Deadman Switch

by Timothy Zahn

  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.”

  A flash of surprise crossed her sense. “Wait a minute, I don’t want you to get involved—”

  “I’m already involved,” I said, backing out of the room. “I’m a Watcher.”

  The door closed on her, and Kutzko cocked an eyebrow at me. “You really believe her?”

  I nodded, feeling my muscles trembling. The confrontation had been more of a drain than I’d realized. “Yes,” I said. “I’m a Watcher, aren’t I?”

  He thought about pointing out Calandra was one, too, thought better of it. “So what now?” he asked instead.

  “I go hit Mr. Kelsey-Ramos with it, of course,” I said, starting down the corridor.

  “He won’t like it,” Kutzko warned.

  “I can’t help that,” I called back. “See you later.”

  I found Randon in his stateroom, going over the Whitecliff numbers with Dapper Schock, one of Lord Kelsey-Ramos’s top financial experts. “Can it wait?” he asked with a touch of annoyance as I came in. His full attention was on the report, and he clearly wanted to keep it that way.

  “The details can, sir, if necessary,” I told him. “But I think you ought to hear the high points right now. I have reason to believe that Calandra Mara Paquin, our … outzombi … didn’t commit the crime she was condemned for.”

  The financial data was abruptly forgotten. “Oh, really?” Randon frowned, leaning back in his seat. “What makes you think that?”

  I raised my eyebrows, and he half smiled. “Yes, of course,” he conceded wryly. “Foolish question.”

  Schock cleared his throat. “Calandra Mara, did you say? Isn’t that a Watcher-style middle name?”

  “Humility name, yes,” I corrected him. “Does that make a difference?”

  “Well …” He glanced at Randon. “It’s a general rule, Benedar, that a professional magician, say, can easily blaze out another magician’s tricks, simply because he knows how all of them are done.”

  “My observational skills aren’t tricks,” I told him. “Certainly not in that sense. It’s a matter of having been trained since childhood to really see God’s universe.”

  “We’re aware of that,” Randon cut in, a little uncomfortable at even so tame a religious reference. “I think Schock’s point was that a Watcher who knows what you’re looking for might be able to mislead you. Bury the appropriate signals, maybe, or distract you at just the right moment.”

  “I understand,” I nodded. “I don’t think she could misdirect me that completely, but I suppose it’s theoretically possible. Let me turn it around, then. If she is lying about it, what can she hope to gain?”

  “A stay of execution?” Schock suggested. Clearing the display of financial data, he busied himself with the keys.

  Randon shook his head. “Hardly seems worth the effort. The best she could hope to get would be a few more weeks.”

  Schock was peering at his computer screen. “Here’s the record,” he said. “Uh … she was convicted of throwing a bomb into a street crowd from a window in the Outbound HQ of Melgaard Industries. Seen by witnesses … caught when she tried to leave the building.”

  I chewed the back of my lip. “Any extenuating circumstances?”

  He looked at me in astonishment, “For a bombing?”

  I couldn’t think of one, either. “How about possible mistaken identity, then?” I asked. “How would she have gotten into the Melgaard building, for starters?”

  “She was employed there,” Schock said, scanning the display again. “She’d been working as a reception converser for the previous two months.”

  “Nice cushy job for a Watcher,” Randon grunted. He considered for a moment. “What was the track record on the trial itself?”

  “Uh …” Schock flipped through a few pages. “From what we’ve got here it looks pretty standard.”

  “No extraordinary measures? No indications they did any psychological reconstructions or anything else of that sort?”

  “No, sir. Just a standard trial and the requisite double appeal. It’s not even clear anyone asked for pravdrug questioning.”

  Randon looked up at me, shook his head. “Sorry, Benedar, but if Melgaard wasn’t willing to put any money or influence into her trial, they must have been convinced she was guilty.”

  “Or at least convinced she was someone they didn’t want around?” I asked pointedly.

  Randon gave me a hard look. “I’ll admit to the existence of prejudice in the Patri and the colonies,” he said steadily. “I won’t listen to specific accusations without proof.”

  A reasonable enough caution under most circumstances. Here, in the privacy of his own ship and stateroom, it made for a weak argument, and he knew it. “All right, then,” I said. “Let’s just talk theoretical. Assume for a moment that Calandra was, in fact, framed; and further assume it wasn’t an isolated incident.”

  “Grand conspiracy?” Randon said with an amused half smile. “Oh, come on. What would anyone have to gain by dropping Watchers one by one down the chute?”

