Night Walker
Chapter 4
Aeryn walked out of the small healing center, squinting as she stepped into the silvery morning sunlight. The
medical facility was airy and bright inside, but she’d spent the remainder of the night inside, and her eyes
weren’t prepared for the natural light, no matter how diffuse. She slid down the wall to sit on the ground
beneath the slanting roof that protruded from the front of the building. There were several chairs and benches
scattered there to provide seating for waiting relatives, but she found it more comforting to sit with her back
against the cool ceramic wall and her knees tucked up against her chest.
“How are they?” John was lying on his back on one of the benches, precariously balanced on the narrow
surface. He hadn’t changed, and his clothes were stiff with mud and blood, which was why he hadn’t been
allowed inside the building.
Aeryn opened her mouth, but no noise came out. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Chiana will
recover. D’Argo’s alive.” She rubbed her hands together, trying to remove the last of the blue stains from her
palms. Nebari blood was more tenacious than that of other species, she decided, rubbing at a knuckle. “First
time,” she said quietly. First time she’d ever come in contact with the blue life source -- or that volume of it, at
least.
“What did you say?” John rolled off the bench and stood up, stretching.
“Nothing.” She looked up at him. “You should go get cleaned up. Aksal left some clean clothes for you. I’ll get
them.”
“Don’t bother. I left D’Argo’s Qualta blade out there. I want to go get it first.” John walked to the edge of the
sheltered area and leaned against one of the pillars, making no move to begin his errand. He stretched left
and right, then settled back against the upright.
“You carried D’Argo all the way back. Without resting.” Aeryn leaned her head back against the wall, and
wondered how soon she could find a place to lie down and get some sleep.
“Yup. No biggie.” He sighed. “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.” He shifted slightly, easing his shoulders with a
motion that was too familiar to an ex-Peacekeeper who’d suffered through more exercise-damaged muscles
than she could count. “Where’s Rygel?”
“He said something along the lines of not becoming an appetizer for the creature and took the second transport
back to Moya.” Aeryn got to her feet and moved to stand next to him. She ran her hand firmly down John’s
back.
“Ouch,” he admitted.
“Get Aksal to take care of it.” Vossmarr was watching over D’Argo. No one knew yet whether his vigil would
end in joy or grief.
“It’s just stiff muscles. There’s no damage.” John sighed. “This was my idea, Aeryn. I’m the one who set this
up.” He gazed out over the distant marsh where the events he’d set in motion had come to their culmination.
“Someone else is paying again.” They were her words, but it was the source of the guilt that had him glued to
one spot, unable to move forward physically or mentally.
“We all had our chance to turn back. You walked out of Command, giving us the chance to go somewhere
else. Coming here wasn’t your fault. D’Argo and I argued to go into the marshes when you wanted to stay on
the walks. That part wasn’t your fault.” She followed his gaze toward the marshes. “This isn’t your fault,
John.”
He almost told her then. He almost admitted that he had let the thing get past him, but he couldn’t bring himself
to confess his monumental error in judgment.
He had stood in the maintenance bay just days earlier, arguing over the fate of Pilot and Moya, and Stark had
asked him, ‘What have these strangers done to so earn your trust?’ when he’d been willing to abandon their
gentle host in favor of transferring to the Pathfinder ship. Crichton stared out at the marshes and tried to figure
out how he had once again convinced himself that an obvious threat was benign.
“This wasn’t your fault, John.” Aeryn repeated the phrase when he didn’t say anything.
“Next time, I’ll make sure I’m the one who jumps in front of the runaway train.”
He hadn’t done it. His lack of action had placed D’Argo and Chiana squarely in the path of disaster instead,
leaving him to run impotently but safely through the mud after they’d been smashed by the locomotive.
“I need to find D’Argo’s Qualta blade,” he told her. “He’ll want it when he wakes up.”
* * * * *
John lowered himself to sit on the edge of the wooden walkway, taking a few moments to look at the remnants
of their footprints in the few areas of firmer ground below. Most of the heavy gouges had disappeared, the
viscous mud flowing into the depressions to erase the tale of their frantic movements in the dark, but a few
signs of desperate scrambling remained. It seemed like a nightmare now, a surreal journey through disjointed
images linked only by the common theme of darkness and damp.
