Beastchild

by Dean Koontz

  He shut off the recorder.

  For a while, he sat in the office with the lights dimmed nearly to total darkness. Not much illumination filtered through the windows from the late winter afternoon.

  He thought of the home world where his family was now safe. The menace had been put down; mankind was gone. There would be much mating, many days spent in the warrens in rejoicing. He thought of his children, the entire brood of three hundred and some. How many exactly? He did not know. But he was proud of all of them.

  Inexorably, his mind traced rambling patterns until it had returned to the situation at hand. The occupied planet. The dead cities. The ill naoli stationed here.

  So Hulann's conscience was bothering him. Genocide was a bitter pill to swallow.

  Banalog toyed with the recorder microphone, then thumbed the lights completely out. The room seemed to shrink in the darkness until it was the size of a closet.

  He rose from his desk and went to the window to look upon the fallen city that the humans had called Boston. He could not see much, for the clouds hung low and a snowfall was beginning. Sheets of fine white flakes drifted by the glass, some smearing wetly along it, distorting what little the traumatist could see of the place where men had once lived.

  So Hulann's conscience was bothering him, eh?

  Well, there were other naoli with the same problem . . .

  Later that same night, Fiala stretched in the invisible strands of her bed and allowed the pleasant power web to caress her lithe body. Though her flesh tingled excitingly and began to feel better as the tension and fatigue drained from it, her mind still boiled. She was cultivating her hatred for Hulann.

  There was no reason why he should have been appointed director of this team. His record was no better than hers. Not substantially, anyway. And his time of service was actually somewhat less. She could see no logic in his receiving the position other "than the possibility that he had been able to pull strings of which she had no knowledge.

  Today, when he had left the diggings early, he had looked drawn and troubled. His lids had been drooping until his eyes were only slits. He had his lips drawn tightly over his teeth, covering them: the sign of shame. She knew that he was a strong possibility for therapy, and she had been expecting him to be pulled out of the operation by this time, sent home to recover. Yet he hung on.

  Damn him!

  And she could no longer afford to wait for his breakdown. Whoever brought this job to a conclusion would be established for the rest of his or her career. It was the greatest chore in the history of archaeology, in the entire span of naoli scientific history. And Boston was one of the few unatomized cities where something worthwhile could still be uncovered.

  There must be some way of hurrying Hulann's certain collapse, she thought, though the method presently evaded her. She toiled over various plans, rejecting one, after another, and finally gave up on it for the night.

  Elsewhere in the dead city:

  Hulann slept the death sleep, his overmind tucked in its nether-world pocket. Even with his burdens, he could know peace in this manner.

  Leo had finished fashioning a place for himself among clothes that had spilled from a shattered closet. He nestled deeply in them to ward off the cold of the New England night. There was a knife by his side which he could reach easily if he should need it. As he was falling asleep, a picture of perfect clarity burst into his mind. It was of his father, lying dead beneath the grenade lobbing station. He sat upright in the clothes, as if activated by a spring, shivering. He refused to allow himself to think about it. When he felt he could trust to sleep without a nightmare, he laid down again and sought his pocket of warmth.

  Two blocks away, above ground, a winter bird worked its way down into a nest of offal and grass, string and ribbon, pecking and plucking at the fibers of its home with a quick, unpleasant nervousness. Farther along the rain gutter, a hundred feet from where the bird worried, a sick and dying mutant rat crept as stealthily as it could. Its head kept drooping, and it found itself stopping at the same spot for long periods of time, delirious. Its legs felt weak and almost useless to it, and there was a sharp burning sensation along its spine. It could not know of the naoli virus that did deadly work within it. It only knew that it was hungry. When it was within a few feet of the nest, it stopped and tensed to leap. Somehow, the bird heard it and took wing into the darkness. The diseased rat jumped, in one last, desperate effort, missed the slapping feathers, and felt itself going over the edge of the rain gutter. It clawed wildly at the stone, but could find no purchase. It fell away from the top of the empty cathedral toward the silent street below.

