Starfire

4

Bruno Colombo’s office sat in the half-gee environment of the outer perimeter of Sky City. It was the choicest real estate on the space arcology, a place where Coriolis effects of rotation were at a minimum and you were far away from the noisy zero-gee workshops of the central axis.

Maddy Wheatstone didn’t begrudge the director his palatial surroundings. So far as she was concerned, Bruno Colombo had the worst job in the universe. Judging from all that she had heard of the man, he loved it. He was Homo bureaucratiensis, the pure product, happy juggling the mishmash of everyday affairs needed to run an eighty-thousand-person flying city. His worries were budget and construction priorities, plus international politics both Earthside and spaceside.

Different strokes for different folks.

The shuttle craft had docked smoothly on the zero-gee central axis of the rotating cylinder of Sky City. Maddy was late, she was exhausted, and she was hungry. She kept her suit on and hurried toward the perimeter. When she reached a quarter-gee chamber she operated the airlock, and at her command the suit removed itself from her body. Receiving her approval to leave, it headed back toward the axis. It would seek out the service facilities to take on new supplies and exhaust waste products. In half an hour it would be ready for reuse, by Maddy or anyone else.

Maddy didn’t intend to be that next user. She appreciated the suit’s devotion, but she had spent the past fifteen hours inside it, nine of them trying to catch up on lost sleep while the acceleration of her space environment ranged between the two and a half gees of takeoff and the easy float of free fall. The shuttle, for the fourth consecutive time that she had taken it, had been delayed at both ends. Enough was enough.

And in some ways it was too much. Her travel case would not be unloaded and taken to her room on Sky City for another two hours, but her appointment with Colombo was now. Maddy checked her appearance as she drifted down the incline of a spiraling outward corridor. The personal suit did a good job of removing waste products, and it tried to keep body and clothing free of perspiration; but it didn’t quite succeed. Late or not, she had to do something.

Just before she came to Bruno Colombo’s office she slipped into a washroom and did what she could in the way of repairs. Water and a quick brush and comb took care of her hair and skin. Makeup hid the signs of weariness around her eyes and mouth. Clothing was a more difficult problem. Her outfit was reasonably clean, but rumpled. It looked as though she had slept in it — exactly what she had been unable to do.

A woman occupied Bruno Colombo’s outer office. She j was, according to Maddy’s information, the notorious Goldy Jensen. She was barely forty, but she had been Dr. Bruno Colombo’s personal assistant for twenty years. She was also, according to the Argos Group information services, his longtime mistress. But beyond all that, she was his guardian. No one made it in to see Colombo without being subjected to Goldy’s scrutiny. Maddy had heard that even Bruno’s wife had to be cleared for access.

Goldy let her off easily. She gave Maddy’s clothes a disdainful stare, but she said, “Go on in. You are late.

Your meeting was scheduled to begin seven minutes ago. The others are already here.”

Others? Maddy had assumed that Gordy Rolfe had arranged for a one-on-one. “Who is in the meeting?”

Goldy Jensen stared at her stonily. “I feel sure that Dr. Colombo will introduce you as he thinks fit.”

And screw you, too. But Maddy didn’t say it. The briefing documents also noted that Goldy held grudges and forgot nothing.

Maddy slid the door open and walked through into Bruno Colombo’s office.

The view, if you felt comfortable in space, was spectacular. On the perimeter of Sky City “down” meant “outward.” The whole floor of the room was transparent. As Sky City turned on its axis you looked past your feet and watched the panorama of the heavens sweeping by. Once a minute the same view returned, except that Sky City was itself in synchronous orbit about Earth. Sometimes the benign face of the planet intervened, blocking out a full fifteen degrees of the sky.

Maddy knew that the transparent floor could turn opaque with the flip of a switch, but Bruno Colombo apparently had a habit of showing the wheeling starscape whenever he had visitors from Earth — particularly first-time visitors with weak nerves and little space experience.

If he hoped that was true in Maddy’s case, he had missed his target. She walked forward, stared down and out, and said, “Magnificent. I’d pawn my soul for an office view like this.” She held out her hand to the tall man standing with feet planted in the middle of the floor/window, and said, “Dr. Colombo, I’m delighted to meet you. And . . .” She stared pointedly at the other man in the room.

He was lounging at the low table. He had been speaking, but broke off in midsentence as she entered. Then he scrambled to his feet and held out his hand. “John Hyslop.”

