Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

Final comfort tempts it.

And it wants to be tempted.

Do not hold me back, tiny good!

Let me go!

Karr's hands twitched, but he did not reach for the Gattler. "I stopped keeping it alive a couple days ago." Karr confessed quietly. "I owed it that much, after all I put it through."

Jenette reached out as if to comfort Karr, but withdrew at the last second. It was so confusing, what he must feel, what she felt... and feared.

Karr said, "I'm sorry, Jenette."

"For what?"

"There's no more fugue."

"Oh, that. Don't be." Jenette fumbled into her breast pocket and withdrew a medical vial. "Our scientists finally biofactured a vaccine."

Karr turned around.

His expression was not as Jenette expected. Dried tears stained his face, but there were no tears now.

Karr's countenance was philosophical, weary, as if from long hardship, but accepting. He stared at the vial of vaccine.

"That is a great relief."

And then he looked at Jenette. Her throat tightened as he stared. She wanted to speak, anything to distract him from looking at her. She wanted to tell him about the fugueship-spawn, how satellite scans showed they were feeding and growing large on the local gas giant's rings. She wanted to tell him how the colony had rebuilt its beacon and sent a message to the rest of the human universe, and that a message had returned ten years later from a Major Vidun. She wanted to tell Karr how that major and a certain Dr. Uttz were moving the Pilot Academy permanently to New Ascension to take advantage of a planet full of Pilot candidates, so that when the fugueship-spawn became full grown fugueships, they would not have to wander the galaxy alone. She wanted to tell Karr how much she had missed him, and how she desperately wanted him to say how much he had missed her, and that he still loved her. And she wanted to throw her arms around him and for him to hug her back and tell her that it was all over and now they would never be apart again. But Karr's mouth gaped open, and the longer he stared, the wider it gaped.

"It feels like only twenty days to me," he said at last in a hush. "But it's not, is it? Everything changed while I was gone."

Jenette's vision swam. Karr reached out to her, but she slapped his arm away.

"Don't touch me!"

"Jenette, what? ?"

"I'm old!" she sobbed. "I'm old and weak and wrinkled and disgusting! Don't tell me you don't see it because I can tell by the look on your face. I'm twenty years older and you're young and handsome and exactly the same! And you don't love me anymore, and I don't blame you because I'm old... old!" She

was becoming an ancient, like Colonel Halifax and Dr. Yll and her father before they died. It was beyond horrible. Jenette wept uncontrollably.

Karr reached out again, this time weathering her blows to grasp her shoulders. "Wait a minute? ouch!

Stop hitting! Stop! Don't you think you're overreacting? Maybe just a little?"

Jenette settled a little, but continued to glare at Karr. "Don't tell me any lies Lindal Karr! Don't tell me age doesn't matter to you!"

"Okay," Karr said, not seeming to have the energy to get worked up about it. "That's fair. Age does matter to me, but not in the way you think." She started to squirm again. "Sssh. Think about it. How old were you when we first met? Well?"

"You know very well that I was twenty-three standard years," Jenette spat.

"And how old did I say you looked then, by off-world standards?"

Jenette scowled, "Fifteen?"

"Exactly," Karr agreed. "Fifteen. And now, twenty years later, do you know how old you look, by off-world standards?"

"I don't know," Jenette said quietly. "Old?"

"Thirty-five," said Karr. "And a very young thirty-five at that It must be the residual effects of all those hormone inhibitors. Don't you get it? I'm thirty-six. Your age is perfect."

"But I'm really forty-three. I'm still older than you."

Karr's mouth twisted, not quite into a full-blown smile. Karr's emotions had been beaten and bruised

? were still being beaten and bruised? too much, for that. But it was a start. "Jenette, I'm eleven hundred years old. You have a long way to go before you're older than me!"

Jenette sniffed, liking his logic, but still suspicious. "But the look on your face when you first saw me...

?"

"I simply couldn't believe how good you look as a full grown woman," Karr said. "I still can't. You're so beautiful. ..."

"Really? No patronizing and no pity?"

"Absolutely. I am too weary to beat around the bush."

Jenette's eyes grew big. She leaned up and planted a long, tender kiss on Karr's lips, which he did not seem to mind.

A throaty urrrrr carried through the night from the heavy lifter. "About time."

Karr squinted at the alien in the cockpit. "Arrou?"

"Arrou-Two," Jenette corrected.

Karr blinked. Had he been gone that long? Yes, he supposed, he had. "Don't you mean Arrou the second?"

Jenette shrugged. "I tried to explain it to them, but they wouldn't listen." She disengaged from Karr's embrace, so as to face the lifter, but stayed close. "There's also a Kitrika-Two, a Jenette-Two and a Karr-Two. They liked the sound of it."

"Who liked the sound of it?" Karr asked, feeling as though his brain was running at half-speed.

For an answer, Jenette keyed a comset on her collar. It bleeped and in response two old Khafra stepped out of the lifter's passenger module. "Arrou and Kitrika, of course. Duh."

The old male raised his bullet snout and called out. "Five hundred knots!"

Karr called back. "It's good to see you, old friend."

"Arrou glad to see Karr, too. Arrou has lots of questions. Arrou flies satellites into orbit when Jenette not using lifter for personal trips. Hrrrrmmmph."

Karr might have chuckled at the alien's annoyance, but water began to bubble behind him. He spun around. Long Reach was sinking. No doubt its iris-valves had relaxed, and the ship was filling full of water.

This was the final sadness Karr had been bracing for. He hurried over and held his head and hands as close as possible to the descending wall of hide. Karr had spent his time away from the realtime world learning from a strange source: in-bob. It had taken some effort, some forgetting of old, regimented beliefs and the learning of new, more intuitive ones, but Pilot Lindal Karr could now feel the moods, if not the exact thoughts of his ship. It was not as hard as he had imagined. You just had to open yourself up, to trust. While Karr had been keeping Long Reach alive, against its desire and at great pain to it, he had spent a lot of time practicing to open himself up and trust and listen to what it would be feeling at this exact moment....

It is floating away.

Into the Light jewels of ending.

But it does not forget.

Gratitude it feels, as warm nothing embraces it.

The hard, recent times are already forgotten,

A speck of discomfort in a life of contentment.

A wish it makes,

For the tiny good it leaves behind:

Do not be alone,

Do not be afraid,

Forever be un-sad,

Forever and always.

Ending comes.

That was what Karr had needed to hear. Forgiveness. It was the end of an era. Now Karr's life could move on.

"I'm not a Pilot anymore," he said, looking at the water-filled hole in the ground.

"Are you sad?" Jenette asked.

"Yes. But I will try not to be. Long Reach would not want me to be sad."

"No," Jenette agreed.