The Stars Down Under

by Sandra McDonald

  “Honey,” he said when he saw her.

  “I thought I’d surprise you—” Jodenny took a closer look at his left eye. The flesh around it was bruised. “What happened?”

  “This is AT Tingley and AT Romero,” Myell said, hurriedly introducing his companions. “This is Lieutenant Commander Scott, my wife.”

  “Ma’am!” Romero popped off a salute even though Jodenny wasn’t in uniform. Tingley followed. Her lips moved, but her voice was too soft for Jodenny to hear over the crowd.

  “At ease.” Jodenny remained focused on the bruises. “Your eye?”

  “My own fault,” Myell said. “I was going to call you, see if you wanted to eat dinner out. Romero and Tingley are graduating, and they’ve never had Cuban camarónes.”

  “We don’t want to be an imposition,” Romero said.

  Tingley bit her thumbnail and ducked her head.

  Myell had a smile pasted on his face. “You can’t go to the fleet without a hefty dose of garlic. It’s good luck.”

  Oh, what a clever husband she had. Jodenny knew a diversion when she saw one, but she did love camarónes. The cantina off Water Street was a rowdy, crowded place filled with faux-wooden tables, colorful artwork, and robot parrots that flitted from one perch to the next. Music blared from a live band in the corner. Jodenny could barely hear anything Tingley said, but she could tell from shy smiles that the two able technicians were more than just classmates.

  Myell was more effusive than usual, cheerfully relating tales from the fleet about what real supply sailors did. She had heard some of the stories, but not all. His experiences working in Supply Departments were vastly different from her own. She couldn’t say that enlisted soldiers had more fun, but their shipboard culture was perhaps more colorful, their adventures on leave a little more grand than anything she’d ever encountered. Neither Tingley nor Romero had ever been off world, and both had plenty of questions about life down the Big Alcheringa.

  “Well, Baiame’s still backward,” Myell said. “Warramala’s all for fun and personal freedom. Mary River’s duller than dirt, and Sundowner’s full of all the smart ones. Universities on every block.”

  “Is that true, Commander?” Romero asked.

  Jodenny signaled the waiter for another beer. “I didn’t notice.”

  She wanted to haul Myell into a quiet corner and harangue him until he fessed up about the bruises, but had to wait through dinner and beers and more beers. When her patience ran out she sent Tingley and Romero back to their barracks in a cab. A second cab took Jodenny and Myell through the night streets of Kimberley and out toward Adeline Oaks.

  “Tell me,” she said, as he let his head fall back against the passenger seat. He looked more tired than she’d seen him in a long, long time.

  He said, “Fight. My fault. Misunderstanding, maybe. Maybe not. But I swung first.”

  The thought of him brawling in the middle of Supply School made her wince. “What kind of misunderstanding?”

  He gave her a crooked smile. “Do I have to tell? Or will you trust me to work it out on my own?”

  Jodenny pursed her lips. “When we got married, we promised to work things out together.”

  “I know.” Myell closed his eyes. “But I can do it alone.”

  She touched his arm. He winced a little, and she tugged up the sleeve of his sweater. Now she understood why he had kept it on all evening, even though the cantina had been hot. The bruising was ugly in the passing lights of other flits.

  “That’s not a misunderstanding!” she said.

  He tugged his arm away. “It was a prank.”

  “A prank?” Jodenny heard the shrillness in her voice and tried to scale it back. “What prank? How could it be your fault?”

  He glared at her. “Trust me or don’t. Which is it?”

  Jodenny folded her arms and turned from him. Her heart was thumping painfully fast. She had seen him bullied on the Aral Sea, had nearly lost him in the freezing darkness of a locked-down storage tower, and had watched him slide toward death on their trip through the Spheres. He was a damned fool if he thought this was about trust.

  “I’m sorry,” he said a moment later.

  Jodenny shook her head.

