Angelmass

CHAPTER 16

Ornina looked up from the circuit board, a slightly bemused expression on her face. "Stop me if you've heard this before, Chandris, but you are absolutely amazing. Are you sure you've never done this sort of work before?"

Chandris shook her head, feeling her cheeks warming under Ornina's praise. It was embarrassing to stand here and listen to the woman go on like this. Embarrassing, and pretty stupid besides.

But she had to admit that, down deep, it felt kind of nice. "Not before last week," she said. "You must be a good teacher."

"Fiddlies," Ornina said firmly. "It's sweet of you to say so, but fiddlies nonetheless." She twisted her head around to look across the room at Chandris's assembly table. "That was the last of them, too, wasn't it? Well, let's see; what else needs doing around here?"

Chandris cleared her throat. "Actually, I was wondering if maybe I could have a couple of hours off.

I thought I might go into Shikari City for awhile."

"Why, certainly," Ornina said. "Hanan showed you how to call a line car, didn't he?"

"Yes, but I thought I'd just walk. I feel sometimes like I haven't been outside the Gazelle for more than ten minutes since I first got here."

"It is a hard life," Ornina agreed quietly. "If it helps any, we aren't always going to be quite this busy. It's just that the Gazelle's going to have to have some major overhauling done soon, and we need to get a bit ahead of schedule before then. Time-wise and money-wise both."

"I understand," Chandris said. "I won't be gone long."

"Oh, well, don't worry about that. Though you probably ought to take a phone along—it's possible we might need to get in touch with you." Ornina's forehead creased in thought. "Not to put you off or anything... but should you be wandering the streets this soon after your, ah, trouble aboard the Xirrus?"

Chandris had wondered about that, too. But this whole angel question had been hanging over her head for more than a week, and she was tired of not knowing what she was up against. She needed more information than the Gazelle's library could provide, and going out was the only way to get it.

"I can't hide forever," she told Ornina, heading for the door to cut off further argument. "Don't worry, I've had a lot of practice at not being recognized. I'll be back in a couple of hours."

"Okay," Ornina called after her. "See you later. And don't forget the phone."

It was a brisk fifteen minute walk from the Gazelle to the edge of Shikari City proper, and another ten to the huge glass-and-stone monstrosity that the Gazelle's maps had identified as the Angelmass Studies Institute. Circling until she found the front door, she went inside.

"Public access terminals? Right over there." The receptionist pointed past a large stairway to a long room containing rows of low-walled carrels, about half of them occupied. "You have a ship's signon, I presume?" the woman added, her eyes taking in Chandris's coveralls.

"Of course," Chandris told her automatically. She got two steps toward the room before it belatedly dawned on her that the lack of privacy in there would keep her from using any of her normal techniques to crack into the computer.

It was another two steps before it likewise dawned that, for a change, cracking wasn't going to be necessary. A quick phone call to Ornina for the Gazelle's sign-on, and she was in business.

Only to realize, forty minutes later, that the whole trip had been for nothing.

"Can I help you?" the receptionist smiled.

"I hope so," Chandris said, smiling back through the best poor/lost/vulnerable expression in her repertoire. "I'm trying to locate some special information on angels, and I can't seem to find it in those files. Have I missed some special access or sign-on or something?"

"I doubt it," the woman said. "There really isn't all that much information available on angels that most people don't already know from the news and learning channels."

"I guess not," Chandris agreed. "But there must be some other files here somewhere. I mean, you people study angels all day, don't you?"

"Sometimes far into the night, too," the other woman said wryly. "The problem is that most of what's done here is still in the preliminary stage. They prefer to wait until they're sure about something before releasing it to the general public. Otherwise you get conflicting stories and retractions and general confusion all around."

"I understand," Chandris told her, letting a bit of pleading creep into her tone. "But I'm not just general public. I'm a crewer on a huntership. Isn't there—oh, I don't know; some kind of special procedure for us to get the information we need to do our jobs safely?"

The receptionist's forehead wrinkled in thought. She was on Chandris's side now—her body language showed that much. The question was whether there was anything she could do to help.

Keeping quiet, Chandris waited, letting her work through it.

"There isn't any way to let you into the main computer files," the woman said at last. "However—"

Her eyes flicked past Chandris's shoulder, her hand darting up to beckon someone over.

Chandris's muscles tensed, and she had to fight to keep from turning around to look. If the receptionist had recognized her—if that was a guard coming over—she'd have a better chance if she looked harmless and blissfully unaware that anything was going down. A fist-sized decorative crystal adorned the receptionist's desk; easing a few centimeters to her left brought Chandris within reach of it.

