The Stars Blue Yonder

by Sandra McDonald

  “Lieutenant Ling should have seen this,” Cappaletto said. “I just hope they don’t throw us out a window when they’re done.”

  That was an unhelpful image. Myell shunted it aside immediately. The passage ended in a set of doors that swung inward at their approach and he steeled himself, mustering the last shreds of Whatever courage he still had left.

  Inside was a long chamber of wood and stone that reminded Myell of a sacred temple. The floor was covered with the same white symbols and figures as he’d seen in the passageway, and gentle folds of curtains hung along the walls and overhead—blue and green fabric shot through with gold streaks, lightweight and shifting.

  The effect was beautiful, the entire room a peaceful oasis, except for dozens of tall narrow golden cages that lined alcoves in the bulkhead. They were tall enough for a man Myell’s height and some of the bodies pressed inside them might indeed have once been men. Or maybe aliens. The decayed state of the bodies made it hard to tell. There was no smell but for a soft, citrusy sort of scent. But some of the corpses were streaked with blood that still glistened, and some of them appeared to be moving because of the colonies of maggots swelling and boiling under split-open skin.

  Cappaletto made a sound that might have been a stifled retch.

  He was probably regretting everything now.

  Myell wrenched his gaze away and saw more cages ahead—dozens on each side of the room, some stacked on one another, others swaying from chains. Some of these were empty. Others were filled with captive birds that fluttered and chirped against the bars, or little monkeys with blue eyes and red fur, or sea-lion-sized creatures that had grown so large the metal bars cut into their flesh. In the center of them all was a large stone dais holding up a silver throne. Here was the heart of the menagerie: the blackened vile heart.

  On the throne sat a figure wearing a red feathered cloak and a headdress reaching for the sky. Beneath the cloak were high black boots, shiny enough to reflect a vision of the chamber. Who knew the Roon were so fashion-conscious?

  Then again, Anna Gayle had always prided herself on her appearance.

  The Roon guards who’d brought them here forced Myell and Cappaletto to their knees before the throne. For a moment Myell heard only the pounding of his own heart, which was so powerful and so frantic that surely everyone else could hear it, too. The deck was hard on his knees, and when the Roon knocked him forward he realized he was supposed to prostrate himself with both hands stretched toward the altar and his nose to his own knees.

  A thwack sounded to Myell’s left. Cappaletto gave off a soft grunt and then was silent.

  Quiet again, except for the scrape of footsteps on the dais. He didn’t dare look up. The footsteps grew closer, paused. The sound was soft and slight, like flesh falling in strips from bone.

  A short chirping sound from the altar made the Roon guards retreat from the room. The doors closed behind them. Myell wasn’t sure how long he was supposed to stay prostrated, but he didn’t think it wise to move yet.

  More rustling, as the headdress and robe fell away. “You can sit up now,” Anna Gayle said, the syllables and words rusty.

  Myell eased himself back on his haunches. Gayle stood nude above him, her body not quite human anymore. The shape was familiar—shoulders and arms, breasts and hips and legs—but her skin was roughened and scaly, and her legs and arms were thin as sticks. Her long blond hair was dark and stringy, patchy in places. Her skull had sores on it. Her eyes had darkened to gray ovals rimmed in black. Once she had been beautiful, but that was before her capture and subsequent aiding of the Roon.

  He looked away, unable to bear her terrible gaze.

  “I have no vanity,” she said. “Stare all you want.”

  Cappaletto said, “No disrespect, ma’am, but what happened to you?”

  Gayle made a hacking sound that might have been laughter. “I’m exactly who I always was. But neither of you are my Robert.”

  She swung her feet down off the dais, dropped to the deck beside them, and then went down on all fours. Myell was so startled that he backed away and fell sideways. Gayle bent low to Myell’s leg and sniffed it. Her tongue darted out past blackened teeth to taste a patch of his leg where his trousers had ridden up past his socks.

  “You don’t taste like him either,” she said.

  Cappaletto said, “This how you imagined your reunion, Chief?”

