"You sure she"s dead? Carol"s calling the medics."

"Idiot-love, sometimes you ask stupid questions."

"I guess you can recognize death, huh?"

Abbot"s shadow loomed over them. "You should have let me kill her in the cryo-lab. Next time you"ll know better."

Inea rose to her feet and hissed, "You"re no better than she was! It"s you who ought to be dead."

"Call her off, t.i.tus, or our agreement is void."

"Inea, don"t. There"s still a lot you don"t know."

She looked down and her hand went to t.i.tus"s head and came away b.l.o.o.d.y. "You"re hurt!"

He got to his feet. "Already healing up. If anyone asks, it"s nothing. Okay?" His scalp wasn"t even numb now.

"t.i.tus, are you sure? If one of those poison things. .h.i.t you, and Langton"s dead-"

"Please don"t argue. Not here. Trust me."

The way she looked at him made him hungry.

A Brink"s squad jogged around the corner escorting a medical team which spread out to all three corpses. From her door, Colby called, "t.i.tus, Abbot, Inea, come in here. It"s safer." Then she asked the medics, "Are they all dead?"

"Yes, Ma"am," answered a woman who supervised them.

While Colby attended to the officials, t.i.tus retreated to the chair opposite the vidcom and dropped into it, burying his face in his hands. He had known a sort of intimacy with Langton. It was amazing how much her death hurt.

Abruptly, the room filled with the crackling of flames. His head snapped up on a rush of adrenaline, then he realized it was only the news broadcast. As the camera closed in on a burning house, the neighborhood seemed strangely familiar.

". no one inside at the time of the blast. World Sovereignties Police will investigate, but firefighters on the scene say it"s clear the house was bombed, and is a total loss. Dr. Shiddehara has not yet been reached for comment, though we have a reporter on Project Station and should have something for you by morning. This is Solomon Lawrence reporting for Independent News, North America."

"My house," muttered t.i.tus.

"Oh, t.i.tus," said Inea. Her sympathy almost undid him.

"No, you don"t understand. The master copy of my catalogue"s gone." But now they"ve no reason to kill me.

Hours later, t.i.tus dragged himself to his own apartment. More than physical fatigue, he felt inwardly battered.

Colby had pulled herself together to deal with all the details of the official inquiries into three more deaths in addition to the guards in the cryo-lab. Ebony had sold her life for four others, but they had all been Brink"s guards, not key scientists. The Project was not at all damaged-except possibly by the publicity.

And Colby was ably managing that. She hadn"t allowed t.i.tus and Abbot to be questioned, insisting that t.i.tus"s work was only just beginning, and Abbot"s time was too valuable to divert just now that they must prepare a new cryogenic room.

She had them both record notarized depositions, and as soon as the reporters started calling in, she told them she would replay the depositions at the meeting in the morning, and would supply each of them with a copy.

Promising to send the reporters home tomorrow as scheduled, she cleared everyone out of her apartment. Seeing t.i.tus to the door, she added, "How soon can you get us some reliable numbers? The situation on Earth is very bad. We"ll have to move the probe launch up again."

t.i.tus had grinned ferociously, and promised, "You"ll have Pliable figures when you"re ready. Depend on it."

Now, trudging toward his door, he wondered if he could deliver. In the morning, he thought, he"d sift through every Taurus region entry in the two copies of the catalogue. Maybe he"d spot the tampered entries if the subst.i.tutions were clumsy. But now, he needed a meal and some sleep.

Fishing in the pocket of his disposable suit for his door key, he remembered it was with his clothes in the cryo-lab. The guard had been withdrawn from his door. He smacked his open hand angrily against the door. "s.h.i.t!"

He turned away, shoving his hands in his pockets. The transmitter component was tearing a hole in the flimsy suit.

"t.i.tus?"

He spun in his tracks. "Inea!" She stood in the open door of his apartment. "What are you-how did you-"

"I still have your key, and you"ve got mine. Are you going to stand out there all night?"

