Angelmass

CHAPTER 23

The wrench slipped and clanged against the edge of the access flange, narrowly missing Chandris's knuckles in the process. "Nurk," she gritted, lowering the tool and flexing her fingers. "It keeps coming off."

"That's because you're not setting the line-lock solidly enough against the connector," Hanan told her, his voice calm and soothing. "If it's tight enough, it won't slip."

"Well, I can't do it," Chandris growled, offering him the wrench. "If you can, you're a genius."

"Hardly," Hanan huffed. But it was a pleased sort of huff. "Let me show you."

Chandris stepped aside, maintaining her frustrated scowl as Hanan busied himself with the wrench.

His hands, she could see, were still not a hundred percent steady; but she could also see that her modified little-miss-helpless routine was doing wonders for his morale. With any luck, he wouldn't catch on to what she was doing until his nervous system had gotten back in synch with the exobraces' electronics.

And when that happened, it would be time for her to leave.

"There," Hanan grunted, stepping back and gesturing with a slightly shaky hand at the wrench handle protruding from the access hatch. "Try it now."

"Thanks," Chandris said, getting a grip on the wrench and giving it a tug. This time it stayed on.

"That's it, all right."

"Just one of those things you pick up with experience," Hanan said modestly. "You'll get it in time.

That is, if you stay."

"Where else would I go?" she countered, keeping her eyes on her work.

She sensed Hanan shrug. "Back to running, I suppose. You were running when you first came here, if you remember."

With a final tug, Chandris got the connector loose. "I'm not much interested in running anymore, thank you," she told him, in a tone carefully designed to discourage further questioning.

It was a waste of good voice control. "You know, you never did give us any details about this crazy man you said you were running from," Hanan commented. "He must have been really crazy for you to have run all the way to Seraph to get away from him."

"He was," Chandris said briefly. "You have a spare grommet there?"

"Sure." He found one, handed it to her. "Tell me about him."

"Why?"

He sighed, just audibly. "So that maybe we can help you find a way to get clear of him. Before you leave us."

Chandris felt her throat tighten. "Who says I'm leaving?"

"Ornina. She was right, you know: we do need you here."

Chandris snorted. "That's the trouble with you two. You talk too much to each other."

"She talks and I listen, anyway," Hanan said, a hint of his usual flippancy peeking through. "I'm serious, though, about wanting you to stay. For starters, who else will play this helpless-maiden routine with me if you go?"

Chandris grimaced. So much for him not catching on. "Maybe that's why I want to leave," she growled. "Maybe I'm tired of playing games. Ever think of that?"

For a long minute he was silent. Chandris finished attaching the new connector, then set the wrench's line-lock on the next one and broke it loose. "We're all running from something, Chandris," he said at last, quietly. "Did Ornina ever tell you I wanted to be a surgeon?"

Chandris paused, the connector halfway off. "No," she said.

"It's an art, you know, surgery," Hanan said, his voice oddly distant. "One of the few real arts left.

Maybe the only one where you can genuinely feel that you're doing some good for people."

Chandris heard the faint whine of his exobraces as he moved his arm. "How far had you gotten?" she asked.

"I was in my second year of college when our parents died," he told her. "Ornina had just finished basic, and insisted on going to work to help me pay my way. I was able to work some, too, but she was the one who kept us afloat. I let her do it because I knew that when I got into practice I could afford to send her to college, too. To pay her back for everything.

"I was six months from finishing when the disease showed up."

Chandris blinked away sudden moisture. "They couldn't do anything about it?"

"Well, that's the point, you see," Hanan said, his tone suddenly strange. "They could have."

She turned around to look at him, expecting to see anger in his eyes. But all that was there was sadness. "I don't understand," she said carefully.

He let out his breath in a gentle whoosh. "It could have been cured, Chandris," he said, gazing at his trembling hand. "Not just helped; cured. All it would have taken would have been some highly specialized neural surgery and six months of intensive treatment... and about two million ruya to pay for all of it."

Unbidden, a memory from the Barrio flicked into Chandris's mind: old Flavin, limping painfully along on an ankle that could easily have been replaced. "I'm sorry," was all she could think of to say.

