The Stars Blue Yonder Page 4

  Lisa shook her head. “Really, now. What kind of danger is he? Didn’t murder us in our sleep last night, did he? Didn’t even try.”

  Alice said, stubbornly, “You never know what trouble is until it shows its ugly face.”

  “Go get some sleep, Alice,” Lisa said. “Doctor’s orders.”

  The air outside was hot and humid, and debris from the night’s storms was still littered on the ground. The settlement itself had indeed grown since its early days. The main street of homes and buildings had developed into several short streets around a grassy commons. Lisa said the population was a tad more than three hundred people, not bad considering how many they’d lost in the early years to splinter groups and illness or injury. Recycled parts of the Kamchatka were everywhere—bulkheads grown over with moss or rusty with age, plastiglass cloudy from sunlight, railings and porches and posts that had been stripped out of the ship and repurposed. The place had an industrious if worn look to it.

  Baylou kicked at a lamppost they passed. “Most of the power conduits are beginning to fail. Damn rain and rust gets into everything. We should have scavenged more out of the ship, but who knew we’d lose her so quick? Goddamned autopilot.”

  “I know,” Myell said. The devastating and unexpected loss of the Kamchatka due to engine failure, just eight months after arrival, had hampered the colony for years. The ship had never been equipped or designed to found a new world, after all. Its crew and passengers had been woefully unprepared for life in the wilderness, even if it was a wilderness just like Earth.

  Baylou said, “And the crop fungus, that doesn’t help things. Or the locusts—”

  “It’ll all work out,” Lisa said optimistically. “We’ve come this far, right?”

  They passed a number of villagers, most of whom called out a hello and gave Myell sideways looks as they went about their morning chores. From the school house came the sound of children’s laughter, followed by a teacher’s stern admonishment.

  “This,” Baylou said, coming to an abrupt stop, “is the most important place for a hundred miles. More work gets done here than at the town hall, and don’t you let anyone tell you different.”

  Before them was a hole-in-the-wall building, not much bigger than a shack, with tables and chairs outside on the wooden deck, and a liquor bar with a lock on it. Baylou had a key.

  “Hair of the dog?” Baylou asked, proffering a bottle.

  Myell accepted a shot glass of something golden-brown that tasted not quite like whiskey. Lisa demurred. She’d sat down on one of the chairs, her bare knees exposed to the sun, and was watching pedestrians go on by.

  “Miss this the most,” Baylou said, indicating the glass. “Everything else, I can live without. But a good drink is hard to find in these parts.”

  Myell figured he had a few hours or so left. Not enough time to do much but get drunk, if he wanted. And to maybe make amends that wouldn’t matter once his time here was up.

  “I’d like to see Jodenny,” he said.

  Lisa sighed. “She said she’s not up for company this morning.”

  “She didn’t mean it,” Baylou said. “Love of her life, come back from the dead? It’s a girl’s dream come true.”

  “I’m not sure you should go around saying ‘love of her life,’ ” Lisa said cautiously.

  Myell glanced up from his glass, slightly hurt by the remark.

  Lisa spread her hands wide. “Not saying he’s wrong, mind you. Just that, well, she did marry Sam eventually. And they had Teresa, and little Teren—”

  The glass slipped from Myell’s hands. “They did what?”

  Baylou poured himself more of the not-quite whiskey and gulped it down.

  Lisa’s gaze was steady on Myell. “Teren was their son. My half brother. He died when he was little, of the flu. You didn’t know?”

  Mutely he shook his head.

  “Broke them up with grief.” Her expression was rueful. “Broke up their marriage, too. Neither one of them was the same afterward. So, yes, Dad, I think you were the love of her life. But maybe not the only one.”

  He wasn’t sure he’d earned the name “Dad.” All he did was float in and out of her life, twenty-four or so hours at a time, and she never remembered him. Myell tried to imagine Jodenny and Osherman having a son, raising him, and watching him die.

  “I want to talk to her,” he insisted.

  Jodenny’s house was back along the commons and not at all far from Lisa’s. Two knocks on the unlocked door brought no answer. They stepped inside. Myell had to blink several times to adjust his eyes from the bright outside to the dim light of the living room. Without power, the overhead fans were all still. The air was hot and beginning to turn sour.

