Beastchild

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