The Ugly Little Boy by Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg Read Free Book Online Page B

saw an Other One right up close once, didn't you?" Broken Mountain asked her.
    "Once, yes," She Who Knows said, frowning at the troubling memory of it.
    "What did he smell like, when you were that close?" said Young Antelope. "He really stank, I'll bet."
    She Who Knows nodded. "Like a dead hyena," she said. "Like something that had been rotting for a month and a half. And he was ugly. You can't imagine how ugly. His face was fiat, like this, as if somebody had pushed it in." She gestured emphatically with her hands. "And his teeth were as small as a child's. He had ridiculous little ears and a tiny nose. And his arms, his legs-" She shuddered. "They were absurd and hideous. Like a spider's, they were. So long, so thin."
    They were all looking at her in awe, even Blazing Spear. No one else in the tribe, not Silver Cloud himself, had ever come face-to-face with an Other One, so close that she could have reached out and touched him, the way she had. Some of them had seen Other Ones now and then at a great distance, just fleeting glimpses, back in the days when the tribe had lived in the western lands. But She Who Knows had stumbled right into one in the forest.
    That had been years ago, when she was nineteen, still a wild girl then, who went her own way in all things. The men of the Hunting Society had forbidden her, at last, to accompany them on their patrols any more, and she had gone off by herself early one morning in a dark, scowling mood, wandering far from the tribe's encampment. At midday in a little glade of white-barked birch trees she had found a pretty rock-bound pool, and she had stripped off her robe of fur to bathe in its chilly blue water, and when she came out she was astounded to see an Other
    One, an unmistakable Other One, staring at her from a distance of no more than twenty paces.
    He was tall-incredibly tall, as tall as a tree-and very thin, with narrow shoulders and a shallow chest, so that he looked more fragile than any woman, tall though he was. His face was the strangest face she had ever seen, with oddly delicate features like a child's, and extremely pale skin. His jaws looked so weak that she wondered how he could manage to bite all the way through his meat from one side of a piece to another, but his chin was unpleasantly heavy and deep, thrusting out below his flat, pushed-in face. His eyes were large and of a weird, washed-out watery-looking color, and his forehead went straight up, no brow ridges whatsoever.
    All in all, she thought, he was astonishingly ugly, as ugly as a demon. But he didn't seem dangerous. He carried no weapon that she could see, and he appeared to be smiling at her. At least, she thought that was a smile, that way he had of baring those tiny teeth of his.
    She was stark naked and in the full ripeness of her youthful beauty. She stood before him unashamed and the unexpected thought came to her that she wanted this man to beckon to her and call her to his side, and take her in his arms, and make love to her in whatever way it was that the Other Ones made love to their women. Ugly as he was, strange-looking as he was, she wanted him. Why was that? she wondered. And she answered herself that it was because he was different; he was new; he was other. She would give herself to him, yes. And then she would go home with him and live with him and become an Other One herself, because she was weary of the men of her own tribe and ready for something new. Yes. Yes.
    What was there to be afraid of? The Other Ones were supposed to be terrifying demons, but this man didn't seem demonic at all, only strange of face and much too tall and thin. And he didn't appear menacing, particularly. Only different.
    "My name is Falling River," she said-that was what she called herself in those days. "Who are you?"
    The Other One man didn't reply. He made a sound deep in his throat that might have been laughter.
    Laughter?
    "Do you Like me?" she said. "Everyone in the tribe thinks I'm beautiful. Do