Cloths Of Heaven
Part 3
Gallenn slammed his fist into the communications panel, frustration winning out over logic as he was forced to
turn away another repair request, this time for a Rhotarri equipped cruiser. He leaned on the console and
rubbed a grimy hand against his forehead, unconsciously smearing the dirt across his face. It had been almost
two days since he had led Aeryn Sun to John’s hiding place, and his friend still had not reappeared. He
debated going into the wreckage to see if he was all right, but once again concluded that John needed to work
things out for himself.
There was a drop in the noise level behind him, and he turned to see what was causing the techs to stop their
activities. He sighed with relief as a very bedraggled looking Crichton made his way toward the station.
Gallenn forced a grin onto his face, and leaned nonchalantly against one of the consoles.
“Since you’re not an owner any more, I’m going to have to dock your pay for being late,” he called.
John tried to produce a smile, but it faded after only two or three microts. He stepped into the interior of the
station and eased himself down onto a seat. “Since I never got paid anything to start with, that shouldn’t hurt
too bad,” he responded, trying for some humor. He looked at Gallenn for several microts, a flow of expressions
passing quickly over his face until something that looked like indecision finally reigned. “Do you know where
she is?” he asked.
“I think she’s gone,” Gallenn answered. “She was around yesterday morning, asking some questions, but I
haven’t seen her since.” He watched tension flow out of Crichton’s body, his shoulders dropping inside the
dusty coveralls.
John ran his hand through his hair a few times, then rubbed his fingers together, feeling the gritty layer of dirt
that had been transferred onto his hand. He smiled, but it was still lacking mirth. “I need a shower and a
change of clothes.” He looked around the hangar, assessing the work in progress. “Anything top priority that
needs to be completed?”
“No, but I had to turn a couple of jobs away. They were both Rhotarri systems though, so I can get them back
any time you’re ready.” He crossed his arms and leaned his hips against the consoles. “Why don’t you get
cleaned up, and I’ll come buy you a meal in a couple of arns … since you’re no longer employed.”
That finally produced a genuine smile on John’s face, and he nodded. “Could we renegotiate that situation? I
might have jumped the gun on that minor detail,” he wheedled.
“Minor detail?” Gallenn scoffed. “Too late partner, the business is all mine!” The sebacean’s wide smile
suggested that his position wasn’t as unyielding as his response.
“I feel like a guy who went out looking for a snake-oil salesman to give him my last buck. I wasn’t taken to the
cleaners. I gave everything to them willingly.” John pushed himself to his feet and headed toward the open
doors at the end of the building. Gallenn watched him leave, still trying to decipher his last comments.
* * * * *
John stepped into the bedroom, toweling himself dry, and looked around the subsistence level quarters that he
had been leasing for the last cycle. The room wasn’t much bigger than his converted cell aboard Moya, except
for the small extension that held the cooking arrangements and a table with two chairs. Even after an entire
cycle living here, he occasionally found the complete silence jarring. He had become so accustomed to Moya’s
rhythmic noises and constant motion, it had taken almost a quarter cycle to adjust to a room that didn’t rumble
or shift under his feet.
He pulled on a clean one-piece coverall and sat at the table to lace his boots, looking at the chess set there as
his fingers finished their task without direction.
“That was a good move, Gallenn,” he muttered as he looked at his friend’s latest adjustment. “Another cycle or
two and you’re going to be ready for Bobby Fischer.” He started to reach for a rook, and hesitated, debating
his opponent’s strategy. It was the first time since he’d taught him the game that Gallenn had managed to
completely out maneuver him. He dropped his hand without making a move, deciding to give it more thought.
His examination of the chess board was interrupted by a pounding against the wall of the corridor outside, a
rumble that approached his quarters, arriving at the same time that the door slid open.
“Are you ready yet?” Gallenn yelled as he entered, “I’m so hungry …” he broke off abruptly. “Drannit Dren!”
The exclamation came out in a rush as he looked at John’s hair. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? If she
found you, there’s no telling who else might show up looking for you.”
