Starfire

12

John had relinquished his hold on her waist, but he still guided her with a hand on one forearm. He could not have been more proper, yet she could feel goose bumps rising under his fingers. As he led her out of Weinstein’s office — a neat, pink-walled room packed with medical equipment that she had no recollection of entering — Maddy felt spectacularly strange and light-headed. She struggled for self-control. You have a job to do. You’ve got to sticky with John Hyslop, or make him sticky with you.

She halted, so that John was forced to turn and face her. “Five minutes ago I didn’t think I’d ever feel like eating again. Now I’m all of a sudden starving. Your doctor friend said you could feed me. Will you do it?”

“Of course.”

“Soon?”

“Right away. Can you move by yourself, or do you need my help?”

“I don’t know. If you could . . .”

She held out her hand, letting it flop limply at the wrist. Isn’t that what poor weak women are supposed to do? Just as well there’s no one from the Argos Group to see this. Maddy Wheatstone — rising star, hard as diamond, cold as Charon, never sick, never dependent — clinging for support like a delicate flower.

You do whatever you have to do. John Hyslop didn’t even seem suspicious. He took her by the elbow and carefully walked her to a drop chute. He halted at the edge.

“We’ll be in free fall in the chute, but only for a few seconds. Can you stand that?”

Maddy nodded. The head movement was another informal test of her balance centers, and it went fine. All sense of vertigo had gone. In its place she felt a delicious, sensual languor. Was it low gravity that produced the sense of moving deep in warm water, or was it Weinstein’s drug?

She stepped forward into the open space of the drop chute. The free-fall ride down added a new sensation. She felt hot and tingling in the pit of her belly, a warmth as good as the afterglow of the best sex ever.

Len Strahlig had been — how long ago? More than six months. And he had definitely not been the best sex ever, as well as being an empty-headed scumball liar. But he had talked a great line, just as a salesman was supposed to. The very opposite of John Hyslop. John was so serious and awkward and tongue-tied except about his work. How would he be if he could relax for once and obey his emotions instead of his inhibitions?

The return of weight brought Maddy out of her budding fantasy. She realized that her eyes were closed, and reluctantly opened them. When you began to have erotic thoughts about a hard-line engineer who was also your primary job assignment, something was long overdue.

Maddy felt heavier, which meant that they had dropped a long way from the central axis. And yet — she took a couple of steps — the floating sensation was still there.

The drug. It had to be the drug.

A voice at the base of her brain whispered, Be careful! Argos Group training forbade the use of drugs, not for any moral reasons but because they warped business judgment. The warning was intended to apply mainly to dope and fizzes, but Weinstein had mentioned that the Asfanil shot might produce the same effects.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. She had been told that it would be good if she could sleep, except that she had to stay with John Hyslop. Both of those were possible only if she slept with him. Maddy took a deep breath. She had to get herself under control. She ought not have been thinking of sex at all at a time like this. You were permitted, even encouraged, to have sex with your assignment when that came as a necessary part of the job. But you never, under any circumstances, became emotionally involved. Thanks to the Asfanil, she felt more than involved; in her present mood she was likely to say or do anything.

Fortunately, she was no longer the focus of John Hyslop’s attention. The drop chute had delivered them into the middle of the biggest room that she had ever seen on Sky City. Looking forward, along what had to be the main city axis, she saw thirty meters of floor before it reached a flat blue vertical surface. The wall behind was the same distance away. On the other two sides the floor curved up through ninety degrees to become the walls.

This had to be one of the big communal halls of Sky City, a combined social meeting place and restaurant. Scores of tables were scattered randomly on the smooth white floor. They and the one-piece chairs were all light and moveable. Small groups, mostly between two and six people, sat eating and chatting around the tables. Low-level rolfes scuttled unobtrusively between the tables, clearing and cleaning.

