The Outback Stars (33 page)

Timrin dropped by with the news that Nitta had been transferred. “Lieutenant Scott's getting some wash-up to take his place. As good as pissing in the wind, if you ask me.”

Jodenny brought Faddig around but wouldn't stay. She wouldn't return Myell's calls. He brooded on that, telling himself not to be unreasonable. Gallivan had told him how she'd spent most of the day in the waiting room, waiting to see if he emerged from surgery alive, but she would have done that for anyone. She was just that kind of officer. By the time Dr. Lee released him he had resigned himself to unrequited love. He was looking for his boots when Chaplain Mow came by.

“You look much better,” she said.

“Thanks. At least my insides don't feel like they're still broken.”

“Your ribs or your heart?”

He opened the closet doors. “I don't know what you mean.”

Chaplain Mow sat in the visitor's chair. “Did you hear about Lieutenant Francesco and Chief Vostic?”

“Got caught, I hear.” Timrin had told him. “Stupid of them.”

“Do you think the fraternization rules are fair?” Chaplain Mow asked.

The boots were under a spare blanket on the bottom shelf. Bending carefully, one arm pressed against his ribs, Myell fished them out. He told himself that as soon as he got back to his cabin he was going to slide into bed, pull a sheet over his head, and sleep for another week. “It doesn't matter what I think. I was wrong about how she feels.”

“Perhaps. But that doesn't change how
you
feel.” Chaplain Mow leaned forward. “What about the trip through the Mother Spheres the two of you took?”

He was almost too flummoxed to reply. “She told you?”

“No. You did. You weren't exactly clearheaded at the time.”

Myell got one boot on with ease, but his right side lit up with fire as he reached for the other. “You shouldn't have listened. It was nonsense from the drugs.”

Chaplain Mow gazed at him steadily.

“It was,” Myell insisted. If he breathed slowly and shallowly, the pain was just about manageable. “People visit Spheres all the time. Nothing ever happens to them. And we couldn't make it happen again.”

“But you made it happen once,” Chaplain Mow insisted. “It's the greatest discovery since Jackie MacBride found the Little Alcheringa, and it brings us all closer to the Wondjina. Don't you see? You told me that the Rainbow Serpent said you would have to make a choice. Secrecy versus the truth, Terry. The path where you continue to hide your knowledge, or the road where you follow the spirit path that's been laid for you in your visions.”

Spirit path. Road to ruin, more likely. “You don't know that for sure.”

“No one knows anything for sure,” she replied. “Do you feel up for a walk? There's someone you should meet. Someone who might be able to help.”

Chaplain Mow seemed so earnest, so sincere, that something hard inside him softened just a little. Bed would have to wait. “All right. But unless you want me to go barefoot, I need your help with this damned boot.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

T9 held a new colony bound for Warramala. Chaplain Mow took Myell to the eleventh deck and a hatch emblazoned with an official-looking seal.

“Who are we going to see?” he asked.

“A very wise man,” she replied.

The doors slid open. The suite beyond had been furnished in standard Team Space decor, with none of the opulence he expected in a diplomatic suite. A large map of Warramala hung on one bulkhead, flanked by a map of Old Australia. “Sit,” Chaplain Mow said, indicating one of the grain-colored sofas, but he remained standing while she went into a side room. The Australia map was marked up with tribes' names, some of which he'd come across in his reading: Nyamal, Wakaya, Gowa. Where had his mother come from? Had she been of Aboriginal descent, or had her ancestors been those who'd invaded the country and tried to destroy the native culture and people? He was following the landscape from rain forest to desert when Chaplain Mow returned in the company of a dark-skinned man with startling familiar features.

“Sergeant Myell.” The man offered his hand. “William Ganambarr.”

“Governor of this colony,” Chaplain Mow added.

“Call me Terry, sir,” he managed to say. Ganambarr was the Wirrinun. Or perhaps the Wirrinun's twin. They had the same small eyes and high forehead, and skin that had been weathered by time and wind, and wiry gray-black hair. But this man wore a business suit and fine shoes, and no markings had been drawn on his skin. He was graceful and lithe as he sat in an armchair and motioned Myell to one of the sofas. Chaplain Mow got Myell a glass of water.

