John trailed off. He had run down, and at a most unedifying point.

“It is there. Inside you. I knew it.” Maddy was sitting upright, her blue eyes so intense that he burned up in their gaze. She went on, incomprehensibly, “It wasn’t the body, you know. I could have stood that. It was her face and hair. She looked so much like Meg.”

Was she talking to him? Did she even know that he was there?

He stared at her hopelessly, until suddenly she reached out and gripped his arm.

“It was different for me.” She spoke dreamily, like a woman in a trance. “My family seemed so lucky. We were living in Edmonton when the supernova happened. I was only five, but I remember my reaction. It was annoyance. We lost all the entertainment channels. That, and the electric power went off for a while. Nothing else seemed wrong.”

John had heard the story before, but never from anyone who had been there. Somehow, in an area of Canada about a hundred miles across and centered on Edmonton, all the global changes and violence caused by Alpha C had canceled out. In that eye of the hurricane the puzzled residents heard reports of devastation and disaster everywhere, while their own town and countryside remained untouched.

“My sister Meg was ten years older than me.” Now Maddy was talking rapidly, almost in a whisper. “She was so smart and so talented, everybody in the family said that one day she’d run the country. I thought she was a goddess; she could do absolutely anything. But she wasn’t with us when the power went out. She was on a visit to Calgary. When the AVC of her car failed along with everything else, it ran into a downed power line. The line was still live. When they brought her body back home they told me I couldn’t see her. I really wanted to, and when everybody was asleep I sneaked into her bedroom. I knew the car had hit a power line, and I sort of imagined that she would be all lit up and glowing, like a fairy. It wasn’t like that. Meg was lying on her bed. She had beautiful long blond hair, but the ends of it were black. Burned. Her face wasn’t glowing, the way it should be. It was gray and twisted and blotchy, and her eyes were white and bulging. I remember thinking, it’s not possible, how could someone be burned, the way they’d told me, and have their eyes go white}

“What I hadn’t realized was that my father had been sitting in the room with Meg. He didn’t move for a few seconds when I came in, but then he stood up. I was terrified. I thought it must be Meg’s ghost. When I realized who it was I thought he’d be mad at me because I’d disobeyed him, but he wasn’t like that at all. He came over and put his arms around me. He said, ’I didn’t want you to see Meg, not the way she is. But I was wrong. You have a right to say goodbye to her, Maddy, as much as anyone else.’ He gave me a big hug. ’You’re all I’ve got now,’ he said. ’Make me proud of you. Make Meg proud of you, too.’

“I’ve tried. But I don’t think I did, ever. I never could.”

It was a sad, vulnerable Maddy, one who John hadn’t known existed. When she stopped speaking she folded her hands together in her lap and sat with her eyes lowered. He knew what he ought to do. He should comfort her, put his arms around her and tell her that everything was all right, that she herself was better than all right.

But he couldn’t do it. John sat silent, cursing his ineptitude and inhibitions and insecurity. Maddy Wheatstone was his superior in every way, even when she was at a personal low. Would it be taking advantage of her if he hugged her to him and offered help? And if he did try to comfort her now, how would she feel about it later?

In a strange, dreamlike separation of mind and body, John moved to Maddy’s side. He put his right arm around her shoulders. He couldn’t find words, but he lightly kissed the top of her head. After a moment she leaned against him and stayed there. They sat silent, bodies together, while John’s mind took off in unthinkable directions. It was a moment when anything might happen.

The mood shattered when the door jerked open and Alyssa Sisk came hurrying in.

“I wondered if you’d still be here.” She took no notice of the fact that John was sitting with his arm around Maddy. “You must be going deaf. Didn’t you hear it? There’s a call out for you, John, on the general alert system.”

“About the murder?” With Alyssa’s sudden appearance John’s mind jumped for no reason to the image of Lucille DeNorville’s ravaged corpse, drifting alone for months in that dark, unattended corridor.

“Not the murder, man.” Alyssa sounded impatient. “That’s my business, not yours. Bruno Colombo wants you in his office.”

“Why?”

“How should I know? Whatever it is, do you think he’d announce it to everybody in Sky City? But there’s lots of action everywhere. Rumors of bad news about the particle storm, changes of plans, tighter schedules — as if that were possible.”

John took his arm away from Maddy. He stood up and glanced down at her.

“Don’t worry.” Maddy read his concern. “Go to your meeting. I’ll be all right now, and I’ll see you later. And — thanks, John.”

“I’m sorry we didn’t talk more.”

“We said lots. I didn’t need more talk. I needed what you gave me.”

“Well, then.” He paused, then said uncertainly, “If you’re sure you’re going to be all right . . .”

“I’m all right.”

He nodded and hurried out, and Alyssa turned to Maddy.

“I know you say you don’t need more talk, but there’s some character hanging around outside. He says he needs to talk with you right away.”

“He must have the wrong person. Nobody knows I’m here.”

“You’d better tell him that yourself, because he doesn’t seem to know it. He certainly knows your name. He asked for Maddy Wheatstone. He says he only needs five seconds with you. After that, he says, you’ll be the one wanting to meet with him.”

17

John Hyslop stared around Bruno Colombo’s office and found himself speechless. He was losing count of the number of shocks he had received in the past couple of hours. The latest blow — the wave of the hand from Bruno Colombo, and a dismissive “Go ahead. It’s all yours” — lifted the afternoon away from Sky City and moved it to the realm of the Mad Hatter.

First there had been the horrifying discovery of Lucille DeNorville’s space-dried corpse. Next came the unexpected summons to Bruno Colombo’s office. Third, Goldy Jensen greeted John at the outer vestibule with the savage smile of a black widow spider about to eat her mate. What had he, a mere engineer transferred away from Sky City, done to deserve such a look? Offended Bruno Colombo? But if so, how, when they had not spoken to each other since John’s transfer to the Aten asteroid project? Goldy shook her head when John asked what was going on and ushered him without a word through to Bruno Colombo’s inner sanctum.

If Goldy had some unknown reason to smile, Bruno Colombo apparently did not. His private office was his shrine, an organized and well-ordered perfection. His telcom was discreetly hidden away in a drawer of the long wooden desk, and the desk itself never carried more than a single folder placed in the middle of its nine-foot length. A cut-glass bowl of red roses, fresh every morning from the Sky City hydroponic gardens, always graced its polished top.

Today the roses lay scattered on the floor. The folder was there with them, and the oriental rug on which they sat was soaked with water. The bowl had found a new use. A short black woman dressed in a lurid pink blouse and yellow shorts was crouched on the floor, bending over the ornament, which sat between her legs.

A tall, bald-headed man watched her gloomily. “I warned you,” he said. “But would you listen? Of course not. Are you ready for it now?”

The woman — she appeared to John hardly more than a girl — raised her head and glared up at the man. “Yer can stuff yer pills. I don’t want ’em.”