Disjointed. Our science is disjointed! Little bits and pieces of comments and allusions H'lim had made coalesced. "A pool," said t.i.tus aloud. "You said a pool must be entered to learn this variety of math. A singularity might look like a pool." He was standing on the black gla.s.s at the center of the design. He tapped one foot. "This looks like a pool! It makes some kind of a s.p.a.cewarp, doesn't it?"

H'lim was utterly still, his boots no longer scuffing at the mosaic. Even the susurration of everyone else breathing vanished as they waited.

"s.p.a.cewarp?" asked H'lim.

The word was part of t.i.tus's vocabulary, but mentally filed under "fantasy" along with everything else he knew about philosophy, psychology, Tarot, palmistry, and dream interpretation-unreal and therefore unimportant. Mysticism. He had dismissed the most important clue H'lim had given him as mysticism, not physics.

It's real. It's not mysticism, it's real. They can really make s.p.a.cewarps. It was the simplest explanation for everything they had found-and not found-on this ship.

"Explain it to him, t.i.tus," said one of the engineers, and t.i.tus could hear the suppressed chuckle.

"I'm sorry, H'lim." t.i.tus sketched a definition, stumbling embarra.s.sedly as he gave his sources.

"Science fiction? And I thought science training knocked all the imagination out of humans."

They were all breathing again, but softly, tentatively. t.i.tus replied, "Oh, we still dream, even as adults."

With intense, searching curiosity, H'lim asked, "What do you dream of achieving, t.i.tus? Travel among the stars you study?" His tone made it a personal, private moment, almost as if he were seriously offering t.i.tus the stars.

t.i.tus answered with bald honesty, "Yes. Every night."

H'lim took a step closer, and t.i.tus could make out his pale features behind the helmet. "Every night?" he demanded with a peculiar intensity.

"Every night when I can sleep, anyway. Tell me, H'lim, how does this thing work?"

H'lim retreated two steps, and t.i.tus thought he could make out the negative movement of his head as he brushed the plea aside, his concentration focused elsewhere. "I don't know, t.i.tus. That's the truth. I don't know."

In jerky stages, H'lim's left hand went to the top of his helmet, as if absently trying to touch his forehead. The glove remained suspended there. t.i.tus sensed aborted surges of Influence, as if the luren were choking down a fear/fight/flight response as he muttered, "Dreams," as if tasting the word's nuances for the first time. "Not aspirations or ideals. Something else entirely, some other biochemical function of consciousness."

t.i.tus offered, "Dreaming is the healthy way the human mind has of editing and organizing memories of the day's events, and is psychologically vital to human health."

t.i.tus expected that was enough to dredge up all of the untapped a.s.sociations lurking at the back of H'lim's mind where t.i.tus's vocabulary was stored. It usually didn't take very much to bring a word up into active use for the luren, but now t.i.tus understood better what blocked the luren's comprehension. Earth's languages carved the universe up into chunks of very different sizes and shapes than the galactic languages. The genetics of consciousness. Earth's physics talked of conserving momentum, ma.s.s and energy, not volition.

Before t.i.tus could pursue that thought, H'lim dropped his hand, muttering in the luren language, "So that's what Abbot meant." The room filled with a beat of Influence that built from shock, to dismay, and edged into panic. t.i.tus gathered his own Power. Knowing he couldn't protect the humans if H'lim were to seize them as he had when he first woke, t.i.tus focused narrowly on H'lim and spoke with all his own power, "H'lim!"

Somewhat to t.i.tus's surprise, it worked. The bright throb of Influence vanished and the luren turned to look at the cl.u.s.ter of humans by the door. "I'm sorry," he began, then turned back to t.i.tus, who was still standing on the black area of the floor. He) seemed to realize the humans had never been aware that he'd violated his word and invoked Influence. "Uh. I've just had a sudden insight. I've got to get back to the lab." He started for the door. "t.i.tus? Can you hurry?" He chattered to the scientists as he sidled through the crush. "You know how it is when you're stumped and you take your mind off the problem. Besides, we were finished out here anyway."

The crowd parted, and t.i.tus caught up with H'lim, casting his own apologies about him as he went.

Chapter twenty-two.

"What did Abbot mean?" demanded t.i.tus when the two of them were momentarily alone in the airlock.

"Later, t.i.tus." There was still panic in H'lim's voice, and the aura of Influence he held tightly about himself was like a clenched fist, white-knuckled and trembling. t.i.tus had never felt anything like it. Two feet away, it wasn't perceptible, not even after they'd shed their suits.

