He was standing at an intersection, still shaking, when Shimon accosted him with a new problem.
Abbot had created a grotesque array of mismatched parts, claiming it would replace one of the microcomponents they couldn"t get from Earth. Irritated by Abbot"s high-handed manner, Shimon still took every opportunity to challenge him. This only enhanced Abbot"s entrenched contempt for humans. Abbot had lived through the years when the contents of a modern desktop calculator filled an entire room.
It took all of t.i.tus"s skill to persuade Shimon to give it a try. But in the process, he realized that Abbot must be spending so many hours fabricating items that he couldn"t be keeping t.i.tus under surveillance. The idea was both a relief and a torment. There had to be moments when t.i.tus could approach Inea safely-but he had no way of knowing when.
He redoubled his own efforts on all fronts, hoping once more that he could outwit and outflank his father. With luck, he might even locate another transmitter component. That would surely keep Abbot busy.
t.i.tus could get along on very little sleep during the moon"s night, but as the sun rose over the horizon outside, even with all the protective dome and moon rock over his head, he felt a perpetual drag on his energies, yet couldn"t rest. For the first time, he unlimbered the magnetic field generator for his bed. It took some recalibration, but he finally found the setting that brought his peace.
Gratefully, he lay down, chuckling as he always did at the way legends are born. The superst.i.tious, noting the restlessness of the vampire unable to return to the place where he"d awakened to second life, a.s.sumed it was the dirt of that grave that was needed. But, in fact, it was the exact magnetic condition of the place of wakening that was vital.
Abbot had once remarked that luren had a mobile life stage before First Death, and a localization thereafter, in the adult stage-much like some primitive sea life on Earth.
The anthropologists studying the sleeping quarters aboard Kylyd were going crazy without knowing that a few wires and a battery were all the "bed" a luren needed.
In daytime, t.i.tus allowed himself four hours sleep in each twenty-four, but the shortened sleep period sharpened his appet.i.te. And his supplies were running low.
He normally used a packet a day, but had cut it to a third so the six packets he had left gave him eighteen days. Surely Connie would get a shipment to him by then. But if not, he"d have to use Influence to create a string. He hadn"t done that in ten years, since the luren researchers had improved the humans" own process for synthesizing blood. He"d lived on synthetics, with occasional deep contact with humans he truly cared for and who cared for him. He flinched from the thought of forced intimacy with strangers.
But Abbot left him no time to brood. One night, when t.i.tus was showing Shimon and the night shift what Abbot had accomplished that day, Abbot returned to the lab on the pretext of having forgotten his Varian. t.i.tus rose from his crouched position beside Shimon, telling the Israeli, "Go ahead and check that one out. I"ll be right back."
Abbot turned from his desk with the Varian held in his right hand. "Putting in overtime, I see. Checking my work?"
"Should I have to?"
Pacing a bit aside, Abbot cloaked his words. With an air of embarra.s.sment, he confessed, "I"m not playing games with you. I really want your computer fixed so you can verify our legends. I didn"t mean to do so much damage, and I didn"t know you lost your spare catalogue at Quito. I"m just trying to make up for a small blunder. We"re both really on the same side, you know."
"Are we?" If Abbot was telling the truth, then Abbot had made an error, and so had the Tourists. As formidable as they were, they were not invincible. He had to cling to that. Cloaking his own words, he asked, "I suppose you"re ready to give up on implanting your transmitter then?"
"Of course not. And all your various secretive activities are only making my job more dangerous. Neither of us want the humans to discover us before the luren arrive. It would be better if you"d stop skulking about so clumsily."
t.i.tus could not take offense. He was clumsy. But how much did Abbot really know? "Skulking about where?"
"Well, the ship, for one place. Don"t you realize what a mess you made of the business of the dormant luren?"
Abbot reacted to the dismay that disrupted t.i.tus"s heavy cloaking by wrapping his Influence around t.i.tus, shielding his shock from human notice. "You didn"t know. ?"
t.i.tus had cherished the knowledge that Abbot had not known he was hiding in the sleeper"s chamber, observing.
