And All the Stars

Chapter Nine

Staring back, Madeleine could see the lone strawberry blonde boy who walked to the gate. Watching them go.

"Gav! Bastard things! We’ll get them for this!" Pan writhed under the weight of bags and the boy lying across all three back seat occupants. "Shit. Fuck them all! Shit, shit, shit. Damn it, I need better words."

He took a deep breath, and boiled out with:

"I will do such things, what they are yet I know not, but they shall be the terrors of the Earth! You think I’ll weep. No, I’ll not weep."

He was shouting, eyes bright and wet, punctuating the sentences with thumps on the legs of the boy lying on top of him.

"I have full cause of weeping, but this heart will break into a hundred thousand fragments before I’ll weep! Oh Fool, I shall go mad!"

Noi darted a glance back at him, then at Emily’s gasp swore herself and swerved around the three Greens who had left first, standing just around a bend in the road. The boy lying on top, a spiky-haired Asian kid, slid dangerously sideways, and Madeleine and Nash grabbed to stop him zipping over the side.

"Be Shakespearian later," Nash told Pan. "Focus on the fact that he’s not dead. For all we know these things hop from person to person, and there’s a chance we can get Gav back."

Pan punched the inside of the nearest door, a thump to make them all wince, but he stopped talking.

"We’ve been terraformed," said the boy in Madeleine’s lap, his lightly-accented voice edged with a kind of disbelieving, acid delight. "They made us habitable."

"It’s what they’ve done to the Greens which concerns me," Nash said. "There are so many more Greens than Blues, and they seem to have all been impacted at once. We had best not spend long at the Wharf getting those cars."

"Get out of the city as soon as possible," Emily muttered.

"No." "Perhaps not."

Noi and Fisher, speaking together.

"Why not?" Madeleine asked, startled. "Even if we get locked up, it’s better than…that."

"Because of the Greens. Because we don’t know nearly enough about what’s going on. How far does that sound carry? Is it going to tell them to do anything more than stand gaping?" Noi roared down a wider road. "There’re Greens in every direction, in all the surrounding towns."

"We need a solid plan on where to go, and how to get there unseen," Fisher said. He had been very quiet, uncertain, but now seemed to have rediscovered his drive. "The problem is finding a place where we can wait safely and gather information."

"That’s taken care of," Noi said. "We had a Plan B."

After the swiftest of trips they hurried up to Tyler’s apartment, squashing into one elevator, tensely searching for any sign of other people, straining for an individual voice over the song of the Spire.

"Someone pack the edibles while we grab our stuff," Noi said, scooping up a line of keys.

The TV went on while Madeleine was in Tyler’s wardrobe, and when she emerged the screen showed a couple of hundred people, all staring in the same direction.

"All of the world," Nash said. "A simultaneous attack."

Madeleine turned to stick a large note on the fridge: "T – Don’t stay here. They know it. – M" She printed her mobile number at the bottom, in case he’d lost it, then did a quick tour of the room, collecting stray brushes and the bag of pads and pencils she’d put together while hunting nappies and baby formula. Most of her supplies were already in the bolthole, a piece of forethought she owed to Emily.

"Right." Noi emerged, two bags hooked over her shoulders. "We don’t have far to go, but it’s critical we go quick, quiet and unseen. Let’s head down to the central hall."

They accomplished this without much difficulty, the cloak-and-dagger peering about not even comical when they were all so sick and nervous.

"Good," Noi said, as they emerged from the elevator. "Now–"

"Girls! Wait there!"

Madeleine was not the only one who gasped at the sudden voice from above. The elevator’s doors closed behind them and, exchanging glances, they watched it go up.

"Wait," Noi murmured. "If it’s an attack, run out to the visitor parking – through the big entryway on the driveway side. I’ve a key to one of those cars."

"But who is it?" Pan asked, eyeing the descending figure.

"Not a clue," Noi said, as a beautifully-dressed woman – all silk and pearls, her platinum hair perfectly coiffed – stepped out.

