The Outback Stars

by Sandra McDonald

  “What was said about my mother…” Myell kept his eyes on the road. “I’d appreciate it if that didn’t get repeated.”

  Jodenny made a small surprised sound. “I wouldn’t. Never.”

  He nodded. Another kilometer passed before Jodenny said, “I read the report from Loss Accounting about the missing dingo. Sergeant Rosegarten confirmed that it wasn’t your fault.”

  “Good,” Myell said.

  “I heard Chief Chiba’s been giving you trouble.”

  Myell turned south onto Bethlehem Parkway. The local Spheres appeared, solid and unyielding against the sky. “Nothing that you need to worry about, Lieutenant.”

  Jodenny made a small skeptical sound.

  “Chiba just likes to show off,” Myell insisted. “Has the power and likes to use it. Don’t tell me there aren’t officers who do the same thing, because we both know differently.”

  “There’s a difference between showing off and bullying. That fight last week between the two divisions—someone could have gotten seriously hurt.”

  Myell hadn’t forgotten about the clash. “I didn’t ask anyone to get involved.”

  “If you knew someone in your division was being harassed, you wouldn’t take the initiative to intervene?”

  Damn her for making it sound so easy. Myell decided silence was his best strategy. Jodenny turned her head to the window and, after a moment, said, “Stop for a moment, will you?”

  Warily Myell pulled the flit over.

  “Do we have time to swing by those Spheres?” she asked.

  He checked the clock. “If you want. The next birdie doesn’t leave until late this afternoon.”

  Myell angled the flit across the fields and parked in a dirt lot. Jodenny said, “I’ll be back in a few,” and headed off with a water bottle in hand. He sat on the hood with his arms crossed, glad for the shade of the Father Sphere. Two eagles chased each other across the sky, but the grandeur of the site was ruined by overflowing trash bins and graffiti on the historic site marker. That was a shame. Like the pyramids of Earth, the Spheres deserved to be protected and preserved. But then again Spheres had never held archaeological treasure or dead pharaohs. They were as much a mystery as the Alcheringa itself, and such mysteries lost their allure as decades passed.

  “Lieutenant?” he called out. “Anything in particular you’re looking for?”

  Jodenny emerged from the Mother Sphere. “No. Someone told me a theory, that’s all. A stupid idea.”

  A low, mournful sound filled the air, like someone blowing an animal’s horn. The noise stiffened the hairs on the back of Myell’s neck. He slid off the hood and scanned the horizon, but it seemed to be coming from the interior of the Mother Sphere. Jodenny turned toward it.

  “Careful, Lieutenant.”

  “It must be a trick of the wind,” she said. “Spheres don’t make noise.”

  The horn died away, leaving his ears ringing. When Jodenny started toward the arched entrance he said, “You sure that’s a good idea?”

  Jodenny gave him a considering glance and headed inside. He grabbed the torch from the flit and followed her under the arch inscribed with Wondjina runes. He had been inside Spheres before, of course. Sometimes, when Daris was in a particularly bad mood, he and Colby had taken refuge in the group a few kilometers from their farm. Once inside this one, it took a moment for Myell’s eyes to adjust to the darkness. As he played the light over its interior he saw a large metal ring lying in the dirt. It was some kind of welded sculpture, at least three meters in diameter. The sight of it made him distinctly uneasy.

  “This wasn’t here a minute ago,” Jodenny said.

  “We should leave,” he said.

  Jodenny tilted her head at it, stepped back, then crouched down and put her hand on the ring. “It’s an ouroboros. A snake eating its tail.”

  Myell wanted to backtrack to the flit, but he wasn’t about to leave her alone. He bent low and thumbed the metal. It was roughly the width of his forearm and was faintly warm, as if it had been sitting in the sun and not inside a stone structure. He cocked his head, noting scales and wings, swirls and whorls.

  “It’s a Rainbow Serpent,” he said.

  “A what?”

  Old childhood stories came to mind, along with the unsettling visions he’d had of the shaman. “Created the lands and rivers and all who live in it. Made the world itself.”

  “My mythology’s a little rusty.” Jodenny gingerly stepped inside the ring.

