The Stars Down Under

by Sandra McDonald

  Bastards, all of them. Nam rose stiffly from the witness table, walked out of the room in his best uniform, and emerged into the bright sun of another day in Kimberley. Tom Gold was waiting at the curb, leaning against their silver-blue flit. He too was wearing his dress whites. His testimony had ended earlier that morning.

  “They’re all goddamn idiots,” Nam said.

  “I hear that.” Gold opened the passenger door. “Give you a ride, sailor?”

  Nam got inside. Gold turned off the autopilot and guided them through light traffic. The inside of the flit was tinted and privacy screened, and warm like a cocoon.

  “They think they have all the time in the world,” Nam groused. “That we’ll see the next Roon ships long before they reach Earth, now that we know they’ll be coming. That we can pull new weapons platforms out of our asses.”

  Gold said, “Sounds painful.”

  “We don’t stand a chance.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  Nam stared out at the streets and pedestrians, at buildings and bridges. Civilians went about their merry business down Water Street, not far from Supply School. “Yes, I do.”

  “If you did, you and I would be hightailing it down the Big Alcheringa to hide,” Gold said.

  “I didn’t say we shouldn’t fight,” Nam told him. “We should always fight.”

  Gold reached over and squeezed his hand. “There’s the man I love.”

  Nam leaned his head back and closed his eyes. His Achilles tendon began throbbing for no good reason. It had been six months since he’d torn it on the trek up Burringurrah. The Team Space doctors told him that it seemed fully healed. To machines, perhaps. To gibs and medical DNGOs. But sometimes he limped so badly that he needed a cane, and there was talk of replacement surgery. He’d resisted so far.

  “Are you thinking about her?” Gold asked.

  “No,” he said truthfully, but he would. At least once a day he would stop whatever he was doing and wonder where Jodenny Scott was. At Burringurrah she had climbed into that crocodile ring with Mark Sweeney and Sam Osherman and her husband’s corpse. No one had seen them since. Part of him wished he’d gone with her, and part of him was insanely glad to be back on Fortune with Gold and the chance to somehow stop the Roon, however wild and fantastically improbable that might be.

  It didn’t comfort him to think about the Kamchatka, which had disappeared from Earth’s orbit immediately after Jodenny’s disappearance from Burringurrah. Gone, completely. Not a shred of visual or scanner data to indicate what had happened to it or its crew and civilian passengers. The Roon ships had disappeared just as thoroughly from across Earth and up in orbit. The frozen Roon on the plain had likewise disappeared, and not even Myell’s spilled blood remained in testimony.

  All Nam could do about Jodenny was wonder what had happened to her. And grieve. Feel sorrow for Myell, who had died to become Jungali. Regret that he himself hadn’t been Myell’s biggest supporter, though he hoped in the end he’d done what he could.

  “Hey,” Gold said, tapping his knee. “We’re home.”

  Nam opened his eyes. They had purchased a private home far from military housing. The neighborhood was good, not too crowded, not too old. Eucalyptus trees kept it fragrant. Gold pulled the flit into the garage, parked, and opened the kitchen door. Nam limped in after him. Sunlight spilled in through the oversize windows and the blue waters of the bay glittered past the edges of their backyard.

  “It’s your turn to make dinner,” Gold said.

  Nam flopped down on the sofa. “I’m not very hungry.”

  Gold gave him a stern look. “How can you single-handedly defeat the Roon if you don’t keep up your strength?”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “I’m not joking,” Gold replied. “Tell him, Karl.”

  Karl the Koala uncurled himself from a pillow by the patio doors and lumbered toward Nam. After Burringurrah, Nam had hired a couple of off-duty sergeants to trek through the outback and rescue the little bot from the wreck of the Kamchatka’s lifeboat. Karl’s fur was still a little singed in places, and one of his eyes had a tiny crack in the lens, but he was otherwise in fine shape. Nam was hoping Jodenny might come back for the bot someday. He’d keep the koala safe until that happened.

  “Rub belly,” Karl insisted, and climbed up onto the sofa.

  Nam obeyed. Gold opened the refrigerator, peered inside, and heaved a dramatic sigh.

  “I’ll take you to dinner,” Nam said, surrendering.

