And All the Stars (20 page)

"It looks like a dead jellyfish," Pan said. "Which is a step down from the 'mermaid
called Rover' thing it started with." He grimaced, and wiped at the water running into his eyes. "We beat one of these things. We know now that we can fight back. Why the hell aren't I cheering?"

"We don't even know what this is," Min pointed
out. "Our problem is the
Moths. Whole different ball game."

"It's familiar in an odd way," Madeleine said. "I know I've never seen it before, but I
felt like I had."

"The balls with ears from the first challenge," Noi
said, using Pan's shoulder to lever herself to her feet. "Come on, we can't just sit here in a
puddle. Nash, go see if you can spot
anyone coming down the wharf. Everyone
else, there have to be controls to shut these sprinklers off."

Fisher, next to his feet, held a hand down for Madeleine, and
waited to check she could stay up. Then they
paused to stare at the thing they'd just killed. It did remind Madeleine a little of the
targets from the Manila challenge, but a car-sized doggy mermaid was a long way
from a soccer ball with ears and paws. Related species? Parent? She puzzled over it while they hunted for a
way to shut down the broken sprinkler system without cutting off water to the
entire building.

"No sign of any movement on either side," Nash
said, jogging back to the garage entrance just as they succeeded in stopping
the flow. "Why alone? It seemed to know where we were."

"Maybe it's some kind of Blue tracker," Min
suggested. "Able to smell us or
hear us or something."

"Doesn't explain why they'd let it gallop off to leap on
us alone," Noi said, then shivered and shook her head, a few drops of
water spraying from damp curls. "Speculate later. Right now
we have a big glowing corpse, no obvious Moths, and a huge decision."

"Stay or leave." Fisher said.

"At sunset, while cold and wet. When the only one of us not exhausted is
Nash." Noi ticked the obstacles
off. "Not necessarily
insurmountable. We've talked about Goat
Island as a possibility. We have boats
and have downloaded harbour charts, and it's a straightforward enough
trip. We could probably get there in the
dark without running into anything. But
for all we know Goat Island is where they keep their flying snake, so condition
unknown. And it's one of the few largish
islands in the harbour, so a bit obvious as a hiding place. That's the question of leaving – what about
staying?"

"The gamble is whether they have another Rover,"
Min said. "If, that is, the thing
really could track us. They obviously
haven't been able to before now, or our pyjama party would have been over days
ago. If we're to believe the internet
chatter, the Moths don't know when Blues are hiding nearby. This building has been cleared already, and
the hidden room and webcams are seriously hard to give up, so long as we think
this Rover is the only Rover. The
problem with staying is that." He
nodded at the corpse, large and obvious in the fading light. "We could risk using the garage because
it's dim and sheltered and there's little chance anyone will go in it to notice
any damage. The glow from that thing is
a neon sign marking the start point of any hunt."

"Staying or leaving, we need to get rid of it,"
Fisher said.

"True enough."
Noi's
stomach growled, announcing another
issue they needed to deal with, and soon. "Right. Fisher, grab the
laptop and see if you can dig up any other sightings of Rovers. Nash, Pan, take lookout either side. We'll try to push it into the water."

The yielding, insubstantial mass would only shift when
thumped with a shield, and by the time they had knocked it out of the garage
and then chivvied it to the navy base side of the wharf, all Madeleine could
think of was food and rest.

The lantern glow of monster sank below the surface, and they
went inside to eat and decide what next.

A chorus of breathing in a room lit only by the flicker of
computer screens. Madeleine shifted,
warm beneath a blanket, bracketed by sleeping people. Her back hurt.

With no sign of Moths following Rover, and everyone but Nash
close to dropping where they stood, the decision to stay or leave had been a
forgone conclusion. As a precaution they
were all spending the night in the hidden study. While his fellow Musketeers filled their
stomachs, Nash had shifted the computer to the top of the filing cabinet and
removed the simple desk, creating a little more room. Then he'd been stuck with a lot of cleaning
up, as everyone else focused on getting warm and dry before curling up to sleep
and digest. The extremes of the Blue metabolism.

