Starfire

40

The Sky City communication systems provided minute-by-minute news to outlets on every level. So why was the engineering information center again full of people, after John Hyslop had told everyone to go away? He hadn’t objected when Maddy had stayed at his side, but she hoped that she was a special case. He had even smiled at her, the John Hyslop equivalent of a passionate embrace. His only condition for her presence, implied by attitude rather than words, was that she not interfere with his work. He was struggling to maintain an open communication channel with Earth.

But what were all the others doing here?

Maddy had her own answer: People would risk anything, even death, to see the action firsthand. She glanced around the room.

Star Vjansander had stayed, too — rather to Maddy’s annoyance. Maddy liked being alone with John, even when he was too preoccupied to notice her. Star’s hair was wet and she was unusually quiet, sprawled prone on the floor with her short skirt riding almost to her waist and her chin cupped in her hands. Maddy looked for Wilmer Oldfield and did not see him. That was odd. The two went everywhere together.

Will Davis had returned and stood close to John. Most of the other senior engineers had come back, too, filling the vacant desk seats. Amanda Corrigan was obviously scared, biting her nails and staring at nothing. Torrance Harbish played a different role, totally calm and pretending to be more interested in his fellow engineers than in the displays. But Maddy saw the white, strained look around his mouth.

Seth drifted in last, nondescript and inconspicuous, with the usual rolled-up bundle of clothing under his arm. He caught Maddy’s eye and nodded.

Meaning what? Maddy knew of the trap. But where was Lauren Stansfield? Had she been taken into custody? She raised her eyebrows at Seth. He just grinned.

A gasp and a murmur from the other people in the room brought her attention to the displays. The biggest one had suddenly changed, switching from the outward views of space and the defense system to an image of Earth. The big scope on the rear face of Sky City was in use, and it showed the whole of the Southern Hemisphere. With winter there, the pole ought to be dark. Instead, the great ice shield of Antarctica glowed an electric blue. The surrounding oceans were obscured by clouds of white steam and vapor as far north as the tip of South America. Every sunlit land area, from Tierra del Fuego to as far north as Panama, was hazy and indistinct, ground details lost behind a continent-wide pall of black smoke.

A faint and unidentifiable man’s voice sounded from the audio channel. “We make it five minutes to maximum flux, and I hope to hell that’s right because we’re taking quite a beating here. Our monitors show a Southern Hemisphere temperature rise of thirty-eight Celsius, and still climbing. Sky City, can you hear me? Are you able to confirm that number with bolometric readings and thermal IR?”

John began speaking into a microphone. Maddy, close as she was, could not hear his reply, but the display suddenly changed. The image still outlined the continents and oceans of Earth, but the colors on the globe were different. She had no idea how to interpret that until Will Davis said, “Thermal map, radiance corrected for emissivity and differenced from yesterday’s numbers. We’re looking at big temperature increases down there.”

His remark was intended for the young technician next to him, not Maddy, but she examined the display with new understanding. The particle storm was scorching a wide swath on the turning Earth. Although the hottest region corresponded to latitude sixty degrees south, directly below Alpha C, there were changes all the way down to the South Pole and north to beyond the equator. Thirty-eight degrees Celsius. The difference between a cold winter’s day and a hot summer’s one. And that was an average increase. If the particle bundles didn’t kill the plants and animals in the red zone, heat would. Thank God it was the Southern Hemisphere, where there was less land area. The southern oceans formed a huge heat reservoir and would not easily be warmed beyond the surface.

She looked at the countdown below the display. Four minutes to storm peak. After that the particle bundles would still be coming but the number of hits should start to diminish. Maybe her sense of time was distorted. The number of bundles bursting through the information center didn’t seem to have increased during the past quarter hour. If anything, it seemed a shade less.

She was ready to dismiss that as her own wishful thinking when a new voice came from the speaker. This time it was a woman, barely making sense above the static. “I don’t know how you’re doing it, or exactly what you’re doing up there, but keep it up. We’re hanging in. If it doesn’t get worse than this, there’s a chance we’ll make it all the way.”

Will Davis said, softly enough so that only the people nearest to him could hear, “What the hell are we doing, John ? We were at the limit of the defense system when I left, and that was half an hour ago. I thought that by now Sky City would be a sieve and Earth would be beyond contact.”

