Deadman Switch

  Kutzko grunted. “Well, maybe Mr. Kelsey-Ramos will see his way clear to helping push—”

  He broke off, eyes flicking over my shoulder as the bridge door opened behind me. I turned to look—

  Just in time to see Aikman come to a sudden halt as he belatedly spotted us. “Ah—good evening,” he managed, his sense gone suddenly taut. In his hand was a cyl, a cyl his first reflexive twitching of fingers tried vainly to conceal. “I was looking for the captain; I see he’s not here. Excuse the interruption.”

  He turned to go, stopped abruptly as Kutzko took a long step around me to cut off his exit. “That’s okay, Mr. Aikman—we were about finished, anyway,” he said easily. “What did you need the captain for? Maybe I can help.”

  “No, that’s all right,” Aikman insisted. His eyes flashed at me … but on top of the usual hatred there, I found a strong current of nervousness. “I just needed—”

  “To call someone?” Kutzko interrupted him genially. “That’s right—there’s a block on outship calls from your stateroom, isn’t there?”

  Aikman’s forehead darkened in anger. “There are laws against illegal restraint—”

  “There are laws against aiding industrial sabotage, too,” Kutzko cut him off, his voice hardening. “What’s that?”

  “What’s what?” Aikman asked cautiously, thrown momentarily off-balance by the question.

  “That.” Kutzko took another half step forward, and his pointing finger abruptly became a darting hand that smoothly plucked the cyl from Aikman’s startled fingers.

  “Give me that!” Aikman snarled, making a snatch for the cyl. For that one brief instant his sense was less that of a human being than it was of an enraged animal, and I felt my muscles tense up as I took an involuntary step backward.

  Kutzko’s didn’t even flinch as his free hand deflected Aikman’s grab. “Easy, Mr. Aikman,” he warned, voice calm again. “Looks like some kind of tamper-resistant datapack,” he commented, peering at the cyl’s ends. “Shall we plug it in and see what it is?”

  “It’s an official legal document,” Aikman bit out. “For transmission and filing with the Solitaran judiciary. You break the seal by reading it here and you’ll void it.”

  “Then you’ll just have to write it up again, won’t you?” Kutzko said coolly. “Unless you’d rather just tell me what it says?”

  For a long minute the two men stood motionlessly, facing each other like an echo of the ancient gladiators. The sense of defiance surrounding Aikman bent first. “It’s a request for a judicial restraint order,” he ground out. “I want the outzombi barred from leaving this ship; and I want him—” he nodded his head sideways at me— “also barred, for collusion with a condemned felon.”

  Kutzko’s eyebrows went up in polite surprise. “Collusion?”

  “Yes, collusion,” Aikman’s said sarcastically. “It’s a legal term—I doubt that you’ve had much acquaintance with such things. Except possibly as a defendant somewhere.”

  Kutzko considered taking offense, decided it wasn’t worth it. “I know more about law than you might think,” he said. “You want to tell me how collusion applies here?”

  “Oh, come on, Shield Chief, let’s not let company loyalty blind you to what’s going on here,” Aikman snarled. “Why do you think Benedar got Kelsey-Ramos to take your outzombi to the HTI meeting this morning?”

  “Suppose you tell me,” Kutzko invited him.

  “Because he’s preparing her for an escape, of course. Showing her the lay of the land—helping her to meet the powerful of Solitaire who might be duped into hiring a parasite Watcher, the way Lord Kelsey-Ramos was.”

  There was a lot in all of that to strain Kutzko’s temper, but he held on admirably. “You have any proof of that?” he growled.

  “He doesn’t need proof,” I said quietly. The flicker in Aikman’s sense confirmed that I had indeed read his intentions correctly. “If he can even get that restraint order accepted for consideration, it’ll be a couple of days before anyone can track through it and find it’s nothing but unsupported innuendo.”

  Kutzko nodded understanding. “Uh-huh. By which time we’ll be out of here and on our way to the ring mines.”

  Reaching forward, Aikman plucked the cyl from Kutzko’s unresisting hand and stalked across the bridge to Gielincki, who’d been wisely staying out of it. “Officer, I want you to file this document with the Solitaran judiciary in Cameo,” he told her, thrusting the cyl in front of her face.

