t.i.tus let him shove the Thermos into his numb hands. What about your guards-the recorders? Carol will-"

"They'll never know I was gone!"

"H'lim!"

"I'm going. Don't worry." With one hand on the door, he Paused to say over his shoulder, "I just wanted you to know, I'm around to count you Fourth Father. And I'll be proud to introduce y to my First Father."

Then he was gone.

t.i.tus sank into a kitchen chair, his knees too weak to support him even in the lunar gravity. The Thermos clutched to his chest, he bowed his head over it and blinked away unaccountable tears. I must be as close to the edge as Abbot is.

Inea lifted the Thermos from his grasp. With her help, he choked down the alien substance and kept it down, and by morning, he had regained his equilibrium and soaked up some of Inea's optimism and determination with her ectoplasm and her love.

Chapter twenty.

Over the next few days, t.i.tus survived on what H'lim provided, though he sometimes vomited up most of what he swallowed. Mirelle's improvement was evidence that Abbot wasn't at her again, not yet.

Abbot was as horrified as t.i.tus that H'lim had eluded them and the guards to bring t.i.tus blood. H'lim argued, "I made sure it was safe enough. Filial duty takes precedence."

"You could have called me," t.i.tus repeated doggedly, and H'lim insisted t.i.tus had even less business stalking the halls in such condition than H'lim had, and besides they couldn't trust the monitored vidcom channels. For t.i.tus it was a new experience, having someone worry about him. In the end, t.i.tus understood that the restrictions were chafing on H'lim, and this had been his way of a.s.serting himself as well as seeking that peculiar gratification t.i.tus had discovered while providing for Abbot. And H'lim hadn't been caught. He hadn't made any of the mistakes he'd made the first time. He'd learned a lot about humans.

But after that, t.i.tus, Abbot, and Inea clung closer to H'lim.

Inea, having fewer obligations than the department heads, had the longest duty hours alone with the alien. But he never gave any trouble. They seemed to be developing a kind of friendship as Inea became ever more fascinated with the evolution of the orl and luren.

During this time, two ships penetrated the blockade dropping bundles of supplies near the station. Soon the probe construction was resumed, and rations were increased, though there was no blood aboard for t.i.tus. He understood security must be ferocious, and though his spirits sank, he didn't blame Cofinie for the failure.

After that single W.S. triumph, the frenzy of the orbital clashes increased. Colby inst.i.tuted a more vigorous regimen of decompression drills. At rumors that a blockader ship blown up in Earth atmosphere had been slated to bomb Project Station, she ordered more lower levels equipped as survival bunkers.

With the new hardware in place in the probe, programmers began installing the software, both guidance and message. They installed extra shielding on the a.s.sumption that the probe would launch through a dense veil of heavy particles. During this phase, Abbot spent much of his time at the probe hangar. When t.i.tus planted one of Inea's bugs on the vehicle, guards caught him loitering and Colby ordered him not to go out there after his targeting program was in place. "You're too valuable to lose, and that hangar is the primary target on this station."

With the installation of t.i.tus's program, his crew's job was over. They were exhausted but still tense because they they could have done better, given time. t.i.tus sent them to rest. "You've got to be back here on Launch Day, fresh and ready to work. We have to track the probe, probably without backup from Earth." Every day, news came of another attack on W.S. orbital control installations and even University observatories.

Now it often fell to t.i.tus to escort H'lim at meetings of the joint Cognitive Sciences and Telecom committee that was designing Earth's message. And one thing stood out, even above the achievement of a broadcast signal intelligible across such a gulf of s.p.a.ce and culture: H'lim was gradually winning the humans over. They had begun to trust him. And as that trust grew, the factionalism on the station precipitated by the war began to melt away. There was a feeling that only those on the station had any grasp of what was out there in the galaxy, and of how Earth could benefit from it all.

t.i.tus's distrust of H'lim, however, was not a.s.suaged by seeing how he manipulated humans without even using Influence-or how he'd learned to do that in such a short time. One other thing bothered t.i.tus: H'lim had no difficulty understanding the war. His strange, backhanded grasp of English never got in the way on that topic. He had the concepts down pat.

