Angelmass

by Timothy Zahn

  Pirbazari was tugging at his sleeve. Angrily, Forsythe shook off his hand. “You listen to me, General,” he said. “You’re going to attack, and you’re going to attack now. Get those ships back together and hit it.”

  “I’m sorry, High Senator,” Roshmanov said, his voice icy cold. “This is an EmDef matter, and an EmDef decision. And I will not order men and women to their deaths for no reason.”

  “General—”

  “Sir!” Pirbazari said insistently, tugging even harder at his sleeve. Forsythe threw a glare at him—

  And what he saw made him pause for a second look. Pirbazari was staring at him, his eyes narrowed, his mouth slightly open, his throat muscles taut. Staring at him as if at a stranger. “Sir,” he whispered hoarsely, his head jerking slightly to the side.

  With an effort, Forsythe tore his eyes away and looked around him.

  They were all staring at him. All of them. All of these high government officials gazing at him in astonishment or furtive disbelief or even out-and-out fear.

  And not all of them, he realized suddenly, were looking at his face. Some of them were gazing in confusion at his neck, where his angel pendant glittered against his shirt.

  Rather, his fake angel pendant.

  Slowly, with a supreme effort, he lowered the phone away from his ear. Pirbazari was ready, taking it from him and tucking it quickly away. “It’s all right, sir,” he said. “This is just a retreat It doesn’t mean the war is lost.”

  Forsythe took a deep breath, let it out in a ragged sigh. “I know,” he said, his voice sounding strained but mostly under control again. “How long till they’re here?”

  “From that distance?” Pirbazari’s eyes darted to the screen, came back again. “Less than a day if they push it. No more than three even if they’re not in any particular hurry.”

  “They’ll be in a hurry,” Forsythe told him grimly. “Trust me.”

  “We should know for sure in an hour or so, once we see what kind of vector profile they set for themselves.” Pirbazari hesitated. “Which leads to the question of how we announce this to the public.”

  Forsythe looked back at the screen. “We don’t,” he said.

  There was a ripple of reaction around the room. “Sir, I don’t think we can do that,” Pirbazari said carefully. “I mean, all of EmDef already knows about it—”

  “EmDef should also know how to keep their mouths shut,” Forsythe cut him off. “If we move quickly, we should be able to block all communications from the various off-planet stations and research platforms.”

  “You don’t think someone will figure it out once that thing floats past overhead?” someone demanded. “Come on, High Senator, be realistic. We have to warn them.”

  “I am being realistic,” Forsythe said stiffly. “I’m thinking that at this point all a warning will accomplish will be to precipitate a night of planet-wide panic.”

  “The people have a right to know,” the other insisted.

  “To what end?” Forsythe asked. “What’s anyone going to do in twelve or fifteen or twenty hours? Grab a rifle and aim it skyward? Throw his family into a line car and try to escape into the hills? Do you really think that kind of chaos will do anyone any good?”

  “Maybe the High Senator is thinking of trying to get a little more distance himself,” another voice put in.

  Forsythe didn’t even bother to turn in that direction. “We will do everything in our power to prepare a proper military reception for the invaders,” he said quietly. “Everything EmDef can put together will be waiting when they arrive. But it will take everything they have. I don’t want any of EmDef’s people or resources having to be diverted for crowd or looting control.”

  He looked back at Pirbazari. “There’s nothing the general public can do to help,” he said. ‘They might as well have one last peaceful night’s sleep.”

  Pirbazari licked his upper lip, a quick swipe of his tongue tip. “Yes, sir,” he said. He wasn’t happy with the decision, Forsythe knew.

  But he could also tell that the other realized the basic wisdom of it. “I’m sure you’ll be wanting to get over to EmDef HQ as soon as possible to oversee the defense preparations,” Pirbazari went on. “But right now, you have a visitor waiting in your office.”

  It was a second before the words connected. Right: Pirbazari was supposed to have brought Kosta here from the hospital. In all the confusion, he’d completely forgotten about the Pax spy. “Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

  He started to turn away. A sudden thought struck him, and he turned back. “What happened with the Number Four catapult ship?” he asked, searching the screen for it.

