by Ivan Cat
But Arrou bounded off into the foliage. "High good," he called, "see lots."
"Where is he?" Jenette hissed, straining to see in the lowering light.
"There." Karr pointed to a shooting-star palm fifty feet in from the shore. Its trunk quivered, and then Arrou climbed into view, rimmed by the fading glow of sunset. "Third tree on the left, above the deep red leaves."
"This is stupid," Jenette cursed. She wanted her next encounter with Ferals to be on her terms, not theirs.
Karr called out Arrou's actions. "He's looking around. Checking for trouble…."
"I see him."
"He's coming back down," Karr continued, but the four-legged shape suddenly stopped and turned the same color as the leaves of the trees. "He just went invisible...?"
"Bad news," Jenette decided.
The shoreline seconded her opinion. The foliage was alive with the sounds of unseen movement. Karr picked up the Gattler and pulled Jenette behind the crawler as, rapidly, the unseen menace became ominously visible. As far as the eye could see, stretching beyond the island's curve in either direction, the twilight shore was lined with Ferals.
Ferals stacked up, two and three deep, along the shore. Karr waited for an attack, bracing the Gattler on the hood of the crawler. The Ferals saw them clearly, a mere spring away, but for some reason held off a final rush. They stood, staring, with unnerving, unblinking eyes, skins perfectly matching the deepening indigo sky.
"Why don't they attack?" Karr whispered.
"They are not inherently violent," Jenette hissed. "Maybe it's some sort of greeting ritual."
Karr did not lower the Gattler. The last greeting ritual he had participated in consisted of snarling and chasing.
For a while, the Ferals made no noise. The forest made no noise. Not even buzzers or peepers dared break the eerie quiet.
Then, a peculiar thing happened.
One by one the horde of Ferals bowed down on their forelegs, facing their chameleon backs outward from the island. Like a spectator wave sweeping across a stadium, they blacked out, discernible only as blacker shadows against dark jungle. Except for the gentle roll of the island on water, the scene was motionless. The minutes drew on. No one and nothing stirred.
"Creepy," said Karr.
Karr's predisposition to assume the worst about Ferals annoyed Jenette. "I told you," she insisted, "they are not inherently violent."
When ten minutes elapsed with no immediate attack, Karr's attention switched from the Ferals to the inoperative thruster. "I'm going to fix that," he decided, shoving the Gattler into Jenette's petite hands. "You hold them off."
"Forget it," Jenette objected. Whatever the Ferals were doing, they were calm and she was not about to jeopardize that by brandishing a weapon. It was perfect. She had intended to search out the Ferals from the encampment—instead they had come to her.
"They respect a show of force," Karr insisted. "I know that much. Here. Hold it like this."
"Don't tell me what to do," said Jenette. "I know how to hold a gun and I know how to shoot—but I'm still not taking it."
Karr saw that further argument was futile. Laying the Gattler in plain sight on the crawler, he squirmed into the cab and, trying not to make too much noise, fumbled in the toolkit. Then he felt under the dash for more microfibers. "How's Arrou?" he asked, fingertips closing around a braided strand.
"They haven't spotted him yet," Jenette responded. "I think he snuck back into the treetop." She wished he was beside her, both for his protection and knowledge. She reviewed her vocabulary of Khafra words, preparing to speak. It was a big gamble and she wanted to get it right. No one knew how Ferals would react to a human speaking their own language.
Karr sighed after crimping a few strands. Night fell fast on New Ascension and the cab interior was pitch black. Strangely, though, he could see Jenette's face above him, mouthing silent words in a faint red glow. "Where's that light coming from?"
"The horizon ... that way," Jenette pointed, her mouth going slack.
Karr recalled the aura he had seen on the previous night. "Southwest?"
"Yes," Jenette mumbled. "I guess."
"So it's not colony lights."
"No. That's the other way. Oh, my...."
From the floor of the cab, Karr saw a spray of light across Jenette's features. Glistening rainbow reflections frolicked in her eyes.
"What is it?"
All Jenette could say was, "Wow."
Karr sat up.
The Ferals were glowing. Hundreds of motionless bodies lit up the shoreline with a dance of ghostly colors, shimmering will-o-the-wisps. Karr stared, entranced. "What is it?" he asked again.
"Don't know," Jenette muttered. "Never seen anything like it."
The luminescent phenomenon was not restricted to FI-716. Karr saw that wherever island silhouettes loomed on the ocean, firefly dots of alien light blinked in the night. It was beautiful in an eerie, elegant way—so beautiful that Karr forgot about the microfibers in his sweaty hands. As he watched, the ground-bound aurora began to build in intensity. Ferals near the lifter absorbed one another's patterns, each adding its own splash of color as the radiance bled from one alien to the next. A sameness spread along the shore, and the more same the light became, the more powerful it became. Yet, it was not bland, safe sameness, but the sameness of an avalanche, of many differences reveling in a rush down a mountainside. The light sang, intoxicating. Karr felt as though he was being swept along in the light, riding the front of the radiant avalanche, following it around crests and valleys of darkness....
To a single Feral.
