The Stars Down Under

by Sandra McDonald

  Vao shivered. “Why? Why this big reunion?”

  To make me happy, Myell thought. Because I wanted it.

  Gayle arrived. She didn’t look like she’d been crying, or that news of Monnox’s death had affected her much at all. Myell doubted that was true. He felt bad for what he’d said to her in the petroglyph cave about not really wanting to find her husband.

  “The token that brought us here is gone, and we haven’t been able to trigger another,” she reported. Her voice was flat. “The crocodile ring in the control room is also gone. Garanwa won’t say so, but he must control them through that skin cloak.”

  “I told everyone to stay away from him,” Nam said.

  Gayle reached for a pitcher of water. “He approached me, actually. He calls himself a Nogomain. That’s an Aboriginal Australian god who gives spirit children to mortal parents.”

  “Is he the only one?” Nam asked.

  She replied, “He won’t say where the others are, or what happened to them. They might have died off, they might have left this place voluntarily. But he clearly said he needs someone to help him run the network. A replacement. Chief Myell, it seems.”

  Myell concentrated on peeling a banana.

  Gayle said, “I think he’ll consider other candidates.”

  Nam said, “Such as you?”

  “It’s obvious Chief Myell doesn’t want to do it,” Gayle said.

  “He won’t have you,” Nam said.

  “You want it yourself,” Gayle retorted. “You want to grab it and use it for military purposes only.”

  Commander Gold slammed a fist onto the table. “Have you seen those fucking lizards? Seen them kill?”

  Nam leaned forward intently. “We’re talking about control of the Spheres, maybe of the Little and Big Alcheringa as well. Of course it has to be in military hands.”

  Gayle didn’t look intimidated. “We live in a democracy, Commander. The freely elected government of Fortune and the Seven Sisters have a vested interest in this.”

  “Interest, yes,” Nam said. “Authority, no.”

  Myell had enjoyed a brief surge of pleasure that Garanwa wanted him, no one else, but it left a sour taste in his throat. Now he pushed back from the table and said, “I need to take a walk.”

  “We’ll go with you,” Nam said.

  Myell understood he didn’t have a choice. Nam and Gold both came with him, leaving breakfast to the others.

  “I’m going to put a guard on that cloak, make sure she doesn’t try experimenting with it,” Nam said.

  Gold said, “She’s upset about her husband. I didn’t tell her he died slowly of sepsis. Holt tried every drug we had. Monnox wasn’t a bad guy, you know. Opinionated, stubborn, but pulled his weight.”

  Myell kept his focus on the ground. More chambers, more vistas, the cosmos unfolding. The scenery was amazing. The maze, unending. The songlines beneath the floor wove and unwove patterns that he could follow for the rest of his life, if he let himself be drawn into them.

  After several minutes of walking Gold asked, “Why does it seem like the rooms keep rearranging themselves?”

  Without looking up, Myell said, “It’s recursive. It exists all over time, all over the place, many places, and keeps folding back in on itself.”

  Nam stopped him, frowning. “How do you know that?”

  “I just do,” Myell said. “I think Garanwa must have told me while I was asleep.”

  “Because he needs you,” Nam said.

  “You know that I don’t want the helm, Commander.”

  Gold asked, “What’s a helm?”

  Myell stopped, perplexed. “The helm of the boat. Of this station. He said that, when we first met him.”

  Nam folded his arms. “No, he didn’t.”

  Gold stayed silent.

  Myell said, “Whatever it is, I don’t want it. You know that.”

  “I used to know what you wanted, Chief,” Nam said. “Now I’m not so sure. What if it’s true that you’re the only one who can take control of the network? Are you going to walk away from that responsibility?”

  Nam was too close, too stern. Myell almost pushed him away. How much did Team Space want from him? He’d been dragged on this mission against his will. He’d endured lightning and storms and crocodiles and alien soldiers. He’d dived off a cliff, leaped into a goddamn sea, in the crazy name of duty.

