Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

Arrou tilted his head and looked hurt. "How?"

Jenette instantly regretted her previous words. Of course Arrou had not learned from Ferals. He had been captured when just a kit and hadn't seen a wild Khafra since. The reason they were tramping through untamed jungle in search of Ferals, who had every reason to kill them on sight, was to put an end to that very practice.

"Well," Jenette considered, gazing at the trees around them, their leaves sagging in the heavy, still air,

"maybe a green body-bag will work."

Arrou brightened, literally, at that suggestion and they spent the next while looking for sprouting bodybags. There were buds on high branches and some were quite big, even out of season. Jenette saw that with a little luck they might find one big enough for her or Arrou, but just about the time that Arrou spotted a likely looking bulge behind a collapsed sail leaf, Jenette began to fret once more. The afternoon had become hot and oppressive, so that only the scuffling or peeping of New Ascension's most energetic creatures was heard. But now it became dead silent. Arrou went stiff, head outstretched on his neck, jagged breath drawing air past the nasal plates in the roof of his mouth.

"What is it?" Jenette whispered.

"Not know," Arrou whispered back. "Smells like pink."

"Smells like pink? What's that supposed to mean?"

"Trouble. Funny smells."

"Feral smells?"

"Not know. Wind weak." Arrou's ear pits, small depressions at the crest of his head, flared wider.

"Rrrr," he rumbled. "Something coming."

Jenette's heart raced. "Is it Ferals?" she pressed.

"Maybe," Arrou conceded, "but other somethings come, too." He turned away, presumably in the direction of the shore. "Go back."

Jenette had a similar impulse to flee, but resisted it. "No. No, we stay."

"Ferals not safe," Arrou protested. "Jenette alone. Jenette unarmed."

"That's why you're here," she admonished, "to protect me. Besides, this is what we came here for and I'm not going to run away without even trying to make contact."

Arrou didn't like it. He shuffled from side to side, his back emitting a warning display as the distant rustling of foliage grew loud enough for Jenette to hear. It amplified rapidly, crashing and snapping with a certain frenzied rhythm.

In her mind Jenette ran over the Khafra words Arrou had taught her. Rikit-ee-brikhauss. She hoped she would get them right. "You might have to help translate."

"Urrr."

Suddenly a panicked bleating, like a child yelling through a hose, resonated and the greenery burst apart. An olive-furred creature with long legs and a body made up of three melon-sized spheres crashed into view, tube mouth yowling. It leapt sideways to avoid Arrou, its yowl Dopplering lower in tone as it careened past Jenette.

Arrou shot her a look, longing to go.

Jenette was getting pretty panicky herself. More creatures crashed through the foliage around them. A few she recognized: mlums, forfaraws, and wompets. Most she did not, like the small hairless ones with long tails and hopping gates, or the larger ones with thick, bristled bodies and forward stabbing tusks in massive jaws. For a place that had appeared deserted minutes before, the numbers were phenomenal.

"Can't let a few herbivores scare us off," Jenette said, trying to sound brave.

"Not afraid of herbivores," Arrou huffed. "Ferals hunting herbivores. Hunters not want talk. Hunters want kill."

Two of the bristly creatures bowled Jenette over. She scrambled back up, shaken. Maybe Arrou had a point. Maybe Ferals hot with blood lust would not be in a diplomatic frame of mind. Maybe it would be prudent to wait until after their hunt. "Okay, let's get out of here."

Arrou instantly bounded off with the flow of animals and Jenette followed, but if he was hoping for safety in the numbers of the stampede, it was not to be. Jenette could not run as fast as the four-footed prey creatures. Arrou had to check up and wait for his human companion and they were quickly left behind as another noise grew to their rear, not a panicked desperate noise this time, but a measured one, spreading out on all sides.

"Hurry," Arrou exhorted, leaping ahead.

Jenette began to recall Colonel Halifax's stories in more detail, she remembered how he had earned all

those ugly red scars in Feral ambushes, and how he had told her that Khafra in the wild grew larger and more ferocious than domestics. Arrou was big enough already. She tried not to think of a bigger creature with bigger claws, longer teeth, and thicker armor.

Jenette ran faster. She and Arrou plunged through pools of light and shadow, leaves whipping their faces, slick molds greasing their steps.

"Owwurr," Arrou cried as they crashed through a stand of hitchhiker brush. Cashew-shaped burrs clung to Jenette's clothes. Arrou's velvety snout bled from a dozen tiny scrapes.

The noises behind accelerated.

Arrou raced back from scouting the path ahead. "Dead end, dead end," he said and bounded off in a different direction.

There was motion behind the curtains of leaves now, shimmering smears of green on green, like heat waves on water. Jenette's legs complained; gasps of air burned her throat and she fell further and further behind.

Arrou paused to wait.

"Keep going!" she ordered. "Get away!"

Arrou stubbornly refused to move. "Impossible."

Jenette stumbled up to him, expecting Ferals to burst out of the foliage any instant. Arrou hunched his shoulders and bared his teeth, prepared to go down fighting. His back shimmered defiant waves of orange.

This was not the peaceful encounter Jenette wanted.

"Hide!" she cried.

"Okay."

Like turning off a switch, Arrou's defiant markings vanished and his thousands of glowbuds became a perfect imitation of the mottled forest around them.

He disappeared.

"You'll have to teach me that sometime," Jenette said, as exposed as ever. Looking around wildly, she dove under a fallen log by the foot of an enormous moss heap. Whoof! Arrou dropped his four hundred pounds on top of her as a flurry of feet rumbled up.

This would be the end of her little crusade, Jenette realized. Surely the Ferals would see her, and if not they would certainly smell her. Would the Ferals rip them apart all at once as a pack, or bit by bit in revenge for all the misery Jenette's species had inflicted upon them? Jenette's heartbeat pounded in her head. Primal fear blotted out the higher functions of her brain. She waited for the characteristic howl that Arrou made when he trapped a small animal.

The ground shook, but no chorus of victory howls arose. Instead, the log slammed down onto Arrou and her as an unknown prey animal vaulted off of it and fled, a gangly, pinkish smudge as seen through the corner of Jenette's eyes. The hunters stampeded past. When the vibrations ceased and Jenette could bear Arrou's weight no more, she shoved at his knobby flank.

"Get off," she gasped.

He rolled off and they looked around. The jungle was empty again. Leaves were trampled and branches broken, but the hammering of feet receded and there was no sign of Ferals to be seen.

Jenette didn't believe it. The Ferals had passed them by.

"What was that all about?"

Arrou shook his head and sniffed. "Funny smell," he said, perplexed. "Funny, flowery smell."

X

It is a demanding life. Full of bittersweet accomplishment and distant, rare glory. Many times it is harsh. Always it is lonely. But it is the only life we know. And there isn't anything any of us wouldn't do to prolong it a month, a day, a few sweet seconds more.

? anonymous Pilot

Karr ran through the jungle, emotions numbed by the loss of his fugueship, body fatigued from too many hours without sleep. The ghimpsuit had kept Karr's muscles in good condition during Long Reach's