Deadman Switch

"And maybe whether or not we can locate its source," I pointed out slowly. "Because if there is a source and we can find it... it can presumably be shut off."

Calandra chewed at her lip. "So you're suggesting that maybe the Patri aren't just tolerating the Halloas, after all? Or letting them spread out over Spall just to get rid of them?"

"Triangulation, maybe," I said doubtfully. "I don't know, though. How do you gauge the strength of a meditation contact?"

She shrugged. "Don't ask me. This is your crazy idea, not mine."

I glared through the darkness at her. "Oh, right. Your crazy idea was that Adams is organizing the Seekers to follow in Aaron Balaam darMaupine's footprints."

She actually winced, her irritation coloring into embarrassment. "I only said the sense here was similar," she muttered. "There's too much placidity here. Too much comfort. Too little curiosity—don't you think they ought to care at least a little about the ecology of the planet they're living on? To me that says they're letting their leaders do their thinking for them."

"Sorry, but those all sound contradictory to me," I told her, feeling a twinge of remorse. I knew darMaupine and Bridgeway were a sore spot with her; I shouldn't have hit her there. "And I don't see any signs of that kind of twisted ambition in Adams, either."

She shook her head. "It doesn't matter. Whatever Adams has pla

I reached out and put my arm around her shoulders. "Yes, you will," I said with as much assurance as I had. Plus as much more as I could fake. "Don't forget we've now got two potential targets to go for: a smuggler base, and the origin of the Cloud."

She snorted. "Oh, great. And if we're really lucky maybe we'll find the origin with a smuggler base built on top of it. And an iridium mine next door."

The sarcasm displaced some of the depression, as I'd hoped it would. "That's the spirit," I told her lightly, trying to push it a bit more. "Hey—if we find a rich enough mine, we'll just go ahead and buy out Lord Kelsey-Ramos's interest in Carillon. Then Randon can scream at us all he likes."

Again she snorted. "You'd better get to bed—you're starting to hallucinate."

I nodded. "Sure. You, too; we'll want to get an early start in the morning." Besides which—I didn't add—a good night's sleep would do a lot to quiet at least the worst of her fears.

"Yeah." She hesitated. "Gilead... I still think you're a suicidal fool to be doing this. But... thanks."

I found her hand, squeezed it reassuringly. For he hides me away under his roof on the day of evil, he folds me in the recesses of his tent, sets me high on a rock. Now my head is held high above the enemies who surround me... "It'll all work out," I told her.

"Sure," she sighed, not even trying to pretend she believed me. "Good night."

"Good night."

I waited until she was inside, then trudged along the edge of the square to the house where I'd been given a room. Trying to bolster Calandra's spirits like that, I hadn't realized just how tired I really was. But it was all catching up with me now: the nighttime flight from Solitaire, the debilitating ride across Spall, the continual strain of having to lie with a straight face. Not to mention simply having to contemplate the enormous task looming before us.

The lights were out as I approached the Changs' house, for which I was grateful. Pleasant though I'd found the family earlier, the last thing I wanted at the moment was to have to face them. However paranoid Calandra might feel about the Halo of God, my own respect for both the Seekers and their goals was only increasing... and along with it was similarly growing a quiet dread that our presence here was somehow going to be used to destroy them.

On the threshold of the house, I shook my head sharply. Fatigue depression, I told myself—it was nothing more than that. As long as Myrrh Fellowship was unaware of who and what we were, they couldn't be held responsible for aiding us. Not legally, not rationally.

And yet...

I looked upward. Hanging overhead, like some kind of bluish fruit, was the partially lit disk of Solitaire, with three abnormally bright stars off one edge. Three of Commodore Freitag's ships, coming for us... and it occurred to me that the law was usually designed to serve the purposes of those in power. And that for those same people, rationality was more an occasional option than it was a requirement.

Chapter 17

We left just after sunrise the next morning—a totally ungodly hour, to my way of thinking. Even so, quite a few of the Seekers were up before us, though that was hardly remarkable once I reminded myself that Myrrh was economically an agricultural community. Still, to my city-oriented biological clock, the thought of doing this day in and out made my eyes ache.

My skills at manual driving were probably ten years out of date, but given there was no road to stay on and no other traffic to avoid, I didn't expect to have any real problems. Calandra, clearly more wide awake than I was, suggested she take the first turn at the wheel, an offer I had to regretfully decline. The way my eyelids were sagging I wasn't at all sure how good an observer I would be, and it would be better for us to hit a few extra bumps than to miss some possibly vital clue off on the horizon somewhere.

Fortunately, Zagorin had anticipated the problem. Two mugs and a thermac full of a hot, tart-sweet-tart drink had been placed into the car along with the promised supply of sucon rings, and even as we drove out of the settlement I found I was gradually sipping my eyes fully open.

The fields surrounding Myrrh were more extensive than I'd realized from our approach the evening before. Our southeast heading took us through several hectares of cultivated land, a good scattering of Seekers and small-scale farm equipment already hard at work among the rows of greenery. "What do you know about farming?" I asked Calandra.

"Nothing more than I picked up as a child." She craned her neck to both sides. "I'd say they've got enough cropland here to support their community, though, if that's what you're getting at."

"It was," I acknowledged, too groggy to be irritated by her customary ease at reading my thoughts. "Can you identify any of those plants?"

She shrugged. "That's corn over there, and I think those short broadleaved things are trelapse. The rest—" She shook her head.

"Not important," I said. A movement off to the left caught my eye: a Seeker, head down, walking slowly through the native flora bordering the fields. "I wonder what he's looking for," I commented.

"Valeer, probably," Calandra said, leaning forward to look past me. "The Mustains told me about it last night before I went to bed. It's a native plant they extract a spice from."

"Ah." I thought back to the exotic flavors of the food at di

"I'm sure the leaders have toyed with the idea—the Mustains certainly have. At the moment, though, they seem to be keeping it to themselves."

Something in her voice... "Trying to find out if they're being fed a placidity drug, were you?" I asked.

I sensed a grudging embarrassment from her. "The thought had occurred to me," she admitted.

"We both ate it last night," I reminded her. "Even with just a single dose either of us would have noticed if it produced that kind of effect."

"If they're using one native plant, they could be using others," she countered. But her voice lacked any real conviction. And rightly so—with a multitude of vodkyas in vogue around the Patri and colonies these days, both of us were well acquainted with the outward signs of such use, and none of the Seekers in Myrrh had exhibited any of them. That Calandra would even consider such an unlikely possibility meant she was determined to find a darker explanation for the Halo of God than a loving community spirit.