Starfire a-2

by Charles Sheffield

  Once again, the trained observer in Maddy noted another oddity of the group. Something was missing. Where was the jockeying for position? Where were the hidden agendas that you found in every meeting back on Earth? Even Celine Tanaka, whom Maddy liked, possessed secret meeting goals that she would never reveal.

  And where were the egos? Maddy could see no sign of them. All that seemed to matter were technical problems. It was a different world from the one she was used to. It was also a world with its own attractions; men like John Hyslop and Will Davis, awkward and often inarticulate, without the smooth, persuasive line of talk you were so used to. You were not always fighting with them for a controlling hand, or wondering what they wanted from you. They were men who were what they seemed to be.

  Not that Sky City was without its own unpleasant characters. The faceless murderer, wandering unseen through the corridors, the blood of a dozen young girls on his hands. Seth Parsigian. Not a murderer — at least, not this murderer — but one of Gordy Rolfe’s hard-core bully boys.

  John Hyslop’s quiet voice brought Maddy back from her brooding. “So we know where the immediate problems are. Optimal placement of thrustors — even though the accelerations are low, we’re moving an awful lot of mass. Local stresses will be fierce and local strains need checking. That’s your area, Lauren. I’ll worry about balancing thrust movements about the center of mass. Low-intensity beam generator and pulse generator we’ve already discussed — that’s you, Will and Torrance. Allocation of computing resources when we need them — that will be you, Amanda.”

  “You say when we need them.” Amanda Corrigan was a slim brunette. Maddy took a closer look and revised her first impression. While that undeveloped body and slender legs made her seem about thirteen years old, her eyes told a different story. She was in her mid-twenties or older. She must also be highly competent to hold a place in John Hyslop’s elite engineering group. “Isn’t it really if,” Amanda went on, “and not when we have to move Sky City? Do you honestly think it will be necessary to do it?”

  John took the question very seriously, finger-tapping at the control panel on his lap while he was thinking. Finally he nodded. “It will be necessary. I wish I didn’t feel this way, and I’m surely no physicist. Astarte Vjansander acts a bit peculiar, but she and Wilmer Oldfield have me completely convinced. The particle storm is coming sooner than we thought. And it will be nothing like we expected.”

  He glanced around the group. “Any other questions?”

  “Materials,” Will Davis said. “We’re going to need lots of electronics for the broad-beam field and pulse generators, but I’m not sure yet what the requirements will be. When we do know, we’ll be in a hurry. Standard procurement channels are a pain — and they’re slow.”

  “Good point. Until “we’re out near Cusp Station and ready for action, I’ll put a no-limits ceiling on material requests. If you’re going to need anything really outlandish, you should contact me and discuss it. I’m available anytime, but don’t call me unless you really have to. It’s not that I’m antisocial; I just like to sleep now and again.”

  The group dispersed and drifted out of the room. John Hyslop stayed. So did Maddy, despite the curious glances that she received from the others.

  John, at least, seemed pleased to see her. He smiled shyly, looked away, and said, “Well, I don’t imagine that was very much fun for you.”

  “Not great. You love all this, don’t you?”

  “I suppose I do. It’s my world, Maddy. Where I live.” He hesitated.

  Maddy waited.

  Could you learn to live here, too?

  He hadn’t said that. Of course he hadn’t. It was her own mind, producing perplexing questions. Nothing had been the same since the sight of Lucille DeNorville’s body. Old memories, dredged up from Maddy’s deepest levels, pushing away the present, drawing in the past. The white bulging eyes, the gray and blotchy face. You’re all I’ve got now . . . make me proud of you.

  She had done her best. She was Maddy Wheatstone, close to the top in the Argos Group and ready to rise farther yet. She was star-bright, diamond-hard, tough as she had to be. Even Gordy Rolfe treated her with respect. Meg could have done no better.

  And then in one moment it all became meaningless.

