THE BURNING HEART OF NIGHT

by Ivan Cat

  Jenette did not buy it. "Spin it any way you want. Sacrament is still wrong."

  Tesla rubbed his eyes in frustration. "Why does everything have to be a crisis with you?"

  "Because if it isn't a crisis, you ignore it!" Jenette said resentfully.

  "We have to be strong, Jenette. You and I have to sacrifice for the good of the weak. I know you don't believe it, but I'm trying to keep us all alive. This road you're going down, it's a dangerous path. I've seen it first hand. I've allowed it to occur in the past and it always ends in heartache. Why don't you learn from my mistakes? Abide by the laws against becoming attached. They are there for a reason: because it hurts. That's exactly why you are avoiding Sacrament right now, because it hurts."

  "Because it's wrong," Jenette corrected.

  Tesla's temper finally began to rise. "Sometimes we have to make decisions that hurt. Sometimes we make a stand and suffer small pains to avoid greater ones."

  Jenette crossed her arms defiantly. "I am making a stand. I didn't reschedule my Sacrament. I canceled it. I'm not going again. It's an abomination."

  A dozen angry expressions played on Tesla's face. "You complain that I don't treat you like an adult, that I don't trust you with responsibility? What kind of responsibility is this?"

  "The Enclave can't go on like this," Jenette said fiercely. "I have a plan—"

  "I don't want to hear it," Tesla roared, furiously. "I have my own plans."

  "The supply of domestics is running out. Halifax and I can't keep up with the demand. We must seek help to find a cure—"

  "Silence!" Tesla pounded his desk. "I have been patient, but suicide is not an option! Not for you, not for anyone in this Enclave! This is the real world, not your childish fantasy. In the real world adults don't get to do what they want. They do what they must. If you weren't so selfish you'd see that this colony needs you alive, you'd see that I'm grooming you to lead this world when I'm gone!"

  A water mug crashed to the floor. Father and daughter glared at each other.

  "I don't want to lead," Jenette spat, refusing to break down and cry in front of her father. "I don't want anything to do with you or your power or your Sacrament. They make me sick."

  Muscles flexed up the side of Tesla's head and he spoke through clenched teeth. "I'm sorry you feel that way." He hammered through the entries in his mindercard. "You are due ... no, you are a week overdue for Sacrament. I waited for you to do the right thing and you made a fool out of me. That ends now. Tomorrow you go to Sacrament, either like an adult, or kicking and screaming, but you will go to Sacrament before the meeting of the Body tomorrow night. Do we understand each other?"

  Jenette did not argue. What was the point? Battle lines were drawn and they were on opposite sides.

  "I understand."

  "Good. You and I will talk tomorrow, when you are in a more civil mood."

  Jenette contemplated the coins in her hand, heat from the open incinerator warming her face.

  Flames licked at Trum's shroud.

  "Must be more," Arrou said.

  Jenette nodded, catching the philosophical inflection.

  Arrou asked, "What father say?"

  "We're in trouble," Jenette answered. "We have to go to Sacrament."

  "Urrr," Arrou rambled thoughtfully. "Jenette needs Sacrament."

  "Arrou, you'll die."

  Arrou shrugged innocently. "Everything dies."

  The alien's seeming indifference exasperated Jenette. "Do you want to die now?"

  "No."

  "Do you want to die tomorrow?"

  "No."

  "I didn't think so." Jenette clenched the coins until they bit into her palms. It had been foolish to confront her father. His response was preordained right from the start, but she had gone anyway, with childish hopes of—what? Conciliation? Compromise? What a joke! She hated how stupid she had been. Why couldn't she just write her father off, once and for all? Why did she have to keep trying? And why did it have to hurt so much? No matter, she told herself, her plans were already in motion. In a way, Tesla's ultimatum made it easier for Jenette, by forcing her resolve.

  Jenette had seen too much death during three years as Subconsul in charge of the Enclave's domestics. Too many had died because of her decisions. Suffering might be the law of the jungle, but she was a sentient being, not a beast. Sentient beings could choose not to kill. Standing there before the flames, Jenette made a pledge that not a single additional domestic would die at her hands, starting with Arrou. She would not go to Sacrament tomorrow; Arrou would not die.

