Starfire

by Charles Sheffield

"It's light green."

  "It sure is. So far so good. Tell me where to go and what to do next, an' if it won't kill me, I'll try an' do it."

  "Turn around, slowly."

  I felt as though I myself were turning. The green wall vanished, to be replaced by a mural of some kind of jungle scene framed by real potted plants. That gave way in turn to a wall-wide picture window, seven or eight meters away, that showed a blue sky beyond.

  "Walk over toward the window," I said.

  There was a silence—rather longer, it seemed, than the planned electronic delay. "All right. If you say so." Seth had an odd tone in his voice. For the first time I wished that I could see the expression on his face.

  My field of view moved steadily across the room, and I counted the paces. The window came closer. I was looking up and out, to a high layer of scattered cloud. And then I was looking down.

  Down, down, down. Far below lay dwarfed fields, towers, and highways, and beyond them the dull, distant glint of water.

  I stepped back convulsively. My legs moved, but I did not move. I stepped again, and again. Nothing. I was rooted to the spot, running backward in a nightmare. Finally I realized what I had to do and squeezed the hand controller. The video field switched at once to full local.

  "You all right?" Seth must have heard my panting.

  I stared at the familiar fixtures of my study: the old elephant-foot umbrella stand, the carved bone flute on the wall, the delicate glass globe on my desk that had survived a hundred close encounters with my darlings. Slowly they soothed me. "I am . . . all right. You should have warned me."

  "Wrong." Seth was cheerfully unrepentant. "This was a practical test, right? You think when I'm wandering Sky City I'll be able to give you a running commentary about where we're goin'? If you think that, you're blowin' bubbles. I'll be wearin' what looks like a normal jacket, an' people who talk to their clothes get put away. You have to figure out for yourself how much input you can take."

  He was, of course, absolutely right, but that made his casual callousness no easier to take. Slowly I allowed the remote scene to bleed back into my visual feed. Superimposed on the furnishings of my study appeared a faint black-and-white outline of the window. Seth must still have been standing in front of it.

  "How high is the place where you are standing?" I asked.

  "Don't know exactly. I'm up near the top of The Flaunt, so I'd guess over thirty-five hundred feet."

  "Don't move. I wish to try an experiment."

  As long as my sense of presence was firmly rooted in the castle, the fact that the other view emanated near the vertiginously high summit of The Flaunt had no more effect on me than a photograph taken from a mountaintop. The question was, at what point was the remote scene mistaken for reality?

  Gradually I strengthened the feed. The sky beyond the window turned from pale gray to blue. Dark lines lower down in the image strengthened and changed. Once again I saw roads and buildings.

  I had reached the point where the image was drawn equally from my own and Seth's perspective. Still I felt no discomfort.

  "You havin' fun there?" Seth, I realized, had little idea what I was doing. His only input was the sound of my breathing.

  I told him of my actions, and added, "Wait a little longer. I propose to see how far I can go with this."

  "Take your time. Don't worry about me, I can stand around here all day." Sarcasm should not be confused with wit, and Seth's use of it suggested more tension than he would admit.

  I continued to change the balance of images presented to me, gradually increasing the contribution from Houston. All went well until the scenes of my study began to lose color and appear only as a set of gray edges. At that point I felt a prickling in the palms of my hands and a sweaty clamminess on my forehead and cheeks.

  Others might tell themselves that they were still in control, that they could handle the fear seeping like iced water up the spinal column and into the brain. I held no such delusions. I have known, for far too many years, that I am not in control of myself.

  I decreased slightly the contribution from Seth. As the image of my study strengthened, once more I could breathe easy. I locked the setting of my controller and studied the scene presented by the RV helmet.

  "I think this will be satisfactory," I said. "My surroundings are enough to anchor me in this reality, and I can see yours well enough to make my own observations. Select some feature below you."

  "The ship canal. Over on the left."

  "I see it. Four vessels are visible. I am not able to make out their types."

