Timothy Zahn - Angelmass

"I don't know for sure," Kosta admitted. "But try this. An angel has a huge negative charge, which means that as soon as it's created it starts pulling positively charged particles to it."

"Which is what creates the matter shell," Chandris put in.

"Right," Kosta nodded. "And the most common positive particles out there are the protons and helium nuclei from the solar wind, plus heavier particles from Angelmass itself."

Gyasi muttered something startled sounding. "Of course. Of course."

"Of course what?" Chandris demanded, looking back and forth between them.

"Anti-angels would be positively charged," Gyasi told her, his voice the sour tone of someone who's just failed a child's brain-tweaker. "That means they would be pulling mostly electrons. And electrons, being a lot lighter than protons, will get yanked in to it that much faster."

"Which means an anti-angel could go neutral so fast that your average huntership would never even see it," Kosta concluded.

"So simple." Gyasi shook his head. "You said you had a theory about Angelmass. Did it have something to do with possible structure?"

"I don't know," Kosta said. "Maybe."

"Well, spit it out," Chandris said.

Kosta braced himself. "What would you say," he said, "if I told you I think Angelmass has become sentient?"

For a long minute the only sound in the room was the humming of the computer cooling fans. "I'd probably say you'd been working too hard," Gyasi said at last. "Jereko, it's a black hole. A fruitcake would have more chance of spontaneously developing sentience than it would."

"Would it?" Kosta countered. "You're forgetting Che and his nine angels."

"Easy," Gyasi warned, jerking his head urgently toward Chandris. "We're keeping that quiet, remember?"

"Keeping what quiet?" Chandris asked.

"Che Kruyrov found that a cubic array of nine angels mimics a Lantryllyn logic circuit," Kosta told her. "That was a system that people once thought could form the basis for a fully sentient computer."

Chandris blinked. "So now your quanta of good have become quanta of sentience?"

"We don't know what it means," Gyasi said, looking pained. "But I'm sure it doesn't mean you can make a jump from a single Lantryllyn circuit straight to a sentient black hole."

"It attacks hunterships," Kosta said flatly. "It's done it twice, firing dead-on at moving targets."

"Maybe more than twice," Chandris said, staring at the white line as the image on the screen continued its slow rotation. "You said there were other radiation surges before the one that hit the Hova's Skyarcher. Were they all pointed at hunterships?"

"I don't know," Kosta said grimly. "We'll have to check on that. And it's had to alter its internal structure and even its gravitational field to do so."

"A black hole hasn't got an internal structure," Gyasi snapped.

"Then it's altered its event-horizon environment," Kosta said. "I don't know what the hell it's doing, or how it's doing it. But you can't deny it is doing something."

Gyasi snorted. "Next you're going to try to tell me this has some bearing on the increase in angel production you calculated."

"As a matter or fact, I'm sure it does," Kosta said. "Hawking radiation is caused by strong tidal forces at the event horizon. A side effect of Angelmass's gravitational and radiation surges could well be an increase in the number of angels it turns out."

Gyasi exhaled loudly, looking back at the display showing the rotating vector field. Kosta stirred, as if preparing to speak; Chandris touched his arm warningly, and he subsided.

"So what do we do?" Gyasi asked at last. "We put something like this on the net and we're going to have a lot of scared people out there."

"Agreed," Kosta said. "I was thinking of telling Director Podolak and a couple of others. Dr.

Qhahenlo, certainly, and probably Che and Dr. Frashni, too."

"What are you going to use for data?" Chandris asked.

Kosta frowned at her. "What do you mean? The angel, of course."

"The Daviees' angel?" she asked pointedly. "The one it's illegal for them to have?"

"Yes, the—" Kosta broke off. "Illegal?"

"I looked it up earlier, while I was waiting for you to show," Chandris told him. "Angel hunters are required by law to turn in any angel they find."

Gyasi waved a hand impatiently. "Sure, but in this case—"

"No," Chandris said flatly.

"She's right," Kosta seconded. "They've got enough trouble right now, with Hanan in the hospital and a half-wrecked ship." He looked at Chandris. "Anyway, I promised we'd put the angel back when we were done testing it."

"Then what do we do?" Gyasi asked.

"We dig up some independent data," Kosta said. "Let's start by seeing if we can find evidence of antiangels."

He reached for the terminal; checked the motion with a muttered curse. "Yaezon, if you would?" he said. "Check for me when the last time was anyone went out looking for one."

"We've done a complete bio-chemical analysis on Mr. Ronyon," the white-jacketed doctor said, punching keys on the nurses' station computer. "There are still remnants of the stress-created chemicals, but we can't find anything that might have triggered the stress itself. We're still waiting on the results of the neural scan, but I'm not expecting to find anything." He paused, just noticeably.

"Aside from the obvious malfunctions in a brain like his, of course."

"Then what caused it?" Forsythe asked.

"I'm afraid I don't know," the doctor conceded. "Though with someone with Mr. Ronyon's congenital problems, I imagine things like this just happen every now and again."

"No," Forsythe said icily. "They don't."

The doctor blinked as he looked into Forsythe's eyes. What he saw there made him shrink back a little. "My apologies, High Senator," he said hastily. "I didn't mean it that way."

"This was not something random caused by his physical or mental disabilities," Forsythe continued in the same tone of voice. "Something happened to him out there. I want to know what."

The doctor bobbed his head nervously. "Of course, High Senator, of course. We'll do all we can."

"I expect nothing less." The woman manning the nurses' station, Forsythe noted peripherally, was puttering around in the back of her alcove, striving to look invisible. "When can I see him?"

"Ah... not until morning, I'm afraid," the doctor said. "I mean, you could see him, but he won't be awake until then. The neural scans require the subject to be sedated—"

"I understand," Forsythe cut him off. "I'll see you in the morning."

The doctor gulped. "Certainly. Until morning, then."

He turned and hurried down the corridor toward Ronyon's room and the examination room beyond.

Forsythe watched him go, thinking quietly contemptuous thoughts in his direction. He disappeared through the doorway, and Forsythe turned around—

"You were a little hard on him, weren't you?" Pirbazari commented quietly.

"I'm not going to stand here and let him push off what happened on vague he-was-born-that-way excuses," Forsythe said tartly, moving away from the nurses' station. "Nothing like that has ever happened to him before. I want an explanation."

"I wasn't there, so I can't comment on what happened," Pirbazari said diplomatically. "I would merely suggest that jumping down the doctor's throat isn't going to help."

"The fear of God can do wonders for someone's motivation," Forsythe growled.

"Or else freeze them up completely."

"You let me worry about that," Forsythe said shortly. "What's happening with the Angelmass gravitational data?"

"It's been collected, compiled, and sent on to Kosta," Pirbazari said, his voice going a little grimmer.

"And I'm no expert, but it's obvious even to me that something weird is going on out there. I've got a copy if you want to take a look."