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 talking 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.
“Quite a difference,” he was saying as Maddy came up behind him. “Fifteen percent?”
“At least.” The woman in the pilot’s seat was lean and blond and hollow-cheeked. She turned to survey Maddy with eyes of arctic blue, then nodded to indicate that she, too, was included in the conversation. “The end spec is supposed to be a twenty-one percent increase for the new engines, but we’ve not quite reached that yet.”
“That will be great. What’s the change in final mass ratio?”
“A factor of two with present performance. Over three if we ever hit spec.”
“I have a thought about that. How long will you be here?”
“Nine hours. Then we head back down.”
“Good. Plenty of time.” Hyslop again had the little notebook in his hand. “I was listening closely right through the powered ascent phase, and it sounded to me as though one cluster wasn’t firing as cleanly as the others.”
“Exactly right.”
“L-8?”
“That’s the way I feel it, and it’s the way the gyros measure it. But we’ve been through ground maintenance twice, and they insist that everything is nominal.”
“I bet your tests were done at constant external pressure. Downside maintenance sometimes cuts corners that way and uses ambient. I think the aerospike for the L-8 cluster may be following a recorded pressure that’s trailing the actual pressure by a few seconds. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know. But if you call Dan Iverson at the Flight Test Facility here on Sky City, the FTF can run you a dynamic test with variable ambient air pressures. You’ll be able to find out if that’s the reason the L-8 cluster is off.”
“Great.” The woman raised blond eyebrows, plucked to a thin line. “I assume you can authorize that?”
“Sure. No, wait a minute.” Hyslop paused, with an expression of surprise and irritation that Maddy found comical. “Damn it, I could have last week, but I’m not sure I can anymore. Look, go to Dan anyway, and tell him that John Hyslop told you that Dan is to get authorization from Bruno Colombo to have the test performed.”
“Dan Iverson. John Hyslop. Bruno Colombo.” The curved eyebrows went up farther. “I hope I can remember all the names. One of them is you?”
“I’m John Hyslop.”
“I’ve heard that name.” She reached out a long, slender hand. “Kirsten Lindstrom.”
“Will you do it?”
“Sure. Why not?” She shrugged. “We have lots of time before we leave, and I’d love to have that twenty-one percent increase in EJV. If it works out, I’ll let you know.”
“I don’t know where I’ll be. Go through Dan.”
“It’s a promise.”
Maddy, at last, was able to drag him away and off the shuttle. As soon as they were out of the pilot’s hearing she said, “Didn’t you even know her before?”
“No. You heard us introduce ourselves.”
“But you went right into the cabin, which passengers are not allowed to do, and you started telling her what was wrong with the way she did things.”
“I did?” He was frowning at Maddy. “I don’t think so.”
“I heard you. All that about the way the engines were firing, and what she ought to do about it.”
“But that wasn’t criticism of her. We were talking about the engines.”
“If you came into my project, and I didn’t even know you, and you started telling me you understood it better than I did, and how I ought to be running it, I’d— I’d— well—” It occurred to Maddy that at the moment John Hyslop was her project, and he understood himself far better than she did- She finished weakly, “Well, I don’t know what I’d do.”
She had left herself open for a major put-down, but all he did was stare at her, very seriously, and say, “I hope she didn’t feel that way. I was trying to do her a favor, because her bonus depends on the performance of her shuttle. I said a fifteen percent improvement in EJV was great, but that was only so she wouldn’t feel bad. The ratio of final payload to initial mass depends exponentially on the EJV. When the spec promises a twenty-one-percent increase, fifteen percent is terrible. Kirsten Lindstrom and I both knew it, but neither of us said it,”
It was a correction rather than a put-down. Not in the least like Gordy Rolfe’s cut-you-off-at-the-knees mockery and open sneer. Maddy decided that she preferred John Hyslop’s way of doing things, particularly when he added, “I suppose we have a different style of operations out here. But I feel sure you’ll get used to it. Have you ever been out at the shield before?”
“Never.”
“Then the more you know about it ahead of time, the better. Let’s go and get something to eat and we’ll talk about it.”
It was a genuine offer, well intended. Maddy had not eaten since morning and should have been starved. Instead, the thought of food produced a swirl of nausea. Her head was suddenly aching and the dizziness was back, worse than before.
It couldn’t be that she was sick. She was never sick; hadn’t been sick since she was seventeen. But the room in which they stood was rocking about her, and the straight line of Sky City’s central axle seemed to bend and twist as she stared along its length.
“Are you all right?” John Hyslop’s face was close to hers. She wondered why he was asking, then realized that she was clutching his forearm in both hands. She tried to shake her head. Nausea gripped her. She wanted to swallow, and couldn’t.
