Those Of My Blood Part 3

"Nothing so fancy," she said and put the instrument on the bar. Abbot moved her custom up next to Gold's Alter.

With great concentration, she plucked out a combination and got a Periodic Table with the metals outlined in purple. "Is that right? I wouldn't know if I got the wrong one."

"There is only one," a.s.sured Gold, not bothering to hide his disappointment. "The table is the basis of our message to the aliens, you know."

"That's not my part of the project," she replied.

"No?" asked Abbot, searingly alert. "So why a linguist on this project? Your other communications skills won't be much called for, so are you going to spend all your time translating at meetings?"

"Don't you think that will keep me busy? And then there are all those doc.u.ments on subjects I know nothing about."

Her bored resignation rang false, and suddenly t.i.tus wondered just why she was on the project. A medic who isn't a doctor and a linguist who isn't working on the message-Mihelich had cut himself off from others, and Mirelle had been dissembling so persistently it was hard to say who she really was. t.i.tus glanced about and spotted other loners. Could there be something else going on besides Project Hail?

If the humans were up to something different from what had been announced, it was imperative that the Residents find out about it, and quickly. Mirelle had to be the key.

Just then a man's voice announced, "Attention members of Project Hail. I am honored to present to you, the on-site director of the Project, Dr. Carol Colby."

People turned toward a woman who stood on a chair, a microphone in one hand and an electronic clipboard in the other. She was wearing the same Project Hail uniform as the rest of them, an unprepossessing blue coverall with indigo piping, one had her flight jacket tied around her waist by the arms. Her sandy hair was cut short and flipped back, secured by a headband that held an earphone near one ear.

"There isn't much time, so I'll make this short." Her Pleasant contralto voice suggested a trained broadcaster or singer.

She appeared no more than fifty, and was trim-figured, with pale skin. t.i.tus saw a scattering of people move to a counter by the boarding ramp where translator headphones were plugged in.

"Everything is ready at Project Station, your quarters and labs-even the computers are up and running. We've worked hard to reach this point so quickly, and I must now ask something even more special of you."

"As you know, having come directly from Earth today, sabotage has not been rare despite Project security. The controversy is so heated, the project could be canceled."

"You're all volunteers, here because you believe in the Project, so I'm confident you'll respond well when I ask you to work longer hours than you expected. Our supporters on Earth can give us another eight months at the outside. So we launch in eight months, not fourteen. Can you do it?"

A roar of voices chanted "Yes!" in a dozen languages.

t.i.tus noticed a small knot of men and women moving toward Colby, leading the chanting.

"Abbot?" asked t.i.tus, nervously cloaking his words in Influence. "What are they up to?"

"I see no threat, only suppressed amus.e.m.e.nt."

t.i.tus wondered if he'd ever develop such powers. He forced his attention back to the director, who was saying, "Since this decision was taken only hours ago, we haven't yet consulted heads of vital departments, so let me put you on the spot here and now. Dr. Nancy Dorenski?"

One of the group of chant leaders presented herself. She was a diminutive brunette.

"Dr. Dorenski, can you complete programming of the message in such a short time?"

"If nothing goes wrong," came a tiny soprano voice, "we can make it."

"Good." Colby made a note on her clipboard with a light pen. "Dr. Shiddehara, Dr. t.i.tus Shiddehara?"

"Here!" answered t.i.tus. "Back by the bar."

"Ah, you speak English!" Her own English had a slight French Canadian tang to it. "Can you locate the point of origin of the aliens in only eight months?"

"There's no way to know, Dr. Colby. But if, as you say, the computers are ready and the crews working on the alien craft complete the a.n.a.lyses I specified, you can count on my department." In truth, he expected that within a month or so he'd have verification of the luren tradition that identified their origin.

On the other hand, as with most legends devoutly believed in, this one might contain only a kernel of truth, embroidered for effect by storytellers impressing children.

Colby continued calling on department heads and all answered as t.i.tus had. He caught Abbot eyeing him narrowly. How long would it take Abbot to make another targeting device? Had he counted on fourteen months? Suddenly the future didn't look quite so bleak. If only Connie managed to get a decent quant.i.ty of blood through to the Station.

t.i.tus's brooding was interrupted when a member of the small group of chanters, a young woman who couldn't be more than twenty-five, dragged a chair up to Colby's and climbed up. "May I borrow your microphone for a moment, Doctor?"

Puzzled, the Director handed the instrument over, while the woman held out a packet wrapped in white tissue. "This is from the six technicians of the Air Scrubbing Plant-to help you maintain discipline."

The Director unwrapped the package, unrolling a green cloth and holding it up. It was a T-shirt with the words BIG CHEESE on the front and a moon-shaped slice of cheese balanced on a photograph of the moon. In silence the Director stared at it blankly, then she burst out laughing. She took off the jacket tied around her waist and pulled the huge T-shirt over her head. It went almost to her knees.

