The Stars Blue Yonder (20 page)

“I'm willing to try. Are you?”

She turned back to the screen just in time to see panic cross Myell's face as he tried to suck in air. Jodenny had seen the same expression when he stumbled away from her at the waterfall.

“The ring!” she said. “It's coming!”

They must have heard her on the birdie, because Beranski sprang toward his equipment. Blue light flooded through the compartment and the small ship suddenly rocked, forcing Adryn and Cappaletto to fight the controls. Myell sat, seemingly paralyzed in his seat, tugging at his neck as if an invisible rope had been looped around it.

“Your equipment's not working!” Adryn shouted at Beranski.

“It should be!” Beranski shouted back.

The birdie shuddered under another onslaught of blue light. Myell wasn't panicking, but it was clear he couldn't breathe. Alarms were going off in the birdie, sharp and urgent. On an overvid, Jodenny could see that the ship was diverting off its holding pattern.

Haines demanded, “What's going on out there?”

“We've almost got it,” Beranski reported.

“You don't have anything,” Jodenny said sharply. “Look at Terry!”

A deep humming noise rolled through the speakers, and then the vids went dark.

“Lieutenant Ling, report!” the duty officer said.

Darkness on the vid. The humming noise shifted tones and became a screech. The duty officer was talking to a second birdie that was shadowing them and Nam was demanding that Adryn answer. Jodenny's heartburn rose up her throat with the sour taste of bile, and cold sweat broke across her neck. He couldn't be dead. Couldn't be, couldn't be, couldn't be—

Adryn's voice cut through the hum on the speakers. “We're here,” she reported. “We're alive.”

“Terry,” Jodenny said. “Talk to me.”

Silence on the audio. The video remained dark.

“We've got the ring,” Cappaletto reported. “But Chief Myell's not breathing.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Myell was floating in a sea of murky green light, his arms and limbs akimbo. He wasn't sure if he was alive but he sure hoped he wasn't dead. Death in this endless sea of blue wouldn't be a kind fate at all.

“Fate,” a voice sneered. “What do you know of fate?”

He turned in a green hallway lit by a single garish lightbulb. There stood the Flying Doctor, his cloak of black feathers fluttering in a non-existent breeze.

“This is Kultana,” Myell said. “This is where you didn't want me to come.”

“You see it but you don't understand it,” the Flying Doctor said. “Typical of your kind. You are no threat at all.”

Very clearly, a woman's voice said: “Inscribe.”

Myell turned to see who she was, but the green light of the hallway collapsed into utter darkness. He coughed, thrashed, and opened his eyes to find himself on the deck of the birdie, with Chief Cappaletto's hands on his chest. Cappaletto was breathing hard and had a worried look on his face. Myell realized he'd been performing resuscitation on him.

“He's awake,” Cappaletto announced.

“Uncle Terry?” That was Adryn, chewing on her bottom lip in worry. Jodenny's voice nearby asked, “Terry?”

He coughed some more and rubbed his throat. “I'm here. Why is everything blue?”

Cappaletto nodded toward the back of the birdie.

The blue ouroboros spun slowly, humming. Beranski smiled triumphantly. “I caught the fucker.”

Captain McNaughton disagreed entirely with the proposal to bring the captured token ring back to the
Confident
. Admiral Nam said he understood and that was fine, but the
Melbourne
had no such qualms and would be happy to claim the ouroboros as Team Space property. Admiral Su surely weighed in on the matter at some point, but Jodenny wasn't privy to that part of the conversation. More debate followed, perhaps more negotiations and payoffs, and in the end Adryn Ling piloted the birdie to the
Confident
's auxiliary docking bay, where it could do the least damage if the hull was breached or compromised in any way.

Chief Ovadia kept Jodenny out of the docking bay control room.

“Orders, ma'am,” he said. “You can wait over here, in the pilots' ready room.”

Jodenny considered arguing with him, but Junior was kicking and her energy was draining away. Besides, Ovadia didn't look like he would be an easy sucker for disobeying orders. Or for tears, which she could maybe deploy at a strategic point later.