“You’re traveling through another dimension,” he chanted, deepening his voice. “A dimension not only of sight
and sound, but of … mud. Deep, dark, mysterious mud that holds god only knows what.” John sighed and slid
into the blackish water. It had been easier in the dark. He hadn’t known what he was wandering through then.
He followed the sporadic footsteps upstream, found the heavy gouges where he’d scrambled up into the grass,
and cut off at what he thought was the same angle he’d followed last night. He ran into a huge pool of greenish
water instead.
“Well, that ain’t it,” he griped.
He worked back to his tracks, surveyed the outline of the treetops, and tried a tangent leading toward a tall
cluster of leaves that looked familiar. He worked from one mound of foliage to another, hopping across a
labyrinth of black muck with a foul, oily scum of rotting vegetation shimmering on the surface. He couldn’t quite
believe he’d slithered through the sludge the night before, sometimes on his belly, sometimes on his hands and
knees, but when he looked down at the carapace that had dried on his clothes, he concluded that it was the
same material.
“Hooooeeee. Good Cajun potluck. One hun’red percaint garranteeeeed!” He bounded across a particularly
bilious looking puddle, trying for a large mound of marsh grass, but his mud caked foot slipped off the hummock
as he landed. John dropped awkwardly into the puddle, arms waving wildly for balance, almost caught himself,
and splashed belly first into a reddish custard of mud and rotting grass. His hand caught something warm and
firm as he pulled himself out of the mud, and he looked up into another set of eyes.
He yelped and rolled away, startled beyond rational thought. He pushed himself to his knees and looked more
carefully at what he’d found. Then he turned away, crawled to an area of firmer ground, and threw up.
He glanced at his find when he finished retching, testing his ability to hold his now empty stomach in check.
When nothing else clamored for ejection, John pulled off his vest and shirt, and wrapped the item into a
bundle. He covered it with his shirt first, then fastened his vest around it again, numb hands taking their time
buckling it into a tidy package.
He found himself obsessively tucking and straightening the black shirt beneath the vest, making sure the
wrapping was smoothly perfect, and had to shake himself physically to get his hands to stop. He spat a surge
of acid into the weedy growth, then gathered his discovery to his chest and began picking his way back to the
walkway. Three steps later, his foot kicked something that leapt away from him with a metallic clang. John
hoisted the Qualta blade with one hand, cradling his other burden in the crook of his arm as though he were
carrying a baby, and walked slowly out of the marsh.
* * * * *
Aeryn was headed toward the healing center to check on Chiana and D’Argo when she spotted John walking
slowly toward the village. She noted the fresh layer of mud, and stepped through the door of the building to get
the clothes Aksal had left for him. John’s posture and slow gait registered late, and brought her to an abrupt
halt before she got any further than the entryway. She stepped back to the door to look at him again.
Something was terribly wrong; she could tell even from a distance.
“Aksal! Vossmarr? Can someone come here?” she called down the hallway. The distress in her tone was
more than she had intended to convey, but it had the desired result.
Vossmarr hurried out of one of the rooms, wiping his hands on the long front skirt of his tunic. “What is the
matter, Aeryn Sun?”
“Something’s wrong with John.” She beckoned to him, and they hurried out of the building together.
Vossmarr’s long gliding gait carried him toward the approaching human as quickly as Aeryn’s jog, both of them
alarmed by the stumbling, almost blind progress toward the building.
“John!” she called ahead, worried enough to abandon her usual reserve.
His head came up slowly, like some sort of mortally stricken creature. The hollow haunted look was back in his
eyes -- the look she’d seen when he was facing the truth about the neural chip that was taking control, the look
she’d seen when he’d watched Zhaan step onto the bridge of the Pathfinder ship, and the look she’d seen for a
brief flash on the ice planet when he’d looked into her eyes and thought she was an illusion.
John’s gaze switched to Vossmarr. “You said the last person the creature took was a child.” He handed Aeryn
the Qualta blade and used the free hand to pull the vest and shirt away from one end of his bundle.
