Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

"We can't stop," she said to Karr. "Get us out of here."

Karr wasn't sure he had heard right. "Abandon him?"

"He'll be all right," Jenette said in a cold voice.

"Recovery is possible," Karr insisted. "I can maneuver right up to the tree."

"That's not the point. It's better this way."

Karr circled the shooting-star palm, unsure what to do. "But they'll rip him apart."

Arrou waited anxiously, preparing to leap.

"Are they ripping him apart now? Look! They aren't hurting him!"

Kant looked. The Ferals could easily have climbed Arrou's tree, but those around the base merely mulled around? unlike the snarling pack that jumped and gnashed at the air trying to get at the lifter.

"See?" said Jenette.

Karr hesitated. "This doesn't feel right."

"You have to trust me," Jenette said, becoming more desperate. She had to convince Karr before she lost her own weak resolve. She had to do what was right no matter how much it hurt. "Please! You're an outworlder and you don't know what's going on. I do. This is for the best."

Karr could not make a rational decision without facts. It all boiled down to gut instinct? and there were tears pooling in Jenette's eyes. Apparently she had not made her decision lightly.

Without further argument, Karr turned the lifter and accelerated away from the island.

Arrou's face fell, shocked and confused.

Karr looked back once to see the tiny figure waving frantically. Neither he nor Jenette saw Arrou jumping to the last tree on the edge of the island, nor did they see him sit quietly and hang his head, but

both Karr and Jenette? who, overcome by emotion and the recent bloodshed, doubled over, wracked by dry heaves? heard the mournful howl rise into the night as Arrou realized they had left him behind and were not coming back.

XIV

Life or death is not important. The cycle of life and death, that is the core of Pact. Death gives time for life to grow in. Life gives itself for death to feast on. One does not exist without the other.

? Feral aphorism

Imprisoned by the sticky substance, Tlalok watched the blank-ones flee into the night. Many Pact had fallen to their barbarism, as it had been for so many nights and seasons before. Tlalok looked down.

Water frothed where voracious mouths feasted on his dead brethren.

Their flashbuds had flared and dimmed as their lives were spent without fulfilling Pact.

Tragedy.

Their brilliance faded without being passed on. The Red Mouths would overflow before Balance was struck again. So many bondmates sundered. Many would pay so that others might live. Tlalok would offer himself up when the time came, but for now he lived. In pain. And the pain where the male blank-one gouged his face earlier that day was nothing compared to the pain of Tlalok's loss.

Tlalok thrashed at his bonds.

Members of the pack hurried into the jungle and returned a few minutes later with hungry grubs, placing them on the sticky goo. They then ladled ocean water over and dripped immune venom onto the wriggling masses. The worms grew, relentlessly doubling and tripling in number and consuming the sticky bonds with insatiable hunger. Tlalok directed the grubs to be used on others before himself.

Unfortunately, the grubs could not eat fast enough to save all. Some Pact had already lost their brilliance; the blank-one's substance had sealed off their breath.

"Harouuuuuuu," howled a sadness above.

Tlalok tried to shut it out, as he tried to shut out his own sadness. The male blank-one had killed Tlalok's bondmate, extinguished her light by felling the wind-grabber tree into hungry waters. There had been no time to find grubs then ... Lleeala had been the radiance of Tlalok's life, the radiance of their pack. Always they had followed her, and fought with her and lived with her as she shone, but now she was gone and there were lonely shades in Tlalok's heart.

Tlalok was half-blank. The glowbuds on his right side blacked out in the instinctive Pact way of mourning.

Why had he not killed the male blank-one when he had the chance, Tlalok wondered. Why did that blank-one taste like Pact? How could the impossible be true? And how could the blank-one have tasted so strongly of Pact? with the intensity of not just one, but many individual Khafra? Knowing that it was some kind of blank-one trick had not helped Tlalok overcome it. The blank-one had tasted of Pact? and

Pact did not kill Pact.

Freed pack members began applying grubs to Tlalok's sticky bonds.

Tlalok's sorrow at Lleeala's passing was such that if members of the pack had not gathered around him and loaned him their light, he might have surrendered to the blackness in despair, losing his light to sorrow without fulfilling Pact. After sorrow had come rage. Tlalok had shone that rage in the Clash of Radiance and it had united the pack under his Radiance? and the packs of neighbor islands, too. All now followed Tlalok. All were bonded by the unexpected Clash of Radiance.

How could there be a Clash without four moons swollen to fullness in the night sky? It did not fit the Balance. The Four Messengers carried small Radiances from the world of light into the world of night, just as shadows carried small darknesses from the world of night into the world of light, to keep the Balance. Without the Messengers there could be no Clash.

And yet there had been.

Tears had fallen. The birth of the Burning Heart glowed on the edge of the world...

"Harouuuuuuu," wailed the no-pact in the tree.

Tlalok was not the only one with a hole in his heart.

Pact circled around the no-pact's tree. They were unsettled by the sadness, but they did not look.

They must not corrupt their Radiance. It was the way.

"Harr-harrouuuuuu!" the no-pact keened.

The female blank-one, who came with the no-pact, had almost corrupted Tlalok's pack with her twisted words. Peace between blank-ones and Pact. Of course it was a trick, a vile deception to play on their hopes and longings. Tlalok had never seen a blank-one trying to communicate that way before.

So why now? To catch Pact off guard, that was why! To inflict further blank-one atrocities upon them. It had almost worked, only the female blank-one was not speaking the true Pact speech, but the loathsome pidgin speech used by enslaved no-pacts. Tlalok's pack members did not know it? and the female blank-one could not use the light-speech, which made up most of true Pact conversation. So Tlalok's pack had been slow to understand what she said. A little more time and they would have fallen for her corruption, but fortunately Tlalok did understand the pidgin no-pact speech and was able to silence the blank-one female before it was too late.

"Harr-harrouuuuuu! Harr-harrouuuuuu!"

When the hungry grubs finished their work, freeing Tlalok, he joined his pack at the base of the no-pact's tree.

Quiet! Tlalok flashed angrily.

"Left behind, left behind..."

Bile washed Tlalok's long tongue. He felt sorrow for the no-pact and Tlalok could not bear any more sorrow. More suffering would drive him to an extreme act. A severe thing. And he did not want to do it.

It would be out of Balance.

Silence! Tlalok blazed.

The no-pact's sadness recalled too many memories that Tlalok needed to shut off, not because the memories were sad, but because they were happy...

The place of new Radiance was thick with the breath of Pact. Their light warmed the enclosing petal walls of the giant blossom. Females moaned with the pain of creation. They lay in a ring around the Red Mouth at the center of the giant flower that enclosed them. Males like Tlalok knelt behind their bondmates, to give comfort, while mid-mates hovered in preparation for the wonder to come. The rest of the pack lined the curving, pink walls: the old, the young bonded pairs who had missed this cycle. None were excluded from the miracle of coming Pact.