“Kath tells me you have made a great discovery,” Ganambarr said. “If it's true, people can traverse from planet to planet without the necessity of costly transport—a most amazing thing.”

“Yes, sir, it would be.” Myell was still trying to wrap his mind around the governor's resemblance to the Wirrinun. He lifted the water glass and took a sip.

Ganambarr steepled his hands together. “Did Kath tell you our colony consists entirely of Aborigines from Earth?”

“No, sir.”

“Never before has such an endeavor been attempted. After the Little Alcheringa between Earth and Fortune was discovered, the people allowed to go forth and colonize were those survivors of the Debasement who had money, influence, or the proper skin color. Left behind all these decades to deal with the aftermath of ecological disaster were the poor and the dark and the illiterate.” Ganambarr's tone was even, though his eyes had turned hard. “It's taken my people twenty years of dedicated effort to fund this colony's transport from what's left of Earth. Even then, Team Space only wanted us to go to Baiame. It took ten years of lawsuits to be allowed to emigrate to Warramala instead.”

“I understand what you're saying, sir,” Myell said. “If it was possible to move to another planet without Team Space's approval or assistance, it would change everything.”

“Everything.” Ganambarr repeated the word. “Endangered societies would have the same chance at resettlement as those groups that have been traditionally entitled. The Unigar, the Shan, the Han—all on the verge of extinction, forced to eke out an existence on the planet our collective ancestors debased and defiled. The knowledge you have is priceless beyond measure.”

Myell spread his hands. “I don't have any proof. I don't know how to make it happen again or why it happened in the first place. Please don't put the burden of saving the universe on my shoulders.”

Chaplain Mow said, “We're not trying to, Terry,” but Ganambarr nodded gravely.

“It is an awesome responsibility,” Ganambarr said, “and one which would not have been placed on you were you not able to bear it. Your fate is far different than you ever imagined it would be, Sergeant. You are walking the path of the Eternal Dreamtime.”

“I'm not Aboriginal,” he protested. “I don't even know what I believe in.”

Ganambarr smiled suddenly. “The spirits will guide you. They do that to those among my people who are of high degree and clever minds. You are uninitiated, but your rite of passage is just beginning.”

The mystical talk bothered him more than he wanted them to know. Myell started to stand. “I have to get back to my quarters.”

“Wait,” Ganambarr said, and touched Myell's knee.

The cabin lurched around him. Myell groped for something to balance against as the entire room vanished into a vast plain. White sunlight blistered the sky. On the horizon, dark thunderheads rolled up against each other in preparation for a terrible storm. He could see a large monolith of rock in the distance—
Uluru,
a voice whispered inside his head—and when he gazed down at himself, he saw that he was dark-skinned and dusty, painted with white markings, clad only in a loincloth with a long stick in his hand.

Something hissed on the ground nearby. The Rainbow Serpent coiled toward him, its mouth opening wide, wider than Myell himself, wider than the world—

Ganambarr's cabin reappeared. Myell's knees gave way and he landed on the sofa with a solid thump.

“Terry? Are you all right?” Chaplain Mow asked.

“Uluru,” he gasped.

“One of the greatest of all spirit places.” Ganambarr leaned forward. “Did you see it?”

“No,” Myell lied. Chaplain Mow pressed the glass of water into his hands and he gulped it down. The unnerving vision of himself as some kind of ancient Aboriginal made his voice shake. “I didn't see anything.”

Ganambarr scrutinized him carefully, then rose and disappeared into the next room. When he returned, he had a small cloth bag in his hand. “This is a dilly bag. In it, you keep your most sacred objects. Will you take it and carry it?”

“I don't have any sacred objects,” Myell said.

Ganambarr's tone was polite. “Perhaps you will acquire some.”

He took the bag and put down the water glass. “I really have to go. My lieutenant will be looking for me.”

Ganambarr walked him and Chaplain Mow to the door. “Think of us, Sergeant. Come back to us if you find yourself in need.”

Myell nodded, but didn't trust himself to speak aloud.

