Starfire

16

John Hyslop was showing off, but he didn’t know it. Even with a knowledge of what he was doing, he would have had trouble explaining why.

He and Maddy Wheatstone stood at the entrance to the shield simulation chamber. The sight alone was enough to make most visitors gasp, even without explanation of the technological marvels hidden within.

The chamber sat far out on the central spindle of Sky City, at the opposite end from the power-generating plant. It was a structure only in the Sky City sense, of material enclosing a volume. It would not have survived for two seconds down on Earth. The wall of the chamber was a micron-thin sheet of fullerenes, held to its spherical shape by an internal pressure of a few micro-grams per square meter.

At the center of the sphere floated a physical model of the shield, built at a scale of a hundred thousand to one.

“It’s a little more than a kilometer lengthwise,” John explained as he guided Maddy toward the wide end of the cone. “Everything is in exact proportion to the real shield. The important thing, though, is that you get an overview of where the project stands at any time, which you can never get by looking at the shield itself — for one thing, most of the shield components are too small to see, and for another, the whole thing is too big to look at all at once. The model is updated in real time to reflect progress — or problems — with the real shield. See, it’s happening now. A section is going out of commission. Either it’s part of a routine check, or a horde of rolfes will be heading that way on the real shield.”

Maddy followed his pointing arm. A small section of the shield, no more than a meter square, was changing from green to red. Except that a one-meter square was not small at all. With a scale of a hundred thousand to one, one meter on the model represented a hundred kilometers on the shield itself.

“Let’s go take a look at it,” John said casually. “Hold tight, I’m switching us to VR mode.”

He saw Maddy turn and stare at him inside her suit helmet. A VR session was not on their schedule. In less than an hour, John was supposed to meet with Will Davis and Lauren Stansfield for a final wrap-up before he went to his new assignment in asteroid capture.

“I know,” he said. “But I’ve worked with the shield for a lot of years. Call it one last look.”

“Hey, you’re the boss. You don’t have to give me explanations for what we do.”

Her helmet was only a foot away from his, and she was smiling. That smile made John profoundly uncomfortable yet pleased at the same time. Will Davis had met Maddy only once, three days ago, but as soon as he and John were alone he said, “Better not get ideas, boyo — and if you have ideas already, drop ’em. That there’s one heavy-duty alpha female. She eats men like me and you as appetizers before the main meal.”

Heavy-duty alpha female. That struck John as an understatement. But he still wanted an answer to his question: Why did someone like Maddy Wheatstone trail along with him when she could be doing so many more important and interesting things?

Don’t ask, or you’ll hear what you don’t want to hear. John took a quick breath and threw them into virtual reality mode.

The shield sat in front of them, exactly as before. Its apparent size had not changed, but the far-off wall of the chamber had vanished and Maddy Wheatstone no longer smiled at him inside her suit.

He heard her gasp. “What happened?”

“We’re in VR. What you’re seeing on your visor isn’t the model of the shield anymore, it’s the real thing. We’re picking up radio feeds from sensors located around the shield, in the same relative position as we are to the model. Smart sensors on the shield surface send out messages describing their condition, and those are converted to light signals of the right color by the message sensors.”

“Neat. But suppose I want to look at a different part of the shield?”

“You move along using your suit controls, just as if you wanted to visit a different piece of the model.”

“Like this? Hey, I’m moving.”

“Keep going. You can use VR all the way to Cusp Station.” John did the same thing, gliding steadily toward the point of the cone that formed the terminus of the shield.

He was used to the effect, but Maddy wasn’t. After a moment she said, “I don’t get it. I’m moving all right, but if I travel along in my suit at ten meters a second I must be going like hell in real space.”

“It’s a hundred thousand to one scale. Ten meters a second converts to a thousand kilometers. You’re moving along the shield at a thousand kilometers a second.”

“But that’s impossible. Nothing can accelerate me so fast to move at that speed.”

“Quite true. Nothing at all is accelerating in real space. Observational sensors watch every part of the shield, and the VR system simply switches to provide us with signals from whichever set of sensors is appropriate. What you’re seeing is a succession of frames, like in an old-time movie camera. If your eyes could handle a hundred frames a second, you’d be able to watch the individual scene change each time you were switched to a new set of observational sensors.”

He wondered if he was talking down to her. Maybe Maddy already knew this; it was well-known stuff. He rapidly switched himself out of VR, leaving Maddy in it. The suits’ proximity sensors and collision-avoidance systems had cut in as soon as they went to VR mode, so he and Maddy now floated ten feet apart. John overrode them and approached close enough to peer in at her face. She couldn’t see him, and he was relieved to find that she appeared anything but bored or irritated. Her lips were slightly apart, her eyes were wide, and her nostrils flared. “Alpha female” didn’t even begin to describe it.

