The Stars Blue Yonder (42 page)

As they made their careful way upward, escorted by half a dozen
Aboriginals and Osherman, he grew increasingly appalled that Jodenny had hiked down here in her condition. The descent had been relatively easy in the military complex, but it was downright treacherous now. Surely she was exhausted. Climbing around couldn't be good for junior, either. He helped as much as he could, but his own balance and strength weren't at their best, either, as proven when he slipped and landed hard on a patch of mossy limestone.

“We're halfway to the surface,” Osherman said, hauling him back to his feet. He stripped out of his jacket. “Take off your wet shirt and put this on.”

“I'm not cold,” he insisted.

Osherman gave him an exasperated look. “Your teeth are chattering.”

Jodenny, who had squeezed through a passage ahead of them, called back to see what was taking them so long. Myell swapped his wet shirt for Osherman's jacket and was slightly warmed.

“You're all she's thought about since she got here,” Osherman said.

Myell didn't know what Osherman wanted from him. “Thanks for taking care of her.”

Osherman motioned for Myell to precede him through the passage.

The last part of the ascent was a blur of magnificent stone formations and the increasing buzz of fatigue in Myell's brain. When they stepped out of the caves into a grotto of some kind, it took Myell's eyes several seconds to register the sight of stars in the dark trees above. Jodenny immediately sank to the ground and he joined her there, holding her in both arms.

“How do you feel?” he murmured.

“Never been better,” she said. “You?”

“Great.”

She traced the line of his jaw with her hand. “Liar.”

“You lied first.”

“Actually,” she said, “you lied. On the
Confident
. And took off in that shuttle without me. We're going to have a long talk about that, mister.”

He asked, “Is it too late for an apology?”

Jodenny kissed him. “We'll discuss it.”

Tulip spoke to his people and then to Osherman in words Myell
couldn't hear. The Aboriginals all disappeared into the dark forest. Osherman crouched low beside Myell and Jodenny.

“I don't think we should go back to Sydney,” he said. “Cassandra kept a farmhouse near here. I think I can find it, and I know the housekeeper will let us use it. Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” Jodenny said.

Myell nodded, though he wondered why trust was an issue. They didn't really have much of a choice. Then Osherman showed him the little airship sitting on the forest floor and confessed that he wasn't sure he could find Darling's house in the dark.

“We trust you,” Jodenny repeated.

The seating was limited, but once aloft Jodenny dozed off against Myell's side and that was all right. Osherman was focused on the controls and the landscape below, which was lit mostly by the silvery light of a full moon rising in the east. There were so many stars that Myell lost track trying to count them. He was too tired to make casual conversation but full of questions.

“Darling?” he asked. “She's here?”

A muscle twitched in Osherman's cheek. “She was murdered.”

A moment passed as Myell tried to absorb that. “The other kids?”

“They're not kids. They've been here thirty years.”

“Oh,” Myell said. “They're okay?”

“I need to concentrate on flying this thing,” Osherman said.

Myell blinked down at the countryside below. He couldn't make out many details at all, but the flight console had a scanner that picked out individual homesteads and farms from the trees and foliage. After several minutes of orienting himself, Osherman let out a “Gotcha!” and set the airship down on a plot of land behind a long low building nestled against wooded hills. No lamps burned inside.

“This is the place,” Osherman said. “You need help?”

“No, I've got her.”

Jodenny was hard to rouse and harder to keep on her feet. By the time Myell had her inside, Osherman had lit three lanterns and started a fire in the main hearth. The house was decorated with hand-carved furniture, thick rugs, and European paintings; Darling had done well for herself, Myell observed.

“There are two bedrooms down the hall,” Osherman said, tending to the fire. “Take the one on the right. I lit a lantern in there.”

Myell had never been happier to see a bed. The room was small but nicely done up, and the yellow lantern cast shadows on silver wallpaper. Jodenny sank on the bed with nary a protest and started to pull off her dress. Her fingers were clumsy and her voice was drunk with weariness.

