Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

Yes.

Tlalok would go where the blank-ones lived and he would show them what his True Shadow could do. He would hunt them down and kill them. And he would save the blank-one Karr for last. And when Karr had paid the price for all the Pact slain by the False Radiance, only then would Lleeala's memory be freed.

It would not be pretty.

No, by the shadow in Tlalok's heart, it would not be pretty.

PART THREE

THE BLANK-ONES

XX

Fugueship Kismet. 4609 A.D.

Olin Tesla and Pondur Yll stand over a porthole in the ship's fugue-free chambers. The round glass looks down on a silver-blue planet dotted with minuscule, viridian rings. The diminutive Yll is reserved. Tesla, brawny and stern, is troubled.

"Decide," says the older of two men in white behind them. Bondir Malda, Senior Pilot of Kismet, is wrinkled like fruit left in the sun too long.

Testa's mouth presses tight. "If we decline, will we be allowed to seed the next planet?"

Malda sucks his long teeth. "Refusal of seeding places dreamers at the end of the queue, as you well know."

"Maybe they'll get lucky," the younger man in white says offhandedly. Handsome in a hollow sort of way, Rookie Pilot Talaylan wears his uniform like a peacock flaunts its feathers.

Malda scowls at the thoughtless comment. "The other candidate systems this tour are not promising, Pilot Talaylan. In a best case scenario, one of the other dreamer groups might agree to absorb Representative Tesla's surplus population."

Surplus population. Tesla flinches. It is not a good option. He and his people will lose control of their own destiny, and forever be at the mercy of some less pure ideology. Like the one they left.

Malda continues in his aging parchment voice. "Worst case, refusal of seeding will find two thousand dreamers disembarked back on Evermore, ousted in favor of more daring individuals."

The old Pilot's words are spoken without sympathy ? or malice ? but Tesla feels the pressure of seeding regulations like a knife to his jugular. He stares hard at the planet below. "What do you think, Pondur?"

Dr. Yll recounts his findings cautiously. "I think... CG-423-B has a magnetosphere larger than necessary to shield against radiation. Gravity is close enough to one g as to be irrelevant.

Atmosphere: textbook nitrogen, oxygen. Weather: temperate to tropical all year round due to minimal axial tilt. The biosphere teems with diverse life-forms, including a possibly sentient species, and conserved DNA from the cross-section of specimens I collected approaches ninety-nine percent Terran. We breathe what they breathe and eat what they eat. And what they eat grows wild and plentiful for the taking. CG-423-B is a biological Elysium." The scientist motions out the porthole. "Just look at all that free water."

Tesla clenches his eyes to clear his thoughts, but an afterimage of the seamless silver orb hangs in his head. "I don't trust a planet without land."

"The apparent lack of plate tectonics is peculiar," Yll admits, "but we can mine the sea floor for metals and fossil fuels, and there is plenty of room to settle on the floating islands. We might eventually be able to link them into artificial subcontinents."

"So you say go?"

"I say it seems rather encouraging."

"I need a yes or a no."

Yll pulls at the tip of his high-bridged nose.

Tesla presses. "From your report, this world seems almost perfect. Is there a problem?"

"There is the matter of disease. ..."

"What kind of disease?" Tesla immediately asks.

"Actually, an apparent lack thereof. My specimens exhibited very little sign of it, in fact almost none, but it is possible those results were a consequence of rushed methodology. Obviously not a wide enough sampling."

Tesla scoffs. "No disease? Is that possible?"

"Very little disease," Yll re-emphasizes. "The large sentient species, which are most like us in biology despite their four-legged locomotion, exhibits no sign of disease of any kind. It is most peculiar. Dissection and analysis revealed no trace of harmful bacteria, viruses, cancers, or any other form of malady. A few symbiotic bacteria, but that's it. Of course the lower life-forms prey upon one another and their life cycles are rather rapid and short, but if one eliminates parasitism, there seems to be very little disease." Yll's pinched body language becomes more erratic as he futilely attempts to stifle his enthusiasm. "It goes against all my scientific training to make sweeping statements, you know that Olin, but... we may have stumbled upon a paradise. We may be on the verge of founding the first colony on a disease-free world!"

"We've got diseases," Tesla remarks, surprised at Yll's outburst.

"I applaud your altruism," Yll says, with building vigor now, "but concern for the native life forms is surely not primary."

"That's not the point," Tesla argues. "If there is no disease down there, what if the bacteria in our sweat kills off every living thing on the planet? We'd starve to death on a dead planet, that's what."

Yll argues back. "The entire biosphere seems to have evolved sharing slightly different mutations of a single super-potent immune system. I doubt they will be affected by our bacteria."

The scientist reflects. "It will be interesting to see if we might biofacture a version of their immune defense for ourselves." Yll takes a deep breath, as if coming to a momentous decision, leans closer to Tesla and speaks in a lowered tone. "You wanted me to give you a definitive answer and now I'm giving you one. I say yes."

Tesla clenches his hands over his heart. "I don't know Pondur. The seeding has to be viable for the Body Pure to survive."

"It will be viable. Olin, this is our chance, what we all talked about and dreamed about. What you made happen. This is our chance at the Body Pure. Life without corrupt air and corrupt bodies. Our minds our own. A New Ascension for those who have Fallen. Let's not let it slip away.

No one wants to go back..."

The old Pilot steps up to the porthole. "Decide now."

"We need more time," Tesla asks.

"Your chosen scientist has already expended the allotted weeks."

"But I should have been awakened at the same time," Tesla protests. "I am the representative of my dreamers and I did not get a chance to guide Dr. Yll's investigation."

"You were removed from dream capsules at the same time," Malda says. "We cannot be expected to allow for exceptionally slow rates of fugue withdrawal."

Tesla reaches out a conciliatory hand. "Please ? "

Malda jerks back. "Do not presume to touch me! Decide now or risk return to your..." he searches for the right word, "cosmopolitan homeworld."

Tesla growls at the thought. CG-667-A. Better known as Evermore. Summer on that green sphere brings flowering plants that fill the air with pollens that rival the most potent narcotics discovered by man. The planet's entire population is forced to migrate from southern to northern hemispheres and back again each year to stay in relatively unpolluted, winter environments. And even so, a huge proportion of the population is incapacitated at any one time, the narcotics polluting their bodies and minds.