"If those are the only ones you studied," I said, "I'm not surprised you're having trouble. Those particular ones don't seem very alert at the moment."
The Pravilo officer beside me snorted. "I've heard this one before. You tell people you can put a rock to sleep with hypnosis, and when they ask you to demonstrate you tell them all the rocks in sight are already asleep."
Chi threw him a glance, cocked an eyebrow at me. "Crudely put, perhaps, but you have to admit—"
"There!" I snapped. All three of the thunderheads had abruptly come to life.
Chi spun around. "Where?"
"The thunderheads! Don't you...?"
I hissed through my teeth. The brief flash of intelligence I'd sensed there had gone as quickly as it had come. "It was there. It was."
Chi turned back, eyes flashing with irritation. "Look, Benedar—"
"Why don't we check your monitors?" Randon suggested. "If something really happened, it should have shown up there."
Chi looked at him, took a deep breath. "If you insist. I can tell you right now, though, that it'll turn out to be a false alarm. We've seen them before."
He stalked over to the hollow and the central monitor station. "Give me a composite for the last two minutes," he instructed the young woman sitting there. "All three subjects."
She nodded and tapped keys, and three traces appeared on the display. "There you go," Chi said, waving at them. "Spurious data."
"Wait a minute," I objected. "Who says it's spurious?"
He gave me a patient look. "Just look at the traces. All three virtually identical, and all three beginning and ending at the same time. Doesn't that suggest that whatever caused it was some external effect—a mild ground tremor, perhaps—and totally unrelated to the thunderheads?"
I bit at the back of my lip. But I'd sensed their intelligence—could still sense it, at least in the further ones—
"Or else," Randon said thoughtfully, "it means they're deliberately turning it on and off in synch."
Chi snorted. "You're arguing your premise."
"Or looking for internal consistency," Randon corrected mildly. "Indulge me a moment, Doctor, and assume they're capable of something that sophisticated. Why would they want to do that?"
"To shake us off their trail," Kutzko spoke up unexpectedly, a hard edge beneath the words. I turned to look at him, found him gazing out at the thunderheads... and a chill ran up my back. Kutzko's stance, his eyes, the way his hand hovered near his needler—I'd seen it before. He was sensing the presence of danger... "They're trying to make us think that the readings are wrong."
"Ridiculous," Chi snorted. "You're not just postulating intelligence, now, but intelligence equal to humanity's own. Not to mention a sophisticated social structure."
I thought back to the sense Calandra and I had had, that this collection of thunderheads was a city. "You implied you've had other readings like this?" I asked.
"A few," Chi acknowledged grudgingly.
"Exactly the same?"
"I doubt it—we really haven't done the complete analysis on the data yet." He sighed. "But if it'll make you happy—Karyn, call up all such events, will you? Give a time line, too."
The tech did as instructed. Four records appeared on split sections of the display... and Chi hissed between his teeth. "Bozhe moi," he muttered.
"What?" Randon asked sharply.
Chi pointed. "This one was the fourth we've recorded... and the time lapse between it and the third is the same as between the third and second... and between the second and first."
Randon and I exchanged glances. "So they can go dormant," Randon said slowly, "but not indefinitely. Something like a water mammal having to come up at fixed intervals for air."
Chi rubbed his cheek. "Maybe," he conceded reluctantly. "Maybe. It still doesn't prove it's not a natural non-intelligent phenomenon. A normal biologic cycle, perhaps."
"The others aren't following any such cycle," I told him. "It's only the ones you're studying. The rest are watching us."
"So you say," Chi countered. "Can you prove it?"
Randon snorted. "Oh, come on, Doctor. He pointed out to you the exact moment when those three reacted. What more proof do you want that he's seeing something real?"
Chi glared at him. "I'm a scientist, Mr. Kelsey-Ramos," he said evenly. "I deal in facts—provable, scientific facts. Watchers like Benedar deal in feelings and interpretations and beliefs. Faith, not science. I understand the political reasons you want to make him a hero in this, but I have no intention of letting those reasons get in the way of my work."
For a long minute Randon just looked at him, and I watched as Chi went from righteous indignation to discomfort to the distinctly nervous feeling that perhaps he shouldn't have spoken quite so sharply to the heir of the Carillon Group. Randon let him squirm another moment, then turned to gaze again out over the thunderheads. "Tell me, Doctor," he said calmly, "why would something as plant-like as a thunderhead develop intelligence in the first place?"
Chi blinked at the unexpected question. "I don't understand what you're asking."
"They're not mobile, are they? I've seen the original survey team reports—their roots go pretty deep into the ground. Surely they aren't able to pull them up and move elsewhere."
"No, of course not. That's why the whole idea of them being intelligent—"
"Is ridiculous," Randon finished for him. "Yes, we know. And yet, they're aware enough to know that you're studying them. True?"
He hesitated. "We don't yet have any hard evidence of that."
"So check me on it," I suggested, beginning to feel annoyed with the man. "Have Calandra brought here—I presume she's being held somewhere nearby? We'll watch one of your test thunderheads and see if we can both spot the exact moment when it returns again."
Chi made a sour face. "The collusion between two Watchers would hardly—"
"Wait a minute," Kutzko interrupted him, turning to me with a frown. "What do you mean, when it returns again? Returns from where?"
"It was just a figure of speech—" Chi began.
"Quiet," Randon said. "Well, Benedar?"
I opened my mouth... closed it again. It had been just a figure of speech... hadn't it? No; it hadn't. "I don't understand it fully myself," I said at last. "But the thunderheads don't feel dormant so much as they feel... empty."
The word seemed to hang in the air, held there by the thick silence that had settled into the hollow. Even without looking I could tell that the techs around us had all ceased their work and were listening.
Chi could tell it, too, and it perhaps kept him from being as sarcastic aloud as he would otherwise have been. "Well," he said at last. "That's a rather interesting interpretation. To say the least."
Randon ignored him. "Are you suggesting that it's not the thunderheads themselves that are sentient? That they're just playing host to some kind of non-physical consciousness?"
"It doesn't have to be that sharp edged, sir," one of the techs spoke up, a bit hesitantly. His eyes flicked to me, as if seeking moral support. "It could be that the thunderheads are indeed sentient, but that they've learned how to... well, to allow their spirits to disassociate from their bodies."
Chi glared at his subordinate. "If you don't mind, Allix," he growled, "I'd like to try and handle this without resorting to mysticism. Religious upbringing," he added with thinly veiled contempt to Randon.
The natural person has no room for the gifts of God's Spirit; to him they are folly; he cannot recognize them, because their value can be assessed only in the Spirit... "Dr. Chi—"