Starfire

21

Pleasure at the prospect of Milton Glover’s impending shock stayed with Celine for a long time. Even the weather report did not lower her spirits. A line of afternoon thunderstorms with violent wind shears was running across Virginia, and the White House transportation team was recommending ground travel. It would be a little slower, but acceptable for a short trip and less likely to have problems with the weather.

Celine did not argue. She viewed the upcoming meeting with Gordy Rolfe with mixed feelings. The whole Mars expedition and the twenty-seven years of life after it had taught her that she could handle just about anything. It had not taught her, however, to like many of the things that were thrown at her. And it could not stop her worrying.

Accompanied by her usual four security staff, she climbed into the car.

“Take it slow.” She needed time to prepare herself for the meeting with Gordy Rolfe.

The driver nodded. His presence was hardly necessary, except to set the Automatic Vehicle Control. The armored vehicle went from the underground parking lot, across the new Tidal Crossing Bridge, and on into Virginia. The heavy, brooding weather put Celine in a strange mood. Returning to a place that had so affected her in the past, she felt that she was also moving back through time. Heading south and west toward Richmond, she recognized the rolling sweep of the land. She had traveled this same path, in darkness, in another armored vehicle. She had encountered there a person who, like Gordy Rolfe, was arguably mad: Pearl Lazenby, the Eye of God. Pearl’s ideas had undoubtedly influenced Gordy Rolfe, the head of the Argos Group.

The beginning of the trip seemed long; but then, before she expected it, she saw ahead a gentle slope leading down toward a children’s playground and a small schoolhouse. She would have sworn that she did not remember the setting, but on first sight it became immediately familiar. The car rolled down to the foot of the hill, halted beside the schoolhouse, and switched itself off. The AVC screen went blank.

“We’re arrived,” Celine said. “Tell Mr. Rolfe we’re here. No, better than that.” She reached out for the headset clipped to the partition in front of her. “I’ll do it myself. Hello, Gordy Rolfe. Are you there?”

“Of course I’m here.” The gruff reply came at once. He must have been waiting for her call — probably monitoring her progress. The Argos Group possessed the world’s most advanced surveillance systems. “Do you know where the elevators are?”

“I know where they used to be. In the back of the schoolhouse.”

“They haven’t moved. Come on down. No, I don’t want the Secret Service meatheads. Just you.”

He was observing them. The first of the security staff had climbed out of the vehicle ahead of Celine.

“They’re supposed to accompany me wherever I go.” Celine saw Chesley Reiter, her security chief, nodding vigorously.

“Supposed to.” Rolfe produced a harsh sound that could be interpreted as a laugh. “That’s a load of bull, and you know it. Who was with you when you went down to New Rio to see Nick Lopez? We do it my way or not at all. You want to see me? Then you come down by yourself.”

Celine glanced at Chesley Reiter, shrugged, and climbed out of the car. The sky was black, even though it was only midafternoon. To the west she saw forked lightning. “Ches, take your staff and find somewhere comfortable. I’ll call when I need to be picked up.”

“With respect, Madam President, we’ll wait for you here.”

Chesley Reiter did not add, just in case. Nor did Celine argue. It was his job, his decision. Celine went inside the schoolhouse without another word. One thing about being President, no one’s time was as important as yours. If necessary, Ches and the security detail would wait all night.

The inside of the schoolhouse had changed little in the twenty-seven years since Celine had last seen it. There had never been toys — the Legion of Argos did not permit such distractions — but the old wooden desks still sat in neat lines, and the turn-of-the-century teaching aids sat by the wall. Celine picked up an orange folder from one of the diminutive desks, blew away the dust, and opened it. The lined sheets inside, covered with a child’s careful lettering, were yellowed and brittle.

She looked around. Not everything was unchanged. Gordy Rolfe’s personal interests showed in the tiny red eyes set at each corner of the room. Celine had never seen anything so compact. The new surveillance system must be at the limit of today’s technology. Gordy’s inventions in fact defined those limits.

As she hesitated, his voice came from nowhere.

“Go to the elevators and take the left-hand one all the way down. I’ll be waiting.”

And watching.

Celine wondered. The Argos Group was famous for its up-to-date and detailed knowledge of what went on all around the world. Did Gordy Rolfe’s remote observation systems extend to the White House — even, perhaps, into the Oval Office itself? After all, there were maintenance rolfes there, even though you rarely saw one. Could they be the source of Nick Lopez’s information about the meeting with Maddy Wheatstone?