  Lucille DeNorville’s dry, ravaged corpse floated in front of her, abandoned like trash in the dark and barren corridor. Lucille had been mourned long ago. Now there could only be second sorrow and a quiet interment.

  Lucille’s death, like any death — like any life — was meaningless. Everything that Maddy had done was meaningless. Nothing had significance. Nothing brought the slightest satisfaction.

  She felt a hand on her arm. John Hyslop was at her side. “Are you all right?”

  Maddy took a deep breath. “I will be. I’m just — a little tired.”

  “You ought to be taking things easier. Come on, sit down.” He led her to one of the reclining chairs. “Dr. Weinstein said that you might not feel a hundred percent for quite a while.”

  “I’m all right now.” The feeling of desolation was passing. Had that been mentioned as an aftereffect of labyrinthitis and the Asfanil injection? If so, Maddy didn’t remember it — or believe it. The change was deeper and more long-lasting. It had begun on her first visit to Sky City, her first meeting with John Hyslop. Make me proud of you. Even if she could one day take over from Gordy Rolfe and run the whole of the Argos Group, was that something to make a father proud? What about the rest of her life?

  Maddy made herself sit up straighter in the chair. She found John Hyslop staring at her. He looked worried. She forced a smile and said, “I’m feeling better. But John, I can’t afford to take things easy. None of us can.” She deliberately made the switch of subject. “Why does Sky City have to change its position?”

  The change was immediate and obvious. As John began to speak she saw him relax. Technical discussions, no matter how complex, were easy and natural for him.

  Personal issues, things such as dealing with an emotionally tattered and unstable Maddy Wheatstone, came much harder.

  He explained about the meeting with the two physicists who had arrived from Earth. Maddy had never heard of them, but that was not surprising. The world of science and that of the Argos Group intersected only in very specialized areas.

  Halfway through John’s summary of the meeting with Wilmer Oldfield and Astarte Vjansander, Maddy caught another of its implications.

  She interrupted him. “Sky City has to be moved, and the old shield will be useless. If there’s to be a new defense system for the particle storm, who is going to do all that?”

  “Well, it will naturally be a team effort. But if you mean who will lead the engineering design, I guess that’s me.”

  “Then the Aten asteroid project—”

  “Is on the shelf. It’s not needed for the new protection method.”

  “And you?”

  He hesitated. “I’m back in my old job. Actually, it isn’t much like my job used to be.”

  While Maddy, by the sound of it, didn’t have a job on Sky City at all. She had to get in touch with Gordy Rolfe. Did he know what was happening? It would be typical of Gordy to have information and not bother to pass it on. But if John had been reassigned, where did that leave Maddy? John himself would surely see no reason to have her around.

  He had fallen silent and was fingering the control panel on his lap. In the display in front of Maddy, the holograms constantly changed. First, Sky City dwindled to a bright point of silver in a steady diurnal orbit around the Earth. Then at some new command the silver dot began to move outward. The space shield appeared, a ghostly green lattice defining a long cone. Sky City veered toward the axis of the cone and started along it, beginning the long ascent away from Earth.

  Maddy realized that she was seeing a new simulation, one that reflected Amanda Corrigan’s recent calculations. John might be too polite to say so, but when he was trying to work it was better for Maddy to
go away and leave him to it.

  The display began to change again, moving to an image of the space shield — the old space shield, useless now because it was unable to deal with the problem of particle bundles. Maddy felt reassured. If John needed to work, it made no sense for him to be examining an obsolete solution. He was doing the engineering equivalent of doodling.

  They sat silently until he said, “I suppose that if I’m not going to be involved in the Aten project, you’ll be heading back to Earth.”

  Maddy tried to catch his eye. He stared resolutely away from her, focused on infinity. At last she said, “Back to Earth. Yes, I guess so.”

