“We don’t know how long he stood around taking pictures. But let’s say he was unlucky as well as stupid.”
“Extremely stupid. See, he’s wearing a hard hat — heaven knows what he thought that would do for him. The particle bundles are whipping in there at thirty thousand kilometers a second.”
There was a five-second silence before Nick said, “Maybe none of us is too smart in situations like this. I should have known better, but I told my staff to put on hard hats until they could head for the deep shelters. And now you’ve got me wondering about the cross-sectional area of this suborbital, and the particle rate over the Caribbean.”
It sounded like a rhetorical question, but Celine happened to be able to answer it. “Once you’re north of Venezuela, you’ll be safe if you keep below a couple of hundred kilometers altitude. Your path puts you behind Earth relative to Alpha C.”
“Safe.” Lopez laughed, but Celine would bet that he was not smiling. He went on, “I like that word, safe. Is anybody safe? Is the particle beam still converging?”
“Faster than ever, according to Sniffer reports.”
“Then we better hope that our smart boys and girls on Sky City know what they’re doing. Otherwise, we might as well all be on Kerguelen Island and finish up like him.”
Lopez and Celine fell silent. The sea boiled and the land burned, while drifting black smoke intermittently hid the forlorn yellow-clad figure on the beach. The bodies of marine animals of all sizes darkened the lifeless shore of the gulf. Mobiles, most of them no bigger than a cicada, flew over and under the water, seeking targets. Their small size provided some immunity from particle bundle impact.
But you can’t shrink a human down to cicada size, Celine thought. And humans are what this is all about. Am I looking at my own future on that screen, and the future of everybody on Earth? Will only the machines be left as observers in another month or two? Come on, Nature. Let’s get this over with — one way or another.
In front of her, the Kerguelen Island data showed the bundles arriving more and more frequently. After a fifty-year journey through interstellar space, the particle storm from Alpha Centauri was ready to show its power.
34
Maddy had heard the official Sky City line: When the storm hit, you would be better off here than anywhere else on Earth or off it. The defense system would concentrate on protecting Sky City, Cusp Station, and the field generators, even if it was effective nowhere else. You should be especially safe if you stayed near the rear face of the disk, the one that pointed away from Alpha Centauri. The city was a hundred and ninety meters thick. Every centimeter of that thickness would help to slow or stop the flying particle bundles.
Maddy had listened to all that and been unpersuaded. She was not a specialist on the effects of high-speed particle bundles, but she knew a lot about human nature. You tried not to worry people by telling them things they could do nothing about. Sky City might be safe, or it might prove very unsafe. Now, as she left the information center and wandered toward the rear face, she was starting to tilt toward the second opinion.
She could see the marks left by the bundles that had made it through the defense system. The wall seals, designed to protect the city from micrometeorite impacts, had no trouble closing the holes. However, the seal marks sat not only in the forward walls of chambers. For every one of them, another matching mark could be found in the rear. The particle bundles could not be stopped by a wall. They came into a chamber, crossed it, and went right out the other side.
Her idea was confirmed as she approached the rear face of Sky City. There were no fewer holes here than in the information chamber, close to the front. What there were — because people had come to the rear-facing chambers, seeking safety — were more casualties.
The first one that Maddy saw was an old man with an injury to his right hand. The particle bundle had drilled a neat hole through his palm, removing flesh and bone with surgical precision. There was no blood, and you might easily have missed the wound if the man were not holding his hand out in front of him. He was suffering the triple effects of shock, painkillers, and sedatives. He sat on the floor, arm extended, jaw sagging, tears trickling down his cheeks. Whoever had provided the painkillers had moved on, leaving the man alone.
Maddy went over to where he leaned against the wall. “Are you all right?”
Stupid question. Of course he wasn’t all right. He stared at her and mumbled something.
“What? Say that again.”
Maddy bent close. She heard his faint words: “I came to Sky City because it’s easy on your heart.”
“Do you feel dizzy? Are you in pain?”
“Extend your life for fifty years, they told me. Safer than the telomod treatment, they said. No danger of cancer. I flew up to Sky City because my heart wasn’t good.”
“Is someone coming back for you?”
“Look what they did to me.”
It was no good. She wasn’t getting through. Maddy raised the old man to his feet, and he offered no resistance.
“Come on.”
Taking most of his slight weight, she led him on a spiral course downhill toward the city perimeter, until she came to an open area filled with people. It had been converted to a makeshift emergency room.
Maddy set the old man on one of the beds and placed his wounded hand where it could easily be seen. As she was straightening up, a woman in a pink housecoat approached.
“You can’t leave him here.” The woman was perfectly made up and wore expensive jewelry, but she had suffered her own narrow escape. She had a swath cut through her red hair, a cylindrical furrow that missed her scalp by a fraction of an inch. “These are private quarters. We have no space for strangers.”
Maddy said mildly, “If you can explain that to him, I’m sure he’ll leave.”
“This is disgraceful. We paid for the best location on Sky City, and we were promised safety and security. And do we have it? We do not.”
