by Ivan Cat
Karr thanked the Fates that his body was steeped in fugue.
Karr crawled off through the fronds, making as little noise as possible and carefully avoiding any further cadavers. Soon he was slinking down an alley and scrambling around a bend between large aquifer extractors, the slow, rhythmic chambers pumping water up from the island's natural reservoirs. Then he was jogging beneath the spoon-shaped scoops of a sensor array, through latticed support structures, and out to the boundary where the colony buildings ended and open fields began.
There, halfway across no-man's land, lay the heavy lifter. Unconsciously, Karr's movements had brought him back towards it, but now he saw how futile that had been. Ferals were swarming over its shattered pieces. Karr didn't see them at first, but longer scrutiny revealed that at least a hundred of the hostile, camouflaged aliens had advanced and were using the hull sections as a forward outpost. Every so often a pulse-rifle shot would zing off a ceramite tile and the bullet heads would disappear, but they were no less present or dangerous. And, even if they hadn't been there, and even if Karr could somehow sneak out through the polyp grasses without being seen by the fighting aliens and humans, the lifter was damaged far beyond his ability to jury-rig repairs. It needed weeks, maybe months in a repair dock before it would ever fly again.
Mob cries echoed from behind the aquifer pumps.
Even more harried than before, Karr darted between stacks of high-g containers. Row upon row of the empty things formed a neglected maze at the human edge of no-man's land. It was the perfect place for Karr to get lost. Jog left, right, right, left. Perfect. Oops, a dead end. Turn around and—WHAM! Karr collided with two colonists. Looking like starved children in the shadowy light, they eyed Karr hungrily. One was armed with a large food preparation knife, the other bare-handed. Advancing deliberately, they backed Karr into the dead end. Karr fumbled the cutting beam from his pocket, activating it and aiming for their sunken eyes, but the youths simply shielded themselves with their forearms, ignoring the pain of blisters sizzling up on their flesh. Karr bumped against a solid stack of crates; he could back up no further. The colonists halted three paces away, blocking the only exit.
"Stop wasting it!" the knife-wielder snarled.
Anxious to buy time, if only to catch his breath, Karr clicked off the ineffectual cutter beam and held his hands up. "All right, no problem," he wheeled, vocal cords not yet recovered.
"I said, stop wasting it!" the colonist repeated, more agitated.
Confused, Karr looked where they were staring: at his right arm. It glistened black and wet in the dark. His exertions had torn the many cauterized syringe wounds open. Blood dripped onto pavement tubers at his feet.
"Your shirt," the knife-wielder said to his cohort. "Give it to him."
The cohort obediently unzipped his daysuit and pulled his arms out of its sleeves. He then removed an undershirt and tossed it at Karr.
"Put pressure on it," the knife-wielder ordered Karr.
Karr twisted up the questionable bandage and wrapped it around his arm. The second colonist cocked his head as he rezipped his daysuit; riot sounds were spreading out in the distance as the mob frantically searched for Karr.
"Should we tell?"
"Get ours first. Then tell."
"The Body must be Pure."
The knife-wielder grinned. "Our bodies must be pure."
The colonists bowed their heads and stacked their fists. The reflex ritual, Karr noted, lasted three heartbeats.
"How will we get it?"
"It is already bleeding."
"How will we subdue it?"
The knife-wielder shifted his blade from a precision, point-up hold, to a point-down power grip. "Any way we can."
Karr had visions of the kitchen knife plunging into his neck. "The Body must be Pure!" he yelled, abruptly stacking his fists over his heart and bowing his head. Both colonists stopped and bowed their heads.
"The Body must be Pure," they intoned.
Karr made a break for it, darting between them, but the reprieve did not last long. All too soon, the colonists were on his heels and while Karr's stamina was flagging, their anticipation of feasting upon the fugue in Karr's tissues spurred the colonists to greater speed. Looking back, Karr saw that soon they would have him in their clutches once more.
He unwound the improvised bandage from his arm, stopped and wheeled around.
