Deadman Switch (20 page)

“It wasn't meant to be.” Moving stiffly, she began to unstrap. “Any signs of life out there?”

I found the control for the outside cameras, got them sweeping. “Um … small dust cloud forming over one of the hills. Probably a vehicle approaching.”

She craned her neck to look; and right on cue, a pair of cars topped the hill and headed toward us. “Reception committee from the Halloas?” she ventured.

“Probably. I don't see anything official-looking about the cars.” I hit my own strap releases. “Come on—let's get the ship ready for the next leg and then go out and meet them.”

They were waiting patiently outside their cars as we emerged from the Cricket: two men and a woman. At first glance all three struck me as impressive … and it was several seconds before I realized how remarkable that subconscious conclusion actually was. Standing next to old mul/terrain vehicles, dressed in neat but drab clothing, there was no immediately obvious reason why I should find them anything but perfectly ordinary.

And yet I did … and a couple of seconds later I realized why. There was something in their faces, in the senses of each of the three, that seemed to radiate peace. Not the artificial and short-lived counterfeit of peace available from bottles and pills, nor even the genuine kind of peace that most people experience only rarely and for similarly brief periods. This was a far deeper and more permanent sort of peace; a peace, moreover, with an unshakable dignity of soul attached to it.

It was the sort of peace I'd seen occasionally among the Watcher elders of my youth … and nowhere else that I'd ever traveled.

“Good day to you,” the man in the center said with a smile as Calandra and I approached them. “Welcome to Spall.”

“Thank you,” I nodded to him. About fifty years old, I estimated—perhaps twice the age of each of his companions—with a neatly trimmed fringebeard and the sort of wrinkling about his eyes that comes of long outdoor work and frequent smiling. The eyes themselves … measuring me with a keenness almost Watcher-like in its intensity. “You must be from the Halloas,” I told him. “An elder, I presume?”

A slight ripple of distaste touched his companions, but the spokesman didn't flinch. “I'm a shepherd of the Halo of God, yes,” he said, correcting my terminology. “The term ‘Halloa' is considered derogatory, by the way.”

“I'm sorry,” I apologized. “We'd never heard you referred to as anything else.”

His eyebrow twitched. “Ah. I take it, then, that you haven't come here to join us?”

I shook my head. “No, I'm afraid not. We have some rather pressing business on Spall … which we were hoping you might be able to help us with.”

His sense shaded toward wariness. “What sort of business?” he asked cautiously.

“Life and death business,” I said bluntly, watching him closely. “If we're unsuccessful, someone will die.”

His eyes continued to measure me. “People die all the time,” he said, a hint of challenge in his voice. “And death is, after all, only the passage from this life back to God.”

“Perhaps,” I acknowledged. “But injustice should not be the ticket to that passage.”

His eyes flicked to Calandra, returned to me. “I'm Shepherd Denvre Adams,” he said; and with his name came a sense of at least provisional acceptance of us. “Two of my associates from the Shekinah Fellowship: Mari Ray and Danel Pommert.” He gestured to his companions.

“I'm Gilead Raca Benedar,” I told him, watching carefully for reaction. “This is my friend, Calandra Mara Paquin.”

There was some reaction, certainly, among the three. But not at the level I would have expected from people on the alert for a pair of fugitive Watchers. Carefully, I let out the breath I'd been holding; apparently the alarm hadn't yet made it this far.

“So. Watchers.” Adams nodded as if finding a piece to a puzzle. “I should have guessed right away. The aura of alertness surrounding you is very distinctive.”

“We find it so ourselves,” I agreed, wondering how much of that had been made up on the spot to impress his companions. “Most people manage to miss it, though. Is there some place where we can talk in private?”

“The Shekinah settlement is only about fifteen minutes away. We can talk there.” His eyes flicked over my shoulder at the ship. “I take it you could use a ride?”

“Yes, thank you,” I said. “If you'll give us a minute, though, we need to get our supplies off. And to set our ship to take off.”

