by Timothy Zahn
She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Your angel, of course. Come; let me show you.”
She stepped inside. Taking a deep breath, Kosta followed.
The furnishings were similar to those of the other labs Podolak had shown him, though the room itself was much larger than any of them had been. The arrangement of the equipment, however, was strikingly different. Instead of being set out in standard rows, the worktables and stations here were arrayed in concentric circles around a chest-high cylindrical pillar rising up from the floor in the center of the room. A handful of people were scattered around the lab, hunched over notebooks or computers or complex-looking electronic breadboards.
“Doesn’t look like anyone’s in the middle of anything delicate,” Podolak said quietly, glancing around. “Come on.”
She led the way to the central pillar, and as they approached Kosta could see what appeared to be a small crystalline dome set in the center of its flat upper surface. Stepping up to it, Podolak turned; and with an expression that was chillingly reminiscent of a proud mother showing off her child, she gestured to the little crystalline dome. “There it is.”
It was rather unspectacular, really: a barely visible speck, even with the magnification given it by its encasing dome. “So that’s an angel,” Kosta heard himself say.
“That’s an angel,” Podolak confirmed. “And if you’re like every other visitor who comes through the Institute, you’re probably wondering if you can touch it. Feel free.”
Not an order … but Kosta could feel the official weight behind the suggestion. She wanted him to reach out to it; to move into range of whatever this alien influence was …
“But you don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Podolak added softly. “It’s not a requirement.”
Kosta gritted his teeth, cold hard reality forcing its way through his hesitation. More than likely, he would be spending his next few months literally surrounded by these things … and there would be no better time than right now to try and detect their influence. Bracing himself, trying to watch every facet of his mind at once, he reached his hand gingerly toward the crystalline dome and touched it.
Nothing. No wrenching of emotions, major or minor. No sense of alien thought or presence or influence. No overwhelming urge to confess that he was a spy.
Nothing at all.
He drew his hand back and let it drop to his side, feeling a strange mixture of relief and disappointment. Beside him, Podolak nodded. “Yes, that’s the usual reaction. The angel effect isn’t nearly as dramatic as most people think.”
He looked her straight in the eye. “Is that what this object lesson was for? To eliminate any residual nervousness?”
A small smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. “As a matter of fact, yes, that’s one of the reasons we try to bring newcomers into contact with an angel as soon as possible. We don’t want to be too obvious about it, of course—people don’t like to admit to fears they intellectually believe are unreasonable. That’s why we like to include it in the general orientation. You understand psychology.”
“A little. Mostly, I understand nervousness.”
“But there are a few who do sense something right away,” Podolak went on, her forehead wrinkling slightly. “Did you feel anything? Anything at all?”
Kosta reached out and touched the crystalline dome again, then took his hand away. Nothing. “No,” he told her. “Nothing at all.”
“Yes,” she murmured. “Well … as I said, that is the usual reaction.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.” Kosta looked at the crystalline dome. “Question, though: which is the real angel? The subnuclear particle in the center that everyone calls the angel, or the particle plus the shell of positively charged ions it surrounds itself with?”
He watched Podolak’s face, holding his breath. One of his instructors had suggested that question as a way to quickly establish himself as a visionary, independent thinker, the sort who might be able to get away with ignoring facts about the angels that every genuine Empyreal would already know. But if the question, instead of sounding original, merely came across as sounding stupid …
“An interesting question,” Podolak said, her expression thoughtful. “The quick and obvious answer is that it’s just the central particle; but quick and obvious doesn’t necessarily equal correct. Offhand, I can’t remember if anyone’s ever tried to study the significance of the outer ion shell before. Beyond the simple physical explanation that a particle with a negative charge in the quadrillions has no choice but to pull a lot of positive ions over to it, of course. Might well be worth taking a look at.” She cocked her head slightly. “You interested in volunteering?”
Carefully, Kosta exhaled. “I’d like to do a database search, anyway,” he told her. “If it turns out no one else has done any work that direction, I might like to give it a shot.”