Hanan's eyes came back from his hand and his memories, and he threw her a tight smile. "So was I," he said. "For a long time I was pretty bitter about it, I can tell you. I wasn't asking for charity, you know—I could almost certainly have paid all of it back over a lifetime of surgical work."

Chandris nodded, an old saying floating up from the depths of her memory. " 'The rich get richer,' " she quoted.

" 'And the poor get babies,' " Hanan finished.

"What?"

"My own version. Skip it." He cocked an eyebrow. "So. Your turn."

She felt her stomach tighten. "His name is Trilling Vail," she told him. "For two years he was—" she hesitated, groping for the right word.

"Your lover?" Hanan suggested delicately.

"Yes, that too. But he was a lot more." She shook her head. "You have to understand what the Black Barrio was like, Hanan. Poor people, lots of scorers and koshes—probably a lot like that part of Magasca near the spaceport."

"Sounds pretty grim."

"It wasn't fun. I started out as a trac—that's someone who plays decoy or distraction for a scorer—and worked my way up to where I was the one doing the scoring."

"All of this by yourself?"

"I was never really alone," Chandris said. "But there wasn't anyone who really cared about me, either. Mostly the people who kept me around did so because I was useful.

"And then, when I was fourteen, I met Trilling."

She turned back to the access panel, unwilling for Hanan to see her face. "He was real nice at first.

He took care of me like no one else ever had. Taught me all sorts of tricks, got me involved with his friends, let me move in with him."

Bittersweet memories flashed past her eyes, making her throat hurt. "What can I say? He took care of me."

There was a brief pause. "What happened?" Hanan asked quietly. "Another woman?"

Chandris snorted. "Not Trilling," she said. "He always said he was a one-woman man. As far as I know he never tommed around while I was with him. No, what happened was that he started acting... strange. I mean really strange. He'd try to score tracks he wasn't ready for, and then go crazymad when they popped. He'd get mad at me for no reason at all, or else drop into a black pit for days at a time. He'd disappear, too, at strange hours and blow up when I tried to ask where he'd been. And he started playing around with reeks a lot."

"Sounds like someone on the glide path to a mental breakdown," Hanan said. "Did you try to get him to talk to someone?"

"About twice a week. But he blew up every time I suggested it. Besides, there wasn't much of anyone left for him to talk to; most of his friends had chopped and hopped by that time. They said he was a crash waiting to happen and didn't want to be around when it did."

"Some friends," Hanan murmured.

"The Barrio was like that," Chandris told him. "No one ever did anything for anybody unless there was something in it for them."

"Well..." Hanan scratched his cheek. "Pardon me for pointing it out, but you stayed with Trilling.

And it doesn't sound like you were getting much out of it."

Chandris felt her lip twist. "Don't try to make me look noble, Hanan. I wasn't. Even at his worst Trilling was the most security my life had ever had, and I didn't want to lose that. Or maybe just didn't want to admit that it was already lost. You lie to yourself a lot in a place like the Barrio."

"People lie to themselves a lot everywhere."

Chandris shrugged. "Anyway, it finally got to the point where I couldn't take it anymore. I decided I had to get out." A sudden, violent shiver ran up through her at the memory. "And then, like a complete fool, I went and told Trilling I was leaving."

Hanan took a step closer to her, his arm slipping around her shoulders. "Did he hurt you?" he asked gently.

Chandris shivered again, the memories flashing across her vision. "He never even touched me. All he did was stand there, staring at me with a crazy look in his eyes. And then he told me, in complete detail, what he would do to me if I ever even tried to leave him."

She shook her head. "I still don't know how I got away the way I did. I guess he didn't really believe I was serious."

For a long minute they stood there in silence. Chandris found herself leaning into Hanan's side, feeling the warmth and strength and security of his presence. In some ways it reminded her of how things had once been with Trilling; and yet, in other ways, it was an entirely new experience. There was no sexual content to the hug, none of the underlying current of predator ferocity that had seemed to saturate everything Trilling said or did. Hanan's touch was one of friendship; nothing more, nothing less. And it asked nothing more or less in return.

Which was only going to make it that much harder when she left.

