THE BURNING HEART OF NIGHT

by Ivan Cat

  "Remember what happened last time," Karr warned, clearly wanting to say a lot more than that. "That's a lot of Ferals down there."

  "A lot of well-organized, highly sophisticated Ferals," said Jenette.

  "They don't look all that sophisticated to me," Karr argued weakly. "Just a few agriculturalists, and non-technological ones at that."

  "Don't quibble," said Jenette. "I agreed to put my agenda on hold until we recovered the C-55s from Coffin Island. Now you didn't get them, but you got a much bigger null-fusion reactor to blow up, so it's your turn to live up to your promise and help me."

  Karr opened his mouth to retort, but nothing came out. Defeated, he turned to Arrou. "Throttle down, way down." The thrusters dropped in pitch. The lifter's speed decreased to a crawl. "That's good. Keep station with their pace, no faster, no slower."

  Jenette smiled a thank you at Karr and stepped to an easily seen vantage on the lifter's leading edge, the starlure held in her outstretched arms.

  Shaking his head in disapproval, Karr knelt, wrapped his arms around Jenette's legs, and held on tight.

  Jenette's fingers played on starlure studs. Wheeling shafts of starlight—G class yellow and F class white, M class scarlet and O class purple—the spectral radiances of Capella, Solara, Betelgeuse, and all the hues in between shone down on the unsuspecting Ferals.

  <>

  Feral heads suddenly swiveled upward. Cones of teeth gaped. Eye orbs blinked into skulls and popped back out in disbelief.

  Had she done it right, Jenette wondered. She repeated, choosing bolder color combinations.

  <>

  <> The Ferals responded instinctively, then abruptly went blank, as a human might clap a hand over its mouth, for several shocked heartbeats. An eruption of rapid-fire light code ensued, only snippets of which Jenette could make out. <>

  Dissension swirled on the waves below the lifter. Flicker, flash, flare. Ferals stopped paddling, or missed their strokes and capsized their tippy craft. The ocean became an artist's palette, with areas of conflicting Feral opinion as blobs of color upon it, intertwining, mixing, slowly melding into a reddish-purple consensus. <> the Ferals decreed.

  Without further delay, a message telegraphed from under the lifter was relayed across the backs of ever more distant Ferals, disappearing beyond the western horizon. <> it repeated, like a fading echo. <>

  Not very much later, a response rippled back from that same unseen location, presumably, Jenette reasoned, from the "Kthulah" the Ferals had mentioned.

  <> it asked, in bold, strong colors.

  <> the Ferals relayed back.

  A longer pause, as if that distant presence was thinking. Finally, it asked, <>

  The Ferals looked up, dutifully repeating the message at Jenette. <>

  Jenette carefully tapped the starlure studs, her pulse pounding. <>

  The Ferals relayed her message. An equally colorful reply rippled back.

  <>

  It took a moment to decipher the reproach in the message, but Jenette was not discouraged. <>

  <> flashed the message from Kthulah.

  <>

  Jenette's limited exposure to the dialect of these sophisticated Ferals began to catch up with her. It was one thing to guess the meaning of an entire phrase, inferring intent from the whole, quite another to improvise a conversation together piece by piece. <> What was the light code for knowledge? <<... all truth. No matter what...>> Species? Race? <<... no matter how many legs, two or four.>>

  The Kthulah presence responded, <>

  <>

  <>

  <>

  There was a long pause. <>

  Shivers ran up Jenette's spine. It was a start. She hurried to keep the dialogue going. <>

  <>

  Twenty days east, Jenette inferred.

  <>

  Kthulah's relayed words took on reverent hues. <>

  Below on the water, Ferals instinctively turned to the northeast, a direction Jenette had a hunch about.

  <> she asked.

  <>

  "They're headed for your ship," Jenette said to Karr. "Or the fire over it, to be more specific. I think it's some kind of religious pilgrimage."

  Karr grumbled a few less than enthusiastic words as another message cascaded toward Jenette.

  <> Kthulah asked.

  <> Jenette answered.

  <>

  Unable to explain the complicated concept of a submerged fugueship under a burning pillar of hydrogen fuel, Jenette took the easy way out.

  <>

  As one, every Feral in sight gasped vivid orange, warning colors.

  Whoops, thought Jenette. What had she said?

  <> Kthulah asked, more specifically.

  <> Jenette answered, trying to choose nonthreatening hues.

  Silence. Seemingly endless.

  "What's happening?" Karr asked.

  "I think I messed up," Jenette said, stepping back from the lifter's forward rim.

  Ferals on the water took on edgier colors and began to fidget.

  "Maybe we should move along," Karr suggested, ever the paranoid.

  Jenette hung her head and stared angrily at the starlure. In her excitement she had not been as cautious as she should have been, and that was stupid. She would never let her guard down with members of her own species; what had possessed her to make such a foolish mistake in a dialogue with a society of unknown Ferals? Jenette felt the frustration hot and moist at the corners of her eyes and she gritted her teeth.

