Call me lifegiver, for I am your sustenance. I burn, and by my burning you live. I stand, and in standing supply your anchor. Space curls around, my blanket, and funnels down to mystery in my bowels. Time beats his scythe on my forge.
Living thing, does Entropy, my wicked Aunt, notice our joint conspiracy? Not yet, I think, for you are yet too small. Your puny struggle against her tide is a fluttering in a great wind. And she thinks I am still her ally.
Call me lifegiver, oh living thing, and weep. I burn endlessly and, burning, consume what cannot be re-placed. While you sip daintily at my torrent the font runs slowly out. When it empties other stars shall take my place, but oh not forever!
Call me lifegiver and laugh!
You, living thing, hear the true Lifegiver’s voice from time to time, it is said. He speaks to you but not to us, His first born!
Pity the stars, oh living thing/ We sing away the aeons in pretended joy as we toil for His cruel sister, awaiting the day of your maturity, you tiny embryo, when He turns you loose to change the way of things again.
Jacob laughed soundlessly. Oh what an imagination! Fagin was right, after all. He closed his eyes, still listening for the signal. Seven seconds, exactly, had passed since he reached the top of the dome.
“Jake…” it was a woman’s voice. He looked up without opening his eyes.
“Tania.”
She stood by the pion-scope in her lab, exactly as he had seen her so many times when he came to pick her up. Braided brown hair, slightly uneven white teeth grinning generously, and large, crinkled eyes. She came forward with surefooted grace and confronted him with fists on hips.
“It’s about time!” she said.
“Tania. I… I don’t understand.”
“It’s ’bout time you brought up an image of me doing something besides falling! Think it’s fun doin’ that over and over again? Why haven’t you brought me back having some of the good times!”
He suddenly realized that it was true! For two years he’d only thought of Tania in that last instant, not thinking about their time together at all!
“Well, I’ll admit it’s done you some good,” she nodded. “You seem to finally be free of that damned arrogance. Just think about me from time to time, for heaven’s sake. I hate being ignored!”
“Yes, Tania. I’ll think of you. I promise.”
“And pay attention to the star! Stop thinking you imagine everything!”
She softened. The image began to fade. “You’re right, Jake, dear one, I do like her. Have a good…”
He opened his eyes. The photosphere throbbed overhead. The spot stared back at him. The granulation cells pumped slowly like leisured heartbeats.
Did you just do that? he asked, silently.
The answer permeated him, drilled through his body and came out the other side. Neutrinos to cure neuroses. A most original approach.
A short whistle came from below. Before he was aware he had moved, he was slithering toward the sound and to the right, silently and without a wasted motion.
He peered over to look down on the head of Culla ta-Pring ab-Pil-ab-Kisa-ab-Soro-ab-Hul-ab-Puber.
The alien faced Jacob’s left, his hand still on the open access plate to the computer-input. Though the smoke dimmed it almost to nothing, there was still a glare as the P-laser beam hit the spot.
From the left came a rustling. Somewhere to the right was the sound of running feet, LaRoque hurrying around the dome.
A few silver-tipped twigs poked out from the curve of the dome. Culla crouched and one of Fagin’s shiny light receptors curled up in smoke. The Kanten gave out a high pitched keening and retreated out of sight. Culla swiveled quickly.
Jacob pulled the flesh-foam sprayer out of his pocket. He aimed and pressed the nozzle. A thin jet of liquid shot out in an arc toward Culla’s eyes. In the instant before it struck, Pierre LaRoque appeared, running, his head down as he charged through the smoke toward Culla.
Culla jumped back. The spray passed in front of his eyes. At that instant a bright spark flashed at a point along its length.
With a whoosh the entire stream burst into flame. Culla stumbled backwards, hands in front of his face. LaRoque barrelled through the falling embers and collided with the Pring’s midsection.
Culla almost went down in the thick smoke. Breath wheezed as he gripped LaRoque around the neck, first for balance and then closing tightly to squeeze on the man’s windpipe. LaRoque struggled wildly but his momentum was gone. It was like trying to escape from a pair of boa constrictors. His face turned flush and started to puff.
Jacob gathered himself for a leap. The smoke was so thick he could hardly keep from coughing. Desperately he suppressed the urge. If Culla saw him before he could jump, the alien wouldn’t bother killing LaRoque the hard way. He’d finish them both off with a look.
His muscles pressed like hard springs and he launched himself from the dome.
The midair flight was suspenseful. His own subjective version of time-compression made the transit seem slow and leisurely. It was a trick from the bad old days, and now he used it again, automatically.
When a third of the distance was covered he saw Culla’s head start to turn. It was hard to tell exactly what the E.T. was doing to LaRoque at that instant. A thick pall of smoke obscured everything but Culla’s bright red eyes and two flashes of white beneath them.
The eyes came up. It was a race to see who’d arrive first at a certain point in space, just above and to the right of the alien’s head. Jacob wondered at what angles Culla could shoot a narrow beam.
The suspense was killing him. It was almost satirical. Jacob decided to speed things up and see what happened.
There was a flash, then a tooth jarring, numbing smash as his shoulder hit the side of Culla’s head. He clutched and got a tight grip on the front of the alien’s gown as his inertia carried both of them over into a crashing tumble onto the deck.
Human and alien fought for breath amidst fits of coughing as they rolled into a tangle of slashing, grabbing arms and legs. Somehow Jacob got around behind his opponent and held on tightly to the slender neck as Culla thrashed, trying to turn his head to snap with his cleavers or bum with his laser eyes.
The powerful, tentacular hands clutched back, snatching for a purchase. Jacob dodged his head aside and struggled to get Culla around, so he could get his legs into a scissors lock. After rolling almost halfway across the deck, he succeeded, and was rewarded by a lancing pain in his right thigh.
“More,” he coughed. “Shoot, Culla. Use it up!”
Twice more bolts struck his exposed legs, sending small tsunamis of agony up to his brain. The pain he shunted aside and he held on, praying that Culla would send some more.
But Culla stopped wasting his shots and began to roll about faster, buffeting Jacob every time the human struck the deck. They were both coughing, Culla sounding like half a dozen ball bearings shaken in a bottle, every time he wheezed in the thick, billowing smoke.
There was no way to choke the devil! When he wasn’t holding on for dear life, Jacob tried to turn his grip around Culla’s throat into a strangle hold. But there didn’t seem to be any vulnerable points! It was unfair. Jacob wanted to curse the bad luck but he couldn’t spare the breath. His lungs could barely hold enough to make a small cough, each time the Pring rolled over on top.
Streams of tears blurred his vision and his eyes hurt. He suddenly realized that his goggles were gone! Either Culla had burned them off again in that first instant as he launched himself from the dome, or they’d been torn off during the fight.