John stepped to a mirror and combed his brown hair flat with his fingers. “It’s been a full cycle. I’d say it’s safe
now. I never liked the De-Grecian Formula look anyway.” He wasn’t willing to admit that it had been a constant
reminder of the life on Earth that had been torn away from him, and that every time he’d looked in the mirror,
the dyed hair had left him with a pang of guilt for the grief his father must have suffered ever since he
disappeared. It had been an interesting glimpse at how he might appear in the future, but keeping it that color
had become an intolerable nuisance.
“You haven’t moved,” Gallenn objected, looking at the chess set.
“I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet,” John responded, watching the tall figure move around the table,
exuding energy. Gallenn rarely stood still for very long anyway, but tonight he seemed more energetic than
usual.
“That’s a load of trelkez dren. I’ve got you this time, and you just don’t want to admit it.” The sebacean turned
his back on the chess set without any further gloating, and headed out the door. “Let’s get something to eat.”
John swept a handful of credit wafers off a shelf and followed him, moving quickly to catch up.
* * * * *
Gallenn watched as John pushed away a still laden plate of food and picked up his glass instead. He was
concerned about Crichton’s behavior. He’d thought this moodiness was all well behind them, and didn’t want to
see him slide back into the pattern of nightly stupors. John hadn’t been willing to talk about his visitor during
their meal, and had rebuffed every one of his attempts to obtain the slightest amount of information. Gallenn
assumed that Aeryn Sun was the woman John had occasionally referred to when he had first come to the
planet, but he also knew John had been desperately in love with her then and didn’t know what had changed to
make him drive her away.
He tried to approach the subject from several directions, dredging up every detail from their earliest
conversations in an attempt to drive some sort of wedge into John’s reticence, but it was all in vain. It had
originally taken John close to a quarter cycle to trust him enough to describe some of his life since leaving his
home on the Leviathan, but when he had opened up it was usually under the weight of a significant amount of
alcohol, and had therefore been somewhat incoherent. Gallenn was encountering the stubborn reserve this
evening, and it was undiminished by time.
“You never told me why you left the Leviathan and your friends. Did Aeryn Sun have something to do with it?”
It seemed like a pretty blatant approach, but he held his breath and waited to see if John would respond.
“No … not really. And I didn’t leave the ship, I got abandoned.” Crichton looked at his friend’s shocked
expression and made a sideward motion with his head, forgiving his old friends in a single gesture. “It wasn’t
their fault. The roto-rooter man opened the drain right under them, and I got left standing there like the kid
who’s five minutes late for the school bus.”
Gallenn shook his head, totally baffled by the explanation. “Would you care to try that one again?”
John leaned on his elbows and stared down at his drink, thinking about the cycle he had spent working with
Gallenn. They had become good friends, but they had never explored or compared their pasts. Their history
began the day Gallenn had found him standing in stunned incredulity at the spaceport, watching the fragments
of the freighter burn up as they fell into the planet’s atmosphere. He’d known that the ship was falling apart at
the seams, and had tried to warn the captain and crew, but he’d still felt guilty when it had disintegrated into just
so much space debris. He’d been wallowing in his own sense of responsibility when Gallenn had approached
him that day.
He’d told him a few selected tales about what had happened to him over the last three cycles, but had
deliberately avoided every story involving wormholes. It was nearly impossible to fill in the gaps now without
violating that constraint. Leaving out wormholes left out any discussion of life on Earth, how he’d gotten here,
or why he’d been on a Command Carrier that had imploded. He trusted Gallenn, but his enduring silence about
wormholes had been paid for with Co-Kura’s screams in the Aurora Chair, and that was a sacrifice he wasn’t
willing to betray.
He glanced up at Gallenn again and thought about all the things he would have told him if it hadn’t been for
wormholes. He would have told him what it was like to leave his father and home and never return, to live and
love and fight with a group of strangers who became family only to have everything jeopardized by his own
obsession. He could have told him about the Aurora Chair and the woman who rescued him from the Gammak
Base, the woman he had loved.
Ultimately, he couldn’t even tell Gallenn about how he had lost her to another John Crichton, not without
explaining why that man had died, or how she had stood beside him but not really with him when they went to
destroy the technology that threatened this part of the universe. Gallenn could never learn of the sacrifice he’d
been willing to make in order to keep her, because he’d have to explain about finally having the secret to return
home. Telling him about those things would have been the only way to make him understand what it felt like to
stand in Moya’s hangar and watch her leave, when she was the only thing in this universe that gave him
direction.
