by Ivan Cat
Karr had awoken on the morning of day one, bobbing in CG-423-B's strange chrome sea, suspended by a survival raft that had inflated out from compartments on the back of his kilnsuit. Torpid waves rolled from horizon to horizon with no sign of land, lifter, or fugueship in sight. The warm water surrounding him reminded him of being enfolded in Long Reach's brain, and for a while, as it dawned on him that his magnificent ship was gone, he did nothing but despair. The creature that for so long had been his sole companion, the very reason for his existence, was dead.
And what good was a Pilot without a ship?
Karr would gladly have given his life for Long Reach to live, but of course there was no bartering with Fate. No matter that he felt his life was over. No matter that he had trained all his life, believing his choice a noble task, forsaking any human contact, family, friends—forsaking time itself as the centuries stole away. No matter that he had roots nowhere and that it would have been better if his kilnsuit had cracked on ejection so that he could drown at the bottom of the silvery ocean. None of that sacrifice brought his fugueship back from the dead. That was the terrible truth. His helmet began to fog.
Lindal Karr, who had not wept at the loss of several thousand units of human cargo, who had not shed a tear for twenty million lost souls on Sheldon's World, took his helmet off and wept at the loss of his ship.
And his tears became flower petals...
Or so it seemed.
Wherever his tears fell on the quick-silver waves, clouds of rich indigo birthed into the air, swarms of insects fluttering up, twirling on tissue-paper wings, out of control, joining and mating for a few stolen minutes of life and then, spent, snowing back onto the waves like flower petals. The cycle repeated over and over, sometimes near Karr, sometimes in a chain reaction that swept far away, the ocean surface stippling as if from invisible rain, chasing itself before a wind of fairy-like procreation and death. Such was the pace of life on that alien planet, but Karr neither counted the endless cycles nor marveled at the fragile beauty. He remained un-moving, inward-locked in misery.
Many fluttering life cycles passed.
Eventually, Karr's ingrained determination did kick in. His sense of duty was just too strong to give up; even though his ship was gone, he must go on. Long Reach would have wanted it that way. Somewhere in that great, dumb brain it had feelings for its tiny symbiont. Karr was sure of that. Furthermore, Karr remembered as he rose increment by increment out of the pit of his sorrow, that it was his duty to locate Long Reach's crash sight, record what he saw, and try to transmit an account of the events and his actions for dispersion throughout human-colonized space. Maybe other Pilots could learn from Karr's misfortune and save their ships where he had failed. Only after that would he be free to wallow in sorrow.
Until then, he was still a Pilot.
So, Karr heaved himself into the survival raft and paddled along a trail of floating wreckage. In time it led him to the heavy lifter. It was submerged on a free-drifting reef of snarled green hoses and wire-like corals, fifteen yards under the surface. Over the rest of that day, Karr made several descents in the kilnsuit, eventually reactivating the orbiter's engines and bringing the wreck to the surface. Karr patched it together as best he could. The Gattler's molecular glue worked very well to bond the larger broken hull sections, but evidently he hadn't found all the tiny cracks because the hull still leaked. Water immediately began to accumulate on deck. He decided he could live with it. The faster he got the vehicle flying, the faster he could head southwest, the direction in which Long Reach had disappeared.
That had been the first day. He fell asleep that night watching a peculiar red glow on the southwestern horizon.
Which brought him back to the present.
So far this second day had not gone as productively as the first The probability that Karr was the only human within twenty light-years was increasing. Karr reasoned that no primate-descended colonist could have watched his fiery plummet from the heavens without swinging by to take a look, but the skies were decidedly clear of flying machines and the ocean devoid of ships. He had to face the fact that he was alone; there might not even be a colony beacon from which to transmit his report. And the planet's bloodthirsty inhabitants would be of no help to Karr. They made the simplest tasks of searching for food and water next to impossible; he had been lucky to escape his first interspecies encounter with his life.
It was at this sorry point in his rumination that Karr heard a voice.
