Deadman Switch

Chapter 31

Temperatures the previous night had dipped toward freezing, a sure sign that winter would be arriving in this part of Spall. Even now, four hours after sunrise, the air was still respectably chilly—a fact that clearly weighed upon the minds of the engineers working hard to prepare the new housing area that was being added onto the compound. I watched them as I walked, finding it a little hard to remember the encampment as it had been at the beginning. From a single Pravilo ship and a handful of soft-wall structures, its occupants grudgingly investigating the babblings of a pair of pravdrugged Watchers, it had now become a veritable city of offices, labs, and prebuilt individual houses.

And somewhere in all that influx of money and personnel, I could sense that something had gotten lost. The pure, almost childlike excitement of scientific discovery was all but gone now; in its place was the equally strong but far darker motivation of being part of an important, life/death problem.

Dr. Eisenstadt, though he wouldn't admit it aloud, could feel that loss. Many of the others didn't. For some, bigger and more important and better funded was always the definition of progress.

The house I was looking for was just inside the original security fence, about as far from the main work areas as it was possible to get at the moment. Like all the other houses in the cramped and inadequate space, there wasn't a great deal of land surrounding it; but as I neared the front door I could tell from the faint whiffs of familiar vegetation that there was enough room between house and fence for at least a small garden. The muted sound of metal implements on dirt accompanied the smells, and I changed direction to circle around that way.

Shepherd Adams was on his knees in the middle of a small section of turned dirt, poking with a fork trowel around the roots of three knee-high plants. He looked up as I came around the corner of the house, and for that first unguarded instant his sense was full of unfriendliness, vague bitterness, even betrayal. "Mr. Benedar," he nodded, his voice tightly neutral.

"Shepherd Adams," I nodded back, fighting to hold my ground against the strong feelings radiating from him. "I'm sorry to intrude on your privacy—"

"I have little else these days except privacy," he countered.

There was just a hint of irony in his voice; a chink in the armor he was trying to throw up around himself... "Gives you an idea of what it would be like to be a monk," I offered. Another flicker in his sense— "As you once considered becoming."

He snorted gently, another chunk of the armor coming down. Adams simply wasn't constituted to hold onto grudges. "I'd forgotten how little one's thoughts are one's own in the presence of a Watcher," he sighed. "It's a hard reminder of how open we always are to God."

I looked at him, read the quiet pain there. "I'm sorry," I said softly. "Sorry for... everything."

He favored me with a bittersweet smile, a portion of the anger within him turning back against himself. "You mean for your part in exposing the Halo of God as a lie?"

I flinched at the bluntness. "A mistake, Shepherd Adams. Not a lie."

He grimaced. "Was it? I've spent the last month wondering about that. After all, we both know the Halo of God wouldn't have grown as large or as quickly without the mystical allure we presented—the chance to actually stand here on the very physical manifestation of God's kingdom." He dropped his eyes away from mine. "Who's to say I didn't deliberately blind myself to the inconsistencies in that claim?"

I shook my head. "For whatever it's worth, I looked very hard for signs of perverted ambition when we first met—and Calandra looked even harder. Neither of us found any."

His lip twitched. "Calandra never really trusted us, did she?"

I thought about Calandra's admitted loss of faith. "She has a hard time trusting anyone these days," I told him.

He nodded. "I suppose it comes of being a Watcher living after the darMaupine's fiasco." Lowering his eyes, he tapped one of the plants with his fork trowel. "Know anything about valeer plants, Gilead?" he asked.

The name was vaguely familiar. "They provide one of the spices you use in cooking, don't they?"

He nodded. "I found these growing inside the fence after Dr. Eisenstadt's people decided they didn't need me and buried me out of the way back here. Tricky sort of plant to harvest, actually—something we discovered the first time we tried it." He gestured at five fat leaf-like structures at the top of one of the plants. "These are the spice pods," he identified them. "What happens is that, as winter approaches, the plant's entire supply of nutrients—its life-force, if you will—is drawn into the seeds in these pods. By the time the process is complete, the plant has become a dead stalk, and at that point the next wind just blows it apart, scattering the seeds all over the landscape. The trick for the gardener is to wait long enough to get the maximum yield, yet not so long that the wind destroys the harvest."

I looked at the plant, seeing the analogy he was making. "Perhaps it's now time for the Halo of God to scatter," I suggested.

"Oh, they'll scatter, all right," he sighed. "But not as viable seeds. They're too young, most of them, to withstand something this hard."

