The Stars Blue Yonder (11 page)

“Louise,” she said, once she'd raised the other woman on her gib. “I'm taking a raincheck. I'll be down at the end of the week.”

“You okay?”

“I want my own bathroom and bed,” she said, and that brought a bark of short laughter.

“All right, missy with the full bladder. Come on down Friday. We'll have us some fish then.”

Jodenny reversed course and headed back to Providence. Soon the hidden sun was setting, casting the woods in gloom, but she had her flashlight and knew the way, and had no concerns. The wild animals had learned to avoid the area and Mark Sweeney's great aim. The bugs came out but she had on her repellent, and though she had to stop again to piss in the bushes, she had more than enough water to carry her through another twenty minutes of walking.

Five minutes later, a man appeared in front of her on the path.

Appeared, just like magic. Popped out of nowhere. One moment she saw trees and the next minute she saw him, wearing a purple outfit that hadn't been in fashion for decades, if ever.

“Gamsa!” he said, grinning widely, throwing his arms open. “It's good to see you!”

Jodenny slid her hand into her pink beach bag and groped for her knife.

“Who are you?” she demanded. He certainly hadn't been aboard the
Kamchatka
. This planet lay millions of light-years from Earth and had no Spheres linking it to the Wondjina Transportation Network. Strangers were not only unheard of, they were
impossible
.

“I'm Homer,” he said, friendly as could be. He was in his mid-twenties or so, with frizzy hair past his shoulders, dark brown eyes, and skin like milk chocolate. Though he was standing in place, he seemed ready to
bounce on his toes, crack his knuckles, fidget like a teenager. He practically hummed with energy. “You're Jodenny. Jodenny Scott. My great-grandmother twenty times removed, or something. Gamsa!”

“Where did you come from?”

“The future,” he said, flinging his arms open.

She didn't like the sound of that, but she didn't entirely discount the possibility. Her life had been strange enough these last few years.

“I could tell you things I couldn't possibly know,” he said. “Like that time you were in the academy and you went to Richi Miller's birthday party and kissed him in the alley. Such passion, Gamsa! I didn't know you had it in you.”

For a moment her memory failed her. The academy was so entirely long ago that it belonged to someone else's life. But there had been a cadet named Richi something-or-other, yes, and she had stepped out in the alley with him. She could feel her cheeks warm.

“I never told anyone about that,” she said.

“I tell you, Gamsa, I'm traveling through time. I'm not the only one.” Homer's expression and voice turned serious. “There are others. There's one other, most importantly, very vivid, you know? Someone who loves you very much and thinks he's lost you forever. Are you ready, Gamsa? Ready for him to come back into your life?”

Her heart thudded painfully against the inside of her chest. “You're lying.”

Homer shook his head. “He's been through many ordeals since you last saw him, and he's lost faith. You have to help him regain it. He needs that hope, more than even he knows, if he's going to do what he's going to do.”

She had forgotten how to breathe, or so it seemed. Homer was talking about the impossible. Terry Myell was buried on a hill outside town, his corpse nothing more than rotted bones.

“Just a bit away this path turns down the hill. He's going to walk out of the woods down there and you have a choice,” Homer continued. “You can treat him with suspicion and fear—the dead returned. You can be distant and cold. Hold him at arm's length. He's used to that. He'll expect it. He won't fight it, though it's killing him inch by inch. Or you can say to yourself, ‘This is what I've been wanting. Answer to my
prayers. The gods finally listened.' It's all your choice, Lieutenant Commander Scott. Gamsa.”

He lapsed into silence.

Jodenny heard only the movement, soft and persistent, of the wind in the trees. She could no longer feel her fingers or toes.

“Show me,” she said.

“He went away,” Twig said between her tears. “Hours ago, to get help, because you wouldn't wake up. But he hasn't come back and now it's getting dark.”

Myell pulled himself upright. His legs were rubbery but they held his weight, and they damn well would until he found the kid. He tried to identify the forest around them. The air was cool, with a crescent moon sliding in and out from behind storm clouds that threatened to dump rain at any minute. The air smelled faintly salty. He clung to the slim, impossible hope that they had returned to Twig and Kyle's eddy in Providence.

