Angelmass

by Timothy Zahn

  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.

  CHAPTER 24

  “According to the receptionist’s records,” Pirbazari said, leaning over to peer through the line car’s right-hand window, “Kosta headed out to the huntership fields early this morning. He took a bunch of equipment with him.”

  “Interesting,” Forsythe said. Had Kosta somehow caught wind of this and rabbited? “How much equipment is there in a bunch?”

  “Not much,” Pirbazari said. “I don’t think he’s pulled the plug, if that’s what you’re wondering. She said he was just taking an experiment aboard one of the ships.”

  “The Gazelle?”

  “That’s the one,” Pirbazari nodded. “Same ship he used before. Ten to one we’ll find the Xirrus’s stowaway somewhere in the vicinity.”