The Stars Down Under

by Sandra McDonald

  The Wondjina Transportation System, dead. The most important discovery since the Little Alcheringa, the wormhole that connected Earth to Fortune. Or even since the Big Alcheringa, which linked Fortune to the six other planets of the Seven Sisters. Gayle’s husband and eight other missing scientists, lost and stranded somewhere. Jodenny’s former lover Sam Osherman was out there too, maybe injured, maybe dead.

  She didn’t fall asleep for a long, long time.

  * * *

  “No,” Myell said.

  He was sitting in a windowless conference room with the two representatives from Fleet. One was a woman named Leorah Farber. She had dark black hair cut very short and a heart-shaped face currently expressing a frown. The other, Teddy Toledo, had wide shoulders, a thick neck, and curly brown hair. Both wore business suits. Farber was standing by the door, and Toledo sat across from Myell at a long table made of faux wood. The smooth brown walls were vidded with the same Supply School pictures that hung in Captain Kuvik’s suite.

  Farber had done very little talking, but she watched Myell with an intensity that was perhaps meant to be intimidating. Toledo had done nothing but talk, at about two thousand words a minute. The fast pace made him sound like a teenager talking about Izim or Snipe.

  “—I don’t think you’re understanding what’s at stake, here, Chief, we’re talking about the lives of people who were stuck in a system that stopped working because of something you or your wife did while you were in it, otherwise how can anyone explain why nothing works now, nothing at all? I’m not saying sabotage, no one’s saying that, but you have to admit the timing is bad, and maybe you found some equipment you didn’t want to tell anyone about, maybe you pressed a button or two—”

  Myell wondered if Toledo had played football in school. He had the hulking, menacing build for it. But he was more earnest than menacing. Not the captain of the team, then. Maybe the co-captain. American football had fallen out of favor over the years, but on Myell’s first ship, the Kashmir, some of the sergeants and chiefs had enjoyed scrimmaging on the flight deck using Australian rules.

  “—Don’t you understand, Chief? All you have to do is stand in the Sphere. We’ll be there if the token ring activates.”

  Myell could almost hear the mournful horn already, the warning that an ouroboros—“token ring” seemed such a dull phrase—was about to arrive in one of the ancient structures left by the creators of the Alcheringa and Seven Sisters.

  He repeated, “No.”

  Toledo threw up his hands. “Don’t you feel any responsibility at all?”

  Myell had his doubts about Toledo’s claim that he and Jodenny had somehow broken the system. The fault, if any, rested with the Rainbow Serpent. The Creator God that Myell had spoken with and turned away from.

  “If it’s so important to you that we try, why hasn’t someone given me a direct order?” Myell asked.

  “You’ve refused orders before,” said Farber. “In such a delicate situation as this, we agreed to try to enlist your help rather than demand it.”

  “Because you’re a man of principle, and you don’t like seeing innocent people get hurt,” Toledo added.

  Myell almost asked which innocent people Toledo was referring to. Anyone who tried to use the system had to know the risks involved. Not only the physical side effects, but also the possibility of getting lost in the vast, unmapped maze of stations and spheres.

  Then again, perhaps the missing team of “scientists” was something else entirely.

  Toledo said, “All you have to do is step inside a Mother Sphere. We can be there in twenty minutes. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. If it works, then we’re golden.”

  He made it sound so easy. So reasonable. But Myell had made his choice in front of the Rainbow Serpent, and he would abide by it.

  “Teddy,” Farber said suddenly, “I’d like to talk to Chief Myell alone.”

  Toledo flicked a gaze her way, then back to Myell.

  “Go,” Farber insisted.

  When they were alone, she sat down and laid her hands flat on the table. “He’s not telling you everything, Chief. We want you to do more than just activate the transport ring.”

  Myell waited. The room was soundproof, but he imagined Toledo standing at the door trying to listen.

  “I know that when you were debriefed on Warramala, the agents didn’t believe your story about a serpent telling you how to get home. The official conclusion is that you were hallucinating, and that you were enormously lucky navigating the network back to Warramala.”

