Voices Of Reason
Chapter 10
John sank gratefully onto one of the seats in front of the strategy table, leaning heavily on one forearm. He felt
as if he had just run the Boston Marathon … twice. He glanced back at the portion of the deck that ran from
the corridor through the doorway into Command. Funny, it looked absolutely flat, but it had sure felt like
Heartbreak Hill. Aeryn’s hand lay on his back, following the steady rhythm of his heaving chest and shoulders
as he tried to give his weakened body the air it demanded. Her touch was a warm reminder of safety, but the
uncertainty that had invaded him before leaving his quarters was now back and redoubled.
Aeryn had simply sat next to him on his bunk for almost a quarter arn, waiting until he was ready to listen. His
suspicions had gradually faded when nothing else weird had happened. The only oddity to invade his reality
was the unintelligible sound of her voice breaking the stillness. Aeryn had begun to talk to him in a careful,
even voice, the tangled sounds unmistakably reassuring in cadence. He had listened to her tone and had
allowed the events of the past few days to stream through his mind, picking out pieces of clues until he could
form a theory about what might have happened.
Two phrases had returned almost unbidden to circle in his ear. Aeryn’s voice blurting, “John, your translator
microbes were … ” The phrase remained unfinished in his head, turned back into gibberish midstream. The
other piece he latched on to was a floating fragment, almost missed as he hovered between waking and sleep
when the others had been talking in his quarters. Jool’s voice saying, “… manipulate the pathogen response
mechanism of the immune booster … ”
Aeryn’s hand had moved to rest on the back of his head, gripping carefully but firmly at the base of his skull, as
she had continued to speak to him.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” He hadn’t meant to interrupt, but her voice didn’t sound like conversation to him anymore.
He looked over at her. “Something about how Jool cured me screwed the pooch with my microbes.” Her
eyebrows went all the way up. “Mine, not yours, babe. Screwed the pooch … totally and completely,
irreversibly frelled.” She nodded. “You tried new ones; that was the DRD.” Yes.
“Frell me dead!”
She looked at him with a strange humorous expression. No. His laughter at her response seemed to be some
sort of signal. She got up and took his hand, pulling him to his feet. She handed him Wynona, now latched
securely in its holster, and pushed him out of his cell as he buckled the weapon around his hips.
He still had no idea why she had forced him to come to Command, but the confusion of sounds was wearing him
down. He tried to concentrate on the reassurance of Aeryn’s touch, the firm pressure between his shoulder
blades trying to tell him it was where he belonged. He found he was quickly falling prey to the fatigue that
accompanied the relief of knowing that it was his translator microbes that had taken the vacation, not his sanity,
and felt ill equipped to cope with whatever was going on here.
Chiana’s voice drew him back to what was happening around him, and he looked up toward where she stood
near the forward view screen. She pointed to what had just been displayed, what lay outside.
“Holy mother of god,” the phrase spilled out of him. “Are we stuck in that?” A vigorous nod confirmed his
immediate comprehension of why they had gone to such great lengths to get him out of his room. The last of
his suspicions evaporated before his instant recognition of their desperate situation. “Does Pilot know how to
get us out?” Head shake. “Well this sucks … literally. When did we get stuck here?”
Aeryn’s clipped, truncated Sebacean drew his attention. She did a lot of gesticulating, and with a lot of guess
work and a fair amount of imagination he managed to decipher her message. “While I was blotto?” Her
expression told him he wasn’t the only one having trouble translating right then. He had to stop doing that until
his problem was solved. “Sorry. While I was still sick or sleeping?” Nod. “How many arns have we been stuck
now?” Five fingers. “Are we stationary or sliding further in?” Fist hammered into her palm. “Stationary.” Nod.
“How is Moya holding up? No, don’t try that one. Umm … Is Moya holding up okay?” Yes.
His mind was finally clearing for the first time in almost two days as John forced himself to concentrate on their
predicament. His fatigue vanished. He needed information -- lots of information about what had happened.
And he needed everything Moya contained in her data stores about blackholes. “Crap!” What a time for this to
happen to him. This was going to be nearly impossible.
D’Argo’s growling voice broke into his thoughts, full of frustration. Without the microbes, John heard only the
noises that he had come to associate with profanity. He was tempted to laugh. It sounded like a string of
unequalled cursing.
“This is ridiculous Aeryn! Crichton can’t understand anything that is going on here, we can’t begin to explain,
and Pilot can’t work together with him. Bringing him here is completely useless!” His concern for John’s plight
was falling prey to frustration over their problems. He began to pace from one console to the next, angrily
looking for new data.
“I suppose you know about these blackhole things,” Rygel drawled. “The great Luxan intellect will be working
together with Pilot to come up with a way to get us out of here?”
“Of course not. I am not a scientist.”
“Well John IS a scientist.” Aeryn interjected. “He may know more about that,” a frustrated gesture indicated the
vortex of condemned matter, “than anyone in this galaxy, and certainly knows more about it than anyone else
on the ship. He knew what he was looking at the microt he saw it, D’Argo. He is our only hope. We have to
find a way to communicate with him.”
“She’s right, D’Argo.” Chiana spoke up at last. She moved next to him, brushed up against his heavy frame,
and placed one hand on his arm. She could feel the tension there, the explosive power of his frustration just
beneath the surface. She found herself trying to will him into calming down. He had been teetering on the thin
edge of anger ever since they had returned from the Commerce Planet.
“Pilot.” John’s voice broke into their discussion.
“Yes, Commander.” The purple image appeared in the clamshell. John looked behind him at Aeryn, started to
gesture a request and caught himself, remembering. ‘They can understand you, John, you’re the only one with
scrambled circuits here.’
“Can you come around in front of me, Aeryn?” She did as he asked, sitting down on the far side of the table to
face him. “Pilot can you put up a presentation of the singularity using the strategy table projector?” The image
appeared, a tiny Leviathan represented in relation to the great gravity well.
“Is this a correctly scaled representation?” Aeryn nodded. “Pilot, we’re still outside the event horizon then.”
His statement was also a question and Aeryn nodded again. Rygel’s voice came from behind him, a fast
exchange with Aeryn, and then she raised her eyebrows and made vague hand movements. “Not a real clear
question there, Aeryn,” he observed. She looked like she was about to explode so he relented. “Event
horizon?” Yes.
“Anything reaching the event horizon, even light, is not going to get back out. That’s our make-or-break point.
We hit that boundary and it’s Happy Trails … sorry, Aeryn,” he jumped back in before she could make another
gesture. “Hit the event horizon and we are dead, dead, dead. No way out. But right now we are outside it by
… ” He waggled his head, doing some fast calculations of relative size and distance. “I don’t know!! I guess
maybe a large enough distance that we might have a prayer.”
Crichton stared at it the projection a bit longer, considering. Yes/No answers made the process so damned
slow. He looked up at Aeryn, “What about Jool and all of her book larnin’? She didn’t have any ideas on how
to get out?” No. He heard Rygel’s burping, bubbling dialect, unmistakably sarcasm even without the slightest
context. Aeryn fired something back angrily. “Not an easy discussion earlier?” She glared at him and gave a
series of small emphatic headshakes.
John wished he could have been here to listen to that. He returned to the bigger problem, chewing on the base
of his thumb for a moment. Then he leaned forward, noticing something about the image. “Pilot is that thing
spinning?” Nod from Aeryn. “Oh dren.” Raised eyebrows from Aeryn. “A spinning blackhole does things a bit
different, and it warps space-time for thousands of metras around it.” He tried to remember more from his
classes at college.
He stood up and began to pace a short distance. “Wait. This could be a good thing. Sitting on the edge of a
strong gravity source like this, time is going to be moving slower for us here. We could wind up losing decades,
maybe more. But hitting a time distortion getting out might put us back where we belong … or make it worse.”
Aeryn gesticulated at the image with both hands, made sweeping motions. “Exactly. All moot point unless we
get out.” Vigorous nod. She gestured directly at him with both hands. “Me. I get to figure out how to get us
out.” Hands and nod said yes. He looked down at her expectant look, full of faith in his capability, and wasn’t
sure he was going to be able to measure up this time. He rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger, trying
to think, but only coming up with a fervent desire that this was all another fever-induced bad dream. He opened
his eyes. No change in the view.
“You know what?” A single clipped word from Aeryn. He glanced across Command at D’Argo and Chiana and
then looked back at her, “I think this is still all part of a strange Scarran delusional trick, and I‘m going back to
bed until it’s over.” Nope, she wasn’t falling for it.
* * * * *
Captain Hasman found himself unmolested on the upper tiers of the ship, searching for a vertical shaft that
might take him back to the level where the maintenance bays were located. His pursuers had been on the
verge of catching him when the entire vessel had begun shaking. At first he’d hoped that another Peacekeeper
vessel had caught up with them and was attacking, but everything had been quiet for too long. He didn’t know
what had happened to the ship, but it was the only reason he was still free. Or alive.
He jogged past one abandoned cell after another, sometimes glancing in quickly to see if anything useful had
been left behind. So far he had come up empty. Some cells were stripped bare, others had been vacated
hastily, uniforms and personal items left strewn carelessly about. When he found a collection of cast off items
he would take the time to rifle rapidly through them, hoping that he might find a weapon of some sort. He knew
it was a vain hope, but diligence had paid off in the past, and he was willing to spend the few extra microts
searching in case it yielded anything of value.
* * * * *
John sat slumped at the strategy table, resting his head on his folded arms, near to falling asleep. It had taken
two tedious arns to establish some basic facts about their situation. Normal Hetch Drive couldn’t be used
because the strong gravitational forces were distorting the drive energies in Moya’s ion backwash chamber
before they could be focused and used, literally bending the ion flow. At maximum effort, Moya could produce
just enough drive to continue station holding, no more.
Moya was also expending so much energy just holding her position that she was unable to divert any extra to
starburst out of their trap. And that was assuming that the spaces between dimensions used by starburst
weren’t warped by the gravity as well. Probably no one alive knew if those slipways were subject to the physics
altering effects of a singularity, and they weren’t going to have the opportunity to find out until they somehow
slid in there themselves.
Moya was weakening slowly but inexorably. It was only a matter of time before she reached the point of
exhaustion and then they would spiral into the center, crushed into nothingness. The only other thing they had
established was that he currently had no idea how to break them loose from its grip.