  They arrived home in silence. Jodenny used a yuro card to pay off the cab’s automated driver. The house lit up as they stepped inside. Betsy had a few incoming messages for them, including more media queries for interviews. Karl wanted to be held.

  “Scratch my ears,” he demanded, and Jodenny obeyed.

  “I have to take a shower.” Myell disappeared into the bathroom.

  When he came out twenty minutes later she said, “I told Dr. Gayle I’d help her tomorrow. We’re going to the Spheres out at Bainbridge.”

  He rubbed a towel against his damp hair. A bathrobe concealed whatever other marks or injuries he hadn’t told her about.

  “I don’t want you to,” he said. “I’m asking you not to.”

  Jodenny folded her arms across her chest. “I trust her. And if you trust me, you’ll leave it at that.”

  Myell gazed past her to the darkened living room and the vids glowing softly on the mantelpiece. Family and friends. Some lost, but never forgotten.

  “It’s not about trust,” he said.

  “Then what is it about?” Jodenny stepped toward him, part of her secretly pleased that he edged backward. If he needed her to challenge him, then she would do it. She hadn’t expected that of marriage, but they’d barely known each other on the Aral Sea. Maybe they’d rushed into things before they were ready.

  Relentlessly Jodenny asked, “Why won’t you tell me what’s going on at school? When did I become someone you couldn’t tell the truth to?”

  Myell’s expression was a mix of bleakness and stubbornness. “When did I sign up to be interrogated and second-guessed? Do I ask you if you’re helping because of Sam Osherman? Do I wonder if you want to go out there despite your promise because you want to find him, not some missing scientists?”

  She wasn’t going to be able to reason with him, not now, maybe not ever.

  Karl ambled between them and made a soft querying sound.

  “Do what you want,” Myell said, and went into the guest bedroom. The click of the door behind him was as definitive and final an end to the discussion as Jodenny had ever heard.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It took Myell ten flights of stairs to realize what an idiot he was.

  The school gym had been crowded when he first arrived, but he’d snagged a training machine in the corner of the cardio room. News, movies, and other entertainment played out on the overvids. Beyond the plastiglass windows, sweat-sheened students were racing around a basketball court. Myell kept focused on his personal display, which relayed his progress up the stairwell of a hypothetical skyscraper. He was sweating heavily and feeling the burn of protesting bruises, but the exertion kept him from brooding over Jodenny and whatever she was off doing.

  The display pulsed a warning that he was exceeding his recommended cardio target. Myell slowed a little, aware of his heavy breathing and the sweat soaking through his T-shirt. The young woman beside him was going much faster than he was, though the age difference between them wasn’t more than ten or so years. He told himself that planetside life was making him soft, and started pumping the pedals harder. He wasn’t going to let a stupid machine limit his exertions.

  But he was, it seemed, going to let his beloved wife go play around with the Wondjina Transportation System without him. His eyes went unwillingly to the clock. She might have already gone out to Bainbridge. Already there might be a gleaming ouroboros whisking more people out into the galaxy, playing around with a technology that none of them understood or could control.

  His right calf began to cramp. He slowed down again. He leaned his arms against the machine’s supports and sucked in air. Jodenny thought that what she was doing was helpful, and perhaps it was, for the missing members of the ill-fated mission. But Sphere travel was a
perilous endeavor full of dangers that included the all-powerful Rainbow Serpent. He was sure of that, sure down to his bones, sure as the sweat soaking his clothes and socks.

  Yet the Wondjina, whoever they were, had left their system behind to be discovered. Monuments of stone, empty and forlorn.

  But not useless. Not dead. And Team Space was going to use them whether Myell objected or not.

  In the men’s locker room, he thumbed open his locker and groped for his gib. Jodenny answered on the third ring, tight lipped and stern.

  “I can’t really talk,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” Myell said. “For a lot of things. I want to help.”

  Jodenny gazed at him through the small screen. “Why the change of heart?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t support what you’re trying to do. But I support you. If this is what you really want, then I want it, too.”

