The Stars Blue Yonder

by Sandra McDonald

  The funeral was held the next day at St. Mary’s Cathedral on Church Hill. On the way Lady Scott delivered a history lesson about Irish convicts and hidden sacraments, most of which Jodenny missed because she was too busy trying not to throw up. Her acclimatization to carriage travel had disappeared. Perhaps it was because Osherman was miserable company—withdrawn, haggard—or because the morning was abysmally hot. The breeze smelled like the slaughterhouses and flies were out everywhere.

  “Why did people have to hide being Catholic?” she asked, to keep the conversation going.

  “The government was Church of England, of course. Most of the Irish convicts were Catholic and obviously, that meant Catholics were troublemakers. The only Services you could attend were Protestant.” Lady Scott looked ill at the prospect, or maybe the carriage ride was nauseating her as well. “You actually had to go, or be flogged for being absent.”

  The cathedral was a large Gothic building built entirely of local stone. The mourners were arriving by foot, carriage, and horseback, decked out in their finest clothes and carrying on them the dust and sweat of the day. The dim interior was much cooler than the day outside, even with all the bodies crowding inside. It was long and narrow, running east to west, with small clerestory windows, a high arched ceiling, and an enormous stained glass window fronting the street. Lady Scott’s stature got them to a row of hard pews cushioned by thin pillows, and Jodenny was happy to sit. Catholicism was mostly unknown to her. She didn’t know the differences between one saint and another, or one Bible and the next, and the few Catholics she’d met in Team Space weren’t especially illuminating on the matter.

  “The organ came from London,” Lady Scott murmured.

  It played loud enough to be heard back in London as well. Jodenny fought the urge to hold her hands over her ears as a thin, bald organist worked the stops and pedals. She could still hear the echo in her head as the congregation rose for the arrival of Bishop Polding in his fine robes and very tall hat. When he began the service she thought maybe she was mishearing him, because not a single word made sense.

  “Latin,” Osherman murmured.

  “I knew that,” Jodenny whispered back.

  It seemed to her that a bishop shouldn’t be doing the Mass himself, but maybe the junior priest was sick or Darling’s wealth earning her special note. Polding was sweating copiously under his layers of clothes. She was sweating, too, in a dress that ballooned around her like a camping tent. She hoped Myell, wherever he was, appreciated just how much she was going through in this semitropical limbo, and abruptly missed him so much that her eyes began to tear up.

  She didn’t want to weep in the middle of these strangers, in this strange and awkward land, so she concentrated on the unfamiliar Latin words and the response of the congregation when called upon. She assured junior there would be no Catholicism in their future. Then again, she couldn’t predict anything about their future at all. In her best wild hopes it would involve Terry Myell at her side, and a healthy junior in her arms, and beyond that she could make no presumptions on the universe. None at all, not sitting there in her enormous dress in this Gothic cathedral with the heat and light of colonial Australia outside the windows.

  She lost track of the Mass. She might have even dozed off once or twice. Certainly she wasn’t the only one, because Bishop Polding’s no doubt fine qualities did not, it seem, include succinctness. More than one elderly man and woman across the aisle nodded off during an exceptionally long passage. At one point the congregation stood and began to line up at the altar for communion, and Jodenny felt her dress and throat tighten so constrictively that she feared fainting. Even though they hadn’t reached the part of the ceremony that would commemorate Darling, she tugged on Osherman’s sleeve.

  “I have to go outside,” she told him.

  He immediately ushered her to the side aisle. She took one look at the distance to the front door and gauged it at a thousand steps, maybe a million. Osherman must have realized she wouldn’t make it, and steered her instead into an alcove and out into the sunshine. She felt as if she were falling, spiraling into darkness, so maybe she did faint after all. The next thing she knew, she was sitting on a bench in a garden adjacent to the cathedral. Osherman fanned her with his sleeve.

  “Better now?” he asked.

  “A little,” she said. “I hate this.”

  “I know. Stay here, I’ll go get some water.”