Beside me, I could sense Calandra's displeasure at my telling him that. I didn't much like it myself, but I couldn't see any way around it. The faster we got the ship headed for the outer system, the less inevitable it would be that the search would zero directly in on us here; and trying to concoct a lie about how the ship had accidentally launched itself could easily lose us any Halo of God support we could hope to get.

Adams's eyebrows raised slightly. “Without you aboard?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

I stopped, waiting for the questions. Adams's eyes flicked to Calandra, to the ship, back to me. “Very well,” he said at last. “We'll wait and drive you to Shekinah.” His sense suddenly went very solemn indeed. “And there, Mr. Benedar, we
will
talk.”

If Shepherd Adams was our first surprise, the Shekinah Fellowship settlement was our second.

With only a sparse scattering of native plant life across the hills between our landing area and the settlement, I had formed a mental picture of a cluster of rude huts clumped together, its inhabitants struggling to eke a living from rocky fields. Nothing could have been further from the actual truth. Even as I unconsciously braced myself for the drab ugliness ahead, we came over the final hill into a shallow valley … and a virtual explosion of greenery.

Not just small fields, but also well-tended private gardens and even a grassy parkland where a handful of adults could be seen relaxing and conversing as a group of children played a short distance away. The houses, pre-built sectionals, were nevertheless clean and attractive, their positioning well thought out. “I'm impressed,” I told Adams as we drove down toward it.

“Thank you,” he said. “Some visitors have thought it a bit extravagant for people who are supposed to be seeking God and not their own material comfort. But it's been my experience that attractive surroundings usually improve one's meditative abilities instead of detracting from them.”

I frowned, and took another look at the group of adults in the park. Sure enough, they weren't talking together, as I'd first assumed. We were close enough now that I could see their closed eyes, the odd combination of concentration and relaxation on their faces. “Scenery is all good and well,” I commented, gesturing toward them, “but wouldn't they do better to choose a quieter place?”

“Probably,” Adams agreed easily. “And we certainly don't start beginners that way, out in the middle of the park. But the more advanced among us can listen to God anywhere at all.” He waved at the surrounding hills. “You see, Mr. Benedar, we believe Spall to be the actual center of God's kingdom, with the Cloud a manifestation of His halo. Here we can touch Him more easily than anywhere else in the universe; but our goal is not simply to become modern-day monks.”

Beside me, Calandra stirred. “You mean the way the Watchers have?”

Adams shrugged, his sense becoming a bit uncomfortable. “It's not my place to judge anyone else,” he said evasively. “The Watchers were dealt a terrible blow by the actions of Aaron Balaam darMaupine, and if you must withdraw into yourselves for a time, I can understand that. But if we're truly to be the light of humanity, none of us can hide like that indefinitely.” He gestured again to the surrounding landscape. “Our goal is to become so attuned to God's presence here that we'll be able to go anywhere in the Patri and colonies and still feel His touch. No matter the distance, no matter the distractions.”

I nodded. “Hence the meditation in the park, amidst the universe's best shot yet at perpetual motion machines?”

Adams smiled, a crinkling of his face. “Aggravating though they may be at times, children are still one of our most prized treasures. The Watchers proved that the art of observation is best begun in childhood; we hope that will prove true for the art of meditation, as well.”

Adams's house was situated near the center of the settlement: an unpretentious structure, indistinguishable at least externally from the others surrounding it. I wasn't especially surprised; the sense of the man was clearly not that of someone in the job for the wealth or the prestige.

He parked the car under a two-sided overhang, and we went inside … and got down to serious business.

Carefully, Adams poured himself a cup of tea, his third since we'd begun our story. He offered us refills, was turned down, and set the pot back to the side. “I'm sure you realize,” he said, gazing into the swirling liquid in his cup, “the awkward position you put me in.”

“Yes, sir,” I acknowledged, “and we're sincerely sorry about that. But we really had no one else to turn to.”