Everyone, it seemed, knew John Hyslop. Every few steps he paused to exchange a few words with a person or a group. Sometimes it was a question, such as how a repaired life-support subsystem on Sky City was performing. Sometimes the exchange concerned the airy web of the space shield. Never, Maddy noticed, did anyone ask or offer anything personal. No wife or kid talk, no flirting, no social chat. It was all microprocessors, monofilament strengths, q-bit rates, rolfe performance, and shield capabilities.

Geeks, she decided. Sober, serious engineers, dedicated and hardworking, the purest geek form in the universe.

And what did they think of her? Hard to tell. She was eyed with a good deal of curiosity, but no one asked who she was or hinted to John that he might provide an introduction.

So to hell with them. Except for John. He was a major challenge. There was real passion in him — you heard it when he spoke of aerospikes and dynamic tests. How could you transfer that to the human domain? Most interesting of all, how could you transfer that to you ?

She examined the set of his shoulders and the straight line of his back. She was listening, but hardly listening, to a discussion of the installation of smart strain gauges on extended fullerene members under extreme stress, when the thin, moon-faced man talking to John brought her awake by saying, “You know, you ought to talk to Lauren. She was around here just a while back, asking if anyone had seen you. She says she really has to meet with you.”

At last, a personal remark! Maddy’s muddled brain was asking, Who’s Lauren? Old girlfriend, present girlfriend? Then she remembered where she had heard the name before. It was nothing personal at all. Lauren was Lauren Stansfield, the woman who would take over John Hyslop’s duties.

No, get it right. Half his duties, the ones connected with Sky City. Someone else, a man — name? Don’t recall — would be responsible for engineering work on the shield itself.

The voice inside Maddy’s head was busy. If people will just go on talking to John, so I don’t have to talk anymore at all, maybe I can avoid making a total fool of myself . . .

“This will do.” They had reached an empty table at last, and John guided Maddy to a seat. “What would you like to eat?”

“Mmm.” She had professed to be starving, but in fact she was sure that any solid food would stick in her gullet. “Could I have soup? And a hot drink. But look, I’m fine, I can go with you and help myself. And I have a job to do. I’m supposed to—”

She managed to choke back the rest of the sentence. She said, “I’m supposed to rest, so thank you. I’ll wait here.” She had been about to say, “I’m supposed to stick to you tighter than Gordy Rolfe’s tiny ass.”

Maddy leaned her elbows on the table and rested her face in her hands, covering her eyes. The only thing she could do was sit tight, bite her tongue, and pray for the Asfanil to wear off before she said or did something awful. She felt amazingly horny. Loose as a goose, the doctor had said. How would John Hyslop react to a quiet hand sneaking up his thigh under the table? Stare down his nose at her, probably. Explain to her that she was not a certified engineer and therefore not qualified to handle extended members under extreme stress. But he was wrong about that. She was Maddy Wheatstone, and she could handle anything.

“Here we are. I hope this is all right.”

Maddy took her hands away from her eyes. John was back, heavily laden. “Got you soup and a drink. But I thought you might be able to manage something a bit more substantial once you started.” He pointed to the contents of the tray. “So I brought you a Sky City special. It’s easily confused with real food.”

He was staring at her uncertainly. Bless him, could it be a joke? And he didn’t know how she was going to react. Look at the worry lines on his forehead, and see the concern in those lovely gray eyes. Smile at him, at the very least, show you appreciate what he’s doing for you.

“Thank you, John.” Maddy gave him her top-quality seductive smile. “That’s very sweet of you.” She patted the chair next to her. “Come on. You sit down right here.”

He ignored the invitation and sat down opposite. “Look, Maddy, I did something else when I was ordering the food. I hope you don’t mind.”

I don’t think I’d mind anything you do. Not the right answer. “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me what you did?”

“I put out a general message. For Lauren Stansfield, asking her to come to table forty-seven. That’s us. I know you’re not feeling well, and I should have asked you first. But Lauren has been telling people that she really needs to talk to me, and if she’s still here, I didn’t want to miss the chance.”

