And All the Stars (5 page)

Was she turning
into the tower?

Memory of warm
stone, wondrous and strange, flooded through her. Touching it had sent a tingle all through
her, but then it had thrown her away, blasted her–

The mirror
shattered, and Madeleine was tossed forward, bouncing off the basin and falling
to her hands and knees. Fragments of
glass and tile rained down around her as she cowered, hands over her head, but
none of it touched her, and she was aware of strength flowing out of her in a
way which felt as uncontrolled as a throat wound. She was doing this, destroying everything
around her even as she shielded herself.

Madeleine pulled it
back, an effort which left her limp, barely able to lift her head to survey her
handiwork in a room suddenly dim, lit only through the open door. Shards of glass and ceramic lay
everywhere. The mirrored wall, ceiling
light, the basin, shower screen, even the tiles – all looked like someone had
taken a sledgehammer to them. But she
wasn't injured at all. Not even the
smallest fragment had reached her, though she would now have to find some way
to move without cutting herself to shreds.

The television was
still on. Madeleine could hear a voice
with a British accent, talking about death tolls. About 'blues' and 'greens', a mandatory no
travel order, and the possibility of person-to-person transmission.

She was hungry
again.

Tyler's inadequate pantry finally drove Madeleine
outside. It was Saturday morning, four
days after the arrival of the Spires, and she no longer felt like she would
keel over if she walked any distance, but she might if she didn't find
something to eat soon. Whatever else being
blue meant for her, it made skipping a meal a major problem.

Overnight rain had washed Woolloomooloo clean of obvious
dust. High white clouds studded a
ceiling of dazzling azure, and the sun's warmth tempered a fresh wind. She could hear some kind of electronic music,
but it was too faint and distant to identify the source. Otherwise, silence. The long row of boats bobbed lazily in
unshrouded water, and high fencing hid the lower apartments' patio gardens, so
it wasn't until she reached the restaurants, their outdoor eating areas still
in disarray, that Madeleine had any reminder of disaster beyond the clean black
shaft of the Spire dominating the cityscape.

She'd hoped to find the restaurants – well, not open for
business, but perhaps one or two of the dozen with doors ajar. But a line of shutters and solid glass doors
greeted her, and she'd collected too many cuts in awkward places making her way
out of the wrecked bathroom to be eager about breaking in. There was, however, something unexpected where
the wharf widened and curved around to its second mooring. A café table set with a brilliant white
tablecloth. Seated very upright beside
it was a girl, pouring herself a cup of tea.

And eating scones. Scones with jam and cream.

The girl looked around as Madeleine approached, providing a glimpse
of starry blue streaks marking her throat. She was short, curvy, her eyes and light brown skin suggesting Asian
heritage, though her hair was a wild mass of spiral curls, held back from her
face by a red tartan bandanna. Her eyes
were swollen, but she managed a crooked sort of smile.

"Table for one?"

Madeleine laughed, and then stopped because her laughter
worked as well as the girl's smile. "I'm having to hold myself back from mugging you for your little
pot of jam."

"Ha." This
time the smile worked, warm with wry edges. "I could tip you into the bay before you got so much as a
spoonful. Sit down, I'll bring some more
out."

Hunger overrode any pretence of restraint, and Madeleine
swallowed the remaining half-scone before the girl had taken two steps, then
quickly emptied what was left of the little serving pot of jam and cream,
running her finger around the interior to catch the last traces. The tea was sugarless, but Madeleine drank it
anyway, and finished off the milk. Then
she pulled off her backpack and sat down, embarrassed, staring at her sandals
poking from beneath the hem of the green maxi-dress she'd liberated from
Tyler's closet. Her toes glimmered back
at her.

"One Devonshire tea, special Blue serving," the
girl said, putting down a tray holding a half-dozen scones, whipped cream, and
a jar of plum jam. She picked up the
teapot and left again, and by the time she was back, lugging a chair while
balancing a tray, Madeleine had inhaled four still-warm scones and was
spreading jam on the fifth.

