Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

Burke remained, giving Karr a stern appraisal. Karr prepared for trouble as Burke leaned close.

Would he break Karr in half, or request a kiss of his own? Karr did not relish the options.

"Jenette says hello," Burke said in a low voice.

Karr perked up. "Jenette?" he whispered back. "Where is she? Why haven't I seen her?"

"You are out of bounds," Burke said, with a significant jerk of his honest face at Tesla.

"I must speak to her? " Karr started to hiss.

Burke silenced him with a headshake as other colonists moved around them. "Be patient. Your goals are hers. She is working on them."

A commotion broke out in an adjoining dome.

Burke took the opportunity to slip away. "Be nice to Jenette," he said in parting, "or I'll have to break your arms."

What the hell did that mean, Karr wondered.

The commotion spilled in on the official gathering as the girls from outside rushed in through a back entrance. "There he is!" screamed the youngest looking. Bragg and his VF police tackled the first two, but the third screamer zigzagged between invited guests and before Karr knew what happened, body tackled him. He fell backward. She rubbed her twelve-year-old's body against his, grabbing his face and thrusting her tongue into his mouth. Karr tried to push her off, but thin legs wrapped around him like a vise. Her boyish pelvis rubbed against his crotch.

"I want you!" she breathed in his ear. "I want your babies!"

Colonists rushed to help, swamping in on Karr like an evil tide, too many and too close.

"Young lady! Control yourself!" Karr heard Tesla yelling from somewhere. Strong arms pulled the struggling girl off Karr. More clutching hands pulled him to his feet, brushing and cloying at his uniform.

"Are you hurt?" Tesla asked, his concerned face looming before Karr.

Karr's own voice sounded far away in his ears. "I'm fine," he panted, but it was a lie. The weight of people pressing in was too much for a fugueship Pilot. A circuit in Karr's brain snapped. Ingrained anthropophobia drowned his rational mind in a flood of panic.

Karr needed out. Now.

Suddenly his legs were carrying him through the agricultural domes, leaping over rows of bulgy vegetables, running out into a yellow-paved alley between the domes and a three-story hospital complex.

What sort of hospital had bars on the windows, his panic-stricken mind wondered.

Tesla, the VF police, and a horde of domestics swarmed out behind him. Karr looked frantically for somewhere, anywhere, to get away; he could not out run the quadrupeds. He fixated on a potential haven. Darting past two very surprised domestics, Karr ran through a restroom door and slammed it behind him.

Karr jammed the latch locked and leaned against the door, hyperventilating in his odd refuge. Organic looking toilet stalls, sinks, and urinals were built amid the spidering legs of a tree, Karr staggered over to a sink, jabbing and twisting until he figured out how to activate a timer bulb, and splashed water on his face.

There was pounding on the door. Karr ignored it.

He felt dirty, violated. He tasted the crazed girl's tongue in his mouth and smelled every one of a hundred repulsive handshakes on his fingers. Karr rinsed his mouth for a long time, then switched to hot water and washed his hands for even longer. The mirror fogged over. The stream of water described lazy circles around the drain as the island swayed.

Gradually, the pounding of blood through Karr's ears decreased.

"Pilot Karr!" came a muffled voice. "It's Consul Tesla. Please open the door."

"Just a moment," Karr gasped. "I need a personal moment." He turned on the other spigots to drown out further questions and kept washing. When his irrational mind finally admitted that further scrubbing would do no good, Karr straightened up and stood with dripping hands, looking for an evaporator, towel, or anything at all to dry off with.

Kla-tik, went a valve behind him. Foosh! Karr jumped as water rushed from tree pod reservoirs above him down through overhead piping and into a closed toilet stall.

Suddenly the empty bathroom was crowded.

An obese man, three times larger than Karr, stepped out of the stall hiking up his daysuit, and drew a basin of water. Everything about him was plump: the pudgy fingers dipping in water, the piggy eyes peeking out from fat-crowded eyelids, the full lips pursed in mirth at some secret joke. It all jiggled when he moved.

Karr watched the man suspiciously.

The man made a show of plucking a wide leaf from the living ceiling and delicately drying between his fingers. Remembering his own wet hands, Karr copied him.

"My name is Dr. Clarence Bigelow," the fat man said, conspicuously tossing the leaf into a compost hopper, "and you, sir, are a person I simply have to know."

Karr froze.

"And I don't want to touch you, either," Bigelow added.

Karr relaxed a bit.

"I don't believe any of that residual fugue nonsense, not a bit of it."

"Residual fugue?" Karr managed.

"Certain non-cognoscenti, an unfortunately profuse portion of our population it seems, believe that fugue oozes off Pilots and that if they touch you they can prolong their lives by a few miserable days.

That goes in there," Bigelow reminded.

Karr tossed his wet leaf into the hopper.

Bigelow straightened his immaculate daysuit and picked lint from crossed lightning bolt patches on his shoulders. "Do you know about Scourge?"

"Yes, a bit."

"Well, we worry entirely too much about Scourge around here. It gives us a rather... skewed outlook."

"I noticed," Karr said, stealing a glance at the door.

Whether he noticed Karr's displeasure or not, Bigelow kept right on talking. "I have heard of your exploits."

"You have?" said Karr.

"Certainly," said Bigelow, "They are quite impressive. Let me be the first to congratulate you on setting our ocean ablaze."

"The ocean is not actually burning," Karr said defensively.

"Of course not," Bigelow replied. "Your fugueship is electrolyzing salt water into oxidizer and fuel.

Nevertheless, a conflagration several kiloyards wide and who knows how tall, that's big, that's style!"

"It was unintentional," Karr assured. "I need to put it out to save what's left of my ship."

"Not to mention the ecosystem of our poor planet," said Bigelow. "Consider what just one small meteorite or a volcano can do to an atmosphere, and those are limited in duration, relatively. I wonder what is more stylish, boiling in greenhouse heat, or freezing from a premature ice age? I am exaggerating, you understand? by no means am I a planetologist? but you follow my drift?"

"Perfectly." Karr's imagination filled with images of devastating electrical storms, changing air and water currents, seas of dead ocean creatures, and clouds of moisture blocking out New Ascension's sun and either suffocating or freezing the tropical planet, both of which left a dark hulk in space. Karr slumped against the sink.

The outside door rattled again. "Pilot Karr?" Tesla called. "Are you sick? Do you need a doctor?"

"I am all right," Karr called back, not wanting to go back outside yet. He felt secure in the organic restroom. It reminded him of Long Reach.

"Let us know if you need anything."

"I'll tell Dr. Bigelow if I do."

"Bigelow?" the muffled voice said with a tinge of consternation. "Dr. Bigelow is in there?"

"Yes, Prime Consul," Bigelow announced, grooming his eyebrows with a flick of dampened thumbs.

"Attending to important Enclave matters."

Tesla became silent.

"Philistine," Bigelow muttered. Presently he extended a pinkie finger and traced three lines on the fogged mirror. "Let us examine your problem. Since I am in charge of the Enclave's power supply, I know a certain amount about these things." The lines on the mirror joined into a triangle. Bigelow labeled its sides fuel, oxygen, and ignition. "This is the combustion triangle. All three sides are necessary to sustain a fire, from a humble candle right on up to an inferno of your size. Remove one and the fire expires. Fuel is your best bet. See?" A Rubenesque hand covered one side of the triangle, "Without fuel there can be no combustion, even with oxygen and a source of ignition present. Likewise for the other two sides of the triangle. Ignition and fuel produce nothing if oxygen is removed from the equation.