Part 2 (2/2)
t.i.tus, realizing she was in this only for fun, extended the tension much as he would prolong foreplay because a woman liked it. As if about to announce his win, he snapped his cards down. ”Spades. Eight. Nine. Ten. Jack. Queen.”
She burst out laughing. Twisting in her seat, she could just barely reach t.i.tus's shoulders to embrace him. ”t.i.tus, you are wonderful! But even so, I'm glad I won.”
Then she reached for the net. ”I'll take Abner's TI-Alter, and give my custom job to.” t.i.tus felt the Influence build. He tried to block Abbot. She paused and looked as if she'd forgotten what she'd intended to say then started over, ”Since it seems to matter to t.i.tus and Abbot more than I'd ever expected, I'm going to award Abbot's Varian to t.i.tus. And my custom to Abbot. Which leaves t.i.tus's Bell to Abner.” With a little frown, she said, ”Doesn't that make perfect sense?”
”Are you sure that's the way you want it, Mirelle?” asked Abbot.
”Well?”
In a hard voice, t.i.tus answered, ”She's sure. The game isn't over until we settle up!”
She c.o.c.ked her head to one side, and t.i.tus felt her strive against the Influence aimed at her. If a resistive human had fought Influence half so valiantly, the luren would have little chance in public. But Mirelle was susceptible. She said doubtfully, ”I think I'm sure. The object of the game is to make it interesting. And since Abbot seems to want to keep his Varian out of t.i.tus's hands, the best way to make the game interesting is to put it into t.i.tus's hands.”
Even though Abbot could have made her change her mind, these people would be confined with them for a year. It was essential not to arouse their suspicions. As he hesitated, the warning chime sounded and t.i.tus collected the Varian, pa.s.sing the others out as Mirelle had specified while they hurried to stow the cards and chips before docking maneuvers.
No sooner had the s.h.i.+p stopped pulsing and surging than the attendants appeared to escort them through the linked hatches and into G.o.ddard Station-the first stepping stone into s.p.a.ce, orbiting high above Earth's surface.
The station rotated, providing gravity. The lights were bright, but not too strong for t.i.tus's dark contacts. The air had the blank feel of dustless, processed air marbled with streaks of human odor. Under the hum of machinery, there was the sharp sound of human voices confined in a metal sh.e.l.l.
Abbot had contrived to stay behind t.i.tus all the way from the skybus to an area where the scientists had to pa.s.s a brief instrument check to determine their response to the low gravity, litus walked with one hand in his pocket on Abbot's Varian. seeing his chance, he squirmed through the press, muttering apologies, and headed for the hatch marked MEN. Glancing behind, he saw Abbot detained by a knot of laughing Turkish engineers teasing a Greek mathematician.
t.i.tus dodged around three women huddled over a glossy fax of a bubble chamber tracing, arguing heatedly. He caught half a sentence and chipped in, ”No, if it were, it would go clockwise. Ask that tall, skinny gentleman over there.” He pointed at Abbot.
As the women followed his gesture, he ducked through a crack in the wall of people and backed into the men's room. Two men pushed out past him discussing better designs for low-grav urinals. t.i.tus locked himself in a stall and attacked the Varian's case, using his thumbnail as a screwdriver. He heard the door open, and thought he was lost. The screw wouldn't budge. Then, with the steps coming toward him, it turned. Someone went into the adjacent stall, and t.i.tus knew it wasn't Abbot-should have known all along.
Calm down, he admonished himself. At last the case opened. He sorted through modified boards and connectors. He tricked me! He wanted me to believe there was a transmitter component in here!
Abbot was capable of such subtlety, and t.i.tus was ashamed for not having considered that before. But then a small bit of circuitry fell out into his hand. It was as long as his palm, and no more than five millimeters thick, but he could see the circuitry etching inside, and the microprocessor. It was an advanced design, glittering like a diffraction jewel, and it wasn't attached to the Varian.
The hatch opened again, and the room was flooded with Influence, silent, overwhelming.
t.i.tus's breath caught in his throat. He clamped his teeth onto his lower lip as he fought to turn his palm over and spill the component to the floor where he could crush it with his heel. His hand trembled, but refused to turn.
He summoned his own power to combat Abbot's Influence. From the adjacent stall came the sound of human retching. Cloaking his words, so the human wouldn't notice, Abbot whispered, ”Put it back, boy, and I'll let the human rest.”
”If he knew what he was suffering for, he'd surely volunteer,” returned t.i.tus and made another supreme effort to drop the jewel-like chip and crush it.
Against the pall of Abbot's Influence, he could not force his hand to turn. With a silent snarl, he focused his power, feeling weak and helpless against the elder's might. He was a twig, and the older vampire an immense oak. He redoubled his effort, but his hand only shook violently.
His fingers, white with strain, uncurled a bit. Not from any conscious direction of t.i.tus's but simply from the strain, his arm spasmed, jerking his hand. The chip slid off his palm and fell lazily in the weak gravity, Coriolis force curving its trajectory. It glanced off the toilet rim and clanked into the polished steel bowl, which contained no water. The lucite chip clattered to rest on the mirror-bright surface, easy to retrieve if not for the searing ultraviolet rays triggered when the solid entered the field.
