Alien Child by Pamela Sargent Page A

he asked. “Expecting visitors?” He made a small, choked sound that might have been a laugh as he came to her side. They gazed at the edge of the wood to the south. She wondered how she could ever bring herself to enter the forest and to face whatever dangers lay there.
    I’m wrong about our guardians, she thought; I have to be wrong.
    She glanced back at the tower, then continued to walk until they reached the eastern edge of the surface. In the distance, a mower was clipping the grass bordering the east wing; the robot was too far away for the mind to hear them through its sensors.
    Sven’s lips were pressed tightly together. He was clearly as anxious as she was to go back inside, although he probably would not admit it.
    She said, “I have to talk to you. That’s the real reason I wanted to come out here. It may be important, and I didn’t want to say anything to you inside.”
    “What is it?”
    “Llare talked to me today, in the library.” She told him quickly about what his guardian had said, and then mentioned her own suspicions. Sven was silent as she spoke. A grim look had come into his eyes by the time she was finished.
    He thrust his hands into his pockets and paced over the grass as she waited for his reaction. Perhaps he would convince her that she was mistaken.
    He stopped pacing. “I wish I could say you’re probably wrong,” he said at last, “but I’ve been wondering some of the same things lately. I keep asking myself how they could have come here without knowing anything about their kind—their people couldn’t have sent them here for no reason. And if they’re here because of an accident, or because they were lost somehow, there’d be no reason to hide that. I told myself I was imagining things, but now I don’t know. If you have the same ideas—” He sighed. “And now you say that Llare told you another time’s coming. That doesn’t sound good.”
    “What’ll we do?”
    “What can we do?” His eyes narrowed. “They kept us here. We don’t know how to survive outside. They didn’t tell us about each other—I think I started doubting Llare the first time I saw you. If they could deceive us about that, they could lie about their real reasons for being here. Maybe some of our people are alive, and they’re keeping that from us, too. After all, they didn’t tell us about each other.”
    She tensed. “Do you think—”
    “I don’t know. You say Llare talked of a struggle. Maybe they’re here to make sure all of our people are dead.”
    “But why would they bring us up?” she asked. “Why didn’t they let us die? Why did they repair the Institute’s power source instead of letting the place rot? For that matter, why didn’t they destroy all the embryos in the cold room after they knew what was there?”
    “How can we know?” he responded. “Maybe they wanted to study us first. And how can we be sure they didn’t destroy everything in the cold room? We’ve never been inside, and separate circuits control it. Maybe there’s nothing left—maybe they took care of that after they took us out. Llare told me never to go there, because he was afraid I might make his mistake, and we couldn’t get in without authorization, anyway, but maybe he just wanted to see that I didn’t find out what they’d done. Even the mind isn’t linked to those circuits.”
    Nita sank to the ground, stunned by the horror of that possibility. She had been hoping for reassurance from Sven; instead, he had magnified her fears. She was beginning to see that the boy was ready to accept the darkest possibilities, while she still fought against believing the worst.
    “They couldn’t,” she said. “They—” She gazed at him as he sat down in front of her. “We’re authorized now. We could go to the cold place anytime. They know that, and they can’t really prevent it, can they?”
    “They haven’t had to try, really. They knew we wouldn’t want to go there, even now. I could find