“You’ll do,” he said. “Don’t worry if you think and say strange things. That’s standard drug side effects.”

Maddy risked a tiny nod of her head. No spinning of the room, no convulsive gag reflex. “I can manage. You don’t have to worry.”

You don’t have to worry. The person who needs to worry is me. I’m supposed to stick tight to John Hyslop, and he’s going off for a meeting out on the shield. Am I well enough to go with him? I don’t think so. But that isn’t even an issue. I have to be well enough. Or I must prevent him from going until I feel better.

“You do whatever you have to do.” Thanks, Gordy. I know the Argos Group rules.

The rules, the sacred rules. The rules were wonderful. They told you exactly what to do at all times.

Of course, the rules made no allowance for sickness or weariness. You probably had to die to get off the hook, and even that wouldn’t satisfy Gordy Rolfe. Worst of all, though the rules said what you had to do, they offered no advice at all on how to do it.

12

John had relinquished his hold on her waist, but he still guided her with a hand on one forearm. He could not have been more proper, yet she could feel goose bumps rising under his fingers. As he led her out of Weinstein’s office — a neat, pink-walled room packed with medical equipment that she had no recollection of entering — Maddy felt spectacularly strange and light-headed. She struggled for self-control. You have a job to do. You’ve got to sticky with John Hyslop, or make him sticky with you.

She halted, so that John was forced to turn and face her. “Five minutes ago I didn’t think I’d ever feel like eating again. Now I’m all of a sudden starving. Your doctor friend said you could feed me. Will you do it?”

“Of course.”

“Soon?”

“Right away. Can you move by yourself, or do you need my help?”

“I don’t know. If you could . . .”

She held out her hand, letting it flop limply at the wrist. Isn’t that what poor weak women are supposed to do? Just as well there’s no one from the Argos Group to see this. Maddy Wheatstone — rising star, hard as diamond, cold as Charon, never sick, never dependent — clinging for support like a delicate flower.

You do whatever you have to do. John Hyslop didn’t even seem suspicious. He took her by the elbow and carefully walked her to a drop chute. He halted at the edge.

“We’ll be in free fall in the chute, but only for a few seconds. Can you stand that?”

Maddy nodded. The head movement was another informal test of her balance centers, and it went fine. All sense of vertigo had gone. In its place she felt a delicious, sensual languor. Was it low gravity that produced the sense of moving deep in warm water, or was it Weinstein’s drug?

She stepped forward into the open space of the drop chute. The free-fall ride down added a new sensation. She felt hot and tingling in the pit of her belly, a warmth as good as the afterglow of the best sex ever.

Len Strahlig had been — how long ago? More than six months. And he had definitely not been the best sex ever, as well as being an empty-headed scumball liar. But he had talked a great line, just as a salesman was supposed to. The very opposite of John Hyslop. John was so serious and awkward and tongue-tied except about his work. How would he be if he could relax for once and obey his emotions instead of his inhibitions?

The return of weight brought Maddy out of her budding fantasy. She realized that her eyes were closed, and reluctantly opened them. When you began to have erotic thoughts about a hard-line engineer who was also your primary job assignment, something was long overdue.

Maddy felt heavier, which meant that they had dropped a long way from the central axis. And yet — she took a couple of steps — the floating sensation was still there.

The drug. It had to be the drug.

A voice at the base of her brain whispered, Be careful! Argos Group training forbade the use of drugs, not for any moral reasons but because they warped business judgment. The warning was intended to apply mainly to dope and fizzes, but Weinstein had mentioned that the Asfanil shot might produce the same effects.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. She had been told that it would be good if she could sleep, except that she had to stay with John Hyslop. Both of those were possible only if she slept with him. Maddy took a deep breath. She had to get herself under control. She ought not have been thinking of sex at all at a time like this. You were permitted, even encouraged, to have sex with your assignment when that came as a necessary part of the job. But you never, under any circumstances, became emotionally involved. Thanks to the Asfanil, she felt more than involved; in her present mood she was likely to say or do anything.

Fortunately, she was no longer the focus of John Hyslop’s attention. The drop chute had delivered them into the middle of the biggest room that she had ever seen on Sky City. Looking forward, along what had to be the main city axis, she saw thirty meters of floor before it reached a flat blue vertical surface. The wall behind was the same distance away. On the other two sides the floor curved up through ninety degrees to become the walls.

This had to be one of the big communal halls of Sky City, a combined social meeting place and restaurant. Scores of tables were scattered randomly on the smooth white floor. They and the one-piece chairs were all light and moveable. Small groups, mostly between two and six people, sat eating and chatting around the tables. Low-level rolfes scuttled unobtrusively between the tables, clearing and cleaning.

Everyone, it seemed, knew John Hyslop. Every few steps he paused to exchange a few words with a person or a group. Sometimes it was a question, such as how a repaired life-support subsystem on Sky City was performing. Sometimes the exchange concerned the airy web of the space shield. Never, Maddy noticed, did anyone ask or offer anything personal. No wife or kid talk, no flirting, no social chat. It was all microprocessors, monofilament strengths, q-bit rates, rolfe performance, and shield capabilities.

Geeks, she decided. Sober, serious engineers, dedicated and hardworking, the purest geek form in the universe.

And what did they think of her? Hard to tell. She was eyed with a good deal of curiosity, but no one asked who she was or hinted to John that he might provide an introduction.

So to hell with them. Except for John. He was a major challenge. There was real passion in him — you heard it when he spoke of aerospikes and dynamic tests. How could you transfer that to the human domain? Most interesting of all, how could you transfer that to you ?

She examined the set of his shoulders and the straight line of his back. She was listening, but hardly listening, to a discussion of the installation of smart strain gauges on extended fullerene members under extreme stress, when the thin, moon-faced man talking to John brought her awake by saying, “You know, you ought to talk to Lauren. She was around here just a while back, asking if anyone had seen you. She says she really has to meet with you.”

At last, a personal remark! Maddy’s muddled brain was asking, Who’s Lauren? Old girlfriend, present girlfriend? Then she remembered where she had heard the name before. It was nothing personal at all. Lauren was Lauren Stansfield, the woman who would take over John Hyslop’s duties.

No, get it right. Half his duties, the ones connected with Sky City. Someone else, a man — name? Don’t recall — would be responsible for engineering work on the shield itself.

The voice inside Maddy’s head was busy. If people will just go on talking to John, so I don’t have to talk anymore at all, maybe I can avoid making a total fool of myself . . .