The Stars Blue Yonder (45 page)

By then, she and Junior might be dead.

Homer wasn't backing away from the alien. In that, if nothing else, he reminded Jodenny of Myell. He said, “Your weapon won't work here.”

The Roon fired.

Sizzling bolts of silver dissolved around Homer and melted to the ground.

The Eola showed no notice; they were still sitting in their circle, chanting, and Jodenny wondered if their words were somehow keeping this so-called construct in place.

“This battle has already been won,” the Flying Doctor said, as ships exploded like gruesome fireworks above its head. “Our civilization follows its own destiny independent of your wants and desires. I will not let you change the course of history.”

“You can't stop us,” Homer said. “Only your gods can. They sent you, but are they too afraid to come themselves?”

The Roon surged forward, as if to physically attack Homer, but it couldn't extend past the silver ouroboros.

“I thought so,” Homer said.

The thing was, Jodenny mused, the Roon's argument had merit. The battle over their heads had indeed already been won. She herself would be pissed if mankind had triumphed over a foe and had the victory reversed by mysterious, omnipotent deities. She was still angry at Jungali
for stranding the
Kamchatka
, after all, and that offense had at least been well-intentioned.

Seeing the Flying Doctor's side of things didn't mean she agreed with it, though.

No alien armada was going to triumph if she had anything to say about it.

“Homer, help me up,” she said.

Carefully, one wary eye on the Roon, he reached down with both arms. When she was erect and steady, Jodenny took a careful step toward the creature.

“Would you negotiate a truce?” she asked.

Homer exclaimed, “Are you crazy, Gamsa?”

The Flying Doctor glared at her. “We do not surrender.”

“Not a surrender,” Jodenny said. Her insides were beginning to cramp again, and she pushed both hands against her belly. Just a moment more. One more. “An agreement. You already have what you wanted—control of the Wondjina network. You don't need to eradicate mankind and other species as well. There must be a way to exist side by side and not kill each other.”

The blue-gray clouds on the horizon slowed.

The exploding ships overhead faded.

“There will be no coexistence,” the Flying Doctor said. “My gods will pound yours to dust.”

Another contraction in Jodenny's womb tore through her. The pain was so vicious, so unexpected, that she almost missed the sound of Sam Osherman's voice behind her.

“Your gods will fail,” Osherman said.

Myell and Osherman had returned.

One of them was dead on the ice, a boomerang through his heart.

The new god standing above Osherman's corpse sounded like him but was larger all around, from the broad expanse of his shoulders to the long stretch of his face and legs growing taller with each passing second. The rain clouds on the horizon rushed forward to circle around his head. Though his gaze was on the Flying Doctor, some part of him
focused on Jodenny as well. She could feel his warm attention, a touch of concern.

Homer said, “Jungali.”

Myell moved away from the new god and took Jodenny into his arms. She clung to him, bereft. Osherman's death was a loss she hadn't prepared for at all.

The Flying Doctor said, “I reject you and all your kind.”

“Too late,” Jungali said.

The god raised a white-hot hand.

The blue ice plain of Kultana flickered away. Gone as quickly as it had come, with no more exploding spaceships to mark the sky. Instead Jodenny found herself kneeling on all fours in the underground cave with the Painted Child before her. The worst pressure of her entire life was ripping through her body. She screamed. There was nothing easy about this, nothing calm or soothing, nothing at all worth recommending—but then the huge weight and shape of Junior's body was moving through her into Myell's hands, and Jodenny sobbed with relief and gratitude and grief.

Which was how Junior Scott Myell came into the world in the Jenolan Caves, New South Wales, Australia, in the year 1855.

CHAPTER THIRYT-FOUR

Mrs. Dunbar at Lady Darling's farmhouse had no misgivings about letting them stay on, or at least none that she voiced around them. Jodenny couldn't help but feel like a trespasser. Osherman had left behind money for Mrs. Dunbar's salary, though, and for a nice side payment to her brother the local police constable as well. With no heirs to claim the estate, Jodenny and Myell and the baby had some time to recuperate.

“Are we really going to call her Junior?” Myell asked one morning as they lay in bed. The baby had just finished feeding off Jodenny's breast and was dozing, her pink lips happily sucking her own thumb. Jodenny brushed at wisps of dark hair and planted a kiss on Junior's fat little cheek.

“You said we named her Lisa.”

“We don't have to name her Lisa this time,” Myell pointed out. “We could name her Kay.”

Jodenny thought a moment. “I'd like to call her Sam. Samantha.”

Myell leaned forward to kiss them both. “Samantha it is.”

They didn't talk about Osherman and his sacrifice. They didn't speculate as to Homer and his fate, though Myell sometimes gazed unseeingly at the wallpaper and Jodenny thought he was thinking of icy blue plains. They had no plans for the future, or at least none they shared with one another.