“Menri,” Vossmarr sang quietly. “Oh, my little man, Menri.” He cradled John’s package in his arms, huddling
over it.
“This is why you asked us to kill that thing in trade. This is why you’re the one who contacted us, instead of one
of your bureaucrats.” John’s voice was a whisper as the Ashrei nodded, clutching the small body to his chest.
“He was my cousin.” Vossmarr fingered one of the few wet tufts of hair that could be seen between the folds of
the shirt. “Oh, my little brother, you would have been one of the great healers. They told me so. Your family
misses you so much, Menri.” He turned toward the healing center, still singing to his lost cousin. “You will be
consecrated as an Aleph, my little man. I will see to it. They’ve already agreed that you may lie alongside the
great ones at the Center. Everyone will know who you were.”
John stared dry-eyed at the receding pair -- one tall and alive, the other a small fragment of memory. “I need to
kill something,” he said flatly. His voice rose to an agonized pitch as he continued. “What kind of thing does
that? What would do that to a child and then … and leave it … and just … What kind of thing?” The figure
was still hunched over its burden as it disappeared into the building. “I need to kill something.” John
summarized.
* * * * *
“Let me ask you something.” John placed one foot on the railing and tipped back in his chair. He was finally
clean, dressed in the same flowing Ashrei clothes that Aeryn wore, enjoying the late afternoon sun from
beneath the roofed porch in front of Sellimarr’s home. “You saw that thing moving down the stream.” Aeryn
nodded. “If that critter could move, say, twice as fast as what you saw -- or even three times as fast -- could it
have gotten from where you found Chiana, all the way down to the lake, and then back up to D’Argo in the time
between the two attacks?”
Aeryn thought about it for several microts. “I wouldn’t think so.”
“So it either flew …” He anticipated her reaction and shook his head just as she did. “Or it cut across the
marsh from side to side …”
“That would certainly have taken even longer,” Aeryn scoffed.
“Or …” He waited for her to make the jump to the conclusion that he would never have formulated without
Harvey.
“Or there are two of those things.”
“Yes. Thing Number One and Thing Number Two.”
“Or more.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” He considered it for a while. “I don’t think so. If there were more than two, why didn’t
they take us all out last night? God knows they had the chance. They could have gotten us all down by the
lake on the first pass if there were more.”
“You still want to go after these Nessie things,” she stated. “You haven’t changed your mind.” She studied his
reaction carefully.
“More than ever.” John was aware of her stare, but continued to gaze into the distance. He still hadn’t
confessed to her that he’d had a chance to shoot one of the creatures last night, but decided that this was a
bad time to tell her that he’d seen the vague shape moving upstream. That sight contributed to his certainty
that there was only a pair. He was positive that the creature he’d seen moving was the one that had gotten
D’Argo. Thing #2, he labeled it in his mind. The timing and location matched up perfectly. If there were more
than two, he probably would have seen another one traveling with Thing #2.
“What’s your plan?” she asked.
“What I think is my plans stink. My plan is to -- listen to you.” He hit the first two rhymes inadvertently. “I’ll shut
up and follow you, so we can kill Things One and Two. I want to fry them down to the bone, and send the Cat In
The Hat home alone.” Aeryn favored him with her special ‘make-sense’ frown. “It’s called ‘Seussin’, and it’s an
art form.”
“If that’s an art form on Earth, I’m definitely never visiting.” Aeryn looked up at the porch rafters, reaching back
into her extensive Peacekeeper training in order to marshal their meager information into some sort of pattern.
“I have to come up with the plan this time,” she mused. “These creatures are like your Nessie, why don’t you
come up with a way to kill them?”
“Because I never hunted Cecil the Sea Serpent, and because the last time I had a plan, you used words like
‘never work’ and ‘idiot’.” Crichton made a grumbling sound in the back of his throat. “Idiot,” he repeated,
sounding hurt.
“I don’t think trapping or luring these things is going to work. And we don’t have enough people to try another
nighttime engagement.” She slid into military terms as she considered their problem, ignoring his complaint.
“The only thing left would be an assault of some sort.”
“Go after them.” John looked toward the marsh, considering what was beyond it. “They live in a lake, Aeryn.”
