by Ivan Cat
Yll's words freeze Tesla in place.
"There will not be many women left alive after the second wave of pre-planned pregnancies," Yll continues, "so for the third we need to consider multiple births, massive doses of fertility drugs, ex-vivo ovum splitting—and we also need to consider using the frozen zygotes from Evermore."
Now it is Testa's turn to flinch. To use prefertilized eggs, taken randomly from morally degenerate Evermorites and implant them in brave, pure-hearted New Ascension women—one month ago, such an abomination was unthinkable, but now?
Olin shudders. "Who is going to convince our women to commit suicide for your plan, Yll? Who?"
The little man stiffens, perhaps taking spiteful revenge for the indignity perpetrated on him by the Prime Consul.
"Why you will, Olin. You will."
The next few days were frustrating ones for Karr. His time was split between two equally repellent tasks.
The first was being Dr. Yll's guinea pig, spending hours on end having blood drawn, being biopsied, poked, prodded, and generally made uncomfortable by all manner of sharp and pointed instruments. The pretext for the torture was to provide Enclave scientists with badly needed samples of fugue to analyze in hopes that it would help them biofacture a cure for, or at least a vaccine against, Scourge. For humanitarian reasons, Karr could hardly refuse such aid, but as days added up, Yll wielded his implements more and more greedily.
Karr wondered what they were doing with so much blood and tissue.
The second task was equally repellent, if not more so. Tesla insisted on personally introducing Karr to each and every one of the Enclave's three thousand proto-humans—and on having Karr touch them. Except for sleep, and Yll's butchery, that's what occupied Karr's every waking moment. Meeting after meeting, lunch after lunch, function after function blurred by. Following the incident at the main gates, Tesla was careful to keep the groups small, but Karr could not enjoy the procession of ghostly faces. His overpowering impression of the colonists was one of having stumbled into a mortuary and having surprised the corpses swaying to a silent, zombie waltz; that somehow it was only his gaze which kept the colonists alive and that if he turned away they would all fall back into tiny, over-young graves.
Three girls shrieked as Subconsul Bragg herded Karr from a crawler into a cluster of hydroponic domes for his next session of greet-and-grope. Volunteer Forces, green and red armbands distinguishing them from regular colonists, held the girls at bay. Karr was of half a mind to bite the bullet and go over to the girls. Maybe then they would stop following him around. But the unmitigated hero worship was off-putting, and besides, they were not high enough up on Tesla's list to be permitted access to the Pilot yet.
It was all political maneuvering.
As a Pilot, Karr was used to being at the beck and call of local leaders during his stints planetside. It took great concerted efforts on the part of fringe worlds like Solara or Evermore to outfit a fugueship: constructing the enormous seed-colony containers and stocking them with the vast quantities of equipment and materials necessary to start a new world, selecting and training thousands of new dreamers, and many other labor intensive tasks. The decades necessary for these exploits put great strain on populations of below one hundred million. So, when a fugueship finally arrived for refitting, it was a big planetary event. Parades and celebrations inevitably focused on the Pilot. The wheels must be kept turning. It was part of Karr's job description, a part he learned to tolerate, just barely.
So at first Karr did Tesla's bidding, but after days of playing figurehead, anxiety reared its ugly head. There was a major difference between those other times and being on New Ascension. Then, Karr had been killing time between missions. Now, Karr had an urgent need to rescue Long Reach from the bottom of New Ascension's ocean. That meant somehow extinguishing the mountain of fire over top of it, a task Karr could not do alone. He had to get help and every hour that elapsed was an hour wasted, an hour in which his anxiety mounted.
Upon entering the interlinked domes, Karr spotted Tesla buttering up a group of influential colonists. Karr attempted to push his way through the crowd to get to the Prime Consul, but as had happened every other time, Bragg conveniently stepped in the way.
Teeth, smiling teeth. "May I be of assistance?"
"I must speak with the Prime Consul."
"The Prime Consul has asked me to tell you that he will be unable to speak freely until later."
"When later? Tonight?"
Slippery smooth was this Bragg. "As soon as the furor over your arrival dies down. I'm sure you understand?"