  She was sitting upright, fanning herself, when a concerned man’s voice said, “Mrs. Osherman?”

  Jodenny blinked up at the man. He looked vaguely familiar, but his name eluded her.

  “Benjamin Cohen,” he supplied. “We met at Government House.”

  The same day she’d met Darling. Jodenny tried to look more alert and not like a miserable pregnant woman. “I remember.”

  “Is there anything I can get for you?” he asked.

  “No. My husband will be back in a minute or two. Do you want to sit?”

  Cohen awkwardly sat on the far end of the bench. “Such a terrible shame about Lady Darling. There have always been robbers on the roads outside the city but this kind of violence, this mayhem—it makes me think the colony’s no safer today than it was thirty years ago. A trip to Katoomba should be as safe as a walk down King Street.”

  “Was she a good friend of yours?” Jodenny asked.

  “The most valued kind of friend. One who knows you from the heart inside out, and still accepts your weaknesses and foibles. The kind you might not speak to for years and years, and then the day you cross paths again, it’s as if the conversation never had a pause. Do you have a friend like that, Mrs. Osherman?”

  From inside the church came the murmur of the faithful.

  “Not here,” she answered.

  Cohen smiled sadly. “I understand. When we first got here, it was a terrible adjustment. Learning the local dialects, customs, how to hide ourselves, protect ourselves. Some of us didn’t make it. Cassandra never gave up, though. Surrender was not in her vocabulary.”

  Jodenny blamed the heat for the slowness of her thoughts. But she eventually collected enough of them to piece the story together.

  “You were one of the children,” she said. “You’re from the future.”

  He replied, “My nickname then was Speed. I know that Cassandra told you part of the story, but I suspect she didn’t tell you all. How we came here through the Painted Child. Where the Child is. And what happened to Chief Myell.”

  Which was exactly when Osherman returned and found them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “Well, you see, I’m Chief Cappaletto and that’s Chief Myell. He’s the Hero of Burringurrah. Haven’t you heard of him?”

  Cappaletto had to do some fast talking under the aim of Ensign Darling’s mazer. Myell would have interjected a word or two but he was sprawled on the floor, retching. He didn’t know how many more trips he could make with Cappaletto’s weight; the screech of the ouroboros was still ringing in his ears, and the migraine was so bad that the passageway flickered in his vision.

  “Honest truth,” Cappaletto was saying. “We’re time travelers. The Roon army’s going to be here in a few hours to destroy the Painted Child you’re hiding somewhere in this mountain. But we’ve got a better plan.”

  Myell heard mazer fire. Cappaletto slumped to the floor.

  “Search that one for weapons, Speed,” Darling ordered. She crouched over Myell. “Now, you. Tell the truth. And I don’t want to hear anything about time travel.”

  He took a steadying breath past the pain. “Your name is Cassandra Darling. You’re in charge here because you’re the oldest and no one else is suited for the job. There’s Speed, Bell, Nelson, and the other girl—another little girl. I don’t remember her name.”

  Darling stared at him, giving him nothing in her expression.

  “The Roon army is on its way. They want the Painted Child. But you’re going to blow the base up rather than let them get it, and everyo
ne here’s going to die. But if you let me help you, you can escape and still keep the Roon from getting what they want.”

  Silence. She squinted at him, tilted her head. “Okay, Future-man. You know everything? What’s my middle name?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Fair enough. I don’t have one. Come on. Sit up. No funny stuff.”

  He didn’t think he was going to be able to stay upright, not with the passage lurching wildly around him, but Darling sent Speed for a medical kit and, once in hand, gave Myell a painkiller. She handed him a canteen as well.

  The water was flat and stale-tasting, but he was glad for it. Myell said, “So it’s true? You’ve got a Painted Child somewhere on this base.”

  Darling sat down across from him in the middle of the dusty passage. Cappaletto was still mostly unconscious, but he was beginning to stir.

  “Speed, go keep watch with the others,” she ordered.

  The boy looked rebellious. “Why?”

  “Because I said so!”