At the tink of plastic hitting metal, Abbot swarmed up the wall, his concentration wavering when he had to pay attention to how he moved in the light gravity. With a cry of triumph, t.i.tus fell against the flus.h.i.+ng bar. Abbot's Influence clamped down again, but the toilet mechanism sucked the component away into the main sewage tank.
t.i.tus looked up at Abbot, who was spread across the top of the stall gazing into the toilet. The power that had enveloped t.i.tus in an iron grip dwindled. The shock frozen onto Abbot's ageless face told t.i.tus he had struck a major blow.
Chapter three.
Abbot's urbanity returned. He even smiled with paternal pleasure. ”I honestly didn't think you could defy me so strongly. You've grown, t.i.tus. I'm proud.”
Next door, the human stopped retching. Abbot was now using Influence only to blank their conversation and his conspicuous perch. ”But we're on the same side of this, you and I. We're both luren.”
”Are we?” Residents preferred to think of themselves as vampires-humans living a post-death existence nourished by pre-death humans-but still natives of Earth. The Tourists, however, insisted on the ancestral name for their speciesa” luren-which presumably meant blood-kin, or The Blood, and regarded themselves as temporarily s.h.i.+pwrecked on a primitive planet.
”We are,” said Abbot, ”and now humans will signal luren s.p.a.ce. Even if you misdirect the message, someone will hear it, eventually. Luren will find Earth. It's all over, t.i.tus. There's no point in you and I opposing one another over an obscure philosophical point.”
It sounded so reasonable, and Abbot wasn't even driving his words with Influence. Doggedly, t.i.tus repeated the Residents' argument. ”Without your SOS, it could take centuries for them to find us. By then, humans may be able to defend themselves.”
”Never effectively,” replied Abbot. He glanced at the human who'd been sick. ”They've no natural defenses against us. Are their genes going to change in a century or two?”
t.i.tus's faith in humanity, which had sounded so practical in meeting rooms on Earth, seemed a feeble argument now.
”t.i.tus, with your greatest effort, you have not managed to strike a blow against my mission-but only against our Blood. I'll fabricate another targeting device, but it won't fit as neatly. Your destruction has increased the chance that the human inspectors will discover my device. And if they do, and if they discover that my message is not in any human language, what will they think?
”If humans discover us before rescue arrives, they'll slaughter us-just as they did in Transylvania.” Abbot's genuine anguish echoed off the hard walls. ”We're so close to going home, safe, and you have to do this!”
Shame overcame t.i.tus and he could summon no answer.
The paging speaker interrupted, a pleasant woman's voice urging, ”Dr. Nandoha, Dr. Abbot Nandoha, please report to medical. Dr. Nandoha, to medical immediately.”
Abruptly, Abbot was gone, the outer door closing softly behind him. t.i.tus leaned on the stall door, shaking.
Two hours later, all the scientists had been processed through medical and a.s.sembled in the moons.h.i.+p lounge to await boarding of the orbit-jumper Barnaby Peter.
Mirelle had gathered her poker players around one end of the bar. Behind the bar a huge screen, clear as an open window, displayed an exterior view of Barnaby Peter.
t.i.tus played with the bulb of Rum Collins he'd ordered for appearance's sake and gazed into the depths of s.p.a.ce. Inwardly, he was drained. His best effort would not prevent the Tourists from bringing a ravening horde of luren to Earth, a horde that would devour the only home he'd ever known, and crush him under their heels because he was no more luren than the humans they would feed on.
”t.i.tus, pay attention!” Mirelle nudged up to his side and waved an open hand in front of his eyes. ”I said we're settling up now. Are you ready to work the Varian?”
He had been only peripherally aware of them playing with the instruments. He fished the Varian out of his jacket and laid it on the bar. Negligently, he poked keys and it responded with a syncopated ”Jingle Bells.” Mirelle laughed, delighted, but t.i.tus could summon no response within himself.
He touched her hand, drinking in her warmth and that intangible life which was the component of blood that could not be synthesized. He began to thaw inwardly, to recall how precious a human could be, and the real reason he was here, fighting a battle he couldn't win. However small, the chance of winning was worth his life. Humanity was worth it.
”Well, then, here you are,” said Abner Gold as he slid the Bell 990 over to t.i.tus. ”Took me eight tries to work yours, though. Forgot the quotation marks and kept getting the Southern Cross instead of the Big Dipper.” He glanced at Abbot and added jocularly, ”The embarra.s.sing part is that I couldn't see the difference!”
Mirelle laughed at the strained joke, her voice ringing through Abbot's glum silence as he nursed a Screwdriver he had no intention of drinking. Looking past Abbot, t.i.tus saw Mihelich watching the bet-settling ceremony with more than pa.s.sing interest. As their eyes met, Mihelich turned away as if he hadn't been watching them at all.
Mirelle said, ”Okay, Abbot. Can you work my custom?”
With a slow smile, he poked at the controls, producing the Rosetta stone closeup she had shown them. Then he tapped another command. The image rotated. ”Good enough?”
Abbot seemed genuinely amused by the human game. t.i.tus marveled as he returned the Varian, sans its most vital component. But as Abbot accepted the gutted instrument, his eyes lingered on Mirelle, then measured t.i.tus.
Self-consciously, t.i.tus moved away from her. ”Mirelle, let's see what you can do with Abner's Alter.”
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