THE BURNING HEART OF NIGHT

by Ivan Cat

  They sat for a while in the sunlight. Jenette's hand began to feel better.

  "What now?" asked Arrou.

  "We've got to find Ferals," Jenette replied, rising and grabbing hold of the cab, heaved it back down over the generator compartment and locked it into position. She climbed on top. Shading her eyes, she surveyed their predicament. As Arrou had said, the island appeared devoid of Ferals. Jenette turned a full circle. Many more emerald islands dotted the expanse of mirror ocean, and even a few skrag islands, withered and dry. She and Arrou had circled around many of them, but had seen neither hide nor hair of his wild brethren.

  "Where are they?" Jenette said.

  "Hiding," said Arrou.

  Jenette nodded. "Can't blame them for mistrusting humans in vehicles." That was how the raiding parties came. The fact that they used much faster skimmers and not slow, lumbering crawlers might not make much difference to a wary enemy. She looked at nearby FI-716 again. It was overgrown in comparison to the Enclave, but the island was healthy otherwise, with no apparent dead spots, fissures, or cracks that indicated that there must be Ferals present and tending it. "We've got to get over there."

  "Leave crawler?"

  "We won't find any Ferals in a broken crawler, will we? Won't find your Tears or your Burning Heart, either."

  "Urrr," Arrou grunted, disappointed.

  "We have to make contact and if we don't do it at this island, we've got to find a way to keep going without the crawler." FI-716 was a big one, several kiloyards wide, but if there was no Feral population it was of no use.

  Arrou scratched his jaw, thinking. "Make paddleboards?"

  Jenette lit up. "You can do that?" A paddleboard was a shallow boat big enough for one person to lie face down on and paddle with arms and legs. Jenette had heard that Ferals used them to travel from ring-island to ring-island, but she had never seen one.

  "Yes," said Arrou, "on island."

  Jenette looked askance at the fifteen-yard stretch between crawler and shore. "Of course, we're not on the island."

  "Arrou go, with cable," he offered, pointing to the winch on the vehicle's front. It was dead without the generator, just like the six separate wheel drivers, but the cable could still be used to pull the crawler ashore by hand. The trick was getting across in the first place. The water was not safe and Jenette doubted the kelp skirts would hold her up, never mind Arrou. Their constantly curling, sprouting tendrils might even impede progress.

  "It's dangerous," she observed.

  "Go fast."

  "Un-hunh." Jenette was skeptical, but hung over the front of the cab, unlocked the winch, and retrieved a hook-ended cable. Arrou stepped onto the cowling and she looped it over one of his muscular shoulders and under the other. "Ready?"

  Arrou bunched his powerful back legs, butt wiggling in anticipation. "Ready."

  Jenette slapped his wide back. "Go! Go fast!"

  Arrou sprang forward, shoving the crawler deck down in the water and bounding a good five yards before splashing onto the weeds. He began to sink straight away, but did not slow, his sure footed claws grasping the thickest bunches of kelp. Jenette marveled at the display of athletic prowess; sheer speed kept Arrou from submerging. The winch whined, the crawler bobbing up and down as cable paid out.

  "Go, go!" Jenette encouraged, catching a flurry of motion out the corner of one eye. Zigzags of water splashed up a few dozen yards from the crawler, like the motion of fish fighting on hooks.

  Arrou missed a step with his clubbed paw. That leg sank up to his chest.

  "Don't stop!"

  Arrou struggled to pick himself up, but the unanticipated weight of the cable held him down. His mighty legs flailed in the water, half crawling, half swimming in the grasping ropes of kelp. More flurries of water appeared, drawn by the motion. They closed on Arrou with alarming speed.

  "Faster, Arrou!" Jenette yelled. "Faster!"

  The underwater disturbances converged on Arrou as he neared the shore. Jenette closed her eyes, afraid to look.

  "Raaak!" Arrou howled. Jenette peeked.

  Arrou lay on the embankment at the edge of the island, kicking a mottled, red torpedo shape: a sharkworm. Its jaws were sunk into Arrou's leg. His bullet head twisted back, lips retracting from teeth, and he sliced the yard-long predator in half, yanking the still-biting head off his leg and crushing it between strong, radial jaws.

  "Are you all right?" Jenette called.

