The Stars Blue Yonder

by Sandra McDonald

  Thirteen-year-old Kyle, who was Teresa’s oldest son, came in close on his cousin’s heels. Like his grandpa Osherman, he had sandy-colored hair, a long nose, and a narrow face. He said, “Don’t be stupid, Twig. You already have a grandfather.”

  Twig said, “But he was my first one. Right, Mom?”

  Lisa put a wet cloth to Twig’s dirty face. “You’re supposed to be fishing. Where’s the catch?”

  “We caught a bunch,” Kyle said. “Steven’s got ’em.”

  Twig’s brothers Steven and David soon arrived, bearing a string of river trout. Alton trudged in after them, his feet filthy up to his knees. After Lisa made the introductions, Alton said, rather proudly, “I’m the one who found you! In the stream.”

  “Where’d you come from, anyway?” Kyle asked.

  Twig poked his arm. “From the grave, doofus.”

  Myell paused from shucking corn. “Do I look like a zombie?”

  “You’re supposed to be old.” Kyle gave Myell a thorough, scrutinizing look. “As old as Nana.”

  Lisa corralled the kids and pointed them toward the bathroom. “Go wash up, all of you, and then keep yourself busy until I call for supper. And if you’ve got homework, you better go do it now. I’ll be checking later.”

  Twig broke free of the gang to duck into the living room. “Hi, Nana,” she said, throwing her arms around Jodenny’s neck and giving her a quick, sweaty squeeze. “Are you happy your first husband’s back?”

  “News travels fast around here,” Jodenny replied. “How many of those fish are yours?”

  “Just one.” Twig circled around the table and hugged Osherman. “Hi, Grandpa. It’s okay if I have two grandfathers?”

  “We’ll talk about that later,” he said.

  Twig dashed off, never content to walk when she could run. Osherman’s gaze turned Jodenny’s way for the first time since she’d sat down, and he said, “You fainted.”

  “Hours ago.”

  “You were that surprised to see him?”

  “You’re not?”

  His nose wrinkled up. “Nothing about him surprises me. Not anymore.”

  Teresa and Brian showed up a few minutes later bearing fresh biscuits. They would have used the last of their good flour for those, but Jodenny didn’t chide them for being so generous. Teresa gratefully sank into the nearest chair and Brian took the fish outside to fry. More visitors arrived, including Captain Balandra on her cane, and her son Malachy, who’d brought his own kids and grandkids, most of them bearing what little food they could spare. Most everyone was in good cheer and curious about Myell. Alice Romero was one of the few ill at ease, and stood in the corner watching Myell with close attention. Osherman didn’t move from his chair but instead nodded at those who came over to pay their respects. Jodenny didn’t move either, though she felt like fleeing the house and heading for the hills without ever turning back.

  Someone put music on. Conversations grew louder. More beer and rotgut liquor showed up, and Lisa grew more frazzled. Any excuse for a party, Jodenny thought in dismay. The humid air built up like a sauna even with the fans rattling overhead. The kitchen, living room, and dining room weren’t big enough for the crowd, which spilled down the hall and into the bedrooms. It would have spread into the garden but for the rain that was slanting down harder and faster each minute.

  Myell, meanwhile, was pestered with questions to the point where he stopped answering and instead retreated to the corner. Brian flanked him, warding off would-be interrogators, and Baylou kept him supplied with wine. Finally dinner was ready, and Lisa shooed off just about everyone who wasn’t immediate family.

  “Off you go,” she said. “I can’t feed every single one of you.”

  The partygoers disbursed cheerfully, some of them stumbling off home to their own dinners, others moving the party to the town’s only pub. In the end there were several chairs, stools, and boxes set up around the dining room, with most of the grandchildren eating around the kitchen table.

  Wedged between Teresa on one side and Brian on the other, with Osherman right across from her and Myell next to Lisa, Jodenny poked at her food without any appetite at all. Myell didn’t seem interested in dinner either, though he dutifully pushed around bits of fish with his fork. Music played softly on an old machine while the rainy breeze sucked the curtains in and out of the window frames. Thunder and lightning rolled through the air, making Jodenny uneasy.

