"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."

"Later," Forsythe said, blinking his eyes a few times to moisten them. "What about the other matter?"

Pirbazari glanced around, making sure no one was in hearing range. "Slavis went through the local police records for the past few months," he said in a quiet voice. "No reported con games involving anyone even close to their descriptions."

Forsythe stroked his lower lip. "Interesting," he murmured. "Especially on the girl's part."

"You think she's gone straight?"

"Do you?"

Pirbazari shrugged uncertainly. "She has been working around angels."

"Tigers don't change their stripes, Zar," Forsythe said firmly. "Once a con artist, always a con artist.

If she hasn't pulled anything since arriving on Seraph, it just means she's got something long-term in the works."

"Teamed up with Kosta?"

"That's the logical assumption," Forsythe agreed. "The problem is, what could it be? Something involving the Institute? Then why didn't they cut and run when we froze Kosta's account? That should have been a dead giveaway that we were on to them."

"Maybe it has to do with that huntership," Pirbazari suggested. "The Gazelle."

Forsythe shook his head. "That makes even less sense than an Institute con. I was on that ship, and there's nothing aboard worth stealing. At least, nothing that would require more than a lock-breaker and a TransTruck to haul the stuff away."

He paused as a sudden thought struck him. Turning on his heel, he retraced his steps back to the nurses' station. "May I help you, High Senator?" the duty nurse asked as he approached.

"I'd like you to pull up the record for Hanan Daviee," he said. "He came in the same time as my aide Mr. Ronyon."

"Yes, we all saw it on the news," the nurse murmured, pressing keys on her board. "Terrible situation... here it is. He suffered severe damage to his exobraces, with feedback damage to his own neural system. He's currently stable, but weak."

"Prognosis?"

The corners of her mouth tightened as she scanned the listing. "He'll need to have some reconstructive work done on his spinal cord," she said. "How much he'll be able to recover will depend on how much work they can do."

"What are the limiting factors?" Pirbazari asked from Forsythe's side.

Her mouth tightened a bit more. "To put it crassly, money," she told him. "The work involved is complex and expensive. Very simply, the more he can afford, the more of a recovery he can make."

"I thought Gabriel paid for work-related health problems," Pirbazari said.

"Some of them, yes," the nurse said. "The entire hospital stay will be taken care of, for instance. But his long-term neural problems are congenital, not work-related, and they aren't covered."

"Thank you," Forsythe said, taking Pirbazari's arm and turning away. "Interesting," he commented as they headed down the corridor again. "Maybe you were at least partially right, Zar. The tiger may not change his stripes, but he may occasionally roll over and purr."

Pirbazari shook his head. "You've lost me."

Forsythe nodded back toward the nurses' station. "Our friend Mr. Daviee needs large amounts of money for an operation. Our other friend, Chandris Lalasha, is a lady whose profession is to separate people from large amounts of money. Coincidence?"

Pirbazari frowned. "Are you suggesting the Daviees hired her to get money for them?"

"Or else she's taken them on as a charity case," Forsythe said. "Either way, she still bears watching."

"All right," Pirbazari said, not sounding entirely convinced. "You want me to put the police onto her?"

Forsythe pursed his lips. "Not yet," he said slowly. "She may have ways of keeping tabs on what the police are up to. Let's just watch her ourselves for a couple of days."

"Both of us?"

"Yes," Forsythe said. "I've got an inside connection with these people; you're an outsider none of them know. Between us, we should have them pretty well covered."

"You're going to stay here yourself, then?" Pirbazari asked. "There's a lot of work waiting for you on Uhuru."

"There's enough I can do here," Forsythe said. "Try to catch up on my reading, for one thing. I'll send Slavis back—he can sit in on any meetings and take notes for me."

"He can't cast votes for you."

"There's nothing important coming up for at least two weeks," Forsythe said firmly. "At any rate, Ronyon's not going to be able to travel for another day or two at the earliest, and I'm not leaving without him."

He glanced into a deserted lounge alcove as they passed it, looking at the darkness outside the far windows. "Besides," he added quietly, "whatever Lalasha and Kosta are up to, they didn't cause what happened at Angelmass. Something strange is going on out there. I'm not leaving until I find out what."