Deadman Switch (40 page)

“Interesting,” Adams murmured. He pondered for a moment. “You don't think revealing that will make trouble?”

I shook my head. “The thunderheads almost certainly know by now that we know it. And in the two weeks since Lord Kelsey-Ramos figured it out they haven't shown any signs of being particularly worried.” Which, if that was true, meant that its use as a lever might well be vanishingly small. But there was nothing left for me but the grasping of such straws.

For another moment Adams gazed at me, his sense a kaleidoscope of indecision and thought and the weighing of possibilities. Then, abruptly, it cleared; and he nodded briskly. “All right. Are you ready?”

The quickness of the decision surprised me. “Well, yes, but
you
aren't. We'll need to get some of the drugs they've been using to prepare Shepherd Zagorin.”

“And you have access to these drugs?” he asked pointedly.

“I can get them,” I insisted. “We can't risk the kind of trouble you had the first time.”

“Why not?” he countered. “I lasted several minutes then, and with my rebuilt heart and cerebral circulatory system I shouldn't be in even that much danger this time.”

I felt my stomach muscles tightening up. I couldn't ask him to do this—not now, not unprepared. But he was right. The first batch of rocheoids were already being prepared, and the schedule called for the rest to be finished within another month. The longer we delayed, the less likely anything we learned would be able to stop the holocaust. “All right,” I sighed at last. “There shouldn't be anyone at the Butte City at the moment.”

“I'm glad to hear it,” he said dryly. Laying his fork trowel aside, he shifted to cross-legged position and closed his eyes.

I felt a rush of heat to my face, feeling like an idiot. Of course there was no need for us to physically go to where the thunderheads' bodies were. Sitting down in front of Adams, I took a careful breath and tried to clear my mind of extraneous thoughts. Adams slipped into his meditative trance … reached what seemed to me to be the proper point … “Thunderheads?” I invited.

The response was immediate. “I am here,” Adams whispered hoarsely. “What do you wish?”

I braced myself. This was it. “I wish information,” I said. “I'd like you to teach me how to communicate with the aliens who are approaching this world.”

Eisenstadt had made the identical request before; and, as with that time, there was a long moment of silence. I kept my eyes on Adams, watching for any signs of physical distress. “There is no way to talk … to them,” the thunderhead answered at last.

Predictably, the same answer as last time. “Then perhaps we humans will choose to leave this place,” I told him. “Perhaps those in authority over us will decide they don't like being lied to and manipulated by others.”

I'd half expected the thunderhead to feign innocence; but perhaps I'd underestimated the creatures' sophistication. “Your race has gained much from … this place,” he said through Adams. “You seek certain miner … als for your machines. They are worth lives to you. You will stay and fight for … what you want.”

“I'd advise you not to underestimate the strength of human pride,” I warned him. “You see, we now know all about your natural defense strategy, with the stinging insects and all. We know that you're playing the exact same game with us, right down to luring us here by creating the mineral wealth of Collet's rings for us.”

“We do not create,” he said calmly.

“Semantics,” I snorted. “Perhaps you'd prefer the word
enhanced.
Regardless, we know all about it. Must have been quite a project: an entire planetful of thunderheads focusing their organic lasers on the rings for years at a time, slowly boiling off the lighter elements and leaving the heavier metals behind.”

“Such an accusation … is utterly fantas … tic.”

I shook my head. “I agree it's wilder than most of the theories that have tried to account for the heat-treating of the rocks out there, but once Lord Kelsey-Ramos made the connection it was a trivial matter to show that the heating was done by the same set of wavelengths as the melted spots on that ramp in the Butte City.”

There was another long silence, and I had the distinct impression that the thunderheads were a little taken aback. For all their remarkable natural abilities, their lack of any kind of technology severely limited their knowledge of the physical sciences. To their minds, the analysis I'd just described—a very straightforward one, I'd been told—probably sounded identical to magic. “Well?” I prompted after a moment.