It had happened impossibly fast. When the shuttle docked she had been fine. Now she couldn’t speak and she dared not move. She wanted to lie down and die.
“Come on.” John was pulling her along in the low-gravity environment. “Just hang on for two minutes. Keep your eyes closed if it helps; I’ll make sure you don’t bang into anything.”
She wanted to say, What’s happening? Leave me alone. Oh my God. Help me, please. All she could manage was an anguished groan. Dizziness made speech impossible. Eyes open, eyes closed, it made no difference.
“One more minute,” John said. He had her around the waist and was hurrying them along a broad, twisting tunnel. Maddy felt weight coming back. It made her feel sicker than ever, if that was possible. She realized that he was carrying her rather than steering her. They must be heading away from the central axis of Sky City. They passed two other people, who made way for them and called something to John that Maddy didn’t quite catch.
Lab something, they said — was he taking her to a lab?
For tests? She couldn’t stand the idea of tests.
She was going to throw up.
She must not throw up.
Anytime she moved her head, even a millimeter, the nausea became worse. She closed her eyes and concentrated on holding her head perfectly still. One more minute, he said. Surely she could hang on for one minute. But how long did a minute last when you felt like this?
The icy spray on her left temple made her gasp. She opened her eyes and involuntarily jerked her head. The universe rolled sickeningly about her.
“That should do it,” said a voice. “But you’re moving, making things worse.” Not John’s voice, but a stranger’s. He was standing in front of her, a fat man in a green uniform.
John was next to him, holding her at the waist. “Don’t move,” he said. “Give it another half minute. Stay there.”
Stay here, as opposed to what? With that thought — with the very fact that she could think it — Maddy was suddenly enormously better. Her stomach no longer pushed up into her throat and the room was slowing and steadying.
“What?” she said. It wasn’t much of a sentence, but the word came out all right.
“Labyrinthitis,” the stranger said. “Have you been pogoing?”
Maddy didn’t dare open her mouth, and anyway the stranger’s words made no sense. He turned to John Hyslop. “Has she?”
“Yes. She’s been down to Earth and back half a dozen times in the past week or two, and I don’t think she had any training and preparation.”
“There’s your explanation, then. If you pogo between zero gee and multiple gees, it’s just asking for inner-ear trouble. It’s amazing she didn’t get it sooner. Some people are hit the first time they come to Sky City.” He turned again to Maddy. “You were lucky to be with somebody who recognized that you had labyrinthitis and brought you right here.”
Maddy said weakly, “Labyr . . .”
“Labyrinthitis. Infection of the inner ear. Don’t worry, it’s never fatal.”
Maddy wanted to protest that no one had warned her of anything like this, and why had it happened to her, who never got sick? She was not up to saying anything so complicated. Instead she said, “I feel awful.”
“Soon you’ll feel fine. Actually, you’ll probably feel better than you are. We’ve got rid of the nausea and dizziness, but you still have an inner-ear disturbance. It will be a while before the shot completes the repair. And you’re going to feel dopey and high and loose as a goose for the next few hours.” The fat man in the green medical outfit turned to John. “Feed her, Hyslop, if she can eat. That will help. Sleep would be even better. No alcohol or fizzes; they are chemically similar to the Asfanil shot and they’ll interact with it. Caffeine is all right, but no strenuous exercise. And there might be an Aphrodite effect, so no sex, and don’t take her dancing tonight.”
“I don’t dance,” John said seriously. “Thanks, Weinstein.”
“Hey, unless you guys find something useful for me to do now and again, they’ll stop paying me.” Weinstein reached out, took Maddy’s hand, and gave it a little formal shake. It seemed like pure courtesy, but she noticed that he watched her eyes and face closely while he did it.
“You’ll do,” he said. “Don’t worry if you think and say strange things. That’s standard drug side effects.”
Maddy risked a tiny nod of her head. No spinning of the room, no convulsive gag reflex. “I can manage. You don’t have to worry.”
You don’t have to worry. The person who needs to worry is me. I’m supposed to stick tight to John Hyslop, and he’s going off for a meeting out on the shield. Am I well enough to go with him? I don’t think so. But that isn’t even an issue. I have to be well enough. Or I must prevent him from going until I feel better.
“You do whatever you have to do.” Thanks, Gordy. I know the Argos Group rules.
The rules, the sacred rules. The rules were wonderful. They told you exactly what to do at all times.
Of course, the rules made no allowance for sickness or weariness. You probably had to die to get off the hook, and even that wouldn’t satisfy Gordy Rolfe. Worst of all, though the rules said what you had to do, they offered no advice at all on how to do it.