  "Me neither. Four ships is right. But you can do somethin' I won't be able to do once I'm up at Sky City. Watch this."

  I took no action, but the canal expanded suddenly in my field of view. One of the ships at the center of the scene sprang into vivid detail. I could see individual funnels and masts and hatches, even individual human figures standing on the deck.

  "How are you able to do that?"

  "Beats me, but I'll tell you what I was told. This jacket I'm wearin' has sensors all over it. They can work together, an' when they do it's like having a telescope with a mirror two feet across. You got a control for it on the side of your hand unit. When you turn it on you'll see a lot more detail of what I'm lookin' at than I can. Try it for yourself."

  "I will. But not now." As Seth was speaking I had become aware that the gray image representing my own local scene was changing. The clean-edged outline of the walls had become broken and uneven. "I must go. You can call me later."

  "I'll do that—from Sky City."

  It was, I suspect, intended to keep me from breaking contact. If that was Seth's objective, it failed. I decreased the remotely viewed component to zero, and at once saw what I already suspected. My study was crowded. Every one of the girls was there.

  I spoke to Paula, whom the others through some unidentifiable instinct recognized as their senior. "Would you care to explain your presence?" I said. "This is not some form of entertainment, devised for your pleasure. As I told Crystal and Lucy-Mary, I am engaged in an important meeting."

  "I'm very sorry." Paula's face said she was no such thing. "It's just that Lucy-Mary and Crystal told us you were—well, we all wanted to see you."

  "Indeed?" I stood up and walked into their midst. As always, their beauty rendered me breathless—but not speechless. "You see me. Here I am. Have I, then, become so much an object of ridicule that the very sight of me—"

  I stopped. I had caught sight of myself in the long mirror next to the mantelpiece. The bottom of the RV helmet formed a seamless match to my own dark shirt. Tall, forbidding, with a swollen, goggle-eyed, hideous head, I had become a chimera, a lusus naturae, enough to strike terror into any heart. But not, apparently, those of my darlings. They stared at me with interest.

  I pulled off the RV helmet. At the sight of my frowning face every girl, from tall and mature Bridget to little golden-haired Victoria, shrieked, turned, and ran out of the room.

  It was done on purpose, planned long before they ever entered. I went back to sit at my desk. It was nice to know that my young wards were developing that most important of all senses, the sense of humor; but at the moment I had serious issues to ponder.

  Seth Parsigian was relying on me to perform miracles. He would head off for Sky City, move around at my bidding, return images to Earth, and blithely wait for me to do—what?

  To integrate new material from Sky City with the existing evidence, apply my own unique understanding of the mind of a serial killer, point a spectral finger at some individual, and say, "That's the one."

  It would not happen. The pattern of deaths remained totally baffling, the brain behind the killings unseen and alien. There was no hint of compulsion, no suggestion of the recurring need that enforced its schedule for murder.

  As I have already remarked, the savage mutilation of the Sky City bodies disgusted me. I had not touched sexually, nor would I ever touch, my victims. I had saved them, from pov
erty and misery, from hunger and dirt, from abusive parents, from sexual assault, from the degradation and drugs and dark despair that would otherwise have been their lot. They were rising again to a place where each could fulfill her own high potential.

  The Sky City murderer and I had nothing in common.

  As I sat alone in my darkened study, that thought led me to another. In my discussions with Seth I had already alluded to the famous resident of 221B Baker Street, London. Now I recalled one of his most celebrated cases, in which Sherlock Holmes remarked on the curious behavior of the dog in the night. When asked what the dog had done in the night, he answered that it had done nothing. He therefore deduced that the midnight visitor must be someone already known to the dog, otherwise the animal would have barked. Absence of evidence became evidence.

  Could I use what I knew—what I alone knew—to guide me to a similar insight?

  Question: What did the Sky City killer and I have in common? Answer: We seemed to have nothing in common. That had implications. My task was to deduce what they were.

  It took a long time. When the idea finally came, it took the form of another question. The Sky City murders were savage, brutal, random, committed in fits of insane rage. What could possibly be worse than the slaughter of a dozen innocents by a sex-crazed, blood-obsessed lunatic?