John let the chaos of voices wash over him, no longer trying to understand any of the syllables, just letting the
tone and the emotions soak into him. Something in one of the voices struck him like a physical blow and he
lifted his head, turning to look straight at D’Argo. The Luxan saw him turn his gaze his way and suddenly
looked embarrassed. John’s face was empty of all its normal pleasantness, but he didn’t say anything.
He stared at D’Argo for another few microts, and then got up, feeling immensely tired, and walked out of
Command. “If you need me, give me a call on the comms, but there’s no guarantee I’ll understand anything.”
“John,” Aeryn objected to his departure, but with his back already turned he just continued the way he was
headed.
“Well, that was brilliant D’Argo!” Chiana accused. “Why did you have to go say that about him when he was
sitting right here in the room?”
“I thought you said he couldn’t understand what we were saying.” His voice blamed the others, but D’Argo’s
thoughts were focused only on the fact that he had hurt his friend once again.
“He can’t understand the words you’re saying D’Argo, but I keep trying to tell you that you are still
underestimating John in small ways.” Aeryn sighed and looked out of the front view screen at the creature that
held them. “Now what the frell are we going to do?”
Chiana looked at D’Argo in astonishment. “You can’t just let him leave like that. Go after him! Apologize and
get him back here, D’Argo.” The Luxan looked at her, his expression impossible to read, and then turned and
followed the route taken by Crichton.
“Do you think he’ll be able to get John to come back?” Aeryn asked the room at large.
“I would like either one of you to describe the occasion during which you heard of a Luxan apologizing. It’s an
impossibility, and you are deluded if you think our resident warrior is going to suddenly break with tradition.”
Rygel looked at the two women with disbelief and disgust at their naivety.
“There are other ways of letting John know he’s sorry,” Chiana said, still staring in the direction where the two
men had disappeared. “Did anything Crichton said give you any new ideas, Aeryn?”
Aeryn’s only new idea was that she too had been underestimating John in small ways. She had been absorbed
into the process as he had sucked in more information than the rest of the crew combined, and without
understanding a single word of the conversation flowing around him. A single yes or no answer would lead to a
barrage of further questions, until he seemed satisfied that he had drained Pilot’s resources. She dragged
herself back to Chiana’s question.
“No, I still don’t have any idea what to do about this. Pilot?”
“Yes, Officer Sun.”
“How long can Moya hold out?” John had asked technical questions about energy reserves and rate of flow,
but they had never discussed a time frame for action.
“At the current rate of drain, Moya will begin slipping into the gravity well in just under twelve arns. I cannot
estimate how long it will take after that before the stress collapses her hull.”
* * * * *
John tried to shut his mind to the sense of betrayal he’d left behind after hearing D’Argo’s tone. He tried to
focus on creating a new line of thinking about their invisible prison instead. His thoughts were revolving around
an image of futility, and he was trying to kick himself into a more productive mode. He knew he had to break
free of the belief that this situation was impossible. Most of his life in the Uncharted Territories could be listed
under the heading of “Unbelievable To Humans”. There had to be an alternative somewhere.
He drifted back to the first time he had seen something that appeared to defy rational thought. He’d been
seven, and his father had taken him to the airport in Atlanta to watch the planes take off and land. He’d
watched with his mouth hanging open as a Boeing 707 had rumbled down the runway for almost a mile,
accelerating straight toward their parking spot just outside the airport perimeter. Then more than three
hundred thousand pounds of metal and humanity had broken loose of gravity, heaving itself into the air. The
roar and the stench of burnt jet fuel had filled his senses, and he’d been Chicken Little for one moment as the
sky above was filled with shivering aluminum panels.
An errant thought buzzed through John’s head. A quick sting of mental connection and then it was gone. It
wasn’t his habit to chase those tenuous thoughts, finding that they tended to flee ahead of pursuit. But this one
had the scent of solution and he began to carefully stalk it.
“John, wait!” He stopped walking and turned to face the source of the bass-throated demand, feeling a twinge
of frustrated anger because he felt the thread snap. He had lost the trail of the teaser.
“What’s up, D’Argo?” He tried to sound pleasant, but he didn’t really want to try to communicate with
D’Argo at that moment. Moya’s safety was waiting, and he needed to think.
“John.” D’Argo took a huge breath and let it out, but the words he most wanted to say still weren’t there. “We
need your help. Please come back to Command. I will not say anything like that again; you have my word of
honor.”
Buried beneath the tattoos, the braids, and the tentacles, Crichton saw the heaviness of spirit. He could see
the effect, but he couldn’t discern its cause. D’Argo was uncomfortable about something, probably whatever
he’d said in Command. He debated taking the time to play twenty questions to expose the source of the big
guy’s discomfort. Then the shy idea flitted by again, and drew his attention away from the waiting expression.
“I need to just think for a while, D’Argo. Tell Aeryn I’ll come back to Command in a little while.”
The last of the reservoir of rage inside D’Argo finally emptied. He watched as Crichton walked away, head
down, staring at the floor. He felt that he should have tried harder to express his remorse. A small portion of
his aimless anger had remained percolating for two entire days. The sight of the solitary man walking away, cut
off from them all, made him realize that he didn’t have one good reason for feeling sorry for himself.
Crichton had only wandered a short distance further when a flash of yellow burst through one of the small
hatches made specially for the DRDs and ran toward him. He was trying to tease the thought out of hiding, so
he didn’t notice One-Eye as the robot fell in alongside. He paused in the first intersection he had come to, lost
in a haze, not thinking about where he was headed or hearing the chirps and squeaks at his feet.
“Ow! Dren that hurts!” He danced away from One-Eye, one ankle and foot full of pins and needles. The
thought was gone completely. The DRD had resorted to bashing into his ankle in order to get his attention,
somehow managing this time to smash a nerve against bone. “You have my attention, really you do. Lead on,
oh master of mine.” He gestured to the DRD and limped after it, occasionally hopping as he waited for the
feeling to come back into his foot.
One-Eye led John to Pilot’s Den, scooting off into the shadows as soon as he followed it into the cavernous
room. Crichton approached Pilot, uncertain as to why he had been shepherded here. “Hi ya, Pilot, what’s
shakin’?” He listened to the symphony of sounds that flowed out of the huge being, astonished that his
microbes had turned that incredible melodic mixture into everyday English. It sounded like an entire group of
people were talking simultaneously in cadence and harmony.
Pilot beckoned to him, and Crichton worked his way over the consoles and stood alongside him, inside his
bulwarks. Pilot began manipulating controls, and one of his displays came alive with a presentation of the
blackhole that John hadn’t viewed yet. It was one that had not been displayed in Command. “Is this the latest
sensor information from Moya?”
Pilot’s spreading cranial shell fanned his hair as he nodded his head. John reflected that a moment’s
inattention could result in a skull fracture … but only for himself. He looked at Pilot’s thick plates and
considered. “Pilot, one blink for yes, two blinks for no. It’s faster than nods.” Not to mention safer. One of
Pilot’s claws moved, and a single light blinked once on the display he had prepared for John.
Crichton leaned a hip against the side of the consoles and rested his chin on his hand, elbow on his knee. He
bent closer to watch the presentation, assessing the new information but coming no closer to a solution. He
jumped the tiniest bit when one of Pilot’s arms came to rest gently upon his shoulders. “Thank you, Pilot. I
appreciate the thought,” he said without looking up. “Can you turn this image over? Upside down?” He
watched the new display of forces and gained nothing. “Try reversing it, let me see what the situation looks like
from the singularity’s point of view.” Nothing revealed itself.
Escape a singularity. The idea was still so far outside his frame of reference he was having trouble getting his
mind to consider alternatives.
“Pilot, when the Illonics were on board, did we get any of their data?” Two blinks, no. “Dren.” One blink. He
looked at Pilot but there was no trace of a smile there. He suspected that in addition to reading a lot, the huge
creature had been working on developing a very dry sense of humor. “Matala never got her hands on that
processor of Verrell’s. Did that have any information left on it?” Two blinks. The Illonics had been able to
capture a piece of a singularity, a staggering accomplishment but ultimately a fatal one.
If the Illonics could do that, then manipulating the singularity was possible. He felt the hinges of his mind creak
open a hair, unlocking possibilities, but still couldn’t envision a productive avenue. The ghost of his thought
hadn’t returned yet either. He stood up straight carefully, knowing he hadn’t spent much time there, but
frustrated by his lingering sense of futility. He looked around the station. “How’s Moya doing?”
Pilot touched a control and a series of schematics were displayed. John bent to look at the readouts that he
had once described as a cross between a blueprint and a CAT-scan, but which now looked like blessed sanity
and organization. At least his understanding of this hadn’t been taken away.
“Pilot, she’s leaking energy. I know none of these breaks are major, but why hasn’t anyone taken care of this?
… Never mind. Why don’t you tell Aeryn and D’Argo about these ruptures, and let them know I’m on the way
down to meet them. They can show me which ones they want me to work on.” A single light blinked once on
the panel. John tapped him lightly on the top of his shell, slid over the edge of the barrier, and strode out of the
Den.
* * * * *
Hasman tossed discarded clothes in a corner. He was searching a cell that the previous owner had abandoned
without removing any personal possessions. He rifled quickly through another carrier full of uniform items, and
stopped when his hand encountered something coldly familiar. He pulled the item loose and looked at the
breach mechanism of a pulse rifle. It was just one piece, but it was a beginning. He dumped the container over
and found four more parts. He had the chakan oil receiver and part of the triggering mechanism. He finished a
fast sweep of the chamber, and began a more thorough search of the rest of the tier.
* * * * *
It took John longer than he expected to get back to Command, having to stop once to catch his breath. His
body was forcing him to concede how much stamina had been stolen by his illness. He was repeatedly finding
himself breathless or dizzy, drained of energy at a time when he needed it most. When he walked at last into
the large chamber, he found it empty. “Frell!” They had started without him, but to be fair, comming him would
have been a waste of time.
“OW! … Dang it all!” A different DRD, the opposite ankle, but it had used the same method to get his
attention. “Are you enjoying yourself?” The drone didn’t respond. “Would you like to take me somewhere to
start repairs?” One blink. It turned and led the way out of the room, Crichton limping a little again as he
followed it.
* * * * *
Aeryn finished sealing the last of the incisions she’d made while repairing Moya’s wiring, and leaned back,
stretching cramped muscles. Why couldn’t leviathans be bred with more worker-friendly access to major
systems, she wondered. She was hit with an annoying flash of appreciation for the work that Techs did on a
daily basis, and found herself longing for the days when all she had to do was fight and relax. No grot work, no
brain draining thinking, no emotionally taxing relationships. She patted Moya’s vertical conduit, and knew that
despite the wishful thinking, she would never choose to go back.