“That tiny thing is Cusp Station?” Maddy’s words brought John back from his private version of virtual reality. “How big is it, John? It looks small enough to reach out and hold in my hand.”

“It’s almost a kilometer across — as big as Sky City.” John went back to VR and felt a gentle push as the proximity sensor cut in again and moved his suit away from Maddy’s. Cusp Station was a cherry-sized glowing ball at the very end of the shield. As Maddy said, it seemed close enough to grab. “Of course, Cusp Station has nowhere near as many people as Sky City, and hardly any computer power.”

“How many people?”

“The last time I was there we had a human staff of a hundred and forty, plus about three thousand rolfes either in Cusp Station or out on the shield. But a lot of the rolfes are early models. They can’t do nearly as much as the newer ones.”

“That was the day we first met, wasn’t it? We dragged you back for a meeting in Bruno Colombo’s office. You were so tired you looked like a walking corpse. That’s the last time you were out on the shield.”

“Yes.” The last time. That could mean the time before this one, or it might mean the final time.

Could you feel nostalgia for something as vast, remote, and austere as the space shield?

John had a sudden urge to see it — not the model, not the VR presentation, but the real thing in its elusive gossamer glory. He dropped out of VR and checked the time. They had forty minutes before the meeting with Will and Lauren. He and Maddy could do it, provided they kept their suits on and used the old exit lock from the simulation chamber.

He brought Maddy out of simulation mode and watched her shocked expression when he appeared from nowhere in front of her.

He said, “Relax, you’re out of VR now. The change is a bit of a surprise when you’re not used to it. Come on. I’ll take you outside so you can see the shield. The real thing this time.”

He took over her suit controls and steered them toward the far side of the simulation chamber. Maddy protested, “But this isn’t the way we came in.”

“No. The usual way outside takes you back along the axis, but there’s a faster route to space using an old exit lock and tunnel at this end.”

“Are you sure it will be all right?” Maddy was used to the old office buildings of Earth, where many escalators and elevators knocked out by the supernova had never worked properly since.

“Sure. The maintenance machines keep everything clean and in perfect working order. The worst thing that can happen is there might be maintenance work going on, and we’d not be allowed to enter.”

They passed into an exit lock hardly big enough for two people. The doors groaned and creaked as they opened and closed. “Just old,” John said, though the poor lubrication surprised him. He made a mental note to check that a suitable vacuum-rated lubricant was being used, then realized that was no longer his job. Sky City maintenance was Lauren Stansfield’s responsibility now.

They emerged at the entrance of the curving corridor beyond. Maddy paused to stare at John. She did not speak, and she did not need to. He could see for himself. Everything in this section might be in working order, but clean it certainly was not. He ran his glove along one dimly lit wall and wiped off a layer of gray dust. Now that he looked closely, he could see that a couple of nearby fluorescents on the tunnel wall were not lit. But all the corridor lights were supposed to come on automatically when the lock was cycled.

Maddy was standing perfectly still, taking her cues from him. “We’ll be safe,” he said. “Even if all the wall lights failed, our suit lights would be enough. All we have to do is go along to the end of the corridor, then another lock takes us outside to open space. One more thing before we go.”

He opened a circuit to maintenance and left Maddy in the loop so that she could hear his message. He kept it short. The corridor they were in seemed to have been overlooked by the cleaning machines. From the look of the place it had been this way for months.

She watched him send the message and made no comment. After his boast about everything being in perfect working order, why should she? He already looked like a half-wit. “Along here,” he muttered, and ushered her into the main body of the corridor.

A small residual field showed that they were not exactly on the central axis of Sky City, so the path they followed had an apparent floor and ceiling. The upward curve was gentle, and as they moved John could examine the walls and follow the line of the corridor. He kept track of failed lighting and looked for any signs of recent visits by cleaning machines. Possibly it was just one particular machine that needed repair.

A grunt from Maddy brought his attention back to her.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” She gestured ahead of them. “But what on earth’s that?”

It was a shapeless dark object on the floor about thirty meters ahead.

“Probably a cleaning bag.” John moved faster, but it wasn’t until he was within a few yards of the sack that he felt any sense of uneasiness. The bag was bulky, about four feet long and two feet across, and the lumpy shape was suggestive.