  He stayed quiet.

  Farber leaned forward. “I think you did encounter some kind of intelligence. It communicated with you. The first alien sentience that mankind has ever made contact with, and you were chosen for the honor. That makes you our liaison. Our best chance to establish a dialogue with the beings who created or control the Wondjina Spheres.”

  Myell phrased his answer carefully. “Miss Farber, whatever’s out there, it doesn’t want us using the system. It’s not my place to go against that. If it’s meant to be, those scientists will find their way back.”

  If the Rainbow Serpent meant it to be.

  “You’re condemning them to death,” she told him.

  Not true. They had done that themselves, the minute they stepped into a transportation system they knew nothing about.

  “I’m sorry you feel that way,” he said.

  Myell walked back to Captain Kuvik’s suite alone. The secretary gave him a sideways look, made a discreet call, and then said, “Your office is on the equipment deck.”

  “Is that the basement?” Myell asked.

  The secretary smiled coldly.

  Myell took the lift down. The equipment deck was dim and airless, with machinery sounds muffled behind thick locked doors. One door bore a sign with his name printed neatly on it. He’d seen closets that were bigger, but inside was a desk and a chair. No deskgib. He used his bee to ping Betsy.

  “Where’s Jodenny?” he asked.

  “She’s sleeping, sir. Shall I wake her?”

  “No. Let her rest.”

  He sat there, alone with nothing to do, pondering snakes and lost travelers. Fleet would ask Jodenny, of course. They would appeal to her sense of honor. But she would say no. Together they had made their decision, and there was no going back on it now.

  CHAPTER THREE

  After a while the view of four blank walls grew claustrophobic. Myell searched through the desk drawers but found nothing to write on. He ventured down the passageway and tried other doors. Most were locked, but close to the lift he found a closet filled with unwanted office supplies. Old deskgibs sat piled in boxes, their screens cracked or coated with dust. Printers and copiers with missing power units filled shelves. After sneezing a few times Myell dug up boxes of envelopes bearing the name of Captain Kuvik’s predecessor, and at the bottom of a filing cabinet he found some pens and thumbtacks.

  He brought the discovered treasures back to his office. On the backs of envelopes he began to sketch out the most common shipboard duties of a supply tech. The envelopes went up on the wall in decreasing order of importance. He sorted through the old courseware. He was even coaxing one deskgib into clicking, flickering existence when footsteps hurried past his door and farther down the passage.

  Myell hadn’t heard anyone else since coming down. He suspected students weren’t allowed in the area. Curious, he followed the sound down to one of the mechanical rooms. The hatch was open, revealing a dim and noisy interior full of water pipes and hot-water heaters.

  “Hello?” he asked. “Who’s down here?”

  Something clattered to the floor. Myell turned to a corner.

  “I could just leave you alone,” he said casually, “or I could turn on the fire-suppression equipment for this room. It’ll be hard to remain inconspicuous later when you’re soaking wet.”

  After a moment a young sailor emerged from the shadows behind a boiler. He was a scrawny kid, barely old en
ough to shave, tall and gawky in a flagpole sort of way.

  “Sorry, sir,” he said.

  Myell sighed.

  The sailor noticed Myell’s insignia. “I mean Chief, not sir.”

  “What are you doing down here, sailor?”

  A frown, a shrug. “Just being derelict, Chief.”

  Myell scratched his chin. “Dereliction’s a pretty serious charge. You might as well come down to my office and be useful instead.”

  “Chief?”

  “It’s over here. It’s the luxury suite.”

  Myell led the way. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the sailor wipe at his eyes quickly. No worries there. Myell had done his own fair share of retreating to dark corners over the years. By the time they reached his office, the sailor’s face was splotchy but dry.

  “Romero, is it?” Myell asked, eyeing the sailor’s nametag.

  “Yes, Chief. AT Putty Romero.”