  She made no move to take it. “I’m sorry, Mr. Aikman,” she said, eyes still on her displays. “You’ll need to get permission from Mr. Kelsey-Ramos before I can do that. If you’d like, I’ll call his stateroom.”

  “You’ll comply, or I’ll have you up on charges of illegal restraint,” he said coldly. “I don’t need anyone’s permission to file legal papers.”

  Gielincki never had been the type to take threats well. Slowly, deliberately, she turned to look up at him. “Aboard this ship,” she said, her tone even colder than Aikman’s, “you need Mr. Kelsey-Ramos’s permission to do anything. If that offends your democratic sensibilities, you’re welcome to go elsewhere.”

  Aikman glared at her a moment longer. Then, without a word, he spun around and stomped back toward us.

  Kutzko still blocked the door, and he made no effort to move. “Of course, if you leave the ship,” he said casually, “that cyl has to stay here. We don’t have any proof that it’s really only a legal document.”

  Aikman’s forehead darkened. “If you’re accusing me—”

  “Mr. Aikman,” I interrupted.

  “Shut up, Benedar,” he snapped.

  “I think perhaps I can help resolve this impasse,” I persisted.

  That earned me a needle-pointed glance. “How?—by reading my mind? How convenient that you’re here. How convenient, too, that there’s nobody to corroborate whatever you decide is the truth.”

  I felt my face flush with anger. “I don’t lie about the things I see,” I bit out. “I have to answer to God for my actions, you know.”

  His lip twisted. “Oh, yes, of course. It all comes back to God for you, doesn’t it?”

  “You have a problem with that?” Kutzko put in.

  Aikman looked at him, then turned his attention back to me … and abruptly, his sense cooled, his frustrated rage changing to an almost icy bitterness. “Tell me, Benedar, did your Watcher schools bother to teach you any history while you were learning how to invoke God as justification for everything you did? Do you know what finally destroyed the Earth, for instance?”

  “It was the increasing economic and political stresses of the last half of the twenty-first century,” I told him evenly. “The final disintegration came from a combination of minority demands and unrest, plus a surge of anger over the costs of the StarWay project.”

  “Yes, that’s how I would have expected a Watcher school to tell it,” he sneered. “This may come as a shock, Watcher, but it wasn’t economics or politics that destroyed the Earth. It was religion. Religion that started a thousand fanatic brush wars. Religion that kept terrorism going long after most of the strictly political problems were on their way to being solved. Religion that tore apart every society from East to West and back again.”

  “That was a long time ago,” Kutzko interjected … but behind the supportive words I could sense his own hidden doubts. He, too, had grown up being taught that same Patri version of the Final Revolution. “You can’t blame—”

  “The Watchers?” Aikman cut him off. “Tell that to the people of Bridgeway who lived under the rule of Aaron Balaam darMaupine and his God. They know what happens when religion becomes more than just a hobby.”

  I felt a surge of anger. To equate religion with a hobby—

  With an effort, I forced the indignation down. Resentment kills the senseless, and anger brings death to the fool … “As it happens, Mr. Aikman, I have heard that theory before,” I told him. “It gives the Patri and colonies a g
ood excuse to dislike and even persecute religious practice. Now tell me why it is you hate me.”

  His face went rigid, and for a half dozen heartbeats the bridge was filled with a brittle silence. “You don’t need me to answer that,” he said at last, very quietly. “You demonstrate it every time I have to be in the same room with you.”

  “What, because he understands people better than you do?” Kutzko scoffed.

  Aikman sent him an ice-edged glare. “Tell me, Shield—you who know so much about the law—have you ever read the Patri Bill of Rights and Ethics? Read it, I mean, not just heard of it?”

  “Yes,” Kutzko told him stiffly.

  “Do you remember Article Nine? The right against self-incrimination? Good. Then tell me how such a right can exist in the presence of a Watcher.”

