The Stars Down Under

by Sandra McDonald

  “Thinking about it,” Myell said.

  “Poisonous, probably,” Gayle said.

  He wasn’t in a hurry to find out, hunger pains be damned. The rain outside slanted down harder and the thunder grew louder. Nam said, “We’ll give it until morning. Then, weather or not, we’ll have to head back.”

  Gayle made a noise in her throat and resumed her studies.

  Nam nodded off with his chin against his chest. Myell stretched out stiff muscles, drank more water, and joined Gayle in examining the back of the cave. She was using a small ink pen to take notes on her arms, because her paper notebook had been ruined by water. Her handwriting was very fine. On her upper arms she’d drawn copies of swirls and symbols.

  “What are these?” Myell asked, pointing to seven odd figures on the wall. “Men with kangaroo heads?”

  Gayle said, “Therianthropes. Ancestor gods believed to have entered the rock, merged with it, and left their imprints behind.”

  “And these people over here?” They were elongated and sticklike, but wearing robes and headdresses. Some of them carried arrows or spears. They were beautiful and strange, and made him shiver.

  Her tone was cool. “Remarkably similar to the Bradshaw paintings discovered in northwest Australia. Those were believed to be fifty thousand years old.”

  Myell almost touched the paintings, but one stern look from her quelled his hand. He spread his fingers a few centimeters over a white handprint and eyed a fine black boomerang.

  “Sorry you can’t vid it?” he asked.

  “Of course I am. That’s a stupid question.”

  “You couldn’t show your colleagues anyway. Top-secret mission and all that.”

  Gayle moved sideways and continued to write on her left arm. “One day it’ll be declassified.”

  “And you’ll be ready to tell the world.”

  “Is there something you need, Chief? Otherwise I prefer to work in silence.”

  Myell eyed the kangaroo men again. “Jodenny told me you wanted our help to find your husband. I don’t see how studying cave walls helps you do that.”

  Her lips pursed. “Expert on heartache, are you?”

  “Yes,” he replied.

  She stepped away from him. “Robert would be fascinated by this. He’d want me to find out as much as I can, in the short time allotted.”

  “Allotted, or created?”

  “I have no idea what you mean.”

  Myell took a step her way. He enjoyed that she was discomfited. It was a look that suited her.

  “That rope and harness,” he said. “Commander Gold’s team never went down into that ravine. You put them out there so there’d be a reason to investigate the other Spheres.”

  “Maybe you were hit by lightning, Chief. You’re delusional.”

  “Am I? That harness wasn’t very weathered.”

  “But there was ice on the cable.”

  “A wet cable will get icy overnight.”

  She smiled. “So I snuck out of camp during the middle of the night, when it was dark and wolves were out, just to loop a cable around a tree and throw it down the slope, so that we could go down there and discover the aliens that probably killed Dr. Jiang and Dr. Meredith. I’m pretty clever, aren’t I?”

  Myell said, “I think you’ll do anything you can to further your knowledge of the network. You’ve already proven yourself a liar.”

  “Chief,” Nam called out. “Dr. Gayle.”

  They went to where he was standing at the cave mouth. He was staring out into the gray afternoon. “There’s someone out there.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Up on that ridge.”

  Myell couldn’t see anyone. Gayle shook her head. Nam said, “I’m going to check it out. The two of you stay here, and try not to kill each other.”

  Myell wished their radios worked, but they’d been ruined in the storm. He watched Nam go down the gully and start up the incline. The threat of mudslide was still imminent, and he held his breath as Nam steadily ascended, his figure growing fuzzy in the dusk.

  “You should go after him,” Gayle said.

  “He said to stay here.”

  “Lot of good that will do if he tumbles down the hill.”

  Myell hesitated, unwilling to disobey an order. Gayle said, “Fine, I’ll do it,” and went out into the rain.

  Left alone, Myell rubbed the sleeves of his uniform. The fabric had dried out on its own, as it was designed to, but he still felt damp. A crack of thunder made him withdraw into the cave. The painted animals appeared to shift and change, ever so slightly, at the edges of his vision. He turned a sharp eye on a yellow kangaroo.

