Timothy Zahn - Angelmass

"You still believe that?" Chandris asked. "The invasion part, I mean?"

"I don't know," Kosta admitted. "A week ago I would have said no. Now... I don't know." He gestured to the angel box beside him. "That's why I need to borrow the Daviees' angel."

"Is this test of yours important?"

"Very important. Possibly even critical."

"Then why don't you just shoot me and take it?"

Kosta felt his stomach curl up inside him. He'd completely forgotten about the shocker pressed against his right palm. "I didn't think you could see it from there," he said between suddenly stiff lips.

"I know what it looks like when someone's palming something," Chandris said. "You haven't answered my question."

Kosta swallowed, his heart suddenly pounding in his ears. She was right, he realized. At this range, with the shocker still set for wide field, a single shot would take out the light, the cutting torch, and Chandris herself.

A simple, casual tap on the firing stud, and he would be free. He could take the angel, run his tests, then escape back across the Empyrean to Lorelei. There he could hide; and when the Komitadji returned he would be able to face them all with the knowledge that he had succeeded beyond all their expectations. Even Telthorst would have to wipe that smirk off his face then.

He squinted past the light, to where Chandris waited silently with her torch. A torch she could have fired, but didn't... and belatedly it dawned on him that she was running a test of her own here. A test just as critical as the one he had planned for the Daviees' angel.

"I didn't come to the Empyrean to kill people, Chandris," he said quietly as he set the safety on the shocker. Dropping the weapon on the floor, he kicked it her direction. "I came here to help."

For another minute the room was quiet. Then, to Kosta's surprise, the light dazzling his eyes went out. "The light switch is beside the door," Chandris said.

Kosta found it and flicked it on. Behind the light stand she'd rigged up, Chandris was standing by the storage room wall. There was no sign of any cutting torch. "What's this test you want to run?" she asked.

Kosta glanced down. The shocker was still lying on the deck where he'd kicked it. "I want to measure the angel's mass," he said, looking up again. "I think it may help us figure out what's happening to Angelmass."

"You mean with these surges?"

"The surges, and a theoretically impossible shift in its gravitational field," Kosta said. "That's what I was talking to High Senator Forsythe about after we landed."

"You know what's going on?"

"I've got an idea," Kosta said grimly. "I hope I'm wrong."

For a long moment she studied him. Then, abruptly, she nodded. "All right. But you have to promise the angel won't be damaged."

"There's no danger of that," Kosta assured her. "None of the tests I want to run will hurt it."

"And I have to be with the angel at all times." Reaching down, Chandris picked up the shocker.

"Here—put this away somewhere," she said, tossing it to Kosta.

He almost fumbled it in his surprise. "Don't you want to keep it?" he asked. "I mean, as a guarantee of my good behavior?"

She snorted. "Good behavior be nurked. If you think I'm going to risk getting caught with a Pax weapon on me, you're crazy." She brushed past him. "Come on—the angel's in a carrying case in my room. You've got three hours to do your tests."

On the display screen Kosta's friend Gyasi straightened up from the big shiny box and busied himself for a moment with an inset keyboard. He watched it another moment, then turned and gave a thumbs-up signal to the monitor camera before walking out of its range. "Okay, he's got it running,"

Kosta said, half under his breath. "We'll know in a few minutes."

Chandris nodded, looking at the big box still centered on the screen, and the other equipment stacked on the table behind it. All that, just to measure the weight of a tiny little angel. "How much smaller than the other angels do you think it'll be?"

He sighed. "I don't know," he said. "According to everything we think we know about quantum theory it shouldn't have lost any mass. By definition, a quantum is as small as that particular package can be. Unless Dr. Qhahenlo's quantum bundle theory is right. But I've never really liked the mathematics she used to cook that one up."

"So who decided it had to be a quantum?"

"It's a subatomic particle with a mass in the quadrillions of AMUs," he said. "Nothing that big has any business being stable unless it simply can't break down into smaller pieces."

"So who decided it had to behave like everything else you've ever found?" she persisted. "And don't give me any of that 'if you were an expert you'd understand' crapsy."

"I wasn't going to," Kosta said. But he was staring hard at the display, his forehead furrowed with concentration. "I wish I knew, Chandris. But I don't. I'm not sure I know anything at all."

She thought about that, watching him out of the corner of her eye. "Your masters aren't going to be very happy with you, are they?" she commented at last.

He snorted in derision. But even as he did, the vague demons swirling across his face seemed to recede a little. "I'm beyond caring what they think of me," he said. "What gave me away, if you don't mind my asking?"

She snorted. "What didn't give you away? You might as well have hung a sign around your neck saying you didn't belong here. That background story you spun for Hanan and Ornina was part of it.

Too good and too well-memorized for an amateur con man, but without the flair a professional would have put into it."

Kosta nodded. "I could tell there was something about it that bothered you. I guess my trainers didn't expect me to run into someone with your expertise."

"But it was that snide comment you made about aphrodisiacal perfumes that finally cracked me into you," Chandris went on. "I'd never heard of anything like that, but I didn't get around to checking up on it until tonight. Turns out they don't exist. At least, not in the Empyrean."

"Aphrodisiacal perfumes," Kosta said ruefully. "I don't even remember making that comment."

"You did. Trust me."

"Oh, I believe you," he said. "I'm not all that surprised I did, either. Too much information was the number-one fatal error on my trainers' list. Given the rest of my record, it was inevitable I'd trip over the most amateurish mistake in the book."

Chandris was still trying to come up with a response to that one that wouldn't sound too sarcastic when the door opened behind them and Gyasi came in. "Anything?" he asked, nodding toward the computer display.

"Not yet," Kosta told him, leaning forward and tapping a key. "Still working the baseline."

"This mass tracer's always been a little slow," Gyasi said as he slid into the chair beside Kosta.

"While we wait, you might want to take a look at the package that just came in for you."

Kosta sat up straighter in his seat. "The huntership data from High Senator Forsythe?"

"I didn't see a name on it," Gyasi said. "Sending address was Angelmass Central, though. I wasn't sure if your files would be accessible, given your funding freeze, so I dumped it into one of mine.

You want me to pull it up for you?"

"Please."

Gyasi swiveled a terminal over and keyed in a command. "So this is from a High Senator, huh? I swear, Jereko, you're getting more interesting stuff done since your funding froze than you ever did when things were purring along."

"You have no idea," Kosta said, hunching a little closer to the display. "Here it comes."

Chandris frowned at the screen. A fuzzy ball made up of short multicolored vector lines had appeared in the center, rotating slowly around its vertical axis. "I was right," Kosta said softly.