The Stars Down Under

by Sandra McDonald

  “We paid a lot of money for this trip,” someone said from the back of the room.

  “Are we going to get refunds?” someone else asked.

  Jodenny idly wondered if she was a curse. First the Yangtze disaster, then the assault on the Aral Sea, now the Kamchatka’s engineering woes.

  “You’ll have to take up any refund requests with Team Space passenger office,” Sweeney was saying, which was just about when Jodenny lost interest in the conversation. She headed for the exit and happily stepped out into the cooler air of the passage. So many bodies crammed into one space irritated her. Hullabaloo and Farber were close behind her.

  “Fancy a drink?” Hullabaloo asked. “The bar’s open. Beer’s probably warm, though.”

  “I had enough beer last night,” Jodenny said.

  “I don’t drink,” Farber said.

  “Suit yourselves.” Hullabaloo headed off.

  Farber asked, in a low voice, “You think Sweeney’s telling the truth?”

  “Don’t see why not.”

  “Are people going to get refunds?”

  “Not even if they hold their breath and turn blue,” Jodenny predicted. “They paid for passage. They didn’t pay for passage in comfort.”

  “I’m going to go find Teddy,” Farber said.

  Jodenny went upladder to D-deck. Several passenger hatches were open and people were lingering in the passageways, driven to sociability by the shutdown of the entertainment units in their cabins. Karl, entrusted to the care of the Fraser daughters, was batting a small yellow ball between his paws. Jodenny patted his neck as she stepped by. Louise Sharp, her magenta hair as brilliant as ever, was sitting on the deck outside D-18. She shuffled a deck of oversize cards between her hands.

  “Hey, Lulu,” Louise said. “Come keep me company.”

  “I was going to try to nap,” Jodenny said.

  “Oh, sure, like sleep’s more interesting than me.” Louise gave her a crooked grin. “Sit down and rest your weary dogs.”

  “Dogs?” Jodenny asked.

  “Dogs. Feet. Earth slang.”

  Jodenny sat and leaned her head against the bulkhead. It was nice to rest her feet, after all. “You’ve been there often? Earth.”

  “We make this run about twice a year, checking on company investments. It’s not half the cesspool people make it out to be, though I wouldn’t exactly call it hospitable in most places. Ruined cities and burned-away ozone do that to a world. Makes the naturalists cranky.”

  “The who?” Jodenny asked, thinking of Malachy Balandra.

  “Big movement. Back to nature, anti-technology, all that, but they need the tech to clean up the mess left from the Debasement. What brings you there?”

  “I’m on vacation. Wanted to see something different.”

  “Different, it is.” Louise flipped a card down on the deck and said, “Ah, the wallaby. Change is coming soon.”

  “What are those?”

  “Aboriginal tarot cards.”

  Jodenny examined the card more closely. It was old and frayed at the edges, but the artwork was intricate and carefully inked. “I thought tarot cards were European.”

  “Well, like everything else European, they found their way to Australia,” Louise said. “Hocus-pocus cockeyed bullshit, all of it, except when it isn’t.”

  She tossed another card down on the deck. It showed a brown and orange koala clinging to a gum tree as storm clouds raged overhead. “See there? Turmoil. Not surprising. The future shapes the present, you know. Something up ahead of us is significantly different than what’s behind us.”

  Jodenny didn’t want to think about the future unless it specifically involved reuniting with Myell. “You don’t seem like the mystical type.”

  “I believe in the great unknown, and the great unknowable. And a martini every evening after work.” Louise shuffled the cards. “I’ll do a reading for you.”

  “I don’t really need one.”

  “Free of charge. Keeps me in practice.” Louise put four cards down on the deck in the shape of a diamond. “Romance, Finance, Career, Fortune. First card: Will our dear Ellen find true love?”

  Two male passengers stepped over Jodenny’s outstretched legs on their way down the passage. It was cool in the ship, the heating elements only on half power, and she rubbed her bare arms.

  Louise turned the romance card over. A dark figure, arms and legs akimbo, stared up at them.