Old advice, but still good: Assume nothing is off the record, nothing that you ever say, do, or write.

The bottom button of the elevator panel bore an icon like a flaming torch. Celine pressed it and began a slow, uneasy descent.

He was waiting when the door finally opened. He was even smaller than she remembered, unshaven, and dressed in a black jumpsuit with a leather belt and its array of clip-on instruments. He was scruffier than usual — his hair was greasy, and his hands were smudged with oil or graphite.

“Esteemed Madam President.” Gray eyes glittered behind the outsized and antiquated frames. His mirthless smile suggested that the honorific was no more than a form of sarcasm.

Celine remembered that he tolerated no form of physical contact. Just as well, since she had no desire to touch those blackened, clawlike fingers. Instead of holding out her hand she nodded and said, “Gordy Rolfe. I’m glad you were able to meet with me.”

“Good. Let’s see if you stay glad.”

He turned and led the way up a steep spiral staircase. Celine followed. A round hatch brought her through into a broad circular chamber bounded by a thick transparent wall. Beyond the wall she saw what seemed to be a wilderness of vegetation, but she paid little attention to that or anything else because of the other contents of the room.

Just a few yards from her squatted a small bipedal dinosaur. It was, she felt sure, a carnivore; a genetically down-bred form from one of the largest meat-eaters, T. rex, or maybe Gorgosaurus. The creature was muzzled and tethered by a short chain to a heavy ring bolt in the floor of the room. The blue-black eyes turned in the oversized scaly head and fixed their dead gaze on Celine. The mouth opened as far as it could against the green muzzle, to show the tips of white needle teeth. The animal growled, deep in its throat, and the smell of rotting meat that gusted out made Celine hold her breath. The animal stood up and moved toward the newcomers until it reached the limit of its chain.

“Place is a bit of a mess.” Rolfe walked, unconcerned, to within two feet of the chained carnosaur. “Come sit down.”

Celine edged after him, and saw that the place was indeed a mess. Rolfe’s desk and a nearby table were covered with a clutter of electronics and test units. On the floor beside the table, upside-down and eviscerated, lay a trio of eight-legged machines.

“Those look like rolfes.” Celine dumped a tangle of wires and a miniaturized scanning probe microscope onto the floor and sat down. The carnosaur was a deliberate attempt to make her ill at ease, but she refused to acknowledge its presence. She wanted Gordy Rolfe to know he had failed.

If he had failed. It was hard to sit calmly with your back to the minisaur, especially when you could hear its harsh breathing and the grating of stressed chain links.

“They are rolfes — of a sort.” Gordy perched on the arm of a chair, so Celine would have to look up at him. “I originally designed them to function in there.” He jerked his thumb toward the wall and the jungle beyond. “Now I’m doing a bit more fiddling, adding a few special functions. The new ones have the same general organization, but they’ll be smarter and more versatile. The sort of things your space dummies say they’re going to need, but won’t get.”

Deliberate provocation, designed to start an argument. Celine delayed her response, swiveling in her chair to add to her original first impression of the chamber. The floor was dust-free and clear of small objects. Cleaning machines would remove those, also the dust and dirt and spilled liquids. These machines — rolfes of the most primitive kind — were clearly in use here. Two moved across the room as she watched, little low-end servers no more than a foot long and a couple of inches off the floor. They would ignore large objects, or at most clean, lift, and replace them exactly.

Part of the room had been partitioned off, and she could see the end of a bed through an opening in the waist-high barrier. There were no doors, beyond one that led through to the encircling area of dense vegetation. A heap of spare machine parts lay in disarray against the wall on the side opposite to the chained carnosaur. She recognized axles, gears, motors, gauges, and metal rods and pipes of many sizes. A bench nearby was a jumble of wrenches, saws, pliers, hammers, and pincers. Stacked against the wall next to that stood a stack of cages, each one the size of a large chest. Changes in light and dark behind narrow slits in the front of the cages showed something moving within, but Celine could not determine what it might be. Next to the chests, incongruously, stood an old-fashioned bicycle.

“Do you ride that?”

“Sure.” Rolfe had his eyes fixed on Celine, as intent and unblinking in his gaze as the tethered carnosaur. The communications unit on his desk was buzzing with an external call, but he took no notice. “Got to stay healthy, you know. Mens sana in corpore sano. A healthy mind in a healthy body.”