  "Think so," Arrou gasped, wolfing down the large chunks of sharkworm which would later be ground in his gizzard. "Head taste good," he added, catching his breath and shaking off strands of wriggling tube-and-bladder weed. He gave a test yank on the cable. The crawler twisted in the kelp skirts, but swung back when he let go. "Wheels stuck."

  Jenette reached into the cab and unlocked the hubs. Now the large wheels could spin freely. Arrou turned and, leaning on the cable like a tug-of-war contestant, disappeared into the lush jungle. Under his power the crawler ambled over the weeds and butted against the island. Jenette gathered the few useful items from the vehicle's cab, locked it down as best she could, and hopped ashore.

  Arrou reappeared, picked up the other half of the sharkworm, and held the raw thing up as Jenette tied the cable to a tree. "Want some?" he asked, huffing hot, fishy breath at her.

  Jenette's nose crinkled. "You caught it. You eat it." She checked the sharkworm bite on his leg. It had barely penetrated the thick hide, but, along with the broken crawler, it was an inauspicious beginning to their quest. What else could go wrong, she wondered? The jungle glistened darkly, its decomposing-plant smell much stronger up close. "Come on, let's make some boats."

  Deeper and deeper they traveled into the island. And more and more Jenette realized how little she knew of the world they lived on and how frightening it all appeared. It was very different from the Enclave, which was all trimmed and cultivated, the unwanted eradicated and the foul-smelling replaced with the fragrant. Myriad plants grew under the canopy of FI-716 and the occasional shaft of sun filtering down through the jungle canopy did not ease Jenette's wary and dismayed eyes. She searched for familiar things, because there were no dangerous plants or animals within the Enclave's perimeter walls, but familiar things were few and far between and highly-outnumbered by the unfamiliar. The plants were most obvious, thick menacing bushes with oily blossoms and unpleasant bouquets, or brightly-hued creepers strangling haunted tree trunks. But there were unfamiliar sounds as well, sounds of moving things that tickled blonde hairs on the back of her neck and whispered nasty hints in her ears about what lay in wait for the foolish and unwary. Jenette remembered creepy tales Colonel Halifax had told her when she was very young. Even those things Jenette did recognize, like the ever-present brainturf (after the first ripe squish she tried to walk on roots or resin nodules instead), seemed larger and more menacing to her anxious senses. There were many dark holes underfoot from which creatures could spring from and neither she nor Arrou had so much as a big stick to defend themselves with.

  After a tense couple of hours foraging, they had seen no sign of Ferals and Jenette had lost track of the direction from which they'd come. The sun was to the north, she reasoned, but ring-islands had a habit of slowly spinning, so that didn't mean much. And Arrou, in his quest for paddleboard material, was leading them into thicker and thicker growth.

  "What are you looking for?" Jenette asked.

  "Sailtrees."

  "We've been walking all afternoon in search of sailtrees?" Jenette asked impatiently. "There are sailtrees all over. Look, there's one. And there's another, and another."

  Arrou scrutinized every tall tree she pointed at, but dismissed them with a sniff and a toss of his head. "Not right." He slunk into denser growth.

  Jenette didn't like the look of the thickening foliage. So far it had been convenient to let Arrou lead, but even if Ferals lived there, maybe it was rash to plunge ahead in hopes of finding them.

  Maybe they wouldn't like being bothered so close to
home. She liked the idea of making paddleboards closer to the shore. "Do you know what you are doing?"

  Arrou gave a curious shrug. "How hard can be?"

  Jenette stiffened. "Haven't you made paddleboards before?"

  "No."

  "But you've seen it done, right?"

  "Yes."

  "Oh, good." Jenette was relieved. "So what's the problem? What's taking so long?"

  "Find bodybags."

  "Sailtrees don't drop bodybags for another six months," Jenette reminded him.

  "Urrrkurrrkurrrk," Arrou rumbled, suddenly thoughtful.

  "Even I know that."

  "Forgot. Documentary not say."

  "Documentary not say? You saw paddleboards being made in a human recording? You didn't learn from Ferals?"

  Arrou tilted his head and looked hurt. "How?"

  Jenette instantly regretted her previous words. Of course Arrou had not learned from Ferals. He had been captured when just a kit and hadn't seen a wild Khafra since. The reason they were tramping through untamed jungle in search of Ferals, who had every reason to kill them on sight, was to put an end to that very practice.

