by Ivan Cat
Jenette tried to explain herself as Karr's brain melted down. "I know I misled you, but I did it because I needed to speak to my father and I knew you would not agree to return if I told you everything, and because I had a hunch things were not going well here at the Enclave ... and I hope you can see that I was right."
Karr continued to say nothing. Jenette read it as condemnation. "I'm sorry," she said, her lower lip beginning to quiver. "You are the last person I want to lie to, believe me. I understand that you are probably extremely mad right now—I would be—and that I'm probably the last person you want to talk to right now, but, but... oh, fuck it." Jenette began to sob quietly.
Karr felt for her. Technically, she had betrayed him, but it had been a small betrayal in comparison with the scale of his failure and culpability as a Pilot. In fact, to his self-centered Pilot-mind, Jenette's actions were nearly inconsequential. Karr understood the burden of a Higher Duty, the things it drove you to, the sacrifice and the separation from the wants and needs of normal human existence, the loneliness. Furthermore, crouched there in the skimmer hulk, hiding from Khafra and humans alike, and separated from the comfort of his ship and the enveloping, forgiving, compassion if its flesh, Karr's own frail human heart felt very alone, too.
So it was that Karr took an action that he had not taken in hundreds and hundreds of years, an action based on human male-female behavior patterns so deeply rooted that they subverted all of his ingrained Pilot Academy inhibitions and paranoias, an action that surprised himself even as he did it.
Karr gave Jenette a hug.
Jenette buried her face in his shoulder and wept. Karr, socially challenged though he was, had enough sense to keep his mouth shut.
"I promise I'll do everything I can to make this up to you," she said, when she finally extricated herself from his arms.
Karr nodded, still feeling overwhelmed.
"What are we going to do?" Jenette asked.
"I haven't a clue," Karr admitted.
Obviously he had to return to Long Reach. Obviously he had to detonate the null-fusion reactor, as originally planned, and snuff out the pillars of fire. Then he would have to somehow descend into his ship and stop it from splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. He must stop the electrolyzing flow of current through its superconductor core. Perhaps he would then reignite the hydrogen and oxygen which was presumably spewing from four growing, baby fugueships, then the number of flaming pillars would match the Feral prophecy. Hopefully that would set the spawning back on track and Long Reach's natural processes of reproduction would take over from there. But how would he get to that point? The human colony certainly did not posses the proper infrastructure to repair the heavy lifter in a timely fashion. And, in any case, its shattered remains lay in Feral hands. He had no way to move a fifty-ton null-fusion reactor a hundred feet, never mind a hundred kiloyards.
It was a pretty bleak situation.
The back of Bob's projected head wavered in the corner. The low volume voice squawked, "... 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...."
No-man's land was quiet in the predawn air chill. A lone, white-clad figure walked through a field of polyp fronds with its arms up, as if in surrender. As it neared the heavy lifter, Ferals sprang from cover behind it, camouflaged blurs moving in the chest-high stalks.
Jenette crossed her fingers and hoped Karr was right.
Behind Jenette and Arrou was an equally strange situation. Guardsmen aimed their weapons, not outward at the Ferals, but back into the buildings and streets of human-held territory, to hold off Bragg's mob. It was another group of defenders that held the Ferals at bay. They were, of course, the domestics of Jenette's underground network, but Jenette had nothing to do with their sudden courage. It was Patton who rallied and led them because it was Patton who single-handedly devised a strategy to save the human colony by using the instinctual Pact injunction against killing other Pact. Time and time again, even in the short period of time that Jenette had watched the domestics that ringed the human barricades had marched out to drive the Ferals back. No weapons were used, no blood spilt; the domestics themselves were the deterrent to Feral aggression—and the tactic was quite effective. No Ferals had killed a human since Patton's domestics joined Halifax's Guards on the battle lines.
"Mahatma Gandhi," Patton rumbled, "battles of passive resistance, early twentieth century."
