She nodded. "Go ahead."
"Thunderheads."
Nothing. "Defenses. Fortresses. Body-homes."
Still nothing. "Solitaire," Calandra put in. "Spall. The Halo of God. Humans. Fear, or distrust."
"Anything?" Eisenstadt murmured.
"Quiet," I said sharply. There had been just the briefest of flickers... "Fear, Joyita? Fear of us? Fear of death?"
Another flicker. "Death," Calandra said, almost pouncing on the word. "Death?—the Deadman Switch?"
I glanced at Calandra... and in her sense I found confirmation of my own impression. "The Cloud?" I asked Zagorin quietly.
And there it was. Subtle, but unmistakable. "The Cloud," Calandra said, and shivered.
I turned to Eisenstadt. "It has to do with the Cloud," I told him.
He chewed at his lip, his eyes on Zagorin's taut face. Uncharacteristically, he didn't seem inclined to doubt our conclusion... at least as far as it went. "I need more details," he said. "Is it just that they're the ones guiding us through it?"
I watched Zagorin, replaying her earlier responses in my mind. Replayed especially her reaction to the word fear. "I don't know," I had to admit. "But whatever it is, it's important. And it's something that includes fear."
Eisenstadt took a deep breath. "Ms. Zagorin... do your records back at the—whatever the place is called; at your Myrrh settlement—do the records there include a list of your best meditators?"
Zagorin gazed up at him, and I could see her bracing herself. "I can't ask my people to do this," she said.
"I'm afraid I have to insist," he told her firmly. "We need to talk to the thunderheads again, and neither you nor your friend Adams is up to it—"
"And why isn't Shepherd Adams up to it?" she cut him off. "Because he nearly died, that's why. How do you expect me to ask one of my people to take that kind of risk?"
"It's not that much of a risk," Eisenstadt insisted, trying hard to be soothing. "We know what the contact does—"
"And you know that I'm the only one who's been through it safely."
Eisenstadt sighed. "Ms. Zagorin, I thank you for your offer—at least, I assume I hear an offer in there. But to be perfectly honest, we can't afford to let you be our only contact with the thunderheads. In the first place, even with proper medical preparation I doubt you'll be able to make contact more than once a day at the most, and I don't want to be stuck with that kind of limitation. In the second place—" He hesitated. "I don't want all our communications to go through a single person."
Zagorin's forehead creased slightly with puzzlement. "Why not?" she asked.
"Dr. Eisenstadt?" I put in quietly, before he could answer. "May I talk to you a moment? In private?"
He hesitated, eyes measuring me. Then, with a quick nod, he led the way out into the hall. "Well?" he asked, closing the door behind him.
"You're worried about the possibility that repeated contacts may subtly alter her," I said. "Bringing her emotionally onto the thunderheads' side, or even making her an agent of their will. Correct?"
He smiled grimly. "Maybe you're not as naive as I thought," he conceded. "Yes, that's exactly what I'm worried about."
I nodded. "In that case, sir, I think you ought to let Shepherd Zagorin be our only contact, at least for now."
"Oh, really? And what happened to all that stuff about how the thunderhead presence was affecting people over on Solitaire?"
I thought back to our dinner in Myrrh settlement, the odd passivity Calandra had thought she'd sensed among the people there. "It affects people here on Spall, too," I told Eisenstadt. "Only not in the same way. Maybe because the Seekers' meditation leaves them more in a position of cooperation than of competition with the thunderheads—"
I'd been thinking out loud, and I could see that along the way I'd completely lost Eisenstadt. "Calandra and I found a sort of relaxed passiveness here when—"
"I get the main picture," he interrupted my attempt to explain. "Assuming that you're not talking nonsense—and that may be an invalid assumption—all I'm really hearing is that the closer the contact, the more dangerous."
"Maybe, maybe not," I shook my head. "We don't know for certain—which is why it would be safest to keep these direct contacts limited to as few people as possible. Besides which... Calandra and I spent some time with both Shepherd Adams and Shepherd Zagorin when we first came to Spall. We don't know any of the other Seekers nearly as well."
Eisenstadt frowned at me for a long moment... and then he understood. "You really think you could spot any alterations the thunderheads might make in them?"
"I don't know," I said honestly. "But we'd have a better chance with them than with anyone else, at least until we've gotten to know them better."
Eisenstadt pursed his lips, considering. "Your boss—Kelsey-Ramos—told me that you have something of a gift for persuasion. Specifically, that you'd probably try to make you and your friend too valuable for me to easily get rid of."
"Mr. Kelsey-Ramos exaggerates," I said between dry lips.
"Perhaps." Eisenstadt grimaced. "Unfortunately, even knowing the hook's there, I seem to be stuck with the bait." He took a deep breath. "All right, you've convinced me. For now, anyway, we'll stick with Zagorin. I suppose it would make sense to wait a day or two before talking to them again, anyway—give us a chance to study the dead thunderhead we're allegedly getting." He glanced at his watch. "Which reminds me, I ought to go check on their progress."
"Would you like Calandra or me to come with you?"
"When we actually find the thing, probably. Until then—" he jerked a thumb at the door behind him—"your job is to spend your time getting to know Zagorin as well as you can. Just in case."
I sighed quietly. "Yes, sir."
He eyed me. "Something else?"
"I... don't know." I shook my head slowly, trying to identify the uncomfortable darkness hovering like a nighttime predator at the edge of my mind. "I guess I just don't like having to guess what it is about the Cloud that the thunderheads don't want us to know about."
He snorted. "I don't much like it myself. Do try to remember that it was you who just talked me out of sending for more Halloas and dragging the secret out of the thunderheads right here and now."
"I know, sir. But..."
"And anyway," he added, "whatever it is, they've kept it to themselves for at least seventy years. A few days, one way or another, isn't likely to make any difference."
He was right, of course, I told myself as he strode briskly away to check on his search team. After seventy years, a couple of days could hardly be important.
I hoped.
Chapter 25
It was, in fact, considerably more than a couple of days before Eisenstadt was ready to talk to the thunderheads again. Though Shepherd Zagorin seemed ready and willing to make another attempt by the next morning, the physician charged with preparing her was reluctant to administer his proposed pre-treatment mixture without doing a few more tests on both it and her; and before he had time to complete them, Eisenstadt's search team finally located the dead thunderhead.
Most everyone, I gathered—from Eisenstadt on down—had privately concluded that the directions we'd been given had somehow been misread, and it was only through mule-headed persistence on the search leader's part that the dead thunderhead was located at all. The "height" the thunderheads had used in giving distance, it turned out, was neither their own physical height nor ours, but a length that was finally identified as the height of the common building in Shepherd Zagorin's Myrrh settlement. For me, it seemed just one more indication that the thunderheads had been observing the Halo of God settlers since their arrival; Eisenstadt, conversely, wondered aloud whether it was a deliberate delaying tactic. But it wasn't long before the sheer scientific excitement drove such political/military considerations into the background of his mind and allowed the pure scientist to shine through again.