The Stars Down Under (39 page)

The afternoon sun was high behind the western haze. Myell rubbed sleep from his eyes. He hadn't meant to nap the day away, but he'd stretched out and fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep. Nam was working diligently on the truck engine, trying to work a miracle with wire and tape and the tools he'd rustled up from the back.

“Try starting it,” Nam suggested.

Myell climbed up into the cab. The driver's seat was more uncomfortable than Nam had let on. Myell eyed the unfamiliar controls. Though he'd watched Nam drive hundreds of kilometers, he hadn't paid much attention to how he'd done it.

“Turn the key and step on the pedal on the right!” Nam said. “Don't shift it out of Park or you'll run me over.”

Myell did exactly as he was told. The engine made a rough gasping noise, belched, then settled into an irregular rhythm.

Nam slammed down the hood, threw their supplies into the back, and nudged Myell into the passenger seat. “There you go. Right as rain.”

Burringurrah grew closer, its enormousness becoming more clear with every passing minute. The rock wasn't as symmetrical as Uluru, not as red tinged, but it was larger, maybe older. If Myell closed his eyes he could picture native Aboriginals worshiping in its shadows. Nam's books had mentioned caves and petroglyphs, and gorges full of ducks and swans, and lush flowers that grew during the wet season. Gum trees ringed the monocline's base, many dead from drought.

“This whole place used to be the floor of an ocean,” Nam said. “Bet you didn't know that.”

Myell admitted that he hadn't.

“I'll say one thing for you, Chief. Outer space, jungles, cliffs, islands, oceans, space stations, and ancient seabeds. You certainly get around.”

They finally got as close as they could. Nam turned off the engine. The truck shuddered and went still in the dusk.

“You shouldn't have done that,” Myell said. “You could have gone back.”

“Fuel's out. Besides, I always figured this was a one-way trip.”

Myell was glad for the company, though he told himself he shouldn't be.

“Up it?” Nam asked. “Around it?”

“Up,” Myell said.

Nam adjusted the mazer and knife he kept on his belt. He reached for their flashlights. “I was afraid you'd say that.”

Snakes slithered in the bushes as Myell led Nam on a steep switchback trail that was no wider than their feet. Darkness made the going all the more dangerous. The terrain dropped away quickly, ghostly gray under a dirty moon.

“How far do you think it is to the top?” Nam asked.

Myell tilted his head back. “Can't tell.”

He soon fell into a plodding rhythm that kept him going upward. He didn't think he could have done the climb in the heat of the day, but night seemed to have cooled a bit. Nam, behind him, was having a little more trouble keeping up, but he waved off Myell's backward glances.

“Keep going,” Nam said, breathing heavily. “Maybe at the top you'll finally let me know what this has been all about.”

“You think I know?” Myell retorted, and that earned him a grunt.

One of their flashlights died after an hour, and the other was giving off only a weak yellow light. Myell feared they'd be left with no light at all. But the flashlight stayed on and the temperature kept dropping, and the slope grew steeper. He was sweating but had goosebumps. Couldn't wait until they reached the summit, but feared what they would find there.

Dead brush entangled his feet.

Jodenny,
he thought, in grief, in memory.

“What is that?” Nam asked, his head turned to the west.

Myell tried to focus on a brightly moving light. “A birdie?”

Nam shifted on the trail. “No. I think—”

Rocks slid out from under his feet, and Nam fell.

*   *   *

Jodenny didn't know where Sweeney had dug up his whirlybird pilot, but she wished he'd done a little more searching. Captain Crook was clearly a man who liked flying. Liked it too much, maybe. He skimmed the ancient vehicle close to the ground, swooping and lifting and dropping for the fun of it. Music blasted through the commset, a screeching cacophony of some sort that she'd never heard before and hoped never to hear again. In the hot air of the outback night all she could do was hold on tight to her safety straps and peer at the dark landscape below.

“Do you have any spotlights?” she asked, shouting over the music.

“You're lucky we've got fuel!” Captain Crook responded cheerily.

Sweeney twisted around in his seat. “What the hell made them set out on foot?”