The sack’s neck was loosely secured by a drawstring. He lifted it easily and pulled the string fully open. The bag fell away. The contents appeared as though emerging of their own volition. Two feet from John’s suit helmet a human face and naked torso floated into view. The skin of the head was desiccated and freeze-dried, withered lips pulled back in a dreadful grin. The eyes showed only whites, deep in their sockets. A deep indentation in the skull on the left-hand side gave evidence of a savage blow. The delicate throat had been hacked and slashed, and dried blood blackened the ends of long, fair hair. A deep cut began just below the sternum and ran downward to the navel.

And beyond.

John swallowed hard, lifted the black plastic of the bag back into place, and pulled the drawstring tight.

He looked at Maddy. She sagged against the wall, eyes unblinking behind the visor of her suit. He wanted to speak to her, but could not.

He opened another circuit, this one direct to Bruno Colombo’s office and without Maddy in the loop. “This is John Hyslop,” he said. He sounded strained and unnatural, even to himself. “I am in the old extension tunnel leading from the simulation chamber to space. I will transmit exact coordinates after this message. I need security here as soon as possible. I have found . . .”

He paused. He had been about to say “a new victim of the Sky City killer,” but the body showed signs of long duration in space. Such a degree of drying could not have happened in a few hours.

He shielded the bag from Maddy with his own suited body, and forced himself to open the drawstring. This time he examined the body closely, for as long as he could stand. “I believe,” he said at last, “that we have found one of the missing victims of the Sky City killer. There has been mutilation. Judging from the wounds and the apparent age of the victim, I think that this must be Lucille DeNorville.”

Under other circumstances the prospect of a private dinner with Maddy would have made John delighted but nervous. He had been aware of her oddly amorous look after the attack of labyrinthitis, but he had done nothing to follow up on it because he felt sure it was all the effect of her medication. Now, the discovery of Lucille De-Norville’s mutilated corpse overshadowed all personal issues.

He and Maddy had been grilled for an hour by four Sky City security staff. John knew each of them personally and hoped that they saw him and Maddy as no more than the accidental discoverers of the body. But a full and careful questioning was inevitable. At what time had they entered the simulation chamber? At what time did they operate the air lock? Why had they chosen that particular lock, out of date and normally out of use? Had they seen anything or anyone in the tunnel before Maddy caught sight of the black plastic bag? Had either of them heard anything?

To that last question John was tempted to give a sarcastic answer. What can you possibly hear when you are floating in a vacuum?

He remained polite and cooperative. The security officers had no choice but to ask their questions, it was standard procedure. Unfortunately, neither he nor Maddy could offer a scrap of useful information. They had not touched the corpse, or moved it from where they found it, or seen anything out of the ordinary.

John knew, as Maddy did not, that the location of Lucille DeNorville’s body had other implications. The killer, either before or immediately after the murder, must have tampered with the central data bank that governed the maintenance of Sky City. Otherwise, routine service by cleaning machines would have found Lucille within a few days. Without such service the discovery might have gone unnoticed for years. John could not recall the last time that he, or anyone else, had gone directly from the simulation facility to open space.

The security staff confirmed John’s suspicion. The air lock maintained an electronic log of the date and time of its use, and there had been just two previous openings in the past three years. The first was four days before Lucille DeNorville vanished. The second was on the actual day of her disappearance.

That raised a question in John’s mind: Why had the murderer failed to do the obvious thing and taken the body to release it in open space? Why leave Lucille DeNorville in a location where, even if it took months or years, the corpse would ultimately be found?

The security officials had no answers. They departed at last for the medical center. Their leader, Alyssa Sisk, had ordered an autopsy even though the cause of Lucille’s death seemed clear. She had died when her skull was bludgeoned. The other wounds and the sexual mutilation had taken place after death.

Alyssa and John had been friends for eight years. She told John and Maddy that they were free to stay in the private security office for as long as they liked, but formally she warned him that he must remain on Sky City for the next twelve hours in case more questions came up. Alyssa was gray and drawn and tended to repeat herself. Living with the murders night and day had been hard on her.

When John and Maddy were finally alone and with their suits off, she slumped on a blue padded chair and he sat opposite. Food had been provided at the beginning of the meeting, but neither had even glanced at it. A low table between them bore a collection of cooked dishes, now all cold.

“You don’t have to stay, you know,” John said. “Alyssa Sisk’s instructions apply only to me.”

Maddy’s slight nod was her only sign that she knew John was still in the room. The discovery of the corpse had turned her into a different woman. Every shred of vivacity and resolve had vanished.

“I’m sure you have other work waiting,” he went on. “Down on Earth, or with the Aten asteroid capture people, or something else on Sky City. Everybody these days always has too many things to do.”

