Beastchild Read Online Free PDF Page B

child drew deeper into his nest.
        "You should have let the rat kill me. You were a stupid child for warning me. What am I to you? I am the enemy. I was better dead to you than alive."
        The boy listened.
        "Stupid. And a traitor to your own race."
        "The war is over," Leo said. "You won."
        Hulann hunched as if bending over a pain in his stomachs. "No! No, the war is not over-until one or the other race is extinct. There is no quarter in this battle."
        "You can't believe that."
        Hulann did not speak. He did not, of course, believe it -just as the boy had said. Perhaps he had never believed it. Now, he realized the war was somewhat of a mistake. Man and naoli had never been able to co-exist even in a cold war sort of situation. They were too alien to meet on any common ground. Yet this child was reachable. They were communicating. Which meant there had been a flaw in their reasoning-which meant the war could have been avoided.
        "Well," Hulann said, "I have no choice. I must open these cellars to the researchers on my team. I cannot hide their existence. I'll string the lights. If you are not gone when I call them in, it is your problem. It is no longer mine."
        He got up and began his work for the day. Two hours before he was due to go to the traumatist, he had strung lights through most of the cellars. He came back and looked at the boy. "The next cellar is the last. I've finished."
        Leo said nothing.
        "You should be going."
        Again: "There is nowhere for me to go."
        Hulann stood, watching the child for a long while. At last, he turned and unstrung the glow bulbs, pulled up the poles he had planted, rewound the wire and took everything into the outer cellar. He came back and put his handlamp with the boy.
        "It will give you light tonight."
        "Thank you," Leo said.
        "I have undone my work."
        Leo nodded.
        "Perhaps, tomorrow, I can fill up the crevice in the wall of ruins, seal this at the last cellar and try to keep the continuation from being discovered. Then, you would not be bothered." 'I'll help you," Leo said.
        "You know," Hulann said, his heavy face strained so even the boy could see the anguish in the alien features, "you are… you are… crucifying me?"
        And he went away. Leaving the boy with light.
        "Come in, Hulann," the traumatist Banalog said, smiling and friendly as all traumatists are with their patients. He exuded a fatherliness, an exaggerated sense of well-being that could not help but infect his charges.
        Hulann took the seat to the right of Banalog's desk while the older naoli went behind and sat down in his customary chair, leaned back and feigned relaxation.
        "I am sorry I forgot to arrange an appointment yesterday," Hulann said.
        "Nothing damaged," Banalog assured him gently, quietly. "Just shows that this guilt is not so bad as the Phasersystem computer thinks. Otherwise, you wouldn't have been able to continue working as you did." Banalog wondered if his lie was transparent. Hulann seemed to perk up, and he thought that he had told it with conviction. But now he was certain that the archaeologist was consciously aware of his guilt and trying to hide it."
        "I didn't know I had a guilt complex until the Phasersystem told me about it."
        Banalog waved his hands to indicate the unimportance of the situation Hulann now found himself in. The point was to, a little at least, put the patient at ease. He pulled his chair in closer to the desk, rested his arms on the top and began to punch a series of buttons on his multicolored control console.
        There was a stirring above Hulann's head. As he looked up to see the cause of the noise and movement, the hood of the monitoring robot, gray and dully burnished, descended like a landing shuttlecraft. It stopped two feet above where he sat, the four-foot diameter of the