A lone Feral with the glowbuds on half its body darkened—and a gouge on its neck like that left by the barrels of a Gattler. Karr recognized his enemy from that afternoon, the suspicious Feral who had fought Karr to the point of defeat and then inexplicably left after tasting Karr's blood. That Feral was the leader of the light.
That Feral raged.
Despite half the Feral's glowbuds being blackened out, his rage was a sight to behold. Irresistible. When he raged, the whole island raged. When he challenged, the whole island challenged with him. His sorrow and anger drove the others on. What Karr had felt in the alien's desolate howl that afternoon now filled Karr's vision, bathing his body in that emotion. It was like the sorrow of centuries lost to loneliness. It was like the bittersweet splendor of centuries given to Duty in a fugueship.
Karr was frozen in place as, across dark ocean waters, other Ferals on other islands rallied behind other emotion-filled leaders, building radiant arsenals of their own and then unleashing them. Broadsides of light smeared over the waves. Salvoes of radiance exchanged under the night's star-dotted dome.
XIII
It is easy to dodge the teeth of an enemy, but difficult to avoid the claws of a friend.
—Feral aphorism
Arrou clenched his eyes. He must not look.
But he wanted to look, so very much. The lights spoke to him. They called to him, caressed him. They enticed him with memory feelings of warmth and belonging. Feelings from a long time ago, before Jenette, before humans.
No! He must not look. Must not participate. He was on a mission and must stay secret.
But the lights made patterns on his eyes, even when tightly shut. He burrowed his head under fibrous leaves atop the tree. Still the bright light shone through.
Join us, it said. We are the Radiance. Come to the Radiance....
Arrou's breath came in short gulps. The smell of palm flowers in the tree's top smelled sour compared to the sweet glow of the Radiance. Each moment apart from its light was torture. Without realizing it, Arrou's blending colors had gone dark and his back raised up like the bowing Ferals below. He trembled like a leaf before a storm—he must not give in!
But he could not help it.
Be the Radiance....
Arrou's eyes opened. He saw the Radiance. Shivers swept along his glowbuds as he lit up, adding his spark to the splendor. And the Radia
nce saw him too. It brought Arrou to its soft, warm bosom.
And for the first time in his memory, Arrou was home.
The islands battled into alliances of brilliance, attacking and counterattacking, conquering and surrendering. Very bright were the islands arrayed against FI-716, but Karr saw that it would not be beaten. For, no matter the spectacle united against it, Karr's enemy played the light with unstoppable strength of feeling. His enemy's longing enflamed the longing of his radiant allies; his misery consoled their misery and his loss eased their loss. Soon, all the points of light, all the visible ring-islands, were enveloped in a single, synchronous radiance, following that single Feral's will. The radiance throbbed lighter and brighter until it reached a unified peak and held, proclaiming its existence to the heavens.
Pain and pleasure. Sorrow and love. Hope and desolation. These things Karr experienced stronger than he had ever experienced before, stronger than he had ever thought possible. It was just light, after all, but so strong, so, so ... so much more than just light. Karr found himself wishing that he could light up his blank skin and glow in synchrony with the aliens, no matter how painful the double-edged feelings might be, wanting never to let them go. Never, ever. Jenette felt it, too, as well as the numb void that followed, like a blind man seeing for the first time, and then returning to blindness.
Slowly, the light faded.
"I feel... invisible," said Jenette.
Moving as if in a trance, vision smudged with afterimages, Karr dropped out of the crawler and solemnly began swapping good microfiber relays for bad.
The Ferals on shore began to shift.
Jenette looked for Arrou. He had been in his tree the whole time. She remembered now that he had flashed with all the rest, unable to resist the magic and blessed with the means to respond in kind. His energetic colors had been out of sync, like a human child tooting a kazoo to Mozart. Now that the light show was over, Ferals prowled at the base of his tree. They could have climbed it as easily as Arrou had, but made no aggressive moves. The Ferals did not even look in his direction.
The Khafra opposite the heavy lifter were a different story.
There was no question of their focus on the humans. In arching backs and colors steeped in hatred, Jenette recognized their mood. She looked at the Gattler, wondering if Karr was right, but refused to pick it up. Weapons were the way of her father.
She must follow her own path.
"Just a few more seconds," Karr said. Ferals bunched up on shore, pressing to get closer to the humans as he merged microfibers into the left front thruster control conduit. He snapped the last connector into place. Double-checking the strands, and paying no attention to Jenette, Karr hurried back to the cockpit, flipping switches and pushing buttons to power up. All four engines spun up to a gentle hum.
"Prepare for launch," Karr said with satisfaction.
"No," Jenette said from behind him, the strange tone of her voice staying his hands on the controls. Karr turned, intending to protest, but fell silent.
Jenette was standing in a precarious position on the lifter's landward sidewalk where any sudden use of the engines would topple her into predator infested waters. She extended her arms, palms outstretched to the Ferals.
"What are you doing?" Karr hissed.
"Rikit-ee-brikhauss," Jenette said, her voice cracking.
"Rickety brick what?" Karr said, confused. "Get down from there. You'll make those things mad!"
