Beastchild

He fought his nausea, reached out, grabbed her legs and pulled her backwards.

She fell over him, clawing, tearing at him with her fingers and her wicked teeth.

He wrestled her, trying to get another chance at her nose, to cut off her breath until she was genuinely unconscious. But she tossed her head and bit him.

The pupils of her eyes were enormous as the drug worked against her and for Hulann. But he was not going to be able to wait for it to help him.

She drew blood from his hand and made a gurgling sound of pleasure deep in her throat.

She bucked, almost threw him off.

At last, regretting the necessity for his action, he drew back his open hand, and slammed the flattened palm into her sex pouch. She made a harsh strangling sound, gagged as he had gagged. He did it again, sending a new wave of paralysis through her.

Then he stood. She was in no condition to run now. She writhed on the floor, calling him names and hugging herself. She said something about his buying his directorship from the commander of the Second Division and of how she would now get the job she should have had in the first place.

He ignored her. His mind was not clear enough to handle any more problems than those he already had.

Ten minutes later, he had her tied in a chair, gagged as thoroughly as Banalog had been. She did not know what he was doing or much about anything in the Here and Now. The sweet-drugs had taken her to another land that was much more enjoyable than this one. She murmured and cooed at the imaginary things she saw.

He went into the corridor, found the drop shaft, punched for the ground floor, and stepped into the nothingness, fell down and down and down until the winds of the mechanism began to slow his descent.

He found the ground car parked with the others behind the tower. He opened the door, climbed in, inserted the key. The engine purred to life. The rotors in the undercarriage coughed, sputtered, and then beat steadily. The car lifted off the ground, bobbling slightly in the stiff, snow-laden wind.

Hulann pulled out onto the cleared square, located the overturned tank where Leo would still be waiting. He accelerated, arced, slowed before the rubble. Leaning across the seat, he touched the door stud and flung it open. The boy crashed down the slope, tripped over a twisted length of aluminum and fell full length. But a moment later he was up moving again. He leaped into the car and pulled the door shut behind.

Hulann knew that only one street out of the square was clear enough to negotiate. He turned to head that way and saw the naoli guard coming across the snow-covered fused glass floor of the compound. He was waving his arms and shouting. As yet, he had not opened contact with the Phasersystem (Hulann would have heard) but he would do that any instant.

The guard came between Hulann and the exit from the square. He still waved and called.

Hulann depressed the accelerator. The blades whined faster.

The guard realized his mistake in not calling for help earlier. Hulann heard the shift in the Phasersystem silence as the other naoli prepared to issue a general alarm.

He accelerated, closing on the guard.

Attention:

The first word of the Phasersystem alarm boomed inside Hulann's head.

Too late, the naoli guard tried to jump aside. The front of the ground car struck him, knocking him back. Then the thick, steel blades went over him, barely registering a change in their speed of revolution.

Hulann did not look back. He concentrated on the street ahead. He had succeeded in cutting off a warning. Even if the guard were soon found, they would have no way of knowing who had hurt him. Hurt? No, lulled. Hulann had killed the guard.

There was a spreading numbness in his body as the realization began to reach the depths of him. He, who had never killed, had never carried a weapon in anger against another intelligent being? He had murdered.

He drove with a hypnotic concentration now, unable to stop the car, unable to think of anything to do but run. Run not only from the naoli who would be searching for him as soon as Fiala or Banalog was found, but running also from the dead guard. And from his past. Faster, Hulann, faster. Booming through the darkness in the fluttering insect machine.

In the occasional flushes of light as they passed other naoli buildings along other parts of the city, Leo could see the traces of tears on Hulann's thick, gray alien hide.

The traumatist Banalog sat bound in his office chair. He had turned it so he could look out the window at the snow.

If the universe is truly as balanced as all our studies have indicated, he mused, then how fundamental a part of the equilibrium is a race? An intelligent race? One of the eleven races, for instance. The naoli? The humans? Would the destruction, the total extinction of a major galactic race have an influence on the overall balance? Would it be a large or small influence? Small. Yes. We think too highly of ourselves. The loss of a race will have but a small effect. Yet will that small effect snowball? Will more and more things change because mankind no longer exists? And will this snowball grow so large that, a hundred thousand years from now-a hundred thousand centuries, perhaps-it will roll over the naoli as well? Have we, in the last analysis, damned ourselves? Have we only managed to borrow a little time against the end of everything?

He would have thought on it more, but for the growing delusions of the sweet-drug. Outside the window, the snow was now crimson and yellow.

It formed faces.

Hulann

A Human boy

It was pretty. He watched, letting the unreality engulf him

The Hunter sleeps. His is the death sleep of the naoli. He does not yet know that it will soon be time to stalk.

This time, his prey will be a lizard man, not a human. This will be unique for him. He will enjoy it. He has within him the seeds of destruction. He has longed to walk among his own kind with his sword of light and his permission to pass judgment. He will soon have that opportunity.

Now, he sleeps

Leo was quiet for a long while, watching the wipers thrust the thickening snow to the ends of the windscreen. At last, he turned to Hulann and said, 'Where are we fleeing to?'

'I told you. Just away from the city.'

'We will have to stay away ten years. We should have a destination.'

'There is no destination.'

Leo considered a moment. 'The Haven.'

Hulann looked sideways, almost lost control of the craft. He pulled it back onto the road, then talked without turning his attention away from driving. 'It is not even certain that such a place exists. It may be a myth. Even if there is a sanctuary for the last humans which we have not reached, its whereabouts is a well-held secret.'

'There is a Haven,' Leo assured him. 'I heard it talked about in the days of the last stand. I knew of certain leaders and irreplaceable specialists who were ferreted out of the city to be taken to the Haven.'

'You know where it is?'

'Not exactly.'

'What does that mean?'

Leo scrunched down in the corner between the seat and the door, turned sideways. He played with the hole in the seat which let the naoli tail through to the rear floor. 'Well, I know that it's on the coast. The West Coast. Along the Pacific Ocean.'

'That doesn't pinpoint it.'

'But it's a start' he insisted.

'How would we ever search so much coast once we got there? And avoid the naoli forces all the way across the country.'

Leo did not seem perturbed by what seemed insurmountable obstacles. 'We'll find a way. You're a naoli. You can bluff your way through if you have to.'

'Not likely.'

'Otherwise,' the boy said, 'we hang around here until they catch us. And they will, you know.'

Hulann hesitated. 'I know.'