And All the Stars (12 page)

"You see Noi as beautiful, and when we look at these
images, we realise that beauty as well."

"If we managed to miss it before now," Nash added,
mouth curving.

Madeleine, suddenly very glad she'd taken out most of the
sketches of Fisher, moved hastily on to another uncomfortable topic.

"I heard from my cousin before we left today. He'll be back this evening." She pushed on through the beginning of their
congratulations. "He's a Blue, but
he said that he doesn't create energy, he needs it. That two other Blues have been keeping him
alive."

She kept her gaze steadily on Nash as she spoke, and saw how
his face closed.

"A revelatory skill," Fisher repeated. Rather than disturbed, he sounded almost
pleased. "Also a skill which
involves paying attention to people. Is
your cousin returning home? We're
finding that it takes all three of us to keep Nash up – at least, without
needing to frequently rest. Though he's
highly stained, which must impact on the need."

"Can Greens gives you energy as well?" Madeleine
asked Nash, and flushed at the flat, accusatory note in her voice. "Is this why there's been so many
stories?"

"They can." Nash sounded resigned, then straightened, as if refusing to let himself
be ashamed. "Shaun's a good friend
– he volunteered to allow me to check. It's a different kind of energy." His candy-cream voice was grim. "And much less. If I had no
other Blues around me, if I had spent the last few days surrounded only by
Greens, I would now be a murderer. Or
perhaps have found the courage to face the consequences of not killing."

"I'm surprised this isn't already widely known,"
Madeleine said. "Though – I guess
I'd..." She paused, considering how
she'd instinctively wanted to hide simply the amount of her stain. "What are you going to do?"

Nash hesitated. "It makes most sense to be proactive, to clearly describe the
situation and pre-empt any...less calm announcement. We've held back to gauge the environment at
Rushcutters."

Now that most of the Greens were up and having opinions. If Madeleine was a Green, she'd probably have
an opinion about Nash too. But then
there was Tyler.

"Noi and I should be able to support my cousin,"
she said. "Though I guess he's
already managing. We've been working on
the relocating plan, in case things get weird, and have keys to enough boats to
stage a carnival. Is it okay if I tell
her?"

They agreed to that, and left her considering the sketch
she'd just completed: Shaun and Nash watching Pan. Would Tyler and Nash be able to feed off
normal humans as well, or only Blues and Greens? Would all Blues be seen as dangerous
monsters, either destructive or life-stealing?

Before long a car arrived carrying five Blues in their early
twenties. More people drifted in while
these were running through their tests, a trickle which became a stream, until
there were hundreds, Blues and Greens, far more than anyone had expected. Someone had brought a portable stereo, there
were picnic baskets, umbrellas. As the
day warmed, a handful went east of the lifeguard tower to swim. Then Pan discovered that he could use a
partial force field to launch himself into the air, and immediately after
frantically found a way to slow his fall with another, splashing down into the
surf in a minor explosion of spray.

Madeleine drew. Faces
full of excitement, strain, hilarity, irritation, hope, suspicion. People who clumped together, never straying
too far from their particular friends. Those who sat apart. The group
around Fisher, Shaun and Nash, pontificating at each other. The handful who had decided to jump off the
walkway and force shield bomb the sand, and the group who went to lecture them.

Among the small sea of strangers Madeleine spotted Finger
Wharf residents, and stopped sketching to talk to Asha, and to meet Mrs
Jabbour
.

"It is the feeling of taking a positive step," Mrs
Jabbour
explained, gazing fondly at her husband and
daughter as they prepared to test. "Even though we saw that you had more than enough participants, we
still wanted to come, to take part."

"Saw?"

With a smile, Mrs
Jabbour
nodded at
the railing above and behind them. "The special news broadcast. Did you not know?"

Madeleine looked, and saw two women with a
professional-weight camera. Wincing, she
turned away.

"We will be leaving, early tomorrow," Mrs
Jabbour
went on. "To the house of a cousin on the South Coast. If you and your friends wish to join us, you
would be welcome."