  “Lieutenant,” he warned. “I really think we should get out of here.”

  She probably thought this was one big adventure. Something to tell the wardroom about, or put in her performance evaluation. Supply lieutenant discovers ancient sculpture. But the weight of the Sphere pressed down on Myell and he could almost feel the shaman’s glare on the back of his skull. “Lieutenant,” he said again as she crouched down to the inside of the serpent.

  “There are two symbols here. Like Wondjina runes.”

  Swallowing hard, he forced himself into the ring alongside her. The symbols were deeply etched into the metal, and spaced just a few centimeters apart.

  Jodenny pointed at the first one. “At the risk of sounding caffeine-deprived, that looks like a cup of coffee.”

  Myell squinted. He supposed she could interpret it that way, though he wasn’t so sure. The symbols weren’t like any Wondjina runes he’d ever seen.

  “And this one could be a slice of pie,” Jodenny said, indicating the second symbol but being careful not to touch it.

  The horn sounded again. This time it sounded like it was coming from the dome of the Mother Sphere itself, and the vibrations rattled the back of his teeth. “It’s a warning,” he said.

  “Maybe just some kind of announcement.”

  “Or a General Quarters alarm—” Myell started, but then a wall of yellow light swept over them and cut off his words. The light shoved him hard through what felt like a brick wall. When his senses returned he was on both knees, dazed and coughing. The serpent ring was intact and the Mother Sphere unchanged around them.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  Jodenny grabbed his arm, barely able to stand. “Let’s get out of here.”

  They mutually supported each other out of the Sphere and into the muted green sunlight of a tropical jungle. Humid air redolent of dirt and rot pressed in on Myell from all sides. He slid bonelessly to his knees, sweat already beading between his shoulder blades.

  “Shit and spice,” Jodenny said, staring into the distance.

  The Mother Sphere they’d emerged from was just one of several Mothers trailing away like a line of old gray soldiers. Many of them were broken or crushed. Though the jungle was teeming with growth, the dirt and airspace around each Sphere was barren in all directions. Maybe it was radioactivity, maybe poison, but someone or something had tried to destroy these Spheres and left them so damaged that nothing alive grew near.

  Myell didn’t know what exactly had happened, he didn’t know if he felt numb or dull with surprise, he didn’t know what to make of any of it—but he knew one thing for sure.

  They weren’t on Mary River anymore.

  * * *

  Delayed reaction set in, making Jodenny vomit into the dirt. She heaved for a full minute, the acid of semidigested breakfast burning her throat. Afterward she wiped her mouth with her sleeve. Myell looked pale and shocky, almost as bad as she felt, but as she groped for the bottle hitched to her belt she was selfishly glad she wasn’t alone. She took a sip of water, spat it out, took another, and swallowed. Her mouth tasted fuzzy.

  “This isn’t Mary River,” Myell said when she passed him the bottle.

  “No.” Jodenny gazed at the row of Mother Spheres with a leaden feeling in her stomach. “It’s nowhere in the Seven Sisters. We must have found some kind of Wondjina transportation device that’s still working after all these years.”

  “Maybe it’s simpler than that,” Myell said. “We’re hallucinating.”r />
  She toed the dirt beneath them. “Most vivid hallucination I ever had.”

  A few more moments passed before Jodenny was able to stand without feeling faint. She had spent time in the rain forests of Fortune and recognized kauri trees, several red cedars, and a mammoth cathedral fig. Daisies and bluebells, snails and bees—she didn’t have to look far to confirm this was a world with a familiar ecosystem.

  “You sure we’re not in the Sisters?” Myell asked.

  “If we are, it would have to be some remote corner of the tropics that no one has charted yet. No one ever reported this kind of formation of Spheres.” Jodenny couldn’t help but smile. “I think we’ve discovered another kind of Alcheringa.”

  Myell didn’t answer. Already sweating from the heat, Jodenny turned in a circle to take in every detail she could. Green, green, green, as far as the eye could see. Birds of paradise sprouting amid giant tree roots. Mushrooms wider than the spread of her arms. She wrapped her arms across her chest and gave herself a gleeful hug. Jackie MacBride had discovered the Little Alcheringa, and others had discovered the river between the Seven Sisters, but she, Jodenny Scott, had discovered the secret of the Spheres.

