The Outback Stars

by Sandra McDonald

  “Find some flour and we can make apple pie,” he said.

  Jodenny ran her hands up and down the hard muscles of his arms. “You’re freezing.”

  “You could warm me up.” He tugged her close, and there certainly wasn’t anything cold about his mouth against hers.

  “Good idea,” Jodenny murmured. “Medical necessity and all.”

  After some very nice groping and fondling, Myell showed Jodenny the small stream he’d discovered. It ran icy cold but she endured it long enough to swallow several times and scrub her face. Myell had a water bottle from Warramala with him, and he filled it to the brim before they returned to the encampment.

  “Thanks,” Osherman said as Myell shared the water and divvied up the fruit.

  “What about me?” Chiba called out from his remote spot.

  Osherman replied, “If you behave and keep quiet, I’ll let you have some.”

  Jodenny noticed that Myell kept his distance from Chiba. She didn’t think he was afraid of him, but rather that he didn’t consider Chiba worth noticing anymore. She sat against Myell, his arms around her waist, and she saw Osherman’s disapproving expression. That really wasn’t worth noticing, either. She held her hands out toward their small campfire.

  “What’s the plan?” she asked.

  Osherman said, “The minute any of us step into a Sphere, it’ll send a ring our way. Like hailing a cab whether you want one or not.”

  “Any Sphere?” Myell asked. “We could try one of the others?”

  “They’d just take us farther and farther into the network,” Osherman said. “Without any kind of map, we’d get more lost. Better to stick to the sure thing.”

  Transiting a hundred and fifty-four more stations wouldn’t be pretty, but the idea of stumbling blindly from planet to planet was much worse.

  “Team Space has known about this for a long time,” Jodenny said. “Why aren’t there outposts or new colonies? The system should be rife with explorers.”

  Osherman poked at the fire. “There have been attempts. They haven’t ended well. Explorers have disappeared. One entire colony disappeared without a trace. Team Space hasn’t been too eager to send people to their deaths until more is known about the network, and what’s really out there.”

  The three of them were silent for a moment.

  “You said any of us could trigger a ring,” Myell said. “Why us? Why not Commander Al-Banna, or Captain Umbundo, or any stranger who happened to walk by?”

  Osherman’s tone was casual. “It only works for certain people.”

  Jodenny asked, “Certain people like who?”

  “I’m going to get more firewood.” Osherman rose to his feet. “Keep an eye on the chief over there. I think he’s been trying to free himself.”

  Jodenny planted herself squarely in front of him. “Sam. Tell me.”

  Myell rose to stand with Jodenny. Osherman gazed over both their shoulders and into the trees. A muscle pulled in his cheek. Finally he said, “You know that yellow light that flashes when the ring activates? It registers your DNA or something like it if you’re in near proximity to it. Afterward you can never step into a Sphere again without triggering the system. You get access to the whole network.”

  Jodenny said, “But neither of us had ever seen anything like that before Mary River.”

  Osherman sighed. “Sergeant Myell, no. But you were exposed on the Yangtze.”

  A shiver ran down her spine. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Let’s talk about it later, Jo. In private.”

  Myell tensed behind her. She insisted, “Tell me now.”

  Osherman turned back to the fire. “The ring on the Yangtze was disassembled. It was being taken from Kookaburra to Fortune to be studied. As we drew nearer to the Alcheringa it somehow triggered an energy transfer from the planet surface. You were there. You saw the ring, you saw the yellow light, you saw it all.”

  Cold all the way to the center of her bones, Jodenny said, “I would remember something like that.”

  Osherman shook his head. “While you were in surgery getting your leg repaired, Team Space gave you a memory block.”

  “You’re lying,” Myell said. “No one can give you a block without your permission. It’s illegal.”

  “Why would I lie?” Osherman asked, annoyed. “Besides, the known side effects of memory blocks include depression, mood swings, and suicide attempts. Does any of that ring a bell, Jodenny?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  “I don’t believe you,” Jodenny said.

