by Ivan Cat
"Grab the steering yoke and pull up on the throttle!" Karr yelled at Jenette.
"Grab the what and pull the what?" Jenette yelled back. "I don't know how to work this thing!"
"Hold the center stick and pull up on the left hand lever!" Karr gasped out between shots.
Jenette looked around at the foreign controls, her hands tentatively hovering around the throttle lever and steering yoke.
"Now!" Karr yelled. "Do it!"
Jenette grabbed and yanked.
The lifter surged out of the water as if a bomb had detonated under its hull. It lunged up through the building cloud of crimson vapor to a height of twenty feet, but Jenette had trouble holding the controls steady and the vehicle faltered, lurching from side to side.
Ferals sprung from the shore to the platform, clawing over the sidewalls and scrambling across blood-slick decking. One jumped at Jenette, talons extended to slash her head off. Karr fired. Five hundred pounds of dead weight slammed the outside of the cockpit and tumbled down into ocean water.
"Get us higher!" Karr ordered.
Jenette manhandled the controls as best she could. "Fly," she exhorted the lifter through clenched teeth. "Fly, fly, fly!"
The heavy lifter rose erratically. Adrenaline pumping, Karr washed the Ferals on deck with the cutting beam. A last surviving Feral sprang at him. Karr held the trigger down as it charged and bowled into him. By the time they both tumbled to the deck, most of the alien was missing.
The lifter labored to treetop level.
Karr pulled through the center of the smoking, spasming corpse and scrambled over to the orbiter's sidewall. Below, Ferals were doing everything in their power to get to the lifter, clawing on top of one another, even climbing and leaping from treetops in a vain attempt to get airborne.
Karr couldn't help but respect their uncompromising ferocity.
A different moving form caught his attention. Arrou was leaping from treetop to swaying treetop in an effort to get closer to the flying platform.
"Wait, wait!" he called.
But the lifter was sliding sideways out to sea. Karr ran to the cockpit. "Shove over." Jenette squeezed aside. "Now give me the yoke." The lifter bucked once as Karr leaned in beside her to take the thrust lever, and then again as Jenette hopped out and he climbed in behind the yoke. Karr quickly stabilized the sideslip and banked back toward the ring-island.
"What are you doing?" Jenette suddenly asked.
Karr nodded to Arrou's tree. "Going back for him."
Jenette's nose crinkled, her thoughts in chaos. Her attempts to contact Ferals had failed disastrously, causing the very death and carnage she had sought to stop. She looked down at Arrou. Ferals were frothing at the mouth trying to get at the out-of-reach heavy lifter. But they ignored Arrou. Jenette made a decision. It wasn't how she had planned it—she had not planned it at all—and it added to her feeling of sickly distress, but Jenette suddenly knew what must be done.
"We can't stop," she said to Karr. "Get us out of here."
Karr wasn't sure he had heard right. "Abandon him?"
"He'll be all right," Jenette said in a cold voice.
"Recovery is possible," Karr insisted. "I can maneuver right up to the tree."
"That's not the point. It's better this way."
Karr circled the shooting-star palm, unsure what to do. "But they'll rip him apart."
Arrou waited anxiously, preparing to leap.
"Are they ripping him apart now? Look! They aren't hurting him!"
Kant looked. The Ferals could easily have climbed Arrou's tree, but those around the base merely mulled around—unlike the snarling pack that jumped and gnashed at the air trying to get at the lifter.
"See?" said Jenette.
Karr hesitated. "This doesn't feel right."
"You have to trust me," Jenette said, becoming more desperate. She had to convince Karr before she lost her own weak resolve. She had to do what was right no matter how much it hurt. "Please! You're an outworlder and you don't know what's going on. I do. This is for the best."
Karr could not make a rational decision without facts. It all boiled down to gut instinct—and there were tears pooling in Jenette's eyes. Apparently she had not made her decision lightly.
