Starfire

18

The face of the man who wanted to see Maddy was familiar, even if she could not attach a name to it. He was — somehow she was not surprised — the sallow, dark-haired man she had seen on the shuttle up. He was leaning nonchalantly against the wall outside, holding under his left arm the same cylindrical black bag with its pink and mauve lining.

He greeted her casually, as though they were old acquaintances.

“I’ve seen you a coupla times round The Flaunt, and I recognized you on the flight up. You’re Maddy Wheat-stone. I’m Seth Parsigian. You an’ me got the same boss.”

“The same boss?” Maddy wasn’t ready to give anything away.

“Mister you-know-who. The toxic midget.”

In spite of herself, Maddy smiled. “I bet you don’t call him that to his face. Do you have identification?”

He did not speak, but he slipped a card from his jacket and passed it to her. He waited as she placed it face-to-face with her own Argos Group card and his image flashed onto its back face.

He raised one dark eyebrow. “Satisfied?”

“Not yet. It doesn’t state your division.”

“It wouldn’t. I’m Special Projects.” He grinned at her. “And just to prove that I’m Special Projects, try this one.”

He passed a second card to her. Her ID tracer showed the same picture and the same name, Seth Parsigian; but now he was identified as an undersecretary in the French armed services.

He said cheerfully, “I’ve got three or four more if you want to see ’em.”

“Don’t bother. So you’re Seth Parsigian, and you work in Special Projects for you-know-who. I’m here on a special assignment, too. I don’t have time for social chat.”

“Good. ’Cause this ain’t one.” He tucked away the cards. “I need help. If you can do something for me, I’ll owe you big-time.”

The rules within the Argos Group were quite clear: You helped another member if you could, but not at the price of your own assignment. Another’s success would not balance your failure.

There was one exception. “Did GR tell you to ask me to help?”

“Hell, no. If Gordy knew that you and I were even talking, he’d shit bricks.”

“Then we shouldn’t talk.” But Maddy didn’t turn and walk away. An ally inside the Argos Group — especially one in Special Projects — might have many uses.

He was watching her with those light, flickering eyes. She had the feeling that he had surveyed her up and down in the first second, made his assessment, and was acting on it.

“Why don’t I tell you my problem?” he asked. “I’ll be real quick, no more than five minutes. Then you can decide if you’ll help or not.”

“I’ll give you two minutes.”

“Fair enough. I’ve come up here to find the person who killed a dozen teenagers. You know about ’em?”

Maddy thought of Lucille DeNorville’s ravaged body. “I know too much. I was there when we found one this afternoon. It was horrible.”

“So that’s what all the excitement was around security. Another one? He’s killed again?”

“No. This was the body of one of the earlier victims, a girl called Lucille DeNorville.”

“I remember her. Number seven. Disappeared, but evidence at the scene said she’d had her brains bashed in.”

“She had. That and — other things. She’d been badly cut up.” Maddy found that she couldn’t add details. She went on, “Look, if I could help you, I would. But I don’t know much about the murders. You need an expert.”

“I’ve got me an expert. No, I won’t say who, so don’t even ask. I’m up here tryin’ to do the legwork, but it’s damn nigh impossible.”

“Why? I’ve been anywhere I wanted to on Sky City. Nobody has bothered me.”

“That’s because you’re a woman. They’ll leave you alone. Try bein’ an adult male. A man like me, a stranger to Sky City wanderin’ round by himself, six people ask who you are and tell you to move on every time you stop to scratch your ass.”

Maddy could see why. Seth Parsigian did not have the look of a man she would like to meet in a dark alley, and Sky City was full of dimly lit, empty corridors. She said, “I can’t do legwork for you. I wouldn’t know how.”

“I’m not askin’ you to. All I’m saying is, if you were with me when I was doin’ walk-arounds, I’d not have amateur sherlocks trailin’ me every step I take.”

“So you want me to go with you. How do I know you’re not the murderer yourself?”

