Beastchild

recall that cold, eerie forest where the plants had been sentient and monsters had lurked in the trees. But that seemed silly now.
        "Are you turning me in?" the boy asked.
        "That is my duty."
        "Of course. Your duty." It was said without malice.
        "I would be severely punished."
        The boy said nothing.
        "Unless, of course, you were to escape before I could apprehend you," Hulann said.
        Even as he spoke, he could not believe his vocal apparatus had formed the words. He had always been an individual of great common sense, of cool thought and reasoned action. Now, he was engaging in sheer madness.
        "That's no good," the boy said, shaking his head so his yellow hair bounced and sprayed about. To Hulann, the sight was breathtaking. "I can't get away. I crawled in here because I thought it was safe. I thought I'd come out when you'd all gone."
        "Ten years," Hulann said. "That would be ten years." The boy looked surprised. "That's how long our researches will take-the reconstruction of daily human life alone."
        "Anyway," the boy interrupted, "I'm stuck here. There's food and water. I thought I could hole up. Then you came along. See, it's my leg."
        Hulann moved closer, raising the double lids completely free of his huge, oval eyes. "What's wrong with it?"
        "I was hurt," the boy said, "in the final stand."
        "You participated in the battle?"
        "I was on a grenade lobbing station. Loader, not marksman. We were struck with something. Don't know what. See? Here. It's kind of dirty, but you can see."
        Hulann was within a foot of the boy now. He saw a tear in the lad's thigh, perhaps five inches in length. It was crusted with dirt and blood, very ugly looking. His trouser leg had been torn off, and there was nothing to protect the wound from all the filth it had come into contact with. Hulann could see a giant bruise spreading out in all directions from the gash.
        "You'll poison from that," he said.
        The boy shrugged.
        "Oh, certainly you will." He turned and started back toward the other cellar, beyond the caved-in ceiling.
        "What are you doing?" the human asked.
        "I've got a kit in the next room. I'll bring it back and do something for your leg."
        When he returned with the medicines, the boy had come down from the rubble and was sitting on the floor. Hulann could see that he was in pain. But the moment the boy realized the naoli had returned, he erased the grimace from his features.
        "Some of the medicines would endanger you," he said, talking as much for his own gratification as for the human's. "But I think I can remember which ones will do some good." He fumbled through the kit, brought out a hypodermic needle designed for naoli skin. He would have to remember to be gentle; human skin was fragile. He filled it with green liquid from a green bottle. When he turned to inject it into the boy's thigh, he stopped. "It should be cleaned," he said.
        "It won't clot," the boy advised. "It stopped bleeding a lot faster when I let the dirt collect."
        Hulann dampened a sterile sponge and bent to the muddied wound. Abruptly, he recoiled, realizing he was going to have to touch the human.
        "Could you clean it?" he asked of the boy.
        The human took the sponge, smelled it for some reason or other, then began swabbing the wound. It was soon apparent that three hands were required to do a proper job, two to hold away the ragged edges of the flesh and the third to daub at the crushed slash.
        "Here," Hulann said at last, taking the sponge. "Hold your hand here."
        And he touched the human. He held one side of the wound while the boy held the other, and he worked the antiseptic into the flesh until he had sponged away the last of the dirt. New blood slowly welled, ran down the leg.
        Hulann injected the green fluid into several points about the wound, then bound the thigh in a pressure bandage of light, two-molecule cloth that had almost no bulk. The bleeding stopped.
        "It will be healed in three to four days," he said.
        "We had these bandages too. But they were pretty scarce for civilians during the last ten years of the war."
        As Hulann repacked the kit, he asked, "Why didn't you just let the rat kill me?"
        "They're ugly. No one should die under one."
        Hulann winced. His double