by Timothy Zahn
Kosta frowned slightly, his eyes not quite focused on anything. He really had fallen for it “Have you been with them on any actual angel hunts yet?” he asked.
“Yes, two of them.”
“Did they behave any differently before and after they had an angel aboard the ship?”
Chandris hesitated. She definitely didn’t want to tell Kosta about the Daviees’ hidden angel. “It’s difficult to say,” she said instead. “There are many other factors that come in at that point, unfortunately. The pre-capture tension, for example, which largely disappears once the angel’s aboard.” She shrugged. “That’s why I came here. I thought the Institute might have done some studies on this phenomenon.”
“No,” Kosta said, shaking his head. “At least, nothing I’m aware of. I suppose it could fit in with the general framework of the Acchaa theory, though. That kind of love could be one of several factors making up this theoretical ‘good’ we’re supposedly quantizing. I don’t know, though.”
Chandris nodded, wondering what the hell he was talking about. But his tone and body language were more than clear. “I take it you don’t put much stock in the Acchaa theory?”
His lip twisted. “Hardly. The whole idea of good and evil coming in bite-sized chunks makes no sense at all. It throws free will all to hell, for one thing.”
“So what’s the alternative?”
He locked eyes with her. “That the angels are alien intelligences,” he said bluntly. “Either separately or together, as part of some kind of hive mind. And that this plan to flood the Empyrean with them—a plan put together by people who already have angels hanging around their necks—is nothing less than an invasion.”
“I see,” Chandris said, startled by the sheer intensity of the outburst. She wouldn’t have tagged him as the sort to feel strongly about anything. “What exactly does this Acchaa theory say, anyway?”
He stared at her … and, abruptly, he seemed to remember just who it was he was talking to. His face tightened up with the unmistakable look of someone who’s just sent a secret rolling across the floor. “It says that good and evil come in tiny packages,” he said, a note of resignation in his tone. Probably decided that trying to backpedal now would just make things worse. “Like light comes in packages called photons, and electric charge comes in multiples of the electron charge.” He lifted his eyebrows slightly. “Is this over your head?”
“I know all about photons and electrons, thank you,” she said coolly. Or at least she knew what the files on Angelmass had told her about them. “So how exactly do you hammer good and evil into little packages?”
“Ask the people who believe the theory,” Kosta said. “I’m not even convinced anymore that this so-called angel effect really exists. Maybe it’s nothing but hype and placebo. People believe so hard in the things that they go ahead and make themselves change.”
Except that Chandris hadn’t known the Daviees had hidden an angel near her. And she certainly hadn’t wanted to do any changing. “No,” she said. “They work, all right. I’ve seen it. But this package-of-good stuff is crazy.”
“Hey, don’t argue with me.” Kosta growled. “It’s not my theory.”
“Oh, right,” Chandris said dryly. “Your theory is that they’re tiny little invaders, here to overthrow the Empyrean.”
His face darkened. “You ever hear of viruses? You get a handful of the wrong kind in your body and they’ll kill you where you stand. Size by itself doesn’t define a threat.”
“Yeah, but if you don’t have size you’d better have numbers,” Chandris countered. “Those viruses of yours aren’t just a handful anymore when they kill you. Even I know that much.”
“Do you, now?” Kosta said. “Then maybe you’d also be interested in knowing that the number of angels your hunterships are finding out there has been increasing.”
Chandris frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. There are more angels available for capture than there were even three years ago. More than can be explained by numbers of ships or better equipment.”
“So maybe it’s because Angelmass is getting smaller and spitting out more of everything. You ever think of that?”
She had the immense satisfaction of watching him trip over his own tongue, a look of total flabbergastment flooding over his face. It made those tedious hours of wading through the Gazelle’s Angelmass files all worthwhile. “Where did you learn about quantum black holes?” he asked at last.
“I read about them,” she said sweetly. “What, you think you can’t learn things without going to some fancy school somewhere?”
He snorted. “Certainly not some of the things you probably know.”
Chandris gave him a long, cool look. Then, deliberately, she got to her feet “Thank you for your time, Mr. Kosta,” she said, icily polite. “And for your rich expertise. If I ever have any more questions, I’ll be sure and go somewhere else.” She turned to go—
“Just a minute.”
She turned back. “Yes?”
His face was a mass of conflicting emotions. “I have to ask you,” he said at last. “When you ran me down at the spaceport you were wearing a fancy dress—blue and silver, I think it was, with embroidery or something all over it. But when you showed up later you were wearing just a plain white dress. Where did you get it?”
She eyed him, automatically searching the question for a trap. Self-incrimination, maybe? But, no, he already knew who she was. And anyway, he didn’t strike her as smart enough for even that much finesse. “I didn’t get it,” she told him. “I made it. Fancy dresses like that always have fancy linings to match. All I had to do was cut the outer part of the dress away and do some trimming and shortening. It’s not hard if you know what you’re doing.”
“Mm,” he said, nodding thoughtfully. “But don’t the seams show?”
“You can turn it inside out,” she said. “But you don’t always have to. People usually see what they want to.” She hesitated; but it was just too tempting to pass up. “Like if you want to see alien invasions, for instance.”
