THE BURNING HEART OF NIGHT

by Ivan Cat

  And the sequences formed words.

  <> the root pillar gleamed. <>

  "It's an archive!" Jenette exclaimed. "A radiant, organic archive!"

  The words shimmered on, reflecting across echelons of the gray pillars, each one a volume, lovingly preserved and added to by generations of scholarly Ferals—each a cache of Feral answers awaiting Jenette's questions.

  < the root concluded, <

  <>

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  <> the Judges said as the blossoms reverted to somnolence. <> <> <> <>

  XLII

  "As we approach the moment of total victory, that is when we are most vulnerable."

  —from the speeches of Olin Tesla

  The lifter auto-hovered ten yards up and two kiloyards out. Karr, who was already sweating from the radiant heat, Kthulah, who was watched closely by armed Guardsmen, and the other expedition crew stood at a siderail, staring in abject shock toward Long Reach.

  Karr's mouth fell slowly open.

  Kthulah flashed, faint with dismay.

  Arrou translated, <>

  Not one, but five pillars of flame thrust up out of the ocean, stabbing high into blue sky, the wide main column of flame that Karr was already familiar with and four smaller columns, rotating lazily around it.

  Everything had to be rethought.

  In tow behind the lifter, connected by a grapple anchor and thirty yards of high-g orbital filament, floated a skrag island. Guardsmen Skutch had used proportional charges to excavate a pit in its center. Karr's plan had been to place the null-fusion reactor in that pit. Bigelow and Skutch would then prepare the reactor for its explosive demise. Finally, the makeshift floating platform was to have been towed as close to the shaft of fire as possible and cut loose with as much forward momentum as possible. The heavy lifter would withdraw and, just before the rooty mass was sucked into the column of flame, the reactor would be detonated. The fire would be snuffed out. Hopefully there would then have been a few minutes without lightning or sparks in which Karr could fly in to ground zero, drop into the ocean, and descend into Long Reach. Once there he would stop the flow of fusion energy through its damaged superconductor. Electrolysis of ocean water would stop. Problem solved.

  Only that wasn't going to work now.

  The unpiloted skrag mass stood too great a chance of running afoul of one of the smaller, rotating flame pillars before it reached the large central pillar. And since the null-field nodes would be programmed to drop in a very specific order, it was imperative that the skrag the reactor rested on not be tilted or tumbled, as such a collision would surely cause. Such a mishap could potentially channel the force of the explosion down at Karr's ship under the water instead of diverting the force harmlessly up into the air.

  Besides which ... something else was bothering Karr.

  "How can there be five?" he wondered numbly. Long Reach had only one superconductor, with only one cathode and one anode to create the volatile hydrogen-oxygen mixture—which accounted only for the main conflagration. Something baffling and deeply disturbing was occurring on his ship.

  Kthulah scintillated, equally confused.

  Arrou translated. <>

  "Four?" Karr asked. "There should be only one."

  <

  Karr shook his head slowly. "I don't put much stock in prophecies, Arrou. Too many people invest too much hope and time waiting for mumbo-jumbo which doesn't ever come true."

  Arrou and Kthulah flashed. The old alien turned on Karr, wrinkled muzzle skin furrowing.

  "Kthulah say Karr not understand. Kthulah not waiting for Prophecy to come true. Kthulah waiting for Prophecy to come true again."

  Karr turned to the old Khafra. "This?" Karr pointed at the five fires. "This has happened before?"

  "Kthulah says yes. Long time ago. Three times."

  Karr shut up as Kthulah told a story....

  Arrou translated:

  Long, long before. Before Pact. Before Burning Heart. When world was cold and dark. Many things grew, plants, foodbeasts. Many different kinds of things. Khafra lived forever. Never old, never dying. Khafra lived Balanced.

  But Khafra sad.

  Why? Because Khafra are blank!

  (Like humans.)

  Long this before-time lasts, like bad dream. Always in shadow. Always hiding, always fearing. Never ending, never seeing. Always night and never day. Khafra not even can wish for better, because Khafra not even now there is "better" to wish for.

  (Urrr. Scary story.)

  Long time passes.

  Then, one time, Khafra see Tears. Long, red Tears fall from sky. And big light blossoms in night. Burning Heart of Night. Now Khafra see what is better than dark. Radiance. Burning Heart births Radiances (four) into dark world. Suddenly there is day. Khafra worship Burning Heart. And when Burning Heart escapes with three Radiances, one Radiance stays. This Burning Heart's first gift to Khafra:

  Present of Radiance.

  Present to Balanced Khafra, suffering-long Khafra. Present goes into Khafra. Now Khafra are not blank.

  Khafra shine in dark like bright day. Khafra not scared anymore.

  Another long time passes. Always in light and never dark. Always living and never dying. Too long a time! Khafra forget suffering. Remember only selves, think of and love only selves. Want only pleasure. Tears fall again. Burning Heart blossoms again. But selfish Khafra ignore it. Not Balanced.

  (Stupid, stupid.)

