The Stars Down Under (28 page)

“That's what they call it. The people who fished me out of the ocean.”

“The ones who tattooed you?”

The ridges itched when Myell touched them. “I don't know who did that.”

The men of the tribe rose to dance. Shark Tooth pulled Nam and Myell to their feet. Nam said, “No, really, I'm good,” and Myell also tried to decline, but they were swept into the foot-stomping, thigh-slapping crowd. The women cheered and clapped. Nam's evident mortification, a Team Space commander dancing with the mostly naked natives, cheered Myell up. He would have taken more delight, but at that very moment his right ankle turned beneath him and he started to crash to the ground.

The Roon caught him. Its grip was careful but strong. Its teeth were so close that Myell could see slivers of pig caught between incisors and smell its meat-scented breath. The alien held him upright while the dancers spun around them and Nam pushed his way over.

“Put him down,” Nam ordered.

Gayle, standing at the alien's elbow, said, “He's just examining him. He won't hurt him.”

The Roon's flat gray eyes narrowed, but it gave no indication of understanding them. Myell shuddered as it leaned even closer. The alien's nose holes widened as it sniffed Myell, actually sniffed him, as if he were an appetizer or maybe even the main course.

Nam didn't have a mazer, didn't even have a knife, but he grabbed the nearest scaly arm as if to physically wrestle the Roon. The grip on Myell released, and he fell to his ass on the hard ground.

“Told you!” Gayle said.

The Roon made several clicking noises and retreated a few steps.

Nam kept a wary eye on Myell and said, “You okay?”

He rubbed his ankle. “Only wounded my pride.”

The Roon walked off. Gayle followed. The drums, already loud, grew in volume as women dancers joined the men. Children lit torches to illuminate the encroaching dusk, and Myell let Nam help him up.

“Let's take that walk,” Nam said.

*   *   *

Afterward, as they sat on the edge of the village swatting bugs, Nam said, “You have the strangest adventures.”

Myell squinted at the distant firelight. The singing and dancing hadn't abated, even if the guest of honor had disappeared. He didn't feel adventurous. He was tired, hot, and still covered with sea salt. The only part of the story he'd omitted was Free-not-chained and her band of crocodile women. He could push Nam's credulity only so far.

Nam slapped at an insect on his neck. “That Sphere, on the women's island—it'll take us to this Nogomain? Garanwa. The one who wants to stop the Roon. The one who needs your help, maybe take his place?”

“Allegedly.”

“You should have gone through,” Nam said. “Taken the chance while you could.”

The second-guessing stung in a way that Myell hadn't expected. Before he could object, however, Nam added, “We can't go there now—the risk's too great that the Bunyip, Roon, whatever you call it, will follow. We can't ever let it gain control of the network and all the Spheres.”

“You've got a plan?” Myell asked.

“Keep you away from it,” Nam said. “It's obviously interested in where you've been. We'll have to leave on our own, get back across the plain, without it noticing.”

“Sounds impossible.”

“I'm working on it,” Nam said.

They went back to the hut that Nam and Gayle had been sleeping in. Shark Tooth came around, urging them back to the party, but finally accepted Myell's bleary-eyed refusal. A young girl brought a basin of fresh water and Myell happily rinsed himself and the clothes he was stuck wearing. Nam sat outside, keeping an eye out for Gayle or the Roon.

Myell had no idea what time of night it was, but as he lay down on one of the pallets he told himself he'd just close his eyes for a short while. He wished Jodenny were there to lie with him. She would curl over him, her legs twined with his, her breath warm on his cheek. Sometime later he woke, muddy-headed and exhausted, to the sound of men arguing outside the door. More precisely, Nam was haranguing Shark Tooth.

“This high, long hair, tiny waist, talks a lot? How far could she go?”

Shark Tooth's reply was all in his native tongue, and explained nothing.

Myell hauled himself to the doorway. “What's wrong?”

“Gayle's missing,” Nam said. “I don't see the Roon anywhere, either.”

The party had ended, with only embers glowing in what had been the central bonfire. A few last stragglers were heading off toward their huts. Shark Tooth was coated with sweat and dust and looked ready to sleep off the feasting, but Nam was insistent.

