He began loosening Mirelle’s clothing, then he noticed Inea was not moving. “Move! She’s lost a lot of blood.”

Silently, Inea helped him to wrap Mirelle and, as she regained consciousness, to get some fluids into her. But Inea was still angry when they’d done all they could. “Titus, I want to know what you intend to do! You can’t let him get away with this!”

“Why didn’t you take her to the infirmary?”

“And let them find out? They would, you know, and then the witch hunt would be on.”

Titus nodded. “Exactly. We’ve held off that witch hunt by adhering to a very strict set of rules. One of those rules is the respect for the Mark, and another is the filial duty. I can’t do anything about what Abbot chooses to do to Mirelle.”

“Not even if it threatens to expose you all?”

“I don’t know why she’s walking around in this condition. He’s usually more careful.”

“Walking around in this-” she repeated, aghast. “All you’re worried about is that she’s ”walking around,“ not that she’s in this condition to begin with? Titus, he’s killing her!”

Her outrage beat against him. He wanted to make excuses for Abbot, and he wanted to placate her all at the same time. And he ached horridly for Mirelle. She was so pale and thin, the glowing beauty of her faded to gray.

He turned away from them both and spoke to the computer console which still showed H’lim’s lab, Abbot’s back to the pickup. “Inea, there is something about luren law that you have to know, about luren politics on Earth.”

“Politics? Politics! How can you-”

He lowered his voice and cut across her hysteria. “I know how you feel, Inea. It’s the reason I left Abbot to begin with. I’ve had moments when I wanted to do more than leave him. I’ve actually wanted to kill him. I got over that only when I discovered he’s not one of a kind, but a representative of a group, the Tourists. And Abbot’s one of the least worst of them. He’s kind, considerate, and sane by comparison.”

She approached as if creeping up to a cesspool. “Titus, the way he’s treating Mirelle isn’t kind, considerate, or sane. If anyone finds out-”

“Listen to me! The Tourists constitute fully half of the luren on Earth. My presence here constitutes an act of civil war, but it is war under more strictures and conventions than humans have ever heard of. If we had known who the Tourist would be here, I would never have been sent here. Never! They’ve tried to send someone who could deal with Abbot, but he couldn’t get through. But even if he had, he couldn’t do anything about Mirelle. Abbot is within his legal rights with her, and no Resident will challenge that. We don’t kill humans, but they do, and the Law of Blood says Marked stringers can be killed. Abbot can kill Mirelle, and it’s perfectly legal, under some circumstances.”

She recoiled, white-lipped.

“Yes, it’s disgusting, and yes I hate it, and yes I’d like to wring his neck. But I won’t. I wouldn’t if I could. Not for this.” Don’t remind her she’s Marked!

“Titus-” It was a tiny, strangled plea that stopped his heart.

He watched her lip quiver, somewhere between disgust and tears of bereavement, and he realized that he had to do something or lose her forever. He couldn’t argue that Mirelle would probably survive the few days until H’lim’s booster was ready. That must be what Abbot was thinking. Or maybe he wasn’t thinking too clearly. Hunger could impair the ability to assess risks. And the vision of how much hunger it would take to do that to Abbot horrified Titus.

Damn the blockade! Damn this goddamned war!

“There is one thing I can do. I don’t know if it will work. I can only try.” He went to the cupboard and stuffed the few remaining packets of blood into a net bag lined with a lab coat. At the outer door, he said, “Maybe this will keep him from leaning too hard on her. Take care of her while I’m gone.” Then he turned to meet her eyes. “I’ll be back soon, Inea.”

In H’lim’s lab, he found H’lim and Abbot tinkering with the temperature controls of an empty incubator on a workbench screened from the rest of the lab and from the one bug he’d planted, by a noise partition. H’lim was shoving a notepad under Abbot’s nose, the screen lit. “In the Teleod, both luren and human-stock people are legally enfranchised, and this is the genetic tag they look for to determine stock. You have it, so you should have no trouble with the courts.”

He’s lying. Why is he lying? Why do I think he’s lying? Titus had never been one to suspect others of prevarication, but he could not shake this conviction. Simultaneously, he filed away the datum that Teleod was a political alliance, not a chemical term, and in the Teleod legal enfranchisement was a matter of genetics, not loyalties. The lessons of Nazi Germany sprang to mind, but he put aside his suddenly dark suspicions and strode forward.

Without looking up, Abbot said, “You’re early, Titus.”

H’lim thrust his pad at Titus. “Look!”

H’lim’s pad screen was divided into five areas. In the center, four colorful molecular models were superimposed over each other in three dimensions. Around it, each of the four curled helices was displayed alone.

H’lim pointed as he explained with real enthusiasm, “This is you; here’s Abbot; here’s a textbook example of human, and here’s me. I have orls, too, but this pad is too small. I haven’t translated any galactic races into your coordinates yet, but just by inspection I can tell you that you and your humans have some peculiar anomalies. Other than being oddly suggestible, your humans might be the find of a lifetime for me.” He pointed at various parts of the screen. “I’ve never seen or read about anything like this-or this-or even this! Once I discover what traits are linked here, and there-and this one, too-I may actually have found the single most marketable commodity on Earth. And Titus, I assure you, I am the one who can best market it.”

Abbot turned, gesturing with the probe he’d been wielding. “Now do you see that I’ve been right all along?”

Triumph, and Mirelle’s blood, had glossed over Abbot’s hunger, but Titus saw an ashen tinge of exhaustion in him even before he noticed the way the probe vibrated with his hand’s uncontrollable shaking. He’s on the edge, and it’s partly my doing. His efforts to stop Abbot had only amounted to harassment and inconvenience, with his mistakes adding a modicum of busywork, but all together it had taken a toll on his father and Titus felt a luren’s guilt for that.

Absorbed in his models, H’lim mused aloud, “This may account for the suggestibility of humans, though why it should vary so much, I don’t know. Can you get me a specimen from Inea? And one from Mirelle? Comparing the strongest with the weakest, perhaps-”

“It’s Mirelle’s weakness I’ve come to discuss,” Titus interrupted. “Her exceptional weakness today.”

“She’ll recover,” declared Abbot.

“What?” asked H’lim, yanked out of his reasoning.

“I intend it should be so,” said Titus.

H’lim backed off a way, suddenly sensing the cold tension, advanced to set the net bag on the counter beside Abbot’s tools. It sagged open, partially revealing the contents, which he recognized. “Inea half carried Mirelle to my room. She fainted on the floor. What if someone else had found her and taken her to the infirmary? In the name of the Law of Blood, take what your son offers. Use it. Let her recover.”

Abbot’s fingers rested thoughtfully on the packets. “My son. Truly my son again, at last?”

He met Abbot’s eyes and yearned with all his soul to say yes. The moment stretched unendurably as his lips almost formed the word. He felt the first tentative stirring of Abbot’s power, offering the enfolding warmth of a parental welcome, stirring the depths of his being. The tentative joy dancing in his father’s eyes, the scream of hope poised at the edge of his Influence, and the ache in Abbot’s soul at the loss of his son-an ache Titus, only recently a parent himself, could now understand-all combined to show Titus that Abbot had two distinct objectives in coming to the Project: to save Earth’s luren by getting their message out, and to win Titus back from the darkness, to do his parental duty by his son whom he loved as any luren would.