  It may be argued that my own flawed makeup leads me to see the dark side of humanity. But I can think of something worse.

  11

  Gordy Rolfe gave the order to Maddy Wheatstone with his usual brutal simplicity: "John Hyslop isn't your main priority, he's your only priority. Until I say different, where he goes, you go."

  Maddy sat with Gordy at the top of The Flaunt in Rolfe's office, a three-dimensional labyrinth of glass, staircases, and mirrors that gave a visitor the sensation of inhabiting one of Maurits Escher's gravity-disdaining lithographs. The trompe l'oeil interior and vertiginous outside view were part of Rolfe's techniques for maintaining psychological dominance, and Maddy was careful to exhibit a slight edginess. In fact, she preferred visits here to their occasional meetings in the green underground gloom of the Virginia habitat.

  "If he's in a technical session, you're in it, too." Rolfe drove the point in farther. "You eat with him, you drink with him, and you travel everywhere with him. If he tells you he has to take a leak, you're right there in the toilet watching him do it. If he takes somebody to bed, you squeeze in between the two of 'em. You do whatever you have to do, without limits. Compris?"

  Not for the first time, Maddy wanted to tell Gordy he could shove it. He loved to challenge people, to see just how far they could be pushed. So far Maddy had given as good as she got. Thereby proving that she was as tough as he was? Or proving that she was a dumb masochist who didn't have the sense to come in out of the thunderstorm?

  "Don't worry, Gordy. I'll be on him tighter than your tiny ass."

  It was the right answer, the answer of an ambitious and confident woman. He grinned and said, "Never." But he added, "You got my point, so get out of here. And don't tell anybody outside this room you speak to me like that, or it's your ass that'll be in the shop for repairs."

  That had been yesterday, at the tip of the four-thousand-foot needle The Flaunt. Now, following instructions, Maddy was leaving Earth again. If John Hyslop felt surprise when she said she wanted to come with him to one of his wrap-up sessions with the people who would be taking over his duties, he didn't show it. He leaned back in his seat as the shuttle completed its ascent phase, and he sat silent. He was frowning slightly.

  Maddy made her inventory of the other nine passengers. She recognized four of them. The head of LMB Industries—that made sense, they had one of the three big construction contracts. The shield could not really be said to have a skeleton, but the thin cables produced and installed by LMB, and running from Cusp Station all the way to Cone End, were the closest thing to it.

  In the row in front sat Mulligan Johnson, the top mirror-matter specialist for Photonics. John Hyslop had spoken of problems with the latest group of mirror-matter thrustors, and those were Photonics's responsibility. Mulligan was here to troubleshoot, stir the Photonics's staff to greater efforts, and smooth ruffled client feathers.

  The other two faces presented more of a mystery. Candy Wentzel, sitting next to Mulligan Johnson, was a top media reporter. She might be doing some kind of feature article on the shield and its schedule problems, but that wasn't her usual line. She was a muckraker, chasing scandals at the highest levels of government and industry. A schedule delay might lead to a world-crippling disaster, but it still wasn't a scandal. To justify Candy's highly expensive and decorative presence, Bruno Colombo himself would have to turn out to be the Sky City murderer.

  Maddy smiled inwardly at the idea—Goldy Jensen would have to be in on it, too, because Colombo's personal assistant tracked his movements every waking (and sleeping) second. And there was the question of motive. Bruno had none. He might kill, but only for promotion or political preferment.

  Maddy turned her attention to the fourth figure. Familiar, yes, but in what context? She couldn't be absolutely sure, but she thought she had seen him around the offices of the Argos Group. He was of medium height and strong build, with a sallow complexion and dark, short-cut hair; it was the sort of nondescript face and figure you would never notice in a crowd, unless those eyes fixed on you as they had fixed on Maddy before takeoff.