"Look!" he panted, holding the blood-soaked cloth in plain view. "Enough fugue to keep you alive for months, maybe years!" The colonists came to an uncertain stop. "I'll give it to you," Karr said sweetly. "No fighting, no risk of getting wounded, no chance of triggering Scourge onset. Easy pickings."
Like magic, the colonists fixated, reaching out with grasping hands, but just as their fingers were about to close on the bait, Karr flung the dirty rag into the open end of a nearby crate. The colonists wavered for an instant, and then dove for the prize. Karr bolted as they fought over it.
"Mine, mine!"
"No mine! Let go!"
Disoriented, Karr wove through the storage yard maze, trying to find a way out.
That's when he ran into Consul Bragg, literally.
Before Karr knew it, the young man's right hand was clenched around his throat. Bragg's left hand jammed a mauler pistol into Karr's stomach.
"The Body must be Pure!" Karr choked.
An evil grin split Bragg's face. He did not stack his fists or bow his head. "Pilots think they're so smart," he said, without taking his eyes off of Karr for an instant. "But they're not smart." Sounds of the mob closing in resounded through the maze about them. Bragg gloated. "We're the ones who are smart."
Karr squirmed. Unfortunately, the youth had a very strong grip and any small move on Karr's part found the pistol jabbing harder into his belly.
Bragg leaned in closer, to Karr. "I never liked you."
Karr gasped, uncomfortably. Stifling the impulse to tell Bragg that he never liked him, either, Karr said, "There's no need for us to fight. I'm sure we can come to some sort of mutually beneficial arrangement."
Bragg said, "The arrangement is this: there is just as much fugue in your body dead as there is alive." He raised the mauler pistol and pressed it to Karr's temple. "Make your peace, Pilot."
Karr felt the mauler pistol's arming rod snap into firing position. He felt Bragg's arm jerk on the weapon. He heard the crack of a charge cut the air and waited—in that instant of blinding fear—for non-existence as his head vaporized.
Instead, Bragg's cranium vaporized.
Tiny bits of bone and brain streamed off to Karr's right. He looked left. No more than a dozen paces away, where the aisles of storage crates formed an uneven intersection, Jenette stood holding a pulse-rifle in firing position. She blinked, a look of horror on her face. Then, before Karr could say anything, she motioned for Karr to climb the stack of crates next to him, and she took off at a run using the butt of the pulse-rifle against the crates like a stick on a picket fence. Karr scaled the crates. Seconds later a mob of wild-eyed colonists appeared and stampeded off after the receding clatter.
A predatory shape was waiting for Karr atop the crates. It lunged at him.
XLVII
Once we accept our limits, we are forever prisoners to them.
—Major A. Vidun
Founder, Pilot Academy
Karr flinched, but the predatory shape was a domestic. Better yet, it was Arrou.
"Want ride?" Arrou asked, offering a perch on his wide back.
Karr lost no time climbing astride Arrou's powerful flanks and grabbing tight to the knots of armor plate at the alien's shoulders.
Below, in the chasms formed by stacked crates, packs of rampaging colonists searched for Karr. From streets beyond the maze, others colonists spotted Karr and Arrou and began to shout and gesticulate in their direction.
"Bad humans coming," said the alien. "Go fast?"
"Five hundred knots," said Karr.
"Five hundred knots! Rraaaarrk!"
Arrou took off. The ride was not exactly comfortable. Various armor plates dug into Karr as Arrou bounded across the top of the crate maze, then leapt down and sprinted along narrow streets, through polyp grass, hurtling over fences, springing into structures through broken windows, and skidding out under half-closed garage doors. Arrou ran a convoluted path that soon had Karr's sense of direction spinning, never mind that of those on their trail. In no time they had lost all sign of pursuit, disappeared beneath dense undergrowth, and secreted themselves into a hiding spot that only a domestic like Arrou would have thought to use.
Karr crouched alone inside the old flitter hull, sitting atop dozens of specimen jars filled with ash. Each one bore a label: Wotan, Jikkawak, Lady, Hastur, Rex. The labels also bore dates, but aside from the year, Karr could not make sense of the non-standard calendar. The latest one was tagged Trum 53-1-4632, but there were at least three tiers of jars under Karr, going back many years. Arrou had said the bad humans would not find Karr there, but it was an unsettling place to be.
