Beastchild

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