"Well, never mind," Ornina said, her eyes traveling up and down the white dress Chandris had escaped the s.p.a.ceport in, a dress now streaked with dust and dirt. "Whatever you had probably wouldn't have been very practical for s.p.a.ce, anyway. After dinner we'll go to the outfitters and get you some proper coveralls."

"That would be wonderful." Chandris hesitated. "I really want to thank you-both of you," she added, looking at Hanan, "for giving me this chance. I won't let you down."

"I'm sure you won't," Ornina said softly. "Better go with Hanan, now. You've got a lot of reading to do before we lift in the morning."

"All right." Chandris turned to Hanan, still waiting in the doorway, and smiled. She'd done it; she'd actually done it. "I'm ready."

And as he led the way down the narrow, metal-walled corridor, she smiled again. This time to herself.

CHAPTER 9.

The database codes were simple enough to learn, the system itself considerably less so. It took Kosta over an hour to bend his Pax-oriented computer habits enough to use the Empyreal system without mis-keying every second command.

It took him the rest of the day to sort through the index of files on angels and Angelma.s.s. Not the files themselves, just the index.

The sun was disappearing behind the squat buildings of Shikari City when he finally pushed his chair back from his desk, shoulders aching with fatigue and another, far different, tension. The database stretched back nearly thirty years: fifty years after Seraph's colonization, and a hundred fifty since the first group of breakaway colonists had arrived at Uhuru. Back then, Angelma.s.s had been nothing more than a violently radiating quantum black hole, with the angels themselves little more than exotic curiosities for quantum theorists to argue about. It had only been in the past twenty years that all that had changed.

Which meant it had taken less than twenty years for the researchers from five underpopulated planets to ama.s.s all this.

Kosta had seen research projects tackled with single-minded intensity before. But this bordered on obsession.

He looked out the window at the buildings silhouetted against the brilliantly colored sky, a chill running up his back. No; this didn't border on anything. It was an obsession.

There was no other explanation. The Inst.i.tute, the vast rows of hunterships and their support facilities to the northeast, the whole of Shikari City-the Empyreals had poured incredible amounts of time and effort and money into this angel thing. Were still pouring time and effort and money into it.

As all the while, unnoticed under their feet, the city of Magasca lay rotting.

He shivered again. He hadn't believed-perhaps hadn't wanted to believe-that the angels were really the threat the Pax claimed they were. Now, for the first time, he did. Slowly but surely, the angels were indeed taking over the Empyrean. The political leaders were already under angel influence; now, he saw, so were the Empyrean's best scientists and researchers.

In fact, it was entirely possible that he was already too late to stop it.

It was a horrifying thought. But all the signs were there. Every Pax official he'd met during the course of his training had been grimly, deadly serious about stopping the spread of this alien influence. They'd emphasized the need to rescue the Empyreals and bring them under Pax protection; and they'd made it abundantly clear the Pax would do whatever it took to achieve that end. It was a message the Empyrean's leaders could hardly have failed to understand.

And yet, there'd been nothing but the most basic ident.i.ty check at the Seraph s.p.a.ceport. No check of any sort at the Inst.i.tute itself. Director Podolak, head of the supposedly most important project in the Empyrean, had cheerfully welcomed him into the center of that project without so much as a single question about his qualifications or background or expertise.

His instructors had told him the Empyreals refused to understand the threat posed by the angels. Now, Kosta saw, they were equally blind to the threat posed by the Pax itself.

It didn't make sense... unless the alien influence was stronger than anyone realized. Unless everyone in the Empyrean had already been affected. Had already been turned into an unconcerned, pa.s.sive, happyface robot.

For a long minute Kosta stared out his window at the sunset, turning that thought over and over in his mind as the flat, scaly clouds slowly changed from brilliant fire-red to light pink to dark gray. But-No, he told himself firmly. If that conniving little stowaway back at the s.p.a.ceport had been a pa.s.sive happyface robot, then Kosta was a frog.

The people of the Empyrean could still be saved. It was up to him to do it.

Hunching his shoulders back in one final stretch, he returned to his desk, arching his fingers over the keyboard. He was still gazing at the display, considering his next move, when the door abruptly swung open and a young man strode into the room, his nose buried in a sheaf of papers balanced on one hand.