“You have to be nice to Sam,” she said. “He's been through a lot.”

He kissed her nose. “Yes, ma'am. Love the dress.”

“You should see what's under it.”

“My firstborn child?”

“Petticoats.” Jodenny stared down at her own bare legs once the dress was gone. Perplexed. “I swear there were petticoats. Where'd they go?”

“Are you hungry?”

“Thirsty.”

He went to find the kitchen. All his bruises were making themselves known, and he knew that come morning he was going to be paying for them. Osherman had disappeared from the living room. Myell was too tired to wonder where he'd gone. The sink didn't have running water, but there was a hand pump that brought water in from a well or rain barrel. Myell sniffed it, decided it was all right for the time being, and brought it back to Jodenny. She was already asleep, her face mashed into the pillow.

Myell was tucking her in when Osherman brought in a serving tray. “The housekeeper lives just down the road. She gave me some cheese, these apples, some pie. She'll come up in the morning to cook breakfast.”

“You've been here a lot,” Myell said.

Osherman left the tray on the side table. “See you in the morning.”

Myell bit into one of the apples, discovered he was famished, and finished it before his stomach began to revolt. He stripped off his own clothes, climbed into bed next to Jodenny and junior, and was asleep before he could even figure out how to turn down the lantern wick.

Someone else took care of it, or else it burned itself out, because when he opened his eyes again the room was entirely dark. He was
certain that he was back in the Painted Sphere with water rising all around him. He gasped for air, kicked his legs. Firm hands caught his wrists.

“Stop,” Jodenny said. “Wake up. You're okay.”

As his eyes grew accustomed to starlight through the windows, he saw that she was lying beside him with junior's bump between them.

“What?” he asked.

“You were dreaming,” she whispered. “Go to sleep.”

He slipped underwater into more bad dreams in which he couldn't save Cappaletto or Bell. When sunlight hit his eyes he turned to the wall and pulled the bedspread over his head. He woke much later when the taste of butter reached his tongue. Pushing the blanket aside, he blinked at Jodenny sitting on the bed and smiling at him. She had been painting his lips with her finger.

“Humph?” he asked, as articulately as he could.

“Time for breakfast,” she said. “There's a housekeeper here named Mrs. Dunbar, and I think I love her. She made pancakes.”

Getting out of bed was a good idea, but not as easy as he'd hoped. His whole body ached in bone-deep ways, and all his muscles had stiffened during the night.

“Maybe I'll bring it to you,” Jodenny said, leveraging herself to her feet.

Shame got him to his feet and toddling after her. The house was larger by daylight than he remembered, which meant more walking, which meant more pain radiating up his legs and back. What he wouldn't give for a painkiller or two. The sight of the pancakes cheered him up, as did the smell of good old-fashioned coffee.

Jodenny watched him shovel food into his mouth, a fond smile on her face.

“Aren't you going to eat?” he asked.

“I had my turn,” she said.

“Where's the commander?”

“After all this time, I think you can call him Sam.”

Myell poured himself more coffee. “I think you can call him Sam. He's still Commander Osherman to me.”

Mrs. Dunbar, round-faced and perfectly cheerful, bustled in with some
fresh eggs. “It's good to have people in the house again,” she said. “Lady Darling, she always said to treat Captain Osherman like one of the family.”

“And now he's a captain,” Myell mused.

Jodenny squeezed Myell's hand. “Not that kind.”

“Will you be staying long?” she asked.

Myell's gaze drifted to the mantel clock he'd seen in the living room. It was almost ten o'clock. He was startled he'd slept that long. Jodenny's grip tightened on his fingers and he realized she hadn't been thinking of the clock at all.

“Yes,” Jodenny said tightly. “We'll be staying for several days.”

“I'd better see how the cows are doing,” Mrs. Dunbar said.

She left the kitchen. Myell concentrated on his pancakes and tried not to flinch under Jodenny's stern expression.

“You're not going,” she said.

He tried to think of something reassuring and soothing to say, but the words didn't exist. He settled for “Nothing's changed.”

