Deadman Switch

Chi snorted. "You're arguing your premise."

"Or looking for internal consistency," Randon corrected mildly. "Indulge me a moment, Doctor, and assume they're capable of something that sophisticated. Why would they want to do that?"

"To shake us off their trail," Kutzko spoke up unexpectedly, a hard edge beneath the words. I turned to look at him, found him gazing out at the thunderheads... and a chill ran up my back. Kutzko's stance, his eyes, the way his hand hovered near his needler—I'd seen it before. He was sensing the presence of danger... "They're trying to make us think that the readings are wrong."

"Ridiculous," Chi snorted. "You're not just postulating intelligence, now, but intelligence equal to humanity's own. Not to mention a sophisticated social structure."

I thought back to the sense Calandra and I had had, that this collection of thunderheads was a city. "You implied you've had other readings like this?" I asked.

"A few," Chi acknowledged grudgingly.

"Exactly the same?"

"I doubt it—we really haven't done the complete analysis on the data yet." He sighed. "But if it'll make you happy—Karyn, call up all such events, will you? Give a time line, too."

The tech did as instructed. Four records appeared on split sections of the display... and Chi hissed between his teeth. "Bozhe moi," he muttered.

"What?" Randon asked sharply.

Chi pointed. "This one was the fourth we've recorded... and the time lapse between it and the third is the same as between the third and second... and between the second and first."

Randon and I exchanged glances. "So they can go dormant," Randon said slowly, "but not indefinitely. Something like a water mammal having to come up at fixed intervals for air."

Chi rubbed his cheek. "Maybe," he conceded reluctantly. "Maybe. It still doesn't prove it's not a natural non-intelligent phenomenon. A normal biologic cycle, perhaps."

"The others aren't following any such cycle," I told him. "It's only the ones you're studying. The rest are watching us."

"So you say," Chi countered. "Can you prove it?"

Randon snorted. "Oh, come on, Doctor. He pointed out to you the exact moment when those three reacted. What more proof do you want that he's seeing something real?"

Chi glared at him. "I'm a scientist, Mr. Kelsey-Ramos," he said evenly. "I deal in facts—provable, scientific facts. Watchers like Benedar deal in feelings and interpretations and beliefs. Faith, not science. I understand the political reasons you want to make him a hero in this, but I have no intention of letting those reasons get in the way of my work."

For a long minute Randon just looked at him, and I watched as Chi went from righteous indignation to discomfort to the distinctly nervous feeling that perhaps he shouldn't have spoken quite so sharply to the heir of the Carillon Group. Randon let him squirm another moment, then turned to gaze again out over the thunderheads. "Tell me, Doctor," he said calmly, "why would something as plant-like as a thunderhead develop intelligence in the first place?"

Chi blinked at the unexpected question. "I don't understand what you're asking."

"They're not mobile, are they? I've seen the original survey team reports—their roots go pretty deep into the ground. Surely they aren't able to pull them up and move elsewhere."

"No, of course not. That's why the whole idea of them being intelligent—"

"Is ridiculous," Randon finished for him. "Yes, we know. And yet, they're aware enough to know that you're studying them. True?"

He hesitated. "We don't yet have any hard evidence of that."

"So check me on it," I suggested, begi

Chi made a sour face. "The collusion between two Watchers would hardly—"

"Wait a minute," Kutzko interrupted him, turning to me with a frown. "What do you mean, when it returns again? Returns from where?"

"It was just a figure of speech—" Chi began.

"Quiet," Randon said. "Well, Benedar?"

I opened my mouth... closed it again. It had been just a figure of speech... hadn't it? No; it hadn't. "I don't understand it fully myself," I said at last. "But the thunderheads don't feel dormant so much as they feel... empty."

The word seemed to hang in the air, held there by the thick silence that had settled into the hollow. Even without looking I could tell that the techs around us had all ceased their work and were listening.

Chi could tell it, too, and it perhaps kept him from being as sarcastic aloud as he would otherwise have been. "Well," he said at last. "That's a rather interesting interpretation. To say the least."

Randon ignored him. "Are you suggesting that it's not the thunderheads themselves that are sentient? That they're just playing host to some kind of non-physical consciousness?"

"It doesn't have to be that sharp edged, sir," one of the techs spoke up, a bit hesitantly. His eyes flicked to me, as if seeking moral support. "It could be that the thunderheads are indeed sentient, but that they've learned how to... well, to allow their spirits to disassociate from their bodies."

Chi glared at his subordinate. "If you don't mind, Allix," he growled, "I'd like to try and handle this without resorting to mysticism. Religious upbringing," he added with thinly veiled contempt to Randon.

The natural person has no room for the gifts of God's Spirit; to him they are folly; he ca

Randon silenced me with a wave of his hand. "So why is it so ridiculous?" he asked Chi coolly.

The other blinked in surprise. "Why? Mr. Kelsey-Ramos—well, all right; for starters, it makes no sense from an evolutionary standpoint—"

"Why not? Especially given that they can't move physically, why shouldn't they have found a way of getting around on a different plane?"

"You're talking mysticism—"

"I'm talking different levels of reality," Randon snapped. "Mjollnir space used to be considered mysticism, too, you know. Superluminal travel, electric currents creating artificial gravity—the whole thing's patently unreal by all the rules that were known half a mille

"Spare me the history lesson, if you please," Chi said stiffly. "The problem is that there's no way an evolutionary process could have come up with this sort of thing."

"Then forget evolution," I said, suddenly tired of swimming upstream against this man. "Surely somewhere in the Patri and colonies there are more sensitive instruments available—"

"Or in other words," Chi cut me off, "you want the Patri to make a nova-class fuss over this, simply on the strength of a Watcher's word. Let me explain something, Benedar: I have a reputation and a career, and chasing ghosts is not how I got them. If we find some evidence—hard evidence, I mean—in the next couple of days, then we'll see."

"And if you don't?" Randon asked.

"Then we pack up and go back to Solitaire." Chi's lip twitched knowingly. "And you'll have to make some other kind of deal to get your Watcher back."

Beside me, Kutzko stirred. "Hard evidence, huh?" he asked.

We all looked at him... and again I shivered. He was preparing for action... "Mikha—"

He turned hard eyes on me, and I shut up. "Your permission, Mr. Kelsey-Ramos?" he asked.

Randon frowned, but nodded. "Go ahead."

Kutzko nodded back and turned to the Pravilo officer still standing nearby. "Sir, I'll need my needler. Please signal your men not to react."

The other eyed him thoughtfully, gave a brisk nod. "Guards!—clear weapon!" he shouted.