Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

Body, domestics were everywhere and saw everything, every argument, discussion, and decision, no matter how small. Nothing escaped them.

During three years as Subconsul, Jenette had first tapped into that unplumbed pool of knowledge and then put it to use, using it to find other colonists who believed as she did, that Sacrament must end. To her surprise, it was not a small number. Many were scientists, disillusioned by twenty years of fruitless struggle to find a cure for Scourge, but most were just ordinary colonists who feared the tenuous balance between survival and disaster, and longed for a better way. None of these people could meet in person, but they could safely conspire through domestics gathering together for other purposes? a forbidden funeral, for instance. Any domestics taking part would be punished if discovered, but it was unlikely that authorities would suspect a more secret, underlying reason for the breach of Enclave law.

Tonight Jenette would put her conspiracy to the test.

"How do you feel?" asked Burke's domestic, Rusty.

Jenette stood, heart racing. "I feel, yellow," she said, carefully choosing the Khafra mood color for excitement. But she could have chosen gray, the color of uncertainty, or orange, for apprehension.

"Yellow, Jenette feels yellow," murmured the ghost army.

"My father made me a full Consul," she added ironically.

The domestics rippled gentle turquoise against the deep green glade. "Good. Good. Full Consul good." They trusted her. They respected her.

"You all understood my question?" Jenette asked, referring to the content of Arrou's surreptitious flashing that day.

"Question asked," they domestics replied. "And understood."

"Then what is the answer? Who supports peace with the Ferals?"

The glade lit up with the colors of unanimity. "Peace good. No more Sacrament. Humans and Ferals fight Scourge together," the domestics said.

Jenette held her breath. Of course the domestics supported peace, their lives depended on it. Now the critical question, the reason they were all there. "And which humans will join in the envoy to go and make peace with the Ferals?"

The glade went dark. Not a flicker or a glimmer.

Only Rusty raised his head. "Burke goes."

Jenette shook her head, not feeling very yellow anymore. "Burke cannot go." Jenette would not risk the father of the only children on the planet, even if they were as yet unborn. She searched the glade for any further glint of support. The darkness was eloquent. "No one else will go?" Jenette said in disbelief.

"Not one more human supports our cause?"

Reluctant tones were heavy on the glade and a voice called from the back. "Not want to tell. Not want Jenette blue," it said, using the human color metaphor.

"Not want Jenette blue," the others concurred.

"Never mind what color I am!" Jenette said. "Tell me what your humans said."

And so the domestics told her, one by one, not meeting her eyes and hating the words they spoke.

"Kora supports Jenette, but cannot go ... want Onos to go, but Onos not go ... Prebecca supports, but not husband...." Jenette's heart sank as the bad news went on.

She walked among them, hunting out a specific Khafra. "What about Dr. Yll?" she asked.

"Wants peace," his domestic offered half-heartedly.

"But will he go...?"

"Will not." The domestic hung her head in shame. Jenette hung her head, too. Dr. Yll was the leader of New Ascension's scientists. If he would not join, then none of them would.

"Jenette blue," Rusty bemoaned and the glade went blue like a lonely midnight sky. It was hybrid domestic-human behavior; blue was the Feral color of serenity.

Anxious to please, Colonel Halifax's domestic spoke up. "Halifax will go, if Body votes."

Jenette touched his head gently in passing. "The Body will never take the risk, Patton. That's why we need a secret envoy to take a peace offer to the Ferals." Jenette felt certain that Ferals, as sentient beings, must want peace. And if she could get a promise from them to cease hostilities, then she could force the Body to vote against her father. Sacrament would end. The constant fighting would stop and things could really begin to change. That was what the whole clandestine domestic-human conspiracy was supposed to be about.

She stood dejectedly beside a decaying hulk. "What's wrong with us?"

"Domestics support Jenette," Rusty consoled, the others flashing agreement.

"No," said Jenette, tapping her chest. "What's wrong with us humans?"

There was no answer for a long time, but then a domestic said, "Humans fear."

"Safe to do nothing," added another.

Jenette shook her head in disgust.

A shy domestic named Bronte spoke up. "Bigelow says yes."

There, at last, was a ray of hope. Dr. Clarence Bigelow was a black sheep among New Ascension's scientists, but he was also smart and persuasive.

"Why didn't you say so before?" Jenette asked.

"Not want Bigelow to go," Bronte protested.

"It's your life at stake," Jenette emphasized. "Don't you want to stop the Sacrament?"

Conflicting colors played across Bigelow's domestic. "Yes, but not want humans to die," the alien reasoned. "Ferals demand humans stop Sacrament before making peace. That means humans die."

"Not if the Ferals help us find a cure for Scourge," Jenette countered.

"But can Jenette guarantee Ferals have cure?" Bronte persisted.

"No," Jenette admitted. "I can't."

Jenette believed Ferals had the knowledge, but she could not guarantee it. And that, she knew, was the reason her conspirators had deserted her. To stop Sacrament before having a cure for Scourge was to throw dice with death and hope you didn't crap out; her fellow humans were not willing to commit suicide for a cause, no matter how noble.

Jenette understood. She did not want anyone to commit suicide.

Jenette believed that the Sacrament must end or all human life would die out on New Ascension.

Humans and Ferals had once existed peacefully. In the initial months after planetfall, before her father invented Sacrament and the Feral Wars broke out, colonists had begun to trade and share knowledge with the Ferals. That Feral knowledge of indigenous plant life had led human scientists directly to the discovery of the highly successful hormone inhibitors. But then had come two decades of war. In that time the scientists had still not discovered a cure for Scourge? and Jenette did not think they ever would without a greater understanding of the world around them. They simply did not have the ability to acquire such knowledge, not when no human could leave the battlements surrounding their tiny island without armed escort. Ferals, on the other hand, had been on New Ascension, watching and observing, perhaps recording knowledge, for a very long time....

Without Feral help, it seemed clear to Jenette that humans would never find a cure for Scourge. They would continue to follow the same awful path of Sacrament. Inevitably a day would come when there were no more Feral litters to raid from the local area. Domestics would die and not be replaced and then humans would die, succumbing to Scourge one by one until there were no humans left on New Ascension.

But with Feral knowledge and human science combined, who could say how rapidly a cure for Scourge might be discovered?

Unfortunately, Jenette had no idea how her conspiracy, now reduced to a conspiracy of one, was going to accomplish these goals. It was a bitter disappointment.

"Go home," she said to the assembled domestics. "You have done your best."

By ones, twos, and threes, domestics flashed good-byes and filed out, vanishing into the darkness as magically as they had appeared. There was no question of the domestics forming an envoy. No domestic would leave his bonded human. Jenette didn't even stop Bigelow's domestic as the alien passed her by.