Timothy Zahn - Angelmass

"What ion shell project is this?" Qhahenlo asked, looking interested.

"I'm trying to see whether it's possible to strip off an angel's collected ion shell," Kosta said, feeling awkward. It was a little unsettling to have someone of Qhahenlo's obvious status and experience listening so closely to what he had to say. "My original thought was to see whether the shell had anything to do with the angel effect, but Yaezon tells me it's probably a dead-end approach."

"Never underestimate dead-end approaches," Qhahenlo advised. "At worst, they often generate useful spin-offs; at best, they sometimes turn out to be not so dead-end as everyone expected."

"I'll remember that," Kosta said. "May I ask what this V/E experiment is?"

"Certainly—it's not a secret," Qhahenlo said. "The Variable Exposure experiment is a long-term test of angel stability."

"Not like Dr. Ciardi's, though," Gyasi put in. "This one's based on a variant on the Acchaa theory that Dr. Qhahenlo's come up with. Instead of the angel being a single quantum of good, you assume it's a bundle of many quanta, with the angel particle being a kind of threshold for creation rather than the absolute minimum size that a strict quantum would imply. When you do that, the angel effect can be explained as a slow decay of these constituent quanta into fields of good that directly affect people nearby. Saves you a whole bunch of the headaches the theorists are having trying to come up with a workable mechanism for the angel/personality interaction—"

He broke off suddenly, looking at Qhahenlo with a somewhat sheepish expression. "Sorry, Dr.

Qhahenlo. I interrupted, didn't I?"

"Don't worry about it," Qhahenlo told him with an amused smile. "The general rule is that enthusiasm is worth two to three extra lab techs. Anyway, that's basically where we're starting from, Mr. Kosta. Since all angel theories allow both positive and negative solutions, it seems reasonable to assume that there can be fields of evil—or anti-good, if you prefer—that might be able to affect the rate of decay of the quanta bundles in a given angel."

"Which is where the Variable Exposure experiment comes in," Gyasi said.

"Right," Qhahenlo nodded. "What we've done is to take four newly captured angels and put them in radically different environments. The first is locked in a deep underground vault, some fifty meters from any human being; that one's our control. The second is in a special cell with a convicted serial murderer. The third is being worn by Director Podolak herself, replacing one she'd been wearing for the previous five years. And the fourth has been sewn into a special harness being worn by a onemonth- old child."

Something icy ran up Kosta's back. "A one-month-old child?" he repeated carefully. "A baby?"

"That's the layman's term for them, yes," Gyasi said dryly. "He's the son of two Institute employees—they've got an apartment on the grounds."

"We plan to run the test for about a year," Qhahenlo said. "If angels do in fact absorb evil, then there should be detectable differences between the four. Though what those differences will be we're still not sure of."

"I see," Kosta said mechanically. A baby. They'd put an angel on a baby. An unknown but very real force... and they'd turned it loose on an innocent and helpless child.

"We'd of course appreciate any suggestions you might have along the way," Qhahenlo continued.

"And Mr. Gyasi's right; finding a way to strip off the angels' ion shells could be very useful when it comes time to compare them."

With an effort, Kosta forced his mind away from the image of that baby. "Yes," he managed. "I'll see what I can do."

"Good." Qhahenlo looked at her watch. "We should be getting close to our target zone. Give me a hand, Mr. Gyasi, and let's get this thing going."

"Attention, all passengers," the cool voice came over the speakers. "De-rotation will begin in three minutes. Repeating: de-rotation will begin in three minutes."

Hunched head to head with Qhahenlo over a display, Gyasi looked up at Kosta. "You going to be okay?"

Kosta nodded. "I think I've got the hang of it now," he said.

Qhahenlo looked up, too, as if noticing Kosta for the first time. "Incidentally, Mr. Kosta, you really don't have to wait around here if you've got something else you want to do. Watching other people sift their data isn't the most thrilling way to spend an afternoon."

"Actually, I've already been around the ship a couple of times," Kosta told her. "Nobody else has anything more interesting to watch."

Qhahenlo blinked. "When did you do all that?"

"About forty minutes ago."

Qhahenlo's lips puckered. "Occasionally, you'll find I get too engrossed ill my work to be a proper host. My apologies."

"That's all right," Kosta assured her.

Qhahenlo looked back at Gyasi. "Anyway. Let's see; we were about here..."

Their heads went back together, already lost in the data again. Kosta watched them, a wisp of worried contempt tugging at him. They were the archetypical crystal-tower scientists, all right, both of them. So completely wrapped up in their research that they didn't notice the rest of the universe.

So single-mindedly confident in what they were doing that not even the slightest doubt ever crossed either of their minds.

So infatuated by the angels that they'd lost all sense of perspective.

They'd put an angel on a baby. How long would it be before they were putting angels on all the babies?

"Yaezon?" he asked suddenly. "What kind of numbers are we talking about to get the Empyrean properly fitted out with angels?"

Gyasi looked up again. "Well, we need angels for all politicians from regional level on up. Then there are the judges, corporate executives, EmDef officers, trade officials—"

"Yes, but what I want is the total number of angels we're talking about."

Gyasi frowned. "No idea. Doctor?"

"Not offhand," Qhahenlo said. Without looking up she waved at another terminal. "But all that should be listed under the Empyreal Angel Experiment heading."

The approaching-zero-gee alarm was beginning to sound as Kosta found the proper sublist; and the ship's rotation was nearly at a stop by the time he located the current status information.

It was worse than he'd expected. The original estimate had been that it would take forty years to achieve the target level of one angel per hundred Empyreals. Now, barely eighteen years later, updated projections were guessing that goal to be only seven more years away. More hunterships, better shielding and detection equipment, the breakthrough invention of the hyperspace net—there were pages and pages of graphs tracing how each new scientific and technological advance had brought the goal closer. Already over eighteen thousand angels had been collected, with that number growing at an ever increasing rate.

Kosta paused, staring at one of the graphs, a quiet alarm bell going off in the back of his mind. He'd studied great quantities of black hole theory during the astrophysics segment of his tridoctorum degree. But if that graph was correctly drawn...

Strapping himself into the chair, hardly noticing his weightlessness, he got to work.

He was still at it when the announcement came that the ship had landed.

"So. What did you think?"

Kosta looked up from his display, feeling a flicker of annoyance at the interruption. "Of what, Angelmass?"

"Of Dr. Qhahenlo," Gyasi said. "And our project."

"Oh." Kosta shrugged, turning his attention to the display again. "I don't know. Okay, I guess."

Peripherally, he saw Gyasi put down his stylus and scoot his chair over. "Okay, I give up," he said.

"What in the world is so interesting?"

Kosta hesitated. He was sure now. But whether he ought to tell any of the Empyreals about this...