"h.e.l.lo," Kosta said.

The other looked up in surprise. "Oh. h.e.l.lo," he nodded. "Sorry-I wasn't expecting company."

"Well, I'm not exactly company," Kosta told him cautiously, wondering how the other was going to take this invasion of his. .h.i.therto private office. "More the officemate type, actually. I've just been moved in."

The other broke into a grin. "No kidding? That's great. I've been asking the director for months for some company." Stepping to Kosta's desk, he stuck his hand across it. "Yaezon Gyasi."

"Uh-Jereko Kosta," Kosta replied, staring at the outstretched hand for a split second before recovering and reaching out to touch the other's fingertips. He'd expected that, as the newcomer here, the proper gesture would be the fingertips-to-palm respect thing he'd done with Director Podolak; but Gyasi had instead initiated the greeting used between equals. Either Kosta still didn't grasp all the nuances of Empyreal culture or Gyasi was just a naturally friendly person. "I'm honored to meet you."

"As am I," Gyasi said. Stepping over to his own cluttered desk, he dropped his sheaf of papers onto a pile of similar ones and swiveled his chair around to face Kosta. "So. Welcome to Seraph and the Angelma.s.s Studies Inst.i.tute, and all that. Where are you from?"

"Palitaine, on Lorelei," Kosta said, reeling off his cover story with practiced ease. "Originally. I've spent the past few years doing graduate studies on Balmoral."

"Whereabouts?"

"Clarkston University in Cairngorm," Kosta said, mentally crossing his fingers. If Gyasi-or anyone else at the Inst.i.tute, for that matter-had ever been to Clarkston themselves, there could be trouble. "You've probably never even heard of it," he added.

"Oh, no, I've heard of it," Gyasi nodded. "Never met anyone who went there, but it's supposed to be a pretty good school. Nicely landscaped, too, I hear."

"It is that," Kosta agreed, relaxing again. This part was easy-he'd spent a couple of days on Lorelei researching both Clarkston and Cairngorm, and probably knew them better than anyone on Seraph who hadn't actually lived there. "Sort of like the Inst.i.tute's grounds here, though on a larger scale."

Gyasi nodded. "I'm from Uhuru, myself. Rungwe, to be exact-it's a few hundred kilometers west of Ts...o...b..." Rolling his chair toward Kosta's desk, he craned his neck to look at the computer display, still showing the end of the file listing. "I see you've been getting your feet wet. Impressive, isn't it?"

"Very," Kosta nodded. "One might say overwhelming."

Gyasi chuckled. "One might, indeed. You want overwhelming, though, just wait until you get a close look at Angelma.s.s itself. The next survey flight's going out in a couple of days. You coming along?"

"Probably depends on whether I've gotten more funding by then."

"Ah." Gyasi gave him a knowing look. "Yes, we get a lot of that around here. The High Senate's funding tends to palpitate a lot. You know the routine: small but loud group starts screaming about the government pouring extra money into angel research when they're already paying Gabriel's ridiculous prices for the things."

Kosta shrugged, thinking about the slums of Magasca. "Not necessarily an unreasonable argument," he said. "Especially with the Pax out there breathing down our necks."

Gyasi waved a hand in a gesture of scorn. "The Pax is no big deal. There's no way they can conquer us, and they're too madly in love with money and profit to destroy us."

"Unless they see us as a threat," Kosta pointed out, annoyed in spite of himself at having the Pax so casually dismissed. "My understanding is that they consider the angels to be alien intelligences in the process of invasion."

Gyasi snorted gently. "I know people in Rungwe who think that, too. A pity, particularly when there are so many more interesting theories to choose from." He c.o.c.ked an eyebrow. "You were told, weren't you, that we're not supposed to discuss angel theories with people outside the Inst.i.tute?"

"Not specifically, no," Kosta said, wounded pride vanishing in a surge of interest. Angel theories, plural?

"Well, consider yourself told," Gyasi said. "That goes for any other findings, too. You can write them up on the Inst.i.tute's own net, but nothing gets released outside without prior approval."

"I understand." That was more like it. Maybe the Empyreals had some understanding of security after all.