Abbot moved a bit closer. "Listen. We can"t afford another botched up job like that one. Thanks to you, they"ve moved the dormant one into the biomed dome and redoubled the security. What if he wakens where we can"t get to him?"
t.i.tus gulped. He knew what happened when an Earth luren wakened without luren help. He had hunted down such feral monstrosities. They were the source of the worst of the vampire superst.i.tions.
"They"ll probably vivisect him soon," Abbot went on grimly. "I can"t imagine how we can rescue him now. If I were you, I"d feel like a murderer."
"He"s not dead yet-"
"And don"t a.s.sume you"re in the clear. They"re combing all records looking for whoever might have broken into that chamber. We were both on Kylyd, though I was there before you. They can"t prove I was there, but I can"t prove I was elsewhere. Can you? Don"t you see what you"ve done?"
"How can you be so sure it was me?" His voice shook. When he"d returned to his apartment that day, he"d found a message from Inea on his vidcom. She had triggered the emergency alarm trying to wake him, so she knew he hadn"t been home.
Worse yet was the idea of the sleeper coming to on the operating table with a dozen human medics leaning over him. In the ravening hunger of reawakening, he would surely kill most of them before he was subdued.
"Who else could have figured out the door latch? The only others who can work it are two anthropologists and two Brink"s men. They had clearance. They knew the alarm system. They trusted the alien lock to hold against any human. They never figured on another luren who could work the latch."
He didn"t know I was watching him! The relief that flooded through t.i.tus almost undid him. "I"ve learned to avoid the security alarms now. Don"t worry. I won"t set them off again." But I didn"t figure out the lock. His hands had worked the alien mechanism by accident. Quick, change the subject. "You say it"s called Kaileed?"
"I think it"s a type of bird. A scavenger. When I was young, it was used as an insult. There"s so much you didn"t give me time to teach you. If you had, you"d understand and help me with this transmitter."
"What is there to understand except that humans have no defense against luren, and luren have no reason to regard humans as equals? Inviting luren here would just be handing over our human families to slavery-or worse."
"You don"t know that. We"re here. The very fact that we"re luren, too, will protect Earth. If we call in the authorities, we"ll have proprietary rights over Earth. If we just sit and wait, we won"t get any rights."
"We don"t know that Law still holds, or that human-luren hybrids would be legally luren-able to own property." The implications of human-luren cross-breeding had not escaped t.i.tus. They had to be genetically linked, to be races of the same species. But would that make a difference to luren? "Laws can change, you know."
"The Law of Blood is ancient beyond human reckoning. There"s no reason to suppose it"s changed in principle. Our time sense has changed with our shortened lives, you know. We haven"t been exiled so awfully long."
"We don"t know how long the ship that brought our ancestors was out of touch with luren civilization before it arrived here. We don"t know the parameters of the s.p.a.ce drive they used-the time dilation. For that matter, we don"t know what sort of drive Kylyd has! Neither ship is a generation ship or a sleeper ship, but they can"t be instantaneous."
"There are a lot of old tales I only half remember. t.i.tus, there could be virtually instantaneous travel by now, and there may be more than just luren in the galaxy. There could be a galactic civilization with inter-species politics. The Blood may need us-and Earth-as much as we need them."
"And you want rescue to come in your lifetime. I can understand that. But give the humans time to study Kylyd and they"ll meet luren as equals. Without your signal, it could take a couple of centuries for them to get here. By then-"
"-you"ll still be young, and you"ll have to watch the extinction of Earth"s luren. Think what you"re saying!" Abbot"s intensity was born of true conviction. "We"re already losing our heritage. Little things, like the fact that kylyd is the name of a scavenger bird, get lost each generation, and big things do too. You Residents call yourselves vampires, not luren. You think of humans as your families, not a convenient link in the food chain. In a few centuries, there won"t be any recognizable luren on Earth to be rescued."