She blinked back the tears from her eyes and straightened away from him. "I'm all right," she murmured. "Thanks."

Hanan dropped his hand away. "It's not always a blessing having a perfect memory, is it?"

"It's not a blessing at all," she said bitterly. "It's a tool that's been useful in scoring. Nothing more."

And speaking of tools... With a sigh, she reached for the wrench again—

And from the gate behind them came the sudden clink of the latch.

Trilling! Chandris jumped, banging her head on the underside of the Gazelle, feet scrambling for traction as she came down. She spun around, hand darting to the tool tray for something—anything—she could use as a weapon. Grabbing a long screwdriver more by luck than design, she twisted to try and get around Hanan's bulk—

It wasn't Trilling. It was Kosta, frozen like a startled animal halfway through the gate. "Uh... hello," he managed, eyes flicking to the screwdriver gripped in Chandris's hand and then back to her face.

"Have I come at a bad time?"

"No, no," Hanan said cheerfully, his serious mood vanished without a trace. "That was nothing to do with you. I told a bad joke and Chandris was taking exception to it. Come in, come in."

Slowly, obviously not convinced, Kosta resumed his interrupted trip through the gate. "Because if it's a bad time—"

"No, really," Hanan waved him forward. "Chandris, put that screwdriver down. What brings you out this way, Jereko? You need another ride out to Angelmass?"

"I'm sure his credit line must be unsnarled by now," Chandris put in before Kosta could answer, tossing the screwdriver back into the tool tray in disgust. Kosta, anytime, was an annoyance. Right now, he was a flat-out intrusion.

She looked back up in time to see a muscle in Kosta's cheek twitch. "As it happens," he said, "it's not."

"Odd," Hanan frowned. "I thought it was just some sort of clerical error."

"So did I," Kosta agreed. "Apparently, it's something more complicated than that. What, exactly, I don't know. Director Podolak's still having trouble getting straight answers."

They probably caught on to whatever track you're trying to score, Chandris thought with sour satisfaction. Now if only Hanan would wish him well and send him on his way...

"Well, we'll be going up again in two days," Hanan offered. "If you want to come along, you're certainly welcome."

Kosta's eyes flicked to Chandris. "I somehow doubt the invitation is unanimous. Anyway, for now there's not much point in my going up. I want to look for the kind of conditions the theory says ought to precede these radiation surges, but until my credit line gets unfrozen I can't get any new equipment."

"Can't you do anything with your original experiment?" Hanan asked. "Modify it somehow?"

"That's what I'm trying," Kosta nodded. "So far it's going pretty slowly."

"Well, if you need any tools, you're welcome to use ours here," Hanan said. "Sorry that we can't offer you anything else, but hunterships tend to run on a tight budget."

"Oh, I understand," Kosta assured him. "And thank you for the offer. Actually, the main reason I came by was to see how you were doing." He glanced again at Chandris, his eyes a little hard this time. "For some reason, I've been having trouble getting hold of you by phone."

"Oh?" Hanan asked, throwing Chandris a speculative look.

"We've been having problems with the Gazelle's phones," she told him evenly. "The system's been locking out some incoming calls. I've been working on it."

"Ah." Hanan held her gaze a moment longer, then turned back to Kosta. "Sorry about that. However, as you can see, I'm pretty well recovered. Certainly enough for Ornina to put me back to work. You mentioned a theory in the works about these radiation surges?"

The cheek muscle twitched again. "So they say. Dr. Qhahenlo thinks it's a self-focusing effect triggered by something falling into Angelmass from one of the hunterships. I'm not convinced, myself."

"I don't recall you liking the Acchaa theory much, either," Chandris put in. "Are there any theories you like?"

He glared at her. "Actually, I'm rather partial to the idea that the angels are a deliberate alien invasion," he said tartly. "Here to turn everyone in the Empyrean into something non-human."

"Unfortunately, we don't need alien help to become less than human," Hanan murmured, glancing at Chandris. "Matter of fact, Chandris and I were just discussing that."