“Nothing's changed.” Her cheeks turned red with outrage. “Nothing's changed?”

Myell had been warned that pregnant women could be mercurial, but he wasn't prepared for the full reality.

“I'll tell you what's changed,” Jodenny said. “See this belly? It's changed. See my body? It's changed a lot. See the view outside these windows? This is nineteenth-century Australia. Does that sound like home to you?”

“It's not about—” he started.

But she was just warming up. “I've been stuck here with flies and open sewers, and do you know what a Team Space supply officer does around here? Nothing! She does nothing. She sits around and goes to tea parties and tries to save babies whose mothers are going to kill them anyway.”

Myell shut his open jaw. “And she talks about herself in third person.”

“It's not funny,” Jodenny said.

“No.” He pushed his plate aside. “It's not.”

She didn't burst into tears, but looked close to the breaking point.
Myell got out of his chair, came up behind her, and wrapped his arms around her so she could lean backward.

Jodenny sniffed. “When?” “This afternoon,” he said. “I'm probably back to every twenty-four hours or so.”

She shook her head. “I'm not letting you go.”

He didn't say, “You can't go with me,” because that was as obvious as the sunlight streaking through the window. They both remembered what had happened when she went from Providence to the
Confident
.They couldn't risk that again, not so close to junior's arrival. Not even if junior dropped out in the next few minutes; who knew what the ring could do to a newborn?

Myell kissed the top of her head. It wasn't enough, of course, but it was all he had at the moment.

Osherman came in the kitchen door, stomping dust from his boots. “Well, we have a problem with the airship.”

“What problem?” Jodenny asked.

“It's gone.”

She sniffled. “Are you sure it's not just invisible?”

“Pretty sure, yes.”

They searched the yard, but found no airship either visible or invisible.

“Maybe it drifted off,” Jodenny suggested. “Like a balloon.”

Osherman said, “I don't like it.”

“Speaking of things you won't like,” Myell said, steeling himself, “I need to tell you both about Homer.”

The house had a shaded front porch and the day wasn't too hot out yet. A breeze washed over them as Jodenny sat in a rocking chair, Osherman leaned against a post, and Myell stood against the railing. He needed something to do with his hands and so he picked up a handful of pebbles and began pitching them, one by one, at a eucalyptus tree a few meters away.

“It started when I was with Commander Nam's team,” he said. He told them about that long-ago day when he'd been rescued from the ocean by Free-not-chained, and later how she'd saved him from a shark
attack, and how the rescue had been more intimate than he expected or wanted.

“Define intimate,” Jodenny said, her expression dark.

“I was barely conscious,” he said. “I didn't realize what she was doing.”

Jodenny looked away. Osherman said nothing.

Next he told them about meeting Free-not-chained again, and the man-seal who'd told him about the son he hadn't expected. A son who was fully grown and in trouble with the Wondjina gods, and who just happened to be the one who'd stranded Jodenny and Osherman here in the past.

“Let me get this straight,” Osherman said when he was done. “You have a son who's a half-crocodile. He angered the gods, stranded us here, lied and misled just about everyone, and now his mother wants you to intercede and release him from some kind of purgatory or curse.”

Myell had no more stones to throw.

“I think that's about it,” he said.

Jodenny covered her face with both hands. Her shoulders shook. Myell didn't know what to say or do. He went to his knees in front of her chair and put his hands on her knees.

“I'll fix it,” he promised. “Whatever I have to do.”

She pulled her hands down. Her expression was half amazement, half amusement. “They never mentioned this kind of thing in officer training.”

A knot loosened its hold on Myell's heart. “You're not mad?”

“I'm furious,” she said. “But not so much at you.”

Myell kissed her soundly.

Osherman said, “I'm going to take a walk,” and left.

Myell glanced after him, wondering if he should follow. Jodenny wrapped both hands around his head and pulled him tight. He breathed in the smell of her—cities and caves and places he hadn't been with her, hadn't shared.