Celia Friedman: When True Night Falls

The circle was finished now, and all the designs that the botanist had chosen to add to it. He poured the last handful of powder back into the bag, tied it shut again, and set it aside. Case tensed, ready to interfere the minute Ian went for his captives. But the man simply stepped back, so that he stood in the exact center of the circle he had marked, and shut his eyes. For a moment he was silent, as if readying himself. For what? Case wondered. What arcane operation did the man imagine would give him control over this violent, unpredictable world?

If only it were that easy, he thought bitterly. Draw a few signs on the ground, recite an ancient incantation or two, and behold, all problems disappear . . . for a brief moment he wished that he shared the botanist’s delusion. He wondered if he, too, might not be willing to spill a little blood, if he truly believed it would help the colony survive. Human blood? It was a disturbing question, and not one he wished to investigate further. God save him from ever discovering that the shell of his morality was as thin and as fragile as that of Ian Casca’s sanity . . .

The botanist stirred. Slowly, breathing deeply, he raised his hands up by his sides, and opened his eyes at last. The lamplight barely picked out his features, but even so Case could see the concentration that burned in his eyes, the sweat of tension that gleamed on his brow. He began to chant, in a manner that was half speech, half song. Case caught a few words of something that sounded like Latin, intermingled with bits that might be Greek, then Hebrew, then Aramaic. It was as though Ian had taken all the ancient tongues of Earth and sifted through them for words he needed, then mixed them indescriminately to create this custom-made ritual. Words of power, Case thought. For one sickening moment he wondered if Ian might not be right, if Earth’s magical traditions might not wield some true power in this extraterrestrial forum . . . but a moan from beneath the blankets brought him back to his senses, and his hand tightened about his gun. Even if it did work, he thought grimly, it’s not worth the price.

Then Ian stopped. Stared into the night. His whole body was taut, rigid with tension. “Erna, hear me,” he intoned. “I offer you this sacrifice. I offer you the most precious thing we possess: the lifeblood of Terra. In return I ask this: Take us in. Make us part of you. We tried to be aliens on your soil, and your creatures defeated us. Now make us part of this world, as those creatures are part of it. And in return . . . I offer you the heartsblood of Earth. The souls of this colony, now and forever.” He shut his eyes; Case thought that he trembled. “May it please you,” he whispered. “May you find it acceptable.”

His hands dropped down to his sides once more. For a moment he was silent; perhaps waiting for an answer? Case saw one of the bundles on the trams begin to stir, as if trying to free itself. Apparently so did Ian. The movement awakened him from his seeming trance, and he began to move toward the tram and its contents. Stepping over the line he had drawn, across the sigil-girded circle he had so carefully created. Drawing a slender knife from his belt as he moved.

That was enough for Case. He was on his feet in an instant, and Lise was right behind him. While she moved to intercept the man, to keep him from reaching the tram, he took up. a solid position at the edge of the clearing and leveled his gun at the man’s heart. “That’s enough,” he announced. “Party’s over, Casca. Stay right where you are.”

The botanist reeled visibly, as though Case’s words had not only stopped him in his tracks but had awakened him from some kind of trance. He turned toward the commander and gaped at him, as if trying to absorb the fact of his presence.

“Leo,” he said at last. Starting to move toward him. “How did you—”

“Stay where you are!” Case ordered. “And keep your hands where I can see them.” He glanced toward Lise and nodded; she was kneeling on the tram’s bed, inspecting its contents. “No fast movements, you hear me? Just stay where you are and keep quiet.”

Lise had cut the tie on one of the bundles and was freeing its occupant. “Well?” Case demanded.

“It’s Erik Fielder.” She reached a hand in to take his pulse, and added, “He’s alive.” Quickly she moved to the other bundle and unwrapped its upper end. “Liz Breslav. Out cold. I see bruises, some sort of impact damage to the side of the head . . . can’t say how bad it is without MedOps. We need to get her back to the ship.”

It took him a minute to put the names in context; when he did, he darkened. Ian’s choice of victims was all too practical. With true night coming, the colony’s other members would have been huddled together in their makeshift cabins, seeking the dubious safety that could be found in numbers. It would have been hard for Ian to single out one or two of them, much less knock them out and drag their bodies from the camp without being seen. But Fielder and Breslav had drawn special guard duty for the night, which meant that they were already outside the camp, standing watch over the ship and its contents a good mile away. They would have been especially vulnerable, Case thought, if their enemy was not a creature of Erna, like they expected, but one of their own kind. A glib man who might talk his way into their company, and then strike at them from behind when they least expected it.

His mouth tightened into a hard line as he raised the gun. “That’s proof enough for me.”

Sudden understanding gleamed in Ian’s eyes. Understanding . . . and fear. “Leo, listen to me—”

“The charge is endangering the welfare of the colony,” Case said steadily. “The verdict is guilty.” Something tightened inside him, something cold and sharp. Something that hated killing, even in the name of justice. It took effort to get the words out. “The sentence is death.”

It’s not a killing, he told himself. It’s an excision. A cleansing. Ian had to die so that the rest of them could live. Was that murder?

Call it a sacrifice.

“Listen to me,” the botanist protested. “You don’t know what you’re doing—”

“Don’t I?” he asked angrily. With the toe of one boot he kicked at the nearer side of Ian’s circle, erasing the chalk line. “Damn it, man! This isn’t some primitive tribe in need of a shaman, but a colony in desperate need of unity! I have enough trouble from the outside without having to guard against my own people—”

“And how many more deaths can you absorb?” the botanist demanded. “You know as well as I do that the death rate is increasing geometrically. How many more nights does this colony have before it loses the numbers it needs to maintain a viable gene pool?”

“Two Terran months,” he answered gruffly. “But we’ll learn how to fight these creatures. We’ll learn how to—”

“Erna will create new ones as fast as you destroy the old! And if you learn to kill one kind, then the next will be different. Don’t you see, Leo, it’s the planet you’re fighting, the planet itself! Some force that controls the local ecosphere, keeping everything in balance. It doesn’t know how to absorb us. It doesn’t know how to connect. But it’s going to keep trying.” With a shaking hand he brushed back a lock of hair from his eyes; it fell back down almost immediately. “Leo, this planet was perfect. No drought, no famine, no cycles of surfeit and starvation like there are on Earth . . . think of it! A whole ecology in utter harmony—a true Eden. And then we came. And threatened that harmony by our very presence—”