Did he ride the bike down here, somewhere out there beyond the tangle of jungle? No. The whole thing was an obscure joke. Gordy Rolfe rode nothing. His face had the gray pallor of a man who shunned all forms of exercise. Furthermore, the bicycle sat in front of a dozen other anachronisms. Celine pointed to a radio that was not of this century, and from its appearance hardly of the last. “I suppose you use that, too.”

“No. Too valuable. It’s a real rarity. The woman who sold it to me guaranteed that Noah used it for ship-to-shore.”

“Why did you really agree to meet with me? You seem to have made up your mind that you won’t make more rolfes available on Sky City.”

“I did so because I owe you a favor.”

“I can’t think what.”

“I’ve owed it to you for a long time. If you hadn’t come here, Pearl Lazenby might not have been captured. I might never have got my start in electronics, never been able to found the Argos Group.”

“But you knew that so far as I was concerned, my visit here would be a waste of time. You’d already decided that you wouldn’t provide the rolfes.”

“I never said that.”

“Would you meet with Wilmer Oldfield and Astarte Vjansander, and hear what they have to say?”

“Waste of time. I know what they told Nick Lopez. Crazy. Somebody out at Alpha Centauri decided humans were a nuisance, so they deliberately destroyed a whole stellar system and made an impossible supernova just to zap us. That about it?”

“There’s more to it than that.” But it was disturbingly close to Star and Wilmer’s view.

Rolfe was grinning down at her from his perch on the chair arm. “I’m sure there’s more. I don’t need to hear it, because the whole idea is pure bullshit. You may believe it, but on this one you’re the person who’s not rational.

And I’ll tell you why you’re not. Fucking scrambles the brain, and you used to fuck old Wilmer.”

Celine wanted to say, How on earth do you know that? Her second thought, That was nearly thirty years ago! was not much better.

She said, “What about Nick Lopez? He heard Wilmer, and he believed him. Are you telling me Lopez fucked Wilmer Oldfield, too?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him. But I think he’s more interested in fucking Oldfield’s little black chippie Vjansander, even though she’s female. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Celine stood up. “I’m leaving. I have work to do. This is a stupid waste of time.”

“Maybe not. Sit down. Forget who’s screwing who, and what I believe and don’t believe. I might be willing to provide what you say you need — if the terms are right.”

“What terms? Money?”

“No — though I do run a business.” Rolfe strained forward, eyes gleaming. In intensity there was little to choose between the eager man and the carnosaur heaving at its chain. “I do want something, and it’s not money. Get it for me, and you’ll have rolfes for Sky City. All the rolfes you want.”

“Why didn’t you ask Lopez? He controls more of the world’s resources than I do.”

“Not this particular resource. I want land — this land, here where we sit and all around us. From ground level to the center of the Earth. I’m willing to pay, but the United States has to deed it to me for my lifetime plus fifty years.”

“What do you want it for?”

“That’s my business. But I have to be totally outside U.S. laws and U.S. justice. I must be able to do what I like, on it and in it — and with whatever lies within it.”

Celine glanced at the chained carnosaur. Genetic combination work of that kind was not easy. Within the United States it was also tightly controlled and monitored. If Gordy Rolfe had performed the gene mix himself, without licenses or oversight, he was already in violation of a score of statutes. Celine could remember no recent applications for similar experiments.

But why not go offshore, to any of a dozen Golden Ring labs that would happily do the work and deliver the results?

Because a crippled, wizened man enjoyed playing God? That she could believe. But she suspected a stronger motive. This underground stronghold was where Gordy Rolfe had been raised. It was his home, his fortress, his sanctuary. He wanted a guarantee that he could never be made to leave, for any reason.

“How much land are we talking about?”

“A circle of four miles, centered on the schoolhouse. There are no occupied houses, and I have checked ownership. Every landowner has already agreed to sell. The Argos Group is ready to make final purchase.”

“I assume you realize that you can’t be outside U.S. jurisdiction unless you are counted as a foreign territory. That’s difficult to arrange legally.”

“Difficult, but it happens all the time.”

“Between countries, not individuals.”

“I don’t want you telling me how hard it is. I’m telling you how it has to be. You get me the land, you get more and better rolfes. Otherwise, forget it.”