Madeleine had gone to sleep propped between Noi and Emily,
but, drifting awake, she could see Nash sitting beneath the window with a
laptop, and Noi curled next to the sprawling pile which was Min and Pan. The shoulder she was tucked against belonged
to Fisher.

Noi had most likely contrived the swap during a bathroom excursion,
and Madeleine decided to be grateful, to enjoy the moment. Fisher had continued to provide a fascinated
audience during the portrait sittings, helping her clean up afterwards. Today – yesterday – they'd spent all of the
time between the sitting and late afternoon training chatting. He'd avoided talking about himself, instead
drawing her out on what still needed to be done on the new portrait, and the
chances of a young unknown winning the Archibald Prize, and all her hopes for
being able to study full time, to not need to compromise between what she
wanted to do and what was likely to earn her a living. About scholarships, and the gaps in her
portfolio. She hadn't meant to talk so
much, but Fisher was a good listener, and so interested.

The question was whether his interest was in her, or her
art. And if he was pretending to be
interested in her painting as a way to get closer to her. She wasn't sure she would be able to forgive
that.

But she still filled a small secret sketchpad with images of
him, and worried about how little sleep he got, and wondered whether it would
be stupid to suggest they surely had enough time for him to rest
occasionally. Her private challenge was
to capture how he would pause sometimes to be amused at himself, and it
discomforted her, in reviewing these attempts, to see just how much of her own
emotions the pictures revealed.

Nash had noticed she was awake, and was smiling at her, at
the way she was trying to look at Fisher's face without moving from his
shoulder. Her sketchbooks really weren't
going to tell anybody anything they didn't already know.

"What's the time?" she whispered.

"Twenty to one." Nash's voice was particularly delicious when he kept it low, and she
regretted being unable to find a way to express the sound of him. "I promised to wake everyone to watch
the challenge, but it can wait till there's something to see." He removed the power cord from his laptop and
leaned forward to hold it and the headphones toward her. "Here is something you will be glad
of."

Reluctantly abandoning her comfortable contact with Fisher,
Madeleine stretched to take it. The
screen showed the ABC website, an article with a headline of "Shocking
Survival" below a video image of a woman with a soft brown bob and sun
damaged skin.

Researchers from James Cook University have reported a
breakthrough in the treatment of Blue-Green. Earlier this evening, a representative of the School of Biomedical
Sciences made the first announcement of this critical discovery.

"Our preliminary results show a dramatic increase in
the survival rate of the infected if they are shocked with shield paralysis as
soon as possible after exposure to the Blue-Green Conversion," Dr Jennifer
Elliman said. "A healthy subject,
even among smaller mammals where mortality has been nearly one hundred per
cent, has in the area of a fifty per cent survival rate with Green stain, and
thirty per cent with Blue."

Madeleine skimmed the rest of the article, then played the
video and listened to the woman answering questions, and insisting that it was
early days for absolutes, and that this was by no means a cure, only a
treatment method.

She'd felt Fisher shift while she was watching, and when she
removed the headphones he said: "This will provide a counter-motive for those
so eager to hand over Blues."

"Perhaps," Nash said. "But only so far as keeping one or two
on hand. I still would not risk putting
ourselves in another's power."

Madeleine closed the browser window, and found a second open
page, headed:
Leech Blues: Inevitable
Murderers?
Her eyes met Fisher's,
and he reached unhurriedly to brush the
trackpad
,
closing the window.

"How is your back?"

"Sore," Madeleine admitted. "I couldn't tell if it was bruised or
not. Peering over my shoulder at the
mirror isn't effective when everything is blue." She suddenly remembered him circling her
taking pictures and had to look away. "I'll get Noi to check later," she added hurriedly, and saw
that Noi was awake, watching with unabashed interest. "Or maybe now. It's nearly time for the challenge."

