Timothy Zahn - Angelmass

Which meant it had taken less than twenty years for the researchers from five underpopulated planets to amass all this.

Kosta had seen research projects tackled with single-minded intensity before. But this bordered on obsession.

He looked out the window at the buildings silhouetted against the brilliantly colored sky, a chill running up his back. No; this didn't border on anything. It was an obsession.

There was no other explanation. The Institute, the vast rows of hunterships and their support facilities to the northeast, the whole of Shikari City—the Empyreals had poured incredible amounts of time and effort and money into this angel thing. Were still pouring time and effort and money into it.

As all the while, unnoticed under their feet, the city of Magasca lay rotting.

He shivered again. He hadn't believed—perhaps hadn't wanted to believe—that the angels were really the threat the Pax claimed they were. Now, for the first time, he did. Slowly but surely, the angels were indeed taking over the Empyrean. The political leaders were already under angel influence; now, he saw, so were the Empyrean's best scientists and researchers.

In fact, it was entirely possible that he was already too late to stop it.

It was a horrifying thought. But all the signs were there. Every Pax official he'd met during the course of his training had been grimly, deadly serious about stopping the spread of this alien influence. They'd emphasized the need to rescue the Empyreals and bring them under Pax protection; and they'd made it abundantly clear the Pax would do whatever it took to achieve that end. It was a message the Empyrean's leaders could hardly have failed to understand.

And yet, there'd been nothing but the most basic identity check at the Seraph spaceport. No check of any sort at the Institute itself. Director Podolak, head of the supposedly most important project in the Empyrean, had cheerfully welcomed him into the center of that project without so much as a single question about his qualifications or background or expertise.

His instructors had told him the Empyreals refused to understand the threat posed by the angels.

Now, Kosta saw, they were equally blind to the threat posed by the Pax itself.

It didn't make sense... unless the alien influence was stronger than anyone realized. Unless everyone in the Empyrean had already been affected. Had already been turned into an unconcerned, passive, happyface robot.

For a long minute Kosta stared out his window at the sunset, turning that thought over and over in his mind as the flat, scaly clouds slowly changed from brilliant fire-red to light pink to dark gray.

But—No, he told himself firmly. If that conniving little stowaway back at the spaceport had been a passive happyface robot, then Kosta was a frog.

The people of the Empyrean could still be saved. It was up to him to do it.

Hunching his shoulders back in one final stretch, he returned to his desk, arching his fingers over the keyboard. He was still gazing at the display, considering his next move, when the door abruptly swung open and a young man strode into the room, his nose buried in a sheaf of papers balanced on one hand.

"Hello," Kosta said.

The other looked up in surprise. "Oh. Hello," he nodded. "Sorry—I wasn't expecting company."

"Well, I'm not exactly company," Kosta told him cautiously, wondering how the other was going to take this invasion of his hitherto private office. "More the officemate type, actually. I've just been moved in."

The other broke into a grin. "No kidding? That's great. I've been asking the director for months for some company." Stepping to Kosta's desk, he stuck his hand across it. "Yaezon Gyasi."

"Uh—Jereko Kosta," Kosta replied, staring at the outstretched hand for a split second before recovering and reaching out to touch the other's fingertips. He'd expected that, as the newcomer here, the proper gesture would be the fingertips-to-palm respect thing he'd done with Director Podolak; but Gyasi had instead initiated the greeting used between equals. Either Kosta still didn't grasp all the nuances of Empyreal culture or Gyasi was just a naturally friendly person. "I'm honored to meet you."

"As am I," Gyasi said. Stepping over to his own cluttered desk, he dropped his sheaf of papers onto a pile of similar ones and swiveled his chair around to face Kosta. "So. Welcome to Seraph and the Angelmass Studies Institute, and all that. Where are you from?"

"Palitaine, on Lorelei," Kosta said, reeling off his cover story with practiced ease. "Originally. I've spent the past few years doing graduate studies on Balmoral."

"Whereabouts?"

"Clarkston University in Cairngorm," Kosta said, mentally crossing his fingers. If Gyasi—or anyone else at the Institute, for that matter—had ever been to Clarkston themselves, there could be trouble.

"You've probably never even heard of it," he added.

"Oh, no, I've heard of it," Gyasi nodded. "Never met anyone who went there, but it's supposed to be a pretty good school. Nicely landscaped, too, I hear."

"It is that," Kosta agreed, relaxing again. This part was easy—he'd spent a couple of days on Lorelei researching both Clarkston and Cairngorm, and probably knew them better than anyone on Seraph who hadn't actually lived there. "Sort of like the Institute's grounds here, though on a larger scale."

Gyasi nodded. "I'm from Uhuru, myself. Rungwe, to be exact—it's a few hundred kilometers west of Tshombe." Rolling his chair toward Kosta's desk, he craned his neck to look at the computer display, still showing the end of the file listing. "I see you've been getting your feet wet. Impressive, isn't it?"

"Very," Kosta nodded. "One might say overwhelming."

Gyasi chuckled. "One might, indeed. You want overwhelming, though, just wait until you get a close look at Angelmass itself. The next survey flight's going out in a couple of days. You coming along?"

"Probably depends on whether I've gotten more funding by then."

"Ah." Gyasi gave him a knowing look. "Yes, we get a lot of that around here. The High Senate's funding tends to palpitate a lot. You know the routine: small but loud group starts screaming about the government pouring extra money into angel research when they're already paying Gabriel's ridiculous prices for the things."

Kosta shrugged, thinking about the slums of Magasca. "Not necessarily an unreasonable argument," he said. "Especially with the Pax out there breathing down our necks."

Gyasi waved a hand in a gesture of scorn. "The Pax is no big deal. There's no way they can conquer us, and they're too madly in love with money and profit to destroy us."

"Unless they see us as a threat," Kosta pointed out, annoyed in spite of himself at having the Pax so casually dismissed. "My understanding is that they consider the angels to be alien intelligences in the process of invasion."

Gyasi snorted gently. "I know people in Rungwe who think that, too. A pity, particularly when there are so many more interesting theories to choose from." He cocked an eyebrow. "You were told, weren't you, that we're not supposed to discuss angel theories with people outside the Institute?"

"Not specifically, no," Kosta said, wounded pride vanishing in a surge of interest. Angel theories, plural?

"Well, consider yourself told," Gyasi said. "That goes for any other findings, too. You can write them up on the Institute's own net, but nothing gets released outside without prior approval."

"I understand." That was more like it. Maybe the Empyreals had some understanding of security after all.

"Good," Gyasi said. "It's no big deal, really, but after the Flizh embarrassment it's been standard policy to hash things out in private before we let the public in on the party."

"I understand." Kosta took a deep breath, phrasing his next question carefully—