In minutes, he reached the Sanctuary, staggered up the steps with her, his throat afire and dry, his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. He raced for the door, was about to slow to push it open when it opened of its own accord, giving him entrance. He went through, stopped in the foyer, puffing and unable to speak. He looked up, expecting to see Matron Salsbury, but was confronted with the face of the Alliance rep instead.
The rep drew on his mustache with one hand, looked at the girl, then up into Davis’s face. In his other hand, he held a pistol.
“She’s been bitten by a wolf,” Davis said, the words harsh and wheezed, an octave too high.
“Drop her,” the rep said.
“Get help for her quickly,” Davis pleaded.
“Drop her,” the rep said, pointing at her with the pistol. “I must warn you that I was an Alliance soldier before entering the diplomatic corps. With my training, I have no inhibitions about violence. I’m capable of—well, of anything, really. Drop her.”
Proteus made grumbling sounds.
“And a protection robot isn’t designed to strike out at any other human being, Davis. So forget that.”
He started to bend over with Leah, to place her on the carpet.
“I did not tell you to lay her down. I told you to drop her. Just let her go.”
He ignored the rep and placed her gently on the floor.
“That was a bad move,” the ex-soldier said. “Another strike against you: disobeying an officer of the Alliance. That carries two years in itself. I think you had best be more courteous.”
“How did you get here so quickly?” Davis asked.
“I came around to visit Matron Salsbury to discuss you, to see if she knew of any misdemeanor—violating the preserve laws or anything—we might harass you with. She had just told me what she discovered about you and the animal there when you obliged us by charging right in with your little beast.” He smiled.
Davis looked down at the girl. “Will you get help for her? She’s dying. A simple speedheal unit would—”
“Let her die,” the rep said, still smiling.
Davis looked astonished.
“Davis, what you forgot is that no matter how intelligent an alien may seem to be, no matter how clever, it is inferior. It is not a man. Man is the highest order of life. Why do you think, in all these years of exploration into space, we’ve never met a race that could compete with us? We were meant to be the dominant species, man. And in the million years to come, we’re not going to run across anything we can’t handle. You tainted yourself by touching this little animal. You should have known better. And because you made a fool out of me and set my chances of promotion back five years by your little ruse about the sort of book you were going to write, I think I should have an opportunity to pay you back, in some small way, for your brutality. And, perhaps, if you watch her die, you’ll realize that she was nothing more than an animal, a beast, a thing. She’ll die, and there won’t be choruses of angels singing her to her final resting place.”
“You’re insane.”
“No,” the rep said. “It’s you who are insane.” He stepped forward and pushed a toe of his boot against the girl’s side, shoved her hard enough to flop her over on her belly. “See, Davis, insanity is judged, in part, by what is standard for society. Someone who breaks the greatest taboos with the least regard for his own being is often labeled as a lunatic. Loving an alien is very abnormal. So you will surely be judged mad as well as a traitor.”
In one swift, clean movement, Davis locked hands and brought the resultant club in an upswing that caught the rep under the chin, snapped his head back. The ex-soldier’s eyes rolled up until they were all white, and he toppled backwards, crashed onto the floor, his head striking hard at the temple. He had never been expecting a civilian to possess the ability to commit such a vicious act of violence against another human being, and his smugness had made it the simplest thing in the world for Davis to take him out of the picture.