Karr was not good with people, so each time Bragg adroitly maneuvered him away from Tesla. Karr was silent, but his apprehension and annoyance grew.
Bragg disappeared before Karr could protest further.
More faces swirled around Karr. More hands thrust at Karr. Shake, shake, smile like an idiot... blank reverent face after blank reverent face. They sniffed their fingers after touching him or surreptitiously rubbed his sweat onto their faces.
Karr's skin crawled.
Occasionally, the gapers spoke. "I'm Panya Hedren," said a haughty woman. She stood out, not only because of her attitude, but also because of her obviously adult, very pregnant body. Karr found himself comforted by the familiarity of her full, womanly figure. He checked his stare before it became rude, but not before Panya flirted back at him with her eyes. Baring her midriff, she thrust her pregnant belly out. "Kisses for luck?"
"Yes, of course," said Karr, bending stiffly at the waist and pecking her ripe abdomen.
"Now three more," Panya said before Karr could stand back up. "That was for Kayli. Now for Shona and Soren and Gall."
Karr gave her three more pecks.
"You're so kind." Panya beamed, turning to a giant of a man beside her, also a full-grown adult. "This is Burke, my husband." Burke had arms as big around as Karr's legs. Karr hoped Burke had not noticed the flirty eyes Panya had made in Karr's direction. Panya suddenly bubbled over. "Oh! There's the Prime Consul!" She flittered off to get into an influential orbit—with no impediment from Bragg, Karr noticed sourly.
Burke remained, giving Karr a stern appraisal. Karr prepared for trouble as Burke leaned close. Would he break Karr in half, or request a kiss of his own? Karr did not relish the options.
"Jenette says hello," Burke said in a low voice.
Karr perked up. "Jenette?" he whispered back. "Where is she? Why haven't I seen her?"
"You are out of bounds," Burke said, with a significant jerk of his honest face at Tesla.
"I must speak to her—" Karr started to hiss.
Burke silenced him with a headshake as other colonists moved around them. "Be patient. Your goals are hers. She is working on them."
A commotion broke out in an adjoining dome.
Burke took the opportunity to slip away. "Be nice to Jenette," he said in parting, "or I'll have to break your arms."
What the hell did that mean, Karr wondered.
The commotion spilled in on the official gathering as the girls from outside rushed in through a back entrance. "There he is!" screamed the youngest looking. Bragg and his VF police tackled the first two, but the third screamer zigzagged between invited guests and before Karr knew what happened, body tackled him. He fell backward. She rubbed her twelve-year-old's body against his, grabbing his face and thrusting her tongue into his mouth. Karr tried to push her off, but thin legs wrapped around him like a vise. Her boyish pelvis rubbed against his crotch.
"I want you!" she breathed in his ear. "I want your babies!"
Colonists rushed to help, swamping in on Karr like an evil tide, too many and too close.
"Young lady! Control yourself!" Karr heard Tesla yelling from somewhere. Strong arms pulled the struggling girl off Karr. More clutching hands pulled him to his feet, brushing and cloying at his uniform.
"Are you hurt?" Tesla asked, his concerned face looming before Karr.
Karr's own voice sounded
far away in his ears. "I'm fine," he panted, but it was a lie. The weight of people pressing in was too much for a fugueship Pilot. A circuit in Karr's brain snapped. Ingrained anthropophobia drowned his rational mind in a flood of panic.
Karr needed out. Now.
Suddenly his legs were carrying him through the agricultural domes, leaping over rows of bulgy vegetables, running out into a yellow-paved alley between the domes and a three-story hospital complex.
What sort of hospital had bars on the windows, his panic-stricken mind wondered.
Tesla, the VF police, and a horde of domestics swarmed out behind him. Karr looked frantically for somewhere, anywhere, to get away; he could not out run the quadrupeds. He fixated on a potential haven. Darting past two very surprised domestics, Karr ran through a restroom door and slammed it behind him.
Karr jammed the latch locked and leaned against the door, hyperventilating in his odd refuge. Organic looking toilet stalls, sinks, and urinals were built amid the spidering legs of a tree, Karr staggered over to a sink, jabbing and twisting until he figured out how to activate a timer bulb, and splashed water on his face.