“Sounds good,” Podolak nodded. “Let’s go back to your office and I’ll give you a list of the database access codes.”
CHAPTER 8
The man was young and thin and rather sloppy looking, his clothes smelling of oil, his lower lip twisted in a permanent smirk. But there was nothing lazy or funny about his voice. “Forget it, kid,” he growled. “I got Rafe and I got me, and that’s all the crew we need around here.”
“And what about when you have to do some emergency maintenance?” Chandris countered, fighting to keep her voice calm and reasonable. “Not here, but while you’re out in space. Who runs the ship while you and Rafe are busy fixing it?”
The smirk seemed to get bigger. “You, I suppose?”
“Why not?” Chandris demanded. “I’m an expert navigator and pilot, and I also know my way around an engine room. I could fly this thing out to Angelmass and back by myself if I had to.”
“No, you couldn’t,” the man shook his head. “Want to know why?” He leaned forward, to smirk directly in her face. “Because you aren’t ever gonna be aboard this ship.”
With a snort, he straightened up again and reached down for the box he’d been carrying. “So get lost, huh? We’re busy.”
Turning, he headed back toward the mass of metal that towered over him, all but filling the large open-air service yard. Chandris watched him go, hoping desperately that, even now, he might reconsider.
Midway down the side of the ship, he disappeared up the long fold-out stairway that led inside. He’d never even looked back.
Blinking back tears, Chandris turned and trudged back to the wire fence and the gate with the faded sign Hova’s Sk-
yarcher above it. Across the street, visible between the ships parked on that side, the sun was touching the distant hills. She’d spent the entire day here, going from one huntership owner to the next, trying to find one who would be willing to take her on.
None of them had been especially polite. Most had been rude, or sarcastic, or even angry.
All had said no.
For a long minute she just stood there, leaning against the gate, too weary and drained to move. The clink of metal and the hums and growls of machinery came from all around her as huntership crews worked to get ready for the next morning’s launches. All that studying aboard the Xirrus—all that time she’d spent reading and memorizing and struggling to understand. And then getting caught on top of it all, and having to chop and hop without a single nurking thing but the clothes she had on.
All of it for nothing.
A motion across the street caught her eye: a middle-aged man, rather overweight from what she could see of his profile, coming stiffly down the stairway of the huntership housed behind the fence over there. Carrying a small handled box in one hand, he disappeared toward the far end of the ship.
For a moment Chandris hesitated. It would end like the others, she knew; but it was the last huntership on this side of the launch area and the only one she hadn’t yet tried her luck at. Might as well make a clean sweep of it.
The gate was unlocked, its overhead sign proclaiming the ship bey
ond to be the Gazelle. Chandris let herself in and headed back toward the stairway, studying the ship towering over her as she walked alongside it. In slightly worse shape than the average, she decided, at least as far as the exterior was concerned. A smooth circular indentation in the hull caught her eye, and she stepped over for a closer look. A handful of small flat lenses and fine-mesh gratings were grouped within it, their sparkle and cleanliness in marked contrast to the pitted and faded hull itself.
“It’s a sensor cluster.”
Chandris turned toward the voice. The overweight man was standing at the foot of the stairway, watching her. “Yes, I know,” she told him, sifting quickly through her memory for the pictures of such things that she’d seen in the Xirrus’s files. “Half-spectrum and ion analysis.”
He smiled. Not a smirk, but a simple, friendly smile. “Right as rain. You must be the little girl who’s been driving everyone in the Yard frippy today looking for a job.”
“I’m hardly a little girl,” Chandris snapped, suddenly tired of having to take this dribble from every jerk on Seraph. “And if you just came over to tell me you don’t need any help, don’t bother.”