  “It’s on its way back to Seraph with the others,” Pirbazari said. “The Pax fighters abandoned their attacks when the EmDef ships began their retreat.”

  “Never mind the fighters,” Forsythe said, frowning. “What about that Hellfire missile?”

  “It self-destructed,” Pirbazari said. “A few seconds after the Komitadji destroyed the catapult end of Number Two.”

  Forsythe felt his lip twist. “I guess they didn’t want to damage any more of the spoils of war than they had to.”

  “Yes, sir, that’s probably it,” Pirbazari agreed. “Shall we go?”

  Silently, Forsythe followed him out through the crowd, bitterness and guilt eating into his stomach. Pirbazari might believe that line about Pax greed. All of those who had heard it might believe it. It might even be true.

  But he couldn’t escape the sobering realization that, while he had been ready to order his own people into a suicide attack, the Pax commander had deliberately destroyed one of his own missiles rather than waste Empyreal lives.

  And the Pax commander wasn’t even wearing an angel. What did that say about angels?

  More importantly, what did it say about Forsythe himself?

  CHAPTER 38

  The two guards Pirbazari had left behind to watch Kosta were big, competent looking, and very definitely not the talkative type. In fact, aside from telling him once to stop wiggling and shut up, neither had said a single word, not even to each other, since Pirbazari hurriedly handcuffed him to the chair and took off through the office door at a dead run.

  They had all been sitting like that for nearly two hours when Pirbazari finally returned.

  With a surprise visitor.

  “Mr. Kosta,” High Senator Forsythe said. “Nice to see you again. All recovered from your injuries, I trust?”

  “Yes, sir, mostly,” Kosta said, his initial relief at seeing a familiar face fading quickly into uncertainty. There wasn’t a single hint of friendliness anywhere that he could see in Forsythe’s expression, not even the abstract camaraderie that was supposed to develop when two people had shared deadly danger together. The High Senator’s eyes were hostile as he gazed at Kosta, his face set in hard lines. “Thank you for your concern,” he added.

  “You’re welcome,” Forsythe said. The words themselves were formally polite; the delivery as cold and dark as a Siberian winter morning. “Zar, take the guards and wait in the outer office.”

  Pirbazari shot a look at Kosta. “If I may suggest, sir—?”

  “I said wait outside.”

  Pirbazari’s lips compressed briefly. But he nevertheless gestured to the guards, and the three of them left the room.

  Forsythe waited until the door had shut behind them. Then, very deliberately, he walked over to his desk, shuffled a few papers out of the way, and sat down on one corner facing Kosta. “So here we are,” he said, the hostile eyes boring into Kosta’s face again. “Rather like a dramatic thriller you’d watch on a quiet evening, isn’t it?”

  Kosta shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t follow you.”

  “Oh, come now, Mr. Kosta,” Forsythe said coldly. “The Empyreal High Senator … and the Pax spy?”

  Kosta felt his lip twitch. He should have guessed. “Oh,” he said. “That.”

  Something passed across Forsythe’s face, leavin
g even harder lines in its wake. Apparently, for all his assumed confidence, he hadn’t been completely sure of his accusation. “So you don’t deny it.”

  “Not at all,” Kosta said. “As a matter of fact, I was ready to turn myself in two days ago.”

  Forsythe snorted. “Of course you were.”

  “I was,” Kosta insisted. “The only reason I didn’t was because of Angelmass. Something’s happening up there, High Senator, something very dangerous. We have to find out what that is, and fast. Before more people die.”

  “Ah,” Forsythe said, folding his arms across his chest. “So you care deeply about Empyreal lives, do you?”

  Kosta frowned. There was something simmering beneath the surface of the man, something that seemed far out of proportion to the simple fact of having unmasked a minor spy. “Yes, I do,” he said. “I’m not your typical dramatic-thriller spy, High Senator. I wasn’t sent here to sabotage or steal secrets or anything like that. I was sent to study Angelmass and the angels. That’s all I’ve done.”

  “Of course you have,” Forsythe said, his voice suddenly bitter. “And there was nothing in your orders about laying the groundwork for military action, I suppose.”

