Starfire

EPILOG

From the private diary of Oliver Guest.

At Otranto Castle a wind from the south-southwest should be a warm zephyr, bringing the lotus ease of the lazy tropical ocean whence it came. But not this time. The wind had blown as a force-five gale for six days and nights, a fury that carried in its dark heart sleet and hail and the sour, bitter stench of cindered lands and dead seas. The castle, windows shuttered, crouched down and endured this blast, as it had stood and withstood for more than two and a half centuries.

Soon after dawn on the sixth morning, I opened the heavy oak door of the main entrance and stepped outside. The wind was strong as ever and rain sheeted at me sideways, but there was a freshness in the air and a clarity to the sunrise. It was possible to believe, for the first time since the onset of the particle storm, that Earth had a future.

In that moment of spiritual rebirth, the castle Alert blurted in to steal joy from the morning. Warning, it shouted in my ear. Possible intruder sighted to the southwest. Human evaluation requested.

I sighed and went inside. Under high magnification I studied the solitary walker. He was enveloped in waterproof clothing that flapped like dark wings in the gusts, and he maintained a wide and wise separation between himself and the edge of the cliffs. This time, however, I had no doubt as to his identity. For more than a week I had been waiting and wondering; not if, but when.

I opened the door and held it as he approached. He hurried into the dark hallway as though the wind bore him across the threshold unassisted.

“A nasty morning,” I said.

“You might say.” Seth grinned at me as he stripped off his overcoat and leggings. “But we’ve both seen worse.”

His clothing had been inadequate protection. His hair and shirt were soaked. I led him through to the far end of the kitchen, where towels hung drying on a line and a gallon pot simmered on the blackened stove.

He took a towel and rubbed at his hair until it was a drier but more tangled mess, then went over and sniffed the pot. At my nod he filled a bowl and carried it to the long wooden table.

“Beans?” he asked.

“With ham hocks,” I said. “From the gentleman who pays the rent.”

“Huh?”

“It’s an old Irish joke. It means a pig.”

Those were our first words after the initial greeting, and they were not inspiring. After that neither seemed inclined to speak again. The silence continued until Seth had emptied the bowl and refused more with a shake of the head. Finally he said, “You were expecting me.”

“It was my preference.” I led the way to the study, and we sat down in front of the peat fire. “Otherwise I would have ultimately been obliged to seek you.”

“Yeah.” He removed his boots and held his stockinged feet close to the red peat coals until the soles began to steam. At that point he moved back a couple of feet, accepted my offer of whiskey, stared into the low flames, and said, “We got unfinished business. It’d be nice to say, go back to the way it was before any of this started. But we can’t. You know that I know.”

“And vice versa. I know about you. More, perhaps, than anyone else in the world. Even in these troubled times, the curious demise of Gordy Rolfe was widely reported.”

“Yeah. There’s rumors that he was part of some big conspiracy, robbin’ Sky City blind, an’ his business partners knocked him off so he couldn’t talk. But some people talked conspiracy with the Sky City murders, an’ we know how that turned out. Me, I think nobody’s goin’ to find anything more. Old Gordy made hidin’ what he knew an’ did into an art form.”

“I will not dispute the conspiracy theory. However, I suspect that you and I alone are aware of your intention to visit Gordy Rolfe on the day before he died.”

“Ah, but did I go there? I vote for natural causes, Doc, comin’ as a result of unnatural experiments. You heard what the media said about poor old Gordy. ’Hoist with his own petard,’ if you want to put it fancy. They found one of his boots, an’ that was all. Nobody’s lookin’ for me as a killer. Can’t say quite the same for you.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Or thinking to blackmail me?”

“Never.”

He glanced toward the door behind me and frowned. I turned and saw four faces peering in a vertical line around the jamb: Paula, Bridget, Beth, and Trixie. They had been in the cellar earlier, but they must have seen the Alert flashing or heard the outer door.

“This meeting does not call for your presence,” I said sharply.

That would probably have been enough had not Seth made the mistake of adding condescendingly, “Run along, kiddies. You heard your dad.”

Paula frowned, and Bridget flushed and opened her mouth as though about to speak. Before she could do so, Paula dragged her out of sight. A moment later the other two faces vanished.

Seth waited to make sure they had gone, then went on. “Take it easy, Doc. I’m just sayin’ we need to have some sort of negotiation or truce, an’ it’s nice to know where each of us is startin’ from. Seems to me you’re startin’ off vulnerable. Not because of you; you’re fireproof.” He gestured toward the door. “Because of them.”

