Timothy Zahn - Angelmass

She hadn't promised them anything. Not a single solitary nurking thing. For that matter, they'd never promised her anything, either. Not even full employment. As far as anyone had said, she was still here only on a temporary basis.

Not that she really wanted the job, of course. It wasn't her kind of life. Too dull, too honest.

Too permanent.

Four weeks. She'd been with the Gazelle for four weeks now. Probably the longest she'd stayed in one place for years. Certainly longer than she and Trilling had ever stayed anywhere while they'd been together.

Trilling.

She sipped at her tea, but the peppermint had gone flat in her mouth. No, she couldn't stay here, not even if she wanted to. Right now, somewhere out there, Trilling was looking for her. The longer she stayed in one place, the sooner he'd find her.

She didn't owe the Daviees anything. Not a single solitary nurking thing. The four weeks of room and board she'd more than paid for with all the work she'd done aboard the ship. And it would be doing them a favor, really: a painful but solid lesson in how the real world operated.

Painful, maybe, for everyone. But that was life, wasn't it?

There were only a few places the angel could be hidden, she knew, assuming that the Daviees had wanted her to be near it for as long as possible during that first trip out to Angelmass. The obvious place to start was her cabin; and it was barely two minutes' work to discover that the Daviees were as unsubtle in this as they were in everything else. The flat angel holding box was underneath the head of her bed, fastened snugly against the mattress by a wire mesh frame.

It took another minute to cut the mesh away, and three more to find an innocuous grocery bag in the galley to carry the box in. Then, changing back to the white makeshift dress she'd worn when she first arrived on Seraph, she left the ship.

For the last time.

Pedestrian traffic was light as she walked past the service yards and the rows of dusty ships behind their wire fences. That was normal, she knew—huntership crewers, when they left their yards at all, were usually in too big a hurry to walk anywhere that a line car or TransTruck would take them. It made Chandris more than a little conspicuous, but there wasn't much she could do about it.

Witnesses' memories were vague; line car records weren't.

Still, she breathed a sigh of relief when she finally cleared the edge of the yards and headed into Shikari City proper. It was still a good couple of kilometers to the Gabriel receiving office, but she was young and healthy and the exercise would do her good.

Besides which, she still had to figure out what the hell she was going to do once she got there.

It wasn't a trivial problem. She'd gone with Hanan on the last angel dropoff and knew the usual routine. But the usual routine wasn't going to do her a lot of good. Assuming that the Daviees hadn't been lying when they said angels couldn't be traded for cash—and she'd seen no evidence that they had lied about that—she was going to have to somehow get the angel dumped into a credit line that she could then convert to cash. That wasn't particularly difficult, but in the past she'd always had more prep time to work with. Now, she was going to have to make a chop and hop of it.

She felt her lip twist, a stab of self-recrimination twisting her stomach. No, she'd had the time, all right. Four weeks' worth of it. She just hadn't used it.

Which just made it that much clearer how much she needed to get away from this place. Sitting around being comfortable instead of watching for opportunities was a sure way to lose that hard edge.

And if there was one thing for sure, it was that Trilling hadn't lost his hard edge.

She forced her mind off depressing thoughts like Trilling and back to the problem at hand. What she really needed was a contact, someone here on Seraph who could help her get off the planet once she got the angel sold. Hopefully for a price she could afford; it was for sure she wasn't going to have time to charm or score anyone into doing it for free. No one but soft-touches like the Daviees did anything for free, at least not on purpose. But making contact with Seraph's criminal underground would take time.

And half a block later, like a gift from the god of thieves, the opportunity dropped straight into her lap.

It was a score in progress; the body language of the two participants showed that as clearly as if there'd been a sign hanging over them. One, dressed in shabby lower-class clothing, held something cupped in his hand as the other, upper-middle-class at the least, spoke into a phone. His face was still undecided, but Chandris could see from the way he stared into the other's cupped hand that he was already more than halfway gone. A little extra nudge on her part, and she would have her contact.

The targ hung up as she approached, slipping the phone back inside his coat with obvious uncertainty. The scorer said something Chandris didn't catch, pushing his cupped hand toward the other with just the right blend of reluctance and resolve. "But I really don't know if I should," the targ said, reaching a hesitant finger into the cupped hand.

"Look, like I told you before—" The scorer broke off, startled, as Chandris stepped up to them.

"Hey, go away," he growled, snatching his hand back from her. "This is a private discussion."

But Chandris had already seen the glint of metal. "What have you got there, coins?" she asked, ignoring the order. "Let me see, huh?"

"I said go away—"

"Oh, let her see them," the targ interrupted. "He found them right over there in an envelope," he continued as the scorer reluctantly opened his hand again. "With a phone number on it. I just called, and the woman there said she'd lost them. She'll pay five hundred ruya to get them back."

"That's a lot of money," Chandris commented, stirring the coins around with her finger. Most of them were normal Empyreal currency, but there were a few that she didn't recognize. "You get her address?"

"Oh, sure—real fancy neighborhood in Magasca." He jerked a thumb at the scorer. "The problem is that he doesn't want to go there."

"Me, in a fancy neighborhood?" the scorer chimed in, looking plaintively at Chandris. "Come on. I wouldn't fit in there. Someone'd call the police before I even got to the door."

"And I told you that no one would accuse you of stealing them," the targ said, starting to sound a little annoyed. "She told me herself she lost them."

"All I want is for him to take them there," the scorer said, still to Chandris. "He'd be okay up there, now, wouldn't he?" He looked at the targ, almost sadly. "Fit right in with the rich people."

"But it's your money," the targ insisted. "Five hundred ruya. I can't take that."

"So just give me part of it," the scorer said. "I'll sell 'em to you right now." Again, he pushed his hand toward the targ. "I'll take whatever you want to give me."

The targ looked helplessly at Chandris, back at the scorer. "But I don't have that kind of money with me."

"I'll take whatever you can give me," the scorer said again, more plaintively this time.

"But—"

"May I see them?" Chandris put in. Before the scorer could react, she plucked the coins out of his hand, sorting the unfamiliar ones out for a close look. It was a variant on the old antique ring score she'd pulled a number of times: the scorer would get whatever he could, leaving the targ with a phony address and a fist full of worthless coins.

Which he obviously thought were worth a five-hundred-ruya reward. If she went ahead and confirmed their value, she would have her contact with the scorer clinched. Her contact, and the doorway she needed to get out of here.

"Okay, look," the targ said suddenly, reaching for his wallet. "I've got—I don't know; maybe sixty ruya on me. If that's really all you want I'll go ahead and take them. But I'd be glad—really—to just go out to Magasca with you so that you can get the whole thing." He reached into his wallet and began counting through the bills.