“Trust me. No, I guess that dog won’t run. Well, for starters you can check the dates of the murders. You’ll find I wasn’t on Sky City for any of them.”

“I think I’ll do that. Now you’ve had your two minutes, and more.”

“An’ you’re still here.”

“I want to talk payback. Suppose I decide to help you. What do I get out of it? What’s in it for me?”

“You sound like Gordy Rolfe. What do you want to get out of it? Can I do somethin’ for your job up here? Tit for tat?”

At the beginning of the meeting Maddy would have denied that she needed help. It took only half a second to realize how wrong that was. She had been told to stick with John Hyslop every second of every day. In practice that was impossible. She wasn’t with him now, for instance, and she didn’t know where he was or what he was doing.

She made her decision. “You may be able to help me keep an eye on someone up here — someone whose actions are of direct interest to Gordy Rolfe. Do you know John Hyslop?”

“I know who he is. He’s the big-wheel engineer for Sky City and the shield. But I don’t know him know him.”

“Gordy assigned me to watch him, see what he does. I could introduce you. Tit for tat. I help you poke around Sky City, you help me keep an eye on Hyslop.”

“Suppose he won’t let me?”

“Let me handle that end.”

“You say Gordy knows about this?”

“He’ll approve. Do you have your communicator hooked into the local system so I can get in touch with you?”

“Give me ten minutes, and I will have.”

“Good. I’ll call you. If I decide we have a deal, I’ll tell you where and when we meet Hyslop.”

“You want to check me out first.”

“Of course. Do you mind?”

He grinned. “I’d mind more if you didn’t. You got a hell of a reputation in Argos — yeah, I’ve seen your file, did that after I spotted you on the shuttle up. But files can be faked, and there’s too many amateurs in this game already.” He turned away and said over his shoulder, “Call me, Maddy Wheatstone. Professionals need to stick together.”

A tedious and interminable search of the information banks, both on Sky City and Earthside, found no sign of a Seth Parsigian. No one in the Argos Group matched his detailed description. Maddy was not too surprised. You could look at it the other way round: Anyone in Special Projects who could be traced was not right for the job.

When she finally headed for Bruno Colombo’s office, John Hyslop was no longer there. Colombo himself was busy in a meeting and unavailable. Goldy Jensen, asked to provide information, was not cooperative.

She looked up from her immaculate desk in the outer office and frowned at Maddy’s question. “I don’t keep track of everybody on Sky City, you know.”

“It’s important that I locate John Hyslop.”

“Important to whom? I suppose you might try the engineering information center. He spends a lot of time there.”

“Where is that?”

“Any of the directories will tell you how to reach it.” Goldy turned impatiently away and initiated another call to Earth on Bruno Colombo’s behalf. Five lines were already active and two others blinked for attention.

Maddy knew she would get no farther with Goldy. And yet today’s rudeness did not feel deliberate. It was more as if Goldy Jensen was working under unusual pressure and had no time for her normal discourtesy.

The feeling of pressure persisted as Maddy used a directory to find the location of the engineering information center and made her way toward it. Everyone she passed gave off an impression of urgency. Something important was going on inside Sky City. Everybody but Maddy seemed to know what it was.

As she moved upward toward the lower-numbered levels — the engineering information center, to her surprise, lay far from Bruno Colombo’s office and close to the axis of Sky City — she left a message for Seth Parsigian. He was to meet her in an hour unless she called and canceled. The limited information in her Argos data base confirmed Seth’s position, but it did not indicate that he knew anything about space activities. Rather the opposite. Like Maddy, he was ground-based. It added to the mystery of his presence. Why would Gordy Rolfe send his Special Projects head to look for a murderer out here?

Maddy did not consider calling Earth for answers. Gordy played his games at multiple levels, and he delighted in withholding information from his staff — even information that would help them. He also kept his projects tightly compartmentalized. Maddy might have guessed that Gordy had other operatives working on Sky City, just as he had them in every major facility and government on Earth. They were engaged in everything from bribery (certain, from Maddy’s personal knowledge) to assassination (rumored, but, knowing Gordy, she was willing to believe it). She would learn of no other Argos Group members on Sky City unless, like Seth Parsigian, they broke Gordy Rolfe’s rules and identified themselves.

