Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

"Five hundred knots," said Karr.

"Five hundred knots! Rraaaarrk!"

Arrou took off. The ride was not exactly comfortable. Various armor plates dug into Karr as Arrou bounded across the top of the crate maze, then leapt down and sprinted along narrow streets, through polyp grass, hurtling over fences, springing into structures through broken windows, and skidding out under half-closed garage doors. Arrou ran a convoluted path that soon had Karr's sense of direction spinning, never mind that of those on their trail. In no time they had lost all sign of pursuit, disappeared beneath dense undergrowth, and secreted themselves into a hiding spot that only a domestic like Arrou would have thought to use.

Karr crouched alone inside the old flitter hull, sitting atop dozens of specimen jars filled with ash. Each one bore a label: Wotan, Jikkawak, Lady, Hastur, Rex. The labels also bore dates, but aside from the year, Karr could not make sense of the non-standard calendar. The latest one was tagged Trum 53-1-4632, but there were at least three tiers of jars under Karr, going back many years. Arrou had said the bad humans would not find Karr there, but it was an unsettling place to be.

A projected image from Bob's datacube? one of the few items the colonists had not stripped from Karr when they captured him? provided light. The recording looped endlessly. A disembodied, 3-D

Bob head floated above the cube, pinched face, beaky nose, and all.

"This is for my friend, Lindal Karr," the head said. "A truer pal no one ever had." Bob's seemed to look right at Karr. Tears welled in Bob's bulgy eyes. "You're beautiful, buddy. I love you."

Bob's head shrank as the projected image widened out. Bob was inside Karr's Pilot quarters, on board Long Reach. Karr lay on his bunk, in one of his four-month-long sleep periods. Bob, existing in slowtime, sat cross-legged? and buck-ass naked? on the bunk beside Karr.

"Can I say that to you? I love you, man." Bob gave Karr's sleeping image a playful punch on the chin. "You're the only one that didn't stab Bob in the back."

Wait and see, Karr thought. Freak.

Tears streamed down Bob's face. His head hung, his voice coming in sporadic, honking sobs. " I gotta be straight, buddy. I don't think old Bob's going to get out of this. Bob's done some... bad things.

And he doesn't feel so good right now." Every crevice, every fold of flesh on Bob's gangly frame was filled with yellow fuzz. Foodyeast immune defenses were at work defending their biosystem, which explained why Bob didn't feel very good. "No, the odds aren't good for Bob. But you might make it out of this mess, Lindal ? if you listen to Bob." Bob's face became even more pinched than normal as thoughts rattled about in his devious head.

"Bob knows. Bob sees. When nobody knows Bob's around, Bob figures things out."

Bob dug mold out of his ears. Eventually his brain would turn to jelly, he would stop moving, and slowly dissolve into the tissues of the ship. It was a testament to Bob's fortitude that he survived so long.

Bob's face took on a worshipful glow. He caressed Karr's sleeping face. "You're everything Bob wants to be, buddy. Smart. Honorable. Good looking. Lucky. Problem is, You're also a dupe." Bob grabbed Karr's sleeping image by the scruff of his ghimpsuit and shook. "Why? Why? What have the fuckers ever done for you? Nothing!"

Bob let Karr go, and wept some more.

"Your gut's all out of whack. That's what. Mark my words, 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. Find out what those things are and you're golden, buddy, golden." Bob wavered drunkenly. "Bob's tired now."

Bob curled up beside Karr and passed out. The datacube recording clicked back to the beginning.

Karr sat quietly in the flitter hulk, ignoring the replay. He was only using the datacube as a light source.

Outside the hulk there were people who wanted to eat him and the last thing Karr wished to ponder at that moment was the rantings of a madman.

Digging sounds resonated through the hulk. The hatch opened. Dirt poured in as Arrou's bullet head poked through.

"Arrou back," the alien announced. "Brought Jenette."

Arrou's head darted out once more. Jenette entered, bending over in the cramped space, and sat, looking rather shell-shocked, beside Karr. Since there was no room for a creature of Arrou's bulk inside the skimmer hull, he gently let the hatch back down and, presumably, hid himself from view. Jenette cringed at the sight of Karr's mutilated arm.

"Sorry about that."

"Don't be sorry," said Karr. "It wasn't your fault. You saved my butt. If you hadn't taken that shot, I wouldn't be here right now."

Jenette shivered. "I think I set the shot-torque too high."

"You may have," Karr agreed, recalling how Bragg's head had disintegrated.

"I didn't want to kill him," Jenette said numbly. "I didn't like him, but I didn't want to kill him. But what was I supposed to do? Stand there and let him kill you?"

"I'm glad you didn't. Thank you very much."

"You're welcome," Jenette said despondently.

"Hard decision," Karr said guessing how she must feel. He had made a few of them in his time. "They never get any easier, but sometimes you've got to do what you've got to do. Otherwise nobody will make the tough calls and then where would we be?"

Jenette glared at Karr for a while. He didn't understand why. Her expression became pained and she spoke again.

"There's something I have to tell you," she said. "Back at Gnosis, I may have made a judgment error.

In a roundabout way, it's got to do with the situation here at the Enclave. The fighting was fierce. There were heavy losses."

Karr nodded gravely. "I saw what's in the polyp grasses."

Jenette looked equally as grave. "And those are the lucky ones. On this planet there are things worse than death, things that make you wish you were dead. If you die, Scourge eats your body and you explode worms all over the place. But if you get wounded, severely, your immune defenses are compromised and the Scourge attacks. The worms multiply and begin to eat. Millions of the tiny parasites. The pain drives you mad. You lash out, violently. Friends, family, it doesn't matter. Everyone is a target. Your body decays at an accelerated rate, you spread the worms, infecting everything you touch.

It's one of the ways Scourge spreads itself."

Karr remembered his first days at the Enclave. "That's why your hospital has bars on the window?"

"Yes," said Jenette.

Karr frowned. "Funny, I don't remember the colonists in the vivisection lab showing any outward sign of injury."

"That's because they weren't injured? those individuals are just cowards..." Jenette said disgustedly, her voice trailing off as Bob's recorded chatter interrupted.

"You're beautiful, buddy. I love you."

Leaving the projection as a light source, Karr twisted the volume as low as it would go and turned Bob's face into a corner where the flitter's curving hull sections joined.

"Madman," he muttered. "You were saying, about a judgment error?"

Jenette squirmed uncomfortably. "Let me ask you first, your ship is spawning, what do you plan to do

in regards to that?"

"Wait two hundred and thirty-six more days," said Karr simply. "No more meddling. The only reason I tried to shut my ship's engines down when we first arrived at the crash sight was that I thought Long Reach was in trouble. Now I know it's all part of a natural reproductive cycle, so it's hands off. That's always been my philosophy as a Pilot anyway. Whenever and wherever possible, let the ship do what it wants. Things work out better that way."