She was holding a gift-wrapped box, complete with extravagant, curling bow. "Girls," she said, her voice cultured and assured, "I wanted to give you a small thank you before I left." Smiling, she held out the box, which Noi accepted blankly. "Take care of yourselves."

Without another word she turned and walked back into the elevator, her heels clicking.

"Hello Twilight Zone," Pan said, as it descended.

"Have you seen her before?" Noi asked, and Madeleine shook her head.

"Something you can discuss later–" Fisher began, and stopped as Noi suddenly gaped.

"Take Him Away Lady! It has to be! Holy flipping hell."

"You think so?" Madeleine stared at the elevator, but the woman was already out of sight. Could that hoarse, frantic whisper really have come from a person who looked like that?

"Has to be," Noi repeated. "And, yeah, now is not the time." She spun on her heel, craning to look in every direction. "Total fail on quick, quiet and unseen, but we’re going to have to risk it. Come on."

They were already near the north end of the long central hall, so it was a short trip to the aerial bridge joining the main building to the smaller block at the very end of the wharf.

"This is called the North Building," Noi said, after they had crossed, and the outside world was safely closed away once again. "When we were doing our check-the-neighbours shtick we didn’t find anyone alive in here. Almost all the apartments on the east side didn’t have anyone in them at all." She paused as Madeleine unlocked the door of their chosen bolthole. "One advantage of this one is that with the help of a ladder we prepared earlier you can jump the patio fences and dash for either the cars, or the boat moorings. There’s comparatively limited entry points, we can move through the whole sub-building without risk of being seen, and there’s a good hiding spot if anyone actually comes this far."

"You don’t think it too close to where you were before?" Nash asked.

"I think that right now there’s very few places where we can get in and out without having an encounter like we just had with the Take Him Away Lady, where there’s no-one on the other side of a wall to hear us, where there’s no easy line of sight through the windows. We might want to move again, sure, but I’m not driving madly through the city till I have a better idea of what’s going on."

"Makes sense," Fisher said.

"Why do you call her the Take Him Away Lady?" Pan asked, and Noi explained as they dumped their bags just past the entry hall.

The apartment was enormous, taking up the eastern half of the ground floor of the North Building, with a spiral staircase leading up to another quarter floor on the level above. Sliding doors led to an expansive patio bordered by potted hedges and a glass safety fence which looked directly out into the harbour. The sprawling lounge, dining and kitchen area which backed on to this was full of sunlight, and the room was dotted with touches which showed that this was a family home: children’s drawings stuck to the fridge, clusters of photos, and a stuffed unicorn arranged in one of the chairs. The warm comfort of the place seemed to make the day’s losses all the crueller, and they collapsed onto the wide lounges, suddenly depleted.

"Damn it," Pan muttered again.

Nash dropped a hand to his shoulder, but he shrugged it off. The taller boy looked worried, but turned his attention to the room. "This is Min," he said belatedly, while Fisher sorted through a collection of remotes.

"Pleased to escape with you," the younger boy said.

"Welcome, welcome." Noi gestured vaguely around the room, then paused and pulled out her phone, answering it as Fisher managed to turn on the wall-mounted television.

Images of silently-standing Greens were interspersed with scenes of unfurling stars, of fleeing Blues embraced to become abruptly composed and purposeful. The stars had found large groups of Blues everywhere, whether gathered to test their powers, or in the survival communities which had begun to form: swooping into dormitories, share-homes, repurposed hospital wards. One group of stars had even travelled far out beyond the fringes of their city, to a quarantine facility outside the dust zone.

"Hiding mightn’t be a plan after all," Pan said restively. "They don’t seem to have any problem finding Blues."

"The one at the school passed right by us and didn’t stop," Emily said.

"None of these places have been hidden," Fisher pointed out. "Most are Safe Zone sites whose locations have been broadcast. And we could hardly have been more noisy about the testing sessions."

"Aliens who surf the internet." Pan shook his head. "Great."

