The Stars Blue Yonder

by Sandra McDonald

  “Long day, honey?” she asked, and was asleep before he could answer.

  When she woke it was oh-nine-hundred and she was alone. She couldn’t believe she’d slept so long. Myell had left a tray of muffins, juice, and fruit on the desk with a handwritten note beside it. The note was nice enough—“Love you, eat well”—but he shouldn’t have left the cabin without her. She took a sixty-second shower, dressed and pinned up her hair, and opened the hatch to ask Ovadia where her damned husband was.

  Not Ovadia outside: instead, the guard was a squirrelly looking young man with curly red hair.

  “He’s up in a briefing, ma’am,” the guard said. “I’m to escort you to Medical when you’re ready.”

  “I feel fine,” she protested.

  “Those are my orders, Commander.”

  Jodenny grabbed a muffin and followed him, disgruntled, to the lift. The Confident was busier today than it had been in the middle of the night, and she found herself the object of scrutiny by passing members of the mostly male crew. She realized it was Junior they were probably intrigued by, and not her prenatal Raphaelite beauty. At the infirmary, Laura Ling met her and scanned her belly.

  “How are you doing today?” Ling asked.

  “Fine,” Jodenny said, puzzled. “Why am I here?”

  Her mouth a tight line, Ling nodded toward Sam Osherman’s room. “He’s awake and agitated. I think he’d be happy to see you.”

  Jodenny thought there was more to Ling’s frown than Osherman’s well-being. “Is something wrong?”

  The doctor folded her arms. “Not with him.”

  “With you,” Jodenny said. “Or is this about Adryn?”

  “She does what she needs to do, her duty,” Laura said. She leaned against the bulkhead and looked down at the deck. “But there’s no reason her life should be endangered just because she’s Chief Myell’s family. I resent the fact she was pulled into that dangerous duty yesterday just because she’s his niece.”

  Jodenny was confused. “She was?”

  “It’s unfair. If it continues, I’ll complain through my chain of command.”

  “I see.” Jodenny scratched an itch on the back of her neck. “Okay. I’d do the same thing.”

  Ling nodded. She brushed past the guard outside Osherman’s room and led Jodenny inside.

  Osherman was awake, sitting up, his wrists in restraints. He was glaring at the bulkhead as if it were personally responsible for his plight. His gaze turned to her, and there was no easing of the anger.

  “Hey,” Jodenny said, not as strongly as she wanted to. “You feel better?”

  He yanked on the restraints. He looked tight and sinewy and lucid, which was preferable to him being withdrawn and nonresponsive. She’d seen him both ways since Burringurrah, and many other variations as well.

  “It’s not up to me,” she said.

  He looked away.

  She added, “But I’ll see what I can do. Do you know where we are?”

  He gave her nothing at all.

  Jodenny turned to go, the best response whenever he was like this, and was startled when he thumped his feet on the bed to get her attention.

  “What?” she asked.

  His face twisted up in frustration.

  “We’re on an ACF ship,” she told him. “Americans and Canadians, mostly. Some Team Space. There was an ouroboros that brought us here. You, me, and Terry.”

  His fingers splayed wide, resisting the restraints. Jodenny touched his closest hand, trying to calm him. “You’re safe here. Maybe they can even help you.”

  Scorn in his expression. Sometimes he was bitter, sometimes lost, sometimes so angry that people in Providence became concerned. She never thought herself in danger, but she sometimes worried he might hurt himself.

  Jodenny debated whether or not to tell him they had moved forward in time, but she saw no reason to really withhold the information. So she told him, watching him closely to see if he understood. He looked skeptical.

  “When you’re up and around,” she promised. “You’ll see.”

  A knock on the hatch, and it opened under the hand of the curly-haired guard. “Commander? They’re wondering if you want to join the briefing now.”

  She realized she was still holding Osherman’s hand, and hastily released his fingers. “Sure. I’ll be back later, Sam. Promise.”

