Deadman Switch

Chapter 25

It was, in fact, considerably more than a couple of days before Eisenstadt was ready to talk to the thunderheads again. Though Shepherd Zagorin seemed ready and willing to make another attempt by the next morning, the physician charged with preparing her was reluctant to administer his proposed pre-treatment mixture without doing a few more tests on both it and her; and before he had time to complete them, Eisenstadt's search team finally located the dead thunderhead.

Most everyone, I gathered—from Eisenstadt on down—had privately concluded that the directions we'd been given had somehow been misread, and it was only through mule-headed persistence on the search leader's part that the dead thunderhead was located at all. The "height" the thunderheads had used in giving distance, it turned out, was neither their own physical height nor ours, but a length that was finally identified as the height of the common building in Shepherd Zagorin's Myrrh settlement. For me, it seemed just one more indication that the thunderheads had been observing the Halo of God settlers since their arrival; Eisenstadt, conversely, wondered aloud whether it was a deliberate delaying tactic. But it wasn't long before the sheer scientific excitement drove such political/military considerations into the background of his mind and allowed the pure scientist to shine through again.

To shine through with a vengeance. For all but his inner circle he virtually ceased to exist, disappearing into the project as if inhaled by it. Every waking hour was spent either in the clean room with the examination team or else in his office studying the data that was being extracted by the double cylful. His rare sleeping hours were probably spent dreaming about it.

I'd spent eight years with Lord Kelsey-Ramos, who hadn't pushed Carillon to the top by being lazy; but even by those standards Eisenstadt's capacity and energy were astounding. Armed with a full clearance to the information—a courtesy that I suspected for a long time had been an accidental oversight on his part—I did my best to keep up with as much of the flood of information as I could. But even just following the nontechnical summaries was almost more than I could handle.

Thunderheads, it turned out, were in many ways an almost even mixture of plant and animal characteristics. Our dead drone, once extracted, left behind it an extensive network of hairlike roots extending up to twenty meters into the ground, a nutrient-gathering system which at least partially explained how they were able to survive on top of barren bluffs as well as amid lush vegetation. The root system contained an unusual twist, though: a close examination showed that each of the fibers went through a living/dead/decomposing cycle that actually encouraged nearby plant growth by flooding the soil with vital trace elements.

The discovery, exciting though it was to the scientists, was greeted with a certain chagrin by those who had had to dig the drone up and would presumably be called on to do so again. Along with the problem of having to slog through matted plants to get to the thunderhead, they had quickly found that those same plants sheltered the nests of a fairly nasty species of stinging insect, insects who had had to be gassed before the drone could be approached. For a day or two afterward there were rumors that the workers had asked either that the next specimen be taken from Butte City, where no such plants or insects existed, or else that Eisenstadt assign the next sampling run to a fully armored Pravilo team.

The rumors faded with time. I doubt Eisenstadt ever even noticed them.

There were a great many other plantlike characteristics, too, cellular structure among them. But at the same time there were enough animal-like qualities to keep the thunderheads from simply being labeled as sessile, sentient plants. They had almost the entire set of normal animal senses, for one thing, including sight, hearing, a limited sense of touch, and a combined chemical analysis system nestled beneath the wave-like overhang that combined smell and taste. Their sight, in particular, was surprisingly well developed, especially given that it relied on fairly simple cellular lenses scattered in a semi-random pattern across the whole of the body. It took a great deal of computer modeling time to finally show that the hard-wired neural pathways connecting the lenses to each other and the brain actually acted as as sort of organic computer, combining and cleaning up the blurry images into something as clear as human eyesight.

The drone had a true circulatory system too, not just primitive ducts for transporting sap and water, though the system operated via a combination of vascular pressure, capillary action, and gravity instead of a heart. There were also several distinct organs scattered throughout the body, though there was a great deal of heated debate as to the functions each might serve. The brain and central nervous system were fairly decentralized, though the neural density increased markedly near the various sensory organs and each of the cellular eyes.

There was more to be learned—a great deal more—and Eisenstadt's "couple of days" stretched ever longer as they took their prize apart bit by bit, arguing and discussing each new discovery. Off to the side, largely ignored, Calandra and Shepherd Zagorin and I waited... and speculated quietly among ourselves whether giving Eisenstadt the drone might have been part of a thunderhead plan to distract him from whatever it was about the Cloud that they seemed determined to hide. We waited three weeks... until, finally, Eisenstadt decided he was ready.