“Homer!” he called. “Show yourself.”

A flicker of light behind a bush, and there Homer stood. “I'm right here, Gampa. No need to shout.”

“Where's Kyle?”

Homer's nose wrinkled in confusion. “Where'd you leave him?”

Twig and Kyle had met Homer a few times already, very briefly: Homer didn't seem very comfortable around kids, though, and rarely stayed to talk long. Twig didn't like Homer at all, and his arrival, on top of Kyle's disappearance, was maybe the reason she now burst into new tears.

“Please stop crying,” Myell said, because he couldn't take that helpless sound on top of all the other things that had gone wrong recently. He pulled her close against his leg and rubbed her back. “He can't be far.”

Homer pulled out a scanner and turned in a circle. “No sign of him, Gamps.”

“Where are we?”

“Providence,” Homer replied promptly. “Seven months or so after you died. Friday night. And your lovely pregnant bride is just up that hill over there. You should go see her.”

Pregnant with Lisa, then. With Twig's mom. Myell pushed that thought away. “I have to find Kyle first. Keep scanning.”

“Maybe she can help,” Homer said. “Maybe she's seen him. She could find out. She has a radio to the settlement and to the Outpost.”

Myell wasn't sure he could take another rejection from Jodenny. The dull ache under his breastbone had grown worse every time she looked at him blankly or with disregard. Then again, Kyle was wandering out here in the woods somewhere, and if the ouroboros took Myell and Twig away before they were reunited, Kyle's life would vanish like a puff of smoke. Maybe Jodenny could be of help with that, at least.

“Which way?” Myell asked.

Homer pointed. And though he couldn't possibly be truly cold, he shivered and tugged up his collar. “Better hurry. Weather's going to turn worse before it gets better.”

That, Myell could believe. “Come on,” he said, and started walking with Twig pasted to his side. When Myell looked back, Homer had disappeared again.

Jodenny's feet started moving faster. She hurried down the open hillside as fast her pregnancy allowed.

“Hey, wait—” Homer said.

The grass was soft and spongy beneath her sandals. The wind kicked up and cold air wafted up Jodenny's sleeves to her still-damp bathing suit. She had the sudden fear Homer was a figment of her hormone-overwhelmed imagination, that she'd suddenly gone insane. Pregnancy psychosis.

At the bottom of the slope she stopped to frantically scan the trees. The silver-green grass rippled in the wind and the trees bowed left and right but there was no dead husband, miraculously returned.

No one walked out of the woods.

She wasn't sure what was worse—getting her hopes up and having them so cruelly crash down again, or the burning embarrassment that she'd believed it could be true. Homer appeared off to her side, staying at an arm's length away. Perhaps he was afraid she was going to punch him. His green velvet coat billowed in the breeze. Hadn't he just been wearing purple?

The important thing was Myell. Who was not here at all.

“Liar,” she said.

“I don't lie,” he insisted, and pointed to the trees behind her.

Jodenny almost didn't look. But there, stepping out of the trees. The man she'd loved and lost, with a child at his side.

CHAPTER EIGHT

They stood five meters apart, neither moving forward.

Myell looked terrible in the light from her flashlight. Hollow-cheeked, skinnier than usual, his hair longer than military regulations permitted. She didn't know what he thought of her, but couldn't imagine that her huge belly, beach-blown hair, and bloated features were very impressive.

“Nana,” the girl said. “Kyle's lost.”

Myell didn't say anything.

Jodenny forced herself forward on trembling legs. When she was close enough to touch him, she stopped. He was doing nothing, saying nothing, but in his eyes she saw wariness and resignation. As if he expected her to turn him aside, to deny him everything.

Jodenny reached out very slowly and cupped his face. He tried to
flinch away but she held him firm and stared into his eyes. The cold hard knot in her chest didn't unwind, but it shifted fractionally. His skin was pale and soft, cool to her fingers. His lips, under her thumb, were warm.

“Hey,” she said. “Aren't you dead?”