An independent country, completely surrounded by a single other country. There were precedents. Lesotho. Vatican City. More recently, Basque and Kurdistan. The area that Rolfe was demanding was tiny, but the political problems would be immense. Even the Indian nations on U.S. territory were subject to most U.S. laws. Celine began a mental count of the different Cabinet-level departments involved: State, Commerce, Interior, Agriculture, Defense, Transportation. After six she gave up. Congress would have to agree, and that might be the biggest hurdle. If it could be done at all, it would probably take years.

“I don’t know. The best I can promise you is that I’ll try. But it won’t happen overnight.” There was the understatement of the century. “Nothing in government happens fast.”

“One reason I’d never work there.”

“We need the rolfes at once.”

“Then you’re lucky I’m not the government. I’m willing to deliver. And I’m willing to wait for your part.”

Celine stared at him in amazement. “Are you implying that you’ll make the rolfes available?”

“Sounds like it, don’t you think?” Rolfe lifted himself laboriously from the arm of the chair and wandered away behind the desk. “You do your bit,” he said over his shoulder, “and I’ll arrange a first shipment for three days from now. One other thing, though. These rolfes will have new circuits in them, still unprotected by patents. You tell your people to keep their hands off. No opening up. No examination of the entrails.”

“I see no difficulty with that.”

“Then we’re all settled.”

“You don’t want something in writing from me?”

“Saying what?” He was lifting a cage from the stack, picking it up as though it was almost too heavy for him. Why didn’t he tell the rolfes to lift it?

He went on, “Suppose you did give me a piece of paper. What could you say? ’I, Celine Tanaka, promise to do my best to get for Gordy Rolfe the land that he wants.’ That’s not worth shit in a court of law. You know it. But it’s all you can offer.”

“I will do my best.”

“And I’m accepting that you will. So everything’s fine.”

Celine doubted that. Everything had been too easy. What had she missed? Rolfe went on, as though the discussion of rolfes and land rights was over and done with, “While you’re here I want to show you something. See what I’ve got?”

The communications center was buzzing again to indicate an incoming call. He continued to ignore it. He turned a knob on the top of the cage and the slits on its front widened. Celine saw white whiskers and a pink questing nose.

“It’s — a rat.” She felt ridiculous. “Isn’t it?”

“Sort of. Actually, it’s a hundred and twenty rats.” He lifted the cage with a great effort and carried it toward the leashed carnosaur. He paused out of reach, lowered the cage, and carefully pushed it forward. The scaly head dipped to peer in through the slits and the creature snuffled noisily.

Gordy Rolfe nodded approvingly. “The rats haven’t been fed for a long time. Neither has the minirex. Rats are one of his favorite foods. If he could get at them, they’d be doomed. Small mammal against big dinosaur. A one-pounder against a ninety-pound meat-eater. You’d think the mammal would have no chance. Agreed?”

Celine said nothing. If Gordy Rolfe was losing his sanity, he might have any unspeakable thing in mind.

“No opinion?” Rolfe asked. “Well, let’s find out.”

“Whatever it is, I don’t want to see it,” Celine said loudly.

Rolfe took no notice. He touched a series of buttons on a device clipped to the belt of his jumpsuit. The green restraining muzzle on the carnosaur clicked open and fell to the ground. The animal leaned back on its thick haunches and opened its mouth wide. The tongue appeared — a gleaming leathery strip of black with a delicate forked end. Inch-long white teeth stood out against the mottled red-and-black background of the roof of the mouth.

Celine resisted the urge to back away. The carnosaur was still safely held by the thick chain. But it was strong. When it lowered its head and butted at the front of the cage, the solid frame dented.

“He really wants those rats,” Rolfe said happily. “He can smell them, and he knows they’re his dinner. You’d be a candidate for dinner, too, if he could get at you.”

His fingers were again at the controller on his belt. There was a whirring of an electric motor and the front of the cage lifted. A single gray rat darted out and paused, a front paw raised. Before it could move, the minisaur swooped. It rose with the rat impaled on its long teeth, squeaking and wriggling in agony. Blood ran down the blunt jaw. The minisaur’s head snapped back sharply. The rat was tossed in the air, caught, and swallowed in a single gulp.

“You might expect the rest of the rats to huddle in the cage,” Rolfe said cheerily. He moved a little closer to Celine. “Or maybe you think they ought to come out and try to run away. That seems like the smart thing to do. The minirex is so much bigger and stronger than they are, it outmasses all of them put together. Worse than that, their teeth can’t penetrate the armored scales. And the minirex can only reach to the limit of its chain. What would you do, Madam President, if you were the rats? Would you run away?”

