The Stars Down Under (30 page)

Gayle touched one of the rock piles, and it began to crumble under her fingers.

“Silica.” She peered under her fingernails “Algae, maybe lichen.”

On the most distant wall hung an enormous mural that measured ten meters high and twice as long. Myell approached it warily. The fabric was organic and stitched together in large patches. Tufts of fur poked out from under the edges. Skin cloaks, sewn together. Large-scale paintings like petroglyphs covered the canvas, but instead of cave animals he saw swirls and whirls, lines, zigzags, arcs.

The Roon began to chitter in excitement. Myell tore his attention from the skin cloak to watch a small man approach from one of the archways. No, not a man. A boy, or what had once been a boy a very long time ago. The not-boy had taut brown skin and a swollen, bald head. He looked as fragile as the beehives, and older than anyone Myell had ever met.

The not-boy wore no clothes, only a white crocodile painted on his torso. His genitalia were shrunken and misshapen. The Roon hissed at him and raised their clawed hands. Nam's hand went to the empty place on his belt where his mazer usually hung.

“You brought the interlopers,” the not-boy said, his wide, milky white eyes fixed only on Myell.

Myell said, “I'm sorry. It happened that way.”

Gayle stepped forward and asked, “Who are you?”

The not-boy stared only at Myell.

“Garanwa,” Myell said, uncertain at first, but growing more confident. “Of the Nogomain. Last of the Nogomain. Is that it?”

Garanwa lifted his trembling right hand toward the skin cloak. The designs brightened and hummed, as if gaining power.

“Chief?” Nam asked, sounding nervous.

“We're trying to get back to our people,” Myell said. “They're stuck back on a planet a few stations away from where we started. There are other people, too. A team that went before us. We came to rescue them. Then we can go back home and leave the network alone. That's all we want.”

Glyphs on the skin cloak began to glow white hot. A silver-green ouroboros shaped like a crocodile dissolved into existence nearby, encircling Collins, Saadi, Lavasseur, and Breme. They were all still dressed in winter gear, with snow on Saadi's shoulders and frost on Breme's goggles.

“Commander!” Collins said.

“What the hell—” Saadi started.

The crocodile ring flashed away, and returned several meters away with a different crew inside—six men and women whom Myell didn't recognize, but who wore Team Space gear and were tanned and dirty, as if they'd spent many weeks in the field.

The second team saw the Roon first. “Lizards!” one of them yelled. Instantly two of them pulled mazers from their holsters. Two others raised hand-made spears. Saadi, Lavasseur, and Breme were only a split second slower.

“Stand down!” Nam ordered.

Garanwa stalked away, leaving them to their confrontation.

*   *   *

The gecko and crocodile ring left Jodenny in the middle of a dark chamber. She couldn't see the walls or the ceiling, but the floor at her feet was sky blue and vast, as if she were standing on top of a world.

“Hello?” she asked. She turned in a circle. “Is anyone here?”

A Great Egret twice her size walked out of the darkness and dived into the floor. Its wings spread with majestic power as it swooped and sailed beneath Jodenny's feet. It had graceful curves and a long neck, with white feathers and black feet. Clouds and sun rolled by under Jodenny, and she had to sit down or fall over from dizziness.

“You're not real,” Jodenny said.

The glass floor dissolved and plunged her into the clouds. She shrieked. Flailed for any kind of handhold. Plummeted, wildly, onto the back of the egret. It had become exceptionally large, and she very small. She clutched its white feathers and tightened her legs around it and closed her eyes against the dizzying landscape.

“Put me back!” Jodenny ordered.

“Where have you gone?” the Great Egret asked, its voice clear and high. “Are you lost?”

The bird flew and flew. Jodenny forced one eye open and immediately regretted it. Far below her was a black ocean churning and crashing with great white waves. Above her, the blue chamber was a field of stars and planets, a great dizzying progression of the cosmos.

“You're a dream,” she said through chattering teeth. Icy air buffeted her. “You're not real.”

“Then why are you talking to me?” It sounded amused.

“I'm talking to myself!”

“Then say something interesting.”