  “No, nothing,” Kosta said. “The Pax believes the angels are an alien invasion—”

  He broke off, the meaning beneath Forsythe’s words suddenly penetrating. “What do you mean, military action? Has something happened?”

  For a long moment Forsythe simply gazed at him. “You’re an excellent actor, Mr. Kosta,” he said at last. “Either that, or you truly don’t know.”

  Kosta felt his stomach curl into a hard knot. “Please tell me.”

  There was another long silence. Then Forsythe stirred. “All right. Lorelei has gone silent. Something has shut down all its lines of communication; and that same something has also swallowed two investigating courier ships without a trace.”

  He smiled tightly. “Tell me again about alien invasions.”

  “Lorelei,” Kosta murmured, his mind flashing back to his nerve-wracking entrance into that system, and to the unreasonably large asteroid they’d smuggled him in with. “That was where I came into the Empyrean. Hidden inside a fake asteroid.”

  “How many others were in there with you?”

  Kosta shook his head. “They told me I was the only one,” he said. “But the asteroid was pretty big. There might have been … maybe there were more.”

  “Was yours the only asteroid they dropped?”

  “Again, that’s what they told me,” Kosta said. “But I don’t really know.”

  “So in other words, they could have dropped off an entire commando task force with you and you’d never have known the difference,” Forsythe concluded heavily. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “I guess so,” Kosta conceded. The pieces were starting to come together now, into a decidedly unpleasant mosaic. “It’s interesting. Several times over the last few months I’ve wondered why they sent me. I’m not a professional spy, I don’t know much about Empyreal culture, and I’m not good with social situations anyway. I didn’t even have more than a few weeks’ training.”

  “So why did they send you?” Forsythe asked.

  Kosta swallowed. “I think they meant for me to be quickly caught,” he said. “Probably thought that if you caught one spy it would quiet any suspicions about what the Komitadji had been doing at Lorelei.”

  “While the rest of the commandos planned to take or destroy the nets?”

  Kosta shook his head. “I don’t know what else they had planned.”

  For a moment Forsythe didn’t answer. “No, I suppose not,” he said. “The sacrificial lamb usually doesn’t get to sit in on the wolves’ strategy sessions, does he?”

  There was a hesitant knock at the door. It opened, and Pirbazari stuck his head inside. “Sorry to bother you, High Senator,” he said. “But you wanted to be kept informed of the situation at Angelmass.”

  “Go ahead,” Forsythe said, his eyes still on Kosta.

  “Its orbit has dipped some more,” Pirbazari said. “Latest calculation shows that it could be close enough to threaten Angelmass Central in as little as four days.”

  “Four days?” Forsythe repeated, frowning. “I thought you said it would be a couple of weeks.”

  “It’s moved deeper since then,” Pirbazari explained. “That means it’s picked up more speed.”

  “It also means it may have moved too deep to be a problem to Central,” Forsythe pointed out.

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” Pirbazari’s mouth tightened. “The thing is, the orbital dip doesn’t seem to have been completely uniform. The astronomers think it actually moved out a bit at one point.”

  Forsythe turned to frown at him. “Moved out?”

  “Yes, sir,” Pirbazari said. “It was a little hard to tell—there was another radiation surge at the time that obscured some of the positioning data. But they’re pretty sure.”

  “Which direction was the surge?” Kosta asked.

  “You keep out of this,” Forsythe ordered, throwing a brief glare back at him.

  “I only thought that if the surge was inward, toward the sun, it might explain the outward movement,” Kosta said. “Angelmass may have learned how to focus its radiation output and use it as a jet.”

  Forsythe had been looking at Pirbazari. Now, slowly, he turned back to Kosta. “What do you mean, learned how to focus its radiation?”

  “An array of angels has certain characteristics of proto-intelligence,” Kosta said. “Specifically, it shows the response curve of a classical Lantryllyn logic circuit. You can check on that with Che Kruyrov and Dr. Frashni at the Institute.”

  “What are you talking about?” Pirbazari asked. “What’s a Lan-whatever logic circuit?”