“Pilot, are there any other repairs to be done?”
“No, Officer Sun, thank you. Moya’s reserves are dropping at a much slower rate now because she isn’t
leaking energy any longer. But perhaps you could check on Commander Crichton. He is finishing his last
repair.” Aeryn heard something else in Pilot’s voice, but it was unfamiliar.
“Certainly. Where is he working?” There was a brief, puzzling pause, and then he gave her directions.
When Aeryn approached the large cavity where John was supposed to be working, she couldn’t hear any
movement and she felt irritation run through her, suspecting she had misunderstood Pilot’s description of where
he was located. She bent to look inside anyway and saw the soles of his unmoving boots. There was a nasty
lurch as she thought something had happened to him again, but when she stepped inside, she found he had
simply fallen asleep on the hard deck. She looked over the repairs he had made, and was impressed. It was
high quality work, and he had done it in less time than hers had taken.
She considered letting him sleep a little longer, but remembered the Peacekeeper and knew that even this
short nap was hazardous in the extreme. Pilot must have known that. It had probably been the source of the
strange note in his voice. Aeryn knew she was indulging herself as she took a moment to watch him sleeping.
The ship’s dilemma was too great to allow her much leeway, though, so she nudged John gently with her foot.
“Let’s go Mr. Humans-Are-Superior,” she started to tease him, and then remembered that it was useless.
The first nudge hadn’t woken him, so Aeryn crouched down and shook his shoulder, watching in silence how
slowly he woke up. When he finally came to, he appeared to have no problem remembering what was going
on, only looking embarrassed for having fallen asleep. She was relieved that his mind was clear, even if the
lines of fatigue were etched more deeply than ever around his eyes.
“Sorry, Aeryn. I asked Pilot to have you come down to show me what to fix next, but I guess I kind of zonked out
there for a bit.” She didn’t know what to say or indicate so she simply put her hand down and helped pull him to
his feet. As John turned to pick up the tools he had left in a pile on the floor she saw the dark bruises that still
painted his arms. The emotional turmoil of that day began to bubble up from inside her once more. She forced
it back down, knowing they didn’t have time for such weakness.
John followed Aeryn, finally recognizing that her route was taking them back to Command. “No more repairs to
be done?” he asked. He watched from behind as she shook her head. He recognized the stiff carriage, the
ramrod straight spine, and knew that something was making her angry. He couldn’t coax it out of her, he didn’t
have the capacity for a hide-and-seek conversation about whatever was bothering her. He decided to ask her
straight out.
“Aeryn, did I do something to make you mad?” She stopped and turned to look at him, a mixture of expressions
flowing over her face. John thought he knew Aeryn as well as anyone could, but he discovered he didn’t have
a clue what was going on. He had been able to read her posture in his quarters, understand her intent based
on body language alone, but that knack seemed to have deserted him. She finally shook her head and turned
away, still heading for Command.
“Cut me some slack here, Aeryn. It takes everything I’ve got just to figure out that you’re ticked off. I haven’t
started learning Sebacean Sign Language yet, so how about just giving in a little bit this time and you tell me
what’s going on?” She didn’t stop. Her head came up a little higher, and her pace increased, which told him
she was even more angry or upset. He still didn’t have a clue.
“That’s just great.” He was having to almost yell after her now. “I’m going for a walk to give myself time to
think. If you need me, have Pilot send another yellow kamikaze driver after me.” He knew she might not
understand that phrase, and suddenly didn’t care. He turned out of the corridor at the first intersection he
came to and tried futilely to redirect his thoughts back to their problem.
When Aeryn heard John lapse into another of his untranslatable humanisms it was a sharp reminder of what he
was contending with every waking microt. She turned to relent, but he was gone. She’d done it again! She’d
driven him away with her uncontrolled behavior. She considered going after him, but that hadn’t worked for
them in the past. She settled for hoping he’d be careful. There was still that frelling officer wandering around.
* * * * *
The officer leapt clear of the ladder and looked around him in wonder. The tier had been hideously burned.
Thick scar tissue lined the corridors; the floors were gnarled and uneven beneath his heavy boots. The
passageway was gloomy, lights melted into the walls, slowly being consumed by the creeping scabs of the
ship’s healing tissues. He didn’t waste time searching the section. Any fire hot enough to sear a leviathan
would not have left anything intact in the cells.
He ran around a corner and came face to face with a Banik. The slave’s face was half covered with the mask of
a Stykera. Hasman saw the one eye widen and he tried to turn a weapon to bear. ‘A weapon at last,’ he
thought, and didn’t hesitate. He leapt forward and struck the inferior being across the side of the face with his
elbow, grabbed at the pulse rifle and tried to rip it out of his grasp.
An unholy shriek filled the corridor. The Banik screamed in fury and his free hand ripped at Hasman’s throat,
steely fingers sinking in, diving toward his windpipe. Hasman dropped his chin, trying to pin the clasping grip
before it could do damage. He beat at the face, pulled at the rifle, but the slave didn’t falter. He was shouting
names now, and Hasman realized his comms must be open. He was summoning help. He hit the man harder,
driving him to his knees and loosening the grip on his own throat. He was wrenching at the rifle again when he
heard pounding footsteps approaching from the lit area to his right. Hasman admitted to another defeat, let go
of the rifle and ran.
“Stark! Are you all right?” Crichton hovered over him for a moment, and then helped him stumble to his feet.
He had Wynona out, watching the corridor in both directions. “Was it the Peacekeeper?” Stark began a string
of non-rhythmic sounds. He was in his more lucid state, John realized, not chanting repetitive babblings. He
could at least tell that difference from Stark’s speech. “Whoa, yes or no only, Astro! I can’t get the rest.”
Stark was bleeding from the nose and a cut lip, but ignoring the fast running streams, he grabbed Crichton by
his vest and shoved him in the direction his assailant had gone.
Crichton accelerated, leaving the somewhat dazed Stark behind. He ran full speed for the first fifteen motras,
knowing the cells there were all fused shut. There was nowhere for the commando to hide until he reached the
first junction. “Pilot, are there DRDs to track …” Frell! Why even bother asking? His comms squealed twice.
No DRDs ahead. Yotz, this phantom was lucky. Why couldn’t they catch a break? He realized that was a
stupid question … when were they ever lucky? He ran faster, trying to catch up before they lost him again.
* * * * *
Hasman reached the intersection and spotted a vertical shaft. There was a neural bundle in the center, but
when he reached the well there was no ladder. Two sets of running feet were approaching from either side and
he could hear his original pursuer behind him. The drop between tiers was more than anyone could hope to
traverse without injury, but he didn’t have a choice. He swung over the parapet and lowered himself to the full
extent of his reach and let himself drop.
* * * * *
“Chiana! D’Argo!” Crichton raised his pulse pistol, pointing it at the ceiling once he recognized the two
sprinting figures. “Scare me half to death for the ninth time today. Did you see anything?” Two voices
responded. He spread his hands and looked at them with his eyebrows raised as far as he could get them.
“Little help here?” No they hadn’t seen him, and he already knew that they had approached from separate
directions. He pointed to the fourth passageway and they started down that corridor.
They all pulled up short, almost colliding, as two DRDs approached from the opposite direction. He listened to
the quick exchange between D’Argo and Pilot, but watched Chiana’s expression. She was easier to read.
Nothing. Their poltergeist Peacekeeper had gotten away again. John followed D’Argo back to the junction and
they all looked for the other way out. John was the first to peer down to the tier below. He looked over at
D’Argo, “What do you think? Could he have survived that drop?”
The Luxan considered it, measuring the distance judiciously, and then shook his head for John‘s sake. “I don’t
think so. Not even I would attempt that height.”
John looked around again. “Frell!” Why couldn’t they get this guy? He knew the others had been searching or
chasing him for arns.
“Frell!” D’Argo yelled in frustration at the same time that the word exploded out of Crichton.
Chiana looked from one to the other and broke into laughter. After two microts D’Argo loosened up and began
to smile as well. John’s head had snapped around at D’Argo’s outburst and he watched the two of them crack
up, perplexed. Chiana finally pointed at both him and D’Argo simultaneously so he could get it. He shook his
head smiling and holstered Wynona.
“What now?” he asked the pair.
Hands signals indicated D’Argo and Chiana going to the tier below them, the rest was too vague. “You’re going
to go look anyway? See if he made the drop?” Nods.
‘Might be time for that fictitious sign language course,’ he reflected. ‘Sign Language for the Uncharted
Territories? Might want to at least reconsider that label, John.’ He shook his head, tossing the thought away,
and tried to focus on the matter at hand.
“I’m going to go see if Stark is … ” Hands told him what he was saying was wrong. “Stark’s all right or is being
taken care of already?” Yes. He stood hands on hips and considered. “In that case, I’m just going to finish my
walk.” Astonished expressions. “I need to think about getting Moya loose and walking helps.” He saw his own
thumbs up gesture thrown in his direction in duplicate, but it didn’t offset the deep anxiety he saw in their faces.
He felt the need to find a solution settle more heavily on to his shoulders.
* * * * *
“Rygel, where are you?” Aeryn asked into her comms. She was back on Command, monitoring Pilot’s and
Moya’s efforts to resolve their two lethal problems.
“Getting something to eat. Is there a pressing decision to be made? If not I prefer to dine uninterrupted.”
Rygel had overheard the rapid exchange of verbal traffic as the Peacekeeper had been seen, chased and
lost.
“The commando officer has been spotted in the burned tiers near Zhaan’s quarters. He’s disappeared again.
If you need to be in that portion of the ship, be careful.”
“Be anywhere in that festering wound?” he deliberately exaggerated the existing damage. “I can’t imagine any
activity that would convince me to go down there.”
“All right. As long as you are still armed and know where he was last seen.”
“Why isn’t anyone chasing him anymore?” Rygel maneuvered his Throne Sled as he continued to talk.
“D’Argo and Chiana had to give up. There was no sign of him again. He’ll have to wait until we get Moya
loose. We only have eleven arns left before she’s exhausted.” Aeryn’s voice was filled with bitterness and
frustration.
Rygel reached up and shut off his comms. He had lied about getting something to eat. He floated beneath the
vertical opening where the others assumed the vermin had escaped. He looked at his choice of corridors,
reviewing where each one led. “If I were a foul, murdering, mindless automaton … which way would I go?” He
turned his Throne Sled and tried a corridor.