Hallucination or dream, the joy of flight slowly seeped into Jodenny. Skimming the ground in flits was fun enough, soaring into orbit in a birdie even more so, but never before had she so keenly felt the wind lifting and dropping her, the sun hot on her face, the clouds like wisps of cotton candy that twirled around her fingers and trailed up her arms to her shoulders.

“What do you want from me?” Jodenny asked, her voice muffled in the soft white feathers of the bird's neck.

The Great Egret swooped through the sky, clouds parting around them, other birds appearing and disappearing, their cries distant and comforting. Rivers of wind carried them along. The ocean below crashed up against a red landscape of desert and rock where shadows swirled and whirled, and connected to one another in a pattern that looked older than time, older than the wind itself.

“Not yours to tread or rule,” the Great Egret said. The bird dipped lower, its voice deepening. “Nor theirs.”

The wind slowed. The sky began to smell of smoke. Jodenny's eyes focused on an army of figures moving over the surface of the red land: helmeted, towering, reptilian creatures with claws. Like the kind she had seen on the
Yangtze
. They kicked at the landscape, smashing and overturning every stone.

“Roon,” said the bird. “The Interlopers.”

“Why are you showing me?” Jodenny asked.

“Only the Lightning Man can stop them,” the Great Egret said. “You must let him do his job.”

Jodenny buried her face in the bird's feathers. “No.”

“It is his destiny—”

The Great Egret cried out sharply. Bright red blood blossomed under its feathers. Jodenny's heart trip-hammered and she clutched the bird's neck frantically as they dropped limply out of the sky. She was falling, worse than falling, plummeting, both of them, and though Jodenny told herself
just a dream,
just a goddamn dream,
she couldn't help but scream as the wind sucked at her clothes and hair, and she was still screaming when she crashed.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE

“Everyone put down your weapons!” Nam ordered.

“Step away from them,” Commander Gold said to Gayle. He was a slim man, with bright green eyes and months of beard on his face. His uniform was torn, his hands dirty. His mazer was aimed directly at the larger Roon's head. “Get away
now
.”

“No,” Gayle said. “They're unarmed. They're not going to hurt us.”

Myell waited, breathless, ready to duck if mazer shots started flying.

“Chief Saadi, Sergeant Breme, Sergeant Lavasseur,” Nam said, his voice steady. “I'm giving you a direct order. Drop your weapons.”

Nam's team lowered their mazers. Gold's team waited for word from their commander.

“Byron?” Gold asked, flicking a gaze toward Nam.

“Drop them,” Nam said. “You can always kill them later.”

Gayle asked, “Where's Robert? Why isn't he with you?”

Myell slipped out of the room, intent on following Garanwa. The little not-boy had a lot of explaining to do. The adjacent chamber, dark and woodsy, was full of archways and vines and greenery, but Garanwa wasn't there.

Myell stared down at the dirt and grass, trying to see with his eyes. That failed, so he tried to feel with his feet instead. After a bit of shuffling he found the gecko songline, and followed it into a long low room of black divans and cushions. The viewport here was the floor itself, which was like a thick pane of glass hovering over stars and two blue-gray moons.

Should keep looking,
he told himself, but languor made him stretch out on the nearest divan. He didn't remember closing his eyes but when he opened them Garanwa was there, his misshapen face like a moon in the dimness, his swollen fingers on the side of Myell's head.

“The helm needs to be steered,” Garanwa said.

Myell murmured a protest, or thought he did, but was soon asleep again.

When he next woke, Lavasseur and Saadi were somewhere nearby, arguing.

“That's the thing about alien spaceships,” Lavasseur was saying. “What if this is really the engine room? You could be pissing on a nuclear power rod or something.”

The room they were arguing in had water flowing into round bowls set at waist level. If there were other water sources or drains, they were well hidden. Iridescent tiles, blue shading to pinks and yellows and purples, covered the walls. The air was moist and smelled like newly fallen rain.

From the doorway, Myell said, “Looks like a bathroom to me, but if you're wrong, it'll be interstellar war.”

The other two squinted at him.

