THE BURNING HEART OF NIGHT

by Ivan Cat

  So Karr fled, half-running, half-falling over the constantly rippling ground. CG-423-B harrowed him with sensual stimulation unlike anything on the interior of his lost ship. Harsh, unidentifiable sounds hammered his ears. Varied odors wafted in atmosphere lacking the chemical scent of air scrubbers. And the sights were nerve-wracking! What was that thing? Karr wondered at gourd shapes strangling the base of a tall tree. They resembled a drill corporal back at the Academy, bulbous nose and all. Below that proboscis, a squirmy thing struggled in a plant mouth lined with teeth. There were rainbow bubbles, blowing from viscous fluid that stretched over irregular hoops of liana. Yards long, the bubbles undulated in the lazy breeze above Karr, floating many paces before popping. They were beautiful—but what were the fine fibers that fell on him? They smelled like spun sugar. Karr brushed them off. Mounds of puff sacks underfoot shot stinging needles.

  Ouch. Don't rub. Let the swelling go down by itself. The creatures closed in again, grumpier—and presumably cleaner—than before. Karr summoned his last reserves of energy and sprinted around a stand of velvety leaves. The crowded foliage parted like a curtain, revealing a doughnut-hole lagoon in the middle of the island. One hundred yards of calm water mirrored the stately trees around it. The shore was rotting, slowly submerging unlucky plants and bushes as the lagoon grew wider.

  Karr followed the decaying shoreline counterclockwise until an ill-placed inlet blocked further flight. To his left, the ground sloped down to a narrow peninsula with a tree on its sinking end. To his right, the way he wanted to go, the sounds of pursuit were growing louder and louder.

  Karr was trapped.

  He ran down the slope onto the dead-end peninsula, stopping short of the tree, which resembled the mast and sails of an ancient Terran sailing ship. Because of the rotting shoreline, its roots were submerged and it leaned at a precarious angle.

  Rustle, rustle.

  Karr spun. The aliens broke out of the jungle into view— or rather, Karr deduced their positions by the parting swaths of greenery and shadows on the ground. The deadly creatures were impossible to see directly because of highly effective camouflage, ever-changing on their skins. Karr counted eight shadows, noting that they appeared to move in pairs. Those shadow pairs stopped midway down the peninsula to size up the situation.

  "Rachikatikachiktik," went the disembodied voices, like coins churning in cogs. Patches of color smeared clear air.

  "Rakachikutuktuk," said the blur over the biggest shadow.

  "Krikadrishtix," its partner clattered. Karr heard suspicious sniffing.

  Was it speech or just animal sounds? It sure sounded like communication to Karr.

  The shimmering pack of aliens spread out across the narrow wedge of land. Karr backed up, splashing ankle deep into the water. It felt chilly in contrast to the hot air and reminded Karr that he had nowhere to go. The aliens certainly thought he was trapped, because they dropped their camouflage and displayed synchronized waves of black and yellow as they prowled forward.

  "That's far enough," Karr barked, vocal chords gravelly from lack of use. He twisted the Gattler's selector and fired a burst of qi needles. They were not designed as darts and only flew straight a few yards before tumbling and bouncing off the ground or spinning harmlessly into the creatures. It was a pretty sad display. The Gattler's barrels spun again. This time Karr fired globs of adhesive froth. The aliens were able to dodge these, but they got the point: the Gattler was a weapon. They halted when Karr pointed it at them.

  "Urrrrrr," growled the one that had sniffed suspiciously. It poked a patch of adhesive with a stick. The glue held; the stick broke off.

  Tool use, thought Karr, intelligent behavior. Were these fierce aliens the reason he had not found a colony on this planet? Had they wiped the humans out? Karr kept backing up until he banged into the roots of the sinking tree.

  Climb or swim?

  The creatures edged closer.

  "Look," he warned, selecting the cutting beam. "Don't make me hurt you...."

  The suspicious creature clattered its nasty teeth. "Rikurrkurrkurrk."

  "I don't want to hurt you," Karr continued, "but I will if I have to." He menaced them with the Gattler. The threat was largely a bluff. Karr didn't think he could get them all before they pounced on him. He just wanted them to back off.