Emerging from the Biomed section, through security and into the main corridors, H'lim turned the wrong way. t.i.tus caught up with him. "Lab's that way," he offered.

"I know that!"

Stung, t.i.tus fell silent. He'd never heard annoyance in H'lim's tone before, nor had he ever imagined a tone that conveyed both annoyance and fear. The two of them almost outdistanced the four Brink's guards.

At his apartment, H'lim opened the door and paused while the guards glanced inside, hands on their weapons. H'lim never allowed the Brink's people in, and had proved many times that he could detect unauthorized intrusion, so it was just a ritual. While Waiting, H'lim said, "t.i.tus, I didn't mean to snap at you. I've got something on my mind I have to think about, and then I'll want to talk to you. I'll call you."

One of the hardest things t.i.tus had ever done was to reply casually, "All right. Abbot comes on duty in a couple of hours Meanwhile, I'll be in the gym if you want me." In his mind, he was already preparing a list of questions he was going to demand answers to. And he meant demand. This time he wasn't going to be put off, no matter what. H'lim owed him.

H'lim went inside, pausing on the threshold for a moment as if puzzled, but closing the door gently behind himself and not looking back. t.i.tus stood between the guards, rubbing the back of his neck and shaking his head.

One of the guards offered, "You didn't do anything. He probably just realized he'd been wrong about an equation or such and he's feeling like an a.s.shole."

"That's the impression you got?" asked t.i.tus.

"Scientists are always confident, then crushed. Then they get mad at having been wrong and snarl at everyone."

"Really?"

"Shut up, Sid. Dr. Shiddehara isn't like that."

t.i.tus grinned. "Thank you."

"I was going to say," said Sid, "you're not like that."

t.i.tus waved a hand. "I haven't been wrong about this job yet. Between the breakdowns, the theft, the war, and the haste, I haven't had a chance to do the job right!"

H'lim's door opened partway and the luren stuck his head out. "t.i.tus. Come in. I need to talk to you."

Inside, t.i.tus sensed what had disturbed H'lim at his threshold, the odor of human blood-and something else.

"Brace yourself." He led t.i.tus to the bathroom.

Blood.

The walls, the floor, but mostly the shower stall were covered in blood, puddled, smeared, congealed, blackened, and reeking. Holding his breath, H'lim opened the shower door and t.i.tus staggered back.

An arm clad in a black peignoir sleeve oozed fresh gore from the detached surface of its shoulder. Some legs and a head were stacked on a female torso.

Mirelle!

t.i.tus felt his lips curling and trembling as they shaped her name and the word, "dead." His gorge rose, and all at once he recognized the other odor. H'lim's vomit.

Helplessly, he gestured for the luren to close the door, and backed out of the cubicle. H'lim shut the bathroom door. They stood, breathing hard, looking at each other. t.i.tus barely recognized his own face reflected in H'lim's goggles.

"It was Abbot," said the luren. "She was dead when he brought her here." He indicated the clean floor. "But not bleeding. He wants people to believe I did that. I don't know what to do. t.i.tus, you've got to help me."

Dead humans don't bleed like that. "Why would he want you accused of-this?"

"He's deduced that once I discover that humans-and worse yet, Earth's luren-dream, I will do everything in my power to prevent him from sending any message-especially not with your targeting data, and emphatically not with my too explicit message coupled to this planet's position!"

t.i.tus's mind gibbered, Do something. Anything. Fast! He groped for the logic that had to be here, somewhere. "But you were on Kylyd when this was done. You can't be blamed."

"Do you think facts will override panic? You know humans, t.i.tus." He paced a small circle. "They'll say I fed from her directly. Abbot knows Andre Mihelich discovered the similarity between natural luren enzymes and those of some leechesa" hirudin, hementin, orgalase." As H'lim's fear grew, he lost the human body language and became truly alien. "Andre dubbed mine orgalentin and wrecked three Sepracor membrane reactors to grow a batch to keep the orl blood fresh. If Abbot stole it and injected it into Mirelle, it could have killed her and made her body a storage sack! That would account for the excessive Weeding after death-no clotting for hours, maybe days, without exposure to air."

Abbot's frames stick. He probably framed H'lim for the enzyme theft, too. "We've got to think. What would he expect you to do when you found the body? That's what we must not do This is not at all like Abbot-not in a closed community where he can't change ident.i.ties and disappear. What's driven him to this? What's his objective?"