“Kidding.” Myell gazed for a moment at the walls, at the wavy designs barely visible beneath the tiles, and waved his hand at an appropriate spot. “Use these controls.”

Benches slid soundlessly out of the walls, each one equipped with more bowls and drains. Water jets overhead trickled to life, then grew stronger.

“How'd you do that?” Saadi asked.

Myell pointed, but they insisted that they couldn't see any designs.

“Well, wave your hand at this spot here when you're done,” he said.

“Nice skirt, Chief,” Lavasseur said.

He gave them an obscene gesture and went back to bed.

The next time he woke, Saadi and Lavasseur were asleep on their own long cushions. Three other people from Gold's team were sacked out as well. Myell used the bathroom and then shamelessly raided the backpacks that had come with Nam's team. Properly dressed in Saadi's spare pants and Lavasseur's green T-shirt, he went in search of breakfast or Garanwa, whichever presented itself first. He found Breme and another sergeant sitting on the floor outside the sleeping room, pens and pieces of notebook paper in hand.

“I don't think those rooms are close together,” Breme was saying. She lifted her head. “Good to see you, Chief.”

Myell yawned. “Good to see you, too. What are you doing?”

“Trying to make a map of this place,” said Sergeant Highcastle. She tucked wisps of blond hair behind her ears. Her uniform was threadbare at the knees. “It's a big old maze. The rooms don't line up.”

“You follow the lines in the floor,” Myell said.

“What lines, Chief?” Breme asked.

“Take your shoes off,” he said.

The women did as told, but no matter how precisely he showed them where to stand, they insisted that they couldn't feel any kind of power under the dirt. When Myell started to follow the gecko line out of the chamber, Breme put a hand on his arm.

“Commander Nam said we should stay with you, make sure you don't get into any trouble,” Breme said.

He was almost, but not quite, affronted. “Where's everyone else?”

“Exploring,” Breme reported. “Or sleeping, or guarding the lizards. We're on shifts.”

“Anyone find any food?” Myell asked hopefully.

Highcastle sighed. “I'd kill for some chocolate.”

Myell set off following the gecko songline with his two escorts in tow. Three chambers away, in a green room with a stream running through it, they found a stone table heaped high with breads, nuts, fruits, and some tuberous vegetables that reminded Myell of the food in the People's village. The aromas went straight up his nose and down to his stomach.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Highcastle reached across the table and started grabbing food. “Three months of meal rations and local fruits and whatever we could kill, and I'm just about starved.”

Breme was watching Myell carefully. “You going to eat, Chief?”

He pushed aside some hunger pangs. “I'm going to look for Garanwa. Little guy, about this high? I'll be back soon.”

Reluctantly they rose to follow him again.

“At ease,” he said. “Stay here, wait for the others.”

Breme said, “But Commander Nam ordered us to stick with you.”

“And I'm ordering you to stay here,” Myell said. “I need to do something alone.”

“Belay that,” Nam said, from the archway of the room. With him was Commander Gold. Nam said, “You're not going anywhere. Sit and eat.”

“But—”

“Sit,” Nam said, and Myell sat.

*   *   *

From the other side of the table, Commander Gold said, “Chief Myell, thank you for all you've done in rescuing us.”

“It wasn't me.” Myell slid a glance at Nam, who was busy spreading red jam on a piece of bread. “It was everyone.”

“That's not what I heard,” Gold said.

More of Gold's team joined them. Lieutenant Vao had short red hair and a nasty-looking sunburn. Ensign Holt, their medic, had grown a long, wild beard.

“Four months in the field,” Holt said, stuffing himself with grapes and chunks of watermelon. “Damn nice thing to have indoor plumbing again.”

Lieutenant Vao asked, “Is this really a space station? In orbit somewhere?”

All eyes turned to Myell.

“I don't know,” he said. Then, to divert attention, he asked Gold, “Everyone from your team is safe?”

Gold's goodwill faded. “We lost two of our people to the lizards.”

“We know,” Nam said. “We found the bodies, remember?”

“That's right.” Gold ran his thumb along the tough skin of a lemon. A muscle pulled in his cheek. “You told me.”