THE BURNING HEART OF NIGHT

by Ivan Cat

  Jenette cradled the precious sphere. "This is worth all the metal on New Ascension. I can talk to Ferals with this. But... I thought you didn't approve of my attempt to talk to Ferals?"

  Karr shook his head. "I didn't understand. I was in error." He plumped his makeshift pillow and lay down. "It's a noble cause and I'll do whatever I can to help."

  "You will?"

  "After I save my ship." Karr curled up and pulled the blanket over himself. "Wake me in a few hours." It wasn't long before his breath came slow and deep, the lullaby motion of rollers sweeping across the ocean and the lapping of water against the hull rocking him fast asleep. Jenette resisted the urge to play with the starlure for fear of attracting unwanted Feral attention, but she held it close.

  Hours passed. Jenette kept watch sitting on the crawler or standing quietly with Karr in view. There was little noise other than the wind and wave, not even the sounds of hoppers or violin bugs, which filled any night on a ring-island. Between periodic scans of the lonely horizon, Jenette found her attention drifting to Karr. His arrival was already affecting the course of New Ascension history. For better or for worse, she could not predict which. Although the burning ocean was certainly not for better—but the starlure was a promising sign.

  Time flowed.

  She found more and more of her attention focused on Karr. Sleep, she noticed, softened the perpetually dour expression on his face. Why did that inconsequential observation seem so important to her? She couldn't say. But Pilot Lindal Karr was different, and not just because he was a grown man, although that was alluring. No, Karr was also fresh. Karr was new. He was mysterious and a bit dangerous. And that was somehow exciting, which appealed to the woman-child who wrote naïve erotic prose in a little black book. And he was honorable. That was clear in the actions he took to save his ship, however doomed those actions might be.

  All of this Jenette felt rather than thought. Her thoughts were scarier, because looking at a man in such a way was a sure sign of the changes taking place in her body. The hormone inhibitors had failed her. She was turning into a woman—and little girls on New Ascension did not live happily ever after when they turned into women.

  At least Arrou would live.

  The night glowed red.

  Jenette had no clear memory of when she first heard the whine building behind the shshsh-shshsh of the elements, but at some point her trance was broken by the recognition of a sound: man-made skimmers. How many she could not tell.

  What were skimmers doing so far beyond the defensive perimeter? The answer popped into Jenette's head: they were looking for her; that was the only reason skimmers would venture so deep into Feral territory. With that answer came personal responsibility and concern. It could be Toliver or Skutch or Grubb in the skimmers, and they were headed toward the area that she and Karr had just overflown, where the water was thick with Ferals. Remembering Halifax's warnings that Ferals had recently brought down a skimmer, Jenette stepped over to the crawler and pulled a flare pistol from the cab.

  She had to warn them.

  Jenette broke the pistol open, plugged a flare into its breach and flipped the safety off. Pistol outstretched at the sky, finger wrapping around the trigger, she scanned the ocean. Where were they?

  Crimson light glinted off a sleek shape. A rooster tail crept across the water far to the south, like a shimmering veil, a single skimmer jumping into sharp delineation as it passed in front of the red horizon.

  A single skimmer.

  Jenette's blood ran cold. Her finger hesitated on the trigger. Only one man had the arrogance to fly a lone skimmer outside the Enclave's perimeter and risk such a valuable machine. Halifax would not allow it. He would send several skimmers armed to the teeth. And only one man had the power to override Colonel Halifax in such a matter.

  Jenette's father.

  An ugly little thought slithered into her mind. If she did nothing, the Ferals would bring the skimmer down and all her problems would be over. She didn't have to do anything, just hesitate. No one would know. Karr was asleep. And even if the Enclave somehow found out, she could say the flare didn't work. It was old, just like everything else from offworld. Her hand wavered. Put it back in the crawler, the ugly thought teased. With her father gone, life would be so much easier.

  And so... empty. No chance for her to prove herself. No chance for her and her father to ever understand one other. In spite of everything, he was the only father she had. If only things could be better between them....

  Jenette jerked her arm up and squeezed.

  Pfish, the flare sputtered, and then whoosh! Up, up, a climbing green star, sizzling into the night on a trail of fading smoke.