  In the chief administration building of the occupation forces, the programmers of the Phaserdreams worked industriously on the broadcasts for the following morning. Now and then, one of the technicians took a break, went outside and popped a sweet-drug lozenge for fifteen minutes of drifting pleasure, watched the snow fall and eddy around his splayed feet. Under the effects of the chemicals, it seemed as if the naoli were one with the floating flakes, as though losing his identity to the natural forces of this world.

  Chapter Two

  The second warning from the Phasersystem had disconcerted Hulann. He had honestly forgotten all about the need to make an appointment with the traumatist. He was shaken by his neglectfulness and decided to complete his obligation before going to the diggings. He set a time with Banalog's computer-secretary for late that afternoon. He went to work, late for the second day in a row.

  He passed the others without comment, noticing the odd looks he drew from them. Realizing that his lips were pulled in over his teeth giving him a look of shame, he quickly rearranged his facial composure until he seemed nothing more than a happy bone hunter on his way to rich graveyards.

  He went into the tumbled-down building, down the stairs, into the cellar, flicking on the lights as he went. He walked to the break in the continuous stretch of rooms, took his handlamp through the hole and into the chamber where the human child had been yesterday.

  Leo was still there.

  He sat in a pile of clothes, wearing two coats to keep from freezing, eating some earthly fruit from a plastic container. The container apparently had a heat tab, for steam was rising from it.

  Hulann stood in disbelief, his eyes totally uncovered, the lids folded like accordions in the overhanging ledge of bone above his sockets.

  "Would you like some?" Leo asked, offering the fruit.

  "What are you doing here?" Hulann demanded.

  Leo said nothing, took another bite of food, swallowed it. "Well, where else was there for me to go?"

  "The city," Hulann said. "The whole city!"

  "No. There are other naoli. It is all occupied."

  "Out of the city, then. Away from here!"

  "My leg's better," Leo admitted. "Though I couldn't walk well on it yet. Even so, there isn't anything outside the city. There has been a war, remember."

  Hulann could find nothing to say. For the first time in his life, he felt that he could not control his emotions. There was a great desire in him to kneel and relax and cry.

  "It's so cold," Leo said, still eating. "Yet you don't wear anything. Aren't you cold?"

  Hulann crossed, sat down in the dirt a few feet in front of the boy. Almost absentmindedly, he said, "No. I'm not cold. We have no constant body temperature such as humans have. Ours varies according to the cold. Though not greatly, really. And then there are our skins. Little body heat can escape us if we wish to contain it."

  "Well, I'm cold!" Leo said. He put the empty can aside. Slight white vapors still steamed upward from it. "I've looked for a personal heating unit ever since the city fell. I can't find one. Do you think you can bring one to me?"

  Hulann looked incredulous. Yet he found himself saying, "I've seen a few recovered from the ruins. Maybe."

  "That would be swell."

  "If I bring it, would you leave?" he asked.

  Leo shrugged his shoulders, whic
h seemed to be his most characteristic gesture. Hulann wished he knew for certain what emotion it expressed. "Where would I go?"

  Hulann waved his arms weakly, pointlessly. "Away from the city. Even if there isn't much of anything out there, you could take food and wait until we were gone."

  "Ten years."

  "Yes."

  "That's silly."

  "Yes."

  "So we're back where we started."

  "Yes."

  "Doesn't that hurt?" Leo asked, leaning forward.

  "What?"

  "Your lips. When you pull them in over your teeth like that."

  Hulann quickly showed his teeth, put a hand to his lips and felt them. "No," he said. "We have few nerves in our outer layers of flesh."

  "You looked funny," Leo said. He drew his own lips in over his teeth and made talking motions, then burst out laughing.

  Hulann found himself laughing also, watching the boy mimic him. Did he really look like that? It was a mysterious expression on a naoli; or at least he had been raised to respect it as such. In this mock version, it truly was humorous.