“I’m sure that Sky City is the best possible place to be.” Sometimes the official line had its uses. “The defense system will protect us better than anywhere else.”
“That’s not good enough. Do you see what happened to my hair? That particle thing might easily have hit me. I am going to file a formal complaint with Bruno Colombo.”
“I think you ought to do that. I doubt if he’s busy.” Maddy turned before the woman could reply. She went on her way, heading toward the rear face.
She thought, You might easily imagine, spending time with John Hyslop and his group, that everyone on Sky City is supercompetent and superdedicated. But even here you can find stupidity and selfishness. She recalled Gordy Rolfe’s words when he first hired her for the Argos Group: “You might say, well, if people weren’t so dumb, we’d have no reason to exist, but I like to think of it differently. Sure, we take money from stupid people. But we also give service. We protect them from doing something even dumber with their money.” Someone with Maddy’s skills would make a living on Sky City with no difficulty.
If, that is, you and Sky City and Earth survive. Maddy looked at her watch. Forty-seven minutes to the storm peak. How much of the chaos around her was the fault of Gordy Rolfe and the Argos Group, delivering defective materials to Sky City? If she lived, she was going to find out.
A sharp ping sounded, and Maddy saw a streak of blue light just a couple of feet in front of her face; another particle bundle through the defenses. ’All the evidence suggested that she was no safer here than up near the front of Sky City with John Hyslop. So why wasn’t she with John, where she most wanted to be?
Not hurrying, Maddy began her return to the engineering information center.
35
From the private diary of Oliver Guest.
The RV jacket worn by Seth Parsigian was less than totally satisfying. It provided clear visual and auditory signals, but for me, attuned as I am to olfactory and tactile stimuli, Sky City remained no more than a hollow shadow of reality. Att
empts to draw supplementary information from Seth proved a waste of time.
“Smells of what?’ I said.
“I dunno.” Seth paused in the empty corridor and sniffed loudly. “I told you, it stinks like something’s been burnin’. Feathers, mebbe?”
“Feathers! You’re up in space, and you smell burning feathers?”
“Well, you were the one who asked. Don’t worry; it’s usually that way on this level.”
We were approaching Cargo Bay Fourteen. Clearly, Seth knew the area well, while to me much of the region was terra incognita. I was aware of his distaste for wearing the RV jacket, so it was no surprise to learn that some of his Sky City roaming with Maddy Wheat-stone had been done without my vicarious participation.
At the entrance to the cargo bay, Seth paused.
“Where do you want it?”
It referred to the bundle, swathed in white cloth, that he carried under one arm. Even from as close as a few feet away it bore a plausible resemblance to the body of a human.
I paused before I answered. We had been forced to settle for whatever John Hyslop could make available, and this air-filled cargo bay, up in the low-gravity region close to the central axis, was larger than I had anticipated. In addition to a chamber big enough to house an entire shuttle, the sides of the cylindrical void were honeycombed with separate storage cupboards and racks. At the end farthest from where Seth floated with his burden, a web of guys and thin ropes provided convenient attachment points for larger items. The walls of the chamber were painted a mustard yellow, which glistened stickily in the spotlight that Seth shone on them.
I regarded the whole cargo bay with distaste. It was not an appropriate resting place for a murdered girl. On the other hand, it would surely never be one. “Suppose that Doris Wu’s body really had been found and brought here by a shuttle,” I said. “Where would it have been placed?”
“In one of the cupboards, mebbe?” Seth moved forward and opened one. “Like this.”
“No.” I could see inside, and the RV jacket’s enhanced optics gave me a clearer view than Seth. “It’s dusty. No one would risk contamination before security had done their inspection for evidence, and that won’t happen until the particle storm is over.”
“Then it has to be put somewhere over there.” Seth turned, so that I again had a view of the far end of the chamber. “Looks like the cleaning machines work the main chamber, but not the cupboards. Hang it on one of the support points, an’ it won’t be disturbed.”
“Then let us proceed.” In spite of the fact that at least an hour would elapse before anything could be expected to happen, I was filled with a disquieting sense of urgency. Patience has its limits. This promised to be the culmination of more than a month of frustrating inaction, and I could hardly wait.
Seth carefully suspended the cloth-wrapped figure between two of the web nodes, then moved back to admire his work. “That do?”
“It will be fine.” I wanted to head at once into hiding, but now it was Seth who displayed the caution and attention to detail that should have been mine.
“Hold on a minute,” he said. “Better make sure you can see it easy from every way in.”
He was right, of course. I restrained my impatience as he went slowly and carefully to each entry point of the cargo bay, moved outside, and then came in again. We agreed, the white figure would catch the eye at once no matter where a person chose to enter the chamber.
“So now let us make sure we are not equally visible,” I said. “I suggest the storage cupboard over on the extreme right, where the light is dim.”
“In a minute.” Seth pulled a high-intensity beam weapon from his belt and subjected it to a thorough, and to my eye excessively lengthy, inspection.
“I thought we agreed that we do not anticipate violence,” I said.