"That's easy," said H'lim and went to the disused kitchen cabinet where t.i.tus had hidden the transmitter. He brought out the ca.s.serole and removed the lid, displaying its emptiness. "Yes I thought so. Somehow, he's planning to send that d.a.m.n message anyway!"

t.i.tus blinked. He'd never heard H'lim swear before. "How did you know about Abbot's probe transmitter being in there?"

"You left your spoor all through this room when you hid it. All I had to do was follow it to discover what you'd planted."

I thought I was so clever. He lets me in all the time. How could he tell that one time from all the others? But he asked, "So how did Abbot know the transmitter was here?"

As soon as he asked the question, t.i.tus knew. He buried his face in his hands. "It's all my fault. He tricked me!" The memory, transparent as a ghost, floated through the periphery of his mind: Abbot asking with incisive Influence and t.i.tus babbling out the whole story of his trip to the probe, and his hiding the transmitter. I never should have let him use Influence on me! Not even to fake autonomic responses for the new medical anti-hypnotic conditioning.

"No, it's not all your fault. He tricked me, too. Not a flicker, not a twinge, but he knew all the time!"

t.i.tus raised his head. "Knew what?"

"That humans dream."

The whole long list of questions t.i.tus had been concocting moments before came surging back to the forefront of his mind, but what he said made no sense even to him. "Dreaming tent volitional. So it must be genetic?"

"t.i.tus," said H'lim as if the question were not nonsense, "there's no time to explain it all right now. Later, I promise. But right now everything's changed." He glanced at the closed bathroom door. "That message must not go out, not where Abbot's going to send it with your targeting data!"

"Because humans dream? My targeting is wrong because humans dream, and that's why all of a sudden you're willing to be marooned here instead of getting rich, and of course, logically, Abbot had to kill Mirelle in your bathroom." My G.o.d. My G.o.d in Heaven! t.i.tus's eyes were fixed on the bathroom door, a nightmarish feeling swelling up inside him as the image of body fragments clad in black lace and oozing blood floated before his eyes.

Some oddly detached corner of his mind told him glibly that now he knew how Inea felt all the time she was fighting off understanding of what he had become-had always been.

I must do something fast . . hurry. something. anything! Mirelle's in there, dead because I couldn't keep her out of Abbot's clutches because humans dream. You see, I'm a scientist and all of this makes perfect sense! He was aware that his eyelids were peeled back too far and his mouth was open.

With forced human mannerisms, H'lim brought a flask out of the refrigerator and poured two gla.s.ses of a thin, orange liquid reeking of orl blood. "Drink this."

"What is it? I can't-"

"Stripped orl blood with a dozen enzymes, nutrients, and a stimulant. Taste it. It won't hurt you. You need it. You're hysterical."

Hysterical? Hardly. But his hands curled around the gla.s.s. It was not as repellent as plain orl blood. It seemed to evaporate into his sinuses, exploding into his brain. He'd had nothing like it since he'd died. He drank down half of it and was surprised to find his mind clearing.

"Drink it slowly," advised H'lim, "so it won't make you hungry. I've no blood here." He sat down opposite t.i.tus, cradling his gla.s.s. "These are the immediate questions. What is Abbot planning to do with the transmitter? What did he expect me to do when I found the body? What can we do to stop Abbot?"

"He's going to transmit the message, and he wants you tied UP here so you can't stop him, which means you could stop him. How? And why?"

"Now I know where I am, I know Earth is interdicted."

"You know where you are?"

"On the other side of the galaxy from where we were supposed to go!" he snapped. "If Abbot sends that message I wrote, the luren species may well be exterminated. And if the Teleod and the Metaji fight for possession of Earth's dreamers Earth itself may have to be destroyed. Earth's humans are as dangerous to galactic order as luren. Maybe worse. I think from what Abbot said-he plans to buy the Tourists a place in galactic affairs by selling Influenced humans as spies."

"You've told Abbot more than you've told me."

"No, just a chance remark about a planet way across the galaxy-I thought! I don't know how I could be here, but I should have known just from the genetics. I should have guessed! But your genes are cla.s.sified top secret, so of course I've never seen anything like them. No, I can't go home. I wouldn't dare communicate with anyone! With what I know now, they'd."

