Beastchild

stomach burned on both levels with acidic agitation. Surely his guilt index must have risen higher than eighteen points. Or was it merely that his guilt was now a conscious thing?
        "But I am a naoli," he argued. "We're at war."
        The boy did not answer. When Hulann clamped down the top of the medical kit, the boy said, "My name's Leo. Do you have one? A name?"
        "Hulann."
        He thought it over, nodded his yellow head with approval. "I'm eleven. How old are you?"
        "Two hundred and eighty-four of your years."
        "You're lying!" To lie seemed a greater crime than all the acts of war.
        "No, no. We have a long life span. Your kind dies at a hundred and fifty. We live for five or six hundred years."
        They sat in silence a time, listening to the rustle of things in the rubble, to the moaning wind that had picked up above and somehow found its way down into this dungeon. At last, the boy said, "Are you turning me in?"
        "I guess so," Hulann said.
        "I don't think you will."
        "What?"
        The boy indicated the leg dressing. "After healing me, why take me in to be killed?"
        Hulann watched his enemy," his friend. His overmind was overtaxed trying to analyze his own behavior. He was obviously quite a sick creature. It would be a crime against his race to release this beast. It would have bordered on sin, except that his people had no such concept. Whatever this boy did from now until his death would be Hulann's fault. He might murder other naoli. And if Hulann's crime were discovered he would either be tried as a traitor or sent home for total washing and restructuring.
        The organic brain specialists had developed startling techniques during the war. They had learned how to totally erase a captured human's mind and refill it with false identity and purpose. It had been these unknowing traitors among the human fleets who had signaled the turning of the war tide against mankind. The naoli doctors had now learned to use the same procedures on their own kind in the treatment of the most mentally deranged.
        Once washed, he would never remember his first two hundred and eighty-seven years of life. The centuries to come would be nothing more than a farce without history-and therefore without purpose. Such a thing should be avoided at all cost.
        Yet now he was considering letting the human escape, thereby risking all of these things. It had to do with the boy's saving him from the rat. But there was also that great pool of misery lying on his soul bottom: the knowledge that he had assisted in the extermination of an entire race.
        "No," he said. "I am not taking you in to be killed. But I want you to be gone from here as fast as possible. I will be back tomorrow to continue my work. You will be gone?"
        "Of course," Leo said. Hulann thought of him as Leo now, not just as a human or a boy. He wondered if Leo also thought of him by his naoli name.
        "I'll go now," Hulann said.
        He went. He took with him the knowledge that he was now a criminal against all others of his race, against the naoli treasures and traditions, against the beloved home worlds and the powerful central committee. Against Fiala-and maybe against himself as well.
        Banalog, the chief traumatist of the occupation forces' Second Divison, leaned his head into the scope of the tapeviewer and watched the life history of Hulann Po'-naga flit before his weary eyes. The film moved at a rate four times faster than he could consciously comprehend.
        The end of the film passed, then only whiteness. Banalog pushed the viewer away and settled back in his chair, crossing his hands on the slight rise of his primary stomach. When his overmind had mulled the data, he punched a desk stud and spoke to the air in a gruff, commanding tone-his natural voice.
        "Tentative recommendation based on files. Hulann should be returned to home world for therapy. Otherwise, he will become a hopeless neurotic. He is a fine and gentle person; the war has affected him more than most. Too, he has a history of mild obsessions. Therapy will be to his advantage. Naturally, final recommendation will be deferred until I've seen the patient first-hand as per the Phasersystem's advice. Perhaps it is relevant to note that, although he was told to contact me as soon as possible, Hulann has thus far not come to schedule an interview. This may be an