* * * * *
John’s unresolved frustration over not being able to talk with Aeryn goaded him to return to an area of Moya he
hadn’t visited since Zhaan’s death. He stood outside the burned and scarred room, hesitating to enter. He
could see the remains of the bunk, the chanting bell she had used for her Seek, some of her oils and potions in
warped, melted glass vials. His feet seemed glued to the floor. He couldn’t go forward, but he couldn’t leave
either.
He finally broke the spell of indecision by scanning one more time up and down the gray, poorly lit corridor.
This was where he had been headed when he’d heard Starks yells of alarm. When he looked back in the door
he was able to walk slowly into the chamber. He eased himself down to sit on the charred bed, sitting where
she had lain, her head in Stark’s lap when he had come to confirm she was dying.
He wanted to talk to her, tell her things, ask for her help. Now that he was here, he found he couldn’t do it. He
thought of Unity, the one place where he might have been able to hear a sane voice in the midst of the bedlam
of his new realm. Zhaan had always been able to understand his actions, his motivations. He felt the need for
that kind of insight now to understand his friends. He finally spoke out loud, but to no one in particular.
“I can see what they’re feeling, know how they’re saying things, but the sounds are just noise. There have
been so many times over the cycles when I’ve just wanted to put my fingers in my ears and shut them all out,
and now that their voices are gone … ” He trailed off and dropped his head into his hands.
He was just so tired, physically and mentally. His brain kept struggling against the new restriction, constantly
filled with a surreal expectation that the well-known and well-loved voices would suddenly rearrange the mixture
of sounds, and words would rise out of the anarchy. It was like listening to a badly tuned radio, the music and
lyrics indistinguishable. He kept expecting his brain to turn the dial, and for clarity to emerge from the static.
“Time and patience, John.”
He looked up to see Zhaan, standing in the doorway to her quarters, about to leave him to step inside. He felt
the familiar comfort of his long since destroyed IASA flight jacket, the knit collar providing some warmth against
the still unfamiliar chill of Moya’s internal airflow. “Is that your answer for everything?” he asked her.
“Yes, because it’s always the right answer.” She smiled at him serenely, her world still in balance. It hadn’t
been disrupted yet by violence and desperate measures.
“Zhaan, my life here was starting to finally make sense. But I’m back to square one; the others will treat me like
some sort of Earth idiot again.” He voiced his fears, but was careful not to move, not wanting to disrupt the
tenuous moment.
“John, there’s so much information that needs to be assimilated, sometimes the smaller things will elude you.
Develop your patience. You can hear them if you just take the time and patience.”
He just grinned back at her, enveloped in Zhaan’s acceptance, leaning against the wall with his hands in the
pockets of his khaki uniform pants. “Time and patience.”
“Time and patience,” she repeated once more. “I get the feeling you’re going to be able to handle this soon,
John.”
He turned away, starting back down the corridor, but a thought of something more recent stabbed through
him. “Zhaan, I never told you …” He turned back but she was gone.
John raised his head out of his hands and looked around the room in confusion. That hadn’t been a dream, he
hadn’t dozed off again. Had he? He could still feel the peaceful touch of her presence -- it was almost
tangible. But he was wearing the black T-shirt and leather pants that was his daily uniform now, the khaki pants
destroyed long ago on Acquara. The conversation was familiar, but he knew it hadn’t occurred like that, it wasn’
t what had actually been said.
“I never told you … I never said how …” He closed his mouth and sat thinking, still unable to voice his festering
pain. “How sorry I was for what I did. It was my fault, my blindness that led to your end.” But there was no
answer. The wound stung still, a brand burned deep into his heart.
“Crichton, are you all right?”
John jumped as the voice broke him out of his reverie. He clutched at his chest, trying to convey how badly he
had been startled. “Astro!” He took another deep breath. “Stark, make a noise next time. Don’t sneak up on
me like that! My heart doesn’t come back from molecular dispersion.”
He turned to look at the Banik, seeing peace and sanity in his one eye, now surrounded by rapidly spreading
bruises. Stark was going to be the most difficult one for him to learn to cope with, his half-face only projecting a
portion of what went on in his mind. He looked for the grief that had been Stark’s constant companion for days,
and saw that it was finally absent. “Are you all right?” he asked, not knowing for sure whether he meant
physically or mentally.
“Zhaan was here, wasn’t she Crichton? I heard her talking to you as I walked in the hall. I could hear her telling
you things, but I didn’t understand her meaning. Did she help you? Could you hear and understand her?”
Crichton watched as Stark walked to the middle of the chamber and spread his arms, reaching out to his sides,
hands spread wide. His voice was deep and even, one of Stark’s almost divine tones when the special sight of
the Stykera controlled his soul. He listened to the upswings in his voice, the probing tones, and watched the
one eye close in concentration.
Time and patience. Maybe she had come back to watch out for him one more time. He still couldn’t understand
a single word of what Stark was saying, but somehow it didn’t matter quite as much as it had before. He felt the
muscles in his neck relax just a little.
“John can we finally talk now?” John was laying on his bed in his parent’s house, dressed in his favorite
broken-in jeans and an MIT T-shirt. He looked at Scorpy over the toes of his bare feet.
“Just my luck. First Heaven and now Hell! Hey, nice shiner.” The clone was sporting an enormous black eye.
“Who you been pissing off lately, Harvey?”
“You did that John. I must say I was rather impressed when you forced me out of your mind earlier today.” He
walked over to the bookcase in the corner and began examining the titles, fingering some of the books that
John had owned since he was a boy. “Tom Swift and His Flying Car. Is this fine literature on your world, John?”
“Sure, Harvey. Comes in right after the Hardy Boys. What do you want?”
“You accused me of removing your capacity for understanding what your crewmembers were
saying …”
“I know better now, Harvey.” John rolled off the bed and padded barefoot to where Scorpius was still looking
through his books. He snatched a volume out of his hands and placed it carefully back in the bookcase,
wondering if those books would actually still be waiting for him when he got home. “My body won’t tolerate the
foreign microbes anymore, it just kills them … you know that, I know that … get to the point. Why did you pop
up?”
Stark’s comms activated and Aeryn called him. “Stark, have you seen Crichton? Chiana said he was
somewhere down on the tier where you are.”
“Yes. Crichton is right here.”
“Could you bring him up to Command, please? Pilot says there is some new sensor data that might make a
difference.”
“John, Officer Sun would like you to return to Command to evaluate some new sensor data.” Scorpius spoke
over his shoulder as he continued looking through the bookcase.
“All right, I’ll go.” John rolled off his bed and started for the door, as … he got up off Zhaan’s charred bunk and
headed out of the door and into the corridor.
John charged back into his bedroom, grabbed Scorpius by his black leather clad arms and slammed him up
against the wall. Model airplanes tumbled off shelves and clattered to the floor. “What the frell was that all
about? You said you couldn’t be of any help. You’ve been lying to me again, Scorpy.” He pulled the clone
away from the wall, and smashed him back against it again. His frustration came bubbling up out of the dark
place he had caged it, and it felt good to take it out on the image of Scorpius.
Stark followed Crichton out of Zhaan’s chamber, intending to follow Aeryn’s instructions, and found him
standing motionless in the corridor. He hesitated to approach Crichton, sensing the energy emanation in him
that he had come to know was the result of interaction with the neuro-clone. The signature was even stronger
than normal, and he backed slowly away.
“I told you the truth, John. I couldn’t understand anyone in the chamber when you first accused me of doing
this to you. I cannot translate on my own. But Officer Sun was not in your quarters, and Officer Sun is
Sebacean … as am I. I did try to tell you … twice. But you forced me out before I had time to consider this
option. It’s your own fault, John.”
John released him and backed away. “So you can understand just Aeryn, just Sebacean?”
“Correct, and I believe we can work together to compensate for your unfortunate condition.”
“One thing at a time, Scorpy. Let me consider this for a while.” Another thought occurred to him. “What about
the blackhole? Have you been holding out on me there too?”
“You know Scorpius’ interest was invested entirely in wormholes, John. Controlling singularities is not
something any rational species would try. I have no information to offer, except that I want to survive as much
as you do now. I will do whatever it takes to help you and your friends out of this situation.”
“All right, Harvey. Let’s see what happens, no guarantees, and you DON‘T get your money back if you‘re not
entirely satisfied.”
John ran down the corridor as he finished the conversation in his head. He was filled with a conflicting mixture
of elation and dread, leaving him feeling almost as queasy as he had felt the day before. He had a way of
communicating now, but it meant relying on Scorpy, something he never would have envisioned in all his worst
nightmares. He didn’t know if he could trust the clone to translate reliably, and he really didn’t know if he
wanted to allow it to co-exist as frequently as communication would demand.
He was still in a turmoil when he entered Command. He was relieved to see that Aeryn was the only one there.
He didn’t want to have to explain this to anyone else right away, not till he could decide if this was a blessing or
the most foul of curses. He tried to figure out the best way to bring this up without Aeryn trying to take his head
off. He didn’t expect her to like this very much.
“John, I’m glad you’re here, Moya has collected some new information,” she spoke before she remembered that
it wasn’t any use.
“John, I’m glad you’re here, Moya has collected some new information,” he repeated after a moment’s delay.
Aeryn whirled around, an eager smile blossoming on her face. Before she could say anything further, she was
frozen into granite stillness, her excitement dying unexpressed. John’s face was a flowing mixture of emotions,
but there wasn’t even the slightest glimmer of a smile. John always seemed to at least have a grin lurking
somewhere, and it was missing completely now. ‘He should be dancing with joy if his translator microbes were
back,’ she thought.
“How did you do that?” she asked, caution and suspicion roiling inside her. He approached her slowly, and the
feeling in her stomach got worse.
He dropped his head for a moment, then looked up at her from under his eyebrows, “You’re Sebacean …”
“Of course I’m Sebacean, what does that have to do with it?” She saw his eyes make their strange momentary
shift, as though he had left the room for a split microt, but was still here. And she recognized where he had
gone. She had seen it too many times already. “No!” she involuntarily backed away from him, watched the hurt
from her retreat grow in his eyes. She stopped her feet, held her ground. “John, you can’t do it this way. No
matter what the problems are, you can not use that thing in your head to solve this.”