  He moved off, sulking. Darling said to Myell, “Tell me everything. As fast as you can, if it’s true what you say about the Roon coming. Are you really the Hero of Burringurrah?”

  “So they say,” Myell replied.

  “Jungali.”

  He gave a start at the name. “It’s a long story.”

  “You better start talking.”

  So he told her as much as he could, as quickly as he could, as persuasively as he could. It wasn’t easy. The migraine was fading but leaving him muddy-headed. Many of the details of his travels were confusing despite the fact he’d lived through them. Darling was a tough audience, neither encouraging nor questioning him, until the end.

  “So you think this Painted Child will let you save mankind,” she said.

  “Something like that.”

  “And if I take you to it, and the Roon get it, nothing matters because this has all already happened?”

  Myell nodded.

  “Protecting that Sphere is the only thing my dad ever made me promise to do,” Darling said. She chewed on a dirty fingernail. “Don’t let them get it, he said. Me and my mother both. Before they died in the bombs.”

  “Why didn’t he destroy it himself?”

  Darling rubbed her eyes. “Hope that it might work one day. That we could escape, when the day came. But that day’s today, Chief Myell, and until you showed up, I didn’t see much hope.”

  “Let me try to save you,” he said.

  Cappaletto groaned from the floor. Myell had to help him sit upright. Darling watched them with her mazer ready to fire again.

  “We don’t have much time,” Myell said. “Last time, there were only a few hours or so between the time I woke up to the time the Roon came knocking. It’s best that you gather up your team, Ensign.”

  She didn’t move. “Here’s the thing, Chief. Even if I take you down there, there’s no guarantee we can get to it. The caves flooded a few years back, water everywhere. The Painted Child might be completely submerged by now. And even if we get there, it won’t work. Captain Doubleday broke it.”

  The last pain of the migraine spiked behind Myell’s eyes. “Who?”

  “Captain Homer Doubleday,” Darling said. “He showed up here, told my parents he was on a top-secret mission. He had a man named Sam with him. They used the Painted Child and we didn’t see him again for a few years. Then he came back with a pregnant woman. Same kind of mission. My mom didn’t believe him either time, but my dad did. He told us that the Roon were coming, that Earth was in jeopardy, but that a man named Jungali would save us all. After he was gone, the Painted Child never worked again.”

  “I don’t understand,” Cappaletto said. “He broke it?”

  Myell got to his feet. The complexities of time travel made his head hurt. That Homer had come here years apart with Osherman and Jodenny confused him. Years apart? Though he’d rescued them both from Kultana before the Roon decimated the Fleet? Maybe Homer wasn’t as good at time travel as he professed to be. Maybe he wasn’t in control of his travels as much as he claimed.

  “There’s no time left,” he told them. “Whatever he did to it, we’ll undo. Either piss or get off the pot, Ensign. We’ve got to go.”

  Darling didn’t move for a long moment. Then she stood, dusted off her pants, and clicked on her commset. “Speed, get everyone down here. We’re going to the caves. Bring the controller.”

  Cappaletto asked, “Controller? For what?”

  “In case I have to blow the place up after all.”

  She didn’t believe Myell, obviously. Or didn’t believe him enough. He was simply happy that she was willing to take them down to the Painted Child. Key to the Dreamtime or not, it had suddenly, unexpectedly become the only clue pointing to Jodenny and junior’s location. Homer, that bastard. Whatever his intentions, he’d sent Jodenny and Osherman through the Child’s ring on a one-way trip and doomed everyone on this base by blocking off their one avenue of escape.

  The rest of Darling’s crew joined them—Ammy with her missing teeth, Nelson with his filthy hands and face, and Speed with his thinly veiled suspicion. The youngest girl, Bell, was in Speed’s arms. She cringed at the sight of two strange men.

  “It’s all right,” Darling said. “That one there is Jungali.”

  “No he’s not,” Speed said.

  Nelson squinted hard. “Doesn’t look like a Jungali.”