A sense of firmness touched Adams's face. “You will stay and fight for … the minerals in the … rings,” the thunderhead repeated.

I bit at my lip. This was getting me nowhere. “Will you at least tell me
why
they're coming?” I asked him.

“They are invaders.”

The stock answer. “Yes, so you've told us,” I said, feeling my frustration level beginning to rise. “But
why
are they coming? What quarrel do they have with you that they're willing to spend a hundred years coming through your Cloud to get to you?”

“They are invaders.”

I focused sharply on Adams. Something in his voice on that last sentence … ? “Thunderhead, we haven't got much time left,” I said, watching Adams closely. The contact was beginning to get to him. “We can't simply kill the aliens in cold blood—we just
can't.
Don't you understand how unethical such a thing would be for our species?”

Adams's glazed eyes turned up to me … and suddenly I felt a chill run up my back. There was a hard edge to his sense, something I'd never before seen in a thunderhead contact. “You are defenders,” he whispered; and even with a whisper's usual lack of tonal cues I could hear the contempt there. “You will destroy them be … cause that is your nature. That is why you are here.”

I gritted my teeth hard, anger and frustration combining into a violent urge to somehow lash out at the thunderhead. But I couldn't. A nerve was twitching in Adams's neck, and I could see the palpitation of the carotid artery, and there was nothing I could do except swallow my fury and break off the contact. “We are human beings,” I gritted out. “We go where we wish, do what we wish. As you
will
find out. Adams!—break contact.”

For a second I had the horrible feeling that the thunderhead was going to refuse to allow it, that he was going to let Adams die as a demonstration of thunderhead power. But a second later the stiffness went out of Adams's back, and he was free.

I watched him closely, finger resting lightly on the Emergency button on my phone. But the worrying turned out to be unnecessary; compared with the last time, this recovery was practically instantaneous. Within a minute his breathing and eyes had returned to normal and he was able to sit up straight again. “So,” he said at last. “It didn't work.”

Defeat had a bitter taste. “No,” I shook my head wearily. “I'd hoped there might be something else there … but there isn't. We really
are
nothing but overgrown insects to them. They're playing with us—
have
been playing with us, for seventy years now. And if the Pravilo gets their way on this one …”

Adams turned his head to gaze through the security fence. “Perhaps they aren't simply being blind or greedy,” he suggested quietly. “Perhaps they don't see any safe alternative to cooperation at this point.” He hesitated. “The thunderheads' lasers—did they
really
burn the light elements out of the rings?”

I saw what he was getting at. “Yes, but Lord Kelsey-Ramos told me that it took them literally years to do it. At least ten, probably closer to twenty. The individual lasers aren't all that powerful, really—they seem to have come about mainly as a means for stirring up their insect protectors when a predator approached. It wouldn't be all that effective a weapon against us.”

“They fused the end of a needler with it,” he pointed out.

“Melted a few drops across the opening,” I corrected him. “And it probably took the entire Butte City population to do it. Agreed, a direct confrontation would carry a certain risk. But I can't see the Patri knuckling under solely because of that.”

Adams snorted gently. “Then you're right: it has to be either blindness or greed.”

I nodded. “My guess is greed.”

For a minute we sat there silently. I found my eyes turning upward, toward the glistening white clouds drifting serenely across the blue sky … and in my mind's eye the clouds became Mjollnir-equipped rocheoids. Massive chunks of death, moving into their appointed places in front of the approaching ships.

Ships that would probably never even know what had happened to them.

“You can't give up,” Adams said.

I turned back to find his eyes on me. “I don't
want
to give up,” I retorted. “But I've tried everything I can think of, and I'm out of ideas. Even if the thunderheads were willing to tell us how to talk to the aliens, there's no guarantee we could get a dialogue going fast enough to figure out what the conflict is between the two races.”

“Still, if the aliens could tell us their side of things, you can bet the thunderheads would open up and give us
their
version,” Adams pointed out.