  "Well," Jenette considered, gazing at the trees around them, their leaves sagging in the heavy, still air, "maybe a green body-bag will work."

  Arrou brightened, literally, at that suggestion and they spent the next while looking for sprouting bodybags. There were buds on high branches and some were quite big, even out of season. Jenette saw that with a little luck they might find one big enough for her or Arrou, but just about the time that Arrou spotted a likely looking bulge behind a collapsed sail leaf, Jenette began to fret once more. The afternoon had become hot and oppressive, so that only the scuffling or peeping of New Ascension's most energetic creatures was heard. But now it became dead silent. Arrou went stiff, head outstretched on his neck, jagged breath drawing air past the nasal plates in the roof of his mouth.

  "What is it?" Jenette whispered.

  "Not know," Arrou whispered back. "Smells like pink."

  "Smells like pink? What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Trouble. Funny smells."

  "Feral smells?"

  "Not know. Wind weak." Arrou's ear pits, small depressions at the crest of his head, flared wider. "Rrrr," he rumbled. "Something coming."

  Jenette's heart raced. "Is it Ferals?" she pressed.

  "Maybe," Arrou conceded, "but other somethings come, too." He turned away, presumably in the direction of the shore. "Go back."

  Jenette had a similar impulse to flee, but resisted it. "No. No, we stay."

  "Ferals not safe," Arrou protested. "Jenette alone. Jenette unarmed."

  "That's why you're here," she admonished, "to protect me. Besides, this is what we came here for and I'm not going to run away without even trying to make contact."

  Arrou didn't like it. He shuffled from side to side, his back emitting a warning display as the distant rustling of foliage grew loud enough for Jenette to hear. It amplified rapidly, crashing and snapping with a certain frenzied rhythm.

  In her mind Jenette ran over the Khafra words Arrou had taught her. Rikit-ee-brikhauss. She hoped she would get them right. "You might have to help translate."

  "Urrr."

  Suddenly a panicked bleating, like a child yelling through a hose, resonated and the greenery burst apart. An olive-furred creature with long legs and a body made up of three melon-sized spheres crashed into view, tube mouth yowling. It leapt sideways to avoid Arrou, its yowl Dopplering lower in tone as it careened past Jenette.

  Arrou shot her a look, longing to go.

  Jenette was getting pretty panicky herself. More creatures crashed through the foliage around them. A few she recognized: mlums, forfaraws, and wompets. Most she did not, like the small hairless ones with long tails and hopping gates, or the larger ones with thick, bristled bodies and forward stabbing tusks in massive jaws. For a place that had appeared deserted minutes before, the numbers were phenomenal.

  "Can't let a few herbivores scare us off," Jenette said, trying to sound brave.

  "Not afraid of herbivores," Arrou huffed. "Ferals hunting herbivores. Hunters not want talk. Hunters want kill."

  Two of the bristly creatures bowled Jenette over. She scrambled back up, shaken. Maybe Arrou had a point. Maybe Ferals hot with blood lust would not be in a diplomatic frame of mind. Maybe it would be prudent to wait until after their hunt. "Okay, let's get out of here."

  Arrou instantly bounded off with the flow of animals and Jenette followed, but if he was hoping for safety in the numbers of the stampede, it was not to be. Jenette could not run as fast as the four-footed prey creatures. Arrou had to check up and wait for his human companion and they were quickly left behind as another noise grew to their rear, not a panicked desperate noise this time, but a measured one, spreading out on all sides.

  "Hurry," Arrou exhorted, leaping ahead.

  Jenette began to recall Colonel Halifax's stories in more detail, she remembered how he had earned all those ugly red scars in Feral ambushes, and how he had told her that Khafra in the wild grew larger and more ferocious than domestics. Arrou was big enough already. She tried not to think of a bigger creature with bigger claws, longer teeth, and thicker armor.

  Jenette ran faster. She and Arrou plunged through pools of light and shadow, leaves whipping their faces, slick molds greasing their steps.

  "Owwurr," Arrou cried as they crashed through a stand of hitchhiker brush. Cashew-shaped burrs clung to Jenette's clothes. Arrou's velvety snout bled from a dozen tiny scrapes.

  The noises behind accelerated.

  Arrou raced back from scouting the path ahead. "Dead end, dead end," he said and bounded off in a different direction.

