Starfire

by Charles Sheffield

  When John and Maddy were finally alone and with their suits off, she slumped on a blue padded chair and he sat opposite. Food had been provided at the beginning of the meeting, but neither had even glanced at it. A low table between them bore a collection of cooked dishes, now all cold.

  "You don't have to stay, you know," John said. "Alyssa Sisk's instructions apply only to me."

  Maddy's slight nod was her only sign that she knew John was still in the room. The discovery of the corpse had turned her into a different woman. Every shred of vivacity and resolve had vanished.

  "I'm sure you have other work waiting," he went on. "Down on Earth, or with the Aten asteroid capture people, or something else on Sky City. Everybody these days always has too many things to do."

  Still she said nothing. John had zero confidence that he knew how to deal with distraught women. When she did not reply, not even with a nod or a look, he felt that he had to find a way to fill the dismal silence. It didn't matter if he sounded lightweight and trivial—it might even be better that way.

  He told himself, Talk! If she can't, you have to.

  He said, hardly knowing what words would come out of his mouth, "When I think you're doing nothing, like now, I bet that's not true at all. On the flight up you were sitting and evaluating people and what they do, and I had no idea what you were thinking. I didn't realize you were thinking at all." Just as I have no idea what you are thinking now. "Even when it's logical for people to have the same thoughts, they often don't. When I first applied for a position on Sky City, we were told that we would work on building the shield and it was presented as the only worthwhile task in the solar system. We were saving humanity from a guaranteed future disaster. I'm sure that's true, and I nodded as much as any of the others. But it wasn't the reason I wanted to come."

  Maddy looked up and raised an eyebrow. It could be an expression of inquiry—or disbelief.

  John went on, "I was born on the Canadian border, but I was on vacation in Washington state visiting my aunt and uncle when the supernova hit. My sister was already grown up and married and living back East, and she made it through all right, but we never heard from my parents again. I stayed on with Aunt Sue and Uncle Jake. They were too busy putting things back together after Alpha C to worry a lot about me, so I was pretty much left to myself. I spent my time backpacking in the Cascade Mountains. I just loved exploring and rock climbing. When I finally got hauled in from the mountains and had to work with the learning machines, my heroes were Columbus and Drake, Amundsen and Peary, Mallory and Whymper and Hillary. I saw myself like them, king of some new frontier—until I realized there was nothing left to explore. The blank spots on the map were recent; all the remote regions had been explored and mapped long before the supernova. Every desert had been crossed, every island had been charted and surveyed, every mountain had been climbed, solo and in groups, with and without oxygen. There was rediscovery and reconstruction to be done in South America and Africa and Australia, but that's not the same as discovery."

  He was boring her to death, he just knew it. He was all ready to apologize when Maddy grabbed his hand, squeezed it, and said, "Go on. Please."

  It wasn't the response he'd expected. He had nothing more to say. There were things you didn't talk about, and there were things you couldn't talk about. Maddy Wheatstone sat squarely at the intersection of the two. He wasn't much of a talker at the best of times. But Maddy was staring at him imploringly.

  John took a deep breath and spoke of the things you didn't talk about. "I was in despair. I was seventeen years old and I thought I had reached a dead end. I didn't see any future for myself as an explorer, because even if there had been anywhere on Earth left to explore, nobody could afford to support luxuries like polar expeditions. Space exploration was dead. The one Mars expedition had been a disaster, and there was no chance there would ever be another. Alpha C had put an end to that.

