Timothy Zahn - Deadman Switch

My subjective feeling was that the contact was made faster this time than the last, but as nearly as I could tell everything else was the same. Zagorin straightened abruptly from her meditative slouch, glazed eyes opening to stare at us. "Greetings to you," she whispered, the husky sound again containing overtones that never existed in her normal voice. "We are the thunderheads. We have waited long for... your return."

Eisenstadt cleared his throat, and I could tell he was mildly impressed by the thunderheads' easy acceptance of our name for them. "I greet you as well," he said. "Yes, I'm afraid it has been a while. We had a great deal of work to do, and it seemed best for us to finish it before talking to you again. For one thing, this sort of communication is rather hard on the humans you speak through."

A slight pause. I glanced back at the techs monitoring Zagorin's biological functions, read no alarm or danger in their faces. Apparently the medical pre-treatment was successfully warding off the more extreme side effects of the contact. "We mean no harm," Zagorin whispered. "It is not possible... for us to change this."

"Yes, we understand," Eisenstadt assured the speaker. "It may be possible for us to do something from this end—we're still experimenting with it." He paused, and I felt him brace himself. "We appreciate your generosity in letting us examine one of your dead. We've learned a great deal from our work; however, there are still some questions we've been unable to answer. Several weeks ago, for instance, you used a heat weapon—we think probably it was a chemically-pumped laser—against a human that you thought was about to attack you. We're very interested in the commercial and industrial possibilities of such a device, but we've been unable to identify either the mechanism or the biochemistry from the drone we studied. If you could enlighten us—even give us a clue as to where the source is located—we would be most grateful."

Zagorin gazed at him with those flat eyes, but remained silent. "Even a second demonstration would help," Eisenstadt tried again, uncertainty and uneasiness creeping into his sense. "Under controlled conditions, of course, with recording instruments in place—"

"The Cloud," Zagorin cut him off. "You seek the origi... nation of the Cloud, do... you not?"

Eisenstadt threw a slightly startled glance at me. "Well... yes, of course we do. We've, uh, been speculating that it was your people who've been guiding our ships through the Cloud all these years—"

"We will take you to the... origination of... the Cloud."

Eisenstadt stared at Zagorin, and it took him two tries to get any words out. "You mean... the mechanism that generates the Cloud? Where is it, on Spall?"

"In space," Zagorin whispered. "Deep in space."

Eisenstadt nodded slowly, his sense that of a man who has seen the answer to a long-time puzzle. "I understand. We'll need some time to get a ship ready. Can we communicate like this with you off of Spall?"

"There is no need. When you are ready, speak... to the pilot. To—" Zagorin hesitated, and I could sense the thunderhead searching his host for the right word. "To the zombi."

"All right," Eisenstadt said, forehead furrowed slightly. "Well get started on the preparations. In the meantime—"

"Farewell until then," Zagorin said.

"Wait!" Eisenstadt barked; but it was too late. Zagorin slumped over, her face and eyes returning to normal.

Eisenstadt took a step toward her, fury in his eyes. "Who told you to break contact?" he snarled.

Zagorin blinked up at him; but Calandra spoke up before she could reply. "It wasn't her doing, Doctor," she told him. "The thunderhead left her of his own volition."

Eisenstadt glared at her, and I could see him fighting to choke down his anger. "I wasn't through asking questions yet," he bit out, to no one in particular. "Couldn't he see that?"

"Perhaps he could," I said. "Perhaps he was through giving answers."

Eisenstadt paused in mid-sentence, swinging around to focus on me... and as I watched, the scientist within him gave way once again to the official representative of the Patri, with all the political and military considerations that role included. It was something of a shock; I hadn't really appreciated how different the man had been without those encumbrances.

"I see," Eisenstadt said at last. His voice, too, had subtly changed. "Sounds like they don't really want to discuss their organic laser, doesn't it?"

"Or else," I offered, "they consider whatever it is about the Cloud to be far more urgent."

Eisenstadt looked sharply at me, and I could tell he was remembering back to that Process of Elimination game with Zagorin three weeks earlier. "You could be right," he admitted grudgingly, and I could see him thinking about how much trouble it would be to organize a trip out into space to actually take a look. There was a long moment of indecision; and then his face cleared. "Lieutenant?" he called, turning to look for the Pravilo officer in charge.

The other stepped forward from the monitor area. "Yes, sir?"

"I want you to contact Commodore Freitag for me. Find out how soon we can have one of his destroyers ready for a short trip."

The lieutenant nodded and turned back to one of the consoles. Eisenstadt looked over at Zagorin, currently the focus of attention of a half dozen medical people. "How do you feel, Ms. Zagorin?" he asked.

"Fine," she said, sounding a little out of breath. "Much better than the last time."

Eisenstadt nodded, caught one of the physicians' eyes. "I want you to do an extrapolation of her physical condition," he told the other. "I'm interested particularly on how long she could have stayed under without harm."

The other nodded and returned to his examination. "You're planning to take her along with you?" I asked quietly.

Eisenstadt nodded. "It might be useful to find out just how far away from Spall we can get before we can't raise them anymore."

"But if the thunderheads are guiding us through the Cloud—"

"We have no evidence of that," Eisenstadt reminded me. "Not even an unsupported statement by the thunderheads. All of that is pure speculation on our part, and pure speculation always makes me nervous."

I looked at him, read the sense of uneasiness there... "Because if it's not the thunderheads guiding us through the Cloud, it's someone else?"

He threw me a patient look. "Come on, Benedar—surely it's obvious there are at least two intelligences working at cross-purposes here. Or do you want to try and tell me that the thunderheads built the Cloud as a defense or something and then couldn't remember how to turn it off?"

I thought about that. "It doesn't have to be that monochrome, though, does it?" I suggested hesitantly. "Couldn't it just as well be that they don't mind us mining the rings but want to limit how many of us live next door to them on Solitaire?"

"Or even be the reverse," Calandra added. "That they don't mind us living on Solitaire but want to limit our plundering of the ring minerals."

"For all the good the rings do them," Eisenstadt growled. "They're hardly in a position to do any mining themselves. Unfortunately, neither of those theories will hold air. If that's all they wanted, all they needed to do was to make a treaty with us covering population size and mining rights and then shut off the Cloud."

"What if we reneged?" I asked.

"They turn the Cloud back on, of course—trapping, incidentally, everyone who was in the system at the time. With that kind of threat hanging over us, they'd hardly have to worry about treaty violations."

"Before the Halo of God came along, maybe there wasn't any way for them to talk to us," I reminded him.

"The way's there now," he countered. "And they haven't mentioned anything along those lines. No, either the thunderheads are the ones guiding our ships and aren't responsible for the Cloud, or else they're running the Cloud and someone else is bringing our ships in. It doesn't make sense any other way."