by Ivan Cat
The island spun free of the flame pillar. It and the skimmer were now within the orbit that the small pillars took around the large one.
"Go, go, go!" screamed Jenette. "Hit it!"
Liberty applied full power. The skimmer's speed ramped up and it rose onto its stubby, ground-effects wings. Exposed human skin began to burn and blister as Liberty steered a path outward, equidistant between two of the small columns of flame.
The null-field was dim once more; it had been an easy task for Bigelow to correct the in-human's amateurish sabotage. The scientist sat cross-legged under the pinched midsection at the reactor's waist, a Buddha of exquisite agony, his life fluids seeping away. Teeny-tiny buzzers swarmed over him, attracted by the sickly sweet smell of a meal, tickling his internal organs with their dozens of scurrying legs.
In each hand Bigelow held a wire. The ends were frayed. He did not allow them to touch.
The time was near. Bigelow could feel it. The cavity shook from the colossal impact of the island against the central column of fugueship fire. The room shuddered more violently as, Bigelow deduced, the island was being sucked in and consumed by the great inferno. Even the mound of fire-resistant ghutzu would be burning now, his shielding becoming weaker by the heartbeat.
He must wait.
His mind became calm. A few lines of a favorite poem played upon his tongue.
"And you, my father, there on the sad height, "Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray—"
The temperature soared. He felt the air being sucked out of the chamber. He must hold off. Until he was as near to the center of the inferno as possible.
"Do not go gentle into that good night,"
"Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
The island began to tilt.
Bigelow touched the wires together.
The island, a ragged crescent tearing itself apart upon the pillar of fugueship fire behind Jenette, disappeared. The world abruptly went out of focus. A ghostly cloud of Shockwave exploded, rising up and out as it expanded over the ocean, hammering away the clouds above. Out of where the island had been, seeming to fold itself out of a dimension which originated somewhere behind Jenette's head, a null-sun erupted, evil and black, ringed with purple, swelling, boiling, snuffing out the Burning Heart of Night. This was the power of that-which-should-not-be, the power humans stole from that the awful, angry void of pre-creation. It rose, mushrooming, its antediluvian hunger greedily devouring all matter in its path.
"Sonofabitch," Jenette heard Skutch gasp beside her. "That's an explosion."
At which point an overspill of the blast, an infinitesimal portion of the total unleashed energy, which had not been diverted up and away from the ocean surface by Bigelow's careful null-field shaping, smashed down on the skimmer.
LII
Play the curveballs destiny throws at you. Do not mourn for what-could-have-beens and if-onlies. Do what is right, no matter what the cost.
—from the speeches of Olin Tesla
Karr sank, tumbling out of control, deeper and deeper into the boiling water. The in-human clutched Karr's kilnsuit, the gouts of ferocious bubbles tearing at its ghastly costume as convection currents drew the two of them inexorably toward the fugueship fires. Five orange plumes became visible through the hellish gloom, huge and smearing up from the depths like the tails of spinning, underwater comets. The colors grew hotter and brighter as the distance decreased. In no time, Karr was amidst the fires. An eddy caught him and the in-human and spun them back and forth between plumes of instant incineration.
And then there was nothing.
Hard hitting. Black. Enveloping. The death throes of the null-fusion reactor. Blotting out the world from above and sucking the life out of the submerged fires. Karr's kilnsuit went rigid. His helmet cracked along a thousand fracture lines. The proximity of such a voracious nonexistence overwhelmed him, seeming to tug at the very threads of his DNA, as if to unravel all trace of his ever having been alive at all. Karr and the in-human were separated.
At length, his sense of self returned.
The laminated layers of his helmet were fractured, but fortunately no water was leaking in. Through that transparent bubble, in a faint gloom seeping down from above, Karr saw the huge and slowly rotating mass of his fugueship. Four bulbous forms sprouted from its grub-shaped midsection, rocket-shaped stamens in the heart of a titanic bloom, each one over half a kiloyard long; each of these booster-spawn making its own plume of water split into hydrogen and oxygen gas. Karr's heart quickened. Here was a vision no other human had seen before: a fugueship reproducing. In spite of the circumstances that he found himself in, Karr could not help but feel a pang of paternal pride. Look what his Long Reach had done! It was almost as if the spawn were his children too. He suddenly felt some of the emotions that normal humans feel as they live their normal lives, falling in love, reproducing, seeking out a piece of immortality in the form of their blood descendants. Karr longed to be Pilot for each of the four, to watch them grow, protecting them from harm, sheltering them from sorrow, letting them fly free through the stars ... and he certainly did not wish to be the cause of their premature deaths, that was for sure. More than ever he knew he had to set the spawning to rights, to do whatever he had to do to set Long Reach's normal reproductive process back on track and make the number of hydrogen fires four—as demanded by the Feral prophecy of the Burning Heart of Night.