  The briefing room was a theater-seating chamber up on Deck Two. The rows of seats were crowded with senior officers and scientists. Adryn, Cappaletto, and Ovadia were all there, wedged into an aisle. Beranski was giving a multimedia presentation at the front. A live feed of the trapped blue ouroboros was displayed on an enormous screen. It cast light down on Myell, who was sitting near the front between Haines and Nam.

  Haines gave up his seat for her, but only so he could chase off a lieutenant and take his seat instead. Jodenny eased down onto the cushioned chair gratefully. Myell gave her a kiss on the cheek in blatant violation of the regulations against public displays of affection. But there was something distant in his eyes, something she didn’t like at all. She suspected he was upset about something and trying not to show it. Maybe Beranski, at the front podium, had delivered news he didn’t like. Maybe he was thinking about Kyle and Twig again.

  Beranski was saying, “. . . and I don’t see any reason why we can’t hold it indefinitely, but the trick is trying to figure out what path it follows through the Universal Bulk. There are no glyphs or symbols on it. No way of telling what loop it’s following.”

  “It’s not following a loop,” Myell said, loud enough for only Jodenny to hear.

  “We need to be able to use it,” Captain McNaughton said to Beranski. “We need the tactical advantage.”

  Jodenny squeezed Myell’s hand.

  A commander from the Science Corps got up to take the podium from Beranski. “I’m Commander Perry, Research and Development. We’ve charted its course through time and space based on everything Sergeant—er, Chief—Myell told us. Here-now is its current point of existence. And his. Then-there is wherever it goes, whether backward or forward. Because space is curved, we think there’s only a limited area for where a user can go with it. Think of two icecream cones, joined at the smallest tip. That’s right now, right here. Chief Myell is the point between them.”

  “Why does it take him into the past and future randomly?” Admiral Nam said.

  Perry said, “It’s not random. There are rules. For instance, he never lands anywhere where there’s a chance of running into himself. Something or someone is controlling it.”

  Myell said, “Well, I’m not,” and this time he spoke loud enough for everyone to hear. “Maybe the gods are.”

  Murmurs in the room. Jodenny watched Captain McNaughton lean close to Admiral Su and say something in a low voice. Beside her, Haines asked, “Does he really believe that?”

  She and Myell had talked about it, long ago—whether the Wondjina gods such as the Rainbow Serpent were really deities, or aliens with incredibly advanced technology. She didn’t know the answer then and she didn’t know it now. Most of her life she’d been undecided about religion, and before Myell there’d never been any reason for her to believe in any given faith over the other.

  Jodenny said, “You’ll have to ask him.”

  Nam spoke up. “He says nothing ever changes. Is that possible?”

  Perry’s gaze went to Myell. “From his perspective, yes. If there’s any such thing as an outside observer, maybe not. To the people whose lives he changed and the historical events he might have altered—I don’t know. They might be able to tell us, if only we found some way to communicate with them.”

  Jodenny hoped Myell took that to mean that the copies of Kyle and Twig were still alive in the eddy where they’d left them. She still couldn’t read the expression on his face, though.

  “This is the first time we have a token ring that works outside the network,” Admiral Su said. “Commander Haines, your people are supposed to be the expert at Wo
ndjina technology. The Roon are going to be in range in less than twenty-four hours. Make that ring work for us, so when those sons of bitches show up, we’ll have something in our corner.”

  “Token rings aren’t weapons,” Jodenny said to Nam as the meeting broke up.

  “They are now,” Nam said.

  She joined Myell, who had gone to the podium to corral Commander Perry and was saying, “Tell me about the cones again, sir.”

  Perry grabbed a pen and his SOEL. He drew what looked like an ice cream cone, then drew a reverse cone below it. “Your window of travel. From the here-now going backward until your date of birth, forward until the day you die. You can only travel through time periods in which you’re alive.”

  “But I’m already dead,” Myell said. “Killed on top of Burringurrah and buried on Providence.”

  Perry used his pen to scratch the side of his head. “Not from my perspective. From where I stand, you disappeared from Burringurrah with Commander Scott and Commander Nam. I don’t know what happened to you after that, but clearly you’re alive now.”

  “He died and I buried him,” Jodenny insisted.

