Timothy Zahn - Deadman Switch

"Um. Let's see... originally from Bridgeway... murders occurred in the Outbound capital of Transit City."

Some of the Watchers from Cana settlement did occasional business in Transit City. Could her killings have included someone I knew? "Do you have the names of her victims there?" I asked Kutzko.

"No. Sorry." His eyes focused on me again. "That's right—you're from Outbound, too, aren't you?"

"I grew up there." I hesitated... but if the ship's records didn't have that information, there was only one other person besides Aikman himself who might. And I would rather talk to a murderess than ask Aikman for such a favor. "Do you suppose I could go in and talk to her?"

Kutzko studied me. "Why?"

"I'm not entirely sure," I admitted. "I just feel like I should, that's all."

"Well... by the book, you know, only my shields and the HTI people are supposed to have anything to do with her." He scratched his cheek thoughtfully. "On the other hand, I was going to check on her soon anyway; and if you just happened to wander in to keep me company..." He raised his eyebrows questioningly.

I nodded. "I owe you."

"Forget it." Turning, he busied himself with the lock. "I'll go first," he instructed me as the mechanism tripped. "Stay out until I give you an all-clear."

Rapping twice on the door, he pressed the release. The knock was typical, I thought as the panel slid open—for someone in his particular line of work, Kutzko was unusually polite. A man, I'd sometimes thought, who would apologize for the inconvenience as he broke your neck.

For a moment his back blocked my view of the room beyond. Then, taking a step forward, he moved off to the side. "All right," he said over his shoulder. "You can come in."

But for that first moment, I couldn't move. Beyond him, the woman—the murderess—was seated in front of the stateroom's reader, her face turned questioningly to Kutzko. Her eyes met mine... and in those eyes, in that face, in that whole presence, there could be no mistake.

Calandra Paquin was a Watcher.

Slowly, I stepped into the room. The woman watched me, and I could tell that she too had recognized our common heritage. "Mikha," I said carefully, "I'd like to speak to Ms. Paquin alone for a moment, if I may."

He half turned to frown at me. "May I remind you—?"

"It'll be all right," I cut him off. My knees were beginning to tremble with a tangle of contradictory emotions. "Please."

Kutzko looked at Calandra, back at me. "All right. But just for a minute." Slipping past me, he left the room. The door slid halfway closed, and I heard him move to the opposite side of the corridor, where he could see but not really hear us.

I took a deep breath. "Gilead Raca Benedar," I introduced myself. "Cana settlement, Outbound."

Her face might have flickered at the mention of Outbound. "Calandra Mara Paquin," she nodded in return.

"From...?"

"I was raised in the Bethel settlement on Bridgeway. If it's any of your business."

I felt cold. Bridgeway: Aaron Balaam darMaupine's world. For a brief, unnerving second I wondered if she might actually have been involved in that perversion... but another second and I realized how unlikely that was. Calandra was only about thirty-eight—five years older than me—which meant she'd have been barely sixteen when darMaupine's grab for temporal power was finally overthrown. "We're both Watchers," I reminded her. "Committed to God and to each other. That makes our lives each others business."

She snorted gently. "Sorry, but I gave up commitments like that a long time ago."

I felt a vague stirring of anger. I was trying as hard as I could to forget her crime and accept her as an equal, and all she was doing was rubbing salt on my patience. "Maybe the rest of us haven't given up on you," I gritted. "Just because you ran out on your people when they needed you—"

"Oh, you think I ran out because of what Aaron Balaam darMaupine did to us with his insane vision?"

"You wouldn't have been the first," I told her, fighting doggedly to give her the benefit of the doubt. "With all the animosity that mess generated—"

"Animosity?" she cut me off. "Is that what you got on Outbound? Animosity?"

I pursed my lips. Others fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them... "I'm sure it was a lot worse on Bridgeway. Especially for a teenager."

She glared at me. "I doubt you could even imagine it. Certainly not from such a lofty and protected place as the Carillon Group. Oh, don't look so surprised—I know whose ship I'm on. I haven't been living in a hole all these years. Or in a Watcher colony." She cocked her head slightly to the side. "And before you start talking about deserting the faith, you might remember that you aren't exactly living at your settlement, either. Haven't for quite a few years, as a matter of fact."

Anger stirred within me... anger, and a painful feeling of helplessness. Of course she would have picked that up: my speech patterns, my body language, a thousand other cues—they all pointed to my long absence from a Watcher settlement as clearly as a spaceport skysign.

And in those eleven years I'd been away from home, I was suddenly learning, I'd forgotten what it was like to be with another Watcher. How profoundly naked it felt to stand beneath that all-seeing gaze.

I nearly turned around and walked out right then and there. But I didn't. Blessed are the merciful: they shall have mercy shown them... Perhaps it was a desire to prove that I knew the actions as well as the words. "I'd like to ask you a few questions about your crime," I managed.

"Why?" she retorted. "Have the elders added some form of ritual last rites to the repertoire?"

I ignored the jibe, all I could think of to do. "I just want to talk. To hear your side of... what happened."

She studied me, and I felt my discomfort grow stronger. "No Watchers died. Not from your Cana settlement, or from anywhere else. Is that what you wanted to know?"

"Partly," I admitted, my sense of nakedness growing stronger. Here I was, trying my best to mask my emotions from her; and not only was she reading them like a book, she was just as casually picking up my thoughts, too. It made me feel like a child again. "I also wanted to know why you did it."

She looked me straight in the eye. "I didn't."

For three heartbeats I thought I'd heard her wrong. "I—you—?"

"You heard me right. I didn't do it."

For a long minute I looked at her. "I don't..." I began; but the words faded into silence. She was hiding a great deal of herself from me—that much was clear. But she couldn't hide everything... and the sense of her was definitely that she was telling the truth.

"Don't believe me?" she finished my sentence. "I can't say I'm surprised. No one else did, either."

"But—I mean—" I broke off, trying to get my tongue under control.

"I was set up," she said softly. "Set up in a very professional manner. Most of the evidence pointed very neatly to me."

"What about the parts that didn't?" I persisted. "Weren't there any counterwitnesses? Odd physical evidence? Your own pravdrug testimony, for heaven's sake?"

She looked at me. "Most of the evidence fit neatly," she repeated. "The parts that didn't... they ignored." She shook her head, dropping her gaze from my face.

I took a deep breath; but before I could speak there was a rustle of movement behind me, and I turned to see Kutzko in the doorway. "Daiv just called in—says Aikman's headed this direction," he reported. "You'd better get out before he finds you and goes blazing off to Mr. Kelsey-Ramos."

"All right." I turned back to Calandra, my heart aching in sympathy. Framed for a crime she didn't commit... and sentenced as a result to be sacrificed to the great god Profit. "Don't worry, Calandra," I told her quietly. "I'll get this thing turned around."