Celine was too fascinated and horrified to answer. There was a moment of utter stillness, then the rats emerged all at once from the cage and moved across the floor like a gray tide. Rather than fleeing from the minisaur they were heading straight at it.

The saurian took a step back, so that the chain did not hamper its movements. The great head dipped and came up with two rats between its jaws. The minisaur growled, crunched, and swallowed. By that time the wave of rats had reached the taloned feet. They swarmed up the powerful tail and thick legs, heading for the belly and the head.

The carnosaur gave a deep, coughing roar. It flailed its tail violently from side to side, hurling a dozen rats away in all directions. A couple hit the wall and dropped maimed or unconscious, but the rest landed, turned, and at once headed back. By that time another score of rats had climbed as far as the softer wrinkled leather of the neck and were clinging there with teeth and claws. A shake of the head dislodged many, but half a dozen held on tenaciously. The short, withered arms of the carnosaur reached up to claw most of them away.

But not all. A rat at the back of the scaled neck was able to hold on through another shake of the head, climb higher, and claw its way forward until it reached an eye. It tried to sink its teeth into the eyelid, but it was batted away at the last moment by a forearm. Rats lay strewn on all sides, limbs and backs broken.

The carnosaur roared its blood lust and defiance, and ducked low to grab and swallow a crippled rat.

“Too soon for a victory feast, my friend,” Rolfe said softly. “They’re coming again. Watch out now.”

Another rat had bitten into the softer hide below the chin and held on through all the shaking of head and body. When the carnosaur raised its head to roar again, the rat scampered up the side of the head, plunged its fangs into a ridge of scaly tissue above the eye, and clawed at the delicate surface of the left eye with its forepaws.

The carnosaur reached up and knocked the rat clear, but its left eye was bloody. At the same time another tormentor had found the right eye. It bit ferociously into the eyelid, hung with its weight supported by its fangs, and scrabbled with taloned paws at the eye itself. It too was brushed away by a forearm, but another bleeding wound was left behind.

Meanwhile, a horde of rats had climbed the legs and converged on the softest part of the belly. They hung there, tearing at the leathery skin and at the area of the hidden genitals.

The carnosaur could not see them or catch them easily with its short forearms. They tore and chewed, opening a three-inch tear in the skin that widened with every bite. In agony, the carnosaur crouched low on its hind legs and shook like a dog emerging from water.

It was less effective than before. The rats were learning. When the shaking began they gave up any attempt to deepen the wound and waited, clinging with fangs and claws. As soon as the shaking stopped they went back to work. Any thrown clear that could still move ran back and began another ascent of the living mountain. Their goal was the soft belly and neck, but they bit as they climbed, stripping off scales and gnawing at the skin beneath.

The carnosaur collapsed, flat onto its back. Most of the rats were quick enough to dash clear, but an unlucky half-dozen were squashed beneath the leathery body and the hard floor.

“Not a great move,” Rolfe said softly. “I wouldn’t have done that if I were you. Get up, or you’ve lost.”

The rats were much quicker than their opponent. While the minisaur still struggled to roll over so that its powerful tail and legs could lift it upright, the rats attacked again. Thirty of them went for the mouth and belly and genitals. A dozen others took advantage of the change in the carnosaur’s position and tackled the head, ripping at the eyelids and at the exposed surface of the eyes themselves.

The carnosaur at last reared upright, but it was damaged. It possessed plenty of energy and defiance, but now it gave up any attempt to eat the rats. It tried only to dislodge them from its body and trample them beneath its powerful feet. Blood and aqueous humor was oozing from the torn eyes. More blood ran freely from a severed vein low on the belly, where the wall of the abdomen had been broached. A gray bulge of intestine was visible. The rats tugged at that with their fangs, pulling it farther, tearing pieces off and swallowing them.

Celine stared in horror. “They’re eating it alive.”

“Yeah. What did you expect them to do? Kill it, cook it, and wait for steak sauce?” Rolfe was edging close, as close as he could without coming within striking range of the carnosaur. The animal had begun a low growl of anguish.

Celine’s feelings about the minisaur changed from fear to pity. “Shoot it. You must have some way to kill it quickly.” She wished she had brought a gun herself — every one of her security detail carried weapons, she could have borrowed one easily. “You can’t let it suffer like that.”

