Charles Sheffield - Starfire

“Did you not hear me?” I cried. “I cannot go to Sky City-or anywhere else in space.” And, when he stared at me, “Did you not check my background before you came here? Since childhood I have suffered from extreme forms of acrophobia and agoraphobia. I cannot, to save my life, tolerate heights or open spaces.” I pointed toward the invisible cliffs, half a mile to our west. “I can go no closer to the sea than we are now. As for outer space” — the very words caught in my throat — “in that intolerable environment I would be unable to think, to work, even to breathe.”

He did not, to his credit, argue or rage or deny the reality of the problem. Instead he stood up and went to stare into the dying fire. “I didn’t know that,” he said at last. “I should have. There’s nothin’ you can do about it? I mean, like with drugs and fizzes?”

“Nothing. I have tried. Anything that damps my reaction sufficiently to tolerate an open environment leaves me unable to think.”

“Which ain’t too good, since your brain is what I need an’ it’s no use when it’s mush.” Seth turned to me, and to my astonishment he had a little smile on his face. “Dumb of me not to check everythin’, wasn’t it? But I guess I was in too much of a hurry to get here.”

He went to sit once more by the fireside. “Well, now we got us a problem. You can’t go to Sky City, an’ Sky City sure as hell can’t come to you. But it’s real important for me to catch our murderer, an’ I still think you’re my best bet for that. So let’s you an’ me sit down, talk slow and easy, an’ see what we come up with as a solution.”

The man, mirabile dictu, was humoring me. For possibly the first time in my life I did not object.

Celine was used to kisses. She had spent her teenage years in the Philippines and traveled widely in Europe and the Middle East. In many nations of the world she knew that an embrace or a kiss on the cheek was as natural as a handshake.

Less common — unique, in fact, in Celine’s experience — was the visitor who strode across the Oval Office, grabbed you in a bear hug, and gave you a great smacking kiss on the lips.

But that was Wilmer. He had acknowledged few of the rules of polite society when he and Celine were partners on the Mars expedition, and in the twenty-seven years since, he had apparently changed not at all.

Celine kissed him back, just as heartily. Lovers, even long-ago and faraway lovers, possess privileges denied to others. After a couple of seconds she pushed him away and held him at arm’s length. “Wilmer Oldfield, you’re as handsome and debonair as ever.” His head, close to bald, wore its remaining hair close-cropped, and his idea of suitable White House dress was a faded brown shirt and pants short enough to show two inches of white socks.

“Now you must introduce me,” Celine went on.

She had glimpsed the woman walking in behind Wilmer in the moment before she was grabbed and hugged. She made a more detailed survey now. The other visitor was short and broad and very black, with clear, shiny skin. She wore a tiny skirt of bright lime green and a yellow sleeveless top that showed off muscular limbs. Her hair was shaped into an array of jutting black spikes that suggested to Celine’s eye an electrocuted cartoon character.

Wilmer’s companion was in her mid-twenties. She appeared subdued and upset at the same time. “Celine,” Wilmer said, “this here’s my friend Star Vjansander. Star, this here’s Celine Tanaka.” He added, as an afterthought, “The President of the United States.”

The woman bobbed her head. “Pleased t’ meet yer, mam. I’m actually Astarte Vjansander; but if you want ter call me Star, like Wilmer does, that’s all right.”

The accent was unfamiliar. A broadness to the vowels, plus the occasional ter for to, and yer for you. Celine wondered if that was typical North Australian, and decided that she rather liked it. More familiar was the look that Astarte Vjansander gave Wilmer. Celine recognized it at once as adoration, though it was unlikely that Wilmer did. But it accounted for Astarte’s discomfort when she saw the other two kissing. Had Wilmer bothered to mention that he and Celine had been an intimate item in the remote past, although there had been nothing more than platonic friendship for many years?

Probably not. It wasn’t the sort of thing that would occur to him.

And was it a sexual relationship between Wilmer and Astarte? Probably, in spite of the big age difference. Wilmer might collect his female partners in a bemused and abstracted way, but he certainly collected them. Celine sensed her own objection to the idea that Wilmer and Astarte were lovers, at the same time as she was astonished by her reaction. If she didn’t like to share Wilmer when he had not been part of her love life for a full quarter of a century, then no wonder Astarte was jealous. Humans were inexplicable only if you assumed that they were logical.

She smiled at the young woman, offering nonverbal reassurance that she had no territorial claims on Wilmer. But it was a waste of time, because before she could get onto Astarte’s wavelength Wilmer was off and running.

“We probably sounded a bit mysterious to your lady in the outside office, insisting we had to see you in person and not telling her why. But you see, I didn’t want to put her in a panic or have her spreading bad rumors.”

“Given some of the things that Claudette has heard in the past few years, I don’t think you need to worry. It would take news of the end of the world to shake her.”

As a light remark, it fell flat. Astarte gasped and turned to Wilmer.

“She knows.”

“No, she don’t. Go on, Star, you tell it. It’s your story. I mostly came to get you in to meet Celine.”

Astarte nodded, but she didn’t say a word. Celine had seen the same thing often enough in the past. People entered the office with their story carefully prepared, and promptly became tongue-tied in her presence. After the first few times she realized that it had nothing to do with her. It was the office of the presidency, carrying a weight unrelated to the personality and character of its current occupant. The surprise was that Astarte Vjansander felt it.

Celine said, “Let’s all sit down and make ourselves comfortable. And Wilmer, why don’t you start instead of Star? You’ve briefed me often enough, you know how to keep it down to my level.”

She was making a trade-off. Wilmer must certainly know whatever it was that Astarte Vjansander wanted to say, otherwise he would never have brought her to meet Celine.

On the other hand, Wilmer’s briefings had their own problems. Clarity, yes. Brevity, never. Celine sat back and prepared for a long evening.

“Is that all right with you, Star?” Wilmer said. And, at her nod, “You take over whenever you feel like it.” He put his hand to the top of his bald head and rubbed at it for inspiration. “I -think I’d better go a fair way back. Celine, you know how I told you there was something odd about the Alpha Centauri supernova, right from the beginning?”

“Told me once, told me twice, told me a hundred times. You may not remember this, but when we had our first look at the supernova, back on the Schiaparelli, you said that Alpha Centauri was a double star system, and double stars can become Type Ia supernovas only if one of the pair is a white dwarf. And Alpha Centauri didn’t qualify.”

“Still doesn’t,” Wilmer said placidly. “Bit of a nuisance, really, since the thing did go supernova. Zoe Nash told me then that if that’s what the astrophysicists’ theories said, we damn well better get new theories. She was right, of course. Poor old Zoe.” He stared off at nothing for a few seconds, then shook his head. “Anyway, I worked and worked trying to explain the Alpha C supernova. And I got nowhere.”