Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

"Leave crawler?"

"We won't find any Ferals in a broken crawler, will we? Won't find your Tears or your Burning Heart, either."

"Urrr," Arrou grunted, disappointed.

"We have to make contact and if we don't do it at this island, we've got to find a way to keep going without the crawler." FI-716 was a big one, several kiloyards wide, but if there was no Feral population it was of no use.

Arrou scratched his jaw, thinking. "Make paddleboards?"

Jenette lit up. "You can do that?" A paddleboard was a shallow boat big enough for one person to lie face down on and paddle with arms and legs. Jenette had heard that Ferals used them to travel from

ring-island to ring-island, but she had never seen one.

"Yes," said Arrou, "on island."

Jenette looked askance at the fifteen-yard stretch between crawler and shore. "Of course, we're not on the island."

"Arrou go, with cable," he offered, pointing to the winch on the vehicle's front. It was dead without the generator, just like the six separate wheel drivers, but the cable could still be used to pull the crawler ashore by hand. The trick was getting across in the first place. The water was not safe and Jenette doubted the kelp skirts would hold her up, never mind Arrou. Their constantly curling, sprouting tendrils might even impede progress.

"It's dangerous," she observed.

"Go fast."

"Un-hunh." Jenette was skeptical, but hung over the front of the cab, unlocked the winch, and retrieved a hook-ended cable. Arrou stepped onto the cowling and she looped it over one of his muscular shoulders and under the other. "Ready?"

Arrou bunched his powerful back legs, butt wiggling in anticipation. "Ready."

Jenette slapped his wide back. "Go! Go fast!"

Arrou sprang forward, shoving the crawler deck down in the water and bounding a good five yards before splashing onto the weeds. He began to sink straight away, but did not slow, his sure footed claws grasping the thickest bunches of kelp. Jenette marveled at the display of athletic prowess; sheer speed kept Arrou from submerging. The winch whined, the crawler bobbing up and down as cable paid out.

"Go, go!" Jenette encouraged, catching a flurry of motion out the corner of one eye. Zigzags of water splashed up a few dozen yards from the crawler, like the motion of fish fighting on hooks.

Arrou missed a step with his clubbed paw. That leg sank up to his chest.

"Don't stop!"

Arrou struggled to pick himself up, but the unanticipated weight of the cable held him down. His mighty legs flailed in the water, half crawling, half swimming in the grasping ropes of kelp. More flurries of water appeared, drawn by the motion. They closed on Arrou with alarming speed.

"Faster, Arrou!" Jenette yelled. "Faster!"

The underwater disturbances converged on Arrou as he neared the shore. Jenette closed her eyes, afraid to look.

"Raaak!" Arrou howled. Jenette peeked.

Arrou lay on the embankment at the edge of the island, kicking a mottled, red torpedo shape: a sharkworm. Its jaws were sunk into Arrou's leg. His bullet head twisted back, lips retracting from teeth, and he sliced the yard-long predator in half, yanking the still-biting head off his leg and crushing it between strong, radial jaws.

"Are you all right?" Jenette called.

"Think so," Arrou gasped, wolfing down the large chunks of sharkworm which would later be ground in his gizzard. "Head taste good," he added, catching his breath and shaking off strands of wriggling tube-and-bladder weed. He gave a test yank on the cable. The crawler twisted in the kelp skirts, but swung back when he let go. "Wheels stuck."

Jenette reached into the cab and unlocked the hubs. Now the large wheels could spin freely. Arrou turned and, leaning on the cable like a tug-of-war contestant, disappeared into the lush jungle. Under his power the crawler ambled over the weeds and butted against the island. Jenette gathered the few useful items from the vehicle's cab, locked it down as best she could, and hopped ashore.

Arrou reappeared, picked up the other half of the sharkworm, and held the raw thing up as Jenette tied the cable to a tree. "Want some?" he asked, huffing hot, fishy breath at her.

Jenette's nose crinkled. "You caught it. You eat it." She checked the sharkworm bite on his leg. It had barely penetrated the thick hide, but, along with the broken crawler, it was an inauspicious beginning to their quest. What else could go wrong, she wondered? The jungle glistened darkly, its decomposing-plant smell much stronger up close. "Come on, let's make some boats."

Deeper and deeper they traveled into the island. And more and more Jenette realized how little she knew of the world they lived on and how frightening it all appeared. It was very different from the Enclave, which was all trimmed and cultivated, the unwanted eradicated and the foul-smelling replaced with the fragrant. Myriad plants grew under the canopy of FI-716 and the occasional shaft of sun filtering down through the jungle canopy did not ease Jenette's wary and dismayed eyes. She searched for familiar things, because there were no dangerous plants or animals within the Enclave's perimeter walls, but familiar things were few and far between and highly-outnumbered by the unfamiliar. The plants were most obvious, thick menacing bushes with oily blossoms and unpleasant bouquets, or brightly-hued creepers strangling haunted tree trunks. But there were unfamiliar sounds as well, sounds of moving things that tickled blonde hairs on the back of her neck and whispered nasty hints in her ears about what lay in wait for the foolish and unwary. Jenette remembered creepy tales Colonel Halifax had told her when she was very young. Even those things Jenette did recognize, like the ever-present brainturf (after the first ripe squish she tried to walk on roots or resin nodules instead), seemed larger and more menacing to her anxious senses. There were many dark holes underfoot from which creatures could spring from and neither she nor Arrou had so much as a big stick to defend themselves with.

After a tense couple of hours foraging, they had seen no sign of Ferals and Jenette had lost track of the direction from which they'd come. The sun was to the north, she reasoned, but ring-islands had a habit of slowly spinning, so that didn't mean much. And Arrou, in his quest for paddleboard material, was leading them into thicker and thicker growth.

"What are you looking for?" Jenette asked.

"Sailtrees."

"We've been walking all afternoon in search of sailtrees?" Jenette asked impatiently. "There are sailtrees all over. Look, there's one. And there's another, and another."

Arrou scrutinized every tall tree she pointed at, but dismissed them with a sniff and a toss of his head.

"Not right." He slunk into denser growth.

Jenette didn't like the look of the thickening foliage. So far it had been convenient to let Arrou lead, but even if Ferals lived there, maybe it was rash to plunge ahead in hopes of finding them.

Maybe they wouldn't like being bothered so close to home. She liked the idea of making paddleboards closer to the shore. "Do you know what you are doing?"

Arrou gave a curious shrug. "How hard can be?"

Jenette stiffened. "Haven't you made paddleboards before?"

"No."

"But you've seen it done, right?"

"Yes."

"Oh, good." Jenette was relieved. "So what's the problem? What's taking so long?"

"Find bodybags."

"Sailtrees don't drop bodybags for another six months," Jenette reminded him.

"Urrrkurrrkurrrk," Arrou rumbled, suddenly thoughtful.

"Even I know that."

"Forgot. Documentary not say."

"Documentary not say? You saw paddleboards being made in a human recording? You didn't learn from Ferals?"