She snorted. "Someone like who?—the Halloas? Come on; they were perfectly content to sit here thinking they were walking around on heaven talking directly to God. They'd never have made the connection by themselves."
From heaven God looks down, he sees all the children of Adam, from the place where he sits he watches all who dwell on the earth; he alone molds their hearts, he understands all they do... "Imagine the impression on mankind's history if that had been true," I murmured.
"The thunderheads hardly conform to the popular concept of angels," Calandra said, a touch of humor glinting through the solemnity.
I smiled in return; and right then it hit me, like a brilliant flash of lightning. From heaven God looks down... "God in heaven, Calandra," I breathed. "That's it. That's it!"
She stared at me. "What—?"
"Come on!" Grabbing her hand, I almost literally pulled her toward the Pravilos still waiting nearby. "I need a phone—quickly," I called to them.
We met them halfway, and a phone was handed to me. "How do I get Dr. Eisenstadt?" I asked, fumbling with the instrument with trembling hands. It was so blatantly obvious—
One of the Pravilos keyed in the code, and a minute later Eisenstadt's face appeared on the tiny display. "Hello?"
"This is Benedar," I identified myself. "Where is Commodore Freitag?"
He blinked, clearly taken aback by the unexpected question. "On Solitaire, I presume."
"Call him," I said. "Get him here." I glanced at the Pravilos, looking as puzzled as Eisenstadt did. "And after he's on his way, better keep this whole place incommunicado. We still haven't proved Aikman didn't have an information source here, and this cannot be allowed to get out."
"What can't be allowed to get out?" he growled, starting to grow irritated. "Calm down and—"
"We need a non-Solitaran criminal," I cut him off. "Right? And the best candidate for one is a smuggler. Right?"
"Y-y-yes," he said slowly. "Except that you said Freitag wasn't interested in a solution to the—"
"In a partial solution," I corrected him. Couldn't he see it—? "He wants to take all the smugglers in a single sweep, before any can slip through the net."
"And you know where they all are?"
"No!" I all but shouted at him. "But the thunderheads do!"
Beside me, Calandra whispered something startled and yet oddly reverent sounding... and Eisenstadt, for the first time since I'd met him, was speechless.
Chapter 27
It wasn't quite that easy, of course. The thunderheads had no way of distinguishing legitimate ships and settlements from smuggler ships and bases, for one thing, and it was quite a job explaining to them how to use human maps and skytracks. But with patience and computer wizardry on Freitag's part and stamina on Zagorin's, the job was eventually done.
A week later, Freitag had his clean sweep.
—
I learned later that no fewer than five smuggler ships were caught in the Pravilo's grand net, as well as four rather cushy bases buried in the wilds of Spall. Unraveling all the entanglements—some of which were rumored to stretch as far afield as Janus and Elegy—and bringing all those involved before the appropriate judiciaries would take months or even years. But for the leaders of one crew, caught red-handed with a kidnap victim still aboard, the Solitaran judiciary authorized the use of pravdrugs. From those five men, two were chosen whose clear and willing guilt was matched only by their complete ignorance of the group's business contacts.
Guilty, but at the same time useless to the Pravilo investigation... or in other words, perfect candidates for filling Eisenstadt's request for a zombi.
I expected the judiciary to take at least a week to make it official. It took, in fact, barely five days.
—
I'd expected the second time would be easier. Or perhaps merely hoped it would.
It wasn't, of course.
The Pravilo doctor stepped back from the Kharg's helm chair, returning the hypo to its place in his small case. My stomach a hard knot, I forced myself to watch as the dead hands lifted delicately and reached for the helm board. I shuddered—those hands could have been Calandra's. They settled there; and abruptly the stars vanished from the bridge displays.
"Deadman Switch in control, Commodore," the man at the ditto helm announced. "Taking us out on bearing twenty-two mark four zero, fifty-six mark three three."
Freitag nodded. "Navigation?"
The navigator's hands were already playing over his board. "There's nothing in particular listed for that direction, sir," he reported. "No large planetoids or cometary bodies. Though that may not mean much—except for Solitaire system itself, data for this part of space is pretty sketchy."
"Which should encourage all of you to keep sharp," Freitag reminded the bridge in general. "Wherever the Cloud generator is stashed, it's likely to be either well hidden or well defended. Or both." He swiveled another quarter turn. "Dr. Eisenstadt?"
Standing beside the ditto nav chair, Eisenstadt leaned over to peer into Shepherd Zagorin's glazed eyes. "Thunderhead? You still with us?"
"I am," Zagorin whispered.
"Are we on the right path?"
"Yes," she assured him.
I watched her closely, trying with all my skill to read past the words to what might lie beneath them. As usual, the attempt failed. There were subtle differences in the sense between one encounter and another, I could tell now, differences that might be related to thunderhead emotional coloring the same way it was to that of human beings. But it could equally well be a result of Zagorin becoming acclimated to the contact, or to different thunderheads handling their end of the communication each time, or to any of a dozen other factors.
Beside me, Calandra shivered. "You were right, Gilead," she murmured. Her eyes, I saw, were on the body at the Deadman Switch. "It is the same. The same motions, the same sense, the same... everything."
She trailed off. I turned to Eisenstadt, to find him looking in turn at Calandra. His eyes flicked to mine, then shifted to the helm and Commodore Freitag sitting stiffly in his command chair. His sense... "Something wrong?" I asked quietly.
Eisenstadt hesitated, shook his head. "Just... thinking. Wondering about... well, the logic involved here."
The logic of the Cloud. With all his attention focused on getting a zombi for this trip, Eisenstadt had apparently lost sight of all the questions and contradictions that had sparked this trip out in the first place. "I presume you and Commodore Freitag intend to move carefully," I said.
"Give us a little credit for brains," he grunted. "I just wish the thunderheads would loosen up and tell us exactly what they expect us to do for them out here."
His eyes dropped to Zagorin's impassive face, but if the thunderhead listening through her ears recognized the cue he ignored it. Zagorin remained silent, and after a minute Eisenstadt grunted again and gave up. "Anyway," he said to me, "we should know within ten hours. Wherever it is they're taking us, it has to be inside the Cloud itself."
I nodded down at Zagorin. "Are you going to have her maintain contact the whole way?"
Eisenstadt pursed his lips, shook his head. "No, I suppose not. They're not," he added dryly, "exactly being fountains of information, after all. Ms. Zagorin?—you can go ahead and break contact. Thunderhead, we'll be talking to you later. If there's anything we need to know, you'd better tell us now."
Zagorin straightened slightly. "Farewell," she said... and with a loud sigh slumped in her seat.
Eisenstadt looked at me, a sour expression on his face. "Or in other words," he growled, "they're still playing it coy."