  "So I gave up and trained to be an engineer. There was more than enough work for me then; we had to rebuild the whole world. I didn't climb any mountains, and I didn't go to the poles or to Jupiter. But I did walk the high steel four thousand feet above Tokyo, and I rode the span of the ninety-kilometer arch across the Messina Strait, and I planted the deep caissons in the Mariana Trench. I told myself that was sufficient, that I didn't miss the thrill of the old dreams, of being where no one had ever been before. And for a long time, what I had was enough. Then Giorgio Hamman fired me. He pushed me into space, and I finally found what I'd been looking for. The new frontier wasn't on Earth at all. It was out here, building the shield. Not exploration. Application." He wanted to tell her of the thrill of it, hanging beyond Cusp Station a hundred and fifty thousand kilometers from Earth, with a straight fall through the insubstantial fabric of the shield if your drive system failed. But he could not summon the words. At last he said, "If Edmund Hillary were alive today, he wouldn't be struggling up the South Col of Mount Everest. He'd be out on the shield perimeter with us, living in a suit for weeks at a time, drinking recycled water, eating his own reprocessed wastes . . ."

  John trailed off. He had run down, and at a most unedifying point.

  "It is there. Inside you. I knew it." Maddy was sitting upright, her blue eyes so intense that he burned up in their gaze. She went on, incomprehensibly, "It wasn't the body, you know. I could have stood that. It was her face and hair. She looked so much like Meg."

  Was she talking to him? Did she even know that he was there?

  He stared at her hopelessly, until suddenly she reached out and gripped his arm.

  "It was different for me." She spoke dreamily, like a woman in a trance. "My family seemed so lucky. We were living in Edmonton when the supernova happened. I was only five, but I remember my reaction. It was annoyance. We lost all the entertainment channels. That, and the electric power went off for a while. Nothing else seemed wrong."

  John had heard the story before, but never from anyone who had been there. Somehow, in an area of Canada about a hundred miles across and centered on Edmonton, all the global changes and violence caused by Alpha C had canceled out. In that eye of the hurricane the puzzled residents heard reports of devastation and disaster everywhere, while their own town and countryside remained untouched.

  "My sister Meg was ten years older than me." Now Maddy was talking rapidly, almost in a whisper. "She was so smart and so talented, everybody in the family said that one day she'd run the country. I thought she was a goddess; she could do absolutely anything. But she wasn't with us when the power went out. She was on a visit to Calgary. When the AVC of her car failed along with everything else, it ran into a downed power line. The line was still live. When they brought her body back home they told me I couldn't see her. I really wanted to, and when everybody was asleep I sneaked into her bedroom. I knew the car had hit a power line, and I sort of imagined that she would be all lit up and glowing, like a fairy. It wasn't like that. Meg was lying on her bed. She had beautiful long blond hair, but the ends of it were black. Burned. Her face wasn't glowing, the way it should be. It was gray and twisted and blotchy, and her eyes were white and bulging. I remember thinking, it's not possible, how could someone be burned, the way they'd told me, and have their eyes go white?

  "What I hadn't realized was that my father had been sitting in the room with Meg. He didn't move for a few seconds when I came in, but then he stood up. I was terrified. I thought it must be Meg's ghost. When I realized who it was I thought he'd be mad at me because I'd disobeyed him, but he wasn't like that at all. He came over and put his arms around me. He said, 'I didn't want you to see Meg, not the way she is. But I was wrong. You have a right to say goodbye to her, Maddy, as much as anyone else.' He gave me a big hug. 'You're all I've got now,' he said. 'Make me proud of you. Make Meg proud of you, too.'

  "I've tried. But I don't think I did, ever. I never could."

  It was a sad, vulnerable Maddy, one who John hadn't known existed. When she stopped speaking she folded her hands toget
her in her lap and sat with her eyes lowered. He knew what he ought to do. He should comfort her, put his arms around her and tell her that everything was all right, that she herself was better than all right.

  But he couldn't do it. John sat silent, cursing his ineptitude and inhibitions and insecurity. Maddy Wheatstone was his superior in every way, even when she was at a personal low. Would it be taking advantage of her if he hugged her to him and offered help? And if he did try to comfort her now, how would she feel about it later?

  In a strange, dreamlike separation of mind and body, John moved to Maddy's side. He put his right arm around her shoulders. He couldn't find words, but he lightly kissed the top of her head. After a moment she leaned against him and stayed there. They sat silent, bodies together, while John's mind took off in unthinkable directions. It was a moment when anything might happen.