  “You hate eating out.”

  “For you, anything.”

  “Hmmm.” Gold came to the sofa and sat beside him. “I can think of better things to do with the rest of our night.”

  Nam would recognize that lecherous look anywhere. Despite his gloomy mood, he felt the definite stirring of interest.

  “Fine,” he said. “We’ll order in.”

  Karl retreated to a cushion in the corner, curled up in the sunlight, and smiled.

  * * *

  The cemetery was on a grassy, peaceful hill not far from the colony of Providence. Under the canopy of trees stood one lone headstone with no name on it. Jodenny couldn’t explain why she didn’t want Myell’s name engraved into the rock. She suspected that Sweeney and the others thought she was in denial, that if there was no name she could pretend her husband wasn’t dead, but that was ridiculous. Every single day she lived with the hollowed-out pain in her chest that reminded her he was gone.

  And every day her womb grew bigger, her body swelling and curving as expected. Myell’s last gift to her.

  “I dreamed last night it was a boy,” she said today, as trees swayed in the wind and grass tickled her bare feet. Though the day was sunny, rain was forecast for the afternoon. “I dreamed he could play the piano, just like you. But I don’t remember you playing the piano. I never asked if you could play anything.”

  The leaves bowed and rustled above, and insects hummed in the grass.

  “Maybe someone in the crew could make a piano,” Jodenny murmured.

  As if musical instruments were any kind of priority. Jodenny stretched out on the ground, letting the earth support her growing body. Junior, maybe waking from a nap, kicked her left ribs twice and then went still. Jodenny hadn’t realized how much abuse from within pregnant women endured. Kicks and pokes and all sorts of twisting. If the kid wasn’t destined to be a pianist, maybe he or she could be the colony’s first gymnast.

  Abuse and weight gain and fatigue, and daily fear that something would go wrong with the delivery. Jodenny was happy to endure all of it as long as this little piece of Myell continued to grow within her. Their only child. She told herself that it didn’t matter but she wanted a boy, and planned to give him his father’s name.

  Another kick, harder than the last.

  “Ouch,” Jodenny complained.

  Fat and lazy clouds rolled by in the sky until her view was blocked by Leorah Farber’s concerned face.

  “Are you sleeping?” Farber asked.

  Jodenny frowned. “I don’t think so.”

  “I’ve been calling your name.”

  She sat up slowly. “Is something wrong?”

  “I wanted to tell you before you heard the gossip.” Farber sat down beside her and pulled a blade of grass from the ground. She’d let her dark hair grow long in the months they’d been marooned, and the breeze blew it around her face. “Teddy and I are moving to the coast.”

  Jodenny hid her surprise. The Zhangs lived at the coast, along with other passengers who had rejected Captain Balandra’s leadership.

  “You’re joining the dissidents?” Jodenny asked.

  Farber twisted the grass into a knot. “Hoping for rescue doesn’t make you a rebel. They need to believe Team Space is coming for us. I guess I need to believe it, too. For my daughter’s sake.”

  Junior kicked again. Jodenny patted her left side, urging him to settle down.

  “You could come,” Farber said hopefully. “Af
ter the baby, if you’re worried about that.”

  “I’m loyal to the captain,” Jodenny said. “And someone has to keep an eye on Sam.”

  Farber grimaced. “He’s crazy. And dangerous.”

  “He’s been through more than any of us,” Jodenny protested.

  “More than you?”

  “Much more than me,” she insisted, even though no one knew what Osherman had endured at the hands of the Roon. He could not or would not speak. The Kamchatka’s medical equipment wasn’t sophisticated enough to say for sure. Ensign Collins believed he was electively mute, but Jodenny didn’t agree.

  No one doubted that Osherman was still traumatized. He slept most nights in Jodenny’s tiny house, curled up on a sofa from one of the ship’s lounges. Often he had terrible nightmares that left him shaking and crying soundlessly. Sometimes he fled out the door into the darkness, and Jodenny let him go. The sentries reported that he spent a lot of time at the beach. He’d trimmed his beard and gained some weight, but he never smiled, never looked anyone in the eye, and kept a knife in his boot.

  He scared people, Jodenny knew. But she didn’t think he’d harm anyone but himself.