There was pounding on the door. Karr ignored it.
He felt dirty, violated. He tasted the crazed girl's tongue in his mouth and smelled every one of a hundred repulsive handshakes on his fingers. Karr rinsed his mouth for a long time, then switched to hot water and washed his hands for even longer. The mirror fogged over. The stream of water described lazy circles around the drain as the island swayed.
Gradually, the pounding of blood through Karr's ears decreased.
"Pilot Karr!" came a muffled voice. "It's Consul Tesla. Please open the door."
"Just a moment," Karr gasped. "I need a personal moment." He turned on the other spigots to drown out further questions and kept washing. When his irrational mind finally admitted that further scrubbing would do no good, Karr straightened up and stood with dripping hands, looking for an evaporator, towel, or anything at all to dry off with.
Kla-tik, went a valve behind him. Foosh! Karr jumped as water rushed from tree pod reservoirs above him down through overhead piping and into a closed toilet stall.
Suddenly the empty bathroom was crowded.
An obese man, three times larger than Karr, stepped out of the stall hiking up his daysuit, and drew a basin of water. Everything about him was plump: the pudgy fingers dipping in water, the piggy eyes peeking out from fat-crowded eyelids, the full lips pursed in mirth at some secret joke. It all jiggled when he moved.
Karr watched the man suspiciously.
The man made a show of plucking a wide leaf from the living ceiling and delicately drying between his fingers. Remembering his own wet hands, Karr copied him.
"My name is Dr. Clarence Bigelow," the fat man said, conspicuously tossing the leaf into a compost hopper, "and you, sir, are a person I simply have to know."
Karr froze.
"And I don't want to touch you, either," Bigelow added.
Karr relaxed a bit.
"I don't believe any of that residual fugue nonsense, not a bit of it."
"Residual fugue?" Karr managed.
"Certain non-cognoscenti, an unfortunately profuse portion of our population it seems, believe that fugue oozes off Pilots and that if they touch you they can prolong their lives by a few miserable days. That goes in there," Bigelow reminded.
Karr tossed his wet leaf into the hopper.
Bigelow straightened his immaculate daysuit and picked lint from crossed lightning bolt patches on his shoulders. "Do you know about Scourge?"
"Yes, a bit."
"Well, we worry entirely too much about Scourge around here. It gives us a rather... skewed outlook."
"I noticed," Karr said, stealing a glance at the door.
Whether he noticed Karr's displeasure or not, Bigelow kept right on talking. "I have heard of your exploits."
"You have?" said Karr.
"Certainly," said Bigelow, "They are quite impressive. Let me be the first to congratulate you on setting our ocean ablaze."
"The ocean is not actually burning," Karr said defensively.
"Of course not," Bigelow replied. "Your fugueship is electrolyzing salt water into oxidizer and fuel. Nevertheless, a conflagration several kiloyards wide and who knows how tall, that's big, that's style!"
"It was unintentional," Karr assured. "I need to put it out to save what's left of my ship."
"Not to mention the ecosystem of our poor planet," said Bigelow. "Consider what just one small meteorite or a volcano can do to an atmosphere, and those are limited in duration, relatively. I wonder what is more stylish, boiling in greenhouse heat, or freezing from a premature ice age? I am exaggerating, you understand—by no means am I a planetologist—but you follow my drift?"
"Perfectly." Karr's imagination filled with images of devastating electrical storms, changing air and water currents, seas of dead ocean creatures, and clouds of moisture blocking out New Ascension's sun and either suffocating or freezing the tropical planet, both of which left a dark hulk in space. Karr slumped against the sink.
The outside door rattled again. "Pilot Karr?" Tesla called. "Are you sick? Do you need a doctor?"
"I am all right," Karr called back, not wanting to go back outside yet. He felt secure in the organic restroom. It reminded him of Long Reach.
"Let us know if you need anything."
"I'll tell Dr. Bigelow if I do."
"Bigelow?" the muffled voice said with a tinge of consternation. "Dr. Bigelow is in there?"