  “Maybe we’re not supposed to be here,” Myell said. “If the Wondjina meant for us to use the Spheres, then people would have found snake rings a long time ago.”

  “Ouroboros,” Jodenny said, because that sounded more scientific. “Let’s explore some more.”

  “No,” Myell said. “We should see if the ring will take us back.”

  “But the potential here—”

  “Means nothing if we can’t get home,” he said, and pushed her back inside the Mother Sphere.

  By the faint light that fell through the archway she saw the ouroboros was indeed still in place, with Myell’s torch abandoned near one edge of it. Cautiously he leaned over and snagged it. He played the light over the walls around them, but they were as smooth and unmarked as any she’d ever seen before. He studied the symbols on the ring.

  “Maybe one’s for Mary River, the other for here,” Jodenny said.

  “Or maybe it’s a warning,” Myell said. “Stay away, don’t use this. The thing is, Lieutenant, you can’t really trust snakes.”

  He spoke as if the ouroboros had a mind of its own. Jodenny said, “We need to investigate those other Spheres. Get some plant samples, some—”

  The horn sounded again, low and mournful. Myell stepped into the ring. “Come on.”

  “But we don’t have any proof—”

  “If we don’t take our chance now, we might never get back.”

  “We can try—” Jodenny started, but Myell grabbed her by the arms and pulled her inside the ring just as the yellow light swept down out of nowhere.

  * * *

  Jodenny regained consciousness with Myell slumped in the driver’s seat beside her. The Mary River sun had set, leaving the Father, Mother, and Child Spheres before her as silhouettes against the red and purple sky. She had only vague memories of Myell half carrying, half dragging her from the Mother Sphere to the flit.

  “Sergeant.” She touched his hand. Cool, but he had a strong pulse. “Sergeant,” she repeated, more loudly, and he shifted in his seat.

  “Ouch,” he complained.

  “We’re back.”

  Myell’s head lolled. He opened his eyes. “Hell of a trip.”

  They sipped at their water bottles for several minutes. The sky faded to dark and the air grew cold. The Spheres were dark against the stars. “We have to tell someone,” Jodenny said. “Otherwise the next person who walks in there will get a hell of a surprise.”

  “Tell who?” he asked.

  “Fleet, for starters.”

  Myell snorted. “The organization that has a monopoly on all travel down the Alcheringa? If it is some kind of galactic transportation system, Team Space won’t want anyone to know until they figure out how to control it and profit off it. That trip you and I just took might cost fifty thousand yuros, probably. Maybe a hundred thousand. They’d really have every colonist or traveler by the throat then.”

  Jodenny gazed in consternation at the Mother Sphere. “You’d rather tell the media? Who knows what might happen. People would come try it, and end up marooned or dead. We have a responsibility to our chain of command.”

  Myell sipped at his water and didn’t answer.

  She took that as acquiescence. “Do you have your gib? Mine’s at my hotel. We need pictures, some kind of proof.”

  Myell reached into the backseat and rummaged around in his rucksack. He pulled out something small and wooden, a box of some kind.

  “What’s that?” Jodenny asked.

  “Nothing.” He sounded annoyed. He shoved it back into the sack, took out his gib, and stepped out of the car. “I’ll get the pictures.”

  “Wait for me.” Jodenny opened her own door, but her legs were still wobbly and threatened to give out if she took more than three steps. Myell eased her back to the seat.

  “I’ll be back soon, Kay,” he said.

  “Sergeant Myell,” she said, making it a command. She didn’t want him to go alone. Myell ignored her and went back to the Mother Sphere. He returned a few minutes later.

  “It’s gone,” he said.

  Jodenny went to see for herself. The ouroboros had disappeared completely, without even an indentation on the ground to mark its prior existence.

  “They’re going to say we made it up,” Myell said, and almost sounded relieved.

  “But we didn’t!”

  He spread his hands in a not-my-fault gesture.