  He nodded. His fingers tapped faster at the control panel on his lap. The display changed randomly, different sections of the space shield appearing and disappearing every few seconds. Maddy glanced at her watch. It was past midnight in Houston, but Gordy Rolfe kept strange hours. If he was at The Flaunt, she had a good chance of reaching him in the next hour. The deep hideout in Virginia was another matter. He was often busy with his habitat experiments there. In either place, though, he usually kept an eye on his messages. There was a strong chance that Maddy would be on her way back to Earth in the next few hours.

  “I don’t suppose there’s any way you could stay, is there?” John said abruptly. His eyes moved to her face for a moment, then as quickly looked away. He went on, “My group hasn’t talked much about schedules, but if Oldfield and Vjansander are right, it will be touch and go. We’ll need every hand that we can get. You could be very useful.”

  That wasn’t true. Maddy would be almost useless. Also, she heard stronger come-ons almost every day of the week back on Earth. But she was learning. From a man as romantically tentative as John Hyslop, an expression of interest in her continued presence on Sky City was close to a proposal. It didn’t sound like much, but it changed her mood to one of confidence and energy.

  “I’d like to stay,” she said. Don’t be wishy-washy. “I’d absolutely love to stay with you. I’ll have to check with my boss, make sure he doesn’t have other plans for me.”

  “I understand.”

  But John didn’t, because Maddy had already made her decision. Forget that check-with-my-boss stuff; she was staying. If she had to, she would fabricate a role for herself with the Sky City engineering team. She would also invent for Gordy Rolfe a reason why her continued presence here was of vital importance to the Argos Group. She would, in fact, for the first time in nine years do something that was not aimed directly at advancing her career. And it didn’t worry her at all.

  Maddy saw John turning in his chair. Seth Parsigian stood in the doorway.

  Right on cue. She actually felt pleased to see him. She waved him forward.

  “John, I want you to meet a colleague of mine, Seth Parsigian. Seth and I are working together. He has things for me to do part of the day around Sky City. The rest of the time, we’ll be available to work with you.”

  She saw their expressions. Surprise. Logically, she had some explaining to do. In practice, she proposed to explain nothing. John wanted her to stay; she wanted to stay with John. Seth needed her to help him; she needed Seth to help her. Explanations were unnecessary when everybody wanted the same thing.

  And life? Maddy sat down between the two men. Life was meaningless only when you let yourself think it was meaningless.

  19

  From the private diary of Oliver Guest.

  Uncharacteristically, I am drawn to quote from another source. About to set down my own thoughts, I find myself unable to better another’s description of a psychological phenomenon.

  Here, then, is my translation and summary of the statements of the nineteenth-century French mathematician Henri Poincare concerning the process of intellectual discovery:

  For fifteen days I struggled to prove that a certain class of mathematical functions did not exist. Every day I sat down at my worktable, but despite all my efforts I arrived at no result. One evening, contrary to my custom, I took black coffee; I could not go to sleep; ideas swarmed up in clouds; I sensed them clashing until, so to speak, a pair hooked together to form a stable combination … By morning the main work was done, and I had only to write up the results.

  Next I wished to represent the functions in a certain way. That called for a great deal of straightforward labor, which I performed without any major new insights.

  I then left Caen, where I was living at the time, to participate in a geological trip sponsored by the School of Mines. The travel made me forget my mathematical efforts, until at Coutances we took a bus for an excursion. The instant I put my foot on the step a new idea came to me that integrated and illuminated all my previous work. I did not at once make the verification — I did not have the time, because once in the bus I resumed an interrupted conversation; but I felt an instant and complete certainty. On returning to Caen I verified the result at my leisure . . .

  I then undertook the study of certain other mathematical questions without much apparent success. After much hard work, disgusted at my lack of progress, I went to spend a few days at the seaside and thought of something else. One day, while walking along the cliffs, the solution came to me with the same characteristics of brevity, suddenness, and immediate certainty.

  Given my susceptibilities, it is highly improbable that I would experience anything other than panic if forced to walk along the edge of cliffs, as Henri Poincare did. However, the process that he describes is familiar to me, as I imagine it is to every other creative individual.