"Aren't the roads still closed?"

"The main roads perhaps. We will find a way."

The idea of just getting out of Sydney was tempting, but
Madeleine didn't want to go too far from her parents, and explained their
situation.

"You, too, have been blessed then." Mrs
Jabbour
held
out her hands as
Faliha
came bouncing up, glorying in
the length of her punch. "Cherish
that gift."

Like Madeleine, the
Jabbours
were
rare in not having lost anyone from the very core of their little family. Even Madeleine's grandparents were fine, off
up in Armidale.

Reminded of Noi, Madeleine looked about and couldn't spot
her. Tucking her sketchbook into her
shoulder bag, she climbed the stairs and wandered across to the Bondi Pavilion,
a low, square building with galleries and a gelato shop, lockers and
showers. No sign of Noi, no response to
her tentative call in the toilets.

Not quite concerned, Madeleine headed back toward the beach
and stood at the top of the flat series of stairs to the left of the lifeguard
tower. Bondi Beach was enormous, large
enough for ten thousand, let alone the few hundred clustered around its
centre. Noi shouldn't be hard to find.

Far to her left an isolated figure in a sunhat was standing
at the very eastern end of the beach. Noi. Madeleine headed in her
direction, and Noi must have seen her, starting back.

"I think they're about through," Madeleine said,
when she reached the older girl. "The flow of new arrivals has slowed, at any rate. Did you know it's being broadcast?"

"Yeah. Casey and
Djella
, ABC Sydney's newest – and only – roving
reporters. One of them was a sound
editor, and the other some kind of junior-league production assistant. They knew a heap of interesting
goss
. You know the
home billeting thing being set up – people volunteering to take in some of the
city outflow? Blues and Greens are going
to be specifically excluded, no matter what the science types say about there
being no sign of person to person transmission. And they want to collect any Blues and Greens who are already outside
the city, and not let them stay with uninfected people. Even their own families that they've been
staying with for the past week without any sign of passing this on."

"I guess it's too early to be entirely certain we won't
start spewing out dust," Madeleine said, far from pleased. "It's only going to get worse when they
know there's two types of Blues." She explained briefly about Tyler and Nash.

"Is
that
what's going on with Nash?" Noi produced a low, appreciative
whistle. "Just what we didn't
need. Damn, I was already looking
forward to meeting your cousin. This
makes him twice as interesting! Think I
can talk him into biting me?"

Madeleine gave Noi a
wary look, and realised she was being teased.

"People really did give you a rough time for having
Tyler Vaughn as a cousin, huh?" Noi said. "I would have thought they'd be queuing up to ask you to wangle an
autograph."

"Some did. But at
that point I hadn't seen Tyler for six years. We knew he'd come back to Australia, and then we spotted him
guest-starring on
Blood Mirror
. It wasn't until they asked him to come back as a rival love interest,
and that whole 'you realise I'm physically male' story was released that most
people back home even recognised him. School got very strange after that."

She rubbed her forearm, still able to find a slight lump.

"It wasn't the people objecting to the way he dressed
who were my main problem. All his new
Biggest Fans were angry at me for not producing him for some kind of
show-and-tell session, and then decided to be offended that I didn't refer to
him as 'she'."

"'Tyler is Tyler'," Noi murmured, repeating what
had become his fan club's catchcry.

"Yeah, this was before he gave that interview about
labels, and what he identified as. I got
trapped in an argument with a bunch of girls about me not being sensitive or
respectful enough and, well, we were at the top of a flight of stairs. I ended up with a broken arm, Mum took me out
of school for what was left of the year, and we moved to Sydney."

The two people in school she'd thought her closest friends
had been in that group. None of it had
been strictly intentional; it had all just escalated into stupidity. At her new school she'd almost gone out of
her way to cultivate a stuck up bitch reputation, and had maintained total
disinterest in socialising right up until she met
Noi's
Devonshire tea.

