Deadman Switch

Some of the pure fury was fading from O'Rielly's face, to be replaced by an icy bitterness and more than a little discomfort. "What, off the record with your little pet lie detector Benedar there somewhere?" he sneered, eyes darting around as he searched the limits of his screen for some sign of me. The sarcasm wasn't nearly strong enough to cover his discomfort. "Or did you think I didn't know about him?"

Lord Kelsey-Ramos had indeed thought that, but only I caught his a

O'Rielly's lip twisted. "You're really enjoying this, aren't you? You've been trying to get your sticky little fingers on a Solitaire license for, what, eight years now?"

"Closer to ten," Lord Kelsey-Ramos said coolly. "Not that it matters. I'll be sending a courier over to your office within the hour; kindly have copies of all your records and documents ready by then. Good morning to you, Mr. O'Rielly."

He waved his control stick, and the display blanked. "And that is that," he commented, dropping the stick on his desk and looking up at me again. Some of the thrill and triumph was draining out of him now, leaving a measure of tiredness behind. "A very profitable day's work, I'd say."

I nodded, a neutral enough response. "You'll be going out to Solitaire yourself, I take it?"

He smiled. "Is it that—?" Abruptly, the smile vanished. "Is it that obvious?" he asked cautiously.

The paranoia of the wealthy. "It is to me."

A muscle in his cheek tightened. "Could it have been obvious to O'Rielly, too?" he asked.

I thought back, trying to remember every nuance of the man. "It might have been," I agreed. "The shock of it all was wearing off at the end, and he wasn't ready yet to give up. Once he stops to think about it he may be able to guess at least that much."

Lord Kelsey-Ramos pursed his lips. "Tell me everything else you got."

I went back through the conversation for him, giving as best I could the sense I'd had of O'Rielly at each juncture. "Do you think he'll put up a fight over this?" he asked when I'd finished.

"Yes."

"A legal fight, or otherwise?"

I shrugged. The sense of the man on that point had been abundantly clear. "He'll fight to the limits of either his abilities or his conscience. I don't know where either limit lies."

Lord Kelsey-Ramos gnawed the inside of his cheek. "I have a pretty good idea of both limits," he growled. "Unfortunately. So. You think he'll figure me to go charging off to Solitaire to personally stick Carillon's flag into the dirt, eh?" Gently, under his breath, he swore. "You know, Gilead, I've waited for this moment for ten years now. Petitioned and maneuvered to get the Patri to grant new transport licenses, pushed and prodded at companies who already had them—" he glared up at me, discomfort flicking across his face—"and put considerable money into trying to find a substitute for the Deadman Switch. I've earned the right to be the first man to ride a Carillon ship to Solitaire, vlast it."

He broke off, took a deep breath. "And now I've got to stay here and duel with O'Rielly and the HTI board instead. Thanks to you."

"You could ignore my advice," I reminded him. "You've done so before."

A touch of dark humor came back into his face, as I'd expected it would. "And usually wished I hadn't," he pointed out wryly. "Besides which, what's the point of hiring a Watcher in the first place if I'm not going to listen to him?"

"People have done stranger things to themselves, sir. Often even willingly."

His eyes flicked past me, to the door of my—to his mind—painfully plain cubicle. "And more often done those strange things to others. Not willingly."

Punishing the parents fault in the children and in the grandchildren to the third and fourth generation... "The training really hasn't been a burden, Lord Kelsey-Ramos," I assured him quietly. "There's a great deal of beauty in God's universe—beauty that you may never even notice, let alone be able to appreciate."

"Does that beauty make up for all the ugliness that's also there?" he asked pointedly. "Does it make up for the fact that you have to strip a room practically bare to get a little relief from sensory overload?"

To one he gave five talents, to another two, to a third one... "I do what I can with what I've been given," I said simply. "In that way, at least, I'm no different than you."

He pursed his lips. "Perhaps. Someday you'll have to tell me—to really tell me—what it's like to be a Watcher."

"Yes, sir." I never would, of course. He didn't really want to know. "If that'll be all...?"

"Not quite." His face tightened slightly, his sense that of a man preparing to deliver unwanted news. "I concede that you're right, that I can't afford to traipse off to Solitaire right now. But someone ought to go, if for no other reason than to let them know Carillon will be taking things firmly in rein. It seems to me that the obvious person for that job is Randon."

He clearly expected a negative reaction, but I had none to offer. At twenty-five, Lord Kelsey-Ramos's son still had a lot to learn about life, but he knew enough about how to handle people—his own and others—to make a reasonable ambassador to a conquered firm. "I presume you'll be sending a financial expert along with him?" I asked. "In case their records need looking over?"

"Oh, I'll send a whole slate of experts along with him—don't worry about that. Still, even experts often miss important details... which is why you'll be going, too."

I took a careful breath, feeling my heartbeat increase. "Sir, if it's all the same with you—"

"It isn't," he said firmly, "and I'm afraid I insist. I want you there with Randon." He hesitated. "I realize the whole idea of the Deadman Switch bothers you, but I'm sure you can handle it this once."

Solitaire... and the Deadman Switch. For a moment I nearly told him no, that this time the price was too high. But even as I opened my mouth, the quiet reminder of why I was working for him in the first place drained the defiance away.

As it always seemed to do. Punishing the parents' fault in the children and in the grandchildren to the third and fourth generation... "All right, sir," I told him instead. "I'll do my best."

Chapter 2

The Carillon Group numbered several small courier ships among its modest fleet, and I naturally expected our group would ride one or more of those to Whitecliff, transferring at that point to one of HTI's freighters. But Lord Kelsey-Ramos would have none of that. This was his personal triumph, and he had no intention of having us ride someone else's ship into Solitaire like hitchhikers or afterthought cargo.

Which consideration made it almost inevitable that he would saddle us with the Bellwether.

From his point of view, it was a generous favor, of course. His own personal craft, the Bellwether was a genuine superyacht, with all the luxury and heavy-duty status that that implied. Unfortunately, the size and sleek lines carried their own hidden costs: the size meant the Bellwether could do only eighteen hours at a stretch on Mjollnir drive before having to go space-normal to dump its excess heat; and the sleek lines meant it then took up to six hours to cool down enough to continue on.

Which meant that instead of the twenty-three-plus light-years per day a heavily radiation-fi