  “It was once thought to be the road to self-aware computers,” Kosta said. “The point is that angels in a group show definite signs of intelligence; and over the past few years you’ve taken thousands of angels out of Angelmass. If you’ve left that same number of anti-angels behind, then it follows—”

  “Hold it,” Forsythe cut him off. “Anti-angels?”

  “The angel anti-particle,” Kosta said.

  “Never heard of it.”

  “No one has,” Kosta said. “But I’m convinced they exist.”

  He nodded his head toward the ceiling, in the general direction of Angelmass. “And if I’m right—and if anti-angels have the same potential for intelligence that angels do—then Angelmass itself may have become sentient.”

  Pirbazari shook his head. “This is ridiculous,” he said. “We’re talking about a black hole, not some two-year-old kid or even a well-trained chimp. How could it possibly be intelligent?”

  “I know it sounds crazy,” Kosta admitted. “But Angelmass’s behavior is already defying all known black hole theory. This orbit-changing thing is only the latest example.”

  “So how would you go about proving it?” Forsythe asked.

  “First step is to pin down the existence of anti-angels,” Kosta told him. “I’ve put together some equipment that will hopefully be able to locate, identify, and capture one. While I’m doing that, we need Dr. Frashni’s team to get busy on larger angel arrays, to work on the intelligence aspect.”

  “I see,” Forsythe murmured. “Well, we can certainly get Dr. Frashni busy on the second part. As to the first part …” He cocked his head slightly to the side. “We’ll see who the Institute can recommend for that.”

  Kosta felt his throat tighten. “Sir, I already have the equipment ready. It would take someone else days to design and assemble their own version.”

  “Why can’t they just use yours?”

  Kosta waved a hand, a truncated gesture with the wrist cuffs anchoring his arms to the chair. “Most of the planning and procedure is in my head,” he said. “I didn’t have time to write anything down. It would take as long for me to brief someone on the technique as it would for them to start from scratch.”

>   “Then they can start from scratch,” Forsythe declared, standing up. “First things first, Zar. Have EmDef order a transport to Angelmass Central. The station’s got three hours to evacuate.”

  “Yes, sir,” Pirbazari said, an odd look on his face. “Sir, under the circumstances…?”

  “We have to evacuate the station anyway,” Forsythe said. “There’s no reason we can’t get the Institute busy on this, too.”

  Pirbazari grimaced, but nodded. “All right. Do you want Central’s net left on?”

  “Might as well,” Forsythe said. “As Mr. Kosta suggests, we may want to get someone up there to check things out.”

  “High Senator, please,” Kosta said in a low voice. “We can’t afford to waste time.”

  “I’ll be sure to mention that to Director Podolak,” Forsythe said. “And when you’ve finished that call, Zar, you and the guards can escort Mr. Kosta to the EmDef military jail. I’m done with him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Pirbazari disappeared back into the outer office complex, closing the door behind him. “Ironic, isn’t it,” Forsythe commented, half to Kosta, half seemingly to himself. “For months I’ve been searching for a way to stop the flow of angels into the Empyrean. For a time, in fact, I even thought your research might be the key I needed.”

  He shook his head. “And so now you give me the key I’ve needed; just as the Pax begin their invasion. Funny how fast one’s priorities can change, isn’t it?”

  He straightened up. “I’ll give you one chance. Tell me what sort of Fifth Column arrangements the Pax has set up across the Empyrean, and I’ll ask EmDef to be lenient with you.”

  “I wish I could, sir,” Kosta said. “I really do. I don’t want this war any more than you do. I can give you the location of the automated sleeper drop on Lorelei where I picked up my documents, but that’s all I’ve got.”

  “Too bad,” Forsythe said. “Normally, the court would probably hand down a life sentence for the crime of espionage. Considering that we’re at war, I suspect they’ll opt for summary execution instead.” Turning, he started for the door.

  It was odd, Kosta thought distantly, to hear a sentence of death being handed down to you. Odd, because at that moment his own life didn’t seem to matter. In his mind’s eye he could see the blazing fury that was Angelmass, moving impossibly about in its orbit, threatening hunterships and Angelmass Central.