Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

"By the authority of the Prime Consul," Halifax ordered, "I order you to put down your weapons."

"The Prime Consul is on his deathbed!" Bragg shot back. "There is no authority here except the will of the Body!"

Halifax protested something about an orderly transfer of power, but the roaring crowd drowned him out. Jenette waved her arms in an attempt to calm them.

"Stop! Think! Is this what you want? Anarchy? Humans fighting humans, humans eating humans?

What's wrong with you people?"

The mob, in no mood to be lectured, roared its disapproval.

Bragg's boyish face appeared. "You don't get it, do you Consul Jenette Tesla? Do you think we want

to do these things? Do you think we enjoy doing these things? We don't! But we want to live! While you've been gallivanting around the planet, we've been fighting for our homes and dying of Scourge!

Look at us; we're all wounded. We can feel the worms growing inside us, but we can't even make Final Sacrament, because Halifax stole our domestics to man the battle lines!"

"I didn't have anything to do with that," Halifax responded angrily. "They volunteered."

"It's your fucking domestic that's turned ours against us."

Halifax clenched his jaw. "It's those fucking domestics that are keeping your sorry asses alive."

"Wrong!" Bragg said pointing up at the vivisection lab, where he believed Karr still lay. "It's fugue and only fugue that's going to keep us alive! His life for ours, it's a good trade!"

"It's murder!" Jenette accused.

The mob roared louder and pushed forward. Halifax's Guards shifted sweaty palms on pulse-rifles (Karr noted Liberty, Skutch, and Grubb front and center beside Jenette), but Karr didn't get to watch the confrontation unfold. Boots scraped behind him. Colonists were clambering out the lab window, their ravenous eyes fixed upon him.

XLVI

CHOREA VERMICULORUM, Latin (dance of the little worms), scientific name for deadly xenoparasite commonly known as Scourge, which was responsible for nearly wiping out the colony seeded at New Ascension [4609 A.D.].

? New Encyclopedia Galactica, 34th edition

Karr ran around the lab to the back of the roof. There was no way down and, even if there had been, the narrow alley separating the vivisection building from its nearest neighbor was crammed with frenzied colonists.

"There he is! Grab him, grab him!" pursuing voices cried from behind Karr on the roof.

With no alternative, Karr backed up, took a running start, and jumped. He sailed across a ten-foot gap, falling down hard onto a darkened roof across the alley, but quickly gathered his legs under him. A colonist leapt after Karr, bloodlust in his eyes. He, however, fell short of landing on the neighboring roof and ended up hanging from its edge by his fingertips. The mob cheered and shouted encouragement as the colonist scrambled to climb up. Karr stomped fingers until the crazed pseudo-juvenile fell into the mob below.

"He's getting away!" colonists on the lab roof shrieked in alarm.

Karr fled across the dark roof as the clamor increased below. He bruised his shins on shadowy condensers and scraped his arms on half-seen cooling fins as the sound of opposing colonists' voices merged into a violent din. Weapons fire cracked as Karr scampered around a series of pipes, jumped up, and then pulled hand over hand along a cable to the next darkened structure. Across its roof he went.

Smoke billowed from broken skylights, choking his breath. At the far end, he clambered down a ladder and dropped the last few feet into an alley.

Karr's arm throbbed. He ignored the pain and ran out into the street. The glow from burning structures and vehicles shone brighter at ground level. In one direction, the parasitic grasses grew thick and high. In the other, those fronds had been trampled down. Karr saw colonists fighting one another in that direction. Pulse-rifle reports echoed off plasteel and ceramite.

Karr turned and walked at a measured pace toward the untrampled grass fronds, hoping to avoid notice, but after only a few steps, a hue and cry arose. "There, in the white! There!" Cursing his beloved uniform, Karr charged into the disturbing sea of grass. Bulb-headed stalks enveloped Karr, battering his face. Cloying, mildewy, malodorous fronds impeded his speed. He could see no further than an arm's length ahead. And there were things in the deep grass. Karr stepped on them all too frequently; they were both squishy and brittle at the same time. Karr tried not to think what they might be as he ran pell-mell down the street.

Tesla lay in the records room alone. The pain of his wounds was overwhelming, fogging his mind. He struggled to differentiate between reality and hallucination...

The door opens again.

Once more Tesla strains to look, but he cannot see who it is and there is no other sound.

"Jenette?" he calls. "Jenette?"

The faint tik-tik of four multi-clawed legs sounds on the hard floor. Through the fog of his pain, Tesla hears them move tentatively closer.

"Toby? Is that you?"

The footfalls stop halfway across the room.

"Toby," Tesla says harshly. "Come here."

But the only response is a suspicious sniffing. Teeth chatter indecisively. Finally, a hushed voice speaks. It is not Toby.

"Master?"

The sound triggers a flood of bad memories. Tesla remembers a battle-torn Coffin Island. He is on an overloaded jump-lifter. Below are the domestics that must be left behind, their forlorn faces upturned ? one in particular locks eyes with Tesla.

"Blacky?" he says aloud into the room.

"No," says the voice from the past. It sounds irritated and confused. "Not Blacky."

Again the voice triggers bad memories. "Come closer," Tesla croaks weakly. "Come."

The four-legged shape shuffles nearer. The room is dim and Tesla's vision is blurred from his injuries. He cannot identify the domestic, but the voice is the voice from his nightmares. It must be Blacky. Only, why does the hunched form look pink? Tesla reaches out a shaky hand. At first the domestic flinches away. Then, with renewed sniffing, it allows contact. Tesla feels a warm muzzle under his palm ? and then he feels the instinctive nose-butt that the domestic from Tesla's memories always gave to a scratching hand.

"Blacky, it is you."

"No," the voice denies. "Blacky is dead."

"Dead? But you are Blacky."

"No. In-humans killed him."

"In-humans ...? " Tesla wonders if he is dreaming. He can feel all the needles and hoses connected to his body. Are the anti-pain drugs affecting his mind? It seems so real ? the breath, for instance, huffing on his hand, becoming more rapid and agitated. "Be a good boy," Tesla says, feeling ill at ease with the hallucination. "Be a good boy, Blacky."

"Blacky was a good boy!" the voice snivels. "Master says guard the Null. Blacky guarded the Null. Master says keep the Null safe. Blacky kept the Null safe. Master says he will come back. But master never comes back. Why?"

Tesla knows he has no worthy answer. Blacky was courage, loyalty, and honesty embodied.

Blacky was one of the hard decisions.

"Why master never comes back?" the domestic asks again.

"You would never understand," Tesla says.

There is silence, and then anger. "Understand master lies. Un d erstand only Ferals come.