It would have been futile to try and explain how he’d survived being stranded in space without letting him know
how Harvey had reduced his metabolism to make the limited oxygen last until he found a planet that would
sustain him. Tell him about Harvey and it was a quick trip back to Scorpius and wormholes again, so he’d never
shared that part of his life either.
So Gallenn had never understood his deep depression after he almost been killed by stepping on a live power
cable in the repair facility. His friend had always assumed it was the result of his injuries, but it was the loss of
the clone that had driven him into his last and most severe bout of drinking. Harvey had been his single
remaining tie to his previous life, and when the personality disappeared in an uncontrolled surge of energy, it
was as if he had been abandoned in the emptiness of space once again. At least with the clone around, he
could occasionally reminisce about his life on Moya, discuss the small moments, the good and the bad, and the
way fate had brought him to this new life. A careless step had taken that away from him as well.
He’d never told Gallenn why the Peacekeepers wanted to get their hands on him so badly, never told him about
what would happen if a young, crippled Leviathan with a finally selfless captain in command chose to starburst
inside the hangar of a Command Carrier, or what their sacrifice had purchased. John looked at the expectant
face across the table, reflecting on all the other things that had remained secreted in his heart.
Since Gallenn didn’t know why the Peacekeepers were so highly motivated to find and execute John Crichton,
Destroyer of Gammak Bases and Command Carriers, he had never told him about his first, desperate days
away from Moya. He’d never described finding a suitable planet to land on, only to make his final descent right
over a Peacekeeper outpost. They’d recognized the white module immediately, and he’d spent an entire solar
day being chased by patrols keen on the promotions that would accompany his capture.
His only way off the planet had been to infiltrate the outpost in order to find a charged fuel cell for the module.
He’d almost gotten away with it, but on his way out of the encampment had run into a young soldier standing
sentry who had seen past his black leather clothing and recognized an intruder. His mouth had opened wide to
sound an alarm that would have meant John’s capture and death, and he couldn’t allow that, so John had done
the only thing possible and stabbed him with the soldier’s own blade.
Crichton looked down at the hands that cradled his drink, the hands that had designed and helped build the
Farscape, had brushed back Aeryn’s hair and touched her face, had learned to pull the trigger on a pulse
pistol without hesitation, and had been stained with the warm blood of a young sebacean who had looked
surprised to discover he was dying. He still heard the quiet, desperate voice some nights, betraying all of his
Peacekeeper training by promising silence in return for life if he -- John Crichton, Astronaut -- would only spare
him. But he had pulled the knife out and sunk it in a second time to ensure his own survival, and had somehow
destroyed himself instead.
Gallenn was still waiting for an explanation of his last statement, but that would have led to wormholes as well,
so he took another sip of his drink and turned to stare out the door, watching the stars slowly appear in the
darkening night sky.
“Do you still love her?” Gallenn prodded again.
John muttered a reply, almost too quietly to be heard.
“Beyond what?” Gallenn asked, catching only half of the answer.
John shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Too much has happened since then. I’m not the same person I was
then, and she’s obviously not the same woman either. I did some things to survive that I never thought I was
capable of doing. I don’t want to go back to any life that might demand I ever do that again.” He turned around
and gave Gallenn a twisted, humorous smile. “The fat lady sang a long time ago. It’s time to drop the curtain
on this play and move on to the next production.”
Crichton shoved his half-empty glass away, clapped the puzzled sebacean on the shoulder, and sauntered out
of the building. He paused outside the door to look up at the sky. He could pick out two of the stars he had
renamed. Dewey and Louie were hanging just above the horizon, faint in the distance but visible. Somewhere
out there were Hewey and the other bright pinpoint he had named, but they were never visible from this point
on the planet. When he’d first decided to remain here, he’d considered relocating to a different settlement,
somewhere in the southern hemisphere where he could see them, but he’d finally decided it would be better if
he never looked at them again. They weren’t his guide posts anymore. His way was set by the rise and fall of a
binary star, and by the needs of customers. He had remade his life that way, and it would have to be enough.