"Are you so sure we"d be recognized now? I saw the dormant one. Would he think he looked anything like us?"
"Have you seen the way humans look at him? Do you doubt that if they knew us, they"d turn on us? Son, don"t you know how difficult it was to get you and me into this Project? With today"s computer records and photographs, life on Earth isn"t what it was when I was your age. It"s becoming harder to forge new ident.i.ties to cover our failure to age. Manipulation of popular or even government opinion is nearly impossible. Soon we"ll be rediscovered and humans will erupt in madness to devour us all. Even Residents who consider themselves humans and live on that synthetic syrup you call blood, won"t be safe.
t.i.tus, it wouldn"t take much to wipe us out. Humans know our vulnerabilities. We need the help of The Blood."
He might be right. He just might be. While t.i.tus groped for reply, someone called, "Dr. Shiddehara! I have a tracing now! look at this!"
"I"ll be right there!" called t.i.tus.
He buried himself in the work, frightened by Abbot"s ability to undermine his convictions. He preferred to deal with particle storms in s.p.a.ce, gravity lenses, galactic fields, or something really simple, like the origin of time. Espionage wasn"t his game.
Late that night, he woke with a new resolve. To counter Abbot, he"d have to use Influence, and he knew just where it would be most effective.
Dressing in a black Glynnis gym suit and his Suchoff moon shoes, he threw a towel about his neck and went to the gym. He had been unable to crack the project"s security codes and get into the files. But he had discovered the duty rosters for the Brink"s personnel, and there was one charming young woman, Suzy Langton, who would be in the gym now. It shouldn"t be difficult to get the codes from her.
The gym was the largest open area on the station. World Sovereignties had spent lavishly to make it attractive so that people would spend time there. Real plants adorned the dividers separating working areas. Clever engineering controlled noise. Anthropologists had designed a s.p.a.ce that many nationalities would find conducive to socializing. t.i.tus surveyed the largest area, where a dozen women were working out on rowing machines while watching a popular adventure show. One of them, who worked in his lab, waved to him.
He waved back, contrasting the cozy feeling the gym created with the crawling discomfort he"d felt at first on Kylyd. Here the walls were a neutral light shade, difficult to name. The floors were of a shock-absorbing composition. The ceiling was high, and artwork concealed gym riggings when they were pulled up and stored.
In one place, trellises supported arching vines. In another, rough-cut wooden beams crisscrossed beneath the lights. Beyond that, there was a ceiling that made you think you were looking up into the ocean from a dome on a sunken coral reef. Farther away, there was frescoed vaulting. With dividing hedges and trellises, hanging plants and some trees, there was a sense of privacy without the enclosed feeling of the tiny efficiency apartments.
Off the main room, a gla.s.s wall enclosed the swimming pool. Water behaved so differently under lunar gravity that one needed special training to be allowed to swim. t.i.tus had not taken the training. Water altered magnetic currents in disconcerting ways. So he hoped his quarry wasn"t a swimmer.
He checked the log of the centrifuge for Langton but finally discovered her working out in the martial arts studio-a huge area divided by colored mats and padded walls. Six different styles were being practiced or taught, modified for lunar gravity. But in a far corner, a green mat was occupied by two Brink"s women, one of them Suzy Langton. They were sparring free-style, shifting from one stance to another, from one style to another with smooth efficiency.
t.i.tus threaded his way between the mats, protected only by elastic ropes from which vanquished contestants rebounded gently-or in the case of one young man, not so gently. That youth bounced, grabbed futilely at his instructor, then soared into the padded wall. On the rebound, he caught the ropes and held on, oscillating ludicrously.
Uproarious laughter met this performance, and t.i.tus, seeing the youngster was hamming it up, laughed too. The instructor let his group break ranks and engage in random horseplay. t.i.tus decided this was not just a cla.s.s in martial disciplines but in mental health and social integration.
If he had time, it might be a good thing for him to partic.i.p.ate in. It could keep suspicions at bay-if he could hide his strength.
