Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

Bob finished that day doing things to Long Reach that his friend Karr would not have approved of.

Bob used the Gattler he took from Karr. A needle in a fuel bladder here, another in a flow constrictor there. Bob didn't know what he was doing, specifically, but he didn't care either. These tricks worked for Karr, so why not for Bob?

Besides, they were necessary. As Karr had pointed out, the shortsighted authorities on Evermore would not understand Bob's divine purpose. They would condemn him. They would lock him up. They might even hurt Bob, and that would never do. Authorities were to be avoided.

Bob slept again before checking in on his buddy.

Karr was still under the fugue purifier with the hoses in his nose. Bob twitched, recalling the icky rush of fluid through his own sinuses.

"You'd think they'd come up with a better way to do that," Bob said lightheartedly. "Ah, never mind."

Of course they would not figure out a better way. Nobody cared about what he and Lindal had to go through.

"See you later, buddy."

Bob spent the next day shoving backstabbing bastards out through the airlock. The backstabbers thought they had the last laugh on Bob, but they were wrong. Trip after trip went by, carry a load out, eject, and return for more. It was Bob who laughed the loudest. Once in a while, Bob took a break, to rest in his empty fuel bladder hideout. Items pilfered from storage made a jumbled nest around his bed mat. At these times Bob's mind would race, like a rodent retracing the same maze over and over.

Bob remembered Sheldon's World. He remembered the coming Armageddon: a freak swarm of comets on collision course with Sheldon's World. He remembered thinking they would all die. But he also remembered his discovery...

They thought they were so clever. They thought no one else saw their plans to flee Sheldon's World

and leave everyone else to fry or get squished. But Bob saw. Bob was a cargo boss at the time, restocking Long Reach with a crew of grunts, who worked in space-suits to protect them from dropping into fugue- coma. One day when he was alone, Bob opened a bunch of crates and saw what was inside.

Booty. Art looted from public galleries, hordes of precious metals and gems, storage cubes full of technical secrets that would set them up in style on a different world.

Bob kept this discovery to himself. No one willingly challenged authority on Sheldon's World. It was clean and orderly because laws were harsh and punishment harsher. The citizenry liked it that way, so twenty million pairs of peeking eyes kept a lookout for boat-rockers. Any revelation of what Bob knew would at best lead to martyrdom and Bob was not into that. So Bob did nothing until the day he fell and cracked his helmet.

To his shock, Bob did not black out as fugue -laced atmosphere hissed into his suit.

No one had to tell Bob what to do then. When Long Reach accelerated out of system bound for Evermore? a suitably cushy destination for fleeing cowards? Bob stayed on board. At first, he didn't feel much guilt over abandoning the rest of the planet's population to die, but about halfway from Sheldon's World to Evermore, when Bob knew beyond a shadow of doubt that everyone on his homeworld had been wiped out, he did begin to feel shame. After all, if he hadn't been so concerned with saving his own precious skin, he could have warned someone about what the backstabbers were up to. Bob began to feel cowardly and to despise himself. It was at this point that he began to idolize Karr, who was everything honorable that Bob was not. It was also then, between the stars and far from watchful authorities, that Bob stopped dosing up, dropped into slowtime, and began making a twisted penance for his sins? by shoving Karr's passengers out the airlock. Day after subjective day, week after subjective week, Bob's toil continued.

One day, some time after their chat in the dreamchamber, Karr surprised Bob by appearing on Wendworm Way, still as a statue, but with the concerted look of a man who has places to be and things to do.

Grinning, Bob poked Karr in the chest.

"Hey Lindal, you got a drop of fugue on your ghimpsuit." Karr did not look down as the joke demanded, but Bob flicked him under the nose anyway. Then he went back for another body, chuckling all the way.

Fourteen trips later Bob got bored.

Bob laid his present burden across Karr's arms and shoulders. The ghimpsuit fibers tightened up like muscles to compensate for the extra load. Bob knew that Karr's own muscles were of little use in fuguetime. Even in the relatively low gravity caused by the fugueship's deceleration, Karr could not support his own weight without the ghimpsuit. The suit even exercised his muscles with electrical charges so they would not atrophy in low gravity. It was an amazing piece of technology all right. Except for showers, Bob never saw Karr without one on.

Bob was only two times slower than realtime, so he didn't need a ghimpsuit to move around. Bob could talk with his own vocal cords and everything. Sure the ghimpsuit fabric also protected against foodyeast contamination, but it was hot and sweaty.

Bob smirked. It was kind of funny the lengths his naïve buddy went to decontaminate, when he, Bob, had missed several decontaminations and it hadn't affected him in the least. In fact, it had increased his mental capacity; it was only after missing the decontaminations that Bob got the fabulous connection between airlocks, the backstabbers in the dreamchamber, and what he could do with them in

combination. Yes, that was when it all started to make sense.

Still smirking, Bob examined Karr's face. Bob had come upon Karr during a blink, so Karr's eyes were closed. With thumb and forefinger, Bob rolled one of Karr's eyelids open. The pupil did not register Bob. Of course not. He Bob, Avenging Angel, was far too fast for his slow friend. He let the eyelid go and it eased back down. Bob felt a fleeting pang of guilt, but it soon passed. Life on the fugueship was boring and Bob needed a bit of humor once in a while, even if he was the only one laughing.

Bob succumbed to another mischievous impulse, suddenly pursing his lips and blowing air up Karr's nose. Karr still did not move. Bob held Karr's eyelids open. Bob leaned in. Bob licked Karr's eyeballs.

Giggles shook Bob's withered body. Afterward Karr was as unmoving as usual, no wincing, no flinching.

"You are such a good sport, buddy," Bob said. He tousled Karr's hair, picked up the dreamer, and continued with his angry task.

When Bob passed Karr on the way back, his friend was frozen in the act of rubbing his eyes. Bob giggled again. He just couldn't stay angry, not with a guy like Karr around to keep him amused.

Once out of his quarters, Karr never stopped moving, never stopped to tend the new wounds Bob had caused to his beloved ship, although it almost killed Karr to pass them by. Dreadful minutes elapsed.

Karr knew Bob was messing with him. Karr's senses did register the unwanted intimacies, even if he could not see the perpetrator, but Karr bit his lip and pressed on, shirking off fits of burning in his eyes or sudden moist sensations in his ears. When a pair of his underwear appeared over his face like a deranged mask, he simply tossed them off. Nothing stopped Karr's inexorable progression of one foot ahead of another.

Karr turned onto Airlock Alley.

Now came the tough part of his plan. Karr had one shot at stopping Bob. If Karr didn't get it right the first time, there would be no second chance. A stiff weight in Karr's thigh pocket reassured him that the manual qi stick was still where he had put it. All the physical elements were falling into place. Now if Bob would just take the bait, and if Karr could only survive the upcoming mental ordeal....