Noi’s fragmentary conversation reminded Madeleine to hunt out her own phone, and she was not surprised to see a half-dozen missed calls from home. The spectacle of Madeleine Cost being thrown to the sands of Bondi Beach had already flashed up twice among the stream of TV images.

Moving to sit on the spiral stair, she tried her home number

"Hi Mum."

"Oh, thank God!" A pause. "It – it is you, isn’t it?"

A tiny snort of laughter escaped Madeleine, and then her eyes stung and she felt ill and exhausted. "I don’t think the phone home stuff applies to all aliens," she said unevenly.

"Are you safe? Are you hurt?"

"Just a little shaken up. I’m with friends. We’ll try to leave the city as soon as we figure out a safe way to do it. Mum, I think you and Dad should go now. Go to Gran’s."

"Maddie, we’re not leaving without you."

"Please Mum." Her voice had gone tight and high and she struggled to bring it back under control.

There came the sound of the receiver being passed, then: "Maddie."

"Dad, make her go. It’ll be… Please. If I know you’re out of reach of this, it’ll help."

"Where are you?"

"Well hidden. Plenty of food. We haven’t decided yet what to do long-term, but for the moment we’re set to wait and listen."

Silence, then: "We were so proud of you today, Maddie. When you stopped to help that boy, I could see how afraid you were, and I–" He broke off, and Madeleine had to stand abruptly and go upstairs. Their conversation after that was fractured and full, and she broke down when it was done, and wept for the first time since she’d woken lying in dust.

After some time, Noi came up and handed Madeleine a steaming mug.

"There’s a few thousand spoonfuls of sugar in this," she said. "We’re all pretty shocky."

"Thanks," Madeleine mumbled, and sipped until her throat had opened, watching Noi as she wandered around the room.

The triple-wide landing at the top of the staircase had been fitted out as a spacious library, with floor to ceiling shelving on all walls, and even above the window seat which looked out over the navy base side of the bay. Most of the shelves were a riotous jumble of spines of all colours and sizes, but one bookcase held nothing but two-tone Penguin classics, and on another serried ranks of leather gleamed. The only furniture beside the window seat was a heavy coffee table, a curve-footed floor globe, and two vivid stained glass lamps. It was perhaps the nicest room Madeleine had ever been in, and she wished she was in a state to appreciate it.

"Who called?" she asked eventually.

"Faliha. They went straight south, didn’t come back here for anything. And then, well, her Mum…stopped. Is just sitting in the car, turned toward the Spire. Faliha wanted to ask if we had any information – and to check if we were okay."

"What if the Greens stay like that? Just standing, staring, until they starve and die? Shaun and Nick and Mrs Jabbour and…"

"The possessed Blues are gathering near the Spires," Noi went on, deliberately shutting down speculation. "That webcam trained on the Sydney Spire is still working, but only a couple of people have shown up so far." She paused, eyeing Madeleine critically, then went to the top of the stair and called down: "Come up here and I’ll show you why this place in particular."

The rest of the escapees came clattering up, exclaiming at the room.

"Because we won’t run out of reading matter if the power goes?" Fisher asked, with a faint smile and lifted brows.

"Not even because of the Wonder Woman bedroom," Noi said. "Which I’ve bagged already, thanks. No, check this out."

She crossed to the leather-bound books and pulled three toward her, producing a muted click. And the entire bookcase moved, swinging out to reveal a pocket-sized office with a safe, a desk and computer in front of a slatted window, and high shelves full of files.

"You can tell it’s there if you start looking at room proportions," Noi said. "But I would never have guessed if it wasn’t standing open when we showed up."

"Your taste in hideouts is impeccable," Min said. "But that would be comfortable for two or three."

"We’ll clean out what we can and deal with it," Noi said, shrugging. "If anyone comes to this building, we’re straight up here and the door shut. No waffling, no delay. And we need to do what we can to minimise the bunch of people hiding out ambience we’ve already achieved. I wanted to hook up some kind of motion sensor alarm for that walkway, but didn’t get a chance, so we’ll just have to be quiet and keep an ear out."