Patton and the other domestics were impatient to drive the Ferals back to their side of no-man's land, but Halifax proudly patted his friend's shoulder.
"Patience, soldier. Let's see how this battle plays out."
"Rrrrrr."
Karr stood his ground in the field. Ferals lunged, always in pairs, and then, just as lightning fast, retreated to circle in confused loops about their target. Over and over they attempted to attack the fragile human. None succeeded.
A single large Feral appeared, its glowbuds half white and half blank.
Arrou drew a sharp breath beside Jenette. "Tlalok!"
Tlalok attacked Karr. Both Feral and Pilot tumbled out of sight in the fronds. Several anxious heartbeats later, they reappeared. Karr was unhurt. Tlalok backed off, shaking his muzzle violently. The large Feral suddenly flashed from half white and half blank to full, angry glowbud radiance across his entire four-legged frame. He then threw back his muzzle.
A horrified cry echoed across the battlefield.
PART SIX:
Burning Heart
XLVII
Sometimes, hollow winds moan through his fugueship. Huffff, huffff. Always he wakes up to these uneven rhythms. Always he feels ill at ease. Huffff, huffff. Always he slips on a uniform over his ghimpsuit and shuffles through the nighttime, blue-lit worm-highways of the ship. He pads over ligaments and bone. Huffff, huffff. They make a jerky motion under his boots. Birth canal passages throb around him, but not in their normal, peaceful way.
His sleepy brain imagines that he is a fetus, seeded in the giant womb of his ship, fermenting, growing into something... other. He walks, walks. Huffff, huffff. What that other will be he does not know, but he knows that he has been enwombed before. He remembers, with memories born of touch and taste and hearing, memories kept in muscle and bone rather than in neurons and synapses. He remembers-feels his own mother slumbering around him when he was a real fetus, a creature of primordial fish eyes and translucent organs. He remembers a world of wet, snug love. When she slept, he slept. When her blood ran fast, his blood ran fast.
And when she had nightmares, he had nightmares.
Huffff, huffff.
His mother had nightmares a lot.
Did she sense, even then, the one-in-a-billion abnormality gestating within her? Did she suspect, did she have premonitions, as some mothers do, that her unborn would not birth out the same as all infants?
His ship shudders. Apprehensions and dreads intrude upon his wet-snug. Nightmares in the womb. That was how they felt then. This is how they feel now.
But, how can this be, now?
He wonders, stepping into the brainroom's softly glowing vault. Pillows of pink cortex swell before him. The brain is vast compared to him, minuscule compared to the body it runs. Not enough thinking mass for intelligence. His wonderful, beloved ship is also a simple, dumb beast.
How can a beast of burden have nightmares?
The brain twitches. He remembers the closed-eye blinking of a childhood pet. The passage outside jerks like the inside of a snake. He remembers the pet's paws-in-quicksand dream running, jerking. That is how it looked then. This is how it looks now.
Stupid or not, idiot or not, his ship is dreaming. He knows it. Bad dreams. Long bad dreams. His eight fuguetime hours versus its four realtime months.
What nightmares does a fugueship have, a half million living tons, alone on its pathways between stars, old enough to have seen human planetary civilizations rise and fall, but too unknowing a
nd innocent to notice or care?
He remembers that innocence is not always bliss, childhood damp ultra-fears, who-loves-me-desperation monsters, abandonment dream-abominations. He does not analyze them this way—that is too painful to remember—that is just how the memories feel. Most of all he remembers the wanting to wake up, the striving to be free of the somnolent torments.
Huffff, huffff.
Make it stop, mommy.
But mommy and daddy sold you for a shiny new life, and you're not a part of it. These are the nightmares of an adult-child.
The adult-child goes to the beast-of-burden brain. He presses down on the moist suede cortex, smoothing, stroking, cooing in his mind, if not with his voice emulator.
There, there. It's going to be all right. Everything is going to be all right.
The jerking in the hall outside subsides. He spreads out, face down, maximum touching.
We're safe. We're okay.