  “You home, Mom?” Lisa called out.

  Baylou said, “Come on out. We brought the dead man by.”

  “Last time I was here, you weren’t so funny,” Myell said.

  Baylou smiled crookedly. “Jungle rot. Burrows into the brain.”

  The living room was sparser than Myell remembered. With each passing year Jodenny was shedding herself of material possessions until only the bare essentials remained: a sofa, a table and chair, a kitchen unit. If her grandchildren ever drew pictures for her, she was hiding them in a drawer somewhere. The walls were smooth and, in a way, soothing. The best feature, as always, was the small porch out back, and the large yard running downhill toward trees and the creek.

  Jodenny was sitting out on that porch. She didn’t look surprised to see any of them.

  “I told you I didn’t want company, Lisa,” she said.

  Myell spoke up. “I’m not company.”

  Baylou said, “Maybe some more beer would smooth over this happy reconciliation?”

  Jodenny said, “Get out of my house, Baylou Owenstein. And you as well, daughter number one.”

  Baylou went off good-naturedly. Lisa gave them both a dubious look, but left without comment. Myell sat down in the rocking chair next to Jodenny’s and they both looked at the sky and trees.

  “Nice weather,” she finally said.

  Myell asked, “You want to talk about the weather?”

  “Not much else to talk about. And apparently it won’t matter what we say anyway. I won’t remember.”

  “But I will,” he said.

  Jodenny slid him a glance. “So this is about you.”

  He stared at the trees.

  She pressed on. “Not that I believe you, especially, but last night you said you’ve been here before. That you’ll leave and come back, and we won’t remember you’ve been here. That nothing you do ever makes a permanent change.”

  “That’s right.”

  She rocked in silence for a moment, then said, “How do you know for sure? Maybe things do change, and we go off on some other timeline. You just don’t get to visit there.”

  “We’ve had this conversation before,” he replied. “Quantum physics and time-travel theory and branching timelines and everything. Schrödinger’s cat. Asimov. Einstein. Branes and string theory. Theories, all of them, nothing concrete except what Homer—”

  He cut himself off.

  Jodenny cocked her head. “Who’s Homer?”

  “You never believe me when I tell you.”

  “Try me.”

  “He’s our descendent from two thousand years in the future,” Myell said. “He says that there’s only one timeline that runs through eternity. No matter what eddy I visit—that’s what he calls them, time eddies—well, wherever, whenever, I change things temporarily but not permanently. I could kill my grandfather, I could wipe out a planet, I could do anything at all. But when I leave, the eddy dissolves and the timeline reverts to its original course. Anything I’ve done is washed away. He says that only the gods can change history.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “I know.”

  Jodenny’s chin jutted forward. “I’m not going to forget you came back. I’ll write it down. Burn it in stone.”

  “We c
arved it into a tree trunk once,” he replied. “Over there. That big oak. Your initials and mine, and the date, and a heart. In letters as big as your fist. And then you went off and married Sam anyway.”

  They gazed at the oak in silence. The bark was rough but unmarked. Insects buzzed in the grass and somewhere, out on the street, kids laughed and raced around. Morning recess at the school. His time was running out quickly.

  “Maybe I didn’t love Sam,” she said. “Maybe I just thought I did.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Kay.”

  Her eyes narrowed. The same old determination blazed out of them. “I won’t apologize.”

  “I don’t want you to.” He leaned forward. “Our vows said until death we do part, and I died. On some giant rock called Burringurrah back on Earth. No one but you and Osherman seem to know how, exactly, and you never tell me. No matter how much I ask, you never tell me. For all I know, I slipped on a banana peel. But dead is dead, right? Buried up there on the hill, just a bunch of bones in the dirt.”

  “Now you’re feeling sorry for yourself,” she said.

  His fingers clenched on the arms of the rocking chair. “That’s not true.”

  “Being thrown around in time is better than being dead,” she said bitterly. “You’re strong and young and what more do you want?”

  “You,” Myell said.

  Jodenny’s expression turned sour. “Now who’s lying?”

