It was a valid enough point, in its way. Probably the one they'd used to talk him into this mission in the first place, though he didn't remember that conversation very clearly. He did remember they'd made a big deal about his tridoctorum degree including neural physiology along with astrophysics and tech design, and there did seem to be a fair amount of neural data in the Inst.i.tute's files.

But surely there were other people in the Pax with as much expertise and better social polish. If Chandris was at all representative of the average Empyreal, he was probably d.a.m.ned lucky he'd even made it to Seraph without being exposed for who and what he was.

Unless that was exactly what they'd wanted.

For a long minute he stared out the window, not seeing anything at all. Could that really be what all this was about? Not a research mission at all, but just some kind of throwaway decoy to cover up the Komitadji's real operation?

Because if it was, his life wasn't worth the plastic his phony ID was printed on. He'd be caught-sure as anything he'd be caught. They'd have made sure of that.

Behind him, the door opened.

He jumped, twisting awkwardly in the air, hand clawing uselessly for the shocker buried out of reach in the bottom of his pocket. He came down, trying to land in the combat stance they'd taught him- "Hi, Jereko," Gyasi said absently, barely glancing up from the printout balanced across his left forearm as he ambled into the room and over to his desk chair. "What's new?"

Kosta swallowed hard, knees trembling with relief and reaction. "Nothing much," he said, striving to sound casual.

He obviously didn't succeed. Midway through turning a page Gyasi looked up, a frown on his face. "You okay?"

"Sure," Kosta said. "Fine."

"Uh-huh." Gyasi peered at him. "Come on, what's wrong?"

"It's something personal," Kosta told him, hearing the edge in his voice. "I just need some time to think."

Gyasi frowned a little harder, but then shrugged. "Okay, sure. You need someone to talk to, I'm right here."

"Sure."

Gyasi threw him a quick smile and, for all practical purposes, disappeared back into his printout.

Kosta watched him for a moment. Then, with an effort, he made his way back to his own chair, feeling both relieved and more than a little foolish. Of course the Pax hadn't thrown him to the sharks-the whole idea was crazy. Aside from anything else, this mission must have cost a fantastic amount of money. And if there was one thing everyone knew about the Pax, it was that no one in government deliberately threw away fantastic amounts of money. Not with the Adjutors hovering like hungry vultures over everything they did.

No, what they must have been counting on was something far more subtle: namely, the non-suspicious att.i.tude the angels seemed to create in their subjects. It was the same mindset that had allowed him to breeze through interplanetary Empyreal customs and into a sensitive facility without his credentials ever being challenged, and it would very likely allow him to gloss over any cultural blunders as well. At least, with anyone who mattered.

"Oh, by the way," Gyasi said, looking up again, "what's the status of that angel-production paper I keep nagging you about? Anything new?"

"The research is done," Kosta told him. "I'll be writing it up this afternoon."

Gyasi's eyebrows went up. "Great. I'd like to show a copy to Dr. Qhahenlo before you put it on the net, if I may."

"Sure."

After all, the reason he'd joined this mission in the first place had been to help free the Empyreals from alien domination. Risky though it might be to draw attention to himself, it might be the only way to shake up the general complacency around him. To try and get the people in charge to take a good, hard look at their most basic a.s.sumptions.

And as to the other part of his mission...

"Speaking of Dr. Qhahenlo," he said, "is that offer from her still open?"

"I'm sure it is. You looking to join the team?"

"I'd at least like to do some consulting," Kosta said. "You people know so much more than I do

about angels, and there's a lot I still need to learn."

"Great," Gyasi smiled, getting to his feet. "Let's go talk to her."

Kosta stood up, too, forcing a smile of his own. And wondered uneasily why the deception seemed

to hurt his stomach.

CHAPTER 17.

"Well, we're off," Ornina said, tucking the flat angel holding box solidly under her arm as she made yet another adjustment to her floppy-brimmed hat. A horrendous hat, to Chandris's way of thinking, but Ornina obviously liked it. "We should be back within four hours at the latest."