Still she said nothing. John had zero confidence that he knew how to deal with distraught women. When she did not reply, not even with a nod or a look, he felt that he had to find a way to fill the dismal silence. It didn’t matter if he sounded lightweight and trivial — it might even be better that way.

He told himself, Talk! If she can’t, you have to.

He said, hardly knowing what words would come out of his mouth, “When I think you’re doing nothing, like now, I bet that’s not true at all. On the flight up you were sitting and evaluating people and what they do, and I had no idea what you were thinking. I didn’t realize you were thinking at all.” Just as I have no idea what you are thinking now. “Even when it’s logical for people to have the same thoughts, they often don’t. When I first applied for a position on Sky City, we were told that we would work on building the shield and it was presented as the only worthwhile task in the solar system. We were saving humanity from a guaranteed future disaster. I’m sure that’s true, and I nodded as much as any of the others. But it wasn’t the reason I wanted to come.”

Maddy looked up and raised an eyebrow. It could be an expression of inquiry — or disbelief.

John went on, “I was born on the Canadian border, but I was on vacation in Washington state visiting my aunt and uncle when the supernova hit. My sister was already grown up and married and living back East, and she made it through all right, but we never heard from my parents again. I stayed on with Aunt Sue and Uncle Jake. They were too busy putting things back together after Alpha C to worry a lot about me, so I was pretty much left to myself. I spent my time backpacking in the Cascade Mountains. I just loved exploring and rock climbing. When I finally got hauled in from the mountains and had to work with the learning machines, my heroes were Columbus and Drake, Amundsen and Peary, Mallory and Whymper and Hillary. I saw myself like them, king of some new frontier — until I realized there was nothing left to explore. The blank spots on the map were recent; all the remote regions had been explored and mapped long before the supernova. Every desert had been crossed, every island had been charted and surveyed, every mountain had been climbed, solo and in groups, with and without oxygen. There was rediscovery and reconstruction to be done in South America and Africa and Australia, but that’s not the same as discovery.”

He was boring her to death, he just knew it. He was all ready to apologize when Maddy grabbed his hand, squeezed it, and said, “Go on. Please.”

It wasn’t the response he’d expected. He had nothing more to say. There were things you didn’t talk about, and there were things you couldn’t talk about. Maddy Wheatstone sat squarely at the intersection of the two. He wasn’t much of a talker at the best of times. But Maddy was staring at him imploringly.

John took a deep breath and spoke of the things you didn’t talk about. “I was in despair. I was seventeen years old and I thought I had reached a dead end. I didn’t see any future for myself as an explorer, because even if there had been anywhere on Earth left to explore, nobody could afford to support luxuries like polar expeditions. Space exploration was dead. The one Mars expedition had been a disaster, and there was no chance there would ever be another. Alpha C had put an end to that.

“So I gave up and trained to be an engineer. There was more than enough work for me then; we had to rebuild the whole world. I didn’t climb any mountains, and I didn’t go to the poles or to Jupiter. But I did walk the high steel four thousand feet above Tokyo, and I rode the span of the ninety-kilometer arch across the Messina Strait, and I planted the deep caissons in the Mariana Trench. I told myself that was sufficient, that I didn’t miss the thrill of the old dreams, of being where no one had ever been before. And for a long time, what I had was enough. Then Giorgio Hamman fired me. He pushed me into space, and I finally found what I’d been looking for. The new frontier wasn’t on Earth at all. It was out here, building the shield. Not exploration. Application.” He wanted to tell her of the thrill of it, hanging beyond Cusp Station a hundred and fifty thousand kilometers from Earth, with a straight fall through the insubstantial fabric of the shield if your drive system failed. But he could not summon the words. At last he said, “If Edmund Hillary were alive today, he wouldn’t be struggling up the South Col of Mount Everest. He’d be out on the shield perimeter with us, living in a suit for weeks at a time, drinking recycled water, eating his own reprocessed wastes . . .”

John trailed off. He had run down, and at a most unedifying point.

“It is there. Inside you. I knew it.” Maddy was sitting upright, her blue eyes so intense that he burned up in their gaze. She went on, incomprehensibly, “It wasn’t the body, you know. I could have stood that. It was her face and hair. She looked so much like Meg.”

Was she talking to him? Did she even know that he was there?

He stared at her hopelessly, until suddenly she reached out and gripped his arm.

