The Stars Blue Yonder

by Sandra McDonald

  Twig climbed up on one of the sofas. She was amazingly skinny, all elbows and knees. “Are you staying for dinner? They’re bringing chocolate ice cream. We never get to eat chocolate icecream.”

  Jodenny lied instantly and without regret. “I have to stand watch.”

  “You could get out of it,” Kyle said. “If you wanted to.”

  She didn’t like the challenge in his eyes, or the way he saw through her. “There will be plenty of time to have dinner. We’re two weeks from stopping at Kiwi.”

  Kyle’s gaze slid back to Izim and he didn’t bother to argue with her. Still perched on the back of the sofa, Twig said, “You look really young. How old are you?”

  “Twenty-six. How old are you?”

  “Ten. And he’s thirteen, but he thinks he’s so smart.”

  Kyle threw a pillow at her.

  Twig ducked it and nearly toppled to the floor. Jodenny caught her arm and kept her upright.

  “None of that.” Jodenny cast a gaze at Myell’s closed hatch and weighed the consequences of disturbing Commander Delaney. “Sit down properly and show me how you play this game.”

  She knew how to play Izim, of course, but it was mildly entertaining to watch Twig try to explain the various levels and puzzles to her. The security tech, Hadley, retreated to the main hatch to stand his guard. Kyle listened to Twig’s explanations with growing exasperation and finally grabbed the pointer from her hands.

  “You don’t do it that way, stupid.”

  “Give it back! Nana, tell him to give it to me.”

  Jodenny blinked at the name. “I’m not your nana. Yet.”

  “You will be,” Twig said. “When you’re old.”

  “How old?”

  Kyle’s gaze was fixed on the screen. “Where we came from, you’re seventy. Older than almost everyone else.”

  “Am I happy?”

  Twig made a face. “Your back hurts, because you fell a few years ago. And your leg and hips hurt, because you broke them once. You never told us how. But you’re gray and all wrinkled and you’re grumpy a lot, but sometimes not so much.”

  Kyle remained silent on the matter, focused on the game.

  Myell’s hatch opened. Osherman, Commander Delaney, and two officers Jodenny didn’t recognize emerged, all of them looking grim-faced. Osherman stayed behind as the others left.

  “You saw the medical results?” he asked Jodenny.

  She nodded.

  “Bit awkward,” Osherman said, running his fingers through his short hair. “You, me, and him.”

  “There is no me, you, and him,” Jodenny said.

  “You don’t believe in time travel?”

  “You do?”

  He said, “I believe in genetics testing. Kyle has your DNA and mine. Twig carries DNA from both you and Sergeant Myell. That’s mighty strange, don’t you think?”

  “No odder than a man claiming to be a time traveler.” Jodenny glanced at the kids, but they appeared engrossed in the game. The sounds of explosions and gunfire rang out from the screen.

  “He’s fairly persuasive, Lieutenant. You should talk to him.”

  She took that as a dare. Myell’s hatch was still open. He was sitting on the bed considering his own bare feet. He wriggled his toes and flexed his heels.

  “Hello, Kay,” he said, without much enthusiasm.

  Jodenny leaned against the open hatchway in an attempt to look casual. “Why do you call me that? That’s the name of my computer agent.”

  “I know. Did you come to hear stories about the future?”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  He nodded toward an empty chair, but she didn’t move. She said, “I received the medical reports.”

  Myell poured himself some water from a plastic pitcher. “So you know it’s true. They’re both your grandchildren, with different grandfathers. Myself and Commander Osherman.”

  “I still don’t understand how.”

  “It’s not that hard, is it, Lieutenant?”

  She didn’t like the sarcasm in his voice. Didn’t like it one bit.

  Jodenny said, “If I married an enlisted man, I’d be brought up on fraternization charges.”

  “There’s ways around that.”

  “And we found them?”

  Myell gave her a bland smile that meant nothing at all.

