The Stars Blue Yonder
Read The Stars Blue Yonder Online
Authors: Sandra McDonald
THE
STARS BLUE
YONDER
Tor Books by Sandra McDonald
The Outback Stars
The Stars Blue Yonder
The Stars Down Under
SANDRA
McDONALD
THE
STARS BLUE
YONDER
TABLE OF CONTENTS
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE STARS BLUE YONDER
Copyright © 2009 by Sandra McDonald
All rights reserved.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
Tor
®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McDonald, Sandra, 1966â
The stars blue yonder/Sandra McDonald. â 1st ed.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-2041-4
ISBN-10: 0-7653-2041-X
1. GodsâFiction. 2. Quests (Expeditions)âFiction. 3. Time travelâFiction. I. Title.
PS3613.C3874S7 2009
813'.6âdc22
2009001669
First Edition: July 2009
Printed in the United States of America
0Â Â Â 9Â Â Â 8Â Â Â 7Â Â Â 6Â Â Â 5Â Â Â 4Â Â Â 3Â Â Â 2Â Â Â 1
To Jerian and Nicholas,
Alli and Sydney,
and all the other children, living and lost
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book could not have been possible without the support and love of many people, including Carol McDonald, Wilfred McDonald, Terry Berube, Stephanie Wojtowicz, my brothers, and my nieces.
My enormous gratitude goes out to the members of the Jacksonville Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer's Group, including Steve Covey, Jean Osborne, Brandie Tavrin, Charisse Phelps, Norman Wood, Sherry Czerniejewski, and Stefan Lingonblad. That critique session at Panera's will always be a memorable Sunday in 2008.
Many thanks also to Sarah Prineas and Greg van Eekhout, whose support and truth-telling is much appreciated, and to the team at Tor, including Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Liz Gorinsky, James Macdonald, and Terry McGarry.
Modern Australia was built on the backs of thousands of men and women convicted, imprisoned, and cruelly banished to the other side of the world in an attempt to rid England of her “undesirables.” Many
of them never again saw their homes or families. At the same time, indigenous people whose ancestors had roamed Australia long before the birth of Rome and Greece saw their land, families, and traditions destroyed by newly arrived Europeans. The vivid, heartbreaking story of this beautiful country cannot be done justice in just a few hundred pages, but I tried my best.
THE
STARS BLUE
YONDER
PROLOGUE
Smoke and dust, and a far-off rumbling like thunder. Choking, Terry Myell rolled over onto his stomach. Burnt skin pulled and tore under his clothes. His throat and lungs ached as he tried to suck in air. He couldn't see clearly.
“Jodenny!” Though he put all his strength into it, his voice came out as a raspy whisper. “Jo!”
No answer. He clawed at the dirt and deck beneath him. Stupid space station, overgrown with jungle plants and ancient gods. He'd never trusted the place. And now something catastrophic had happened, something that left his mouth tasting like ash.
The station groaned and shook around him. The deck heaved. He heard no voices or cries for help. Jodenny, Commander Nam, Anna Gayle, all of the othersâthey couldn't all be dead. Not after what they'd
been through together. Not after he and Jodenny had just found each other again. He hauled himself to his hands and knees and tried crawling through rocky debris.
He didn't get far.
Jodenny
, he thought, and now it was an apology.
He was dully aware of a crack as his head hit the ground. The sound of thunder faded in his ears. Breathing no longer mattered. Then a cool breeze washed over him, soft as a pleasant spring rain.
“Teren Myell,” a voice said. “Can you hear me?”
He didn't move. The breeze was refreshing and clean, a balm to his abused body.
The voice took on more urgency. “Listen to me. You have to use the ouroboros. The ring. Use it and escape from here.”
Myell wasn't sure if his eyes were closed or not. The face before him was blurry, indistinct, as if in a dream. The hands against his skin were thin and cold.
“Go to Kultana,” the stranger urged. “Save the human race.”
Myell groaned. He didn't want to be responsible for saving humanity. He didn't have the strength for it. He was tired, so very tired, and inadequate to the task.
The stranger paused. Reconsidered.
Whispered, “Save your wife. Save her and the child.”
Child? The stranger was wrong. There was no child. But for his wife, Terry Myell would drag himself across a desert, up a mountainside, through hell. Though he had no strength, nor confidence, nor sure knowledge of how to do it, Myell reached out his blistered hands and called the ouroboros to him. Bid it and bent it and thought of Jodenny, only Jodenny.
The blue ring came to him like a lover and carried him away.
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 and limber. 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 door frame 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, armiesâ
“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.
Better to face an entire Roon army than the indignities of old age
, she thought.
Teresa rubbed her belly some more. “How many candidates are there?”
Not many. Aside from some officers, some business travelers, and a few elderly immigrants, most of the crew and passengers on the
Kamchatka
had been under the age of thirty when they had been stranded here. Jodenny took a mental head count. Not old Captain Balandra; her birthday was in January. Not Baylou Owenstein. They'd just celebrated his birthday a few weeks ago. That leftâ
“Sam,” Jodenny said unhappily.
“Yes,” Teresa said. “Dad's birthday is tomorrow. I knew you'd remember. I'm making a cake.”
“Mom!” Alton stomped his foot. “Come on! He's in the water!”
Jodenny said, “Watch your tone, young man.”
Teresa made to stand up despite her swollen ankles. “I'll go see what he's going on about.”
“You stay put. I'll do it.” Even with her arthritis, Jodenny moved more quickly than her daughter. “But if this is another one of his frogs, I'm going to make him kiss it.”
She limped down the stairs and past her vegetable garden. Four grandsons and one granddaughter, who would have expected that? Forty damn years spent stranded in this backwater wilderness with the rest of the crew and passengers. Sam, turning seventy-six. There'd be a cake and maybe a banner, lots of jokes about aging that were funny only to the young, and recycled or homemade presents he had no use for. Certainly he wouldn't want her there. She didn't think anyone except Teresa could seriously expect her to go.
Alton had turned and dashed back into the woods. “Hurry up! I think he's dead.”