“If you imply that through the existence of those girls I have, in the words of Francis Bacon, given hostages to fortune, then I am obliged to agree with you. However, you know my history. The addition of one more victim to the roster for the sake of security would not, if discovered, change my sentence at all were I ever to be recaptured.”

“One more victim. Are you threatenin’ me, Doc?”

“I would not dream of it.”

“Or tryin’ to blackmail me?”

“Never.”

Seth grinned. Far from being intimidated, he seemed amused. “So we both know where we stand. Question is, what do we do?”

“If you are referring to the reward for the apprehension of the Sky City murderer, I neither need nor want it.”

“That’s good. I need it, an’ I want it, ’cause with Gordy gone I don’t have a job. But the reward ain’t the problem. How do we work the other stuff?”

I had no immediate answer. Regrettably, he was right. I was far more vulnerable than he. Eighteen young girls are not easy to hide. With them to protect and nurture, I would need a permanent and safe base of operations for many more years. A single male like Seth, on the other hand, could vanish with ease or wander the world as he chose.

Should I seek to kill him now, this very minute, while he sat drinking my whiskey? He was undeniably accessible, but I felt a reluctance even to consider that prospect. I ascribed it to a worry that my darlings might somehow become aware of such a bloody deed. There was also, of course, a more practical consideration: Seth Parsigian’s whole history proved that he was no easy man to kill.

Before I could decide on action or inaction, another complication reared its head. My darlings appeared again; not, this time, in the form of the previous four. All eighteen came trooping into the study and stood in an orderly line, oldest to youngest, along the wall opposite the fireplace.

“Paula.” In spite of her short stature I addressed her as the most senior and the usual ringleader. “I told you once to go away. What do you think you are doing here?”

When Paula spoke it was not to me but to Seth. “We wanted to meet you,” she said in her deep, husky voice. “And we wanted you to meet us. We thought it was important.”

This time he did not try to dismiss her. He studied the girls, carefully and one by one, his tawny eyes moving steadily along the line. “Important how?” he said. “We never met. You don’t know me.”

“You came to our home on one previous occasion. You are Seth Parsigian.”

Seth jerked around sharply in my direction. His face was more surprised than I had ever seen it. I shook my head. “Not from me, Seth. I swear on my nonexistent soul, that did not come from me.”

He turned angrily back to Paula. “So you know who I am. Clever girl. Do you also know who-”

He caught himself, but she had followed his eyes.

“Who he is? Yes. He is our father, Kevin Baxter. Not our biological father, of course. But he raised us, and so far as we are concerned he is our true and only father.”

Seth looked at me, but he did not speak. My eyes told him that he was on very dangerous ground. To protect my darlings, I would do anything. But Paula was not finished.

She added, “He is our father. And he is also Dr. Oliver Guest, who in the year 2021 was sentenced to six centuries of judicial sleep for the murder of fifteen teenage girls. That number was later, through his own confession, increased to eighteen.”

If Seth was surprised by that announcement, I was stunned. I made a faint sound in my throat. I think I was trying to offer a denial, stupid as that sounds, but no words came out.

“And,” said Paula, “we know who we are.” She took a step forward out of the line. “I am Paula Baxter. I was once Paula Searle. I was raised in Norfolk and in the Atlanta Scantlingtown. I never knew my father, but my mother was a druggie and a whore, and I was mostly a nuisance to her until I became old enough to go on the game.”

While I gaped-how did she know any of that? There was to my knowledge no written record-she stepped quietly back in line and made a little hand gesture. Amity, standing next to her, moved forward.

“I am Amity Baxter. I was once Amity Carlisle. I was born in San Antonio. My mother was only fourteen, so I was sent to El Paso to live with an aunt and uncle whom I had never met. She beat me most days and when I was ten years old he raped me. I ran away when I was eleven. I lived along the transport strips. Money was short, but I always knew I could get some from older men if I did the right things to them.”

Amity, my magical, innocent Amity who insisted that she believed in fairies and danced with joy when she saw a rainbow. Not even I knew all of what she had said. But she was back in line, and Rose was stepping forward.

“I am Rose Baxter. I was once Rosa Gonzales. I was born in Coral Gables. When I was little we had plenty of money, but my father was ruined in the economic collapse after the Turnabout riots, and he killed himself. Mother had to work, and so she left me home alone . . .”

I knew what was coming, the slow descent and degradation until she sat hopeless by the roadside and I drove past. But Seth did not. It was news to him, the whole tawdry parade, from Paula’s beginning until little Victoria had had her turn. The cavalcade of events that they offered was appalling and bizarre, yet I was oddly proud of them. Each of my darlings spoke so clearly, so confidently, and so calmly.