Without further argument, Karr turned the lifter and accelerated away from the island.
Arrou's face fell, shocked and confused.
Karr looked back once to see the tiny figure waving frantically. Neither he nor Jenette saw Arrou jumping to the last tree on the edge of the island, nor did they see him sit quietly and hang his head, but both Karr and Jenette—who, overcome by emotion and the recent bloodshed, doubled over, wracked by dry heaves— heard the mournful howl rise into the night as Arrou realized they had left him behind and were not coming back.
XIV
Life or death is not important. The cycle of life and death, that is the core of Pact. Death gives time for life to grow in. Life gives itself for death to feast on. One does not exist without the other.
—Feral aphorism
Imprisoned by the sticky substance, Tlalok watched the blank-ones flee into the night. Many Pact had fallen to their barbarism, as it had been for so many nights and seasons before. Tlalok looked down. Water frothed where voracious mouths feasted on his dead brethren.
Their flashbuds had flared and dimmed as their lives were spent without fulfilling Pact.
Tragedy.
Their brilliance faded without being passed on. The Red Mouths would overflow before Balance was struck again. So many bondmates sundered. Many would pay so that others might live. Tlalok would offer himself up when the time came, but for now he lived. In pain. And the pain where the male blank-one gouged his face earlier that day was nothing compared to the pain of Tlalok's loss.
Tlalok thrashed at his bonds.
Members of the pack hurried into the jungle and returned a few minutes later with hungry grubs, placing them on the sticky goo. They then ladled ocean water over and dripped immune venom onto the wriggling masses. The worms grew, relentlessly doubling and tripling in number and consuming the sticky bonds with insatiable hunger. Tlalok directed the grubs to be used on others before himself. Unfortunately, the grubs could not eat fast enough to save all. Some Pact had already lost their brilliance; the blank-one's substance had sealed off their breath.
"Harouuuuuuu," howled a sadness above.
Tlalok tried to shut it out, as he tried to shut out his own sadness. The male blank-one had killed Tlalok's bondmate, extinguished her light by felling the wind-grabber tree into hungry waters. There had been no time to find grubs then ... Lleeala had been the radiance of Tlalok's life, the radiance of their pack. Always they had followed her, and fought with her and lived with her as she shone, but now she was gone and there were lonely shades in Tlalok's heart.
Tlalok was half-blank. The glowbuds on his right side blacked out in the instinctive Pact way of mourning.
Why had he not killed the male blank-one when he had the chance, Tlalok wondered. Why did that blank-one taste like Pact? How could the impossible be true? And how could the blank-one have tasted so strongly of Pact—with the intensity of not just one, but many individual Khafra? Knowing that it was some kind of blank-one trick had not helped Tlalok overcome it. The blank-one had tasted of Pact—and Pact did not kill Pact.
Freed pack members began applying grubs to Tlalok's sticky bonds.
Tlalok's sorrow at Lleeala's passing was such that if members of the pack had not gathered around him and loaned him their light, he might have surrendered to the blackness in despair, losing his light to sorrow without fulfilling Pact. After sorrow had come rage. Tlalok had shone that rage in the Clash of Radiance and it had united the pack under his Radiance—and the packs of neighbor islands, too. All now followed Tlalok. All were bonded by the unexpected Clash of Radiance.
How could there be a Clash without four moons swollen to fullness in the night sky? It did not fit the Balance. The Four Messengers carrie
d small Radiances from the world of light into the world of night, just as shadows carried small darknesses from the world of night into the world of light, to keep the Balance. Without the Messengers there could be no Clash.
And yet there had been.
Tears had fallen. The birth of the Burning Heart glowed on the edge of the world...
"Harouuuuuuu," wailed the no-pact in the tree.
Tlalok was not the only one with a hole in his heart.
Pact circled around the no-pact's tree. They were unsettled by the sadness, but they did not look. They must not corrupt their Radiance. It was the way.