“Take this.” Ganambarr pressed something small and hard into his palm. “Everyone has a totem ancestor. Until you determine your own, perhaps you will make do with this one.”

Myell didn't look in his hand until he and Chaplain Mow were in the lift.

In it was a stone carved in the shape of a gecko.

*   *   *

Myell returned to work the next day with two vows in mind. One, he would refuse to think about the Rainbow Serpent or Wirrinun when he was on duty. He had a job to do, even if it was just sitting in an office doing paperwork, and spiritual mumbo-jumbo, no matter how compelling, was just going to distract him. Two, his relationship with Jodenny would be based entirely on professional respect. He would not think about what it would be like to hold her in his arms, or run his fingers through her hair and down her back, or feel her legs entwined with his. At quarters, when she welcomed him back and everyone gave him an embarrassing round of applause, he offered her only a brief nod. At the office he said, “Lieutenant. Tell me where to start.”

“RT Caldicot will show you,” Jodenny replied.

Myell went to Mrs. Mullaly's former desk. Faddig helped him adjust his chair to a more comfortable height. Dicensu got him coffee and offered to get him snacks. VanAmsal dropped by to see if he needed anything.

“I'm fine,” he protested. “Everyone can stop fussing.”

Because of the ongoing investigation, Jodenny had sent Amador to run T6 and reassigned Hosaka to LD-G under VanAmsal's supervision. Later that morning Myell asked Faddig, “Did Amador clear out my workbench?”

“I don't know,” Faddig said.

Jodenny, who happened to be nearby, asked, “Is there stuff you want to keep?”

“Maybe. I'll go over at lunch and see.”

On the tram to T6 he ran into Minnich, who was on his way to help Amador and Ishikawa finalize the June inventory.

“You nervous about going back there?” Minnich asked.

“No,” he said, but the moment he stepped off the tram he broke into a sweat that had nothing to do with the ship's climate.
Don't be silly,
he told himself. T6 held nothing to be afraid of. He had no memories of the accident. He knew that he had flatlined and was alive only because Ishikawa had pulled him out. Yet the whole experience seemed to belong to someone else, and the only thing they had in common was prescription painkillers and a medical chit that kept him off watch until further notice.

Minnich went to the command module. Myell headed for the base of the hold. Above him the DNGOs glided and soared as they performed their duties. He'd asked Hosaka about Circe's fate, and had been told she was in Security's custody until the investigation was complete. He felt bad for her, sitting on a bench somewhere, powered down and inert.

He tried to remember what he had been working on the morning of the accident, but the hours between breakfast and waking up in Sick Berth were a long stretch of white nothingness, like a wheat field during Baiame's winter. He had told himself that remembering those hours wasn't important, but they belonged to him, were part of his life, and he wanted them up in his head along with all his other memories, good and bad.

“Everything okay, Sarge?” Ishikawa asked, from a respectable distance away.

“Hmm?” Myell rubbed his forehead. “Oh. Yes, it's okay.”

She drew nearer. “You still don't remember it, huh?”

“I know I was trying to get Circe out of the slots. Everything else is a blank.”

“You had a dingo in pieces down here. Andromeda. I couldn't find anything wrong with her, so I put her back together and sent her into service.”

“I really don't remember,” he said.

Ishikawa studied him for a moment longer, then abruptly smiled. “Okay. Want anything from the vends? I'm starving.”

“No, thanks.”

Myell sorted through the workbench drawers, hoping to find something that would jog his memory or at least some souvenir of all his months spent in T6. In the end he had only a small log he'd kept about DNGO quirks and the gram of his mother on the beach in Australia. She was probably the same age as he was now, with a happy smile on her face and laugh lines around her eyes.

“They had my favorite halvah,” Ishikawa said as she returned. “Chocolate chip. Want some?”

Myell put the gram in his pocket. “No. I'm heading back to Mainship.”

“I'll walk with you. I need some requisition codes from Caldicot.”

Back at his new desk, he set the gram out in plain sight and checked his queue. Jodenny had gone off to a department head meeting. Faddig was trying to figure out how to format a COSAL.