  They were a tawny brown in color, too light for that dark face, and they moved constantly to scan everything around him. If she suspected that she thought she knew him, she felt quite certain that he knew her. For the past half hour he had been holding on his knees a black cylindrical bag about eighteen inches long and eight inches across. She could see a piece of pink and mauve cloth sticking out of the end of it. The bag had been stowed away during takeoff, so why was he nursing it now? You did that only when you were carrying something precious, something that you were afraid you might lose.

  She glanced again to John Hyslop, still sitting in silence at her side. Was she going to have to work with a zombie? He hadn't taken out anything to read, he didn't have a headset, he hadn't said a word. He was holding a tiny notepad in his hand, and now and again he scribbled a couple of digits. He seemed totally unaware of her presence, and she wasn't used to being ignored. She expected male attention. He wasn't gay; her own instincts told her that as well as the background briefing documents. But he seemed lost in another world, one where Maddy Wheatstone did not exist.

  Her musings ended when the docking phase began and the usual string of visuals appeared on the seat displays. They showed dozens of locations on Sky City and told what the visitor might do at each one. They amounted to commercials that could not be turned off, and they were boring even the first time you heard them. When you had been shuttle-hopping as Maddy had for the past week and a half, in a constant dizzy veering between Earth and Sky, you wanted to find the owner of that soft, persuasive voice and strangle him.

  That led to another thought: The person who had taken those shots had been everywhere in Sky City and must know it in detail. Wouldn't he be in a perfect position to travel around and kill without being noticed?

  Maddy dismissed the thought as soon as she had it. It was an idea that security had surely explored and dismissed. Other people's jobs always seemed easier than yours until you actually had to do them.

  The visuals ended as a vibration along the shuttle's outer hull indicated that an umbilical was being clamped into position. The shuttle docking was taking place at an air-match port, and the air pressure and gas mix inside the shuttle had slowly been adjusted after takeoff from Earth standard to Sky City normal. The passengers would be able to leave without the use of suits or masks.

  John Hyslop showed no sign of moving. He was still writing numbers on his notepad. Maddy watched as the shuttle hatch opened and the LMB executive at once hurried away. His every movement said Time is money! Mulligan Johnson and Candy Wentzel were next. He was talki
ng animatedly and Candy was smiling and nodding.

  Some scandal involving Photonics?

  Hard to imagine. Much more likely, Candy was a newcomer and needed somebody who knew his way around Sky City. In media races, an hour's delay could be fatal. Maddy knew what she would have done, and Candy had probably followed the same line of logic: examined the passenger list, decided in real time that Mulligan Johnson was her best bet, and collected him as effortlessly as a child picking a daisy. Maddy didn't disapprove of that. Candy, like Maddy, took her job seriously. You did what you had to do.

  Next, the familiar-but-unfamiliar dark-faced stranger vanished through the hatch, still clutching his black cylindrical bag. The only passengers left were two who had arrived on the shuttle in wheelchairs and who were now waiting for nursing assistance. Both men had the puffy complexion and purplish lips suggesting congestive heart disease. The low-gee environment of Sky City might help—if they survived the shock of the launch and the strain of vomiting in the first few days. Space was the last resort for those individuals who, incomprehensibly to Maddy, refused a simple heart-lung replacement.

  Still John Hyslop was sitting and staring at nothing. Maddy reached the end of her patience and nudged him. "Don't we have meetings to attend?"

  He turned to look at her with those steady gray eyes. "We'll be there on time."

  She knew now that his jumpiness at their first meeting had been the result of a Neirling boost. Usually he was the calmest man she had ever met—calm enough to drive her crazy.

  "Not if we hang around here, we won't." Maddy stood up. "Let's go."

  He nodded, stood up also, and started toward the hatch. But when he came to it he didn't go through. Instead he continued forward.

  "Where—" Maddy began, and paused. A strange sensation of dizziness hit her as she left her seat. It passed as quickly as it had come, but by that time John had drifted all the way to the end of the main compartment and through the door into the pilot's cabin. Passengers were not supposed to go in there.