After one meeting, H'lim confided, "Now I'm glad Abbot's sending a real message, or I'd have been tempted to deceive the humans. They're clever, t.i.tus. Especially Mirelle. They'd have caught me." Seeing t.i.tus's expression, he'd added, "I'm sorry you and Abbot are at odds over this."

It was one of the few times t.i.tus believed the luren. He pressed him. "What exactly did you put in Abbot's message that's not in this one?" It wasn't the first time he'd asked, but it was the first time he got a straight answer.

"A code that'll tell my company that I'm sitting on a genetic gold mine. If they can only get here first and dig me out, we'll all be rich-Earth's luren as well as the humans. I told them to file a claim that will protect your legal rights, and to make all the appropriate appeals to create a special category for you. We're one of the few firms in all the galaxy, Teleod and Metaji combined, who can do this for Earth. Trust me, t.i.tus. I wouldn't do anything to harm a parent of mine!"

Abbot came to take over escort duty, and t.i.tus watched the two walk away. Maybe not to harm, but to risk, yes. Then he wondered where the thought had come from. H'lim had sounded so sure. But on the other hand, under Mirelle H'lim had mastered the body language and kinesics of the Near East, China, and Australia as well as North America. It had made him so effective in his dealings with the committees studying him, even the ones who understood the power of the unverbalized languages, that he didn't need Influence.

Throughout this period, Inea and t.i.tus still watched Abbot's movements closely. One evening, about two weeks prior to the scheduled launch of the probe, Inea was at t.i.tus's vidcom screen drinking coffee and sifting the newest data on Abbot. t.i.tus was sprawled on the bed doodling equations on a pad, his old mathematical proof that Influence, and so H'lim's ability to grab language right out of t.i.tus's skull, couldn't exist. Meanwhile, most of his mind was inventing methods of prying truth out of H'lim. Inea's voice penetrated his reverie. "Either he's installed his transmitter in the probe or he's not going to at all."

"What? Who?" t.i.tus sat up. "Abbot? He's supposed to be with H'lim."

"He is right now, but I mean all this last week."

He went to look over her shoulder at the graphs she'd made. "You're right. He hasn't been out to the probe hangar in days." Heading for the door, he shrugged into his jacket.

"Where are you going?" She followed him.

"I'll be right back."

She slipped out the door behind him. "t.i.tus!"

He put his hands on her shoulders. "I know Colby ordered me not to go out there. I'll just check out what Abbot's done, and be right back. Don't worry, it's night outside. I'll be fine."

"t.i.tus, what will he do to you if he catches you destroying his work? You can't just go rushing-"

He kissed her. "You're supposed to relieve him in half an hour. Go early, see if you can keep them both occupied. I'll come to the lab when I'm done." He turned and strode away before she could object again.

Suited up, he rode with a shift change out to the probe. Colby had not lifted his clearance, so he was quite open about his presence. His mind, however, was on how he could possibly identify Abbot's transmitter and what he'd do if he found it. From studying the plans of the hastily redesigned probe, he had a fair notion of where it must be. He had entertained ideas of editing Abbot's message, or subst.i.tuting one of his own, but had been unable to break into Abbot's codes to steal either his message or the program that cast it into galactic communications protocols, which Abbot had no doubt lifted from Kylyd, and not shared with the humans. t.i.tus hadn't spent enough time on the luren language to draft his own message. Besides, what could, or should, a Resident say?

I have to remove the transmitter. I can put it back again before launch if it seems H'lim's honest. How he'd explain such an act to Residents who had sacrificed to put him here, he didn't know.

The illumination outside the hangar cut the area into a crazy quilt of stark, flat pictures embedded in black, like a limbo set on a stage, because there was no air to diffuse the light. But the floods were cleverly aimed to prevent disorientation or dazzling on approach to the open hangar doors. Despite his contacts, t.i.tus could make out traces of what existed in shadow, infrared images that would have been clear had there been no light, for the workers produced a considerable amount of heat that could escape only by radiation and conduction.

