Deadman Switch

I looked at her, back at Eisenstadt, and swallowed my anger. "Where do you want us to start?"

A flicker of relief touched Eisenstadt's face. "Let's try over here," he said, the same relief evident in his voice. Clearly, Calandra and I weren't nearly as expendable as he wanted us to believe. I filed the fact away for possible future reference and we followed him to the edge of the thunderhead city.

"We've found several places along their skin where we can pick up neuroelectric signals," he said, squatting down beside one of the thunderheads and gingerly indicating places along its side and atop the curving crest. I noticed that he was careful not to actually touch the creature, wondered if perhaps the scientists had had a second demonstration of the thunderheads' defensive capabilities. "We can detect well enough when the thing is... vacant... but so far every one we've found has come back within the decay limit."

"The what?" I asked.

"Decay limit." Eisenstadt's general discomfort deepened a bit. "While the bodies are empty there's a subtle form of tissue decay going on. Nothing particularly serious, but our projections indicate that if the thing stays away longer than about two hours, irreversible damage will begin to set in."

Calandra shivered. "As if they really were dead."

The word hung in the air for a moment. Temporarily dead thunderheads; permanently dead zombis. Nowhere in Solitaire system, it seemed, could you get away from death.

"Whatever," Eisenstadt said at last. "We suspect that that limitation implies that this wasn't a talent that evolved along with their physical development."

I cleared the image of death from my mind. "So. You set up your sensors on one of the thunderheads, who promptly runs out when he sees you coming, and then you have to wait another two hours before you can tell whether it's dead or just off somewhere hiding."

Eisenstadt nodded sourly. "That's basically it—and we'd just as soon not have to go through the whole exercise with all two hundred forty-one of the smert-putrid things. And then maybe have to go outside to hunt one down anyway."

I looked at Calandra. "What do you think?"

A slight frown creased her forehead. "It would be a little like trying to single out a particular conversation in a crowded room," she said. "And from a fair distance, too. It's going to be tricky."

"Why from a distance?" Eisenstadt demanded. "Why can't you just go up to one of them—?"

He broke off, looking a

Slowly, Calandra let her gaze sweep the thunderheads. "There," she said, pointing. "Fourth back from the edge. Is that one...?"

She trailed off. I stared at the thunderhead she'd indicated, searching with all my powers of observation for signs of sentience... "I don't know," I murmured finally. "It's hard to tell."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Calandra lick her lips. "Well... there's one way to find out. Maybe."

She started forward, walking carefully out toward the thunderhead. I watched closely... and saw the subtle change. "It's gone," I called to her.

"Yes," she agreed, coming to a halt. For a moment she stood there watching it; then, almost reluctantly, she turned and came back to where Eisenstadt and I stood. "I don't think this is going to work, Dr. Eisenstadt," she sighed. "The signs are too subtle—" she waved a hand helplessly—"and there's just too much interference from the others around here."

He gave her a look that was equal parts contempt and disgust. "What about you, Benedar?" he said, turning the look on me. "You giving up, too?"

The threat beneath the words was abundantly clear: if we couldn't or wouldn't help his investigation, we would be summarily returned to our cells. From which I would go to stand trial before the Solitaran judiciary; from which Calandra would be taken to her long-overdue execution aboard the Bellwether. "What about the thunderheads outside the Butte City?" I asked, searching desperately for a straw to grasp at. "Surely some of them must have died, too."

"Some of them have," Eisenstadt growled. "Unfortunately, the two or three we've located have been dead long enough for the local scavengers to have made a mess of them. More to the point, they never show up in groups of larger than four out there, and I have no interest in trekking all over Spall sifting through groups that small for a fresh corpse. This—right here—is our best chance; and it's your only chance to put all those high-minded religious principles of yours to work. If you can't, then we go out and pull up one of the things at random."

I took a deep breath. "Sir..."

And at my side Calandra suddenly seemed to tense up. "What?" I interrupted myself, turning to her.

She was gazing unseeingly out over the thunderheads. "Perhaps, sir," she said quietly, her voice taut with a strange reluctance, "we could try asking the thunderheads themselves."

Eisenstadt snorted. "Oh, certainly," he said, dripping sarcasm. "What do you suggest we use: sign language or dot code?"

Calandra hesitated. "It... may be easier than that," she said hesitantly. She looked at me, eyes pleading—

And suddenly I understood. "Yes," I agreed, my stomach tightening. A long, long shot indeed; and I could just hear what Eisenstadt would say when I suggested it. The thought made me wince... but if there was even a chance it would work... "Yes," I said again, putting as much confidence into the word as I could and bracing myself for what was to come. "It's certainly worth a try. Dr. Eisenstadt... we're going to need an aircar."

Chapter 22

Shepherd Denvre Adams listened in silence until Eisenstadt had finished. He looked at me, at Calandra, at the sea of thunderheads beside us. "What you're suggesting," he said quietly, "is blasphemy."

Eisenstadt's lip twisted. "Look, I understand how you feel about this—"

"I doubt that, sir," Adams cut him off. "I doubt it very much. At any rate, I won't do it."

Eisenstadt threw a razor-edged glare at me, and I cringed at the raw frustrated anger boiling out at me. Just convincing him to give this a try had taken every bit of my persuasive powers, and he'd made it abundantly clear at the outset that it was going to be on my head if it didn't work out. Now, it didn't look like we were going to get even that far. "I wonder, sir," I said to Eisenstadt, "if Calandra and I could talk with Shepherd Adams privately."

"Why?" he demanded.

Calandra got the answer out first. "Because we do understand how he feels," she said.

Eisenstadt turned his glare onto her. Unexpectedly, though, the reflexive refusal he'd been preparing to give seemed to get lost somewhere en route. "You've got five minutes," he said instead. Turning his back, he stomped away to the central monitoring station.

"You can't convince me," Adams warned me... but there was more than a hint of uncertainty beneath his quiet defiance.

"What are you afraid of?" I asked him.

"I already told you. Blasphemy. To even suggest that God is nothing more than a group of sentient plants—"

"No one's suggesting that," I insisted. "All we're saying is that the thunderheads may be what you hear when you're meditating."

"Is that all?" he asked with probably as much sarcasm as the man was capable of. "You just want to prove that God isn't speaking to us?"

"But if He's not—"

"If He's not, there are still benefits to be had from the act of meditation," he said stubbornly. "As well as from our fellowship here."

I eyed him, mentally preparing myself. For years I'd watched Lord Kelsey-Ramos appeal to logic and self-interest to persuade people to his point of view; now, it was my turn to try. Fleetingly, I wished he was here to do it for me. "I realize that, sir—don't forget that I had the chance to observe some of those benefits first hand. But that's not what's at issue here. The question is whether Halo of God doctrine does, in fact, conflict with the real universe... and if it does, you know as well as I do that you can't hold it back."