She had almost reached level zero. The low-gee environment of Sky City’s axis added physical discomfort to Maddy’s mental uncertainties. Her stomach still did not approve of free fall, and she had no idea what she would say to John Hyslop. The last time they were together she had fallen apart and practically wept on his shoulder. He hadn’t seemed to mind, though if Gordy Rolfe had been there he would have fired her on the spot.

The sign beside the door of the chamber ahead stated in crude block capitals: information control, authorized engineering personnel only. So far as Maddy could tell, no one on Sky City paid any attention to instructions like that. Security, even after all the murders, was nonexistent in this part of the city. Also nonexistent, it seemed, was any interest in decor. Out on the perimeter Bruno Colombo occupied an office where walls, furniture, and carpets were exquisitely balanced in style and tone. Here on the axis the paint and fittings had apparently been selected and installed by a color-blind monkey.

Engineers. What was she doing, letting herself get involved with one?

She floated through the open door and looked inside. Good. John was there. But he was not alone. Half a dozen people sat with him in reclining chairs. They were all staring at a three-dimensional hologram of Sky City. The display, ten feet across, was slowly turning around its central axis. The one-minute rotation period matched the leisurely spin of the structure itself. Maddy had a full view of the whole space city for the first time. The wide, flat pill of the disk seemed solid and substantial, in contrast to the delicate axial spikes that connected the main body of Sky City to the power-generation plant on one side and the shield simulation chamber on the other.

Maddy recognized two of the other people in the room with John: Will Davis, the lanky, skeptical Welshman whom John had introduced her to three days ago, and Lauren Stansfield, the cold-eyed woman with the antique hair comb and the queenly walk, whom Maddy had met and probably deeply shocked when she was drugged to the gills on Asfanil. Maddy’s minimal self-control on that occasion must have made a disastrous first impression.

Confirmation: Lauren Stansfield greeted Maddy with a welcoming scowl. John Hyslop gave her a single puzzled glance and went on talking. “Sky City was designed as a free-orbiting structure. So naturally, nothing more than station-keeping movements to maintain the right geosynch orbit were ever anticipated. We’re facing an unprecedented situation. We can attach mirror-matter boosters at any or all of these places.” He did something to the panel on his lap, and dozens of flashing points of yellow appeared on the hologram. “We already have attitude control engines at each of those sites, so the new installation ought to be easy. But we’re dealing with a structure that masses millions of tons, and it has to travel over a hundred thousand kilometers.” He turned to a slim girl who seemed to be in her early teens. “Amanda, did you check the accelerations?”

Amanda Corrigan. The computer specialist on John Hyslop’s old team. Skinny, angular, no figure. Just a kid. Nothing to do with the Aten asteroid project. Why was she with John now? Why were any of them here? Including John. Had they asked him for help? What he was talking about had nothing to do with his current assignment.

Amanda Corrigan was nodding. She, too, had given Maddy a single glance, then ignored her. “I did a worst case, then a most probable case. I’ve put both of them in the simulation files, so anybody who wants to can take a look. One open question is the travel time. Torrance and Will think it will need at least four weeks to install a low-intensity beam and pulse generator on Cusp Station, and until those are working there’s no point in computing anything. Also, John and Lauren estimate that it will take a couple of weeks to install the thrustors here. So for purposes of analysis I assumed a three-week travel time.”

The others all nodded in agreement. Maddy was bewildered. It was as though she had been transported to a foreign country where she understood not one word of the language. Move Sky City? If so, where and why? But it was a bad time to interrupt with questions. Amanda Corrigan was talking again.