Something was wrong already. According to her plans, John Hyslop should not be here. Her meeting was with Bruno Colombo alone, and her main task was to persuade the director that Hyslop should be made available to assist the Argos Group in the asteroid capture program.

She needed time to think. Colombo already looked grumpy and ill at ease. Was Gordy Rolfe the cause, playing power games behind her back?

John Hyslop was still holding out his hand. She took it, held on for a fraction longer than custom demanded, and used the time to study him. He was short and stocky, only a few inches taller than her own five-four. Steady gray eyes, dark-smudged with fatigue or illness, stared into hers. He wore a dark two-day stubble of beard. The beginnings of male pattern baldness, easily treated with follicle protozoans, sent a different message: He didn’t much care what he looked like.

Her peripheral vision made a lightning scan of his clothes. She concluded that she had worried too much about her own appearance. Compared to him she was well groomed and elegant. Her clothes looked as if she had slept in them. His looked like he had died in them.

Bruno Colombo moved between the two, forcing her to take a step backward. “Hyslop, this is Madeline Wheatstone. She lives in the United States. However, as I told you, she is not visiting us in any official government capacity.”

Hyslop’s gray eyes had been gazing at her with a curiosity that matched Maddy’s own. She felt a sudden conviction that he did not know why he was here. And he did not know why Maddy was here, either. Her background data said that he was all engineer, as much the pure product as Bruno Colombo was the pure bureaucrat. His expression asked, Why have I been dragged here from my work? The director, Maddy knew, was the last person on Earth — or off it — to waste time with casual visitors.

Colombo had somehow glided forward again so that her view was mainly of the director’s back. Bruno was enormously tall and broad-shouldered. He must seldom be in a setting where that groomed halo of silvery hair did not tower above the crowd.

Maddy took a quick step sideways, so that she and John Hyslop faced each other again. She said, “Actually, I prefer Maddy to Madeline. Why don’t we all sit down? I don’t think we’ve ever met, Mr. Hyslop, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about you.”

Judging by the look on Bruno Colombo’s face, none of those had come from the director. They all sat down, and now she and Hyslop were eye to eye. She was long-waisted, so a lot of her height was in her torso. John Hyslop was probably self-conscious about his own short stature. He would have been just the wrong age, all set to be given a series of growth hormone shots, when the supernova hit.

He leaned forward. “Ms. Wheatstone—”

“Maddy.”

“—I feel sure that you and I have never met. Actually, I don’t even know why I’m meeting with you now.”

It was a cue, and not a very subtle one. But Bruno Colombo picked up on it before Maddy could. “I did send you a message, Hyslop, when you were out on the shield.”

“If this concerns the new simulations of shield performance and shield failure, then I agree that the problem—”

Maddy wanted to hear his next words, but Colombo broke into Hyslop’s reply as though an impending shield failure and the consequent collapse of civilization were of no great interest.

“This has nothing to do with simulations. It concerns the unfortunate—” Colombo paused, considering his next words. “—the unfortunate series of events that has occurred here over the past few months. More to the point, it concerns the consequences of those events as they are apparently being perceived on Earth. Hence the presence of Ms. Wheatstone.”

Hence. Hence what? What in the name of heaven had Gordy Rolfe told Bruno Colombo? And why had no one bothered to inform Maddy?

An old axiom: When you are totally confused, don’t make things worse by talking. Maddy kept her mouth firmly closed, and after a few moments Colombo went on, “I should explain to you, Ms. Wheatstone, that although I have followed the problems at a general administrative level, my duties as director of Sky City and chief implementor of the space shield program prevent the day-to-day detailed involvement that Hyslop, as my assistant, has been able to enjoy. We admit that progress has been slow.”

Buck passing was nothing new to Maddy. She had watched it happen many times during her nine years with the Argos Group, as that organization burgeoned from its original role as a provider of unique electronics to a worldwide deal broker and powerhouse. But John Hyslop seemed decidedly unhappy. Presumably he knew where he had failed to make progress, even if Maddy didn’t.

The problem was Colombo’s habit of talking in language designed to stifle any transmission of information. What events was Colombo talking about? The deaths?

That might be it. Through all the desperate years of space and shield development there had been deaths on Sky City and on the shield, hundreds and hundreds of them. They were inevitable in any construction program in a new operating environment where speed was more important than safety. No one back on Earth had ever offered criticism, or done anything but cheer the space workers on to greater efforts. But there had been nothing like this.

