"So why, then," he asked softly, "has it taken them this long to communicate with us?"
I shook my head. "I don't know."
He pursed his lips, and for a moment the room was silent. "What about Zagorin?" he asked at last. "Could she have picked up anything herself during the contact, or was she acting purely as a medium?"
"No idea, sir." I looked at Calandra. "You?"
She shook her head. "You'll just have to ask her yourself."
He nodded, an odd reluctance evident in his sense. "Yes, I'd planned on doing that. I just thought—well, never mind." He seemed to brace himself. "I suppose that... now that we know how to get through to the thunderheads, your part in this is pretty much over."
He stopped... and I saw what it was he couldn't allow himself to say. "With your permission, Dr. Eisenstadt," I said into the silence, "Calandra and I would both very much like to continue on with this. Having gone this far, we'd like to see it through." I looked at Calandra, saw she understood what I was doing, and why. "Curiosity aside, we might still wind up being of some use to you."
Relief virtually flooded into Eisenstadt's sense, all the confirmation I needed that my reading of him had been correct. To verbally acknowledge our worth and ask us to stay on had been a sacrifice of humility he hadn't been willing or able to make. But now that pride had been satisfied—now that he could see himself as doing us a favor, instead of the other way around—he could get what he'd wanted all along. "You might be of some value, at that," he agreed. "I'll pull some strings with the governor, see what she can do. In the meantime—" he glanced at his watch—"let's go talk to Zagorin. See what she remembers about her contact. If anything."
I nodded, and together we left... and it wasn't until we were out of the room that the significance of what I'd just done suddenly struck me. Barely two months ago I'd felt real agony over the ethics of using my Watcher insight to manipulate people to my wishes; now, I'd done precisely the same thing to Eisenstadt without the slightest qualms or hesitation.
For the best of motives, of course: those of protecting Calandra's life. No one can have greater love than to lay down his life for his friends... I let that scripture run over and over through my mind as we walked down the hallway with the two Pravilos. And tried to ignore another saying, nearly as old, nagging at the back of my mind. A saying that spoke of the road to hell... and how that road was paved.
Chapter 24
After what the physician had said about the effects of the drugs Zagorin had been given, I wondered privately whether trying to talk to her now would wind up being a waste of time. Those fears, at least, proved groundless. Zagorin was awake, alert, and coherent, and though she was clearly tired she was willing to help.
Except that in her case, good intentions merely paved the road to nowhere.
"I'm sorry, Dr. Eisenstadt," she said tiredly, for probably the fifth time. "Believe me, I would be happy to tell you everything, if only to get this over with. I just don't have the words—I don't have them, period. The contact was like—" She waved a hand vaguely, let it drop back to the bed beside her. "The feelings, the sensations..." Her face contorted with the effort, but again she was forced to give up.
Eisenstadt stared at her a moment longer, his sense going through contortions of its own as he struggled to hang onto his patience. "Opinion?" he growled, turning to me.
"She's not just being uncooperative," I assured him. "She really can't find the right words."
"Perhaps a dose of pravdrug would help her vocabulary," he suggested, throwing her a darkly sour look.
"I doubt it," Calandra spoke up, her first words since we'd entered the room. "The problem isn't vocabulary. There's some sort of blockage in her ability to speak."
Eisenstadt frowned at her. "You mean a mild aphasia? Nothing like that showed up on her brain scans."
Calandra shrugged fractionally. "It may not be totally physical in origin. Perhaps it was a side effect of the way the thunderheads used her speech center to talk to us."
"Perhaps." Eisenstadt stroked his chin thoughtfully, his sense suddenly suspicious. "Or maybe it was done deliberately."
I looked at Zagorin, saw her own sudden tension there. "Why would they do something like that?" I asked Eisenstadt. "If they didn't want to talk to us—"
"Oh, they wanted to talk, all right," he grunted. "But if you were paying attention, you may have noticed that they didn't exactly give us a gigapix of useful information. Certainly nothing we didn't already know or couldn't easily find out. Maybe there was something they didn't want us to know, but that they couldn't hide from their co-opted mouthpieces."
I felt the first stirrings of annoyance. There he was, jumping to worse-case conclusions again. "I don't suppose it occurred to you that they might just be nervous," I pointed out with perhaps more heat than was really called for.
"Oh, it occurred to me, all right," he countered. "Did it ever occur to you that they could just as easily be hiding some massive plot against humanity?"
"What?—here in the middle of nowhere?" I snorted.
He eyed me coldly. "You and Ms. Paquin have already stated you believe the thunderheads are creating tension in the people of Solitaire. Our communication with them so far has been entirely on their terms and under their control; now, you tell me that—intentionally or otherwise—they're hanging onto that control even after the communication is ended."
Coincidence, I thought. Coincidence, or else simply the normal misunderstandings and gropings that should be expected in a first contact between two such different species. "If you assume the worst of people," I murmured, "you'll often get it."
"Maybe," he conceded stiffly. "And I'm sure you religious types would rather err on the generous side than take the risk of bruising someone's pride. But we can't afford that kind of naivete here." His glare flicked to Calandra, came back to me. "Part of my job—and yours—is to make sure the thunderheads aren't a threat, to humanity in general and the Solitaire colony in particular. You can cooperate with me in that or you can get out. Understood?"
"Yes," I said between clenched teeth. Deep down, I had to admit it wasn't an unreasonable attitude for him and the Patri to take. In some ways, that made it worse. "All right, then," he said. "So. Somehow, Ms. Zagorin can't talk about her little visit with the thunderheads. We know there's no physical brain damage, or at least none of the kind usually associated with aphasia. That leaves us either something very subtle or else something psychological. Opinion: would hypnosis help? Either standard or drug-induced?"
I looked at Calandra. She chewed her lip briefly, then stepped up to the bed. "I'd like to try something less drastic first, if I may. Shepherd Zagorin, I'd like you to try to relax and think back through the contact, remembering it as fully as you can. Words, impressions, emotions—whatever comes to mind. Don't try to talk about them; just remember."
I turned to explain to Eisenstadt, saw that he'd already caught on to what she had in mind. "Go ahead," he nodded to Zagorin.
She clenched her teeth momentarily. "All right." Closing her eyes, she settled herself back against the pillow. Calandra reached over to take her left hand as I moved to the other side of the bed and took her right. Zagorin's skin was warm, the muscles slightly tense, and I could feel the faint throbbing of her pulse. "All right, now, Joyita," Calandra said, her voice calm and soothing. "You're sitting down by the thunderheads and going into your meditative trance."