“Worst case calls for Sky City to move two hundred and thirty thousand kilometers. That’s if you start to accelerate when Sky City is on the opposite side of Earth from the shield. I think you’d be insane to try it that way, but I did the calculations anyway. Naturally, you’ll want to finish at rest relative to Cusp Station. So you’ll be accelerating for the first half of the trip, decelerating for the second half. Turning Sky City over out-of-plane to do the changeover would be a nightmare. So you put a double set of mirror-matter thrustors, one set of them on each side. When you do the arithmetic it comes out to an average acceleration of point two seven millimeters per second squared — a few hundred-thousandths of a gee. Peanuts. Acceleration stresses won’t be a problem, even in the worst case.”

John Hyslop was nodding. “That’s what I hoped. I know I didn’t ask you to consider this, but what about rotation? Will we have to stop Sky City turning on its axis when we move?”

“If you do, you will introduce all kinds of other problems.” The speaker was Lauren Stansfield. “Life-support systems are calibrated to the current rotation rate. Air and water circulation pumps assume a certain level of centrifugal forces working either for or against them. I’m not saying that it’s impossible to go through the whole interior and adjust the pump settings, but I am saying it would be a nuisance. If there is any way that we can avoid it, we should.”

Cold, crisp, competent. Lauren Stansfield had sounded that way when Maddy first met her; now it looked like her normal style.

Will Davis added, “Not to mention the screams you’d get from everybody on the perimeter if you halt the rotation.” He grinned at the others. “Wouldn’t do, would it?

Pay all that money for prime half-gee living space, then find you’re sitting in free fall like the poor peasants on the axis.”

The smiles and nods of agreement said Poor like us. To someone with Maddy’s sensitivity to people, that was easy to read. How much money did a Sky City engineer make? She could ask that some other time. Her bet was that she had an income more than this whole group combined, except maybe for Lauren, who was as expensively dressed as before. The harder part was to comprehend the rest of what the others were saying. She was getting the picture very slowly, not because she was unintelligent or because what she was hearing was particularly obscure but because the idea was so alien. This small group was quietly discussing ways of moving the vast and complex Sky City out to the end of the shield and parking it next to Cusp Station. And that, in turn, had huge implications. Why would anyone ever consider such a move, unless the project to save Earth was in dreadful trouble?

Once again, the trained observer in Maddy noted another oddity of the group. Something was missing. Where was the jockeying for position? Where were the hidden agendas that you found in every meeting back on Earth? Even Celine Tanaka, whom Maddy liked, possessed secret meeting goals that she would never reveal.

And where were the egos? Maddy could see no sign of them. All that seemed to matter were technical problems. It was a different world from the one she was used to. It was also a world with its own attractions; men like John Hyslop and Will Davis, awkward and often inarticulate, without the smooth, persuasive line of talk you were so used to. You were not always fighting with them for a controlling hand, or wondering what they wanted from you. They were men who were what they seemed to be.

Not that Sky City was without its own unpleasant characters. The faceless murderer, wandering unseen through the corridors, the blood of a dozen young girls on his hands. Seth Parsigian. Not a murderer — at least, not this murderer — but one of Gordy Rolfe’s hard-core bully boys.

John Hyslop’s quiet voice brought Maddy back from her brooding. “So we know where the immediate problems are. Optimal placement of thrustors — even though the accelerations are low, we’re moving an awful lot of mass. Local stresses will be fierce and local strains need checking. That’s your area, Lauren. I’ll worry about balancing thrust movements about the center of mass. Low-intensity beam generator and pulse generator we’ve already discussed — that’s you, Will and Torrance. Allocation of computing resources when we need them — that will be you, Amanda.”

“You say when we need them.” Amanda Corrigan was a slim brunette. Maddy took a closer look and revised her first impression. While that undeveloped body and slender legs made her seem about thirteen years old, her eyes told a different story. She was in her mid-twenties or older. She must also be highly competent to hold a place in John Hyslop’s elite engineering group. “Isn’t it really if,” Amanda went on, “and not when we have to move Sky City? Do you honestly think it will be necessary to do it?”