  “No.” Myell backed away some more. “Dr. Gayle, do you remember who I am?”

  Gayle arched her back. “No. I don’t even remember who I am. I’m told that once I was Anna. But I failed him once too often. Now I am the Queen’s plaything. Do you know what that means?”

  Sharp pain unfolded in his chest as he realized just how much of a mistake he’d made. Still, maybe if he stalled for time, a brilliant new plan would make itself known.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  She stood up so swiftly that something cracked in her back. Gayle climbed back up on her dais. Her hands clawed out for her feather cloak and pulled it close.

  “You’re not my Robert,” she said. “Liars, both of you.”

  Myell rose. “Wait. I want to talk about Robert. What you remember about him. Your family, your studies back on Fortune—”

  Gayle sniffed. Her gaze had gone elsewhere, focused on something outside of the room. “I’m weary of games. You’re not my Robert and there is no Fortune. It was destroyed, along with the rest of mankind’s cradle. Don’t you know that? Silly men. Silly, stupid men. You’ve destroyed yourselves.”

  “Now might be a good time to run,” Cappaletto said.

  Myell nodded.

  They got as far as the door before it opened to allow more Roon in. Myell’s arms were seized in a grip he had no hope of breaking. Cappaletto was also subdued.

  “Put them in their cages,” Gayle said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  A knock on the door interrupted Darling’s story.

  “Excuse me,” Darling said, and rose and crossed the room gracefully.

  Jodenny, sitting with one hand curled against her chest, forced her fingers to unfold. They had gone numb without her even realizing it. She was also having trouble breathing. The very idea of her husband caged up by Anna Gayle was enough to make her light-headed with fury. She told herself that Darling had heard the story from either Myell or Cappaletto and so one of them, if not both, had survived. But logic was no comfort.

  The visitor at the door was the hotel clerk, who delivered a folded-up card. Darling read it with an absent smile, sent the clerk away, and returned to her seat on the velvet sofa.

  She blanched when she looked at Jodenny’s face.

  “I’m sorry,” Darling said. “I’ve upset you.”

  “I’m okay,” Jodenny replied, which was a lie of the highest order. “You have to keep going.”

  “I think you’d feel better if we took a rest—”

  Any break now, and Jodenny would leap over the coffee table and kill Darling where she sat.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  Darling poured herself more tea. “I’m not sure of all of it, mind you. I don’t think they were imprisoned long, but I can’t be sure. Your husband realized very quickly that Anna Gayle was insane. Years of captivity and cooperating with the Roon had done that to her.”

  Not for the first time, Jodenny thought Darling might be toying with her. “Tell me.”

  Darling lifted her teacup.

  The cage pressed in on Myell from all sides. He couldn’t turn around because of the metal bars against his bare body. He couldn’t raise his arms or scratch the maddening itch on his nose. Everything around him was blurry and disconnected; he suspected he’d been drugged. He couldn’t actually remember being put into the cage, though the reality of it around his body was undeniable. The only part he could really move was his head, and if he craned far enough to the left he could see Cappaletto in his own cage. There was no way to reach across and grasp his hand. No way to take him away
when the ring came.

  “I’m sorry,” Myell said, low, not eager to attract Gayle’s attention.

  Cappaletto’s eyes were closed. He shrugged. “It was worth a shot. Maybe it’ll work better the next time you pass through.”

  Something hummed at the top of Myell’s cage. He tilted his head back as far as he could and caught a glimpse of silver light concentrated directly above his skull.

  “You can’t escape,” Gayle said from nearby shadows. “Already the ring has come, and come, and come. Knocking on the door. Turned away.”

  Of course the Roon would know how to deflect an incoming ouroboros. Myell was a fool for thinking otherwise. He leaned his forehead against his bars. The cage was hanging from a single cable, and the sway of it made his stomach feel squirrelly. But motion was better than stillness. Proof of life. He flexed his fingers and tried shifting his arms, but they were pinned tight against his sides.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said.

  The chirping of birds grew louder as Gayle moved through her pets. The birds did not sound especially happy. Gayle was humming and singing, in notes that were so off-key Myell’s ears began to ache.