"You think it'll be harder on them than Aaron Balaam darMaupine was on us?" I countered, suddenly angry at his defeatist attitude. "The Watchers have been considered little better than dormant traitors by much of the Patri and colonies for the past two decades. Yet we survive."

He smiled bitterly. "You were old and established, and faced suspicion and hatred. We are young, and face ridicule. Which do you think the human spirit can more easily withstand?"

I knew the answer to that one. All too well. "Don't underestimate them," I said instead. "They may be stronger than you think."

His gaze drifted to the security fence. "I should be out there with them," he murmured. "Preparing them for this."

I took a deep breath. "You may be of more value here."

He shrugged. "I'm of no use at all. Shepherd Zagorin seems to be—" He broke off, eyes shifting back to me as his brain belatedly noticed the tone of my comment. "Has something happened to her?"

"No, she's fine," I assured him. "She's still handling all the contact work, but she seems to be acclimating to it well."

He snorted. "There's no need for her to be doing all of it alone," he growled. "They fixed my heart and brain weeks ago—I'm perfectly capable of taking some of that load off her."

"I know, sir. That's why I'm going to ask you to contact the thunderheads for me."

His sense was startled, then cautious. "Why me?"

"Because I can't use Shepherd Zagorin." I braced myself; this was likely to be painful. "What do you know about what's happening?"

His forehead furrowed slightly. "The thunderheads are intelligent, with what seems to be a complete society, though we don't yet understand how it works. There's also a fleet of sublight spaceships a little under a light-year from Solitaire and due to reach us in about seventeen years."

"Did you know the Patri is planning to destroy that fleet?"

The skin around his eyes tightened, his sense turning to horror. "God save us all," he murmured. "But... why?"

"Because we're afraid of them," I said simply.

He licked his lips, and I could see him struggling with the enormity of it. "How do they intend to... do it?"

I grimaced. "A hundred ninety-two of Collet's biggest rocheoids are going to be fitted with Mjollnir lacings and tethered to tugboats equipped with Deadman Switches," I told him, my stomach tightening as it always did at the thought of it. "Zombis will be put aboard, and the thunderheads will guide them to points directly in front of each of the ships. Too close, of course, for the aliens to veer or take any kind of countermeasure."

For a long moment Adams was silent. I watched, also in silence, as he slowly forced his horror back. "How will they know how close they'll have to get?" he asked.

I nodded. "The same thought occurred to me. Apparently the thunderheads know more about this than they'll say."

"They know who the Invaders are, then." It wasn't a question.

"I'm certain of it," I agreed. "But they won't tell us anything."

He thought about that. "What is it you want to ask them?"

"I want to know how to communicate with the aliens," I said. "If we can talk to them, maybe we can figure out what's going on here, as well as what side of this confrontation we should be on."

He gazed steadily at me. "And what makes you think there is a side we should be on?"

I blinked, the question catching me off-guard. "We have to take a stand on this somewhere."

"Do we?" he demanded. " 'Blessed are the peacemakers'—or had you forgotten that?"

I clenched my teeth against a rush of anger... anger tinged uncomfortably with guilt. "Are you suggesting I've forgotten the goals of my faith?"

"Have you?" he asked bluntly.

The emphatic denial I'd planned died in my throat. "If eight years in Lord Kelsey-Ramos's business world didn't break me," I ground out, "a couple of months here certainly didn't."

A faint, sad smile touched his lips. "The business world of Lord Kelsey-Ramos is one of the acquisition of money and the stabbing of competitors in the back," he said quietly. "Here, you've been offered a chance to use your talents to explore a part of God's universe. Which world do you think it would be easier for you to fit comfortably into?"

"Neither," I retorted, feeling uncomfortably on the defensive. To even suggest I could be so easily seduced by the secular world was utterly absurd, even insulting. "And anyway, that's beside the point. The point is that unless we can find an alternative, the Pravilo is going to snuff out a great many intelligent lives."

He nodded, but I could see that the issue of my path was merely being shelved, not abandoned. "So why won't they let you talk to the thunderheads?"

With some effort, I forced myself back to business. "They probably would, actually, if that's all I was going to do," I told him. "But I'm going to have to do more than just talk. I'm going to have to reveal to the thunderheads that we know a secret about them."

Adams's frowned. "What kind of secret?"

"One that shows they aren't the poor, picked-on victims they've been pretending to be. That they deliberately drew us to Solitaire system in hopes of embroiling us in this dispute with the aliens."

"Interesting," Adams murmured. He pondered for a moment. "You don't think revealing that will make trouble?"