Colby took the microphone back, and said, "I'll be the Big Cheese on the Moon if you folks remember that this Colby doesn't crumble!" With that, she stepped down, leaving everyone cheering. The boarding announcement cut across the noise, and people lined up to board for the trip to the moon.

Abbot, t.i.tus, and Mirelle rated private cabins far forward of the drive and so were funneled into the same line. t.i.tus wanted nothing so much as to get away from Abbot, but he turned when Mirelle called, "t.i.tus, wait!"

She caught up with him and this time shyly waited for him to take her arm. He hesitated. He had made a pact with himself not to touch human sources of blood. He was used to synthetics, supplemented with ectoplasm only from volunteers. But his blood supplies had been stolen.

And Mirelle had chosen him over Abbot. If he rejected her, she'd turn to his father. t.i.tus could not abide the way Abbot treated his stringers.

He slid his arm around her waist, feeling the layer of hard muscle under feminine contours, and guided her to the line moving up the boarding ramp. She cuddled closer. "Maybe I can get my cabin changed to one next to you?"

"Mirelle, I don't know what to make of you. You're never the same woman twice. What game are you playing?"

She looked up with wounded dignity turning to innocence. Just then Abbot inserted himself into the line beside them, exerting Influence to keep others from objecting to the cut.

"Mirelle," he said, displaying his boarding card. "I've switched to the cabin next to yours." Enhancing his words with Influence, he put his arm around her and murmured in her ear, "This'll be an interesting voyage. We're far enough away from that stuffy physicist"-he indicated t.i.tus-"to have some real fun." Over her head, Abbot met t.i.tus's gaze and hardened his Influence around Mirelle.

Abbot was only exercising the elder's right of choice in taking Mirelle. But the way he did it rankled.

Yet it was the Law of Blood. t.i.tus relinquished his hold on the human. He could barely breathe against the outrage flooding through him. His lips curled in a snarl. Tourist! But he dared not spit an obscenity in his father's face. Cloaking his words, he said, "Humans aren't orl. They have the right of choice." Orl were just animals evolved for luren to feed on, but Tourists often used the word for humans.

Abbot whispered to Mirelle, poisoning her subconscious against t.i.tus. "I won't let that physicist pry anything out of you. You can always depend on me to protect you."

Offended, t.i.tus choked, "What do you think I am?"

Abbot raised an eyebrow. "Luren, of course." He turned Mirelle toward him and moved his left forefinger toward the point between her brows. His Influence focused to a barely discernible blue-white light emanating from the tip of his finger. If that finger should once touch her, Mirelle would be Marked with the complex pattern of Abbot's personal sigil.

Until Abbot cared to remove the mark, no other luren would touch her. She would become Abbot's puppet, his eyes and ears, his hands, doing his will.

t.i.tus grabbed Abbot's wrist and-surprised that he'd caught the older vampire off guard-yanked him off balance. Startled, Abbot forgot the light gravity and stumbled, drifting to the deck, Influence disrupted.

Security guards converged, moving with that sliding gait that marked experienced s.p.a.cemen. Mirelle came out of her induced stupor. "Abbot! What were you doing?"

Appalled at himself, t.i.tus spread his Influence, projecting boredom. It was just a clumsy grounder stumbling around. He waved the guards away and bent to help Abbot up.

The older vampire bemusedly added his power to t.i.tus's efforts to distract the guards, then soothed Mirelle. As the line shuffled forward, he grunted, "t.i.tus, that was unprincipled. Undisciplined. UnLawful. And foolish. Didn't I go to considerable pains to teach you the penalties for violating Blood Law?"

"Your people stole my supplies. Who violated Law first?"

"Supplies!" he scoffed. "Powdered ichor, cloned, freeze dried-lifeless! That stuff isn't covered by Law. Mirelle is. There're other pa.s.sengers. I deny you nothing in exercising my priority. Defy me again on penalty of death!"

Surrounding Mirelle in a bubble of Influence, Abbot touched her forehead and set his stamp into her aura. She darted hurt glance at t.i.tus, then succ.u.mbed. Her eyes were dull as she gazed adoringly up at Abbot. With a triumphal swagger, he escorted her onto the ship.

Calm enough to think again, t.i.tus realized Abbot hadn't taken Mirelle just because t.i.tus had won her over. He sensed, as t.i.tus did, that she was involved in something clandestine within Project Hail. Abbot took her as t.i.tus had taken the transmitter component, as part of his job.

And there was nothing t.i.tus could do about it. Abbot, as his father, had both right and responsibility to destroy him if he turned unLawful and thus became a danger to luren security on Earth. Abbot never shirked a responsibility.