  Jodenny folded her arms. “I hope this doesn’t ruin the course of time, but I don’t even like you.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Myell reached for a pair of gray socks balled up on the deck. The boots beside them were freshly issued and spotlessly clean. “You know what I like best about Team Space? The socks. Excellent socks. You get them wet and they dry out. You rip them, and they meld back together. When your toes get cold they warm them up, and when your feet are hot they cool them off. My first day in boot camp, when I got my first pair, I knew I’d made the right decision.”

  “You’re a man of simple pleasures. Obviously that’s why I fall in love with you.”

  He pulled one of the excellent socks onto his left foot. “Who said anything about love? Maybe I just knock you up. Maybe we get married when we’re drunk and you’re going through a fit of rebelliousness. Maybe we get married just so you can screw me over for Sam. He’s an officer, after all.”

  “And you’re enlisted, so that’s Commander Osherman to you.”

  The half-smile returned. “Commander Osherman. Yes, ma’am.”

  Jodenny wanted to take the remaining sock and shove it into his mouth. Good looks could only get this sailor so far, future husband or not. “Why are you here? Why are you traveling through time with grandchildren in tow? Some sort of strange vacation?”

  “There’s nothing relaxing about this.” Myell pulled on his boots. “We were thrown here. I don’t know how it works or how to control it. I don’t know how to get them home, or if any of us can ever go home.”

  “Where’s home to you?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  She took a deep breath. “I don’t believe your story, Sergeant. You appear to have convinced Commander Osherman, and who knows what Commander Delaney thinks. The tests say one thing but they can be wrong, or mixed up, or there could be some reasonable explanation other than time travel. This is my life we’re talking about. My career. Which I don’t intend on throwing away anytime soon.”

  His expression was shuttered. “Which is what you’d do, marrying me? Throw your life away?”

  Jodenny spun away and left him with his socks.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “So let me get this straight,” Ensign Hawkins said, hoisting his beer. “You just put on your full lieutenant bars this morning and already you’re a grandma? Fast work!”

  The wardroom was busy and loud, and Jodenny regretted coming. Everyone appeared to have heard the tale of the time-traveling sergeant and the ridiculous claims about her future love life. Gossip had run rife through the department all day—nay, the entire ship, no doubt—and she was feeling like the butt of a particularly bad joke.

  “Fraternization, too,” said Lieutenant Holt, sitting on the stool at Jodenny’s elbow. “Breaking ranks for love. That’s our girl.”

  Another word or two and she was going to poke both of them in the eye. Dyanne rescued her before that could happen by taking her elbow and steering her toward a set of faux-leather chairs in the corner.

  In just a few minutes the hour would strike and they’d have to sit for dinner, but for now they had a moment of privacy.

  “What are you doing here?” Dyanne asked.

  Jodenny lifted her beer stein. “Getting sloshed.”

  “Your future husband is sitting in a cabin with your future grandchildren, and you’re here? Aren’t you at all curious?”

  “It’s a hoax!” Jodenny insisted. “Or another prank.”

  Dyanne gave her an impatient look. “A joke perpetuated by the Security Officer known so much for her sense of humor? By the doctors, who have nothing to do but yank your chain? Listen
to yourself.”

  “No, you listen to yourself. There is no such thing as time travel. You were in the same academy physics classes I was. It’s impossible.”

  “Impossible just means they haven’t figured it out yet. What’s really impossible is why you’re here when you should be there. Don’t you think they’re scared? Don’t you think they need you?”

  Jodenny drank more beer and let her gaze roam over the familiar faces of her fellow officers as they chatted and joked. These men and women aboard the Yangtze were her true family. She didn’t need any more than that. Didn’t want it.

  “I’ll see them tomorrow,” she told Dyanne.

  “How do you know they’ll even be here?”

  Alarm spiked through her. “Why wouldn’t they be?”

  “Hello? Time travelers? Seems to me that if they can show up anytime they want, they could leave anytime as well.”

  The wardroom bell rang. People started toward their chairs at the long, formal table. Jodenny gazed at the bottom of her beer and then at Dyanne’s earnest, eager face.

  “If it were me,” Dyanne said, “I’d go to him.”

  Jodenny replied, “I’m not you.”