  “No funny stuff,” he said. His dilly bag weighed heavily against his leg. “I’m not in the mood.”

  Rain poured down. The cave was deeper than it had first appeared, folds of rock hidden in darkness. He swung his flashlight over the recesses. Painted animals stared back at him. The stick people, with their long legs and arms, remained locked in stone. He imagined men kneeling in this cave with ocher and brushes, painstakingly setting down the stories and symbols of their lives. Stories and legends, victories and losses. The world would spin and seasons pass, storms rage, generations die off, but still the stories would remain.

  Myell turned and saw an Aboriginal crouched in the cave mouth, spear in hand, teeth bared in the dim light.

  His heart lurched, but annoyance quickly overrode the first cold wave of fear. “I said no funny stuff,” Myell snapped. “I don’t have time for visions right now.”

  The Aboriginal cocked his head but said nothing. He was a young fellow, sturdy, midnight black. Feathers and seashells were entwined in his long hair. Swirls of yellow ocher decorated his torso from throat to waist, and wavy lines flowed from his shoulders to his wrists. He had a dilly bag like Myell’s, but no clothing. A shark’s tooth hung on a cord around his neck. His penis, large and flaccid, hung between his well-muscled thighs.

  Myell edged backward. “Shit. You’re real, aren’t you?”

  The Aboriginal took that as an invitation to speak, and replied with a series of words that Myell couldn’t understand at all.

  “If this is your cave, I’ll be happy to leave,” Myell said.

  Shark Tooth—the name seemed as good as any—took his long, sharp spear and drew quick lines in the dirt. A head, two arms, two legs. He jabbed at the drawing, pointed to Myell, and spoke several long words.

  “That’s me?” Myell gestured at the lines and at his own chest. “Me?”

  A grunt. Shark Tooth drew another line in the dirt. He clapped his hands together and made a rumbling sound, then stabbed the spear in the shape meant to represent Myell.

  Myell said, “I wasn’t hit by lightning!”

  Shark Tooth leaned back on his haunches, quite satisfied with his artwork.

  Myell edged along the cave wall, inching by Shark Tooth and his spear with deliberate slowness. “Sorry for disturbing the place. We didn’t touch anything. Nice to meet you.”

  He got no farther than the cave entrance before he spied Nam and Gayle up on the ridge. Relief was quickly replaced by disappointment. More Aboriginals flanked them, a tribe of young men carrying spears and knives.

  Shark Tooth shouted out something long and triumphant, and the warriors cheered.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Snow and ice blanketed the landscape outside the conference room, bleak gray and white as far as Jodenny could see.

  The room itself was small, well heated, and full of standard Team Space furniture, including a long oval table of faux wood and swivel chairs with blue cushions on them. The walls were vidded lime green. In the two hours that Jodenny had been sequestered there, she’d paced a small track in the beige carpet, had memorized exactly how many steps took her from one wall to the next, and knew exactly how many white ceiling tiles comprised the overhead. An able technician had brought her juice and a sandwich on a tray but hadn’t been able to answer any questions. The two guards s
tanding outside the door didn’t have any answers for her either.

  “You’re to stay here, ma’am, until someone comes for you,” they said, whenever Jodenny opened the door and asked.

  She told herself that Myell was fine. That he could endure a trip through the Spheres without her. That Gayle might be a lying bitch but the Marines were trained in survival techniques. All they had to do was stay on the ouroboros loop, and they’d return to Bainbridge sooner or later.

  Jodenny stared out at the snow-swept land. Bainbridge was a three-hour birdie flight away, and she damn well didn’t appreciate the way she’d been taken here instead of, say, Kimberley, where she could even now be kicking up a fuss. Compass Bay was a small base set up for ocean and atmosphere monitoring, with only a small staff and limited resources. No civilians lived within several hundred kilometers, and the only way in or out was by launch field.