  The mood shattered when the door jerked open and Alyssa Sisk came hurrying in.

  "I wondered if you'd still be here." She took no notice of the fact that John was sitting with his arm around Maddy. "You must be going deaf. Didn't you hear it? There's a call out for you, John, on the general alert system."

  "About the murder?" With Alyssa's sudden appearance John's mind jumped for no reason to the image of Lucille DeNorville's ravaged corpse, drifting alone for months in that dark, unattended corridor.

  "Not the murder, man." Alyssa sounded impatient. "That's my business, not yours. Bruno Colombo wants you in his office."

  "Why?"

  "How should I know? Whatever it is, do you think he'd announce it to everybody in Sky City? But there's lots of action everywhere. Rumors of bad news about the particle storm, changes of plans, tighter schedules—as if that were possible."

  John took his arm away from Maddy. He stood up and glanced down at her.

  "Don't worry." Maddy read his concern. "Go to your meeting. I'll be all right now, and I'll see you later. And—thanks, John."

  "I'm sorry we didn't talk more."

  "We said lots. I didn't need more talk. I needed what you gave me."

  "Well, then." He paused, then said uncertainly, "If you're sure you're going to be all right . . ."

  "I'm all right."

  He nodded and hurried out, and Alyssa turned to Maddy.

  "I know you say you don't need more talk, but there's some character hanging around outside. He says he needs to talk with you right away."

  "He must have the wrong person. Nobody knows I'm here."

  "You'd better tell him that yourself, because he doesn't seem to know it. He certainly knows your name. He asked for Maddy Wheatstone. He says he only needs five seconds with you. After that, he says, you'll be the one wanting to meet with him."

  17

  John Hyslop stared around Bruno Colombo's office and found himself speechless. He was losing count of the number of shocks he had received in the past couple of hours. The latest blow—the wave of the hand from Bruno Colombo, and a dismissive "Go ahead. It's all yours"—lifted the afternoon away from Sky City and moved it to the realm of the Mad Hatter.

  First there had been the horrifying discovery of Lucille DeNorville's space-dried corpse. Next came the unexpected summons to Bruno Colombo's office. Third, Goldy Jensen greeted John at the outer vestibule with the savage smile of a black widow spider about to eat her mate. What had he, a mere engineer transferred away from Sky City, done to deserve such a look? Offended Bruno Colombo? But if so, how, when they had not spoken to each other since John's transfer to the Aten asteroid project? Goldy shook her head when John asked what was going on and ushered him without a word through to Bruno Colombo's inner sanctum.

  If Goldy had some unknown reason to smile, Bruno Colombo apparently did not. His private office was his shrine, an organized and well-ordered perfection. His telcom was discreetly hidden away in a drawer of the long wooden desk, and the desk itself never carried more than a single folder placed in the middle of its nine-foot length. A cut-glass bowl of red roses, fresh every morning from the Sky City hydroponic gardens, always graced its polished top.

  Today the roses lay scattered on the floor. The folder was there with them, and the oriental rug on which they sat was soaked with water. The bowl had found a new use. A short black woman dressed in a lurid pink blouse and yellow shorts was crouched on the floor, bending over the ornament, which sat between her legs.

  A tall, bald-headed man watched her gloomily. "I warned you," he said. "But would you listen? Of course not. Are you ready for it now?"

  The woman—she appeared to John hardly more than a girl—raised her head and glared up at the man. "Yer can stuff yer pills. I don't want 'em."

  Bruno Colombo stood at the other side of the room, as far from the desk and the other people as possible. He gestured to John to come across to him.

  "Hyslop," he said as soon as John was close. "There are going to be major changes in the shield program. You will once again occupy the position of chief engineer for shield development. I have summoned other members of your old staff, and they are on the way here." He waved a hand at the man and woman. She was now making dry-heaving sounds. "These people have come up from Earth and will be working with you. They have"—his voice turned to acid—"been given total authority to direct changes in shield construction."

