Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

that if enough immune venom reached a blank-one's brain, then that blank-one would begin to feel pleasure. That's what normally happened, but Karr did not react to Tlalok's immune venom as a normal blank-one would have reacted. Tlalok was forced to inject large amounts to cause Karr pain. It was an extravagant expenditure of Tlalok's immune venom. The bright side was that no matter how much Tlalok injected, Karr felt only pain and never pleasure.

Karr screamed with renewed vigor.

Tlalok brooded. He had told Kitrika. That had been hard; Tlalok was ashamed, but she deserved to know why she had been spurned. She was brave and just. She had fought by Tlalok's side ever since?

and in spite of? their abortive tryst. She deserved to know the truth.

She had said nothing when he told her what he would do to Karr, but it was a silence that spoke volumes.

Kitrika does not approve of torturing blank-ones? Tlalok had asked defensively.

Kitrika does not approve or disapprove, Kitrika had responded, as long as Tlalok is not also torturing Tlalok.

Tlalok had not heeded her subtle warning. Now, three days later, he felt like a furnace stoked too hot and about to melt down.

"If fugue is Pact," Tlalok growled at Karr, "and the blank-one Karr is full of fugue, then why does the blank one Karr feel pain from Tlalok's Pact?"

"I don't know," Karr admitted through clenched teeth. "The Pact form of fugue must have mutated. It has to have mutated, since it survives and reproduces itself outside of a fugueship biosystem ... which is technically impossible."

Tlalok throbbed black and red. "Tlalok does not care about technical impossibilities! Tlalok cares only to eradicate every single blank-one from the face of Tlalok's planet!"

Karr squinted at Tlalok with reddened eyes. "I guess we deserve it. Humans have behaved badly on this planet... and that includes me."

"The blank-one Karr killed Lleeala!" Tlalok snarled in confirmation.

"Llee? aaa? la," Karr repeated, trying to replicate the windy pronunciation of the Khafra name. "Was that your bondmate? Lleee? gack!"

Tlalok's talons closed about Karr's neck, closing off his airflow and digging in painfully.

"The blank-one Karr will not speak Lleeala's beloved name!"

Karr nodded his head in quick, tiny bobs of acquiescence. Tlalok eased his grip.

Karr croaked at Tlalok as his throat opened up again. "What a puzzle ... you want to eradicate all blank-ones from your planet. You almost succeed, but just when you're about to finish the Enclave off, domestics enter the battle and stop you. Because Pact shall not kill Pact?"

"Because Pact shall not kill Pact," Tlalok repeated sullenly.

"Even though you call domestics no-Pact, which doesn't make sense to me. But you can't kill them, so you can't kill the blank-ones they defend. And you and your hunters can't kill me because I taste like Pact

and, worse for you, you and I are actually bonded. Sounds like a Tora'okkan stand-off to me," said Karr.

Tlalok did not understand Karr's reference, but he grasped the meaning. "The blank-one Karr talks too much."

Karr's face contorted as he struggled to think through his pain.

"So what makes a blank-one?" he persisted. "What makes a blank-one different from a Khafra?"

"No Radiance, no Balance, no Pact," said Tlalok.

"Which means that I am no longer a blank-one, even though I am imBalanced and blank?" Karr asked. "There is Pact in my blood, and that's all that matters?"

"Yes," Tlalok allowed after thinking for some time. "Does not matter. Blank-one or not blank-one, Feral or domestic, once there is Pact all else unimportant."

"Then if that is the case," Karr said, "I propose to help you eradicate all blank-ones from your planet."

Karr told Tlalok how he could do that.

"No," Tlalok said immediately.

"Don't you want to stop humans from murdering and kidnapping?" Karr challenged, using arguments he had heard Jenette use. "Don't you want to put a stop to Sacrament?"

"Yes," Tlalok begrudged. "Of course."

"Then what is the problem?"

"Problem is..." Tlalok began, choosing his words carefully, "what the Pilot Karr proposes will stop wrongs that happen now, but will not right the wrongs that happened before. The Balance will stop tipping, but the Balance must be leveled. Vengeance must be served, to pay for all who died without fulfilling Pact."

"That is your duty?" Karr asked. "To find vengeance?"

Tlalok nodded his head once, human style.

Karr's human eyes became sad. "I understand duty. Someone must pay for all the Lleealas."

Tlalok nodded his head again.

Karr took a deep breath. "Then I will pay."

"But the human Karr is Pact," Tlalok rumbled impatiently, "Tlalok cannot? "

" I can do it," Karr said, cutting him off. "After the Burning Heart, I can ... sacrifice myself to right the Balance, and satisfy your duty ... if you agree."

Tlalok did not know what to think, let alone what to choose. Never before had a blank-one made such a proposal to Tlalok. It was hard for Tlalok to believe that he, the self-appointed avenger against blank-ones, would want to cooperate with a blank-one, let alone this blank-one. But then, as Karr had so artfully pointed out by using Tlalok's own Pact logic against him, Karr was not a blank-one, but

human. And Pact. And Tlalok must do what must be done. What was right was right, even if he did not like it. But could the human Karr be believed?

It was at that point that Tlalok remembered the last thing Kitrika had said as Tlalok left her to enter the egg-shaped chamber. Remember Tlalok, blank-ones speak with the language of lies, but even the blank-one language of lies will speak truth if there is enough suffering behind it.

Suddenly, Tlalok's choice was easy.

Tlalok tortured Karr for another three days. Then, and only then, when the human's story did not change, did Tlalok relent and agree to Karr's proposal.

XLIX

Sunset, six days later.

The passageway descended through layers and layers of ghutzu root. Karr followed it down to a grotto where stacks of equipment and glowbars on tripod stands surrounded the null-fusion reactor.

Cables snaked from null-regulator sinks and other diagnostic devices to various apertures on the elephantine hourglass. Dr. Bigelow and Guardsman Skutch were hard at work rigging the reactor, leaning in through two of its many access hatches. Karr did not disturb the two humans, but observed, trying to discern if all was going according to plan.

"I've worked out the sequence for shaping the blast," Hutch was saying in a muffled voice.

"Are you certain?" Bigelow responded, equally muffled. "The fields must drop in precisely the right order to shape the detonation up and away from the Pilot's ship."

"Had to increase the figures in the formula by a factor of ten thousand, but it should work..."

Karr felt a chill. Was he doing the right thing?

Hutch leaned out of the reactor to get a different tool and spotted Karr. "Pretty amazing what a few thousand Ferals can do, hunh?" the Guard quipped, apparently far more confident in his equations than Karr was with his own plans.

"Yes," Karr agreed without enthusiasm. Hordes of the aliens had dragged the reactor to its present location by sheer force of numbers, pulling on a web of lines half a kiloyard long. Now that mass of Ferals was above Karr, using their immune venom to stimulate the growth of dense, fire-resistant ghutzu over the top of the reactor grotto. The protective mound thickened at the rate of one foot per hour.

Presently it was the height of a seven-story building. Karr hoped that would be thick enough because it wasn't going to get a lot thicker than that before its protective capabilities were put to the test.