Timothy Zahn - Deadman Switch

Shepherd Adams was on his knees in the middle of a small section of turned dirt, poking with a fork trowel around the roots of three knee-high plants. He looked up as I came around the corner of the house, and for that first unguarded instant his sense was full of unfriendliness, vague bitterness, even betrayal. "Mr. Benedar," he nodded, his voice tightly neutral.

"Shepherd Adams," I nodded back, fighting to hold my ground against the strong feelings radiating from him. "I'm sorry to intrude on your privacy—"

"I have little else these days except privacy," he countered.

There was just a hint of irony in his voice; a chink in the armor he was trying to throw up around himself... "Gives you an idea of what it would be like to be a monk," I offered. Another flicker in his sense— "As you once considered becoming."

He snorted gently, another chunk of the armor coming down. Adams simply wasn't constituted to hold onto grudges. "I'd forgotten how little one's thoughts are one's own in the presence of a Watcher," he sighed. "It's a hard reminder of how open we always are to God."

I looked at him, read the quiet pain there. "I'm sorry," I said softly. "Sorry for... everything."

He favored me with a bittersweet smile, a portion of the anger within him turning back against himself. "You mean for your part in exposing the Halo of God as a lie?"

I flinched at the bluntness. "A mistake, Shepherd Adams. Not a lie."

He grimaced. "Was it? I've spent the last month wondering about that. After all, we both know the Halo of God wouldn't have grown as large or as quickly without the mystical allure we presented—the chance to actually stand here on the very physical manifestation of God's kingdom." He dropped his eyes away from mine. "Who's to say I didn't deliberately blind myself to the inconsistencies in that claim?"

I shook my head. "For whatever it's worth, I looked very hard for signs of perverted ambition when we first met—and Calandra looked even harder. Neither of us found any."

His lip twitched. "Calandra never really trusted us, did she?"

I thought about Calandra's admitted loss of faith. "She has a hard time trusting anyone these days," I told him.

He nodded. "I suppose it comes of being a Watcher living after the darMaupine's fiasco." Lowering his eyes, he tapped one of the plants with his fork trowel. "Know anything about valeer plants, Gilead?" he asked.

The name was vaguely familiar. "They provide one of the spices you use in cooking, don't they?"

He nodded. "I found these growing inside the fence after Dr. Eisenstadt's people decided they didn't need me and buried me out of the way back here. Tricky sort of plant to harvest, actually—something we discovered the first time we tried it." He gestured at five fat leaf-like structures at the top of one of the plants. "These are the spice pods," he identified them. "What happens is that, as winter approaches, the plant's entire supply of nutrients—its life-force, if you will—is drawn into the seeds in these pods. By the time the process is complete, the plant has become a dead stalk, and at that point the next wind just blows it apart, scattering the seeds all over the landscape. The trick for the gardener is to wait long enough to get the maximum yield, yet not so long that the wind destroys the harvest."

I looked at the plant, seeing the analogy he was making. "Perhaps it's now time for the Halo of God to scatter," I suggested.

"Oh, they'll scatter, all right," he sighed. "But not as viable seeds. They're too young, most of them, to withstand something this hard."

"You think it'll be harder on them than Aaron Balaam darMaupine was on us?" I countered, suddenly angry at his defeatist attitude. "The Watchers have been considered little better than dormant traitors by much of the Patri and colonies for the past two decades. Yet we survive."

He smiled bitterly. "You were old and established, and faced suspicion and hatred. We are young, and face ridicule. Which do you think the human spirit can more easily withstand?"

I knew the answer to that one. All too well. "Don't underestimate them," I said instead. "They may be stronger than you think."

His gaze drifted to the security fence. "I should be out there with them," he murmured. "Preparing them for this."

I took a deep breath. "You may be of more value here."

He shrugged. "I'm of no use at all. Shepherd Zagorin seems to be—" He broke off, eyes shifting back to me as his brain belatedly noticed the tone of my comment. "Has something happened to her?"

"No, she's fine," I assured him. "She's still handling all the contact work, but she seems to be acclimating to it well."

He snorted. "There's no need for her to be doing all of it alone," he growled. "They fixed my heart and brain weeks ago—I'm perfectly capable of taking some of that load off her."

"I know, sir. That's why I'm going to ask you to contact the thunderheads for me."

His sense was startled, then cautious. "Why me?"

"Because I can't use Shepherd Zagorin." I braced myself; this was likely to be painful. "What do you know about what's happening?"

His forehead furrowed slightly. "The thunderheads are intelligent, with what seems to be a complete society, though we don't yet understand how it works. There's also a fleet of sublight spaceships a little under a light-year from Solitaire and due to reach us in about seventeen years."

"Did you know the Patri is planning to destroy that fleet?"

The skin around his eyes tightened, his sense turning to horror. "God save us all," he murmured. "But... why?"

"Because we're afraid of them," I said simply.

He licked his lips, and I could see him struggling with the enormity of it. "How do they intend to... do it?"

I grimaced. "A hundred ninety-two of Collet's biggest rocheoids are going to be fitted with Mjollnir lacings and tethered to tugboats equipped with Deadman Switches," I told him, my stomach tightening as it always did at the thought of it. "Zombis will be put aboard, and the thunderheads will guide them to points directly in front of each of the ships. Too close, of course, for the aliens to veer or take any kind of countermeasure."

For a long moment Adams was silent. I watched, also in silence, as he slowly forced his horror back. "How will they know how close they'll have to get?" he asked.

I nodded. "The same thought occurred to me. Apparently the thunderheads know more about this than they'll say."

"They know who the Invaders are, then." It wasn't a question.

"I'm certain of it," I agreed. "But they won't tell us anything."

He thought about that. "What is it you want to ask them?"

"I want to know how to communicate with the aliens," I said. "If we can talk to them, maybe we can figure out what's going on here, as well as what side of this confrontation we should be on."

He gazed steadily at me. "And what makes you think there is a side we should be on?"

I blinked, the question catching me off-guard. "We have to take a stand on this somewhere."

"Do we?" he demanded. " 'Blessed are the peacemakers'—or had you forgotten that?"

I clenched my teeth against a rush of anger... anger tinged uncomfortably with guilt. "Are you suggesting I've forgotten the goals of my faith?"

"Have you?" he asked bluntly.

The emphatic denial I'd planned died in my throat. "If eight years in Lord Kelsey-Ramos's business world didn't break me," I ground out, "a couple of months here certainly didn't."

A faint, sad smile touched his lips. "The business world of Lord Kelsey-Ramos is one of the acquisition of money and the stabbing of competitors in the back," he said quietly. "Here, you've been offered a chance to use your talents to explore a part of God's universe. Which world do you think it would be easier for you to fit comfortably into?"