Charles Sheffield - Starfire

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.

John had relinquished his hold on her waist, but he still guided her with a hand on one forearm. He could not have been more proper, yet she could feel goose bumps rising under his fingers. As he led her out of Weinstein’s office — a neat, pink-walled room packed with medical equipment that she had no recollection of entering — Maddy felt spectacularly strange and light-headed. She struggled for self-control. You have a job to do. You’ve got to sticky with John Hyslop, or make him sticky with you.

She halted, so that John was forced to turn and face her. “Five minutes ago I didn’t think I’d ever feel like eating again. Now I’m all of a sudden starving. Your doctor friend said you could feed me. Will you do it?”

“Of course.”

“Soon?”

“Right away. Can you move by yourself, or do you need my help?”

“I don’t know. If you could . . .”

She held out her hand, letting it flop limply at the wrist. Isn’t that what poor weak women are supposed to do? Just as well there’s no one from the Argos Group to see this. Maddy Wheatstone — rising star, hard as diamond, cold as Charon, never sick, never dependent — clinging for support like a delicate flower.

You do whatever you have to do. John Hyslop didn’t even seem suspicious. He took her by the elbow and carefully walked her to a drop chute. He halted at the edge.

“We’ll be in free fall in the chute, but only for a few seconds. Can you stand that?”

Maddy nodded. The head movement was another informal test of her balance centers, and it went fine. All sense of vertigo had gone. In its place she felt a delicious, sensual languor. Was it low gravity that produced the sense of moving deep in warm water, or was it Weinstein’s drug?

She stepped forward into the open space of the drop chute. The free-fall ride down added a new sensation. She felt hot and tingling in the pit of her belly, a warmth as good as the afterglow of the best sex ever.

Len Strahlig had been — how long ago? More than six months. And he had definitely not been the best sex ever, as well as being an empty-headed scumball liar. But he had talked a great line, just as a salesman was supposed to. The very opposite of John Hyslop. John was so serious and awkward and tongue-tied except about his work. How would he be if he could relax for once and obey his emotions instead of his inhibitions?