“For whatever good that would do,” I shrugged. “Whatever the morality of the situation turns out to be, the fact remains that siding with the thunderheads keeps us the ring mines. I don't think the thunderheads would let the Patri forget that.”

“As if the Patri would need reminding.”

“Right.” Carefully, I got to my feet, the muscles in my legs protesting as I did so. “Thank you for your time, Shepherd Adams, and for your willingness to risk your life in this.”

He waved a hand, figuratively brushing the gratitude away. “What will you do now?”

“I don't know.” I looked toward the Butte City. “Go talk to Dr. Eisenstadt or Lord Kelsey-Ramos, I suppose. Keep nagging people until they get tired enough of me to do something.”

He smiled. “‘For a long time he refused,'” he quoted, “‘but at last he said to himself, Even though I have neither fear of God nor respect for any human person, I must give this widow her just rights since she keeps pestering me, or she will come and slap me in the face.' Is that it?”

“More or less,” I said. “Except that unlike the judge in the parable, they don't really have to put up with me any longer than—”

I broke off as my phone twittered. I frowned as I pulled it out, wondering who could possibly be calling me. “This is Benedar,” I identified myself.

“Gilead, this is Eisenstadt.” The scientist's voice was tight. “Where are you?”

“Out near the fence, talking with Shepherd Adams,” I said, stomach muscles tightening. “What's wrong?”

His sigh was just barely audible. “You'd better get back to the ship right away. There are some Pravilos here … with a warrant for your arrest.”

T
HE PRISON CELL WAS
simple, small, and unadorned—a sort of sardonic parody, I thought more than once, of my cubicle in the Carillon Building back on Portslava. Without the magnificent view, of course. Or even a reasonably good intercom system.

“As near as I can tell, it's sort of a forced misunderstanding,” Lord Kelsey-Ramos said, his image on the display fuzzing just enough to make it exasperating to try and read. “What's happened is that someone labyrinthed a writ through the central judiciary on Portslava, ordering the Pravilo to detain you here on charges stemming from your running off with Calandra Paquin. Total nonsense, of course, given what's happened since then, but until we can backtrack it there's not a lot I can do about it.”

I nodded heavily. “I don't have to guess who's behind it, do I?”

He grimaced. “Not really. I've talked to Randon and we both agree it was almost certainly this smert-headed Aikman you kept locking horns with. Something of a farewell present to you, I expect.”

I frowned. “Farewell present? He's gone?”

“Left about a week ago. Took a new position on Janus, the HTI people tell me.”

“How very convenient for him,” I murmured.

“How, indeed,” Lord Kelsey-Ramos said grimly. “Don't worry, though—we'll track him down.”

I sighed, a bitter taste in my mouth. “Don't bother, sir. He's not worth it.”

Lord Kelsey-Ramos glared at me. “You'll forgive me, I trust, if turning the other cheek isn't part of
my
philosophy.”

“It's not that, sir,” I told him. “It's just that he really
isn't
worth the effort. You can get me out of here just as fast through normal channels as you could by chasing him down, and even hauling him back here wouldn't do anything but give him the chance to gloat in my face.”

“Give
you
the chance to gloat, don't you mean?”

I shook my head. “No, sir. You see, he's already lost his original battle—I've kept Calandra away from the Deadman Switch. He can't make me watch her die, the way he wanted to … so instead he's arranged for me to be locked away and helpless while the alien fleet dies in her place.”

Lord Kelsey-Ramos made a sour face. “I understand. Yes, it could easily take the three weeks we've got left to sort all of this through to Portslava and back.” He studied my face. “Unless, that is, I make an all-out fight of it.”

I shrugged. “What would be the point? I've already done everything I can think of to get the Patri to change their minds about talking to the aliens first. Whether I sit here or in the Butte City encampment makes no real difference.”

Lord Kelsey-Ramos sighed. “I'm sorry, Gilead. If there was any way I could help, I would.”