  “The Lightning Man,” Louise said, impressed. “Very powerful. And you already know him, don’t you? His feet are flat on the ground, not on tiptoes, indicating certainty. He cares for you very deeply.”

  Jodenny tried to keep her expression blank. Her wedding ring burned on its chain around her neck.

  Louise said, “Thing about the Lightning Man is that he’s very powerful, but also very dangerous. Doesn’t know his own strength. Brings destruction, and in the aftermath, rebirth. You jeopardize yourself by keeping company with the likes of him.”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Jodenny said.

  Louise’s mouth quirked. “If you say so. Whoever he is, you’ll probably see him soon. Lightning Men, they tend to stick around whether you want them to or not. Next question: Will Ellen be rich?”

  Louise overturned the second card. A blue and white seal swam through golden waves.

  “Congratulations. The seal indicates you’ll have all you need. Maybe you’re going to win the lottery. Or you could be rich in other ways, money notwithstanding. Next comes Career. Will Ellen achieve great professional success?”

  A great white egret stared up at them with black eyes.

  Louise was silent for a moment.

  “Determined, persistent, strong,” she finally said. “When you set out to do something, you do it.”

  “Not always,” Jodenny said.

  “What did you say your job was?”

  “Librarian.”

  Louise twirled a curl of magenta hair between her fingers. “Thing is, it’s inverted. See? Upside down. Compromised. Subject to the power of the next card: Fortune. Go ahead and turn it over.”

  Jodenny touched the card gingerly and then flipped it. A Rainbow Serpent curled around the card’s surface, gleaming gold and bronze, yellow and white. She could almost smell its hot, rotting breath.

  “The Creator.” Louise’s gaze narrowed. “First among all in the Dreamtime, the land that was and is and will always be. But it’s reversed, too. Your connection is through someone else. Your Lightning Man, perhaps?”

  The passageway was getting more crowded. The meeting in the galley must have broken up. Jodenny put her hand on top of the Rainbow Serpent and then swept up the other three cards. Let Louise do readings for other passengers. Let her peer into artwork on their behalf and presume to know anything at all.

  Jodenny said, “There’s no Lightning Man, and no Snake. I have to go.”

  Louise cocked her head. “Go where? We’re all trapped here until we get to Earth.”

  Jodenny started to get up anyway. Louise peeled one last card from the deck and put it facedown on the deck. Louise asked, “What about this ship? What’s our fate going to be?”

  She turned the card over. It showed a crocodile, its jaws wide and tail high.

  Despite herself, Jodenny asked, “What does that mean?”

  Louise took her time answering.

  “Undecided,” she finally said. “And it’s also inverted. A bad sign. Things don’t look so good.”

  Rubbish, Jodenny almost said. She left Louise with her cards and headed back to her cabin. The prospect of staring at bulkheads didn’t make her happy at all. She climbed downladder instead, bypassing the galley for the library. It was more crowded than she’d expected, with several passengers tucked into the comfy chairs and either reading or doing puzzles by flashlight. She detoured by the passenger lounge, found that too crowded as well. She was heading for Toledo’s cabin, hoping he might have an update, when AT Tingley caught up to her in an
E-deck passageway.

  “Commander,” she said. “I’ve been looking all over—”

  “Miss Spring,” Jodenny corrected, with a quick look around. No one else was in the passageway, but eavesdroppers were never far away. “What’s wrong?

  Tingley took a deep breath. “It’s Putty. He got in a fight and they put him in the brig and it’s not his fault, he was trying to get my ring back!”

  They had no privacy while standing right there in the passageway. Jodenny spied a unisex head and towed Tingley inside. The stalls were empty, and the thin red light from the emergency light left most in shadows.

  “Tell me what happened,” Jodenny said.

  “My wedding ring! I took it off this morning when I was washing up and left it on the sink shelf by accident. Everyone else was already off to breakfast. So then an hour later I remembered, and I went back, but it was gone. Someone told Putty this kid Malachy was hanging around berthing, and he was seen in the bathroom, and he picked it up.”