As H'lim trailed off, t.i.tus's eyes swept back to the closed bathroom door. He'd been right all along to distrust H'lim, but H'lim had in fact been innocent of duplicity. "What chance remark? It's important, H'lim. I have to know what Abbot knows-and doesn't know-if you want me to figure his moves." He glanced at the hall door. "We'll have only one chance to get out of here. If we walk into one of Abbot's b.o.o.by traps-"

The luren twisted to gaze at the bathroom. "Discussing an old Genentech article on genetic engineering, I told him planetary scale bioengineering had been outlawed millennia ago, and only two such planets survive, both failures: our own and one on the edge of the galaxy that harbors a race of powerful telepaths who can't tap their power alone. Asleep, they involuntarily recapitulate the day's events, though in fragmented and broken symbols when not linked to the right receiver.

"Their planet is under interdict because, linked to the right receiver, the people they were engineered to link with, they make great spies. Everything experienced by the sleeper that day is uploaded into the receiver's mind. And with a telepathic link on that level of consciousness, there's no distance limit. We had been discussing the current galactic war and Earth's achieving peace with its consequent loss of practical standing armies, and I mentioned that such a spy could be placed within the tactical planning councils of one side and be untraceably pa.s.sing information to the tacticians of the opposing side.

"Abbot replied, That's interesting. On Earth, reliable spies are valuable." On Kylyd I finally understood what he'd meant; that Earth's luren could sell humans as reliable spies. In retrospect, it seems obvious that he would think that way, knowing that humans "dream," and knowing that there is only one planet where this occurs."

Current galactic war! Telepaths! What else had H'lim discussed with Abbot that he'd never mentioned to t.i.tus? The thousand questions clamored in the back of his mind, but there really was no time for that now. "Is there anything Abbot doesn't know?"

"That it won't work. This interdict is the strictest law on record, the only one obeyed everywhere," said H'lim, then lost the facade of Earth culture as he added, "except for the laws controlling us."

t.i.tus pounced on that. "What controlling law!"

He refused to squirm under t.i.tus's challenge, but his Influence betrayed him. Yet he needed t.i.tus's help now, and when he spoke, it was pure truth. "That we may not, as you know, take sustenance from any but the orl, nor use Influence on any but orl, nor interbreed with any race on penalty of death for breeder and offspring alike." He lunged across the table to grab t.i.tus's hand as if to stay a blow. "Listen! I know we could have gotten around the law, considering the immense value of this unique genepool! I had no idea where I was! t.i.tus, Abbot's message must not go out."

I was right and Abbot was flat wrong. They'll come to Earth and exterminate us like vermin, and never tell us why.

t.i.tus doubted Earth really was this mysterious planet of telepathic spies. Dreaming couldn't be that exotic a talent. But as long as H'lim believed it was, he wouldn't risk the anti-luren laws of the galaxy. He put his other hand over H'lim's. "Abbot doesn't care about the Taurus window or my targeting program now. He knows that to cross the galaxy, your ship had to use a spaeewarp, not a straight line, which means he doesn't need the Taurus window, so never mind the window closing for the Eightha"gone to the Eighth!"

"Across the surface? In sunlight?"

"Abbot can do anything he sets his mind to." The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed. "He's been planning this for days. He Influenced the hiding place of the transmitter out of me the morning after we lost the landline to the Eighth. He must have found out I got his observatory transmitter, though how he'd know his message never went out." He shrugged.

"He's your First Father. You understand him. Go on."

"If we're across the galaxy, it'll take a long time for an answer, so he's decided the secessionists have to win the war, which is the reason he framed you. He killed Mirelle so he'd have the strength to cross the surface, but he framed you for it, so the W.S. would lose the war."

H'lim nodded. "If I'm really a monster, then my backers are discredited and the W.S. falls. But why? Why would he want that?"

"If the W.S. wins, order will be restored because it can run the world. But if the handful of small countries that have seceded win, they'll lose control. Economic and political chaos will break up the giant databases that interfere with Tourist activities."

"I see. He's playing for very high stakes. He must feel he's sacrificing minor game pieces-Mirelle-and me."

"And me!" He'd have planned another trap to keep t.i.tus busy, which meant using Inea as bait somehow.

t.i.tus remembered the look on her face that morning when H'lim had shown them the booster. "Mirelle! That's what Inea had in mind!" t.i.tus slewed his chair about to face H'lims vidcom. "Did you show her how to use the booster?"

"A few days ago. How did you know?"