  No matter what the cost.

  Jenette threw the coins into the flames with Trum's body. When the cremation was over, she gathered the ashes into a jar and left with Arrou.

  The incinerator was in an out of the way part of the island, surrounded by agricultural plots and hidden in a thicket of trees. Behind it was a secluded glade where no one came anymore. It was empty, as usual. A lot of flowers grew in and around the stripped hulks of crawlers and skimmers destroyed in the Feral Wars. There were even a few mysterious flitters, which Jenette had never seen fly. Nothing remained of the machines but inert composite-fiber hulls and skeletons. Everything useful had been stripped long ago.

  The glade had always been a graveyard of sorts, but now it served double duty.

  Arrou dug dirt away from the torpedo-shaped belly of an old, upturned skimmer. His paws opened a battered hatch, revealing a cache of makeshift urns within the hollow hulk. Jenette placed Trum's urn with the others, wrapped it in rags and wedged it in tight so that violent movement of the island during a storm would not shatter and spill the solemn contents. Then she cried, somehow still able to find tears even though she had placed hundreds of similar jars in the clandestine tomb.

  As Jenette wept, a change came over the glade. What had looked like rocks or moss-covered vehicles magically transformed into dozens of Khafra gathered in the graveyard, sitting upright and still, like tombstones. They had been in the empty glade all along, of course, hidden by their ghostly chameleon camouflage. Their bullet heads bowed in silence; blood red spots flared from flashbuds on their foreheads, chests, and paws. Trum's urn in place, Arrou closed the skimmer hatch, reburied it, and glowed with the same alien stigmata.

  After a while Jenette spoke. "Arrou, go keep watch." Arrou padded away. She looked upon the aliens gathered around.

  Jenette's hopes hung on these ghostly beings.

  These were the domestics Arrou had signaled with secret light-code messages earlier that day. Years ago, Jenette had taken the time to learn their language and in doing so she had learned a precious secret: domestics knew everything that happened on the Enclave. With the exception of the Chamber of the Body, domestics were everywhere and saw everything, every argument, discussion, and decision, no matter how small. Nothing escaped them.

  During three years as Subconsul, Jenette had first tapped into that unplumbed pool of knowledge and then put it to use, using it to find other colonists who believed as she did, that Sacrament must end. To her surprise, it was not a small number. Many were scientists, disillusioned by twenty years of fruitless struggle to find a cure for Scourge, but most were just ordinary colonists who feared the tenuous balance between survival and disaster, and longed for a better way. None of these people could meet in person, but they could safely conspire through domestics gathering together for other purposes—a forbidden funeral, for instance. Any domestics taking part would be punished if discovered, but it was unlikely that authorities would suspect a more secret, underlying reason for the breach of Enclave law.

  Tonight Jenette would put her conspiracy to the test.

  "How do you feel?" asked Burke's domestic, Rusty.

  Jenette stood, heart racing. "I feel, yellow," she said, carefully choosing the Khafra mood color for excitement. But she could have chosen gray, the color of uncertainty, or orange, for apprehension.

  "Yellow, Jenette feels yellow," murmured the ghost army.

  "My
father made me a full Consul," she added ironically.

  The domestics rippled gentle turquoise against the deep green glade. "Good. Good. Full Consul good." They trusted her. They respected her.

  "You all understood my question?" Jenette asked, referring to the content of Arrou's surreptitious flashing that day.

  "Question asked," they domestics replied. "And understood."

  "Then what is the answer? Who supports peace with the Ferals?"

  The glade lit up with the colors of unanimity. "Peace good. No more Sacrament. Humans and Ferals fight Scourge together," the domestics said.

  Jenette held her breath. Of course the domestics supported peace, their lives depended on it. Now the critical question, the reason they were all there. "And which humans will join in the envoy to go and make peace with the Ferals?"

  The glade went dark. Not a flicker or a glimmer.

  Only Rusty raised his head. "Burke goes."

