Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

Jenette didn't think of it as a mindless microorganism, but as a malignant force, twisting her life.

Even the Khafra, the only life forms to strike an evolutionary bargain with the Scourge, did not escape its final victory. Feral Khafra bonded into pairs who exchanged immune venom at yearly intervals and thus ensured each other's survival; they lived healthy lives, but they all also died at forty years of age, without exception. Her father had discovered that cycle and struck a vile bargain of his own to keep the Enclave humans alive: a repulsive ritual called Sacrament. In Sacrament, humans took immune venom from force-bonded domestics. Because the humans gave nothing in return, the domestics succumbed to Scourge shortly after their third Sacrament. The colonists did their best to forget the yearly nightmare, but it was Jenette's job to place young Ferals? kidnapped from the wild because domestic Ferals did not reproduce? with human colonists to begin drastically shortened lives. So Jenette could not forget. And with each inevitable fatality it got harder and harder to carry out the assignments and pickups.

Arrou shifted, impatient for the crawler to move. "Sad?" Jenette looked at Trum. "Yes. Burke and Panya will miss him." Arrou's alien head bobbed, a gorget of flesh swaying under his chin. "Arrou miss too."

Trum's death reminded Jenette that she would soon be missing Arrou. They had gone through the terrible Sacrament twice already, the first time when she entered puberty at twenty-one, and the second time last year. The third time was due even as they sat in the crawler. It would kill Arrou. And the thought of losing him made Jenette very sad. "Tears," Arrou said. "I'm okay."

"No." Arrou was looking up at the night sky. "Tears." Jenette followed his pointing muzzle. "A shooting star..." she gasped.

A tiny fireball burned its way across the heavens, tail streaming far behind. It seemed to hang, not flashing across the sky as it should have, but taking languorous minutes to pass overhead and disappear to the southwest. Jenette was no astronomer, but that seemed far too long a time. Also, she noted, the crawler's compass was acting up, slowly turning in lock step with the shooting star's passage and then whipping back to true magnetic south when the red plume finally disappeared beyond the horizon.

"Sign," Arrou pronounced cryptically. "Burning Heart comes."

Jenette did not believe in signs, however strange, but she knew it was time to make a decision. Each of the many pickups she had made was a dry run for Arrou's death. At first it had been two years away, then one year, then months and weeks, and now that it loomed like the executioner's ax Jenette knew she could bear it no longer. She steered down the right fork in the road.

"Where going?" Arrou asked.

"To talk to my father."

"Oh ... talk about Arrou?"

Jenette put on a brave face. "Yes."

"Good. Ask if Arrou can drive crawler?"

Jenette sniffed. "You are so weird."

V

Aliens are raising my daughter, she and all the children born in the early years. An entire orphaned generation. And Jenette is an orphan too, but not because of the Scourge. My hands have done the deed. The Enclave demands every waking moment of my time. What will happen to these sons and daughters of our dream? I am an old man in a world of children and I fear the changing of the guard that must come.

? from the private journals of Olin Tesla

The great hall was a calculated, ostentatious display, even in the dark. Jenette's boots and Arrou's claws clattered on the shipmetal decking and echoed high in shipmetal arches; reflections of their very different bodies smeared across burnished shipmetal walls. The great hall was tooled out of a giant seed-colony container that had been strapped to the back of Kismet, the fugueship that had brought humans to New Ascension. It was their link to humanity's destiny and it was also the single greatest concentration of metal on a resource-poor planet. Portions were cannibalized as necessity demanded, but Jenette's father always made sure to loot unseen sections first. That way all who entered the great hall knew this was the Enclave's focus of power.

Jenette tensed more with each step toward the imposing double doors at the end of the hall. Arrou walked lightly, uneasy on the slick deck. They passed other grand doors leading to the grand dining hall, the records vault, the library.

Jenette jumped when the library doors groaned open.

"How's my fiancée?" a voice greeted. The shadow of a man spilled across the hallway. No, Jenette corrected, not a man? a hormone gelding.

"I am not your fiancée, Bragg," Jenette responded dryly.

"Tell that to your father. In his mind it's a done deal." A too-handsome, too-young figure appeared in the doorway. Bragg was twenty-six, but would pass for fourteen on any other colonized world. He looked laughable leaning cockily against the doorjamb. "Why do you fight it? You can't win."

Jenette grinned. "Because I don't like you."

Bragg was undaunted. "What's that got to do with it? Didn't you hear? They made me head of the VF.

You're the daughter of the Prime Consul. Together we could own this world."

Head of the VF had never been an important Enclave position. The Volunteer Forces encompassed policing, fire control, and any other emergency services that Halifax's overwhelmed Guards could not. In the past, leadership of the VF had always been handed from one Consul member to another, an expected civic duty, however inconvenient. But Bragg had changed all that, turning it into an influential position by the sheer force of his ambition? and he was not even a full Consul, but a Subconsul like

Jenette. Unfortunately, Bragg's moral backbone was sorely lacking. Power was all that counted, a philosophy that Jenette despised, but she knew how to get rid of him. Jenette moved closer, well within the unspoken boundaries of his personal space.

Bragg froze, eyes darting over her body suspiciously. "What are you doing?"

"I was thinking." Jenette put her arms around his shoulders. "If you're my fiancée, then I should give you a kiss." She leaned in, lips parting seductively.

Panicked, Bragg broke free. "What are you trying to do, kill me?" You'll get my testosterone going!"

He backed down the hall in terror that a fluctuation of his hormone levels would awaken the Scourge sleeping in his tissues. "You're out of control, Jenette. Your body's swelling out of control and it's affecting your mind."

"I'm not swelling," Jenette shot back. "I'm growing into a woman. It's a natural part of life."

Bragg wasn't listening. "Look, I'm taking double doses of inhibitor," he prattled. "I'm connected.

Maybe we can set you up and fix that, that? " he gestured at her chest, "? or at least stop it."

Jenette pressed what little cleavage she had together under her zipped-to-the-neck daysuit. "Breasts, Bragg. Women have these. Men know what to do with them."

Beads of sweat broke out on Bragg's immature face. "I've got to get out of here." He turned and quick-marched out the front doors, no doubt to take more illicit hormone pills.

Arrou, who had seemed oblivious to the sexual innuendo, stopped preening a glowbud on his haunch and rumbled in his chest. "Grr-hruuu. Funny."

Jenette didn't see the humor. Bragg's retreat gave her no sense of victory; he was the least of her troubles. She and Arrou continued toward the Chamber of the Body Pure. When they reached the grand doors, Jenette drew a measured breath. Remember, be concise. Don't lose sight of your argument.

And don't let him bully you around.

Her father's bad-tempered domestic, Toby, lay to one side of the doors. Toby was the only domestic bigger than Arrou. Toby snarled. Arrou did not flash the secret signals to him.