The Stars Blue Yonder (43 page)

Her lips broke free of his and she made a lewd suggestion against his ear.

“You're kidding,” he said.

“You don't know much about pregnant women, do you?”

“We'll squish the baby.”

“No, we won't.” Her smile was wide and genuine and dirty. “We just need some pillows and some creative positioning.”

He was still doubtful as she pulled him into the room, and even more doubtful once she'd shed her dress, but she was gorgeously lush in the morning light, all curves and soft skin and wide-eyed under his touch.

“I'll be back,” he said. “Wherever it takes me, I'll come back. I won't leave you.”

“Sssh.” Her hands slid around his waist. “Right here, right now, it's only us. Stay with me.”

So he did.

They slept until a dog barked somewhere, loud and obnoxious. Myell woke famished. The sun stood at midday and the hot air was still.

“Food?” he asked her.

“Great idea.”

He slid out of bed, fumbled into his pants, and padded barefoot down the hallway. The house was empty and peaceful in the bright light. He was halfway to the kitchen when he saw Osherman sitting in the living room. A moment later he realized the man wasn't Osherman.

“Hello, Chief,” the man said.

Myell squinted. He didn't recognize the stranger—not his pale face, his thin hair, or his well-cut clothes.

“Do I know you?” Myell asked.

The man patted the pistol that was resting in his lap.

He said, “You knew me when I was named Speed.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Jodenny was dozing off again. She thought she'd heard voices, but it was easy to ignore them and luxuriate in the comfort of the sturdy bed. When footsteps came down the hall she forced herself awake to greet Myell. Instead, Osherman walked into view. She grabbed the bed-sheet and pulled it up to her neck.

He glanced her way and flushed.

“Where's Myell?” he asked.

“Not far.” The sheet seemed woefully inadequate for the task of hiding, but Jodenny pulled it tighter anyway. “Why?”

“I talked to Tulip, and he had an idea or two,” Osherman said.

He carefully avoided looking at her, which Jodenny decided was ridiculous. They'd shared beds together, after all. In the permanent timeline, they'd been married. Still, logic had nothing to do with it.

“He was just here,” Jodenny said. “Is he in the kitchen?”

Osherman went to find him. Jodenny got herself out of the bed, pulled her dress back on, pined for the luxury of a hot shower, and went after them. The living room was empty and Osherman was alone by the stove.

“Outhouse?” Jodenny suggested.

Osherman went out into the yard, and returned shaking his head. He scanned the countryside. “He can't have gone far.”

“He wouldn't go anywhere,” Jodenny protested. “Not on his own.”

“Homer,” Osherman said.

“Why would Homer take him away?”

“I don't know. But if not Homer, then who?”

A gunshot cracked through the air.

Myell risked a glance over his shoulder. “Where are we going, Speed?”

“The name's Cohen.”

The dirt road wound past Lady Darling's farmhouse and through the deep woods. Flies hovered in the hot stillness. They were the only two people on the road. Maybe the only people for hundreds of kilometers, as far as Myell knew. He had only the vaguest sense of the surrounding geography—Cohen hadn't seen fit to give him a map. Myell's feet were bare and he was sweating in the heat. Cohen was also sweating under his hat and city jacket.

The pistol was unwaveringly fixed on Myell's back, sweat or no sweat.

“Tell me why you want to kill me?” Myell asked.

“I don't want to kill you,” Cohen said. “You're going to drown yourself in the lake on the other side of this hill. It's not far, near where I parked the airship. Your stupid friends never thought to check if it had a recall device.”

“Oh.” Myell kept walking. “Why am I going to drown myself?”

A pistol shot whizzed over his shoulder.

Myell jerked and stopped walking, at the risk of a bullet through his back. “Bell,” he said in sudden realization. “This is about Bell?”

“Keep going.” Cohen's voice was brittle with anger. “I'm not kidding. I'll kill you here. I killed Darling for less.”

“You killed her?”

“I had to. She was going to stop me from using the airship to go back through the Sphere and save Bell from drowning.”

That plan was so fundamentally flawed that Myell lost his breath for a moment.