  “Anna,” he called out. “This isn’t right. This isn’t you.”

  More singing. Some old Australian folk tune. Not “Waltzing Matilda.” The name of it danced around his brain, elusive. He’d ask Cappaletto but Cappaletto was American, and what good was that?

  Gayle moved into the edges of his vision. Her feather cape rustled against her legs. The bird feed in her leathered palm was black and gristly. The chamber had grown dark above them, though Myell hadn’t noticed it happening. He thought time was slipping from his perception.

  “There’s a rover,” she said. “Wild rover. Gets the gold he’s looking for and goes home. Do you know the song?”

  Myell said, “No.”

  Cappaletto said, hoarsely, “How crazy is she?”

  Gayle held her hand up to a group of small yellow birds. She stroked one that came to feed, then circled its neck with her fingers as if to snap it clean.

  “Dr. Gayle,” Myell said. “You can come with us. Escape.”

  Her chin lifted suddenly. The bird squawked frantically against her fingers, aware of its jeopardy.

  “I’m not the Flying Doctor,” she said. “I’m just the doctor who flew to the stars.”

  The monkeys in their cages began screeching. Myell lifted his head and saw a Roon striding across the enormous chamber toward them. The headdress was instantly familiar, though the uniform had changed to a simple tunic that revealed the Flying Doctor’s powerful, scaly legs and arms. Its tail dragged on the deck. The eyes were bright with awareness but the creature reeked of something rotten—something foul and unwanted, sour to the core, that hung around it as it came to a stop just a meter away.

  Gayle made a whimpering sound and fell to her knees.

  The Flying Doctor ignored her.

  It peered at Myell with its head cocked in consideration. Made a hissing and clicking noise and bared its teeth. All Roon were strong, but this one looked powerful enough to part the cage bars as easily as Myell could push aside a curtain.

  “Now you can kill me,” Myell murmured.

  “Your gods don’t protect you here,” the alien agreed. It stepped closer, dragging its gaze from Myell’s bare feet up to his face. “Many times I offered you conditions. Terms of negotiation. You could have had everything.”

  Cappaletto gave a snort of laughter. “I’ll take everything. No problem.”

  Myell alternated between admiration for the other man’s gumption and the urgent wish he would shut up.

  The Flying Doctor showed no interest in Cappaletto. Instead he said, “You were Jungali. Chosen by the gods. Now sent on a foolish errand. Did they think we would be unaware? That we wouldn’t stop you?”

  Gayle peered up at them through her stringy hair.

  “There’s nothing you can offer now,” the Flying Doctor said. “Your life is forfeit.”

  So it appeared. There was no Jungali here. Myell possessed nothing but his body and some clothing that included a pair of excellent socks. Even his wedding ring was gone.

  The wedding ring.

  Gayle’s focus went to Myell, then dropped to the floor.

  His inscribed wedding ring.

  Homer had presumed he knew how to control the ring now. Obviously observing something in Myell’s travels that Myell himself had not seen.

  Carefully Myell said to the Flying Doctor, “That’s not true. I have something you want and you know it.”

  Silence for a moment. The birds and monkeys and other animals had all gone quiet. Gayle’s head was bowed again. Cappaletto was watching carefully, but with no discernible expression. The vast hall paused as if in the middle of some intricately choreographed dance, and Myell hadn’t even realized he was one of the dancers.

  “Negotiate,” the Flying Doctor said.

  A thin fountain of confidence welled up in him, tiny but nourishing. “You control the Wondjina network. You control that silver ouroboros you used to follow me around without having to use Spheres. But you can’t step outside it. Wherever and whenever you go, you’re tied to it.”

  The Roon was listening.

  “I can give you the blue one,” Myell said. “I can teach you how to use it.”

  Cappaletto said, “Son of a bitch.”

  Myell deliberately ignored him.

  “You don’t how to control it,” the Flying Doctor said. “Such a human thing, to be so blind.”

  “I know how to control it.” Myell pressed on. “I will give it as a gift. But not to you.”