  She dipped her chin a little. “You’re sure?”

  “More than sure.”

  Jodenny had to go offscreen for a moment, but when she came back she told him a flit would be by to pick him up in twenty minutes. Myell put the gib back in his locker, stripped off his sweaty clothes, and headed for the showers with only a towel and the dilly bag in hand. Superstitious, he told himself, but he didn’t like to leave it out of his sight.

  Five minutes under the hot water was enough to sluice him clean and ease the lingering cramp in his leg. When he returned to his locker the door was broken and hanging open. His gym bag, lunch, workout clothes, and uniform were all gone, and his gib was a useless smashed pile of electronics.

  He stood there gaping, his face growing hotter by the moment, only peripherally aware of other men moving to and from their own lockers or the showers.

  With only the towel around his waist, Myell went out of the locker room and along the basketball sidelines to the registration desk. The civilian employee at the desk gawked at him.

  “You can’t come out here dressed like that—” she started.

  “Someone took my uniform,” he said, struggling against fury. “I need someone to hunt down some clothes for me.”

  Her frown was a deep crevice. “I have to stay at the counter and Tommy’s gone to lunch—”

  Myell steadfastly ignored the attention he was drawing from athletes all over the gym. He’d stand there in his towel and drip water all day long, just to spite them. But the flit was due soon, and he wasn’t going to call Jodenny to tell her that his things had been stolen.

  “Are you sure you checked the right locker?” the clerk asked. A young civilian man emerged from the back office, a stack of neatly folded towels in his arms. She said, “Benny, would you go with this gentleman and see if you can find his things?”

  “It’s not there,” Myell insisted. “I need to use your gib.”

  He tried pinging Senior Chief Gooder, but Gooder’s agent said he was off base and unavailable. He tried Sergeant Etedgy next, but Etedgy was conducting a lunchtime training session.

  “Sir, you really can’t stand here half naked,” the clerk insisted. “Do you want me to call Security and they can help you find your bag?”

  She was entirely unsympathetic. Myell wanted to snap his towel at her face. Benny had gone to the locker room and returned with the remains of Myell’s gib, a perplexed look on his face.

  “This yours, sir?”

  “I’m not a sir, and yes it’s mine,” Myell said, exasperated. “I dropped it.”

  “Hell of a drop,” Benny said. “It was in the trash.”

  He didn’t have time for any of this. He certainly didn’t have time to file a report with Security. Myell considered leaving in just the towel, but then AT Romero came to sign in at the desk and asked, “Chief? Everything okay?”

  “No, it’s not okay.” Myell dragged Romero to the side. “I need you to get me some clothes.”

  Romero offered his gym bag. “I’ve got some shorts—”

  “Not quite my size,” Myell said. He dispatched Romero off to the school store, and because he didn’t even have his wallet, had to ask Romero to pay. Myell returned to the locker room and paced back and forth and tried not to count every passing second. Romero must have run all the way back, because he was red faced and sweating when he returned with a shopping bag.

  “Don’t have a heart attack,” Myell told him.

  “Senior Chief Talic caught me running, said I couldn’t do that, had me do a hundred push-ups,” Romero reported. “I’m not sure I got the right sizes or that the sneakers are going to fit—”

  The school store was not known for fashion. Myell tugged on a jersey embroidered with the Supply emblem and a pair of black shorts. The sneakers were a little too tight, but he could live with them.

  “You’re a life-saver,” Myell told Romero.

  “Don’t you want to tell Security what happened, Chief?”

  “Not now,” Myell said. “I need you to deliver a message to Senior Chief Gooder for me, can you do that? Tell him I had an urgent appointment outside of the building, and I’ll talk to him first thing in the morning. It’s very important.”

  A black flit was already waiting in the parking lot by the time Myell got there. He felt naked without his Team Space identification, but the young driver said, “Afternoon, Chief,” and opened the back door for him.