  Lisa struggled to keep the conversation going. The party had sucked up all the easy words, leaving only awkward ones behind.

  “Tell him about the school, Baylou,” Lisa prompted.

  “Hmm?” Baylou asked. “Oh, the school. Well, we teach everything to the best we can. The kids, they all have to learn medicine and engineering, and how to keep the fuel cells charged—we used hydroelectric and solar, though it’s not easy.”

  Lisa tilted her head toward the kitchen. “Kyle’s very good with engineering.”

  “Stop talking about me, Aunt Lisa,” Kyle said around a mouthful of corn.

  “They know all about the colonies,” Lisa said. “How all of the Seven Sisters and this planet, too, presumably, were made by the Wondjina to be just like Earth for mankind to colonize. It’s important that they don’t forget where they came from.”

  Thunder rolled through the air, as if in agreement. Myell didn’t answer. He and Osherman were vying for the Most Uncommunicative award.

  Teresa made a faint noise and put her hand on her stomach. Jodenny remembered how her children had kicked and fussed in her womb, and how sore she’d been from little fists and heels poking at her day and night.

  “All right?” Brian asked her.

  She nodded. “Just a foot under my rib, I think.”

  Lisa offered a plate to Myell. “More corn?”

  Myell ignored the plate and said, “You’re not real.”

  Everyone looked at him.

  “What did he say?” Captain Balandra asked, mostly deaf these days.

  Jodenny’s hands tightened on her cup.

  Myell gazed miserably at his beer. “You’re real to you. You live here, in this moment, then the next, and it’s real to you. But soon I’ll be gone and forgotten.”

  Lisa put the corn down. “Maybe you should go back to bed.”

  He stood up but didn’t move away. Myell’s gaze swept the table and then settled on Jodenny, as she feared it would.

  “Sooner or later the blue ouroboros is going to come for me again,” he said. “When I open my eyes it’ll be twenty years ago, or five years from now, or whenever. Maybe I’ll be on Fortune. Maybe I’ll be right back here. But you won’t remember that I was here before. You never remember. After I leave, everything goes back to the way it was. Nothing ever changes.”

  Jodenny found her voice. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “I’ve been here before,” Myell said. “Seven years ago, when Alton was born. He came out breech. Teresa, you lost a lot of blood.”

  Teresa stared at him, openmouthed.

  “I was here thirty years ago,” he said to Osherman. “I showed up in the middle of your wedding, right when Captain Balandra was about to pronounce you man and wife.” To Lisa he said, “You were ten years old. You said, ‘Are you my dad?’ and I said yes.”

  He turned back to Jodenny. “I was there when you graduated from the academy. I saved you from the disaster on the Yangtze, for at least a little bit. I was here the day after you buried me, and we made love by my grave. But you never remember. Dozens of times I’ve been here. But only the gods can change time.”

  Silence hung in the room.

  Baylou rocked back in his chair. “Well, now. That’s not what I expected to hear.”

  “Dad.” Lisa’s hand snaked out to grasp his fingers. “Sit down. We’ll find a way to fix this.”

  He gave her a forlorn smile.

  “That’s what you said the last time,” he said.

  Thunder drummed through the air. Lightning lit up the world outside
the windows, bright light for a second here, a second there. Myell was trying to sleep through the ruckus when a voice said, “You forgot the most important part, didn’t you, Gampa?”

  “Go away,” Myell groaned. He realized he was kind of drunk. Baylou and Brian and Alice had plied him with a lot of beer in their attempt to get the whole time-traveling story out of him. He might have been a little maudlin there, toward the end, weeping into his glass before Lisa escorted him to bed. He wasn’t quite sure.

  Homer’s voice was slightly chiding. “Everyone was having a good time until you had to go and tell the truth.”

  “I’m not talking to you.” Myell rolled over in the bed. He watched more lightning, and felt the roll of thunder in his bones. He wondered if the children were sleeping through this. “There’s nothing for you to document here.”

