The Stars Blue Yonder Read online

  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

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

  Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  TITLE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-­ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-­TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-­THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-­FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-­FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-­SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-­SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-­EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-­NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-­ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-­TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-­THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-­FOUR

  EPILOGUE

  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

  www.­tor-­forge.­com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  McDonald, Sandra, 1966–

  The stars blue yonder/Sandra McDonald. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  “A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-2041-4

  ISBN-10: 0-7653-2041-X

  1. Gods—Fiction. 2. Quests (Expeditions)—Fiction. 3. Time travel—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3613.C3874S7 2009

  813'.6—dc22

  2009001669

  First Edition: July 2009

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 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 others—they 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, 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?

  Alton crept closer to the stranger. The buzzing in Jodenny’s ears grew worse. The green of the forest was blurring at the edges. She’d fainted only a few times in her life, but the warning signs were clear.

  “Run and get the sheriff,” Jodenny said.

  Alton poked at the man’s arm. No reaction. He was probably dead.

  “Go get the sheriff!” Jodenny snapped, fear and anger all mixed into it, because the child never listened and here she was going to faint like an old lady. She knew the man in the creek, knew the shape of his head and shoulders, knew him down to the withered fibers of her fading heart. Wasn’t it bitter and horrible that he’d returned from death just as she was getting ready to embrace it?

  Alton dashed off up the hill, yelling at the top of his lungs.

  Jodenny’s world grayed out and went silent.

  Myell woke in a soft bed without anyone shouting at him, which sure beat most of the other ways he’d been waking up lately.

  He blinked at the plastisteel ceiling and pinkish gray walls. Bright sunlight spilled past gauzy curtains over what looked like portholes from a Team Space ship. The furniture seemed like ship salvage as well—the narrow bed, a metal dresser, a round mirror. But there were touches of domesticity in the bright yellow bedspread and the daisies in a blue vase on a shelf. A smell like bitter coffee hung in the air.

  “Caffeine would be nice,” he said aloud.

  His voice was rusty but otherwise fine. He couldn’t say the same about his legs, which were shaky as he swung them out to the floor. The brown rug on the metal floor tickled his toes. He checked his arms and torso. Just a few bruises and scars, and a place on his right arm where someone had recently given him an injection.

  He tried to stand up and the room spun out from under him. The next thing he knew, he was flat on his back and a woman was talking to him.

  “That was a dumb thing to do,” she said. “Come on, wake up again.
Don’t make me get the smelling salts.”

  He forced his eyes open. A woman with the same color hair and eyes as Jodenny Scott smiled down at him.

  “I’m Lisa,” she said. “You’re in my house.”

  Myell nodded, his mouth gone dry. Lisa was as pretty as Jodenny but with wider shoulders and a longer nose. He knew that nose. Had seen it in the mirror all these years. She was in her late thirties or early forties and had an old-fashioned stethoscope around her neck.

  “You patched me up?” he asked.

  Her cool hand touched the inside of his wrist. “You weren’t too bad off. A bump on the head, a few bruises. You’ve got some burn scars. Not too old, from the look of them, but someone took care of them. Someone with better medical equipment than mine, but not enough to get rid of the scars.”

  He shrugged. A few scars didn’t bother him.

  Lisa said, “Can you tell me how you feel now?”

  “Better.”

  “Good. We do what we can, though the ship’s infirmary has been stripped out for years now. How’d you come to be in the creek, anyway? It’s not like we ever get any strangers here.”

  He said, “You haven’t asked my name.”

  “I don’t have to.” Lisa’s smile faded. “I know your name. You still have a dog tag embedded in your collarbone. And my mother’s the one who found you. Jodenny.”

  He felt for his wedding ring, which was still firmly affixed to his finger. If Lisa was about forty, that would make Jodenny nearly seventy. Wrinkled and arthritic and probably hating every moment of it.

  “I need to . . .” he said, and gestured toward what he hoped was the bathroom.

  “That’s the fluids I ran into you,” Lisa said. “Come on. Up you go.”

  She helped him upright and shouldered him to a bathroom equipped with a Team Space toilet. He scrubbed at his face and peered at the bloodshot lines in his eyes and the stubble on his chin. Vanity was a luxury he hadn’t had in a while. When he felt steadier, he emerged to find three men sitting in his room on chairs that had been pulled in from elsewhere. Lisa was straightening the pillows on the bed.