John took the question very seriously, finger-tapping at the control panel on his lap while he was thinking. Finally he nodded. “It will be necessary. I wish I didn’t feel this way, and I’m surely no physicist. Astarte Vjansander acts a bit peculiar, but she and Wilmer Oldfield have me completely convinced. The particle storm is coming sooner than we thought. And it will be nothing like we expected.”

He glanced around the group. “Any other questions?”

“Materials,” Will Davis said. “We’re going to need lots of electronics for the broad-beam field and pulse generators, but I’m not sure yet what the requirements will be. When we do know, we’ll be in a hurry. Standard procurement channels are a pain — and they’re slow.”

“Good point. Until “we’re out near Cusp Station and ready for action, I’ll put a no-limits ceiling on material requests. If you’re going to need anything really outlandish, you should contact me and discuss it. I’m available anytime, but don’t call me unless you really have to. It’s not that I’m antisocial; I just like to sleep now and again.”

The group dispersed and drifted out of the room. John Hyslop stayed. So did Maddy, despite the curious glances that she received from the others.

John, at least, seemed pleased to see her. He smiled shyly, looked away, and said, “Well, I don’t imagine that was very much fun for you.”

“Not great. You love all this, don’t you?”

“I suppose I do. It’s my world, Maddy. Where I live.” He hesitated.

Maddy waited.

Could you learn to live here, too?

He hadn’t said that. Of course he hadn’t. It was her own mind, producing perplexing questions. Nothing had been the same since the sight of Lucille DeNorville’s body. Old memories, dredged up from Maddy’s deepest levels, pushing away the present, drawing in the past. The white bulging eyes, the gray and blotchy face. You’re all I’ve got now . . . make me proud of you.

She had done her best. She was Maddy Wheatstone, close to the top in the Argos Group and ready to rise farther yet. She was star-bright, diamond-hard, tough as she had to be. Even Gordy Rolfe treated her with respect. Meg could have done no better.

And then in one moment it all became meaningless.

Lucille DeNorville’s dry, ravaged corpse floated in front of her, abandoned like trash in the dark and barren corridor. Lucille had been mourned long ago. Now there could only be second sorrow and a quiet interment.

Lucille’s death, like any death — like any life — was meaningless. Everything that Maddy had done was meaningless. Nothing had significance. Nothing brought the slightest satisfaction.

She felt a hand on her arm. John Hyslop was at her side. “Are you all right?”

Maddy took a deep breath. “I will be. I’m just — a little tired.”

“You ought to be taking things easier. Come on, sit down.” He led her to one of the reclining chairs. “Dr. Weinstein said that you might not feel a hundred percent for quite a while.”

“I’m all right now.” The feeling of desolation was passing. Had that been mentioned as an aftereffect of labyrinthitis and the Asfanil injection? If so, Maddy didn’t remember it — or believe it. The change was deeper and more long-lasting. It had begun on her first visit to Sky City, her first meeting with John Hyslop. Make me proud of you. Even if she could one day take over from Gordy Rolfe and run the whole of the Argos Group, was that something to make a father proud? What about the rest of her life?

Maddy made herself sit up straighter in the chair. She found John Hyslop staring at her. He looked worried. She forced a smile and said, “I’m feeling better. But John, I can’t afford to take things easy. None of us can.” She deliberately made the switch of subject. “Why does Sky City have to change its position?”

The change was immediate and obvious. As John began to speak she saw him relax. Technical discussions, no matter how complex, were easy and natural for him.

Personal issues, things such as dealing with an emotionally tattered and unstable Maddy Wheatstone, came much harder.

He explained about the meeting with the two physicists who had arrived from Earth. Maddy had never heard of them, but that was not surprising. The world of science and that of the Argos Group intersected only in very specialized areas.

Halfway through John’s summary of the meeting with Wilmer Oldfield and Astarte Vjansander, Maddy caught another of its implications.

She interrupted him. “Sky City has to be moved, and the old shield will be useless. If there’s to be a new defense system for the particle storm, who is going to do all that?”

“Well, it will naturally be a team effort. But if you mean who will lead the engineering design, I guess that’s me.”

