Dean Koontz: Beastchild

The second warning from the Phasersystem had disconcerted Hulann. He had honestly forgotten all about the need to make an appointment with the traumatist. He was shaken by his neglectfulness and decided to complete his obligation before going to the diggings. He set a time with Banalog's computer-secretary for late that afternoon. He went to work, late for the second day in a row.

He passed the others without comment, noticing the odd looks he drew from them. Realizing that his lips were pulled in over his teeth giving him a look of shame, he quickly rearranged his facial composure until he seemed nothing more than a happy bone hunter on his way to rich graveyards.

He went into the tumbled-down building, down the stairs, into the cellar, flicking on the lights as he went. He walked to the break in the continuous stretch of rooms, took his handlamp through the hole and into the chamber where the human child had been yesterday.

Leo was still there.

He sat in a pile of clothes, wearing two coats to keep from freezing, eating some earthly fruit from a plastic container. The container apparently had a heat tab, for steam was rising from it.

Hulann stood in disbelief, his eyes totally uncovered, the lids folded like accordions in the overhanging ledge of bone above his sockets.

"Would you like some?" Leo asked, offering the fruit.

"What are you doing here?" Hulann demanded.

Leo said nothing, took another bite of food, swallowed it. "Well, where else was there for me to go?"

"The city," Hulann said. "The whole city!"

"No. There are other naoli. It is all occupied."

"Out of the city, then. Away from here!"

"My leg's better," Leo admitted. "Though I couldn't walk well on it yet. Even so, there isn't anything outside the city. There has been a war, remember."

Hulann could find nothing to say. For the first time in his life, he felt that he could not control his emotions. There was a great desire in him to kneel and relax and cry.

"It's so cold," Leo said, still eating. "Yet you don't wear anything. Aren't you cold?"

Hulann crossed, sat down in the 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 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."