  Osherman tossed broken twigs onto the fire. “For years scientists all over the Sisters had been trying to capture a ring from a Sphere so it could be studied. A trio of engineers on Kookaburra finally succeeded. Because of my Inspector General clearance, I was debriefed about the WTS and ordered to get it aboard the Yangtze without anyone finding out about it. A team of scientists came with us, as did the lead agent for that project. None of them thought it would be dangerous. No one thought it would try to activate.”

  Jodenny searched her memory high and low, forced her mind back, back, back to the morning of the explosion. She had signed off on the duty log and turned her responsibilities over to Lieutenant Odell. Then she had gone to the mess decks and was enjoying a nice cup of horchata when the first alarms started to blare …

  Hadn’t she?

  * * *

  Jodenny Scott, Assistant Division Officer for Underway Stores, glanced at the nearest clock on the Yangtze’s bridge and stifled a yawn. The overnight watch had been long and dull, and not even the prospect of the upcoming Alcheringa drop could fill her with excitement. Between now and then the only exciting thing worth contemplating was an icy cup of horchata with extra sugar. She had both hands wrapped around it when her relief showed up early.

  “Couldn’t wait to start the day?” she asked Lieutenant Odell.

  “It was either come in early or stay home and listen to the baby cry,” Odell said, rubbing her eyes. “When the hell is someone going to find a cure for colic?”

  Jodenny signed out at oh-six-hundred, sixty minutes before the ship transitioned into the Alcheringa. She swung by her cabin, picked up her gym bag, and headed back to F-Deck. A long treadmill run soon had her feeling more alert. She showered, put on a fresh uniform, and was heading toward the lift when the comm clicked to life.

  “Alcheringa drop commencing in twenty seconds,” she heard. “Fifteen … ten…”

  The blast of a horn drowned out the rest of the announcement. It sounded low and mournful, as if calling faraway warriors to a battle already lost, and made the hairs on Jodenny’s neck stand at attention. An emergency sensor lit up over the hatch to Science Lab B, and the General Quarters klaxon began to shriek.

  “Emergency in Tower 6,” the bridge announced. “Emergency Services responding. Hull breach in Mainship, Deck F. All crew and passengers to lifepods.”

  For a moment Jodenny stood rooted to the deck. T6 belonged to Jem and the Underway Stores Division. Maybe someone had collided with a DNGO, or a hazardous material smartcrate had broken open. But a hull breach, here, on Deck F? Impossible—

  “Lieutenant,” her agent said, “you should evacuate to your lifepod.”

  “I will, Katherine,” Jodenny said, just as the hatch to Lab B burst inward. A civilian scientist stumbled out of the room and grabbed her by the arms.

  “It’s not supposed to work!” he gasped. “We didn’t mean for it to—”

  Jodenny pushed into the lab to see if anyone needed her help. Sucking wind dragged at her, and she clutched at a fixed table in order to keep from being dragged toward a large hole in the stern bulkhead. An enormous chunk of parasteel had somehow evaporated. The lab was located in the ship’s interior, but the bulkheads beyond it also appeared breached, and the emergency clearshields weren’t holding well. Severed conduits and vents hissed smoke and sparks, and a live power line had two men trapped on the other side of the room. Between Jodenny and the trapped men wer
e pieces of a metal sculpture that had been arranged on the deck. Hanging high over the pieces was a shimmering, yellow-white hologram in the shape of an ouroboros.

  “Jodenny!” a voice shouted, and for the first time she realized one of the trapped men was Sam Osherman. She hadn’t seen him since they’d broken up a month earlier, though she’d cursed his name daily. He yelled, “Jo, get out!”

  The call of a horn filled the room again.

  “It pierced the ship,” said the scientist. “Jesus Christ, it sliced right through the hull—”

  “Jo, leave now!” Osherman said. He dragged the scientist forward so that they were standing in the middle of the ring. The ouroboros over their head glowed brightly. “Get out!”