"And past time for midnight snacks," Noi said,
stretching. "Even normal practice
sessions make it hard to get through the night without getting up to eat, let
alone yesterday's extravaganza."

She poked the pile of boy next to her while Madeleine woke
Emily, and then they opened the door to let in a wash of chilly air. Nash offered to cook something, and Noi took
Madeleine into the master bedroom en suite to examine her back.

"I should have suggested doing this tomorrow,"
Madeleine said, shirtless and shivering. "It's definitely getting to the end of Autumn."

"Yeah, pity we can't risk turning on the heating in this
place. As it is I've been wondering if
we'll end up having the power cut off by some automated you-haven't-paid-your-bill
system." She poked Madeleine's
shoulder blade gently. "Hurts here,
right?"

"Yes. You can see
bruises then?"

"I can see where the stars aren't. The only thing I know to do for bruises is
put ice on them."

Madeleine shuddered at the idea. "Definitely not bad enough for
that."

"Okay then. Look
at me for a moment." Noi was
standing, arms folded, eyebrows raised, lips lightly curved. "See me here, visibly restraining
myself."

"Is that what you call that?"

"Did I mention I took photos? Didn't even wait till he was
asleep." Noi paused to fully
appreciate Madeleine's reaction. "He laughed. That makes him
a keeper in my book."

"Noi..."

"I was going to point out that we could have died
yesterday afternoon, that we could die today, or tomorrow. After all, we're not talking wear clean
underwear because you might get hit by a bus – we're talking glowing flying
buses hunting us down and trying to hump our legs. But, seriously, it's way too much fun
watching you two dancing around each other with no idea what to do next. It surprises me, since Fisher's really very
confident and assured for a Science Boy. I'm having to revise my stereotypes."

"We only met eleven...twelve days ago," Madeleine
protested, pulling on her Singlet and tracksuit jacket.

"I guess so. Seems like much longer. Seems
like centuries."

All the liveliness drained from
Noi's
face, and this time Madeleine didn't hesitate, but turned and wrapped her arms
around the shorter girl. Noi started to
pull away, but then leaned into Madeleine's hold, breath turning to gulps.

"We were so close to being lost,
Maddie
. All of us, any of us. There's no way we can make it through two
years of this, and I'm just so – everyone's gone,
Maddie
. I can't stand it. They're all gone."

Madeleine wondered if the reason Noi had stopped pursuing Pan
had less to do with his age than it did
Noi's
fear
and grief. There was still nothing she
could say which would make
Noi's
loss easier, though
she told her she was sorry, and stroked her back as she struggled with her
tears. After yesterday's fight, it
wasn't surprising that
Noi's
control had frayed:
Madeleine was only surprised that the lot of them hadn't kicked each other
awake having nightmares.

"You don't have to be the strong one all the time, you
know," she said, when the storm had begun to pass.

"Don't I?" Noi took a deep breath and straightened. "How will Millie cope if I'm having dramas all over the place? She's just a baby. How will it help anyone if I sit in a corner
rocking back and forth?" Turning
away, she dashed water into her face, firming her mouth.

"Does it have to be one extreme or another?" Madeleine paused, then added: "We made a
good team yesterday. I don't know if
it's enough to get us through this, and I don't like to think about how I now
have a bunch of people that matter. I
know I rely on you a bit much – I don't think ahead in the same way – but you
don't need to..." Madeleine
stopped. Who was she to dictate how Noi
coped? "Anyway, I'm here if you
need anything. And you can email me
those photos."

That brought back
Noi's
smile, and
then the scent of cooking drew them downstairs. Madeleine let herself be the entertainment by sitting next to Fisher so
she could peek at what he was typing. Surviving the next two years wasn't just a matter of successfully
hiding: it was being brave without losing your head, and squabbling a bit but
not too much, and having two people around not managing to hide that they liked
each other, because watching that was a happy thing.

"Do you think they're being deliberately
dickish
?" Pan
was eyeing the television, which had switched from thousands of people gathered
in a candlelight prayer vigil to a sunny parkland, and another gathering of
Moths.