"If there are other computers in the building, there is every chance one of them has a webcam," Nash suggested. "We can feed it to a monitor in the lounge, and roster some kind of watch."

"Good thought. Maybe we better set that up straight away, and then talk what next."

"And have food," Emily said plaintively, sparking immediate agreement. Blues.

Nash left with Fisher and Min to scout the other apartments for an unobtrusive spot to set a camera, while Pan decided to join the cooking crew.

"Is there really a Wonder Woman bedroom?" he asked.

"And a Supergirl one."

"That’s mine," Emily said.

"There’s six bedrooms." Noi eyed the pantry stuffed with bulk supplies from the restaurants, then passed it over in favour of the freezer. "Two guest rooms – each with twin beds, luckily – the parents' room and three for the kids, and I think I would really like the people who live here and I have no idea if they’re alive or dead, or standing in a street somewhere staring at the Spire."

Her voice, just for a moment, had wavered, then she reached into the freezer and pulled out a Tupperware container. Keeping on. Noi, Madeleine knew, wouldn’t break down till no-one could see her.

"So," Noi said, after the first edge of hunger had been dulled, "places to run to. Family homes. Houses belonging to really trusted friends who live outside the city. Where’s everyone from?"

"Hong Kong," Min said, with a slight smile. "And I suspect we can rule out Nash’s home as well."

"I live in Edgecliff," Fisher said, naming a suburb just east of Rushcutters Bay.

"Marrickville." Noi lifted one shoulder. "I had some rellies up in Brisbane, which is no help."

"Leumeah," Madeleine said. "Out near Campbelltown, still in the dust zone. But my grandmother lives just outside Armidale. My parents – I told my parents to try to get there today. It’s on the edge of farmland, kind of open, but it wouldn’t be totally obvious if we were there."

"Kogarah," Emily said quietly, and did not mention parents. That was a suburb not much further out than Marrickville.

"Oberon," Pan put in. "In the tablelands, just before Bathurst. Relatives all around the area. A couple of spare rooms."

"Shouldn’t you be called Puck, not Pan, if you’re from Oberon?" Min asked, eyes lit with sudden delight.

"I’ve played him as well. But merry trickster junk aside, he spends his time being ordered around. Pirate-taunting’s way more my style."

"What I’d give for a straightforward pirate right now," Noi said. "Okay, so either west or up north. Oberon’s closer, but might be harder to get to since there’s fewer access roads into the mountains. How likely is it that a bunch of us could stay at either place for any measurable amount of time without the entire town knowing?"

Neither Pan nor Madeleine were very hopeful of that happening, and they debated splitting into smaller groups, or whether it was necessarily that bad a thing to be known to be Blue, once you were out of the city.

"Can’t we stay and fight?" Emily asked. "We’re letting them get away with killing our families, and taking our friends, and our homes! It’s not hopeless! Madeleine hurt one of them, and they couldn’t take her over. We can punch and shield. Can’t we at least try?"

"At this stage, we can only learn more before acting," Fisher said. He hesitated, then added softly: "I won’t pretend I don’t want to hurt them. I want – very badly – to bring that Spire down. I’m trying to think of a way. That Madeleine was able to shield…" He gave Madeleine a measured glance, then an apologetic smile as she reacted with not unnatural discomfort. "It gives me hope, but it’s hardly an upper hand. We will watch for opportunities to go on the offensive, but we need to prioritise staying…ourselves."

"If nothing else, we can practice shielding and punching," Nash said. "The car park below this North Building will give us a relatively private space, though we won’t be able to use anything like full strength. But fine control, learning to shield quickly, it cannot be a bad thing."

"We brought some phones back from the other apartments," Min told them. "Use them and turn your own off. And stay off the ground line. I’ll set up a monitor and alarm in the lounge for the webcams – there’s a program I can use to make them motion sensitive. It’d also be best to go silent on any web identities, and mask our IP for any family contact."

"You’re starting to depress me," Noi said. "But more smart thinking. And I’m sure everyone can resist the temptation to give out details. If you have to tell them something, tell 'em we’re out near the zoo."