—

Calandra and I were taken to the Butte City at mid-morning the next day, to find the preliminary preparations nearly complete. Shepherd Zagorin, sitting alone this time at the edge of the thunderhead mass, was being fitted with sensors and monitor leads as Eisenstadt stood fidgeting over her. Further back, in the ridge hollow, the techs were checking out their equipment and taking readings with a sense of quiet chaos that reminded me of an orchestra warming up before a concert.

Physically, it was like a replay of the last contact. Emotionally, it was drastically different. Three weeks ago the men and women here had been contemptuously amused by the suggestion that a simple religious practice could accomplish something their science had so far failed to do. We'd offered them a miracle, and it had been granted... and as I looked around the Butte City now I found only sober anticipation and even traces of respect.

Beside me, Calandra snorted gently. "Look at them," she murmured, nodding fractionally at the busy techs.

"What about them?" I murmured back.

"The way they look at Joyita—you see it? They've adopted her as an honorary member."

I frowned, studying their faces more closely. Calandra was right; I could indeed sense an odd camaraderie when they looked in her direction. "I don't understand."

"The last time they did this she and Adams were just religious fanatics," Calandra said, a trace of bitterness in her voice. "Not worth more than basic legal tolerance. But their method worked, and every scientist and tech knows that only science works. So the method must be science, and she must be a scientist."

I felt an echo of her bitterness in my own stomach. For the wisdom of its wise men is doomed, the understanding of any who understand will vanish... "It's always easier to come up with a rationalization than to change your basic assumptions," I reminded her. "At least it gains her some acceptance—maybe even gains some acceptance for the Halo of God in general."

Eisenstadt spotted us, beckoned us over. "We're about ready here," he told us as we approached, his voice and expression rich with slightly nervous anticipation. He raised his eyebrows questioningly—

"We're ready, too," I assured him. Calandra and I had kept up our end of the bargain with Eisenstadt, spending a good seventy or eighty hours with Zagorin over the past three weeks. If the thunderheads were planning any intellectual or emotional manipulation, I had little doubt that we'd be able to catch it.

Eisenstadt nodded, the tension in his sense easing just a bit, and turned back to Zagorin. "Whenever you feel ready, Ms. Zagorin."

She nodded and closed her eyes. Eisenstadt stepped back to stand between Calandra and me, and together we waited.

My subjective feeling was that the contact was made faster this time than the last, but as nearly as I could tell everything else was the same. Zagorin straightened abruptly from her meditative slouch, glazed eyes opening to stare at us. "Greetings to you," she whispered, the husky sound again containing overtones that never existed in her normal voice. "We are the thunderheads. We have waited long for... your return."

Eisenstadt cleared his throat, and I could tell he was mildly impressed by the thunderheads' easy acceptance of our name for them. "I greet you as well," he said. "Yes, I'm afraid it has been a while. We had a great deal of work to do, and it seemed best for us to finish it before talking to you again. For one thing, this sort of communication is rather hard on the humans you speak through."

A slight pause. I glanced back at the techs monitoring Zagorin's biological functions, read no alarm or danger in their faces. Apparently the medical pre-treatment was successfully warding off the more extreme side effects of the contact. "We mean no harm," Zagorin whispered. "It is not possible... for us to change this."

"Yes, we understand," Eisenstadt assured the speaker. "It may be possible for us to do something from this end—we're still experimenting with it." He paused, and I felt him brace himself. "We appreciate your generosity in letting us examine one of your dead. We've learned a great deal from our work; however, there are still some questions we've been unable to answer. Several weeks ago, for instance, you used a heat weapon—we think probably it was a chemically-pumped laser—against a human that you thought was about to attack you. We're very interested in the commercial and industrial possibilities of such a device, but we've been unable to identify either the mechanism or the biochemistry from the drone we studied. If you could enlighten us—even give us a clue as to where the source is located—we would be most grateful."

Zagorin gazed at him with those flat eyes, but remained silent. "Even a second demonstration would help," Eisenstadt tried again, uncertainty and uneasiness creeping into his sense. "Under controlled conditions, of course, with recording instruments in place—"

"The Cloud," Zagorin cut him off. "You seek the origi... nation of the Cloud, do... you not?"

Eisenstadt threw a slightly startled glance at me. "Well... yes, of course we do. We've, uh, been speculating that it was your people who've been guiding our ships through the Cloud all these years—"

"We will take you to the... origination of... the Cloud."

Eisenstadt stared at Zagorin, and it took him two tries to get any words out. "You mean... the mechanism that generates the Cloud? Where is it, on Spall?"

"In space," Zagorin whispered. "Deep in space."

Eisenstadt nodded slowly, his sense that of a man who has seen the answer to a long-time puzzle. "I understand. We'll need some time to get a ship ready. Can we communicate like this with you off of Spall?"