He climbed the scaffold into the probe and took a few moments to sort out who the electricians were. He hung over their shoulders asking questions as he examined each of them for trace of Abbot's Influence. It would not be perceptible unless triggered by work involving Abbot's modifications, so he checked only those at work. At last, he came to one woman squatting before an open panel consulting a circuit diagram.

She kept tapping a single component with a probe, and then following the circuit diagram away from that spot, clearly frustrated that she couldn't find it. That's it!

He hunkered down next to her and introduced himself. "Why are you checking this out? It's been approved." He pointed to the band of tape that had sealed the access port.

"Oh, another surprise double-check, along with all that anti-hypnotic conditioning they're putting everyone through."

"All that conditioning?" As far as t.i.tus knew, they'd only done one round of hypnotic conditioning, unsure that H'lim's power was related to hypnosis.

"Yeah, an experiment. They make you do a job, then they "lash lights in your eyes for a while, make you do the job over again, flash lights at you again, and so on. Who knows when it'll stop! If you ask me, the higher-ups were raised on too many o'd movies. This blood-sucking monster from outer s.p.a.ce turned out to be a nice guy!"

"Sure seems like it." I better not miss any more meetings! t.i.tus couldn't be hypnotized, but he had no idea if he could fake it without using Influence. Finger quivering inside his glove, he pointed at a familiar area of her diagram. "That's my stuff. Here, let me. No use both of us rechecking what's been rechecked before. You must be tired." He didn't even have to use Influence. Tedium had taken its toll. She shoved the display pad into his mitts.

"All yours, Doctor. I'll be up top when you're done."

"Right."

Aware that Abbot's shift with H'lim was officially over, t.i.tus kept looking over his shoulder expecting his father to appear. It can't be this easy, not after all these months. But connection by connection, memorizing what he was doing, t.i.tus excised Abbot's a.s.sembly, checked everything by the diagram, ran a systems check, and b.u.t.toned it up again, satisfied it would now work the way the humans had intended.

Even with the lumpy appurtenances where Abbot had improvised parts, the whole transmitter fit neatly into his outside leg pocket. He was still sweating after returning the diagrams to the electrician.

t.i.tus found himself climbing down between a welder and a shift supervisor who were arguing with each other, when their voices in his phones were cut off by a piercing whistle. "Clear the probe hangar! Clear the hangar! Incoming bogey at ten o'clock. Clear the hangar! Two minutes to contact."

Swearing, the men above and below t.i.tus pushed off from the ladder to land yards apart and running for the nearest dome. t.i.tus copied them, and then lost ground when the lights went out as the station secured for attack. t.i.tus followed the sparks of suitlights around him, and once outside the hangar, dug his toes into the compacted soil of the path. His ma.s.s was too great, his feet clumsy, his vision obscured by the helmet but he had to keep up with the swarm of men and machines behind him, driving toward the safety of the dome's underground bunker or be run over.

The Disaster Controller's voice chanted the countdown in his ears. He didn't dare look up when the voice announced defenders on the attacker's tail. He'd gained such momentum that he had to concentrate on staying over his feet.

An oddly detached corner of his mind worked Newton's Laws, calculating his stopping distance, and impact force if he didn't stop in time, a freshman final exam problem. This isn't going to work! But the crowd seemed to be bounding along in nightmarish slow motion, and no one dared slow down even when the narrow opening in the dome gaped before them. It led into a small garage, still floodlit inside. The first arrivals skidded onto the smooth paving, yelling frantically when they realized they would hit the far wall hard. Way short of the door, t.i.tus slowed, yelling for others to do the same despite the instinct that screamed, run!

Then the ground jerked from under him as something hit his back. He sprawled, chin first, momentum driving him on. In front of him, others fell, knocked over the staggering who piled into the fallen, who slid with relentless momentum into a tangled jam in the doorway. Then molten fragments of metal rained down. Screams filled his earphones.