  There was motion behind the curtains of leaves now, shimmering smears of green on green, like heat waves on water. Jenette's legs complained; gasps of air burned her throat and she fell further and further behind.

  Arrou paused to wait.

  "Keep going!" she ordered. "Get away!"

  Arrou stubbornly refused to move. "Impossible."

  Jenette stumbled up to him, expecting Ferals to burst out of the foliage any instant. Arrou hunched his shoulders and bared his teeth, prepared to go down fighting. His back shimmered defiant waves of orange.

  This was not the peaceful encounter Jenette wanted.

  "Hide!" she cried.

  "Okay."

  Like turning off a switch, Arrou's defiant markings vanished and his thousands of glowbuds became a perfect imitation of the mottled forest around them.

  He disappeared.

  "You'll have to teach me that sometime," Jenette said, as exposed as ever. Looking around wildly, she dove under a fallen log by the foot of an enormous moss heap. Whoof! Arrou dropped his four hundred pounds on top of her as a flurry of feet rumbled up.

  This would be the end of her little crusade, Jenette realized. Surely the Ferals would see her, and if not they would certainly smell her. Would the Ferals rip them apart all at once as a pack, or bit by bit in revenge for all the misery Jenette's species had inflicted upon them? Jenette's heartbeat pounded in her head. Primal fear blotted out the higher functions of her brain. She waited for the characteristic howl that Arrou made when he trapped a small animal.

  The ground shook, but no chorus of victory howls arose. Instead, the log slammed down onto Arrou and her as an unknown prey animal vaulted off of it and fled, a gangly, pinkish smudge as seen through the corner of Jenette's eyes. The hunters stampeded past. When the vibrations ceased and Jenette could bear Arrou's weight no more, she shoved at his knobby flank.

  "Get off," she gasped.

  He rolled off and they looked around. The jungle was empty again. Leaves were trampled and branches broken, but the hammering of feet receded and there was no sign of Ferals to be seen.

  Jenette didn't believe it. The Ferals had passed them by.

  "What was that all about?"

  Arrou shook his head and sniffed. "Funny smell," he said, p
erplexed. "Funny, flowery smell."

  X

  It is a demanding life. Full of bittersweet accomplishment and distant, rare glory. Many times it is harsh. Always it is lonely. But it is the only life we know. And there isn't anything any of us wouldn't do to prolong it a month, a day, a few sweet seconds more.

  —anonymous Pilot

  Karr ran through the jungle, emotions numbed by the loss of his fugueship, body fatigued from too many hours without sleep. The ghimpsuit had kept Karr's muscles in good condition during Long Reach's last ill-fated mission, but there were limits to his stamina. He could not run for more than a few more minutes. The bloodthirsty life-forms on his tail, however, showed no signs of weakening. Their rustle of pursuit was dangerously near and drawing nearer by the second. Karr had to do something—and fast—with the limited resources at hand: ghimpsuit, light Pilot's boots, and Gattler. He had nothing else, and the Gattler was growing heavier with every step. The creatures had cut Karr off from the rest of his equipment when he ventured inland searching for water and food. Deciding to use the Gattler before he couldn't carry it any longer, Karr spun its selector knob. Barrel six whirred into position and he stopped and turned, squeezing the trigger. Mountains of aqueous sterilizing foam gushed out like suds from a mad washing machine, swamping a wide swath of jungle to a height well above his own head. Karr heard several gratifying slurshes as the creatures slid into it, followed by howls of displeasure as the stinging foam got into eyes, mouths and noses—assuming they had those. They thrashed in blinding, slippery confusion.

  The voice of fear counseled Karr to select a different barrel and riddle the foam with qi needles, or better yet, use a cutting beam to fry the creatures, but he turned and ran. Downed on an alien planet and surrounded by hostile life-forms, every Pilot knew better than to stand and fight. Karr had played these scenarios in survival training. It didn't matter that the Gattler could be used as a weapon. The creatures had the advantage. It was their turf. They knew it better than Karr and they outnumbered him. Even with rocks and teeth to his needles and cutting beams, all they had to do was swarm him. In a game of attrition wherein Karr had only one of himself to lose, Karr lost. Keep moving. Keep hiding. Stay alive from one moment to the next and try to get away. If they don't get you in the first forty-eight hours, you will probably make it.