I hate Lauren Stansfield, and I don’t want her here. On the other hand, I think I may need her here. “Of course I don’t mind. Where is she?”

“For all I know, she left. But if she gets my message, she’ll join us.”

Maddy squeezed the plastic bowl and took a mouthful of soup. It had a gritty consistency but no flavor whatsoever. He was watching as she forced it down. He watched as she swallowed another mouthful. If she didn’t find something to distract him, he was going to monitor every blessed milliliter she drank and every movement that she made. And if he looked a few inches lower, he couldn’t miss the fact that her nipples were erect and pushing against her green silk blouse.

She met his eyes and cleared her throat. “You know, when we were coming up on the shuttle I thought you were sitting there doing nothing.”

“That’s all right. I thought the same about you.”

“But you weren’t doing nothing, were you? You were monitoring the flight performance.”

“That’s right. Monitoring, and estimating. That’s my job, though it doesn’t usually apply to shuttle flights. But you really were doing nothing.”

“No.” Maddy reached out for the drink that he had brought her. It was, thank God, coffee, hot and even drinkable. “I was watching the passengers. That’s my job.”

It was the wrong thing to say, and she knew it at once. He was leaning forward, palms flat on the table and eyes fixed on hers. “It’s odd you should say that. I’ve been wondering since our first meeting, just what is your job? In fact, I don’t really know what anyone does who works for the Argos Group.”

You are my job, you strange, sweet man. I’m assigned to you. Maddy leaned forward also, and by an act of will kept her hands away from his. He, she noticed, had not eaten a bite. “There’s a joke about that in the Argos Group. We say it’s our goal to have a piece of everything, and do nothing. Maybe it’s like your job. You’re a top engineer, but you don’t actually make anything, do you?”

“Not for a dozen years.” He had a broad, full-lipped mouth, and it twisted downward. He didn’t like giving her that answer.

“So what do you do?”

“You saw it today. I look and listen and analyze, then I tell other people to do things.”

“Right. So would you say you’re an engineer, one level removed?”

“Two, really. The people I tell then tell other people, or they instruct the machines. The rolfes do most of the real work.”

“Well, it’s the same with the Argos Group. We’re managers, not engineers, but we bid contracts for major space projects, like the Aten asteroid capture and mining that you’ll — that we’ll be involved in.” Maddy was puzzled. Gordy Rolfe had not told her that she would be involved beyond the initial phase. That we had pushed its way in from nowhere. She added, “But we don’t perform the contracts. We farm them out, to companies who do the actual work.”

“And what do you do?”

“I suppose that I’m like you. I’m a troubleshooter. I keep an eye on things that might go wrong, and I make sure that they don’t. But I don’t mean technical things. You listen to engines. I listen to people. And I watch them, and I steer them. Do you know what I’ve been thinking?”

Maddy was talking more than her share — more than she should — and he wasn’t talking enough. She had seen the file on his background, he was a Scots-Irish mixture, but apparently the taciturn Scottishness came more easily to him than Irish blarney. She, on the other hand, didn’t seem able to shut up. When he shook his head in answer to her question, she went on, “I was thinking that you and I live in two different worlds. Even when we are on the same shuttle flight, even when we sit in seats right next to each other, what we notice is totally different. Your world is mostly engines and numbers and performance levels, mine is mostly people and their interactions and their motives. It makes you wonder, could two people like us live happily together?”

Maddy was far out of her depth. She should not be talking this way, especially to her assignment. She felt one tongue-slip away from inviting him to bed. Gordy Rolfe would skin her if he ever found out, but John was looking intrigued and decidedly puzzled.

Change the subject.

What to?

Anything. Get him talking.

“How long have you been working on Sky City?”

Maddy knew the answer: He had come eleven years ago.

“Eleven years.”

Bad question, if he could get away with two words. “What made you decide to come here, instead of taking a job down on Earth?”

