He was raising a question that Maddy was not equipped to handle. Was he right — was there more going on than she knew about? Gordy Rolfe might again be playing his own game.

Fortunately, John Hyslop didn’t press the point. He went on, “You know, Dr. Colombo isn’t the way you think he is.”

It was an odd non sequitur. Maddy asked, “And what way do I think he is?”

“You think he’s all empty talk. But he used to be an engineer, and a good one.”

“He doesn’t seem to care for that sort of thing now.”

“No. But sometimes, when you think he’s not been listening and has no idea what you are talking about, he comes up with a key insight for an engineering problem or he puts his finger on a fatal design flaw. It’s a terrible waste, doing what he does all day long.”

Maddy had the urge to tell him that it took a good man to defend a boss who would surely never defend him. She wanted to see if a compliment would again produce that boyish look of discomfort. However, before she could speak he put out a hand to steady himself against the wall of the corridor, grunted, and gave a prodigious yawn. Then he blinked at her and said, “I’m sorry, Ms. Wheatstone. We can’t have our meeting now.”

“Call me Maddy.” She frowned. “Are you all right?”

“No.” His words became breathless. “Not all right. I’ve been awake and at work for over forty hours. I either have to lie down or throw up. I’m approaching the end of a second Neirling boost, and I’m going to crash. Soon. Give me twelve hours. Then we can talk.”

Maddy took his arm in hers. “You should have told me sooner. Of course you must have sleep. If you’re on a second boost, you absolutely need sleep.” And not only you. The prospect of twelve hours of rest rose ahead of her like a prospect of paradise. “Come on, let’s get you to where you can lie down in peace. We’ll have plenty of time for our meeting when you wake up.”

The look in his weary gray eyes surprised her. It was gratitude. You didn’t see much of that when you worked for the Argos Group.

She led him away along the corridor. John Hyslop promised to be intriguing to work with — even though he insisted that they didn’t really need him for the Aten asteroid work.

And did they? What other reason could there be for his transfer? She could ask Gordy Rolfe, but he’d take that as a sign of weakness. Better to file the question away in Maddy’s box of minor mysteries, and try to find the answer for herself.

5

From the private diary of Oliver Guest.

A peat fire is like no other: silent, sullen, and slow-burning, red in its hidden heart. Not unlike, to one of morbid imagination, the man seated in front of it.

Seth Parsigian fitted well into an ancient castle of western Ireland; better, perhaps, than I did. Burly, primitive, cross-legged by my broad stone hearth, he made a rather formidable leprechaun. His skimpy black singlet revealed long-healed scars on his chest and neck. His eyes, glittering in the light of fire and wall lamps, were like a snake’s.

“A dozen of ’em, and countin’,” he said. “We can do this any way you like. I have a ton of stuff with me, pictures, descriptions, video reconstructions, locations and murder method, plus ages and background for each girl. What foxes me-an’ not only me, half the security forces an’ probably all the amateur sleuths in the world-is the pattern. There isn’t one. I mean, so far as normal people are concerned, there ain’t. Mebbe you, with your special talent, can make sense of it.”

Of course. Maybe you, Dr. Guest, with your perverse, sick, disgusting, psychotic mind, will realize at once who did it.

“Spare me the doubtful compliments,” I said. “I will certainly read, and I will look, and I will think. I will do all these things-at my leisure. For the moment, I prefer to have your impressions. You were surely engaged on this effort for some time before you decided to seek me out. Tell me what you know, what you deem can be ignored, and what you conjecture. When I feel a need for information, I will interrupt. Surely you have observed some pattern, however faint.”

“Yeah. The pattern is, never the same thing twice. It started on December twenty-fifth, 2052. Myra Skelton went to a Christmas party at a friend’s place on level eighty-eight.”

“Level eighty-eight?”

“Locations on Sky City are named from the central axis. The axis is level zero. The outer edge of the cylinder is level one hundred. Myra Skelton lived with her parents on the eighty-second level, so she didn’t have far to go to her friend’s. Down six levels, and a hundred-meter walk around. She left there at nine at night. But she never made it home. They found her body the next mornin’, stuck in an empty storage room on level eighty-seven.”

“What was her age?” I sat back in my chair with my eyes closed. For the moment I was not attempting logical analysis. I sought only a sensation, a certain feeling, the stir of the small worms creeping up from the base of the brain.

“She was fourteen an’ a half. Actually, more like fourteen years and eight months. She died from a blow to the back of her head. No murder weapon, no suspect, no motive. I got full medical reports. Want to see ’em?”

“Later. Continue.”

“No rape, and no sexual molestation. Of course, I know that don’t prove a thing. In your own case, from all I’ve heard, you never even touched them, before or after—”

I opened my eyes. “At your peril, Seth Parsigian. This truce is fragile enough, without unnecessary provocation.”

“Yeah. Sorry.” He did not look it. “Anyway, she hadn’t been touched. Big mystery, an’ no clues, even though her family’s well connected an’ pulled strings to get high-powered investigators on it. They come up from Earth an’ talked a lot, but they found out zilch. They said, we got us an unknown killer — brilliant — and January seventh, they left.

“January tenth, Tanya Bishop played a game of three-ball on a court up near the axis, where it’s close to zero gee. She pulled a muscle and had to drop out before the game was over. Instead of waiting for the others, she said she was goin’ home to shower and rest her leg. Home was level sixty-six. She never made it. They found her in an airtight tank on level five. Thought at first it was an accidental death-gone in there, fallen asleep, asphyxiated. I know, that sounded like a bunch of crap to me, too. When they took a closer look at her body it turned out she was strangled. Fourteen years and one month old. This time she was naked. There was no intercourse, but there was mutilation after death. Sexual mutilation. Everybody said, we got us a crazy sex killer.”

I nodded. Once again I sat with eyes closed. Fourteen years and eight months, fourteen years and one month; the ages were right.

“On January twenty-sixth,” Seth went on, “Doris Wu disappeared. Age: fifteen years and four months. They never found a body, but everybody assumed she’d been murdered and dropped out into space. Wouldn’t be hard to do-earlier that day she had been on level hundred, right at Sky City perimeter. Dump her outside, and centrifugal force would carry her out and away. Pretty risky if you left any evidence on her, because the outside of Sky City is packed with meteorite sensors and the body should have been seen. It wasn’t. Soon as the disappearance was reported, people made the connection. Sixteen days between Myra Skelton and Tanya Bishop, sixteen days between Tanya Bishop and Doris Wu. Hey, we got us a killer who’s regular as clockwork. We better watch real close come February tenth.

“Except that Cissy Muller was found stabbed to death on January twenty-ninth, only three days after Doris Wu. No sexual interference, though Cissy was more mature-looking than the others. Mature-acting, too. Only fourteen years and three months old, but a real hot number. Experienced. If the killer had just wanted sex, best guess on Sky City is all he’d’ve had to do was ask.