"Sorry." Madeleine had recovered enough to put down the jam and make room for a
larger teapot and accompanying cups and milk. "Thanks."

"No problem – it keeps hitting me like that. You've got to stay ahead of it." She surveyed Madeleine frankly, gaze
lingering on her face and hands, and Madeleine, uncomfortable with the extent
of her blueness, was glad she'd worn a long-sleeved shirt knotted over the
dress. "I'm Noi."

"Madeleine."

They drank tea in silence. Madeleine, who constantly received report cards declaring "does not
work well with others" and "does not participate in group
activities", searched for the right thing to say. With a glance toward the restaurant,
Nikosia
, she
tried: "Did you stay in there the entire time?"

"No."
Noi's
voice dropped. "Once the stain started showing, everybody went home. I...there's no-one at my home now, so I came
back to check on
Niko
."

Madeleine awkwardly took another bite of scone, giving the
girl time to take a few deep breaths. "
Niko
?"

"My boss. I knew
he lived alone, that no-one would be around to check on him." Her voice wavered again, then firmed, and a
ghost of a smile emerged. "I've
only been here a few months – first year of my apprenticeship – and he was a
little tin-pot dictator who had me on prep and cleaning for forever. But he took me on, so I owed him for that,
and, well. He was in his
apartment."

Madeleine didn't need to ask for details: television had fed
her more than enough statistics. In the
areas of heaviest dust exposure the first deaths had been recorded within
twenty-four hours of the darkening of wrists, though for most the crisis point
was after the two to three day point. Green stains were slower to regain strength, but so far had a much
higher survival rate. Even among Greens
it still took the very young, the sick and weak, the elderly – and a great many
others who were none of these. Surviving
Blues were rare. Noi had stayed at her
home till everyone there died, and then returned to find this
Niko
dead as well. Making scones and drinking tea in the sun was a better response than
Madeleine would likely have managed.

"My parents haven't shown any signs yet," she said,
glad and guilty to be able to say that. "They live at Leumeah, and had a little time to prepare."

"That's southwest, right? Are you going to head out there?"

"And risk letting in the dust – or infecting them if
this
is
infectious?" Madeleine shook her head. "I'm borrowing my cousin's apartment. I'll stick there until–" She stopped, unsure what limit there was to
'until'. Tyler had sent her a text two
days ago, letting her know he was still at Sydney Airport, no longer on the
plane. Then, nothing.

"Want to go look at it?"

Noi was gazing up at the Spire, and Madeleine suddenly
regretted not bringing her sketchpad, and then was overwhelmingly glad for that
reaction. Since she'd woken she'd spent
hours staring at Tyler's portrait, but had inexplicably lacked any urge to
complete it. She'd thought she'd lost
something, but with Noi her usual drive to capture people around her had
revived.

But Madeleine also wanted to see the Spire again up close, to
compare skin to stone, so she finished off the last of the scones, and helped
Noi put her table away and lock up. Noi
had obviously been tidying earlier –
Nikosia
was the only restaurant where the outside tables had
been cleared of dusted food. Then they
started up the curving multi-flight stair to The Domain.

Noi stopped abruptly, and Madeleine barely avoided running
into her. Then she saw the reason: an ungainly
tumble of school uniform and blue-patched limbs sprawled at the foot of the
next flight of stairs. The second body
Madeleine had seen in person.

"He has stars," Noi said, fingers digging into
Madeleine's arm.

After a beat, Madeleine understood
Noi's
reaction. The stars developed after the
cramps, at what the TV was calling the survival point for Blues.

"Maybe there's a stage we haven't hit yet," she
said, approaching the body reluctantly.

He'd been around her own age, and what she thought of as half-made:
someone who'd shot up in height recently, and was all bony wrists and
coat-hanger shoulders, not yet fully filled out. Wide mouth, strong nose, and very straight,
dark brows below a mop of black hair which didn't quite curl. Madeleine immediately wanted to draw him as
well, which felt a wildly inappropriate thing to do with the body of some poor
random boy who had died of being Blue.

"I think he's breathing," Noi said.