"There is no need. When you are ready, speak... to the pilot. To—" Zagorin hesitated, and I could sense the thunderhead searching his host for the right word. "To the zombi."

"All right," Eisenstadt said, forehead furrowed slightly. "Well get started on the preparations. In the meantime—"

"Farewell until then," Zagorin said.

"Wait!" Eisenstadt barked; but it was too late. Zagorin slumped over, her face and eyes returning to normal.

Eisenstadt took a step toward her, fury in his eyes. "Who told you to break contact?" he snarled.

Zagorin blinked up at him; but Calandra spoke up before she could reply. "It wasn't her doing, Doctor," she told him. "The thunderhead left her of his own volition."

Eisenstadt glared at her, and I could see him fighting to choke down his anger. "I wasn't through asking questions yet," he bit out, to no one in particular. "Couldn't he see that?"

"Perhaps he could," I said. "Perhaps he was through giving answers."

Eisenstadt paused in mid-sentence, swinging around to focus on me... and as I watched, the scientist within him gave way once again to the official representative of the Patri, with all the political and military considerations that role included. It was something of a shock; I hadn't really appreciated how different the man had been without those encumbrances.

"I see," Eisenstadt said at last. His voice, too, had subtly changed. "Sounds like they don't really want to discuss their organic laser, doesn't it?"

"Or else," I offered, "they consider whatever it is about the Cloud to be far more urgent."

Eisenstadt looked sharply at me, and I could tell he was remembering back to that Process of Elimination game with Zagorin three weeks earlier. "You could be right," he admitted grudgingly, and I could see him thinking about how much trouble it would be to organize a trip out into space to actually take a look. There was a long moment of indecision; and then his face cleared. "Lieutenant?" he called, turning to look for the Pravilo officer in charge.

The other stepped forward from the monitor area. "Yes, sir?"

"I want you to contact Commodore Freitag for me. Find out how soon we can have one of his destroyers ready for a short trip."

The lieutenant nodded and turned back to one of the consoles. Eisenstadt looked over at Zagorin, currently the focus of attention of a half dozen medical people. "How do you feel, Ms. Zagorin?" he asked.

"Fine," she said, sounding a little out of breath. "Much better than the last time."

Eisenstadt nodded, caught one of the physicians' eyes. "I want you to do an extrapolation of her physical condition," he told the other. "I'm interested particularly on how long she could have stayed under without harm."

The other nodded and returned to his examination. "You're planning to take her along with you?" I asked quietly.

Eisenstadt nodded. "It might be useful to find out just how far away from Spall we can get before we can't raise them anymore."

"But if the thunderheads are guiding us through the Cloud—"

"We have no evidence of that," Eisenstadt reminded me. "Not even an unsupported statement by the thunderheads. All of that is pure speculation on our part, and pure speculation always makes me nervous."

I looked at him, read the sense of uneasiness there... "Because if it's not the thunderheads guiding us through the Cloud, it's someone else?"

He threw me a patient look. "Come on, Benedar—surely it's obvious there are at least two intelligences working at cross-purposes here. Or do you want to try and tell me that the thunderheads built the Cloud as a defense or something and then couldn't remember how to turn it off?"

I thought about that. "It doesn't have to be that monochrome, though, does it?" I suggested hesitantly. "Couldn't it just as well be that they don't mind us mining the rings but want to limit how many of us live next door to them on Solitaire?"

"Or even be the reverse," Calandra added. "That they don't mind us living on Solitaire but want to limit our plundering of the ring minerals."

"For all the good the rings do them," Eisenstadt growled. "They're hardly in a position to do any mining themselves. Unfortunately, neither of those theories will hold air. If that's all they wanted, all they needed to do was to make a treaty with us covering population size and mining rights and then shut off the Cloud."

"What if we reneged?" I asked.

"They turn the Cloud back on, of course—trapping, incidentally, everyone who was in the system at the time. With that kind of threat hanging over us, they'd hardly have to worry about treaty violations."

"Before the Halo of God came along, maybe there wasn't any way for them to talk to us," I reminded him.

"The way's there now," he countered. "And they haven't mentioned anything along those lines. No, either the thunderheads are the ones guiding our ships and aren't responsible for the Cloud, or else they're running the Cloud and someone else is bringing our ships in. It doesn't make sense any other way."

I bit at the back of my lip. He was right—the logic of it was indeed hard to argue against. And yet...

"You don't seem convinced, Benedar."