  Kutzko’s forehead furrowed slightly. “That right is supposed to be for judiciaries and trial proceedings—”

  “No!” Aikman snapped. “It is the most basic of human rights, the right to the privacy of one’s own thoughts.” He glared at me. “You have no right to do what you do, Watcher. As far as a strict reading of Patri law goes, you don’t even have a right to mingle with the rest of society.” He held up the cyl, pointing it at me like a needler tube. “And if I can’t keep you locked away from normal people forever, I can sure as putrid smert make sure you stay away from the people of Solitaire.”

  He stepped around Kutzko, headed for the bridge door. “What about Calandra?” I asked. “She has the right to keep her life if she’s not guilty.”

  “The dead have no rights,” he shot back. “And zombis are already dead.”

  I clenched my teeth, feeling a quiet panic bubbling up within me. With Calandra’s life hanging by a thread, I couldn’t afford to be trapped here in the Bellwether, away from the only people who could help. But there was only one way I could think of to stop him … and it would only add more fuel to his hatred of Watchers.

  So be it. “Mr. Aikman,” I called as he opened the bridge door, “if you file that document, I’ll have no choice but to tell Mr. Kelsey-Ramos what you did this evening.”

  Mid-way through the door, he paused. “And what might that be?” he demanded without turning around.

  “It was you, not HTI, who called the governor’s mansion and told them that Calandra would be with us.”

  He still didn’t turn; but I didn’t need to see his face. The stiffening of back and neck muscles was all the proof I needed that my guess was indeed correct. “You told them Calandra would be along,” I continued, “and that she was a Watcher and a condemned felon.”

  “She is,” he almost snarled over his shoulder. “She has no legal right to be out of her cell, let alone out of the ship.”

  “I doubt Mr. Kelsey-Ramos would see it that way,” I pointed out. “He might consider it an interference with his mission to collect information here … in which case he might well have you removed from the Bellwether for the remainder of the trip.”

  Again, the tightening of muscles told me I’d hit close to the nerve. In the corner of my eye I could see that Kutzko was watching closely … and that he hadn’t caught either of Aikman’s reactions. “And you can’t afford that, can you?” I continued. “HTI wants one of their people aboard to keep track of what Mr. Kelsey-Ramos does, and you’re it.”

  “Dr. DeMont will still be here,” he countered, striving for off-handedness. “And you can’t use the Deadman Switch without a Patri legal rep aboard.”

  “Cameo’s full of Patri legal reps,” I reminded him. “Many of whom don’t have any loyalty whatsoever to HTI.”

  Aikman didn’t reply, and after a moment of silence Kutzko stepped over and extended his hand. Without looking at him, Aikman dropped the cyl into the open palm. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, still with his back to me. “In a week she’ll be dead. And there’s not a putrid thing you or anyone else can do to stop it.”

  “We’ll see,” I told him, trying to sound more confident than I felt.

  Perhaps he sensed that; or perhaps he knew much better than I what I was up against. “Oh, she’ll be dead, all right,” he bit out, the confidence in his voice as genuine as the gloating. “And if you don’t stay out of my way, I may even arrange to have you as official witness to her execution. Remember that the next time you think about invading my privacy.”

  He left. “Probably makes friends wherever he goes,” Kutzko commented wryly. But I could sense that some of the sarcasm in his voice was merely there for cover. Beneath it—

  Beneath it, and in his eyes, was a kind of uneasiness I’d never seen in him before.

  “Legal reps are often like that,” I shrugged, deciding to ignore the uneasiness I was reading. If what I’d just done really bothered him, he’d bring it up in his own good time. “Just remember that we only have to put up with him for a few more days; he’s stuck with himself permanently.”

  Kutzko snorted. “He’s welcome to it. I wonder if he’s like this with everyone.”

  “I doubt it. Not everyone has a Watcher with them.”

  Kutzko’s uneasiness took on a tinge of guilt. “Yeah. Well …”

  “What are you going to do with that?” I asked, gesturing to the cyl in his hand.

  “Give it to Mr. Kelsey-Ramos, of course. Why?—you wanted to keep it our little secret?”

  I shrugged. “I did sort of imply that if Aikman surrendered the cyl we’d keep his squalling to the governor to ourselves.”