  Jodenny retreated a step or two but she couldn’t just leave him there, the bastard. “I’ll get help!” she yelled, just as a flare of yellow light blinded her. She tumbled backward, trying to shield her eyes, but the world was full of light, bright light, hot light boiling away her skin, and when she opened her eyes Osherman and the scientist were gone. The disaster had already begun, and the Yangtze was doomed.

  * * *

  She pulled herself clear of Myell’s arms and took several unsteady steps away from both men. “What happened after that? Did I really rescue anyone? Earn that goddamned MacBride Cross?”

  “Of course!” Osherman looked appalled that she doubted it. “You got out of the lab and started for your lifepod. Everything that happened after that, the people you saved and the injuries you sustained, is true. The block was just a little part of your treatment afterward. It’s supposed to be an improved version, with not so many side effects. But it didn’t take too well with you.”

  Jodenny didn’t believe him. He had been her lover, once, but then had stood aside and let them tamper with her memory to the point where she picked up pieces of broken glass and pressed them to her veins. The treachery of it all, from Osherman to her doctors to the admirals of Team Space, made her feel brittle inside, ready to snap into pieces. She couldn’t bear to look at Myell, a man whose mother had killed herself. Her suicide attempt was the one thing she had never wanted him to know about.

  “You used the ring to escape,” Myell said to Osherman. “You left the ship.”

  “Yes,” Osherman said. “It was only six stops until the Point Elliot Spheres. A picnic, compared to this trip.”

  She couldn’t bear to listen anymore. Jodenny walked away blindly, the trees blurred in her vision, her movements jerky and stiff. When tears ran down her face she wiped them off with her sleeve and kept going.

  “Jodenny! Kay!”

  Myell caught up to her but she shrugged off his hand and said, “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine,” he said. “Who could be?”

  He pulled her into his embrace. Jodenny fought with a few thumps of fists against his chest but the punches were perfunctory, and he didn’t let go. Her knees gave way. They both sank to the ground as sobs tore out of her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said when she could speak.

  “Sorry for what? None of this is your fault.”

  “What I did to myself … what your mother did.” Her face was hot with shame. “I didn’t want you to know.”

  Myell’s expression was fierce. “What happened to you and what happened to my mother are two entirely different things. Never compare them. Never blame yourself.”

  His lips found hers in a hard, determined kiss. Jodenny let him cradle her to the ground, where he nuzzled against her cheek and whispered in her ear and told her everything would end well. But her fear wasn’t so easily assuaged. She cupped his strong, stubbled face and said, “What if they try to block this from us? What if we get back and they do it again?”

  “They won’t,” Myell promised, and pressed his weight against her until the forest and trees and sky disappeared, and the only real things were their two bodies. “We’ll die before we let them do that to us.”

  * * *

  Yellow light. Pushing, pushing, pushing them onward. Jodenny made it through the next few stops without too many ill effects but Chiba and Myell both started to suffer terribly. Twelve stations after leaving Warramala they landed in a Sphere with a broken dome, and in the cast of sunlight Chiba went into convulsions. Myell’s eyes were only half open, his skin cold and clammy to Jodenny’s touch.

  “We have to stop,” Jodenny told Osherman.

  The station consisted of three Mother Spheres and a Child set in a thick rain forest. Jodenny fought ferns, vines, and slippery moss until she got Myell to a small clearing under the auspices of an enormous red cedar tree. Birds flitted overhead. Parrots and cockatoos and pigeons, mainly, with some exotic species as well, all the colors of the rainbow. The temperature was mild enough but the ground was damp with recent rain and it took Jodenny several minutes to get a campfire going. She settled Myell close to the flames. He was unresponsive to her cajoling, but that didn’t stop her from talking to him.

  “Remember,” she said into his ear. “We have a dinner date. I already know what I’m going to wear, and you can bet it’s not a uniform. What about you? That sweater you wore at your brother’s house—that was nice. Do you still have it?”

  It was ridiculous discussing wardrobe choices when their clothes were millions of light-years away, but she didn’t have much to say about the weather and gossip about Underway Stores was in short supply. She would have happily traded all her current problems for the challenge of keeping Lange from playing Izim.

