Beastchild

plans.
        Make plans.
        The full understanding of his position came to him harshly, making him dizzy and weak. He thought that he might vomit. He felt the contents of his more sensitive second stomach surging back into his first stomach. But he managed to stop the regression there. Up until a moment ago, he had been a candidate for washing and restructuring. That had been bad. Now, it was worse. He was a traitor. He had struck Banalog to keep himself from being committed and to keep a human child safe. They would surely execute him now.
        Once he had thought losing his past was the worst they could do to him, worse than death as a traitor. Now he realized this was not so. At least, restructured, he could give his children the heritage of his future deeds. But" executed as a turncoat, he would give them nothing but disgrace for centuries to come.
        What could be done? Nothing. There was no way to salvage his family name. He was only thankful that he had bred so few children. He rose from Banalog and considered his next step. Suicide, at first, seemed the only honorable path. As not even that would redeem his name, it seemed silly. He had nothing now but his life. He must salvage that.
        And the life of Leo. That too. For, after all, it had been for Leo that he had ruined himself. To let Leo die now would be to give an air of farce to the entire affair.
        The first thing, then, was to secure Banalog so that he could not spread an alarm until Hulann and the boy were beyond the clutches of the Second Division.
        Transferring the unconscious traumatist to the chair beneath the hood where he himself had recently sat, he searched the office for something with which to bind him. He uncovered nothing of value. At last, he took down the drapes to either side of the window and tore them into strips. He wet the strips in the attached toilet and secured Banalog to the chair. Both feet first, then both hands. He looped his rope around the naoli's shoulders and tied that strand to the chair. Then his chest. Then a strip across his lap and under the seat.
        "That would seem enough," Banalog said.
        Hulann stood, startled.
        "It would take a trick expert to escape from these."
        Hulann drew his lips over his teeth.
        "No need for that," Banalog said. "You're doing what you consider correct. You are ill. You do not know better."
        Hulann turned for the door.
        "Wait. Two things," Banalog said. "First, an injection of sweet-drugs so that my Phasersystem contact is no good. Then a gag for my mouth."
        Numbly, he went back, found the traumatist's sweet-drugs in the center drawer, filled a needle with a strong dose of the potent liquid form, slipped the stuff into a vein in Banalog's neck. Then he gagged him. All of this, he kept thinking, made no sense. Why was Banalog cooperating? Hulann was tempted to remove the wad of drapery material and ask the older naoli. But there was no time for that. He was a fugitive now. He had to move swiftly.

Chapter Three
        
        The street of the diggings was deserted in the early evening's muddy light. The heaviest machinery that could not be easily removed from the scene was covered by blown plastic to protect it from the storm. Four inches of snow had softened the jagged outline of the ruins; it drifted into crevices and filled them up, swept over peaks and spikes, obliterating them. There was a sepulchral silence on the land, save for the constant humming moan of the wind and the swish of the flakes as they drifted over one another like specks of wet sand.
        Hulann made his way along the shrouded avenue, trying to be as inconscpicuous as possible, though his dark body stood out painfully against the snow. He found the building where Leo waited, went down into the cellar, turning on the lights, back through the crevice in the rubble into the room where Leo waited.
        The boy was asleep. Hulann could see nothing but the child's eyes, closed, and a bit of his brow. His face was almost totally buried in his covers.
        "Leo," he called softly.
        The boy did not stir.
        Now, Hulann thought. Now there is still time. I haven't wakened him. I haven't told him we're leaving. Now I should turn back before it's too late.
        But it was already too late. He was well aware of that. From the moment he had attacked one of his own kind- Banalog-to protect a human, he