The ready room was small and sparse, but there was a sofa. She didn't sit down. Instead she paced until the hatch opened and Myell returned to her. She flung her arms around him.

“It's fine,” he said, holding her tight. “They got the ring.”

“I don't care about that,” she said, her eyes wet against his shirt.

“Did you hear what Cappaletto said about that planetoid?”

“No. What?”

He rubbed her back and eased her to the sofa, where she sat against him. She had never felt so exhausted in her entire life. It was entirely possible she might fall asleep against him.

“What about the planetoid?” she asked.

Myell shrugged beneath her. “Humanity's last stand. PX-whatever. Stupid name for it.”

That sounded like a non sequitur, or would have if her brain wasn't so foggy and slow. She was content to simply listen to the steady beat of his heart. Behind them, the hatch opened. Jodenny didn't bother opening her eyes. Myell's voice rumbled in her ear as he said, “She needs to rest.”

Jodenny forced her eyes open. “You, too. But what about the ring?”

“The bastard's not going anywhere,” Myell said. “Dr. Beranski swears it.”

It took some pointed discussion to get their own quarters, instead of displacing Adryn and Laura again. Spaceships in wartime didn't usually deploy with empty accommodations for the convenience of time travelers. Finally a senior officer volunteered to move, and they were quartered in a cabin with a bed wide enough for two, if they spooned together side by side. Jodenny splashed water on her face, threw her uniform into the corner, and crawled under the sheets. Myell picked up her trousers and shirt, hung them in the locker next to his own, and slid up beside her.

“Long day, honey?” she asked, and was asleep before he could answer.

When she woke it was oh-nine-hundred and she was alone. She couldn't believe she'd slept so long. Myell had left a tray of muffins, juice, and fruit on the desk with a handwritten note beside it. The note was nice enough—“Love you, eat well”—but he shouldn't have left the cabin without her. She took a sixty-second shower, dressed and pinned up her hair, and opened the hatch to ask Ovadia where her damned husband was.

Not Ovadia outside: instead, the guard was a squirrelly looking young man with curly red hair.

“He's up in a briefing, ma'am,” the guard said. “I'm to escort you to Medical when you're ready.”

“I feel fine,” she protested.

“Those are my orders, Commander.”

Jodenny grabbed a muffin and followed him, disgruntled, to the lift. The
Confident
was busier today than it had been in the middle of the night, and she found herself the object of scrutiny by passing members of the mostly male crew. She realized it was Junior they were probably intrigued by, and not her prenatal Raphaelite beauty. At the infirmary, Laura Ling met her and scanned her belly.

“How are you doing today?” Ling asked.

“Fine,” Jodenny said, puzzled. “Why am I here?”

Her mouth a tight line, Ling nodded toward Sam Osherman's room. “He's awake and agitated. I think he'd be happy to see you.”

Jodenny thought there was more to Ling's frown than Osherman's well-being. “Is something wrong?”

The doctor folded her arms. “Not with him.”

“With you,” Jodenny said. “Or is this about Adryn?”

“She does what she needs to do, her duty,” Laura said. She leaned against the bulkhead and looked down at the deck. “But there's no reason her life should be endangered just because she's Chief Myell's family. I resent the fact she was pulled into that dangerous duty yesterday just because she's his niece.”

Jodenny was confused. “She was?”

“It's unfair. If it continues, I'll complain through my chain of command.”

“I see.” Jodenny scratched an itch on the back of her neck. “Okay. I'd do the same thing.”

Ling nodded. She brushed past the guard outside Osherman's room and led Jodenny inside.

Osherman was awake, sitting up, his wrists in restraints. He was glaring at the bulkhead as if it were personally responsible for his plight. His gaze turned to her, and there was no easing of the anger.

“Hey,” Jodenny said, not as strongly as she wanted to. “You feel better?”

He yanked on the restraints. He looked tight and sinewy and lucid, which was preferable to him being withdrawn and nonresponsive. She'd seen him both ways since Burringurrah, and many other variations as well.

“It's not up to me,” she said.

He looked away.

She added, “But I'll see what I can do. Do you know where we are?”

He gave her nothing at all.

