Part 32 (1/2)

thing, and he'd really been trying to. ”I didn't know angels felt like anything in particular,” he said.

”Some people can't tell the flavors of different mushrooms apart either,” Chandris said tartly. ”I don't know how I can tell if an angel's there. I just can. The High Senator's wearing a fake. Period.”

Kosta's gaze drifted away from her face, his mind spinning with sudden uncertainties. The

underlying basis of this whole mission had been the Pax a.s.sertion that the Empyreal leaders.h.i.+p was coming under the influence of alien intelligences. But if that wasn't true-if the High Senators were not, in fact, wearing angels-then that threat evaluation was way off target.

Unless Forsythe had engineered this deception on his own. In which case, he was blatantly defying Empyreal law, for some reason of his own. Having second thoughts about the angels, perhaps?

Either way, it was a situation worth following up on. Which meant, unfortunately, that he was again going to have to avoid rocking the boat. ”I won't tell the Daviees about it,” he said, knowing full well that Chandris was going to take this wrong. ”Not now, anyway. But I'll be keeping an eye on Ronyon; and if you grab that angel, I will turn you in.”

Turning his back on her, he left.

Chandris stared after him, her work on the crystal momentarily forgotten. It had happened again. Kosta had cracked her red-handed doing something illegal... and had just walked away rather than get involved.

But it wasn't just a dislike of getting involved, she saw now. It was more specific than that. It was an attempt to avoid situations where he would be drawing attention to himself.

Or more specifically, where he would be drawing official attention to himself.

Slowly, she turned back to her crystal. Kosta wasn't who he pretended to be-that much she'd concluded his first time aboard the Gazelle. But he wasn't a normal con artist, either.

So what was he?

She leaned back in her chair, frowning at the ceiling. There was something he'd said to her a long time ago, an off-handed comment that had sounded odd at the time but which she'd never gotten around to checking out for herself.

That strange comment about aphrodisiac perfumes.

Swiveling around, she reached for the machine room's computer terminal. But even as she did so, the intercom pinged. ”Chandris?” Ornina's voice said. ”Where are you?”

Chandris hesitated a split second, old ingrained reflexes whispering at her to come up with a quick and convincing lie. Suppressing the impulse, she tapped the switch. ”Machine shop,” she said.

”We'll be hitting the catapult in about three minutes,” Ornina told her. If she wondered what Chandris could possibly be doing in the machine shop, it didn't show in her voice. ”You want to come up?”

”Sure. I'll be right there.”

”Thank you.”

Chandris keyed off the intercom and set to work freeing her rough crystal from its clamp. She'd hoped to have the duplicate finished before they reached Angelma.s.s and people started wandering around the s.h.i.+p again. But no problem. There would be plenty of time to get it done before the Gazelle got back to Seraph.

And if Kosta didn't like it, he could go jump.

She made it to the control room and into her seat with maybe twenty seconds to spare. Kosta was already there, sitting tight-lipped in Forsythe's earlier seat and doing his best to ignore her. The High Senator himself was nowhere to be seen. ”Systems all okay?” she asked, keying back into her board.

”Running smooth as can be,” Hanan said. ”High Senator Forsythe left a couple of minutes ago to go find Ronyon.”

”He's probably still in the shower,” Chandris said. ”I was showing him around the s.h.i.+p and accidentally squirted some machine oil on him.”

Ornina frowned at her. ”How in the world did you manage to do that?”

Chandris was saved the necessity of answering by the alert signal from the control board and the start of the catapult's five-second countdown. She ran her eyes over her board, confirmed that everything was ready; and with the usual not-quite jerk the spider-shape of Angelma.s.s Central appeared in the center of her display.

Behind her, the door whispered open, and she turned to see Forsythe come in. ”Everything all right back there, High Senator?” Hanan asked.

”Yes, thanks,” Forsythe said. He glanced at Kosta, in his earlier seat, and for a moment Chandris wondered if he was going to demand it back. But instead he went over to one of the fold-down jumpseats. ”I found Ronyon in his room,” he added, strapping himself in. ”He'd gotten some oil on himself and was showering it off.”

He said it offhandedly, and the glance he threw at Chandris was equally casual. But for someone who'd been reading people as long as she had, it was more than enough.

Forsythe knew exactly who she was. Who she was, and what she was.

She turned back to her board, heart pounding in her ears. So it had happened, as she'd known someday it would. Lulled by the warmth and comfort of the Daviees, she'd let herself believe she could stay here forever.

Now, instead of just getting herself in trouble, she was going to drag them into it, as well.

”I hope he's almost finished,” Hanan commented. ”We'll have to drop the s.h.i.+p's rotation down to near zero soon.”

”He's all finished,” Forsythe said. ”Just drying and getting dressed again. I let him borrow one of your s.h.i.+rts-I hope you don't mind.”

”No trouble at all,” Hanan a.s.sured him. ”I guess I should have made it clear earlier that everything on the Gazelle is at your disposal.”

”You made it perfectly clear,” Forsythe said. ”As I hoped I made clear that I don't want our presence here disrupting your normal working routine. Any progress yet, Mr. Kosta?”

”Yes, but it's mostly negative,” Kosta said, studying something on his display. ”There have been a few delays at the catapult due to hunters.h.i.+p ma.s.s discrepancies, but all of them were traceable to errors at the launch dish. Nothing seems to be from material that fell off the s.h.i.+ps along the way.”

”Though that may not mean anything,” Ornina pointed out. ”As you said earlier, the catapult may have enough tolerance built into its programming.”

”Agreed.” Kosta shook his head. ”The more I think about it, the less I like the whole theory. Angelma.s.s just isn't ma.s.sive enough to pull that much gravitational energy out of infalling paint chips or whatever.”

Behind Chandris, the door slid open... and she turned just as Ronyon stumbled into the room, his fingers tracing agitated patterns in the air in front of him.

A look of absolute terror was on his face.

”What's wrong?” she demanded.

”He's frightened of something,” Forsythe said, making quick finger gestures of his own. Ronyon replied-”I can't get any sense out of him,” Forsythe said, starting to sound concerned. ”He just keeps saying he's afraid.”

”Is it the low gravity?” Ornina asked, starting to unstrap. A pair of gamma-ray cracks snapped through the room, making Chandris jump. ”If he's never been in free-fall before-”

”He been in free-fall hundreds of times,” Forsythe said shortly. He had a hand on Ronyon's shoulder now, his other hand still going through their complicated motions. ”I don't understand this at all.”

”Perhaps we should get him back to his cabin,” Ornina suggested. She was at Ronyon's side now, holding his arm in a rea.s.suring grip as she studied his face.

More hand motions, a violent shake of Ronyon's head-”He doesn't want to leave,” Forsythe said. ”Says he's afraid to be alone.”