"Yes, Prime Consul," Bigelow announced, grooming his eyebrows with a flick of dampened thumbs. "Attending to important Enclave matters."
Tesla became silent.
"Philistine," Bigelow muttered. Presently he extended a pinkie finger and traced three lines on the fogged mirror. "Let us examine your problem. Since I am in charge of the Enclave's power supply, I know a certain amount about these things." The lines on the mirror joined into a triangle. Bigelow labeled its sides fuel, oxygen, and ignition. "This is the combustion triangle. All three sides are necessary to sustain a fire, from a humble candle right on up to an inferno of your size. Remove one and the fire expires. Fuel is your best bet. See?" A Rubenesque hand covered one side of the triangle, "Without fuel there can be no combustion, even with oxygen and a source of ignition present. Likewise for the other two sides of the triangle. Ignition and fuel produce nothing if oxygen is removed from the equation. Oxygen and fuel cannot burn without a source of ignition. In the case of your fire, can we stop the supply of fuel?"
"I think so," Karr said, "but only if I can get inside my ship, and that can only happen if the fire is already out."
Bigelow shook his head. "In that case, that's not a useful strategy. Perhaps you can remove the source of ignition?"
"The engine orifices are already shut," said Karr. "The fire itself is the source of ignition."
"Self perpetuating. I see." Bigelow's face pooched up with displeasure. "A nasty pickle then. Removing the oxygen, which is in the air we breathe as well as being produced in copious amounts by your ship, might prove difficult."
"Unless you just happen to have the largest fire hose in the universe lying around," Karr said without much mirth.
"Alas, no," Bigelow replied, thinking, "but... there just might be a workable substitute. I'm imagining a big, stylish poof." With a flourish of his hand, Bigelow suddenly rubbed out the oxygen side of the triangle. "No more fire."
"An explosion?" Karr asked, following the scientist's train of thought.
"Correct. One of sufficient size would consume oxygen in the local area with extreme efficiency. Provided that the engine orifices of your ship are truly shut," Bigelow cautioned, "and provided that there is not so much as a lightning strike or a spark of static electricity to set it off again, it could work. But, even if the flames are extinguished, your ship will still be producing hydrogen and oxygen. That is a very unstable situation."
"Agreed. But with the fire
out I could drop down in my kilnsuit, enter Long Reach, and block the flow of current to the broken superconductor."
"Is that possible?" Bigelow asked. "No one has ever dissected a fugueship—fascinating creatures by the way—but I understood that they produce current as long as their fusion processes continue to function and that shutting those processes off is very likely a death sentence."
"It is," said Karr, "but maybe I can disconnect the superconductor from the supply of current without shutting the fusion furnace down." Karr's face lengthened as he considered the bloody, risky task.
The door rattled again. "Pilot Karr, please hurry. We are late for your next function."
"Do you have a large stockpile of explosives on this island?" Karr asked hurriedly.
"No," said Bigelow.
"Can you manufacture explosives?"
"No," Bigelow said again. "At least not in the magnitude you require, but," a faraway look shone in Bigelow's beady eyes. "But I just might know of something that would suit our purposes."
XXII
Antisocial behavior must be carefully balanced in the training of a Pilot. Too much and the Pilot loses all commitment to humanity; no sociopath cares whether a cargo of dreamers is alive or dead at journey's end. Too little antisocial behavior and the Pilot will form dangerous bonds when exposed to societies outside his ship, no matter how short the exposure, and then the safety of such a Pilot's fugue ship will be at risk.
—Major A. Vidun,
founder, Pilot Academy
"Coffin Island?" Jenette repeated, incredulous. She had wanted news of Karr during the days of forced separation, but not this kind. "Karr's going to Coffin Island? In the Dead Zone? Now?"
"Soon," said Byussart, the domestic in charge of a certain toilet-tree. "Loading lifter now. Ready before dawn."
"But why?" Jenette fretted, rising from her small desk. She paced between the cages in the Khafra nursery; a paltry few Feral kits slept curled in the straw.
"Not sure, not sure," said Byussart. "Wants big bomb. Toilet door thick. Hard to hear," he added when Jenette scowled.