Finally Paula again stepped forward.

“As you see, Mr. Parsigian, we do indeed know who you are. We also know who our father is, and who we are. It took a great deal of research, and lots of time. But we did it.”

He shot me an accusing glance. “You son of a bitch. You smartened ’em. You never told me that.”

“Minimally. They were intelligent already, every one.”

Paula went on, as though Seth and I had said not a word. “Mr. Parsigian, each of us may seem to you to be helpless and naive. Perhaps we are, considered singly. But a person who seeks to harm any one of us — including our father-will face not just one of the Baxter family. He will have to defend himself against our combined resources. I hope I make myself clear.”

Seth again said, “Son of a bitch.” This time it was addressed to nobody. His eyes went once more along the line. “Son of a bitch.”

“Actually, that’s not much of an answer, Seth,” I said.

“Never intended as one.” His eyes were alight. He was looking not at me but at the serried rank of my darlings, and I believe that in his own way he was enjoying himself. “Young ladies, permit me to assure you of just one thing, and I will leave it at that.” His manner, for Seth, became curiously formal. “I do harm only to those who seek to harm me. Dr. Oliver Guest, or if you prefer it, Mr. Kevin Baxter, will never be troubled by the authorities because of any information revealed to them by me, unless he first seeks to do me injury. I rely upon all of you to make sure that the latter event does not occur. Is that good enough to satisfy?”

He turned his head toward me, but he was watching them from the corner of his eye. “Not only that, with you ladies backing him I wouldn’t dare try any-thin’. Me an’ him have needed each other real bad in the past. The way the world goes, chances are we’ll need each other again.”

“Girls,” I said, “it is time for my guest and me to enjoy a drink in peace. So if you would not mind . . .”

My darlings all looked to Paula, who after a moment’s hesitation nodded. They began to troop out.

“Manners!” I called. They halted and chorused, “Nice to meet you, Mr. Parsigian.”

“Nice to meet you too, ladies.” Seth watched almost all of them leave before he turned back to the low table. He picked up the decanter and did not see Victoria stick her tongue out at him. I would reprimand her later for that unconscionable rudeness.

Seth poured, as usual disdaining water, and hovered the decanter over a second glass. He raised an eyebrow at me.

“I think so,” I said. “It is not yet nine o’clock in the morning, but this surely must count as a special occasion.”

“One in a lifetime-let’s hope.” Seth poured again and handed me the glass. “Don’t know quite when we’ll next meet. But I bet we do. The world is gettin’ stranger all the time. When shall we three meet again, in thunder, lightning, or in rain?”

“There’s only two of us, and you claim to lack all forms of classical erudition. Don’t spoil your image, Seth. This is the second time in ten minutes that you have quoted Shakespeare.”

“I’ll watch out for that.” He raised his glass. “Good luck.”

“Good luck. May the wind be always at your back.”

We clinked glasses. Seth drained his whiskey in a single gulp. He glanced at the door from which my darlings had departed. “Don’t take me wrong, Doc, if I say I think that in a year or two you’re gonna need luck.”

“We all need fortune to smile on us. Another drink?”

“Not for me. If you don’t mind, I oughta be going-before the weather turns bad.”

I could hear the gale, trumpeting like a herd of elephants around the chimneys and false gables of the castle roof. Hail lashed at the shutters. I said gravely, “It would perhaps be wise to do so.”

Seth donned his boots and outer garments and I walked him to the door. In the shadow of the main entrance we stood together for a few moments without speaking. Then he nodded and headed south. The wind was not at his back. It was in his face. He bent low against a howling storm that ripped at his clothes. I watched, foolishly, until the pelting sleet had soaked me.

When I went back inside, Paula was anxiously waiting. She said, “Did we do wrong?”

“You did wonderfully. Every one of you.” I put my arm around her, wetting her blouse. “But I have a question.”

“What?” She sounded worried.

“Do you have any more surprises in store for me?”

She smiled, and in that mobile mouth I saw far across the years to the dimpled face of Paula Searle, holding in triumph her treasured alley-taw blood-orange marble. “We wouldn’t do anything like that, Father,” she said. “We’re too fond of you.”

I nodded and returned to my study. Tomorrow the girls would again be their usual selves, squabbling, conniving, demanding; impetuous, imperious, and inconsistent. Today, however, I refused to see them as anything less than perfect.

Although Seth was not there to provide justification, I poured myself another drink.

God knows, I did not deserve it. But, obscurely, I felt that I and my darlings and perhaps the whole world had earned it.