  Gold put his hand on Nam’s arm and said, “I have confidence that Chief Myell will do what he needs to do. Can you take us to Garanwa? I think it’s time we asked a lot more questions.”

  Myell let the gecko songline lead them to the room with the beehive rocks. Garanwa wasn’t there, but the skin cloak was alive with swirls and dots and dashes in Aboriginal colors. He recognized it now as a map to all the Eggs, the Spheres, spread across the galaxy like stars.

  “A thousand worlds,” he murmured. “The Nogomain made them to please their gods, the Wondjina. They made them for us, to explore.”

  Gold tilted his head back. The cloak colors played out over his gaunt face. “But we can’t use them. We get sick.”

  “We’re not supposed to use them. Yet. Until we’re ready.” Part of Myell was growing increasingly alarmed that he knew these things, that the knowledge was there in his head. But the information felt natural, as if he’d always known it. As if he’d been carrying it around for years, in a secret compartment in his brain that Garanwa had unlocked with a curl of his swollen, unseen fingers.

  He shook himself, tried to snap himself into focus.

  “Earth to start with,” Myell said, pointing to part of the cloak and hoping it made as much sense to them as it did to him. “Then Fortune and the other Sisters. Earth was our crib, the Sisters are our playground.”

  The skin cloak rippled and shifted, the swirls tightening and unspooling again.

  “When the Nogomain deem us ready, they’ll let us through the Spheres to the other worlds,” Myell said.

  Gold touched Myell’s arm and stood in his line of focus. “They already let us through, Chief.”

  “There were mistakes.” Myell touched part of the design, and watched as tiny ripples flowed out of it. “Garanwa only meant for a few to go through, a chosen few. Yambli’s people. They were searching.”

  Nam said, “For you.”

  The ripples deepened, hummed, and then dissipated.

  “What about the lizards?” Gold asked. “Where are they?”

  Myell concentrated on the map, trying to find the Roon world. “Explorers. Not Nogomain. They know of the Wondjina gods, despise them. They seek control of everything. What they can’t control, they’ll destroy.”

  Gold turned to Nam. “That’s it, then. We should head back home, warn them.”

  “We have to secure this place first,” Nam said.

  “If they reach Fortune—”

  “That could be hundreds of years away. Thousands. Think, Tom. This is the prize. This station, and whoever controls it.” Nam turned to Myell. “Can you control any part of the network now, Chief?”

  “No,” Myell said automatically. But that wasn’t exactly true. He could feel something in him, a strange unknown pulse, and he thought that if he focused very hard, if he reached out and pushed, he might be able to manipulate the network after all.

  “No,” he repeated.

  “Yes,” Garanwa said, from the archway. His dark skin looked mottled and flaky, as if it were sloughing off. His white eyes had taken on a tinge of yellow. “You were chosen to take the helm, Jungali. By the Rainbow Serpent himself.”

  “He doesn’t want it,” Nam said. “I’ll do it. I volunteer.”

  “Commander—”

  “Byron—”

  “Shut up, both of you.” Nam stepped toward Garanwa. “You need someone. I’m here.”

  Garanwa didn’t hesitate. “You were not chosen.”

  “On our world, in our species, we choose, not get chosen,” Nam said. “We make our own destinies. We don’t elevate people into
positions because of their genes or favor from the gods.”

  Garanwa stayed silent. Gold, his face ashen, dropped his gaze to the floor.

  Myell said, “You may think I was chosen by the gods, but I’m as ordinary as anyone else, and I can’t do what you want me to do. I have a wife who I love more than anything. We have a life together, and I won’t abandon her.”

  “I never thought you would,” Jodenny said, from the archway behind him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Jodenny had woken from a dream of flying through the clouds and crashing to the ground in a smash of feather and bone. Afterward she wandered for what seemed like hours through strange chambers of light and forests, searching for the Great Egret. Then she heard Myell’s voice, and it led her to a strange, mossy room of orange and black rocks.

