Timothy Zahn - Deadman Switch

For a long moment Randon was silent, and I could feel the anger growing steadily within him. "Could they possibly have had the thing just sitting around, ready to go?"

"You mean was it put together specifically for us?" Schock shrugged. "Hard to tell. For all I know, everyone on Solitaire could be backstabbing each other with these all the time."

Wordlessly, Randon plucked the thing from Schock's fingers and handed it to me.

One look was all I needed. "It was assembled in a rush," I confirmed. "There are traces of connector fluid on some of the sicets that would normally be cleaned off, and the sealant has ripples in it that imply it was force-dried instead of being allowed to set naturally." I handed it back to Schock.

"Huh," he said in a bemused tone, peering at it again himself. "They're there, all right."

"Which means," Randon said thoughtfully, "that they did throw this together solely for our benefit. Hard to do?"

Schock considered. "Not for someone willing to pay the price."

Randon pursed his lips. "There must be something very interesting on those HTI cyls."

"Well, we can find out for sure any time now," Schock offered. "They're clean enough to put into the system and take a look. Incidentally, they'd loaded a passive tapsnake on the cyl they gave us, designed to root around for anything else in our files with an HTI keymark on it. Nothing fancy; it looked almost like they just threw it in out of habit."

"Paranoia," Randon murmured, and I could tell he was remembering the conversation we'd had on the way to the HTI meeting that morning. Remembering the odd tension Calandra and I had sensed overlaying all of Solitaire... "Benedar, you said Governor Rybakov reacted when I had Kutzko pull the fake security matter gambit, right? What was she like when we left?"

I thought back. "Much the same," I told him. "Only worse. But also strangely... resigned, I think. As if she knew she'd lost a battle or something and was mentally preparing to pull back to a new position."

He stared off into space a minute. "Sort of like the way Aikman acted when I told him I was keeping his friends' IDs?"

"Similar, but more intense." I hesitated, sorely tempted to skip over the next point. But omission of truth was just another form of lying. "For the record, though, I don't believe Aikman was actually in on the scheme, at least not beforehand. He was genuinely surprised to find those men trying to break into the ship."

"Then why did he try to get them off?" Randon demanded.

"Oh, he figured out quickly enough what was going on," I shrugged. "It was obvious that he was trying to get whoever sent them off the hot seat with as little damage as possible."

Randon grunted. "The difference between accessory before the fact and afterwards, in other words."

"More or less."

Randon made a face, then shrugged. "All right, forget Aikman for the moment. Back to Rybakov. What was this battle she'd lost, and where was she trying to pull back to?"

I had to search my memory to find the part of the conversation he was referring to. "My feeling is that she was involved, somehow, with the attempt to get aboard," I said slowly, trying to remember every nuance of the governor's sense. "Perhaps only in knowledge—maybe she was just asked to make sure we didn't leave dinner early."

"Or maybe she was asked to provide someone with a pair of official IDs?" Randon suggested.

I blinked. That thought hadn't even occurred to me. "That's... yes, that's possible," I agreed carefully.

"Just a second, here," Schock put in, clearly aghast. "Sir, are you accusing a planetary governor of involvement in industrial sabotage?"

"Why not?" Randon countered. "Just because the Patri thought she was qualified to run a minor system doesn't mean she can't be bribed. Or blackmailed or threatened, for that matter."

"But—" Schock struggled for words.

"Especially if she sees us as a threat to the whole of Solitaire, and not just to HTI," I put in.

Randon paused in the act of responding to Schock and stared at me. "Does she see us that way?" he asked.

I bit at the inside of my lip. The words had just popped out on their own... but now as I reviewed my sense of Rybakov, I could see that my back-brain had again put pieces together ahead of my conscious mind. "Yes," I told Randon.

"How much of a threat?" Schock asked warily.

"It can't be that bad," Randon put in before I could answer. "Logic, Schock. Our would-be saboteurs must have reported their failure by now; if Rybakov thought we had to be stopped at all costs, Commodore Freitag's men would already have boarded us under some pretext and carted us and the cyls away." His voice turned thoughtful. "Which means she still hopes we'll be reasonable about whatever we're about to find."

I watched him weigh the alternatives and come to a decision. "Move aside, Schock," he ordered, stepping around the desk. A wary look on his face, Schock slid out of the lounge chair. Randon dropped into it, scooping up the other's control stick and waving it at the phone. "Governor's mansion," he instructed the computer.

"Mr. Kelsey-Ramos—"

"Quiet, Schock. Yes, hello, this is Randon Kelsey-Ramos. I'd like to leave a message for Governor Rybakov—no, don't interrupt her dinner, just give her this message. Tell her that her friends dropped something of hers before they left our ship, and that if she wants the items back she can pick them up here in the morning... Yes, personally—I wouldn't think of entrusting them to anyone but her. Thank you."

He waved the stick again and got up off the couch. "And that's that," he said, a note of tension underlying the words. "We'll find out in the morning just how much of a guilty conscience the governor has."

"We won't be here—we're supposed to leave for Collet in the morning," Schock reminded him nervously. Clearly, he considered the whole subject perilously close to social apostasy.

"Then we'll just have to postpone our departure a day or two," Randon told him firmly. "I want to stay here until I know what it is about HTI that has everyone so nervous." He cocked an eyebrow at me. "That's good news for you, of course."

It took me a second to realize what he meant... and then it came back in a rush. What with all the intrigue of the evening, I'd totally forgotten the death sentence hanging over Calandra's head. "Yes, sir, it is. If Governor Rybakov does come here tomorrow, I'd like to be present."

Randon's smile was tight, with a trace of bitterness to it. "I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm beginning to see just how potent this Watcher addiction is."

The words were bantering... but the hard edge beneath it was anything but. Like his father, Randon saw himself as a staunchly independent man, master of his life and the people around him. Unlike Lord Kelsey-Ramos, he hadn't yet learned that both independence and mastery had limits. "Good night, sir," I said.

"Okay, Schock, to work," I heard Randon say as the door closed behind me. "Let's get those cyls out and see what in blazing chern-fire is in them."

Kutzko was gone from the gatelock when I returned there. Ifversn, when I asked, directed me to the bridge, a sort of sly amusement about him. Wondering what the joke was, I headed upstairs.

Kutzko was there, all right, sitting beside First Officer Gielincki at the Bellwether's sensor station. "Ah—Gilead," he said, glancing over his shoulder at me before returning his attention to the map spread out in front of him across the control panel.

"Mikha; Officer Gielincki," I said in greeting as I came up behind them. "Am I intruding?"

"Hardly," Gielincki said shortly, not bothering to look around at me. Like most of the Bellwether's crew, she didn't especially like me; unlike many of the others, however, she had both the honesty to recognize her prejudice for what it was and the empathy to feel sorry for me. It gave her an odd and uniquely mixed sense. "—number two just turned again," she said to Kutzko. "North on... must be Shupack Avenue."