  Farber tossed her blade of grass back to the ground. “You really don’t think help is coming for us?”

  “I think…” Jodenny started, and then paused. “I think no one knows the future. I have trouble getting through one day at a time. Help hasn’t come today, how’s that?”

  “So far,” Farber said.

  “So far,” Jodenny agreed.

  The wind picked up, and clouds moved in front of the sun.

  Abruptly Farber stood. “Come on. I’ll buy you some lunch. A pack of emergency rations and the last known dregs of Ensign Sadiqi’s coffee.”

  Jodenny glanced at Myell’s unmarked tombstone.

  “He’s not there,” Farber said gently. “It’s just a body.”

  Just a body. Take me, Jungali had whispered, but for what? So she could bury the corpse of her beloved on this unknown world, far from where they’d hoped to make a home together. So his mortal remains could rot in the ground while she grew a baby and faced the rest of her life without him. Jodenny felt a surge of bitterness at the way things had turned out. But then Junior kicked again, and she told herself that anger was bad for the baby.

  Still. If she ever met that Nogomain again, he was going to damn well answer some questions. She knuckled her eyes dry and lifted a hand.

  “Help me up?” Jodenny asked, and Farber gave her a hand.

  They walked downhill together, and made it to Providence before the sky opened up with rain, thunder, and lightning.

  * * *

  An hour before dawn, with Jodenny snoring softly in her room and Providence’s moon heavy in the silver-black sky, Sam Osherman gave up on sleep and went for a walk.

  He walked east, as he often did, toward the wooded peninsula that separated the bay from the wild blue ocean. The air was cool and clean. At the edge of sky and sea and land he sat on a jumble of rocks left exposed by the receding tide. If he watched the glinting sea closely enough he might see shark fins or a band of dolphins. Very rarely a crocodile might wander over from the marshes and peer at him with open jaws.

  Nothing to see here, he wanted to say. Would have said, if the Roon hadn’t stolen his voice.

  He couldn’t think of that. Couldn’t touch those memories without their razor-sharp edges slicing new wounds into him. Instead he sat with his face turned to the east, thinking about the little life growing inside Jodenny, and the Kamchatka still in orbit with only a skeleton crew aboard. Most of the ship’s cargo, equipment, and resources had already been stripped clean. There was no going back to Earth, Osherman suspected. And not much of an Earth to go back to, perhaps. Jodenny’s child would never know the worlds left behind.

  The sun began to burn its way up past the horizon. Osherman focused on the name Jungali, trying to summon the god that Myell had become. He’d tried it dozens of times already, maybe hundreds of times, with no success. His memories of the plateau were still shaky, still tenuous. A nightmare time of blood and pain and brilliant lights. But he was sure that somehow Jungali wasn’t very far away, that Terry Myell’s story was far from over.

  And the Roon. The Roon were still out there, a prospect that made Osherman want to crawl into the deepest hole he could find and never emerge.

  Out in the waves, a whale breached the sea’s surface as if greeting the sunrise. It slammed back down again in a shower of spray, and its enormous tail gave a little wave.

  Osherman slid off the rocks with renewed determination. For Jodenny and her baby, he would do his best to be sane today. He would not cower in fear, or claw at his own arms and legs, or give in to the impulse to burn himself clean. He wouldn’t yield control to the wild voices in his skull. Wouldn’t pay attention if the Roon King poked its slimy head out from behind a wall, if it blew its hot fetid breath into Osherman’s own mouth. He would be good, he would be strong, and as he climbed the beach toward the settlement he hoped that maybe Jodenny would notice, and give him a smile or two for his efforts.

  Just as he reached the edge of the woods, a dark blue ouroboros shimmered into existence on the sand. It was neither a snake nor a crocodile, but instead shaped like a man. A man bent in a circle, his feet in his mouth, his muscles smooth and untroubled, his face rapturous.

  Standing in the ring was Terry Myell. A very surprised-looking Myell, but also one who was not dead or godlike in any way.

  “Commander?” Myell asked, his voice distant. He raised a hand as if trying to reach past the ouroboros, but seemed constrained, trapped in some way. “Are you there?”