John didn’t have to wait for the echoing translation in his head, he could read Aeryn’s reaction plainly. Well, at
least he had gotten one thing figured out right today. She definitely didn’t like this.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
Chapter 10
John sank gratefully onto one of the seats in front of the strategy table, leaning heavily on one forearm. He felt
as if he had just run the Boston Marathon … twice. He glanced back at the portion of the deck that ran from
the corridor through the doorway into Command. Funny, it looked absolutely flat, but it had sure felt like
Heartbreak Hill. Aeryn’s hand lay on his back, following the steady rhythm of his heaving chest and shoulders
as he tried to give his weakened body the air it demanded. Her touch was a warm reminder of safety, but the
uncertainty that had invaded him before leaving his quarters was now back and redoubled.
Aeryn had simply sat next to him on his bunk for almost a quarter arn, waiting until he was ready to listen. His
suspicions had gradually faded when nothing else weird had happened. The only oddity to invade his reality
was the unintelligible sound of her voice breaking the stillness. Aeryn had begun to talk to him in a careful,
even voice, the tangled sounds unmistakably reassuring in cadence. He had listened to her tone and had
allowed the events of the past few days to stream through his mind, picking out pieces of clues until he could
form a theory about what might have happened.
Two phrases had returned almost unbidden to circle in his ear. Aeryn’s voice blurting, “John, your translator
microbes were … ” The phrase remained unfinished in his head, turned back into gibberish midstream. The
other piece he latched on to was a floating fragment, almost missed as he hovered between waking and sleep
when the others had been talking in his quarters. Jool’s voice saying, “… manipulate the pathogen response
mechanism of the immune booster … ”
Aeryn’s hand had moved to rest on the back of his head, gripping carefully but firmly at the base of his skull, as
she had continued to speak to him.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” He hadn’t meant to interrupt, but her voice didn’t sound like conversation to him anymore.
He looked over at her. “Something about how Jool cured me screwed the pooch with my microbes.” Her
eyebrows went all the way up. “Mine, not yours, babe. Screwed the pooch … totally and completely,
irreversibly frelled.” She nodded. “You tried new ones; that was the DRD.” Yes.
“Frell me dead!”
She looked at him with a strange humorous expression. No. His laughter at her response seemed to be some
sort of signal. She got up and took his hand, pulling him to his feet. She handed him Wynona, now latched
securely in its holster, and pushed him out of his cell as he buckled the weapon around his hips.
He still had no idea why she had forced him to come to Command, but the confusion of sounds was wearing him
down. He tried to concentrate on the reassurance of Aeryn’s touch, the firm pressure between his shoulder
blades trying to tell him it was where he belonged. He found he was quickly falling prey to the fatigue that
accompanied the relief of knowing that it was his translator microbes that had taken the vacation, not his sanity,
and felt ill equipped to cope with whatever was going on here.
Chiana’s voice drew him back to what was happening around him, and he looked up toward where she stood
near the forward view screen. She pointed to what had just been displayed, what lay outside.
“Holy mother of god,” the phrase spilled out of him. “Are we stuck in that?” A vigorous nod confirmed his
immediate comprehension of why they had gone to such great lengths to get him out of his room. The last of
his suspicions evaporated before his instant recognition of their desperate situation. “Does Pilot know how to
get us out?” Head shake. “Well this sucks … literally. When did we get stuck here?”
Aeryn’s clipped, truncated Sebacean drew his attention. She did a lot of gesticulating, and with a lot of guess
work and a fair amount of imagination he managed to decipher her message. “While I was blotto?” Her
expression told him he wasn’t the only one having trouble translating right then. He had to stop doing that until
his problem was solved. “Sorry. While I was still sick or sleeping?” Nod. “How many arns have we been stuck
now?” Five fingers. “Are we stationary or sliding further in?” Fist hammered into her palm. “Stationary.” Nod.
“How is Moya holding up? No, don’t try that one. Umm … Is Moya holding up okay?” Yes.
His mind was finally clearing for the first time in almost two days as John forced himself to concentrate on their
predicament. His fatigue vanished. He needed information -- lots of information about what had happened.
And he needed everything Moya contained in her data stores about blackholes. “Crap!” What a time for this to
happen to him. This was going to be nearly impossible.
D’Argo’s growling voice broke into his thoughts, full of frustration. Without the microbes, John heard only the
noises that he had come to associate with profanity. He was tempted to laugh. It sounded like a string of
unequalled cursing.
“This is ridiculous Aeryn! Crichton can’t understand anything that is going on here, we can’t begin to explain,
and Pilot can’t work together with him. Bringing him here is completely useless!” His concern for John’s plight
was falling prey to frustration over their problems. He began to pace from one console to the next, angrily
looking for new data.
“I suppose you know about these blackhole things,” Rygel drawled. “The great Luxan intellect will be working
together with Pilot to come up with a way to get us out of here?”
“Of course not. I am not a scientist.”
“Well John IS a scientist.” Aeryn interjected. “He may know more about that,” a frustrated gesture indicated the
vortex of condemned matter, “than anyone in this galaxy, and certainly knows more about it than anyone else
on the ship. He knew what he was looking at the microt he saw it, D’Argo. He is our only hope. We have to
find a way to communicate with him.”
“She’s right, D’Argo.” Chiana spoke up at last. She moved next to him, brushed up against his heavy frame,
and placed one hand on his arm. She could feel the tension there, the explosive power of his frustration just
beneath the surface. She found herself trying to will him into calming down. He had been teetering on the thin
edge of anger ever since they had returned from the Commerce Planet.
“Pilot.” John’s voice broke into their discussion.
“Yes, Commander.” The purple image appeared in the clamshell. John looked behind him at Aeryn, started to
gesture a request and caught himself, remembering. ‘They can understand you, John, you’re the only one with
scrambled circuits here.’
“Can you come around in front of me, Aeryn?” She did as he asked, sitting down on the far side of the table to
face him. “Pilot can you put up a presentation of the singularity using the strategy table projector?” The image
appeared, a tiny Leviathan represented in relation to the great gravity well.
“Is this a correctly scaled representation?” Aeryn nodded. “Pilot, we’re still outside the event horizon then.”
His statement was also a question and Aeryn nodded again. Rygel’s voice came from behind him, a fast
exchange with Aeryn, and then she raised her eyebrows and made vague hand movements. “Not a real clear
question there, Aeryn,” he observed. She looked like she was about to explode so he relented. “Event
horizon?” Yes.
“Anything reaching the event horizon, even light, is not going to get back out. That’s our make-or-break point.
We hit that boundary and it’s Happy Trails … sorry, Aeryn,” he jumped back in before she could make another
gesture. “Hit the event horizon and we are dead, dead, dead. No way out. But right now we are outside it by
… ” He waggled his head, doing some fast calculations of relative size and distance. “I don’t know!! I guess
maybe a large enough distance that we might have a prayer.”
Crichton stared at it the projection a bit longer, considering. Yes/No answers made the process so damned
slow. He looked up at Aeryn, “What about Jool and all of her book larnin’? She didn’t have any ideas on how
to get out?” No. He heard Rygel’s burping, bubbling dialect, unmistakably sarcasm even without the slightest
context. Aeryn fired something back angrily. “Not an easy discussion earlier?” She glared at him and gave a
series of small emphatic headshakes.
John wished he could have been here to listen to that. He returned to the bigger problem, chewing on the base
of his thumb for a moment. Then he leaned forward, noticing something about the image. “Pilot is that thing
spinning?” Nod from Aeryn. “Oh dren.” Raised eyebrows from Aeryn. “A spinning blackhole does things a bit
different, and it warps space-time for thousands of metras around it.” He tried to remember more from his
classes at college.
He stood up and began to pace a short distance. “Wait. This could be a good thing. Sitting on the edge of a
strong gravity source like this, time is going to be moving slower for us here. We could wind up losing decades,
maybe more. But hitting a time distortion getting out might put us back where we belong … or make it worse.”
Aeryn gesticulated at the image with both hands, made sweeping motions. “Exactly. All moot point unless we
get out.” Vigorous nod. She gestured directly at him with both hands. “Me. I get to figure out how to get us
out.” Hands and nod said yes. He looked down at her expectant look, full of faith in his capability, and wasn’t
sure he was going to be able to measure up this time. He rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger, trying
to think, but only coming up with a fervent desire that this was all another fever-induced bad dream. He opened
his eyes. No change in the view.
“You know what?” A single clipped word from Aeryn. He glanced across Command at D’Argo and Chiana and
then looked back at her, “I think this is still all part of a strange Scarran delusional trick, and I‘m going back to
bed until it’s over.” Nope, she wasn’t falling for it.
* * * * *
Captain Hasman found himself unmolested on the upper tiers of the ship, searching for a vertical shaft that
might take him back to the level where the maintenance bays were located. His pursuers had been on the
verge of catching him when the entire vessel had begun shaking. At first he’d hoped that another Peacekeeper
vessel had caught up with them and was attacking, but everything had been quiet for too long. He didn’t know
what had happened to the ship, but it was the only reason he was still free. Or alive.
He jogged past one abandoned cell after another, sometimes glancing in quickly to see if anything useful had
been left behind. So far he had come up empty. Some cells were stripped bare, others had been vacated
hastily, uniforms and personal items left strewn carelessly about. When he found a collection of cast off items
he would take the time to rifle rapidly through them, hoping that he might find a weapon of some sort. He knew
it was a vain hope, but diligence had paid off in the past, and he was willing to spend the few extra microts
searching in case it yielded anything of value.
* * * * *
John sat slumped at the strategy table, resting his head on his folded arms, near to falling asleep. It had taken
two tedious arns to establish some basic facts about their situation. Normal Hetch Drive couldn’t be used
because the strong gravitational forces were distorting the drive energies in Moya’s ion backwash chamber
before they could be focused and used, literally bending the ion flow. At maximum effort, Moya could produce
just enough drive to continue station holding, no more.
Moya was also expending so much energy just holding her position that she was unable to divert any extra to
starburst out of their trap. And that was assuming that the spaces between dimensions used by starburst
weren’t warped by the gravity as well. Probably no one alive knew if those slipways were subject to the physics
altering effects of a singularity, and they weren’t going to have the opportunity to find out until they somehow
slid in there themselves.
Moya was weakening slowly but inexorably. It was only a matter of time before she reached the point of
exhaustion and then they would spiral into the center, crushed into nothingness. The only other thing they had
established was that he currently had no idea how to break them loose from its grip.
