Deadman Switch

Chapter 3

It was the middle of ship's afternoon two days later, and I was playing singleton chess in a corner of the crew lounge, when we reached the Cloud.

Without warning, oddly enough, though the effect sphere's edge was supposed to be both stationary and well established. But reach it without warning we did. From the rear of the Bellwether came the faint thunggk of massive circuit breakers firing as the Mjollnir drive spontaneously kicked out, followed an instant later by a round of curses from the others in the lounge as the ultra-high-frequency electric current in the deck lost its Mjollnir-space identity of a pseudograv generator and crewers and drinks went scattering every which way.

And then, abruptly, there was silence. A dark silence, as suddenly everyone seemed to remember what was about to happen.

A rook was drifting in front of my eyes, spiraling slowly about its long axis. Carefully, I reached out and plucked it from the air, feeling a sudden chill in my heart. We were at the edge of the Cloud, ten lightyears out from Solitaire... and in a few minutes, up on the bridge, someone was going to die.

For in honor of their gods they have done everything detestable that God hates; yes, in honor of their gods, they even burn their own sons and daughters as sacrifices—

A tone from the intercom broke into my thoughts. "Sorry about that," Captain Jose Bartholomy said. Behind his carefully cultivated Starlit accent his voice was trying to be as unruffled as usual... but I don't think anyone aboard the Bellwether was really fooled. "Space-normal, for anyone who hasn't figured it out already. Approximately fifteen minutes to Mjollnir again; stand ready." He paused, and I heard him take a deep breath. "Mr. Benedar, please report to the bridge."

I didn't have to look to know that all eyes in the lounge had turned to me. Carefully, I eased out of my seat, hanging onto the arm until I'd adjusted adequately to the weightlessness and then giving myself a push toward the door. My movement seemed to break the others out of their paralysis—two of the crewers headed to the lockers for handvacs, while the rest suddenly seemed to remember there were glasses and floating snacks that needed to be collected and got to it. In the brisk and uncomfortable flurry of activity, I reached the door and left.

Randon was waiting for me just outside the bridge. "Benedar," he nodded, both voice and face tighter than he probably wanted them to be.

"Why?" I asked quietly, knowing he would understand what I meant.

He did, but chose to ignore the question. "Come in here," he said instead, waving at the door release and grabbing the jamb handle as the panel slid open.

"I'd rather not," I said.

"Come in here," he repeated. His voice made it clear he meant it.

Swallowing hard, I gave myself a slight push and obeyed.

There is a unique smell that accompanies death. I don't mean the actual, physical odor of decomposing flesh, but a wider scent that extends somehow to all the other senses as well. I'd smelled it twice before: once at my grandfather's deathbed, where all the hospital disinfectants in the air were unable to disguise it; once at the scene of an accident where the victim was conscious to the end. Both times, for hours afterward, I had tried to separate out the sensations I had felt into pieces that I could understand... and both times I had failed. There was a fear of the unknown involved, certainly, combined with a sense of the profound mystery surrounding the departure of a human soul from this world. But there was more to it than that, and neither my own intellect nor those Watcher elders I took it to could ever totally solve the puzzle.

Randon and I entered the bridge... and for the third time in my life I found the smell of death.

Captain Bartholomy and First Officer Gielincki were there, of course: Gielincki because it was technically her shift as bridge officer, Bartholomy because he wasn't the type of man to foist a duty like this off on his subordinates. Standing beside them on the gripcarpet were Aikman and DeMont, the former with a small recorder hanging loosely from his hand, the latter with a medical kit gripped tightly in his. Flanking the helm chair to their right were two of Randon's shields, Daiv and Duge Ifversn, just beginning to move back... and in the chair itself sat a man. The Bellwether's sacrifice.

I couldn't see anything of him but one hand, strapped to the left chair arm, and the back of his head, similarly bound to the headrest. I didn't want to see anything more, either—not of him, not of anything else that was about to happen up here. But Randon was looking back at me...

The days of my life are few enough: turn your eyes away, leave me a little joy, before I go to the place of no return, to the land of darkness and shadow dark as death...

Taking a deep breath, I set my feet into the gripcarpet and moved forward. Daiv Ifversn had been heading toward Aikman as we entered; now, instead, he turned toward us. "The prisoner is secured, sir, as per orders," he told Randon, his face and voice making it clear he didn't care for this duty at all. "Further orders?"