I shook my head. "The thunderheads almost certainly know by now that we know it. And in the two weeks since Lord Kelsey-Ramos figured it out they haven't shown any signs of being particularly worried." Which, if that was true, meant that its use as a lever might well be vanishingly small. But there was nothing left for me but the grasping of such straws.

For another moment Adams gazed at me, his sense a kaleidoscope of indecision and thought and the weighing of possibilities. Then, abruptly, it cleared; and he nodded briskly. "All right. Are you ready?"

The quickness of the decision surprised me. "Well, yes, but you aren't. We'll need to get some of the drugs they've been using to prepare Shepherd Zagorin."

"And you have access to these drugs?" he asked pointedly.

"I can get them," I insisted. "We can't risk the kind of trouble you had the first time."

"Why not?" he countered. "I lasted several minutes then, and with my rebuilt heart and cerebral circulatory system I shouldn't be in even that much danger this time."

I felt my stomach muscles tightening up. I couldn't ask him to do this—not now, not unprepared. But he was right. The first batch of rocheoids were already being prepared, and the schedule called for the rest to be finished within another month. The longer we delayed, the less likely anything we learned would be able to stop the holocaust. "All right," I sighed at last. "There shouldn't be anyone at the Butte City at the moment."

"I'm glad to hear it," he said dryly. Laying his fork trowel aside, he shifted to cross-legged position and closed his eyes.

I felt a rush of heat to my face, feeling like an idiot. Of course there was no need for us to physically go to where the thunderheads' bodies were. Sitting down in front of Adams, I took a careful breath and tried to clear my mind of extraneous thoughts. Adams slipped into his meditative trance... reached what seemed to me to be the proper point... "Thunderheads?" I invited.

The response was immediate. "I am here," Adams whispered hoarsely. "What do you wish?"

I braced myself. This was it. "I wish information," I said. "I'd like you to teach me how to communicate with the aliens who are approaching this world."

Eisenstadt had made the identical request before; and, as with that time, there was a long moment of silence. I kept my eyes on Adams, watching for any signs of physical distress. "There is no way to talk... to them," the thunderhead answered at last.

Predictably, the same answer as last time. "Then perhaps we humans will choose to leave this place," I told him. "Perhaps those in authority over us will decide they don't like being lied to and manipulated by others."

I'd half expected the thunderhead to feign innocence; but perhaps I'd underestimated the creatures' sophistication. "Your race has gained much from... this place," he said through Adams. "You seek certain miner... als for your machines. They are worth lives to you. You will stay and fight for... what you want."

"I'd advise you not to underestimate the strength of human pride," I warned him. "You see, we now know all about your natural defense strategy, with the stinging insects and all. We know that you're playing the exact same game with us, right down to luring us here by creating the mineral wealth of Collet's rings for us."

"We do not create," he said calmly. "Semantics," I snorted. "Perhaps you'd prefer the word enhanced. Regardless, we know all about it. Must have been quite a project: an entire planetful of thunderheads focusing their organic lasers on the rings for years at a time, slowly boiling off the lighter elements and leaving the heavier metals behind."

"Such an accusation... is utterly fantas... tic."

I shook my head. "I agree it's wilder than most of the theories that have tried to account for the heat-treating of the rocks out there, but once Lord Kelsey-Ramos made the connection it was a trivial matter to show that the heating was done by the same set of wavelengths as the melted spots on that ramp in the Butte City."

There was another long silence, and I had the distinct impression that the thunderheads were a little taken aback. For all their remarkable natural abilities, their lack of any kind of technology severely limited their knowledge of the physical sciences. To their minds, the analysis I'd just described—a very straightforward one, I'd been told—probably sounded identical to magic. "Well?" I prompted after a moment.

A sense of firmness touched Adams's face. "You will stay and fight for... the minerals in the... rings," the thunderhead repeated.

I bit at my lip. This was getting me nowhere. "Will you at least tell me why they're coming?" I asked him.

"They are invaders."

The stock answer. "Yes, so you've told us," I said, feeling my frustration level beginning to rise. "But why are they coming? What quarrel do they have with you that they're willing to spend a hundred years coming through your Cloud to get to you?"

"They are invaders."

I focused sharply on Adams. Something in his voice on that last sentence...? "Thunderhead, we haven't got much time left," I said, watching Adams closely. The contact was beginning to get to him. "We can't simply kill the aliens in cold blood—we just can't. Don't you understand how unethical such a thing would be for our species?"

