Deadman Switch

And at last I saw what Calandra had seen.

I looked back at her. Our eyes met; and together we uncrossed our legs and stood up, picking up our survival pack flashlights as we did so. She moved around the firepatch, stepped close to me, her muscles trembling with emotion. For another moment we stood like that, holding each other tightly, our shadows stretching across the milky white sea. Then, setting my teeth, I raised my light, set it for tight beam, and flicked it on.

A narrow cone of light lanced out... and even as I squinted against it, I felt the responding ripple, and knew that what we'd both sensed had indeed been the truth.

The thunderheads were alive. Alive, and aware... and watching us.

Chapter 19

For a long moment we just stood there. "This is crazy," I said at last. "I mean, really crazy. They're plants, for heaven's sake."

Close beside me, Calandra shivered. "Are they?"

"Of cour—" The reflexive retort died halfway out. "What else could they be?"

"There are things called sessile animals that spend all or part of their lives attached to trees," she said mechanically, her eyes darting about the dirty-white shapes laid out before us. "I just don't... how could the original survey teams have missed something like this?"

I moved my flashlight, watched the incredibly subtle ripple of reaction move with it. "Because they weren't Watchers," I said grimly.

She took a deep breath. "Let's take a closer look."

Together, we walked across the uneven ground. Calandra knelt down beside the first thunderhead we reached, touched it lightly. "Turn the light on it."

I did as instructed. "Well?"

She pursed her lips. "There's a... it's a little like a vibration, but not exactly. I felt it in the thunderhead on top of the bluff, too, when we were up there."

I twisted my head, looking up at the dark shape silhouetted against the stars. "You think they could be mobile at some stage of their lives?"

"Either that, or else they're awfully good at throwing seeds..."

She trailed off, and we looked at each other. "The discolored spots," I said, an odd sense of unreality seeping into me. "The one on top is the last of a whole line of the things."

Calandra nodded, her eyes haunted. "They could only get their seeds a short ways uphill. So they just kept at it until they got one onto the top."

"But why—" I stopped, turning again to look at the sea of thunderheads crowded between the buttes. No; not a sea of thunderheads... "It's a city," I breathed. "A city." Which meant the ones atop the buttes—

" 'I shall stand at my post,' " Calandra quoted softly. " 'I shall station myself on my watch-tower, watching to see what God will say to me.' "

I looked again at the sky, my mouth dry. "They're sentries," I whispered. "Guarding the approaches."

Calandra followed my gaze. "But guarding how? And against whom?"

I shook my head. "I don't know." But even as I said it I thought about the heat-treated spots on the ridge up the bluff... "What do you say," I said carefully, "we kind of ease back, break camp, and get out of here."

She hunched her shoulders fractionally. "It won't help. They know we're here."

She was right—I could sense the unblinking attention focused on us. "Maybe they don't realize we know what they are," I told Calandra. Something in the back of my mind was screaming danger!— "Come on," I snapped, taking her hand and pulling her all but bodily away from the thunderheads—

It came as a half seen, half felt sense of a dark mass falling from the sky; and even as we both ducked reflexively there was the sharp crack of suddenly released pressure, and we were abruptly in the middle of a cloud of thick white smoke. A sweet-bitter smell flooded my nostrils, and I clamped a hand over my face to try and keep it out. But too late. Already I could feel my arms and legs going numb. I tried to take a step, stumbled instead to my knees, dragging Calandra down with me as my hand refused to release its grip on hers. Together we sprawled onto the ground, and a moment later I found myself on my back. Overhead, the fog parted slightly, enough to give me a glimpse of the pattern of lights hovering overhead.

The last thing I saw were those lights, begi

Chapter 20

From somewhere beside me came the quiet sound of someone shifting position in a chair.

Eyes still closed, I let myself come fully awake, stretching still-groggy senses as best I could. From the sound and its echo I could tell that I was in a small, metal-walled room, and that my unknown companion and I were the only ones here. Outside the room... probably a corridor, with others there. Which meant I was in some kind of small building or ship, possibly the one I'd glimpsed attacking us in the buttes. Commodore Freitag's Pravilo force, arriving sooner than I'd expected them to? Or had we indeed found the smuggler we'd been seeking?

And then I paused to evaluate my own condition... and realized with a shock that I'd been asleep for at least two days.

There was no doubt about that. The acid feeling in my stomach, plus the emptiness there, was certain proof that I'd skipped more than a couple of meals, while the general lack of hunger and the tenderness in my right upper arm indicated intravenous feeding had taken place.

And from the odd taste in my mouth I could guess that during those lost days I'd undergone pravdrug interrogation.

My unknown companion shifted again... and there was no point in putting off the confrontation any longer. Mentally bracing myself, I opened my eyes.

Seated across the small room, watching me closely, was Kutzko.

Relief flooded across my tension... and then I looked deeply into Kutzko's face, and the relief was replaced by shame.

Stone-faced, he tapped the phone on the molded table beside him. "Kutzko, sir," he spoke into it. "He's awake."

He got an acknowledgment and turned the instrument off, and for a long moment we eyed each other. "Would—?" I broke off, worked moisture into a desert-dry mouth. "Would it help," I tried again, "if I said I was sorry?"

He regarded me coolly. "I once killed a man in front of you," he said. "You remember?"

How could I forget? He'd been a corporate saboteur, surprised in the act by Lord Kelsey-Ramos, and he'd been practically on top of me when Kutzko had blown three needler cartridges into him. "I remember," I said with a shiver.

"I said I was sorry. Did it help you?"

I sighed. "Not really."

His face didn't change, but his sense seemed to soften a bit. "You could have let me in on it," he said. "Could have let me help."

I shook my head. "I couldn't let you put your neck on the block like that for me," I told him.

"Why not?" he countered.

"Because—" I broke off at a sound from the door beside him. The panel whispered open... and Randon Kelsey-Ramos strode in.

For a half dozen heartbeats he just gazed at me. "I trust," he said at last, his voice cold, "that you're pleased with yourself."

I swallowed. "Not really, sir," I said.

"No?" he asked, eyebrows raised sardonically. "You mean that spiking through half a dozen major laws—not to mention making your friends look like a lot of smert-heads—you mean that's not really what you were trying to accomplish?"

I gritted my teeth. I'd heard Lord Kelsey-Ramos shrivel people this way before, and Randon definitely had the proper tone of voice. And yet, somewhere under the anger I could sense something that didn't quite fit. "You know why I did it, sir," I said quietly. "And I make no excuses. I knew the consequences, and I'm ready to accept them."