  Karr let go of Jenette's legs. "Arrou, ease us on out of here."

  "Easing."

  "Oh, wait!" Jenette blurted as another light code message headed their way.

  <>

  <> Jenette hurried to flash.

  <>

  <> On the water, another orange gasp.

  <>

  <>

  <>

  Karr was adamant. "No. No. Unequivocally, unthinkably: no. Arrou, get us out of here. And don't fly over any more islands, either."

  Engine thrum and headwind picked up.

  "But this is the chance of a lifetime!" Jenette pleaded. "This could be the beginning of a whole new era in human-Feral interaction!"

  "Interaction from a distance is one thing," Karr countered, "but a bunch of bloodthirsty Ferals on board the lifter, with us? Too risky."

  "One is not a bunc
h, and you don't know he's bloodthirsty!"

  "I don't know he's not bloodthirsty!"

  Jenette looked big eyes at Karr and spoke as sweetly as she could. "Please? This is really, really important. There has to be a compromise."

  "Pilots don't compromise."

  "And Pilots are wrong sometimes," Jenette said, just as sweetly. "Aren't they?"

  Karr cursed and rubbed his temples, feeling suddenly, excessively guilty. "That is not fair. I'm not the one who wants to take chances this time. This time it's you. And besides, saving my ship could very well benefit human-Feral relations, because human colonists will no longer require immune venom and Sacrament if they have a ready source of fugue from Long Reach."

  "That's long-term. This is now," Jenette countered. "What did you say about trusting me more?"

  The argument bounced back and forth for a while, and so it was not entirely surprising that Karr and Jenette did not at first notice the phenomena on the water below. In a slow ripple, spreading out from the west, every Feral on the ocean began to mimic the exact hue of the sky. So close was the color match that the ocean appeared to be a giant, platinum sieve, punched with holes wherever there were Ferals—a silver sieve with turquoise sky shining up from below, as well as down from above.

  What Karr noticed first was a disagreement between his inner ear's perception of level and the angle of the deck under his feet.

  "Are we drifting?" he asked. "Arrou, check your drift."

  Arrou's head was tilted at a peculiar angle to the left.

  "Are we in a bank?" said Karr. "I think we're in a bank."

  In fact Arrou's whole body was canted subtly to the left and was thereby pulling the steering yoke off center, so the heavy lifter was slowly banking left.

  "Check your attitude. Arrou? Arrou?"

  "Oooooooooooooooh," said the alien.

  Karr followed Arrou's glassy stare down to the ocean. The skycolored Ferals were blinking on and off in swirling, hypnotic patterns. The effect was not so strong directly below the lifter, but as distance and perspective packed the Ferals closer together near the horizon, the patterns became quite intense.

  "What is that?" Jenette shrugged.

  Karr rapped on Arrou's leathery back. "Arrou? Pilot to Arrou,, we need to make a course correction. Hey! Is anybody in there?"

  "Arrou—in—here," the alien responded, zombie-like. "Arrou—follow—sky—holes."

  The Feral patterns were a giant whirlpool of dots swirling in the same westerly direction that Arrou was leaning.

  "Go to auto-pilot," Karr ordered. "I'm taking control."

  "No," Arrou said simply, and, as Karr began to climb into the tiny cockpit behind him, he swatted Karr with a foreleg. It was a casual swat, but one with the force of a four-hundred-pound creature behind it. Karr sailed through the air sideways, hitting the lifter's side rail in the vicinity of the right front thruster cowl.

  Karr made an internal note not to try that again. A few inches further and he would have taken the long plunge overboard. "You might help," he gasped at Jenette as he staggered back behind the cockpit.

  "I might," Jenette remarked, "if I thought there was a problem."

  At which point Karr realized he would not prevail in that situation. Short of severing control system microfibers from the individual thrusters, so that the heavy lifter would go into safety glide-down and sink into the horde of Ferals, there was nothing he could do to alter Arrou's course.

  The sky holes were growing more psychedelic by the minute. "I don't get it," he complained. "It's not affecting us. Why is it affecting him?"

  "Khafra are extremely sensitive to certain phenomena involving vision," Jenette said loftily. "Remember his reaction to the Feral light display on the night we first met."

  "But that was night, with bright, bright lights. This is broad daylight and a bunch of dumb, blue spots on the water."

  "Perhaps you should take it up with him," Jenette suggested, in reference to Arrou. "Reason it out."

  "Preeeetttty," Arrou cooed, as to confirm how useless that course of action would prove.

  "This is just wonderful," Karr grumbled.

  The heavy lifter flew into the midst of a vast Feral fleet. If the islands on the periphery had been destroyers and frigates, then these islands were cruisers and battleships. Karr counted ten islands bigger than the Enclave colony island and more were appearing as Arrou took the lifter deeper into the formation, following the sky holes, which now cycled like landing lights at a spaceport.

  "Wow," said Jenette.

