Inea held the pitcher filled with warm blood, surrounded by a haze of ectoplasm. He went for it, s...o...b..ring and gulping like an animal, the thick stuff spattering them both. He knew no shame until he'd finished the pitcher, flung it aside, and borne her to the floor, ripping at her clothing.

Then her arms went around him, and she put his face to her neck. His teeth caught the fold of skin, the great vein like rubber between them. And there he stopped.

Scalding remorse paralyzed him while her hands moved urgently on his bare back, and her lips plucked at his bearded cheek. And there was no reserve in her, no barrier between them. Her love and her substance penetrated his flesh, and her desire inflamed him.

He forced his jaws apart, muscles hardening as his will refused what his body demanded. The searing shame was worse than the relentless hunger.

"What's the matter? Am I doing it wrong?"

A raw sound tore from his throat, perhaps a sob. He rolled off her, pulling her on top of him and cradling her in his arms. "No. I'm doing it wrong. Can you ever forgive me? I never wanted you to see anything like that."

"It's okay, if you're all right now?"

"No. I need more." He struggled to his feet, pulling her with him and retrieving the pitcher. His hands were shaking even worse now.

"Here, let me." She rinsed the mess off and set another pitcher of water to warm. Then she ran cold water into the sink. "Get out of those clothes. They've got to soak right away." She stripped her clothes off into the sink, turned and found him standing still. "Come on," she said, unfastening his shirt. "Oh, my G.o.d!"

Her fingers danced over the wound in his neck. He captured her hand. "That'll be gone in a few hours."

"t.i.tus, you've broken quarantine! You could be infect-"

"He's got nothing that hasn't been loose on Earth for centuries! If there was anything to bring, my ancestors brought it."

"You don't know that. There could be mutations-"

"Mihelich says there's nothing humans can't handle, and there's no reason to doubt that."

"I hope you're right." The bleep interrupted them, and Inea poured another packet of crystals into the pitcher, holding it close to her bare chest.

He smoothed her hair back from her face and kissed her forehead. "I don't know why, Inea, but the biochemistry out there is the same as that evolved on Earth."

She held the pitcher to his lips, but he wrapped her hands around it and stepped back to skin out of his stained pants, take his Bell and the bugs' control box out of the pockets, and drop the Pants in the water. Then he got a gla.s.s and poured himself a drink. "To life-micro and otherwise!" When the elixir crossed his tongue, he knew he couldn't afford the bravado. He chugalugged it and refilled the gla.s.s, still unable to sip it.

By the third gla.s.s, his hands stopped shaking and he considered what all this must be like from her point of view. She had been unable to give her body to an alien, and now she'd been attacked by a s...o...b..ring animal who was about to ask her to go to bed with him. He dropped into the chair, burying his face in his hands. "I'm sorry!"

She slid into his lap and put her arms around him. "I know. But it's okay. You're the best man I know, and when you run up against something you can't handle, I know what kind of a thing it has to be. But the secret of love is that the two oil us together can handle anything."

"Even the idea of sleeping with something that's not human?"

"Are you so very sure you're not human?"

"I used to think I was human, but now I'm not so sure." He told her how H'lim had extracted English from his mind. "He was in a panic and paralyzed everyone-even me-and then s.n.a.t.c.hed the language from my mind. But no luren I ever heard of could do that. I fought him, and then I was ashamed I'd fought! Is that a human reaction to mind rape?"

"Was Abbot surprised?"

"I don't know. I was a bit out of it then."

"Out of it? I'll say. I had to haul you through the corridors like a zombie."

He kissed her. "The zombie's coming alive. Can you handle that yet?"

Try me.

He emptied the pitcher into his gla.s.s and wrapped her hands around it. "First I have to confess something that may change your mind."

"Good. That's progress. You always used to hit me with those things afterwards."

"I did a really stupid thing." He recited Abbot's warning that he might kill.

"And you think you should have taken his stringers and maybe killed one of them?"

"I vaguely recall thinking that in the bathroom. Inea, I lost control, I didn't really believe it could happen-"

"Now, you listen to me. You so much as lay a finger on one of them, and you'll never get me in bed again. Is that understood?"

"Inea!" he protested, the false strength of partial recovery deserting him. "We don't know what's going to happen. I may have to develop a string-"

"Well, we'll see about that, but you don't accept anything from Abbot, and you don't go to anyone else without telling me, first! First-do you understand? Not later!"

He nodded, but before he could say anything, her eyes went wide. "The alien! You said the hunger is harder after a dormancy."

"He's fed for now, and Abbot'll bring him a stringer. I think H'lim will accept. He doesn't have much choice."