“The murders?” Maddy began, and paused when John Hyslop raised one eyebrow at her.

It was that, it had to be. And she was paid to make things happen, not to watch them happen. She gave Hyslop the hint of a smile and turned to the director.

“If I may, Dr. Colombo, I would like to express our concerns in my own words.” She swiveled to face John Hyslop directly, making it clear that her question was addressed to him alone. “You alluded to the new simulations, and I assume that you have had a chance to review them. What do you think of them?”

He paused for a long time before he answered. If Colombo had done that, Maddy would have assumed that he was posturing, but John Hyslop actually appeared to be thinking. “The simulations are terrifying,” he said at last. “But I need to know what new data the Earthside team put into the analysis before I can give you a real assessment. For example, were the latest Sniffer data included?”

“No. The main new information was the rate of progress on shield construction and the efficiency of general in-space operations for the past seven months. You know the schedules better than I do. And you know how poorly things have been going.”

Bruno Colombo was sitting to Maddy’s right. She saw the director’s lips tighten, but he said nothing. That was odd. His reputation said that normally he wouldn’t sit quietly in a meeting, no matter who was present. What had Gordy Rolfe been up to?

“You are right, Ms. Wheatstone,” John Hyslop said.

“Things have slowed down. One reason is the uncertainty and fear here on Sky City. We are more than eighty thousand people, and we grow in numbers every month. We have more technical training per head than anywhere since the first atomic bomb was developed at Los Alamos, more than a century ago. But in many ways we are like a small town. Risk of death in adult work is one thing. Risk to the children is quite another.”

Not his own kids, Maddy knew that. Her briefing documents said that Hyslop was unmarried, without children or current partners. But he was continuing, “It’s likely that the teenage murders are affecting everyone. I know they’ve had an effect on me, because I was forced to move one of the bodies from her place of death to where her parents could view the remains. And my assistant, Lauren Stansfield, had a cousin who was one of the victims.”

Bruno Colombo was glaring. Maddy had seen his official statements to the Earth authorities. He insisted that Sky City security was close to capturing the killer, but also that the Sky City murders were having no more than a trifling effect on work schedules.

Clearly, John Hyslop didn’t believe that, though what he said stayed close to the official line. He was affected, since he personally had been forced to view the bodies. Lauren Stansfield was affected, because she had lost a relative. But workers without families could see the murders as little more than a nasty news item. And so far as capturing the killer was concerned, no one had a clue.

John Hyslop seemed paler. His left eye was developing a tic and his voice was strained. When neither Maddy nor Bruno Colombo responded, he said, “We are looking for any help that we can get. If you yourself are with any kind of investigative group . . .”

It was open fishing, but Maddy approved of that. She smiled and shook her head. “Far from it. As Director Colombo mentioned, I do not work for any particular government. I also know less than nothing about criminal investigation methods. I am vice president for development of the Argos Group. I assume that you know of us?”

It was a rhetorical question. The Argos Group wasn’t government, but Gordy Rolfe claimed, at least internally, that it was more powerful than any government; the Argos Group provided the technology that allowed governments to run. Maddy wondered about a new connection, one that she had never heard about. Could that be what was making Bruno Colombo so subdued?

She saw an easy way to find out. At John Hyslop’s nod, she added, “We had early advance warning of the simulation results, and we have been able to study them more than you have. The deaths here have had an effect on morale and efficiency, but they are not the main reason that the project has fallen behind.

“The Argos Group has done its own simulations. The critical path for finishing the shield on time is the availability of construction materials in space. The Aten class of asteroids all have orbits that cross the orbit of Earth, and the Argos Group has during the past eight years contracted with Sky City for the transfer of two of them from their original paths to stable near-Earth orbits. We have also led the mining of those asteroids for metals and volatiles needed in shield construction. The transfer and material extraction went without difficulties, but deadlines were missed. We learned of problems only after the fact.

“If we are to make up for schedule slippage, then the third Aten-class asteroid must be brought to Earth orbit and processed more quickly than proposed. Certainly, the deaths on Sky City must end and the murderer must be caught, but we regard that as a subsidiary problem, one that we are already taking steps to deal with. The central question for the Argos Group remains: Can we rely on Sky City to deliver the third asteroid as required, or will we be forced to examine other alternatives?”