She spun around and stomped off toward the gate, eyes blurry with sudden tears of frustration and fatigue. To hell with it. To hell with all of them. She should have known better than to try something this puff-headed in the first place. She might as well head back to the city where she could steal the price of a meal and find a place to sleep. Tomorrow she’d hit the streets, try and hook up with one of the local scorers—
“So tell me what sort of help you’re offering.”
She stopped. “What?” she called warily over her shoulder.
“You want a job, right?” he said. “So come inside and tell us what you can do.”
Slowly, Chandris turned around to face him, half afraid this was just the setup for a parting twist of the knife. But there was nothing but calm curiosity in the fat man’s face.
“Well, come on,” he waved, starting up the stairs with the same stiff gait she’d noticed earlier. “It’s not getting any warmer out here, in case you hadn’t noticed. You like tea?”
Chandris took a deep breath, her fatigue vanishing like nothing. To have found here, of all places, a real, genuine, open-faced soft touch. Sometimes she couldn’t believe her own luck. “Thank you,” she said, walking quickly back toward the stairway. “I’d love a cup of tea.”
The tea was hot and rich and strong, with a sprinkle of sadras spice and probably some cinnamon mixed into it. A solid, working person’s drink; simple and hospitable, with no pretensions or apologies attached. Exactly the sort of tea, Chandris thought as she sipped, that she would expect soft-touch types to offer a stranger.
Not that it wasn’t welcome. It was indeed not getting any warmer outside, and Chandris hadn’t realized how cold she’d actually been until she began to warm up. Holding the mug to her lips, she inhaled the steam rising from it, suppressing a shiver as she did so.
Or at least she thought she’d suppressed it. “Still cold, child?” the plump woman sitting across the table from her said, reaching for the teapot. “—Ach!” she added, pushing back her chair to get up.
The overweight man in the chair beside her was quicker. “I’ll get it,” he said, heaving himself to his feet. He plucked the empty teapot from her hand and stepped toward the simmering samovar on the counter. “A sprinkle and a half of sadras, right?” he asked over his shoulder.
The woman gave Chandris a knowing look. “You can see how often he makes the tea around here,” she said.
“Unfair,” the other protested, turning around and throwing her a hurt look. “How can you say things like that? Why, I just made some—let’s see—yes; it was just two years ago. On a Sunday, as I recall.”
The woman rolled her eyes skyward. “I hope you like lots of sadras in your tea,” she warned Chandris.
Chandris nodded silently, watched as the man bustled with cheerful clumsiness with the teapot, and wondered what in the world she’d walked in on.
Their names were Hanan and Ornina Daviee. Not husband and wife, as she’d first assumed, but brother and sister—the only such team, according to Hanan, among the two hundred-odd hunterships currently in business. The family resemblance was very strong, once she knew to look for it: both were of medium height, both overweight— Hanan more so than his sister—with long faces and intense brown eyes. Ornina’s dark hair was shot through with gray; Hanan’s hair had nearly disappeared entirely.
And Hanan was crippled.
Neither of them had said anything about it, but it wasn’t like it was a secret they could keep. Every time Hanan stretched out his hand for something Chandris caught a glimpse of the thin exobrace running alongside his arm, and the ones running down his legs were almost that visible as they stretched the material of his coveralls.
And if she concentrated, she could hear the faint whine of tiny motors, starting and then stopping in time with his movements. Gazing down into her mug, listening to the motors but determined not to stare, she wondered uneasily what had happened to him.
Abruptly, right in front of her nose, the teapot spout appeared, jolting her out of her thoughts. Snapping her head up, she found Hanan looking down at her, an impish twinkle in his eyes. “More tea?” he asked innocently.
“Thank you,” Chandris said, giving him a stern no-nonsense look as he poured. He smiled pleasantly in return, set the teapot down on the table, and maneuvered himself back into his chair.
Ornina hadn’t missed any of it. “You have to excuse Hanan his little games, Chandris,” she said, giving her brother the same kind of look Chandris had just tried, with about equal success. “Or at least learn to live with them. Arrested childhood, you know.” She picked up the teapot, added some to Hanan’s mug and then to her own. “Now, then. Hanan said you were looking for a job.”