Karr hung the curing Pilot's uniform on the ejector couch and walked to the shoreward side of the lifter. The sound repeated, seeming muffled, weak, and vaguely human. Karr listened skeptically. It was probably those aliens, trying to lure him back for a second round of Capture Lunch. Having already ascribed them a certain degree of intelligence, Karr wasn't going to fall for any of their tricks.
Still, it sure sounded like a human voice.
Karr went to the cockpit, the top of which had torn off during ejection, and leaned in to adjust the throttles. They were the only method of steering the lifter at that point. The landward thrusters were set at a lower power level than the ocean side thrusters, so the large hull chugged along, veering with the gentle curve of the coast. Karr used a fingernail to pry up the stub of a thrust lever. The ocean side thrusters thrummed a little faster and the lifer nosed in toward the ring-island, pushing through a skirt of floating kelp and on under the shadow of overhanging jungle growth.
Karr returned to the landward side.
The repeating voice sounded like a call for attention. No. A warning. Which didn't make any sense to Karr. Even if the aliens could imitate humans, why would they make warning sounds? Karr was just about to go back to the cockpit and make another throttle adjustment when he saw movement in the greenery some distance behind the lifter. He could not be sure what it was, but the warning sound was coming from that direction, too.
Thwump, went a heavy noise behind him.
Karr whirled and came face to face with another of the alien predators. He could not be sure if it was the same one as before, since it was silhouetted against the glare of open ocean behind it. Apparently, it had misjudged its leap from the overhanging jungle growth and missed Karr, but it was still far too close for comfort. Karr lunged for the ejector couch, and the Gattler leaning against it.
"Urrrkurrrkurrrk." The alien rumbled, hesitating.
But when it saw Karr grasp the multi-barreled tool, it sprang, easily swiping Karr's legs out from under him. Karr splashed into the water on deck, rolling and swinging the Gattler to bear. He snapped the selector knob to full-power cutting beam as the alien pounced on top of him.
"Stop!" shrieked a distinctly human voice. "Stop!"
From his horizontal position, Karr saw a lithe, human figure darting along the shoreline, but he was too concentrated on saving his life to give it much attention. He jammed the Gattler against the alien's chest, intending to vaporize its midsection.
An amber colored lump suddenly arched through the air and hit Karr between his eyes.
"Ah!"
Karr flinched and the beast smacked the Gattler out of his hands. It pursed its teeth into a cone. Karr reached up and gripped the soft underside of its neck before it could jab the ivory daggers through his heart.
"Khaaaghk!" squawked the alien.
Karr's human hands lacked the strength to strangle the creature. He let go one hand and groped into a survival kit beside him. His fingers darted into a pocket and pulled out a serrated knife, which he slashed at the creature.
The blade glanced off its thick hide.
More resin lumps pelted down, thrown by the unknown human—a young girl. She wasn't a very good shot; most of the lumps hit Karr and not the beast.
"Stop! Stop!" she screamed. "Don't hurt him!"
Karr wished the girl would take more drastic action. Such a vicious creature would not respond to threats, and the rocks she threw were hurting him more than it.
As if to prove that point
, the creature grabbed Karr's knife arm and hammered Karr's knuckles painfully against the ejector couch. Karr lost his grip on the knife—and then almost lost his grip on its neck as the lifter slammed into the shore. Engine thrust pushed the craft up the slope at an angle. Vegetation ripped and snapped. Water sloshed around the hull and the creature lurched down on Karr, squashing all the air from his lungs. Pain stabbing through his chest, Karr tried to reach the Gattler again.
The girl followed as the lifter skipped along shore. She threw more misaimed lumps.
"Ow!" Karr gasped. "Ow! Ow! Stop throwing rocks!"
The girl sprang onto the lifter.
"Take it!" Karr yelled, nodding frantically at the Gattler. "Grab it and shoot! Shoot!"
The girl darted across the bucking deck, grabbing the Gattler as instructed. She fumbled for a second before locating and crooking a dainty finger over the trigger—but then she aimed the barrels squarely at Karr's head!
