Timothy Zahn - Deadman Switch

Again, that knowing look. "And you want me ready to run interference?"

"Basically, yes."

He paused, considering, and I could see that he was weighing the risks of possibly winding up square in the middle of this whole mess. "You really think she's innocent?" he asked at last.

I nodded. "I do. The more I see of her, the less I think she could be a murderer."

He pursed his lips, then shrugged. "Okay, sure, I'll do it. Give me a sign when you're ready and I'll try to make you a bubble to talk in."

I exhaled silently. "Thanks, Mikha. I really appreciate it."

"No problem." He studied my face. "Just one question: is Mr. Kelsey-Ramos one of the people I'm supposed to keep out of this bubble?"

It was a question that had also been nagging at me. At the moment I had at least his tacit approval for what I was doing... but making an embarrassing nuisance of myself at a formal reception would evaporate that support in double-quick time. Unfortunately, I had no way of knowing in advance where the crucial dividing line lay. "There shouldn't be a problem as long as I'm discreet," I said as reassuringly as possible. There was no point in him worrying about it, too.

"And if you're not, I pretend I don't know you?"

"Fair enough. Try to be gentle when you throw me out of the building."

He grinned lopsidedly. "I'll bring Brad along and let him do it."

"Oh, thanks a lot," I snorted. "I'll either wind up in orbit or in a burn-out trajectory."

His grin faded into seriousness, a seriousness that somehow made me brace myself. "You know, there is one other way to get the Bellwether a new zombi."

I gazed at him, feeling the cold-steel edge there. "Pick one up ourselves?" I asked carefully.

He nodded in Cameo's direction. "Even Solitaire's got its quota of drifters and generally unwanted people. Some of them might be criminals from the rest of the Patri and colonies who finagled passage here and are hiding out."

"You know I could never be party to something like that," I said, my lips suddenly dry. "It would be murder."

"Which the Deadman Switch isn't?"

I gritted my teeth. "Two wrongs have never yet made a right. Besides, you'd never get Mr. Kelsey-Ramos to go along with something like that."

He cocked an eyebrow. "Maybe. Maybe not I'll bet there would be a way to rig it to look like someone had stowed away and tried to seize control of the ship." He paused. "You may not know it," he added obliquely, "but Lord Kelsey-Ramos has been trying to find a second Watcher for his staff for a couple of years now."

An odd haze of unreality settled over me, a disbelief that I was even talking about this... "No," I said firmly. "Absolutely not. If I can save Calandra legally, I'll do it. Not otherwise."

"Even if the illegal zombi deserved death anyway?" he countered.

All have sinned and lack God's glory... "Even then," I told him.

For a moment we looked at each other. Then Kutzko shrugged acceptance. "If that's how you want it," he said. "If you'll pardon my saying so, I think your sense of ethics is on the overdone side."

"Possibly," I said evenly. "But any ethics you can throw out when they're inconvenient wouldn't be worth much as ethics, would they?"

"I suppose not," he said, and I could sense him backing away from the topic. "I suppose I should start getting my people ready for tonight."

"And I have to get Calandra some formal wear ordered, anyway," I reminded myself aloud.

"There's a catalog listed on the main Rainbow's End phone list," he offered. "I scanned through it some last night, and it seems pretty complete."

"Thanks, I'll take a look."

It was only minutes later, in the privacy of my stateroom, that the enormity of what had just happened hit me with delayed force. Not just that Kutzko, a man I thought a great deal of, had been willing to consider kidnap and murder... but that I had actually been on the verge of considering it myself.

And my knees began to shake.

The brighter of the stars in Solitaire's sky were beginning to appear through the dusk overhead as we pulled up to Governor Rybakov's mansion, an imposing edifice that gave out a sense of dignified power that reminded me of the HTI conference room. From the mansions's double-wing design, I guessed it followed the typical Patri pattern for such places, including both office and entertainment facilities as well as living space for the governor. The windows of the ground floor to our left were ablaze with light, and through the half-tinting I could see the shadows of milling people.

"Nice place," Randon grunted as the five of us filed out of the car. "Be interesting to have Schock run the budget sometime and find out just what percentage of Solitaire's income goes to their officials."

"They've got money to spare," I murmured.

He glanced at me. "I suppose they do," he conceded.

Randon and Kutzko in the lead, we climbed the flaystone steps to the main portico. "Mr. Randon Kelsey-Ramos and party," Kutzko told the liveried guards flanking the door. Stepping smoothly in front of Randon, he started to enter—

"Just a moment, sir," one of the guards spoke up. "Is the lady in your party Ms. Calandra Mara Paquin?"

Beside me, Calandra tensed. Randon turned his head leisurely to look at us, turned just as leisurely back again. "Yes, I believe it is," he acknowledged coolly. "Why?"

"I regret to say, sir, that I can't allow her to enter." There was no regret anywhere in the guard's sense that I could detect. "Governor Rybakov's orders."

"On what grounds?" Randon asked.

"On the grounds that she is a convicted felon, sentenced to death, sir," he said stiffly, distaste at both her legal status and her Watcher background coming through his official decorum. "The governor does not wish to have such a potential danger within her house."

There really wasn't any hope of appeal, and Randon knew it as well as the rest of us. But he was too pridefully stubborn to give up quite that easily. "She was assigned to my ship," he told the guard. "Placed therefore under both my care and my legal jurisdiction. I'll take full responsibility for her actions and behavior here."

"I understand, sir. I still can't allow her to enter."

Randon locked eyes with the man for a long moment, then turned slowly back to us and nodded to Duge Ifversn, behind me in rearguard position. "Ifversn, escort her back to the ship," he instructed the other. For a moment his eyes met mine, and I could sense him bracing for an argument. But there was no point to it, and I remained silent. "Turn her over to Seqoya and then come back."

Ifversn nodded. "Ms. Paquin...?"

Calandra turned away, not looking at me, and went with him. I watched them get back into the car, then looked back to find Randon's eyes still on me... his eyes, and an almost grudging touch of sympathy. I took a deep breath and nodded to him. Turning, he strode without a word between the guards and into the mansion.

Inside, we found ourselves in a high-arched hallway stretching probably half the length of the building itself. A greeter waiting just inside welcomed us to the governor's home and directed us to an open pair of double doors down the hall, while a second pair of guards relieved Kutzko of his puff adder needler clips and gave him a single clip of slapshots in return. It was standard security practice—guards usually preferred visiting shields to carry only nonlethal ammunition—and Kutzko surrendered to it with professional good grace.

The buzz of conversation was audible well into the hall... and as we reached the double doors it became instantly clear that Governor Rybakov wasn't merely going through the motions on this one. There were at least two hundred people milling around the ballroom-sized space, two hundred rich and influential people, judging by their clothing and deportment and the watchfulness of the unobtrusive shields shadowing many of them. Out of a total planetary population of perhaps four hundred eighty thousand—only half of whom lived in the Cameo/Rainbow's End corridor—getting two hundred of the upper class together in one place was a rather impressive accomplishment.