  First one engages in long hours of hard work on a problem, apparently unproductive but completely under the control of the conscious mind. One at last ceases the effort; and then, at a time and place that cannot be predicted, comes the illuminating idea.

  Poincare did not understand the process any more than I do, but he clearly believed that this semblance of “sudden illumination” is “a manifest sign of previous long subconscious work.” The drudgery is a necessary precursor to the inspiration.

  As others have stated it, more succinctly, “No pain, no gain.”

  The relevance of all this will soon become clear.

  For two weeks I had pondered the problem of the murders. I had the records that Seth Parsigian delivered to me, together with my own direct observations as Seth roamed Sky City in the limited way permitted to him as an adult male. I worked hard, night and day, since so long as the killings remained unsolved, so long must my own researches be interrupted.

  On July 25, I took a break from my labors. It is the day every year when we celebrate the birth of my darlings. Since it happens to be my own birthday, they accept it as theirs only by convention and custom. Each of them also has a singular day, which she believes to correspond to her own true day of birth. In truth, July 25 is the date when each of the girls reached the age of delivery as a cloned form. On this occasion they would attain ages of twelve, ten, and eight.

  I do not encourage the presence of strangers in Otranto Castle, which a birthday party for nineteen people would require. Each year we therefore hire a bus and driver and travel to the nearby town of Letterkenny, where we enjoy a catered meal. The indulgent owner of the inn, a loquacious French transplant named Michel Darboux, has become used to us, and he decorates the place with flowers and crude paper streamers to add to the festive atmosphere. While we wait to eat, Monsieur Darboux and I, but not the girls despite their pleas, share a bottle of Hugel white wine from Alsace-Lorraine.

  Not, I must add, that the girls seem to need such stimulants. On this occasion the weather was both warm and dry, a rarity for western Ireland. Our meal would be served outside, on crude wooden tables in the south-facing fenced courtyard that leads to a broad and level meadow of close-cropped grass.

  I did not, then or ever, regret my choice of western Ireland. The selection had been made carefully. Just as the remoter regions of Ireland had been left behind in the world’s twenty-first century surge of technological progress, so the living standards there had
been less affected by the Alpha Centauri supernova. I judged that the same was likely to be true in the devastation caused by the coming particle storm, and I rarely felt nostalgic for the vanished amenities of my former life.

  The bench where Michel Darboux and I had placed ourselves sat in the shade of an old horse chestnut. The tree was too close to the inn for safety, and should long ago have been pruned or removed. Today, however, its leafy curtain was welcome. Even where we sat, the volume of noise that the girls generated was considerable. Their enjoyment of their games served as partial compensation for the fact that we were out in the open air, and I was for that reason a little uncomfortable.

  I sipped, did my best to relax, and firmly resisted Alyson and Lucy-Mary’s adjurations to join them in an activity that they described as a game, but which seemed to consist mostly of a pile of girls sitting on top of each other and screaming. At the same time I had my eye on the line of village lads beyond the fence. They were watching my darlings, while pretending to be busy with other matters. The older girls were very aware of them. The gestures of Gloria and Bridget, and to a lesser extent Katherine and Darlene, possessed an exaggerated quality, with screams, tossed-back hair, and bare limbs much in evidence. They were playing to the crowd of their admirers.

  Who would know, watching them at careless sport, that even the youngest of my darlings was fluent in three languages and had scientific training and knowledge beyond the average educated sixteen-year-old? Not, I felt sure, the row of pimpled teenage males at the fence.

  Darboux was watching, too, over the rim of his glass. He caught my eye. “You are a brave man, m’sieur. Your children are very beautiful. It will not be long before older men will come knocking at your door.”

  The idea that this type of behavior could only become worse with adolescence was not one to bring me comfort. I noticed that when Bridget and Katherine were close to the boys they were deliberately showing off their legs.