Around them, the wind stilled suddenly. The girl and Homer said nothing. The world had narrowed to only Jodenny and Myell, and her hand on his cheeks, and a crushing sensation so great that Jodenny thought she might collapse under its weight.

“You came back,” she said.

His hands closed on hers and gently pried them away. He opened his mouth and she knew, with dreaded certainty, that he was about to say, “Not for long” or “I can't stay.” If she heard those words surely she'd break apart. To block them she pressed her mouth against his and kissed him hard. Tears streamed out of her eyes. Grief fled, along with fear and uncertainty. He was here, he was here
now
, solid and unresisting as her hands swept down his shoulders to his waist.

He didn't move. He was a warm statue, still but for his breathing, no response under her lips and palms, under the press of her the baby between them, while her tears dampened his skin.

His unresponsiveness made her draw back in slow horror. This man wasn't her husband after all. Or, if he was, he no longer loved her. How else to explain his passive resistance, his indifference? Jodenny stepped back with a sick churn in her belly. Myell caught her arm and then waist and pulled her to his chest.

“Kay,” he said, with more grief than she expected. He buried his face against her neck and breathed deeply of her skin, and squeezed her so close they both could feel Junior kicking in protest or happiness.

“Uncle Terry,” the little girl said, tugging on Myell's arm. “We have to find Kyle. And it's raining.”

Jodenny reluctantly let him go. Now that she was paying attention, she could feel the pelt of cool raindrops on her skin.

“This is Twig,” Myell said, sounding embarrassed. “Your granddaughter.”

“Oh.” Jodenny looked at the little girl. She decided to reserve judgment on the “granddaughter” bit for later. “Hello. Who's Kyle?”

“Grandson,” Homer said succinctly. Then he added more information. “
Lost
grandson.”

Myell squinted at him. “You could make yourself useful for a change and go find him.”

“Can't help you there, Gampa, but you three better take cover. Storm's here.”

An impressive crack of lightning split down the sky, thunder close behind it. Twig flinched and Myell cast a worried look upward. “How far are we from town?”

“Too far,” Jodenny said. “And too far from the Outpost. We'll have to take shelter somewhere else. There are caves—”

“We know,” Twig interrupted. “We've been there lots of times.”

Jodenny gave Myell a sharp look. “You've been here before?”

“Sort of. Long story. I'll tell you later, okay?”

No, it wasn't okay, because he'd been here before and never told her. Had never approached her, never made contact in any way, while she was grieving and carrying their child and trying to find a way to make a life without him.

“Time travel,” Homer reminded her, with a cheeky grin. “His ‘before' is still in your future, Gamsa. Caves sound good, though, right? You should get moving.”

Myell reached for Jodenny's beach bag to carry it for her. She snagged her towel off the top and said, “Here, Twig, wrap yourself in this.”

“I'm hungry,” Twig said, sniffing back tears. “And what'll Kyle do in the rain? He'll get wet.”

“He'll be fine,” Myell promised. “Come on. Let's hurry.”

Jodenny held Twig's hand as they ducked past tree branches. The woods opened up into another hillside, this one slippery with mud and wet grass. The rain slanted down harder, stinging her face. More lightning, more thunder, and she tried not think about what would happen if one of them was actually struck by a bolt. Myell led them down toward the river, which was a dark gushing torrent in her flashlight's glare. Jodenny looked for Homer, but he had disappeared.

“We lost your friend,” Jodenny said.

“He's not my friend,” Myell replied. “He'll be fine.”

It was a drenching, quarter-mile trek along the muddy banks until they came to Balandra Bridge. The metal footbridge stretched across the narrowest part of the river to the rocky hill and caves on the other side. It was only ten meters long and had two sturdy handrails along its length. Engineer techs from the ship had made it with safety and durability in mind. The river was running high, but was well below the metal treads.

“Twig, you're going to have to go first,” Myell said. “I'm right here behind you, okay? Jodenny, you stay here and I'll come back to help.”

She almost argued with him, but he was already gone and helping Twig across. She started crossing by her own damn self, thank you very much. She kept her steps slow and sure, and held tight to the rain-slicked rails.