He went in, shut the door and leaned against it. He couldn"t take his eyes off her. "Your key is in my pants in Biomed. Want me to go get it?"

"Tomorrow." The microwave bleeped. "I figured you"d be hungry, so I heated some water. I hope I set it right."

"Inea, why are you doing this? You threw me out this morning. Or was that yesterday? And in Segal"s Castle, you still wouldn"t."He didn"t want to think of the condition Abbot had left her in. "And then when you"d bested Abbot for me, and I had to help him win anyway, I thought-"

She turned away. "Maybe we"ll never be lovers again, but we"re partners. You owe me answers, but I"m not cruel enough to question you when you"re hungry."

t.i.tus went toward the microwave, tossing the metal box onto the table as he pa.s.sed, noting that she"d straightened the room up a little. "You got the setting right." She had laid out the packet of blood and the scissors just as he always did. He put one hand on the packet. She loves me.

The truth of that poured into an aching hollow within him that he had not known was there. "You did this beautifully," he told her, meaning, I love you.

"Thank you," she answered abstractedly.

t.i.tus turned to find her studying the pewter-colored object. "t.i.tus, this is a smart power source for a miniature motor."

"It is?" He hadn"t examined it closely.

"Where did you get it?"

"That"s a long story. But I"ll tell you all of it."

She sat down at the table to study the thing more closely. "Have your dinner first."

"Not now." The thready hope beating through him made him willing to wait.

She met his eyes and offered brusquely, "I"ll hold the cup for you while you drink, but I won"t sleep with you."

He felt her love tearing her apart. He went to his knees beside her. Folding her in his arms, he kissed her in the deep, open communion that stirred her to the core.

For her to feel it, he had to let himself soak ectoplasm from her which roused his own craving for blood to a sudden fever pitch. But before she had a chance to struggle, he forced himself away. "That"s what we could have-tonight if you will it."

She bit her lip, breath suspended, then shook her head. "I"ll hold the cup for you, t.i.tus, but don"t ask for more."

He knelt there, lips only centimeters from her bare arm, but blocking the deep contact. It was one of the hardest things he"d ever done. Feeding was reflexive, a function of the senses that supported Influence. "I thought you understood. It isn"t for me; it"s for you."

She took his face in her hands, her lips working. He felt her temptation, and her confusion. "I can"t. Not yet."

He stood her touch as long as he could, blocking off his hunger, then flung himself away to fetch up against the sink.

Gasping for breath, he arranged his features into a calm k and turned to find her folded over, face in her hands.

She straightened.

"Inea, I dare not accept your energies if you won"t allow me to restore them."

Mutely, she shook her head. "I can"t. Just the blood."

"No. Eventually you"d become weak, listless, depressed. You"d sicken and die even with the best medical attention."

"Like Mirelle de Lisle?"

"What?"

"After I left the demonstration, I headed for the mall, but I saw Mirelle coming out of an apartment. I"d seen her with Abbot before, and it suddenly occurred to me he"s been-taking her?" At t.i.tus"s nod, she repeated, "Taking. What a horrible term! Anyway, Mirelle looked absolutely ghastly-wan, dark circlesa" she staggered as if drunk. At first I thought only to help her, but then we got to talking and I realized what Abbot had been doing during the demonstration."

t.i.tus nodded. "But one thing you didn"t know-she wears his Mark. Though I"d expect him to treat her better than that." And he recounted the incident at G.o.ddard Station when Abbot had stolen Mirelle from him in retaliation for t.i.tus"s destruction of one component. "He wanted her only for her position in the Project. She can"t keep anything from him."

"I refuse to believe he can be all that invincible."

"Oh, he"s not. That," he said gesturing to the box on the table, "is another component of his transmitter. I had it on me all that time and he never knew."

She gaped. "Holy s.h.i.t. And I thought you needed help!"

"I do. Stealing that was sheer luck, and-I"m not sure the transmitter is still his highest priority." He took a deep breath, wondering if she"d run out in the corridor screaming at this next revelation. "Are you ready for another shock-one as bad as I laid on you this morning?"