"Careful with that!" Karr exclaimed.
"Stop fighting!" the girl warned, looking Karr straight in the eye. Her aim did not veer from the center of his forehead.
Karr froze.
"Arrou," the girl continued, slowly and vigilantly, "now you stop fighting, too."
"Ghuukk," the beast choked, but to Karr's surprise, it eased up its grip on him. Cautiously, Karr did the same.
"Are you okay?" the girl asked the alien.
"Okay," it replied, rubbing its neck. It growled at Karr. "Not nice."
"It talks," Karr blurted stupidly.
"Of course he talks," the girl snapped. "Why did you attack him? He wasn't going to hurt you!"
The Gattler's business end continued to waver over Karr's forehead. Karr decided he had better do something before the girl accidentally vaporized his head. But what? Pilot-flatlander encounters were Karr's least competent, and least liked, area of expertise. He wracked his brain for an appropriate section of Academy procedure. In hostile situations seek to keep discourse calm. Endeavor to diffuse volatile encounters by placating individuals armed with life-threatening devices.
Karr attempted to follow that procedure.
"I'm sorry, young lady. Please understand, a pack of these things just tried to kill me—"
"Don't call me young lady!" the girl said angrily. "Nobody calls me that, not even an outworlder!"
Karr realized that his first impression of the female was incorrect. Although she had appeared quite young from a distance, up close was a different, contradictory story. She couldn't weigh more than one hundred pounds soaking wet, her build being sprightly and only just beginning to flesh out, as if she were fourteen or fifteen, but there was a mature ease to her movements and her icy blue eyes burned into his with none of the shyness of puberty.
"I'm twenty-three standard years old," she said indignantly. "How old are you?"
Karr thought it a strange question, but her response to his answer, "Thirty-four," was even stranger. She gave Karr a once over, as if seeing him for the first time, abruptly lowered the Gattler and backed off.
She slapped the creature on its flank. "Arrou, get off him. Get off."
Arrou got off. The alien's great weight eased up and Karr felt needles of circulation returning to his extremities. He stood up, flexing his hands and stomping his feet, but then the young-looking woman's face went pink and a cool breeze reminded Karr about his lack of clothing. Slapping hands over modest regions, he splashed across the deck to the limited cover of the cockpit.
Krunch! The lifter glanced off the island yet again. Karr took a moment to adjust the throttles. The hull veered out to sea. Then, looking back, he pointed at the crash couch and asked, tentatively, "Would you pass me that uniform, please?"
Jenette picked up the garment, her cheeks flushing hotly. The outworlder was so different from New Ascension men—and certainly not a gelding, that was for sure.
"Could you just throw it from there?" he requested as she neared the cockpit.
Jenette obliged, mesmerized. The outworlder was not a pimply-faced adolescent or a weather-wrinkled geriatric, but thirty-four. Thirty-four! That was middle-aged by New Ascension standards. Jenette had read about that condition in books, but had never seen it first hand.
The still-curing uniform stuck together, resisting the outworlder's attempts to put it on. Jenette knew she should look away, but her eyes were tempted as he squirmed into it. Arms slipped into sleeves. Pant legs stretched as long limbs pressed into them.
The fabric slid over a nicely toned butt.
Technician's hands sealed a fiberweld-strip up the front and pulled on boots, which Jenette also tossed upon request. Finally, he climbed out of the cockpit—killing the engines as he did so—and stood, looking quite ill at ease, but also quite dashing in the white uniform.
Nobody moved. Nobody said anything.
He tried, ineffectually, to smooth a shock of unruly hair. "Sorry about the misunderstanding," he ventured, eyes darting at Arrou.
"Rrrrr," Arrou growled, sniffing him. "Smell like flowers."
Jenette drew a sharp breath—jasmine!—and abruptly remembered the significance of the smell of jasmine and a white uniform. She took a step closer. There were gold shooting stars on the outworlder's collar and gold bars at his cuffs.