  Jenette shook her head, not feeling very yellow anymore. "Burke cannot go." Jenette would not risk the father of the only children on the planet, even if they were as yet unborn. She searched the glade for any further glint of support. The darkness was eloquent. "No one else will go?" Jenette said in disbelief. "Not one more human supports our cause?"

  Reluctant tones were heavy on the glade and a voice called from the back. "Not want to tell. Not want Jenette blue," it said, using the human color metaphor.

  "Not want Jenette blue," the others concurred.

  "Never mind what color I am!" Jenette said. "Tell me what your humans said."

  And so the domestics told her, one by one, not meeting her eyes and hating the words they spoke. "Kora supports Jenette, but cannot go ... want Onos to go, but Onos not go ... Prebecca supports, but not husband...." Jenette's heart sank as the bad news went on.

  She walked among them, hunting out a specific Khafra. "What about Dr. Yll?" she asked.

  "Wants peace," his domestic offered half-heartedly.

  "But will he go...?"

  "Will not." The domestic hung her head in shame. Jenette hung her head, too. Dr. Yll was the leader of New Ascension's scientists. If he would not join, then none of them would.

  "Jenette blue," Rusty bemoaned and the glade went blue like a lonely midnight sky. It was hybrid domestic-human behavior; blue was the Feral color of serenity.

  Anxious to please, Colonel Halifax's domestic spoke up. "Halifax will go, if Body votes."

  Jenette touched his head gently in passing. "The Body will never take the risk, Patton. That's why we need a secret envoy to take a peace offer to the Ferals." Jenette felt certain that Ferals, as sentient beings, must want peace. And if she could get a promise from them to cease hostilities, then she could force the Body to vote against her father. Sacrament would end. The constant fighting would stop and things could really begin to change. That was what the whole clandestine domestic-human conspiracy was supposed to be about.

  She stood dejectedly beside a decaying hulk. "What's wrong with us?"

  "Domestics support Jenette," Rusty consoled, the others flashing agreement.

  "No," said Jenette, tapping her chest. "What's wrong with us humans?"

  There was no answer for a long time, but then a domestic said, "Humans fear."

  "Safe to do nothing," added another.

  Jenette shook her head in disgust.

  A shy domestic named Bronte spoke up. "Bigelow says yes."

  There, at last, was a ray of hope. Dr. Clarence Bigelow was a black sheep among New Ascension's scientists, but he was also smart and persuasive.

  "Why didn't you say so before?" Jenette asked.

  "Not want Bigelow to go," Bronte protested.

  "It's your life at stake," Jenette emphasized. "Don't you want to stop the Sacrament?"

  Conflicting colors played across Bigelow's domestic. "Yes, but not want humans to die," the alien reasoned. "Ferals demand humans stop Sacrament before making peace. That means humans die."

  "Not if the Ferals help us find a cure for Scourge," Jenette countered.

  "But can Jenette guarantee Ferals have cure?" Bronte persisted.

  "No," Jenette admitted. "I can't."

  Jenette believed Ferals had the knowledge, but she could not guarantee it. And that, she knew, was the reason her conspirators had deserted her. To stop Sacrament before having a cure for Scourge was to throw dice with death and hope you didn't crap out; her fellow humans were not willing to commit suicide for a cause, no matter how noble.

  Jenette understood. She did not want anyone to commit suicide.

  Jenette believed that the Sacrament must end or all human life would die out on New Ascension. Humans and Ferals had once existed peacefully. In the initial months after planetfall, before her father invented Sacrament and the Feral Wars broke out, colonists had begun to trade and share knowledge with the Ferals. That Feral knowledge of indigenous plant life had led human scientists directly to the discovery of the highly successful hormone inhibitors. But then had come two decades of war. In that time the scientists had still not discovered a cure for Scourge—and Jenette did not think they ever would without a greater understanding of the world around them. They simply did not have the ability to acquire such knowledge, not when no human could leave the battlements surrounding their tiny island without armed escort. Ferals, on the other hand, had been on New Ascension, watching and observing, perhaps recording knowledge, for a very long time....

  Without Feral help, it seemed clear to Jenette that humans would never find a cure for Scourge. They would continue to follow the same awful path of Sacrament. Inevitably a day would come when there were no more Feral litters to raid from the local area. Domestics would die and not be replaced and then humans would die, succumbing to Scourge one by one until there were no humans left on New Ascension.

