I do not know. Not yet. But I do know this: No passive procedure will work. Any successful approach must take the initiative.

The conversation with Seth took only half an hour, but by the time I went to my bedroom the clock on the dresser showed almost four. After a busy day — and night — l had earned, one might think, a little sleep. However, at fifty-five degrees north the late-July sunrise already lightened the sky. Long experience has taught me that I cannot sleep during daylight hours.

I went back to the kitchen, made strong coffee, and sat down at the long butcher-block table to record the events of the past twenty-four hours. I was very tired, and my mind interspersed memories of the pleasant birthday party with thoughts of the Sky City murders. Regrettably, I achieved no insights comparable with those of the great Henri Poincare after partaking of black coffee. However, one useful conclusion did emerge.

During the next few weeks, unprecedented events would be taking place on Sky City as it flew far out from Earth to take its position close to Cusp Station. It was possible that those same events would provide an unprecedented opportunity to catch our killer.

I had been patient in restoring my darlings, waiting many years before I began their cloning. Seth and I could not wait so long, but we, too, must be patient — and always ready to act.

20

It took Nick Lopez three tries before Celine was persuaded.

“You don’t have to like the son of a bitch,” he said. “Hell, I don’t like him myself. But he’s the brains behind the rolfe designs, and all the related patents are his.”

“I don’t deny that.” Celine felt besieged. She had tried to begin a normal day of work, but urgent messages from Lopez had popped up everywhere until finally she had agreed to meet with him in the Oval Office. It was almost ten o’clock, she had yet to make her first planned meeting, and her schedule was in tatters. “I know how valuable the rolfes are for space work, but we already have a slew of them in Sky City and on the shield. If Rolfe says he’s pulling them out of there, we’ll simply invoke emergency powers and say no.”

“That’s not the problem.” Lopez pulled a sheaf of papers from his case and brandished them at Celine. “These are orders from Sky City for additional rolfes with special new capabilities. We know that Gordy Rolfe can provide the machines — he has advertised them, even boasted about them. We’d like to see them shipped up as soon as possible, but without Rolfe’s cooperation it won’t happen. He laughs and says the changes are trivial; but no one on my staff or on Sky City knows how to make them.”

“Have you asked him to cooperate?”

“Of course. I told him about Wilmer Oldfield and Star Vjansander’s work, and I stressed the urgency of the new schedule. He says it’s all nonsense. He’s heard all the panic talk from me before, and he doesn’t believe there’s going to be a different form of particle storm. Even if there is, he says, he’ll be safe.”

“Probably true. He’ll hide underground. But I don’t see how I’ll be any better at talking Rolfe into helping us than you’ve been.”

“He likes you.” Lopez was pouring on the charm. Celine could feel the force of his personality washing over her like a relaxing tide.

“Nick, that’s rubbish. I don’t think Gordy Rolfe likes anyone.”

“He says he’s willing to meet with you. That’s better than I could do.”

“You tried?”

“I called him again yesterday. He told me to go away and stick my head up my ass.”

“That’s not very nice. On the other hand, Gordy Rolfe told one of my staff, less than a month ago, that I was a raddled old trollop who’d be more at home in the whorehouse than the White House. Likes me? Nick, you’ll have to do better than that.”

“Well, he did agree to meet with you.”

“Why?”

“Because he admires you. You’re probably the one woman in the world—”

“Nick! Gordy Rolfe doesn’t admire any woman. He tolerates a few, but I’m not one of them.”

He sagged back in his suit and ran a hand through his bushy gray hair. His frown of defeat was more friendly and disarming than the average smile. “All right. So he doesn’t admire you. I have no idea what that twisted little runt thinks of you. My best guess, he says he’ll meet with you because he thinks there’s a chance he’ll be able to humiliate you. Me, he’s already humiliated.”

“Thank you, Nick. At last. That, I can accept. Now tell me how I’m supposed to talk Gordy Rolfe into coughing up the rolfes that we need on Sky City.”

“He needs your help. You’ve got something he wants.”

“Remind me.”

“Well, according to what I’ve heard — only rumor, of course . . .” Lopez was gazing down and sideways, as though fascinated by the old wicker wastepaper basket beside Celine’s desk. “According to rumor, you promised you’d help the Argos Group with a license for a new launch facility on U.S. territory, off the coast of Florida.”

“How the hell did you learn that? What I said was unofficial, and it wasn’t to go outside this office.”

“Oh, you know how it is.” A shrug of massive shoulders. “Word about these things gets out . . .”

“If you see Auden Travis before I do, tell him to expect to be sent up in flames. Do you know who I said that to about the license?”

“A Miss Maddy Wheatstone. Or so I have been told. But Gordy’s having doubts about her. He’s having doubts about everybody these days. I think he’s really losing it. But that’s to our advantage. You go to see him, you tell him that you promised nothing to anybody, and you negotiate.”

“A bit hard on Maddy.”

“Could be. These days, times are hard all over. She’s a big girl, she’ll get by. I’ll try to do her a favor, if that’s what it takes to get you to Gordy.”

“We’ll put that on hold.” Celine was examining her calendar. “Today, I suppose?”

“You know how urgent this is.”

“Nick, everything is urgent. Everything has been urgent for twenty-seven years. You reach the point where crisis is so much the normal operating condition that you can’t respond to it.”

“If Oldfield and Vjansander are right, we have less than thirty days.”

“Don’t lecture me, Nick. I’m quite capable of doing that to myself.” Celine was examining a list and crossing items off it. “I have to see Milton Glover.”

She noticed Nick’s tiny grimace at the name. “I can’t stand the man, either,” she went on, “but I’ve slipped his appointment every day for two weeks and he’s outside waiting. Jahangir Hekmat, too — he’s the head of the Socinists. They believe that God is a still-evolving entity. I owe them a meeting as a payback for a political favor.”

“I could try my hand with Hekmat if you like. I have some sympathy with the idea of an evolving deity — certainly the gods we’ve had in the past haven’t done too well by us. Why are they called Socinists?”

“They claim to be followers of a sixteenth-century theologian, Sozzini, who said that God wasn’t omnipotent and omniscient. God is still learning and growing. But let me warn you, today’s Socinists believe that the Alpha Centauri supernova is part of the evolving consciousness of the universe, and they say we ought not to defend ourselves against it.”

“Hekmat should be talking to Wilmer Oldfield. If I understand correctly, he and Astarte Vjansander believe something along the same lines. The gamma pulse and the particle flux didn’t come our way by accident. It all happened by intention.”

“Don’t believe everything Wilmer and Star tell you. When they get going they can be as crazy as Hekmat. Anyway, he can’t talk to them. They’re out on Sky City. Their work is too important for me to bring them back here.” Celine stabbed her pencil at the page and viciously crossed out another line. “I sometimes wish I were out there, too. It’s where the real action is.”