  Homer planted himself on the floor lotus-style. He was wearing a ridiculous outfit today—oversized trousers, a scarf, a wild hat. His shining young face was full of eagerness and curiosity. “Gamsa didn’t age very well, did she? She’s like a whole new species. ‘Cantankerous maximus grandmotherus.’ ”

  “You don’t know her,” Myell said, because Homer didn’t. Didn’t know what Jodenny had been through, and had no damn right to pass judgment on her. Though it was true she was somewhat cranky. He supposed he’d be cranky too, stranded for decades in the middle of nowhere and facing the infirmities of old age.

  Homer cracked his knuckles. “She still hooked up with Sam? Kind of funny, considering how she hated him and all before. After he broke her heart the first time. Love’s a strange bird.”

  Myell closed his eyes. If he somehow blocked out that eager voice, maybe he could just get in a solid block of sleep before the ouroboros came for him again. He figured he had eleven hours left in this eddy. Maybe ten.

  “He was grumpy, too, Gampa. You think he’d be happy. He got the girl.”

  Through gritted teeth Myell said, “Shut up already.”

  “Though they didn’t look at each other much. Or interact much. It was like they don’t even know each other anymore. You think they’re divorced? I could put that in the file.”

  Myell pulled a pillow over his head. He didn’t want to hear Homer’s speculations about Osherman and Jodenny’s love life. In a wriggling, uneasy way he still felt guilty for interrupting their wedding. It had been a beautiful spring day in the town square, with white flowers twined in Jodenny’s hair and Osherman sweating through his crisp white shirt. A small ceremony, nothing extravagant. Extravagant wasn’t in Jodenny’s nature, even if it had been possible. Yet the wedding had been prettier than their exchange of vows in the infirmary of the Aral Sea, both of them still recovering from injuries.

  He was proud of the woman Lisa had grown to be. A doctor, a mother, a wife. Jodenny and Osherman’s daughter, Teresa, was always kind to him. And all Jodenny’s grandchildren, five of them, sprouting like weeds. He wasn’t always sure he could match names to faces except for Twig, who’d latched on to him like a puppy. She was bright and eager and all the things he hadn’t been as a child on Baiame.

  Homer sprawled backward on the floor and laced his fingers over his belly. “She’s obviously still carrying a sweet torch for you.”

  “She’s long over me,” Myell said. Getting remarried proved that. He didn’t begrudge her happiness, indeed hoped for it, though it was slightly galling she had found it with Osherman and not, say, any of the other men on the Kamchatka.

  He still hadn’t wormed out of anyone how Osherman had come to be on that freighter. The last clear memory Myell had of the commander was losing him in the Wondjina transportation network built by the gods. Maybe in the next eddy he’d see how he and Jodenny were reunited, or see them in love from their first time together, or be there when either of them died.

  Homer said, “You should tell her how every trip you make is about her.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Myell said. “She won’t remember.”

  “True.” Homer heaved a sigh. “Getting to Kultana would be easier if you could control the ring.”

  Myell sat upright. “Then for the love of Christ tell me how.”

  Lightning struck somewhere close outside, so close that the sizzle and snap of it made Myell’s teeth itch. The accompanying thunder nearly deafened him. For the first time Homer seemed to notice the weather. He glanced at the ceiling with a flash of fear or worry.

  “I can’t, Gampa,” he said. “You know that. I’m only here to observe. I can’t tell you how to get there, where it is, what it is, anything. You have to figure out everything for yourself. But I want you to succeed. I want you to save humanity.”

  The thunder and lightning subsided as the storm burnt itself out. All that was left was rain steady on the roof. Myell said, “The very fact you’re here proves I succeed, right? So you’ve got nothing to worry about. Tell me what I need to know and let me get it done with.”

  Homer’s eyes were wide and sad. “I wish I could. I do. I really, really do.”

  The kid sounded sincere.

  Then again, he always did.

  “Go away, Homer,” Myell said. “Go back to school.”

  Slowly Homer faded from the room. A relief. Myell could finally get some sleep. But the conversation had left him wide awake and restless, and lonely in the narrow bed, and full of regrets he couldn’t fix.

  His head began to ache in earnest, and he wondered if Lisa had any painkillers in the bathroom cabinet. As quietly as possible he slipped to the door and opened it. Sheriff Alice was keeping watch from a chair in the living room.

