Free Alien Child by Pamela Sargent Page A

distinction. Beate and Ismail had also demonstrated such gestures as shaking hands and taking a person lightly by the arms before planting a kiss on one cheek, both of which had apparently been customary greetings.
    “Well, what do you want to look at first?” he asked.
    “I don’t know where to start.”
    “How much reading have you done?”
    “I’ve read some things about the Institute’s work, and writings about plants and animals. I know some astronomy and a little about medicine. I wasn’t allowed to read a lot of things.”
    “It’ll be hard at first,” he said, “depending on what you pick. You’ll see unfamiliar words, but the reading gets easier the more you do of it.”
    “You never told me what Llare said when you came back from the tower.”
    “He said he would have told me about you soon, but he seemed interested in how I discovered it for myself. I kept thinking he’d scold me, but he didn’t. I wish I could believe him. I wonder if he would have said anything if I hadn’t found it out.”
    She understood what he meant; knowing about Sven seemed to increase the barriers between her and her own guardian. “I used to wonder,” she said, “how Llipel could stay with me when she had to be apart from Llare. She thought it was because I wasn’t one of her kind, that she didn’t have the same feeling with me, the same need to stay apart.”
    “Llare told me that, too. He said the feeling was very strong, almost like a command—that it wasn’t time to be with Llipel, that he had to look at everything through his own eyes and not hers. That’s how he described it.”
    “Llipel said it was like having to hear everything through her own ears.”
    “And yet they could still speak over the screens,” Sven said. “Maybe that was mostly about us, maybe that’s why they talked then. They can still talk to each other, even during separateness.” He frowned. “That’s probably more than you can say for our kind. When they had wars, all they must have thought about was killing and winning. They even thought about it sometimes during their times for peace.”
    “Please. You don’t have to think of that now.”
    Sven put his screen aside. “When I first found out about our people, when I realized what they were like, I told myself I was glad I was alone, that there weren’t any others like me. Then I found out about you, and all these feelings came that frightened me. I was happy, but I was angry with Llare for never telling me—I don’t think I was ever so angry before. I couldn’t say anything to him, and then I wondered if he was trying to protect us. Now I worry that I might really hurt you someday. I hurt you once—Llare told me about that.”
    “But you didn’t know any better.”
    “Does that make it all right?” He cleared his throat. “We might hurt Llare and Llipel. Have you thought of that? Maybe when our violent time comes, we’ll go after them.”
    Nita tried to smile. “That wouldn’t be easy. I wouldn’t want to get in the way of their claws.” She studied the boy, trying not to stare at him this time. Somehow she could not imagine him being deliberately cruel, whatever their people had been like.
    Sven shifted on his couch. “You know, I’ve never seen Llare use his claws for anything except grooming himself and me, or poking at something, or combing my cat when Tanj lets him, which isn’t often. I don’t think they know anything about fighting.” He shook his head. “There’s another thing. Now that we’ve met, and we’re older, they might leave. They have a ship, and this isn’t their world. It might be like their time of separateness—they might feel that the time’s come to leave.”
    Nita was silent. What purpose would there be to her life then? Llipel had taken pleasure in her companionship and in guiding her. Nita’s existence might be the result of her guardian’s mistake, but Llipel had clearly taken a bit of joy in raising her. Each was