"Harr-harrouuuuuu!" the no-pact keened.
The female blank-one, who came with the no-pact, had almost corrupted Tlalok's pack with her twisted words. Peace between blank-ones and Pact. Of course it was a trick, a vile deception to play on their hopes and longings. Tlalok had never seen a blank-one trying to communicate that way before. So why now? To catch Pact off guard, that was why! To inflict further blank-one atrocities upon them. It had almost worked, only the female blank-one was not speaking the true Pact speech, but the loathsome pidgin speech used by enslaved no-pacts. Tlalok's pack members did not know it—and the female blank-one could not use the light-speech, which made up most of true Pact conversation. So Tlalok's pack had been slow to understand what she said. A little more time and they would have fallen for her corruption, but fortunately Tlalok did understand the pidgin no-pact speech and was able to silence the blank-one female before it was too late.
"Harr-harrouuuuuu! Harr-harrouuuuuu!"
When the hungry grubs finished their work, freeing Tlalok, he joined his pack at the base of the no-pact's tree.
<
"Left behind, left behind..."
Bile washed Tlalok's long tongue. He felt sorrow for the no-pact and Tlalok could not bear any more sorrow. More suffering would drive him to an extreme act. A severe thing. And he did not want to do it. It would be out of Balance.
<
The no-pact's sadness recalled too many memories that Tlalok needed to shut off, not because the memories were sad, but because they were happy...
The place of new Radiance was thick with the breath of Pact. Their light warmed the enclosing petal walls of the giant blossom. Females moaned with the pain of creation. They lay in a ring around the Red Mouth at the center of the giant flower that enclosed them. Males like Tlalok knelt behind their bondmates, to give comfort, while mid-mates hovered in preparation for the wonder to come. The rest of the pack lined the curving, pink walls: the old, the young bonded pairs who had missed this cycle. None were excluded from the miracle of coming Pact.
Behind each expectant pair were the soon-to-be grandsires and grandmares, knowing that this would be the time for them to fulfill Pact. Only Lleeala's parents glowed behind Tlalok. His had been slain by blank-ones, of course.
As the time neared and female cries grew louder, the pack pulsed in time to their rhythms and the rhythms of the mid-mates. The flower chamber was bright. There must be no shadow, yet. Lleeala cried loudly and dug her claws into Tlalok. Her sleek body shuddered. Tlalok held her tighter as the contractions grew, like those of all the females, rising to excruciating ecstasy and then falling. Many times the unified cycle of pain and brilliance filled the blossom.
And then there were new voices, vulnerable new cries in the light.
Lleeala's mid-mate beamed, holding Tlalok's legacy for the pack to see, as the other mid-mates held other miracles for the pack to see. Four tiny nursling, miniature Tlaloks and Lleealas, skin still blank, squalled in the cold world outside their mother. Four, the sacred number of Pact. Lleeala had done well. Tlalok's heart, so long closed off, and even longer pried at by Lleeala, flooded open at that moment. He wanted to keep the nurslings safe and warm, to keep them from the cold that he, Tlalok, had felt.
Tlalok snipped the umbilicals with his teeth.
Lleeala was dim with fatigue. Her mother and father, full grandmates now, crowded near to share the moment. This was the time all pack member's lives lead to: the completion of Pact. Not all the grandmates were so lucky, some must wait for the next cycle. Lleeala's parents nuzzled the nurslings, and then Lleeala, radiating colors of farewell, but they were not sad. This was how Balance was maintained. It was right.
They blessed daughter and bondmate (they had treated Tlalok as a son, never holding his past against him). Then, each taking two nurslings, they did as other grandmates around the interior of the flower and advanced to the Red Mouth, the center of the blossom, the heart of their island. Not all who advanced were grand-mates by blood, some were Pact whose daughters were dead by accident or blank-ones, who stood surrogate for females whose parents were dead by accident or blank-ones. All would be worked out. All would be Balanced in the end. Pact must endure.