Kosta looked back and forth between them, then shrugged. "Anyway, I wrote the whole thing up—results, comments, and everybody's theories as to what happened. We'll see what kind of response I get." He hesitated. "Incidentally, I also discussed your trapped-alien theory with a couple of people. They said that the idea's been around for quite a while."

"Old doesn't necessarily mean wrong," Hanan pointed out. "Did any of them actually refute it, or did they all just make the usual learnedly snide comments?"

"The latter, mostly," Kosta conceded. "One of them compared it to the ancient epicycle theory of planetary motion. Said it complicated matters without really explaining anything."

"You agree with that?"

"I don't know," Kosta admitted. "That's the other reason I came by, actually; I wondered if you'd be willing to discuss it some more with me. When you're not so busy, of course," he added hastily.

"I'm sure that would be fine," Chandris put in, letting a little acid drip off her tone. "Look us up in about six months. Eight, if we keep getting interrupted."

Kosta reddened. "I'm sorry," he said, taking a step back toward the gate. "I didn't mean to interrupt your work."

"Oh, don't mind Chandris," Hanan told him. "Though if you've got the time, we actually could use an extra pair of hands. You interested?"

"Uh—" Kosta looked at Chandris, a wary look on his face. "Well... sure. Sure, why not?"

"Good." Hanan stepped away from Chandris's side. "Why don't you give Chandris a hand with the connector replacements while I go inside and get the leak-checker warmed up."

Without waiting for a reply he ducked under the Gazelle's hull and headed back toward the hatchway. Kosta looked at Chandris, seemed to brace himself. "Okay," he said, coming forward, his expression that of someone approaching a large dog. "What can I do to help?"

"Absolutely nothing," Chandris growled, turning her back on him. She reached into the access hatch and started unscrewing the loosened connector. "I mean that. You want to be helpful, go follow Hanan around. Better yet, go away."

She felt him come up behind her. "Look, I'm sorry you don't like me," he said. "I'm not exactly crazy about you, either, if you want to know the truth. But the fact of the matter is that Hanan and Ornina did me a big favor, and I'd like to try and pay them back a little. I don't know if you can understand that or not."

Chandris clenched her teeth hard enough to hurt... but under the circumstances there wasn't a single nurking thing she could say to that. "Give me one of those grommets," she ordered.

They worked in silence for a few minutes; Chandris doing the real work, Kosta handing her tools and parts as requested. She had just finished tightening the last connector when the phone hanging on the tool tray's handle trilled. "Chandris?" Hanan's voice called.

"Right here," she called back, giving each connector one last check, "I think we're ready to give it a test."

"Great," Hanan said. "Is Kosta still there?"

She resisted the temptation to say something sarcastic. "Yes," she said.

"Good." The click of a transfer—"Go ahead, Mr. Gyasi."

"Jereko?" an unfamiliar voice said.

Chandris felt Kosta start. "Yaezon?"

"Yeah," Gyasi said. "Finally. I've been looking all over for you—calling the Gazelle was a long shot.

Listen, you've got to get back here right away."

"What's wrong?"

Something in the way he said those two words made Chandris twist her head around to look at him—

To find that it wasn't just in his voice. On his face was the rigid expression of someone not facing just a large dog, but a large dog with its teeth already bared.

"Nothing's wrong," Yaezon said, as if he hadn't noticed anything in Kosta's voice. Which he probably hadn't. "At least, not in the traditional sense of the word wrong. But you're going to want to see this."

Kosta threw a look at Chandris, his tongue swiping across his upper lip. "Sure. I'll be there as soon as I can."

"Good. Room 2205—Che Kruyrov's lab."

"Right."

There was the click as the secondary connection was terminated. "Jereko? Anything wrong?"

Hanan's voice came back on the circuit.

"No, I'm sure there isn't," Kosta told him. But his face was still tight. "But I have to get back. I'm sorry."

"That's all right," Hanan assured him. "I'm sure we'll see you again."

"I hope so." He gave Chandris a nod. "See you," he said absently, and headed for the gate.

Chandris watched him go, an eerie feeling tingling along her back. It had happened again. Kosta had been acting like a relatively normal human being... and then suddenly, for no apparent reason, he'd gone all strange.

What the hell was the matter with the man?