  The aliens did not back off, but they did stop at the edge of the water, eyeing it distrustfully, which gave Karr pause. Observe indigenous species. They know the local hazards. If they don't want to wade, Karr concluded, I don't want to swim. So he turned and, letting the Gattler dangle from its shoulder strap, clawed up the tree, fingers finding purchase on its wrinkled bark. Before the creatures knew it, he was five stories up, standing on a branch that protruded over the inlet. Karr hugged the main trunk as it swayed back and forth, exaggerating the gentle motion of the ground below.

  The aliens watched with hungry eyes.

  Karr was reluctant to venture onto the branch, but he did not know how long the water would hold them back, so he straddled the downward-sloping limb and—not looking down—shimmied out toward the tip. Thankfully, the branch was strong and did not bend under his weight. Karr made good progress until one of the sail-like leaves got in the way. It grew down from the limb above, its lower end anchored by curly creepers wrapped around Karr's branch.

  No problem.

  Getting a firm grip on the Gattler again, Karr used its cutting beam, set narrow, to sever the creepers. The aliens paced restlessly, "richikaticking" and "rackattakatakking" their distress at Karr's actions.

  Karr inched forward as each creeper broke. The sail leaf fluttered and snapped as the last anchor parted, whipping Karr about the head and back as he shimmied past. At its thinner end, the branch sagged uncomfortably under his weight. Karr looked down. The tree's motion described dizzy circles over aliens and inlet, swinging in a loop over to the far side and back on around. If Karr could nerve himself to leap at just the right moment, he would land on the opposite side. However, in spite of the tree's lean and the downward slope of the branch, he was still quite high. The water would feel very hard from that height. Hitting the ground would certainly kill him.

  Up till that point, Karr's decisions had been based on flight, but now he needed a plan. Unfortunately, leaping from trees had not been part of survival training. Don't panic. Breathe. In, out. In, out. Focus.... It was a puzzle. He just had to think of it as a puzzle. He needed to get down, but could not jump, climb, or raise the ground. Therefore—a few more breaths stripped away obvious impossibilities—the only option was to lower the tree. That determined, everything else just fell into place.

  While the tree continued its giddy motion, Karr sat up and, carefully lifting first one leg and then the other over the branch, faced back toward the tree's trunk. He flopped back onto his belly, picked a low-power setting and fired a cutting beam at the base of the tree. Steam rose from the moist bark and then smoke. Karr kept the cutting force moving across the trunk so that things would happen slowly.

  The creatures, upset at his leaf cutting, were incensed at this new offense. They growled and gnashed their teeth. When flame appeared around the cutting beam and the tree shuddered, they let loose a chorus of outrage.

  The dominant creature backed up to make a jump at the tree. The suspicious one tried to hold it back, but snarls exchanged and the dominant splashed across to the trunk. It yowled on contact with the super-heated bark, but dug in and climbed. The others, spurred on by its success, followed on after another. Only the dominant's counterpart held back, distrustful.

  Karr held to his target with the cutting beam and was rewarded by a sudden lurch of the tree. Its angle of lean increased, every branch and leaf swaying as the base weakened. Karr's plan was working. Another minute or two of slow descent would deposit him safely on the other side of the inlet. But the aliens were clawing up at him too fast.

  Again, Karr could have turned up the power and simply fried the creatures, but the bizarre geogr
aphy of the confrontation worked in his favor. As the leading creature prowled out onto the branch, opposing pairs of digits on each paw gripping like vises, Karr changed barrels and aiming point. Jerks of the trigger spewed globs of adhesive froth and this time the aliens could not dodge. The lead alien stepped into a glob. Karr was satisfied to see it stuck; several hours and a whole lot of skin would be missing before it tore free. Before they knew it the others were stuck too, splattered by Karr as they bounded onto the branch. They thrashed, but that only made them more stuck.

  Now the suspicious alien climbed the tree. It stayed on the glue-free trunk, tearing up the bark in frustration and not venturing out onto the sticky limb.

  The branch shook violently, ominous creaks resonating through the wood. Karr shook with it. He worried how much load it could handle, guessing that the seven trapped aliens weighed at least three thousand pounds. As it turned out, the branch was not what Karr needed to worry about.

  Crack!