  Jodenny squeezed the bridge of her nose. Junior sailors on the Kamchatka shared not only berthing but a communal head. She could easily imagine Malachy Balandra slipping in after everyone had gone off to their daily duty assignments.

  “Putty didn’t know he was the captain’s son!” Tingley said, unshed tears beginning to glimmer. “He went off to find him, and they got in a fight, and the kid’s still got my ring, and Putty’s going to be charged with fighting, and what are they going to do to him?”

  “Someone actually saw Malachy Balandra take the ring?” Jodenny asked.

  Tingley nodded emphatically. “Bobby Shu saw with his own eyes! But now he won’t swear to it because he doesn’t want the captain mad at him, and Putty didn’t even punch first, the kid did that.”

  That was a little hard to believe. Malachy didn’t seem like the violent type.

  “What is it you want me to do?” Jodenny asked.

  “Talk to the captain! Or to Security. Can’t you? Because they can keep him in the brig until we get all the way back to Fortune, and he’ll just hate that, he hates little places, and then he’ll have to get a lawyer, and Team Space doesn’t like him anyway—”

  “Take a breath,” Jodenny ordered. “Deep breath. In and out through your nose. You’re going to hyperventilate.”

  Tingley did so, and wiped at her eyes.

  “I’m not a sea lawyer,” Jodenny said. “As far as anyone on this ship knows, I’m not even a lieutenant commander.”

  “But you know him!” Tingley said. “You can stand up for him. No one else is going to do that.”

  Myell had been thrown in the brig once, accused of a crime he hadn’t committed. Jodenny hadn’t known him at the time, but she knew it hadn’t been good for him. She tried to imagine being nineteen years old and assigned to a ship for the first time, and being convicted of a crime for trying to recover your wife’s wedding ring.

  She said, “I’ll go talk to them.”

  “Thank you, ma’am!” Tingley threw her arms around Jodenny and hugged her in a decidedly unprofessional way. She pulled back almost instantly, her face flushed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”

  “We’re on a ship with no power and your husband’s in jail,” Jodenny said gruffly. “I guess you’re allowed a hug.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Tingley said, and dragged her sleeve across her nose.

  “Just don’t let it happen again,” Jodenny said, and went off to talk to Security.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Falling off a cliff took forever.

  One thousand, two thousand …

  Wind rushed at him. The dark and ominous sea expanded beyond the edges of his vision. The sharp rocks below waited for him with hardened teeth and jagged claws. Myell saw his death, clear as the sky: his body slamming into stone, bones cracking and splintering under the strain, his lungs punctured and skull shattered like an egg.

  Three thousand, four …

  The terror of the cliff had been replaced by a strange, cold calm. No sense worrying about the inevitable. In a few seconds everything would be over, and if anything lurked beyond the blackness of death he’d find out.

  Still, calm notwithstanding, he scrabbled for some kind of purchase in the air, anything to grab on to, anything at all.

  Five thousand, six, the pull of gravity, the onrushing rocks, awareness that the Bunyip had already gone into the water and had not surfaced, the fleeting lament Jodenny, and he hit.

  * * *

  Cold. Shockingly cold, and dark, and his mouth and nose and lungs and chest and body were full of water, a torrent of it flooding into him, making breath and life impossible. In terror and desperation he tried to suck in air, air that didn’t exist, his chest muscles paralyzed, his lungs turned to stone, and his heart beat wildly out of control in a battle that was already lost, already far beyond his control.

  He didn’t remember sinking, but here he was deep in salty blackness, unable to see, unable to focus, his limbs heavy and fingers slack, freezing cold, bitterly cold, no sense of up or down, no way back to the surface, all lost, so lost, and when seaweed brushed against his lips he couldn’t even recoil, because the water carried him and drowned him and he was dimming, all of him was dimming, and going into the darkness.

  Come, a woman’s voice said, a voice like a song. Open your eyes.

  Impossible, but he did it anyway. His vision was a blurred landscape of black and dark blue and there, a woman’s silvery face. She shimmered in the darkness like a beacon. Her eyes were tiny burning fires of green, her smile full of sharp gray teeth. Her hands slid over Myell’s arms and up to his throat and cupped his face, oh so cold, and slimy like a fish.