  She rose and went inside the house. Myell let her go. He didn’t know how to convince her that he loved her at any age, in any condition. But it didn’t matter. Soon he’d be gone and the lives of everyone here would go on as they always had.

  From inside the house came a soft thump as she knocked something over.

  “Kay,” he said, sighing, and went to see what she’d taken her anger out on this time.

  Just three steps past the screen door, in the dimness of the house, he saw her lying on the floor in a crumpled heap.

  “No, no,” he muttered, hands cold, dropping to his knees so hard that bone cracked on wood. Myell turned her over. “Kay! Wake up!”

  Her sightless eyes stared past him to the ceiling. Stroke, maybe. Aneurysm. Heart attack. He didn’t know. She wasn’t breathing. He laid her back gently, opened her mouth, and forced air in.

  “You don’t get to die yet,” he told her in a fierce voice. “I’m not gone. It’s Sam’s birthday. You can’t die, okay?”

  From outside, someone screamed.

  A kid’s scream, high and terrified.

  It took a second scream, maybe a third, for Myell to pull himself from Jodenny’s body and step outside. He immediately saw Kyle and Twig standing in the middle of the town common, a soccer ball at their feet. Kyle was holding Twig protectively. Both were staring at a big gum tree just a few meters away. Other schoolchildren had run back to the school for cover, or were hiding behind trees or buildings. Myell didn’t blame them.

  Standing beside the gum tree was a Roon soldier.

  It stood there like a statute, imposing and hostile in the sunlight. Unlike other Roon that Myell had seen, this one wore an ornate feather and steel headdress that added half a meter to its height. From its shoulders hung a black feather cloak. Around its feet was an ouroboros shaped like a silver lizard. In one hand it held a golden, oblong egg aimed right at Twig.

  “Nobody move!” Sheriff Alice was standing on the porch of the cantina, a mazer rifle aimed at the alien. “I’ve got it.”

  The Roon turned its head toward Alice. She fired. The shot zapped harmlessly around its cloak and headdress, then dissipated like tiny bolts of lightning. Kyle and Twig tried to dash toward Myell, who was closest. The alien fired red-hot bolts over their heads and they threw themselves to the ground, shrieking.

  “Stay where you are!” Lisa yelled from the other side of the commons. She sounded frantic. “Stay there!”

  Twig was crying. Kyle was grimly silent, his hands clutched over his head.

  The Roon kept the weapon trained on the children as it turned its head again. “Teren Myell,” it said, loud enough for everyone to hear.

  Murmurs in the crowd. “It speaks English!” someone said.

  Myell was just as startled, but he tried to appear impassive. He took several careful steps forward. “Yes, I’m him.”

  “Teren Myell,” the Roon said again. Around its feet, the silver ouroboros spun faster and faster. “Stop your quest for Kultana or be destroyed. Stop, and be rewarded with long life and wealth.”

  Sheriff Alice asked, “Kul what?”

  From down in the grass, her face screwed up in fear, Twig asked, “Mom? I want Mom!”

  Lisa tried to step forward, but Baylou had his hand firmly on her shoulder. Lisa called out, “It’s okay, honey. Just stay there with Kyle.”

  The Roon ignored the family drama. “Do you agree?” it asked Myell.

  Myell said, “Tell me who you are.”

  Its head tilted sideways. “The Flying Doctor. The one who will stop this. If you cease, they will not be destroyed. If you cease, they will continue. Stop your quest for Kultana.”

  The sun burned against Myell’s skin. In the house behind him, Jodenny’s corpse was already cooling. His head ached behind his eyes and the air around him grew thin, unsubstantial. For a moment he thought it was the weight of grief, but he knew better.

  The blue ring was coming for him.

  The Roon’s stance shifted as it lowered its weapon. “Step here and join me.”

  Myell didn’t move toward the silver ouroboros.

  He was certain—or mostly certain—that events here didn’t matter. The moment he left, the eddy would dissolve. Then again, Jodenny had never died before. Nor had a Roon showed up with its very own ring. Everything might have changed, or be changing as he stood in the sunlight. He couldn’t be sure of anything anymore.

  “Dad,” Lisa said. “Please.”

  Still Myell hesitated.

