At least part of his operation had been functioning well. He was getting some raw data from the far observatories searching the Taurus region along the vessel"s approach path. The others hadn"t found anything as useful as a jettisoned power module, but he was monitoring a particle-counting array deployed on the surface of Demos. If the luren drive had left a particle trail, they might find it. But not until the computer was up again.
t.i.tus hoped Colby"s good news was that they had regained contact with the probe that had tracked the alien in, then ceased talking before dumping its data. Unmanned probes often righted themselves. There were a dozen good people working on the problem, but t.i.tus needed the data soon, for the probe had seen the approach from a different angle.
"Well then," he said heartily, "your good news is that Wild Goose has finally reported in?"
"No, my good news isn"t that good. Abbot Nandoha has agreed-after considerable persuasion on my part-to help with your repairs. He"s technically hired to run our power plant, but his dossier shows he"s also a computer architect. I hope he can redesign your system and put you back on line with the parts we have and will be getting soon."
Oh, s.h.i.t. "I"ll bet that took some persuasion."
"Now, t.i.tus, I am aware of the, uh, friction you"ve generated with Nandoha. I don"t expect such behavior from my department heads. You"ll make an effort. Am I understood?"
"Yes." She couldn"t fire him because n.o.body else had spent the last ten years identifying stars with planets. A few decades ago, the search had been the main occupation of astronomers. But the grant money had dried up. Now, t.i.tus had the only complete catalogue of such stars, and heaps of unpublished papers. The lack of public interest had forced t.i.tus to make his living teaching. "I will make the effort, Dr. Colby. And in the future, I will take care not to allow fatigue to erode my temper. Please accept my apology."
"Now don"t take it too hard, t.i.tus. We"re all human. We make mistakes. If I hear nothing more of it, it won"t go on your record, your pay won"t be docked, and I won"t need to bring in a lesser manager for your department."
"Thank you, Dr. Colby."
"Carol-remember?"
t.i.tus forced himself to relax visibly. But this was a message from Abbot. At will, his father could remove him from the project just by creating "friction."
"Look, Carol, I"m not sure it"s necessary to take such a vitally needed man off life-support. Shimon is a genius in his own right, and has been diligent-"
"Don"t argue with me, t.i.tus. I"m giving you Nandoha for a week. In four days, I"ll want your list of what still must be brought from Earth. Don"t despair, I"ll get it for you somehow. But only what Abbot can"t do without. Good day."
t.i.tus sat back and stared at the blank screen. Maybe the anti-Project humans are blocking appropriations because somebody knows about the sleeper. If they knew, Connie might know by now, too. But he couldn"t a.s.sume that. He had to get a message out to Connie. He needed blood concentrate. He needed someone who could stand up to Abbot. And he had to know what to do about the sleeper.
Before he could report, he had to verify his suspicions about cloning. Mihelich was no orderly. His file was locked behind highest security. Even queries for his published papers were blocked. And while t.i.tus had been wasting time on Mihelich"s files, Abbot had outflanked him, Influencing Colby. He"ll control the whole Project before I figure out what"s really happening.
"t.i.tus?"
Inea peeked around the office door.
With an incredible effort, t.i.tus rearranged his face into a welcoming smile. "Come in. What can I do for you?"
She ventured into the room. "What"s wrong?"
What could he say? That another vampire was coming to joust with him for possession of her? "Nothing new."
"t.i.tus," she warned.
"Carol says we"re not getting our scheduled parts shipment. No appropriation."
"Bad. But it"s more than that."
"Shimon"s going to blow his Israeli stack when he discovers what Carol has done."
She almost bit at that one, but instead of asking what Carol had done, she shook her head. "More."
t.i.tus wondered how he could be so transparent to a human. "All right," he confessed, as if surrendering. "I"m worried. I can"t figure out how to tell you. something."
"Just tell."
"You may never speak to me again. I couldn"t stand that. It"s been bad enough the last few days, with you stalking off every night without a word."
She frowned at him, studying him in that way that made him so nervous. "I"m not ready to talk yet," she said. "Later. I promise."
"Okay. Look, meanwhile could you do me a favor?"
"Like?"
He thought fast. "You"ve turned out to be very talented with circuitry. When the few components we can get finally do arrive, we won"t have time to fool with them. I"m going to send you over to Ernie Natches in Electronics for some quick training. That way you"ll be more help when we really need you."
"What precisely do I have to learn?" she challenged.
"Let Ernie decide. He"s got benches full of our components he"s trying to repair. You can help."
She studied him again, weighing. "You"re making this, up as you go along."
Diabolical woman. He recalled thinking that in a monotonous undertone during the years he"d been going with her. "Inea, I"ve got a lot of problems. I have to create solutions on the spot."
