Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

? Bondir Malda Pilot, fugueship Kismet,

One month after retirement.

It was ghutzu, of course, the root matter that formed the structure of New Ascension's floating islands.

Karr had anticipated the apparent acceleration of the world around him, but had completely forgotten about the already hyper-accelerated rate of plant growth on the planet. That, together with the explosion of the fourth spawn, which doused the local area in fugue, and which he would learn about later) produced the apparently instantaneous phenomena of his entrapment. Brown-gray root tendrils pressed in tight against his helmet bowl, looking like so many crowded worms in the faint light of in-suit readouts; they pried into the helmet's many fractures, widening the cracks enough for air to leech into the suit. They kept Karr immobilized, except for what little movement he could make inside the kilnsuit itself. It was a claustrophobic moment. Fortunately, a warning gage began to blink, distracting Karr. Fugue concentration was diminishing in the atmosphere within the suit. He steeled himself as fugue level dropped to zero. Soon enough his body wrenched, kept from doubling over by the confined space.

Fugue withdrawal hit, the familiar throbbing, thought-obliterating torment of a thousand hangovers. It seemed to last forever, Karr's perception popping in and out of realtime so that a hundred times the torment ended, but then resurged and stretched on again? as Karr knew it always did? which made the experience worse, for there was no naïve hope of a quick reprieve, only the resigned knowledge that he must tough it out.

Finally, Karr vomited in the kilnsuit.

Vacuum slots automatically sucked the mess away.

Realtime.

And with it, the temporary euphoria.

Even though morbid thoughts wandered loose in Karr's head, he giggled. He was entombed under the ground, no trace of light visible. No one could possibly know where he was. He was completely on his own. He could not scratch his nose, let along dig himself out. Aaaaah, quite humorous! How long would it take to starve to death underground? No, he corrected, thirst would kill him before starvation set in. He made a lighthearted attempt to use the suit's comset. The device appeared to be in working condition, but there was no response on any of the colony channels. Where was everybody? Had the null-fusion

explosion gone awry and vaporized them? If not, why weren't they looking for him. Didn't they know he was buried alive? Buried alive? Karr laughed hysterically. Time passed. Later, when the giddiness passed, Karr screamed and thrashed. Eventually, exhaustion set in and he slipped into a sort of waking coma, the last vestiges of his reason shutting off the unnecessary parts of his mind, as it also rationed sips of water from the supply nipple and turned off non-vital insuit systems.

A lot of unpleasant realtime passed.

A very long subjective time later, there was a crackling from within the kilnsuit, followed by a scorched plastic smell and a dimming of readout diodes. Karr turned off all the suit systems, vital and non-vital.

Karr began to hallucinate.

It was stuffy, hard to breathe. There were scratching sounds, as of insect legs or rodent teeth, gnawing. They got nearer, making his skin crawl. He could almost feel the unseen swarms taking bites out of his boots, his life-support powerpak, countless hungry things filling his suit, drowning him in crawly bodies. And there were blades! Sharp, raking knives, slashing at Karr from the dark. Zing! Zing! Searing gashes of light opened before his oxygen starved face. Karr clenched his eyes tight against the illusory brilliance. The blades tore at his cocoon. His helmet bubble collapsed, raining fragments into his suit.

Whoosh! Fresh air rushed in.

"Kruff, kruff, kruff?" asked the blades.

Karr shook his head, inhaling deeply. Gradually, his head cleared. He was not hallucinating. He was at the bottom of a burrow. Above, framed against a patch of blue sky, was an unfamiliar Feral.

"Kruff, kruff, kruff?" it repeated.

"I'm all right," Karr said with a thick tongue. He did not expect the Feral to understand, but a response seemed appropriate. "Just stuck," he added.

The Feral reacted as if it understood and began to burrow around Karr, freeing first his shoulders, then each arm, and working on downward. Karr flinched as tooth and claw slashed uncomfortably near his face, but the Feral was precise in its aim. Karr choked on root dust and itchy debris fell inside the kilnsuit, but that was the worst of it. A few rest breaks later, the Feral had chewed and ripped enough ghutzu away to grasp Karr under his arms and, digging in with its rear legs, drag him out of the pit.

Karr rolled onto his back, coughing and blinking. He was on a wide mound looking skyward. Long Reach's stern protruded into his field of view like a great religious obelisk.

Karr elbowed himself up.

A foreign world met his gaze. Rich, green turf sloped down from the fugueship, forming gently rolling hills that stretched off into the distance, dotted here and there with tousled patches of jungle growth, but never showing a sign of coastline, sinkhole, or ocean. What Karr had assumed was a ring-island was not a ring-island at all, or even several islands crammed together, but a small continent, sprawling as far as his eyes could see.

Things had changed while he was entombed.

"Where are we?" Karr wondered at the sight.

Now the Feral spoke a word that he recognized. "Gnosis."

"Gnosis?" Karr repeated. "All this? Gnosis?"

"Gnosis," the Feral repeated and pointed off to Karr's right. In that direction on the horizon was a pyramid shape, almost exactly as large as the portion of Long Reach that protruded above the ground.

Once that pyramid had been the island of Gnosis. Now it was the mountain of Gnosis.

"How can this be?" Karr asked, looking around, incredulous.

The Feral, who Karr noted was rather small and delicate for a Khafra, did a strange thing. It bowed down before him on forelegs, eyes averted, its glowbuds glittering like metallic gold, and uttered more alien words.

"Ghrrikitakadishtriss."

The Feral stayed prostrate for some time. Karr couldn't make sense of the behavior, other that the fact that is seemed to be thanking him for something. Touching the alien gently on its head, he urged it to its feet. "No, no. Don't thank me. Thank you for digging me out." Karr pointed at the nearby pit as the Feral rose to its feet trying to understand. Karr decided to try another strategy. "Karr, Karr," he said, thumping his chest like a fool. "Karr. Understand?"

The alien pulsed happily. "Pilot Karr," it said in a windy voice. Then, with a twinkle in its eyes, it thumped its own chest, rather theatrically, and said, "Kitrika."

"Aaaah!" said Karr, remembering that this was the female who hung around with Tlalok. "I'm pleased to make your re-acquaintance, Kitrika." Karr looked around. There was no Tlalok to be seen, but there were other Khafra scattered about the manicured-looking landscape. They were pacing individually, heads to the ground sniffing, or gathered together digging clusters of holes in the new earth. "I don't suppose you've seen Jenette or Arrou, have you?" Karr asked.

Kitrika made an effort to shrug like a human.

Karr checked out his fugueship. It did not look dead yet, he refleeted, wondering how long it would take a creature, whose blood was fugue, to die. Weeks? Months? He hoped not years. It appeared to be rooted into the living continent. He stripped off his kilnsuit and walked up to it. Its pulses were weaker than normal, but steady. Its exterior flesh, once raw and bloody after planetfall, was thickening into rough hide. Perhaps it could still be kept alive? NO! Pulling back a shuddering hand, Karr told himself that he must resist the urge to prolong its life. Long Reach wanted to die. He must respect that. He must let it die.