An instant later she was sorry she’d said it. His head twitched back, almost as if he’d been slapped, and for just a second he looked like a school kid who’d been laughed at by his friends.
But only for an instant. “There’s an invasion coming, all right,” he said softly, his face turning to stone as he stood up. “One way or another.”
He brushed past her and left the lounge, stomping his way across the foyer toward the wide staircase. Chandris followed more slowly, and caught just a glimpse of him at the top of the stairs before he disappeared from sight.
For a moment she stood there, watching the spot where he’d disappeared and wondering just what the hell that had been about. A cloud-head and a half, that was for sure. And reeked three ways from dead on this invasion stuff on top of it. You bet, she promised him silently, that I’ll stay away from you. She’d had more than her fill of reeked cloud-heads back in the Barrio. The last thing she needed was to start hunting them down on Seraph, too.
She took a deep breath, exhaled him out of her mind. And speaking of hunting, she really ought to be getting back to the Gazelle.
Crossing the foyer, she headed for the exit.
Great, Kosta snarled to himself as he stomped down the corridor. Just great. It’s so rare to see someone get the chance to make seven different kinds of fool of himself in a single ten-minute slot. And especially rare to see him succeed so brilliantly at all of them. It’s an absolute pleasure to watch you work, sir.
He reached his office and slammed his way in. Gyasi’s presence at that particular moment—his presence, and his inevitable questions—would have completed the whole thing to perfection. But the laughing fates had missed that one; the office was empty.
He flopped down into his chair, but bounded up a second later, far too agitated to sit still. Stepping over to the window, he stood glaring out, pounding the back of his right fist gently into
his left palm.
It was her. It had to be. The woman was a jinx, pure and simple. A jinx with the knack of twisting the universe straight out from under him every time he got within ten meters of her. Woman, hell—she probably wasn’t even out of her teens yet.
Below, on the walkway, a movement caught his eye. A dark-haired figure in a huntership-type jumpsuit.
Yeah, you’d better get out of here, he thought bitterly in her direction. I ever see you again, I will call the police down on you. A huntership crewer—sure she was. She was nothing more than a rotten little con artist; even he could see that. A con artist with a knack for twisting him around her finger …
He took a deep breath, let it out in a snort. It would be nice to believe that. But down deep, he knew the trouble wasn’t with her at all.
The trouble was with him. His life the past few years had been immersed so thoroughly in academic surroundings and people that he’d completely forgotten how to deal with anyone who didn’t fit into that neat little mold.
If he’d ever known how to do it at all.
He watched the girl cross the main entrance road below, a wave of self-disgust souring his stomach. He could kid himself all he wanted, but it wouldn’t make a scrap of difference to the universe at large. The plain, simple, brutal truth was that he’d been a socially incompetent child, a socially incompetent adolescent, and was well on his way to becoming a full-fledged socially incompetent adult.
He couldn’t even handle his own culture without freezing up or babbling like an idiot. And so, of course, he’d been selected for an undercover mission to a totally foreign culture.
Why?
He’d asked his instructors that question during those long weeks of his espionage training. Had asked it a dozen different times, in a dozen different ways. And yet, somehow, he’d never gotten a straight answer to it. At the time he’d been too busy to pay much attention to the evasion; now, remembering back, he could see more clearly the half answers and smooth subject changes that had always seemed to happen.
They’d manipulated him. Like that Chandris girl out there, they’d manipulated him. And had done it just as successfully as she had.
But you can deal with the academic types like Gyasi and Qhahenlo, the thought whispered in the back of his mind.
It was a valid enough point, in its way. Probably the one they’d used to talk him into this mission in the first place, though he didn’t remember that conversation very clearly. He did remember they’d made a big deal about his tridoctorum degree including neural physiology along with astrophysics and tech design, and there did seem to be a fair amount of neural data in the Institute’s files.
But surely there were other people in the Pax with as much expertise and better social polish. If Chandris was at all representative of the average Empyreal, he was probably damned lucky he’d even made it to Seraph without being exposed for who and what he was.
Unless that was exactly what they’d wanted.
For a long minute he stared out the window, not seeing anything at all. Could that really be what all this was about? Not a research mission at all, but just some kind of throwaway decoy to cover up the Komitadji’s real operation?
Because if it was, his life wasn’t worth the plastic his phony ID was printed on. He’d be caught—sure as anything he’d be caught. They’d have made sure of that.
Behind him, the door opened.
He jumped, twisting awkwardly in the air, hand clawing uselessly for the shocker buried out of reach in the bottom of his pocket. He came down, trying to land in the combat stance they’d taught him—
“Hi, Jereko,” Gyasi said absently, barely glancing up from the printout balanced across his left forearm as he ambled into the room and over to his desk chair. “What’s new?”
Kosta swallowed hard, knees trembling with relief and reaction. “Nothing much,” he said, striving to sound casual.
He obviously didn’t succeed. Midway through turning a page Gyasi looked up, a frown on his face. “You okay?”
“Sure,” Kosta said. “Fine.”