The Ferals were just as shocked at Jenette's behavior as Karr was. They stopped in their tracks and tilted their heads in surprise.
"Please get down from there," Karr urged.
Jenette ignored him, counting on her vulnerable position to prevent him from taking off. She repeated the Khafra words, stronger, "Rikit-ee-brikhauss." Light be upon you.
The Ferals angled their ear pits toward her, straining to hear. Their eyes pressed fully forward from their skulls, as if straining to see in the dark (which could not be right, Jenette knew, since Khafra had extremely good night vision).
Leaving the engines running, Karr darted behind the crawler and retrieved the Gattler.
"Rikit-ee-brikhauss!" Jenette said as loud as she could.
This time several of the aliens responded, bodies flashing with light language, flash, pop, sparkle, pop. "Din-tixss-ymisstash," they vocalized, hesitantly. Shadows away. But they clearly were reacting without thinking. Some even held four-thumbed paws over shocked mouths as the words tumbled out. Other Khafra rumbled threateningly, distrustful of the human using their language. They, Jenette saw, wanted to kill her more than ever.
But at least she had their attention.
<
The Ferals stared at her, uncomprehending. Jenette had said the words right, she knew, but the expected response did not materialize. She struggled to find alternate words. <
The Ferals were trying to understand her. They repeated some of her words, as if struggling with a foreign language and not their own, and they flashed at her, pop pop flash crackle, trying to communicate.
<
<
The Ferals were more confused by her last comment. <
<
Again, there were confused looks. But the Ferals had picked up the word Sacrament. They barraged her with light-code questions.
Flare, flash, poppata, sparkle?
Sparkle (blue), sparkle (green)?
Jenette could not follow the rapid-fire light words, never mind answer, but at least it was a positive sign. If she could keep them talking and not attacking, she reasoned, then there was hope.
Shuffling broke out in the Feral ranks. Those on the shoreline parted as a large Khafra worked his way to the front. Powerful muscles bunched and stretched under tight packed glowbuds, those on one half of his body were pitch black and those on the other dazzling bright.
"That's the one that tried to kill me," Karr warned from behind the crawler.
Karr's enemy snarled to its brethren. <
Ferals began to avert their eyes from Jenette.
<
The leader raked his mighty hind claws through ghutzu root. <
<
<
The Ferals crowded forward on the shore. Jenette was losing them.
"Thhssss." The leader hissed through his teeth, muscles coiling. <
<
Jenette knew the warning signs. She was no longer in control. Talking was over. And she had placed herself in a very vulnerable position. Suddenly she was afraid.
"Back away from the edge," Karr said in a low, forceful voice. He had stood up behind the crawler, Gattler raised obviously and threateningly into firing position. His right forefinger twitched and the multitool's barrels whirled. "Don't make any sudden moves. I'll cover you."
Jenette did as Karr said, stepping down on the deck and edging back toward him.
She made it halfway before the Feral leader, suddenly hunched back, like a spring coiling to launch. The others mimicked him. "Get down!" Karr yelled.
Jenette half dove, half fell to the deck as a wave of Ferals sprang at her. A stream of brown liquid hissed over her head, striking the foremost Ferals. They tumbled back, sticking to their island and howling in frustration. But more and more Ferals pushed forward to leap—always in pairs. And in pairs, Karr hosed them with molecular glue, pair after pair, after pair. Beep, warned the Gattler; the adhesive cartridge was half empty. Karr kept firing, sweeping the stream of adhesive from side to side, and none of the Ferals made it on board.
Beep, beep, beep.
The brown stream stopped. Pfitzle.
Karr was out of adhesive. He switched the Gattler to antiseptic froth and foamed the shore, but the Ferals were beyond being stopped by stinging bubbles and a second wave of the aliens lunged forward.
"Back off!" Karr barked in the deepest voice he could muster. He had no more non-lethal options. He aimed the Gattler from side to side, trying to look as menacing as possible.
Pairs of Ferals sprung through the air at the heavy lifter, teeth cones splayed.
Karr's Pilot instincts kicked in. He snapped the selector knob. Chrome barrels spun, set for cutting beam, medium power, narrow distribution.
"Get into the cockpit," Karr yelled at Jenette as he pulled the trigger. "And stay down!"
An invisible beam stabbed out from the Gattler. Karr shot surgically, searing off extremities, trying to wound rather than kill, but his noble intentions backfired. Wounded Ferals fell screaming into silvery water and were torn apart by a feeding frenzy of shark-worms. Those on shore redoubled their efforts to board the lifter.
Karr selected a wide cutting beam dispersion as another wave of Ferals launched into the air. He pulled the trigger. The first to land on deck exploded into steaming vapor, but still the Ferals did not stop. They leapt, unafraid of the danger, focused only on getting at their human enemies. Jenette scrambled on hands and knees, through a rain of flash-cooked remains, and into the cockpit as the slaughter accelerated. More and more Ferals made it across the water before the cutting beam got them. Smoldering skeletons piled up on deck. Karr could not sweep the Gattler fast enough to incinerate them all. Each wave got further and further inboard before exploding into heated mist.