Charles Sheffield - Starfire

Nick Lopez, behind Celine, said suddenly, “How long do we have, Wilmer?”

Celine turned to face him. “How long for what?”

“How long before the bundles develop to whatever they finally become, and do whatever they do? If they’re like seeds, eventually they’ll turn into something that produces more seeds. How long before they change the Sun, or decide it’s breeding time and they need another supernova?”

“No worries. Stellar processes are slo-o-o-w — a star like Sol can spend ten billion years and more on the main sequence.”

“It can. But does it have to? Remember, there was no way that Alpha Centauri could go supernova — until it did.”

“He’s right, Wilmer.” Star moved forward to peer at Nick Lopez with new interest. “I thought it the first time I met yer. Yer got a weird mind, mister. I like that.”

“And in fact we know very little about supernovas and how they work,” Wilmer added. “Maybe they proceed from star to star like a chain of firecrackers, one every ten million years. We’ve not been watching for long enough. In a whole galaxy you get only one or two supernovas a century, and mostly so far away we don’t learn much. Did you know we haven’t had a naked-eye supernova since—”

“Thank you, Wilmer, I’ve heard that before.” Celine cut him off. “No more speeches today. The wounded have to be looked after, the dead buried, Earth and the institutions of Earth rebuilt, and Sky City moved back to its old position. And then we must set new goals for humans, including everything we had before the supernova came along, and more.”

She thought, That sounded an awful lot like a speech. It must be catching.

“And while we’re doing all that,” Nick Lopez said quietly, “there’s one other thing that we’ll be doing.”

The others paused expectantly. Not Celine. When you were a world-class worrier, you didn’t have to. be told what else you needed to be nervous about. “I know. From now on we’ll have a new hobby — maybe we should say a new religion.”

“Maybe we should say, more like an old religion.”

“Whatever you call it, one thing’s for sure. We’ll all be watching the Sun.”

From the private diary of Oliver Guest.

At Otranto Castle a wind from the south-southwest should be a warm zephyr, bringing the lotus ease of the lazy tropical ocean whence it came. But not this time. The wind had blown as a force-five gale for six days and nights, a fury that carried in its dark heart sleet and hail and the sour, bitter stench of cindered lands and dead seas. The castle, windows shuttered, crouched down and endured this blast, as it had stood and withstood for more than two and a half centuries.

Soon after dawn on the sixth morning, I opened the heavy oak door of the main entrance and stepped outside. The wind was strong as ever and rain sheeted at me sideways, but there was a freshness in the air and a clarity to the sunrise. It was possible to believe, for the first time since the onset of the particle storm, that Earth had a future.

In that moment of spiritual rebirth, the castle Alert blurted in to steal joy from the morning. Warning, it shouted in my ear. Possible intruder sighted to the southwest. Human evaluation requested.

I sighed and went inside. Under high magnification I studied the solitary walker. He was enveloped in waterproof clothing that flapped like dark wings in the gusts, and he maintained a wide and wise separation between himself and the edge of the cliffs. This time, however, I had no doubt as to his identity. For more than a week I had been waiting and wondering; not if, but when.

I opened the door and held it as he approached. He hurried into the dark hallway as though the wind bore him across the threshold unassisted.

“A nasty morning,” I said.

“You might say.” Seth grinned at me as he stripped off his overcoat and leggings. “But we’ve both seen worse.”

His clothing had been inadequate protection. His hair and shirt were soaked. I led him through to the far end of the kitchen, where towels hung drying on a line and a gallon pot simmered on the blackened stove.

He took a towel and rubbed at his hair until it was a drier but more tangled mess, then went over and sniffed the pot. At my nod he filled a bowl and carried it to the long wooden table.

“Beans?” he asked.

“With ham hocks,” I said. “From the gentleman who pays the rent.”

“Huh?”

“It’s an old Irish joke. It means a pig.”

Those were our first words after the initial greeting, and they were not inspiring. After that neither seemed inclined to speak again. The silence continued until Seth had emptied the bowl and refused more with a shake of the head. Finally he said, “You were expecting me.”

“It was my preference.” I led the way to the study, and we sat down in front of the peat fire. “Otherwise I would have ultimately been obliged to seek you.”

“Yeah.” He removed his boots and held his stockinged feet close to the red peat coals until the soles began to steam. At that point he moved back a couple of feet, accepted my offer of whiskey, stared into the low flames, and said, “We got unfinished business. It’d be nice to say, go back to the way it was before any of this started. But we can’t. You know that I know.”

“And vice versa. I know about you. More, perhaps, than anyone else in the world. Even in these troubled times, the curious demise of Gordy Rolfe was widely reported.”

“Yeah. There’s rumors that he was part of some big conspiracy, robbin’ Sky City blind, an’ his business partners knocked him off so he couldn’t talk. But some people talked conspiracy with the Sky City murders, an’ we know how that turned out. Me, I think nobody’s goin’ to find anything more. Old Gordy made hidin’ what he knew an’ did into an art form.”

“I will not dispute the conspiracy theory. However, I suspect that you and I alone are aware of your intention to visit Gordy Rolfe on the day before he died.”

“Ah, but did I go there? I vote for natural causes, Doc, comin’ as a result of unnatural experiments. You heard what the media said about poor old Gordy. ’Hoist with his own petard,’ if you want to put it fancy. They found one of his boots, an’ that was all. Nobody’s lookin’ for me as a killer. Can’t say quite the same for you.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Or thinking to blackmail me?”

“Never.”

He glanced toward the door behind me and frowned. I turned and saw four faces peering in a vertical line around the jamb: Paula, Bridget, Beth, and Trixie. They had been in the cellar earlier, but they must have seen the Alert flashing or heard the outer door.

“This meeting does not call for your presence,” I said sharply.

That would probably have been enough had not Seth made the mistake of adding condescendingly, “Run along, kiddies. You heard your dad.”

Paula frowned, and Bridget flushed and opened her mouth as though about to speak. Before she could do so, Paula dragged her out of sight. A moment later the other two faces vanished.

Seth waited to make sure they had gone, then went on. “Take it easy, Doc. I’m just sayin’ we need to have some sort of negotiation or truce, an’ it’s nice to know where each of us is startin’ from. Seems to me you’re startin’ off vulnerable. Not because of you; you’re fireproof.” He gestured toward the door. “Because of them.”

“If you imply that through the existence of those girls I have, in the words of Francis Bacon, given hostages to fortune, then I am obliged to agree with you. However, you know my history. The addition of one more victim to the roster for the sake of security would not, if discovered, change my sentence at all were I ever to be recaptured.”