“It was different for me.” She spoke dreamily, like a woman in a trance. “My family seemed so lucky. We were living in Edmonton when the supernova happened. I was only five, but I remember my reaction. It was annoyance. We lost all the entertainment channels. That, and the electric power went off for a while. Nothing else seemed wrong.”

John had heard the story before, but never from anyone who had been there. Somehow, in an area of Canada about a hundred miles across and centered on Edmonton, all the global changes and violence caused by Alpha C had canceled out. In that eye of the hurricane the puzzled residents heard reports of devastation and disaster everywhere, while their own town and countryside remained untouched.

“My sister Meg was ten years older than me.” Now Maddy was talking rapidly, almost in a whisper. “She was so smart and so talented, everybody in the family said that one day she’d run the country. I thought she was a goddess; she could do absolutely anything. But she wasn’t with us when the power went out. She was on a visit to Calgary. When the AVC of her car failed along with everything else, it ran into a downed power line. The line was still live. When they brought her body back home they told me I couldn’t see her. I really wanted to, and when everybody was asleep I sneaked into her bedroom. I knew the car had hit a power line, and I sort of imagined that she would be all lit up and glowing, like a fairy. It wasn’t like that. Meg was lying on her bed. She had beautiful long blond hair, but the ends of it were black. Burned. Her face wasn’t glowing, the way it should be. It was gray and twisted and blotchy, and her eyes were white and bulging. I remember thinking, it’s not possible, how could someone be burned, the way they’d told me, and have their eyes go white}

“What I hadn’t realized was that my father had been sitting in the room with Meg. He didn’t move for a few seconds when I came in, but then he stood up. I was terrified. I thought it must be Meg’s ghost. When I realized who it was I thought he’d be mad at me because I’d disobeyed him, but he wasn’t like that at all. He came over and put his arms around me. He said, ’I didn’t want you to see Meg, not the way she is. But I was wrong. You have a right to say goodbye to her, Maddy, as much as anyone else.’ He gave me a big hug. ’You’re all I’ve got now,’ he said. ’Make me proud of you. Make Meg proud of you, too.’

“I’ve tried. But I don’t think I did, ever. I never could.”

It was a sad, vulnerable Maddy, one who John hadn’t known existed. When she stopped speaking she folded her hands together in her lap and sat with her eyes lowered. He knew what he ought to do. He should comfort her, put his arms around her and tell her that everything was all right, that she herself was better than all right.

But he couldn’t do it. John sat silent, cursing his ineptitude and inhibitions and insecurity. Maddy Wheatstone was his superior in every way, even when she was at a personal low. Would it be taking advantage of her if he hugged her to him and offered help? And if he did try to comfort her now, how would she feel about it later?

In a strange, dreamlike separation of mind and body, John moved to Maddy’s side. He put his right arm around her shoulders. He couldn’t find words, but he lightly kissed the top of her head. After a moment she leaned against him and stayed there. They sat silent, bodies together, while John’s mind took off in unthinkable directions. It was a moment when anything might happen.

The mood shattered when the door jerked open and Alyssa Sisk came hurrying in.

“I wondered if you’d still be here.” She took no notice of the fact that John was sitting with his arm around Maddy. “You must be going deaf. Didn’t you hear it? There’s a call out for you, John, on the general alert system.”

“About the murder?” With Alyssa’s sudden appearance John’s mind jumped for no reason to the image of Lucille DeNorville’s ravaged corpse, drifting alone for months in that dark, unattended corridor.

“Not the murder, man.” Alyssa sounded impatient. “That’s my business, not yours. Bruno Colombo wants you in his office.”

“Why?”

“How should I know? Whatever it is, do you think he’d announce it to everybody in Sky City? But there’s lots of action everywhere. Rumors of bad news about the particle storm, changes of plans, tighter schedules — as if that were possible.”

John took his arm away from Maddy. He stood up and glanced down at her.

“Don’t worry.” Maddy read his concern. “Go to your meeting. I’ll be all right now, and I’ll see you later. And — thanks, John.”

“I’m sorry we didn’t talk more.”

“We said lots. I didn’t need more talk. I needed what you gave me.”

“Well, then.” He paused, then said uncertainly, “If you’re sure you’re going to be all right . . .”

“I’m all right.”

He nodded and hurried out, and Alyssa turned to Maddy.

“I know you say you don’t need more talk, but there’s some character hanging around outside. He says he needs to talk with you right away.”

“He must have the wrong person. Nobody knows I’m here.”

“You’d better tell him that yourself, because he doesn’t seem to know it. He certainly knows your name. He asked for Maddy Wheatstone. He says he only needs five seconds with you. After that, he says, you’ll be the one wanting to meet with him.”