Once onboard the orbit-jumper, t.i.tus went directly to his cabin and locked himself in. He spent the trip pacing the cubicle, on the floor when there was gravity, in the air when there wasn't. Through his growing hunger, he told himself that Connie would see he was supplied. She was wily enough to get his supplies past the humans and Tourists. But until he got to Project Station and found his baggage empty of blood crystals, he wouldn't think of taking a human. He just would not.

By the time they arrived at Luna Station, he was determined that within a month, two at the outside, he'd be on his way back to Earth, his part of the project completed. Meanwhile, he'd have to send a message to Connie demanding she get somebody else to deal with Abbot.

At Luna Station, they were loaded onto Toyota moonbuses for the twelve-hour trip out to the crash site around which Project Station had been built. t.i.tus was in the lead bus, Abbot and Mirelle five cars behind that. With a heavy escort, they caravanned across the lunar landscape, following a well-worn track.

The scientists were all beyond misery and into dim-witted exhaustion by the time they first saw Project Station.

It was inside the new crater formed by the alien ship's impact. Dust from that impact still orbited, interfering with the observatories' work. The station consisted of a circle of interlocked domes cl.u.s.tered about the wreck. Trails worn by vehicle treads crisscrossed among the domes, some marked out by large boulders or cairns, leading off the station out over the jagged horizon.

t.i.tus knew these were made by maintenance crews going out to work on the farflung solar collector installations that powered, via landlines, both Project Station and Luna Station. But some of them also led to the eight Arrays, the huge a.s.semblies of antennas that would be tied into his own observatory computers, Arrays through which he'd map the sky.

The outer circle of Project Station's domes housed power and environment plants, and, off to one side, t.i.tus identified a motor pool park and maintenance shed. A tall, ridiculously slender antenna mast lofted high over the complex, and held reflectors and dishes for Earth or local communications.

Far off on the rim of the crater, t.i.tus could see a field of solar collectors, most tilted toward the sun. For part of the month, the station had its own power. At "night" they were wired by landlines from the distant solar collectors, by battery, and by experimental generators.

Through the driver's forward screen, they could all see the robe's launch pad. The probe itself was still under cover in the huge hangar at the edge of the station, its gaping maw floodlit, dozens of suited figures around it. The probe was being designed and constructed here using every bit of knowledge that had been rung out of the alien craft. It would be launched toward a point of t.i.tus's choosing, and programmed to beam a message where t.i.tus designated.

The domes housed the labs and offices from which the scientists would continue to study the alien craft. Beneath those abs were the residences, connected by airtight underground corridors. Theoretically, only those working on the alien craft, ie probe, or Maintenance had to go out into vacuum. But they id all been trained for it-just in case.

"It feels like a safe place to live," remarked a man at the back of t.i.tus's transport.

"Safe, I don't know," responded a woman up front, "but live, yes. It's bigger than any campus I've worked on, and I've lived happily without going off campus for months and months at time. They say there's even a shopping mall."

The driver contributed a laugh. "Yes, but everything's so overpriced you'll only buy what you can't live without." She steered into the motor pool parking lot where a dozen suited s.p.a.cemen swarmed over their bus.

In turn, each of the carriers was attached to a dome's lock to discharge pa.s.sengers. t.i.tus suffered stoically through the brief ceremony of welcome. He was hungry. He told himself it was more a psychological than a real physical crisis. Since he'd first rebelled against Abbot, he'd never doubted the source of his next meal. But his patience was dangerously thin by the time they were escorted in groups of six-an airlock full or an elevator full-to their a.s.signed quarters where, presumably, their luggage would be waiting.

The trip took an unconscionable length of time, as they were given maps and their guide encouraged them to trace out their route. At each intersection, he stopped and lectured on emergency procedures. Eventually, one of the women with t.i.tus's group chanced to object, "We've learned all this in training. I'm tired and I want to get to my room!"

"And that, Doctor, is why I must repeat it. You learned it, so you think you know it. You think that being tired is a reason to make haste and take shortcuts. That's the att.i.tude that gets people killed out here."

From then on, the guide was more meticulous, making each of them work the controls on every emergency device they pa.s.sed. The fourth time t.i.tus was required to heft down a fire extinguisher and blow foam on the floor, he said, "You know, don't you, that we're so tired we're not listening well."

"Yes, of course," agreed the guide. "That's the point. You've learned this stuff, but now it's going in on the deepest, unconscious level so you'll react rather than think." He grinned. "It's the principle behind an M.D."s grueling internship. Take it from me, it works."

"You're an M.D.?" asked t.i.tus with interest. He had not forgotten Mihelich, the outsider like Mirelle.

