Blood Pact

She'd had to reschedule an end of term meeting to come here and she had no intention of falling farther behind. "Think about it later. I'm waiting.”

    "Yes. Well . . ." Catherine took a deep breath and smoothed down the front of her lab coat. She hadn't even begun to consider the experimental applications yet. The ability to leap so far ahead, she mused, was what made Dr. Burke such a brilliant scientist. "We had an intruder in the lab last night.”

    "A what!”

    Catherine blinked at both volume and tone. "An intruder. But don't worry, number nine took care of him.”

    "Number nine took care of him?" Dr. Burke suddenly saw her world becoming infinitely more complicated. She shot a disgusted glance across the room to where both number nine and Marj . . . and number ten sat motionless by the wall. "The way he, it, took care of that boy?”

    "Oh, no! He captured the intruder, and with only the most basic of instructions. There really can be no more doubt that he's reasoning independently, although I haven't had time this morning to run a new EEC.”

    "Catherine, that's fascinating I'm sure, but the intruder? What did you do with him?”

    "I locked him into number nine's isolation box.”

    "Is he still in there?”

    "Yes. He made a horrible racket at first, very distracting while I was working, especially since I had to do the whole job alone, but he quieted around sunrise.”

    "Quieted." Dr. Burke rubbed at her temples where an incipient headache had begun to pound. Thank God, Catherine had been mucking about in the lab long after the rest of the world had gone to sleep. Had there been no one around to stop him, they would have all very likely been in a great deal of trouble. On the other hand, Catherine stopping an intruder was a mixed blessing, her grip on the world's standard operating procedures not being particularly strong. "He didn't die, did he? I mean you did check on him?” And if he's alive, what the hell are we going to do with him?

    "Of course I did. His metabolic rate is extremely low, but he's alive." She held the printout higher. "This is a partial analysis of his blood.”

    "That's impossible," Dr. Burke snapped. With a captured intruder to deal with, she didn't have time for the grad student's delusions.

    Catherine merely shook her head. "No, it isn't.”

    "No one has blood like that. You had to have done something wrong.”

    "I didn't.”

    "Then the sample was contaminated.”

    "It wasn't.”

    Unable to break past Catherine's calm certainty, Dr. Burke snatched the printout back and glared down at it, scanning the data she'd already read, looking more closely at the rest. "What's this? This isn't blood work.”

    "I also did a cheek swab.”

    "Your intruder has thromboplastins present in his saliva? That's ridiculous.”

    "He's not my intruder," Catherine protested. "And if you don't trust my results, run the tests yourself. Besides, if you'll notice, they don't exactly register as thromboplastins although there is a ninety-eight point seven percent similarity.”

    "No one has that kind of clotting initiators in their sa . . ." Ten million red blood cells per cubic millimeter of blood . . .
    thromboplastins present in his saliva . . . he quieted around sunrise . . . his metabolic rate is extremely low . . . quieted around sunrise . . . around sunrise. . . . "No, that's impossible.”

    Eyes narrowed, Catherine squared her shoulders. She couldn't understand how Dr. Burke continued to deny the experimental results. Science didn't lie. "Obviously, it isn't impossible.”

    Dr. Burke ignored her. Heart pounding, she turned toward the row of isolation boxes. "I think," she said slowly, "I'd better have a look at your intruder.”

    "He isn't my intruder," Catherine muttered again as she followed the other woman across the room.

    Palms resting on the curve of number nine's isolation box, apparently no longer only number nine's, Dr. Burke told herself she was letting fantasy get the best of both common sense and education. He can't be what evidence suggests he is. Such creatures exist in myth and legend. They aren't walking around in the twentieth century. But if the test results were accurate . . . There's probably a perfectly normal, scientific explanation for all this, she told herself firmly, and opened the lid.

    "Good Lord, he's paler than you are. I didn't think that was possible." She hadn't expected him to look so young. Much as Catherine had done earlier, she pushed her