Beastchild Read Free Page B

humans before. But never when he was alone. And never when they would have so much to hate him for.
        "Will you turn me in?" the boy asked.
        Hulann was afraid. Desperately. Painfully. But there was something else stirring in him as well. It took some moments before he realized that this other thing was guilt.
        Though surely there must have been things the boy wished to say to Hulann (curses and damnations should fill at least an hour; a naoli rarely engaged in physical violence with one of his own kind, resorting to sustained verbal denunciations to work off accumulated frustrations), he merely sat upon the rubble, the concrete, wood and steel, the plastic and aluminum, watching the alien. He did not seem frightened nor particularly angry. Curious, more than anything else.
        It was quite an uncomfortable situation as far as Hulann was concerned. To be spat upon and reviled would have raised his own hatred. Hating the boy, he could have acted. But the lengthening silence was a wall he could not breach.
        Hulann went to the rat, kicked the chunks of stone away and looked at the corpse. He prodded it with a tentative foot. The fleshy body quivered with a post mortem muscle spasm and was still again. He walked back to the boy and looked up at him where he sat just slightly above eye level.
        The boy looked back, his head tilted to one side. He was, Hulann supposed, a pretty specimen by human standards. His head seemed somewhat too large, but its features were well placed for his species. He had a thick mass of golden hair. Hair alone astounded the scaled naoli; golden hair was nearly too much to comprehend. Blue eyes beneath yellow brows, a small nose, and thin lips. His smooth skin was dotted here and there with what the humans called "freckles" and strangely considered an attribute-but which the naoli chose to regard as imperfections in coloration and possibly the marks of disease (although they never had been able to study a freckled human at close quarters).
        "What are you doing here?" Hulann asked.
        The boy shrugged his shoulders.
        Hulann interpreted this as indecision, though he was not certain that some more subtle, complex answer was being given.
        "You must have some reason for being down here in the cellars!"
        "Hiding," the boy said simply.
        Hulann felt the guilt again. He was doubly frightened. To be in the presence of a human after all that had happened was terrifying enough. But he was also afraid of his own guilt-and his lack of concern for that guilt. A good naoli would immediately call for help on the Phasersystem, then turn himself into the traumatist and get himself sent home for therapy. Somehow, though, the guilt feeling seemed fitting. Deep in his overmind, he had a desire to know penance.
        He repeated the arguments fed to all the naoli by the Phasersystem during the psychological conditioning periods every morning. He attempted to recall that cold, eerie forest where the plants had been sentient and monsters had lurked in the trees. But that seemed silly now.
        "Are you turning me in?" the boy asked.
        "That is my duty."
        "Of course. Your duty." It was said without malice.
        "I would be severely punished."
        The boy said nothing.
        "Unless, of course, you were to escape before I could apprehend you," Hulann said.
        Even as he spoke, he could not believe his vocal apparatus had formed the words. He had always been an individual of great common sense, of cool thought and reasoned action. Now, he was engaging in sheer madness.
        "That's no good," the boy said, shaking his head so his yellow hair bounced and sprayed about. To Hulann, the sight was breathtaking. "I can't get away. I crawled in here because I thought it was safe. I thought I'd come out when you'd all gone."
        "Ten years," Hulann said. "That would be ten years." The boy looked surprised.