I focused on him. His expression was gruff, tolerant, as befit a scientist who didn't officially give much credit to my Watcher skills... but beneath that official veneer I could sense a genuine interest. "There's something else about the thunderheads," I said, trying without success to pin down the elusive feeling nagging at my back-brain. "Something that bothers me."

"You think they're lying to us about something?"

I looked at Calandra, saw her equally helpless shrug. She didn't have it, either; but like me, she recognized there was something here we weren't getting. "No, I don't think they're lying. Not... exactly."

It was a sloppy enough statement, and I fully expected to get a scornful glare for it. But Eisenstadt merely rubbed his cheek, his sense thoughtful. "Could it be that this invitation out to the Cloud is some kind of a trap?" he suggested.

"I can't see what they could hope to gain," I shook my head. "They must know that information about them has long since left the system. It's far too late to try and keep their existence secret, even if that was what they wanted."

Calandra stirred. "I don't think it's a trap," she said slowly. "But Gilead's right—they are hiding something. I get a sense of manipulation, as if they're deliberately feeding us just enough information to keep us moving in the direction they want."

"You think they're going to take us to the Cloud generator and then ask us to shut it off?" Eisenstadt asked bluntly.

She looked at him steadily. "I'd be very careful about doing anything like that," she told him. "If you're right about them not being responsible for the Cloud, then it could only have been put there by someone else for the purpose of isolating them."

Eisenstadt nodded grimly. "That thought has already occurred to me," he acknowledged. "Which is why I want to take a Pravilo warship instead of just requisitioning some freighter. The generator may be defended."

Across the way, the Pravilo lieutenant straightened from his board. "Dr. Eisenstadt?" he called. "All set. Commodore Freitag has ordered the Kharg to return from ring patrol duty; ETA approximately six days." He hesitated. "However... the commodore asks me to remind you that none of the Pravilo ships in Solitaire system is equipped with a Deadman Switch."

For a second Eisenstadt just stared at him. Then he swore under his breath. "Chern-fire!—I forgot all about that."

I glanced at Calandra, read my own puzzlement there. "I don't understand," I said to Eisenstadt. "It can't be that hard to install a Deadman Switch."

"The hardware's not the problem," he growled. "It's the fact that the Pravilo doesn't have a general license for Solitaire transport. Trips in and out of the system are authorized on an individual basis by the Patri. And for that authorization you have to go all the way to Portslava."

"It's not quite that bad, sir," the lieutenant spoke up. "The judiciaries on Miland or Whitecliff can also grant authorization."

"All that means is that you apply to them and they send the request on to Portslava," Eisenstadt shook his head. "Could take weeks—not to mention the paperwork involved in getting the actual zombi."

I looked at Calandra, feeling my stomach muscles tightening. Except that there was a zombi already on hand, if Eisenstadt ever happened to remember that... "Surely there are emergency procedures available," I said.

"I doubt this could be made to qualify," Eisenstadt snorted.

"Well..." I hesitated. "The last I knew, Governor Rybakov owed Mr. Kelsey-Ramos a rather large personal favor. You might talk to him, see if he can wheedle a zombi for you from among Solitaire's own death-sentence criminals."

He looked at me; and from the way his eyes carefully avoided Calandra I could tell that he, too, had suddenly remembered her status. I held my breath... but practically before the idea was fully formed it was smothered by a strong sense of rejection. Like Randon, it seemed, he had quickly learned what an asset Watchers were, and he had no intention of throwing that asset away. "I was under the impression Solitaire law forbade that," he said. "Worth a try, though. Anyway—" He glanced at Zagorin. "I'd like you two to accompany Ms. Zagorin back to her quarters when they're through with her."

His voice and sense were heavy with significance. "Yes, sir," I said, trying to convey my understanding of his order without being too obvious about it. If the thunderheads had done anything to her, a couple of hours with her should bring it to light.

"Good," Eisenstadt nodded. "I'll let you know what happens with the governor." Nodding to Calandra and Zagorin, he turned and set off toward the gap in the buttes where the cars were parked.

I watched him go; felt Calandra's presence as she stepped to my side. "He wants the Cloud turned off," she murmured.

I nodded. "I know."

She shivered suddenly. "I hope we're not all going at this too quickly. That we aren't about to undo something that... shouldn't be undone."

I chewed at the back of my lip. "I don't think he'll do anything rash. Besides... there's still something about this that doesn't work. Why would anyone go to all the trouble of creating a ten-light-year barrier when all it does is lock in creatures who are rooted to the ground?"

Calandra shook her head. "I don't know. But I still don't like it."

I put my arm around her, felt the tension in her muscles. "I know," I said quietly. "Neither do I."