"—maybe one of our researchers can tell you what you need to know."

"That would be wonderful," Chandris said, keeping her voice steady and her eyes on the receptionist's face. It still might be a trap, but if it was the woman was a nurking good actress.

Footsteps sounded behind her now; casually, she turned around—

And froze. The man approaching was not, as she'd feared, a guard.

It was worse.

It was the young man from the spaceport. The one she'd scored into getting her past the guards.

Nurk! she thought viciously, twisting way too quickly back toward the desk to try and hide her face.

Nurk, nurk, damn, nurk! If he remembered her...

He did. The footsteps behind her faltered suddenly, then came to an abrupt stop. Chandris kept her eyes on the receptionist's face, waiting for her to realize there was something wrong—

"Mr. Kosta, this is a huntership crewer who's looking for some information about angels," the woman said. "I saw you heading upstairs and thought you might have a few minutes to talk with her."

There was just the slightest pause. "I see," the man said from behind her. No mistake; it was his voice. "Well... sure, why not? Miss—ah—?"

Chandris ground her teeth. "Chandris," she told him, turning around.

His eyes seemed to dig into her face, his expression stony but with an odd undercoating of nervousness to it. She met the gaze evenly; and he blinked first. "Right," he said, and turned away.

"Come on."

He led the way across the entrance foyer toward what looked like a small lounge, his whole back a solid mass of tight muscles. Chandris followed, wondering why she was following him instead of going for a straight chop and hop.

Though if she did, chances were she wouldn't even make it outside the building.

They went into the lounge, Kosta heading back toward an unoccupied corner. "Have a seat," he grunted, pointing her to a chair as he eased himself down into the one facing it.

"Thank you." Chandris sat down, casually taking in her surroundings as she did so. The archway to the entrance foyer and one unmarked door nearby seemed to be the only exits, aside from several tall and probably unbreakable windows.

"So you're a huntership crewer today, are you?"

She focused on him. "As a matter of fact, I am," she said, annoyed despite herself at his tone. "Is that so hard to believe?"

He snorted. "Coming from you?" he asked pointedly.

Chandris unhooked the phone from her belt and held it out. "Huntership Service Yard Number S-

33," she told him. "The ship's named the Gazelle; operators are Hanan and Ornina Daviee. Go ahead—call them. I'll wait."

Kosta's eyes flicked to the phone. "Maybe I should just call security instead."

She could take him, she knew. She could stand up—he would stand up, too—a short, quick jab in the stomach with the tapered top end of the phone—"Maybe you should," she said. "But you won't."

"What makes you so sure?"

She looked him straight in the eye. "Because if you didn't turn me in at the spaceport, you won't turn me in here."

He glared at her. But his tight throat muscles showed that she was right. "I'll answer your questions," he bit out. "But when you walk out that door I don't ever want to see you again. Is that clear?"

Chandris felt her lip twitch with contempt. A typical over-schooled cloud-head, the type who'd rather look the other way than get involved with anything sticky. "Perfectly," she told him.

"Actually, all I want to know is whether angels can make people love each other."

His jaw dropped. "Make them do what?"

"Love each other. What, are you deaf?"

"What, are you stupid?" he shot back. "There are a dozen aphrodisiac perfumes on the market. Go use one of those."

With an effort, Chandris held her temper. She'd hit something in there, all right, something all his noise couldn't quite cover up. If she could just wheedle it out of him...

"You misunderstand," she said, putting her best imitation of quiet professional dignity into her face and voice. "Let me explain. As I mentioned, the owner/operators of the Gazelle are named Hanan and Ornina Daviee. Brother and sister, both in their forties, and they've apparently been working together for quite a few years. As you may or may not know, angel hunting is grueling work, the sort that tends to enhance personality differences between people. You understand?"

"Yes," Kosta nodded. He was falling for it, Chandris saw; slipping into a student/professor pattern in reaction to her newly adopted persona. He must not be all that long out of school for the pattern to have kicked in so quickly.

"All right," she continued, fine-tuning her act a bit. "Now, during the past few days I've noticed several strong personality differences between the two of them, differences I would consider strong enough to put a strain on their relationship. Yet they stay together, working for the most part in harmony. The obvious question arises as to whether their close work with angels has something to do with this continued partnership."

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 socalled 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 nonsuspicious 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.