  Myell’s hair was a mess, red tattoos marred his face, and his feet were bare and dirty. Beside him stood Commander Nam, and another man she didn’t know, and a small shape that she paid no attention to, because Myell was all that mattered.

  She threw herself against him and squeezed hard enough that something made a cracking noise in her shoulder. She drank in the smell of his skin and hair and the dried sweat on his neck. He felt thinner than usual, as if something vital had been sucked out of him.

  “Hi there,” Myell said, clutching her frantically hard. “Oh, God, hello.”

  She kissed him soundly. His lips were chapped and warm and hungry. When they broke apart she put her hands on his tattooed cheeks. The tattoos were ridged, red swirls.

  “You’ve been busy,” she said, her vision blurry.

  “Commander Scott,” Nam said. “Meet Garanwa.”

  Jodenny wasn’t interested in meeting anyone. She wanted to stay there all day in Myell’s arms and let the universe take care of itself for a change. But then she turned her head and saw a small, twisted figure that reminded her of a boy, if a boy could be so old and still be alive.

  Garanwa bowed his head, but said nothing.

  Myell said, “I’ll tell you everything,” and started tugging her away.

  “Chief!” Nam said. “Where are you going?”

  “Give them a minute,” said the man beside him.

  Jodenny followed Myell through more chambers, some of them with the most extraordinary views of the galaxy she’d ever seen, much better than anything in a planetarium, better even than the real experience of visiting the Seven Sisters. Though there were no signs or markers anywhere, Myell walked quickly, confidently, as if he had the whole place memorized.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said.

  They reached a room of black divans where the floor was filled with stars and moons. Team Space gear and sleeping bags were strewn about haphazardly, but the divans were empty. Myell pressed her down, one hand sliding through her hair, the other working to peel off her shirt. Need and hunger rolled out of him, demanding, insistent. Jodenny tried to respond, but she could still see Garanwa’s yellow-white eyes, and here they were on an alien spaceship, alien, and no amount of passionate kissing could make her forget the circumstances.

  “Terry,” she protested, even as her traitorous hands pulled him closer, “maybe this isn’t the right place.”

  “It’s all we have.” His words were muffled against her skin. His lips found her breasts. “I need you.”

  “The alien,” she insisted, even as it grew harder to string together words.

  “He won’t watch,” Myell promised.

  He pinned his weight against hers, his hands roaming freely, igniting her, and maybe it was true that she should celebrate the moment, this reunion. Misgivings fled. His fingers stroked her thighs insistently while his hot mouth worked her nipples. Her sense of time evaporated under his weight and heat, until she was muffling her cries into an official Team Space sleeping bag.

  When they were done, she felt boneless. He looked dazed and sweetly spent, content to nuzzle her neck.

  “I missed you,” he said.

  She caressed the long, strong muscles of his back. “Tell me everything.”

  Myell kissed her cheek. “You first.”

  “Hmmmm,” she replied. “Well, I helped Putty Romero get out of the brig.”

  “I fell off a cliff.”

  “And landed on what?”

  He rested his head against her chest. “The ocean.”

  She fingered his soft brown hair. “I met four people named Lou.”

  “Why are you wearing your wedding ring around your neck?” he asked, tugging on it.

  Jodenny slipped it off the chain and put it on her finger. “I was supposed to be traveling incognito.”

  “Did that work?”

  “I guess.” She gently traced the tattoos on his cheeks. “These coming off?”

  He sighed. “I hope so.”

  She waited for him to say more, but his breath evened out and when she rolled him over he started to snore. Jodenny was too curious to sleep. She slipped out of his arms and cleaned up in a room filled with sinks. She returned to watch Myell. In the starlight the facial tattoos seemed to glow and almost move. A noise disturbed her, and she looked up to see Ensign Collins in one of the many doorways.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I need to get my gib.”

  Jodenny watched him retrieve it from his vest and followed him out of the room. “You don’t seem surprised to see me.”

  “No, ma’am. Commander Nam told us you were here.”