The twitching of the cortex calms.
Together they weather their dreams.
Heat.
Pressure.
More than its great, dumb mind remembers, ever.
Crushing it in, from all around.
Heaviness.
No floating, no drifting,
No flying between diamonds of light.
Only weight and wet darkness.
And food, all around.
Gorging.
It wanted to come here, it feels.
But it is sick. Something is wrong.
Something missing.
The tiny good feeling.
So long the tiny good was with it,
So long the sickness was gone,
It felt only content.
But now the tiny good is gone, There is an empty feeling where it was.
And now sickness is back, escalating.
It feels itself swelling,
Parts of it twisting and stretching,
Buzzing, plating, growing, out of its control.
It is afraid. It wants the changing to stop.
It wants its tiny good back...
Only, it cannot call for help.
What, after all, is calling?
It can only want and hurt.
It can only fear.
XLVIII
My solution to the Feral problem? Nuke 'em till they glow, then shoot 'em in the dark. They already glow in the dark? Oh, yeah, I forgot.
—Rebecca "Liberty" Toland.
Drunken Reflections on Being.
a New Ascension Guard
Karr screamed and screamed and screamed. For three days. Most of his uniform was stripped away. His limbs were stretched and bound in the egg-shaped cell with the glowing white walls. Tlalok attempted everything he could think of. He attempted beating. He attempted suffocating. He attempted peeling skin. And more.
"Why don't you just kill me?" Karr groaned as the torment stretched on.
"Because Tlalok is bonded to the blank-one Karr!" Tlalok howled, so distressed that he did not even care that he was using foul blank-one words.
Karr screamed externally. Tlalok screamed internally.
It was unthinkable, unbearable, irredeemable. But it was true. Tlalok was once again bonded to a blank-one. All the awful memories of the time when Tlalok had been enslaved before came flooding back. It was as if all the intervening years of freedom had never existed, except as a fading daydream.
Tlalok could not kill Karr. Nor could Tlalok beat, temporarily suffocate, or peel Karr's skin. The instinctual injunction against harming one's bondmate was too strong.
"How? How?" Tlalok roared. "Tlalok has exchanged no Pact with Karr!"
"It's the fugue in my blood," Karr mumbled through battered, swollen lips. "It's related to your immune venom. It must have bound us together when we first met, when you tried to kill me and you tasted my blood."
Karr told Tlalok what Jenette had told him about the Burning Heart of Night, fugueships, Pact, and how she believed fugueships had brought immune venom to New Ascension.
Tlalok did not want to hear it.
Tlalok's needle teeth pierced pink skin and injected a large amount of immune venom to ensure the continuation of Karr's discomfort. Immune venom caused no pain when exchanged between Khafra, so there was no instinctual injunction against using it on a bondmate. But when injected into a blank-one it caused great amounts of pain. Tlalok knew this from first-hand experience of Sacrament. He also knew that if enough immune venom reached a blank-one's brain, then that blank-one would begin to feel pleasure. That's what normally happened, but Karr did not react to Tlalok's immune venom as a normal blank-one would have reacted. Tlalok was forced to inject large amounts to cause Karr pain. It was an extravagant expenditure of Tlalok's immune venom. The bright side was that no matter how much Tlalok injected, Karr felt only pain and never pleasure.
Karr screamed with renewed vigor.
Tlalok brooded. He had told Kitrika. That had been hard; Tlalok was ashamed, but she deserved to know why she had been spurned. She was brave and just. She had fought by Tlalok's side ever since—and in spite of—their abortive tryst. She deserved to know the truth.
She had said nothing when he told her what he would do to Karr, but it was a silence that spoke volumes.
<
<
Tlalok had not heeded her subtle warning. Now, three days later, he felt like a furnace stoked too hot and about to melt down.
"If fugue is Pact," Tlalok growled at Karr, "and the blank-one Karr is full of fugue, then why does the blank one Karr feel pain from Tlalok's Pact?"