  "But we're already behind schedule!" John could hardly believe what he had just heard. Restoring him to his original position would have been good news, but not if he had to take orders from a pair of newcomers. No matter how talented they might be, they didn't know the job. "Why are you letting them make changes?"

  "I am not." Colombo grimaced, as though swallowing something unpleasant. "That decision came from Earth. Needless to say, I do not approve of the situation. I, in fact, wash my hands of this. I'm leaving. It's all yours."

  He was out of the room before John could ask what was all his. The bald man stared gloomily at the seated woman and said, "Listen to her. I never would have thought it. Star's got a digestion like an emu, and I've never known her to be sick."

  "Her first time up from Earth?"

  "That's right."

  "Then it's the gravity changes." When the man stared at John blankly, he went on, "Some people take to low gravity easily, others have real problems. It doesn't seem to depend on whether a person is in good or bad physical shape, or how old you are, or how strong your stomach is. You can still get sick. But being young and strong helps. With any luck she'll feel better in a few minutes."

  "I told her that. She's looking better already."

  "Better? I feel like shit." The woman spoke with her head over the bowl.

  John said to the man, "How about you? How do you feel?"

  "Me?" He seemed surprised at the question. "Why, I'm fine."

  "You've been in space before?"

  "Oh, yes. But as I say, this is Star's first time. I told her to take a pill, and would she?" The man rubbed the top of his head. "Would she hell. She's pretending she's not feeling well enough to introduce herself, so I'll do it for her. The pigheaded lump of obstinacy throwing up in the bowl there is my friend Star—Astarte Vjansander, the brains behind the shield changes."

  Again, references to shield changes. John couldn't understand it. Didn't people realize that the project was in deep trouble already? And you couldn't drop new players into the middle of the job, no matter how good they were, without screwing things up.

  "She's an engineer, is she?" John asked. It seemed a harmless question, but the woman glared up at him, said, "Engineer! Bloody hell, no," and bent forward to spit into the bowl. John began to feel a rare sympathy for Bruno Colombo.

  The man said calmly, "Star's not an engineer. Experimental equipment breaks when she walks into a room. She's a physicist. She can tell you what needs to be done with the shield, but don't for God's sake let her try and do it herself. Me neither; I'm no good when it comes to the practical stuff."

  "And who are you?"

  "Me?" The man reacted as though that was an odd question. "I'm Wilme
r Oldfield."

  John had his hand extended when the man's name and the Australian accent meshed. It had been many years, but everything fitted. He even had a vague memory of seeing pictures, a younger version of that heavy-browed face.

  He froze with his hand still outstretched. "I'm sorry. You're Wilmer Oldfield? Dr. Wilmer Oldfield?"

  "Yeah, that's me. But I don't see what I've done to make you sorry."

  "I mean I'm sorry I didn't recognize you when I first came in. You were on the Mars expedition, with Celine Tanaka. And I asked you if you had ever been in space!"

  "Well, I have." Oldfield took John's hand and shook it. "That's all right, it was ages ago. I've not been off Earth for years and years."

  "When I was growing up, you were one of my idols." The words were absolutely honest, but as soon as John said them he wished he hadn't.

  There was an awkward silence, broken when the woman on the floor said, "And he's still idle. Bone idle." She laughed.

  "Told you she was feeling better. And look who's talking." Wilmer Oldfield reached down and took hold of her arm. "Come on, you lazy mass of convent reject. On your feet. We've got visitors, and it's time for work."

  Four more people were entering the room. John knew each of them well: Will Davis, Amanda Corrigan, Rico Ruggiero, and Torrance Harbish—all his old senior team members, with the exception of Lauren Stansfield. From the expressions on their faces, they were as puzzled by recent events as he was. And Bruno Colombo, in spite of his words, had not left completely. He was peering around the edge of the door.

  John made a decision. He didn't know what was going on, but if he was ever to find out, he had to impose his own kind of order on things. He turned to the newcomers. "Do you know why you were asked to come here?"