  “Tell me everything that’s happened to your team since you left Fortune.”

  “Ma’am.” Collins shifted from one foot to the other. “Don’t you think the commander better tell you?”

  “I want to hear it from you, Ensign.”

  Collins hesitated, then gestured for them to sit on the dirt-covered ground. Jodenny was pleased that she could keep Myell in sight. Collins told her about the marsupial lions, discovering the dead scientists under the snow, and being separated from Nam, Myell, and Gayle.

  “The commander radioed in they were being attacked,” Collins said. “Then there was nothing. We tried to find them, but there were only campfire remains, tracks into the woods, and a dead Bunyip.”

  “Bunyip?”

  “Chief Myell calls them Roon. They look like lizards.”

  She remembered the vision the Great Egret had shown her. The alien on the Yangtze. A lasso of steel tightened around her lungs, squeezing out all her air.

  Collins said, “Commander, are you all right? You look like you’re going to faint.”

  Not faint. Scream. She scrambled to her feet. “Where’s Commander Nam? I need to talk to him now.”

  Collins radioed Nam, who said he was in the room with the view of the comets, which was next to the room where the food was, and that they had discovered some kind of power source.

  “I think I can get us back there,” Collins said. “Place tends to go all screwy when you’re not looking.”

  Jodenny was loathe to wake Myell, who was deep asleep and looked exhausted. She kissed his forehead, then followed Collins through the maze and forests and even over a clear-running stream until they reached a fabulous vista of twin comets. Nam, Saadi, and two others, Commander Gold and Lieutenant Vao, had removed a panel from the dirt-covered floor. Glass conduits glowed green and yellow in the space below.

  “Chief Myell kept saying he could feel some kind of current,” Nam said. “This might be it.”

  “There’s something more important you should know,” Jodenny said, and told them about the spaceships around Earth.

  “No one has seen the aliens on those ships,” she said. “They’re not showing themselves. But what are the chances it’s yet another species?”

  Nam’s expression hardened and his lips thinned and he asked her a dozen questions, as if she were lying, or inventing the whole thing.

  “You don’t believe me?” she asked.

  Nam gazed down at the glowing conduits, the bright rivers of light. “I believe y
ou.”

  Commander Gold, sitting on the ground with his arms folded, said, “You should have let me shoot them.”

  Saadi said, “I say we kill them now.”

  Jodenny gave Nam a puzzled look.

  “We have two of them prisoner,” Nam said. “Under guard and not going anywhere. We can’t communicate with them. Don’t know what they want.”

  “They want Earth,” Vao said. “Can we stop them? This space station, or whatever it is? The alien? Can’t he do anything?”

  “Maybe if someone takes the helm,” Collins murmured.

  Nam’s chin lifted. Gold glanced up.

  “What do you mean?” Jodenny asked.

  “The alien is dying,” Nam said. “Garanwa. He wants someone to take over.”

  Saadi said, “Your husband.”

  “No,” Jodenny said.

  “He said he doesn’t want the job,” Nam said, as if that meant anything at all. Didn’t they know Myell? Hadn’t they learned a thing about him?

  “I need to go talk to him,” she said.

  But when she went looking, he was already gone.

  * * *

  Myell woke alone. At first he thought Jodenny had been a dream, a sweet brief fantasy before everything went permanently dark. But the physical evidence of their lovemaking was no illusion, and as he cleaned up in the shower room he could smell her skin, and the shampoo she’d used in her hair. He leaned against the tile wall, letting hot water stream over his shoulders. He needed to send her home to safety. Needed to send them all.

  Swirls and lines faded into the tile walls, glowing images in blue and green, a beautiful tapestry tracing and retracing itself into existence. He touched them through the falling water and felt a faint tingling. There, he realized. Fortune. And over there, glistening wet, his home world of Baiame. All the Seven Sisters, their Eggs. More Eggs, here, and here, and the whole map unfolded, spread open under his eyes, the Thousand Worlds of the Nogomain, and he was their steward, their helmsman—