  Wood shattered below. A shuddering groan rose from the base of the tree to the tip of its bole as rotting roots crumbled. The tree toppled faster than planned, flexing and spinning, and falling in a different direction than planned. Karr hung in the air for an awful second, facing straight down, then plummeted with the tree as island and water rushed up. The force flung him into the inlet. The aliens were not so lucky. Held by the molecular glue, two were crushed where the tree hammered into the opposite side of the inlet. The others were pulled into the water.

  Karr came up spitting bitter brine as the last, suspicious creature raced along the branch, risking imprisonment on the sticky globules to get to the others. They thrashed harder, filling the air with submerged wailing. The lone alien artfully avoided entrapment, sinking claws into its brethren, trying to rip them free. It paid particular attention to the large dominant, its partner, but the glue was designed to hold fugueship wounds sutured shut against the stress of high g-forces. The glue held. It was already an awful sight. And, as Karr averted his eyes and stroked for land, it got worse. The water around the drowning creatures erupted like a thousand tiny explosions. Torpedo-shaped worms attacked the helpless creatures, shredding the water pink.

  Karr gripped the far shore. The roots and fronds were slippery and he fell back into the murky under-surface world. The water near the tree was a froth of bubbles and blood. Karr kicked hard, breaking the surface again and stabbing the Gattler spear-like at the bank. It stuck and he kicked his legs up, rolling to safety. Spitting and choking, he looked back.

  The lone alien was a blur of talons and teeth, slashing the ravenous torpedoes to pieces, uncaring of its own wounds; but for every enemy slain, two more attacked for a mouthful. In no time the submerged aliens were stripped to the bone.

  The survivor raised its head—the glowbuds on one half of its body suddenly blanking out—and let out a mournful cry.

  Howwurrrraouuuu!

  It was the sound of loss, the sound of a being losing the most important thing in its world, and it pierced Karr to his emotional core, because if there had been a sound he could make to sum up the feelings of a Pilot losing his fugueship, that howl was it. The carnage he had inadvertently caused sickened Karr. He did not like to kill. And if not for his arrival on CG-423-B, those aliens would still be alive. Man-eating they might be, but Karr had not wished them such a grisly end.

  The keening died down, absorbed by the foliage of the ring-island, and the survivor turned its head at Karr. It bounded across the tree bridge with vengeance firing its chameleon skin. Karr rose to his knees, yanking the Gattler out of the bank, but had no chance of firing before the creature was on him. Karr braced the stock on the ground and aimed the barrels at its chest. They glanced off the alien's thick breastplates and dug bloody furrows up the side of its neck and head.

  The beast snarled in pain and backhanded Karr into a pile of hardened resin globules at the base of a fractured tree. The Gattler tumbled out of reach and before Karr could react, the monster was on top of him, pinning him under its suffocating weight, stabbing him with its raging eyes. Angry breath huffed on Karr's face.

  One deliberate pull of the alien's talons shredded the ghimpsuit from Karr's chest. Karr struggled helplessly as the beast flexed its teeth inward, then pointed them outward again, head swinging down. The many blades straddled Karr's neck, squeezing effortlessly—each seemed to be rooted in its own separate mandible, Karr couldn't help noticing. And all the while the creature never broke its malevolent eye contact.

  Know who kills you, said those bottomless, black eyes. Know your death.

  Karr stopped struggling. If he was to die before those eyes, it must be as a Pilot and not a coward.

  The teeth tightened and cut. Karr felt cool air on his neck as the alien sucked up trickles of blood. Karr felt its tongue press against his throat as it swallowed heavily.

  "Get it over with," Karr gasped.

  But the alien unexpectedly pulled back, its streamlined face cramping into what could only be described as a grimace. It retched.

  "Achkt," it spat, utter shock in its eyes. "Gaack." It sprang back, sniffing Karr in dismay. Then, gagging, it bounded across the fallen tree, up the peninsula, and out of sight into the jungle.

  Karr collapsed, confounded, panting, holding his neck—and thanking his lucky stars for the unforeseen blessing of tasting really, really bad.

  XI

  The fugueship is a kiss, a musky kiss on her nude skin, a kiss sweet with fugue and pungent like an outworld spice.

  That's how it is in her dream.