  The skimmer's rooster tail diminished as it slowed and turned back.

  Still wrapped in the emergency blanket, Karr got up and rubbed sleep from bleary eyes. "What's wrong?"

  "We've got company." Jenette pointed to the skimmer. "Enclave company."

  Karr tossed the blanket and ran his fingers nervously through his hair.

  Jenette wanted to flee as the skimmer hydroplaned toward them. The coming confrontation would not be pretty. Maturing body or not, she felt very much like a little girl about to get a spanking.

  The skimmer nosed down beside the lifter. As predicted, there was only one human inside, but there were two domestics.

  Tesla's voice resonated across the water. "Lose something, young lady?"

  The alien seated beside Tesla flashed a happy yellow.

  "Jenette, Jenette," Arrou yipped.

  "Arrou," Jenette sighed, conflicted in her heart. It was good to see him, even though it meant her flight from the Enclave had been a total failure. She had not even ensured Arrou's life, and her father would see to it that she never got another chance. That was for sure.

  Shifting attention to Karr, Arrou suddenly growled.

  Toby growled, too.

  "Quiet, both of you," Tesla commanded, climbing onto a stubby wing as the skimmer bumped into the heavy lifter. "Stay."

  Tesla ignored the hand Jenette offered and hopped onto the lifter with surprising agility for a man of his years. Jenette resolved to be brave, not wanting to appear weak in front of Karr.

  "Father, I—"

  Tesla silenced her with an upheld hand, his glance saying I'll deal with you later. But as he looked from the stolen crawler, around the heavy lifter, and finally stopped on the man in the white uniform, his characteristic scouring expression faltered.

  "You, you are a... Pilot?"

  Standing stiffly, Karr gave the formal greeting. "Lindal Karr, Fugueship Long Reach."

  "And..." Tesla wet his ropy lips, "and you are not from Evermore?"

  Karr thought the question strange, but answered. "No, born on Planet of Industry, trained at Pilot Academy on Solara. Last stop was Sheldon's World."

  Tesla reached out abortively, as if to touch and verify, but quickly withdrew, staking his fists over his heart and bowing his head. "The Body Pure."

  Jenette expected a lot of reactions from her father, rage and retribution among them, but not the unguarded expression she saw when his head came back up. The overpowering aspect of Olin Tesla at that moment was awe, relief and awe.

  "I have waited a generation for this day," said Tesla, gruff voice cracking. "I have prayed every night for twenty years. Blessed be the Body Pure. We are saved."

  Thoroughly confused, Karr shook Tesla's hand.

  XIX

  Those who shine their own light cast their own shadows.

  —Feral warning

  The ring-island was caught upon the great pillar of Radiance, pulled in by wind rushing along the waves to feed the enormous fire, and then swept up, its Pact guardians mesmerized by the glorious light, until it was too late. Tlalok watched the Radiance pull the heavy island out of the water. The power was unthinkable. The island bent up as spears of brilliance tore it apart, flash vaporizing gouts of runoff water, incinerating the rising, exploding chunks, obliterating generations of car
eful tending in the space of heartbeats. The great Radiance silenced the cries of tiny Khafra forms, falling, cascading from the dying island, or swept up from paddle-boards on the surface. One heartbeat, there were hundreds-of-fours of tiny dots; the next, nothing but ash.

  The Radiance was false.

  At first, after the second unexpected Clash of Radiance, Tlalok's pack had flocked to the great wonder: a shaft of Radiance as wide as five islands, stabbing from the underworld up through the sky into the stars. A direct connection between Radiance and Shadow. The fulcrum of the Balance. The great Radiance called them like moths to a flame. They idolized it. And they had swarmed in, riding the islands-that-moved. One of those precious islands was gone now, destroyed by the terrible Radiance. Fours upon fours of innocents perished.

  Something was wrong. The Burning Heart had come, as foretold by the Tears in the sky. But it was false.

  How could it be that the Radiance was false?