Jodenny turned to go, the best response whenever he was like this, and was startled when he thumped his feet on the bed to get her attention.

“What?” she asked.

His face twisted up in frustration.

“We're on an ACF ship,” she told him. “Americans and Canadians, mostly. Some Team Space. There was an ouroboros that brought us here. You, me, and Terry.”

His fingers splayed wide, resisting the restraints. Jodenny touched his closest hand, trying to calm him. “You're safe here. Maybe they can even help you.”

Scorn in his expression. Sometimes he was bitter, sometimes lost, sometimes so angry that people in Providence became concerned. She never thought herself in danger, but she sometimes worried he might hurt himself.

Jodenny debated whether or not to tell him they had moved forward in time, but she saw no reason to really withhold the information. So she told him, watching him closely to see if he understood. He looked skeptical.

“When you're up and around,” she promised. “You'll see.”

A knock on the hatch, and it opened under the hand of the curly-haired guard. “Commander? They're wondering if you want to join the briefing now.”

She realized she was still holding Osherman's hand, and hastily released his fingers. “Sure. I'll be back later, Sam. Promise.”

The briefing room was a theater-seating chamber up on Deck Two. The rows of seats were crowded with senior officers and scientists. Adryn, Cappaletto, and Ovadia were all there, wedged into an aisle. Beranski was giving a multimedia presentation at the front. A live feed of the trapped blue ouroboros was displayed on an enormous screen. It cast light down on Myell, who was sitting near the front between Haines and Nam.

Haines gave up his seat for her, but only so he could chase off a lieutenant and take his seat instead. Jodenny eased down onto the cushioned chair gratefully. Myell gave her a kiss on the cheek in blatant violation of the regulations against public displays of affection. But there was something distant in his eyes, something she didn't like at all. She suspected he was upset about something and trying not to show it. Maybe Beranski, at the front podium, had delivered news he didn't like. Maybe he was thinking about Kyle and Twig again.

Beranski was saying, “. . . and I don't see any reason why we can't hold it indefinitely, but the trick is trying to figure out what path it follows through the Universal Bulk. There are no glyphs or symbols on it. No way of telling what loop it's following.”

“It's not following a loop,” Myell said, loud enough for only Jodenny to hear.

“We need to be able to use it,” Captain McNaughton said to Beranski. “We need the tactical advantage.”

Jodenny squeezed Myell's hand.

A commander from the Science Corps got up to take the podium from Beranski. “I'm Commander Perry, Research and Development. We've charted its course through time and space based on everything Sergeant—er, Chief—Myell told us. Here-now is its current point of existence. And his. Then-there is wherever it goes, whether backward or forward. Because space is curved, we think there's only a limited area for where a user can go with it. Think of two icecream cones, joined at the smallest tip. That's right now, right here. Chief Myell is the point between them.”

“Why does it take him into the past and future randomly?” Admiral Nam said.

Perry said, “It's not random. There are rules. For instance, he never lands anywhere where there's a chance of running into himself. Something or someone is controlling it.”

Myell said, “Well, I'm not,” and this time he spoke loud enough for everyone to hear. “Maybe the gods are.”

Murmurs in the room. Jodenny watched Captain McNaughton lean close to Admiral Su and say something in a low voice. Beside her, Haines asked, “Does he really believe that?”

She and Myell had talked about it, long ago—whether the Wondjina gods such as the Rainbow Serpent were really deities, or aliens with incredibly advanced technology. She didn't know the answer then and she didn't know it now. Most of her life she'd been undecided about religion, and before Myell there'd never been any reason for her to believe in any given faith over the other.

Jodenny said, “You'll have to ask him.”

Nam spoke up. “He says nothing ever changes. Is that possible?”

Perry's gaze went to Myell. “From his perspective, yes. If there's any such thing as an outside observer, maybe not. To the people whose lives he changed and the historical events he might have altered—I don't know. They might be able to tell us, if only we found some way to communicate with them.”

Jodenny hoped Myell took that to mean that the copies of Kyle and Twig were still alive in the eddy where they'd left them. She still couldn't read the expression on his face, though.