A petulant current ended Karr's ruminations, seizing and hammering him against Long Reach, scraping him down the side of the immense hull. His arms flailed, fingers striving ineffectually to get a grip on the slick surface as he plummeted into the deep.
The Null was gone. Horror.
His new skin was gone. Torn away by the angry water. In-bigelow was dead before even beginning to live. Desolation.
After pulling himself into the strange, new place, he could not move very well. He hurt all over. One of his hind legs did not work anymore.
And yet... the in-human was not overcome.
"Ooooooooooh," he cooed.
He felt salvation as he lay prostrate. It throbbed through the fleshy walls, the pulse of a fusion furnace far, far greater than the Null had ever been. This new Null was so big that the in-human could stretch out his arms and not feel the walls of the passage around him, and he sensed that it was much bigger, even, than that. It was a Null with Pact flowing through its veins! That part he did not care for. He remembered what Pact was from the before-time, before his transformation to in-human. The smell of this Null-Pact made him feel strangely slow, in a way that he could not understand, and he did not like that, either. But he did not let those things bother him much. What, after all, was a bit of filthy Pact compared to the power of this new Null?
The Null was dead, long live the Null!
This Null he would keep Safe. This Null he would not fail—no matter what skin he bore. Uncoiling a dirty loop from around his neck, the in-human unfolded the last remnants of his old in-robert mask. He stretched it over his head as best he could. He was not hidden very well from the Balance, but at least he had a name, and therefore a purpose.
Hobbling three-legged through pools of fugueship blood, in-robert wormed his way deeper into the ship.
Karr clawed in through an iris-valve at the end of a bilge duct and collapsed onto the floor in a small alley between cartilage arches. Fugueship ichor streaked and stained his already cracked helmet. He could not see a thing. He unlocked the fishbowl and removed it. The smell of jasmine—of familiarity, of duty, of travel between the rainbow lights of distant stars—swamped Karr. He felt lightheaded for a while as his body absorbed and reaccustomed itself to the fugue in the air. Then, using the light of a glowstrip that he had brought to facilitate moving around inside the darkened hulk, Karr removed the other ungainly segments of his kilnsuit and stacked them in a fleshy alcove for safekeeping.
The passages Karr wound through were distorted, squeezed, and twisted by the pressures of gravity an
d water on a creature designed to live in zero gravity, but they were not spasming dangerously as they had been the last time he was on board. Long Reach seemed to have found a new, tenuous state of equilibrium. It was still dying, Karr could see, but no longer imminently. Walls no longer wept blood. Infectious patches no longer made walking treacherous. His ship was dying a death by increments, a slow withering. It was not a reassuring prognosis, but at least it meant Karr had a chance to redeem himself as a Pilot, to make up for the ignorant meddling which had jeopardized the lives of his wonderful ship and its even more wonderful spawn. And, most importantly, to save them. He just needed to keep them alive for two hundred and twenty-four realtime days more, until the prophesied escape of the Burning Heart of Night. After that, Karr did not know what would happen, but he had placed his faith in the Ferals and their knowledge and prophesies. They believed that everything would all work out, so he believed.
Trust.
"Don't worry," Karr said, easily falling into his old habit of reassuring dialogue with the ship. "Everything is going to be all right, somehow."
Perhaps there was hope after all.
Karr recognized a few landmarks. He was on Bloodflower Boulevard. He followed it down, toward the bow of the ship, where he was pleasantly surprised to find areas where implanted power and light sources still functioned and, not too long after that, he discovered the remains of his old quarters, now looking like a heap of discarded child's blocks. Turning the glowstrip off with a sharp squeeze and stuffing it into a pocket, Karr dug through the jumble of white cubicles. He located and donned a clean ghimpsuit. Normally, a ghimpsuit was not necessary in slowtime. But then again, normally, a Pilot was not trying to function under the pull of one full gravity and Karr figured he could use all the help he could get.