“Well . . .” One-word answer. Come on, sweetie, you can do better than that. “Well, you know what they say, the fool of the family goes to space. But down on Earth I trained as an engineer under Giorgio Hamman.” He raised his eyebrows at her, waiting for a nod of recognition.

Maddy had never heard of Giorgio Hamman, but John was talking at last. She nodded and repeated, “Giorgio Hamman.”

“Right. Old Giorgio was over eighty when I met him, but he was still the best engineer in the world. I worked with him restoring the big suspension bridges that had been damaged after the supernova, and if I’d been left to myself, I would probably still be doing bridge work. But Giorgio wouldn’t let me. He said, ’Bridge repairs are a good job for an old man, they bring back happy memories. The Messina Strait bridge, now, what that means to me. Hard days and hard nights, sunshine and wine and beautiful girls. But you, young fellow’ — I was young, but I didn’t feel it — ’you, young fellow, you don’t have those memories. You ought to be building memories, to keep you warm in your old age. You must go where the action is. The space shield is the toughest engineering job in the history of the world, and it presents problems and opportunities that no one has ever dreamed of. With the talent that you have, you ought to be out there. So I’m going to do you a big favor.’ ”

John smiled at Maddy. “You know what his ’big favor’ was? Giorgio fired me. It didn’t feel like much of a favor at the time. But he gave me a farewell party that lasted two days, and sent me off with a terrific recommendation to the space shield council. And here I am.”

Building memories, to keep you warm in your old age — / like the sound of that. But I’m not building anything, and I wonder if you are, now that you’re not working on the shield.

You love that old man, don’t you? I bet the thought has never occurred to you. And did you know that when you smile like that, your eyes crinkle at the corners? I bet that has never occurred to you, either.

And I bet you don’t realize there’s not a dry seat in the house when you look at women like that.

Down, Maddy. But keep him talking, so you don’t have to. He’ll do it; you just have to push the right button.

“Is Giorgio Hamman still alive?”

“He’s not only alive, he’s out here in Sky City. He came four years ago, when he hit ninety. Not for the engineering, though — I’ve tried to get him involved in that, but he won’t listen. He says he made a mistake. What we’re doing with the shield isn’t real engineering, the way that the big suspension bridges are engineering. Instead of the cables and girders and caissons that he’s used to, we’re piddling about with robots and computers and strands of gossamer. He says we’re building a spiderweb. The fact that it’s a hundred thousand kilometers long doesn’t change things.”

“If he doesn’t like it, why does he stay on Sky City? Because it’s easier on his heart?”

“Giorgio isn’t worried about his heart. He says a good engineer doesn’t have one. He stays here because he’s sour on Earth. Maybe it’s just an old man’s memories, but the way he tells it, people on Earth before the supernova were different. More easygoing. I pointed out that there were twice as many people back then, but he says that’s not what he means. Half the world died, but it doesn’t explain why the ones who are left are so much tougher and more selfish.”

You’re describing Gordy Rolfe perfectly. Actually, you’re describing the whole Argos Group. And I’m part of it. I’m the hotshot VP, the fastest gun in the place except for Gordy himself. And he’s a disgusting, paranoid little shit.

Maddy had just enough self-control to say none of that. She was helped by something else that caught her attention. A woman had appeared at one of the hall entry staircases. She stood about fifteen meters away, regarding Maddy with a puzzled expression on her face.

Now she was walking toward them. Maddy did an instinctive point-by-point comparison. About my height. Great carriage, sexy and regal at the same time — can’t compete with that. Good figure, too, far as I can tell in those clothes — bet the men go ape over those breasts. Big, serious eyes. But they’re sort of lifeless, I’ll take mine any day. Nice auburn hair. Color looks natural. An odd style. And that’s a strange hair comb, sort of tiara-shaped — looks like it’s a real antique -

The woman halted at their table while Maddy was still busy with her inventory.

“Lauren. You got my message.” John Hyslop finally saw the newcomer and gestured to her to sit down. “Come and join us.”