Randon shook his head. "You two may leave."

"Yes, sir." Daiv caught his brother's eye, and the two of them headed for the door.

And all was ready. Taking a step toward the man in the chair, Aikman set his recorder down on one of the panel's grips, positioning it where it could take in the entire room. "Robern Roxbury Trembley," he said, his voice as coldly official as the atmosphere surrounding us, "you have been charged, tried, and convicted of the crimes of murder and high treason, said crimes having been committed on the world of Miland under the jurisdiction of the laws of the Four Worlds Of The Patri."

From my position next to Randon and Captain Bartholomy, I could now see the man in profile. His chest was fluttering rapidly with short, shallow breaths, his face drawn and pale with the scent of death heavy on it... but through it all came the distinct sense that he was indeed guilty of the crimes for which he was about to die.

It came as little comfort.

"You have therefore," Aikman continued impassively, "been sentenced to death, by a duly authorized judiciary of your peers, under the laws of the Four Worlds Of The Patri and their colonies. Said execution is to be carried out by lethal injection aboard this ship, the Bellwether, registered from the Patri world of Portslava, under the direction of Dr. Kurt DeMont, authorized by the governor of Solitaire.

"Robern Roxbury Trembley, do you have any last words?"

Trembley started to shake his head, discovered the headband prevented that. "No," he whispered, voice cracking slightly with the strain.

Aikman half turned, nodded at DeMont. Lips pressed tightly together, the doctor stepped forward, moving around the back of the helm chair to Trembley's right arm. Opening his medical kit, he withdrew a small hypo, already prepared. Trembley closed his eyes, face taut with fear and the approach of death... and DeMont touched the hypo nozzle to his arm.

Trembley jerked, inhaling sharply. "Connye," he whispered, lower jaw trembling as he exhaled a long, ragged breath.

His eyes never opened again... and a minute later he was dead.

DeMont gazed at the readouts in his kit for another minute before he confirmed it officially. "Execution carried out as ordered," he said, his voice both tired and grim. "Time: fifteen hundred twenty-seven hours, ship's chrono, Anno Patri date 14 Octyab 422." He raised his eyes to Bartholomy. "He's ready, Captain."

Bartholomy nodded, visibly steeled himself, and moved forward. Unstrapping Trembley's arms, he reached gingerly past the body to a black keyboard that had been plugged into the main helm panel. It came alive with indicator lights and prompts at his touch, and he set it down onto the main panel's front grip, positioning it over the main helm controls and directly in front of the chair. "Do I need to do anything else?" he asked Aikman, his voice almost a whisper.

"No," Aikman shook his head. He threw a glance at me, and I could sense the malicious satisfaction there at my presence. The big pious Watcher, forced to watch a man being executed. "No, from here on in it's just sit back and enjoy the ride."

Bartholomy snorted, a flash of dislike flickering out toward Aikman as he moved away from the body.

And as if on cue, the body stirred.

I knew what to expect; but even so, the sight of it was shattering. Trembley was dead—everything about him, every cue my Watcher training could detect told me he was dead... and to see his arms lift slowly away from the chair sent a horrible chill straight to the center of my being. And yet, at the same time, I couldn't force my eyes to turn away. There was an almost hypnotic fascination to the scene that held my intellect even while it repelled my emotions.

Trembley's arms were moving forward now, reaching out toward the black Deadman Switch panel. For a moment they hesitated, as if unsure of themselves. Then the hands stirred, the fingers curved over, and the arms lowered to the Mjollnir switch. One hand groped for position... paused... touched it—

And abruptly, gravity returned. We were on Mjollnir drive again, on our way through the Cloud.

With a dead man at the controls.

"Why?" I asked Randon again.

"Because you're the first Watcher to travel to Solitaire," he said. The words were directed to me; but his eyes remained on Trembley. The morbid fascination I'd felt still had Randon in its grip. "Hard to believe, isn't it?" he continued, his voice distant. "Seventy years after the discovery of the Deadman Switch and there still hasn't been a Watcher who's taken the trip in."