“That’s right,” Chandris nodded, shifting mental gears. The cold little girl routine had been an easy one to slip into, but that wasn’t the role she was supposed to be playing here. “I’ve just graduated college, with degrees in astrogation, piloting, and spaceship functions. I wanted to get some small-craft experience, and thought this would be my best opportunity.”
“I take it no one else agrees?” Hanan suggested.
Chandris grimaced. “I wouldn’t know. No one else let me get even that far.”
“Can’t say I’m surprised,” he said. “Huntership crews tend to be an ingrown lot. Not much given to strangers.”
“Though there are exceptions, of course,” Ornina said. “Where did you go to school?”
“Ahanne University on Lorelei,” Chandris said. “My records were supposed to be here already, but I checked this morning and they hadn’t yet arrived.”
Hanan snorted gently. “Not surprised about that, either,” he rumbled. “There are only four regular skeeters a day between here and Lorelei, and Gabriel business probably takes up two and a half of ’em. Welcome to the real world.”
“We’ll take editorial comments on the state of the Empyrean later,” Ornina told him. “Tell me about Sibastii regulators, Chandris.”
Sibastii regulators … “They’re a type of voltage regulator used in sensor-to-autonav interfaces,” she quoted from the Xirrus’s lessons. “Usually used in areas where there’s a high ion density.” Dimly, she wondered what all that meant.
Ornina nodded. “A samsara switch?”
“A high-stroid device for automatically switching between several different computers, sensors, or navigational pylons.”
“Anspala stabilizers?”
“They’re used to keep the edges of a hyperspace catapult field from shifting.”
“Twitteries?” Hanan asked.
Chandris looked at him, stomach tensing. Twitteries? “Uh …”
“Try to ignore him, child,” Ornina said, giving her brother a warning look. “He just talks to keep his jaw in shape for eating.”
“‘Twittery’ is a
perfectly good word,” Hanan insisted, that innocent look on his face again. “Not my fault if the schools don’t teach these youngsters anything.”
Ornina gave him another look, this one half strained patience and half resignation, with a touch of what-am-I-going-to-do-with-you thrown in. Judging from the way her face settled into the deep lines there, Chandris decided, she probably used that expression a lot. “A twittery, Chandris,” she said, “is an old and slightly vulgar slang term for a Kelsey’s Splitter.”
“Oh,” Chandris said, relaxing again. “That’s a high-speed ion analyzer.”
Ornina raised her eyebrows questioningly at Hanan, who shrugged. “Well, you’ve certainly got the book learning down cold,” he said, eyeing Chandris thoughtfully. “I suppose you know what the next question has to be.”
She didn’t, exactly; but she could take a pretty good guess. “Whether I’ve had any experience?”
“That’s the one,” he nodded. “Have you?”
“Not really,” Chandris admitted, watching their faces carefully. This was where she was going to find out just how good a puff-talker she really was. “I’ve done a lot of simulator work, of course, but only a very little real flying. Mostly in—” a quick search of her memory— “Khalkha T-7s.”
“Khalkhas?” Hanan gave a puff of contempt. “You mean there’s someone out there still using those fossils?”
“Ours was in pretty good shape,” Chandris improvised. “They also used it to teach the maintenance classes.”
“I’m sure it gave you lots of practice there,” he grunted.
Ornina gave him another of her patient looks. “If the editorial department will kindly shut up…? Thank you.” She looked back at Chandris. “I’m sure you realize that a huntership like the Gazelle isn’t very much like a Khalkha. What makes you think you could handle it?”
“I’m sure I couldn’t, at least not at first,” Chandris said, keeping her voice quiet and honest and professional. They were going for it—they were actually going for it. “But I know a great deal about ships and their operation in general. And though I don’t want to seem immodest, I’d be willing to bet that I can learn everything I’ll need to know about hunterships faster than anyone you’ve ever met.”