A projected image from Bob's datacube—one of the few items the colonists had not stripped from Karr when they captured him— provided light. The recording looped endlessly. A disembodied, 3-D Bob head floated above the cube, pinched face, beaky nose, and all.
"This is for my friend, Lindal Karr," the head said. "A truer pal no one ever had." Bob's seemed to look right at Karr. Tears welled in Bob's bulgy eyes. "You're beautiful, buddy. I love you."
Bob's head shrank as the projected image widened out. Bob was inside Karr's Pilot quarters, on board Long Reach. Karr lay on his bunk, in one of his four-month-long sleep periods. Bob, existing in slowtime, sat cross-legged—and buck-ass naked—on the bunk beside Karr.
"Can I say that to you? I love you, man." Bob gave Karr's sleeping image a playful punch on the chin. "You're the only one that didn't stab Bob in the back."
Wait and see, Karr thought. Freak.
Tears streamed down Bob's face. His head hung, his voice coming in sporadic, honking sobs. "I gotta be straight, buddy. I don't think old Bob's going to get out of this. Bob's done some... bad things. And he doesn't feel so good right now." Every crevice, every fold of flesh on Bob's gangly frame was filled with yellow fuzz. Foodyeast immune defenses were at work defending their biosystem, which explained why Bob didn't feel very good. "No, the odds aren't good for Bob. But you might make it out of this mess, Lindal—if you listen to Bob." Bob's face became even more pinched than normal as thoughts rattled about in his devious head.
"Bob knows. Bob sees. When nobody knows Bob's around, Bob figures things out."
Bob dug mold out of his ears. Eventually his brain would turn to jelly, he would stop moving, and slowly dissolve into the tissues of the ship. It was a testament to Bob's fortitude that he survived so long.
Bob's face took on a worshipful glow. He caressed Karr's sleeping face. "You're everything Bob wants to be, buddy. Smart. Honorable. Good looking. Lucky. Problem is, You're also a dupe." Bob grabbed Karr's sleeping image by the scruff of his ghimpsuit and shook. "Why? Why? What have the fuckers ever done for you? Nothing!"
Bob let Karr go, and wept some more.
"Your gut's all out of whack. That's what. Mark my words, if you want to get out of this, you got to turn everything on end. You got to love what you don't want to love and trust what you don't want to trust. Find out what those things are and you're golden, buddy, golden." Bob wavered drunkenly. "Bob's tired now."
Bob curled up beside Karr and passed out. The datacube recording clicked back to the beginning. Karr sat quietly in the flitter hulk, ignoring the replay. He was only using the datacube as a light source. Outside the hulk there were people who wanted to eat him and the last thing Karr wished to ponder at that moment was the rantings of a madman.
Digging sounds resonated through the hulk. The hatch opened. Dirt poured in as Arrou's bullet head poked through.
"Arrou back," the alien announced. "Brought Jenette."
Arrou's head darted out once more. Jenette entered, bending over in the cramped space, and sat, looking rather shell-shocked, beside Karr. Since there was no room for a creature of Arrou's bulk inside the skimmer hull, he gently let the hatch back down and, presumably, hid himself from view. Jenette cringed at the sight of Karr's mutilated arm.
"Sorry about that."
"Don't be sorry," said Karr. "It wasn't your fault. You saved my butt. If you hadn't taken that shot, I wouldn't be here right now."
Jenette shivered. "I think I set the shot-torque too high."
"You may have," Karr agreed, recalling how Bragg's head had disintegrated.
"I didn't want to kill him," Jenette said numbly. "I didn't like him, but I didn't want to kill him. But what was I supposed to do? Stand there and let him kill you?"
"I'm glad you didn't. Thank you very much."
"You're welcome," Jenette said despondently.
"Hard decision," Karr said guessing how she must feel. He had made a few of them in his time. "They never get any easier, but sometimes you've got to do what you've got to do. Otherwise nobody will make the tough calls and then where would we be?"
Jenette glared at Karr for a while. He didn't understand why. Her expression became pained and she spoke again.