"Could he have fainted from hunger?" Madeleine reached down to press fingers to
the boy's throat, and easily found a pulse.

Noi joined the examination. "There's an enormous lump on the side of his head," she said,
and showed Madeleine red-streaked fingers. "I guess we better take him back to the restaurant. This should be interesting."

Madeleine rescued a pair of rimless glasses about to slide
out the boy's pocket, then she and Noi carefully straightened him and tried to
work out how to get someone taller than either of them down several unforgiving
flights of stairs.

"If I go first, with his knees hooked over my shoulders,
and you lift him under the armpits?" Noi suggested.

They experimented with this, and eventually managed to get
enough of the boy off the ground to move down. The steep, lowest flight was hardest, both of them struggling, but not
daring to stop. It wasn't that he was
impossibly heavy, but they needed to keep pace with each other or be pulled off
balance. The last few steps were particularly
wobbly.

"I don't think I've recovered as much as I
thought," Madeleine panted, as they propped him against the end of the
railing.

"In future, I'm only rescuing people who faint at the
bottom of stairs." Noi looked down
at the boy doubtfully. "Maybe I
should go find some sort of cart."

"Hey! HEY!"

The shout came from above, heralding three more boys
stampeding down the stair.

"If you're the cavalry, your timing sucks," Noi
said, unimpressed by their rapid approach.

"What happened?" asked the tallest boy, and
Madeleine had to blink because he was movie-star handsome: precisely
symmetrical features, flawless brown skin, silky black hair, athletic
build. Even his voice was fantastic: a
mix of Indian and plummy English accent which was candy to the ear.

"We found him on the stair," she said, and felt
silly for her defensive tone. "He's
hit his head."

"Told you Fish was pushing himself too hard," said
the boy nearest Madeleine, a strawberry blonde well-furnished with
freckles. His blue eyes sloped down at
the corners, giving him a weary look, but his hands moved briskly over the
unconscious boy's head, locating the lump as if he could learn something from
it.

The third boy was the shortest, his face fashioned from an
imp template, with pointed chin and fly-away eyebrows which darted toward the
sandy-blonde hair at his temples. He
might as well have 'Mischief' stamped on his forehead.

"You two carried him down the stair?" His grin took up half his face. "Damn, I'm sorry I missed that."

"Yeah, yeah, the floor show's at eleven," Noi
replied. "Maybe we should get your
friend out of the sun. We were taking
him to the wharf."

"Lead the way. I'm Pan. This is Nash and
Gav. Looks like you met Fish
already."

As Madeleine and Noi introduced themselves, the first two
boys hoisted Fish up on linked arms.

"Was there anyone nearby?" Nash, the tallest one,
asked. "Could someone have attacked
him?"

"I haven't seen anyone but Madeleine," Noi
said. "We were going up to look at
the Spire."

"We've just been." Pan glanced over his shoulder, and up. "Fish wanted to do some comparisons of our stars to the ones of the
Spire. You seriously think someone hit
him, Nash?"

"It would be stupid to ignore the possibility. We still haven't the least idea what is going
on."

"Why compare your stars to the Spires'?" Noi also looked over her shoulder, craning
back to sight the tip of the Spire.

"To see if they matched in pattern, or even
reacted." He glanced down at Fish,
at the patches of blue on his exposed arms. "And to see if having stars would let us through the barrier around
it."

"Did it?" Madeleine asked, interested. "Did you touch it?"

"No. The barrier
remains. But it was only a first
look."

Unlocking the sliding entrance door of
Nikosia
, Noi led them into the
small indoor dining area, pulling one of the tables aside to clear access to
the long, padded seat which ran up the right wall.

"There's a first aid kit somewhere. Be right back."

"Have you been cooking?" Pan asked, sniffing the
restaurant's fresh-baked aroma as his friends manoeuvred Fish onto the
too-narrow seat. Then he laughed:
"Man, you won't even have to look at people to tell which ones are Blues –
just wave something edible and we'll come running."

"Are you all–?" Madeleine asked, and Pan held his
arms out, showing starry blue palms and a thick stripe disappearing under the
sleeves of his jacket.