“Where does it sleep?” he demanded, making shapes in the air that were meant to resemble the Roon. “Where does it go when it's not here?”

Myell rubbed his gritty eyes. He too tried sign language, simple words, pantomimes, until Shark Tooth abruptly nodded and called out across the village. Two of his men appeared, wobbly on their feet, wine drying on their chests.

Shark Tooth gave them orders. The men stumbled off, and Nam said, “Maybe now we'll get somewhere.”

They got nowhere. Neither Gayle nor the Roon was anywhere to be found. Shark Tooth grabbed some torches, handed them off to Nam and Myell, and led them into the jungle on a narrow footpath. The going was tricky, the insects merciless, and they had to wrest their way through brush and moss and mud. Their flashlights made the going only a little easier. Snakes slithered out of their way and other animals moved in the undergrowth.

“Keep an eye out for crocodiles,” Nam said as they crossed a small stream.

After twenty minutes of hiking, they came to a clearing where a large, low shelter of vines and twigs had been erected and roofed with palm fronds. The work of someone with a lot of time on his hands, Myell thought. Someone who had painted ocher symbols on a door fashioned from branches. The symbols looked like a greeting of some kind, or maybe a warning.

Shark Tooth called out, but the Roon didn't appear. A knife in hand, Nam pulled open the unlocked door. From inside came the stink of rotting meat and something sweet, like candy.

“Good lord,” Myell said.

His torch illuminated dozens of dead birds strung from the shed ceiling. Exotic birds, red and yellow and blue, some of them with their feathers half plucked, some partially dissected, others fully intact. One or two stirred on their vines, as if still alive. Other animals were pinned to the walls or crammed into glass cases—wallabies, bats, frogs, even a koala. They suffered from rotting fur, empty eye sockets, splayed legs, and pinned wings. Death and decay, nothing but it, and it seemed like the specimens had been collected out of cruelty, not curiosity.

Shark Tooth's men muttered unhappily among themselves.

Nam said, “Goddammit.”

Myell tried hard to breathe through his mouth and not his nose. “It slept here? Lived here?”

A long, low pallet lay against one wall, along with some baskets from the People's village and a pile of gnawed-over bones. The bones were too long to be from birds, too thick to be from fragile mammals. In fact, one looked like a human femur—

Myell lurched outside to the clearing.

Shark Tooth and his men came out making warding gestures and spitting into the dirt. Nam emerged last and asked, “If it's not here, where else would it take her?”

Myell shook his head. “Not to the women's island. Gayle didn't know about that.”

“The Spheres,” Nam said. “Maybe it thinks she can help it get home.”

Myell tugged on Shark Tooth's arm, performed more pantomimes, and drew pictures on the ground. Shark Tooth finally seemed to understand, but took them back to the village first for water skins, easy-to-carry food, and farewells.

Chief Elder, roused from sleep, made a long speech and kissed Myell on the head.

“Yes, yes,” Nam said impatiently. “Enough of the farewells.”

The moon was arcing down in the western sky. Myell guessed it was four or five hours until dawn. He hadn't had much sleep lately, but Nam had probably had even less. Shark Tooth and two of his men led them south along the cliff in reverse of the journey they had made a few days earlier, and far below, waves crashed and drained against rocks. Nam kept himself between Myell and the ocean, insulating him from the view.

“It's not so bad anymore,” Myell assured him, though it was a relief when they turned into the jungle.

The going was slow. The landscape pulsed with nocturnal animals and insects, and occasional screeches, flapping noises, and scuffling left Myell unnerved. He couldn't help but remember the dead birds swinging in the Roon's hut, with their tiny claws open and grasping. He and Nam should have torched the place, even if it risked a larger conflagration.

Myell stopped abruptly, his hands on his knees.

“What's wrong?” Nam asked.

He shook his head.

“Hold up,” Nam said to Shark Tooth. The Aboriginals stopped hacking through the brush.

Myell blew out as large a breath as possible and resisted drawing more air in. Yambli believed he could stop the clawed, cruel Roon. Believed it was his destiny. As if one man could possibly do anything against the tide of an alien species that plucked eyes from koalas and offered the dead flesh of its own as a gift.