"There's something I have to tell you," she said. "Back at Gnosis, I may have made a judgment error. In a roundabout way, it's got to do with the situation here at the Enclave. The fighting was fierce. There were heavy losses."
Karr nodded gravely. "I saw what's in the polyp grasses."
Jenette looked equally as grave. "And those are the lucky ones. On this planet there are things worse than death, things that make you wish you were dead. If you die, Scourge eats your body and you explode worms all over the place. But if you get wounded, severely, your immune defenses are compromised and the Scourge attacks. The worms multiply and begin to eat. Millions of the tiny parasites. The pain drives you mad. You lash out, violently. Friends, family, it doesn't matter. Everyone is a target. Your body decays at an accelerated rate, you spread the worms, infecting everything you touch. It's one of the ways Scourge spreads itself."
Karr remembered his first days at the Enclave. "That's why your hospital has bars on the window?"
"Yes," said Jenette.
Karr frowned. "Funny, I don't remember the colonists in the vivisection lab showing any outward sign of injury."
"That's because they weren't injured—those individuals are just cowards..." Jenette said disgustedly, her voice trailing off as Bob's recorded chatter interrupted.
"You're beautiful, buddy. I love you."
Leaving the projection as a light source, Karr twisted the volume as low as it would go and turned Bob's face into a corner where the flitter's curving hull sections joined.
"Madman," he muttered. "You were saying, about a judgment error?"
Jenette squirmed uncomfortably. "Let me ask you first, your ship is spawning, what do you plan to do in regards to that?"
"Wait two hundred and thirty-six more days," said Karr simply. "No more meddling. The only reason I tried to shut my ship's engines down when we first arrived at the crash sight was that I thought Long Reach was in trouble. Now I know it's all part of a natural reproductive cycle, so it's hands off. That's always been my philosophy as a Pilot anyway. Whenever and wherever possible, let the ship do what it wants. Things work out better that way."
Karr felt good about his position, but it seemed to make Jenette even more uncomfortable.
"Do you remember," she asked, "when I told you about fugue-ships coming to New Ascension, about the Feral mythology surrounding the Burning Heart of Night and how it relates to your ship spawning?"
"How could I forget?" Karr said fondly.
"Well, I lied," said Jenette.
Karr's face fell. "My ship isn't spawning?"
"Your ship is spawning," Jenette said quickly. "I didn't tell you a lie lie. What I told you was true. I just didn't tell you the whole truth."
; "So what is the whole truth?" Karr asked.
Jenette winced. "I told you that according to Feral history fugueships spawned on this planet three times, successfully. But... what I neglected to mention was that there were at least two other times, and those spawnings failed. Catastrophically. According to the texts, those times the Burning Heart of Night perished before its proper allotment of four-times-four-time-four-times-four days and no new Radiances were birthed. I suppose," Jenette added meekly, "that you would like to know why?"
Hardly daring to breathe, Karr nodded.
"The number of fire pillars was wrong," Jenette continued. "One time the number was five small pillars and another time it was three small pillars and one large pillar."
"What happens when there are four small pillars and one large pillar?" Karr asked in a hush.
"The root texts didn't say," Jenette admitted, looking more remorseful by the word. "There has never been four small pillars and one big pillar before, at least in recorded Feral history. But the texts were very clear that the number of pillars must be exactly four. Four small Radiances and no large Radiance. Otherwise, disaster." Jenette rubbed her temples. "So you see, going back to Long Reach now is not a question of meddling. It's a question of setting things right. Something—previous circumstance, bad luck, whatever—has already compromised the spawning and without intervention, well..."
Karr gaped speechlessly. It was all his fault. His attempts to constrict the flow of thrust through Long Reach's engine nozzles had adversely affected the spawning. That was abundantly clear to him. His ship was headed for a premature death, and it was his fault. Four baby fugueships were going to perish abortively, and it was all his fault. When Long Reach was gone there would be only two healthy adult fugueships left in all of human space. Four new spawn would have tripled that number. How much exploration of the galaxy, how many new seeded colonies had Karr wiped from the possible future of the human race with one thoughtless action? Karr's head reeled. It was awful beyond a Pilot's capacity to comprehend.