“What do you want me to do?” Rolfe was smiling. “Go in and strangle it, the sort of mercy killing you offer to somebody being burned at the stake? You can try that if you want to. I won’t. I hate to work with my hands.” He held up his blackened fingers.

“Then shoot it. This is horrible.”

“I don’t keep guns here.” He was studying the carnosaur. “Anyway, it won’t be long now. The small mammals always beat the dinosaurs.”

Eyeless and partly eviscerated, with bleeding wounds all around the neck and mouth, the beast still stood upright, but it was terribly wounded. As Celine watched, a rat wriggled out from a gaping hole in the belly. The rodent was smeared all over with blood and carried an eight-inch length of greasy intestine in its mouth. It dropped to the floor and hurried away.

“Even if you don’t have a gun, there must be a way to kill it.” Celine stared around, looking for anything that might serve as a knife, a club, a spear.

The floor of the chamber close to the carnosaur was a nightmare of blood and guts and dying rats. She dared not go too near. The blinded beast was sinking forward, unsteady on its legs. The uninjured rats knew. Now that the fight was over they stood at a safe distance, quietly waiting. The animal was still dangerous. The jaws, covered with a froth of saliva, snapped at imaginary enemies. The powerful tail thrashed the floor, flattening any rat too injured to crawl clear. Celine got the message: Pity it, but do not go near it.

Bizarrely, the little cleaning machines were already busy, removing the bodies of dead rats and wiping up blood and slime and fragments of entrails. The machines could be damaged by minisaur jaws, but a swipe of the tail simply knocked them a few yards away. They started right back.

Gordy Rolfe’s gray eyes were bright behind the eyeglasses. If he heard Celine’s words, they had no effect.

She surveyed the rest of the chamber. Weapons. Anything could be a weapon. She hurried across the room to the workbench. Most of the tools were too light or too short. She wanted something heavy and long enough to be used at a distance.

The biggest object on the bench was a huge pair of cutting shears designed to clip sheet metal or bolts. She hefted the tool and decided it was too cumbersome. The second-best was a four-pound steel hammer with a long handle, flat on its main striking face but with a three-inch punch spike sticking out in the other direction.

Celine lifted it. One hand would be possible, but two hands were better. She walked back across the room, swinging the hammer up and over her head to get the balance.

Was she really going to do this, when she had already told herself that it would be total folly to go too near?

Quickly, or not at all. She moved forward. She was now within the carnosaur’s reach if the animal lunged to the end of the chain. The head swung in her direction. It could not see her, but could it smell her?

Quickly. One shot was all you got.

She took another step forward. Hammer up, above her head. Down with the spike, into the carnosaur’s skull, between and behind the ruined eyes — blood and evil-smelling spittle, spraying her face and hair and clothing — a desperate leap backward, away.

She was barely in time. The carnosaur, from intent or muscular reflex, plunged in her direction. It was halted by the chain.

The head and torso fell backward at the same time as the legs jerked forward. Celine saw taloned, three-toed feet flex just inches away from her belly as the body convulsed and the legs stretched to their full length. For a moment the carnosaur stood balanced on the thick tail, then it slowly collapsed.

As the final death spasm began, the scaled head turned again in Celine’s direction. The hammer spike was still embedded there. She saw that in her terror she had hit hard enough to fracture and split the whole skull.

She saw that Gordy Rolfe was looking at her. He was laughing. “Hell of a whack. I wouldn’t like you to get mad with me. But you’ve got a nerve, killing my minirex.”

Celine wiped carnosaur gore and spittle from her eyes and lips. “That was monstrous and unnatural. I had to put the poor beast out of its misery.”

“It would have died anyway in a few minutes. As for unnatural, you’re completely wrong. What we saw is totally natural. That’s how animals die in the wild. Once they get old or sick, something drags them down and eats them.”

Gordy Rolfe was loving every minute. Celine knew it from the pleasure in his glittering eyes and the flush of color on his pallid cheeks. Suddenly, all she wanted to do was get away from him and back to the surface.

“You leaving?” Rolfe watched her intently as she turned toward the circular exit hatch.

Celine did not trust herself to speak. She nodded and kept moving.

“Well, I guess the fun’s over, anyway.” Rolfe reached for the controller at his waist. “One more bit of cleanup to do, then I’ll see you on your way.”