She toyed with the component. "That I"ve been sleeping with something that"s not even human? What could be worse?

"G.o.d, you do know how to hurt a man, don"t you."

She frowned. "I"m sorry. I didn"t mean to hurt you. It"s just that I still don"t see how it could be true. After all, if you can interbreed with humans, then."

".we must be human? Well, maybe what we know of genetics is kind of like Newtonian mechanics-just a special case? Or maybe all life in the galaxy is descended from a common ancestor?"

"Occam"s Razor. Who needs all life in the galaxy when Earth has enough spontaneous mutation? If such a s.p.a.ceship had really crashed on Earth, somebody would have noticed!"

She was trying to convince herself that his stock was human so she could sleep with him freely. He wanted it almost enough to let her do it, too. Very quietly, he said, "Somebody did notice."

"What?" She frowned. "You mean those silly old cave paintings?"

"No. We think it was in the early seventeenth century-late in Russia"s Muscovite period. Near Vanavara."

"Look, check your facts before you lie to me. The hit near Vanavara was in 1908, not the seventeenth century!"

"By the eighteen hundreds, we were in Transylvania," he continued. "In 1908, it was clear that scientists would know what that ship was when they found it. There wasn"t much left after the crash, but that had not destroyed the interstellar drive. In 1908, with atomic power being discovered on Earth and satellites not far off, the remains had to go. Four luren returned to trigger that explosion, and minimize the damage without leaving telltale traces like radioactive dust." He resisted the impulse to recite their names, as Abbot had taught him. "They never returned."

She thought that over. "You mean that ship out there could-my G.o.d, it could blow half the moon away!"

"It"s not likely to blow. What is surprising is that in 1908, we still retained enough knowledge to explode the drive. They"re designed not to do that."

"What is amazing," she countered, "is that you"d do it at all. What was your last link with-home. Was it the Tourists or the Residents?"

"I doubt there were such factions then." He eyed the . "They all knew what humans would do if they ever suspected us." t.i.tus had not lived through such a purge. "Just think about how it makes you feel, to know what I am." But I"m not trying to kill you!"

"That"s only because you love me. What about Abbot?"

"I"d want to get him, even if he was human. He"s an overgrown bully with delusions of G.o.dhood."

"He just believes differently than we do. And he"s terrified of humans." Abbot had known luren who"d fled Eastern Europe during an uprising against vampires.

"You"re defending him again! Whose side are you on!"

He studied the power source housing. I wish I knew.

"t.i.tus, we might have to kill him."

"I couldn"t, not just because it"s against luren law. There"s a deeper-real physical inhibition." He"d never actually triggered it, but he knew it lurked within him.

"But you have defied him. You told me so."

"Only when he let me." He relived that paralyzing blast of raw power Abbot had leveled at Ebony, freezing t.i.tus too. Why didn"t he use that power in the men"s room on G.o.ddard? Because he was playing with his son, fostering his son"s strength. He was overconfident.

"He"ll let you once too often and we"ll get rid of him."

"He"d be replaced. At least Abbot might be won over."

"Who are you kidding?"

"Myself, maybe. But I think it"s our only real hope. Use his very strengths against him-his sense of honor. He isn"t as bad as some of the Tourists."

"Then I"d hate to meet the real McCoy."

"Yes, you would. Look, that was sheer genius, getting Colby to fire Abbot. If she hadn"t already been heavily under Abbot"s Influence, you"d have gotten him sent home."

"I know. Before Abbot came in, she was ready to kick him off the Project. I don"t understand why you let him change her mind like that. And then you defended him!"

"She was fighting the Influence!" he explained.

"Well, good!" she misunderstood. "She"s no faint hearted, simpering clinger!"

"Which is not good! You want to know why that team blew up our ship? Because we fear humans! Think! How would humans tell Residents from Tourists? And who"d bother?"

"Buta" "

"Abbot has been playing fast and loose with human minds all over this station. What if people discover that someone is warping the minds of those making important decisions for all humanity-and is doing so for the advantage of his own species as separate from humanity?"