  “Well, AT Putty Romero, what do you think of my palace? Too gaudy? Maybe I should tone it down.”

  Romero blinked uncertainly.

  “Don’t be afraid of hurting my feelings.” Myell turned to the deskgib and slapped the side of it, hoping to cease the clicking noise. If anything, the sound grew worse. “I’m told interior design isn’t my forte. What’s yours?”

  “My what, Chief?”

  “Your special area of expertise.”

  Romero’s face scrunched up. “I’m not so bad with gibs.”

  “Can you fix this one?”

  Romero examined the deskgib, pried open the back panel, and began fiddling with the insides. “Power unit’s okay but the brain’s fried up. You’ll need a transplant.”

  “Let’s go shopping,” Myell said, and showed him to the supply room.

  It took thirty minutes with improvised tools for Romero to have the unit working properly. Myell would have taken twice the amount of time on his own. Once powered up, the gib didn’t get him to Core, but Myell could sync his bee to it if he wanted connectivity, and Romero jury-rigged a printer that was excruciatingly slow but serviceable.

  Romero was mostly silent as he worked, but Myell did worm out of him that he was part of the class graduating on Friday. He had orders to the Kamchatka, which was deploying soon for Earth. He’d never been off world before.

  “You’re from around here?” Myell asked.

  “Pennefather. The boondocks.”

  Myell’s grasp of Fortune’s geography was still tenuous. “Where I grew up, the nearest town was called Pink Skunk. You don’t know the definition of ‘desolate’ until you’ve been that way.”

  Romero brushed dust off the top of the printer. “I guess I’d better get back to study hall. I only have one exam to take before graduation Saturday.”

  “Which exam is that?”

  “Fifth-generation X-relation databases.” Romero was still gazing at the printer, as if it contained secrets of the universe. “I hate them.”

  “They’re not so hard, once you understand them.”

  “Oh, I understand them. They’re kinda easy. But clunky, you know? No beauty at all.”

  Myell asked, “Do you find the courses here too easy?”

  Romero shrugged. “They’re not so bad.”

  “But not what you’re interested in.”

  That was it. Romero’s eyes gave him away before anything else did.

  Myell had heard many recruiting horror stories. “Recruiter lie to you? Promise you some other rating, and then switch you at the last minute?”

  “Aeronautics tech. They said I could crew on birdies and foxes, though only officers get to pilot them. But then they said there weren’t enough openings, and I could be in supply aviation. That I could still be in a crew.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “You’ve been on freighters, Chief. Any chance?”

  Myell didn’t want to lie. “Small one.”

  Romero looked down at his boots. “That’s what I thought.”

  The bells for eleven-hundred began to chime. Romero said, “First lunch period. That’s mine. You want me to show you where the mess is?”

  “I think I’ll wait. Thanks for your help.”

  Romero rubbed the side of his head and went off. At high noon Myell ventured over to the mess, which was teeming with students and staff. The high, airy room was separated into a large space for students, a smaller room for enlisted staff, and a wardroom for officers and chiefs decorated with banners, ship models, and plaques.

  He was sorely tempted to grab a tray and bring it back to his subterranean office. The chief’s mess on the Aral Sea had welcomed him well enough, though it had been with the tacit understanding that he’d undergo initiation at Fortune, as they had. He forced himself through the chow line, picked out a plate of spaghetti and soy meatballs, and headed for the wardroom.

  Six male chiefs sat at a table in the center of the room, with no chairs free. They had the jocular air of old friends, of drinking buddies. Two female lieutenants were dining in the corner, their heads bent close in conversation. A lieutenant commander, two ensigns, a senior chief, and Captain Kuvik’s secretary sat at a long table near an aquarium. One chair was free there, but cowardice overtook him and he aimed for an empty table along the bulkhead instead.

  Maybe it was meant to be humiliating, their ignoring him, but he’d had plenty of experience eating on his own. He used his bee to skim the day’s news. He ate with deliberate leisure, and sipped at his coffee long after it had grown cold. He was aware of sideways glances and whispers. One of the senior chiefs at the head table, a thickly built man with muscled arms, glared Myell’s way more than once, as if personally affronted by his presence.