  “Who says we’re just talking Watchers?” I countered. “There are any number of minorities out there, religious and otherwise, that could be
targeted.”

  “To what end?” Schock asked.

  I gestured to his computer. “Check and see if Melgaard Industries has a transport license for Solitaire, will you?”

  He turned to the instrument; but Randon spoke up first. “No, they haven’t,” he said. “They’ve been trying to get one at least as long as Carillon has.” His eyes were on me, no longer amused. “What’s your point?”

  “That they may have abandoned Calandra for reasons other than guilt.”

  “Such as internal pressure?” Schock hazarded. “Melgaard’s home office hoping to get in good with the Patri by not putting up a fuss over the creation of new zombis?”

  The creation of new zombis. Somewhere in the back of my mind I marveled at how neat and sanitized euphemisms could make death sound. “Yes, except that the pressure may not have all been internal. Some could have come from outside Melgaard.”

  Schock cocked a thoughtful eyebrow. “As in from the Patri themselves?”

  “Why not? As long as the Solitaire ring mines are operating as profitably as they are, they have to keep finding people to die.”

  “Hold it right there,” Randon growled. “If you’re suggesting the Patri are putting pressure on the judiciary—and that the judiciary is knuckling under to that pressure—then you’re skating dangerously close to slander and possibly even treason.”

  Schock and I exchanged glances. “It’s not a matter of slander, Mr. Kelsey-Ramos,” I said. “Any reasonable person has to acknowledge the pressure exists. The Patri have to keep up the supply of zombis, and they have to do it against a long history of public inertia against death penalty overuse.”

  “And it’s going to get even worse,” Schock murmured. “As soon as they get that fourth Rockhound 606 into full-stream operation out there, they’re going to outstrip the licensed transport capability again. Either the Patri will have to up the numbers even more—which means more zombis—or else find a variation of Mjollnir drive that can handle bigger freighters.”

  I nodded agreement. “As I said, the pressure exists. The only question is whether the Patri and the judiciary are yielding to that pressure.”

  For a minute the room was silent. A brief and almost undetectable shift in the pseudogravity told me the Bellwether had altered course again. Dimly, I wondered what would happen if rigor mortis paralyzed the body at the helm before the ten-hour trip through the Cloud could be completed. Though presumably after seventy years Dr. DeMont and the other high priests of this sacrifice had found a way around that particular problem.

  “Well,” Randon broke the silence at last. “I suppose there’s no harm in taking a look into this.” He seemed to brace himself as he looked up at me. “Unfortunately, as far as Paquin’s particular case goes …” He shrugged uncomfortably.

  I looked him straight in the eye. “Mr. Kelsey-Ramos, she’s innocent.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, what do you expect me to do about it?”

  “Grant her a stay of execution, of course, until her story can be checked. It’s the only thing you can do.”

  The instant I said it I knew I’d made a mistake. Abruptly, Randon’s sympathetic interest tarnished as he perceived himself being pressed too hard by a subordinate. Lord Kelsey-Ramos would have understood my insistence as merely an excess of strong feeling; Randon was still too young to risk even the appearance of weakness, certainly not in the presence of a third party. “May I remind you,” he bit out, “that if I do that the Bellwether winds up trapped in Solitaire system?”

  “We could send a message out on another ship,” I pointed out doggedly. Backing out now would do nothing but give Randon’s emotional opposition time to solidify. I had no choice but to keep pressing him, to keep his thoughts and feelings fluid until I could find a formula that would allow him to save face while still keeping Calandra alive. “A courier ship could make the trip to Outbound and back in, what, twelve days?”

  “Closer to ten,” Schock offered.

  “Okay; ten days,” I said. “We could request the full transcript of Calandra’s trial and have the whole thing reviewed before you were planning on leaving Solitaire anyway.”

  “Except that there may not be any couriers heading for Outbound right at the moment,” Randon countered. “And the judiciary on Outbound is under no obligation to release their records to us, anyway.”

  “But—”

  “And,” he cut me off, “suppose you’re right? Suppose we do find something that warrants a new trial?”

  “Well, then—” I stopped in midsentence.

  Randon nodded grimly. “Right. If we decide to take her back to Outbound, how do we get the Bellwether back through the Cloud?”

  I looked at Schock. Somehow, I hadn’t gotten around to thinking that far ahead. “Well … we could send another message to Whitecliff at the same time, couldn’t we? Ask them to send us another felon to take Calandra’s place?”