I shivered, my skin crawling. The Deadman Switch had hardly been "discovered"—the first ship to get to Solitaire had done so on pure idiot luck... if luck was the proper word. A university's scientific expedition had been nosing around the edge of the Cloud for days, trying to figure out why a Mjollnir drive couldn't operate within that region of space, when the drive had suddenly and impossibly kicked in, sending them off on the ten-hour trip inward to the Solitaire system. Busy with their readings and instruments, no one on board realized until they reached the system that the man operating the helm was dead—had, in fact, died of a stroke just before they'd entered the Cloud.

By the time they came to the correct conclusion, they'd been trapped in the system for nearly two months. Friendships, under such conditions, often grow rapidly. I wondered what it had been like, drawing lots to see who would die so that the rest could get home...

I shivered, violently. "The Watchers consider the Deadman Switch to be a form of human sacrifice," I told him.

Randon threw me a patient glance... but beneath the slightly amused sophistication there, I could tell he wasn't entirely comfortable with the ethics of it either. "I didn't bring you here to argue public morals with me," he said tartly. "I brought you here because—" he pursed his lips briefly—"because I thought you might be able to settle the question of whether or not the Cloud is really alive."

It was as if all the buried fears of my childhood had suddenly risen again from their half-forgotten shadows. To deliberately try and detect the presence of an entity that had coldly taken control of a dead human body... "No," I managed to say.

Randon frowned. "No what? No, it isn't alive?"

Trembley's dead hands moved, changing the Bellwether's course a few degrees down the twisting and ever-changing path to Solitaire... and suddenly I felt very ill. "I mean, no, I can't do it."

A slight frown creased Randon's forehead. "Look, Benedar, I'm not expecting miracles—"

"I can't do it," I snapped at him.

All heads on the bridge turned to me. Even Randon seemed taken aback. Even were I to walk in a ravine as dark as death I should fear no danger, for You are at my side... Taking a deep breath, I forced calmness into my mind. "Mr. Kelsey-Ramos, the man there is dead. He's dead."

"He was a condemned traitor," Aikman put in, malicious enjoyment at my discomfort coloring his tone. "He was responsible for the deaths of over twenty people on Miland. You feel sorry for him?"

I met his eyes, but didn't bother to speak. He couldn't understand—wouldn't want to even if he could—how much more grisly the zombi was for me than it could ever be for him. To sense overwhelmingly the fact that he was dead; and at the same time to see evidence of life...

"Who was Connye?" Randon asked.

Aikman shifted his attention to him. "Who?"

"Trembley mentioned a Connye, just as Dr. DeMont injected him," Randon said. Annoyed though he might be at me for refusing his order, he still had no intention of letting an outsider like Aikman take free shots at me. "Was she one of the people he killed?"

Aikman shook his head. "She was one of his accomplices." His eyes went back to me. "She was executed on an earlier flight into Solitaire, incidentally."

I clenched my teeth. "Mr. Kelsey-Ramos... with your permission, I'd like to leave."

He studied me a moment, then nodded. "Yes, all right. Perhaps on the trip back you'll be better able to handle it."

I nodded, acknowledging his statement without necessarily agreeing with it. "I'll be in my stateroom if you need me," I told him.

"You might take a minute to stop by the other zombi's cell first," Aikman added as I turned to go.

I paused, looking back at him. Again the hatred of me... but this time combined with something else. Something very much like gloating. "Oh?" I asked.

"Or not," he said, studiously off-handed. "It's entirely up to you." Deliberately, he turned his back to me and pretended to be watching Trembley.

I glanced at Randon, saw my puzzlement mirrored there, and silently left the bridge.

—

Aikman was playing some sort of game, of course. Unfortunately, we both knew I knew it, which meant his ultimate goal could equally well be to goad me into visiting the Bellwether's other prisoner or else to make sure I avoided the cell completely.

But I wasn't going to play his game... and not playing his game meant doing whatever I did for my reasons, not his. And in this case...

In this case I didn't want to face the prisoner. Didn't want to see someone who had committed a crime worthy of death.

Didn't want to risk feeling any empathy for someone with whom I had no business, and who would regardless be dying in no more than two weeks.

But a Samaritan traveller who came on him was moved with compassion when he saw him...

There were times, I reflected bitterly, when religious duty was more trouble than it was worth. With a sigh, I changed direction and headed for the prisoner's cell.