  If they thought they were just going to leave her here, let her stew in worry while Myell was off being dragged around the universe, then they would be sorely surprised. Jodenny already had plans to call Admiral Mizoguchi the minute she got near a comm. Failing that, she had other paths to try. She was still a decorated hero of the Aral Sea, and had a queue full of unanswered media inquiries. Any of those reporters would be delighted with a scoop on Team Space’s most secret project—

  But even as she contemplated her options, Jodenny knew she couldn’t reveal the secret of the Wondjina Transportation System to the general population. She’d end up in the brig for a good twenty or thirty years for violating her security clearance. Being in jail wouldn’t help Myell at all.

  Being stuck out here, in the cold armpit of nowhere, wasn’t helping him either.

  The door clicked open. A Team Space captain with gray bushy hair and a beak-shaped nose came in. Despite her anger, Jodenny stiffened to attention.

  “Sir,” she said.

  He said, “At ease, Commander Scott. Sit down.”

  Jodenny took a seat across from him. Behind the captain, Leorah Farber and Teddy Toledo filed in and took up positions standing against the wall. Both had changed into business attire, and Toledo as usual looked too wide for his shirt. The captain had brought a single piece of paper with him, covered with handwriting so tiny that Jodenny could not decipher it upside down. The row of ribbons on his uniform was easily three times as large as hers, and his Alcheringa patches covered one entire sleeve. He wore no nametag.

  “I’m Captain Fisch,” he said, meeting her gaze dead on. “Here to straighten out a few misconceptions and decide where to go from here.”

  Jodenny said, “With all due respect, sir, would that be the misconception that Chief Myell volunteered for the mission he was dragged onto by force, by Marines holding weapons on him?”

  She was proud of the way her voice stayed level. Fisch didn’t blink at the accusation, nor did he look surprised. Jodenny thought Farber grimaced, but she wasn’t looking at her straight on and couldn’t say for sure.

  Fisch replied, “You think what Dr. Gayle and Commander Nam did was wrong.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said flatly.

  “You too, Miss Farber,” Fisch said, without turning.

  “Sir,” Farber replied. “I would have advised against it, if I’d been told.”

  “Mr. Toledo?”

  Toledo’s cheeks turned pink. “I was very surprised, sir.”

  “In retrospect, both Gayle and Nam should have been removed from the project,” Fisch said. He leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers together. His keen gaze hadn’t shifted from Jodenny’s face. “Both are too emotionally involved. Gayle is eager to be reunited with her husband, and Commander Nam has a relationship with Commander Gold.”

  “Relationship?” Jodenny asked doubtfully.

  “It developed while they were training in Swedenville,” Fisch said. “They were very discreet.”

  Toledo coughed a little.

  Jodenny didn’t care if Nam and Gold were the most discreet lovers in the entire Seven Sisters, but she refrained from saying so.

  Fisch’s chair creaked as he shifted his weight. “As it so happens, Commander Nam did have authorization to go with the mission the moment a token was activated, regardless of who triggered it. It was our hope that whoever activated it would volunteer to accompany the rescue team. If not, the commander was authorized to conscript anyone he needed. Miss Farber, Mr. Toledo, your department wasn’t briefed on that. It was on a need-to-know basis.”

  Jodenny wished she were outside, in the tundra, where the icy air would cool her rising temper. She knew she had to be very careful, lest she end up in the brig.

  “Sir,” she said, “Chief Myell has concerns about using the network. He has the right to refuse a direct order from Team Space without having a weapon pointed at his face.”

  A frown pulled at Fisch’s mouth. “Do you really think, Commander, that your husband would risk a court-martial for refusing a direct order? That he wouldn’t want to save the lives of those missing people on Commander Gold’s team?”

  “He wasn’t allowed to choose.”

  “That wasn’t my question.”

  Deflated, Jodenny shifted her gaze to the tabletop. She stayed silent.

  Fisch asked, “Do you trust him, Commander?”

  “Sir?”

  “Do you trust your husband?”

  Her temper started to rise again. “Yes, sir.”

  Fisch nodded. “Do you trust that he’ll do his best to keep that token coming, if the lives of two teams depend on it?”

  She remembered the surprise on Myell’s face when the ouroboros arrived. “I don’t believe he has control of it. There’s no guarantee the network will keep running. It could stop tomorrow, and he wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it.”

