The Outback Stars (46 page)

“We're no better off than we started,” Jodenny said.

Myell thought,
We're a lot better off than we started,
but that was gooey and sentimental, and he was wary of another change of her heart. Twenty minutes later he doubled their winnings at roulette. Back in the cabin, beneath those river-washed sheets, he celebrated by worshiping the curve of her belly and her firm thighs. She urged him to go fast and hard, then made him lay perfectly still while she moved her lips and hands over every inch of him in exquisite torture.

“You're trying to kill me,” he complained.

“Yes,” she said, her voice husky. “That's exactly my plan.”

Later they lay spooned together, his arm hooked over her waist, her head tucked neatly under his. “Jodenny,” he murmured. “What will we do when we get back?”

“Maybe we won't go back. We'll live in the jungle, in a treehouse for two. You can fish and I'll weave baskets.” Jodenny pressed her hand on his bare hip, a warm and comforting reassurance. “Or we could finish this, go back, clear our names, and fight any disciplinary action they try to impose.”

“Work in separate divisions, deny our relationship to everyone, sneak off for a quickie now and then in the slots?”

“The treehouse sounded better, didn't it?”

She sounded both wistful and sad, no doubt contemplating the end of everything she'd worked for over the years.

“You love what you do,” he said, nuzzling behind her ear.

“Not always. And not if it means losing you.”

They resolved nothing, promised nothing. Myell listened to the river slap against the ferry's hull. He refused to think of the Wirrinun, or the Rainbow Serpent, or anything beyond their cabin. At dawn he sensed a shift in the ferry's engines. He wriggled out of the bed and slipped into his pants. From the balcony he saw the looming shore of Port Douglas. The sky was brightening but overcast.

From the bed Jodenny asked, “Are we there?”

“Nearly.”

“You don't sound happy about it.”

He pulled on his shoes. “Fleet's had plenty of time to try and track us. I expect to see police.”

They dressed and packed up their meager belongings. Breakfast was a buffet in the main dining room, and they ate as much as any of their sleepy, bleary-eyed neighbors. On deck, protected from the light drizzle by an awning, they watched the ferry's captain ease the ship toward a dock.

“There's trouble,” Jodenny said.

Myell followed her gaze and spied three Warramala police officers in the crowd that had gathered to greet friends or family.

Jodenny scanned their fellow passengers. “What we need is a diversion.”

A group of do-wops were clustered on deck, exhausted from their revelry. Crumpled streamers hung out of their pockets, and their clothes were stained and wrinkled. While Myell watched, Jodenny went and spoke to their leader. The doubt left his face when she handed him several money cards.

“We just bought ourselves a celebration,” Jodenny said when she returned.

For a few minutes Myell was concerned that she had been duped, but as the gangway was hoisted into place the do-wops suddenly regained all their energy. They picked up their instruments and began singing and clapping. They sounded small and somewhat ridiculous against Port Douglas's sober grayness, but as they went down the gangplank a beam of sunlight broke through the clouds and set a more cheerful backdrop.

“Now?” Myell asked.

“Wait.”

On the dock, two do-wops stumbled against each other. Loud words were exchanged. Someone swung a fist. As the police officers moved to break up the disturbance, Jodenny and Myell slipped behind the ferry buildings.

“Where now?” Jodenny asked.

Myell replied, “I'm not sure. They came this way, but then where? Up to the Corroboree?”

“It would be a good place to get lost in the crowd.”

Port Douglas had a main street of shops, small hotels, and offbeat restaurants. The townsfolk had decorated for the holiday and every shop window was filled with T-shirts, dreamcatchers, boomerangs, incense, drug paraphernalia, and velvet artwork. It was a kitschy patchwork of symbols and clichés that angered Myell.
So much we've lost,
Ganambarr had said. They bought bus tickets and boarded an old electric bus with worn seats and marginal air-conditioning. The other seats filled with do-wops, backpackers, a handful of budget travelers, and an old man wearing a bush hat. The bus rattled its way out of town and up a winding road.

“Honeymooners?” the old man asked Jodenny. “You've got that look.”

“Absolutely,” Jodenny said.