“It wouldn't work,” he managed to say. “She didn't drown in the permanent timeline. She died with you and Darling and the others when you blew up the base. There's nothing there now but debris and rubble.”

Cohen spat out, “According to
you
. Why should I believe anything you say?”

Damned if Myell was going to be Cohen's next victim, not because of some crazy plan and in the middle of nowhere with Jodenny and Junior so close by. He hadn't even had the goddamned chance to say goodbye. Myell turned and swung out. Cohen fired the gun again, sending the bullet in a wild trajectory by Myell's midsection. He didn't want to see if he'd been hit. He threw himself forward with fists and kicks, knocking Cohen into the dirt. The pistol fell aside with a solid thud.

Though Myell was sore and bruised already, he was still younger and stronger than Cohen. The boy who'd been known as Speed cringed at the blows, returned them slow and clumsy.

“You killed her!” Cohen was saying. “You let her drown!”

Myell landed a punch square on Cohen's jaw that made the older man's head snap back into the dirt. Myell grabbed the pistol and staggered upright, keeping it aimed at Cohen's chest. His knuckles sang with pain and his throat was tight with fury.

“I would have saved her,” Myell said. He spat out a wad of blood. “All of them. Don't you think I would have saved all of them?”

Someone was running up the road toward them—Osherman, armed not with a gun but a knife. Jodenny was hurrying up the road after him, slowed by Junior. Myell wiped sweat from his eyes and kept the gun aimed at Cohen.

“Twig and Kyle,” he said. Their names were bitter in his mouth. “Cappaletto, Adryn, Nam. Your sister. I couldn't save any of them.”

Cohen's face was wet with tears and blood, and racking sobs shook his body. “You killed her.”

“No.” Osherman said, slowing to a stop beside them. His gaze was steady on Myell, his voice confident. “He didn't kill anyone. He just didn't save her.”

Myell felt as if he'd been slapped. The sting was refreshing in its own way, a confirmation of everything he knew.

“Bell died when Darling blew up the base,” Osherman said, still looking only at Myell. “I'm sure I died, bitter and old, on Providence. Jodenny, too. Cappaletto must have died in the Roon mines. Kyle and Twig had their own fates. Chief Myell gave us second chances, and there's nothing wrong with that.”

Jodenny was still coming up the road, too far to hear them. Myell shook his head. “Second chances that didn't work out.”

“Worked out for me,” Osherman said. “Jodenny's here. Cappaletto died free. You think that doesn't matter?”

“I didn't save the fleet at Kultana,” Myell pointed out.

Osherman shook his head in exasperation. “Oh, sorry. One single man didn't save all of mankind from an armada of invading ships. That's your crime?”

Cohen was still sobbing.

“It can be done,” Myell said.

Osherman clearly didn't believe him.

“The Flying Doctor tried to stop me because it's possible,” Myell said. “I still don't know how, but this isn't over.”

Jodenny arrived. Myell took her into his arms, reassuring himself that she wasn't going to faint from the heat and exertion. She felt his arms and torso, looking for injuries that weren't there.

“I'm never letting you out of my sight again,” she said.

“What about him?” Osherman said, his gaze on Cohen.

“He killed Darling,” Myell said, feeling empty and drained. “He told me.”

Osherman's face turned a mottled red. He held out his hand for the pistol. Myell glanced at Jodenny, who was watching them all with a stricken expression. Something was going on here that Myell didn't quite understand.

“Commander?” he asked carefully.

“I'm not going to kill him,” Osherman said firmly. “Give me the gun.”

Myell hesitated some more. Flies buzzed in his ears and around his head. Osherman looked angry but not out-of-control homicidal angry. Slowly he handed over the pistol and walked away. He met Jodenny in the road and fell into her arms.

“You're okay?” she asked. Her hands again felt for injuries. “Are you hurt?”

“I'm fine,” he murmured into her neck.

A pistol shot had them both whirling around in the road. Osherman had shot Cohen. Not a fatal wound in the torso or head but instead in the knee. Cohen rocked and screamed in agony. Myell wondered if a fatal shot wouldn't have been more merciful.

