By then, Titus trusted Abbot’s motives and submitted to him with some confidence. But he was late for his appointment, and subsequently late the rest of the day. Inea did come in just after midnight, but fell asleep over the orl blood she brought for him. He choked it down, and it stayed down producing only a slight queasiness that passed quickly.

The next few days, running late all the time, he had no chance to dwell on the impending arrival of the “tainers, or even to speak to H’lim about his advising Inea. H’lim was constantly surrounded by the Cognitive or Biomed people, and Titus wondered how he could find a moment to work on the booster, ”he day before the scheduled arrival, Titus again overslept, tremendously relieved by the few ounces of her own blood Inea had surreptitiously mixed with his ration of orl blood. Even the resulting quarrel, and lack of sexual release, had not impaired his sleep. The sun was still up.

Waking to the groggy miasma of lunar daylight, Titus realized he felt better than he had in months, and the mirror confirmed the impression. Despite the effectiveness of Inea’s treatment of him, his opinionated and willful woman had been given the worst advice in the galaxy, and, he decided, today was the day of reckoning. Tomorrow they might all be dead, or in the hands of the secessionists. But if they survived it all, he didn’t want to go through the whole ordeal he’d faced after leaving Abbot. If it’s not too late already. Dear God, don’t let it be top late already.

When he arrived at H’lim’s lab to relieve Inea, the guards let him through with a perfunctory warning that the security cameras were off.

Since Cognitive had tried to spy on H’lim’s private hours and he had caught them every time, Titus knew he could speak freely and somehow tell the luren to butt out.

Inside, Inea was seated on a tall stool leaning over the Thizan game board, looking tired but wholly absorbed. H’lim, welding mask over his dark glasses, was in the safety cage using an acetylene torch to mend a piece of glassware. His movements were deft, his concentration total, and a fog of absent-minded Influence filled the room brighter than the torch fire.

Titus watched until H’lim had finished the delicate job and the subliminal throb of Influence had abated.

Inea looked up. “Titus. I thought you’d be late.”

“I am.”

She checked her watch. “Ha! I must have lost track of time! Well, it’s only fifteen minutes. I forgive you.”

Titus looked at H’lim, knowing the luren had, perhaps unconsciously, Influenced her attention to the gameboard. His objection died on his lips, however, because he was more astonished at the deep tremor of violation he felt, and the pure animal rage lurking below it. Maybe it is too late.

Inea came to his side, gripping his elbow. “Are you all light-You seemed better. Look, I’m sorry I said all those really rotten things last night. Forgive me?”

Titus shrugged that off, eyes on H’lim. “It wasn’t your fault.” Did he Influence her to do that to me? He wouldn’t be surprised if H’lim’s touch slipped right through Biomed’s an hypnotic conditioning and past him. But the thought of himusing Influence focused on Inea made his lips peel back from his clenched teeth. He wouldn’t violate my Mark!

H’lim tilted back the welder’s mask and scrutinized Titus. “Earth’s luren are very different from the parent stock. Only in the last few days have I come to see just how different-and how uniquely valuable-Earth’s mixed genetic stock is.” His tone carried a note of apology that checked Titus’s outrage, capturing his curiosity instead. “Last night, Titus, I discovered, after I spoke to Inea about what she had to do for you, that I’d overlooked something vital.”

Titus’s arm went around Inea’s shoulders. “You only spoke to her?”

“I only spoke to her. You see, I thought the key fact was that a particular living orl provides its luren with a vital central nervous system stimulation, a personalized bioelectrical signature, that the luren may come to crave.

“From what Abbot said about you, I thought that’s what you hadn’t understood and so you were resisting a tie to Inea and sickening for lack of her blood. But I was wrong about your motives. I can see that now, in what’s happening between you– and in your outrage about it. You knew very well what would happen, and had set yourself to avoid it. What I still don’t understand is why.”

“Orl are animals. You don’t have to wait for their consent to have your way with them. And you don’t have to deal with having consent withheld or delayed. You don’t have to worry about overtaxing them because they’re replaceable. And you don’t have to contend with your own guilt if they break your patience and your hunger rules you.”

“Ah. Well, consider this. A luren’s own signature changes, attunes to his herd-uh, string, as you say. It’s like Mirelle’s kinesics, only more so. That mutual attunement is what makes Marks so much stronger than yours, and so inviolable, not Sneer power of Influence, as Abbot assumed, and not the power Blood Law. The mutuality of the orl tie between human and Earth-luren, should solve the consent problem.”

Suddenly, a covetous note beneath H’lim’s scientific tone jarred Titus into associating a dozen things H’lim had said and done. There’s some kind of stiff penalty for a luren who takes blood from a human, and that taboo makes luren crave humans even if the blood isn’t compatible. It fit. H’lim had refused Abbot’s stringer in favor of cloned human blood because he wanted to go home, and they had some way to tell if he’d used a human as an orl. Must have been a letdown to find human blood so vile, but he’s still wondering what it could be like.

Inea tugged at his sleeve. “He explained it all to me, Titus. With Earth’s luren, the ability to make the orl-tie is vestigial. But you and I, Titus, we have it. I know we do.” Her eyes shone. “I’m going to make it as beautiful for you as you’ve made sex for me.”

He hugged her closer. “I don’t care what you call it, Inea, it’s not a healthy thing. I’m going to break it. I’m not going to take your blood again. Not ever.”

“Titus,” said H’lim, “your fears are groundless. One never harms an orl one is tied to.”

“A luren doesn’t harm such an orl, perhaps, but you’ve a lot to learn about humans and Earth’s luren.” Titus remembered all too well how he’d felt about the humans he’d fed on and then killed. They’d even enjoyed it.

“Why are you holding her like that?”

Titus jerked away. Inea nestled closer and he froze, aware of his need to possess having gone far beyond the normal sexual need of a male. Just holding her, he was soaking ectoplasm from her.

“You see, that’s what I missed! I never saw you two, only Abbot and Mirelle, and there’s no tie there, despite his practices. But when Inea told me how ill you’d get on orl blood, even after I’d filtered out the irritating component, I realized what brain site that component stimulated-the vestigial orl-tie site! You were sick because you resisted the natural completion of that tie. But what I didn’t grasp is that this isn’t exactly the same as an orl-tie. You see, Abbot was instantly and repeatedly sick because his brain receptors differ from yours, so his nutritional absorption is different, and so he reacted to other trace chemicals as well as the absence of various human blood components.”

H’lim interpolated, “I don’t think Abbot can survive on cloned blood. The differences between the Residents and the Tourists may be physiological, not philosophical.”

I hope not! thought Titus, clutching Inea. If so, it would come to a war of extermination when it was discovered there was no way to persuade the Tourists to stop killing humans. “Abbot’s been controlling his appetite.”

“At a terrible cost,” agreed H’lim, pacing back and forth, warming to his topic. “I wish I knew enough math!”