  Dinner was excruciating.

  The last thing Myell wanted was to share a meal with Osherman sitting across the table looking so young and vibrant while he himself felt scuffed and worn down, like the bottom of a boot. He’d almost retreated to his cabin, but he wasn’t going to just stand by while this version of Sam Osherman made nice with the kids and tried to worm whatever information he could get out of them. Besides which, Myell was starving for a good hot meal.

  The food sent up by the galley was tasty enough, and he shoveled into the ravioli and mushrooms and green beans while Twig and Kyle told stories about the future.

  “—and so the ship gets thrown all this way across the galaxy and we’re all stranded there, but this was before we were born,” Twig said, summarizing the salient history of the Kamchatka.

  Osherman nodded intently. “Because a snake came out of the sky, is that it?”

  “Nobody really believes that,” Kyle said, speaking for his generation. “It was the Roon.”

  “Oh, yes, the aliens,” Osherman said, flicking his gaze toward Myell. “Who invaded Earth. Or will invade Earth, just a few years down the road.”

  Myell glared at the kids. He specifically remembered telling them not to talk about that.

  “Tried to,” Twig stressed. “When Grandpa here was killed on Burringurrah. But now he’s back.”

  Myell deliberately reached for another dinner roll. Sure, he’d died on Burringurrah, but he still didn’t know how exactly, or even why. He didn’t feel dead. “Why don’t you tell the commander about your schoolwork?”

  Osherman refused to be sidetracked. “How is it you die, exactly, Sergeant?”

  “Tragic spaceship accident,” Myell said. “Flattened by a birdie.”

  He didn’t mean to sound so flippant—or maybe he did. Because he’d been answering questions all day now, hundreds of them, for Osherman or Delaney or the men from the Data Department, and he was damned tired of it. He regretted being sarcastic and cruel to Jodenny but she’d come to him with more questions, always more questions, and none of them mattered because the answers would evaporate as soon as the ouroboros came to take them away.

  He only hoped the Flying Doctor didn’t show up instead.

  “Flattened by a birdie,” Osherman said. “That’s a unique way to go, Sergeant.”

  “It doesn’t matter how I die,” he said flatly. “We all do, sooner or later. On this ship or the next ship or on Earth or on the other side of the galaxy, and there’s nothing I can do to change it. What happens will happen. And people will die screaming, and the world will be smoke and ash, and what’s the use, if it’s already written in stone?”

  The three of them stared at him as if he’d lost his mind.

  He pushed away the plate and stood up. His feet carried him toward the hatch before he even knew he wanted to leave the suite. RT Hadley from Security held up a hand and said, “You’re not authorized to go anywhere, Sergeant,” and Myell almost punched him.

  “Let me out,” he told Hadley.

  “I can’t without authorization, Sarge.”

  “Out of my way,” Myell warned. Because as friendly and helpful as Hadley had been, he was the one obstacle Myell could do something about.

  The hatch opened and was blocked by Jodenny, who was wearing her dinner uniform. She looked surprised to see Myell standing there.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  Osherman rose from the table. “Lieutenant Scott, you’re just in time. Will you keep the children company? The sergeant and I were about to take a walk.”

  Jodenny looked uncertain. “A walk?”

  Hadley said, “I’m not supposed to let him out, sir.”

  “It’s all right. I’ll authorize it. Commander Delaney won’t mind.”

  Hadley started to object again, but Osherman was already steering Myell into the passageway.

  Myell shrugged off the guiding hand and headed for the nearest ladder. The rungs were cool and sturdy under his fingers. He climbed down with no destination in mind. The galley on D-deck was busy with crowds, and he ducked away. The gym on E-deck was also teeming with sailors. Wasn’t there any place on the entire damned ship where a man could be alone in his thoughts, and breathe without sucking in someone else’s body odor, sweat, fear? He pushed open a hatch and stepped into the ship’s library, which was a curved dark room with individual reading booths. A vidded expanse of stars stretched from the carpeted deck to domed overhead.

  “What’s wrong, Sergeant?” Osherman asked, following him inside.

