After one meeting, H’lim confided, “Now I’m glad Abbot’s sending a real message, or I’d have been tempted to deceive the humans. They’re clever, Titus. Especially Mirelle. They’d have caught me.” Seeing Titus’s expression, he’d added, “I’m sorry you and Abbot are at odds over this.”
It was one of the few times Titus believed the luren. He pressed him. “What exactly did you put in Abbot’s message that’s not in this one?” It wasn’t the first time he’d asked, but it was the first time he got a straight answer.
“A code that’ll tell my company that I’m sitting on a genetic gold mine. If they can only get here first and dig me out, we’ll all be rich-Earth’s luren as well as the humans. I told them to file a claim that will protect your legal rights, and to make all the appropriate appeals to create a special category for you. We’re one of the few firms in all the galaxy, Teleod and Metaji combined, who can do this for Earth. Trust me, Titus. I wouldn’t do anything to harm a parent of mine!”
Abbot came to take over escort duty, and Titus watched the two walk away. Maybe not to harm, but to risk, yes. Then he wondered where the thought had come from. H’lim had sounded so sure. But on the other hand, under Mirelle H’lim had mastered the body language and kinesics of the Near East, China, and Australia as well as North America. It had made him so effective in his dealings with the committees studying him, even the ones who understood the power of the unverbalized languages, that he didn’t need Influence.
Throughout this period, Inea and Titus still watched Abbot’s movements closely. One evening, about two weeks prior to the scheduled launch of the probe, Inea was at Titus’s vidcom screen drinking coffee and sifting the newest data on Abbot. Titus was sprawled on the bed doodling equations on a pad, his old mathematical proof that Influence, and so H’lim’s ability to grab language right out of Titus’s skull, couldn’t exist. Meanwhile, most of his mind was inventing methods of prying truth out of H’lim. Inea’s voice penetrated his reverie. “Either he’s installed his transmitter in the probe or he’s not going to at all.”
“What? Who?” Titus sat up. “Abbot? He’s supposed to be with H’lim.”
“He is right now, but I mean all this last week.”
He went to look over her shoulder at the graphs she’d made. “You’re right. He hasn’t been out to the probe hangar in days.” Heading for the door, he shrugged into his jacket.
“Where are you going?” She followed him.
“I’ll be right back.”
She slipped out the door behind him. “Titus!”
He put his hands on her shoulders. “I know Colby ordered me not to go out there. I’ll just check out what Abbot’s done, and be right back. Don’t worry, it’s night outside. I’ll be fine.”
“Titus, what will he do to you if he catches you destroying his work? You can’t just go rushing-”
He kissed her. “You’re supposed to relieve him in half an hour. Go early, see if you can keep them both occupied. I’ll come to the lab when I’m done.” He turned and strode away before she could object again.
Suited up, he rode with a shift change out to the probe. Colby had not lifted his clearance, so he was quite open about his presence. His mind, however, was on how he could possibly identify Abbot’s transmitter and what he’d do if he found it. From studying the plans of the hastily redesigned probe, he had a fair notion of where it must be. He had entertained ideas of editing Abbot’s message, or substituting one of his own, but had been unable to break into Abbot’s codes to steal either his message or the program that cast it into galactic communications protocols, which Abbot had no doubt lifted from Kylyd, and not shared with the humans. Titus hadn’t spent enough time on the luren language to draft his own message. Besides, what could, or should, a Resident say?
I have to remove the transmitter. I can put it back again before launch if it seems H’lim’s honest. How he’d explain such an act to Residents who had sacrificed to put him here, he didn’t know.
The illumination outside the hangar cut the area into a crazy quilt of stark, flat pictures embedded in black, like a limbo set on a stage, because there was no air to diffuse the light. But the floods were cleverly aimed to prevent disorientation or dazzling on approach to the open hangar doors. Despite his contacts, Titus could make out traces of what existed in shadow, infrared images that would have been clear had there been no light, for the workers produced a considerable amount of heat that could escape only by radiation and conduction.
He climbed the scaffold into the probe and took a few moments to sort out who the electricians were. He hung over their shoulders asking questions as he examined each of them for trace of Abbot’s Influence. It would not be perceptible unless triggered by work involving Abbot’s modifications, so he checked only those at work. At last, he came to one woman squatting before an open panel consulting a circuit diagram.
She kept tapping a single component with a probe, and then following the circuit diagram away from that spot, clearly frustrated that she couldn’t find it. That’s it!
He hunkered down next to her and introduced himself. “Why are you checking this out? It’s been approved.” He pointed to the band of tape that had sealed the access port.
“Oh, another surprise double-check, along with all that anti-hypnotic conditioning they’re putting everyone through.”
“All that conditioning?” As far as Titus knew, they’d only done one round of hypnotic conditioning, unsure that H’lim’s power was related to hypnosis.
“Yeah, an experiment. They make you do a job, then they ”lash lights in your eyes for a while, make you do the job over again, flash lights at you again, and so on. Who knows when it’ll stop! If you ask me, the higher-ups were raised on too many o’d movies. This blood-sucking monster from outer space turned out to be a nice guy!“
“Sure seems like it.” I better not miss any more meetings! Titus couldn’t be hypnotized, but he had no idea if he could fake it without using Influence. Finger quivering inside his glove, he pointed at a familiar area of her diagram. “That’s my stuff. Here, let me. No use both of us rechecking what’s been rechecked before. You must be tired.” He didn’t even have to use Influence. Tedium had taken its toll. She shoved the display pad into his mitts.
“All yours, Doctor. I’ll be up top when you’re done.”
“Right.”
Aware that Abbot’s shift with H’lim was officially over, Titus kept looking over his shoulder expecting his father to appear. It can’t be this easy, not after all these months. But connection by connection, memorizing what he was doing, Titus excised Abbot’s assembly, checked everything by the diagram, ran a systems check, and buttoned it up again, satisfied it would now work the way the humans had intended.
Even with the lumpy appurtenances where Abbot had improvised parts, the whole transmitter fit neatly into his outside leg pocket. He was still sweating after returning the diagrams to the electrician.
Titus found himself climbing down between a welder and a shift supervisor who were arguing with each other, when their voices in his phones were cut off by a piercing whistle. “Clear the probe hangar! Clear the hangar! Incoming bogey at ten o’clock. Clear the hangar! Two minutes to contact.”
Swearing, the men above and below Titus pushed off from the ladder to land yards apart and running for the nearest dome. Titus copied them, and then lost ground when the lights went out as the station secured for attack. Titus followed the sparks of suitlights around him, and once outside the hangar, dug his toes into the compacted soil of the path. His mass was too great, his feet clumsy, his vision obscured by the helmet but he had to keep up with the swarm of men and machines behind him, driving toward the safety of the dome’s underground bunker or be run over.