Jodenny said, “They didn't have any other way.”

“Man could get his brains fried out here,” Crook offered. “Straight line to hell. Your husband an Aboriginal, is he?”

“Not so much.”

“What?” Crook asked.

“Turn the music down!” Jodenny ordered, and Sweeney reached for the dial.

Crook slapped his hand. “Nay on that, young man. I'll do all the touching around here.”

But he did adjust the volume to a more manageable level. Jodenny asked, “How far is it to Burringurrah?”

“If we don't fall out of the sky first? Not so long,” Crook said. “She's a good ship, you know. Found her myself in a junkyard and lovingly restored every last nut and screw and piston. Fast. No fancy computers for this darling, just a compass and my finger to tell which way the wind's blowing.”

The whirlybird clattered eastward under cloudy skies. The engine noise and vibrations made Jodenny's teeth ache. She asked Sweeney, “Who else was in your lifeboat?”

“Some Engineering types, a few passengers. We splashed down off the coast and had to inflate the rafts. Got everyone off safely enough. Would have preferred to stay on the
Kamchatka.
The third lifeboat landed in Europe, I hear. I don't know what became of the fourth.”

The ground rushing by below stayed dark no matter how hard Jodenny stared at it. She tried not to think of Myell and Nam down there, collapsed on the ground from heat or dehydration. Pawed over by dingoes or other wild animals. Nam was of Aboriginal descent but that didn't mean he had any outback skills. All she hoped was that he was using his military knowledge to keep Myell alive. That they weren't already dead.

They were hours out of Carnarvon when Crook said, “Good holy grief! Look at that.”

Jodenny leaned forward between the pilot and copilot seats. Dead ahead, the plain of Burringurrah was an enormous silhouette. Smack-dab in the middle, hundreds of bright construction lights were pointed down into some kind of pit. She couldn't see what was in it. Several Roon scout ships were parked on the plateau, running lights shining like Christmas bulbs. Tiny Roon soldiers moved around the ships and pit, a deadly army.

“I didn't sign up for this, mate,” Crook told Sweeney.

The whirlybird began to bank. Jodenny clutched Sweeney's arm and shouted, “You can't go back!”

Crook yelled, “I'm not putting myself in the devil's hands! I've got kids at home.”

A blue-green light swamped the whirlybird. Jodenny fell back in surprise. The beam didn't hurt, but it silenced the engines and stilled the ship's vibrations. Crook swore and slapped his controls and said, “Fucking hell,” but he obviously had no control as the plateau swung into view and grew larger in front of them.

“What's going on?” Sweeney asked.

“Tractor beam,” Crook said. “They're pulling us in. Goddammit.”

Jodenny peered out the window. A sense of inevitability, of predestination, calmed her thudding heart. “Prepare to meet the devil,” she said, and sat back for the ride.

*   *   *

Nam cried out and fell a meter or so before being snagged on more rocks. Myell scrambled after him, desperate to keep him from plunging into the ravine below. He grabbed Nam by the arms and hauled him back up to the trail. Nam rolled in pain, and Myell asked, “Your leg?”

“Goddamn Achilles tendon,” Nam gasped, in agony. “Snapped it before.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Myell said.

Nam was carrying the paltry medical kit that had been in the truck. Myell fumbled inside it, trying to find a patch full of painkiller, but the flashlight was unsteady in his free hand and Nam's distress was too loud, too close.

Finally he closed on the patch and slapped it onto the bare skin under Nam's trouser leg. It took a long moment before Nam's shudders stopped, though his eyes were still wide with shock.

“Should I splint it?” Myell asked. All his first aid lessons had fled. “Wrap it or something?”

“Don't bother,” Nam said. “I'm not going anywhere.”

Myell sat back on his heels.

Nam squeezed his eyes shut. “It's a dream come true. You've been trying to get me to turn back since we left Carnarvon.”

“No,” Myell said. “You're coming with me.”

“Don't be an idiot! I'm not going anywhere.”

Nam could indeed stay there, stranded on the side of the most ancient rock in the world, left to bake in the next day's heat. Slow death would follow, by thirst or hunger or wild animals. Or he could take another way out, and use the mazer he'd been carrying around since their rescue from the lifeboat.