  "What are you doing?" the boy squealed, laughing even harder.

  "What?" Hulann asked, looking about him. His body was still. His hands and feet did not move.

  "That noise," Leo said.

  "Noise?"

  "That wheezing sound."

  Hulann was perplexed. "Mirth," he said. "Laughter like yours."

  "It sounds like a drain that's clogged," Leo said. "Do I sound that bad to you?"

  Hulann began laughing again. "To me you sound strange. I had not noticed before. You sound like some birds that we have on my world. They are great, hairy things with legs three feet long and little, tiny bills."

  They laughed some more until they were tired.

  "How long can you stay today?" the boy asked when they had sat in comfortable silence for some minutes.

  The depression settled on Hulann again. "Not long. And you can stay for even a shorter time. You must leave. Now."

  "I've said I can't, Hulann."

  "No. There will be no refusal. You must leave now, or I will turn you over to the executioners as I should have in the first place."

  Leo made no move to leave.

  Hulann stood. "Now!" he commanded.

  "No, Hulann."

  "Now, now, now!" He grabbed the boy, lifted him off the floor, surprised at his own lightness. He shook him until the boy's face was a blur. "Now, or I will kill you myself!" He dropped him back onto the floor.

  Leo made no move to depart. He looked at Hulann, then down at the clothes spread around him. He began to draw them in against himself, cuddled into a hollow to contain the heat from his body. With only his upper face uncovered, he stared at the naoli.

  "You can't do this to me," Hulann said. He was no longer angry, just exasperated. "You can't make me do these things. Please. It is not right of you."

  The boy did not answer.

  "Don't you see what you're doing? You're making a criminal of me. You are making me a traitor."

  A gust of cold air found its way through the debris and twisted by the two of them. Hulann did not notice. The child drew deeper into his nest.

  "You should have let the rat kill me. You were a stupid child for warning me. What am I to you? I am the enemy. I was better dead to you than alive."

  The boy listened.

  "Stupid. And a traitor to your own race."

  "The war is over," Leo said. "You won."

  Hulann hunched as if bending over a pain in his stomachs. "No! No, the war is not over—until one or the other race is extinct. There is no quarter in this battle."

  "You can't believe that."

  Hulann did not speak. He did not, of course, believe it —just as the boy had said. Perhaps he had never believed it. Now, he realized the war was somewhat of a mistake. Man and naoli had never been able to co-exist even in a cold war sort of situation. They were too alien to meet on any common ground. Yet this child was reachable. They were communicating. Which meant there had been a flaw in their reasoning—which meant the war could have been avoided.

  "Well," Hulann said, "I have no choice. I must open these cellars to the researchers on my team. I cannot hide their existence. I'll string the lights. If you are not gone when I call them in, it is your problem. It is no longer mine."

  He got up and began his work for the day. Two hours before he was due to go to the traumatist, he had strung lights through most of the cellars. He came back and looked at the boy. "The next cellar is the last. I've finished."

  Leo said nothing.

  "You should be going."

  Again: "There is nowhere for me to go."

  Hulann stood, watching the child for a long while. At last, he turned and unstrung the glow bulbs, pulled up the poles he had planted, rewound the wire and took everything into the outer cellar. He came back and put his handlamp with the boy.

  "It will give you light tonight."

  "Thank you," Leo said.

  "I have undone my work."

  Leo nodded.

  "Perhaps, tomorrow, I can fill up the crevice in the wall of ruins, seal this at the last cellar and try to keep the continuation from being discovered. Then, you would not be bothered."

  'I'll help you," Leo said.

  "You know," Hulann said, his heavy face strained so even the boy could see the anguish in the alien features, "you are . . . you are . . . crucifying me?"

  And he went away. Leaving the boy with light.

  "Come in, Hulann," the traumatist Banalog said, smiling and friendly as all traumatists are with their patients. He exuded a fatherliness, an exaggerated sense of well-being that could not help but infect his charges.