John didn’t notice as he made the introductions — of course he didn’t, a geek engineer wasn’t designed to pick up undertones — but some things are obvious even when you are drugged up to the eyes. Maddy could see that, so far as Lauren Stansfield was concerned, this meeting had one person too many.

Lauren immediately provided confirmation. She said, “I was hoping that this would be a private meeting.” She looked at Maddy but spoke as though she did not exist.

Not a chance, sweetheart. I stay. Maddy nodded to Lauren, smiled at John, and sipped coffee.

“I think Maddy has to remain where I can keep an eye on her.” John spoke right on cue, as if Maddy had scripted it. “She’s up from Earth, and Weinstein just gave her a shot of Asfanil. We have to watch for side effects. On the other hand, if you want to talk about personal things . . .”

Did I have it right the first time? Are they lovers?

Maddy took another look at the woman sitting on her left, Lauren Stansfield was beautifully dressed in a custom-made plum-colored pantsuit that conformed to engineer dress code while managing to seem nothing like it. She was also impeccably made up, as though for a date. But the body language said no such thing. She sat well back from John Hyslop, knees together, back straight, hands folded at her midriff.

“I have no personal matters to discuss,” she said. “My choice of words was perhaps confusing. When I said that I wished for a private meeting I meant only that I want to talk about matters concerning Aten asteroid materials, inappropriate for discussion in public.”

“Oh, that’s all right.” John was clearly relieved. “You can talk about that in front of Maddy. In fact, it’s good if you do — Maddy’s with the Argos Group, and their contract includes material delivery from the Aten asteroids.”

“Very well.” Lauren Stansfield leaned toward Maddy, providing a close-up of the retrousse nose and the small, prim mouth. For the first time, that mouth took on the shadow of a smile. It was not reflected in the cold, wide eyes. “Ms. Wheatstone, you must excuse me if I am as blunt as if you were not present.”

Lauren turned to John Hyslop, making it clear that so far as she was concerned Maddy was not part of the meeting. “As you know, John, our procedure calls for an inventory of materials every three months. We are six weeks away from the end of the quarter, but since I am taking over from you in certain areas I decided to make an inventory at once. It seems that there are major discrepancies between recorded and actual quantities. I see signs of substantial theft of materials derived from the Aten asteroid stores—”

“Hold on.” John held up his hand. “Lauren, I wish you had let me know that you were going to do this.”

It was not at all a reprimand, but it seemed to Maddy that Lauren Stansfield took it as such. Her back stiffened and she said, “I thought it best to proceed without telling anyone. After all, if there has been theft, as appears to be the case, I did not wish to give the thieves an opportunity to cover up their actions.”

“Sure. But it’s not theft, Lauren. It’s only sloppiness — my sloppiness.” John pulled out the little notebook that Maddy had seen him using on the shuttle. “When we were making fixes on the shield last week, the crew needed a bunch of chrome bars and smart sensors and carbon filament microlattices. It was a rush job, so I told them to pull straight out of inventory and I would take care of the record keeping. I did, too.” He waved the notebook. “In here. But I never got round to transferring it into the data bases.”

Lauren Stansfield’s face was inscrutable. Even Maddy, who specialized in such things, could not read it. Was that a look of relief, that the problem had gone away? Was it annoyance, at having her theory of theft disposed of so quickly? Or was it disdain, for the primitive way that John Hyslop recorded information?

Listen and learn. Maddy had too little experience with women engineers.

Lauren was taking a small entry terminal from her own jacket. “I see. Then I suggest that we update the inventory at once. If you will read me the industry codes, and then the quantities …”

Maddy sat back as the conversation descended into a boring exchange of meaningless numbers. She listened with half an ear and watched much more closely. She wanted to understand, not so much what these engineers talked about as what moved and motivated them.

Her first take on John Hyslop, as a calculating and unemotional man, had been wrong. You only had to hear him talk about Giorgio Hamman to realize that his enthusiasm for the man went beyond admiration to adoration.