“Then the Aten asteroid project—”

“Is on the shelf. It’s not needed for the new protection method.”

“And you?”

He hesitated. “I’m back in my old job. Actually, it isn’t much like my job used to be.”

While Maddy, by the sound of it, didn’t have a job on Sky City at all. She had to get in touch with Gordy Rolfe. Did he know what was happening? It would be typical of Gordy to have information and not bother to pass it on. But if John had been reassigned, where did that leave Maddy? John himself would surely see no reason to have her around.

He had fallen silent and was fingering the control panel on his lap. In the display in front of Maddy, the holograms constantly changed. First, Sky City dwindled to a bright point of silver in a steady diurnal orbit around the Earth. Then at some new command the silver dot began to move outward. The space shield appeared, a ghostly green lattice defining a long cone. Sky City veered toward the axis of the cone and started along it, beginning the long ascent away from Earth.

Maddy realized that she was seeing a new simulation, one that reflected Amanda Corrigan’s recent calculations. John might be too polite to say so, but when he was trying to work it was better for Maddy to go away and leave him to it.

The display began to change again, moving to an image of the space shield — the old space shield, useless now because it was unable to deal with the problem of particle bundles. Maddy felt reassured. If John needed to work, it made no sense for him to be examining an obsolete solution. He was doing the engineering equivalent of doodling.

They sat silently until he said, “I suppose that if I’m not going to be involved in the Aten project, you’ll be heading back to Earth.”

Maddy tried to catch his eye. He stared resolutely away from her, focused on infinity. At last she said, “Back to Earth. Yes, I guess so.”

He nodded. His fingers tapped faster at the control panel on his lap. The display changed randomly, different sections of the space shield appearing and disappearing every few seconds. Maddy glanced at her watch. It was past midnight in Houston, but Gordy Rolfe kept strange hours. If he was at The Flaunt, she had a good chance of reaching him in the next hour. The deep hideout in Virginia was another matter. He was often busy with his habitat experiments there. In either place, though, he usually kept an eye on his messages. There was a strong chance that Maddy would be on her way back to Earth in the next few hours.

“I don’t suppose there’s any way you could stay, is there?” John said abruptly. His eyes moved to her face for a moment, then as quickly looked away. He went on, “My group hasn’t talked much about schedules, but if Oldfield and Vjansander are right, it will be touch and go. We’ll need every hand that we can get. You could be very useful.”

That wasn’t true. Maddy would be almost useless. Also, she heard stronger come-ons almost every day of the week back on Earth. But she was learning. From a man as romantically tentative as John Hyslop, an expression of interest in her continued presence on Sky City was close to a proposal. It didn’t sound like much, but it changed her mood to one of confidence and energy.

“I’d like to stay,” she said. Don’t be wishy-washy. “I’d absolutely love to stay with you. I’ll have to check with my boss, make sure he doesn’t have other plans for me.”

“I understand.”

But John didn’t, because Maddy had already made her decision. Forget that check-with-my-boss stuff; she was staying. If she had to, she would fabricate a role for herself with the Sky City engineering team. She would also invent for Gordy Rolfe a reason why her continued presence here was of vital importance to the Argos Group. She would, in fact, for the first time in nine years do something that was not aimed directly at advancing her career. And it didn’t worry her at all.

Maddy saw John turning in his chair. Seth Parsigian stood in the doorway.

Right on cue. She actually felt pleased to see him. She waved him forward.

“John, I want you to meet a colleague of mine, Seth Parsigian. Seth and I are working together. He has things for me to do part of the day around Sky City. The rest of the time, we’ll be available to work with you.”

She saw their expressions. Surprise. Logically, she had some explaining to do. In practice, she proposed to explain nothing. John wanted her to stay; she wanted to stay with John. Seth needed her to help him; she needed Seth to help her. Explanations were unnecessary when everybody wanted the same thing.

And life? Maddy sat down between the two men. Life was meaningless only when you let yourself think it was meaningless.