* ~ *~ * ~ * ~ *
Part 3
Gallenn slammed his fist into the communications panel, frustration winning out over logic as he was forced to
turn away another repair request, this time for a Rhotarri equipped cruiser. He leaned on the console and
rubbed a grimy hand against his forehead, unconsciously smearing the dirt across his face. It had been almost
two days since he had led Aeryn Sun to John’s hiding place, and his friend still had not reappeared. He
debated going into the wreckage to see if he was all right, but once again concluded that John needed to work
things out for himself.
There was a drop in the noise level behind him, and he turned to see what was causing the techs to stop their
activities. He sighed with relief as a very bedraggled looking Crichton made his way toward the station.
Gallenn forced a grin onto his face, and leaned nonchalantly against one of the consoles.
“Since you’re not an owner any more, I’m going to have to dock your pay for being late,” he called.
John tried to produce a smile, but it faded after only two or three microts. He stepped into the interior of the
station and eased himself down onto a seat. “Since I never got paid anything to start with, that shouldn’t hurt
too bad,” he responded, trying for some humor. He looked at Gallenn for several microts, a flow of expressions
passing quickly over his face until something that looked like indecision finally reigned. “Do you know where
she is?” he asked.
“I think she’s gone,” Gallenn answered. “She was around yesterday morning, asking some questions, but I
haven’t seen her since.” He watched tension flow out of Crichton’s body, his shoulders dropping inside the
dusty coveralls.
John ran his hand through his hair a few times, then rubbed his fingers together, feeling the gritty layer of dirt
that had been transferred onto his hand. He smiled, but it was still lacking mirth. “I need a shower and a
change of clothes.” He looked around the hangar, assessing the work in progress. “Anything top priority that
needs to be completed?”
“No, but I had to turn a couple of jobs away. They were both Rhotarri systems though, so I can get them back
any time you’re ready.” He crossed his arms and leaned his hips against the consoles. “Why don’t you get
cleaned up, and I’ll come buy you a meal in a couple of arns … since you’re no longer employed.”
That finally produced a genuine smile on John’s face, and he nodded. “Could we renegotiate that situation? I
might have jumped the gun on that minor detail,” he wheedled.
“Minor detail?” Gallenn scoffed. “Too late partner, the business is all mine!” The sebacean’s wide smile
suggested that his position wasn’t as unyielding as his response.
“I feel like a guy who went out looking for a snake-oil salesman to give him my last buck. I wasn’t taken to the
cleaners. I gave everything to them willingly.” John pushed himself to his feet and headed toward the open
doors at the end of the building. Gallenn watched him leave, still trying to decipher his last comments.
* * * * *
John stepped into the bedroom, toweling himself dry, and looked around the subsistence level quarters that he
had been leasing for the last cycle. The room wasn’t much bigger than his converted cell aboard Moya, except
for the small extension that held the cooking arrangements and a table with two chairs. Even after an entire
cycle living here, he occasionally found the complete silence jarring. He had become so accustomed to Moya’s
rhythmic noises and constant motion, it had taken almost a quarter cycle to adjust to a room that didn’t rumble
or shift under his feet.
He pulled on a clean one-piece coverall and sat at the table to lace his boots, looking at the chess set there as
his fingers finished their task without direction.
“That was a good move, Gallenn,” he muttered as he looked at his friend’s latest adjustment. “Another cycle or
two and you’re going to be ready for Bobby Fischer.” He started to reach for a rook, and hesitated, debating
his opponent’s strategy. It was the first time since he’d taught him the game that Gallenn had managed to
completely out maneuver him. He dropped his hand without making a move, deciding to give it more thought.
His examination of the chess board was interrupted by a pounding against the wall of the corridor outside, a
rumble that approached his quarters, arriving at the same time that the door slid open.
“Are you ready yet?” Gallenn yelled as he entered, “I’m so hungry …” he broke off abruptly. “Drannit Dren!”
The exclamation came out in a rush as he looked at John’s hair. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? If she
found you, there’s no telling who else might show up looking for you.”