  “He is,” Darling said, with confidence. “Everyone follow me.”

  They all started down the ladder. Some of the rungs were broken or missing, though the children didn’t seem to mind as much as Myell did. The lower decks were dark and moldy as they stepped downward, heavy with the emptiness of abandoned spaces—of plans that had gone nowhere, of people who had put forth their energy and hopes and were now nothing more than rotting bones.

  “My mother was the base commander,” Darling said as they climbed. “My father was in charge of Wondjina Transportation System research. They’d found the Painted Child here in the mountain and built the base around it, top secret, hush-hush.”

  “I never heard anything about it,” Cappaletto said.

  “Like I said, hush-hush. The whole world knew about the First Egg buried in Burringurrah, after all. This one, Australia wanted for itself. Besides, even before Captain Doubleday, it wasn’t very reliable. Some days it worked like they wanted and some days it didn’t work at all.”

  They reached the lowest deck in the complex. Myell was dismayed at the brackish water that pooled under his boots. Cappaletto asked, “Where exactly are we?”

  “Jenolan Caves.”

  “Where’s that?” Myell asked.

  “Blue Mountains,” Darling said. “About a hundred and seventy kilometers outside Sydney, if you take the roads. Less as the bird flies.”

  The hatch at the end of the farthest passage could be unlocked only by an alarm code Darling tapped into a keypad. The large metal slab groaned but didn’t open.

  “Stuff rots out,” Darling said. “Speed?”

  He put Bell down, ripped open a side panel, and fiddled inside. A moment later, the slab opened into darkness. Cool, humid air breezed past them. Stepping forward, Darling threw a switch that lit up a string of weak yellow lights embedded into the cave walls. The metal deck sloped downward into more water.

  “Is it safe down there?” Cappaletto asked.

  “Not really,” Darling said.

  An ominous clang sounded out several decks above them. Darling glanced upward apprehensively. Bell made a whimpering sound and Speed patted her back awkwardly. Myell, who had no intention of letting the Roon get hold of the children, gathered them up and ushered them down the passage.

  The water was colder than he expected, and deeper, too. One minute Myell was shin-deep and then next he was soaked to his thighs. The deck became uneven as it descended, treacherous with hidden debris and slippery with some kind of lake slime.

  “It’s a little late to ask,” he said, �
�but is there a map to this place? A wall diagram?”

  Darling forged ahead of the group. “No.”

  “He’s scared,” Speed said, with obvious scorn.

  Nelson wiped his hand across his mouth. “I’m scared, too.”

  “Don’t worry,” Darling replied. “It’s not far.”

  The caves were limestone; the deeper they went, the more deposits Myell saw hanging from the ceiling like icicles or popping out of the water like jagged icebergs. Pretty formations. Dangerous, too. Catwalks and scaffolding had been erected to navigate the twisting passages, but some had fallen aside and others were completely washed away.

  “Nice caves,” Cappaletto grumbled. “You should sell tickets.”

  “Older than the dinosaurs, my mom said,” Darling said over her shoulder.

  As the water grew deeper and the footing more chancy, the two smallest children started having trouble. Cappaletto scooped up Bell and planted her against his hip. Speed glared at him, but he was submerged to his thin chest and couldn’t help. Myell carried Ammy, who buried her snotty nose against his neck.

  “Down here!” Darling called, from somewhere in the darkness up ahead.

  Myell followed carefully, imagining a dozen different ways this was going to end badly. He heard Darling throw another switch. A power transformer snapped somewhere and an ugly buzz filled the air. No electricity surged through the water, which was a relief. The lights went out, though, which was a less fortunate development.

  Darling’s voice drifted through the darkness. “Damn it.”

  Cappaletto, sounding braver than Myell felt, asked, “Need some help?”

  “Nope.”

  Bell said, “It’s too dark!”

  Speed said, “I told you it was the other one. Let me have a go.”

  “Shut up,” Darling said. Another switch clicked. Then another. The lights flickered and stayed on, and then a warm white glow filled the passage just around the bend ahead.