Karr did not waste any time looking for a clean uniform to go over the ghimpsuit. He had no Gattler, and acquiring one was his next priority. After several hours of hunting around the ship, he decided there were no more of the multitools in any of the usual storage dumps. However, he was able to jury-rig one from a stockpile of replacement cartridges and parts. All it had was cutting beam and needle shooting barrels, no surgical foam, adhesive, or ultrasonic projector, but with any luck it would serve Karr's purposes. With apprehension growing in his gut, Karr set off to find Long Reach's chain of large vertebrae and the superconductor core that paralleled them.
Somewhere between the spare parts storage containers and his goal, he felt a heavy impact to the back of his head and his world faded out.
The fires were out.
Humans, domestics, and Ferals huddled together on paddle-boards, skimmers, and skrag island fragments that dotted the ocean. Bruised and battered and wet, they made no sound. Only the labor cries of a single human female broke the dark night. The Burning Heart was gone. The great null-shadow had devoured it. And no one of either species was sure if that was good or bad, or what would happen next.
Dawn broke over the shell-shocked sentients, bringing warmth and glorious radiance, but also bringing Kthulah's armada. The great fleet encircled the survivors. The floating mountain that was the island of Gnosis bore down upon the clustered blockade-breakers and Prophecy violators, coming to visit its judgment upon them.
Karr awoke on his back, his head pounding, his wrists and feet burning. Overhead was a dome of cartilage, glowing a faint salmon pink. Beneath and puffing up around him, were warm pillows of neural tissue. He was in the brainroom. Lifting his head he saw human implanted control consoles, shorted out and lifeless now, which ringed the pear-shaped room. And he also saw the reason his extremities hurt; he was affixed to Long Reach's large cerebral cortex. Qi needles were driven right through his wrists and ankles, deep into the convoluted brain tissue. How strange was this, he wondered, as a small movement on his part brought extreme jolts of discomfort, to be crucified in the place where he had always felt the strongest bond between Pilot and fugueship? He had been brought to face the judgment of the ship he had so badly wronged.
But by whom?
Off in a corner, Karr saw his jury-rigged Gattler, carelessly discarded. Closer, pacing as best it could with what looked like a shattered leg, was Karr's jailer and accuser, the in-human.
"Big Null, Big Null," it muttered obsessively. "Must keep Big Null safe. Must, must, must."
Two things about the creature immediately affronted Karr. The first was its very presence. How could it have survived the long minutes submerged in the boiling water, and then the blast, albeit diffused, of the null-fusion reactor? The in-human had appeared half-dead before Karr knocked it into the well shaft to save Arrou. Now it looked positively undead. Its skin was seared black, cracking and showing pink and bloody wherever its hide bent or flexed.
The second thing that affronted Karr, in the extreme, was that the in-human was not collapsed in a fugue-coma. In fact it was moving around, talking, and Karr could understand it.
"This one must keep the Big Null safe," it muttered. "But how, when the Big Null does not want to be safe? How? In-robert does not know?"
"In-robert?" Karr heard himself repeating dully. "In-robert, in-robert...?" Why did that name sound so familiar? Why did it bother him so much? Then it hit Karr. "In-bob? Your name is in-BOB!"
The deranged creature swung its muzzle to face Karr. "Friends sometimes call in-robert that for short."
Karr couldn't take it anymore. He pitched a fit.
"I will not accept this! This is more coincidence than one Pilot can stand!" How could it be, to be plagued, over the span of twenty-seven light years and two subjective months, by not one but two insane creatures, one a human and one an alien, who were both immune to the paralyzing effects of fugue—and both of whom were named Bob! What were the odds of it? One in a billion? One in a billion, billion? It could not be! "I do not accept this!" Karr screamed at the universe.
"In-bob does not accept it either," the creature said, with a pained look on the face under its awful mask. "In-bob must keep the Big Null safe. That is clear. The Big Null is Purpose. The Purpose must be obeyed. The Big Null must be safe. But the Big Null does not want to be safe. So how can the Purpose be obeyed? How can in-bob keep safe the Big Null if it does not want to be safe?"