Nam said, low and calm, “You're worrying me, Chief.”

“It's nothing,” Myell said, an enormous lie.

They resumed walking as soon as Myell could make his legs go forward. Sips of water and a steadfast refusal to think further than the next step kept him going until dawn. By then they had reached the floodplain, which stretched gray-red under the lightening sky. The rains had brought more greenery to it, but crossing it would be as difficult as the last time.

Shark Tooth waved his hands around and gestured toward the trees, and Nam said, “I think we're stopping for a while.”

Myell said, “We can't afford to. The Roon already has a head start.”

“If it's gone, it's gone,” Nam said. “We can rest for a bit.”

Myell needed no further encouragement. He swallowed down some nuts and dried fruit that Shark Tooth offered, and fell asleep in the shadow of some trees. In his dreams a flock of birds cried out soundlessly, their throats cut open. The frantic fluttering of their wings brought him awake with a jerk, and he squinted at the sun overhead.

“We're moving again,” Nam said.

The hike was miserable, though he was glad that he'd put aside his boots and socks before the cliff dive and Nam had saved them for him. The skirt chafed at his knees until he rolled it higher. Shark Tooth and his men cheerfully slung rocks at lizards and talked among themselves, while Nam plodded steadily forward and Myell tried to keep pace. He drank from his water bottle in moderation, trying to keep from dehydration. Worse was the sunburn spreading on his face and arms and legs.

“Are we going to march right up to the Spheres?” Myell asked. “It might not give her back without a fight.”

“I'm still trying to figure out why it took her in the first place,” Nam said.

Dark gray clouds rose up in the west, thunder and lightning cracking inside them. Myell slapped at bugs on his arms and sipped water and wasn't surprised when the first cool drops of rain hit his face. They pushed on across the ancient landscape as the water bled down into the dried-out marshlands and sent geese fluttering across the horizon.

Shark Tooth stopped, gesturing, pointing across the horizon, and Myell saw the Spheres. He was absurdly grateful, despite the danger ahead.

Nam said, “Tell them to turn back. I don't want to get anyone killed.”

Myell tried the best he could, but either his pantomime skills had faded during the hot day or Shark Tooth was being deliberately obtuse.

“Iiwariniang,” Shark Tooth said, or something like that. “Iwaringdo.”

Nam also tried to get them to go back, to no avail.

Myell wiped rain from his face. The drops were coming down faster, harder, and he didn't like the increasing proximity of the lightning.

“I'll go in,” Nam said. “Leave you here with them. See if I can talk to it, see if Gayle's still alive.”

“Then it has two hostages,” Myell said.

“Better idea?”

“I go in, trade myself for Gayle, send her out. It's not interested in you, but it likes me.”

Nam squinted at him. “Not going to happen.”

“You can't save both of us, sir.”

“I can damn well try. Don't make me give you an order, Chief.”

Myell held his gaze. “Don't make me disobey one, Commander.”

Shark Tooth murmured something, slapped both their arms, and started jogging toward the Mother Sphere. Nam said, “No, wait!” and Myell tried to stop him, but the Aboriginals splashed gleefully through puddles, called and shouted out and made a ruckus, and any chance they might have had of arriving quietly was ruined.

Not that it mattered much. Gayle came to the archway, waving her hand eagerly. “There you are! Come in out of the rain.”

The Roon appeared behind her, large and expressionless, but not bearing any kind of weapon. The Aboriginals hovered but didn't move forward. Nam held Myell back several meters from the archway. Water poured down as the sky darkened even more, but they couldn't get any more wet.

“What the hell are you doing?” Nam demanded of Gayle.

“It wanted to come out here,” Gayle said. “We're beginning to reach real understanding through pictographs. I drew the Spheres, it drew the token. It wants to communicate.”

“It wants more than that,” Myell said.

The Roon watched them, silent.

Gayle grimaced. “It's an anthropologist, don't you see? It's not a soldier or a general or anything other than a scientist stranded here when the system shut down.”

“You can't be that blind,” Nam said.

“You can't be that obtuse,” she retorted. “It's alone, without equipment, trapped here for months. The worst that can happen is that we take it to the next station. That's such a crime? But if we can communicate, if we can establish trust—”