She turned back to the access panel, frustrated anger swirling within her. Because the bottom line was that it didn't much matter what Kosta's problem was. If he was going to start hanging around the Gazelle—and Hanan had all but given him an engraved invitation to do so—then she had no choice but to stay, too. Whatever Kosta was up to, there was no way she was going to leave the Daviees to handle him alone.

And if he thought he could irritate her out of the way, he was in for a big disappointment. She'd been irritated by people far better at it than he was. He might as well get one of those aphrodisiac perfumes he'd once mentioned and try to charm her out of the way.

A frown went off at the back of her mind. Aphrodisiac perfumes...?

"Chandris?" Hanan called from the phone. "You still there?"

With an effort, Chandris forced her thoughts back to the job at hand. "Sure," she said. "Ready at this end."

"Okay. Here we go."

The faint hiss of fluid through tubing came from the access hatch... and as she watched carefully for the telltale frosting of a leak, she swore.

Damn Kosta, anyway.

The blip traced across the screen; a nice simple horizontal line, nothing special. "Okay; got that?"

Che Kruyrov asked.

"Got it," Kosta nodded.

"Okay." Kruyrov tapped a couple of keys. "Watch now."

The blip again began a horizontal line; but this time it seemed to hesitate halfway across the screen.

Dipping suddenly, it tracked out what looked like half a parabola and then resumed its horizontal motion at a lower level. "There," Kruyrov said with a sort of grim satisfaction. "That look at all familiar?"

Kosta shook his head. "Not really. Should it?"

"Jees, where've you been burying your head?" Kruyrov snorted. "That's the response curve of a classical Lantryllyn logic circuit. You have heard of Lantryllyn logic circuits, haven't you?"

Kosta nodded, an unreal sort of numbness drifting across his mind. He'd heard of Lantryllyn logic circuits, all right. As recently as fifty years ago they'd been the basis of most of the Pax's SuperMaster computer systems, and at one time had been thought to be the breakthrough that would allow a genuinely sentient artificial intelligence.

And for the Lantryllyn response to be mimicked by—"And all you've got there is nine angels?" he asked, his voice sounding hollow in his ears.

"That's all," Kruyrov said, his voice sounding a little strange, too. "A three-by-three cubic lattice.

And yes, that's all that's there, unless you want to count the lattice itself."

"Which is supposed to be electronically inert," Gyasi added.

"Theoretically," Kruyrov grunted. "But then, there's no theory that says angels can do this, either, so who knows?"

Kosta tried to unfog his mind. "When are you going to put this on the nets?" he asked.

Kruyrov's eyes widened. "Give me a chance, Jereko," he protested. "I only ran across the effect this morning, and even then it was ninety-eight percent accident. We haven't even gotten this thing off the ground yet."

"I realize that," Kosta said. "But it seems to me a preliminary report would—"

"Would kick up a firestorm," Gyasi put in. "Face it, Jereko, there are enough people even here at the Institute who are uncomfortable with the idea that angels are quanta of good. You try and tell them that they might be quanta of intelligence, too, and the reaction isn't going to be pretty."

"And it's wholly premature besides," Kruyrov said. "Fine; so a three-by-three cubic array can mimic one of the Lantryllyn reactions. What about a three-by-two? Or a four-by-four? Or a three-by-three with one missing? Or a spherical arrangement, or a cubic array with the angels farther apart, or—"

"Peace," Kosta interrupted, holding up a hand. "I concede the point."

"Good." Kruyrov's eyes bored into his. "I trust, too, that you're willing to concede more than that.

The only reason you're here is that Yaezon said you'd be interested and then bullied me into showing it to you. You leak it before Dr. Frashni gives the okay and I'll wind up washing test tubes down in the bio section."

"I understand," Kosta told him. "Trust me: I know how to keep secrets."

"I hope so." Kruyrov's eyes strayed to the screen, his forehead furrowing with thought. "What do you think, though? Really?"

Kosta shook his head slowly. "I don't know," he admitted. "I can't get past the thought that maybe the angel hunters have been right all along."

