Charles Sheffield - Starfire

But not, it seemed, in this case. As the scene shifted to show my study, the nameless apprehension within me grew rather than subsided. Still wearing the helmet, I walked back to my bedroom, lay down, and returned to the Sky City setting. Seth’s room again appeared before me. Nothing was happening. I stared at that nothing.

I was about to say “stared mindlessly,” but that is not quite true. Late at night the body enters a new phase of its circadian rhythm and the mind plays strange tricks. Into my head drifted a story, one that each of my darlings had enjoyed as an infant: Jack the giant-killer. Brave young Jack ascended the magic beanstalk and found himself in the alien landscape known as Sky City. He entered the giant’s castle. Fee, fi, fo, fum. With the assistance of the giant’s wife, Jack escaped with-what? A goose that laid golden eggs; a speaking harp that warned the giant. A magic mirror? I was not sure. Magic looms large in children’s stories. Snow White’s evil queen had her mirror, too. “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is . . .” The killer’s face, smiling and smug, stared out at me in place of my own reflection.

Jacket, jacket, on the wall; watching the sleeping Seth.

The stories blurred, conflated, ran together. Henri Poincare was a fortunate genius. My own collision of late-night thoughts offered no new insight. The sleep that had so far eluded me was almost here. I was ready to close my eyes, but before I removed the helmet I must take one more look at Seth. Through the eyes of the RV jacket I saw the killer leaning over him. A silver blade slashed across Seth’s throat. Bright arterial blood spurted across the room.

I blinked. Reality returned. The fancy vanished. The RV jacket showed Seth, still snoring, safe in his quiet bedroom.

I mocked my own fears, told myself not to be a fool. I should relax and go to sleep. As my eyes began to close I caught a flicker of movement on the far right of my field of view. The door of Seth’s apartment was opening, slowly and silently. I looked for someone entering the dimly lit bedroom. I saw nothing, nothing at all. But I cried, “Seth! Look out!”

Look out for what? The only thing to see was the opening door. It seemed forever before Seth moved-the signal delay as Sky City moved farther out was having its effect. But finally he reacted. He must sleep like a cat, one eye open and alert for danger. As I called again he moved, not to either side, but straight up from the bed in a single spasm of effort. In the low-gravity environment of Sky City he rose all the way to the ceiling, still covered by the bedsheet.

Seth shared another of a cat’s gifts. At the ceiling he twisted in midair until he was facing down toward the floor. He began to drop back, slowly because of the weak field. At last I could see something else in the room. A thin snakelike object reared up from the floor. The long, segmented neck rose to a round head that gleamed red in the weak light.

Seth was falling free, with no way to change his place of landing. The snake was moving to where he would come down directly on top of it.

I called out, “Don’t land there! It’s waiting for you.” Useless advice, since he could change his fall in neither speed nor direction. And unnecessary advice. Seth held in his hands the bedsheet. He dropped it so that it landed on and enveloped the rearing snake.

The sheet convulsed and jerked from side to side. Seth was still falling, but he turned in midair so that he would land feet first. He kicked at the top of the heaving mass beneath him and used that momentum to carry him sideways across the room. He hit the wall headfirst above a chest of drawers, grabbed something from on top of it, and rolled away to the left.

The snake had wriggled its way free of the sheet. I saw its head lift again, turning and questing. Seth pointed what he was holding toward the snake. There was a flash of green light, and the head and long neck vanished. The room filled with smoke. Seth took a step forward, reached down, and whipped the sheet clear. Again I could see nothing. With the head gone, the rest of the intruder was too low to the ground to be in my field of view.

“I think that’s the main job done,” Seth said calmly. “But just in case, I think we’d be better off without them legs.” He pointed the gun downward and I saw eight separate flashes of green light.

“And now let’s have a look at you.” He reached down, picked something up, and deposited it on the bed.

It was perhaps a meter long. I saw blunt stumps, four on each side, where the legs had been, and the remaining stub of the severed snake neck.

“A cleaning machine,” I said.

“Nah.” Seth shook his head. He glanced across to where the RV jacket hung on the wall. “Nice work, Doc. I coulda been dead meat without the warnin’.”

“ Could have been?”

“I was only half asleep. I mighta been all right.”

“You think perhaps that it did not intend you harm?”

“You kiddin’? Take a look.” He walked a couple of paces and picked something from the floor. He held it toward the RV jacket for my inspection. “Construction laser, lot more powerful than the one I got. Good thing I fired first, or I’d’ve been Parsigian Cajun-style, charred on the outside and well done on the inside.”

I am not unacquainted with death, but blood, carnage, and general messiness have never been a part of my own modus operandi. Everything here had happened so fast that I was only now beginning to react, with a fluttering pulse and a certain difficulty in breathing. I stared at the gun and at the mutilated object on the bed.

“If that is not a cleaning machine . . .”

I ran out of breath before I could complete my question, but Seth took my meaning. He went to the side of the bed, lifted the object by the stubby neck, and turned it over for my inspection.

“See this?” He pointed to a series of marks on the underside. “Series and model number, too high-level for a cleaning machine. It’s a general-purpose rolfe. If you look here on the side, you’ll see the place where it can plug in for instruction transfers. Hm. I guess this one’s too high-powered for me, too, ’cause I never saw this model number before. Must be one of the new ones, fresh up from Earth.”

“You are sure that it was programmed to attack you?”

Seth was still bending over the rolfe. He raised his head. “Not attack. Kill. That laser wasn’t brought along to give me a nice all-over tan. You oughta be sure of that, if anyone is. You were the one, way back when, who asked if a cleanin’ machine could be made to kill. You were the one, just tonight, who told me to watch out for my ass an’ hat ’cause I might be in danger. Why were you watchin’ me, anyway?”

“I was worried that the Sky City murderer might learn what we are doing and try to kill you to prevent it. The idea of sending a rolfe for that purpose never occurred to me.”

“Me neither. An’ I don’t think that’s what’s goin’ on.” Seth sat down on his bed next to the machine. “This ain’t from our buddy the killer. This is somethin’ else.”

“If not the murderer, then who?”

“I’m not sure. But I got ideas. An’ don’t worry, I’ll find out.” He nodded toward the remains of the machine. “Stumpy Joe there is blind an’ can’t go a-walkin’ no more, but the brain oughta be intact. I’m gonna bring that thing to engineering, bust it open, an’ squeeze the sucker dry. Then we’ll find out where it got its instruction set.”

“And after that?”

“Depends what I find. But don’t be surprised if you catch me havin’ a few words with Maddy Wheat-stone.” He stood up. “D’you see much action here in the next few days?”