Lleeala's sire and mare laid the nurslings at the flower's blatantly sexual stamen and pistils, which were symbolic of Pact, of the cycle binding Radiance and life to Shadow and death.
All Pact dimmed. Now was the time for shadow, when the old gave the secret of life to the young. On their flashbuds, grandmates performed accounts of their allotted years to the blank newborns, their successes, failures, loves, and perserverances. As the essences of the grandmates' lives crescendoed, they bent over the nurslings, ever so carefully nipping tender throat flesh with deadly teeth, and injecting their special essence of life, half into each nursling. The grandmates' drained their bodies of immune venom, which they had received from their grandmates before them, and which they had mingled with that of their bondmates year after allotted year. That essence now passed to the new generation, who would pass it to the next in an unending, expanding cycle.
The nurslings began to sparkle as the Radiance of the grand-mates faded. The old generation slumped, falling in on the Red Mouth, cold as ash, the new generation glowing like embers. Mid-mates advanced, slitting swollen sacks between the grandmates' hind legs, and dipped claws into the writhing darkness within. This contagion they smeared into the nursling's mouths.
The die was cast. The pack flickered approval, for the transfer of immune venom, the essence of life, was not the greatest gift that night. Rather, it was the gift of death that blessed the newborns. While the blank-ones did not know the hour of their endings and spent their lives in constant fear of it, Pact knew their exact allotment of time and were comforted. One hundred and sixty seasons. Every Pact knew his passing appeased the Balance. Every death had meaning. The shadow—that which the blank-ones called Scourge—was now growing within the nurslings. It would nurture their lives. No sickness would afflict them; no plague would strike them down, no madness twist their hearts, until the preordained moment it took them.
This was the Pact. The bargain they all made.
Guaranteed life for guaranteed death. It was good. Barring accidental injury, or death at the hands of blank-ones, the nurslings would grow into adults, fight jealously for Balance, bond into pairs, make Pact, and continue the cycle until their time was up and it was their turn to pay a debt to the Balance with the husks of their bodies and the Radiance of their souls.
Three nights hence, the husks of the grandmates would be gone, dissolved by Scourge into the Red Mouth.
It had been Tlalok's greatest hope to end his days with just such meaning, but that was not to be. Further years saw more tragedy than he had yet known. His nurslings were killed by blank-ones, Lleeala taken from him, and his world thrown into the chaos of the Burning Heart.
And so Tlalok was driven to an extreme act. As long as the no-pact existed, it reminded Tlalok of his loss. Tlalok would find no peace. He must do the forbidden thing.
Tlalok spoke up at the tree. <
Tlalok's pack murmured displeasure.
<
<
Tlalok squinted up at the tree. This Arrou was barely old enough
to be considered a young adult, perhaps four and four, perhaps less. He must have been taken by blank-ones at a very early age, for he spoke only the pidgin no-pact words. Tlalok spoke simply so that the no-pact would understand.
<
More displeasure from the pack, but Tlalok darkened them with a crest of warning along his back. <>
<
Such words from a no-pact. Tlalok admired the boldness, but it would not do in front of the others. Tlalok bowed before the tree and said, <
Pack members fluttered iridescent disbelief. Tlalok offered Radiance to the no-pact! <
<
The pack glowed submissively. <
Tlalok looked back at Arrou, alone in his tree. It was not the way, but it had been Lleeala's way, all those years ago when Tlalok was no-pact, grieving, suicidal over the loss of his fallen blank-one, as always happened when Bonds were broken, Pact or blank-one. Lleeala had succored Tlalok, given him a new reason to live. Arrou was Tlalok's past and his grief. Tlalok knew he must face that grief. He must cleanse this no-pact with it, so that he might cleanse himself.
He must be merciful and show the no-pact the error of his ways. Lleeala would have wished it that way and Tlalok would abide by her memory, because otherwise her life would truly have meant nothing. This was the path of Balance.