  But with Feral knowledge and human science combined, who could say how rapidly a cure for Scourge might be discovered?

  Unfortunately, Jenette had no idea how her conspiracy, now reduced to a conspiracy of one, was going to accomplish these goals. It was a bitter disappointment.

  "Go home," she said to the assembled domestics. "You have done your best."

  By ones, twos, and threes, domestics flashed good-byes and filed out, vanishing into the darkness as magically as they had appeared. There was no question of the domestics forming an envoy. No domestic would leave his bonded human. Jenette didn't even stop Bigelow's domestic as the alien passed her by. She needed fifty volunteers; one, two, or three made no difference.

  Jenette did stop Burke's domestic, however. Rusty had been taken from the wild at an older age than most of the other domestics. Pointing toward the world beyond the edge of the ring-island, Jenette asked, "What's it like out there, Rusty? Is there some sort of religious or cultural hierarchy among the Ferals?"

  "Hierarchy?" Rusty repeated.

  "Who runs things? How do Ferals know who's in charge?"

  Rusty considered. "How Jenette know who's in charge?"

  "Yes."

  "Find light," Rusty said without hesitation. "Go to light. Most light rules."

  "That's not very helpful."

  The alien shrugged fatalistically. "Rusty knows. Rusty dummy."

  "You're not a dummy. Don't say that."

  He sat patiently as Jenette pondered. "More questions?"

  "Yes," said Jenette. "What would happen to you out there? What would happen to you in Feral territory alone?"

  "Alone?" Rusty said, puzzled. "Never leave Burke."

  "I know you wouldn't," Jenette said, "but what if you did. Try to imagine it."

  "Hard."

  "What if you didn't have a human, if Burke was dead, and you were out there. Would the Ferals take you in?"

  "Oh," said Rusty, suddenly sad at the thought of Burke being dead, but he tried his best to answer. Unfocused eyes searched back in time; to when he was very young and before humans kidnapped him from his native world. His colors became brighter, like the young domestics Jen
ette took care of in the nursery. His voice, when he spoke, sounded like those young domestics, too, "Pact not kill Pact."

  "What's a Pact?" Jenette asked. "Is that what Ferals call themselves?"

  "Maybe," Rusty said, the youthful glow vanishing. "Not remember."

  "All right." Jenette scratched his head. "Thanks."

  Rusty disappeared and, with a last look at Trum's tomb, Jenette left the glade too.

  Whatever happened now, Jenette knew she was on her own.

  Jenette walked around the front of the incinerator shed. Arrou was keeping watch from the driver's seat of the crawler. He hopped down and sat beside Jenette as she sat disconsolately on a stump.

  "Meeting go bad?"

  Jenette nodded.

  What was she going to do now? She had not forgotten her pledge. No more domestics would die at her hands; Arrou must not die. But everything was turning against her. Her father, her conspirators, even the loyal domestic underground could not help. It all seemed so hopeless.

  Jenette would have wept, but she was all cried out.

  Arrou's eyes got big and his mouth pooched up sadly over his teeth. "Want back scratch?" he said after a while, paws shifting hopefully under him.

  Jenette laughed sadly. "Not right now."

  What was she going to do? With or without the help of her fellow humans, the Sacrament must be stopped.

  After another while Arrou said, "Look."

  For the second time that night, a shooting star streaked across the sky. It burned past the stars even slower than the first one had, in exactly the same direction and exactly the same path the first one had taken across the sky. What were the odds of that, Jenette wondered. A billion to one?

  Jenette suddenly rose. She did not believe in signs, but if she did not act now, she never would.

  "Come on Arrou. Let's go for a ride."

  "Ride in crawler?"

  "Yes, in the crawler."

  "Where go?" he asked as they climbed up.

  That was a good question. Jenette considered it as she slipped the vehicle into drive and followed a winding rut toward the mighty bastions which bounded the outer shore of the ring-island. She didn't actually know where the Feral seat of power lay, or even what kind of society they had, but it was out there somewhere and she was going to find it.