  Burning Heart births four Radiances and escapes with four Radiances. Leaves present for imBalanced Khafra:

  Present of Death.

  Now Khafra get old. Khafra die. Big sickness comes. Light gets weak, night gets long. Now Khafra remember dark, remember afraid. Many things die fast: plants, foodbeasts, slitherers, and buzzers. Many things not live ever again. Extinct. Only animals that birth fast survive. Or trees that birth very slow. Khafra almost go extinct.

  So Khafra are sorry for being bad, sorry for being imBalanced. Promise to be different next time Tears fall. Promise very hard. Ferals use knowledge of plants to try to stay alive. Barely stay alive. But suffering keeps memories good. Next time when Tears fall and Burning Heart of Night blossoms, Khafra go. When Burning Heart births four radiances, Khafra gather. Keep to good, keep to Balance. And when Burning Heart escapes with Radiances, Khafra save one piece, keep one Radiance. So Burning Heart leaves present for Balanced Khafra:

  Present of Pact.

  Pact keeps Khafra never sick, always healthy. Khafra not immortal. Khafra live forty years, then die. That is Pact. But Pact keeps Radiance strong. Night and day Balanced. Birth and death Balanced. All not happy, but all not sad. Khafra live satisfied, for long, long time.

  The Roots of Wisdom spoke to Jenette, the Judges stimulating vein after vein on the columns, like turning pages in a musty tome. The amount of ancient lore overwhelmed Jenette at first, but gradually, methodically, Jenette began to sift the intermingled mythology and superstition from history and fact.

  The Burning Heart of Night—it all kept coming back to that.

  The more Jenette searched for an understanding of the Feral life cycle for any sort of clue that could help human scientists in the quest for a cure to Scourge, the more the root-archives lead her back to the Burning Heart of Night, and the more the imagery of the root tomes rekindled images Jenette had seen with her own eyes. The descriptions of Tears falling from the sky—shooting stars circling the night sky, once, twice, before falling into the ocean—were exactly as Jenette had seen them fall the night she f
led the Enclave with Arrou. And the descriptions of the Burning Heart itself, of its towering pillars of Radiance, were like the pillar of hydrogen fire over Karr's ship. Eventually, the roots foretold, the Burning Heart would change from one large Radiance, to four smaller Radiances, which did not line up with what Jenette had seen herself, but other than that it was the same. She could not conclude otherwise. Karr's fugueship was the Burning Heart of Night, that crucial event which so much of Feral society and even biology, pivoted around. And that was not all. Jenette soon came to another shocking conclusion...

  Fugueships had been to New Ascension before!

  Not just once, but at least three times. The Roots of Wisdom revealed many crucial facts which Jenette began to work together to form a timeline of Feral life cycles and runaway planetary biology, of the coming of Scourge and immune venom, of fugueship immune systems and infinitesimal interstellar stowaways. Each time Fugueships had come to New Ascension, drastic change to the planetary ecology accompanied them.

  Ferals had no glowbuds. Then a fugueship came and Ferals suddenly had flashbuds.

  Ferals did not die, or at least lived a very long time. Then suddenly a fugueship came and Ferals got sick and died.

  Ferals were dying out as a species. Then suddenly a fugueship came and Ferals had Pact.

  Jenette's conversion of base-four Feral dates had the instances occurring over a span of ten thousand years—far more rapidly than evolution could account for such biological upheaval. There was only one deduction Jenette could make:

  Fugueships were infecting New Ascension.

  Somehow, foreign bio-matter was surviving the rigors of interstellar space, the fugueship's vigorous immune defenses, and the fiery planetfall into New Ascension's oceans. The odds were long, but then Jenette reasoned it would only take one microscopic particle finding its way to a living, New Ascension host. Growth and change would transpire exponentially from there as the foreign invaders worked their way through the local biology.

  Gifts the Feral mythology named the infections.

  First infection: foreign bio-matter plus Ferals equals glowbuds. No plausibility problems there. Even contemporary Khafra kits had to be exposed to immune venom essence before their hair follicles transformed into glowing nodules.

  Second infection: foreign bio-matter introduces a pathogen that kills large numbers of plant and animal species on a planetary scale. Those species with high reproductive output adapted better to the unstable new ecology. Slow reproducing Ferals cling to life with all their knowledge of healing and plant chemistry.

  Third infection: foreign bio-matter—Jenette suspected the fugueships themselves this time, and not just a malignant hitchhiker— introduces immune venom to Feral biology. Immune venom was a substance closely related to fugue, as Jenette knew from Dr. Yll's researches. It balanced Feral life cycles once more.

  <>

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  <> said the Judges.

  <> Jenette asked. <>

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  The fugueships brought light. The fugueships brought Scourge. The fugueships brought a cure for Scourge. It was that cure and the healing plant chemistry, with which the Ferals had clung to life before Pact and immune venom, that interested Jenette. Whatever the fourth Gift of gamut was going to be, it did not concern Jenette at that point.