He pressed a sequence of keys. The room filled with high-pitched squeaks. Celine saw scores of rats, their gray skins sparking and smoking, contort into unnatural shapes and collapse to the floor.

“Can’t have them running loose, can we? There’s no saying where they’d get to after they’d eaten.” Rolfe glanced at Celine. “Don’t worry, I only disposed of the ones running free. The ones in the cages are fine. And the dead ones go to the habitat, so they won’t be wasted.”

He led the way down the spiral staircase. Celine followed, very slowly. She felt weak in the knees. Although she had wiped her face, the reek of carnosaur blood saturated her hair and clothing.

Gordy went with her to the elevators. “Don’t forget our deal,” he said. “I’ll keep my end; a set of rolfes will be on the way to Sky City before the end of the week. By that time I expect to hear what you’re doing about my land.”

“I’ll work on it.” Celine forced the words out and pressed the elevator button. She could not wait for the doors to close and the car to ascend. She craved fresh air and sanity. When the slow-rising elevator at last opened on the highest level, she found Chesley Reiter and the rest of his group waiting. One look at her, and the chief of security grabbed her arm.

“It’s all right, Ches, I’m fine.” She gently freed herself. “None of this is my blood.”

“But . . . Madam President?”

He was inviting an explanation. Celine was not ready to give one. She walked past them, through the school-house and on into the open air. It seemed that she had been underground for many hours, and she expected to find it was night outside the building. Instead she walked out into the twilight gloom of an early evening downpour. The thunderstorm had come and gone, leaving in its place a steady rain.

Celine turned her face upward, welcoming the drops. It would be a long time before she felt clean again.

The armored car stood with the door open and the driver waiting. Celine nodded to him and climbed in without a word. Before the door closed she was reaching for the telcom unit to call Nick Lopez. He answered so quickly that she suspected he had been waiting by his own unit.

“Rolfe agreed,” Celine said at once. “He’ll start shipping more up by the end of the week.”

“I can’t believe it. How did you talk him into it?”

“I don’t think I did. I think he has his own reasons for wanting to send rolfes to Sky City, but I can’t begin to guess what they are. Nick, I’ve never had a meeting like that in my whole life. Gordy Rolfe is crazier than you can imagine.”

“I told you he was losing it. What did he do? Start lecturing you on the superiority of small mammals?”

“More than that.” Celine glanced around the armored vehicle. The rest of the security staff had piled in and the driver was waiting for instructions. “Back to the White House,” she said. And, as the car began to roll forward, “Our friend gave me his idea of a practical demonstration.”

“Meaning what? With Gordy, I hardly dare to consider the possibilities.”

Celine hesitated. Should she tell Nick, when the security staff would be hanging on her every word? Well, why not. They, had waited for hours in the rain, probably imagining that she was down there being lavishly entertained by the powerful head of the Argos Group. They might as well learn the truth.

“Did you know he raises dinosaurs down there?”

“He showed them to me. Dwarf varieties, hidden in the jungle around his habitat control room.”

“Not always hidden.” Celine described the minirex and its battle to the death with the cageful of rats. She omitted only her own role in delivering the coup de grace to the carnosaur.

Nick Lopez listened without saying a word. The security staff in the car with Celine were equally silent. The vehicle was racing back toward Washington at its highest speed, and the only sound adding to Celine’s voice was the soft hiss of fullerene tires over sodden roadway. Recalling the final moments with the carnosaur, she again became aware of the smell of blood and saliva permeating her hair and clothes.

“We just have to hope that he’s sane on other matters,” she concluded. “Either the rolfes will appear in a few days for shipping up, or they won’t.”

“How did he sound when you left?”

“Cheerful. Manic. As though we’d been partying together.”

“Then I think this might be a good time for me to call him.”

“You might not get through, Nick. He ignored calls when I was there.”

“I don’t think he’ll ignore me. I have a special tie line. One other question before we sign off.”

“Ask. But keep it short.” Celine was swept by a dreadful wave of fatigue. She wanted to put her head back on the padded car seat and go to sleep.

“What’s the rest of the story? I’ve never heard of Gordy Rolfe making a deal just for money. What else is he asking?”

“The land around the habitat, four miles in every direction, for as long as he’s alive and half a century more. His own personal paradise.” Celine laid her head back and closed her eyes. She could see the carnosaur, eyeless and half gutted, sinking into its death agony. “But you and I might call it hell.”