  Osherman tried to answer, but his throat yielded nothing.

  The ouroboros and Myell disappeared as quickly and easily as they had appeared.

  Osherman touched the warm sand with his fingers. A different kind of hallucination, this, but one he could live with. Better than visions of the Roon King, better than night terrors in which he was a helpless, terrified prisoner wanting only to die.

  He put his hands in his pockets and walked away.

  In the trees above, a Great Egret peered down with beady eyes and then flew away, high into the sky, the land open and welcoming beneath her wings.

  * * *

  Far away, in a green sea cave, Free-not-chained nursed her half-human son and whispered, “My little Jungali. Your day will come.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Nana,” Twig whispered, scared. “They’re coming. The Roon.”

  Commander Jodenny Scott was seventy damned years old. On days like today, crouched in her own living room closet, she felt closer to ninety. The closet was small and dusty, but it was the only viable hiding place they had. She tried to ignore the aching in her back.

  “What should we do?” she asked her ten-year-old granddaughter.

  Twig waved her finger, bidding her to be silent.

  Heavy footsteps approached. Stopped. All else was quiet in the house. Jodenny couldn’t bend down far enough to peer out the slit between the door and the floor, but Twig was still small enough and limber enough to crouch low. She leaned close with her blond hair falling in her face.

  Another footstep.

  Closer.

  The door swung open.

  Jodenny’s daughter Teresa, enormously pregnant and clearly annoyed, asked, “What are you two doing in there?”

  Twig sat up with a frown. “Aunt Teresa! You ruined our game.”

  Teresa sighed. “You shouldn’t go dragging Nana into closets, Twig.”

  “I volunteered.” Jodenny steadied herself against the doorframe as she rose on creaky knees. “Someone’s got to fight off the hordes of dangerous aliens.”

  “Why don’t you go meet the boys at the creek?” Teresa said to Twig. “They’ve been there all morning and I bet they haven’t caught a fish yet. Show them how it’s done.”

  Twig bounded to her feet and gave Jodenny a quick kiss on the cheek. “Don’
t worry. Next time I’ll save you, Nana.”

  Jodenny tried not to envy her granddaughter’s energy and youth as Twig dashed out the door. “Oh to be a kid again.”

  “Which you’re not,” Teresa said. “Come on outside in the breeze and sit down.”

  “I’m not an invalid,” Jodenny grumbled, but she followed Teresa out onto the back porch anyway.

  They both sat in the morning shade. Their rocking chairs creaked against the weathered planking. On days like these, under sunny skies and with the landscape so pretty Jodenny could almost pretend that the planet Providence was home. The fauna, flora, animals, geography, and landscape were certainly just like Earth and her colonies. Gifts of the gods. Though, personally, she would cheerfully strangle the god Jungali, who had given them this gift and stranded them on the other side of the galaxy, cut off from civilization, doctors, hospitals, universities, armies—

  “You’ve got that look on your face.” Teresa put both her hands on her baby bump and made small soothing circles. “I knew Twig shouldn’t be talking about the Roon.”

  “The Roon don’t bother me,” Jodenny said. Which was true. She hadn’t seen one in forty years, and didn’t expect to see any again. Not in this remote corner of the galaxy.

  “Then what is it? You feeling ancient again?”

  “I am ancient,” Jodenny replied.

  Teresa made a harrumphing noise. “Not if you can go crawling around in closets. But at least you’re not turning seventy-six tomorrow. That’s something to be happy about, isn’t it?”

  Farther down the sloping yard, where the gum trees met the stream, seven-year-old Alton emerged from the weeds. As usual, he’d managed to get himself covered with mud. He had a jar in one hand, in which he’d no doubt stashed the latest lizard, frog, insect, or other small creature unfortunate enough to be caught in his nets.

  “Nana!” he yelled up to them. “Mom! Look what I found!”

  “Who’s turning seventy-six tomorrow?” Jodenny asked Teresa. Surely she hadn’t forgotten someone’s birthday again. It wasn’t enough that her knees ached and her back hurt and when she looked in the mirror, she saw only a wrinkled sack of leathered skin. Now she was forgetting things. Soon she’d be a gibbering idiot, someone they’d have to park in the corner and feed through a straw.