  “They won’t do it.” There was a positiveness in Randon’s tone, a clear sense that this one wasn’t just a theoretical position for argument’s sake. “The authorities won’t allow more than two zombis to a ship, except under extremely unusual circumstances. You would have to be able to prove that Paquin was innocent before they would even consider sending us a substitute.”

  “How can we prove anything like that until we have the trial records?” I growled. “It’s a storage loop argument.”

  “Yes, it is,” Randon agreed. Not apologetic, not really angry: just agreeing. “I’m sorry, but the system simply isn’t set up to allow convicted felons to slide through the net at this stage.”

  Or in other words, Calandra’s life wasn’t worth enough to him to buck established channels. Lord Kelsey-Ramos would have had the courage to do that—

  But Lord Kelsey-Ramos wasn’t in charge here. Randon was.

  I took a deep breath. Rarely had righteous anger hit me with such a surge of emotion, and I had to fight to try and think through the haze. “All right,” I said at last. “If I can … if I can find us a substitute zombi before we’re ready to leave, will you, as master of this ship, grant Calandra a temporary stay of execution?”

  Randon eyed me thoughtfully. “One life worth more than another? Hardly what I’d have expected of you.”

  Hardly what I would have expected of myself. I said nothing, and after a moment he nodded. “All right, Benedar, you’ve got yourself a deal.” He hesitated. “I don’t have to remind you that you have to remain within legal bounds in obtaining this zombi for us, do I?”

  The warning felt surprisingly like an insult. But perhaps the knife twist in my stomach was coming entirely from my own conscience. If I could offer a life in trade for Calandra’s, was it so big a step to trading a life for profits? “I understand, sir,” I said, my mouth dry. “Thank you, sir.”

  I turned to go. “Benedar?” he called after me.

  Steeling myself, I looked back. “Yes?”

  His gaze was almost physical in its intensity. “You’d better be right about this.”

  I swallowed. Truth? said Pilate. What is that? “Yes, sir,” I told him quietly, and left.

  Chapter 5

  IT TOOK ME A long time to fall asleep that night. So long, in fact, that I was still awake at one-thirty when the Mjollnir drive kicked off and the Bellwether was once again space-normal.

  There was something eerie about lying alone in the still of the night, I’d long ago learned; something that turned even the most ordinary of daytime noises into something darkly ominous … and the distant thunggk of the Mjollnir circuit breakers was hardly an ordinary noise.

  For a long minute I just lay in the darkness, suddenly weightless, listening to my heart pounding in my throat and straining to hear anything more. If there was something wrong—if somehow we’d lost our path through the Cloud and been brought out too early …

  From the rear of the ship a faint drone became audible, increasing gradually in volume and pitch, and beneath my bed I could feel the faint
answering tremor as the living-ceramic deck of my stateroom angled to keep itself perpendicular to the acceleration vector. A measure of effective weight returned, and increased, and it was clear that the Bellwether’s voyage was progressing normally.

  If such a word as “normal” could be used about a voyage piloted by a dead man.

  I gritted my teeth and swung my legs out of bed. I knew myself far too well to let this slide. In my mind’s eye still lingered a dark, irrational terror: the Bellwether, helpless, stranded somewhere out in deep space, light-years from Solitaire.

  You will come to know the truth, and the truth will set you free …

  Fortunately, in this case truth was easy to obtain. Padding the two steps to my lounge desk, I picked up my control stick and flopped down into the contour couch. “Wall: front view,” I called, activating the computer. Ahead of me, the pastel blue stateroom wall faded into the black of space—

  I took a deep breath, the knots in stomach and psyche dissolving. Off to the left, blazing an artificially muted light against the scattering of stars, was Solitaire’s sun.

  I watched it for a moment, then turned my attention to the rest of the skyscape, searching for Solitaire itself. It was easy to find: a small crescent, just below and to the right of center, with an identical crescent a few degrees away. We’d come space-normal practically on top of it, astronomically speaking. Incredible precision, especially coming from a possessed dead man—

  I shook the thought away. “Wall: grid,” I called. The faint red grid lines appeared— “Wall: section fifty-six: magnification one thousand.”

  The picture jumped, enlarging to fill the wall with the two crescents. Solitaire and Spall, all right—the one known exception to the usual rule that double planets were terrible real estate for humans to dig into. Vaguely, I remembered reading somewhere that both of these worlds were habitable, though the specific reasons why Solitaire had been chosen over Spall eluded me. For the moment, though, I didn’t care. The crisis was over, we’d made it through the Cloud, and with luck I could finally relax enough to get to sleep. I started to ease out of the couch—