  On a flat ocean planet, where nothing was taller than a sailtree, it was a shock to see the island at the end of the landing lights. To Jenette it seemed to be a fabled off-world mountain, towering many times higher than the tallest sailtree. To Karr—who had seen many mountains on his own homeworld and others—the island's silhouette resembled the spiraling end of an enormous seashell, its landforms twisting up out of the water hundreds of feet into the air.

  It was a city. A burgeoning Feral metropolis.

  Tier upon tier of squat violet domes and spindly indigo minarets competed for space on the slopes of the great cone. Countless Ferals walked four-legged across impossibly thin arch-spans and swarmed along boulevards of roadwort cobblestones and crowded open-air markets and floating docks, which jutted out in profusion from the city's waterfront. Large double and triple hulled vessels with spider-leg outriggers and sails that fanned out like peacock tails, unloaded goods from surrounding islands. Offshore, other vessels waited in turn for a berth and still others plied the waters between islands, deftly maneuvering through the ever-present communication net of Ferals on paddleboards, to acquire cargo from other islands of the fleet.

  Karr imagined landing and all those Ferals swarming aboard the heavy lifter. He imagined tearing, limb from limb, and he wasn't the one doing the tearing. Karr began pounding on Arrou's back. "Stop! Stop! Bank away!" But Arrou followed the pattern of lights, which had been picked up by the inhabitants of the Feral city, and no amount of yelling could prevent Arrou from following the concentric circles up the rising slopes to the island's summit. There he hovered over a ring of ebony colored trees.

  Stained glass leaves irised open below the lifter, revealing a grassy glade. At the center, four ascetic Ferals with bandages around their ears and staves in their forepaws sat at the corners of a wooden platform. The entrancing pattern of sky holes ended at a wise-looking Feral who sat in the center of that wooden platform. The wise Feral raised its forepaws and brought the entire display to an abrupt halt.

  Sparkle, sparkle, sparkle, flashed the old Khafra.

  Karr wished for a weapon. As if reading his mind, Liberty, Skutch, and Grubb cocked their pulse-rifles—cha-chik!

  "Hold your fire!" Jenette said, waving them to hide the weapons. Fingers eased off triggers, and the Guards backed out of sight, but they did not put the rifles down.

  Sparkle, sparkle, sparkle, the old Feral repeated.

  Jenette held up the starlure. Flash, flash, flash.

  Sparkle, sparkle?

  Flash, flash.

  Sparkle, sparkle, sparkle?

  Flash, flash, flash.

  The old Feral bowed. The four ascetics did the same.

  Jenette turned to Karr, barely concealing her glee. "That is Kthulah, the leader of all these Ferals. He wants to go with us. He proposes a truce between us and he also proposes an exchange of hostages to guarantee the truce."

  "Hostages?" said Karr.

  "Yes," Jenette said happily. "He will ride upon the heavy lifter to the Burning Heart of Night; and one of us will stay behind here, on the island of Gnosis."

  "And who's going to do that?"

  "Why, me, of course."

  Karr didn't say anything further. The situation was bizarre beyond belief. Up on the lifter it was obvious Jenette had made up her mind to stay and would not be swayed from her rash choice. While below, in rhythms of four hits to a cycle, the ascetic Ferals were beating the old Feral w
ith their bead-laden staves.

  XLI

  Flash (red), flash (green-blue-purple)? Flare (dark), glare (dark).

  Sparkle (scarlet), flash-flare (viridian-azure-mauve)? Flare, glare (dark-dark).

  Glow, fluoresce (silver-gold), flash (yellow), flicker-flash (gold)?

  Flare (light), glare (dark)!

  —answer to the meaning of life in an untranslatable Feral light poem

  The grotto was dark. Water dripped, echoing. Root pillars towered high into the blackness overhead, veins thick and gray, dotted with gray bud-growths, cankered by bulging gray knots. The four ascetic Judges lead Jenette between the pillars, staff beads rustling and guided by only the faint light of the single, blue glowbuds which shone in the center of their foreheads. Jenette followed, moisture cool caressing on her face, her boots occasionally splashing through underground streamlets.

  At a spot, the Judges stopped short.

  <> Jenette asked with the starlure. The spot seemed no different from any other point in the grotto.

  <> the Judges chanted one at a time, <>

  <>

  <>

  Jenette flashed, <> Part of the bargain struck between Kthulah and Jenette was that while Kthulah accompanied Karr, she would be free to delve into ancient Feral lore. <>

  <> the Judges said in uncharacteristic unison, bullet heads bobbing in disapproval and fingering beads on their staves from one dangling loop to another.

  <>

  <>

  <>

  <>

  They turned to a wide, aged pillar beside them and nipped a vein bulging at its base. Jenette fully expected a hidden passage to open or a cache of scrolls and tablets to be revealed. What did Feral writing look like, she wondered?

  Phosphorescence appeared.

  Will-o-the-wisps flittered up the pillar, inside the intricate trace work of its gray veins, to clusters of the gray bud-growths. Suddenly the pillar was somber no more, but unfolding with radiance. The flow of immune venom had ignited phosphorescent blooms in carefully timed sequences.