  Hulann took the seat to the right of Banalog's desk while the older naoli went behind and sat down in his customary chair, leaned back and feigned relaxation.

  "I am sorry I forgot to arrange an appointment yesterday," Hulann said.

  "Nothing damaged," Banalog assured him gently, quietly. "Just shows that this guilt is not so bad as the Phasersystem computer thinks. Otherwise, you wouldn't have been able to continue working as you did." Banalog wondered if his lie was transparent. Hulann seemed to perk up, and he thought that he had told it with conviction. But now he was certain that the archaeologist was consciously aware of his guilt and trying to hide it."

  "I didn't know I had a guilt complex until the Phasersystem told me about it."

  Banalog waved his hands to indicate the unimportance of the situation Hulann now found himself in. The point was to, a little at least, put the patient at ease. He pulled his chair in closer to the desk, rested his arms on the top and began to punch a series of buttons on his multicolored control console.

  There was a stirring above Hulann's head. As he looked up to see the cause of the noise and movement, the hood of the monitoring robot, gray and dully burnished, descended like a landing shuttlecraft. It stopped two feet above where he sat, the four-foot diameter of the hood radiating, to all sides of him.

  Banalog worked other controls, calling forth a post which consisted of lenses and sensors of various types, all of high receptivity. It rose from the floor, half a dozen feet before Hulann, stopped when it was at his eye level.

  "I thought this equipment was for severe cases," he said to Banalog, losing the sense of ease he had entered this room with, a hard edge of terror in his voice.

  "Misconception," Banalog said as if he were quite bored, really, with this whole affair. "We have much more sophisticated equipment for a severe case."

  "But are you afraid that I would lie to you?"

  "No, no. I do not insult you, Hulann. Such a thing is opposite of my purpose. But remember that the mind is strange. Your overmind may lie to you. You would sit there telling me what you thought was the truth about your guilt complex—but it would still be festering inside you. We are all creatures strange to our own selves."

  The machines vibrated slightly as they came to life out of o
iled slumber. Some of the sensors glowed green, like a naoli's eyes. Others were yellow and purple. Hulann's skin crawled as the probing waves penetrated him without sensation and began collecting data for the traumatist.

  "Then it is necessary?" he asked.

  "Not necessary, Hulann. That makes it sound as if you are in a bad way. You do not feel ill, do you? I should hope not. Believe me, I think your problem is a minor one. Not necessary, just standard procedure in such a case."

  Hulann nodded, resigned to it. He would have to be extremely cautious and hedge his answers, try to be as honest as possible—but also try to phrase his responses so that they were literally true while not giving away the exact situation.

  The questioning began gently.

  "You like your work, Hulann?"

  "Very much."

  "How many years have you been an archaeologist?"

  "Seventy-three."

  "Before that?"

  "A writer."

  "How interesting!"

  "Yes."

  "A writer of what?"

  "History. Creative history."

  "Archaeology, then, was a natural follow-up."

  "I suppose so."

  "Why do you like archaeology, Hulann? Wait. Why do you like this archaeological job in particular?"

  "The excitement of resurrecting the past, of finding things unexpectedly, of learning."

  Banalog checked the readout monitors on his desk and tried to keep from frowning. He looked up at Hulann and, with an effort, smiled. "Does your work here on this planet assauge your guilt any?"

  "I don't understand."

  "Well, do you feel as if you are working out a penance, so to speak, in re-constructing the daily life of mankind?"

  And so the questions went. Probing . . . prodding . . . It soon began to be clear to Hulann that Banalog was learning more than he had intended to let him discover. He tried to answer as well as he could, but there was no way to hide from the probing traumatist and the clever machines.

  Then the trouble came.

  Banalog leaned forward, conspiratorially, and said, "Of course, Hulann, you are as aware as I am that your subconscious guilt is now a conscious one."