Without a clear decision on what to do next, they finished up dinner, attention shifting to the television as it showed scenes from earlier in the day – Blues being chased, Blues shooting at balls of light which didn’t seem to care about bullets, Blues force-punching and hurting each other far more than their pursuers, and no other instances than Madeleine’s of anyone even momentarily saving themselves with a shield.

The gatherings of Blues near the Spires seemed to be breaking up, and there were signs of movement among the Greens, some of whom had at least walked out of range of cameras observing them. Others were still standing, waiting, whiles Greens more than two hundred kilometres from Spires didn’t seem impacted at all by the Spire song, even if it was played for them.

Fisher and Nash stacked the dishwasher while everyone else shifted bags and tried to rearrange the pantry so it looked a little less obviously stocked for a siege – difficult given the industrial-sized sacks of sugar and flour. With the boys taking all the downstairs rooms, the parents' room was left for Madeleine. It was decorated in dark wood and another beautiful lamp, but she felt uncomfortable, an intruder.

Folding her clothes into piles in the wardrobe, Madeleine hesitated over her backpack. She’d bestowed most of the packets of condoms on Noi, but had kept a few, vacillating between thinking this very bloodless and unspontaneous, and acknowledging that she was not only keenly attracted to Fisher, but also in a situation where she was more than ordinarily inclined to act on that attraction.

Or not. Shaking her head at the thought of successfully advancing anything with Fisher, she tipped the contents of the backpack into a bedside drawer and went to find Noi.

Pan had done so just before her. "You meant it about the Wonder Woman bedroom!" he was saying, standing in the doorway.

"It’s the floor-to-ceiling gaming consoles which put the cherry on the cake," Noi said, nodding at the only wall not papered in an enormous wrap-around mural of Amazon princess against a silhouetted landscape of temples and stars. "This is one little girl who wants to kick ass."

"You or her? But you’re pretty much Wonder Woman already," Pan said, stepping forward to examine the array of games available, and missing Noi’s sudden, painful flush. Noi had backed off from Pan after learning that he was indeed only fifteen, and even the news that it was his birthday soon hadn’t changed her mind. Since Pan didn’t seem to have realised Noi had been pursuing him, her decision hadn’t made a great deal of difference to their interaction, but moments of vulnerability broke through.

"Did you see the lightsabers?" Madeleine asked, to give Noi longer to recover.

"Wai! Guys! Get down here!"

Min’s summons sent them clattering down the stair. On the big television was an Asian woman wearing a strappy top which showed arms with only the occasional patch of non-blue flesh. Her tone was sedately calm, her posture relaxed, and the effect was one of casual conversation. Madeleine guessed the language to be Japanese.

"Why are we excited?" Noi asked.

"It’s one of the possessed. They said she–"

The image flickered and jumped back to a point where the woman was just sitting down. She turned to the camera, and a man began translating in voiceover as she spoke.

"Listen now. I am the Core of the Five of what you may call the Clan Taiee. The Taiee are First in this cycle of primacy among the En-Mott. We come to this world to settle primacy for the next cycle, and to conduct business of our own."

The woman smiled warmly. "Meaningless things to you. Deliver up to us all who are Blue, unharmed. Do not interfere with those who are Green. Neither hinder nor disturb us. Those who do not comply will be reprimanded." The idea of reprimand appeared to delight her. "Should insufficient Blues be delivered to us, the Conversion – the dust – will be released until a sufficient measure achieved."

"Fuck." Pan, beyond Shakespeare, sat down heavily.

"Our business will take a matter of two of your years. When it is complete, we will depart."

The translation ended, and the screen switched to a non-stained woman. "Further transmissions have been made from four other Spire cities. São Paulo, Mumbai, Shanghai, and New York."

They crossed to the New York transmission, where a skinny black teenager with a shaved head told them that he was the Core of the Five of Clan Na-uhl, who were Fourth in this cycle of primacy.

"We are so completely screwed," Pan said.