Adams's glazed eyes turned up to me... and suddenly I felt a chill run up my back. There was a hard edge to his sense, something I'd never before seen in a thunderhead contact. "You are defenders," he whispered; and even with a whisper's usual lack of tonal cues I could hear the contempt there. "You will destroy them be... cause that is your nature. That is why you are here."

I gritted my teeth hard, anger and frustration combining into a violent urge to somehow lash out at the thunderhead. But I couldn't. A nerve was twitching in Adams's neck, and I could see the palpitation of the carotid artery, and there was nothing I could do except swallow my fury and break off the contact. "We are human beings," I gritted out. "We go where we wish, do what we wish. As you will find out. Adams!—break contact."

For a second I had the horrible feeling that the thunderhead was going to refuse to allow it, that he was going to let Adams die as a demonstration of thunderhead power. But a second later the stiffness went out of Adams's back, and he was free.

I watched him closely, finger resting lightly on the Emergency button on my phone. But the worrying turned out to be unnecessary; compared with the last time, this recovery was practically instantaneous. Within a minute his breathing and eyes had returned to normal and he was able to sit up straight again. "So," he said at last. "It didn't work."

Defeat had a bitter taste. "No," I shook my head wearily. "I'd hoped there might be something else there... but there isn't. We really are nothing but overgrown insects to them. They're playing with us—have been playing with us, for seventy years now. And if the Pravilo gets their way on this one..."

Adams turned his head to gaze through the security fence. "Perhaps they aren't simply being blind or greedy," he suggested quietly. "Perhaps they don't see any safe alternative to cooperation at this point." He hesitated. "The thunderheads' lasers—did they really burn the light elements out of the rings?"

I saw what he was getting at. "Yes, but Lord Kelsey-Ramos told me that it took them literally years to do it. At least ten, probably closer to twenty. The individual lasers aren't all that powerful, really—they seem to have come about mainly as a means for stirring up their insect protectors when a predator approached. It wouldn't be all that effective a weapon against us."

"They fused the end of a needler with it," he pointed out.

"Melted a few drops across the opening," I corrected him. "And it probably took the entire Butte City population to do it. Agreed, a direct confrontation would carry a certain risk. But I can't see the Patri knuckling under solely because of that."

Adams snorted gently. "Then you're right: it has to be either blindness or greed."

I nodded. "My guess is greed."

For a minute we sat there silently. I found my eyes turning upward, toward the glistening white clouds drifting serenely across the blue sky... and in my mind's eye the clouds became Mjollnir-equipped rocheoids. Massive chunks of death, moving into their appointed places in front of the approaching ships.

Ships that would probably never even know what had happened to them.

"You can't give up," Adams said.

I turned back to find his eyes on me. "I don't want to give up," I retorted. "But I've tried everything I can think of, and I'm out of ideas. Even if the thunderheads were willing to tell us how to talk to the aliens, there's no guarantee we could get a dialogue going fast enough to figure out what the conflict is between the two races."

"Still, if the aliens could tell us their side of things, you can bet the thunderheads would open up and give us their version," Adams pointed out.

"For whatever good that would do," I shrugged. "Whatever the morality of the situation turns out to be, the fact remains that siding with the thunderheads keeps us the ring mines. I don't think the thunderheads would let the Patri forget that."

"As if the Patri would need reminding."

"Right." Carefully, I got to my feet, the muscles in my legs protesting as I did so. "Thank you for your time, Shepherd Adams, and for your willingness to risk your life in this."

He waved a hand, figuratively brushing the gratitude away. "What will you do now?"

"I don't know." I looked toward the Butte City. "Go talk to Dr. Eisenstadt or Lord Kelsey-Ramos, I suppose. Keep nagging people until they get tired enough of me to do something."

He smiled. " 'For a long time he refused,' " he quoted, " 'but at last he said to himself, Even though I have neither fear of God nor respect for any human person, I must give this widow her just rights since she keeps pestering me, or she will come and slap me in the face.' Is that it?"

"More or less," I said. "Except that unlike the judge in the parable, they don't really have to put up with me any longer than—"

I broke off as my phone twittered. I frowned as I pulled it out, wondering who could possibly be calling me. "This is Benedar," I identified myself.

"Gilead, this is Eisenstadt." The scientist's voice was tight. "Where are you?"

"Out near the fence, talking with Shepherd Adams," I said, stomach muscles tightening. "What's wrong?"

His sigh was just barely audible. "You'd better get back to the ship right away. There are some Pravilos here... with a warrant for your arrest."