Beastchild Read Online Free PDF

dirt a few feet in front of the boy. Almost absentmindedly, he said, "No. I'm not cold. We have no constant body temperature such as humans have. Ours varies according to the cold. Though not greatly, really. And then there are our skins. Little body heat can escape us if we wish to contain it."
        "Well, I'm cold!" Leo said. He put the empty can aside. Slight white vapors still steamed upward from it. "I've looked for a personal heating unit ever since the city fell. I can't find one. Do you think you can bring one to me?"
        Hulann looked incredulous. Yet he found himself saying, "I've seen a few recovered from the ruins. Maybe."
        "That would be swell."
        "If I bring it, would you leave?" he asked.
        Leo shrugged his shoulders, which seemed to be his most characteristic gesture. Hulann wished he knew for certain what emotion it expressed. "Where would I go?"
        Hulann waved his arms weakly, pointlessly. "Away from the city. Even if there isn't much of anything out there, you could take food and wait until we were gone."
        "Ten years."
        "Yes."
        "That's silly."
        "Yes."
        "So we're back where we started."
        "Yes."
        "Doesn't that hurt?" Leo asked, leaning forward.
        "What?"
        "Your lips. When you pull them in over your teeth like that."
        Hulann quickly showed his teeth, put a hand to his lips and felt them. "No," he said. "We have few nerves in our outer layers of flesh."
        "You looked funny," Leo said. He drew his own lips in over his teeth and made talking motions, then burst out laughing.
        Hulann found himself laughing also, watching the boy mimic him. Did he really look like that? It was a mysterious expression on a naoli; or at least he had been raised to respect it as such. In this mock version, it truly was humorous.
        "What are you doing?" the boy squealed, laughing even harder.
        "What?" Hulann asked, looking about him. His body was still. His hands and feet did not move.
        "That noise," Leo said.
        "Noise?"
        "That wheezing sound."
        Hulann was perplexed. "Mirth," he said. "Laughter like yours."
        "It sounds like a drain that's clogged," Leo said. "Do I sound that bad to you?"
        Hulann began laughing again. "To me you sound strange. I had not noticed before. You sound like some birds that we have on my world. They are great, hairy things with legs three feet long and little, tiny bills."
        They laughed some more until they were tired.
        "How long can you stay today?" the boy asked when they had sat in comfortable silence for some minutes.
        The depression settled on Hulann again. "Not long. And you can stay for even a shorter time. You must leave. Now."
        "I've said I can't, Hulann."
        "No. There will be no refusal. You must leave now, or I will turn you over to the executioners as I should have in the first place."
        Leo made no move to leave.
        Hulann stood. "Now!" he commanded.
        "No, Hulann."
        "Now, now, now!" He grabbed the boy, lifted him off the floor, surprised at his own lightness. He shook him until the boy's face was a blur. "Now, or I will kill you myself!" He dropped him back onto the floor.
        Leo made no move to depart. He looked at Hulann, then down at the clothes spread around him. He began to draw them in against himself, cuddled into a hollow to contain the heat from his body. With only his upper face uncovered, he stared at the naoli.
        "You can't do this to me," Hulann said. He was no longer angry, just exasperated. "You can't make me do these things. Please. It is not right of you."
        The boy did not answer.
        "Don't you see what you're doing? You're making a criminal of me. You are making me a traitor."
        A gust of cold air found its way through the debris and twisted by the two of them. Hulann did not notice. The