Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

And so... empty. No chance for her to prove herself. No chance for her and her father to ever understand one other. In spite of everything, he was the only father she had. If only things could be better between them....

Jenette jerked her arm up and squeezed.

Pfish, the flare sputtered, and then whoosh! Up, up, a climbing green star, sizzling into the night on a trail of fading smoke.

The skimmer's rooster tail diminished as it slowed and turned back.

Still wrapped in the emergency blanket, Karr got up and rubbed sleep from bleary eyes. "What's wrong?"

"We've got company." Jenette pointed to the skimmer. "Enclave company."

Karr tossed the blanket and ran his fingers nervously through his hair.

Jenette wanted to flee as the skimmer hydroplaned toward them. The coming confrontation would not be pretty. Maturing body or not, she felt very much like a little girl about to get a spanking.

The skimmer nosed down beside the lifter. As predicted, there was only one human inside, but there were two domestics.

Tesla's voice resonated across the water. "Lose something, young lady?"

The alien seated beside Tesla flashed a happy yellow.

"Jenette, Jenette," Arrou yipped.

"Arrou," Jenette sighed, conflicted in her heart. It was good to see him, even though it meant her flight from the Enclave had been a total failure. She had not even ensured Arrou's life, and her father would see to it that she never got another chance. That was for sure.

Shifting attention to Karr, Arrou suddenly growled.

Toby growled, too.

"Quiet, both of you," Tesla commanded, climbing onto a stubby wing as the skimmer bumped into the heavy lifter. "Stay."

Tesla ignored the hand Jenette offered and hopped onto the lifter with surprising agility for a man of his years. Jenette resolved to be brave, not wanting to appear weak in front of Karr.

"Father, I? "

Tesla silenced her with an upheld hand, his glance saying I'll deal with you later. But as he looked from the stolen crawler, around the heavy lifter, and finally stopped on the man in the white uniform, his characteristic scouring expression faltered.

"You, you are a... Pilot?"

Standing stiffly, Karr gave the formal greeting. "Lindal Karr, Fugueship Long Reach."

"And..." Tesla wet his ropy lips, "and you are not from Evermore?"

Karr thought the question strange, but answered. "No, born on Planet of Industry, trained at Pilot Academy on Solara. Last stop was Sheldon's World."

Tesla reached out abortively, as if to touch and verify, but quickly withdrew, staking his fists over his heart and bowing his head. "The Body Pure."

Jenette expected a lot of reactions from her father, rage and retribution among them, but not the unguarded expression she saw when his head came back up. The overpowering aspect of Olin Tesla at that moment was awe, relief and awe.

"I have waited a generation for this day," said Tesla, gruff voice cracking. "I have prayed every night for twenty years. Blessed be the Body Pure. We are saved."

Thoroughly confused, Karr shook Tesla's hand.

XIX

Those who shine their own light cast their own shadows.

? Feral warning

The ring-island was caught upon the great pillar of Radiance, pulled in by wind rushing along the waves to feed the enormous fire, and then swept up, its Pact guardians mesmerized by the glorious light, until it was too late. Tlalok watched the Radiance pull the heavy island out of the water. The power was unthinkable. The island bent up as spears of brilliance tore it apart, flash vaporizing gouts of runoff water, incinerating the rising, exploding chunks, obliterating generations of careful tending in the space of heartbeats. The great Radiance silenced the cries of tiny Khafra forms, falling, cascading from the dying island, or swept up from paddle-boards on the surface. One heartbeat, there were hundreds-of-fours of tiny dots; the next, nothing but ash.

The Radiance was false.

At first, after the second unexpected Clash of Radiance, Tlalok's pack had flocked to the great wonder: a shaft of Radiance as wide as five islands, stabbing from the underworld up through the sky into the stars. A direct connection between Radiance and Shadow. The fulcrum of the Balance. The great Radiance called them like moths to a flame. They idolized it. And they had swarmed in, riding the islands-that-moved. One of those precious islands was gone now, destroyed by the terrible Radiance.

Fours upon fours of innocents perished.

Something was wrong. The Burning Heart had come, as foretold by the Tears in the sky. But it was false.

How could it be that the Radiance was false?

It was beyond Tlalok's imagining. Radiance that was false. No Pact had seen such a thing. Radiance was truth. Radiance was life. Radiance held the secret knowledge. And yet there it was. False Radiance.

Tlalok strove to make sense of it. The False Radiance was like fire, which was rare, but which Pact knew. Fire's colors cleansed the corrupt so that new truth might take root. But the False Radiance did not cleanse corruption. It was corruption. It destroyed the healthy, stealing innocent life, telling great untruths and leaving nothing but ruin in its wake.

Tlalok flashed warnings to his pack, calling them back, but his brilliance was nothing before the great corrupt light. His command took a long time to ripple forward. Tlalok entered the water himself, to get that much closer, to try to rescue as many as he could, but many more Pact were incinerated before his warning reached the forward ranks. More still passed after receiving his command, without fulfilling Pact, paddling furiously to escape, but unable to resist the mighty updraft, snuffed out like embers rising from flame.

Tlalok lay in the water a long time after they withdrew to safety, striving to find his own inner Radiance again, but he and the others were blank with shock.

How could Radiance be false? How? How!

And then word came. A blank-one dressed in white had been seen. When he came on a flying machine, the sky was clear. When he left, the False Radiance was eating the world.

And then Tlalok's fury was a hue to behold.

It was Karr, the blank-one temporarily forgotten because of the corrupt light. Tlalok knew it as certainly as he was alive. It was the blank-one Karr who had killed Lleeala, who had made Tlalok half-blank with mourning.

Karr had awakened a shadow in Tlalok's heart.

A shadow from before Lleeala. A shadow Lleeala had shooed away. Now this shadow wrapped around Tlalok's heart once more. Tlalok had come thinking to find the wonder of the Burning Heart and reap justice upon the blank-one Karr, but instead found False Radiance. The blank-one Karr had made the Burning Heart bad. He and all the other blank-ones had warped the world, with their enslaving and truth-twisting and death-cheating with the Pact of others. They had bent the world so much that there was now bad light.

And Tlalok knew what he must do.

The blank-ones must be eradicated, before the False Radiance destroyed the world.

Tlalok had the means to do it. Tlalok's grief on the first Clash of Radiance had grown his pack to hundreds-of-fours. His passion on the second night grew it to thousands-of-fours, even after all who died in the False Radiance. And it would grow still more. For until the bad light went away, there would be Clashes of Radiance for many nights to come. By the time Tlalok returned to blank-one territory, his force would be many more thousands-of-fours strong.

Tlalok knew where the blank-ones were weak and he knew how to strike them down. He knew because of his shame, because he had been a blank-one slave, because they had taken him and raped him with their Sacrament and put their shadow around his heart. They had created him, and he would be their undoing. Lleeala would not approve, Tlalok knew. He would beg her forgiveness in the great nothingness after Pact. But for now he would keep her cherished memory locked away and use his shadow to fight for the Balance. For if there cold be False Radiance, then there could be True Shadow.