"We've got to get there first!" But a vague helplessness suffused her as the heavy drain of ectoplasm weakened her. Absently, she lifted the gla.s.s of blood to her lips, but when the smell reached her, her lip curled.

t.i.tus lowered his head to sip from the gla.s.s. "We don't have much time. But first things first-if you're still willing?"

"We may still have to fight Abbot for H'lim, but we're in a better situation with you as his father than if Abbot had got him. So we've got to find out what kind of folk H'lim's people are, because maybe Earth shouldn't send that probe out at all." She shook her head. "Oh, I can't think."

He set the gla.s.s aside, and enfolded her in his arms. "It will all be clearer after this." He kissed her and discovered he was in an embarra.s.sing hurry all of a sudden.

He didn't get it right for her the first time, but the second and third times made up for that. He woke to find her hanging up their laundry, and the fourth time was pure sharing. He let her sleep while he showered and worried.

Nothing was becoming clearer, and almost six hours had pa.s.sed while events hurtled on without him. Dressed, he made up some blood, noting how low his supply was and hoping Connie's trick packing chips arrived soon. He infused the blood with his own ectoplasm, so replete he hardly felt the loss, then left a note for Inea flashing on the vidcom screen: I don't know how you could face me when I behaved so shamefully. But you did. Now I've got to use the strength you gave me to tend to my obligations. You're right; together we can do anything.

I love you beyond all measure, T(DR)S Tucking the Thermos under his arm, and cloaking it so it wouldn't be noticed, he headed for Biomed, a bounce in his step and a whistle on his lips. Those around him, however, trudged bleakly along, wearing grim frowns and muttering darkly about Nagel and W.S. having declared Project Station under strict quarantine. Colby had already invoked rationing antic.i.p.ating curtailment of supply deliveries.

Sterilization showers were deployed at the entry to H'lim's suite, along with four Brink's guards, two outside and two inside. Colby had put t.i.tus's name on the list of those to be admitted, and the guards signed him into the suite muttering how Kaschmore would have to take it out on Colby, not them, that H'lim had so many visitors.

Abbot had signed in several times during the last few hours, as had Mirelle and Colby.

Properly dressed, but still cloaking the septic Thermos, t.i.tus entered the infirmary's executive suite. He found himself facing a long formal dining table behind which was a conversation pit done in gold and indigo. To his left a door opened into a private kitchen where someone was puttering about. The lights were dimmed, and the temperature was stifling. From the door in the far wall came the glow of Kylyd's one surviving light panel.

Through that door he found the bedroom. The hospital bed had the sheets turned down. To its left was a conversation group of three cloned-leather upholstered couches with computer consoles installed on the end tables between them, and a coffee table with two abandoned cups on it. Behind the couches was a closed door, and another faced it in the wall across the room-To the right of the bed was a desk and executive vidcom installation. H'lim sat at the desk, chin resting on one hand, squinting at the bright screen. A top-security thumb reference file lay open beside his other hand.

When t.i.tus stepped through the door, H'lim turned then grinned widely. "I am trying to learn this the hard way. I don't suppose you'd be willing to help?"

Give him my mind again? "Maybe later. How do you feel?"

"I've been distracting myself from that by learning this." H'lim gestured to the vidcom screen displaying an access menu. "I got your speech, but no graphics, and I'm very hazy on the inner harmonies of your language so I mischoose the applicable meaning too often. Your-people-are polite, and ask many questions, but they won't answer mine."

t.i.tus gestured to the four surveillance cameras bracketing the room. "They're making recordings to study later, you know. They want to see what you're like before you learn too much of us and obscure the data."

"Recorders, yes. Abbot mentioned them. Lack of privacy does not seem to bother humans." His eyes went to the Thermos t.i.tus carried cloaked. He had kept it out of the cameras' fields and now set it down on the floor by the door. Then he went to the desk and leaned over H'lim.

"They're actually for medical use, not spying, so they can be turned off easily. Watch." He poked in Colby's authorization code and the command to secure the room as he did at many meetings. The screen flashed, SECURED. "They might not be happy about that, but insist, then negotiate, and they'll yield a bit of private time to you."

H'lim looked up at him. "You seem to understand humans. Your Abbot does not."

"He thinks of humans as orl."

"A vast error." He squinted at the screen. "All my orl were killed, they tell me." He clenched his hands before him. t.i.tus cupped one hand over the luren's fists, feeling his terror. He explained that Earth's luren had no orl, and that Abbot's people used humans instead. Then he offered the cloned human blood he'd brought, and held his breath.

H'lim clasped t.i.tus's hand. "You are perhaps more human than you know, t.i.tus. Andre Mihelich has begun to clone orl blood for me, but it will take time, and the hunger is now."

"You told them what you need?"

"I had to."