John let the chaos of voices wash over him, no longer trying to understand any of the syllables, just letting the
tone and the emotions soak into him. Something in one of the voices struck him like a physical blow and he
lifted his head, turning to look straight at D’Argo. The Luxan saw him turn his gaze his way and suddenly
looked embarrassed. John’s face was empty of all its normal pleasantness, but he didn’t say anything.
He stared at D’Argo for another few microts, and then got up, feeling immensely tired, and walked out of
Command. “If you need me, give me a call on the comms, but there’s no guarantee I’ll understand anything.”
“John,” Aeryn objected to his departure, but with his back already turned he just continued the way he was
headed.
“Well, that was brilliant D’Argo!” Chiana accused. “Why did you have to go say that about him when he was
sitting right here in the room?”
“I thought you said he couldn’t understand what we were saying.” His voice blamed the others, but D’Argo’s
thoughts were focused only on the fact that he had hurt his friend once again.
“He can’t understand the words you’re saying D’Argo, but I keep trying to tell you that you are still
underestimating John in small ways.” Aeryn sighed and looked out of the front view screen at the creature that
held them. “Now what the frell are we going to do?”
Chiana looked at D’Argo in astonishment. “You can’t just let him leave like that. Go after him! Apologize and
get him back here, D’Argo.” The Luxan looked at her, his expression impossible to read, and then turned and
followed the route taken by Crichton.
“Do you think he’ll be able to get John to come back?” Aeryn asked the room at large.
“I would like either one of you to describe the occasion during which you heard of a Luxan apologizing. It’s an
impossibility, and you are deluded if you think our resident warrior is going to suddenly break with tradition.”
Rygel looked at the two women with disbelief and disgust at their naivety.
“There are other ways of letting John know he’s sorry,” Chiana said, still staring in the direction where the two
men had disappeared. “Did anything Crichton said give you any new ideas, Aeryn?”
Aeryn’s only new idea was that she too had been underestimating John in small ways. She had been absorbed
into the process as he had sucked in more information than the rest of the crew combined, and without
understanding a single word of the conversation flowing around him. A single yes or no answer would lead to a
barrage of further questions, until he seemed satisfied that he had drained Pilot’s resources. She dragged
herself back to Chiana’s question.
“No, I still don’t have any idea what to do about this. Pilot?”
“Yes, Officer Sun.”
“How long can Moya hold out?” John had asked technical questions about energy reserves and rate of flow,
but they had never discussed a time frame for action.
“At the current rate of drain, Moya will begin slipping into the gravity well in just under twelve arns. I cannot
estimate how long it will take after that before the stress collapses her hull.”
* * * * *
John tried to shut his mind to the sense of betrayal he’d left behind after hearing D’Argo’s tone. He tried to
focus on creating a new line of thinking about their invisible prison instead. His thoughts were revolving around
an image of futility, and he was trying to kick himself into a more productive mode. He knew he had to break
free of the belief that this situation was impossible. Most of his life in the Uncharted Territories could be listed
under the heading of “Unbelievable To Humans”. There had to be an alternative somewhere.
He drifted back to the first time he had seen something that appeared to defy rational thought. He’d been
seven, and his father had taken him to the airport in Atlanta to watch the planes take off and land. He’d
watched with his mouth hanging open as a Boeing 707 had rumbled down the runway for almost a mile,
accelerating straight toward their parking spot just outside the airport perimeter. Then more than three
hundred thousand pounds of metal and humanity had broken loose of gravity, heaving itself into the air. The
roar and the stench of burnt jet fuel had filled his senses, and he’d been Chicken Little for one moment as the
sky above was filled with shivering aluminum panels.
An errant thought buzzed through John’s head. A quick sting of mental connection and then it was gone. It
wasn’t his habit to chase those tenuous thoughts, finding that they tended to flee ahead of pursuit. But this one
had the scent of solution and he began to carefully stalk it.
“John, wait!” He stopped walking and turned to face the source of the bass-throated demand, feeling a twinge
of frustrated anger because he felt the thread snap. He had lost the trail of the teaser.
“What’s up, D’Argo?” He tried to sound pleasant, but he didn’t really want to try to communicate with
D’Argo at that moment. Moya’s safety was waiting, and he needed to think.
“John.” D’Argo took a huge breath and let it out, but the words he most wanted to say still weren’t there. “We
need your help. Please come back to Command. I will not say anything like that again; you have my word of
honor.”
Buried beneath the tattoos, the braids, and the tentacles, Crichton saw the heaviness of spirit. He could see
the effect, but he couldn’t discern its cause. D’Argo was uncomfortable about something, probably whatever
he’d said in Command. He debated taking the time to play twenty questions to expose the source of the big
guy’s discomfort. Then the shy idea flitted by again, and drew his attention away from the waiting expression.
“I need to just think for a while, D’Argo. Tell Aeryn I’ll come back to Command in a little while.”
The last of the reservoir of rage inside D’Argo finally emptied. He watched as Crichton walked away, head
down, staring at the floor. He felt that he should have tried harder to express his remorse. A small portion of
his aimless anger had remained percolating for two entire days. The sight of the solitary man walking away, cut
off from them all, made him realize that he didn’t have one good reason for feeling sorry for himself.
Crichton had only wandered a short distance further when a flash of yellow burst through one of the small
hatches made specially for the DRDs and ran toward him. He was trying to tease the thought out of hiding, so
he didn’t notice One-Eye as the robot fell in alongside. He paused in the first intersection he had come to, lost
in a haze, not thinking about where he was headed or hearing the chirps and squeaks at his feet.
“Ow! Dren that hurts!” He danced away from One-Eye, one ankle and foot full of pins and needles. The
thought was gone completely. The DRD had resorted to bashing into his ankle in order to get his attention,
somehow managing this time to smash a nerve against bone. “You have my attention, really you do. Lead on,
oh master of mine.” He gestured to the DRD and limped after it, occasionally hopping as he waited for the
feeling to come back into his foot.
One-Eye led John to Pilot’s Den, scooting off into the shadows as soon as he followed it into the cavernous
room. Crichton approached Pilot, uncertain as to why he had been shepherded here. “Hi ya, Pilot, what’s
shakin’?” He listened to the symphony of sounds that flowed out of the huge being, astonished that his
microbes had turned that incredible melodic mixture into everyday English. It sounded like an entire group of
people were talking simultaneously in cadence and harmony.
Pilot beckoned to him, and Crichton worked his way over the consoles and stood alongside him, inside his
bulwarks. Pilot began manipulating controls, and one of his displays came alive with a presentation of the
blackhole that John hadn’t viewed yet. It was one that had not been displayed in Command. “Is this the latest
sensor information from Moya?”
Pilot’s spreading cranial shell fanned his hair as he nodded his head. John reflected that a moment’s
inattention could result in a skull fracture … but only for himself. He looked at Pilot’s thick plates and
considered. “Pilot, one blink for yes, two blinks for no. It’s faster than nods.” Not to mention safer. One of
Pilot’s claws moved, and a single light blinked once on the display he had prepared for John.
Crichton leaned a hip against the side of the consoles and rested his chin on his hand, elbow on his knee. He
bent closer to watch the presentation, assessing the new information but coming no closer to a solution. He
jumped the tiniest bit when one of Pilot’s arms came to rest gently upon his shoulders. “Thank you, Pilot. I
appreciate the thought,” he said without looking up. “Can you turn this image over? Upside down?” He
watched the new display of forces and gained nothing. “Try reversing it, let me see what the situation looks like
from the singularity’s point of view.” Nothing revealed itself.
Escape a singularity. The idea was still so far outside his frame of reference he was having trouble getting his
mind to consider alternatives.
“Pilot, when the Illonics were on board, did we get any of their data?” Two blinks, no. “Dren.” One blink. He
looked at Pilot but there was no trace of a smile there. He suspected that in addition to reading a lot, the huge
creature had been working on developing a very dry sense of humor. “Matala never got her hands on that
processor of Verrell’s. Did that have any information left on it?” Two blinks. The Illonics had been able to
capture a piece of a singularity, a staggering accomplishment but ultimately a fatal one.
If the Illonics could do that, then manipulating the singularity was possible. He felt the hinges of his mind creak
open a hair, unlocking possibilities, but still couldn’t envision a productive avenue. The ghost of his thought
hadn’t returned yet either. He stood up straight carefully, knowing he hadn’t spent much time there, but
frustrated by his lingering sense of futility. He looked around the station. “How’s Moya doing?”
Pilot touched a control and a series of schematics were displayed. John bent to look at the readouts that he
had once described as a cross between a blueprint and a CAT-scan, but which now looked like blessed sanity
and organization. At least his understanding of this hadn’t been taken away.
“Pilot, she’s leaking energy. I know none of these breaks are major, but why hasn’t anyone taken care of this?
… Never mind. Why don’t you tell Aeryn and D’Argo about these ruptures, and let them know I’m on the way
down to meet them. They can show me which ones they want me to work on.” A single light blinked once on
the panel. John tapped him lightly on the top of his shell, slid over the edge of the barrier, and strode out of the
Den.
* * * * *
Hasman tossed discarded clothes in a corner. He was searching a cell that the previous owner had abandoned
without removing any personal possessions. He rifled quickly through another carrier full of uniform items, and
stopped when his hand encountered something coldly familiar. He pulled the item loose and looked at the
breach mechanism of a pulse rifle. It was just one piece, but it was a beginning. He dumped the container over
and found four more parts. He had the chakan oil receiver and part of the triggering mechanism. He finished a
fast sweep of the chamber, and began a more thorough search of the rest of the tier.
* * * * *
It took John longer than he expected to get back to Command, having to stop once to catch his breath. His
body was forcing him to concede how much stamina had been stolen by his illness. He was repeatedly finding
himself breathless or dizzy, drained of energy at a time when he needed it most. When he walked at last into
the large chamber, he found it empty. “Frell!” They had started without him, but to be fair, comming him would
have been a waste of time.
“OW! … Dang it all!” A different DRD, the opposite ankle, but it had used the same method to get his
attention. “Are you enjoying yourself?” The drone didn’t respond. “Would you like to take me somewhere to
start repairs?” One blink. It turned and led the way out of the room, Crichton limping a little again as he
followed it.
* * * * *
Aeryn finished sealing the last of the incisions she’d made while repairing Moya’s wiring, and leaned back,
stretching cramped muscles. Why couldn’t leviathans be bred with more worker-friendly access to major
systems, she wondered. She was hit with an annoying flash of appreciation for the work that Techs did on a
daily basis, and found herself longing for the days when all she had to do was fight and relax. No grot work, no
brain draining thinking, no emotionally taxing relationships. She patted Moya’s vertical conduit, and knew that
despite the wishful thinking, she would never choose to go back.