John stepped to a mirror and combed his brown hair flat with his fingers. “It’s been a full cycle. I’d say it’s safe
now. I never liked the De-Grecian Formula look anyway.” He wasn’t willing to admit that it had been a constant
reminder of the life on Earth that had been torn away from him, and that every time he’d looked in the mirror,
the dyed hair had left him with a pang of guilt for the grief his father must have suffered ever since he
disappeared. It had been an interesting glimpse at how he might appear in the future, but keeping it that color
had become an intolerable nuisance.
“You haven’t moved,” Gallenn objected, looking at the chess set.
“I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet,” John responded, watching the tall figure move around the table,
exuding energy. Gallenn rarely stood still for very long anyway, but tonight he seemed more energetic than
usual.
“That’s a load of trelkez dren. I’ve got you this time, and you just don’t want to admit it.” The sebacean turned
his back on the chess set without any further gloating, and headed out the door. “Let’s get something to eat.”
John swept a handful of credit wafers off a shelf and followed him, moving quickly to catch up.
* * * * *
Gallenn watched as John pushed away a still laden plate of food and picked up his glass instead. He was
concerned about Crichton’s behavior. He’d thought this moodiness was all well behind them, and didn’t want to
see him slide back into the pattern of nightly stupors. John hadn’t been willing to talk about his visitor during
their meal, and had rebuffed every one of his attempts to obtain the slightest amount of information. Gallenn
assumed that Aeryn Sun was the woman John had occasionally referred to when he had first come to the
planet, but he also knew John had been desperately in love with her then and didn’t know what had changed to
make him drive her away.
He tried to approach the subject from several directions, dredging up every detail from their earliest
conversations in an attempt to drive some sort of wedge into John’s reticence, but it was all in vain. It had
originally taken John close to a quarter cycle to trust him enough to describe some of his life since leaving his
home on the Leviathan, but when he had opened up it was usually under the weight of a significant amount of
alcohol, and had therefore been somewhat incoherent. Gallenn was encountering the stubborn reserve this
evening, and it was undiminished by time.
“You never told me why you left the Leviathan and your friends. Did Aeryn Sun have something to do with it?”
It seemed like a pretty blatant approach, but he held his breath and waited to see if John would respond.
“No … not really. And I didn’t leave the ship, I got abandoned.” Crichton looked at his friend’s shocked
expression and made a sideward motion with his head, forgiving his old friends in a single gesture. “It wasn’t
their fault. The roto-rooter man opened the drain right under them, and I got left standing there like the kid
who’s five minutes late for the school bus.”
Gallenn shook his head, totally baffled by the explanation. “Would you care to try that one again?”
John leaned on his elbows and stared down at his drink, thinking about the cycle he had spent working with
Gallenn. They had become good friends, but they had never explored or compared their pasts. Their history
began the day Gallenn had found him standing in stunned incredulity at the spaceport, watching the fragments
of the freighter burn up as they fell into the planet’s atmosphere. He’d known that the ship was falling apart at
the seams, and had tried to warn the captain and crew, but he’d still felt guilty when it had disintegrated into just
so much space debris. He’d been wallowing in his own sense of responsibility when Gallenn had approached
him that day.
He’d told him a few selected tales about what had happened to him over the last three cycles, but had
deliberately avoided every story involving wormholes. It was nearly impossible to fill in the gaps now without
violating that constraint. Leaving out wormholes left out any discussion of life on Earth, how he’d gotten here,
or why he’d been on a Command Carrier that had imploded. He trusted Gallenn, but his enduring silence about
wormholes had been paid for with Co-Kura’s screams in the Aurora Chair, and that was a sacrifice he wasn’t
willing to betray.
He glanced up at Gallenn again and thought about all the things he would have told him if it hadn’t been for
wormholes. He would have told him what it was like to leave his father and home and never return, to live and
love and fight with a group of strangers who became family only to have everything jeopardized by his own
obsession. He could have told him about the Aurora Chair and the woman who rescued him from the Gammak
Base, the woman he had loved.
Ultimately, he couldn’t even tell Gallenn about how he had lost her to another John Crichton, not without
explaining why that man had died, or how she had stood beside him but not really with him when they went to
destroy the technology that threatened this part of the universe. Gallenn could never learn of the sacrifice he’d
been willing to make in order to keep her, because he’d have to explain about finally having the secret to return
home. Telling him about those things would have been the only way to make him understand what it felt like to
stand in Moya’s hangar and watch her leave, when she was the only thing in this universe that gave him
direction.