"What problem is getting rid of me a solution to?"
"Trying to get my computer repaired and keep my a.s.s out of the fire. The worst part is that I spend all my time filling out forms, writing reports, and going to meetings rather than doing physics. I"m becoming a frustrated administrator."
"You"re evading again."
"Consider it a favor. I"ll owe you. Report to Ernie in the morning, okay?"
"It"s not okay, but I"ll do it. What do I tell him, that I"m still on your payroll?"
"Of course. He"s doing me a favor. Training you."
She went to the door. "What you owe me in return is a complete explanation."
"Okay. As soon as we get back to Earth."
"t.i.tus!"
He shrugged.
"You have the best woebegone look of anyone I know. All right, but I get my explanation on the Quito landing pad."
"No deal. The "port restaurant."" He"d never forget that scorching sun.
"Don"t quibble!" She left.
Watching her, he noted that it was hard to flounce on the moon. It definitely crimped her style.
The moment she was out the door, he got Ernie on the vidcom. He had only met the man on his odyssey through the stockrooms, but he had been extraordinarily helpful. He owed Ernie several favors and here he was asking for another.
Worse yet, as soon as he finished with Ernie, he had to convince Shimon to rotate to the night shift. With Abbot being brought in as if Shimon couldn"t handle his job, there was no way the two would get along.
And still worse, t.i.tus had to face Abbot after publicly expelling him from the lab.
Chapter six.
The next morning, when his father showed up, t.i.tus met him at the lab door, making sure he had an audience. "Thank you, Dr. Nandoha, for agreeing to help us. I hope you"ve forgiven my temperamental outburst on our first day here."
"Think nothing of it, lad. I"m eager to help."
The civilities over with, t.i.tus retired to his office, leaving his adversary free run of his lab. Abbot would certainly place bugs to monitor not only all of t.i.tus"s Project work, but also his Residents" communications. Resolutely t.i.tus bent his efforts to studying the schematics for his computer complex.
It wasn"t that the architecture had ever been beyond him, but that it tended to bore him to distraction. Now, however, he had a purpose that drove him. Each evening when Abbot left, t.i.tus went over every unit the man had touched, tracing each component, striving to comprehend the purpose of every modification and looking for Abbot"s bugs.
Each day, he found hand-fabricated boards spliced to anonymous b.u.t.ton connectors. Some he tested himself, but others, which set up parallel processing with his cosmic cube array, he took to Ernie"s shop for testing. Yet he never found anything amiss.
Inea, when he saw her there, was distant and efficient. He couldn"t believe how much that hurt him. But when she asked, he replied, "I need you here more than in the lab."
"You want my trust? You shouldn"t strain my credulity."
"You"ll get your explanation."
"In Quito! You"ll need the time to concoct such a prize tale!"
Yet she learned the customized circuitry of the system Abbot was building out of the shreds of the original. She became a parts connoisseur, preferring some fabricated at Luna Station over those made on Earth, and never mind they didn"t fit the couplings. Once, t.i.tus heard her cursing at a high-grade chip made at the L-5 factories.
But his vampire senses told him her vehemence originated in her frustrations, not the chip"s quality. And the texture of that frustration was definitely s.e.xual.
Taking his life in his hands, he went to her where she bent over the parts-strewn workbench and whispered, "I love you, Inea, and I want you."
She kept her head bent over her work, but her bright, br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes moved to look up at him. Her hands shook as his hunger aroused her. Now that their physical need was finally winning, he suddenly wasn"t sure that was what he desired. Then she said, "I have to think this through."
"It"s difficult to think when the physical tension is so great." He cupped his hand over her shoulder, almost daring to touch, his hunger sharpened by her desire, her tears aching behind his own eyes. I can"t stand her suffering. "The way to solve a difficult and complex problem is to factor it and solve one term at a time."
She tilted her head back to keep her tears from dripping on the electrical contacts. "Can"t you see that"s what I"m trying to do? Don"t-don"t offer me the easy way out, or I"ll give in and then I"ll hate myself forever."
He forced his hand back to his side.
She turned to look squarely at him. "I can"t think when you"re this close because all I know is your suffering."
Positive feedback. s.h.i.t. After that, he avoided her shift, spending that time out on the craft.
He couldn"t get past the new security on the corridor where he"d found the sleeper, but he did ascertain two things: from the configuration of furniture and hatchways, the Kylyd had a dependable internal gravity. If even full luren needed gravity for health, then he and Abbot were at more risk living on the moon than they"d figured. They couldn"t use the drugs the humans used to slow bone loss.
Secondly, he found that there were more anthropologists studying the puzzle of the orl than was publicly admitted. As with the engineers, independent groups were ama.s.sing their own data and developing divergent interpretations.
