Starfire (47 page)

"Don't be coy. Maddy Wheatstone up an' quit on you. Right?"

"That is correct. She was a woman in whom I had invested much of my time and the group's resources, a woman who was being groomed for the top. Without warning or reason, she resigned."

"Oh, she had a reason. Sort of. She got swoony about her assignment."

"John Hyslop. I know that. But then I should blame myself even more, for a major error of judgment. Only a few weeks ago I was boasting of Maddy's dedication to the Argos Group and of her inner strength. I ought not to have done that. Such talk is hubris, an invitation to the gods to prove me wrong. And they did."

"Seems you oughta have been knockin'
her
off, not me."

"To what end? She has proved to be a weak reed. And I did not intend you to die."

"You said that before. But you programmed one of the new rolfes on the way to Sky City with a deadly bit of code, tuned just for me."

"Expecting, exactly as proved to be the case, that you would be able to look after yourself."

"Even so. Pretty hostile act toward an employee. Am I bein' dumb, or is it unreasonable to expect me to thank you for the chance at promotion?"

Rolfe shrugged, as much as he could with his constraints. "Are you looking for an apology? I will not offer one. You are here. You are unharmed. We are talking of future opportunities. You have no cause for complaint."

"Yeah. But you know, Gordy, you always talk formal when you're thinkin' hard. An' you're bein' formal now. So I better be thinkin', too. Can you gimme a minute?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"Guess not." Seth eased himself off the workbench and wandered around the chamber, examining communications equipment and controls. He spent a long time at the door to the habitat, apparently studying its design. Finally he wandered back.

"Seems like it ought to be tit for tat. You say you weren't tryin' to kill me. You were just playing a little game, testin' me out to see if I'm as smart as I'm s'posed to be. All right. But what about
you
? Are you as smart as
you're
supposed to be? If not, then
I'm
the one bein' cheated. If I had to pass a little test, you oughta do the same."

"Obviously I cannot be expected to agree with you. At the same time, I cannot deny the validity of your logic."

"Couldn't have put it better myself. So here's what we do." Seth pointed to the wall and the green jungle beyond. "I took a look out there earlier, and it's full of nasties. Mebbe they're all your sweethearts, but for me it's like Grandma: What big teeth you got."

"You are referring to the minisaurs."

"If that's what you call 'em. They didn't look much mini to me. They were quiet durin' the day, so I assume they're night feeders. I don't know how strong they are, but I'd guess plenty. If that door was open a few hours from now, an' they felt peckish, a man would have lotsa trouble keepin' 'em out."

"The door to the jungle habitat is always locked at night."

"That don't surprise me none. But tonight it won't be. I'm gonna smash the mechanical lock, an' fix the electronic one so it don't work, either. That door will stay open. Then I'm gonna bollix your communications equipment so you can't call for help from outside. I'm gonna take away anything that looks like it might be a weapon. An' I guess I'll take away the rolfes, too, even though they look busted. Then I'll leave by the hatch in the middle there, an' lock it from below so you can't get out that way." Seth came to Rolfe's side and examined the tapes. "Tight, but not too tight. My bet is you'll be free an hour after I'm gone. Then you can look for another way out, or find a way to stop the nasties gettin' at you while you work on the hatch, or anythin' else you feel like. How you spend your time is up to you. Think of this as your own little test—a lot easier than the one you gave me."

"You can't do this, Seth. It would take days to open the hatch from this side when it's locked below. I designed it that way. You would be leaving me to certain death."

"Would I? There's food here, there's water, there's tools. You're a smart man, a genius with electronic equipment." Seth returned to perch on the workbench and scrutinize Gordy Rolfe. He shook his head. "But I'm missin' somethin'. You're not sweatin', an' you're not screamin'."

"I refuse to scream and shout. I am not a coward."

"I believe that. I guess I didn't expect you would. But you should be thinkin' an' arguin' an' tryin' to talk me out of it, an' you're not doin' that, either. You got some hidden card, haven't you?"

