Timothy Zahn - Deadman Switch

Most everyone, I gathered—from Eisenstadt on down—had privately concluded that the directions we'd been given had somehow been misread, and it was only through mule-headed persistence on the search leader's part that the dead thunderhead was located at all. The "height" the thunderheads had used in giving distance, it turned out, was neither their own physical height nor ours, but a length that was finally identified as the height of the common building in Shepherd Zagorin's Myrrh settlement. For me, it seemed just one more indication that the thunderheads had been observing the Halo of God settlers since their arrival; Eisenstadt, conversely, wondered aloud whether it was a deliberate delaying tactic. But it wasn't long before the sheer scientific excitement drove such political/military considerations into the background of his mind and allowed the pure scientist to shine through again.

To shine through with a vengeance. For all but his inner circle he virtually ceased to exist, disappearing into the project as if inhaled by it. Every waking hour was spent either in the clean room with the examination team or else in his office studying the data that was being extracted by the double cylful. His rare sleeping hours were probably spent dreaming about it.

I'd spent eight years with Lord Kelsey-Ramos, who hadn't pushed Carillon to the top by being lazy; but even by those standards Eisenstadt's capacity and energy were astounding. Armed with a full clearance to the information—a courtesy that I suspected for a long time had been an accidental oversight on his part—I did my best to keep up with as much of the flood of information as I could. But even just following the nontechnical summaries was almost more than I could handle.

Thunderheads, it turned out, were in many ways an almost even mixture of plant and animal characteristics. Our dead drone, once extracted, left behind it an extensive network of hairlike roots extending up to twenty meters into the ground, a nutrient-gathering system which at least partially explained how they were able to survive on top of barren bluffs as well as amid lush vegetation. The root system contained an unusual twist, though: a close examination showed that each of the fibers went through a living/dead/decomposing cycle that actually encouraged nearby plant growth by flooding the soil with vital trace elements.

The discovery, exciting though it was to the scientists, was greeted with a certain chagrin by those who had had to dig the drone up and would presumably be called on to do so again. Along with the problem of having to slog through matted plants to get to the thunderhead, they had quickly found that those same plants sheltered the nests of a fairly nasty species of stinging insect, insects who had had to be gassed before the drone could be approached. For a day or two afterward there were rumors that the workers had asked either that the next specimen be taken from Butte City, where no such plants or insects existed, or else that Eisenstadt assign the next sampling run to a fully armored Pravilo team.

The rumors faded with time. I doubt Eisenstadt ever even noticed them.

There were a great many other plantlike characteristics, too, cellular structure among them. But at the same time there were enough animal-like qualities to keep the thunderheads from simply being labeled as sessile, sentient plants. They had almost the entire set of normal animal senses, for one thing, including sight, hearing, a limited sense of touch, and a combined chemical analysis system nestled beneath the wave-like overhang that combined smell and taste. Their sight, in particular, was surprisingly well developed, especially given that it relied on fairly simple cellular lenses scattered in a semi-random pattern across the whole of the body. It took a great deal of computer modeling time to finally show that the hard-wired neural pathways connecting the lenses to each other and the brain actually acted as as sort of organic computer, combining and cleaning up the blurry images into something as clear as human eyesight.

The drone had a true circulatory system too, not just primitive ducts for transporting sap and water, though the system operated via a combination of vascular pressure, capillary action, and gravity instead of a heart. There were also several distinct organs scattered throughout the body, though there was a great deal of heated debate as to the functions each might serve. The brain and central nervous system were fairly decentralized, though the neural density increased markedly near the various sensory organs and each of the cellular eyes.

There was more to be learned—a great deal more—and Eisenstadt's "couple of days" stretched ever longer as they took their prize apart bit by bit, arguing and discussing each new discovery. Off to the side, largely ignored, Calandra and Shepherd Zagorin and I waited... and speculated quietly among ourselves whether giving Eisenstadt the drone might have been part of a thunderhead plan to distract him from whatever it was about the Cloud that they seemed determined to hide. We waited three weeks... until, finally, Eisenstadt decided he was ready.

—

Calandra and I were taken to the Butte City at mid-morning the next day, to find the preliminary preparations nearly complete. Shepherd Zagorin, sitting alone this time at the edge of the thunderhead mass, was being fitted with sensors and monitor leads as Eisenstadt stood fidgeting over her. Further back, in the ridge hollow, the techs were checking out their equipment and taking readings with a sense of quiet chaos that reminded me of an orchestra warming up before a concert.

Physically, it was like a replay of the last contact. Emotionally, it was drastically different. Three weeks ago the men and women here had been contemptuously amused by the suggestion that a simple religious practice could accomplish something their science had so far failed to do. We'd offered them a miracle, and it had been granted... and as I looked around the Butte City now I found only sober anticipation and even traces of respect.

Beside me, Calandra snorted gently. "Look at them," she murmured, nodding fractionally at the busy techs.

"What about them?" I murmured back.

"The way they look at Joyita—you see it? They've adopted her as an honorary member."

I frowned, studying their faces more closely. Calandra was right; I could indeed sense an odd camaraderie when they looked in her direction. "I don't understand."

"The last time they did this she and Adams were just religious fanatics," Calandra said, a trace of bitterness in her voice. "Not worth more than basic legal tolerance. But their method worked, and every scientist and tech knows that only science works. So the method must be science, and she must be a scientist."

I felt an echo of her bitterness in my own stomach. For the wisdom of its wise men is doomed, the understanding of any who understand will vanish... "It's always easier to come up with a rationalization than to change your basic assumptions," I reminded her. "At least it gains her some acceptance—maybe even gains some acceptance for the Halo of God in general."

Eisenstadt spotted us, beckoned us over. "We're about ready here," he told us as we approached, his voice and expression rich with slightly nervous anticipation. He raised his eyebrows questioningly—

"We're ready, too," I assured him. Calandra and I had kept up our end of the bargain with Eisenstadt, spending a good seventy or eighty hours with Zagorin over the past three weeks. If the thunderheads were planning any intellectual or emotional manipulation, I had little doubt that we'd be able to catch it.

Eisenstadt nodded, the tension in his sense easing just a bit, and turned back to Zagorin. "Whenever you feel ready, Ms. Zagorin."

She nodded and closed her eyes. Eisenstadt stepped back to stand between Calandra and me, and together we waited.