  “You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep,” he growled. “I have to report this, and you know it.”

  I just looked at him, and after a minute he sighed. “Oh, all right—I’ll gloss over that part if I can. Though I’ll bet HTI will be madder at Aikman than Mr. Kelsey-Ramos will—getting Paquin thrown out of the reception meant she was here when the saboteurs tried to get in.”

  I hadn’t thought of it that way, but he was right, God has ensnared the wicked in the work of their own hands … “Good point,” I agreed.

  Idly, he rolled the cyl across his palm. “I suppose I’d better get this to Mr. Kelsey-Ramos.”

  I nodded. “When I left him he was in Schock’s stateroom getting ready to start sifting through the HTI cyls,” I offered.

  “Okay.” He hesitated. “Gilead … does Aikman have a real case?”

  “In other words, can I really read minds?”

  He grimaced. “Maybe I should ask how much of people’s minds can you read.”

  I sighed. “I’ve been working for Lord Kelsey-Ramos for eight years,” I reminded him. “If I could read anything more than emotions and surface impressions, don’t you think I could easily have stolen the Carillon Group out from under him by now?”

  “Even knowing you’d have to answer to God for doing it?” he asked pointedly.

  “Aaron Balaam darMaupine felt God wanted him to establish a theocracy on Bridgeway,” I countered evenly. “He would have held onto his power a lot longer if he could have read the minds of those who eventually betrayed him.”

  “Point,” Kutzko agreed, some of the tension in his sense easing. “Old Balaam’s Ass did crumble pretty quickly once the Patri woke up to what he was doing.”

  I winced to myself at Kutzko’s careless, even automatic epithet. DarMaupine’s humility name had been an easy one for the Patri to turn against him: Balaam, the Old Testament prophet who’d had to be told by his own donkey that an angel of death was waiting for him in the road ahead. It was probably the only scriptural passage that even the most rabidly unreligious in the Patri and colonies knew. “Yes, he did,” I agreed. “The original Watcher elders didn’t unlock any hidden power of the human mind, Mikha. They just learned how to truly see the universe around them.”

  “Yeah. Well …” Kutzko grimaced, then shrugged fractionally. “You have to admit it gets blazing spooky sometimes. Anyway … I’ve still got to go find Mr. Kelsey-Ramos. See you later.”

  “Right.”

  He left. I waited a minute, then followed, hea
ding back to my own stateroom. He was right, of course: Watcher abilities could indeed be spooky to those who didn’t understand.

  To those of us who did understand … there were perhaps dangers the elders had never even considered. God does not see as human beings see; they look at appearances but God looks at the heart …

  Had we, in our human pride, tried to usurp that role for ourselves? Had that been, in fact, the underlying root of Aaron Balaam darMaupine’s treason?—the belief that with God’s power to see even partway into men’s souls he had also inherited God’s power to rule?

  Had that pride led to the persecution the entire Watcher sect now suffered under?

  I had none of the answers. Not in eleven years of searching for them.

  Chapter 11

  I’D ANTICIPATED IT, EXPECTED it, convinced Randon it would happen. Even so, I was still surprised when Governor Rybakov arrived at the Bellwether the next morning.

  “Let me first state for any record you happen to have running,” she said after the formalities of greeting were out of the way, “that my presence here is in no way an acknowledgment of any wrongdoing or knowledgeable complicity in wrongdoing.”

  “Of course,” Randon agreed calmly. “Just as by asking you here to retrieve official property I’m in no way accusing you of any such activities.”

  For a moment they eyed each other in cool silence, while I sat at the third point of the triangle and tried to make myself as inconspicuous as possible. Rybakov broke first. “May I have them?” she asked.

  Wordlessly, Randon reached into his desk and pulled out the customs IDs we’d taken from the would-be saboteurs the previous evening. Equally wordlessly, Rybakov took them, gave each a sour glance, and slid them into a pocket beneath her capelet.

  “I presume you have an explanation,” Randon suggested.

  “Certainly I have one. Is there any particular reason you deserve to hear it?”

  Randon glanced at me, back to Rybakov. “Would it help if I assured you I don’t intend to make any of this public?”