“No!”

“Will it stop me thinking?”

“No.”

“Then why not?”

“Because-” He realized all his reasons were selfish ones. “Because I promised not to use my power on you.”

“But I’m telling you to do it. That’s different.”

“Well.”

“Titus!”

“Maybe-” He swallowed dryly. “Maybe after you hear the rest, you’ll want to tell the authorities. Then how will you feel about me?”

“Then,” she answered reasonably, “I’ll just ask you to lift the whammy. It is liftable, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“So what’s the problem? It’s only to protect you from Abbot.”

And that’s the problem. I don’t want her to protect me. She’d objected to him protecting her, and now he knew why. He squirmed, then hit on how to discourage her. “All right, then-I will. On one condition.”

“Condition?”

“Next time I want to protect you, you let me.”

She blinked. “It’s a deal. Go to it.”

Diabolical woman. But he had to keep his word.

An hour ago, he’d have been too weak. Now, when he exerted Influence, the power shimmered around him. “You won’t speak of my private affairs involving my feeding or living habits or those of the vampires, Tourists, or Residents of any origin, nor will you reveal any detail that would lead anyone to suspect we exist, unless you’re assured of privacy and alone with me.

“Okay,” she agreed. “Go ahead and cast the whammy.”

“It’s done. You can’t test it until morning, though, because right now you’re very busy.”

“I am?”

He smothered that with a kiss, then made love to her, slowly and passionately, driven by the fear that he’d lose all of this when she learned the rest.

When they woke, she was ravenous. “We should live in your room with that lovely microwave. Now I’ve got to get dressed to go eat.”

“Wait a minute.” He pulled her back. He had promised not to keep information from her anymore, and now she couldn’t betray the luren plans. “Abbot mustn’t suspect how much you mean to me, so you’ve got to be careful.”

“But you put the whammy on me. Abbot’s no threat.”

He lay back with an explosive sigh. “Abbot’s an incredible threat. Listen.” And he explained just what Abbot’s original mission was, and how Titus himself had been chosen to stop the Tourists from implanting that transmitter. He tried to talk around his nonhuman origin, to cushion the shock, to delay the ultimate moment. He tried to tell himself she’d accepted him completely and the simple matter of ancestry wasn’t that important. But his throat was dry and constricted as he forced out the words he had to speak.

She was white and shaking when he’d finished. “You’re part of an alien from outer space? But that’s not possible. your mother was human. it’s not possible.”

“Our legends tell us our ancestors crashed on Earth. I don’t know where luren evolved or how.” It was a relief to be able to use his own terminology with her. “I don’t know how or why it’s true, but I know that ship out there on the lunar surface was crewed by relatives of my species.”

She clutched her pillow. “Titus, don’t kid me.”

“I’m not. I promised not to keep anything back.”

“I just slept with an alien from outer space? That’s-that’s– Titus!”

“I was born on Earth,” he protested. “Look, when Abbot dug me out of that grave, and explained why I-behaved the way I did-I felt about like you do now. Then he pointed out I’d always been. nonhuman, and knowing it didn’t make me a different person.” She hugged herself, rocking. Her lips were still too white. “Well,” he added, “it didn’t help me much either, at first.”

He got off the bed and in a slow agony of apprehension, he dressed, noting his bruises had healed, so he’d have to keep the areas covered. Humans didn’t heal that fast. When he glanced at Inea, she was still rocking back and forth, her eyes screwed shut. Finally, he knelt beside her and pried one of her fingers loose to kiss it. “I’m sorry I laid that on you like that. I’d never have done it if you hadn’t insisted on the-we call it being silenced under Influence. You took all that about Abbot so well, I hoped-well, I did promise to tell you everything. Inea, I’m sorry.”

She pulled her finger back and hunched away from him.

I should ask if she wants me to remove the gag. But demanding such a decision right now would be cruel. “I’ll remove the silencing anytime you ask.” She didn’t respond. “You need some time to get over this one. I’ll leave now. I don’t want to but.”

She didn’t move. She was barely breathing.

“But I guess I ought to.” Slowly, he rose and went to the door. Turning for one last look, hoping desperately, he wanted to curl up around the searing grief in his own body. Something finally became clear to him. She’d been doing to him exactly what she’d accused him of doing to her. Every time he let his guard down, feeling accepted, she cut him off. He hadn’t known he was doing it to her, and he was sure she didn’t know what she was doing to him. How human!

He put his hand on the door, and spoke to it. “From now on, Inea, I’ll try for all I’m worth to stop hurting you.”

The airtight seal popped softly as the door opened, but he paused, praying she’d reach out and stop him. “Inea, just remember, the only important thing I’ve told you is about Abbot. He’s the danger. Don’t let him suspect we care about each other. Earth is my home, and I’m going to stop him from sending his message.”

When she didn’t reply, he had to step out and close the door. There were still two things she didn’t know: what it would mean if he Marked her as his stringer-that under luren law his Mark would protect her somewhat from Abbot but make her his property-and that Kylyd had a survivor whom Abbot intended to revive.

He stood with his back to her door, noticing the subtly different air of the corridor and trying to think. He had about twelve hours until the scheduled demonstration to the reporters. They were, no doubt, here already, and Carol Colby was busy with them. He couldn’t help with that. He’d been given his assignment-stay out of the assassin’s way.

With a mighty effort, he ripped himself away from Inea’s door, forcing down all fear that she’d never touch him again. There were three things he had to accomplish before the demonstration. He had to check the sleeper’s new chamber for Abbot’s transmitter before Abbot discovered what Sisi had divulged; he had to reconstruct Abbot’s moves while Titus had been with Inea; and he needed to know who the ninja was.

As he wandered by a refectory, he remembered he had to “eat” and used his reprogrammed meal card, Influencing the crowd automatically. Gradually, he steadied down, concentration returning, and he thought to scan the crowds for traces of Abbot’s work. He was astonished when his mechanical effort brought him to staring at a short Oriental woman with a cap of straight black hair.

She was bussing her tray at the conveyer belt. Her face showed her to be in her forties, with strong character lines and a purposeful expression. She wore the Project uniform pants and jacket with a crisp perfection. But she also wore, no doubt without her knowledge, sign of Abbot’s tampering.

He had not, however, Marked her.

When she reached the door, Titus decided to follow her. Out in the corridor, he crowded into the same lift she took, and lost her as she switched to another. But he knew where she was going. All those she had greeted were from Biomed.

Titus joined the stream of workers reporting for their shift, and cloaked himself in a blur of familiarity. He passed through the security checkpoint as a ghost of one of the legitimate workers-a burst of random static on the instruments. Nothing worthy of the guards’ attention.

He followed the Oriental woman to the Cognitive Sciences section, and toward the Artificial Intelligence division. Moving through as if on an errand, a blur at the edges of vision, he overheard her called Dr. Kuo.