Lauren Stansfield was a tougher challenge. The woman presented herself as the very model of Ms. Cool, but occasionally, as when John had interrupted her assertion of theft, you sensed a spark of fire inside the ice.

Since Lauren was taking over John Hyslop’s duties, she must be highly competent. That came across in her demeanor. Otherwise, she was an invisible woman. Maddy had the feeling that if she turned her back on Lauren, the woman would fade from view within seconds.

No one is calm, no one is logical. Inside, everybody is a volcano. That was Gordy Rolfe’s guiding principle, the one he had used to build the Argos Group.

It worked fine down on Earth — brawling, selfish, tormented Earth. But what about here, in the quiet sanctuary of Sky City, with its abundance of calm and logical engineers? Maybe Gordy’s principle didn’t work at all.

Maddy turned away from John and Lauren, still deep in their number swapping, and looked out along the great length of the communal hall.

Everything was peaceful. Calm, logic, order, rational behavior made manifest. But someone on Sky City, perhaps one of the very people she was now watching, was an insane murderer.

Underneath, even here, burned the volcano.

interlude 2

interlude: Sniffer, Model B.

Two years in the million-year evolution of human intelligence is nothing, less than an eyeblink. Two years in the twenty-first-century development of machine intelligence is a significant interval.

In outward appearance and even in internal hardware, Sniffer-A and Sniffer-B were almost identical, but the second model possessed a far higher degree of program flexibility. In human terms it was still no more than a low-grade moron with unique specialized talents, a silicon-based idiot savant, but it was enormously smarter than Sniffer-A. Model B could correlate predicted and observed values, decide if the difference between the two was significant, and then — a major improvement — vary the performance of its onboard sensors and analytical tools.

The Sniffer tasted the speeding front of the particle flux and decided, as Sniffer-A had done two years earlier, that the difference from expectations went far beyond statistical tolerance. That result was sent on its light-speed journey back to Earth, while at the same time a new sampling protocol was introduced. The arrival times of the anomalously heavy particle nuclei were measurable to within an attosecond. Even moving at an appreciable fraction of light speed, nucleic separation distances of less than an atomic diameter could be determined.

The Sniffer was well equipped to analyze time series data. It was clear that the arrival times of groups of nuclei of different species were tightly correlated. Those groups were also very large, usually containing trillions of separate nuclei. The time pattern was seldom repeated, but the number of a particular type of nucleus contained within a single cluster was usually the same.

Sniffer-B pondered the problem at a thousand billion cycles a second as it flew on through the incident flux. It held in its general data base enough information to realize that the external world was not composed of one-dimensional entities. The data series that it was observing was a projection onto a single dimension — time — of three-dimensional structures. The Sniffer also had information on organic chemistry, enough to infer how a complex structure, such as a molecule, would appear if projected onto any given axis in space. Varying the axis of projection would give patterns characteristic of the molecule, patterns that looked different from each other but in which the number of a particular kind of atom would always be the same.

The Sniffer struggled with the problem of reconstructing the spatial configuration of the clusters that its sensors were observing. It made the working assumption that the structure was always the same, but might be arriving at the sensors at any angle.

Sniffer-B tried, and tried, and failed. It knew that it needed a method for the inference of spatial structures applicable to the clusters of nuclei, but the closest relevant technique — the theory of molecular crystallography — had seemed to the Sniffer’s makers far beyond the set of applications likely to be useful in the interstellar environment.

The Sniffer did not know how to stop trying. It continued with its ceaseless ferment of computation long after the main flux of particles had passed. Only when all systems were powered down for the long interstellar cruise did the analysis process suspend.

It would start up again one more time, when arrival at Alpha Centauri triggered a last flurry of futile activity. The Sniffer would never know that the puzzle racking its circuits had been solved, within days of its receipt on Earth, by the slow and inefficient organic computers of its makers.