Charles Sheffield - Starfire

No! I have to talk to him. But the words came out, “Is he dying?”

“Of course he isn’t dying.” The nurse was already staunching the wound at the back of John Hyslop’s neck. “He’s one of the lucky ones. But he can’t stand to have you pestering him, so either go away or keep quiet. And if you don’t have anything better to do, take his legs.”

Maddy found herself lifting John onto a stretcher. His eyes had closed. Ten seconds more and he was being carried out. She started to follow.

“Not you!” The nurse glared at her. “Not now. I told you, he’s going to be all right. There’ll be plenty of time to see him later. Say, three hours from now. And here. You’re a mess. Use this.”

She and the other stretcher bearer left the information center. Will Davis, rejecting offers of assistance, walked out after her. He was still cursing. Maddy stood alone, wiping her bloodied hands and knees with the rag that the nurse had thrust at her.

She stared around her. The countdown showed one minute past storm peak. While she had been busy with John, zero hour had come and gone. All the displays were alive. The battleground of the shield still flared and glittered, Earth still flamed and smoked and seethed. But minute by minute, the intensity of the attack would decrease. Two hours from now, if she lived to see it, Sky City, Cusp Station, and Earth would begin to calm. They could all begin the long road back.

She heard a loud and distorted voice over the communication channel. “Sky City? We are still holding on, and we show count rates starting down. Can you confirm?”

Bruno Colombo appeared from nowhere. He took John’s chair, grabbed the microphone, and spoke into it.

Maddy couldn’t tell what he said, because everyone in the information center was suddenly talking. She picked her way through the chaos to where Star Vjansander still lay on the floor, her hands cupping her plump cheeks. She was thoughtful, ignoring everyone.

It was John’s question, but Maddy had to ask it. When she saw him later, she wanted to have an answer. Two answers — but one she already had.

“Star, the storm didn’t get as bad as you said it would. Not nearly as bad. What happened?”

Star raised her head and stared vacantly at Maddy. “Uh?”

“What happened? How come we’re alive, and Earth’s alive? We should all be dead.”

“I dunno.” Star slowly stood up, with nothing like her usual fluid grace. “I been wondering, too. We were way off. An’ I don’t know why.” She stared all around the information center. “Where’s Wilmer?”

“I don’t know. He hasn’t been here since the storm buildup began.”

“Well, I got ter find him. Me an’ him have ter rattle our skull-cases. We got data coming out of our ears. But now we hafta do the brain work.”

She wandered off. After a few moments Maddy left the room, too. Rather than following Star, she walked along the corridor that spiraled out toward the perimeter of Sky City. The occasional ping still sounded as particle bundles evaded the defenses and blasted through everything they met, rattling overstressed metal. But there were fewer of them. The defense system had smart components, and efficiency had increased all through the particle storm. There was still danger, and would be for another few hours, but the worst was over.

In any case, that was not where Maddy’s thoughts were concentrated as she traversed deserted corridors and escalators and moved toward the higher-priced levels. By every logic, she should have been thinking of John’s narrow escape from death. In fact, she was seeing Sky City with new eyes.

This place was in need of a thorough overhaul. It had been run like an offshoot of an engineering lab for too long, but now there were eighty thousand people here, men and women and lots of children. It needed to be made to feel like a real city. She could do that. And who would her competition be? Bruno Colombo? Goldy Jensen? She could eat them.

If she wanted to. Maybe she didn’t. Maybe she was ready for a completely different kind of life, not just a Sky City continuation of the sort of work she had done in the Argos Group. Wasn’t that the life she had decided to leave, just a few weeks ago? Gordy Rolfe, with his rages and his ego and his suspected sabotage of shield development, felt a million miles and a thousand years away. She would find out — -someday — if her warning to Celine Tanaka had been necessary and heeded. But that could wait.

Maddy wandered on, looking, wondering, making an evaluation. Deciding if this level of effective gravity was more comfortable than that. Assessing appearance. Balancing cost against comfort. Putting a value on convenience. Picking the nicest area.

Just what you did with anyplace when you realized that you were going to live there.

“Why isn’t everyone dead?”

Six hours had produced a dramatic change. The communication channels between Earth and Sky City were again free of noise. Celine Tanaka was looking at Bruno Colombo, and his image was perfectly clear and solid. Forget the signal delay, and you would think he was sitting just next door.

She had expected to be talking only to Bruno Colombo, but a dozen other people were packed in with him. She should have predicted that. The Oval Office was just as full. In both places, everyone crowded in who could justify a presence.

Plus, perhaps, a few who couldn’t. Celine wondered about Maddy Wheatstone, standing next to a pale and bandaged John Hyslop. Perhaps the particle storm had led Goldy Jensen to relax her iron grip on access to Bruno’s office, and a few extras had slipped by her.

Celine went on, “Not that we’re complaining, mind you. It’s nice to be alive, those of us that are, and know that Earth can start on the road to recovery. It’s going to be a long and hard road, we realize that, but it’s a shock being here at all, after you’ve sat for weeks preparing for the worst.”

“Yes, indeed.” Bruno Colombo was nodding a mile a minute. “Madam President, we are as delighted as you are that the damage and casualties on Earth are less than anticipated. We, of course, have had our own injuries.”

An extra nod went in John Hyslop’s direction. “We also suffered tragic loss of life. However, this should also be a time for thanksgiving, if not for actual celebration. We have seen, if not a miracle, at least a supreme achievement. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate and to thank publicly every individual on Sky City, all of whose exceptional efforts permitted the damage inflicted on Earth to be far less than was originally feared, and every one of whom—”

“We share your gratitude, Director Colombo.” Celine could see the others on Sky City wriggling with impatience or embarrassment. Bruno Colombo had a rare talent for blather, and he was barely getting started. “I would welcome an opportunity to discuss that with you in more detail — on some other occasion. For the moment, however, we have a practical question: We survived, but why} What, if you like, went right} I thought the storm was predicted to be far more than the defense system could handle. We came to the limit, but the defenses held. How were they able to do that?”

Bruno Colombo looked across at John Hyslop. “I think that our chief engineer, despite his severe injuries, is the person best equipped to handle that question.”

If the poor beggar can talk, Celine thought, what with that choker bandage round his neck, and the blood on it. But he looks cheerful enough.

“No thanks to me.” John Hyslop’s voice was a throaty whisper. “I was as surprised as anybody. Star knows what’s been going on, though. Star? Wake up. I’m talking to you.”