  “You refuse,” the Roon said sharply.

  It raised its egg-shaped weapon again.

  Sheriff Alice yelled, “Kids, run!”

  Cursing, Myell dashed forward, threw himself on top of Kyle and Twig, and shielded the children from the Roon weapon. Red bolts slammed into his back but he felt nothing, not even a sizzle. Instead there was only the familiar disorienting blur of the blue ring as it appeared in the airless space around him.

  He had never been more grateful for its appearance. In a split second the ring would yank him from this eddy to somewhere else—to the future or past, to the dead and living, to another Jodenny who would scorn and reject him. Kyle and Twig and all the people here would remain. They would snap back to the lives they’d been leading without his interference. They would neither remember him nor mourn him.

  The flash came, but Myell was only half right.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Sub-lieutenant Jodenny Scott knew she was oversleeping, but even on starships, Sunday mornings allowed for some indulgence. When her gib beeped for the third time, she shoved it under her pillow and rolled over. She was dreaming of a beach, a rolling blue ocean, and a handsome man rising out of the sea. Her fantasy was interrupted when the hatch to her cabin opened and her roommate spoke loudly.

  “What are you doing, Jodenny?” Ensign Dyanne Owens asked.

  “Sleeping. Go away.”

  “You plan on missing morning quarters?”

  “No quarters on Sunday.”

  “Too bad this is Monday.”

  Jodenny forced her eyes open. “It is not!”

  Dyanne sat in her chair and began tugging off her boots. She’d had the midwatch, and dark circles rimmed her eyes. “Okay, it’s not. You’re right and the rest of the ship’s wrong.”

  Jodenny wasn’t entirely convinced. The supply wardroom aboard the Yangtze was notorious for pranks. She retrieved her gib from under the pillow and demanded, “Kay! What day is it?”

  Her agent responded, “Today is Monday, ma’am.”

  Jodenny wrestled free
of her sheets and flung herself toward her locker. Long years of habit from the academy meant she had put out her uniform the night before. She tugged on her pants and boots, pinned her hair up with one swift move, and didn’t bother rinsing the gummy feeling out of her mouth.

  “Don’t forget your gib,” Dyanne said when Jodenny was halfway into the passageway.

  She spun on her heel, grabbed the gib off her bunk, and sprinted down the passage. A small DNGO was cleaning the carpet, smack dab in her way. Jodenny squeezed past it. Another DNGO was washing down the bulkhead. She circled around that, too. A third DNGO was hovering near the overhead, cleaning a vent. This cleaning business was getting out of hand. Jodenny ducked under the robot and barreled into the lounge area, which was inexplicably filled with a dozen other officers all grinning at her.

  “Surprise!” they shouted.

  Her boss, Lieutenant Jem Ross, grinned widely. “Welcome to your promotion party.”

  “My—” Jodenny was speechless. Her face grew hot but she matched Jem’s smile. “All this for little old me?”

  “All this,” Dyanne confirmed, coming up behind her and slapping her shoulder.

  First came the very brief ceremony, in which Jem read aloud Jodenny’s promotion to full lieutenant and pinned new insignia on her collar. After that Jodenny cut the cake, which was entirely too decadent for this early on a Sunday—yes, Sunday, not Monday—morning. That she’d fallen for their dastardly plan caused no end of merriment, from ensigns to commanders alike.

  “You’ll get yours,” Jodenny told Dyanne. “Wait until it’s your turn.”

  Jodenny was halfway through her slice of cake and eyeing another piece when her gib beeped and said, “Lieutenant Scott, you’re needed in the Security Office.”

  She gave Jem a dirty look, but he raised his hands innocently. “No prank. It’s probably AT Tossen again, drunk on duty. Your turn to deal with him.”

  “I’ll be right back,” she told everyone. “Don’t eat all my cake.”

  Dyanne raised a glass of punch. “We’ll be here when you get back.”

  She took a ladder down to D-deck, which was almost deserted this early in the morning. She thought terrible things about AT Tossen. He was more trouble than worth, always in some kind of mess or another. As an academy student she’d never realized how much time and effort went into personnel management. Why people couldn’t just behave and do their jobs was a mystery to her.