Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

A man in lab whites adjusted an overhead light.

Karr squinted against the glare. "Where am? Who are you?"

In stark contrast to the rest of the colonists, the man was old, quite old. He spoke in a nasal voice. "I am Dr. Ponder Yll and this is, not strictly speaking, my lab." Yll's shoulders hunched apologetically.

"Actually this is the domestic vivisection operatory. My lab has fallen to into Feral clutches. Twenty years of work," he mourned, "gone." Dejected, Yll selected a mediprobe from a nearby tray of instruments.

Upon the lab walls were charts detailing the proper procedure for dissecting a Khafra. And there was a blood-draining groove running around the edge of the table that Karr was strapped upon. He tried to remain calm. "Dr. Yll, there has apparently been some sort of misunderstanding. I am Pilot Lindal Karr of the fugueship Long Reach."

"Your identity is known to me."

"Then I request that you allow me to speak with Consul Jenette Tesla."

Yll looked pained. "That will not be possible. I am deeply sorry." Yll pressed the mediprobe against Karr's neck. It hissed. Karr felt cold seeping into the muscles around his throat and suddenly his vocal cords would not work.

"Ghaghkt!" Karr protested.

Yll patted a consoling hand upon Karr's shoulder. "It will be better this way, believe me."

Yll's fingers swapped the mediprobe for surgical cutters and he began to snip off pieces of Karr's uniform. Karr gurgled ineffectually as his arms and torso were exposed. Yll then picked up a syringe-like instrument. It had a small opening at one end and a mechanical plunger at the other. Karr did not like the look of it.

"Gugh whagh?"

"Indeed," Yll said, his brows pinching regretfully. "Anesthetic is contraindicated for this procedure, but I will endeavor to make the experience as painless as possible." Yll tested the plunger. A ring of tiny blades whirled out of, and then retreated back into, the instrument's open end.

Karr squirmed in the restraints.

"Struggling will only increase the level of discomfort," Yll warned. He placed the device against Karr's arm. Cha-chick! The blades bit a half-inch divot out of Karr's flesh.

"Unngh!" he moaned.

The instrument emitted a pureeing whine. A diode on its tip blinked red. With a sneer of distaste, Yll placed the instrument against his own forearm and depressed the plunger again.

"Oh, yessssss."

The sneer disappeared as Yll's eyes rolled into the back of his head. His wrinkles drew into an idiot's grin. "Yesss, that is quite acceptable." The instrument left a purple welt. Yll did not care. Yll's countenance was fully transformed from apologetic and reluctant to euphoric. "Quite acceptable," he said happily. "More than consistent with expectations."

Colonists in the doorway began to lick their lips.

With a giddy spring in his step, Yll joined them at the entrance and opened a crate filled to overflowing with the same flesh-extracting instruments as he had just used on Karr. He passed them out.

A queue of colonists formed. Sunken-eyed juveniles with pasty complexions stepped up to the vivisection table one by one. Karr noted that many of them were wounded and looked even worse than they normally did. They stacked their fists, each in turn bowing their heads. "Blessed be the Body Pure,"

they chanted, holding the syringes like holy icons. One by one, they removed sterile wrappers and applied the instruments to Karr's exposed skin.

Cha-chik. Whir. Hiss.

Eyes rolled and the colonists filed giddily back out the door as others pressed in to take their place in line. The gouges in Karr's arm did not bleed, but they hurt like hell.

Cha-chik. Whir. Hiss. Cha-chik. Whir. Hiss.

"Ergh! Aagh!"

Karr's arm soon took on the cratered look of a moon peppered by asteroids.

"Make neat incisions," Yll giggled from the doorway. "There are many in line."

More and more colonists filed in. Karr wracked his brain, trying to remember what the Enclave's population was. Two thousand? Three thousand? He did not think a human being could live long with the outer half inch of its body mass removed.

Karr thrashed harder.

Yll turned heavy-lidded eyes on Karr. "Please attempt to conserve your dignity." The old doctor-abruptly swayed. "Oh my. I seem to have miscalculated the onset of fugue coma..."

Suddenly, in the midst of all the pain, the peculiar scene made sense to Karr. They were extracting fugue from his tissues and injecting it into theirs to save themselves from Scourge. The giddy expressions, Yll's increasing stupor and lack of balance were all textbook responses to a high dose of fugue. Any moment now, Karr calculated, the next reaction would set in.

Yll collapsed to the floor.

A brief silence followed. The sound of many voices arguing in the streets outside entered through the lab's only window, but neither that nor Yll's comatose form stopped the progression of colonists. They merely grabbed their own syringes from the crate and the line, if anything, moved even faster.

"Blessed be the Body Pure. Blessed be the Body Pure."

The ghoulish faces paid no attention to Karr's discomfort. Cha-chik, cha-chik, cha-chik, cha-chik.

Only the arrival of Panya Hedren diverted the single-minded progression in and out of the lab. Looking as though her pregnant belly would burst at any instant, Panya carefully retrieved a syringe from the crate on the floor and waddled over to Karr.

"Oh the poor, poor Pilot," she cooed, removing her instrument's sterile wrapper. "He looks so pathetic."

The colonists giggled nervously. Karr stared daggers at Panya. Derogatory words from a dozen different colony worlds popped into his head; none of them seemed strong enough to express how much Karr hated her at that instant.

Panya smirked. "A kiss for good luck," she said, bending and pressing her lips onto his. Karr tried to

bite her, but his teeth suddenly clicked onto a hard object. He froze, confused. Panya winked and tongued the object firmly into his mouth. Then she stood back up and made a show of using her syringe.

The device clicked and whirred, and she rolled her eyes, but the blades never actually touched Karr's flesh and therefore did not inject anything into her own.

Lips held firmly shut, Karr probed the object in his mouth. It was an inch long cylinder with one tapered end and a conspicuous bump halfway along its length. Karr pressed the bump with his tongue.

Immediately, a spot within his mouth began to burn. Karr clicked the activator bump again, but not before a painful blister formed inside one cheek.

It was a beam cutter of some kind!

Before Karr could smile a confused thank you to Panya, she turned away. Reaching the doorway she abruptly clutched her distended belly, let out a theatrical moan and collapsed blocking the stairs.

Karr needed no prodding. As distracted colonists clustered around Panya, he maneuvered the beam cutter between his teeth. Crooking his head, he pointed the emitter end at the wrist restraint that the colonists could not see from the doorway. The beam was invisible, and weak, but Karr was able to correct his aim by observing the welts that bubbled up on his skin. The pain was hardly noticeable compared to the throbbing of his cratered arm. The restraint began to smolder. Karr prayed no one would notice the burning smell.

"Oh, oh!" Panya groaned right on cue. "It's time! It's time! Find a doctor!"

Ten seconds, twenty seconds. Snikt. The fibers parted. Karr fumbled one handed to free his other wrist, then released his neck and waist straps, but when he sat up and unbuckled his ankles, the colonists looked up from Panya.

"The Body Pure escapes! Stop him!"

Karr hit the floor running and dove out the open second story window onto a rooftop. He spit the beam cutter into his hands, then ran to the roof's edge. The clamor of many voices washed up from below. Two factions of colonists were facing off below: the mob surrounding the vivisection building, all of whom wore green-and-red armbands, and the Guardsmen who in turn surrounded the mob. Colonel Halifax and Jenette stood toe to toe with Subconsul Bragg.