  It was beyond Tlalok's imagining. Radiance that was false. No Pact had seen such a thing. Radiance was truth. Radiance was life. Radiance held the secret knowledge. And yet there it was. False Radiance. Tlalok strove to make sense of it. The False Radiance was like fire, which was rare, but which Pact knew. Fire's colors cleansed the corrupt so that new truth might take root. But the False Radiance did not cleanse corruption. It was corruption. It destroyed the healthy, stealing innocent life, telling great untruths and leaving nothing but ruin in its wake.

  Tlalok flashed warnings to his pack, calling them back, but his brilliance was nothing before the great corrupt light. His command took a long time to ripple forward. Tlalok entered the water himself, to get that much closer, to try to rescue as many as he could, but many more Pact were incinerated before his warning reached the forward ranks. More still passed after receiving his command, without fulfilling Pact, paddling furiously to escape, but unable to resist the mighty updraft, snuffed out like embers rising from flame.

  Tlalok lay in the water a long time after they withdrew to safety, striving to find his own inner Radiance again, but he and the others were blank with shock.

  How could Radiance be false? How? How!

  And then word came. A blank-one dressed in white had been seen. When he came on a flying machine, the sky was clear. When he left, the False Radiance was eating the world.

  And then Tlalok's fury was a hue to behold.

  It was Karr, the blank-one temporarily forgotten because of the corrupt light. Tlalok knew it as certainly as he was alive. It was the blank-one Karr who had killed Lleeala, who had made Tlalok half-blank with mourning.

  Karr had awakened a shadow in Tlalok's heart.

  A shadow from before Lleeala. A shadow Lleeala had shooed away. Now this shadow wrapped around Tlalok's heart once more. Tlalok had come thinking to find the wonder of the Burning Heart and reap justice upon the blank-one Karr, but instead found False Radiance. The blank-one Karr had made the Burning Heart bad. He and all the other blank-ones had warped the world, with their enslaving and truth-twisting and death-cheating with the Pact of others. They had bent the world so much that there was now bad light.

  And Tlalok knew what he must do.

  The blank-ones must be eradicated, before the False Radiance destroyed the world.

  Tlalok had the means to do it. Tlalok's grief on the first Clash of Radiance had grown his pack to hundreds-of-fours. His passion on the second night grew it to thousands-of-fours, even after all who died in the False Radiance. And it would grow still more. For until the bad light went away, there would be Clashes of Radiance for many nights to come. By the time Tlalok returned to blank-one territory, his force would be many more thousands-of-fours strong.

  Tlalok knew where the blank-ones were weak and he knew how to strike them down. He knew because of his shame, because he had been a blank-one slave, because they had taken him and raped him with their Sacrament and put their shadow around his heart. They had created him, and he would be their undoing. Lleeala would not approve, Tlalok knew. He would beg her forgiveness in the great nothingness after Pact. But for now he would keep her cherished memory locked away and use his shadow to fight for the Balance. For if there cold be False Radiance, then there could be True Shadow.

  Yes.

  Tlalok would go where the blank-ones lived and he would show them what his True Shadow could do. He would hunt them down and kill them. And he would save the blank-one Karr for last. And when Karr had paid the price for all the Pact slain by the False Radiance, only then would Lleeala's memory be freed.

  It would not be pretty.

  No, by the shadow in Tlalok's heart, it would not be pretty.

  PART THREE

  The Blank-Ones

  XX

  Fugueship Kismet. 4609 A.D.

  Olin Tesla and Pondur Yll stand over a porthole in the ship's fugue-free chambers. The round glass looks down on a silver-blue planet dotted with minuscule, viridian rings. The diminutive Yll is reserved. Tesla, brawny and stern, is troubled.

  "Decide," says the older of two men in white behind them. Bondir Malda, Senior Pilot of Kismet, is wrinkled like fruit left in the sun too long.

  Testa's mouth presses tight. "If we decline, will we be allowed to seed the next planet?"

  Malda sucks his long teeth. "Refusal of seeding places dreamers at the end of the queue, as you well know."

  "Maybe they'll get lucky," the younger man in white says offhandedly. Handsome in a hollow sort of way, Rookie Pilot Talaylan wears his uniform like a peacock flaunts its feathers.