"No leaving the city." Noi exchanged a glance with Fisher and Nash, who both nodded.

"People wouldn’t…" Emily began, then shook her head. "I guess they would. I guess…I guess people might even expect us to turn ourselves over."

"They can live in hope." Min waved a tablet computer. "These cities aren’t quite an exact run-down of the most populated cities in the world, but it’s pretty close. And they’re the locations of the tallest Spires. This primacy they’re talking about – they took over our planet to decide on a new pecking order." He was incredulous, losing the mildly-entertained calm he’d displayed till then.

"And business of their own." Nash ran a hand over his eyes. "How very unspecific."

"Two years." Noi tapped the lid of the box the Take Him Away Lady had given her, then absently began to pull loose the bow.

"If they leave in two years, what happens to the people they’ve taken over?" Madeleine asked. "Do they keep them? Or unpossess? Dispossess?"

"Not a gamble I’m willing to take." Noi lifted the lid off the box, revealing a colourful array of cupcakes, exquisitely decorated. She held one up, studying piping work so delicate it was like lace. "Well, she knew just the thing to give to a Blue. And it’s a nice illustration of our primary problem – we all eat like horses. We’ve enough food for a few months, particularly if we collect everything in the other North Building apartments, but two years is going to mean a lot of scouting forays."

They debated longer-term options. Staying at Finger Wharf. Finding another location in the city or outer suburbs. Trying to hide in a countryside fearing a second release of dust. Getting out further, to an island, or Spire-free Tasmania. But for now, not knowing the abilities of the things calling themselves En-Mott, or the position the uninfected would take, they could only stay and watch.

Pan reached suddenly and turned the sound up on the television and they all turned to see freckles, strawberry blonde hair and blue eyes.

"…the Clan Ul-naa," a familiar voice said. "The Ul-naa are Hundred and Fifth in this cycle of primacy among the En-Mott. We come to this world to settle primacy for…"

Pan muted the sound again, and then threw the remote at the television. It bounced, and the batteries flew free, but no-one made any move to rescue it. Noi’s shoulders had hunched, Emily was trembling with anger, Fisher withdrawn, and Min uncertain. Nash–

"Are you okay?"

A grey tinge marred the warmth of Nash’s finely cut features, and his usual grace had leached away. Pan turned sharply, and sucked in his breath: "Damn, it was Gav’s day, wasn’t it? Why didn’t you say anything?"

"Testing limits." Nash lifted one hand, failing to hold back a tremor. "It is a pitiful thing, to be so dependent. I would not last a day alone."

"Here."

Pan held out his hand, but Nash moved his own away. "We’ve already established that two days together is an excellent way to knock you to pieces."

He turned his head toward Fisher, but stopped when Madeleine held out her hand.

"I’ve nothing if not energy to spare," she said. "Do I need to do anything in particular?"

Nash hesitated, then said: "Not at all. Thank you."

"Shall we go clear more space in the hidden room?" Fisher asked, and led the others away, leaving Madeleine with an uncomfortable impression she was about to do something intimate.

She studied Nash’s hand, admiring the clean lines, then suppressed a murmur of surprise at the warm sensation which swept through her.

For some reason she’d expected it to hurt, and on one level it did, but the way running too fast down a hill hurt: a plummeting exhilaration. She was suddenly lit up all over, intensely aware of the roil of power inside her, and a complex passage of strength from her to Nash. And even more aware of him, as if she was in two places at once. She watched his stars growing bright, and trembled.

He fetched her cupcakes and super-sweetened hot chocolate, and carefully ignored her pink-cheeked confusion, and by the time her mug was empty she’d recovered and was able to be amused at how he was energetically striding about, tidying things up.

"You’d probably best take first watch," she said. "You’ll never sleep after that."

Nash agreed, and then made sure she was able to get up the spiral staircase without falling over. It wasn’t quite yet sunset, but Madeleine was more than done for the day. After a quick shower in her room’s en suite, and several futile attempts to reach Tyler, she removed her phone’s battery, and dreamt of running.