Deadman Switch Read Online Free PDF Page B

combined with something else. Something very much like gloating. “Oh?” I asked.
    â€œOr 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?”
    â€œI’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.
    â€¦ 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. “It’s 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?”
    â€œHer,” he corrected. “It’s a woman from Outbound. Convicted multiple murderess.”
    My stomach knotted. Outbound. I’d grown up there, on the Watcher settlement. “Any idea,” I asked carefully, “just where on Outbound it happened?”
    He frowned. “No. Why?”
    â€œA few minutes ago Aikman suggested I might find it instructive to come here and see her,” I said. With Kutzko, I could be honest. “I