The young man nodded. "We all do extra duty, especially when new groups arrive. Yours is the biggest so everyone has to work overtime getting folks settled. Yesterday, three astronomers and five engineers hauled your luggage around. The moon doesn't know from cla.s.s." He waggled a finger at t.i.tus. "You may find yourself a.s.signed to cook next week!"

t.i.tus chuckled. "I doubt that. At least not twice!" The others laughed, and agreed that none of them could cook either. As they entered their residence corridor, t.i.tus moved up beside the young physician. "What's your name?"

"Philips. Morrisey Philips. Yours?"

Tucking the name firmly into his memory, t.i.tus gave his current alias. He'd been Shiddehara since his wakening, with only short times under other names to build ident.i.ties he might need. "How big is the medical department?"

"Big enough. Why? Feeling bad? You'll have another round of checks soon to adjust your gravity medication."

"I'm fine," said t.i.tus. "But perhaps I'll drop over to check out the place tomorrow. Will you be on duty?"

"Most likely. Always am. Here you are, number forty-three." He presented t.i.tus a key. "This way, folks."

Eagerly, t.i.tus opened the door and went in. Instantly, he was relieved to see his luggage piled in the middle of the floor, looking untouched. Locking the door behind him, he turned on the overhead light and squinted against the intrusive brilliance. He attacked the cases, dumping the contents in a frantic search for the packets of dark powder.

"Ah!" Untouched.

The relief made him sag onto the bed clutching two bags to his chest. Then he was acutely embarra.s.sed at the mess he'd made. He forced himself to unpack meticulously and stow his belongings properly. He collected the little bags, boxes and bottles of precious nutrients, and the vials of tablet supplements with all their different, false, labels on the counter that served as a kitchen.

He noted that he would have to refill his prescription for blood pressure medication, and dumped today's tablet down the disposer. The drug rendered humans sensitive to ultraviolet, and the false prescription was his excuse not to use the solarium.

There was a sink, wet bar-sized Frigidaire, and a Sears microwave. Over this was a cabinet with dishes, cooking implements, and basic supplies including the ubiquitous Nescafe, Earl Grey tea, and a package of Osem crackers with Fortnum & Mason marmalade which bore, on an attached card, the compliments of the King of England. t.i.tus found a quart pitcher and managed to fill it with water. Then he warmed the water in the microwave and dissolved his powder.

His hand shook as he poured some of the solution into a disposable cup. He made himself carry the pitcher and cup to the small table and sit down before even tasting the divine liquid.

Only then did he give himself up to the shivering ecstasy of it. He'd drunk three cups before he came to awareness of the room he must call home for the duration.

It was cheerfully decorated in yellow and brown with a short pile carpet and heavy drapes across the wall beside the door. Peeking, t.i.tus discovered he had a round window, a porthole actually, with a view of the corridor.

The room was large. With the bed folded up into the wall, there was enough s.p.a.ce to throw a party. One closet held an extra Samsonite table and several ultralight chairs. Another door led to a bathroom which was plastered with bright signs prescribing dire penalties for wasting water.

An alcove harbored a desk and computer terminal. There was a lounge and some easy chairs. On one wall, a viewscreen displayed a moonscape at Earthrise, but t.i.tus saw the bank of controls below it and realized this was his vidcom as well as his outside window. Playing with it, he discovered the Project Station cable channels and found the news and two entertainment selections. Then he read the instructions.

There was a slot for videotapes. Surely tapes would be traded briskly at the shopping mall.

He found the channels that showed angles from cameras set all around Project Station, and even one of the alien craft.

Arrested in mid-motion, he feasted on the sight. He had no more idea what he was looking at than any human on Earth.

Except he was certain now-certain down deep in his bonesa" that it was a luren ship.

It was a s.p.a.ce vehicle, only vaguely streamlined. Tiny suited figures moving about the area attested to its size. It had housed and fed fifty luren. By the humans' count, there had been two hundred orl aboard. The one-to-four ratio was standard in s.p.a.ce, or so legend held.

This had been a cargo carrier, and its holds were filled with intriguing artifacts. The investigation had been going on now for two years, and a cloak of governmental secrecy still shrouded every detail. Some of it was cla.s.sified above even t.i.tus's rating. "Weapons," they whispered, but t.i.tus doubted that. Weapons would be shipped on an armed vessel. This seemed like nothing but a trader.

I have to go out there-get a look at the corpses.

He laughed at himself, amazed at what a meal could do for his ambition. Finishing the artificial blood, he told himself the station was so big he might complete his job here and still avoid Abbot, avoid defying him again. Things might not turn out too badly at all.

He was washing up when the vidcom chimed and an unfamiliar face appeared in one corner of the huge screen. "Dr. Shiddehara? This is Shimon Ben Zvi. I'm sorry to wake you after your trip, but something very odd is happening to your computer, and we think you ought to know about it. Dr. Shiddehara?" Clearly the man, who spoke with a distinct Israeli accent, couldn't see or hear t.i.tus.