There it was, the first part of the story that she was here to tell. It contained its own veiled warning. For the past decade, Sky City had dominated all space activities connected with the shield. Colombo’s position and influence depended upon keeping it that way. Competition to Sky City’s monopoly would hit Bruno Colombo in his most vulnerable place.

As Maddy prepared to deliver the second part of her message she felt doubts of her own. Would any single individual, John Hyslop or anyone else, be able to make a difference to the whole schedule? Gordy Rolfe insisted that Hyslop could and would, but Maddy was not so sure.

She had been keeping one eye on Colombo for a possible outburst. When he remained totally calm, Maddy’s suspicions grew. Colombo was so unruffled because he had known of the whole agenda for this meeting in advance. All her instincts said setup.

“I feel sure it will not be necessary to look anywhere but Sky City,” Bruno Colombo said quietly. “We will cooperate with you in every way and respond to your every request. If there is ever a shred of difficulty, you will have direct personal access to me. I can promise our maximum effort in returning the whole program to schedule. As for the project to bring a third asteroid to suitable Earth orbit, I propose that the program manager for that work be John Hyslop. There is no better person to lead such a project in the whole solar system.”

Setup, sure and certain. The whole thing smacked of Gordy Rolfe’s fine Italian hand. Maddy was listening to Colombo, but she had been watching John Hyslop’s face. Colombo’s sudden proposal for Hyslop’s reassignment had clearly come as a shock. The engineer was sitting speechless, eyebrows raised and mouth open like a startled frog.

“I know nothing of Mr. Hyslop’s background,” Maddy said. See, Dr. Colombo, I can lie as well as you. “However, I have every confidence in your judgment of him. When would the transfer take place?”

“I assume that time is of the essence.” Bruno Colombo frowned. “Therefore, I see no reason for delay. Reassignment can happen immediately.”

“No!” Hyslop came back to life. “Director, that’s totally impossible.”

“Why?”

“Because things can’t just be dropped when I’m right in the middle of them.”

John Hyslop’s rush of words and incredulous look told Maddy a lot. Bruno Colombo might think he was the god of Sky City, but there was an awful lot going on here that he didn’t know about.

“I’m deep into a dozen projects,” Hyslop continued, “here and out on the shield. We must have continuity — at the very least, I have to summarize the things that only I know about.”

“Hyslop, you have filed numerous reports attesting to the competence of your chief assistant. Are you denying the truth of those?”

“You mean Lauren Stansfield? Of course not. She’s exceptionally able and knowledgeable. She understands all the systems of Sky City as well as anyone. But she’s mainly an inside worker, not an open-space specialist.”

“Where is she now?”

“At the moment she happens to be out on the shield. But that’s unusual. She doesn’t have nearly as good a grasp of shield engineering as, say Will Davis.”

“So we will divide your old responsibilities. Lauren Stansfield will handle problems of Sky City engineering, and Will Davis will deal with outside activities relating to the shield. I assume that you are confident of Davis’s abilities?”

“Certainly. He’s first-rate. But — well — it’s not really that easy.”

Maddy could see how the argument was going. John Hyslop didn’t have a chance against Bruno Colombo. It had little to do with seniority, and nothing to do with who was right. She would bet that John never won an argument with Colombo. The director had a more assertive personality.

And Maddy? Maybe. It was just as well that there had been no argument. But Maddy was increasingly sure she deserved no credit for that. Everything had been greased before she ever set foot on Sky City.

“I agree, you need to tie up what you’ve been doing.” She interrupted Colombo, who was now demanding to know why the full status of each project had not been given in weekly progress reports. “We are hoping for fast action, too, but we don’t want to jeopardize ongoing work. We don’t want to make anyone have to admit he acted too quickly, and without adequate thought.” Yes, Director, that could mean you. “How long will you need, Mr. Hyslop, before you are ready to make the transfer?”

“I can coordinate everything with Lauren Stansfield and Will Davis and be ready to go in a week.”

“A whole week!” Bruno Colombo spoke to John Hyslop, but he was looking at Maddy. “Really, that sounds ridiculously long.”

“It’s acceptable.” Maddy was sure of it, someone had been applying heat to Bruno Colombo. She turned to the director. “So we agree. One week it is, then the official transfer. But I need Mr. Hyslop to make a brief trip to Earth beforehand, for general introductions. That should be done as soon as possible.” Maddy winced inside, knowing that she had just committed herself to another shuttle trip and no sleep. “We also need a planning session here to discuss overall schedules. Where can we hold such a meeting?”