"You're a Pilot!"
"Yes," the outworlder said nervously, adding, "I crashed here yesterday."
The word "Pilot" hit Jenette like a tidal wave. It was a word steeped in Enclave history, spoken with reverence verging on the religious. She unconsciously stacked her fists over her heart. "If you're a Pilot," she said as the implications caught up with her, "then you came in a fugueship. You can take us off this planet!" For a brief instant Jenette imagined a wonderful new future on a different world, without Sacrament and Scourge: no more fear of growing old, no more slavery, no more war....
But the Pilot held up a hand. "I crashed," he repeated.
Jenette looked around the wrecked vessel, suddenly realizing that it was not a boat, but the remains of a spacecraft of some kind. "Can't you call another one down from orbit?" she asked.
The Pilot's face, already grave, became graver. "You don't understand. I'm not talking about this heap." He stole a look to the southwest. "I crashed my fugueship."
Those words caused him pain, Jenette saw.
But she barely knew what to think, never mind say. The hope of evacuation had been euphoric, and short, which was disappointing, but the reality of a Pilot on New Ascension, that changed everything. Her father's plans. The Body's plans. Her plans.... A Pilot was a wild card. Jenette quickly decided that until she knew how he fit unto the grand scheme of things, she must be careful of what she said. Still, she could not help sympathizing with the strange man. He knew nothing of the maelstrom that he had fallen into, nothing of Sacrament and Scourge and, like her, he was stranded in a hostile environment not of his own choosing.
She extended her hand. "I'm Subconsul—er, Consul—Jenette Tesla, and that's Arrou."
The Pilot stared at her outstretched hand, his own hovering undecidedly between the two of them.
"I don't bite," Jenette joked.
Slowly, tentatively, his fingertips drew closer to hers. She shivered involuntarily as their palms touched, then slipped together, and Jenette was pleasantly surprised by a firm clasp. He did not flinch like a gelding.
"Fugueship Pilot Lindal Karr," he said.
"Welcome to New Ascension."
Karr rolled the words over his tongue. "New Ascension." He pulled his hand back.
Jenette couldn't read his expression. Was the dour set of the Pilot's mouth a wry grin or a grimace? Was he relieved, distressed, happy? She couldn't tell.
"Is your colony near?" Karr asked.
"No," Jenette said quickly.
"Yes," Arrou blurted at the same time.
Karr frowned.
"No and yes," Jenette hurried to find an explanation that served her purposes, without outright lying. "But we can't go there. Our crawler is broken.
"
Unconsciously, she glanced northeast, back toward the Enclave.
Karr caught the look. His frown deepened. "It seems we are at cross purposes."
Jenette cursed herself for such a stupid mistake. Now the Pilot would demand to be taken to the Enclave. "Not cross purposes," she said, trying to smooth things over, "no, a miscommunication ... that's all."
Karr stiffened. "No miscommunication. Your attempt to deceive is clear. I am trained to spot such flatlander behavior patterns."
"No," Jenette protested, "that's not—"
Karr cut her off. Clearly uncomfortable with how their dialogue was unfolding, his words came out stiffly and formally. "Let us be direct with one another. My objective lies in the direction opposite your colony. I cannot transport you there. If you wish I will deposit you on a nearby island, but considering the violent nature of indigenous species, that does not seem wise. You may accompany me, if you desist in attempts to manipulate, and I will attempt to return you to your colony after my objectives are complete. But I warn you, that may be some time from now. I regret speaking so harshly, but that is the situation."
Karr stood defiant, expecting protest.
Jenette could hardly restrain her joy. She forced herself to look suitably chastised. "I'm sorry. Of course we will be glad to go with you and help you any way we can."
Karr relaxed a little.
"How far southwest is your goal?" Jenette asked sweetly.
"I don't know," Karr admitted. "Perhaps days."
Again Jenette was overjoyed. The farther they got from the Enclave, the better! "And time is of the essence, I suppose?"
"Exactly," said Karr.