by Timothy Zahn
“The what?” I asked.
“Decay limit.” Eisenstadt’s general discomfort deepened a bit. “While the bodies are empty there’s a subtle form of tissue decay going on. Nothing particularly serious, but our projections indicate that if the thing stays away longer than about two hours, irreversible damage will begin to set in.”
Calandra shivered. “As if they really were dead.”
The word hung in the air for a moment. Temporarily dead thunderheads; permanently dead zombis. Nowhere in Solitaire system, it seemed, could you get away from death.
“Whatever,” Eisenstadt said at last. “We suspect that that limitation implies that this wasn’t a talent that evolved along with their physical development.”
I cleared the image of death from my mind. “So. You set up your sensors on one of the thunderheads, who promptly runs out when he sees you coming, and then you have to wait another two hours before you can tell whether it’s dead or just off somewhere hiding.”
Eisenstadt nodded sourly. “That’s basically it—and we’d just as soon not have to go through the whole exercise with all two hundred forty-one of the smert-putrid things. And then maybe have to go outside to hunt one down anyway.”
I looked at Calandra. “What do you think?”
A slight frown creased her forehead. “It would be a little like trying to single out a particular conversation in a crowded room,” she said. “And from a fair distance, too. It’s going to be tricky.”
“Why from a distance?” Eisenstadt demanded. “Why can’t you just go up to one of them—?”
He broke off, looking annoyed with himself as the answer came. “Oh. Right. They spook too easily.”
Slowly, Calandra let her gaze sweep the thunderheads. “There,” she said, pointing. “Fourth back from the edge. Is that one … ?”
She trailed off. I stared at the thunderhead she’d indicated, searching with all my powers of observation for signs of sentience … “I don’t know,” I murmured finally. “It’s hard to tell.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Calandra lick her lips. “Well … there’s one way to find out. Maybe.”
She started forward, walking carefully out toward the thunderhead. I watched closely … and saw the subtle change. “It’s gone,” I called to her.
“Yes,” she agreed, coming to a halt. For a moment she stood there watching it; then, almost reluctantly, she turned and came back to where Eisenstadt and I stood. “I don’t think this is going to work, Dr. Eisenstadt,” she sighed. “The signs are too subtle—” she waved a hand helplessly—“and there’s just too much interference from the others around here.”
He gave her a look that was equal parts contempt and disgust. “What about you, Benedar?” he said, turning the look on me. “You giving up, too?”
The threat beneath the words was abundantly clear: if we couldn’t or wouldn’t help his investigation, we would be summarily returned to our cells. From which I would go to stand trial before the Solitaran judiciary; from which Calandra would be taken to her long-overdue execution aboard the Bellwether. “What about the thunderheads outside the Butte City?” I asked, searching desperately for a straw to grasp at. “Surely some of them must have died, too.”
“Some of them have,” Eisenstadt growled. “Unfortunately, the two or three we’ve located have been dead long enough for the local scavengers to have made a mess of them. More to the point, they never show up in groups of larger than four out there, and I have no interest in trekking all over Spall sifting through groups that small for a fresh corpse. This—right here—is our best chance; and it’s your only chance to put all those high-minded religious principles of yours to work. If you can’t, then we go out and pull up one of the things at random.”
I took a deep breath. “Sir …”
And at my side Calandra suddenly seemed to tense up. “What?” I interrupted myself, turning to her.
She was gazing unseeingly out over the thunderheads. “Perhaps, sir,” she said quietly, her voice taut with a strange reluctance, “we could try asking the thunderheads themselves.”
Eisenstadt snorted. “Oh, certainly,” he said, dripping sarcasm. “What do you suggest we use: sign language or dot code?”
Calandra hesitated. “It … may be easier than that,” she said hesitantly. She looked at me, eyes pleading—
And suddenly I understood. “Yes,” I agreed, my stomach tightening. A long, long shot indeed; and I could just hear what Eisenstadt would say when I suggested it. The thought made me wince … but if there was even a chance it would work … “Yes,” I said again, putting as much confidence into the word as I could and bracing myself for what was to come. “It’s certainly worth a try. Dr. Eisenstadt … we’re going to need an aircar.”