The "cell" was really nothing but a specially prepared stateroom, cleared of anything that could be used for escape and equipped with an outside lock. A guard would be posted outside, of course; but as I came down the corridor I saw that at least that worry had been for nothing. Mikha Kutzko, Lord Kelsey-Ramos's own favorite shield chief and one of the few people aboard who neither treated me as a vaguely amusing fanatic nor walked on eggshells in my presence, was himself standing guard by the door.

He watched my approach, a genuinely friendly grin on his face even as his hand drifted a few centimeters closer to the needler belted to his thigh. An unconscious reflex, I knew, one that had probably helped keep him alive all these years. "Gilead," he nodded in greeting, eyes twinkling behind the tinted lenses of his visorcomp. "Welcome to the Bellwether's dungeon. What brings you here?"

"I'd heard there was a miracle taking place," I said with a straight face. "That you were actually up here walking the drawbridge yourself."

The smile became a grin. "And you said, 'I must go across and see this strange sight'?" he suggested wryly.... and why the bush is not being burned up, I automatically completed the reference. Kutzko's knowledge of scripture was generally limited to those with novelty value, but it was still nice to hear even that being used in public. "Of course," I agreed. "You have to admit it's been a year or two since you had to pull straight guard duty."

Some of the amusement went out of his eyes. "It's been even longer since any of my shields had to guard a death cell," he said quietly. "Its blazing depressing having to stand around here thinking about it."

I nodded. Until we reached Solitaire Kutzko didn't have any real shield coordination work to do... and like Captain Bartholomy, he wasn't the type to push unpleasant duty off his own back onto his subordinates'. Lord Kelsey-Ramos had a knack for attracting people like that. "I don't suppose it is," I agreed. "What can you tell me about him?"

"Her," he corrected. "It's a woman from Outbound. Convicted multiple murderess."

My stomach knotted. Outbound. I'd grown up there, on the Watcher settlement. "Any idea," I asked carefully, "just where on Outbound it happened?"

He frowned. "No. Why?"

"A few minutes ago Aikman suggested I might find it instructive to come here and see her," I said. With Kutzko, I could be honest. "I wonder..."

"If she could be someone you know?" Kutzko tapped the temple of his visorcomp. "Identity card: Bellwether outzombi."

I grimaced at the word. Braced myself...

"Name's Calandra Paquin," Kutzko reported, reading from the visorcomp's head-up display. "Sound familiar?"

I shook my head, the knot in my stomach easing fractionally. "No."

"Um. Let's see... originally from Bridgeway... murders occurred in the Outbound capital of Transit City."

Some of the Watchers from Cana settlement did occasional business in Transit City. Could her killings have included someone I knew? "Do you have the names of her victims there?" I asked Kutzko.

"No. Sorry." His eyes focused on me again. "That's right—you're from Outbound, too, aren't you?"

"I grew up there." I hesitated... but if the ship's records didn't have that information, there was only one other person besides Aikman himself who might. And I would rather talk to a murderess than ask Aikman for such a favor. "Do you suppose I could go in and talk to her?"

Kutzko studied me. "Why?"

"I'm not entirely sure," I admitted. "I just feel like I should, that's all."

"Well... by the book, you know, only my shields and the HTI people are supposed to have anything to do with her." He scratched his cheek thoughtfully. "On the other hand, I was going to check on her soon anyway; and if you just happened to wander in to keep me company..." He raised his eyebrows questioningly.

I nodded. "I owe you."

"Forget it." Turning, he busied himself with the lock. "I'll go first," he instructed me as the mechanism tripped. "Stay out until I give you an all-clear."

Rapping twice on the door, he pressed the release. The knock was typical, I thought as the panel slid open—for someone in his particular line of work, Kutzko was unusually polite. A man, I'd sometimes thought, who would apologize for the inconvenience as he broke your neck.

For a moment his back blocked my view of the room beyond. Then, taking a step forward, he moved off to the side. "All right," he said over his shoulder. "You can come in."

But for that first moment, I couldn't move. Beyond him, the woman—the murderess—was seated in front of the stateroom's reader, her face turned questioningly to Kutzko. Her eyes met mine... and in those eyes, in that face, in that whole presence, there could be no mistake.

Calandra Paquin was a Watcher.