He witnessed dissections where luren and orl nerves were stimulated by electrical current, and he read the chemists" reports of tracers used to map the DNA. He listened raptly to physical anthropologists spinning theories about two intelligent species exploring the stars in friendship. "Tell me, Doctors," prompted t.i.tus, "do their visual sensitivity ranges match? And what about optical properties of their organic const.i.tuents? Could they be from the same planet?"
"Two intelligent species on the same planet? Unlikely."
"How dare we rule it out?" argued another. "In fact, are you absolutely certain both species are intelligent?"
"They both have hands."
It was too much for t.i.tus. "All apes have hands. Just get me the optical data-if you can."
He made it a blatant challenge, and they redoubled their efforts to determine the capabilities of the optic nerves. But his questions started a new investigation. Could the two species interbreed? Were they two races, not two species?
t.i.tus could not recall any mention of the subject. And so began a new niggling doubt. Suppose orl were intelligent? Suppose his ancestors had been brainwashed by their culture to believe orl were animals? In a twisted way, that was an encouraging thought, for it would mean luren had consciences and that modern luren in the galaxy might have, under the compulsion of conscience, shifted from being callous victimizers to neighbors who might not enslave Earth for food. After all, it had been centuries since t.i.tus"s ancestors crashed on Earth and only about three years since this craft had hit the moon. Things could have changed drastically out there just as they had here.
From then on, he monitored the anthropology reports that crossed his desk, though his low security rating screened out details. If orl had been aboard Kylyd as crew, things had truly changed among luren. Abbot might be right to make contact now, but Abbot would be in for a rude shock when luren rejected the Tourists" archaic callous att.i.tudes.
Could any of the cargo containers aboard Kylyd hold a blood subst.i.tute? If so, and if it was present in quant.i.ties indicating they"d actually lived on it rather than on orl, then luren had indeed changed. t.i.tus spent some of his time trying to find out.
Meanwhile, it became easier to keep away from Inea, for every time he saw Abbot he envisioned what he"d do to Inea if he suspected how t.i.tus felt. His mind froze whenever Abbot was in the lab. He didn"t dare consider the fact that should he give in to Abbot, Inea would be safe. If he did dwell on that thought, he knew he"d soon be willing to believe any anthropologist who declared the orl were definitely crew members of equal status. Then he"d help Abbot send his SOS.
The sight of Abbot so distracted him from the lab"s business that once Shimon brought him some coffee and asked if he was feeling well. Alarmed, t.i.tus pulled himself together and tried to act normally for the rest of the day.
That evening, he found himself pacing outside Inea"s apartment. His whole body could feel the dazzling pull of her apartment"s charged atmosphere. He stood staring at her door, yearning for the revitalization he"d once found there.
Dear G.o.d! I"m starving.
But he knew it wasn"t just the severely short rations he was living on. If this were merely physical hunger, anybody would do. Though he had felt surges of appet.i.te with others, especially if they bled, only here was he overwhelmed with it.
He almost went in. With patience, he could seduce her.
She"d never hate herself for giving in to him as she feared she would. When she finally got it all thought through, she"d know he was no threat to humanity or to her integrity. She was right about him. She"d always been right about him, even though she knew barely half the story and still had at least one more shock coming. But, he told himself, one hand spread on the door, she"s now an astronomer. Obviously, she"s resolved her xenophobia or she wouldn"t be on this project. The mere fact that he was not entirely human wouldn"t matter after she was sure of his mettle.
But if Abbot finds out how much I care- He would have to divert Abbot"s attention. He couldn"t resist much longer, and then he might not have the patience to seduce her. He prayed she"d come to him soon. He would loathe himself if he treated her as Abbot had taught him to treat humans-as he might have to treat some again soon.
He tore himself from her door and fled to the gym to work out in the centrifuge chamber, which helped a little. He got tired enough to sleep.
He had never failed to log the requisite hours in the gym, and made a point of visiting a Skychef refectory, using his meal card and cloaking the fact that he didn"t eat. He never quibbled about this use of Influence.
The day after his abortive approach to Inea"s door, he lunched in the refectory near his lab and was pitching his tray, considering how he might distract Abbot, when he turned to find Inea sitting with a group near the door. She had perceived his projection of the remains of a hearty meal on his tray and maybe even his illusion that he"d been eating.
Their eyes locked and t.i.tus saw injured betrayal in Inea"s. He had told her he fed only on blood. She thinks I lied. He took three steps toward her, but she wrenched her gaze aside.
Such rejection emanated from her that he believed she"d accuse him publicly if he approached. He was unprepared for the chilling weakness that seized him as he left her.
He had never encountered anything like that aching chill before. How long could he stand it, and what would he do if he broke-run back in there, grab her by the shoulders and Influence her to accept him? No! No, I won"t.