Free The Girl Who Loved Animals and Other Stories by Bruce McAllister Page B

another race and ordering me, a federal official, to obey not only a child’s wishes, but your own—you, a Visitor and one without official standing among your own kind—” 
    “The child,” the alien broke in, “will not die. If she dies, I will . . . do what I have been . . . retained to do.” 
    The alien stepped then to the heli and the man’s side, so close they were almost touching. The man did not back up. He would not be intimidated. He would not.  
    The alien raised two of its four arms, and the man heard a snickering sound, then a pop, then another, and something caught in his throat as he watched talons longer and straighter than anything he had ever dreamed of slip one by one through the creature’s black syntheskin. 
    Then, using these talons, the creature removed the door from his heli. 
    One moment the alloy door was on its hinges; the next it was impaled on the talons, which were, Ortega-Mambay saw now, so much stronger than any nail, bone, or other integument of Terran fauna. Giddily he wondered what the creature possibly ate to make them so strong. 
    “Get into your vehicle, Ortega-Mambay,” the alien said. “Proceed home. Sleep and think . . . about what you must do . . . to keep the female sibling alive.” 
    Ortega-Mambay could barely work his legs. He was trying to get into the heli, but couldn’t, and for a terrible moment it occurred to him that the alien might try to help him in. But then he was in at last, hands flailing at the dashboard as he tried to do what he’d been asked to do: Think . 
     
    The alien did not sit on the bed, but remained in the doorway. The boy did not have trouble looking at him this time. 
    “You know more about us,” the alien said suddenly, severely, “than you wished me to understand. . . . Is this not true?” 
    The boy did not answer. The creature’s eyes—huge and catlike—held his. 
    “Answer me,” the alien said. 
    When the boy finally spoke, he said only, “Did you do it?” 
    The alien ignored him. 
    “Did you kill him?” the boy said. 
    “Answer me,” the alien repeated, perfectly still. 
    “Yes . . .” the boy said, looking away at last. 
    “How?” the alien asked. 
    The boy did not answer. There was, the alien could see, defeat in the way the boy sat on the stool. 
    “You will answer me . . . or I will . . . damage this room.” 
    The boy did nothing for a moment, then got up and moved slowly to the terminal where he studied each day. 
    “I’ve done a lot of work on your star,” the boy said. There was little energy in his voice now. 
    “It is more than that,” the alien said. 
    “Yes. I’ve studied Antalouan history.” The boy paused and the alien felt the energy rise a little. “For school, I mean.” There was feeling again—a little—to the boy’s voice. 
    The boy hit the keyboard once, then twice, and the screen flickered to life. The alien saw a map of the northern hemisphere of Antalou, the trade routes of the ancient Seventh Empire, the fragmented continent, and the deadly seas that had doomed it. 
    “More than this . . . I think,” the alien said. 
    “Yes,” the boy said. “I did a report last year—on my own, not for school—about the fossil record on Antalou. There were a lot of animals that wanted the same food you wanted—that your kind wanted. On Antalou, I mean.” 
    Yes, the alien thought. 
    “I ran across others things, too,” the boy went on, and the alien heard the energy die again, heard in the boy’s voice the suppressive feeling his kind called “despair.” The boy believed that the man named Ortega-Mambay would still kill his sister, and so the boy “despaired.” 
    Again the boy hit the keyboard. A new diagram appeared. It was familiar, though the alien had not seen one like it—so clinical, detailed, and ornate—in half a lifetime. 
    It was the Antalouan family cluster, and though the alien could not read them, he knew what the labels described: The