  “Chief,” he corrected. “Or maybe not. It doesn’t matter, does it?”

  “Why don’t you come sit down for a moment?”

  “I’m not having a nervous breakdown,” Myell said, though maybe he was. He paced toward the shelves and then away again, his hands fisted. Fight or flight. He told himself there was no reason to panic but reason couldn’t belt back the hammering of his heart or the tightness in his lungs. “I’m not claustrophobic.”

  Osherman sat on a padded chair. “Wouldn’t matter. There’s nothing wrong with a healthy fear of enclosed spaces.”

  “You’re just saying that.”

  “Let’s just say I never plan to go spelunking. God’s honest truth.”

  Myell scrubbed the side of his head. He needed a haircut. He needed a lot of things. He felt like he was going to vomit up those mushroom raviolis. “You lie all the time.”

  “Part of my job,” Osherman said.

  Myell pressed his face against the vid screen, glad for the coolness. He closed his eyes. “You won’t remember any of this. The next time we meet, you’ll have to be convinced all over again. All of you, convinced.”

  “Sounds wearisome.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Well, then,” Osherman said. “I know an excellent remedy. How about a beer or two?”

  Myell opened his eyes. “Christ, yes.”

  “Come on. I know just the place.”

  “It’s bedtime,” Jodenny announced.

  Kyle said, “I don’t want to.”

  Twig added, “We should wait up for them.”

  “Bed,” Jodenny insisted. The two of them had dark circles under their eyes and had been yawning steadily for the last half hour. “Wash up, brush your teeth, and look in the closet for something to sleep in.”

  Kyle said, “You’re bossy, just like she is.”

  “Bed,” Jodenny repeated.

  The kids’ room had two single beds in it. Once cleaned up and changed into pajamas, Kyle jumped onto his mattress and began punching his pillow into submission. Twig wanted someone to tuck her in. Jodenny pulled back the covers, helped her get settled, and adjusted the blankets and sheets accordingly. She almost smoothed Twig’s bangs back from her eyes, but settled instead for fluffing the
pillow.

  Twig yawned and said, “I want my mom. She’s going to be worried.”

  “I’m sure she is,” Jodenny said.

  “You didn’t have a mom.”

  Jodenny blinked. “Of course I did. She and my father died when I was very little.”

  From the other bed Kyle said, “You never talk about it. Where you grew up, or how.”

  “I don’t?”

  “You don’t talk about much,” Kyle replied. “You say the past is the past, and there’s no use rehashing it.”

  Jodenny said, “Sometimes that’s true.”

  She went back to the living area and tried to imagine herself at age seventy. The picture wouldn’t come. After a few minutes of sitting on the comfortable sofa, she felt herself nodding off and curled around a large cushion. Her nap went undisturbed until Osherman and Myell stumbled in just before midnight.

  Osherman burped loudly. “Sorry to wake you.”

  “Where have you two been?” she demanded.

  “At the Pub with No Beer,” Myell said, naming one of the crew pubs on F-deck.

  They reeked of whiskey, and had the glassy-eyed stares of men on close terms with the bottoms of drinking glasses. Though she wasn’t sure they’d used glasses and not just swigged out of the bottle. Osherman was walking especially stiffly, careful with every small movement. Myell was boneless and sloppy as he flopped down on the sofa beside her.

  “We’ve been talking about you.” He rested his head on a cushion and gave her a puppy-dog look. “But nothing bad.”

  Jodenny rose swiftly. “I’m so glad you had fun. I’m leaving now.”

  “Don’t you want to know?” Myell asked.

  Osherman, who was standing with one hand pressed to the bulkhead, said, “I’m going to break your heart, and then he’s going to die on you, and then we’re going to get married and have a daughter, and then our son’s going to die. But we want to apologize.”

  “For the inconvenience,” Myell added.

  “You’re both idiots,” she said, and headed for the hatch.

  “Jo, wait.” Osherman caught her by the arm. “Say goodbye. He’s going to be leaving soon.”

  Myell nodded earnestly, then burped.