  Myell squeezed her hand. “And I’ve seen the grave.”

  Perry sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe the gods did send you back as some kind of clone. Maybe time has been changed without you being aware of it. It’s possible that this isn’t your original timeline at all, just one that’s a few inches off. Have you ever seen yourself die? Been there at the moment you fall?”

  “No,” Myell said. “But I never visit anyplace where I could run into myself.”

  Haines appeared at Jodenny’s elbow. “We need you down in the docking bay, Chief.”

  Myell gave Perry’s drawing one last look, clearly unwilling to go. “If I leave here tomorrow, will you continue on in your timeline and remember my visit? Or will it all be wiped away?”

  “I’d hope that I remember,” Perry said. “But you would never be able to confirm it.”

  Haines, clearly impatient, said, “Chief Myell, we need to go.”

  Cappaletto and Ovadia had made their way through the crowd down to the podium and had overheard Haines. Cappaletto said, “We’ll take him down, Commander. Grab some coffee in the chief’s mess on the way down. Can’t be a chief on this ship and never stop by the goat locker.”

  Haines looked exasperated.

  Jodenny said, “Only if I can get some coffee, too.”

  “Absolutely,” Cappaletto said.

  Haines said, “They need him now.”

  Ovadia folded his arms over his chest. His muscles bulged under his short-sleeved khaki shirt. “We’ll only be a few minutes, sir.”

  Nam called Haines over. Haines went reluctantly. As soon as he was gone, Cappaletto said, “Let’s go.”

  The two chiefs headed for the hatch. Jodenny touched Myell’s arm, urging him to follow. They’d only gone a few steps when Perry said, “Chief Myell.”

  “Yes?”

  “We don’t know our unconscious minds,” Perry said. “But surely it’s no coincidence that you keep following Commander Scott in time. Why every jump directs the ouroboros to her.”

  “Until this one,” Jodenny pointed out.

  Perry glanced back down at his icecream cone drawing.

  In the passage outside the briefing room they ran into Adryn, who agreed to come with them down to the chiefs’ mess on Deck 4. Cappaletto murmured something to Adryn that made her face furrow. They were barely off the lift before she pulled Jodenny aside.

  “I need your advice,” she said. “Can we talk? I promise, I’ll get you some coffee.”

  Ovadia, Myell, and Cappaletto were still heading for the chiefs’ mess. Jodenny looked longingly after the men. “Does it have to be now?”

  “We don’t exactly have a luxury of spare time,” Adryn said.

  “I suppose not.”

  Myell looked back, quizzical. Jodenny said, “We’ll catch up.” She let Adryn steer her into a small snack lounge filled with vending machines. Adryn ordered up two cups of coffee and they settled on hard black benches.

  “It’s family stuff.” Adryn ran her finger along the rim of her cup. “About my dad, and where he is. I don’t know if Uncle Terry wants to know it, or needs to know it, or if he’ll just be distracted by it. You know, the divorce and all. Or have you already told him?”

  Jodenny poured sugar into her coffee, twice as much as she’d used prior to the pregnancy. “Like you said, we haven’t had a lot of spare time.”

  “I don’t want him to be caught off guard if he finds out,” Adryn said.

  “Thank you. I appreciate that.” Jodenny sipped at the coffee but it was too hot, so she inhaled the aroma instead. “I saw Laura down in medical. She’s upset about yesterday’s mission.”

  Adryn frowned. “What about it?” “That it was dangerous, and apparently you got assigned to it because you’re family.”

  “But that—” Adryn stopped herself from completing the sentence. “I never told her it was dangerous.”

  “A ship this size, I bet it’s hard to keep secrets.”

  “I didn’t get the job because I was anybody’s niece,” Adryn said. “I volunteered for it.”

  Jodenny tasted the coffee. She needed more sugar. “I think you should tell her.”

  Adryn grimaced. “I think that’ll get me into even more trouble. Did I tell you we’ve only been married six months?”

  Jodenny raised her coffee cup in salutation. “Congratulations. It only gets harder, trust me. Now, why don’t you tell me why we’re really here?”

