Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

She needed fifty volunteers; one, two, or three made no difference.

Jenette did stop Burke's domestic, however. Rusty had been taken from the wild at an older age than most of the other domestics. Pointing toward the world beyond the edge of the ring-island, Jenette asked, "What's it like out there, Rusty? Is there some sort of religious or cultural hierarchy among the Ferals?"

"Hierarchy?" Rusty repeated.

"Who runs things? How do Ferals know who's in charge?"

Rusty considered. "How Jenette know who's in charge?"

"Yes."

"Find light," Rusty said without hesitation. "Go to light. Most light rules."

"That's not very helpful."

The alien shrugged fatalistically. "Rusty knows. Rusty dummy."

"You're not a dummy. Don't say that."

He sat patiently as Jenette pondered. "More questions?"

"Yes," said Jenette. "What would happen to you out there? What would happen to you in Feral territory alone?"

"Alone?" Rusty said, puzzled. "Never leave Burke."

"I know you wouldn't," Jenette said, "but what if you did. Try to imagine it."

"Hard."

"What if you didn't have a human, if Burke was dead, and you were out there. Would the Ferals take you in?"

"Oh," said Rusty, suddenly sad at the thought of Burke being dead, but he tried his best to answer.

Unfocused eyes searched back in time; to when he was very young and before humans kidnapped him from his native world. His colors became brighter, like the young domestics Jenette took care of in the nursery. His voice, when he spoke, sounded like those young domestics, too, "Pact not kill Pact."

"What's a Pact?" Jenette asked. "Is that what Ferals call themselves?"

"Maybe," Rusty said, the youthful glow vanishing. "Not remember."

"All right." Jenette scratched his head. "Thanks."

Rusty disappeared and, with a last look at Trum's tomb, Jenette left the glade too.

Whatever happened now, Jenette knew she was on her own.

Jenette walked around the front of the incinerator shed. Arrou was keeping watch from the driver's seat of the crawler. He hopped down and sat beside Jenette as she sat disconsolately on a stump.

"Meeting go bad?"

Jenette nodded.

What was she going to do now? She had not forgotten her pledge. No more domestics would die at her hands; Arrou must not die. But everything was turning against her. Her father, her conspirators, even the loyal domestic underground could not help. It all seemed so hopeless.

Jenette would have wept, but she was all cried out.

Arrou's eyes got big and his mouth pooched up sadly over his teeth. "Want back scratch?" he said after a while, paws shifting hopefully under him.

Jenette laughed sadly. "Not right now."

What was she going to do? With or without the help of her fellow humans, the Sacrament must be stopped.

After another while Arrou said, "Look."

For the second time that night, a shooting star streaked across the sky. It burned past the stars even slower than the first one had, in exactly the same direction and exactly the same path the first one had taken across the sky. What were the odds of that, Jenette wondered. A billion to one?

Jenette suddenly rose. She did not believe in signs, but if she did not act now, she never would.

"Come on Arrou. Let's go for a ride."

"Ride in crawler?"

"Yes, in the crawler."

"Where go?" he asked as they climbed up.

That was a good question. Jenette considered it as she slipped the vehicle into drive and followed a winding rut toward the mighty bastions which bounded the outer shore of the ring-island. She didn't actually know where the Feral seat of power lay, or even what kind of society they had, but it was out there somewhere and she was going to find it.

Jenette negotiated the crawler up over a mound of resin boulders. To her distress, when the vehicle's nose and headlights swung back down, the beams highlighted four startled Guards in a copse of trees.

One of them, as wide as he was tall, staggered and fell across the rutted road. Jenette jammed on the brakes, cursing.

Of all the bad luck.

The other Guards rushed to their fallen comrade. Two were as stupefied as he and not much help.

The third, a melancholy Corporal, stood at a wavering attention and barked at them. "Out of the road you Scourge-bait. Get out of the road before we pull shit shift for the rest of our lousy, short lives!"

Jenette relaxed, recognizing the voice, and leaned out of the cab. "It's all right, Corporal Toliver."

"Oh, false alarm," Toliver declared, slouching woozily.

The other Guards attempted, ineffectually, to get themselves into a semblance of order.

Jenette looked around to make sure no other Guards were in the area. There weren't any. And there were no domestics present, either. That was expected. Guards were under strict orders to keep their domestics locked in the military kennels, the theory being that that way Guards would not get too friendly with creatures they had to kill on a regular basis. Of course it did not work out that way, like all the rest of her father's hypocritical rules. The only practical effect was that because Guard domestics did not mix with the regular population of domestics, these Guards knew nothing of Jenette's underground conspiracy. Jenette knew them anyway. She had done them a lot of favors in anticipation of a time when she might need to be on their good side. Like, for instance, at that very moment.

"Jenette!" The three loudest Guards thrust their fists in the air. "Mook, mook, mook!" they roared in greeting.

"Shshsh," hissed Jenette.

The Guards fell shamefaced and silent.

One known as Skutch, an explosives expert, became overly serious. "You don't hate us, do you...?

We try not to hurt the little beggars."

"Yes," slurred Liberty, a musclebound female with a crew cut, all wide-eyed and weepy. "We really do. We don't even frag the big ones if we don't have to."

Like all Guards, these four were required to run Deep Recon Missions? a euphemism for kidnapping, as far as Jenette was concerned? into Feral territory to satisfy the Enclave's demand for young Khafra. It was a despicable practice, but they, like Jenette, were just trying to make the best of a bad situation.

And, as Liberty had said, they made a particular effort not to hurt the young Ferals or kill their parents.

"Of course I don't hate you," Jenette said.

"Oh, good," said Skutch, greatly relieved.

"We're blasted," the square-built Guard said in an exaggerated whisper.

"Maggot, Maggot, Maggot!" the squad chanted.

"Grubb! It's Grubb!" the square-built soldier protested. The others chortled. Quickly forgetting the snub to his family name, Grubb conspiratorially held up a flask for Jenette to see. "This is popskull."

"Really?" said Jenette, impatient to be gone.

"Yeah," Grubb confirmed. "Want some?"

"No thanks."

"Oh." Grubb considered, drunkenly. "Well, it's an acquired taste."

"Yeah," said Liberty, taking a long swig from the flask. "And we all acquired it!"

"Fuck, fight, hold the light, and carry out the dead!" Skutch chanted.

"Except no fucking," said Toliver.

"De-fin-ate-ly not," Skutch leered. "Fuck, drink, and be merry and tomorrow we will die!"

"Speak for yourselves, shitheads," Liberty taunted, good-naturedly.

"Rub it in, bitch!" the men retorted.

Strained laughter.

Jenette noted that one of the Guard's number was absent. "Where's Mok?"

"Standing graveyard duty on Gate Four," Toliver answered. "Stupid bastard."

"Dumb-ass, stupid bastard just about got us on shit detail, too," Liberty interjected.

"Got caught whacking off," Grubb slurred.

"No more monkey-spanking for him," Skutch agreed. "He's wearing the stiffy-detector."