The director waved a hand around the office. “Right here. We can continue where we are.”

“Not unless you are ready to give up your office.” Maddy was pushing deliberately, curious to see just how much ground Colombo was willing to give. “I need a private session, just me and John Hyslop. We have to get to know each other, and there are sensitive matters of Argos Group activities that cannot involve you.”

Bruno Colombo’s face reddened, and for a moment Maddy thought that she had gone too far. Finally he nodded. She saw the set of his mouth, and decided that she had probably made a mistake. He would not fight now — apparently she still, for no reason that she understood, was in a controlling position. But Colombo’s assistant, Goldy Jensen, must have learned her own grudge holding from a master. It was going to be tough on Maddy if she ever had to depend on the director of Sky City for charity.

“You may use my office if you so wish.” Colombo had himself under control. “Also, there are several rooms available on this level. Whichever you prefer.”

“We don’t want to disturb you. We’ll move.”

She gestured to John. He followed her out. As soon as they were through the outer office and beyond the hearing of Goldy Jensen, he said, “Ms. Wheatstone, I’ve heard of the Argos Group, but I don’t know anybody in it. How come you picked me?”

It was an excellent question. Unfortunately, Maddy didn’t have a good idea of the answer. She stalled, saying, “I’d rather you called me Maddy. After all, we’re going to be working together.”

“Fine. But why me?”

“Let me answer your question with a question. Do you think you are the best engineer on Sky City?”

He hesitated. “I don’t know.”

“Well, do you know of a better one?”

“No.” He seemed highly uncomfortable, refusing to meet her eye. It could mean that he was lying, but Maddy didn’t think so. More likely, he was the kind of person made thoroughly uncomfortable by compliments. She found that rather sweet.

“What you say matches what we’ve heard,” she said, . “that you’re the very best. That’s why we want you.”

It didn’t answer his question, but he didn’t ask again. Instead he scowled at her in a puzzled way and said, “If you think I’m the best, it seems strange to switch me from what I’m doing to the Aten asteroid work.”

“You don’t think you can handle that?”

“No! I know I can. It’s more like — well, this is going to sound like boasting, and I hate boasting. But the Aten asteroid transfer and mining aren’t all that difficult. I’d be willing to trust the job to any of my senior assistants. What I’m doing here is far harder, and far more urgent.”

He was raising a question that Maddy was not equipped to handle. Was he right — was there more going on than she knew about? Gordy Rolfe might again be playing his own game.

Fortunately, John Hyslop didn’t press the point. He went on, “You know, Dr. Colombo isn’t the way you think he is.”

It was an odd non sequitur. Maddy asked, “And what way do I think he is?”

“You think he’s all empty talk. But he used to be an engineer, and a good one.”

“He doesn’t seem to care for that sort of thing now.”

“No. But sometimes, when you think he’s not been listening and has no idea what you are talking about, he comes up with a key insight for an engineering problem or he puts his finger on a fatal design flaw. It’s a terrible waste, doing what he does all day long.”

Maddy had the urge to tell him that it took a good man to defend a boss who would surely never defend him. She wanted to see if a compliment would again produce that boyish look of discomfort. However, before she could speak he put out a hand to steady himself against the wall of the corridor, grunted, and gave a prodigious yawn. Then he blinked at her and said, “I’m sorry, Ms. Wheatstone. We can’t have our meeting now.”

“Call me Maddy.” She frowned. “Are you all right?”

“No.” His words became breathless. “Not all right. I’ve been awake and at work for over forty hours. I either have to lie down or throw up. I’m approaching the end of a second Neirling boost, and I’m going to crash. Soon. Give me twelve hours. Then we can talk.”

Maddy took his arm in hers. “You should have told me sooner. Of course you must have sleep. If you’re on a second boost, you absolutely need sleep.” And not only you. The prospect of twelve hours of rest rose ahead of her like a prospect of paradise. “Come on, let’s get you to where you can lie down in peace. We’ll have plenty of time for our meeting when you wake up.”

The look in his weary gray eyes surprised her. It was gratitude. You didn’t see much of that when you worked for the Argos Group.

She led him away along the corridor. John Hyslop promised to be intriguing to work with — even though he insisted that they didn’t really need him for the Aten asteroid work.

And did they? What other reason could there be for his transfer? She could ask Gordy Rolfe, but he’d take that as a sign of weakness. Better to file the question away in Maddy’s box of minor mysteries, and try to find the answer for herself.