Chapter 22
SHEPHERD DENVRE ADAMS LISTENED in silence until Eisenstadt had finished. He looked at me, at Calandra, at the sea of thunderheads beside us. “What you’re suggesting,” he said quietly, “is blasphemy.”
Eisenstadt’s lip twisted. “Look, I understand how you feel about this—”
“I doubt that, sir,” Adams cut him off. “I doubt it very much. At any rate, I won’t do it.”
Eisenstadt threw a razor-edged glare at me, and I cringed at the raw frustrated anger boiling out at me. Just convincing him to give this a try had taken every bit of my persuasive powers, and he’d made it abundantly clear at the outset that it was going to be on my head if it didn’t work out. Now, it didn’t look like we were going to get even that far. “I wonder, sir,” I said to Eisenstadt, “if Calandra and I could talk with Shepherd Adams privately.”
“Why?” he demanded.
Calandra got the answer out first. “Because we do understand how he feels,” she said.
Eisenstadt turned his glare onto her. Unexpectedly, though, the reflexive refusal he’d been preparing to give seemed to get lost somewhere en route. “You’ve got five minutes,” he said instead. Turning his back, he stomped away to the central monitoring station.
“You can’t convince me,” Adams warned me … but there was more than a hint of uncertainty beneath his quiet defiance.
“What are you afraid of?” I asked him.
“I already told you. Blasphemy. To even suggest that God is nothing more than a group of sentient plants—”
“No one’s suggesting that,” I insisted. “All we’re saying is that the thunderheads may be what you hear when you’re meditating.”
“Is that all?” he asked with probably as much sarcasm as the man was capable of. “You just want to prove that God isn’t speaking to us?”
“But if He’s not—”
“If He’s not, there are still benefits to be had from the act of meditation,” he said stubbornly. “As well as from our fellowship here.”
I eyed him, mentally preparing myself. For years I’d watched Lord Kelsey-Ramos appeal to logic and self-interest to persuade people to his point of view; now, it was my turn to try. Fleetingly, I wished he was here to do it for me. “I realize that, sir—don’t forget that I had the chance to observe some of those benefits first hand. But that’s not what’s at issue here. The question is whether Halo of God doctrine does, in fact, conflict with the real universe … and if it does, you know as well as I do that you can’t hold it back.”
“Not forever, no,” he said evenly. “But perhaps for awhile.”
Calandra snorted. “And what would that gain you? Unless you plan to get out from under your creation before the whole thing collapses.”
The corners of Adams’s mouth tightened in anger. “I did not ‘create’ the Halo of God,” he bit out. “Not for my own gain, not for anything else. It happened far more spontaneously than that, among a great many people.”
“Then why be afraid of the truth?” I asked.
He looked back at me, and his gaze hardened. “You think it’s for myself that I’m worried? I’d have thought a Watcher would understand me better.”
I waited, and aft
er a moment he sighed. “All right. Assume for a moment that your theory is right, that Dr. Eisenstadt’s people have proved God isn’t actually speaking to us here. How long do you think it will be until someone makes the obvious generalization?—that all manifestations of God must be similarly in error?”
It wasn’t, unfortunately, a scenario that could be totally dismissed. “Those who’ve experienced God’s presence in their own lives will know better.”
“And what of those who are young in their faith?” he countered. “I’ve seen what the subtle pressures of this society can do to them.”
But as soon as the sun came up they were scorched and, not having any roots, they withered away … “You can’t protect them forever,” I said.
“I know that.” He hesitated. “But perhaps I can protect them until their roots are a little stronger.”
“Protect them,” Calandra asked quietly, “with a lie?”
A muscle in Adams’s cheek twitched. “I’m sure they’d understand. Afterwards.”
