“I think this will be satisfactory,” I said. “My surroundings are enough to anchor me in this reality, and I can see yours well enough to make my own observations. Select some feature below you.”

“The ship canal. Over on the left.”

“I see it. Four vessels are visible. I am not able to make out their types.”

“Me neither. Four ships is right. But you can do somethin’ I won’t be able to do once I’m up at Sky City. Watch this.”

I took no action, but the canal expanded suddenly in my field of view. One of the ships at the center of the scene sprang into vivid detail. I could see individual funnels and masts and hatches, even individual human figures standing on the deck.

“How are you able to do that?”

“Beats me, but I’ll tell you what I was told. This jacket I’m wearin’ has sensors all over it. They can work together, an’ when they do it’s like having a telescope with a mirror two feet across. You got a control for it on the side of your hand unit. When you turn it on you’ll see a lot more detail of what I’m lookin’ at than I can. Try it for yourself.”

“I will. But not now.” As Seth was speaking I had become aware that the gray image representing my own local scene was changing. The clean-edged outline of the walls had become broken and uneven. “I must go. You can call me later.”

“I’ll do that-from Sky City.”

It was, I suspect, intended to keep me from breaking contact. If that was Seth’s objective, it failed. I decreased the remotely viewed component to zero, and at once saw what I already suspected. My study was crowded. Every one of the girls was there.

I spoke to Paula, whom the others through some unidentifiable instinct recognized as their senior. “Would you care to explain your presence?” I said. “This is not some form of entertainment, devised for your pleasure. As I told Crystal and Lucy-Mary, I am engaged in an important meeting.”

“I’m very sorry.” Paula’s face said she was no such thing. “It’s just that Lucy-Mary and Crystal told us you were-well, we all wanted to see you.”

“Indeed?” I stood up and walked into their midst. As always, their beauty rendered me breathless-but not speechless. “You see me. Here I am. Have I, then, become so much an object of ridicule that the very sight of me-”

I stopped. I had caught sight of myself in the long mirror next to the mantelpiece. The bottom of the RV helmet formed a seamless match to my own dark shirt. Tall, forbidding, with a swollen, goggle-eyed, hideous head, I had become a chimera, a lusus naturae, enough to strike terror into any heart. But not, apparently, those of my darlings. They stared at me with interest.

I pulled off the RV helmet. At the sight of my frowning face every girl, from tall and mature Bridget to little golden-haired Victoria, shrieked, turned, and ran out of the room.

It was done on purpose, planned long before they ever entered. I went back to sit at my desk. It was nice to know that my young wards were developing that most important of all senses, the sense of humor; but at the moment I had serious issues to ponder.

Seth Parsigian was relying on me to perform miracles. He would head off for Sky City, move around at my bidding, return images to Earth, and blithely wait for me to do-what?

To integrate new material from Sky City with the existing evidence, apply my own unique understanding of the mind of a serial killer, point a spectral finger at some individual, and say, “That’s the one.”

It would not happen. The pattern of deaths remained totally baffling, the brain behind the killings unseen and alien. There was no hint of compulsion, no suggestion of the recurring need that enforced its schedule for murder.

As I have already remarked, the savage mutilation of the Sky City bodies disgusted me. I had not touched sexually, nor would I ever touch, my victims. I had saved them, from poverty and misery, from hunger and dirt, from abusive parents, from sexual assault, from the degradation and drugs and dark despair that would otherwise have been their lot. They were rising again to a place where each could fulfill her own high potential.

The Sky City murderer and I had nothing in common.

As I sat alone in my darkened study, that thought led me to another. In my discussions with Seth I had already alluded to the famous resident of 221B Baker Street, London. Now I recalled one of his most celebrated cases, in which Sherlock Holmes remarked on the curious behavior of the dog in the night. When asked what the dog had done in the night, he answered that it had done nothing. He therefore deduced that the midnight visitor must be someone already known to the dog, otherwise the animal would have barked. Absence of evidence became evidence.

Could I use what I knew-what I alone knew-to guide me to a similar insight?

Question: What did the Sky City killer and I have in common? Answer: We seemed to have nothing in common. That had implications. My task was to deduce what they were.

It took a long time. When the idea finally came, it took the form of another question. The Sky City murders were savage, brutal, random, committed in fits of insane rage. What could possibly be worse than the slaughter of a dozen innocents by a sex-crazed, blood-obsessed lunatic?

It may be argued that my own flawed makeup leads me to see the dark side of humanity. But I can think of something worse.

11

Gordy Rolfe gave the order to Maddy Wheatstone with his usual brutal simplicity: “John Hyslop isn’t your main priority, he’s your only priority. Until I say different, where he goes, you go.”

Maddy sat with Gordy at the top of The Flaunt in Rolfe’s office, a three-dimensional labyrinth of glass, staircases, and mirrors that gave a visitor the sensation of inhabiting one of Maurits Escher’s gravity-disdaining lithographs. The trompe l’oeil interior and vertiginous outside view were part of Rolfe’s techniques for maintaining psychological dominance, and Maddy was careful to exhibit a slight edginess. In fact, she preferred visits here to their occasional meetings in the green underground gloom of the Virginia habitat.

“If he’s in a technical session, you’re in it, too.” Rolfe drove the point in farther. “You eat with him, you drink with him, and you travel everywhere with him. If he tells you he has to take a leak, you’re right there in the toilet watching him do it. If he takes somebody to bed, you squeeze in between the two of ’em. You do whatever you have to do, without limits. Compris?”

Not for the first time, Maddy wanted to tell Gordy he could shove it. He loved to challenge people, to see just how far they could be pushed. So far Maddy had given as good as she got. Thereby proving that she was as tough as he was? Or proving that she was a dumb masochist who didn’t have the sense to come in out of the thunderstorm?

“Don’t worry, Gordy. I’ll be on him tighter than your tiny ass.”

It was the right answer, the answer of an ambitious and confident woman. He grinned and said, “Never.” But he added, “You got my point, so get out of here. And don’t tell anybody outside this room you speak to me like that, or it’s your ass that’ll be in the shop for repairs.”

That had been yesterday, at the tip of the four-thousand-foot needle The Flaunt. Now, following instructions, Maddy was leaving Earth again. If John Hyslop felt surprise when she said she wanted to come with him to one of his wrap-up sessions with the people who would be taking over his duties, he didn’t show it. He leaned back in his seat as the shuttle completed its ascent phase, and he sat silent. He was frowning slightly.

Maddy made her inventory of the other nine passengers. She recognized four of them. The head of LMB Industries — that made sense, they had one of the three big construction contracts. The shield could not really be said to have a skeleton, but the thin cables produced and installed by LMB, and running from Cusp Station all the way to Cone End, were the closest thing to it.