“Didn’t you just say you’d shut up and follow me?” She smiled as he clamped his mouth shut. “We can’t search
the entire lake,” she voiced her thoughts out loud. “So our first problem is figuring out where they live in the
lake.”
“No, our first problem is that we can’t breathe underwater.” His feet dropped off the railing with a thump. “I’ll go
talk to Aksal. Maybe he and Vossmarr have some brainiac friends who could help with that part.”
“Pilot?” Aeryn called after activating her comms. “Maybe Moya can help with the first part,” she said as
Crichton went inside.
* * * * *
Vossmarr, Aksal and Sellimarr had joined them in the long family room where the first meeting had taken place.
John was letting Aeryn and Rygel pour over the schematics that Pilot had produced from Moya’s survey of the
lake while he examined the breather system that Aksal’s friends had come up with.
“It seems a bit bulky,” he observed, hefting the system.
“Not once you get it on,” Aksal said enthusiastically. He slid into the backpack arrangement, demonstrating how
the chemical scrubber hugged his spine from neck to hips, moving with him as he moved around the room. “I
told them you would probably be in a fight, so they built the rest with that in mind.” He jammed a helmet down
on his head and demonstrated how the breathing mask, air lines, and face shield all fit tightly together. Aksal
continued to talk inside the mask, his voice muffled into incomprehensibility but the black eyes shining with
obvious pride in his friends’ speedy innovation.
John tried to snag the air lines, pulling at them to see if they could be ripped loose, but they fit tightly against
the Ashrei’s neck, feeding into the mask seamlessly. Aksal’s technician friends had successfully placed the
vital tubing in a spot where the Things would probably rip his throat out before they left him without air. Aksal
pulled the mask away, “They’ll fit a set to each of you.” His grin died away. “Just two of you are going to go
after them?”
John looked across to where Aeryn was hunched over the schematics. She met his gaze, having overheard the
question. “Stark can’t be found, and … Jool?” The judgment remained unspoken.
Vossmarr stood in a corner, black eyes watching the planning. One hand slid up, and he chewed lightly on the
pad of his anterior-thumb. Aeryn looked at him speculatively, watching the unconscious behavior, and then
looked across at where Crichton was testing the connections of mask to helmet. She went back to watching
Vossmarr’s slow worrying of his thumb.
He noticed her stare and jerked his hand down, rubbing the two thumbs against each other. “Apologies. A
very old and unpleasant habit, I fear. I am, perhaps, a bit distracted this evening.”
“You don’t have to be here, Vossmarr. Aksal is helping us enormously.” The Aleph looked as gloomy as his
uncle, and neither had offered anything into the planning as yet.
“Your friend, Ka D’Argo, is doing better than anyone ever would have envisioned. My presence …”
“I was referring to your cousin,” her gentle tone halted his assurance, “and your son, Sellimarr. You’re entitled
to some time to mourn your loss.”
Sellimarr stepped closer to the table. “We are the ones who asked the central authority to notify us if anyone
meeting our requirements contacted the planet. We initiated this, therefore we must participate in its
conclusion. There will be adequate time for grief when this is over. How may we assist?”
“You already have,” Rygel responded. “By offering your gracious hospitality.”
“Perhaps …” Aeryn looked across at John and thought of his emotional swings during the day, and the guilt
he’d been voicing earlier. The symptoms were the same ones that had preceded his nighttime wanderings
aboard Moya. She stepped closer to Vossmarr and lowered her voice. “Perhaps you could make sure Mafflelle
finds her way into John’s lap later tonight.”
He smiled broadly. “I will find her now to make sure she does not wander.”
“I believe I may have something here, Aeryn.” Rygel’s stubby finger rested on what appeared, at first, to be a
blemish on the survey schematic. The entire group leaned over the transparency.
“What is that?” John lifted the Hynerian’s hand to get a better look.
Aeryn leaned closer to see what Rygel had found. “That’s a pile of rocks. The only rocks anywhere on the
bottom of the lake, and the scan shows that it might be hollow inside. Well done, Rygel. I might have missed
that.”
John peered at the blemish, trusting their skilled interpretation of the jumble of symbols. He was better with the
schematics of Moya’s systems. “Think we should knock before entering?”