“Pilot, are there any other repairs to be done?”
“No, Officer Sun, thank you. Moya’s reserves are dropping at a much slower rate now because she isn’t
leaking energy any longer. But perhaps you could check on Commander Crichton. He is finishing his last
repair.” Aeryn heard something else in Pilot’s voice, but it was unfamiliar.
“Certainly. Where is he working?” There was a brief, puzzling pause, and then he gave her directions.
When Aeryn approached the large cavity where John was supposed to be working, she couldn’t hear any
movement and she felt irritation run through her, suspecting she had misunderstood Pilot’s description of where
he was located. She bent to look inside anyway and saw the soles of his unmoving boots. There was a nasty
lurch as she thought something had happened to him again, but when she stepped inside, she found he had
simply fallen asleep on the hard deck. She looked over the repairs he had made, and was impressed. It was
high quality work, and he had done it in less time than hers had taken.
She considered letting him sleep a little longer, but remembered the Peacekeeper and knew that even this
short nap was hazardous in the extreme. Pilot must have known that. It had probably been the source of the
strange note in his voice. Aeryn knew she was indulging herself as she took a moment to watch him sleeping.
The ship’s dilemma was too great to allow her much leeway, though, so she nudged John gently with her foot.
“Let’s go Mr. Humans-Are-Superior,” she started to tease him, and then remembered that it was useless.
The first nudge hadn’t woken him, so Aeryn crouched down and shook his shoulder, watching in silence how
slowly he woke up. When he finally came to, he appeared to have no problem remembering what was going
on, only looking embarrassed for having fallen asleep. She was relieved that his mind was clear, even if the
lines of fatigue were etched more deeply than ever around his eyes.
“Sorry, Aeryn. I asked Pilot to have you come down to show me what to fix next, but I guess I kind of zonked out
there for a bit.” She didn’t know what to say or indicate so she simply put her hand down and helped pull him to
his feet. As John turned to pick up the tools he had left in a pile on the floor she saw the dark bruises that still
painted his arms. The emotional turmoil of that day began to bubble up from inside her once more. She forced
it back down, knowing they didn’t have time for such weakness.
John followed Aeryn, finally recognizing that her route was taking them back to Command. “No more repairs to
be done?” he asked. He watched from behind as she shook her head. He recognized the stiff carriage, the
ramrod straight spine, and knew that something was making her angry. He couldn’t coax it out of her, he didn’t
have the capacity for a hide-and-seek conversation about whatever was bothering her. He decided to ask her
straight out.
“Aeryn, did I do something to make you mad?” She stopped and turned to look at him, a mixture of expressions
flowing over her face. John thought he knew Aeryn as well as anyone could, but he discovered he didn’t have
a clue what was going on. He had been able to read her posture in his quarters, understand her intent based
on body language alone, but that knack seemed to have deserted him. She finally shook her head and turned
away, still heading for Command.
“Cut me some slack here, Aeryn. It takes everything I’ve got just to figure out that you’re ticked off. I haven’t
started learning Sebacean Sign Language yet, so how about just giving in a little bit this time and you tell me
what’s going on?” She didn’t stop. Her head came up a little higher, and her pace increased, which told him
she was even more angry or upset. He still didn’t have a clue.
“That’s just great.” He was having to almost yell after her now. “I’m going for a walk to give myself time to
think. If you need me, have Pilot send another yellow kamikaze driver after me.” He knew she might not
understand that phrase, and suddenly didn’t care. He turned out of the corridor at the first intersection he
came to and tried futilely to redirect his thoughts back to their problem.
When Aeryn heard John lapse into another of his untranslatable humanisms it was a sharp reminder of what he
was contending with every waking microt. She turned to relent, but he was gone. She’d done it again! She’d
driven him away with her uncontrolled behavior. She considered going after him, but that hadn’t worked for
them in the past. She settled for hoping he’d be careful. There was still that frelling officer wandering around.
* * * * *
The officer leapt clear of the ladder and looked around him in wonder. The tier had been hideously burned.
Thick scar tissue lined the corridors; the floors were gnarled and uneven beneath his heavy boots. The
passageway was gloomy, lights melted into the walls, slowly being consumed by the creeping scabs of the
ship’s healing tissues. He didn’t waste time searching the section. Any fire hot enough to sear a leviathan
would not have left anything intact in the cells.
He ran around a corner and came face to face with a Banik. The slave’s face was half covered with the mask of
a Stykera. Hasman saw the one eye widen and he tried to turn a weapon to bear. ‘A weapon at last,’ he
thought, and didn’t hesitate. He leapt forward and struck the inferior being across the side of the face with his
elbow, grabbed at the pulse rifle and tried to rip it out of his grasp.
An unholy shriek filled the corridor. The Banik screamed in fury and his free hand ripped at Hasman’s throat,
steely fingers sinking in, diving toward his windpipe. Hasman dropped his chin, trying to pin the clasping grip
before it could do damage. He beat at the face, pulled at the rifle, but the slave didn’t falter. He was shouting
names now, and Hasman realized his comms must be open. He was summoning help. He hit the man harder,
driving him to his knees and loosening the grip on his own throat. He was wrenching at the rifle again when he
heard pounding footsteps approaching from the lit area to his right. Hasman admitted to another defeat, let go
of the rifle and ran.
“Stark! Are you all right?” Crichton hovered over him for a moment, and then helped him stumble to his feet.
He had Wynona out, watching the corridor in both directions. “Was it the Peacekeeper?” Stark began a string
of non-rhythmic sounds. He was in his more lucid state, John realized, not chanting repetitive babblings. He
could at least tell that difference from Stark’s speech. “Whoa, yes or no only, Astro! I can’t get the rest.”
Stark was bleeding from the nose and a cut lip, but ignoring the fast running streams, he grabbed Crichton by
his vest and shoved him in the direction his assailant had gone.
Crichton accelerated, leaving the somewhat dazed Stark behind. He ran full speed for the first fifteen motras,
knowing the cells there were all fused shut. There was nowhere for the commando to hide until he reached the
first junction. “Pilot, are there DRDs to track …” Frell! Why even bother asking? His comms squealed twice.
No DRDs ahead. Yotz, this phantom was lucky. Why couldn’t they catch a break? He realized that was a
stupid question … when were they ever lucky? He ran faster, trying to catch up before they lost him again.
* * * * *
Hasman reached the intersection and spotted a vertical shaft. There was a neural bundle in the center, but
when he reached the well there was no ladder. Two sets of running feet were approaching from either side and
he could hear his original pursuer behind him. The drop between tiers was more than anyone could hope to
traverse without injury, but he didn’t have a choice. He swung over the parapet and lowered himself to the full
extent of his reach and let himself drop.
* * * * *
“Chiana! D’Argo!” Crichton raised his pulse pistol, pointing it at the ceiling once he recognized the two
sprinting figures. “Scare me half to death for the ninth time today. Did you see anything?” Two voices
responded. He spread his hands and looked at them with his eyebrows raised as far as he could get them.
“Little help here?” No they hadn’t seen him, and he already knew that they had approached from separate
directions. He pointed to the fourth passageway and they started down that corridor.
They all pulled up short, almost colliding, as two DRDs approached from the opposite direction. He listened to
the quick exchange between D’Argo and Pilot, but watched Chiana’s expression. She was easier to read.
Nothing. Their poltergeist Peacekeeper had gotten away again. John followed D’Argo back to the junction and
they all looked for the other way out. John was the first to peer down to the tier below. He looked over at
D’Argo, “What do you think? Could he have survived that drop?”
The Luxan considered it, measuring the distance judiciously, and then shook his head for John‘s sake. “I don’t
think so. Not even I would attempt that height.”
John looked around again. “Frell!” Why couldn’t they get this guy? He knew the others had been searching or
chasing him for arns.
“Frell!” D’Argo yelled in frustration at the same time that the word exploded out of Crichton.
Chiana looked from one to the other and broke into laughter. After two microts D’Argo loosened up and began
to smile as well. John’s head had snapped around at D’Argo’s outburst and he watched the two of them crack
up, perplexed. Chiana finally pointed at both him and D’Argo simultaneously so he could get it. He shook his
head smiling and holstered Wynona.
“What now?” he asked the pair.
Hands signals indicated D’Argo and Chiana going to the tier below them, the rest was too vague. “You’re going
to go look anyway? See if he made the drop?” Nods.
‘Might be time for that fictitious sign language course,’ he reflected. ‘Sign Language for the Uncharted
Territories? Might want to at least reconsider that label, John.’ He shook his head, tossing the thought away,
and tried to focus on the matter at hand.
“I’m going to go see if Stark is … ” Hands told him what he was saying was wrong. “Stark’s all right or is being
taken care of already?” Yes. He stood hands on hips and considered. “In that case, I’m just going to finish my
walk.” Astonished expressions. “I need to think about getting Moya loose and walking helps.” He saw his own
thumbs up gesture thrown in his direction in duplicate, but it didn’t offset the deep anxiety he saw in their faces.
He felt the need to find a solution settle more heavily on to his shoulders.
* * * * *
“Rygel, where are you?” Aeryn asked into her comms. She was back on Command, monitoring Pilot’s and
Moya’s efforts to resolve their two lethal problems.
“Getting something to eat. Is there a pressing decision to be made? If not I prefer to dine uninterrupted.”
Rygel had overheard the rapid exchange of verbal traffic as the Peacekeeper had been seen, chased and
lost.
“The commando officer has been spotted in the burned tiers near Zhaan’s quarters. He’s disappeared again.
If you need to be in that portion of the ship, be careful.”
“Be anywhere in that festering wound?” he deliberately exaggerated the existing damage. “I can’t imagine any
activity that would convince me to go down there.”
“All right. As long as you are still armed and know where he was last seen.”
“Why isn’t anyone chasing him anymore?” Rygel maneuvered his Throne Sled as he continued to talk.
“D’Argo and Chiana had to give up. There was no sign of him again. He’ll have to wait until we get Moya
loose. We only have eleven arns left before she’s exhausted.” Aeryn’s voice was filled with bitterness and
frustration.
Rygel reached up and shut off his comms. He had lied about getting something to eat. He floated beneath the
vertical opening where the others assumed the vermin had escaped. He looked at his choice of corridors,
reviewing where each one led. “If I were a foul, murdering, mindless automaton … which way would I go?” He
turned his Throne Sled and tried a corridor.