"How could I have a hidden card? You've blocked the exits, you say you'll destroy my communications equipment, you'll leave me without weapons. Seth, you can't do this. You've seen the minisaurs. Any one of them can tear a human apart—and they hunt in teams."

"Save your breath, Gordy. I still say you got somethin' up your sleeve, though I can't guess what. But I'm not gonna complain. I had somethin' goin' for me that
you
didn't know about when your tin buddy come in to clobber me. So I figure we'll be even-steven."

Seth again stood up. "No more chitchat. I got work to do, an' I don't want to be here all night. Neither do you. While I'm busy, think how you'll get outa that tape."

He picked up two of the rolfes and tossed them toward the open hatch. They clattered away down the spiral staircase. "I'll wrap you a teeny bit more before I leave, so by the time you're free I'll be long gone. When you get outa here—assuming you do—call me. We can talk about my great future in the Argos Group."

* * *

First Gordy tried his teeth. Two minutes of chewing and tugging told him that would not work. The tape had a tough fiber substrate, and it called for something much sharper than human incisors.

His padded chair was not on casters, but by jerking backward and forward he could make the legs slide an inch or two each time along the smooth floor.

The workbench would be useless. Seth's definition of a weapon was a liberal one, and every saw, chisel, screwdriver, and knife edge had vanished down the spiral stair. Gordy humped his way slowly toward the kitchen. By the time he reached it, the overhead lights were dimming in concert with approaching dusk, far above the habitat. In an increasing gloom Gordy painfully turned the chair so that he could reach sideways with his right hand and pull open a kitchen drawer. No knives were left there, but he saw a vegetable scraper.

The scraper was at the back of the drawer, too far away for him to reach it. He pulled the drawer out as far as he could, then pushed it sharply in again. When he eased the drawer open, the scraper had jerked a couple of inches closer to the front.

Four more openings and rapid closings, and he had it. The scraper was an open-ended metal box, with metal corrugations of different roughness on each of the four sides. Gordy turned it by the handle on one end, very slowly and carefully. He had to work one-handed, and if he dropped it, there was no way to pick it up.

The side of roughest texture was the most promising. It was covered with a grid of sharp-sided holes, each about a centimeter across. The edges of the holes would cut into the binding tape—if only he could find a way to apply them. He measured distances by eye. If he held the scraper in his right hand, it would not reach across far enough to work on the tape that bound his left forearm to the chair.

That left few options. Gordy leaned down and took the handle of the scraper in his mouth. By moving his head he could pass its sharp edges over the tape on his right hand, but he could not get enough downward force to do useful cutting. He pushed the scraper down between his bound forearm and the kitchen counter, and used the limited sideways movement available to his arm to create the pressure he needed. When he raised his head, the sharp edges of the scraper cut into the tape. They also cut his arm. It was a painful quarter hour, pausing often to rest his jaw and neck, before the first strands broke. By that time drops of blood were dripping to the kitchen floor. It was also darker—too dim to see anything beyond the wall leading to the habitat.

Fifteen more minutes, and he had enough freedom of movement to reach a tape end with his fingers. Right hand, then left hand. With both hands loose, his legs took no more than another minute.

Too many things to do, and all at once. He scuttled across the dark chamber to the open door leading to the habitat. He pushed it closed. He couldn't lock it, but he could make a barricade. Workbench, chairs, bed, kitchen drawers, small refrigerator, useless communications terminal, old bicycle—they all went against the door. It would take substantial force to move them.

He hurried to the middle of the chamber and gave the floor hatch one quick shake. His comment to Seth, that it would take days to open when it was locked from the other side, was completely accurate. Seth had left no loophole there. The hatch, by careful design, would not move a millimeter.

Gordy ran back across the chamber. He had piled every loose object in the room in front of the habitat door, with one exception. Now he knelt down by the ancient radio, the one that he joked had been used by Noah for ship-to-shore communication. He took hold of the set, with its carved walnut cabinet, black Bakelite knobs, and speaker cover of woven brown fabric. A hard tug, and the entire front face came free. Nestled inside, hidden among the antique tubes and condensers, was a box of dull gray plastic about four inches long.