Suzy Langton, on the other hand, was engaged in a more serious match. She was short, with the shoulders of a circus aerialist and the calves of a ballet dancer, and moved like a world-cla.s.s gymnast. Her opponent was large and heavier, but they both wore black belts with lunar-gravity knots. t.i.tus swayed, wanting to coach Langton. Kick! But Langton spun, squatted, thrust out one foot and swept the other off her feet. Behind t.i.tus, someone applauded. Turning, he found a group of women in brown belts, -with aromatic sweat from their own cla.s.s. Among them stood Mirelle.
Abbot"s Mark fairly glowed over her forehead, though t.i.tus was the only one aware of it. She didn"t see him at first, but surged forward, yelling, "Suzy, watch out!"
Turning, t.i.tus saw that Suzy"s opponent had used the light gravity to twist so she landed on her hands and used her legs to grab Langton"s neck, forcing her to the mat.
With a grunt, Suzy arched, lunged, and brought her opponent down, where they both grappled for wrestling holds.
Several men had now quit their own mats to join the audience. One called encouragement, "Get her, Kitten!"
Another answered, "That"s no kitten. That there"s one full-grown panther!"
t.i.tus was inclined to agree. If it came down to it, he wouldn"t care to fight either of these women fair. He"d have to use Influence. Normally he"d Influence a violent human to prevent them pitting their strength against his and getting hurt. With trained fighters like these, however, he"d have to combat skill with Influence or get creamed.
"t.i.tus!" At last Mirelle recognized him.
He tore his eyes from the spectacle. "Mirelle. It"s good to see you again. Is Abbot around?"
"Should he be?"
"You two seemed to hit it off fairly well."
"Jealous?"
"I was." It occurred to him that if he hadn"t found Inea, he would be hurting for Mirelle still.
"Such flattery!" She raked him up and down with her eyes. "I could almost wish Abbot did not want me."
t.i.tus felt his polite smile slip. Given her susceptibility and Abbot"s methods, she shouldn"t have been able to think such a thing, let alone say it to him. Her feelings must have been much stronger than Abbot had suspected.
"Now that"s flattering," he responded. But he narrowed his attention, searching for what had been done to her.
She moved closer. "I could wish to see more of you."
"Our work keeps us in separate worlds."
"I don"t work all the time."
"What exactly are you doing?" He felt Abbot"s Influence surface, but it was a bare whisper of what it might be.
t.i.tus realized, as she fabricated a generality, that Abbot had kept his interference to a minimum so as not to impair her professional acuity or limit her curiosity. He hadn"t needed to inhibit her from talking to t.i.tus because t.i.tus lacked the top security clearance and she knew it.
By leaving her able to come on to him, Abbot had found a subtle way to torment both t.i.tus and Mirelle. The Mark on her forehead put her beyond t.i.tus"s reach no matter what.
He stepped back, locking his hands behind him. "Do me a favor, Mirelle. Tell Abbot I play by the rules."
She c.o.c.ked her head to one side. "What do you mean?"
"He"ll know what I mean." She"d report every nuance of his behavior to Abbot the moment she saw him again. She was an open channel through which Abbot spied on anything and everything she encountered.
It suddenly struck t.i.tus that Abbot"s uncanny ability to know everything must be due to his having Marked and opened a number of humans. It was a standard survival technique which Abbot had taught t.i.tus, but which t.i.tus had forgotten. Even if he"s busy, it might not be safe to go to Inea.
Her expression changed. "Well, mon cheri, you don"t have to look at me as if I were half a worm you found in an apple you just bit into." She brushed a finger over his lips and kissed it wistfully. He couldn"t help himself. He caught the fingers and kissed them formally, as she continued, "I will deliver your cryptic message, but do not think I would be faithful to Abbot if you gave me a choice." She turned toward the women"s locker room.
If Abbot had been there at that moment, t.i.tus would have cheerfully killed his father. He forced his attention back to the match, relieved that Mirelle had left, for he couldn"t approach Langton with Mirelle watching and reporting to Abbot.