“Uh-huh.” Gyasi peered at him. “Come on, what’s wrong?”
“It’s something personal,” Kosta told him, hearing the edge in his voice. “I just need some time to think.”
Gyasi frowned a little harder, but then shrugged. “Okay, sure. You need someone to talk to, I’m right here.”
“Sure.”
Gyasi threw him a quick smile and, for all practical purposes, disappeared back into his printout.
Kosta watched him for a moment. Then, with an effort, he made his way back to his own chair, feeling both relieved and more than a little foolish. Of course the Pax hadn’t thrown him to the sharks—the whole idea was crazy. Aside from anything else, this mission must have cost a fantastic amount of money. And if there was one thing everyone knew about the Pax, it was that no one in government deliberately threw away fantastic amounts of money. Not with the Adjutors hovering like hungry vultures over everything they did.
No, what they must have been counting on was something far more subtle: namely, the non-suspicious attitude the angels seemed to create in their subjects. It was the same mindset that had allowed him to breeze through interplanetary Empyreal customs and into a sensitive facility without his credentials ever being challenged, and it would very likely allow him to gloss over any cultural blunders as well. At least, with anyone who mattered.
“Oh, by the way,” Gyasi said, looking up again, “what’s the status of that angel-production paper I keep nagging you about? Anything new?”
“The research is done,” Kosta told him. “I’ll be writing it up this afternoon.”
Gyasi’s eyebrows went up. “Great. I’d like to show a copy to Dr. Qhahenlo before you put it on the net, if I may.”
“Sure.”
After all, the reason he’d joined this mission in the first place had been to help free the Empyreals from alien domination. Risky though it might be to draw attention to himself, it might be the only way to shake up the general complacency around him. To try and get the people in charge to take a good, hard look at their most basic assumptions.
And as to the other part of his mission …
“Speaking of Dr. Qhahenlo,” he said, “is that offer from her still open?”
“I’m sure it is. You looking to join the team?”
“I’d at least like to do some consulting,” Kosta said. “You people know so much more than I do about angels, and there’s a lot I still need to learn.”
“Great,” Gyasi smiled, getting to his feet. “Let’s go talk to her.”
Kosta stood up, too, forcing a smile of his own. And wondered uneasily why the deception seemed to hurt his stomach.
CHAPTER 17
“Well, we’re off,” Omina said, tucking the flat angel holding box solidly under her arm as she made yet another adjustment to her floppy-brimmed hat. A horrendous hat, to Chandris’s way of thinking, but Ornina obviously liked it. “We should be back within four hours at the latest.”
“Sooner than that if the couplers at Glazrene’s are down to their usual standard of quality,” Hanan added, twirling his credit-line card around in his fingers with obviously strained patience as he waited for his sister to finish her primping. “Still, hope springs eternal, or some such thing.”
Chandris nodded silently, her eyes on the spinning card. It was a strangely fascinating routine, very much like the palm-and-switch techniques of the three card monte scorers she’d known in the Barrio. Someday she would have to ask Hanan where he’d learned how to do that.
“Well, come on, Hanan,” Ornina said briskly. “Let’s get this show on the road. Good-bye, Chandris; we’ll see you later. Enjoy the silence.”
They headed outside and down the outer stairway. Chandris stood there, listening … and a minute later heard the sound of the TransTruck driving off down the street.
And she was alone. Alone with the Gazelle. Alone with several million ruya worth of equ
ipment.
Alone with the angel.
For several minutes she just wandered the aft part of the ship, listening as her footsteps punctuated the now familiar sounds of the Gazelle at rest. But only the quieter sounds: engines and pumps, generators and fans. There was none of the music Ornina always played while she worked; none of Hanan’s alleged singing and distinctive, slightly clumping walk.
She was alone. In the silence.
With the angel.
The samovar in the galley was, as usual, simmering gently with one of Ornina’s long repertoire of tea blends. Peppermint, this one, a drink Chandris had developed a particular taste for over the past four weeks. She helped herself to a cup, throwing in an extra stick of peppermint, and carried it carefully up to the control cabin. There, amid the quietly glowing displays and flickering status boards, she pulled the restraint straps away from her chair and sat down.
She hadn’t promised them anything. Not a single solitary nurking thing. For that matter, they’d never promised her anything, either. Not even full employment. As far as anyone had said, she was still here only on a temporary basis.
Not that she really wanted the job, of course. It wasn’t her kind of life. Too dull, too honest.
Too permanent.
Four weeks. She’d been with the Gazelle for four weeks now. Probably the longest she’d stayed in one place for years. Certainly longer than she and Trilling had ever stayed anywhere while they’d been together.
Trilling.
She sipped at her tea, but the peppermint had gone flat in her mouth. No, she couldn’t stay here, not even if she wanted to. Right now, somewhere out there, Trilling was looking for her. The longer she stayed in one place, the sooner he’d find her.
She didn’t owe the Daviees anything. Not a single solitary nurking thing. The four weeks of room and board she’d more than paid for with all the work she’d done aboard the ship. And it would be doing them a favor, really: a painful but solid lesson in how the real world operated.
