Deadman Switch

And abruptly, gravity returned. We were on Mjollnir drive again, on our way through the Cloud.

With a dead man at the controls.

"Why?" I asked Randon again.

"Because you're the first Watcher to travel to Solitaire," he said. The words were directed to me; but his eyes remained on Trembley. The morbid fascination I'd felt still had Randon in its grip. "Hard to believe, isn't it?" he continued, his voice distant. "Seventy years after the discovery of the Deadman Switch and there still hasn't been a Watcher who's taken the trip in."

I shivered, my skin crawling. The Deadman Switch had hardly been "discovered"—the first ship to get to Solitaire had done so on pure idiot luck... if luck was the proper word. A university's scientific expedition had been nosing around the edge of the Cloud for days, trying to figure out why a Mjollnir drive couldn't operate within that region of space, when the drive had suddenly and impossibly kicked in, sending them off on the ten-hour trip inward to the Solitaire system. Busy with their readings and instruments, no one on board realized until they reached the system that the man operating the helm was dead—had, in fact, died of a stroke just before they'd entered the Cloud.

By the time they came to the correct conclusion, they'd been trapped in the system for nearly two months. Friendships, under such conditions, often grow rapidly. I wondered what it had been like, drawing lots to see who would die so that the rest could get home...

I shivered, violently. "The Watchers consider the Deadman Switch to be a form of human sacrifice," I told him.

Randon threw me a patient glance... but beneath the slightly amused sophistication there, I could tell he wasn't entirely comfortable with the ethics of it either. "I didn't bring you here to argue public morals with me," he said tartly. "I brought you here because—" he pursed his lips briefly—"because I thought you might be able to settle the question of whether or not the Cloud is really alive."

It was as if all the buried fears of my childhood had suddenly risen again from their half-forgotten shadows. To deliberately try and detect the presence of an entity that had coldly taken control of a dead human body... "No," I managed to say.

Randon frowned. "No what? No, it isn't alive?"

Trembley's dead hands moved, changing the Bellwether's course a few degrees down the twisting and ever-changing path to Solitaire... and suddenly I felt very ill. "I mean, no, I can't do it."

A slight frown creased Randon's forehead. "Look, Benedar, I'm not expecting miracles—"

"I can't do it," I snapped at him.

All heads on the bridge turned to me. Even Randon seemed taken aback. Even were I to walk in a ravine as dark as death I should fear no danger, for You are at my side... Taking a deep breath, I forced calmness into my mind. "Mr. Kelsey-Ramos, the man there is dead. He's dead."

"He was a condemned traitor," Aikman put in, malicious enjoyment at my discomfort coloring his tone. "He was responsible for the deaths of over twenty people on Miland. You feel sorry for him?"

I met his eyes, but didn't bother to speak. He couldn't understand—wouldn't want to even if he could—how much more grisly the zombi was for me than it could ever be for him. To sense overwhelmingly the fact that he was dead; and at the same time to see evidence of life...

"Who was Connye?" Randon asked.

Aikman shifted his attention to him. "Who?"

"Trembley mentioned a Connye, just as Dr. DeMont injected him," Randon said. Annoyed though he might be at me for refusing his order, he still had no intention of letting an outsider like Aikman take free shots at me. "Was she one of the people he killed?"

Aikman shook his head. "She was one of his accomplices." His eyes went back to me. "She was executed on an earlier flight into Solitaire, incidentally."

I clenched my teeth. "Mr. Kelsey-Ramos... with your permission, I'd like to leave."

He studied me a moment, then nodded. "Yes, all right. Perhaps on the trip back you'll be better able to handle it."

I nodded, acknowledging his statement without necessarily agreeing with it. "I'll be in my stateroom if you need me," I told him.

"You might take a minute to stop by the other zombi's cell first," Aikman added as I turned to go.

I paused, looking back at him. Again the hatred of me... but this time combined with something else. Something very much like gloating. "Oh?" I asked.

"Or not," he said, studiously off-handed. "It's entirely up to you." Deliberately, he turned his back to me and pretended to be watching Trembley.

I glanced at Randon, saw my puzzlement mirrored there, and silently left the bridge.

—

Aikman was playing some sort of game, of course. Unfortunately, we both knew I knew it, which meant his ultimate goal could equally well be to goad me into visiting the Bellwether's other prisoner or else to make sure I avoided the cell completely.

But I wasn't going to play his game... and not playing his game meant doing whatever I did for my reasons, not his. And in this case...

In this case I didn't want to face the prisoner. Didn't want to see someone who had committed a crime worthy of death.

Didn't want to risk feeling any empathy for someone with whom I had no business, and who would regardless be dying in no more than two weeks.

But a Samaritan traveller who came on him was moved with compassion when he saw him...

There were times, I reflected bitterly, when religious duty was more trouble than it was worth. With a sigh, I changed direction and headed for the prisoner's cell.

The "cell" was really nothing but a specially prepared stateroom, cleared of anything that could be used for escape and equipped with an outside lock. A guard would be posted outside, of course; but as I came down the corridor I saw that at least that worry had been for nothing. Mikha Kutzko, Lord Kelsey-Ramos's own favorite shield chief and one of the few people aboard who neither treated me as a vaguely amusing fanatic nor walked on eggshells in my presence, was himself standing guard by the door.

He watched my approach, a genuinely friendly grin on his face even as his hand drifted a few centimeters closer to the needler belted to his thigh. An unconscious reflex, I knew, one that had probably helped keep him alive all these years. "Gilead," he nodded in greeting, eyes twinkling behind the tinted lenses of his visorcomp. "Welcome to the Bellwether's dungeon. What brings you here?"

"I'd heard there was a miracle taking place," I said with a straight face. "That you were actually up here walking the drawbridge yourself."

The smile became a grin. "And you said, 'I must go across and see this strange sight'?" he suggested wryly.... and why the bush is not being burned up, I automatically completed the reference. Kutzko's knowledge of scripture was generally limited to those with novelty value, but it was still nice to hear even that being used in public. "Of course," I agreed. "You have to admit it's been a year or two since you had to pull straight guard duty."

Some of the amusement went out of his eyes. "It's been even longer since any of my shields had to guard a death cell," he said quietly. "Its blazing depressing having to stand around here thinking about it."

I nodded. Until we reached Solitaire Kutzko didn't have any real shield coordination work to do... and like Captain Bartholomy, he wasn't the type to push unpleasant duty off his own back onto his subordinates'. Lord Kelsey-Ramos had a knack for attracting people like that. "I don't suppose it is," I agreed. "What can you tell me about him?"