Free O Master Caliban by Phyllis Gotlieb

something from it. I am the first animal you are looking to learn from before you kill. Now get me some food. I am hungry.”

THE ROAD looked moss-colored. Ardagh bent to scratch it, and found that it was actually green brick and free of growth. She stood, lifted the heavy hair from her neck, and began to braid it. “Too bad I haven’t the figure for a loincloth like you, Joshua. It looks cooler than this baby bunting I’m wearing.”
    Joshua laughed. “You are wearing what everyone in my country wears; I’m considered an eccentric.”
    The wind was down, and the sun, bright orange at the moment, flickered through the heavy arching trees. “Why are the greens so thick here?” Ardagh asked. “I thought jungle was supposed to be quite clear under the trees.”
    “The tracks were kept clean and the seeds found space to root beside them,” Esther said. “There was an old colony here and their slash-and-burn left clearings for new growth when they moved. Our patch was part of that.” Joshua had bent to observe the insect life in a puddle beside the track. “You’re going to get your legs bit.”
    “The gel leaves bugs with stingers full of muck, and the poison sits on top till I wash it down at night. If I don’t touch it and lick my fingers I’m safe.”
    “You bring that from home with the diaper?” Mitzi asked. She was feeling much better.
    “I invented it at home.”
    “I thought they taught that in the Academy,” Ardagh said. “Emergency landing procedures.”
    “I could teach them,” Joshua said without arrogance. He picked up a leaf fragment and watched an ant, or something like it, clenching it with tiny jaws, thrashing miniscule legs; he set it down, brushed fern fronds lightly with his hand. “My father is one of my country’s ambassadors ... the forest tribes did not care much for our government faction, so to placate them the president gave them our children for a year, to educate, in exchange for theirs ... in ecology, conservation, geobotany. I found I enjoyed it more than anything I had done in my life. It was a great chagrin for my father in a family oriented to outworld government service ... several of my cousins are in space—one is the commander of a survey ship and she is perfectly happy.” He laughed. “It is much wetter here than in my forest.”
    Mitzi drawled, “Naturally your father thought you had no balls.”
    “But you know better, Mitzi,” Joshua said mildly.
    “Shirvanian!” Esther yelled, “that’s dangerous!”
    Shirvanian was flat on his belly in gumbo. He stood up stained in green and brown, and held out an object. “Piece of the ship.”
    “Keep it for a souvenir and come on!”
    Shirvanian, ignoring her, rubbed mud off the scrap on the seat of his pants. “First the ergs took the ship and they would have killed us—and then they sent that stupid bird that wouldn’t have hurt anybody. Why?”
    “I think,” Sven swallowed hard, “the bird was sent for me. It—it was a kind of mockery of me.”
    “But that’s two kinds of orders.”
    “You mean the bird was sent from Headquarters and the drones from the outside repair depots where they nest. There doesn’t seem to be a connection, even though all stations must be able to communicate.”
    “That’s right.” Shirvanian turned the crumpled piece of metal, smelled and tasted it. “Nobody at Headquarters handled the ship. I think the patrols were obeying old orders to search and destroy, and nobody bothered to change them.” He shrugged and tossed the fragment away.
    “Why didn’t you keep it, Shirvanian?” Koz asked. “Add a piece here and there and we could have built ...” he sighed.
    Shirvanian stopped dead. “What is it?”
    “Something flying. Very high up.”
    In a minute a high cicada’s whine drew a singing arc above the clouds. It bisected the sky and faded over the eastern horizon. “An aircar,” Sven whispered. “They’ve never come out here before.”
    “What do they