  “If we get back to Mary River,” she said, “we can go visit Colby and Dottie, and they’ll put us up in that nice guest room. All night long I waited for you, but did you come visit? No.”

  His trembling eased, and he might have slept. When Osherman joined them several minutes later he had an armful of mushrooms, macadamia nuts, and mangoes. “Some of these look harmless enough,” he said. “Not so sure about the mushrooms. I suspect a lot of things around here are poisonous.”

  Jodenny said, “Sam, we can’t do one hundred and forty-something more stations.”

  “We don’t have a choice.” Osherman put down the food. “Unless you intend to make your home here for the rest of your days and wait for a rescue that might never come.”

  Jodenny tightened her hold on Myell. “How’s Chiba?”

  “Conscious and swearing up a storm. I left him tied up back there, near a waterfall. Give me the water bottle, and I’ll get some for all of us.” Osherman glanced at Myell’s bone-white face. “Jodenny, I know how you feel. What about your career?”

  “If it’s Terry or my career, there’s no contest.”

  “There are other men in Team Space.”

  She replied, “There are other jobs.”

  * * *

  Myell wasn’t sure where he was. The last thing he clearly remembered was the sound of Jodenny’s voice and a glimpse of bamboo trees by firelight. The landscape around him was now flat and parched, cracked open by drought, and the only sound was the whistle of the wind. The western horizon was gold with sunset, the rest of the sky purple. He thought that if he glanced down at himself he might see dark skin and dusty feet. An overwhelming sense of isolation swept through him. He was alone in this ancient land, abandoned by all, consigned to a future bereft of friends or hope or even the tiniest drops of moisture. He would shrivel to nothing more than salt and bone and be scattered like the dust, unremembered, unmourned.

  A woman’s voice floated across the landscape, sweet like water.

  “And that’s how the emu and the kangaroo changed skins,” she said.

  “Tell me another, Mom,” said a young boy.

  Myell turned around to see the farmhouse where he had grown up. The windows were gaping squares of rust-colored light, the timbers splintered by age. He could see shapes moving inside, indistinct, fluid. Himself and his mother in one room. His father, swaying drunkenly down the hall, saying, “Don’t tell him that crap, Adeline.” Silence, now. The creaking of a rope, as a heavy weight sw
ayed from a rafter. Myell knew if he went to the door it would fall away beneath his hand and deliver him into the land of memory, where pain lived and thrived.

  “No,” he said to whoever was listening. “I won’t go.”

  “You don’t have to,” his mother said. She was standing right beside him now, her sun-colored hair pulled back from her fresh, dewy face. This was his mother not as she had died, worn and wasted and gray. This was his mother as she had stood on an Australian beach, a smile on her lips. She was not so tangible that he could reach over and touch her, but that didn’t stop him from trying.

  “Terry,” she said. “Jungali.”

  That was a name he hadn’t heard since her death. Jangali, she would say, and kiss his nose. My little Jungali, she would sing, as she poured water over his head in the tub. His special name, she said. His father never used it. His mother never mentioned it in front of Colby or Daris. Perhaps they had their own names, or perhaps he was the only one so favored. Before he could ask, his mother dissolved like dust in a storm. All the gray particles of her being reassembled into the shape of the Wirrinun.

  “Choose,” he said, and slammed his staff into the ground. The Rainbow Serpent burst from the ground and swallowed the Wirrinun whole. It swayed before Myell’s eyes, lifted its alligator head to the height of Myell’s head, and repeated, “Choose.”

  “I don’t understand,” Myell said. “What am I choosing between? Are you the Wondjina? Where are we?”

  “Older than the Wondjina,” the snake insisted. “Wiser.”

  Lightning sheeted across the sky, followed by bellows of thunder. Myell had never conversed with a snake before and preferred to see his mother again, but he felt strangely calm in this place. He decided he was not dreaming in the normal fashion, nor was he anywhere that could be pinpointed by a map or star chart. He was in the great elsewhere older than Time itself.

  The snake’s eyes widened as if it were pleased. “In the Dreamtime, yes. But will you stay?”