"Yeah—that trapped-alien folk theory," Kruyrov nodded, lip twisting. "I used to think it was pretty simplistic. Now I'm not so sure."

"Yes, well, let's not go for the mystic long shots first," Gyasi warned. "There's no particular reason why angels can't be quanta of good and intelligence both, you know. Or maybe it's something subtle, like ethics and intelligence just being different aspects of the same thing."

Kruyrov whistled softly. "Boy, there's a concept. I think I'd rather believe in alien ghosts."

"Don't worry about it," Gyasi said dryly. "I'm an experimentalist, too. What do I know about theory?"

"I'm sure the theorists will find stranger things to come up with than even that," the other responded dryly. "Probably a dozen of them by lunchtime the day this hits the nets."

"If they're anything like the theorists I've known, that's a low estimate," Kosta agreed. "Is there anything I can do to help you and Dr. Frashni on this?"

"I'm sure you must have other—oh, that's right," Kruyrov interrupted himself, throwing a glance at Gyasi. "Yaezon told me you're at loose ends at the moment. Well—" He scratched thoughtfully at his chin. "Might be possible. I'd have to ask Dr. Frashni, of course."

"You've got a lot of work ahead of you," Kosta reminded him. "An extra pair of hands could speed things up."

"True," Kruyrov agreed. "On the other hand, Dr. Frashni might prefer to sacrifice speed for secrecy."

"But I already know about it," Kosta persisted. "And I do good work—Dr. Qhahenlo can vouch for that."

Gyasi cocked his head at Kosta. "You're pretty eager to get in on this. Any particular reason why?"

Kosta looked him square in the eye. "A couple of reasons, yes," he said evenly. "Both of them my own business."

"Ah," Gyasi said carefully. "Okay."

Kosta shifted his gaze back to Kruyrov. "I'm going back to my office—got a couple of test ideas I want to sketch out. Let me know what Dr. Frashni says, all right?"

"Okay," Kruyrov said, as carefully as Gyasi.

First rule of espionage: don't draw unnecessary attention to yourself. His instructors' warning echoed through Kosta's mind as he left the room. But at the moment he didn't much give a damn.

Lulled by the casually friendly people here and all the idealistic talk of quantized good, he'd drifted a long way from the original thrust of his mission to the Empyrean.

But with Kruyrov's discovery, that drift was now over. Because if the angels were in fact some rudimentary form of intelligence, even if only in specially arranged formations, then there was indeed an alien invasion going on in the Empyrean. Benign, perhaps... but perhaps not.

The image of baby Angelica, sleeping peacefully in her crib, rose before his eyes. The sins of the fathers, the old, old proverb ran through his mind, are visited upon the children.

Muttering a curse under his breath, he hurried down the corridor toward his office. The hell with drawing attention to himself.

Forsythe read the report slowly and carefully, savoring every detail. There it was. At last, there it was: the ammunition he needed to finally shake up those infuriatingly complacent colleagues of his.

Violent surges of radiation, damaging over a dozen ships and destroying one of them outright—it was absolutely custom-fitted for him.

He keyed back to the first page and the author's name. And with a wonderful touch of irony, it had even come from Jereko Kosta, the man whose work Forsythe had tried so hard to quash.

He keyed for the master operations file. That, at least, would be easy to fix. Freeing up Kosta's credit line shouldn't take more than a minute or two. It might even be a good idea to throw some extra funding in his direction, provided he could be trusted to stay with this line of research. A personal grant might help, or maybe even a personal visit—

Forsythe paused, his fingers resting lightly on the keys. There was a flashing star by Kosta's name, directing him to another file. He called it up, noting as he did so that it had just been attached the previous morning, and began to read.

He was still in the middle of the first page when he groped out his call stick and signalled for Pirbazari.

He had finished the report and was starting to reread the salient parts when the aide arrived. "Yes, High Senator?" he asked, closing the door behind him.

"This report on Jereko Kosta," Forsythe said. "Did you handle it personally?"

"Yes, sir," Pirbazari confirmed. "Interesting, isn't it?"

"If you define 'interesting' as making no sense, then it's absolutely fascinating," Forsythe growled.

"How does a paper trail just disappear? Particularly a paper trail with this much money attached to it?"

