Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

"Ghimpsuit."

"Whatever. Take it off."

Karr blushed, acutely aware that Jenette wore nothing more than a few streaks of pollen. Saffron smudges curved fully where a young woman should curve fully and stretched long where a young woman should stretch long. Her breasts sat high and perfect. Her hips beckoned seductively. Karr's breath became shallow and rapid.

"I don't think you really mean that," he said quickly.

"I don't? Why wouldn't I mean what I say?"

"Because you're sick."

"I feel great."

Karr stumbled backward as she drew nearer. "Oh?" he stammered. "You didn't feel sick after waking up, not at all?"

"Weellll," Jenette admitted, "at first I threw up. But I feel fabulous now." She grabbed hold of Karr's ghimpsuit. "How does this unfasten?"

"Never mind that," Karr objected. "You are suffering from post-fugue euphoria. If you just wait a while, it will pass."

"I don't want it to pass."

"But it's not real."

"It's as real as we want to make it."

"It's biochemically induced!"

Jenette abruptly seized Karr's face in her hands. "Look here, gloomy-man, do you love me or not?"

Karr gulped. He glanced around, but there was no one around to help him. He could not even see his ship, the emotional anchor of most of his adult life; it was blocked by a cluster of newly grown trees. He was truly on his own. "Ummm..."

"Not the right answer."

"I suppose... that is, I guess? "

"Nope. Unacceptable." Jenette shook Karr's head from side to side. "Try again."

Karr sighed. "I don't want to take advantage. I don't want you to do anything you might regret later."

Jenette fixed an icy Tesla stare on him. "Don't think, Pilot Lindal Karr, that just because I feel euphoric that I would do anything I don't want to do. I'm not a little girl."

"No," Karr agreed, sweating. "I can see that you're not."

"So?"

"So..." Karr said, abruptly resembling the sad and vulnerable little boy who was taken from the Planet of Industry so many centuries ago. "So, I love you."

"That's better," Jenette said, kissing him hard, "because I love you, too."

LV

Three things being a Pilot will do for you: It will take you to a crossroads. It will harden you. It will kill you.

? Bondir Malda's suicide note,

Two months after retirement from Kismet.

Jenette dreamed:

The proto-man lays before her, in its clothes of white, the color of true love. She has taken good care of it. The seam around its cranium hardly shows. In a jar nearby is its boy-brain. She sweeps the container to the floor. Crash. That won't be necessary any longer.

She opens a ceramite chest. Within, cradled in satin, is a shiny, new brain. Long she searched for it. Hardships she surmounted to acquire it. Tears she cried to feed it. And now it is just right.

It is a man-brain.

She unlocks the man-body's head. Places the man-brain in the empty cavity. Seals it up.

Now the man-body is alive. Now she cannot play with it like a toy. It has its own will. Its own wants. Its own ? she hopes ? lusts. Now they must play together, woman body to man-brain, man-body to woman-brain, or not play at all.

It grabs her. She is afraid, but excited, too. How will this dream end?

It ends in blossoms.

Her lips wandered over his lips. Exposing, teasing, pressing. He enwrapped her in his arms and she entwined him in her legs, pressing him into her. They moved in the yellow sunlight, caressing, moving with one another as yellow flowers changed color and bloomed white around them, unfurling. Velveteen petals and stems caressed them, changing in perfume as their passion peaked and renewed, reinventing and reinvigorating. The woman, the man, and the field of blossoms made love as the planet made life about them.

Karr held Jenette tightly when it was at last over.

"I've found my home," he said.

Liberty, naked and looking disheveled, wandered into view. Karr lay on his back with Jenette draped lazily over him, both equally as unclothed as the Guard. She spotted the couple and waved.

"I've had sex!" she shouted, sauntering over and looking like the cat that ate the canary. "Six times!"

she elaborated. "With three different guys! And they wanted to. I think the lot of them grew balls overnight. Not that I'm complaining!"

"I'm glad," Karr said, smiling rather stiffly. Liberty was a stunning, heavily framed woman. Muscles rippled when she moved. Karr had an unsettling image of her popping his head between her strong legs like a grape.

"Thanks," said Liberty. She clenched a fist victoriously. "It was great! Say," she added, on a second thought, "you two are cute. You wouldn't want to, you know, have some fun...? Nah, didn't think so.

Catch you later!"

Liberty sauntered on, presumably in search of her next conquests.

"It's pretty amazing about the Khafra," Jenette commented in an idle moment, later.

"What is?"

"How they didn't fall asleep from the fugue."

"They didn't?"

"Nope. Not a single one of them."

"Wow," said Karr. That explained why in-bob had not fallen into fugue -coma inside of Long Reach.

It wasn't because of a billion in a billion chance. It was because he was part of an entire race of potential Pilots. "Wow," Karr repeated. It made sense. Immune venom was related to fugue. Khafra had to be resistant to its paralyzing effects, otherwise every Khafra Karr had ever encountered would have been lying in suspended animation. He knew of some Pilot Academy instructors who would love to know about New Ascension's secret.

"I've got one for you," Karr said. "The Ferals think that it was me who caused the last fugueship-spawn to explode. It wasn't. It was in-bob." Karr told Jenette the story of the minutes leading up to the spawning.

"A Pact saved a piece of the light after all," Jenette observed. "A real indigenous Pact, not a doppelganger Pact like you. The Prophecy was right. The Judges will be happy to know that."

"Maybe we should tell somebody."

"Mmm," Jenette replied, a purr entering her voice, "but we don't have to tell them right away, do we?"

"Decidedly not," Karr said in response to her naughty, roaming fingers.

They resumed playing dueling reproductive games with the flowers.

A few duels later, Tlalok appeared, striding into view with the Judges scurrying along behind him. He honed in on Jenette and Karr like a heat seeking missile.

"Human Karr, human Jenette," Tlalok greeted. "Tlalok has been searching for you."

Jenette said, "Hello, oh Keeper of the Roots of Wisdom, oh Radiance of the Pack of Gnosis."

"I guess that means he succeeded Kthulah?" Karr mumbled to Jenette.

Jenette nodded.

"Congratulations," Karr said, a bit awkwardly, to Tlalok; Karr was still a bit intimidated by the fierce Khafra. Tlalok bowed his head slightly. "And please thank Kitrika for digging me out," Karr added.

"Urrkurrkurrk," Tlalok rumbled. His colors formed unsettled, regret-tinged splotches.

Jenette hissed at Karr. "The Radiance of the Pack of Gnosis must have no bondmate. All lesser-radiant Khafra offer up small amounts of Pact to keep him, and the Judges, alive. That way Khafra leaders are sort of bonded to those they lead. It keeps them Balanced."

"Ah," said Karr, not understanding, and not truly wanting to, either. Alien mysticism was always a brain-bender.

"Developments unfold," Tlalok said, impatiently, to Jenette. "Forces of Gnosis have captured traitor humans on Jenette's home island."

Jenette, who had been quite relaxed, was suddenly all business. "How many?" she asked, sitting up and brushing pollen off her breasts and thighs.