"I don't know," Karr admitted through clenched teeth. "The Pact form of fugue must have mutated. It has to have mutated, since it survives and reproduces itself outside of a fugueship biosystem ... which is technically impossible."
Tlalok throbbed black and red. "Tlalok does not care about technical impossibilities! Tlalok cares only to eradicate every single blank-one from the face of Tlalok's planet!"
Karr squinted at Tlalok with reddened eyes. "I guess we deserve it. Humans have behaved badly on this planet... and that includes me."
"The blank-one Karr killed Lleeala!" Tlalok snarled in confirmation.
"Llee—aaa—la," Karr repeated, trying to replicate the windy pronunciation of the Khafra name. "Was that your bondmate? Lleee—gack!"
Tlalok's talons closed about Karr's neck, closing off his airflow and digging in painfully.
"The blank-one Karr will not speak Lleeala's beloved name!"
Karr nodded his head in quick, tiny bobs of acquiescence. Tlalok eased his grip.
Karr croaked at Tlalok as his throat opened up again. "What a puzzle ... you want to eradicate all blank-ones from your planet. You almost succeed, but just when you're about to finish the Enclave off, domestics enter the battle and stop you. Because Pact shall not kill Pact?"
"Because Pact shall not kill Pact," Tlalok repeated sullenly.
"Even though you call domestics no-Pact, which doesn't make sense to me. But you can't kill them, so you can't kill the blank-ones they defend. And you and your hunters can't kill me because I taste like Pact and, worse for you, you and I are actually bonded. Sounds like a Tora'okkan stand-off to me," said Karr.
Tlalok did not understand Karr's reference, but he grasped the meaning. "The blank-one Karr talks too much."
Karr's face contorted as he struggled to think through his pain.
"So what makes a blank-one?" he persisted. "What makes a blank-one different from a Khafra?"
"No Radiance, no Balance, no Pact," said Tlalok.
"Which means that I am no longer a blank-one, even though I am imBalanced and blank?" Karr asked. "There is Pact in my blood, and that's all that matters?"
"Yes," Tlalok allowed after thinking for some time. "Does not matter. Blank-one or not blank-one, Feral
or domestic, once there is Pact all else unimportant."
"Then if that is the case," Karr said, "I propose to help you eradicate all blank-ones from your planet."
Karr told Tlalok how he could do that.
"No," Tlalok said immediately.
"Don't you want to stop humans from murdering and kidnapping?" Karr challenged, using arguments he had heard Jenette use. "Don't you want to put a stop to Sacrament?"
"Yes," Tlalok begrudged. "Of course."
"Then what is the problem?"
"Problem is..." Tlalok began, choosing his words carefully, "what the Pilot Karr proposes will stop wrongs that happen now, but will not right the wrongs that happened before. The Balance will stop tipping, but the Balance must be leveled. Vengeance must be served, to pay for all who died without fulfilling Pact."
"That is your duty?" Karr asked. "To find vengeance?"
Tlalok nodded his head once, human style.
Karr's human eyes became sad. "I understand duty. Someone must pay for all the Lleealas."
Tlalok nodded his head again.
Karr took a deep breath. "Then I will pay."
"But the human Karr is Pact," Tlalok rumbled impatiently, "Tlalok cannot—"
"I can do it," Karr said, cutting him off. "After the Burning Heart, I can ... sacrifice myself to right the Balance, and satisfy your duty ... if you agree."
Tlalok did not know what to think, let alone what to choose. Never before had a blank-one made such a proposal to Tlalok. It was hard for Tlalok to believe that he, the self-appointed avenger against blank-ones, would want to cooperate with a blank-one, let alone this blank-one. But then, as Karr had so artfully pointed out by using Tlalok's own Pact logic against him, Karr was not a blank-one, but human. And Pact. And Tlalok must do what must be done. What was right was right, even if he did not like it. But could the human Karr be believed?
It was at that point that Tlalok remembered the last thing Kitrika had said as Tlalok left her to enter the egg-shaped chamber. <