"I don't know, sir," Pirbazari said. "At least not yet. We're going over the intermediate steps with a light-chopper, but so far nothing." He cocked an eyebrow. "But we did get something in this morning's Balmoral skeeter that might go a ways toward explaining it—I was just getting ready to flag it for you when you called me in. Clarkston University in Cairngorm claims they've never heard of anyone named Jereko Kosta. Not from Lorelei or anywhere else."

Forsythe stared at him, a cold knot forming in his stomach. "What?"

Pirbazari nodded grimly. "Yes, I remember seeing the transcript in his record, too. And presumably the Angelmass Institute wouldn't have let him in without seeing the original."

Forsythe looked down at the display, a strange taste in his mouth. "Or a very good forgery of it."

Pirbazari nodded. "Exactly. I'd say there's a good chance that our Mr. Kosta has some kind of elaborate con game going. I did a check on the flight he took to Seraph aboard the Xirrus. There was also a teenage girl aboard, using the name Chandris Lalasha. She bought passage from Uhuru to Lorelei, but then gimmicked the ship's computer somehow and stayed aboard. A flag picked up the glitch, and they were finally able to track her down just before reaching Seraph. According to their investigation, she was a con artist working in and around New Mexico City."

"Has she fingered Kosta?"

"Not exactly," Pirbazari said dryly. "They landed her in custody, but as soon as they hit ground she kicked out a couple of guards and disappeared into the spaceport crowd. Far as I know, they still haven't caught her."

"You think she and Kosta are working together?"

Pirbazari shrugged. "It's the most reasonable explanation. It's hard to believe she could have escaped from the spaceport without an accomplice."

Forsythe nodded, feeling his lip twist. Kosta as a reputable scientist could give him the backing he needed to stop the flow of angels. Kosta as a con artist was worthless to him. "So what are they up to? What's the Angelmass Institute got that's worth stealing?"

"There you've got me," Pirbazari admitted. "The Institute's loaded to the ceiling with expensive equipment, but it's all highly specialized stuff. Resale value pretty near zero. Could be something to do with Institute funds, or maybe some kind of blackmail scheme."

Forsythe looked back at the display. Perhaps a personal visit, he'd just been thinking. "Let's go ask him."

Pirbazari's jaw dropped, just noticeably. "What?"

"Let's go ask him," Forsythe repeated. "Well, maybe not ask him, at least not directly. But let's find out what he and this teenager are up to."

"Well..." Pirbazari said slowly. "I suppose we could. Hardly qualifies as proper High Senate business, though."

"It concerns the angels, Zar," Forsythe reminded the other sternly. "The angels, the Institute—maybe Angelmass itself. That makes it High Senate business." He let his expression soften into a tight smile. "Besides which, a con artist used to dealing with police may not be nearly as adept at handling a High Senator. Or a former EmDef commander."

Pirbazari nodded, his expression that neutral one he seemed to be wearing more and more these days. "Yes, sir. With your permission, I'll go make the arrangements."

"Keep it small," Forsythe called as he headed for the door. "You, me, Ronyon, maybe one more, plus the crew. And keep it quiet, too. I don't want word of this leaking out."

Pirbazari paused at the door, and for a moment Forsythe thought he was going to insist on an explanation. But—"Yes, sir," was all he said.

The door closed behind him, and Forsythe swore gently under his breath. But Pirbazari and his neutral looks were the least of his worries at the moment. The key to stopping or at least slowing the flow of angels was—maybe—within his reach.

Kosta's data could prove vital to the Empyrean's survival. Even if Kosta himself wasn't.

Deep within the cocoon, the fabricators came to a halt. The task, at long last, was finished.

A tiny tunnel appeared in the side of the asteroid shell, similar to the one Kosta's ship had emerged from but much narrower. A chunk of rock rolled out, moving just quickly enough to drift slowly ahead of the cocoon. If the task force was on schedule, the next Pax ship would be coming into the nearby Empyreal net in six days, eighteen hours, and twenty-seven minutes. It would leave with the data-pulse satellite's message.

Shifting into low standby mode, the cocoon settled down to wait.