In a flurry of kicks and punches, Langton downed her opponent again, but this time blood sprang from a cut over Langton"s right eye. Negligently, she dashed it aside, sending droplets flying onto the mat at t.i.tus"s feet.
He clamped his lips together, but his indrawn breath carried the scent to him above the aroma of human sweat. His eyes fastened hungrily on the haze of ectoplasm dissipating from the tiny drops. He couldn"t afford to react in public. He closed his eyes and turned away from the ring, abandoning his quarry until her cut had been closed.
He was about to plunge to the back of the crowd, when his eyes locked with Inea"s. She wore a terry robe over a wet bathing suit of azure and pink, her hair plastered to her skull, slick and shiny. Her feet were bare.
His nerves rang with the shock of her beauty. Her eyes leaped out of her face, burning through him in accusation. She saw Mirelle flirting! He started toward her. Since blood had been drawn, the level of noise among the spectators had redoubled. They surged in, making it nearly impossible for t.i.tus to move.
Inea watched him struggle toward her, and he thought he saw a trace of sympathy on her face. Then she shook her head at him, turned and fled into the women"s locker room.
A moment later, with a yell and a resounding smack of open arms. .h.i.tting the mat, the contest was over. Two women, also Brink"s officers, escorted Langton toward the women"s locker room. People surged forward to congratulate her and compliment her on her moves. As she worked her way past t.i.tus, he shook himself out of his daze and stepped forward, catching her elbow. Exerting Influence, he said, "Meet me here when you"re dressed. We have something personal to discuss. Besides, I give great back rubs."
Exhausted from the match, she took the impression readily. She aimed a dazzling smile at him and replied as if he were an old friend, "I won"t be long."
It was that simple. He could have her tonight, all night, if he wanted. A part of him was tempted. The cut over her eye had bled profusely, and he came away with her blood on his fingers. He couldn"t resist raising it to his mouth and sucking until his own skin threatened to break.
There were several ways out of the women"s locker room, and he was fairly sure Inea would not use this exit. Yet if she came out first, he"d follow her-make her listen-and never mind Suzy Langton and the Brink"s security codes. It occurred to him that he"d lost the cold objectivity Connie had insisted was his only protection during this mission.
Langton emerged first, her cut sealed, and a fresh red wraparound highlighting her trim figure. Her black hair was confined by a white band, and her soft-soled Suchoffs were also white. Summoning himself to the business at hand, t.i.tus stepped forward. "Remember me?"
As he escorted her through a hedgerow into a deserted area where comfortable lounges surrounded a dance floor, he shamelessly Influenced her into a dream world. n.o.body would bother them here until the next dance cla.s.s. He gathered her down onto a lounge in such a way that anyone blundering into the area would a.s.sume they wanted privacy.
His lips close to her ear, his Influence clouding her mind so she knew nothing of what she said, only what she felt, he coaxed the information he needed out of her. Brink"s conditioning was fierce. He needed all his skill to create an exquisite pitch of arousal, sufficient to mask his purpose.
To do all this and shield them from interruptions was almost more than he could handle, for half his energy went into fighting his own self-disgust.
Once, his lips strayed to the sealed cut, the odor of blood sending him into delirium, and he wanted to make her illusionary experience real. It would be so much better for both of them if he partic.i.p.ated in her ecstasy.
At the very last moment, as his teeth were nibbling at the bandage, he turned his face aside. Even starvation doesn"t give me the right to take what I want.
When he had all the codes, even those she didn"t consciously remember, he gave her supreme release and the peaceful oblivion of sleep, a tender gift, an offering to he knew not what. How could anything make up for what he"d done?
Gently, he wiped all trace of his ident.i.ty from her memory.
He left no Mark to ward off Abbot, hoping that if his father took her, he would believe t.i.tus had only fed and would look no deeper. He, himself, could hardly believe he could have bestowed such an experience on a human woman and still feel as hungry and as achingly unfinished as he did. Yet the thought of the ration awaiting him at home filled him with revulsion.