“So did I.” John Hyslop stood up and turned to where Star Vjansander lay on the floor in a near-obscene sprawl of bare limbs. “What’s going on, Star? We made our estimates based on the numbers that you and Wilmer gave us. How come they’re so far off?”

“Yer got me.” She stared up at him and rolled her chocolate-dark eyes. “Wilmer and me got no more idea than you do. He said yer’d be on ter us as a couple of silly buggers soon as yer saw the counts was wrong. But I calc’lated the convergence right, I swear it. The beam’s narrowing in; no other way ter read the Sniffer data. But we’re not seeing near enough particle bundles.”

“You mean enough to match your blessed theory,” Will Davis said. He had turned away from John Hyslop to face Star. “For me, there’s more than enough—”

Maddy heard the sharp sound of a particle bundle ripping its way through metal. Will paused and gave an odd grunting cough. Maddy, standing behind him, saw the hole appear in his back just above his waist. At the same time the big display on the front wall went dark.

“Will’s hit!” she cried, and a moment later realized there was more. John had been between Will and the forward wall. The particle bundle had entered the information center, passed through John’s body, through Will, and gone on its way. Will was on his feet, standing and swaying and clutching at his middle. But John was falling.

Maddy lunged forward and was able to catch him and lower him to the floor. She looked in terror for the wound. Will was a good deal taller, and John had been looking down toward Star Vjansander. If it was his head or spinal column — It was his neck. The bundle had entered right rear and exited left center-front, by the Adam’s apple. Spinal cord intact. No spout of blood from jugular or carotid; with any luck no major blood vessels had been cut. Nerve damage they’d fix later. Breathing, hard but fairly normal. The windpipe must be intact.

Or was it? His eyes were open, staring up at Maddy. He seemed to be trying to speak, but no words came out. Vocal cords affected? The bundle had missed the Adam’s apple itself, but it was close. There might be other damage.

“John!”

Nothing but harsh breathing. Eyes trying to talk to her.

Maddy glanced up. “A doctor — we need a doctor!”

“Call’s gone out.” A burly engineer crouched beside her. “Don’t mess with him if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Did she? One course, thirteen years ago. His head was on the hard floor. She slipped her right hand underneath, providing support, raising his head as little as possible. She felt wetness on her hand and looked down. John’s fall had opened his wound and he was bleeding at the back of the neck. Didn’t seem too bad, a little pool on the floor. So long as he was breathing and remained conscious . . .

Where was the doctor?

Maddy looked up again. Will Davis was still standing, his hands held on his belly three inches to the right of his navel. If the vigor of his cursing was anything to go by, his wound was not life-threatening.

Where was the damned doctor?

The big-screen display was back in operation. Two minutes to storm maximum. The view was no longer of Earth. Now the imaging sensors showed the defense system at work as it was seen from the front of Cusp Station. The whole of the shield scintillated with tiny flashing points, too many and too briefly lit to count. The incoming particle bundles were detected crossing the shield. Sky City received the information and computed trajectories. The field generators threw their electromagnetic nooses out at light speed. What Maddy saw was the field loop as the field caught and diverted the particle bundle away from the shield. When Maddy said it that way, John had insisted on correcting her. Maddy was actually seeing the radiation that the charged particle emitted when it was accelerated.

Engineers. Logic, accuracy, precision. No room for emotion. Would he die without emotion, cool and calm?

No!

She turned back to John, wondering what she could say. “Just two more minutes, and we’ll be over the worst.”

She was appalled at her own words. Intended to reassure him, sure, but what did the particle storm matter if he was dying?

His lips were moving. She bent low, her right ear to his mouth.

“Don’t go to Earth.” It was a thread of sound, a whisper so faint that it was as much imagined as heard. “Stay here.”

She jerked up and stared down into his face. It was white and drained. His eyes were wide. His lips still moved, soundlessly.

Again she bent over him. Blood from the pool on the floor was soaking her knees.

“Stay here.” Fainter yet. “With me. Forever. Will you?” And then, puzzled, “Why we alive? Maddy? Why not all dead? Maddy . . .”

His eyes began to close. She straightened up. “John—” Before she could say more a pair of hands grabbed her and lifted.