“Do you really believe that?” Calandra demanded, a hard edge to her voice. On her face I could see her struggle with all the memories she would have preferred to have left buried. “Well, I don’t. Because I lived on Bridgeway under Aaron Balaam, darMaupine. Do you know what happened to his followers after his theocracy was overthrown?”
Adams winced in sympathetic pain. “They were scattered. Those who weren’t tried as accomplices and imprisoned.”
“That’s right,” she nodded. “And there’s a curious thing about that. Those accomplices—the ones who were closest to him, the ones who knew what he was doing—many of them have kept their faith. Such as it was.” The hardness in her gaze faded into a sort of bitter sadness. “Most of the others, the ones he lied to … we didn’t.”
For a long minute the quiet background conversation of the techs at their stations and the hiss of wind whistling between the bluffs were the only sounds in the hollow. Adams gazed out at the thunderheads, his sense a no-win struggle between the logic of the situation and his desire to protect his people. “When we first met,” I reminded him gently, “you told us you appreciated our honesty. If you really meant that, you have to offer that same honesty to your followers. And to yourself.”
He closed his eyes, and I could see moisture at the edges of the eyelids … and I knew that he was seeing the beginning of the end. “It would probably be best,” he said at last, the words coming out with difficulty, “if there were at least two of us present. To try and confirm between us … what it is we hear.”
Eisenstadt was far from happy at the prospect of letting still another outsider in under his tight-locked security umbrella, and he again came very near to vetoing the whole experiment right then and there. But as a scientist he could hardly argue against the reasonableness of having more than one interpreter present, and in the end he gave in. Adams suggested Shepherd Joyita Zagorin be the other Seeker, and a Pravilo aircar was sent to bring her from the Myrrh settlement.
And an hour later, all was ready.
They sat side by side at the edge of the thunderhead city, looking up through the tangle of sensor leads attached to them as Eisenstadt ran through his instructions one final time. “… And remember, nothing fancy this time around,” he told them, trying mightily not to let his complete skepticism over this whole thing show through. “Concentrate on expressing our goodwill to them, and see if you get any kind of similar feeling in return.”
“Don’t you want them to ask about recently dead thunderheads?” I murmured to him.
A flash of annoyance. “Let’s take this one step at a time, Benedar, all right?” he muttered back. “If the sensors show evidence that this trance state of theirs has anything unusual to it, then maybe we’ll try to go for some specifics.”
And if not, I heard the rest of his thought, there was no point wasting any more time than necessary listening to gibberish from religious fanatics. Fleetingly, I considered making some kind of comment; but there really wasn’t anything to say. The only thing that would make a dent in his skepticism would be clear and positive results.
I could only pray there would be some.
Adams nodded. “We understand,” he told Eisenstadt. He took a deep breath. “Silence would be helpful to our concentration.”
Eisenstadt took the hint and shut up, and I watched as Adams and Zagorin closed their eyes and slipped into their meditative trance.
The last time this had happened in my presence I’d missed seeing the actual transition. This time, paying close attention, I still almost missed it. One moment Adams was sitting quietly, his breathing slowing as all emotion seemed to drain from his sense; the next, it was all somehow different.
“It’s started,” I murmured to Eisenstadt. At his other side, Calandra added her agreement.
Eisenstadt nodded. “Kiell?” he called softly over his shoulder.
One of the techs stirred in his seat. “Well … something’s happening,” he said, his tone vaguely troubled. “The readings started looking like normal rest mode, but now …”
“But now what?” Eisenstadt prompted, his sense wavering between irritation and genuine interest.
The tech never got the chance to answer. Abruptly, Adams and Zagorin straightened simultaneously where they sat, and both sets of eyes came fully open. Open … but with a disturbing glaze to them. “Greetings to you,” the two Seekers said in unison, both voices the same husky whisper. “We are the—” something I couldn’t catch. “We welcome you to our … world.”