  Malda scowls at the thoughtless comment. "The other candidate systems this tour are not promising, Pilot Talaylan. In a best case scenario, one of the other dreamer groups might agree to absorb Representative Tesla's surplus population."

  Surplus population. Tesla flinches. It is not a good option. He and his people will lose control of their own destiny, and forever be at the mercy of some less pure ideology. Like the one they left.

  Malda continues in his aging parchment voice. "Worst case, refusal of seeding will find two thousand dreamers disembarked back on Evermore, ousted in favor of more daring individuals."

  The old Pilot's words are spoken without sympathy— or malice—but Tesla feels the pressure of seeding regulations like a knife to his jugular. He stares hard at the planet below. "What do you think, Pondur?"

  Dr. Yll recounts his findings cautiously. "I think... CG-423-B has a magnetosphere larger than necessary to shield against radiation. Gravity is close enough to one g as to be irrelevant. Atmosphere: textbook nitrogen, oxygen. Weather: temperate to tropical all year round due to minimal axial tilt. The biosphere teems with diverse life-forms, including a possibly sentient species, and conserved DNA from the cross-section of specimens I collected approaches ninety-nine percent Terran. We breathe what they breathe and eat what they eat. And what they eat grows wild and plentiful for the taking. CG-423-B is a biological Elysium." The scientist motions out the porthole. "Just look at all that free water."

  Tesla clenches his eyes to clear his thoughts, but an afterimage of the seamless silver orb hangs in his head. "I don't trust a planet without land."

  "The apparent lack of plate tectonics is peculiar," Yll admits, "but we can mine the sea floor for metals and fossil fuels, and there is plenty of room to settle on the floating islands. We might eventually be able to link them into artificial subcontinents."

  "So you say go?"

  "I say it seems rather encouraging."

  "I need a yes or a no."

  Yll pulls at the tip of his high-bridged nose.

  Tesla presses. "From your report, this world seems almost perfect. Is there a problem?"

  "There is the matter of disease...."

  "What kind of disease?" Tesla immediately asks.

  "Actually, an apparent lack thereof. My specimens exhibited very little sign of it, in fact almost none, but it is possible those results were a consequence of rushed methodology. Obviously not a wide enough sampling."

  Te
sla scoffs. "No disease? Is that possible?"

  "Very little disease," Yll re-emphasizes. "The large sentient species, which are most like us in biology despite their four-legged locomotion, exhibits no sign of disease of any kind. It is most peculiar. Dissection and analysis revealed no trace of harmful bacteria, viruses, cancers, or any other form of malady. A few symbiotic bacteria, but that's it. Of course the lower life-forms prey upon one another and their life cycles are rather rapid and short, but if one eliminates parasitism, there seems to be very little disease." Yll's pinched body language becomes more erratic as he futilely attempts to stifle his enthusiasm. "It goes against all my scientific training to make sweeping statements, you know that Olin, but... we may have stumbled upon a paradise. We may be on the verge of founding the first colony on a disease-free world!"

  "We've got diseases," Tesla remarks, surprised at Yll's outburst.

  "I applaud your altruism," Yll says, with building vigor now, "but concern for the native life forms is surely not primary."

  "That's not the point," Tesla argues. "If there is no disease down there, what if the bacteria in our sweat kills off every living thing on the planet? We'd starve to death on a dead planet, that's what."

  Yll argues back. "The entire biosphere seems to have evolved sharing slightly different mutations of a single super-potent immune system. I doubt they will be affected by our bacteria." The scientist reflects. "It will be interesting to see if we might biofacture a version of their immune defense for ourselves." Yll takes a deep breath, as if coming to a momentous decision, leans closer to Tesla and speaks in a lowered tone. "You wanted me to give you a definitive answer and now I'm giving you one. I say yes."

  Tesla clenches his hands over his heart. "I don't know Pondur. The seeding has to be viable for the Body Pure to survive."

  "It will be viable. Olin, this is our chance, what we all talked about and dreamed about. What you made happen. This is our chance at the Body Pure. Life without corrupt air and corrupt bodies. Our minds our own. A New Ascension for those who have Fallen. Let's not let it slip away. No one wants to go back..."