"Good," Gyasi said. "It's no big deal, really, but after the Flizh embarra.s.sment it's been standard policy to hash things out in private before we let the public in on the party."

"I understand." Kosta took a deep breath, phrasing his next question carefully- "So what specifically are you going to be working on?" Gyasi asked.

"Uh..." With an effort, Kosta shifted gears. "First thing will be a lit search. I've more or less volunteered to see if anyone's ever proved that it's the central particle alone that const.i.tutes an angel, as opposed to the particle plus its acc.u.mulated matter sh.e.l.l."

Gyasi frowned. "The angel's the central particle, of course. What does the ion sh.e.l.l have to do with it?"

Kosta shrugged. "Maybe nothing. Maybe a great deal. Either way, I'd like to find out for sure."

Gyasi peered at him. "You're not trying to revive Chandkari's old theory, are you? I thought that died its final death five years ago."

"I'm just looking for the truth," Kosta said, feeling a sheen of sweat breaking out on his forehead and wishing he knew who Chandkari was. It had probably been somewhere in the list he'd just waded through. "I'd like to keep an open mind while I do it."

"Yeah." Gyasi shrugged. "Well. An open mind is a nice thing to have, but don't forget that certain kinds of junk make it fill up real fast."

"Sure," Kosta agreed. "I just have a hard time believing that a single sub-atomic particle could create the kind of ethical effect angels are supposed to have."

"A lot of us do," Gyasi nodded. "That's what makes Dr. Qhahenlo's Acchaa theory so attractive. It fits the data, makes real, verifiable predictions, and practically requires that the angels be single particles." He jabbed a finger at Kosta. "Mark my words: in three years-four at the outside-the physicists will be scrambling to see how the Acchaa theory fits into Reynold's Unified."

"That'll be worth seeing, all right," Kosta agreed, allowing himself to feel a bit patronizing. In the Pax, the Grand Unified Theory had been modified and tacked onto so many times that it wasn't even called by Reynold's name any more. "Do I have to wait until then to hear what this Acchaa theory's all about?"

Gyasi grinned. "No. You're a member of the club now." The grin faded into a slight frown. "You don't mean you've never heard anything about the Acchaa theory, do you? I mean-" he waved a hand, encompa.s.sing either the room or the whole Inst.i.tute-"you're here. Right?"

Kosta shrugged, thinking furiously. "Like I said, I wanted to come to Seraph with an open mind," he improvised. "Anyway, I figured half the theories I could have read about back on Balmoral would have been thrown out the window by the time I got here."

"Point," Gyasi conceded. "We are talking about Balmoral, after all."

"Cute," Kosta growled, remembering this time to stick to his role.

Gyasi grinned. "Sorry. Elitist condescension dies hard, you know."

The grin vanished, his expression becoming serious. "You see, the thing is that the angels can't be just another subatomic particle. If they were, they couldn't possibly be stable, not with that kind of ma.s.s and charge. That's why the Acchaa theory works so well; according to it, they're actually quanta-basic building blocks, just like photons and electrons. And quanta, by definition, have to be stable. You see?"

"I do know a little something about quantum theory, thank you," Kosta said, perhaps a little too dryly. "Balmoral isn't that far behind the times. So what exactly are they supposed to be quanta of?"

Gyasi seemed to brace himself. "They're quanta," he said, "of what mankind has always called good."

For a long minute Kosta just stared at him, the word ricocheting around his brain like an angry gra.s.shopper trying to escape from a jar. "This is a joke," he heard himself say. "Right? It's a joke you play on newcomers."

Gyasi shook his head. "It's no joke, my friend." He gestured to Kosta's display. "Look it up yourself if you like-there are enough papers on the Acchaa theory to require two separate listings."

Kosta's brain was still spinning. "That's crazy," he told Gyasi. "Good and evil, aren't something you can quantize."

"Why not?" Gyasi asked.

"Why not?" Kosta clamped his teeth tightly together. "Come on, Gyasi. Good and evil don't exist in a vacuum-they're the results of things people do."

Gyasi held his hands out, palms upward. "Light is the result of hydrogen molecules fusing in the center of a star," he pointed out. "Or of someone flicking a switch. That doesn't mean that light isn't quantized."

"That's a fallacious argument," Kosta insisted. "You're talking about two entirely separate things."

