Sterilization showers were deployed at the entry to H’lim’s suite, along with four Brink’s guards, two outside and two inside. Colby had put Titus’s name on the list of those to be admitted, and the guards signed him into the suite muttering how Kaschmore would have to take it out on Colby, not them, that H’lim had so many visitors.

Abbot had signed in several times during the last few hours, as had Mirelle and Colby.

Properly dressed, but still cloaking the septic Thermos, Titus entered the infirmary’s executive suite. He found himself facing a long formal dining table behind which was a conversation pit done in gold and indigo. To his left a door opened into a private kitchen where someone was puttering about. The lights were dimmed, and the temperature was stifling. From the door in the far wall came the glow of Kylyd’s one surviving light panel.

Through that door he found the bedroom. The hospital bed had the sheets turned down. To its left was a conversation group of three cloned-leather upholstered couches with computer consoles installed on the end tables between them, and a coffee table with two abandoned cups on it. Behind the couches was a closed door, and another faced it in the wall across the room-To the right of the bed was a desk and executive vidcom installation. H’lim sat at the desk, chin resting on one hand, squinting at the bright screen. A top-security thumb reference file lay open beside his other hand.

When Titus stepped through the door, H’lim turned then grinned widely. “I am trying to learn this the hard way. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to help?”

Give him my mind again? “Maybe later. How do you feel?”

“I’ve been distracting myself from that by learning this.” H’lim gestured to the vidcom screen displaying an access menu. “I got your speech, but no graphics, and I’m very hazy on the inner harmonies of your language so I mischoose the applicable meaning too often. Your-people-are polite, and ask many questions, but they won’t answer mine.”

Titus gestured to the four surveillance cameras bracketing the room. “They’re making recordings to study later, you know. They want to see what you’re like before you learn too much of us and obscure the data.”

“Recorders, yes. Abbot mentioned them. Lack of privacy does not seem to bother humans.” His eyes went to the Thermos Titus carried cloaked. He had kept it out of the cameras’ fields and now set it down on the floor by the door. Then he went to the desk and leaned over H’lim.

“They’re actually for medical use, not spying, so they can be turned off easily. Watch.” He poked in Colby’s authorization code and the command to secure the room as he did at many meetings. The screen flashed, SECURED. “They might not be happy about that, but insist, then negotiate, and they’ll yield a bit of private time to you.”

H’lim looked up at him. “You seem to understand humans. Your Abbot does not.”

“He thinks of humans as orl.”

“A vast error.” He squinted at the screen. “All my orl were killed, they tell me.” He clenched his hands before him. Titus cupped one hand over the luren’s fists, feeling his terror. He explained that Earth’s luren had no orl, and that Abbot’s people used humans instead. Then he offered the cloned human blood he’d brought, and held his breath.

H’lim clasped Titus’s hand. “You are perhaps more human than you know, Titus. Andre Mihelich has begun to clone orl blood for me, but it will take time, and the hunger is now.”

“You told them what you need?”

“I had to.”

“I understand. Come, take this before they get Carol to turn the cameras on again.”

They took the Thermos into the bathroom where there was no camera, and H’lim downed the contents, grimacing and shuddering with each swallow but not complaining. If or a while, Titus was afraid it might all come back up, disagreeing violently with a full luren. But then H’lim bent over the sink and rinsed the taste away. He looked at himself in the mirror, and proclaimed his hunger appeased.

Titus was wrapping the Thermos in a sterile towel when he heard the bedroom door close and Abbot called from the bedroom, “H’lim? Titus?”

H’lim wiped his face. “Who is that with him?”

He’s sensitive! “Probably a stringer to offer you.” He raised his voice, “We’re coming, Abbot.”

He had brought Dr. Kuo, the short, middle-aged Oriental woman Titus had once followed into Biomed. Her eyes had the glazed look of heavy Influence. Abbot greeted Titus. “I see you’ve got the cameras off. That should stir everyone up. How long do you think we have?”

“Maybe another ten minutes.”

Abbot introduced Kuo to H’lim. “Mark her for your own. My gift.”

“You don’t use them in pairs?”

“Pairs?” asked Abbot, frowning.

“As orl, so they replenish each other afterwards.”

Abbot flushed. That was a rare sight. Titus said, “Humans are not orl. They don’t replenish each other effectively. So-we lie with them ourselves.”

H’lim compared the two crossbreeds before him, then said urbanely, “I see. I should have realized.”

Abbot offered, “If the idea distresses you, I will take care of the matter. Do not hesitate. Mark her.”

“May I ask you something first?”

“Certainly. My reticence was only because of the cameras. I thought I explained that.”

“How long have I been-dormant?”

“Luren time measures have not survived the generations,” answered Abbot, and described the length of a year as one thousand four hundred sixty times the interval H’lim had been awake. “And you’ve been dormant about three years.”

As H’lim gnawed on the mental arithmetic, Titus punched up a solar system graphic and gave the year’s length in terms of earth’s orbit.

H’lim nodded. “I don’t know exactly how long that is, but it does explain why I feel like this. It will pass.”

Titus wanted to ask all sorts of personal questions, but Abbot said, “Now you must take sustenance-”

“I have one more question,” said H’lim, and Titus got the distinct impression that H’lim’s mind was still open on the issue of using humans. “Is there any chance I’ll ever be able to go home?”

“Yes, there is, if you can wait long enough,” answered Abbot, and told of the message he was going to send. He spoke as if talking a distraught patient out of suicide, offering hope and so luring him into eating and surviving.

“I see,” said H’lim at length, inspecting Kuo at closer range. “In that case, I must-regretfully-decline your generous offer.”

“What?” exclaimed Abbot. “Why? Titus, what have you been telling him?”

“Titus has met his obligations to me as best he could, and I will be grateful.”

“Met his-Titus!”

“I gave him blood, but didn’t mention that my mission is to stop you sending that message.”

H’lim’s eyes darted from one to the other as Abbot glared at Titus, Kuo forgotten in her stupor.

At that moment, the door opened and Colby charged through, “. and I did not turn the cameras-oh! Dr. Kuo, I don’t recall authorizing-”

Abbot turned Kuo toward himself briefly, as he said with pervasive Influence, “Dr. Kuo, do you think you’ll be able to help Mirelle with the spoken language now?”

Her eyes focused, and she looked away from Abbot. “Oh, yes, there shouldn’t be any problem now.” She saw Colby. “Excuse me, Carol, I’ll have that report by morning.” She gave a polite little bow to H’lim. “Thank you so much.” And she slid past Colby and out the door.

Colby blinked, frowned at H’lim, and rearranged her features. “I didn’t think my security code was in those notes, H’lim.”

His eyes darted to Titus, and Titus intervened. “I taught him the code. He felt the lack of privacy-”

“No harm done,” suggested Abbot with Influence.

“No, I guess not,” Colby said without enthusiasm.

Titus went to the console. “Watch this, H’lim. I’ll turn them back on so the anthropologists will be happy.”