  The Flying Doctor bared its razor-sharp teeth. Fetid air swelled past them, filled with rot.

  “I’ll give it to your boss,” Myell proposed.

  Blurriness again.

  Myell was still trapped in one of the swaying upright cages. He knew that much. Cappaletto had stopped talking some time ago and wouldn’t respond to Myell’s questions. The vast chamber had gone dark and the river across the overhead was red with blood.

  He heard a murmur. Gayle, near his feet. Her face down and her spine bent in supplication. He couldn’t see her lips moving but the words carried softly.

  “Inscribe,” she was saying. “The ouroboros is yours.”

  “Did you start me on this trip?” he asked. “Were you the one who came to me?”

  A slight shake of her head. Her face was down, her expression hidden. “Someone else. But we witnessed.”

  Because only the gods could change history, he reminded himself.

  “You have to let us go, Anna,” he said.

  If possible, she pressed herself even closer to the floor.

  Across the chamber, a hundred synchronized drums beat out a one-two-three beat and went silent. Myell twisted and tried to see, but all was darkness there.

  “Please,” he said. “You can come with us.”

  Again she shook her head. He tried to imagine how terrified she was, how much in danger, but it was hard to think through his own fear and desperation. Before he could find any more arguments she crawled off into the shadows. Birds squawked in alarm but more thumps on the drums—one-two-three-four—silenced them.

  Something small glinted on the floor, exactly where Anna had left it. A tiny sharp knife.

  Out of reach. Utterly useless.

  He tried anyway. Bent his knees against the bars, squeezed his fingers through, groped blindly. The tips of his fingers were far enough away that they might as well have been on the other side of the chamber.

  A moment later, the silver light over Myell’s head went out and the cage door swung open.

  It happened too fast for him to catch himself. Instead he tumbled out clumsily and heavily, bones like lead. Only a last-minute instinctive turn of his head kept him from smashing his face on the floor. The shock of impact rattled through him as thick as a shock wave. His hands and arms shook as he forced himself to his knees and groped for the kn
ife.

  Cappaletto was still imprisoned in his cage. His eyes were mere slits, but the pupils were tracking Myell.

  “You can’t,” Cappaletto said hoarsely. “Don’t give them the ring.”

  “I’m not going to,” Myell said.

  Instead he took the knife in his hand and pressed the tip against his arm. His fingers were shaking so hard he dropped it. Already the ring was making its way toward him, pushing away his air. He had only seconds until it flashed. He groped for the knife, grabbed it. Dragged the tip through flesh to make large awkward letters. A short word, the only one he had time for.

  “What the hell?” Cappaletto demanded.

  Tiny beads of blood rose up like tears. Across the chamber, mammoth doors began to swing open. A retinue was arriving. The drums began beating in a steady thunder that sent all the animals squawking and swinging wildly.

  Cappaletto lifted his head. “You’re too late—”

  The letters finished, Myell hurled himself forward and grabbed Cappaletto’s cage.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  All the tea was gone. Somewhere a church bell was ringing, loud and insistent. The good people of colonial Sydney passed outside Darling’s windows by foot and on horse and by carriage, and strolled through Hyde Park, and went about their morning business. Jodenny thought everything in this room was a dream, and the world beyond an illusion. All she could focus on was Myell and Gayle’s chamber of horrors.

  A knock on the study door made Darling say, “Just one moment, Maude.” To Jodenny she added, “She’ll be nagging me about my lunch appointment. It’s a business meeting that can’t be avoided.”

  The idea that Darling might soon abandon the story for some meeting made Jodenny’s stomach churn. She tried to speak, couldn’t get the words out, tried again. “They escaped?”

  “Of course.”

  Jodenny gripped the armchair tightly. “But what happened next?”

  “I’m not sure,” Darling said. “The blue ring took them, yes. Eventually it took them back to my base. Obviously my crew and I treated them with distrust, and had no memory of any previous visit. Then Chief Myell told us his story and convinced us to come with him or die at the hands of the Roon. He and Chief Cappaletto brought us here, saving our lives.”