“Out of the way.” It was a huge woman in a nurse’s outfit, the front of it filthy with blood. She picked Maddy up like a baby, set her down three feet away, and turned at once to John.

No! I have to talk to him. But the words came out, “Is he dying?”

“Of course he isn’t dying.” The nurse was already staunching the wound at the back of John Hyslop’s neck. “He’s one of the lucky ones. But he can’t stand to have you pestering him, so either go away or keep quiet. And if you don’t have anything better to do, take his legs.”

Maddy found herself lifting John onto a stretcher. His eyes had closed. Ten seconds more and he was being carried out. She started to follow.

“Not you!” The nurse glared at her. “Not now. I told you, he’s going to be all right. There’ll be plenty of time to see him later. Say, three hours from now. And here. You’re a mess. Use this.”

She and the other stretcher bearer left the information center. Will Davis, rejecting offers of assistance, walked out after her. He was still cursing. Maddy stood alone, wiping her bloodied hands and knees with the rag that the nurse had thrust at her.

She stared around her. The countdown showed one minute past storm peak. While she had been busy with John, zero hour had come and gone. All the displays were alive. The battleground of the shield still flared and glittered, Earth still flamed and smoked and seethed. But minute by minute, the intensity of the attack would decrease. Two hours from now, if she lived to see it, Sky City, Cusp Station, and Earth would begin to calm. They could all begin the long road back.

She heard a loud and distorted voice over the communication channel. “Sky City? We are still holding on, and we show count rates starting down. Can you confirm?”

Bruno Colombo appeared from nowhere. He took John’s chair, grabbed the microphone, and spoke into it.

Maddy couldn’t tell what he said, because everyone in the information center was suddenly talking. She picked her way through the chaos to where Star Vjansander still lay on the floor, her hands cupping her plump cheeks. She was thoughtful, ignoring everyone.

It was John’s question, but Maddy had to ask it. When she saw him later, she wanted to have an answer. Two answers — but one she already had.

“Star, the storm didn’t get as bad as you said it would. Not nearly as bad. What happened?”

Star raised her head and stared vacantly at Maddy. “Uh?”

“What happened? How come we’re alive, and Earth’s alive? We should all be dead.”

“I dunno.” Star slowly stood up, with nothing like her usual fluid grace. “I been wondering, too. We were way off. An’ I don’t know why.” She stared all around the information center. “Where’s Wilmer?”

“I don’t know. He hasn’t been here since the storm buildup began.”

“Well, I got ter find him. Me an’ him have ter rattle our skull-cases. We got data coming out of our ears. But now we hafta do the brain work.”

She wandered off. After a few moments Maddy left the room, too. Rather than following Star, she walked along the corridor that spiraled out toward the perimeter of Sky City. The occasional ping still sounded as particle bundles evaded the defenses and blasted through everything they met, rattling overstressed metal. But there were fewer of them. The defense system had smart components, and efficiency had increased all through the particle storm. There was still danger, and would be for another few hours, but the worst was over.

In any case, that was not where Maddy’s thoughts were concentrated as she traversed deserted corridors and escalators and moved toward the higher-priced levels. By every logic, she should have been thinking of John’s narrow escape from death. In fact, she was seeing Sky City with new eyes.

This place was in need of a thorough overhaul. It had been run like an offshoot of an engineering lab for too long, but now there were eighty thousand people here, men and women and lots of children. It needed to be made to feel like a real city. She could do that. And who would her competition be? Bruno Colombo? Goldy Jensen? She could eat them.

If she wanted to. Maybe she didn’t. Maybe she was ready for a completely different kind of life, not just a Sky City continuation of the sort of work she had done in the Argos Group. Wasn’t that the life she had decided to leave, just a few weeks ago? Gordy Rolfe, with his rages and his ego and his suspected sabotage of shield development, felt a million miles and a thousand years away. She would find out — -someday — if her warning to Celine Tanaka had been necessary and heeded. But that could wait.

Maddy wandered on, looking, wondering, making an evaluation. Deciding if this level of effective gravity was more comfortable than that. Assessing appearance. Balancing cost against comfort. Putting a value on convenience. Picking the nicest area.

Just what you did with anyplace when you realized that you were going to live there.