When Samantha was one week old, Jodenny woke to rain at midnight. Myell was already out of bed and standing at the window.

“There's a Wondjina in the backyard,” he said. Somehow he managed to sound casual about it.

Jodenny pulled on her bathrobe and lifted Samantha out of the dresser drawer they'd been using as a makeshift crib. “Is it Sam?”

“I don't think so.”

The baby fussed and kicked but settled down against Jodenny's shoulder. Jodenny held her tightly, one hand supporting her tiny soft head, and joined Myell by the curtains. Lightning illuminated the figure in the field—a woman just about as tall as St. Mary's Cathedral, with black skin and green eyes and a belly curved with pregnancy.

“I'll go,” Myell said.

“We'll all go,” Jodenny corrected him.

He grimaced.

She said, “It's not like the door's going to stop her if she wants to come in, right?”

“I suppose,” he said doubtfully.

They pulled on rain slickers and shoes and stepped into the yard, which was already a morass of mud. The goddess watched them approach with impassivity. Water leaked from her breasts and streamed between her muscular legs.

“Kultana,” Myell said, with a bow of his head.

“Once-Jungali,” the goddess replied. “Your absence is keenly felt.”

Jodenny didn't like that sound of that. Her free hand snaked out and grabbed Myell's wrist. Lightning slashed across the sky in long jagged
tears, accompanied by thunderous booms, but the rain against her face was soft, almost gentle.

“He's not going back,” Jodenny said.

The goddess turned her attention to Jodenny for just a moment. An invisible spotlight scorched through her. Hard and bright, uncovering every flaw and crack. She felt burned by it but also curiously renewed. Destroyed and reborn at the same time, one moment spinning endlessly in time. The goddess's gaze swiveled back to Myell and Jodenny wondered how he could withstand the scrutiny.

“A sacrifice was made,” Myell said.

The goddess was silent. Ominously dreadfully silent, while the wind around them moved and Samantha began to fuss inside Jodenny's coat. Jodenny thought centuries were speeding by with each passing moment—the entire continent of Australia spinning forward in time, landscapes flourishing and dying under merciless skies—but Myell's pulse beneath her fingers kept her grounded. She strengthened her grip. If he had any intention of stepping forward, he'd have to drag her with him.

“The sacrifice was accepted,” Kultana said. “Even now he steers the helm. He asked for you to be sent this gift.”

The goddess's belly shifted again and lit up from the inside. An illuminated blue-and-green sphere spun inside her. It descended between her legs until it was resting in the mud—smaller than the Painted Child but large enough to accommodate Jodenny and Myell and a dozen of their closest friends. This blue sphere sang out, filled with sunlight and the sound of ocean waves breaking on shore.

Myell sounded suspicious, which Jodenny thought was prudent. “What gift is this?”

Kultana's voice echoed across the landscape. “It is the gift of travel, to take you anywhere you want. It is the gift of time to follow your dreams. It is the gift of language, so that you may speak to your enemies and understand them. It is the gift of harvest, so that your children and their children will enjoy bounty.”

The goddess, her belly diminished, began to rise upward into the dark clouds.

“Wait!” Jodenny said. “The Roon! Were they turned back at Kultana? Did Sam save humanity?”

Kultana gazed down silently, her countenance both beneficent and terrible, and disappeared into the storm.

“I think he did,” Myell murmured. “I think everything's okay, for now.”

She wished she could be so sure. Slowly the rain eased away. Jodenny undid the coat to let Samantha enjoy fresh air. The baby scrunched up her nose and turned her head unerringly toward the Blue Sphere, which sang out with promise.

“Are we going to use it?” Jodenny asked Myell.

He kissed her and kissed the baby.

“Not tonight,” he said.

They trudged through the mud and back into the house. The Wondjina gift glowed and sang through the windows until dawn.

EPILOGUE

He woke on slimy cold rock, in what smelled and looked like an underwater cave. His skin itched from scrapes and salt water, and he had a headache that hurt like a bastard. He had the desperate, panicky feeling that he'd failed to do something important. Failure was nothing new to him, as his family and former commanding officers could attest, but this was entirely different.

He lifted his head and spat out the vile taste of seawater.

“Hello?” he called out.

His voice echoed in the dank caverns. A pool of water nearby rippled as a silver fish broke the surface and darted away again.

A moment later, he tried again. “Is anyone here?”

A seal broke the surface of the pool and hauled itself onto the nearest ledge. As it moved, its flippers turned to long arms. The tail split
into muscular legs. A naked man with a wild red beard stood upright and gazed benevolently downward.

“You can call me the Sea King,” the man said. “Also known as Sea Unchanging and Sea Eternal. I rule all the oceans and all the creatures in them. And I have a job for you.”

Tom Cappaletto grinned. “Mother always told me I'd lead an interesting life.”