Swimming in squirming, suited bodies, t.i.tus struggled forward to throw himself across one man's slashed leg, trying to keep air and blood in. It was a mindless act, but it saved his life. Where he had been, a large wedge of hot metal sliced into the man who had been under t.i.tus. It stood quivering, its pointed end skewering the writhing body, its upper end glowing red hot in shadow. Panic drove others forward despite the pile of suits jamming the doorway, burying t.i.tus in squirming humanity. Many of those on top died, suits holed by hot missiles floating down under lunar gravity, or plunging down with the energy of explosion behind them. However, most explosion debris. .h.i.t escape velocity.

The eerie thing, the most frightening thing, was that it all happened in such utter silence. s.p.a.cewar movies always had sound effects. All t.i.tus heard was the screaming. He had not even heard the ground rumbling because his boots were too well insulated.

For a long time, he lay buried under a ma.s.s of dead, injured and dying, pinning other dead, injured and dying to the ground with his own ma.s.s, and all afraid to move for fear of holing their suits on sharp fragments. At least I don't have to smell the panic and the blood. After a while, his suit radio ceased working, so he was even spared the patient Disaster Controller's voice instructing them not to move and not to panic to conserve air.

Eventually, people came and pulled the pile of bodies apart, heaping the stiffened corpses for identification and burial, setting the survivors onto their feet in the awkward suits. Those too injured to walk were carried off, and the others were told to report to the infirmary only if there were signs of concussion or serious injury.

When t.i.tus was at last extricated and set up on his feet, one leg numb from lack of circulation, a small suited figure that had been attaching oxygen hoses for those still trapped, turned toward him, froze, then flew at him, almost knocking him over again.

Across the helmet was written, I. CELLURA. Through the faceplate he saw sweat on her forehead and her lip quivered. He let her support him all the way back to the airlock, because he didn't trust his leg, and because it felt so good to hold her, but he made it clear that he was fine.

When it was his turn to be cycled through the lock, Inea reluctantly returned to her work, and he entered the corridor leading from the suit dressing rooms to the airlock.

Abbot and H'lim both were inside, helping survivors off with gear while others supplied drinks and first aid. All at once, t.i.tus remembered the transmitter in his leg pocket, the reason his circulation had been cut off.

They pushed t.i.tus down on a crate and H'lim pulled the exterior, insulating boots off him. Abbot hovered over him, cutting out other helpful corpsmen, and ostentatiously used a penlite to check if his pupils dilated properly, making notes on a medical pad as he worked. Along the line of dazed survivors, the four Brink's guards who usually shadowed H'lim were wrapping sprained ankles and bandaging facial cuts.

"Thanks, Abbot, I can manage now," said t.i.tus, heart pounding as Abbot worked over him. He struggled to his feet to shed his suit. "Go help someone who needs it."

"What were you doing out there," hissed Abbot.

"My job, what else!" snapped t.i.tus. In a very non-regulation move, he pushed the suit's torso down to dangle over the legs, as if it were a pair of wholly flexible overalls. Abbot began to object, but H'lim tugged at his sleeve, moving off to help clean up someone who had vomited.

With a scowl directed back over his shoulder at t.i.tus, Abbot went, but cloaking his words, he added, "It doesn't matter what you were doing. The probe's gone now."

Watching them, t.i.tus was struck by the way H'lim's ministrations were accepted. He sat back down, pulling his feet out of the suit's attached boots. He'd worked his right foot up to the knee when the lock opened and a woman was brought in on a stretcher, stifling screams. It was the electrician t.i.tus had relieved in the probe.

Her leg was broken. Two corpsmen converged on her to cut the suit away and start an IV. All the suitcutters were in use, so they employed powered metal snips, awkward and dangerous if she moved. She bit the rim of her suit collar and tried her best to remain still, but it wasn't good enough, and n.o.body had come yet with medication.

After their third failure, H'lim plunged across the room and lifted the snips from the corpsman's grasp. "Let me," he said, without Influence.

The electrician readily accepted his help, but she was unable to remain still. H'lim reached for her face, Influence gathering about him like a rising sun. t.i.tus almost came off his crate, one leg in his suit, the other bare, but swallowed his protest when the room fell silent. H'lim murmured, "Let me take the pain away. Please, we've got to stop the bleeding or you'll die."

