Starfire

26

From the private diary of Oliver Guest.

When I suggested to Seth Parsigian a way in which we might catch our murderer, I realized that I was exposing him to a slightly increased risk. He would find it necessary to enlist the support of at least one other person on Sky City in order to carry out my plan, and that person, wittingly or unwittingly, might in turn permit the killer to discover our intentions.

I informed Seth of this when he told me of his conversation with Maddy Wheatstone. He shrugged and said, “Don’t sweat it, Doc. It’s a one-in-a-million long shot.”

“Perhaps it is. So is the chance of being struck by lightning; but lightning does strike. I urge extreme caution. Lock your door, watch where you walk. You are dealing with an individual of great cunning and cold malevolence.”

He said, “Ah, workin’ with you ain’t so bad. But I’ll be careful.”

On that low note, our conversation ended.

There is a well-documented and curious medical condition in which one person, apparently healthy, suffers another’s symptoms. Husbands experience morning sickness, a mother develops sympathetic croup when her baby has it, a sister has trouble breathing during a brother’s attack of asthma.

This phenomenon can be described as the ultimate form of synesthesia, the situation in which a sensation in one area arises from a stimulus applied to another. Normally, the two parties are intimately related: husband/wife, mother/child, brother/sister.

Seth Parsigian and I are, I hope and trust, not related within ten degrees of consanguinity. I reject utterly any suggestion that we are intimate or even close. We lack common interests, temperament, habits, or background. Some other explanation is demanded for the following events.

Sweet are the uses of insomnia.

It was well after midnight when Seth and I finished our call. It was logical that I would seek “care-charmer sleep, son of the sable night.” I was weary, and it was late. After a noisy evening of revolt against programmed instruction followed by prolonged giggling, my darlings were finally in their beds and dreaming the dreams of the innocent. Otranto Castle stood silent.

Before I turned on the security system I opened the door for a moment and stood on the threshold. A cool, gentle drizzle touched my upturned face. Has there ever been a year, in all of history, with more rain? According to the global weather service, only during the initial onslaught of the Alpha Centauri supernova.

After five minutes I went inside. It is difficult to imagine anywhere on Earth darker, calmer, and more silent than the deserted western coast of Ireland on a night of dense cloud and no wind. It is a perfect setting for sleep.

Having said that, I am obliged to note that sleep would not come. For me she has been at the best of times an elusive and fickle mistress. After half an hour I rose from my bed, went to my study, and donned the RV helmet. This was done not as an invasion of Seth’s privacy, but to assure myself that he was, as he had promised, being careful.

The RV jacket on its hanger on the wall offered me a ghostly view of Seth’s bedroom. He lay on his back, covered by a light sheet and hardly touching the bed. On level eight, where his quarters were located, the centrifugal field was no more than a twentieth of Earth’s gravity. Apparently the low-gee environment suited him, because he was sound asleep and snoring softly. I could just see the bedroom door at the extreme right-hand edge of my field of view. It was ajar.

So much for Seth’s ideas of cautious behavior. He presumably still wore the earpiece. I could rouse him and again urge him to be careful; but was there any hope that I would be more successful this time? I thought not. It was synesthesia in its most irritating form. Seth, in the presence of possible danger, slept soundly. I, safe in Otranto Castle, felt the worry and uneasiness that should be his.

In irritation, I changed the setting of the RV helmet to accept only local inputs. Let Seth worry about his own safety. Out of sight, out of mind.

But not, it seemed, in this case. As the scene shifted to show my study, the nameless apprehension within me grew rather than subsided. Still wearing the helmet, I walked back to my bedroom, lay down, and returned to the Sky City setting. Seth’s room again appeared before me. Nothing was happening. I stared at that nothing.

I was about to say “stared mindlessly,” but that is not quite true. Late at night the body enters a new phase of its circadian rhythm and the mind plays strange tricks. Into my head drifted a story, one that each of my darlings had enjoyed as an infant: Jack the giant-killer. Brave young Jack ascended the magic beanstalk and found himself in the alien landscape known as Sky City. He entered the giant’s castle. Fee, fi, fo, fum. With the assistance of the giant’s wife, Jack escaped with-what? A goose that laid golden eggs; a speaking harp that warned the giant. A magic mirror? I was not sure. Magic looms large in children’s stories. Snow White’s evil queen had her mirror, too. “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is . . .” The killer’s face, smiling and smug, stared out at me in place of my own reflection.

Jacket, jacket, on the wall; watching the sleeping Seth.

The stories blurred, conflated, ran together. Henri Poincare was a fortunate genius. My own collision of late-night thoughts offered no new insight. The sleep that had so far eluded me was almost here. I was ready to close my eyes, but before I removed the helmet I must take one more look at Seth. Through the eyes of the RV jacket I saw the killer leaning over him. A silver blade slashed across Seth’s throat. Bright arterial blood spurted across the room.

I blinked. Reality returned. The fancy vanished. The RV jacket showed Seth, still snoring, safe in his quiet bedroom.

I mocked my own fears, told myself not to be a fool. I should relax and go to sleep. As my eyes began to close I caught a flicker of movement on the far right of my field of view. The door of Seth’s apartment was opening, slowly and silently. I looked for someone entering the dimly lit bedroom. I saw nothing, nothing at all. But I cried, “Seth! Look out!”

Look out for what? The only thing to see was the opening door. It seemed forever before Seth moved-the signal delay as Sky City moved farther out was having its effect. But finally he reacted. He must sleep like a cat, one eye open and alert for danger. As I called again he moved, not to either side, but straight up from the bed in a single spasm of effort. In the low-gravity environment of Sky City he rose all the way to the ceiling, still covered by the bedsheet.

