Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

There was little question in Karr's mind that the creature would reach its objective. He only hoped that the in-human's adjustment to fuguetime had maintained a steady progression from weaker to stronger fugue -states. If there had been any aberration in the change, any regressions back toward realtime, in-bob might have had weeks or even months in which to act while Karr dawdled along in fuguetime. In which case, all the spawn were already dead and Karr just did not know it yet.

Days and weeks elapsed. Clashes of Radiance came and went. But none who had been drawn by the Prophecy, or who gathered seeking a second chance at life from the fugueship, left. No one died, either, not even Panya Hedren, who came down with fullblown Scourge after giving birth. Jenette saw to it that Dr. Marsh and the best Feral healers pooled their knowledge; the mother of the Sacred Sign infants could not be allowed to perish. It was a near thing, but Panya was still alive on the two hundred and fifty-sixth sunrise after Tears had fallen from the sky, two hundred and forty sunrises after the blossoming of the Burning Heart of Night.

On that morning, humans and Khafra ringed the four pillars of flame as closely as they dared in their many vessels large and small, to await, they hoped, the fulfillment of Prophecy. Through that clear morning, nothing occurred, but then as New Ascension's sun reached the highest point in the sky overhead, the pillars of Radiance suddenly began to dwindle.

They fizzled completely.

A great submerged rumbling began to vibrate the mirror-like surface of the ocean. Every assembled sentient felt as though its heart was in the back of its throat.

In-bob was failing. Horror, horror!

He could not keep the Big Null safe. It was dying. The Little Nulls were sucking out its life. The cursed Null-Pact had stopped him. It slowed him down too much. He could barely breathe. He could not move upon his legs. All he could do was crawl, like a spineless thing, his mind fogged by pain, inch after labored inch. And when he got to the third of the Little Nulls, he could not rip and shred as he had before, but only slither up to it and begin to gnaw with his teeth into its body at a point above one of the nozzle cones. Chew and chew and chew. He must kill it. He must. Hours of pain. Then he broke through the Little Null's thick, strong hide. Foul chemical powder spilled out. In-bob choked. He could not burrow deeper, but he could make the hole bigger. He chewed and chewed and chewed some more.

The Big Null began to vibrate. Something bad was happening.

Something smelled. Protesting neck muscles dragged his head around to smell better. In-bob smelled Pilot. And he smelled the sterile odor of the Pilot's weapon. It would be aiming at him now. He could not see it or hear it. But in-bob knew. That was what others always wanted to do to in-bob. Kill him. Why had the Big Null not let in-bob kill the Pilot? Why did it want to die? Why did it want in-bob to fail? In-bob wept, burbling in self-pity as the Pilot fired. In-bob felt more stabs of pain in his already agonized body. Metal pins nailed in-bob to the Little Null. He could not move.

The shaking of the Big Null increased. The roar of three Little Nulls coming to life rattled in-bob's bones. WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!

Fire started below in-bob, sputtering impotently from the nozzle cones. In-bob felt the heat. The Little Null was trying to wake up and escape with the Big Null's life, as the other three were. But it couldn't.

Perhaps in-bob had succeeded after all!

But then in-bob smelled ozone. The smell of a cutting beam. The Little Null had somehow been freed; in-bob felt it begin to move. The smell of Pilot disappeared. In-bob felt the nozzle fire below dim growing stronger. Fire also began to spew from the hole he had chewed in the Little Null's body. The foul tasting powder was igniting. In-bob felt the Little Null move. Something separated.

The Little Null was free!

The fire surged. In-bob felt fleeting subjective sensations of realtime events, almost too fast to comprehend. He was moving through water, his extremities burning off from the force of the Little Null's fire, his armored body disintegrating. Then he felt sunlight and thin air. It was a waking nightmare. One that ended, not in escape or saving the Big Null, but in sudden, utter disintegration.

Fugueship spawn burst out of the ocean. Three missile shapes rode roaring thrust up to the stars.

Smoke spewed out behind each of them; differing wind directions in the upper layers of New Ascension's atmosphere tugged the exhaust trails into luminous zigzags. As foretold, the Radiances were escaping.

But only three.

A fourth Radiance followed, spinning an erratic path skyward, trying to catch up with the others. It

wobbled faster and faster as it rose, tearing itself apart, then suddenly exploding, raining fragments of itself? and thick clouds of fugue ? down over the on-watching blank-ones and Pact upon the ocean.

A piece of the light had been saved.

Gravity was in revolt. The sensation of up jerked in one unlikely direction and then another. Karr tumbled helplessly, careening into the ceiling, slamming against the deck, falling into a wall. Bam! Thok!

Krak! Muscle sheet bulkheads and girder-rib struts battered his frail human form. Long Reach was lazily tumbling in the realtime ocean, but the fuguetime equivalent was merciless in its vigor. Angry bruises sprawled across Karr's flesh where his new ghimpsuit could not absorb the damage. Finally, a sickening lurch changed the orientation of down while Karr was in midair? causing Karr a final, painful impact?

and Long Reach settled in its familiar maw-down orientation. Karr's world was still not motionless, however. The deck vibrated under Karr's battered limbs? no doubt his accelerated perception of the ship bobbing on languid ocean waves. For a while the massage felt good, but the oscillation was soon more than his ravaged senses could handle. Nausea. Karr needed out, fresh air and solid ground, or at least the relative stillness of the ocean in realtime.

He had to get out of all of this fugue!

Karr crawled along a vibrating tunnelway, up a cartilage-lined shaft and back to the duct where he had so recently entered his ship. Retrieving the jumbled pieces of his kilnsuit and helmet from the floor, he put them on. Karr used a qi needle to force the entry duct open. He half expected water to explode in, but the iris-portal relaxed uneventfully and he squirmed out, down through its tight birth canal, struggling to get out.

Karr burst out onto Long Reach's exterior a few yards above sea level. Deep indigo and bright, sky blue strobed as night and day whirled around Karr with ungodly speed. Yellow light flared, morning shadows shortened and arched around, lengthened, blending with dusk and then stars wheeled giddily around New Ascension's south polar star. Night... day ... night... day.... It was kind of pretty. Karr had expected that. What he had not expected was the strange wall of green and gray which grew up from the horizon in every direction around him, up from the ocean itself, and which then hammered in at him, abruptly entombing him in motionless darkness.

LIV

Doing mission time is like doing a puzzle. You love the ship. You love the mission. But nothing changes. Each year is a day, but each day feels like ten years. Pieces of the puzzle cut themselves loose. Friends, family, entire planets disappear. The crux of the problem is, you somehow have to let them go and do your Duty. And then when that time of Duty is all over you have to build a new picture, without falling into negative things and using only the remaining mixed up pieces.