“You have to,” Myell said. “I don't know why. I don't know why
you.
But now that we're here, we've both got to get to the top, or it'll be all in vain.”

Nam's expression narrowed. “You're lying.”

Myell shook his head. “You've your own part to play in this, Commander. I can't change that.”

Nam let his head roll back. “You and me, this trail, and I can't walk on my right leg. If that's your plan, it's shit.”

“I know,” Myell said.

And so they started upward together, up the ancient rock, Nam's right arm slung around Myell's neck. The going got rougher, slower, but Myell believed what he had said. Nam was just as important in this as he was. The end of a very long trip was in sight, and they were going to cross the finish line together.

Dead, perhaps, but no one would be left behind.

“Fucking crazy,” Nam said, his voice a rasp.

Their water was gone, the canteens borrowed from the farmer empty.

“Stupid chief who doesn't know how to say no,” Nam said later, as they struggled up the trail.

He didn't think they had any food, either.

“Stupid silly idiotic—” Nam said, the words like pebbles, drop drop drop, but Myell wasn't listening anymore, because they'd reached the top.

He stopped, gasping for air, sweating hard, Nam's weight almost impossible to carry anymore. The ground had leveled onto a rough plateau that stretched on for several kilometers. Myell wiped sweat out of his eyes. He played the flashlight over the ghostly landscape.

“There's nothing here but dirt,” Nam rasped.

Myell rubbed his face. The tattoos abraded his palms. Maybe this whole one-way suicide trip had indeed been for nothing, and they would die atop the rock having achieved nothing but misery and suffering.

Then, in the blackness, something scuffled, something shifted, something breathed.

Artificial light switched on, blasting them from all directions. Myell shielded his burning eyes with his forearm. Nam did so too, and the miscoordination of their efforts made them stagger and fall and land on their asses. In the horrible illumination Myell saw upright reptilian shapes.

“Fucking shit,” Nam said. “This is why you wanted me along?”

With watering, half-blinded eyes Myell stared at the rows and columns of Roon soldiers, a thousand lizards standing in rigid formation, their eyes black coals set in green faces, their body armor gleaming.

CHAPTER
THIRTY

A Roon soldier grabbed Myell and lifted him upright so forcefully that his right arm nearly wrenched free of its socket. Other soldiers lifted Nam. Myell expected to live for only a few more terror-filled seconds, and figured he might as well die fighting.

“Fuck you,” he said, trying to pull free.

The Roon paid him no attention. Something clamped down on his right hand, and he suddenly found himself unable to talk, move, do almost anything but breathe. His head lolled painfully, his throat constricted, his eyes froze wide-open. He began to panic, but then a curious calm washed through him like warm, clean-scented water. He was lifted over one of the Roon's shoulders and carried through the army like a sack of silent potatoes. Nam was carried off in the same fashion.

Myell's mind was clear, even if his body was helpless. The Roon smelled vile up close. Like a rotting corpse dug out of slimy mud. The soldier's armor cut into his stomach and chest and the steady jostling made him want to vomit. The Roon were utterly silent as Myell and Nam were carried through, and he had the uncomfortable feeling that they were going to be some kind of ritual sacrifice, that their deaths would be bloody and excruciating.

The army continued to part around them, lines dividing and falling away. Myell had no idea how far they were carried before the pace slowed. The lights on this part of the plateau were shining down into some kind of pit. He could see the silhouettes of equipment—large equipment capable of blasting through rock and dirt, of digging up something that had long been buried. Something hidden here, in soil that was almost two billion years old …

He had a strong, chilly premonition of what the Roon had found.

An order came, clicks and chitters in the Roon language. Myell was set down on the ground. The squeezing pressure on his hand was removed. He staggered upright. Nam, still hampered by his injury, grabbed for his hand and pulled himself up on one leg.

The Roon King stepped forward.

He was magnificent. More than three meters high, his head smooth where the others were ridged, a powerful jaw full of teeth, and two enormous wings rising from the white feather cloak over his shoulders.