"I understand. Come, take this before they get Carol to turn the cameras on again."

They took the Thermos into the bathroom where there was no camera, and H'lim downed the contents, grimacing and shuddering with each swallow but not complaining. If or a while, t.i.tus was afraid it might all come back up, disagreeing violently with a full luren. But then H'lim bent over the sink and rinsed the taste away. He looked at himself in the mirror, and proclaimed his hunger appeased.

t.i.tus was wrapping the Thermos in a sterile towel when he heard the bedroom door close and Abbot called from the bedroom, "H'lim? t.i.tus?"

H'lim wiped his face. "Who is that with him?"

He's sensitive! "Probably a stringer to offer you." He raised his voice, "We're coming, Abbot."

He had brought Dr. Kuo, the short, middle-aged Oriental woman t.i.tus had once followed into Biomed. Her eyes had the glazed look of heavy Influence. Abbot greeted t.i.tus. "I see you've got the cameras off. That should stir everyone up. How long do you think we have?"

"Maybe another ten minutes."

Abbot introduced Kuo to H'lim. "Mark her for your own. My gift."

"You don't use them in pairs?"

"Pairs?" asked Abbot, frowning.

"As orl, so they replenish each other afterwards."

Abbot flushed. That was a rare sight. t.i.tus said, "Humans are not orl. They don't replenish each other effectively. So-we lie with them ourselves."

H'lim compared the two crossbreeds before him, then said urbanely, "I see. I should have realized."

Abbot offered, "If the idea distresses you, I will take care of the matter. Do not hesitate. Mark her."

"May I ask you something first?"

"Certainly. My reticence was only because of the cameras. I thought I explained that."

"How long have I been-dormant?"

"Luren time measures have not survived the generations," answered Abbot, and described the length of a year as one thousand four hundred sixty times the interval H'lim had been awake. "And you've been dormant about three years."

As H'lim gnawed on the mental arithmetic, t.i.tus punched up a solar system graphic and gave the year's length in terms of earth's...o...b..t.

H'lim nodded. "I don't know exactly how long that is, but it does explain why I feel like this. It will pa.s.s."

t.i.tus wanted to ask all sorts of personal questions, but Abbot said, "Now you must take sustenance-"

"I have one more question," said H'lim, and t.i.tus got the distinct impression that H'lim's mind was still open on the issue of using humans. "Is there any chance I'll ever be able to go home?"

"Yes, there is, if you can wait long enough," answered Abbot, and told of the message he was going to send. He spoke as if talking a distraught patient out of suicide, offering hope and so luring him into eating and surviving.

"I see," said H'lim at length, inspecting Kuo at closer range. "In that case, I must-regretfully-decline your generous offer."

"What?" exclaimed Abbot. "Why? t.i.tus, what have you been telling him?"

"t.i.tus has met his obligations to me as best he could, and I will be grateful."

"Met his-t.i.tus!"

"I gave him blood, but didn't mention that my mission is to stop you sending that message."

H'lim's eyes darted from one to the other as Abbot glared at t.i.tus, Kuo forgotten in her stupor.

At that moment, the door opened and Colby charged through, ". and I did not turn the cameras-oh! Dr. Kuo, I don't recall authorizing-"

Abbot turned Kuo toward himself briefly, as he said with pervasive Influence, "Dr. Kuo, do you think you'll be able to help Mirelle with the spoken language now?"

Her eyes focused, and she looked away from Abbot. "Oh, yes, there shouldn't be any problem now." She saw Colby. "Excuse me, Carol, I'll have that report by morning." She gave a polite little bow to H'lim. "Thank you so much." And she slid past Colby and out the door.

Colby blinked, frowned at H'lim, and rearranged her features. "I didn't think my security code was in those notes, H'lim."

His eyes darted to t.i.tus, and t.i.tus intervened. "I taught him the code. He felt the lack of privacy-"

"No harm done," suggested Abbot with Influence.

"No, I guess not," Colby said without enthusiasm.

t.i.tus went to the console. "Watch this, H'lim. I'll turn them back on so the anthropologists will be happy."

As the cameras started to sweep the area again, Colby leaned against the back of a couch. "t.i.tus, I thought you might have been hurt in the cryo-lab. Some of your blood was found on the sheet-"

t.i.tus felt his face pale. Before he could speak, Abbot said, "He had a nosebleed, but it stopped right away."

t.i.tus started to breathe again when Colby accepted that and went on talking. Silently, t.i.tus blessed the programmer who had gimmicked the Biomed computers to identify his blood without revealing its peculiarities. Abbot was right that it wouldn't be long until Earth's luren could not survive unnoticed. When he came out of shock, Colby was saying ". have t.i.tus checked for infection."