  “But you don’t know,” Fisch said.

  “None of us know, sir,” Farber said from against the wall. “That was my whole argument in keeping Chief Myell out of the network. He’s too valuable to risk.”

  “What we know is that we’re a damn sight closer to rescuing Commander Gold’s team than we were yesterday,” Fisch said. “Whether Chief Myell can control it or not, the system seems to like him. He has a strong incentive to come home to you, Commander Scott. And he has a penchant for coming up like a daisy even when covered with shit, judging by his military records both official and unofficial.”

  Jodenny would have argued, but Fisch wasn’t done.

  “The question is, what do we do with you in the meantime?” he asked.

  “I have my own job, sir. In Kimberley,” she said.

  His eyebrows lifted. “No one believes you’re going to go meekly back to your desk and do your duty like a shy ensign, Miz Scott. Your penchant for bending orders and jumping ranks to get what you want is well known, and fairly effective. Odds in the betting pool are three to one that you’ll try to go back to Bainbridge on your own. Four to one that you’ll go to other Spheres, maybe up at Waylaid Point. You trust your husband, Commander, but you also might be tempted to go out there and join him. Save the day.”

  She didn’t know whether to be appalled or flattered that people were taking bets.

  “The question is, if you were me, what would you do with you?” Fisch asked.

  She took her time answering.

  “Temporarily reassign me here in Compass Bay, sir,” Jodenny said. “Far from everyone and everything. Take away my comm. Put me to work in some tedious job no one else wants.”

  Toledo shuffled from one foot to the other. Farber said nothing.

  Fisch replied, “Not a bad idea. Unfortunately, you know how to fly a birdie, you have the charisma to swindle a comm link out of some unsuspecting sailor, and after a day or so you’d probably do both.”

  Jodenny asked, “Work from home back in Adeline Oaks?”

  Fisch tapped his fingers on the table.

  “Work from somewhere else?” she asked.

  “Not work,” Fisch said. “Think of it as a vacation.”
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  * * *

  Jodenny muttered to Farber, “I hate everything about this.”

  Farber nodded. The birdie was full of civilian passengers, half of whom were clutching their armrests in fear. The other half were chattering in excitement and peering at the bright blue world of Fortune as it fell away from the vidded viewports.

  “And I currently hate you, too,” Jodenny said to Farber.

  Farber said only, “I understand, Miss Spring.”

  Ellen Spring. A stupid name if Jodenny had ever heard one. She would never remember to respond to it. Did she really look like a civilian librarian? Like someone named Spring? The name rankled. More than she wanted to admit.

  Captain Fisch had insisted on the fictitious cover story for her. “Passenger records are public, and we don’t need any intrepid reporters tracing your temporary reassignment,” he’d said. “You’ll go as a civilian, you’ll conduct yourself as a civilian, and in two weeks you’ll be back to find the rescue went well and Chief Myell’s safe and sound. In the meantime, we’ll all be happy that you’re staying out of trouble.”

  Sitting on the birdie, Jodenny scowled at the memory and elbowed Farber’s arm off the armrest.

  “There she is,” Farber said, adjusting the vid. “The Kamchatka.”

  Jodenny didn’t look. The Kamchatka was one of a half-dozen freighters that regularly transited the Little Alcheringa between Fortune and Earth. The duty was tedious and unglamorous. The ships were old and built for capacity, not grace or speed. The Kamchatka’s captain was probably some bitter old officer only a year or two from retirement, saddled with a crew who couldn’t score better assignments elsewhere.

  “That’s our ship, Mommy Kate,” said a young girl across the aisle.

  One of the women traveling with her said, “That’s it, sweetie. Home sweet home until we get to Earth.”

  Another woman in the same row said, “You aren’t scared, are you?”

  “Yes, she is,” said a girl sitting nearby. “She’s scared of everything, Mommy Alys.”

  Jodenny counted four young girls traveling together, all of them blond and fair skinned. Neither Mommy Alys nor Mommy Kate looked like the biological mother, but it was hard to say for sure.