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?"
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 re-emerged, 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."
Eisenstadt chewed at his lip. "Does any of it correspond to other known forms of meditation?"
"Not that I can tell. Of course, the records we've got here weren't designed to be an exhaustive listing."
"Sir," another tech put in, "it looks like their metabolic rates are still going down. Gradually, but noticeably."
"Potentially life-threatening?" Eisenstadt asked.
"I... don't know. Possibly."
Eisenstadt nodded, a slightly sour expression on his face. "You—thunderheads—are you still there?"
Adams's and Zagorin's faces contorted slightly in unison. "Where is there?"
"I meant are you still... in contact with us." Eisenstadt took a careful breath, his emotional resistance to accepting all this at face value fighting visibly against the recognition that we could be running up against a time limit. "We'd like to learn more about you—sharing knowledge of us in return, of course. Part of the study we would like to do—"
"We have no desire to... learn more about you."
Eisenstadt floundered a second, his line of thought bent by the interruption. "Yes. Well. Part of the study we would like to do would involve a dead thunderhead and a procedure called dissection. Would it be possible for us to have—?"
"There is no death."
Eisenstadt took a careful breath. "Ah... yes. Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. What we'd like—"
"Body-homes may die. We do not."
"Yes—that's what I meant," Eisenstadt tried again. "It's one of your body-homes that we'd like to study. If you could indicate an unused one for us and give us permission—"
"You may have a drone to... study."