  Adryn put on an innocent expression. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You and me, right here. Don’t get me wrong. Family talk is important. But I suspect you were more interested in splitting Terry and I up than anything else. Is this a guy thing?”

  A quick smile. “No,” Adryn said. “It’s a chief thing. They wanted to talk to him in private.”

  “Hmm,” Jodenny said, and drank the rest of her coffee.

  The chiefs’ mess was a large compartment filled with comfortable furniture, a table for eating and playing cards, large-screen entertainment devices, and vids of members past and present. It smelled like old sweat, dirty socks, and a whiff of forbidden tobacco. It was also crowded with chiefs, at least a dozen of them, men and women standing around in uniform as if attending a disciplinary hearing.

  Myell figured he was in serious trouble the moment he walked in. Cappaletto and Ovadia effectively blocked any retreat, leaving him in front of the square-jawed beanpole shape of the Confident’s master chief.

  “Chief Myell, I’m Master Chief Halvert. You’ve been summoned on down here because I’ve been talking to Master Chief Talic, over on the Melbourne. He says he served with you at your last command. He claims you never went through a proper chief’s initiation before you disappeared on your last mission, and that’s a bit of a concern.”

  A few of the chiefs nodded. Most were giving Myell a thorough lookover. He remembered Talic well, the son of a bitch.

  Halvert’s gaze was unforgiving. “We understand what he’s talking about. Becoming a chief means more than just putting on a different uniform and making more money. We’ve got the same kind of tradition in our military, so I understand where he’s coming from. You want the respect of the crew on this ship, you’ve got to have the respect of this chiefs’ mess first. You understand what I’m saying?”

  The broad American accent wasn’t too hard to decipher, and Myell understood all the words. Jodenny, when she found out, was going to be pissed. But he was willing to stand his ground, at least on a minute-by-minute basis.

  In as neutral a tone as he could manage, he replied, “Yes, Master Chief.”

  “Well, then.” Halvert turned to Cappaletto. “You’ve got the charges there, Chief?”

  “You bet.” Cappaletto reached into his pocket and pulled out a thin roll of paper. He unrolled it. “The Kangaroo Court of Neptune the Sea King is hereby cal
led to order. To wit, to writ and to all ye present, defendant Teren Myell of the malarkey-filled Team Space is accused of the following. Number one, he saved the lives of his shipmates and colleagues on the TSS Aral Sea. Number two, he made the bastard Roon disappear from the entire planet Earth. Number three, any Team Space pissant whiner who wants to disrespect the Hero of Burringurrah isn’t worth crossing the street to spit on even if he was on fire.”

  “Who’s got the anchor?” Cappaletto asked.

  Ovadia pulled a box out of his pocket and handed them over.

  “Go ahead, Tom,” Halvert said to Cappaletto.

  The anchor was small and gold. Cappaletto pinned it onto Myell’s right collar flap and gave him a solid whump on the upper arm.

  “Congratulations, Chief,” he said. “You earned it.”

  The rest of the chiefs came around to congratulate him as well, each with a nice punch to the arm, and Myell didn’t mind the pain at all even though he’d have bruises come morning. Someone broke out champagne and there was a cake, too, bearing Myell’s name and the logo of the ACF.

  “Can’t stay long,” Ovadia reminded everyone.

  Master Chief Halvert said, “Don’t be a worrywart, Noberto.”

  Myell hated to leave his own party but he did have a job to do, so after fifteen minutes of coffee and cake he, Ovadia, and Cappaletto squeezed out the hatch. Jodenny and Adryn were waiting for them. Myell handed her a plate of cake.

  “Where’d you get that?” she asked, noticing the anchor.

  He kissed her. “Present from the chiefs’ mess.”

  They all went down to the ready room off the auxiliary deck. After several minutes of waiting around, one of Beranski’s men came to get them. The blue ring was humming and turning slowly half a meter above the deck. Sensors, scanners, and force shield equipment surrounded it from every angle. Security guards stood on watch, armed and ready. Beranski looked like he hadn’t slept at all.