Outcasts by Vonda N. McIntyre Read Free Book Online Page B

her.
    She wanted some. It was good stuff. She and Gryf and Jason
had used the last of theirs at the end of the previous set, the night before
they went on different shifts. Kylis was surprised that the Lizard used it at
all. She would never have expected him to pare off the corners of his aggression
out here. She shook her head.
    “No?” He shrugged and put the pipe down, letting
it waste, burning unattended. “All right.”
    She let the silence stretch on, hoping he would forget her
and whatever he wanted to say, wander off or get hungry or go to sleep.
    “You’ve got a long time left to stay here,”
he said.
    Again, Kylis had no answer.
    “I could make it easier for you.”
    “You could make it easier for most of us.”
    “That’s not my job.” He ignored the
contradiction.
    “What are you trying to say?”
    “I’ve been looking for someone like you for a
long time. You’re strong, and you’re stubborn.” He got up and
came toward her, hesitated to glance back at his pipe, but left it where it
was. He took a deep breath. He was trying so hard to look sincere that Kylis
had an almost overwhelming urge to laugh. She did not, but if she had, it would
have been equally a laugh of nervous fear. She realized suddenly, with wonder:
The Lizard’s as scared as I am.
    “Open for me, Kylis.”
    Incredulity was her first reaction. He would not joke, he
could not, but he might mock her. Or was he asking her an impossibility,
knowing she would refuse, so he could offer to let her alone if Gryf would
return to the tetras. She kept her voice very calm.
    “I can’t do that.”
    “Don’t you think I’m serious?”
    “How could you be?”
    He forced away his scowl, like an inexperienced mime
changing expressions. The muscles of his jaw were set. He moved closer, so she
had to look up to see his eyes.
    “I am.”
    “But that’s not something you ask for,”
Kylis said. “That’s something a family all wants and decides on.”
She realized he would not understand what she meant.
    “ I’ve decided. There’s only me now.”
His voice was only a bit too loud.
    “Aren’t you lonely?” She heard her words,
not knowing why she had said them. If the Lizard had been hurt, she would revel
in his pain. She could not imagine people who would live with him, unless
something terrible had changed him.
    “I had a kid — “ He cut himself off,
scowling, angry for revealing so much.
    “Ah,” she said involuntarily. She had seen his
manner of superficial control over badly suppressed violence before. Screwtop
gave the Lizard justifiable opportunities to use his rage. Anywhere else it
would burst out whenever he felt safe, against anyone who was defenseless and
vulnerable. This was the kind of person who was asking her for a child.
    “The board had no right to give him to her instead of
me.”
    He would think that, of course. No right to protect the
child? She did not say it.
    “Well?”
    To comply would be easy. She would probably be allowed to
live in the comfort and coolness of the domes, and of course she would get good
food. She could forget the dangerous machines and the Lizard’s whip. She
imagined what it would be like to feel a child quickening within her, and she
imagined waiting to give birth to a human being, knowing she must hand it over
to the Lizard to raise, all alone, with no other model, no other teacher, only
this dreadful, crippled person.
    “No,” she said.
    “You could if you wanted to.”
    So many things she had discovered about herself here had
mocked her; now it was a claim she had once made to Gryf: I would do anything
to get out of here.
    “Leave it at that,” she said quietly. “I
don’t want to.” She backed away.
    “I thought you were stubborn and strong. Maybe I made
a mistake. Maybe you’re just stupid, or crazy like the rest of them.”
    She tried to think of words he would understand, but always
came up against the irreconcilable differences between her perception of the
Lizard