"Sooner than that if the couplers at Glazrene's are down to their usual standard of quality," Hanan added, twirling his credit-line card around in his fingers with obviously strained patience as he waited for his sister to finish her primping. "Still, hope springs eternal, or some such thing."

Chandris nodded silently, her eyes on the spinning card. It was a strangely fascinating routine, very much like the palm-and-switch techniques of the three card monte scorers she'd known in the Barrio. Someday she would have to ask Hanan where he'd learned how to do that.

"Well, come on, Hanan," Ornina said briskly. "Let's get this show on the road. Good-bye, Chandris; we'll see you later. Enjoy the silence."

They headed outside and down the outer stairway. Chandris stood there, listening... and a minute later heard the sound of the TransTruck driving off down the street.

And she was alone. Alone with the Gazelle. Alone with several million ruya worth of equipment.

Alone with the angel.

For several minutes she just wandered the aft part of the ship, listening as her footsteps punctuated the now familiar sounds of the Gazelle at rest. But only the quieter sounds: engines and pumps, generators and fans. There was none of the music Ornina always played while she worked; none of Hanan's alleged singing and distinctive, slightly clumping walk.

She was alone. In the silence.

With the angel.

The samovar in the galley was, as usual, simmering gently with one of Ornina's long repertoire of tea blends. Peppermint, this one, a drink Chandris had developed a particular taste for over the past four weeks. She helped herself to a cup, throwing in an extra stick of peppermint, and carried it carefully up to the control cabin. There, amid the quietly glowing displays and flickering status boards, she pulled the restraint straps away from her chair and sat down.

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, a.s.suming that the Daviees had wanted her to be near it for as long as possible during that first trip out to Angelma.s.s. 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 h.e.l.l 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. a.s.suming 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 G.o.d of thieves, the opportunity dropped straight into her lap.

It was a score in progress; the body language of the two partic.i.p.ants showed that as clearly as if there'd been a sign hanging over them. One, dressed in shabby lower-cla.s.s clothing, held something cupped in his hand as the other, upper-middle-cla.s.s 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, s.n.a.t.c.hing 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.

Maybe it was the offer to escort the scorer to Magasca to claim his reward that did it. Or maybe it was the earnest expression on his face as he pulled out the money, an expression that somehow reminded her of Ornina hunched over a circuit board.

But whatever it was, something deep inside Chandris suddenly snapped.

"I'd save my money, if I were you," she spoke up, dumping the coins into the hand that had been outstretched to take the targ's money. "These things aren't worth anything."

The targ blinked. "What?"

"I said they aren't worth anything," she repeated, watching the scorer out of the corner of her eye. At the moment he looked as if he'd been hit in the face with a brick, but the shock wouldn't last long. And with his cord popped he might decide to flip this over into a straight robbery. "I know what I'm talking about," she added. "My father used to collect coins."

"But the woman said she'd pay five hundred ruya to get them back," the targ protested, still not ready to believe it. "She said she'd put an ad on the nets to get them back."

"Ads with her phone number on them?"

The targ looked at the scorer, back at Chandris. "I suppose so," he said. "She didn't say."

"Probably someone's idea of a stupid joke," Chandris shrugged. "They read the ad, got a half-ruya's worth of coins together, and dropped it with her number on the envelope." She let her gaze sweep the area. "In fact, he might be watching right now to see what happens."

"Lousy thing to do," the targ growled, looking around as he stuffed his money back into his wallet. "Getting that woman's hopes up for nothing. I suppose I ought to call her back and explain."

Except that the hook would be long gone from whatever phone she'd been using. And if the targ tumbled now, the scorer would be in for it. "I wouldn't bother," Chandris said off-handedly as the targ put his wallet away and reached for his phone. "It'll teach her not to put phone numbers on the net instead of a netsign where she'd know who was at the other end."

"But-"

"And anyway," the scorer chimed in, "you call back now and tell her they're not worth nothing and she might think you're just trying to steal them."