It would have been futile to try and explain how he’d survived being stranded in space without letting him know
how Harvey had reduced his metabolism to make the limited oxygen last until he found a planet that would
sustain him. Tell him about Harvey and it was a quick trip back to Scorpius and wormholes again, so he’d never
shared that part of his life either.
So Gallenn had never understood his deep depression after he almost been killed by stepping on a live power
cable in the repair facility. His friend had always assumed it was the result of his injuries, but it was the loss of
the clone that had driven him into his last and most severe bout of drinking. Harvey had been his single
remaining tie to his previous life, and when the personality disappeared in an uncontrolled surge of energy, it
was as if he had been abandoned in the emptiness of space once again. At least with the clone around, he
could occasionally reminisce about his life on Moya, discuss the small moments, the good and the bad, and the
way fate had brought him to this new life. A careless step had taken that away from him as well.
He’d never told Gallenn why the Peacekeepers wanted to get their hands on him so badly, never told him about
what would happen if a young, crippled Leviathan with a finally selfless captain in command chose to starburst
inside the hangar of a Command Carrier, or what their sacrifice had purchased. John looked at the expectant
face across the table, reflecting on all the other things that had remained secreted in his heart.
Since Gallenn didn’t know why the Peacekeepers were so highly motivated to find and execute John Crichton,
Destroyer of Gammak Bases and Command Carriers, he had never told him about his first, desperate days
away from Moya. He’d never described finding a suitable planet to land on, only to make his final descent right
over a Peacekeeper outpost. They’d recognized the white module immediately, and he’d spent an entire solar
day being chased by patrols keen on the promotions that would accompany his capture.
His only way off the planet had been to infiltrate the outpost in order to find a charged fuel cell for the module.
He’d almost gotten away with it, but on his way out of the encampment had run into a young soldier standing
sentry who had seen past his black leather clothing and recognized an intruder. His mouth had opened wide to
sound an alarm that would have meant John’s capture and death, and he couldn’t allow that, so John had done
the only thing possible and stabbed him with the soldier’s own blade.
Crichton looked down at the hands that cradled his drink, the hands that had designed and helped build the
Farscape, had brushed back Aeryn’s hair and touched her face, had learned to pull the trigger on a pulse
pistol without hesitation, and had been stained with the warm blood of a young sebacean who had looked
surprised to discover he was dying. He still heard the quiet, desperate voice some nights, betraying all of his
Peacekeeper training by promising silence in return for life if he -- John Crichton, Astronaut -- would only spare
him. But he had pulled the knife out and sunk it in a second time to ensure his own survival, and had somehow
destroyed himself instead.
Gallenn was still waiting for an explanation of his last statement, but that would have led to wormholes as well,
so he took another sip of his drink and turned to stare out the door, watching the stars slowly appear in the
darkening night sky.
“Do you still love her?” Gallenn prodded again.
John muttered a reply, almost too quietly to be heard.
“Beyond what?” Gallenn asked, catching only half of the answer.
John shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Too much has happened since then. I’m not the same person I was
then, and she’s obviously not the same woman either. I did some things to survive that I never thought I was
capable of doing. I don’t want to go back to any life that might demand I ever do that again.” He turned around
and gave Gallenn a twisted, humorous smile. “The fat lady sang a long time ago. It’s time to drop the curtain
on this play and move on to the next production.”
Crichton shoved his half-empty glass away, clapped the puzzled sebacean on the shoulder, and sauntered out
of the building. He paused outside the door to look up at the sky. He could pick out two of the stars he had
renamed. Dewey and Louie were hanging just above the horizon, faint in the distance but visible. Somewhere
out there were Hewey and the other bright pinpoint he had named, but they were never visible from this point
on the planet. When he’d first decided to remain here, he’d considered relocating to a different settlement,
somewhere in the southern hemisphere where he could see them, but he’d finally decided it would be better if
he never looked at them again. They weren’t his guide posts anymore. His way was set by the rise and fall of a
binary star, and by the needs of customers. He had remade his life that way, and it would have to be enough.
* ~ *~ * ~ * ~ *