  Well, then. If his tenure at Supply School was going to be shot down before it even got started, Myell might as well make it a spectacular flame-out. When the lunch period ended he followed the senior chief to a large auditorium classroom on the third deck. Two hundred or so sailors were already crowding into the tiered rows of blue chairs. Myell took an aisle seat halfway down and settled in.

  “What class is this?” he asked the sailor beside him.

  “COSAL reporting,” the sailor said, surprised. Apparently chiefs didn’t sit in on each other’s classes here.

  “What’s the instructor’s name?”

  “Senior Chief Talic. Like italic, you know? But not like parentheses.”

  Myell nodded gravely. “I’ll remember that.”

  Senior Chief Talic didn’t notice Myell in the audience, or chose to ignore him. Myell believed the latter, considering he was the only one in dress whites in a sea of gray jumpsuits. Talic began his lecture by saying, “All right, settle down, thumb your way to chapter seven. Your homework assignments show an appalling lack of understanding of basic regulations. Let’s review the priority sequencing for all class-two general requisitions.”

  Ten minutes in, the sailors had glazed expressions and Myell was starting to yawn. Sequencing was a silly thing to spend time on. Young ATs would face much more interesting problems in the fleet. But mastering regulations and procedures meant doing well on tests, and high test scores led to promotion. Didn’t mean a person could handle an issue room, or deal with unhappy customers, or fix DNGOs that decided to shut down on their own.

  The second half of the class picked up a bit when Talic sprang a pop quiz on the students. As they bent to the task, furiously keying in answers on their gibs, Talic came up the stairs. He motioned for Myell to follow him out to the passageway.

  “Who said you could sit in?” he demanded when they were alone. His cheeks were ruddy with anger.

  “I took some initiative,” Myell said.

  “Smart-ass. Everyone says that about you. You’re not welcome in my classroom and you’re not welcome at this command. My students have a hard enough job as it, memorizing all this bureaucratic bullshit. They don’t need a bad influence. Stay the fuck away from them and from me.”

  Talic stalked back into the auditorium. If he could have s
lammed the doors behind him, he probably would have.

  “That went well,” Myell said to the empty air around him.

  * * *

  When he got home that afternoon he found Jodenny in the kitchen, frying tofu in a pan and nursing a burn on her finger.

  “Our kitchenware is cursed.” She kissed him soundly. “How was your first day at school?”

  “I think I made a big impression.”

  “In a good way?”

  “In the only way I could.” Myell eyed the tofu warily. Cooking wasn’t Jodenny’s strong point. She was dressed for the summer weather in a white blouse and blue shorts that set off her long, slim legs. He was tempted to carry her over to the sofa for some overdue affection.

  Instead he pulled a beer from the refrigerator and took a long, satisfying swallow.

  Jodenny said, “I vowed I would cook you dinner on your first day back to work, just as you’ve been cooking for me these past few weeks.”

  He nuzzled her sweet-smelling neck. “I have a secret to confess. I’ve been ordering takeout and making it look like I cooked.”

  “You lie like a rug,” she said, and kissed him until Betsy began to chime a warning.

  “Forget dinner,” Myell said, turning off the stove. He lifted Jodenny up onto the countertop and nudged her knees apart. She looped her arms around his neck, her hot kisses spicy against his lips, her hair brushing his face. He unbuttoned her blouse as her hands ran down his shoulders to his waist.

  “Missed you,” she murmured.

  “Quit your job,” he said.

  She smiled. “When you quit yours, sailor.”

  Then there were no words, just some urgent needy noises and giggling. He carried her not to the sofa but to the bedroom, where Karl was unceremoniously rousted from his pillow. Myell slid Jodenny’s shorts off. His own uniform was too hot, too tight. He shucked the pants off, but Jodenny’s hands stopped him when he reached for his shirt and tie.