Myell watched the road for signs of pursuit but no Team Space cars appeared. Two hours after leaving Port Douglas the bus pulled to a stop in a dusty parking lot in the middle of the jungle. A dozen other buses had arrived before them and were discharging passengers. He saw tourist kiosks set up to sell food, drink, and other necessities, but the Spheres themselves remained unseen. The humid air made him break out into an immediate sweat and Jodenny pressed a water bottle into his hand.

“It's going to get worse,” the old man said. “Sun wipes out a lot of people.”

As they followed the other travelers up a footpath to the crest of a hill the jungle gave way to a rocky plateau and cliffs that fell off to the sea. The Mother, Father, and Child stood in their usual regal alignment, but unlike the ones back on Mary River these were surrounded by at least a thousand sincere pilgrims kneeling in noontime prayer, two thousand tourists snapping vids, and three thousand do-wops dancing and singing to popularized, historically suspect Australian gods. The air was filled with conversation, drumbeats, and didgeridoos. Myell smelled roasting food, fragrant tobacco, melting chocolate. An open-air concert was going on in a shaded pavilion while newsvans and security guards kept their cameras trained on the crowds. Beyond the cliffs, the blue sea glittered like a carpet of diamonds.

“Needle in a haystack,” Jodenny said.

They chose the tourist campground just north of the Spheres, where do-wop tents and state-of-the-art recreational vehicles stood side by side. Everything there was relatively quiet, with no sign of Chiba or Quenger. They tried the pilgrim grounds, but a brown-robed friar refused them entrance. Jodenny's shoulders began to turn pink and Myell was sweating through his shirt. They returned to the Spheres and stopped at different carts to buy water, sunblock, and some nutrition bars. At a shady spot near the cliff's edge they took a break and relaxed in each other's arms.

“It's an aberration, you know,” Myell said, nuzzling the top of Jodenny's head.

“What is?” she asked.

“Corroboree. The original Aboriginal word was
Carribae
. None of this can be authentic if it doesn't even have the correct name.” It was one of the many things he had read during his research on the Rainbow Serpent. He should have asked Daris where in Australia their mother had come from, if she ever spoke of it to him, if they had Aboriginal ancestry. He considered telling Jodenny about the Rainbow Serpent and the Wirrinun, but couldn't make himself say anything. How could he explain them to her, when he didn't even understand them himself?

When the afternoon began to wane they brushed dried dirt and grass from their legs, put their shoes on, and went back to the Spheres, which had turned golden pink in the slant of the sun. The first stars of the evening began to shine even brighter, and the rangers gave permission for the lighting of several bonfires. Jodenny and Myell circulated, still looking for Chiba and Quenger, but many in the crowd had donned cheap tribal masks covered with paint and glitter.

“If we split up, we'll cover more ground,” Jodenny said.

“No. We'll never find each other again.”

“We'll always find each other,” she replied, which made him smile.

Night had darkened the sky, but the floodlights illuminating the Spheres gave off enough light to keep her from tripping over reclining bodies. Jodenny searched the crowd and did her best to keep from looking up at the stars, where the
Aral Sea
might be the largest one of them all. Near the Child, she thought she saw Ishikawa.

“AT—” she said, touching her shoulder, but the woman wasn't Ishikawa.

“Hi.” The woman smiled. “Love partner?”

“Have one, thanks.”

Jodenny started to turn away, but a pilgrim in a dark brown robe and hood grabbed her arm.

“Don't scream,” Osherman said. “Don't make a sound, or you'll just end up getting your boyfriend killed. Understand me?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

“Come on.” Osherman pulled her toward an airvan. “We've got some talking to do.”

Jodenny resisted ineffectively. Had he always been so physically strong, or had all the strength in her body evaporated? “Let me go.”

“Do you want to help Quenger and Chiba get away?”

She stomped on his insole and wrenched free. Al-Banna blocked her path. Like Osherman he was dressed in pilgrim robes.

“Lieutenant!” he snapped. “Stop causing a scene and do as you're goddamned told.”