  Come and live, she coaxed.

  Her lips brushed his. Her tongue slid into his throat, a violation that brought blessed air. Myell choked, gasped, and bolted upright on a damp bed of rock. Around him, the walls of a sea cave shone green with luminescent plants. He clutched his throat, sure that he couldn’t breathe, but air flowed freely down into his chest, where a residual ache told him that he hadn’t dreamed the ordeal. He had jumped from a cliff into the ocean and lived to tell the tale.

  Unless this was some odd kind of afterlife, an afterlife that was wet and salty and cold, and in which he was naked again.

  Shivering, he clutched at a coverlet of seagull feathers that had been wrapped around him. The feathers smelled moldy. He inspected his arms and legs, looking for injuries. A few scratches, a bruise or two. The welts from the stinging tree had faded. But something was missing—

  His dilly bag was gone.

  He patted the coverlet, searched the bed of rock, scanned the floor. No sign of it. Silly to be sentimental about a cloth sack, but the loss cut him anyway.

  You’ve got bigger problems, he told himself.

  He staggered upright, paused to let his spinning head settle down, and limped stiffly toward a low archway of rock. A large crocodile in the doorway snapped at him with teeth like knives.

  Myell jerked back several frightened steps. The crocodile’s tail twitched, long and heavy, but it made no moves toward him. He glanced around for some kind of club or stick, anything that could be used as a weapon. The sea cave gave him nothing.

  “She won’t eat you,” a woman’s voice said.

  Myell turned back to see a young woman standing beside the crocodile. The woman had dark hair that curled in luxurious waves to her hips, and a silvery-white face that seemed familiar. She wore a scrap of fabric around her waist. A string of fish bones and palm fronds hung around her neck.

  “She’s just curious,” the woman continued. “She thinks Nogomain who pretend they are birds must have spent too much time in the sun.”

  All the questions Myell wanted to ask jammed up in his throat. The woman stepped farther into the chamber, her dainty feet pale against the wet rock. Her lips were blue in the glowing light.

  “I don’t think you’re Nogomain yet, and you would make a terrible bird.” She advanced on him wit
h delicate steps. The tip of her head reached only to his shoulders. “Still, you’re welcome here. At least until you tire of fish and salt and the sharks who circle you even now.”

  She put one hand on his chest. Her fingers were short and stubby, her nails green. Her bare, firm breasts were covered with translucent scales, and the nipples were black. She gazed at him steadily, her eyes betraying nothing.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Names are secrets,” she said. “You can call me Free-not-chained.”

  “Are you … human?”

  She laughed. “Are you?”

  Free-not-chained turned away before he could answer. She glided from the cave as if the rocky wet floor were made of ice. Myell followed very carefully, eyes on the crocodile. It let him pass unmolested. Free-not-chained led him through more narrow, low caves. In some the luminescent walls faded to faint glows, leaving him stumbling. In others, open pools of seawater lapped at rock, and silvery fish splashed at their surfaces.

  Free-not-chained’s destination was a wide, high chamber where sunlight broke through large gaps in the ceiling and walls. He could hear birds cawing and the wind whistling, and see chunks of the distant blue sky. The cavern floor was littered with birdshit-stained rocks and women like Free-not-chained basking in pools of sunlight. Crocodiles slept among the women, curled up like pets.

  “He lives,” one of the women murmured, opening her eyes at Myell’s arrival.

  “He’s only a man,” another said, arching her spine and licking at her fingers.

  Free-not-chained showed him a flat expanse of damp sand and bade him to sit down. “He’s Jungali,” she said, which made goosebumps run down his spine.

  “Where did you hear that name?” Myell demanded. His mother had given him that secret nickname. The Rainbow Serpent had called him by it. But no one else, not even Jodenny, knew it.

  “Whispered by the gods,” Free-not-chained said. “Murmured in awe and fear.”

  She gave him a cup of fresh water. Though he didn’t expect to be thirsty after inhaling half an ocean, he finished all of it with slow, even swallows. When she offered him bits of raw fish, he shook his head.