"How so?"

"Well..." Kosta floundered a moment. "Well, for one thing, photons of light are the same everywhere. There's no such universal standard for defining good and evil. It's all culturally based."

"Interesting argument," Gyasi nodded. "Does that mean, then, that there aren't any common definitions of good and evil among human societies?"

Kosta eyed him, sensing a trap. "You tell me," he challenged. "You're obviously the expert."

"Oh, hardly," Gyasi shook his head. "But like everyone else here I've given it a lot of thought over the past few years. And if I haven't got all the answers, I have come up with some interesting questions."

"Such as?"

"Such as how good people can continue to exist in a culture that most outside observers would label as evil. And not just exist, sometimes, but actually turn the whole direction of the culture around."

"Big deal," Kosta growled. "Evil people can do that too."

Gyasi nodded. "Exactly. The reverse of the same coin. Then there are a whole group of questions that I guess would fall into a 'folk medicine' sort of category. You know-little bits of advice that people pa.s.s along generational lines; things they accept as true even if they don't understand the mechanism involved. The standard mothers' warning against getting into bad company, for instance, or the idea that you can change a person's character if you put in the time and effort and love to do it. Or even the question of whether there's some deeper physical significance to the fact that good is so often equated with light, which is itself quantized."

Kosta blinked. "Huh?"

Gyasi grinned. "Never mind. I just tossed that one in to see if you were still paying attention."

"Trust me," Kosta a.s.sured him. "But this still doesn't make any sense. You've got the whole thing backwards."

"Do I?" Gyasi asked, serious again. "Well, then, try looking at it this way: what's the difference-the observational difference, I mean-between a person doing something bad and therefore creating evil; and the evil influencing the person to then go and do something bad?"

Kosta stared at him, searching for a quick and glib answer. He couldn't find one. "It's still backwards," he finally said.

"There are parts of it that bother me, too," Gyasi admitted. "The concept of free will, for one thing, which I'm not quite ready to give up on. But I can't give up on Acchaa, either." He gestured around him. "Because the angels work."

Kosta dropped his eyes to his display. "Doc.u.mented?" he asked. "I mean, really doc.u.mented?"

"We've got data from five hundred thirty-eight High Senators who were in office both before and after the law requiring them to wear angels," Gyasi said. "Over a third of them had occasionally or frequently skated to the edge of ethical and legal behavior. Influence peddling, abuse of power, financial irregularities-you know the list. Now, twenty years later, that sort of thing just doesn't happen. Some of them took years to change; but they did change."

"Maybe it was peer pressure," Kosta suggested, uncomfortably aware that he was grasping at straws. "Or better public awareness of their activities that caused them to back off."

"The people who did the studies didn't think so," Gyasi said. "The reports are there-go ahead and look them up."

Kosta looked up from the display, shook his head. Quanta of good... "Sorry, but I still don't buy it."

Gyasi shrugged. "You're welcome to try and prove the theory wrong," he said equably. "That's what science is all about. Personally, I had enough philosophical struggles before the angels and Acchaa came along. I wouldn't especially mind if this particular complication got eliminated."

He leaned forward, an odd expression on his face. "But while you and your open mind are trying to find another explanation, take a little time to consider the possibilities if this really is true. The chances we'll have to finally get at the root cause of evil and injustice in the universe."

"What do you mean?" Kosta asked, easing back in his chair. The other's sudden intensity was unnerving.

"Suppose we can find a way to create the same effect without having to have angels physically on hand, for instance," Gyasi said earnestly. "That's one of the things my group's working on: trying to isolate the physical mechanism that the angels use to alter brain chemistry or neural structure. Dr. Shivaprasad's group, downstairs in Basic Research, is trying to devise a way of detecting the presence of natural angels in people; Dr. MaecDavz and his group are doing the same thing from another direction, trying to see if angels can leave residual field effects of themselves in physical objects. Think of what that might mean for the interpretation of history or current events."

Abruptly, he broke off. "Sorry," he apologized, looking a little sheepish. "I sometimes lie in bed at night having imaginary arguments with the people out there who'd try to shut us down as blasphemers if they knew what we were doing and thinking here. Sometimes those arguments leak out a little."