He carefully lifted the set out and pressed an indented black circle on its side. A row of tiny red lights began to glow on one end. At the same moment a noise came from the door leading to the habitat. Something was pushing against the other side. Pushing gently, tentatively. Gordy heard a snuffle, the sniff of large nostrils testing the air.

His hands were no longer bleeding, but in his hurry he had not bothered to wash them or bind them. There must be drops of blood scattered in many places across the chamber floor.

Gordy retreated to the far side of the room, clutching the gray plastic box to his thin chest. It was time—past time—to play his hidden hole card.

* * *

Nick Lopez had chosen to remain in New Rio during the blip storm, but he had taken the sensible precaution of observing it from a suite of rooms two thousand feet belowground. Unlike Gordy Rolfe, however, he had no real taste for subterranean life. As soon as it was safe to do so he headed back to the surface and went to the headquarters building of the World Protection Federation.

Today, that name seemed a mockery. The tall pyramid of glass and white limestone had not been able to protect even itself. It stood, apparently intact, in another of this year's endless series of driving rainstorms, but as Nick approached he saw millions of small black pock-marks marring the clear lines of walls and roof.

He went inside and felt water dripping onto his head. He looked up. The particle bundles had slanted in from the south and east, creating holes all through the solid stone walls. He looked down. Apparently the good news was that the particle clusters had still possessed ample energy to penetrate the floor. Instead of pooling there, the rainwater was quietly making its way down to lower levels.

How many levels? Nick didn't know, but suddenly two thousand feet no longer felt like such a safe depth. He walked across the wet floor, through the great open plaza with its now-riddled marble mosaics, and on past the inner atrium to the escalators. Those were working—an impressively rapid repair job. Uniformed men and women appeared from nowhere, watching for his reaction. He nodded approvingly to everyone he passed, adding a personal comment to most of them. "I said we'd see it through, Miguel, and we did."

"Nice work, Flora, I see you kept things going while I was gone."

"Don't worry about the water, Josie"—this to a woman ineffectively dabbing at the floor with a sodden mop—"it will dry out as soon as the rain stops."

His private office was a disaster.
No, a mess. Save
disaster
for when you really need it.
Wet floor, wet walls, wet desktop. Someone had tried to dry the chair seats, but water was still dripping in from above. Nick sat down. His pants seat would dry out, too, as soon as the rain stopped. He called for a readout of waiting messages and mentally assigned them as they appeared to his three standard categories: ignore, assign, answer.

There was one surprise: Celine Tanaka was on her way here, to this building. She had flown low-orbital from Washington, on her way to Tierra del Fuego. Nick noted who was down there: the remnants of fourteen planeloads of American lunatics who had flown in for the particle storm. He automatically thought media opportunity. Celine would be shown talking with the survivors, and she would make some points relevant to her own agenda. Politics was alive and well.

But why was she stopping
here,
in New Rio? This was far off the great-circle route from Washington to Tierra del Fuego. If it was a question of suitable facilities, a low-orbital landing-and-takeoff facility existed at Punta Arenas, spitting distance across the strait from Celine's destination.

The red handset on his desk began to blink. Nick glared at it. The dedicated private line. Its buzz was loud and insistent. Damn Gordy Rolfe, he always thought his business was more important than anyone else's. Nick called down to make sure that Celine would be brought to him the moment she arrived, then picked up the set. Infuriatingly, at the very moment he placed it to his ear the connection went dead.

He could try to call back—but now his main line was active. "Yes?"

"President Tanaka is on the way up to see you."

"Good. Bring her right in." He had no idea what she wanted, but he liked Celine. She was one of the world's few rational people.

Whereas Gordy Rolfe definitely wasn't. Gordy Rolfe was an arrogant, obsessive little shit. Gordy could wait.

* * *

The habitat lighting mimicked surface conditions, a thousand feet above. Now it was night. Gordy could turn on artificial lights anytime he chose, but for the moment he held that in reserve. Sudden brightness
might
scare away nocturnal hunters, but it was a big might for minisaurs who had caught a whiff of blood. Just as likely, it would attract interest.