Charles Sheffield - Starfire

“It would have died anyway in a few minutes. As for unnatural, you’re completely wrong. What we saw is totally natural. That’s how animals die in the wild. Once they get old or sick, something drags them down and eats them.”

Gordy Rolfe was loving every minute. Celine knew it from the pleasure in his glittering eyes and the flush of color on his pallid cheeks. Suddenly, all she wanted to do was get away from him and back to the surface.

“You leaving?” Rolfe watched her intently as she turned toward the circular exit hatch.

Celine did not trust herself to speak. She nodded and kept moving.

“Well, I guess the fun’s over, anyway.” Rolfe reached for the controller at his waist. “One more bit of cleanup to do, then I’ll see you on your way.”

He pressed a sequence of keys. The room filled with high-pitched squeaks. Celine saw scores of rats, their gray skins sparking and smoking, contort into unnatural shapes and collapse to the floor.

“Can’t have them running loose, can we? There’s no saying where they’d get to after they’d eaten.” Rolfe glanced at Celine. “Don’t worry, I only disposed of the ones running free. The ones in the cages are fine. And the dead ones go to the habitat, so they won’t be wasted.”

He led the way down the spiral staircase. Celine followed, very slowly. She felt weak in the knees. Although she had wiped her face, the reek of carnosaur blood saturated her hair and clothing.

Gordy went with her to the elevators. “Don’t forget our deal,” he said. “I’ll keep my end; a set of rolfes will be on the way to Sky City before the end of the week. By that time I expect to hear what you’re doing about my land.”

“I’ll work on it.” Celine forced the words out and pressed the elevator button. She could not wait for the doors to close and the car to ascend. She craved fresh air and sanity. When the slow-rising elevator at last opened on the highest level, she found Chesley Reiter and the rest of his group waiting. One look at her, and the chief of security grabbed her arm.

“It’s all right, Ches, I’m fine.” She gently freed herself. “None of this is my blood.”

“But . . . Madam President?”

He was inviting an explanation. Celine was not ready to give one. She walked past them, through the school-house and on into the open air. It seemed that she had been underground for many hours, and she expected to find it was night outside the building. Instead she walked out into the twilight gloom of an early evening downpour. The thunderstorm had come and gone, leaving in its place a steady rain.

Celine turned her face upward, welcoming the drops. It would be a long time before she felt clean again.

The armored car stood with the door open and the driver waiting. Celine nodded to him and climbed in without a word. Before the door closed she was reaching for the telcom unit to call Nick Lopez. He answered so quickly that she suspected he had been waiting by his own unit.

“Rolfe agreed,” Celine said at once. “He’ll start shipping more up by the end of the week.”

“I can’t believe it. How did you talk him into it?”

“I don’t think I did. I think he has his own reasons for wanting to send rolfes to Sky City, but I can’t begin to guess what they are. Nick, I’ve never had a meeting like that in my whole life. Gordy Rolfe is crazier than you can imagine.”

“I told you he was losing it. What did he do? Start lecturing you on the superiority of small mammals?”

“More than that.” Celine glanced around the armored vehicle. The rest of the security staff had piled in and the driver was waiting for instructions. “Back to the White House,” she said. And, as the car began to roll forward, “Our friend gave me his idea of a practical demonstration.”

“Meaning what? With Gordy, I hardly dare to consider the possibilities.”

Celine hesitated. Should she tell Nick, when the security staff would be hanging on her every word? Well, why not. They, had waited for hours in the rain, probably imagining that she was down there being lavishly entertained by the powerful head of the Argos Group. They might as well learn the truth.

“Did you know he raises dinosaurs down there?”

“He showed them to me. Dwarf varieties, hidden in the jungle around his habitat control room.”

“Not always hidden.” Celine described the minirex and its battle to the death with the cageful of rats. She omitted only her own role in delivering the coup de grace to the carnosaur.

Nick Lopez listened without saying a word. The security staff in the car with Celine were equally silent. The vehicle was racing back toward Washington at its highest speed, and the only sound adding to Celine’s voice was the soft hiss of fullerene tires over sodden roadway. Recalling the final moments with the carnosaur, she again became aware of the smell of blood and saliva permeating her hair and clothes.

“We just have to hope that he’s sane on other matters,” she concluded. “Either the rolfes will appear in a few days for shipping up, or they won’t.”

“How did he sound when you left?”

“Cheerful. Manic. As though we’d been partying together.”

“Then I think this might be a good time for me to call him.”

“You might not get through, Nick. He ignored calls when I was there.”

“I don’t think he’ll ignore me. I have a special tie line. One other question before we sign off.”

“Ask. But keep it short.” Celine was swept by a dreadful wave of fatigue. She wanted to put her head back on the padded car seat and go to sleep.

“What’s the rest of the story? I’ve never heard of Gordy Rolfe making a deal just for money. What else is he asking?”

“The land around the habitat, four miles in every direction, for as long as he’s alive and half a century more. His own personal paradise.” Celine laid her head back and closed her eyes. She could see the carnosaur, eyeless and half gutted, sinking into its death agony. “But you and I might call it hell.”

It was a nightmare from Maddy’s childhood. You woke slowly, in near-total darkness, knowing that you were not alone in the room. The thing — the shadowy form of the he-she-it — stood still and silent at the end of the bed. You lay frozen, too scared to move, too scared to scream.

At last you went back to sleep. In the morning you looked and looked, but you found no trace of the phantom.

It was happening now, and you were not a child. You were Maddy Wheatstone, a grown woman with no time for adolescent fantasies. You were no longer in the family home in Edmonton. You were — where?

Maddy struggled to full consciousness. Her eyes were wide open. This was not a dream. The shadow was still there. It loomed by her bedside, leaning over her, shaped like a man.

And she was — oh God, she was on Sky City, where the murderer of a dozen girls wandered free.

Maddy gasped, drew up her legs, and threw herself over the other side of the bed. She grabbed a boot, the only solid object she could find, and stabbed at the wall panel.

The light flashed on. It showed John Hyslop, mouth open and eyes squinted half shut against the glare, standing by the side of the bed.

“John!” Maddy’s curiosity was as strong as her relief.

“What are you doing in my bedroom in the middle of the night?”

“I’m sorry. I did knock before I came in, but you slept through it. I’ve been standing here wondering if I ought to wake you.”

“For what?” She saw the clock. “It’s three in the morning.”

He was not just looking at her, he was staring. Maddy realized that she was wearing a shorter-than-usual nightgown. Well, that was all right. Let him know what he was missing.