Karr thrashed, despite the pain it cause his skewered feet and wrists. "Shut up! Shut up, you deranged creature! You're not making any sense!"
In-bob hobbled closer.
"It wants to die," in-bob said, distraught. "In-bob does not know why, but the Big Null wants to die."
The way the creature swung its head around the brainroom, as if looking around with its eyeless sockets, Karr suddenly understood what it meant by the Big Null. It meant Long Reach. A shiver coursed down his spine.
"How do you know that?" Karr asked quietly. "How do you know it wants to die?"
"It speaks to in-bob," the in-human said in an awed gurgle.
"It does not," Karr objected. "It doesn't speak. It has no vocal apparatus. And besides, it is a dumb beast of burden."
"No, no," the in-human argued. "It has no mouth, but in-bob knows what it thinks. In-bob feels it." The inhuman leaned against Long Reach's giant cortex, its Khafra paws splayed wide, as if prostrate before a god, its head bowed, earpits pressing into the soft tissue as if listening, like a human might listen to a seashell. "It is not dumb. It is Pilots that are dumb if they think that. The Big Null needs, feels, knows. Its thoughts are simple, but true, mostly... except that it wants to die." In-bob stood up, pursing his cone of teeth pensively. "And except that it won't let in-bob kill the Pilot." In-bob leaned over Karr and snapped his teeth petulantly. "It says Pilot is friend; that is why Pilot is allowed to call this one in-bob, for short. In-bob wants to kill Pilot anyway, but it says no."
"It does? It said that to you?"
"It feels that to in-bob," the in-human said, its muzzle curling in disgust as it explained further. "It feels better when it feels the Pilot. It isn't lonely when it feels the Pilot. It isn't afraid when it feels the Pi
lot. It wants the Pilot to be always and never go away. Foolish, foolish Big Null. Why does the Big Null want to die, Pilot? Why?"
"I don't know," Karr stammered, hardly able to speak.
Epiphany.
Karr's ship knew that he existed. It had feelings about him. It felt bad when he was gone and safe when he was near. It did not want him to die. Karr felt hot tears on his cheeks. He had always known that he loved his ship, but he had never known that it loved him too.
In-bob glowered, oblivious to the human's emotions. "Little Nulls are killing it. That must be it. That's what in-bob thinks. Little Nulls are sucking Big Null's life out. Little Nulls must die."
Abruptly, the in-human scuttled out of the brainroom.
Karr continued to weep. Epiphany followed epiphany. His ship wanted to die. The mad alien was right, Karr knew. In his own limited way, Karr also sensed the moods of his ship; he could not deny what he felt, crucified upon and half enveloped by his ship's cortex. Karr sensed sadness, but mostly acceptance, and even a little anticipation of the end to his ship's centuries-old journey through time and space.
It was an untenable situation for a Pilot. It was his Duty to do everything in his power to keep his ship alive. He wanted more than anything to keep his ship alive.
But he must kill his ship.
He loved it, therefore he must set it free.
Thirty long, long minutes later, the resorbing qi needles that in-Bob had mistakenly used to nail Karr to Long Reach's cortex dissolved. Karr got up, moving numbly. "I guess we're not going to be all right after all," he said, with the sad caress of a hand where his bipedal imprint was slowly disappearing from Long Reach's brain. When it was gone, he picked up his improvised Gattler and exited the room.
The decision was upon him. Kthulah felt it in his bones.
The blank-one Jenette had requested an audience. Kthulah had obliged. The decision impelled him to confront his fate face-to-face and on four legs. Sixty-four hunters, black with silver stripes running down necks, backs, and limbs, rowed a pyramid-shaped barge. Kthulah's four-sided throne sat at the apex; the Judges sat at the throne's four sacred corners as the barge slid through silvery waves to meet the half-burned skrag where the blank-one Jenette, the traitor Tlalok, and the rest of the Prophecy violators awaited. The renegade Pact and blank-ones looked strikingly similar to Kthulah as he neared. Eyes stared, defeated but defiant, from both pink blank faces and iridescent leathery muzzles. Both four-legged and two-legged creatures, sworn enemies only a pawful of days before, now stood shoulder to shoulder, ready to face judgment together, without reserve or cowardice.