I had never told the girls of my irrational fear of heights. They would expect my immediate presence and assistance. I donned coat and hat and left the castle by the scullery entrance on the seaward side. Otranto Castle is thick-walled and solid, and when I stepped from its sheltering bulk I realized for the first time the severity of the weather. A strong westerly was blowing, driving sheets of rain at me horizontally. As I walked west it was almost impossible to see where I was going.
That was, I suspect, the only thing that allowed me to walk as far as I did. I knew that ahead stood the three-hundred-foot headland with its sheer drop to the waters of the Atlantic. I told myself that it was not yet close; I had a long way to go before I got to the edge.
In certain areas, however, I lack the power of self-deception. I came to a point where, try as I might, I could not force my legs to carry me forward. I could hear the wind, howling as it breasted the cliff after its three-thousand-mile journey across the open Atlantic. I could smell brine and seaweed. I struggled to take another step, failed, and sank down on the sodden turf. It took a supreme effort even to look forward. I peered into the driving rain and saw my darlings, a tight cluster of them, perilously close to the edge of the precipice. They were perhaps two hundred yards away, and I could not discern what they were doing.
I stood up, resolved to take one more step, and again sank to the ground. My thoughts, like my legs, lost the power to move. An endless interval passed before I heard Bridget’s voice.
“We got ’em,” she said cheerfully. “Hauled ’em up one at a time on the rope. They’d been bird-nesting, the idiots. They ought to have had more sense in this weather.”
I recalled the cluster of girls I had seen at work. “You all pulled? That’s what I saw you doing?”
“All except Paula and Amity. They’ve started their period and they’re having cramps.” Bridget reached out. “Here, let me give you a hand. You came quite a long way.”
She is perhaps the strongest of all my darlings. She reached out and hoisted me easily to my feet.
I felt a great weariness. “I’m sorry. You don’t know this, but I have a real problem with heights.”
She stared at me. “Of course we know you can’t stand heights. We’ve all known that for years.”
I was saved from a reply by the arrival of the other girls in a great chattering throng. Dawn, Willa, and Beth were loudly defensive, insisting that they could have easily climbed back up the cliff by themselves anytime they wanted to. The others complained about being dragged out into the rain to save a set of senseless dummies.
I walked along in the middle of them. No one spoke to me, and I spoke to no one. But I noticed that they all watched me closely until we were safely inside the castle.
“Hot drinks all round, I think,” Paula said. And then to me, “You didn’t call GSARS, did you?”
“I did not.”
“Good. I bet they’d have made us all fill out their stupid reports. None of us wanted that. You go on into your study. One of us will bring your drink.”
She was humoring me. She knew about GSARS, which I had not realized. Gloria had insisted that I put on my coat before I left the castle. Bridget had kindly told me that I had come “quite a long way” toward the cliff. Yes, they indeed knew of my terror of heights.
These were my darlings, sheltered from reality all of their short lives. I wondered, what else did they know?
It is late on the evening of the same day.
When the excitement of the rescue at last died down I felt infinitely weary. My brain felt as though it was simply ticking over, barely able to keep my vital functions in operation. I lay back in my favorite chair and thought about Beth, Dawn, and Willa, and of the Global Search-And-Rescue System that I had chosen not to use.
The modern search-and-rescue system is a direct descendant of one introduced almost a hundred years ago. In its original form, a constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit picked up signals sent out by stranded travelers or others in distress on land or sea. By analyzing frequency shifts and travel times, the location of the emitted signal could be determined and a rescue party dispatched. The old system was a passive one — the spacecraft flew overhead and listened for a signal.
Suppose, however, that the person in trouble could not send a distress signal because they lacked the necessary equipment, or because that equipment had been damaged. With the original system, such a person could not be located.
The modern version of search-and-rescue came into worldwide use twenty years before the supernova {it languished, not surprisingly, for ten years after Alpha C, when all low-orbit satellites ceased to operate). Rather than a passive system, requiring that a distress signal be sent out, today’s is an active one. The satellites, sweeping around the Earth, send out tuned signals of their own. These are designed to stimulate a response from a human body — a specific human body. The return signal indicates the exact location of that body. It is no longer necessary to carry a transmitter in order to use the Global Search-and-Rescue System.
Suddenly I was wide awake. Argument by analogy can be dangerous, but it can also be fruitful. In our quest to catch the Sky City murderer, Seth and I had so far acted passively. We were the equivalent of the old search-and-rescue system. Like it, we could not succeed unless a signal was transmitted: The killer must initiate an unprompted action.
That was not about to happen. Our murderer did not need to kill again and would do nothing.
Passive procedure would not suffice. Like the modern search-and-rescue operation, we had to move to an active approach. We must generate a signal able to force a reaction. The murderer must be made to respond to a stimulus created by us.
I put on the RV helmet and called Seth Parsigian. At last I had something that could fairly be termed an emergency.
He was wearing the hidden earphone, and answered at once with, “This better be good, Doc. I’ve been digging into Sky City operations, lookin’ for odd stuff that might point to the killer.”
“Did you discover anything?”
“No.” His voice seemed to have an added delay. Sky City was on the move outward from Earth. “But I’m finding somethin’ else that’s interestin’ in the data records.”
“Events relevant to the Sky City murders?”
“If they are, I don’t see how.”
“Then they can wait. I know of a way to flush our murderer out of hiding.”
I described my thoughts on active versus passive procedures, and I made my proposal.
Seth was silent for a long time. I wished I could see his face, but apparently he was not in his room. I was offered the usual annoying view of an empty apartment. The RV jacket must be hanging in its usual position on the wall.
“You’re makin’ some awful big assumptions,” he said at last. “Yeah, Doris Wu’s body is still missing. But how do you know it was chucked out into space?”
“It’s been over six months since she vanished.”
“It was close to that for Lucille DeNorville, and she still turned up.”
“I have explained why it was necessary for the murderer that Lucille’s body not be permanently lost. That argument does not apply to Doris Wu. And remember where Doris disappeared: level hundred, at the Sky City perimeter. You yourself offered the suggestion that she had been murdered and dropped out into space. Dump her outside, you said, and centrifugal force would carry her out and away. And you commented that would be pretty risky if any evidence had been left on her.”
“We got no reason to think it was.”
“I doubt very much that the murderer was so careless. But we are operating here at the level of doubt and psychology, not proven fact. Suppose that you were the murderer. You feel somewhat secure, comfortable in the knowledge that months have passed without threat of discovery. Now comes the news: The body of one of your victims has been found out in space. All the others are accounted for, so this is the last possible source of danger to you. Would you not feel an intense urge to confirm that no physical evidence links you to that newly discovered body?”