Ingrained obedience made Jodenny falter. The two men escorted her into the van and to a bucket seat. Banks of surveillance equipment had been mounted on racks. Vids displayed feeds from dozens of cameras, all of them pointed at the Spheres and crowd. Two armed techs she didn't recognize worked the controls.

“You, too?” she asked Al-Banna. “You're working for the Inspector General?”

“Someone had to step in when Matsuda disappeared,” he said. He reached for a thermos wedged between the consoles. “Coffee?”

Osherman asked, “Jodenny, where's Myell?”

She folded her arms.

“We've picked up Quenger on camera two, sir,” one of the techs said. “He's heading for the Mother Sphere. No sign of the others.”

Osherman sat at the console and slid a headset over his ears. “Lieutenant Scott, when this entire operation falls into ruin, I'm going to blame it all on you.”

“You left us to die,” she retorted.

“No. I saved your life. Chiba and Quenger were ready to shoot you like dogs. But I convinced them to leave you in the tower, like they'd done with Matsuda. Disappearing crew don't cause as much trouble as dead ones do. I told Ishikawa to notify Commander Al-Banna or the bridge where you were once I was off the ship.”

“She never did,” Al-Banna said. He poured himself the coffee, his expression dark. “We don't know where she is, or what became of her.”

“You could have told me, back on the ship,” Jodenny said. “When we were meeting with the captain.”

“Captain Umbundo didn't even know. Not then.” Al-Banna lifted his cup. “There are more secrets on the damn ship than there are dingoes, and you can quote me on that.”

Osherman spun in his seat toward her. “If you had stayed out of this, you wouldn't have been in danger in the first place. Now tell us where Myell is before he ruins what's left of this operation, and that's a goddamned order.”

Jodenny kept silent.

“Sir,” Osherman said to Al-Banna.

“We both know Lieutenant Scott has no good reason to trust us,” Al-Banna said. “But if I were you, Lieutenant, I'd say we're your best chance for getting out of this with your career and life both reasonably safe. The commander understands the importance, now, of leveling with you.”

“Does he?” Jodenny asked.

A muscle clenched in Osherman's cheek. “What do you want to know that you don't know already? Our office has been investigating black-market smuggling throughout the fleet for the last eighteen months. I was spearheading the investigation on the
Yangtze.
After the disaster, I transferred to the
Aral Sea.
The smuggling ring involves Supply, Flight Ops, and Data. We convinced Matsuda to turn on his partners, but they found out. Greiger turned coat next, but they scared him with that car accident on Kookaburra and he clammed up. We got AT Olsson, finally, no thanks to your and Myell's interference.”

Jodenny took her time digesting all that. “Why are Chiba and Quenger here? Why are you?”

“They think they're meeting with someone from the Colonial Freedom Project to sell off several thousand assault mazers and grenade launchers stolen from the
Aral Sea,
” Osherman said. “What they don't know is that it's a sting. If they see Myell, the whole operation might fall apart.”

A comm beeped. Osherman snatched up a receiver and listened. “Camera five,” he ordered, and the vids focused on a line queued up outside the Mother Sphere. Myell was just a few meters behind Chiba and obviously following him. “Fuck it! Try to grab him without anyone noticing. I'll be right there.”

“I'm coming,” Jodenny said.

“No. You're staying here.” Osherman patted the weapon under his jacket and turned to one of the techs. “Under no circumstances is Lieutenant Scott to leave this van or go anywhere near the Spheres.”

“You can't—” Jodenny said, but Osherman was already out the door. When she tried to follow the tech blocked her path.

“Sorry, ma'am,” he said, his hand on his weapon. “You heard the commander.”

Jodenny turned a pleading eye toward Al-Banna. “Sir?”

Al-Banna poured more coffee. “What do you think you could possibly do, Lieutenant?”

“I don't know. Help in some way.”

He shook his head. “Or interfere some more. I can't take that chance. Here, drink some coffee.”

She took the cup and let it slip between her fingers. The hot liquid splashed over all of them, causing a yelp or two. Jodenny slid right past the tech and out of the van. She immediately lost herself in the crowd and made her way toward the Mother Sphere. She had broken yet another order, but Myell might need her. That was all that mattered.