He raised his eyes to me. “Your very presence here threatens our existence,” he said bluntly. “Harboring fugitives is a serious offense—serious enough that the Solitaran authorities could easily use it as an excuse to disband our fellowships and ban us from Spall entirely.”

The sense of him was not nearly as strong as the words … “Except that they won't,” Calandra spoke up before I could. “You're a religious group, which makes you an embarrassment to them, and the last thing they want is to have you around where visitors to Solitaire might stumble over you. Where could they possibly send you where you'd be less visible than you are now?”

She had, I noted, echoed precisely Adams's own private thoughts. “Perhaps,” he admitted grudgingly. “And if it was just you involved I would probably agree. But now you seek to prove that there are smugglers hiding among us; and
that
the authorities won't be so willing to ignore.”

Again, I could sense a private argument about that going on in his thoughts. I probed, trying to pick out a part of that I could use …

And again, Calandra beat me to it. “And yet, if you prove yourselves cooperative in rooting out these smugglers, won't that clearly weigh in your favor?” she pointed out.

“Besides,” I added, “we certainly don't expect to find smugglers hiding out in your actual settlements, masquerading as Hallo—as members of your fellowships. The fact that you may be sharing a planet with them can hardly be considered collusion.”

“True,” he sighed.

For a long minute he continued to gaze into his cup … and abruptly I realized his sense had changed—changed so subtly I hadn't noticed it happen. Somehow, even as he sat before us, it was as if he no longer was aware of our presence. As if his attention had wandered—

Or wasn't there at all.

I looked at Calandra, tilted my head fractionally toward Adams. She nodded, her own sense growing oddly troubled as she studied him.

I know a man who fourteen years ago was caught up right into the third heaven …

It was a scripture that had always intrigued me as a child … but now, faced with something that might very well be similar, I found myself sharing some of Calandra's uneasiness. It seemed impossible … but could Adams and his group truly have discovered holy ground here?

“Sorry,” Adams said suddenly. I jumped; again I'd missed whatever transition there might have been. “I was trying to see if God would provide me an answer.”

I could still sense a great deal of indecision in him. “And … ?” I prompted.

He shrugged. “Nothing that I can take as guidance. Touching the cloak of His mind is one thing; truly understanding what He is saying is something considerably harder.” He took a deep breath, and I felt some residual tension slowly leave him. Apparently this form of meditation wasn't exactly easy on its practitioners. “He seems, as usual, to be leaving this decision up to me,” Adams continued. “So tell me: just exactly what is it you want from us?”

I took a deep breath of my own. “On the way here we spent some time studying the ship's maps of Spall, and we've picked out one area that we'd like to concentrate on.”

“How big an area?”

“A few hundred square kilometers.” I read the look on his face and shrugged. “I know: a drop in an ocean. But we're only two people, and we haven't got much time.”

“Yes, I understand. It's just that—never mind. Please go on.”

“The target area is about two hundred sixty kilometers southeast of here, about eighty kilometers from your Myrrh settlement—that
is
one of yours, isn't it?”

He nodded. “So what you need is transportation to Myrrh; and while there you'll need a vehicle, power for it, and lodging.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I realize that's a lot to ask.”

He waved a hand. “Physical goods aren't that much of a problem. Would you want a guide, or assistance in the search?”

“No,” Calandra spoke up firmly before I could answer. “We'd rather do it ourselves.”

I frowned at her. “Calandra—”

She turned intense eyes on me. “We're getting these people involved too much as it is, Gilead. We do it alone, or not at all.”

It wasn't a point I could really argue with. “All right,” I agreed, turning back to Adams. “I guess the physical goods will be all we need, then.”

He nodded slowly. “Those I think we can provide. There's still one more thing you'll need, though: time. How much?”

How much time to search a world? “We'll take as much as you feel comfortable giving us,” I said honestly. “If you were able to plead ignorance as to who we were—” I shrugged helplessly. “But of course it's too late for that now.”