Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

Karr felt good about his position, but it seemed to make Jenette even more uncomfortable.

"Do you remember," she asked, "when I told you about fugue-ships coming to New Ascension, about the Feral mythology surrounding the Burning Heart of Night and how it relates to your ship spawning?"

"How could I forget?" Karr said fondly.

"Well, I lied," said Jenette.

Karr's face fell. "My ship isn't spawning?"

"Your ship is spawning," Jenette said quickly. "I didn't tell you a lie lie. What I told you was true. I just didn't tell you the whole truth."

"So what is the whole truth?" Karr asked.

Jenette winced. "I told you that according to Feral history fugueships spawned on this planet three times, successfully. But... what I neglected to mention was that there were at least two other times, and those spawnings failed. Catastrophically. According to the texts, those times the Burning Heart of Night perished before its proper allotment of four-times-four-time-four-times-four days and no new Radiances were birthed. I suppose," Jenette added meekly, "that you would like to know why?"

Hardly daring to breathe, Karr nodded.

"The number of fire pillars was wrong," Jenette continued. "One time the number was five small pillars and another time it was three small pillars and one large pillar."

"What happens when there are four small pillars and one large pillar?" Karr asked in a hush.

"The root texts didn't say," Jenette admitted, looking more remorseful by the word. "There has never been four small pillars and one big pillar before, at least in recorded Feral history. But the texts were very clear that the number of pillars must be exactly four. Four small Radiances and no large Radiance.

Otherwise, disaster." Jenette rubbed her temples. "So you see, going back to Long Reach now is not a question of meddling. It's a question of setting things right. Something? previous circumstance, bad luck, whatever? has already compromised the spawning and without intervention, well..."

Karr gaped speechlessly. It was all his fault. His attempts to constrict the flow of thrust through Long Reach's engine nozzles had adversely affected the spawning. That was abundantly clear to him. His ship was headed for a premature death, and it was his fault. Four baby fugueships were going to perish abortively, and it was all his fault. When Long Reach was gone there would be only two healthy adult fugueships left in all of human space. Four new spawn would have tripled that number. How much exploration of the galaxy, how many new seeded colonies had Karr wiped from the possible future of the human race with one thoughtless action? Karr's head reeled. It was awful beyond a Pilot's capacity to comprehend.

Jenette tried to explain herself as Karr's brain melted down. "I know I misled you, but I did it because

I needed to speak to my father and I knew you would not agree to return if I told you everything, and because I had a hunch things were not going well here at the Enclave ... and I hope you can see that I was right."

Karr continued to say nothing. Jenette read it as condemnation. "I'm sorry," she said, her lower lip beginning to quiver. "You are the last person I want to lie to, believe me. I understand that you are probably extremely mad right now? I would be? and that I'm probably the last person you want to talk to right now, but, but... oh, fuck it." Jenette began to sob quietly.

Karr felt for her. Technically, she had betrayed him, but it had been a small betrayal in comparison with the scale of his failure and culpability as a Pilot. In fact, to his self-centered Pilot-mind, Jenette's actions were nearly inconsequential. Karr understood the burden of a Higher Duty, the things it drove you to, the sacrifice and the separation from the wants and needs of normal human existence, the loneliness. Furthermore, crouched there in the skimmer hulk, hiding from Khafra and humans alike, and separated from the comfort of his ship and the enveloping, forgiving, compassion if its flesh, Karr's own frail human heart felt very alone, too.

So it was that Karr took an action that he had not taken in hundreds and hundreds of years, an action based on human male-female behavior patterns so deeply rooted that they subverted all of his ingrained Pilot Academy inhibitions and paranoias, an action that surprised himself even as he did it.

Karr gave Jenette a hug.

Jenette buried her face in his shoulder and wept. Karr, socially challenged though he was, had enough sense to keep his mouth shut.

"I promise I'll do everything I can to make this up to you," she said, when she finally extricated herself from his arms.

Karr nodded, still feeling overwhelmed.

"What are we going to do?" Jenette asked.

"I haven't a clue," Karr admitted.

Obviously he had to return to Long Reach. Obviously he had to detonate the null-fusion reactor, as originally planned, and snuff out the pillars of fire. Then he would have to somehow descend into his ship and stop it from splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. He must stop the electrolyzing flow of current through its superconductor core. Perhaps he would then reignite the hydrogen and oxygen which was presumably spewing from four growing, baby fugueships, then the number of flaming pillars would match the Feral prophecy. Hopefully that would set the spawning back on track and Long Reach's natural processes of reproduction would take over from there. But how would he get to that point? The human colony certainly did not posses the proper infrastructure to repair the heavy lifter in a timely fashion. And, in any case, its shattered remains lay in Feral hands. He had no way to move a fifty-ton null-fusion reactor a hundred feet, never mind a hundred kiloyards.

It was a pretty bleak situation.

The back of Bob's projected head wavered in the corner. The low volume voice squawked, "... 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. ..."

No-man's land was quiet in the predawn air chill. A lone, white-clad figure walked through a field of polyp fronds with its arms up, as if in surrender. As it neared the heavy lifter, Ferals sprang from cover behind it, camouflaged blurs moving in the chest-high stalks.

Jenette crossed her fingers and hoped Karr was right.

Behind Jenette and Arrou was an equally strange situation. Guardsmen aimed their weapons, not outward at the Ferals, but back into the buildings and streets of human-held territory, to hold off Bragg's mob. It was another group of defenders that held the Ferals at bay. They were, of course, the domestics of Jenette's underground network, but Jenette had nothing to do with their sudden courage. It was Patton who rallied and led them because it was Patton who single-handedly devised a strategy to save the human colony by using the instinctual Pact injunction against killing other Pact. Time and time again, even in the short period of time that Jenette had watched the domestics that ringed the human barricades had marched out to drive the Ferals back. No weapons were used, no blood spilt; the domestics themselves were the deterrent to Feral aggression? and the tactic was quite effective. No Ferals had killed a human since Patton's domestics joined Halifax's Guards on the battle lines.

"Mahatma Gandhi," Patton rumbled, "battles of passive resistance, early twentieth century."

Patton and the other domestics were impatient to drive the Ferals back to their side of no-man's land, but Halifax proudly patted his friend's shoulder.

"Patience, soldier. Let's see how this battle plays out."

"Rrrrrr."

Karr stood his ground in the field. Ferals lunged, always in pairs, and then, just as lightning fast, retreated to circle in confused loops about their target. Over and over they attempted to attack the fragile human. None succeeded.