  The Judges activated more roots at her request, Glittering lore lead her deeper and deeper into the library grotto....

  (Hrurrff? More story? Urrr, okay. Arrou translate more.) Pact live satisfied. Long, long time. But then come blank-ones.

  Blank-ones not Balanced. Blank-ones make world not Balanced.

  Some Pact are Balanced. But some not. Many sorrows. Tears fall.

  Burning Heart comes, Burning Heart blossoms. Pack of Gnosis comes to save piece of Radiance. But Burning Heart is imBalanced. Five and not four!

  Arrou stopped translating.

  <>

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  Flame pillars reflected in Kthulah's distressed, spherical eyes. <>

  The old alien said no more. Arrou turned to Karr. The human stood motionless, head craned back and arms shrouded around his head.

  "I've been so stupid," Karr said, voice shuddering and cracking.

  "What wrong, what wrong?" Arrou asked, pressing around front of Karr, muzzle long with concern.

  Tears of joy streamed down Karr's face. It suddenly all made sense: why Long Reach had been sick, why it had chosen this world to come to when he gave it free reign, why it had refused all of his efforts to put it into orbit, why it had crashed and why it was now submerged under the ocean of this alien world. Words choked from Karr's mouth.

  "It's a miracle. My ship, Arrou. It's spawning."

  XLIII

  Opposites give birth. In adversity the noble Pact seeks wisdom from ignorance, beauty from filth, hope from despair.

  —Feral wisdom

  Jenette lay at the foot of the root pillar, the grotto silent but for the hush of stifled sobbing, the Judges withdrawn a distance in the gloom, uncomprehending, but respectful.

  <>

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  <> they glimmered amongst themselves.

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  The pillar Jenette lay before was young and narrow in comparison to the wide, ancient roots around it. Its knowledge had been encrypted within the scope of a single Feral generation, a generation that had seen the arrival, and taken part in the first interactions with humans from beyond the stars; a generation that had recorded everything it saw and heard of what those humans did and said openly—and even some of what they tried to keep secret.

  XLIV

  Before making peace with blank-ones, first prepare for war.

  —Tlalok

  Four Feral hunters hastened Jenette down the roadwort avenue, snapping at her heels.

  <>

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  <> the Judges asked, hurrying along behind, their beads in disarray.

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  The hunters replied gruffly, <>

  Down the mountain island the golden cobblestones wound, from the entrance to the Roots of Wisdom grotto, toward the waterfront. Throngs of Pact parted, staring at the peculiar procession.

  Jenette passed wondrous sights with indifference. There were huts smelling of spice and displaying bowls heaped with medicinal herbs, roots, and ground up animal bones. There were markets teeming with the firework flash of bartering Khafra, filled with the produce of outlying islands: grains and seeds, tiny caged animals with pink feet, piles of nut paste and tree pitch, heaps of salt, and a thousand forms of hollowed gourds that varied in size from little jugs to great water urns. There were orchards where the hypnotic swaying of branches extruded and wove resin fibers into fabric, fabric that Ferals used to bind wounds because it inhibited infection and then dissolved when the healing process was complete. There were fermentaries where curdled marsh ooze was pressed into bread that tasted of cheese. There were open-air sick bowers run by white-pawed Feral healers from whom Jenette could have learned, and nurseries full of bouncy Feral kits that Jenette could have played with. Another time the Feral guards would have had to bind her limbs and physically drag her away from such sights.

  Not that day.

 
Jenette bore the ignoble treatment of the hunters with a resignation that comes from having answers to questions that were better left unasked. She moved like an automaton, placing one foot in front of another, her arms wrapped protectively around the star-lure.

  At sea level, the press of domes and minarets parted and Jenette saw the heavy lifter hovering over a finger-shaped quay, the null-fusion reactor still clutched underneath in its cargo arms. Jenette's guards maneuvered her straight for the quay and up to the foot of a gangway purposely grown for boarding the flying machine. Humans stood formally at the edge of the square deck; domestics squatted near, equally stiff. The Guards clustered at the top of the gangway, pulse-rifles pointed at Kthulah, who squatted like the domestics.

  The Feral hunters prodded Jenette up the curving span.

  Just as confused as Jenette, the Judges flashed secretly, <>

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  The span leveled near the top. The hunters held Jenette back with six paces to go.

  Karr whispered something to Arrou. Arrou sparkled. Kthulah flashed back, seething crimsons and oranges. Jenette grimaced at the words. Arrou flinched, but dutifully translated for Karr.

  "Kthulah say, burn in darkness, get off fecal-worms, larval puss-maggot—"

  Karr sighed and held up a hand to stop the translation. "Tell him we are not going to use the reactor, not now that we know my ship is spawning. We're on his side."

  "Kthulah say Karr not on Kthulah's side," Arrou translated. "Not on Pact side. Kthulah not trust words from mouth of Radiance-killer."

  "But we're not going to do that anymore."

  Kthulah snapped his teeth at Karr.

  "Kthulah say Kthulah must go and take punishment for deciding to trust blank-ones."