* * * * *
John’s unresolved frustration over not being able to talk with Aeryn goaded him to return to an area of Moya he
hadn’t visited since Zhaan’s death. He stood outside the burned and scarred room, hesitating to enter. He
could see the remains of the bunk, the chanting bell she had used for her Seek, some of her oils and potions in
warped, melted glass vials. His feet seemed glued to the floor. He couldn’t go forward, but he couldn’t leave
either.
He finally broke the spell of indecision by scanning one more time up and down the gray, poorly lit corridor.
This was where he had been headed when he’d heard Starks yells of alarm. When he looked back in the door
he was able to walk slowly into the chamber. He eased himself down to sit on the charred bed, sitting where
she had lain, her head in Stark’s lap when he had come to confirm she was dying.
He wanted to talk to her, tell her things, ask for her help. Now that he was here, he found he couldn’t do it. He
thought of Unity, the one place where he might have been able to hear a sane voice in the midst of the bedlam
of his new realm. Zhaan had always been able to understand his actions, his motivations. He felt the need for
that kind of insight now to understand his friends. He finally spoke out loud, but to no one in particular.
“I can see what they’re feeling, know how they’re saying things, but the sounds are just noise. There have
been so many times over the cycles when I’ve just wanted to put my fingers in my ears and shut them all out,
and now that their voices are gone … ” He trailed off and dropped his head into his hands.
He was just so tired, physically and mentally. His brain kept struggling against the new restriction, constantly
filled with a surreal expectation that the well-known and well-loved voices would suddenly rearrange the mixture
of sounds, and words would rise out of the anarchy. It was like listening to a badly tuned radio, the music and
lyrics indistinguishable. He kept expecting his brain to turn the dial, and for clarity to emerge from the static.
“Time and patience, John.”
He looked up to see Zhaan, standing in the doorway to her quarters, about to leave him to step inside. He felt
the familiar comfort of his long since destroyed IASA flight jacket, the knit collar providing some warmth against
the still unfamiliar chill of Moya’s internal airflow. “Is that your answer for everything?” he asked her.
“Yes, because it’s always the right answer.” She smiled at him serenely, her world still in balance. It hadn’t
been disrupted yet by violence and desperate measures.
“Zhaan, my life here was starting to finally make sense. But I’m back to square one; the others will treat me like
some sort of Earth idiot again.” He voiced his fears, but was careful not to move, not wanting to disrupt the
tenuous moment.
“John, there’s so much information that needs to be assimilated, sometimes the smaller things will elude you.
Develop your patience. You can hear them if you just take the time and patience.”
He just grinned back at her, enveloped in Zhaan’s acceptance, leaning against the wall with his hands in the
pockets of his khaki uniform pants. “Time and patience.”
“Time and patience,” she repeated once more. “I get the feeling you’re going to be able to handle this soon,
John.”
He turned away, starting back down the corridor, but a thought of something more recent stabbed through
him. “Zhaan, I never told you …” He turned back but she was gone.
John raised his head out of his hands and looked around the room in confusion. That hadn’t been a dream, he
hadn’t dozed off again. Had he? He could still feel the peaceful touch of her presence -- it was almost
tangible. But he was wearing the black T-shirt and leather pants that was his daily uniform now, the khaki pants
destroyed long ago on Acquara. The conversation was familiar, but he knew it hadn’t occurred like that, it wasn’
t what had actually been said.
“I never told you … I never said how …” He closed his mouth and sat thinking, still unable to voice his festering
pain. “How sorry I was for what I did. It was my fault, my blindness that led to your end.” But there was no
answer. The wound stung still, a brand burned deep into his heart.
“Crichton, are you all right?”
John jumped as the voice broke him out of his reverie. He clutched at his chest, trying to convey how badly he
had been startled. “Astro!” He took another deep breath. “Stark, make a noise next time. Don’t sneak up on
me like that! My heart doesn’t come back from molecular dispersion.”
He turned to look at the Banik, seeing peace and sanity in his one eye, now surrounded by rapidly spreading
bruises. Stark was going to be the most difficult one for him to learn to cope with, his half-face only projecting a
portion of what went on in his mind. He looked for the grief that had been Stark’s constant companion for days,
and saw that it was finally absent. “Are you all right?” he asked, not knowing for sure whether he meant
physically or mentally.
“Zhaan was here, wasn’t she Crichton? I heard her talking to you as I walked in the hall. I could hear her telling
you things, but I didn’t understand her meaning. Did she help you? Could you hear and understand her?”
Crichton watched as Stark walked to the middle of the chamber and spread his arms, reaching out to his sides,
hands spread wide. His voice was deep and even, one of Stark’s almost divine tones when the special sight of
the Stykera controlled his soul. He listened to the upswings in his voice, the probing tones, and watched the
one eye close in concentration.
Time and patience. Maybe she had come back to watch out for him one more time. He still couldn’t understand
a single word of what Stark was saying, but somehow it didn’t matter quite as much as it had before. He felt the
muscles in his neck relax just a little.
“John can we finally talk now?” John was laying on his bed in his parent’s house, dressed in his favorite
broken-in jeans and an MIT T-shirt. He looked at Scorpy over the toes of his bare feet.
“Just my luck. First Heaven and now Hell! Hey, nice shiner.” The clone was sporting an enormous black eye.
“Who you been pissing off lately, Harvey?”
“You did that John. I must say I was rather impressed when you forced me out of your mind earlier today.” He
walked over to the bookcase in the corner and began examining the titles, fingering some of the books that
John had owned since he was a boy. “Tom Swift and His Flying Car. Is this fine literature on your world, John?”
“Sure, Harvey. Comes in right after the Hardy Boys. What do you want?”
“You accused me of removing your capacity for understanding what your crewmembers were
saying …”
“I know better now, Harvey.” John rolled off the bed and padded barefoot to where Scorpius was still looking
through his books. He snatched a volume out of his hands and placed it carefully back in the bookcase,
wondering if those books would actually still be waiting for him when he got home. “My body won’t tolerate the
foreign microbes anymore, it just kills them … you know that, I know that … get to the point. Why did you pop
up?”
Stark’s comms activated and Aeryn called him. “Stark, have you seen Crichton? Chiana said he was
somewhere down on the tier where you are.”
“Yes. Crichton is right here.”
“Could you bring him up to Command, please? Pilot says there is some new sensor data that might make a
difference.”
“John, Officer Sun would like you to return to Command to evaluate some new sensor data.” Scorpius spoke
over his shoulder as he continued looking through the bookcase.
“All right, I’ll go.” John rolled off his bed and started for the door, as … he got up off Zhaan’s charred bunk and
headed out of the door and into the corridor.
John charged back into his bedroom, grabbed Scorpius by his black leather clad arms and slammed him up
against the wall. Model airplanes tumbled off shelves and clattered to the floor. “What the frell was that all
about? You said you couldn’t be of any help. You’ve been lying to me again, Scorpy.” He pulled the clone
away from the wall, and smashed him back against it again. His frustration came bubbling up out of the dark
place he had caged it, and it felt good to take it out on the image of Scorpius.
Stark followed Crichton out of Zhaan’s chamber, intending to follow Aeryn’s instructions, and found him
standing motionless in the corridor. He hesitated to approach Crichton, sensing the energy emanation in him
that he had come to know was the result of interaction with the neuro-clone. The signature was even stronger
than normal, and he backed slowly away.
“I told you the truth, John. I couldn’t understand anyone in the chamber when you first accused me of doing
this to you. I cannot translate on my own. But Officer Sun was not in your quarters, and Officer Sun is
Sebacean … as am I. I did try to tell you … twice. But you forced me out before I had time to consider this
option. It’s your own fault, John.”
John released him and backed away. “So you can understand just Aeryn, just Sebacean?”
“Correct, and I believe we can work together to compensate for your unfortunate condition.”
“One thing at a time, Scorpy. Let me consider this for a while.” Another thought occurred to him. “What about
the blackhole? Have you been holding out on me there too?”
“You know Scorpius’ interest was invested entirely in wormholes, John. Controlling singularities is not
something any rational species would try. I have no information to offer, except that I want to survive as much
as you do now. I will do whatever it takes to help you and your friends out of this situation.”
“All right, Harvey. Let’s see what happens, no guarantees, and you DON‘T get your money back if you‘re not
entirely satisfied.”
John ran down the corridor as he finished the conversation in his head. He was filled with a conflicting mixture
of elation and dread, leaving him feeling almost as queasy as he had felt the day before. He had a way of
communicating now, but it meant relying on Scorpy, something he never would have envisioned in all his worst
nightmares. He didn’t know if he could trust the clone to translate reliably, and he really didn’t know if he
wanted to allow it to co-exist as frequently as communication would demand.
He was still in a turmoil when he entered Command. He was relieved to see that Aeryn was the only one there.
He didn’t want to have to explain this to anyone else right away, not till he could decide if this was a blessing or
the most foul of curses. He tried to figure out the best way to bring this up without Aeryn trying to take his head
off. He didn’t expect her to like this very much.
“John, I’m glad you’re here, Moya has collected some new information,” she spoke before she remembered that
it wasn’t any use.
“John, I’m glad you’re here, Moya has collected some new information,” he repeated after a moment’s delay.
Aeryn whirled around, an eager smile blossoming on her face. Before she could say anything further, she was
frozen into granite stillness, her excitement dying unexpressed. John’s face was a flowing mixture of emotions,
but there wasn’t even the slightest glimmer of a smile. John always seemed to at least have a grin lurking
somewhere, and it was missing completely now. ‘He should be dancing with joy if his translator microbes were
back,’ she thought.
“How did you do that?” she asked, caution and suspicion roiling inside her. He approached her slowly, and the
feeling in her stomach got worse.
He dropped his head for a moment, then looked up at her from under his eyebrows, “You’re Sebacean …”
“Of course I’m Sebacean, what does that have to do with it?” She saw his eyes make their strange momentary
shift, as though he had left the room for a split microt, but was still here. And she recognized where he had
gone. She had seen it too many times already. “No!” she involuntarily backed away from him, watched the hurt
from her retreat grow in his eyes. She stopped her feet, held her ground. “John, you can’t do it this way. No
matter what the problems are, you can not use that thing in your head to solve this.”
John didn’t have to wait for the echoing translation in his head, he could read Aeryn’s reaction plainly. Well, at
least he had gotten one thing figured out right today. She definitely didn’t like this.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