“Mebbe we did, an’ mebbe you don’t.” Seth completed the leisurely review to his own satisfaction before slipping the weapon back into its holder. “I been shot at too many times to take the chance. It ain’t your ass on the line if things go bad. If it don’t work out right, you’ll be laughin’ an’ scratchin’ back in Ireland with your feet up, while I’m up here pullin’ arrows out of my tuckus.”
It was compelling and undeniable logic. I waited quietly while Seth, muttering complaints, established himself within the storage cupboard. Then it was my turn to object.
“If I am to play any useful part at all in this proceeding,” I said, “it is essential that I see what is happening. My entire view of Sky City is at the moment limited to the two square feet of storage locker visible from the RV jacket.”
“It has to be like that if you want me stuffed inside this cupboard.”
“Then let me make an alternative suggestion. Whatever happens next will take place within this chamber. Remove the jacket and hang it in the darkest corner. I will be able to see, and I can offer my comments to you through your earpiece.”
“I thought you wanted me hidden out of the way ASAP.” But Seth climbed out of the cupboard, irritatingly slowly, and removed the jacket. For a few seconds my view was a collage of rotating snapshots of parts of the cargo bay, overlain on the ghostly background of my own study in Otranto Castle. When it steadied I could see the whole chamber spread out before me. Seth, ten meters away, was sauntering back to his hideout in the cupboard. I noticed that in addition to the beam weapon he had an older projectile weapon in a rear holster. The folly of using high-speed bullets in an environment where momentum transfer was a major question and vacuum lay outside most walls was beyond dispute. On the other hand, as Seth had so succinctly pointed out, my ass was not on the line. The danger was all his.
Finally we were in position, and probably an hour early. Now there was nothing we could do but wait. And speculate.
What would happen here in the cargo bay? What would happen in the rest of Sky City as the particle bundles flooded in from space with ever-increasing numbers? And what would happen down on Earth, where my corporeal body resided?
Cargo Bay Fourteen was almost empty, but as the minutes slipped by it was far from silent. First there was an eerie creaking from the walls, evidence that some part of the structure of Sky City was under unusual stress. Then I heard a loud ping a few yards away, followed by a hissing sound that quickly faded. At the extreme edge of the RV jacket’s field of view I saw the hole left by the particle bundle. There had to be another one somewhere at the other side of the chamber. I searched carefully, and at maximum magnification I thought I could just make out a dark dot on the far wall.
“Looks like a few are gettin’ through,” Seth said calmly.
“Yes. I gather that is inevitable. Do you want to be in a suit?” Six of the dark spacesuits hung on an open rack midway between Seth and the RV jacket.
“Not worth it. The sealers can handle anythin’small. Anythin’ big comes along, a suit won’t be no help.” He paused, then added, ” ’Course, it won’t be too good if this place gets fulla little holes from the small stuff.”
There we have a typical Parsigian understatement. If Sky City were riddled by particle bundles, it would mean that the defensive system had failed. Seth, and eventually the whole of Earth, would probably die.
I waited and listened, gradually relaxing as no more noises of bundle impact sounded through the chamber. However, before I could be in any sense at ease, something else snapped me to full attention.
It came not via the RV helmet, but from within Otranto Castle. Not far from where I was sitting I heard a girl cry out.
I stood up at once and switched the helmet to local viewing. It was early afternoon, and sunny, and my study sprang into view in full color. I indulged in one rapid glance out of the window-no sign of any particle storm effects-then ran toward the kitchen.
As I suspected, a girl-no, three girls, Katherine, Charity, and Victoria-were there. Two of the tall kitchen cupboards stood open, heavy doors of dark oak thrown wide. The girls were rooting around inside. The cry that I ha
d heard, I now realized, was Charity’s high-pitched and poorly suppressed snort of laughter.
I was in my stocking feet, and I made no sound even on the hard floor of gray slate. The girls remained unaware of my presence until I cried, “What the devil do you think you are doing?” They turned, and I went on, “I told you, the Alpha Centauri particle storm reaches its peak today. And you all promised that you would remain in the deepest cellars until I told you it was safe to come out. Why didn’t you keep your word?”
“We did.” Little Victoria, smallest of all my darlings, looked up at me with blue eyes filled with guilt. I saw that she was clutching an armful of jars and boxes. “We just came up for a minute. We were going straight back.”
“Why did you come up at all?” But I had already guessed the answer.
“For these,” Katherine said. She, like Victoria and Charity, was carrying a load of provisions. She held them out toward me. “We’re having a storm party. But there was nothing good to eat and drink.”
“Get back down there.” I turned away. “I don’t want anyone else up here, for any reason at all, until I come down and tell you that the storm is over.”
It is not clear to me whether the insouciance of youth will be the doom of humanity or its salvation. I prefer to think the latter, but I have my doubts. I made my way back to the study, returning the helmet to remote viewing as I did so.
“Wanna tell me what all that was about?” Seth asked, and I realized that in my haste I had not switched the sound to local mode. He had heard every word that I said.
“It was nothing. Merely the girls organizing a party. What has been happening there?”
“Not a thing. Wish they’d organize a party for me; this place is as boring as it gets.”
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