Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

Vidun (rubs his temples): He does like girls doesn't he? That would be just our luck; we finally find a Pilot and he's gay.

Dr. Uttz (sternly): Not that that would have any effect upon artificial insemination, cloning, gene splicing ? or his ability to perform his duties as a Pilot.

Vidun: No, not of course not, but it would be problematic as far as reproduction is concerned.

Uttz: Would it? I wonder. In any case, trainee Karr is heterosexual. He simply does not like the girls you send. If you insist upon pursuing this course of action, I suggest eliminating prostitutes from your selection pool.

Vidun: Prostitutes! These women have undergone the highest scrutiny. Only the most intelligent, most well-bred, physically attractive candidates are chosen.

Dr. Uttz: They give their favors in exchange for personal profit, for the not inconsiderable prestige and riches that ensue should they be lucky enough to bear a future Pilot. They have no feelings for Lindal and he knows it. That is the core of the problem.

Vidun: He must be bred before he ships out. (pause) Can you give him something for it?

Dr. Uttz: A pill to cure him of his conscience? I think not.

Vidun: No, no. Calm down, Doctor. I am only suggesting a shot to get his blood, you know, flowing.

Dr. Uttz: I suggest you consider the tried and true method of exposing him to a wide selection of females his own age and letting nature take its course. That is how normal people do it.

Vidun: Oh, no. No, no, no. Normal people fall in love. Normal people become attached and don't want to leave their families behind. Normal people don't become fugueship Pilots.

Karr spotted Jenette at the edge of the fractured island section. She sat at the rim of newly-formed cliffs, atop an arch of drying tube root, hugging her knees girlishly, her face buried in her arms. Karr wound through the limp-noodle topography and climbed the arch. The slight young woman did not react as he sat down beside her. Karr waited patiently, inspecting the root surface. It was dying in the sunlight, like all the other underwater life forms which had been stranded by the break up and roll over of the once large island. Bark-like flakes sloughed off under Karr's fingers and fluttered down into ocean far below.

Without raising her head, Jenette eventually spoke. "Pilot Karr?"

"Yes."

"I'm sorry I hit you."

Karr unconsciously rubbed his solar plexus. Jenette might be small, but she had given him a good bruise. "That's all right. I think I deserved it. My self-preoccupied Pilot training led me to believe that purging the null-field sectors was a sound strategy. In fact, I only succeeded in getting us into more trouble than we were already in. You and the others got us out. Obviously I should have trusted you.

Obviously I was wrong."

"You were what?" Jenette asked, surprised.

"Wrong?"

Jenette's head lifted. Here eyes were rimmed red. Unfocused, confused thought processes were clearly visible in the movement of her face. "Why can't I hate you, Lindal Karr? It would make things so much easier."

Karr did not know what to say. He fumbled for a different course of dialogue. "That's, um, a wonderful view you've found here...."

A rare New Ascension sight spread out before them: a blue-green sea, with no silver sheen anywhere to be seen. Foam frothed against the remaining fragments of Coffin Island, which floated around the island Jenette and Karr watched from. In the distance storm clouds billowed up from the horizon.

Cumulonimbus clouds, Karr remembered from some deep crevice of his mind. Towers of fluff boiled up into the atmosphere, meeting New Ascension's jet stream and smearing downwind into enormous, anvil-shaped thunderheads in a blue, blue sky.

Jenette was not looking at the vista, but at Karr. Her nostrils flared, she took a deep breath, and then buried her head in her arms once more and shook.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

Even Karr with his limited interpersonal skills could see that was not true. "Well... the thing is, I just had an encounter with a four-legged friend of yours. After we recovered the reactor, he trotted off to find you, happy as a Pilot in fugue, but he came back looking like a grumpy light-festival tree."

Jenette clutched her knees tighter.

"I'm no expert," Karr ventured, "but I'd say he's pretty upset."

"So?"

"So, he claims you yelled at him and told him to go away. He says that you were angry, but that he didn't do anything wrong, and that you said he smelled bad."

"He needs a bath," Jenette snapped. Arrou smelled of immune venom.

Misunderstanding her comment, Karr whiffed his own armpits. "Guess I'm pretty ripe, too," he said apologetically.

"Oh, no," Jenette objected. Her chest expanded as, without looking up, she drew another deep breath. "You smell good."

Karr considered. Their recent underwater ordeal had washed away most of Coffin Island's nasty filth.

In fact Jenette looked relatively clean, her blonde-gray hair showing no trace of embalming-fluid stain.

She wore a suit of mottled green-and-black battledress (probably one of Liberty's); it hung loose on her smaller frame, but it was neat. Karr, on the other hand, had just spent a sweaty day prying the null-fusion reactor free from the keelroot's clutches. Karr stank; so he questioned Jenette's pronouncement that he smelled nice. He also noted that she looked even paler than usual.

"It's the Scourge," Karr decided, "isn't it?"

"Dr. Marsh has a big mouth."

"Dr. Marsh didn't say a thing."

The pain in Jenette's cramped posture reminded Karr of fugue withdrawal, which he had endured so many times.

"If there's any way I can help, any way at all...."

Jenette turned her frosty eyes on Karr.

"Do you think I'm pretty?" she asked suddenly.

"Um..." said Karr.

"Do you think I'm pretty?" she repeated.

Karr was struck by how pretty Jenette looked just then, tearyeyed, ill-fitting daysuit, and all. It made no rational sense, but that was how he felt. "Yes, very pretty," he admitted quietly. "But I don't see how that affects? "

Jenette abruptly clasped the back of Karr's neck and drew him to her lips. She was tender and soft.

He smelled the incense of her breath, felt the delicate intimacy. It was a surprise. And it was nice.

He allowed the contact to continue. He even began to participate.

But the encounter changed. Soft became tense. Tender became urgent. Caressing hands gripped tighter, holding his head to her hungry mouth. She was probing, devouring. Feasting.

The girl-woman seemed to be sucking at his very soul.

Karr broke her grip and pushed her away. Jenette fell back in shock and then turned away in shame.

Again, she shook. Not weeping, but shuddering as hints of color flushed her ghostly skin. She swooned and nearly fell off the root arch, but Karr quickly grabbed her. He steadied her, utterly confused. He had no experience with Scourge. Should he run back to camp and get Dr. Marsh, who was hardly in a state to make the trek back, or try to carry Jenette to base camp? Just as Karr was testing to see if Jenette was light enough to convey such a distance, her eyes fluttered open.

"I'm sorry," Jenette said, feeling despicable. She had compromised after all. She had been utterly wicked. And yet... the immune venom cravings were already abating, the fog rapidly lifting from her mind as the traces of fugue in Karr's kiss worked into her body. She had bought time at the cost of her honor. "Please don't hate me."