Timothy Zahn - Deadman Switch

"Maybe," Lord Kelsey-Ramos agreed. "And if you can get them to give you either a method or a language, I'm sure the commission will be interested. But we've asked them about it ourselves at least a half dozen times, and they've so far completely ignored the request."

I grimaced. "They know something about it—I'm sure they do."

"I agree," Lord Kelsey-Ramos nodded grimly. "But if they won't say anything, there isn't much we can do about it."

"But then how can we assume they're the threatened party?" I argued. "All right—suppose the ships are, in fact, a war party. Who's to say it isn't the thunderheads who brought it on themselves?"

Lord Kelsey-Ramos eyed me. "And if they did, what do you propose we do about it? Take sides with the Invaders against the thunderheads?"

Frustration welled up within me, settled into a bitter pool in the pit of my stomach. Blessed are the peacemakers... "I don't know."

For a long minute we stood there in silence. Then Lord Kelsey-Ramos stirred, looking up at the buttes towering above us. "Interesting place, this," he said, almost conversationally. "Unique, too—we've been over the satellite photos of Spall with a fine mesh and there's nothing even remotely like this city anywhere on the planet."

"The thunderheads have many human-comparable senses," I told him mechanically, my thoughts still on the terrible vision of mass murder hovering before my mind's eye. "They told us they like having this kind of close-packed community when it's possible."

"Uh-huh," he nodded. "And what is it, do you suppose, that makes it possible here?"

The vision of carnage vanished, and I looked at Lord Kelsey-Ramos sharply. There was something new in his sense; something part of, yet distinct from, the overall grimness there. "What is it?" I asked quietly.

"Suspicion," he said. "Nothing more—for the moment, anyway. My question wasn't rhetorical, incidentally."

I looked around the Butte City. "I really don't know, sir," I admitted. "It's somewhat sheltered from violent weather, but that's about all I can think of."

Lord Kelsey-Ramos nodded, turning to eye the slope that Calandra and I had climbed the first night we'd camped here—years ago, it seemed. "The transcript of your pravdrug interrogation mentioned that you'd found a line of heat-treated places going up one of those slopes," he said, pointing. "Show them to me, will you?"

"Certainly. This way..."

I led him and Kutzko over to the base of the proper slope and pointed out the lowest of the spots. "We thought perhaps they marked where thunderheads had once been," I explained. "They apparently needed several stages to get one of their seeds all the way to the top of the butte."

"A watchman," Lord Kelsey-Ramos nodded. "Yes, I remember that speculation from the transcript. Has it occurred to you since then to wonder why a physical watchman should be of any use to beings who can leave their bodies and travel about at will?"

I frowned. It hadn't occurred to me, as a matter of fact. "To watch for the approach of threatening weather?" I suggested hesitantly.

"I think that unlikely," Lord Kelsey-Ramos shook his head. "Most creatures tend to do things along the line of least energy expenditure, and I can't see them going to that much trouble for something they don't have any control over."

"Do we know they don't have any control over their weather?" I countered. "I would think that the heat from a massed set of organic lasers might make it possible for them to—I don't know; perhaps at least alter storm tracks somewhat."

Lord Kelsey-Ramos looked hard at me, and abruptly his sense sharpened. "What?" I asked, my heart jumping in sympathetic reaction.

"Maybe nothing," he said slowly. "Maybe everything. Coordinated use of their organic lasers... interesting." He thought for a moment longer, then shook his head fractionally, putting whatever it was into mental storage for later. "Anyway. For now, back to the original topic: the thunderheads' watchmen. According to Dr. Eisenstadt's reports, the way the thunderheads located the smuggler ships and bases was by finding isolated groups of humans for you. Correct?"

I nodded. "I remember them specifically mentioning that inanimate objects such as ships weren't detectable to them in that state."

"Right. Word for word, in fact, with the report."

"Dr. Eisenstadt seemed to think it was reasonable enough," I told him, wondering where he was headed with this. "If they could see everything around them while out of their bodies, there wouldn't be much need for the bodies themselves to have developed duplicate senses."

"Agreed," Lord Kelsey-Ramos said. "Eisenstadt speculated that it was some kind of 'life-force' that they pick up—our souls, if you wish," he added, obviously expecting me to make the identification if he didn't. "It occurred to me that perhaps we were once again being too generous with something the thunderheads were saying. As you pointed out, they themselves told you they couldn't see inanimate objects; but it was our assumption that it was only inanimate objects they couldn't see."

And finally, I got it. "You think there are animal predators around that they also can't detect?"

"It would seem reasonable," Lord Kelsey-Ramos shrugged. "Given the thunderheads' organic lasers, a predator would almost have to be able to sneak up on them."

I frowned at him, reading his sense. "This isn't just speculation, is it?" I asked carefully. "You've done some checking on this already."

Lord Kelsey-Ramos gazed upward at the buttes again. "There's a small weasel-like animal that seems to have a taste for thunderhead flesh," he said. "Often hunts in packs of up to thirty family members. I wonder how clearly a group like that could be seen from up there."

"Thunderhead eyesight is pretty good," I told him, a shiver running up my back. In retrospect it was obvious that the balance of nature on Spall would include predators for the thunderheads to cope with... but the fact that the thunderheads had again deliberately obscured important information set my teeth on edge. "So when the watchmen on each of the buttes see a pack approaching... the others get ready to fight?"

"Kutzko?" Lord Kelsey-Ramos invited. "This is your specialty. What do you think?"

Kutzko looked slowly around the area, eyes measuring. I read his sense, realized the idea was new to him, as well. Lord Kelsey-Ramos had apparently been playing this one very quietly indeed. An indication that he was very worried... "It's a good setup," Kutzko said at last. "Only four approaches, none of them very wide, and with a layered defense in place at each."

"Layered defense?" Lord Kelsey-Ramos frowned.

"Yes, sir." Kutzko pointed. "See, near each gap, how there's a group of five to seven thunderheads positioned slightly upslope? In standard military placement, those would be forward sentries, responsible for stopping any lone weasel or small group who'd managed to slip in past the topside sentry." He waved toward the larger mass of thunderheads. "Then, for larger groups—which the topside sentry would presumably have warned them about—there's a good potential for concentrated firepower from the main community. See how the shorter ones tend to be at the edge, the taller ones at the middle? Again, reminiscent of a standard kneeling/standing arrangement."

I licked my lips. "Many of the shorter ones are drones," I told him. "Extra bodies, not originally sentient."

Kutzko nodded. "So much the better. They can still probably be used to fight from, and are expendable if the weasels get in that close."

"In other words," Lord Kelsey-Ramos said, something dark in his voice, "the thunderheads understand warfare."

Kutzko shrugged. "Not necessarily. Evolution often hammers this sort of strategic ability into a species."