Chapter 23
FOR A LONG MOMENT we all just stood there. Eisenstadt was the first to move; and, predictably, it was to me he turned, an uncertain thunder in his expression. “If this is some sort of game, Benedar …”
The reflexive accusation died midway, and he swallowed hard. Even to him, it had to be clear that this was no trick. The odd blankness in the two Seekers’ eyes, the subtle contorting of their faces, the abnormal timbres in their voices—none of it could have been faked. “It’s no game, sir,” I murmured. “They’re in contact—somehow—with the thunderheads.”
Eisenstadt exhaled between his teeth in a snake-like hiss. Adams and Zagorin were still sitting as they had after delivering their message, faces and bodies frozen as stiffly as normal human muscles could handle. Waiting for Eisenstadt’s response … “Aren’t you going to say something?” I prompted him quietly.
Eisenstadt’s jaw tightened. “I … greet you as well,” he managed. A touch of annoyance crossed his face as some of the initial shock faded and he abruptly realized that he was now speaking for posterity. And not doing a particularly memorable job of it. “I am Dr. Vlad Eisenstadt, representing the Four Worlds of the Patri and their colonies,” he continued, somewhat more firmly this time. “Who, may I ask, have I the honor of addressing?”
A moment of silence. Then Adams and Zagorin spoke, again in that oddly hoarse whisper, and again in unison. “My identity can … not be put into this … kind of speech. We are …” The voices faded.
Eisenstadt leaned forward slightly, cocking one ear forward. “I’m sorry; what was that?”
“They can’t answer,” Calandra spoke up, a slight wavering to her voice. Her face—what I could see of it—looked both awestruck and more than a little shaken. “Their faces—watch their faces and the way their throats contract. Whatever the word is, they simply can’t pronounce it.”
Eisenstadt pursed his lips, considering. “With your permission, then,” he said, “we’ll continue to call you by our name for you: thunderheads. Unless that word should be used to distinguish between you and your physical hosts. They are just hosts for you, aren’t they?”
A pause; and when Adams and Zagorin spoke again, I could hear a slight hesitation in their voices. “Not hosts. Bodies … homes … fortresses. Safety. Life.”
“Ah,” Eisenstadt nodded, a bit cautiously. “Yes—bodies.” He considered. “You mention safety. What kind of safety do these bodies provide you?�
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Silence. To me it was obvious that Eisenstadt was fishing for details about the thunderheads’ defenses. Perhaps it was obvious to the thunderheads, too. “I don’t think they’re going to answer,” I murmured after a minute.
“Afraid to?” he asked. “Or just a lack of vocabulary?”
I considered. “Afraid or distrusting, I’d say. The sense here is different than it was when they were trying to find a way to describe their body-homes, so I don’t think it’s a vocabulary problem.”
He grunted and turned to Calandra. “You agree?”
“That the senses were different in the two instances, yes,” she nodded. “Whether the emotion behind it should be interpreted as fear or something else, I don’t know.”
“I thought you Watchers were supposed to be able to read anybody you wanted to,” he grumbled.
“Anybody human,” she corrected him softly. “At the moment … they aren’t.”
The muscles in Eisenstadt’s cheeks tightened … and abruptly his sense, too, changed. “Yes, well, maybe you religious types believe in demonic possession,” he said, almost briskly. “But I don’t. You—Smyt—swivel Adams around a little so that he and Zagorin can’t see each other.”
I frowned as Smyt and one of the other techs moved to obey. “Sir, there’s no way they can be cueing each other. The synchronization is just too close.”
“We’ll see about that, won’t we?” Eisenstadt said coolly. For just a minute, I realized, he’d been caught up in the same sense of awe and wonder as Calandra and I over what was happening; but that minute was over, and now the scientist in him had reemerged, hard-headed and skeptical. “What kind of readings are we getting?” he added over his shoulder to the techs at the monitors.
“Weird ones,” one of them reported. “Heart rate, blood pressure, and cell metabolism index are way down. Neuron and brainwave patterns—” he hesitated. “Frankly, Doctor, I don’t know how to read this. There are strong elements of mental hyperactivity—localized at highly unusual sites—but there are also elements of deep sleep. Really deep sleep—just barely this side of comatose. By all rights, they should both be flat on their backs, snoring away.”