For someone who had been so convinced friends weren't worth
it, Madeleine was aware of spending more and more time worrying about Noi. She wanted to find ways to make it easier for
her, to relieve the hurt beneath her surface good humour. It was an impulse born of more than just a
practical need for allies, or a change in herself to fit a new world. There were some people that you were just
meant to be friends with.

"Will you tell me about your family?" she asked
tentatively, and saw immediately that it was too soon, adding: "Some
time?"

Noi had turned her head so the sun hat hid her face, but she
nodded, and increased her pace, weaving through the clusters of people sitting
on the east side of the lifeguard tower.

"Here you are!"

It was Emily, fine blonde hair tumbling out of its topknot,
face strained, a waver in her voice.

"What's up?" Noi sounded startled. "Did
something happen?"

"No, I –" The girl stopped in front of them, suddenly shamefaced. "I just didn't know where you were. I'm sorry."

Noi paused, expression quizzical, then her wry smile
bloomed. "Don't worry so much. We're not going to run off and leave
you. You must have seen that the car's
still here."

Patches of red blotched Emily's fine skin, and she told them
again she was sorry. "I just kept –
I keep thinking I see those guys, and then it isn't them. The thing is, I could have blown holes in
windows just as easily as them. I could
have blown holes in
walls
. But
all I did was what they told me, and wish I could get away, and I don't know if
I could ever have stood up to them the way you did, and I feel so stupid and so
angry and I just want to
hit
things."

"Millie the Mauler," Noi said, and tugged a lock of
Emily's hair. "Don't forget I'm
technically the responsible adult around here. I've had more time to practice dealing with dickheads. You're, what, fifteen?"

"Thirteen."

"What?! You are
not allowed to be thirteen and taller than me! Between you and
Maddie
I'm going to get a
complex. But even with your unnatural
stalkiness
, I've still got your back. And you and
Maddie
have got mine, okay? We're the Three
Musketeers – except without swordfights. We can be dashing, and...
y'know
, I have
absolutely no idea what the Three Musketeers did, except it involved
swordfights. And hats with
feathers."

"The Blue Musketeers. We can rescue people."

Emily took
Noi's
hand and gave her
a look of such unbounded admiration that Madeleine, a step behind them, was
struck with an urgent need to get them home so she could paint them.

"Weren't muskets guns?" Noi continued. "Why swordfights?"

Madeleine was about to suggest heading off for an artistic
interlude when a woman sitting on the sand a short way ahead glanced in their
direction, gaped, and sprang to her feet. She was pointing above and behind them, so of course they stopped and
turned, and saw a pale ball of light dropping out of the sky toward them.

A falling star.

"Back up," Noi ordered, gripping Emily and
Madeleine's arms and drawing them toward the edge of the surf as the
watermelon-sized ball slowed to a stop about ten feet above the sand.

All those immediately around the light moved similarly,
though others came forward, until there was a large circle of people south-east
of the lifeguard tower. Some kept going
till they were well distant, and Madeleine spotted the
Jabbours
pausing near the ramp off the beach, and thought it strange that no-one
outright left. They'd surely all seen
enough movies where the alien arrives and starts disintegrating the people not
sensible enough to run.

Yet she, too, stayed and waited because she wanted to know.

Pan hurried up behind them, and poked his head between Noi
and Madeleine. "Is it
singing
?"

"I've heard that before," Madeleine said,
frowning. "A couple of times."

"It's like an out of tune radio."

"A
theremin
," Nash said,
leading Gavin and Shaun to stand with them at the edge of the surf. "Or very like."

"Shit, is this thing just some kind of speaker? We come from beyond the stars: it's time for
a concert?" Pan started forward,
but Nash snagged the back of his shirt and pulled him to a standstill.

"Where's Fish?" Shaun asked, looking about. "He'd hate to miss this."

Nash pointed to Fisher and Nick in the lifeguard tower,
watching through the glass. "That
makes a good vantage. Let's
relocate. Move slowly, so we do not draw
its attention."