  “If we wait long enough, it’ll come back,” Jodenny predicted. But several minutes passed, then a half hour, then an hour, and still the ring didn’t return. They didn’t even hear the horn. Jodenny was cold and had a headache and Myell, sitting in the archway with a torch in hand, didn’t look much better. She took pictures of the dirt, hoping that perhaps a computer could pick out what human eyes couldn’t see. Finally she said, “I suppose we should go.”

  The drive back to New Christchurch passed in silence. The Bethlehem Parkway was nearly deserted. Jodenny tuned the radio to the local news but heard nothing about her being wanted by the police or strange occurrences noted near Spheres. As Myell took the exit toward downtown she told him where her hotel was and said, “I think we should both keep quiet until we can figure out more about what happened.”

  “No problem.” Myell stopped the flit around the corner from her hotel. “It’s probably best you get out here.”

  Jodenny stepped out to the curb. Her leg ached and her eyes had a gritty, sandpapery feel to them. She wondered if she should order both of them to the hospital, to investigate any lingering medical effects of being pushed and shoved through space. “What about you? The birdie left hours ago.”

  His voice was neutral. “I’ll check into the barracks.”

  She wished she knew what he was thinking. “I’ll see you back on the ship, then.”

  Myell drove off without a backward glance. Jodenny walked around the corner to her hotel and decided that if she was arrested, she had to keep Myell and his family out of it. The lobby was empty, however, and the clerk at the front desk ignored her. At the public kiosk in the lobby Jodenny put a call through to the ship. Vu’s agent said she was busy but Strayborn answered on the first ping.

  “Hey, Lieutenant,” he said. “Enjoying your liberty?”

  Strayborn might be under orders to lull her into a false sense of security, but she sensed nothing amiss about him. “It’s been interesting. Anything going on up there?”

  “Nothing we can’t handle.”

  Still wary, she signed off and took the lift to her floor. Her thumbprint opened the door lock, and when she inched inside and flipped on the lights she saw that the room was as perfectly ordered as she had left it. Too perfect, perhaps. The bedspread was unwrinkled and tight, though she had been lying on it before she went out for dinner. The cleaning bot, she told herself. But s
he didn’t rest easy until she opened the wall safe. Inside, untouched, were the diplomatic pouch, her gib, and her wallet.

  “Holland,” she said to the gib. “Are you there?”

  “Good evening, Lieutenant. How may I be of assistance?”

  She sat down on the edge of the bed. “Anything trigger your security alerts lately? Any inquiries or data trespassing?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Try as she might, Jodenny couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had been in the room. Maybe it was silly, or maybe instinct. She packed up her things and went to check out. Down at the front desk, the clerk said, “Did you enjoy your stay, Lieutenant?”

  Sure she did. She had enjoyed it so much she was thinking of recommending Mary River for anyone who enjoyed conspiracies, paranoia, and leaping onto mag-lev trains. Maybe they could package danger, sell it like a theme park. Throw in an unexpected journey to the other side of the universe with a handsome sergeant and they’d be sure to have a surge in customers.

  Jodenny took a cab to the officers’ barracks at Fleet and rented a room. She barely slept at all. In the morning she skipped the first birdie so she wouldn’t see Myell and opted for the second flight instead. At the port she had a brief moment of panic when the security guard ran her ID through his machine and frowned.

  “Something wrong?” Jodenny asked.

  “Not quite.” The guard’s gib rang and he answered it with a distracted, “Johnson here.”

  She vowed to go quietly, no argument, let the lawyers figure it out. As long as they didn’t handcuff her when they dragged her away, she figured she could live with the humiliation.

  “Hey, Lieutenant!” someone called out cheerily. It was Erickson, standing with Minnich. “You’re holding up the line!”

  She held up a hand. A wave or a surrender, depending on what came next. The guard hung up his gib and whacked the scanner solidly with the palm of his hand.

  “You’re all clear, Lieutenant.”

  Until the very moment the birdie departed, she expected police to board and haul her away. While the ship arced toward the Aral Sea, she envisioned guards waiting for her in the docking bay. The skittishness made her angry. Why should she be so worried? Sure, she’d destroyed a secbot, but unknown men had been chasing her. Then a Wondjina transportation device had pulled her from Mary River to God-knew-where and back again. And she was fairly sure she was falling in love with Sergeant Terry Myell.