Beastchild

for he had been living on borrowed time for quite a while.
        Lightning flashed in the heavens, streaked downward and touched the earth only several miles distance. The resultant play of shadows on the desert and the rails was lovely. David grinned and relaxed even farther into his chair.
        The doors of the French Alpine Hotel stood open, and the snow had found its way inside. It drifted into the great lobby, over a pair of chairs that faced each other over a magazine table. Long white fingers grasped at the rug and clawed toward the plush couches. In the rear of the establishment, the delivery room, behind the kitchen, was as hoary as Methuselah, with great icicles hanging from the waterpipes and a blanket of snow across most of the floor.
        Everything was quiet.
        In the depths of the place, a pair of cats snuggled in a cellar corner, licking each other, wondering for the thousandth time why there were no guests any more…
        Docanil the Hunter stood along the highway at the pass out of the desert valley. He had changed clothes to match the weather. Here was no place for a greatcoat He wore a light, porous suit of a fabric that resembled vinyl in appearance and cotton in comfort and to the touch. Between his shoulder blades was the clawed fist ringed with nails. He still wore gloves and boots, for the hands and feet of a Hunter are very sensitive.
        "See anything?" Banalog asked from behind.
        The Hunter did not respond.
        "Perhaps they are already dead," Banalog suggested.
        "We will soon go in," the Hunter said.
        Banalog looked into the long desert beyond the rock pillars that flanked the highway at the end of the valley. He was almost selfish enough to hope that they were already dead. Alive, they might be forced to talk, to inform on him. And then the Hunter-Docanil or another, it hardly mattered-would be coming for him.
        The tableau was broken as the lowering skies began to rip open and dump a fine sheet of rain on the thirsting land beneath. Docanil turned and hurried for the copter and the dryness inside. The rain was cold-and a Hunter is a sensitive creature.
        High above the Earth, clouds of dust and debris, hurtled into the stratosphere by the nuclear blasts men had touched off in the last hours of the war, shifted and stretched into bands. The long streams of stones, dust, paper, wood chips, pottery shards, and other rubbish would circle the globe for weeks and possibly even months before finally settling onto the scorched surface of the planet from which they had come.
        There were pieces of bone, too.
        Circling above the earth.
        Orbiting.
        Slowly coming down again.

Chapter Sixteen
        
        In the pulsing mass of amber flesh pressed against the plastiglass windscreen of the shuttlecraft, the Isolator formed an eye, one of the blue-white frosted orbs that had adorned its bat form only minutes earlier. It stared through the glass at Hulann and the boy where they hung in their straps, watching as its own flesh oozed inside where it could reach them at its leisure. It was as if they were suspended at the moment of Judgment on the final day of the world, hanging by a thread of time, knowing full well that the decision could only go against them.
        "Can you start the shuttle?" Leo asked, cringing against his door as the yellowish jelly pressed more insistently into Hulann's side of the cabin, advancing quietly but steadily.
        "It won't do any good. We can't go anywhere. It's got us trapped. For one thing, we're on our side against the cliff. Secondly, even if we were upright, its weight is enough to press us into immobility."
        The glob of the Isolator already in the cabin was as large as Hulann's arm. It weaved in the air, before his face, like a snake rising from a charmer's basket. It did not, however, attack him. It seemed, instead, intent on going for Leo.
        "Of course!" Hulann said, his voice suddenly miserable.
        "What is it?"
        "We couldn't understand why it didn't demolish the shuttle in its bat form. It couldn't. It's programmed never to hurt a naoli. If it had destroyed the car, I would have died as surely as you. The only way it could get to us was to get inside the cabin. It will kill you and leave me alone."
        Suddenly, the Isolator began pouring through the metal and glass itself, threading its bulk through the molecules