She glanced at her audience, and t.i.tus followed her gaze to see Colby coming through the hatch. Defiantly, the electrician told H'lim, "All right, but just for a moment."

t.i.tus was certain that, concentrating as he was, H'lim was unaware of Colby. Though the power H'lim raised was stunning, his touch was delicate enough not to derange the suggestible human nor to disturb Abbot's work on her.

Her eyes closed and tranquility altered her face to that of a young girl. H'lim wielded the clumsy tool with fine precision, excising her arm for the IV, then exposing the tattered mess, that had been her leg. Everyone there knew what H'lim considered nourishment, and not a one saw a hint of anything on his face but clinical detachment as he wrapped a tourniquet and announced, "It's not as bad as it looks. Only two breaks. They should be able to save the leg." To the corpsman who had finally seated the IV, he added, "If the surgeons doubt it, have them call me.

Before he could answer, a nurse arrived with a shot for the patient and H'lim released his hold on her mind. As he turned away, Colby moved up to challenge H'lim. "You are under injunction not to use your power." The Brink's guards, who had watched from a distance, snapped to.

H'lim met her gaze unwaveringly. "If my life is forfeit, then so be it. I acted as required by an oath and ethic older and more honored than your Hippocratic Oath. And I did, Dr. Colby, gain her express permission first."

"As I recall, permission wasn't a factor in our agreement, nor have you ever represented yourself as a medical pract.i.tioner." Her awareness of the onlookers was clear in her stance and tone.

"The divisions of labor you practice are not universal, Dr. Colby. My field is the integrity of the physical body, in health, in illness, in reproduction, and in trauma, regardless of species or planet of origin. Were it not so, I could not have learned your biological notation system so quickly, could I? But this is the seventieth, or maybe eightieth such system I've encountered, and at least the hundredth physiological variant. I could repair that woman's leg as easily as I could grow her a new one." His expression hardened. "Therefore, I am not free to ignore her plight"

Colby's eyes flicked about the room, and what she saw there gave her pause. H'lim had won. "There is still the matter of manipulating her mind with your power. You gave your word you would not do such things."

H'lim also directed his attention to the audience, aware that they had politics and morale to consider. "At the time of that discussion, neither of us was considering such an emergency. You're not a s.a.d.i.s.t, Dr. Colby. Had I asked your permission, you would have granted it." He raked the humans' faces with a measuring glance. "Would you prefer to find that you were harboring an alien life form so devoid of compa.s.sion that he would withhold succor because his first thought was for his selfish fears?"

Masterful, thought t.i.tus, but he talks like a textbook when gets nervous. And H'lim was scared, there was no doubt of that.

Surrept.i.tiously studying her audience, Colby announced, "Your-patient will be thoroughly tested. If we find you've done anything but relieve pain, your life will be forfeit."

"Then I have nothing to worry about." Which was true, t.i.tus reflected as Colby strode out the door.

Everyone started to breathe again. A corpsman clapped H'lim on the back and set him to wrapping a sprained ankle. From the tone as the buzz of conversation rose again, t.i.tus knew that H'lim had just pa.s.sed the final test. The station no longer considered him inhuman or a menace. If they can accept him, maybe they can accept us-eventually. Abbot caught t.i.tus's gaze, and t.i.tus knew his father was thinking the same thing-only to him, it was an alarming thought.

As more casualties came through, t.i.tus pitched in to help Abbot and H'lim. Inea joined them, and for a while, t.i.tus savored what it could be like to have a family again.

Later, he found out that not only had the secessionists. .h.i.t the probe hangar with several bombs-others having gone wild and dug new craters in the landscape-but two of the W. S. ships defending Project Station had crashed into each other, raining deadly fragments. One dome had been breached, and was currently airless, the survivors trapped in the lower levels behind pressure seals, rescue workers trying to get to them and their casualties.

This was why there was so little help for the probe workers. Meanwhile, one of the blockaders' ships had crashed nearby, and a party had been dispatched to search for survivors. However they might regard the secessionists' politics, they wouldn't let anyone suffocate. Not that they'd be thanked, considering the quarantine.

