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The hatch opened again, and the room was flooded with Influence, silent, overwhelming.
Titus’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 Titus 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 Titus’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, Titus fell against the flushing bar. Abbot’s Influence clamped down again, but the toilet mechanism sucked the component away into the main sewage tank.
Titus looked up at Abbot, who was spread across the top of the stall gazing into the toilet. The power that had enveloped Titus in an iron grip dwindled. The shock frozen onto Abbot’s ageless face told Titus 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, Titus. 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 species– luren-which presumably meant blood-kin, or The Blood, and regarded themselves as temporarily shipwrecked on a primitive planet.
“We are,” said Abbot, “and now humans will signal luren space. Even if you misdirect the message, someone will hear it, eventually. Luren will find Earth. It’s all over, Titus. 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, Titus 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?”
Titus’s faith in humanity, which had sounded so practical in meeting rooms on Earth, seemed a feeble argument now.
“Titus, 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 Titus 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. Titus leaned on the stall door, shaking.
Two hours later, all the scientists had been processed through medical and assembled in the moonship 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.
Titus played with the bulb of Rum Collins he’d ordered for appearance’s sake and gazed into the depths of space. 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.
“Titus, 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 Titus 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 wi
“Well, then, here you are,” said Abner Gold as he slid the Bell 990 over to Titus. “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 embarrassing 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, Titus saw Mihelich watching the bet-settling ceremony with more than passing 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. Titus 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 Titus.
Self-consciously, Titus moved away from her. “Mirelle, let’s see what you can do with Abner’s Alter.”
“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,” assured 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.