The Stars Down Under (42 page)

“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.

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 left—

“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.”

“If he's dead, I don't need to hurry,” Jodenny said.

Alton's discovery wasn't a drowned turtle or half-crushed snake or any other morbid find. Instead it was a man lying half in and half out of the stream. He wore Team Space trousers ripped at the seams and a black T-shirt. His feet were bare but he didn't appear injured in any significant way. With her bad eyesight she couldn't tell if he was breathing. If she moved a step or two to the left she might be able to see his face, but her legs wouldn't obey her.

“Did he come from away?” Alton picked up a stick. “What's he doing here?”

“I don't know.” Jodenny's voice sounded small in her own ears. Her head filled with a buzzing and her knees went weak. Certainly the man wasn't one of their own. No one these days dressed in a Team Space uniform, or would wander down to this stream to take a nap. He might be from one of the splinter groups that had gone off on their own shortly after their arrival here on Providence, but again, where had he gotten the clothes?