"Besides," observed a woman carrying a welder's helmet, "they might know something worth learning. H'lim could get it out of them."

t.i.tus didn't like the enthusiastic response to that, but H'lim's att.i.tude rea.s.sured him. The human mind was off limits to him, he told them, and that meant all humans. "Besides," he pointed out, "you don't need me. You have Dr. de Lisle and her colleagues. They are difficult to lie to."

Four days later, rescues completed, they paused before launching the repair effort to hold the ma.s.s funeral. Colby's oration concluded with a promise to revise evacuation plans and to increase disaster drills. She bolstered their courage by pointing out that when Earth finally realized what H'lim had yet to offer, the war would end. After the day of intense grieving, life returned to something resembling normality. But now there was no further need for t.i.tus's department. There would be no probe to target or track.

Late that night, while Abbot and H'lim were working in H'lim's lab, ostensibly on a project for Colby, t.i.tus let himself into H'lim's apartment using a borrowed maintenance key. He hid Abbot's transmitter where neither H'lim nor Abbot would ever look, inside a ca.s.serole dish heaped in the back of a kitchen cabinet with pots and pans. He didn't even tell Inea for fear she'd telegraph the guilty knowledge to H'lim, who was becoming all too wise in human ways.

t.i.tus retained only a copy of the message he coaxed the transmitter to spit out. Its targeting data were, of course, his own, and of no particular interest, but the message was long, detailed, and obscurely coded. t.i.tus was certain it would have brought the whole galaxy to their doorstep. With little to occupy him now, he spent time attempting to read the message, but without lucka" except for the section that identified Earth's sun in both digital code and in something that must have been Kylyd's coding system. His real purpose, however, was to access H'lim's part of the message and read it back to him to see if Abbot had altered it. It was a longshot, he admitted, but he had to do something to jar the whole truth out of the luren.

The work served another purpose, too. It kept his mind off his hunger and his growing inability to keep the orl blood down. H'lim, aware that his try with the orl blood had not been a success, wanted to risk cloning human blood in his lab, but t.i.tus wouldn't hear of it. If the luren was caught, the whole att.i.tude of the station humans would change. "You might be torn limb from limb, and I mean that literally. Humans can be savage."

When Abbot, looking worse than t.i.tus did, supported t.i.tus's position, H'lim capitulated, and redoubled his efforts to refine his booster. With the mystery of why t.i.tus was rejecting the orl blood nagging at him, H'lim wasn't nearly as confident of the booster now.

The work went slowly, and t.i.tus often saw the alien's frustration with the best of Earth's equipment. But he never compared the hardware to what he was used to. He only worked harder to master the primitive tools and to understand the hazy images the microscopes produced in color schemes all wrong for his eyes. t.i.tus believed the luren's boast that he knew seventy or eighty different scientific systems and was undaunted by learning one more, even one based on an "oddly disjointed model of reality."

t.i.tus could never get H'lim to elaborate on that observation, and in fact the luren apologized profusely, trying to convince t.i.tus that he hadn't meant to disparage Earth's achievements. "Perhaps it's just that I haven't had time to investigate all your uniquely divided specialities. And you are a devoted specialist, t.i.tus. There are so many of your world's disciplines that you know nothing of-not even the basic vocabularies. When this war is over, I expect I'll have plenty of time to learn all of Earth's other ways of studying the relationship of s.p.a.ce, time, will, vision, and the life force."

t.i.tus allowed that mysticism was indeed not his field, but that Earth had a plethora of such disciplines. Not wanting to start an argument by revealing his aversion to the sloppy thinking of mystics, t.i.tus dropped the subject. In retrospect, he later realized that he'd missed his chance to convert H'lim into an ally of Resident policy at a point where it would have saved a lot of lives.

One afternoon soon after that, in H'lim's lab when the Cognitive people had finally left and H'lim had secured their privacy, the luren commented, "It's only a question of time, now, t.i.tus. Abbot's had to start using Mirelle again, but I've asked him to go easy on her. A few hundred hours, and I should have a test quant.i.ty of this formula to try."