“That was for Cassandra, you son of a bitch,” Osherman said.

The airship that had returned to Cohen in Sydney and then come back again was down to dangerous levels of power, but Osherman thought they could make it.

“Make it where?” Jodenny asked. She was clinging to Myell as if the strength of her grip could keep him safe from the blue ring. “Where is there to go?”

Osherman leaned against the ship. “Your crocodile girlfriend said you need witches or shamans, so I talked to Tulip. His people can call the Wondjina gods. They're gathering now at the Painted Child. If we hurry, we can make it before the blue ring comes again.”

Jodenny frowned. “Why do we want to talk to the gods?”

“Not us,” Myell said. “Me. To make an appeal.”

“To save Homer?” she asked skeptically.

Myell's voice neutral. “To save mankind. To make the Roon vanish at Kultana. Just like they did on Burringurrah.”

They tried to leave her behind, of course. Jodenny would have none of it.

“Besides,” she said. “If you leave me here, Homer might show up. What would I do against him on my own? Me, pregnant and barefoot and helpless.”

Myell had glanced at her feet. “You're not barefoot.”

Osherman added, “You're hardly helpless.”

She gave them both a cold smile. “And I'm not staying here, either.”

The second trek down into the caves went faster than the first trip, for this time they knew the way and had a deadline careening closer with each minute. Jodenny knew she couldn't afford to slip and fall. Couldn't afford it for Junior or Myell. She sipped from the canteens they'd brought and let Myell help her over the tricky parts and yelled at herself because they had so far to go, and she was holding them up. She and her stupid fat ungainly body.

“We're almost there,” Osherman said, so often she wanted to poke him between the eyes. But the trip was no easier for him, either. His breathing was short, and he kept glancing around at the walls as if expecting them to close in farther.

Tulip and the men of his tribe had already assembled by the time Jodenny, Osherman, and Myell made it to the Painted Child. The Aboriginals had started a small smoky fire, made markings in the dirt, and painted themselves with ocher. Jodenny wondered if that was how the Aboriginals of Shark Tooth's tribe had prepared themselves for sacred tests and ceremonies. Those people were separated from these by only a few hundred years. The saved and the almost-destroyed, just a Sphere's travel apart.

“What do I have to do?” Myell asked.

Tulip eyed his shirt.

Bare to the waist, Myell sat on a rock and let Tulip paint him with symbols. Jodenny itched to do the job herself but she didn't know the designs and she understood that women's magic was different from men's magic, at least to these people, and she couldn't afford to upset the balance. Osherman watched with obvious impatience, keeping an eye on his pocket watch.

“How much time?” she asked.

He shook his head.

The Aboriginals were chanting now. Jodenny didn't understand a word of it. Myell didn't either, judging from his expression, but he lifted his head and pinned her with a gaze.

“Whatever happens, don't go in there,” he said.

She knew he meant the Painted Child.

“Promise me,” Myell said.

She didn't recognize her own voice. “I promise.”

“Don't let her, Commander,” Myell said to Osherman.

Osherman's hand was white-knuckled on his watch. “After all this, you should call me Sam.”

The Painted Child began to sing.

Jodenny hadn't expected that. She whirled in amazement as the colors across its surface began to glow with life. Corals and blues, green like deep summer leaves, yellow like the sun. She'd witnessed the First Egg in all its glory on Burringurrah but this was a more intimate display, filling her with warmth and building excitement.

Tulip said, “They're coming.”

“The gods?” Osherman asked. His voice was higher than normal. “Right now?”

The torches all around them flickered and died. The Painted Child swirled in Jodenny's vision. In its rainbow depths she saw more Spheres, spinning around each other in exotic orbits. Junior had gone still in her womb, as if entranced by the vision of something she couldn't see.

Tulip pushed Myell toward the archway. “They're here.”

Myell turned to Jodenny for one last, desperate kiss.

“I'll be back,” he promised.

Jodenny saw the Painted Child in his eyes. Felt the Painted Child swell inside her heart. Heard a great rushing, like the first winds of the world sweeping out of the core of the earth upward in a great rush.

The caves dissolved.