  Kissing-lip doorways draw her deeper, wrap her in their moist forgetfulness. The kiss steals away what was Before. The kiss is Sanctuary. The kiss takes her away from the danger of her world.

  Soon it will take her to secret places.

  Naked and nameless, geldings line the love-passages, heads bowed, embarrassed hands over limp nothings. In the past they have taunted her. They have punished her with their bitter nothings. They have tried to tell her that it is she who is inadequate, and not them. But she knows better. She has read. Beyond her world, there are no geldings.

  She ignores them.

  The kiss is on her. The kiss will show them what to do with a real woman.

  Curves on curves, caress on caress. Steamy tongue-shapes lure her to the center of the ship. To the ruby womb. She feels the heat of it in her nipples and throat.

  He is standing there.

  In white.

  And he knows what he wants: her.

  Fingers interlock. Naked, charged flesh presses against muscles under crisp pressed fabric. Hot breath on face. Then contact. Firm lips on hers, touching. Not flinching. Lingering. Tasting. Darting in and out. Savoring.

  This is the kiss for her.

  And all the geldings can do is watch.

  She feels the heat. She is the heat. Wet heat. He is the heat. Hard heat. He moves, she moans. She parts the white uniform, hungry for what she needs. She grabs. He shoves her legs apart.

  They are connected.

  Willowy legs over thrusting buttocks. She arrives where the kiss will take her. To the secret place. She arrives. Such feeling! She almost faints. She takes his gift. And arrives. And arrives. And arrives ...

  —from the black book of J. Tesla

  Impossible!

  A naked man, who Jenette had never seen before, motored by the shore on a strange craft, which she had also never seen before.

  Jenette and Arrou were hiding under droobleberry bushes at the edge of FI-716, disconsolate after their first abortive Feral encounter and trying to figure out what to do next. Hiking through dense jungle in search of Ferals would only get them killed. Jenette needed a different, safer way to locate Ferals.

  Those problems were forgotten at the sight of the naked man.

  The encounter had begun with a peculiar hum. Arrou heard it first, the prickling of his ear pits alerting Jenette to possible trouble. Then she heard it herself.

  "What is it?" she whispered. />
  "Machine."

  Jenette at first assumed the noise was a deep colony patrol, sent by her father to bring her back. And, although the idea of being whisked away from the dangerous island appealed to a certain part of her, Jenette resolved to hide from the vessel. However, the noise did not really sound like a crawler or any other kind of Enclave vehicle. Jenette pushed aside her fear, and several bunches of swollen mauve berries, and found herself staring out from the island at a wholly improbable boat.

  The vessel's general appearance was that of a wreck. Torn composite fibers and bent metal fringed a shallow, flat rectangle, fifteen yards wide and thirty long. Massive charred cowlings, fat at the bottom and tapered on top, sat at the four corners. Jenette guessed some sort of propulsion units were concealed within. There was a shattered cockpit at the front and a pile of junk in the center, and the whole thing was leaking so badly that an ankle-deep lake sloshed inside the shallow sidewalls.

  But more important than the craft itself was the man. Jenette knew every one of the Enclave's three thousand human colonists on sight—and he wasn't one of them.

  Hence, the impossibility.

  "We don't have anything like that, do we?" Jenette asked rhetorically.

  "We should," Arrou said, enraptured by the strange vehicle. "Big engines."

  The craft quickly passed out of sight. Jenette scrambled forward and leaned over the bank as the vessel disappeared around a bend of the shoreline.

  Arrou fidgeted. "What do?"

  Jenette sputtered, still in shock from the sight. "Don't let him get away!"

  The words hardly left her lips before Arrou bounded off through the bush. Jenette followed as best she could.

  Karr rummaged through a heap of salvage on deck, flipping over what was left of the ejection couch and digging into a survival kit attached to it. He unzipped a small packet and poked it inside out. On contact with air, the fabric expanded into a wet simulacrum of a Pilot uniform, which Karr needed now that the vicious alien had destroyed his ghimpsuit. Already Karr was feeling the heat of the yellow sun above and he didn't want to get burned. He waited impatiently as the memory-cloth cured, his brows drawing into an unhappy glower at the remembrance of the last two days.