  She nodded at him. “Chief.”

  “Sheriff,” he said, trying to speak low enough not to wake the house. “You really think I’m going to try and escape?”

  “Don’t know,” she said. “Just being sure.”

  “I could go out the bedroom window.”

  Alice stretched her back, producing a distinctive pop. “Got a man in the garden as well.”

  “Wise precaution,” he said.

  He didn’t find any painkillers in the bathroom but didn’t want to wake Lisa, not for a few aches and itches. Everything was quiet but for the rain. Myell went back to his room and closed the door on Sheriff Alice. Standing by the window, he waited for his eyes to adjust to the lone streetlight. There, huddled under a tarp, was Alice’s man with a mazer rifle strapped across his chest. It would be a miracle if the weapon still worked.

  A shape moved behind the sentry—taller, bulkier, with claws that could kill and red eyes that glowed in the darkness.

  A Roon.

  Myell opened his mouth to shout for Sheriff Alice and the others. Then a last lonely flash of lightning illuminated the landscape more clearly. The Roon resolved itself into an overgrown bush, bits of twig, some hanging moss.

  He stared for a long time, but saw only darkness.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Power’s out, thanks to the storm last night,” Lisa said at breakfast. “But I boiled some water for coffee.”

  Myell peered dubiously into the cup and took a daring sip. Unfortunately, the coffee tasted just like it smelled—like burnt tree bark with some mud mixed in for good measure. He put the cup back down.

  “We had real coffee when we first got here,” Baylou said, perched on a stool. He stroked his long beard. “Had a hard time replicating it out of the ship’s stores. It degraded, generation after generation. The beans refused to grow. Now all we have is swill.”

  Teresa’s kids had come over to walk with Lisa’s children to school. Steven couldn’t find his homework, Alton wanted more breakfast, and Twig was against the very idea of spending her day in the classroom.

  “I want to stay and talk to him!” Twig said, hanging off Myell’s arm.

  “Is Dad coming home today?” Kyle asked, giving Myell a suspicious look. “I think he should be here.”

  “Your father will be back tomorrow,” Lisa said. “Now, off with all of you. And behave yourselves.”

&nbs
p; After the kids were gone Myell said, mildly, “I don’t think Kyle likes me.”

  “He doesn’t know you.” Lisa finished stacking the morning dishes and wiped her hands on a towel. “Now, then, what would you like to do today?”

  Sheriff Alice, sitting on the sofa with her hat over her eyes, said, “You’re supposed to be down at the clinic, Doc.”

  “Greg and Sarah can handle it,” Lisa said. To Myell she said, “Scraped knees and banged thumbs, that’s what we get a lot of. Once in a while someone goes into cardiac arrest, or has a stroke, or a baby gets turned around and won’t come out the right way.”

  Baylou raised his coffee cup. “There was that time Doc Collins drove a nail into his own head by mistake.”

  “I remember Ensign Collins,” Myell said. “Did he survive the nail?”

  “Sure did. Doc Lisa here pulled it right out of his skull with a pair of pliers.”

  “Baylou, as always, has a problem with exaggeration.” Lisa sat on a nearby stool and gave Myell a straightforward look. “When’s this blue ring of yours supposed to scoop you up and take you away?”

  Myell rubbed the side of his head. Sometimes he shared the information and people in the eddy believed him. Sometimes they locked him in the brig or other spaces, as if the ring might not be able to find him in a small enclosure. That never worked. The ring outwitted everyone.

  “About twenty-four hours, give or take a few, after it dropped me in the creek,” he said.

  “There’s got to be a way to stop it,” Lisa said.

  He shook his head mutely.

  Baylou checked the clock. “Well, then. Not much time at all. You probably won’t even get a slice of cake.”

  “Cake?” Myell asked.

  “It’s Sam’s birthday,” Lisa explained. “Come on, let’s take a walk. See the town.”

  “I’ve seen it,” Myell said.

  Undeterred, she said, “Come on, Baylou. You can come, too.”

  Alice stood up with an audible crack from her knees. “Don’t forget me.”