  The drive up to Bainbridge went more slowly than Myell had expected, thanks to midafternoon traffic in Kimberley and a road accident at one of the regional interchanges. The sedan’s air-conditioning left goosebumps on the back of Myell’s neck. The rolling landscape grew more mountainous, forest giving way to slopes and meadows. The driver stayed silent all the way up, but tuned the radio so that the afternoon news droned steadily in the background. As they drew near the Spheres he saw signs announcing their temporary closure.

  “Security measures?” Myell asked the driver.

  “They don’t tell me much, Chief,” the driver replied.

  “What do you think’s going on up here?”

  The driver’s voice was dry. “They’re vidding a game. Izim Extreme, I hear.”

  They passed trailers and vans, and security guards dressed in casual clothes, and bits of vid equipment propped up in different areas. The three Spheres were just a hundred meters down the road, in a clearing surrounded by redwoods. Father, Mother, and Child. The stone triad that repeated itself through the Seven Spheres. The Father loomed largest, almost as tall as the redwoods around them. The Mother was exactly half its size, and the Child half again. Each Sphere had a single archway, darkness spilling out from inside.

  Leorah Farber met the flit in a parking lot. She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, with a ball cap tucked over her hair. She gave Myell’s gym clothes a speculative look.

  “Don’t ask,” he said. “Where’s Commander Scott?”

  “Just up here,” she said, walking him toward the Spheres. Activity had picked up a little, with several of the fake vid crew retreating to the vans and other personnel, military by the look of them, securing the perimeter. “We haven’t started yet. It should be fairly straightforward. Either the Sphere responds to you or it doesn’t.”

  He said, “To my wife. I’m only here to observe.”

  Farber touched the headset under her ball cap. “On our way,” she said to someone, and a moment later they met up with Jodenny and Teddy Toledo on a dirt path through the redwoods.

  “Any problem getting away from school?” Jodenny asked, eyeing Myell’s clothes.

  “It’s all fine,” he assured her. She wasn’t in uniform, either, but instead wore trousers and a shirt that made her look like any other member of the pretend vid crew.

  Toledo, his green shirt already stained at the underarms, clapped his hands. “I’ve got a good feeling about this.”

  Myell’s palms felt damp, and he instinctively reached for Jodenny’s hand. She squeezed it briefly, gave him a smile, then let go as Anna Gayle met them.

&
nbsp; “Chief Myell,” Gayle said, offering him a brisk handshake. She was all business, he decided, very confident, not a single red hair daring to stray from the tight braid on her head. Slim, beautiful, hard: That was her husband out there somewhere, and she was determined to find him. Gayle said, “So very glad you decided to join us.”

  “I’m not joining you,” he said. “I’m supporting Commander Scott.”

  Gayle’s smile was bright and tight. “Same difference. We’re almost ready, Commander. As you’ve been briefed, events will be direct and straightforward. I’ll try activating a token, as will two others who’ve traveled in the network before. Each time we’ll give the system ten minutes to respond. Then it will be your turn.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Jodenny said, though they all knew she had no control over it at all.

  “We’ve got monitoring equipment set up inside, recording everything. The data’s being fed up to that van,” Gayle said. “You can watch from there if you’d like, Chief.”

  Myell squinted at the green van barely visible in the trees. “I’ll stay here.”

  Gayle walked down toward the Mother Sphere. Myell sat with Jodenny in the grass by the side of the path. Farber and Toledo remained standing. The air was filled with birdsong and soughing wind, and a steady crunching sound from Toledo as he chewed on peanuts.

  Ten minutes after entering the Mother Sphere, Gayle emerged with a flat expression.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  Two other people whom Myell hadn’t met came down the path and took their turns. The Sphere didn’t respond to either of them.

  “My turn.” Jodenny stood up and brushed grass from her trousers. “No worries.”

  Myell rose with her and kissed her soundly. “Be careful.”

  “Always,” she said.

  “Good luck, Commander,” Gayle said, her arms tightly folded over her chest.