Seth shared another of a cat’s gifts. At the ceiling he twisted in midair until he was facing down toward the floor. He began to drop back, slowly because of the weak field. At last I could see something else in the room. A thin snakelike object reared up from the floor. The long, segmented neck rose to a round head that gleamed red in the weak light.

Seth was falling free, with no way to change his place of landing. The snake was moving to where he would come down directly on top of it.

I called out, “Don’t land there! It’s waiting for you.” Useless advice, since he could change his fall in neither speed nor direction. And unnecessary advice. Seth held in his hands the bedsheet. He dropped it so that it landed on and enveloped the rearing snake.

The sheet convulsed and jerked from side to side. Seth was still falling, but he turned in midair so that he would land feet first. He kicked at the top of the heaving mass beneath him and used that momentum to carry him sideways across the room. He hit the wall headfirst above a chest of drawers, grabbed something from on top of it, and rolled away to the left.

The snake had wriggled its way free of the sheet. I saw its head lift again, turning and questing. Seth pointed what he was holding toward the snake. There was a flash of green light, and the head and long neck vanished. The room filled with smoke. Seth took a step forward, reached down, and whipped the sheet clear. Again I could see nothing. With the head gone, the rest of the intruder was too low to the ground to be in my field of view.

“I think that’s the main job done,” Seth said calmly. “But just in case, I think we’d be better off without them legs.” He pointed the gun downward and I saw eight separate flashes of green light.

“And now let’s have a look at you.” He reached down, picked something up, and deposited it on the bed.

It was perhaps a meter long. I saw blunt stumps, four on each side, where the legs had been, and the remaining stub of the severed snake neck.

“A cleaning machine,” I said.

“Nah.” Seth shook his head. He glanced across to where the RV jacket hung on the wall. “Nice work, Doc. I coulda been dead meat without the warnin’.”

“Could have been?”

“I was only half asleep. I mighta been all right.”

“You think perhaps that it did not intend you harm?”

“You kiddin’? Take a look.” He walked a couple of paces and picked something from the floor. He held it toward the RV jacket for my inspection. “Construction laser, lot more powerful than the one I got. Good thing I fired first, or I’d’ve been Parsigian Cajun-style, charred on the outside and well done on the inside.”

I am not unacquainted with death, but blood, carnage, and general messiness have never been a part of my own modus operandi. Everything here had happened so fast that I was only now beginning to react, with a fluttering pulse and a certain difficulty in breathing. I stared at the gun and at the mutilated object on the bed.

“If that is not a cleaning machine . . .”

I ran out of breath before I could complete my question, but Seth took my meaning. He went to the side of the bed, lifted the object by the stubby neck, and turned it over for my inspection.

“See this?” He pointed to a series of marks on the underside. “Series and model number, too high-level for a cleaning machine. It’s a general-purpose rolfe. If you look here on the side, you’ll see the place where it can plug in for instruction transfers. Hm. I guess this one’s too high-powered for me, too, ’cause I never saw this model number before. Must be one of the new ones, fresh up from Earth.”

“You are sure that it was programmed to attack you?”

Seth was still bending over the rolfe. He raised his head. “Not attack. Kill. That laser wasn’t brought along to give me a nice all-over tan. You oughta be sure of that, if anyone is. You were the one, way back when, who asked if a cleanin’ machine could be made to kill. You were the one, just tonight, who told me to watch out for my ass an’ hat ’cause I might be in danger. Why were you watchin’ me, anyway?”

“I was worried that the Sky City murderer might learn what we are doing and try to kill you to prevent it. The idea of sending a rolfe for that purpose never occurred to me.”

“Me neither. An’ I don’t think that’s what’s goin’ on.” Seth sat down on his bed next to the machine. “This ain’t from our buddy the killer. This is somethin’ else.”

“If not the murderer, then who?”

“I’m not sure. But I got ideas. An’ don’t worry, I’ll find out.” He nodded toward the remains of the machine. “Stumpy Joe there is blind an’ can’t go a-walkin’ no more, but the brain oughta be intact. I’m gonna bring that thing to engineering, bust it open, an’ squeeze the sucker dry. Then we’ll find out where it got its instruction set.”

“And after that?”

“Depends what I find. But don’t be surprised if you catch me havin’ a few words with Maddy Wheat-stone.” He stood up. “D’you see much action here in the next few days?”

“We cannot proceed with my plan until Sky City and Cusp Station are in their final locations. For what we have in mind, our timing and the killer’s psychological condition will both be crucial. I would prefer to act at the height of the particle storm. Why do you ask?”

“Just thinkin’ ahead.” Seth picked up the battered rolfe. “If I get the answers I’m suspectin’ out of this thing, I might have to make a little trip. But don’t worry, I’ll be back in plenty of time for your fun an’ games.”

He walked out, leaving me to stare at the empty room. I removed the RV helmet, took it back to my study, and stared at the wall clock in disbelief. Everything, from that first flicker of movement at Seth’s door to this moment, had occupied almost no time at all. Five minutes ago I had drifted between fairy stories and the strange no-man’s-land of impending sleep. Now I was totally wired, nerves jangling at the close escape from death.

I told myself this was Seth’s escape, not mine. I was not, and never had been, in the slightest danger. And Seth felt certain that the Sky City killer was in no way involved.

Curiously, I found I believed him. The murderer had done nothing, because the murderer needed to do nothing. We had no evidence. The killer’s safest course of action was continued total inaction.

Why, then, do I believe that Seth and I have a chance of success? Because human beings find it difficult to act on facts alone. We are plagued by overactive imaginations. And of the things that human beings are called upon to do, doing nothing can be the most difficult act of all.