Deadman Switch

Chapter 19

For a long moment we just stood there. "This is crazy," I said at last. "I mean, really crazy. They're plants, for heaven's sake."

Close beside me, Calandra shivered. "Are they?"

"Of cour—" The reflexive retort died halfway out. "What else could they be?"

"There are things called sessile animals that spend all or part of their lives attached to trees," she said mechanically, her eyes darting about the dirty-white shapes laid out before us. "I just don't... how could the original survey teams have missed something like this?"

I moved my flashlight, watched the incredibly subtle ripple of reaction move with it. "Because they weren't Watchers," I said grimly.

She took a deep breath. "Let's take a closer look."

Together, we walked across the uneven ground. Calandra knelt down beside the first thunderhead we reached, touched it lightly. "Turn the light on it."

I did as instructed. "Well?"

She pursed her lips. "There's a... it's a little like a vibration, but not exactly. I felt it in the thunderhead on top of the bluff, too, when we were up there."

I twisted my head, looking up at the dark shape silhouetted against the stars. "You think they could be mobile at some stage of their lives?"

"Either that, or else they're awfully good at throwing seeds..."

She trailed off, and we looked at each other. "The discolored spots," I said, an odd sense of unreality seeping into me. "The one on top is the last of a whole line of the things."

Calandra nodded, her eyes haunted. "They could only get their seeds a short ways uphill. So they just kept at it until they got one onto the top."

"But why—" I stopped, turning again to look at the sea of thunderheads crowded between the buttes. No; not a sea of thunderheads... "It's a city," I breathed. "A city." Which meant the ones atop the buttes—

" 'I shall stand at my post,' " Calandra quoted softly. " 'I shall station myself on my watch-tower, watching to see what God will say to me.' "

I looked again at the sky, my mouth dry. "They're sentries," I whispered. "Guarding the approaches."

Calandra followed my gaze. "But guarding how? And against whom?"

I shook my head. "I don't know." But even as I said it I thought about the heat-treated spots on the ridge up the bluff... "What do you say," I said carefully, "we kind of ease back, break camp, and get out of here."

She hunched her shoulders fractionally. "It won't help. They know we're here."

She was right—I could sense the unblinking attention focused on us. "Maybe they don't realize we know what they are," I told Calandra. Something in the back of my mind was screaming danger!— "Come on," I snapped, taking her hand and pulling her all but bodily away from the thunderheads—

It came as a half seen, half felt sense of a dark mass falling from the sky; and even as we both ducked reflexively there was the sharp crack of suddenly released pressure, and we were abruptly in the middle of a cloud of thick white smoke. A sweet-bitter smell flooded my nostrils, and I clamped a hand over my face to try and keep it out. But too late. Already I could feel my arms and legs going numb. I tried to take a step, stumbled instead to my knees, dragging Calandra down with me as my hand refused to release its grip on hers. Together we sprawled onto the ground, and a moment later I found myself on my back. Overhead, the fog parted slightly, enough to give me a glimpse of the pattern of lights hovering overhead.

The last thing I saw were those lights, beginning their descent...