Charles Sheffield - Starfire

It would not, however, be sufficient. Three days of hard effort on my part had brought me no closer to our murderer. The crucial touching of like minds that Seth had hoped for when he came to see me had not occurred, and it seemed clear that progress through that avenue was unlikely.

I had no other suggestions; Seth, however, did.

“You got it wrong,” he said. “Nobody but me’s gonna be involved with you in this. An’ I’m not gonna do all the work wanderin’ round Sky City while you sit there laughin’ an’ scratchin’. You’ll be right there with me.”

“Impossible. I thought I had made it abundantly clear-”

“Be there as much as you want, an’ as much as you can stand. An’ still be safe at home if it gets too sticky. See this?” He held up a shapeless bundle of mauve and pink. “I’ll wear it. Opens up to look like an ordinary jacket, but it’s an RV jacket-for remote viewin’, it’s got sensors all over it. I send you the receivin’ equipment, audio and video feeds in an RV helmet; then anythin’ I see, you see. Anythin’ I hear, you hear. Realistic, just like bein’ there in person.”

“If realism is your goal, I suspect that I will be unable to function. Full telepresence is no more tolerable to me than physical presence.”

Seth offered a grin of irritating condescension. “You’ll be fine, Doc. I’ll arrange it so you get your place overlaid on the Sky City scene. You control the mix, how much you see of what I’m seein’, how much you get of where you are. If things are tough for you to take, no problem. You just tone it down for a while.”

“But where you go is as important as what you see. Suppose you visit locations in Sky City that I believe to be of no more value than random wanderings?”

“Won’t happen. You’ll have contact with me. Don’t sit there scowlin’.” How did he know my expression when I was feeding to him a voice-only signal? “We do it the same way we’re doin’ it now. I don’t need to see your mug-in fact, I’d just as soon not-but you can talk to me and steer me anyplace you think I need to go.”

The probability that the scheme would succeed seemed vanishingly small. The chance that Seth would drop his idea without trying it was, unfortunately, even less.

As James Russell Lowell remarks, it is no good arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.

“Very well,” I said. “If you think the matter is worth the effort, send me the receiving equipment. Before we try it in practice there must be a test to see if the idea is workable.”

I broke the connection, and pondered the problem of metaphorical outer garments.

The round-trip signal travel time from Earth to Sky City in its geosynchronous orbit is about one-fourth of a second. Seth proposed to accommodate this in Earth-bound tests of our communication system via a built-in electronic delay. It was similar to that employed when the question was first raised of customer acceptance of signals sent through geosynchronous satellites, and although I had not seen details of those century-old experiments I had little doubt that we would rapidly make the necessary mental adjustment. Far more difficult was the question of my environment. Unlike Seth, who would operate wholly in Sky City, I would perforce be obliged to function in Otranto Castle, while at the same time following events several tens of thousands of kilometers away. I needed to provide a test under difficult local circumstances.

The children inadvertently cooperated in providing this. They had been unusually lively for the past few days, perhaps a consequence of my own distraction and decreased attention.

The receiving equipment compounded rather than eased the problem. The controller was small and fitted easily into my right hand, but the RV helmet, large and black with prominent silver eyes, felt heavy and looked uncomfortable. With a little juggling and much more misgivings I fitted it on over my head.

That action did not pass unobserved. I rarely regret my decision to perform minor genetic modification of my darlings, giving each of them increased stamina, better health, higher intelligence, abundant energy, and lessened need for sleep. Notice, however, the adverb rarely.

When I was ready to test the helmet it was early evening for Seth, but past midnight for us in Ireland. Crystal and Lucy-Mary were perhaps the liveliest and most inquisitive, not to say troublesome, of the seven-year-olds, and they should have been in bed hours ago. But they entered my study just as I donned the helmet and moved the controller to a midrange setting. I saw Seth’s offices, located at the Argos Group headquarters in Houston, Texas. I also saw, overlaid on that image, two gray ghostlike outlines. When I adjusted to receive a heavier component of the local scene, the gray figures turned into Crystal and Lucy-Mary. They walked over to me and stood giggling and nudging each other.

“Can you see me?” said Seth’s voice.

“Yes. But wait one moment. I must attend to something here.” I turned off the audio feed. “Girls, you are not a part of this activity. Please leave.”

“What activity?” Lucy-Mary said.

Crystal added, “If there is any activity, we must be part of it because there’s no one else here. Do you know what you look like? You look like a human being with a fly’s head.”

“That particular conceit lost its novelty long before you or even I was born. This helmet provides a communication capability, and I am in fact engaged in a meeting. Or I will be, as soon as you leave.”

“Can’t we stay and listen?” asked Crystal.

“You may not. Please leave-now.”

They did so, reluctantly. I saw Lucy-Mary’s curious final glance at the RV helmet, and I made a mental note to hide it safely away when it was not in use. I could imagine Seth receiving a call from one of my darlings, and enthusiasm was not on the candidate list of his reactions.

“What was all that about?” he asked as soon as we were once more in contact.

“A little local interference. We can anticipate such things from time to time.”

“You really got eighteen of ’em in that castle?” Seth’s ability to infer what he could neither see nor hear was uncanny. “All them young girls. I don’t know how you stand it. They’d drive me dotty in a week. But I guess it don’t matter for you, you were crazy before.”

“Far be it from me to interrupt your valuable insights into my past and present mental condition, but may we return to the subject of the equipment test? I am restoring a full visual feed to you and minimizing my local inputs.”

“All right. What do you see?”

I was rapidly adapting to the quarter-second delay between each statement that we made. However, illogical as it sounds, it had not occurred to me that the visual feeds would be subject to the same hiatus. I found myself waiting impatiently for the field of view to change.

“I see an office wall,” I said.

“So do I. I’m standin’ right in front of it.”

“It’s light green.”

“It sure is. So far so good. Tell me where to go and what to do next, an’ if it won’t kill me, I’ll try an’ do it.”

“Turn around, slowly.”

I felt as though I myself were turning. The green wall vanished, to be replaced by a mural of some kind of jungle scene framed by real potted plants. That gave way in turn to a wall-wide picture window, seven or eight meters away, that showed a blue sky beyond.

“Walk over toward the window,” I said.

There was a silence-rather longer, it seemed, than the planned electronic delay. “All right. If you say so.” Seth had an odd tone in his voice. For the first time I wished that I could see the expression on his face.