* * * * *
“Anything else we need to settle tonight? Or can we work the rest out in the morning?” John leaned away from
the table and stretched his back.
The remains of the dinner provided by Sellimarr’s wife were pushed into an untidy corner of the table, together
with a pile of discarded schematics which Aeryn and Rygel had deemed useless. The group was ranged
around one end of the long table with the one remaining survey, the breather equipment, and several pulse
rifles laid out between them.
“I hit Thing Number One last night,” Aeryn said pensively. She picked up a pulse rifle and ejected the chakan
oil cartridge. “I hit it several times and it didn’t slow down.”
John rocked forward, his chair settling with a loud crack against the hard floor. “You picked a fine time to bring
that up.”
“I didn’t remember until just now,” she snapped at him. “I had a few other things on my mind last night.”
“What about D’Argo’s rifle?” Rygel interjected, trying to distract the pair from their instant antagonism.
John flapped his hands and let them fall back to the table. “No one knows except D’Argo. That thing’s too
heavy for me to want to take it underwater, anyway. Aeryn?” She shook her head. “What else do we have on
board Moya?” he prompted.
“Tarak Deployer, grenades, the larger pulse rifle.” She stopped, gaze vacant as she thought about their limited
supply of weaponry.
“Rocks, sticks, spears,” John ran off in a litany. “You?” he looked at the three Ashrei. They simply smiled at
him. “Didn’t think so.” He turned back to Aeryn’s unfocused stare. “What happens when you fire a pulse
weapon underwater?” The question felt like he was leading into a bad joke, along the lines of ‘Why did the
chakan oil cartridge cross the road?’
Her eyes looked into the distance, shifting from side to side as she searched her memory. “I’m not sure
anyone’s ever tried it. I don’t remember it being covered during training, but that might mean that it works
normally. We trained for amphibious assaults, but only to get onto dry land.” Aeryn turned the chakan oil
cartridge over in her hands, examining it for several microts, then slid it back into the rifle. “I don’t know what
will happen.”
Everyone sat silently, looking glumly at the weapons and equipment on the table, their plans derailed at the last
moment by an oversight. John fingered the breather, thinking about how war was waged on his own planet.
Technology was a wonderful thing, but so many heroic acts had been performed with the most minimal of
supplies. Fingers, brains, courage. The pulse rifles might work.
I’m not your kind of hero, Dad.
He looked at Aeryn out of the corners of his eyes, peeking carefully to check the expression on her face. She
was staring at him. “I’m willing to try it anyway,” he admitted. Her smile left him feeling lightheaded. It was the
one she only seemed to bestow on him when he did something a Peacekeeper would be proud of, but he didn’t
care. He knew he’d willingly jump right off a cliff if she promised to smile at him like that as he went over the
edge. John dragged his thoughts back to the discussion with an effort. “How about we do a test fire as soon as
we get underwater, and beat feet if they don’t go off correctly?”
“Sounds like a good idea,” she said softly, still smiling.
John turned back to the Ashrei. “You don’t have weapons, but you must harvest grain or cut grass or chop
down trees somehow, right?” Nods. “Can one of your people come up with something REALLY sharp along
one edge, about this long,” his hands indicated the desired distance, “with a handle for two hands?”
“A sword?” Rygel burst out. “You want to go up against those things with a sword?”
“It’s for you to carry when you come along, Sparky,” John kidded. “Actually it’s a backup. Winona and swords
don’t misfire. And I can make seafood shish kabobs if I get bored.”
The discussion ground to a halt as they decided they’d resolved everything possible until morning. Sellimarr
disappeared to close up the heavy shutters that every house in the village had installed when the inhabitants
began to fear attacks in their own homes, while the rest of them cleaned up the detritus from their meal, and
arranged the bench-like alcoves for sleeping. Aksal said his farewells and disappeared toward his own home.
John sat on the edge of one of the bunks looking indecisive. He’d made no move to remove his boots, leading
Aeryn to suspect that he was already anticipating spending the night awake. She didn’t like deceiving him to
get him to sleep, but she knew that her life would depend on his reactions the following day, which dispelled the
last of her hesitancy.
Every plan she’d formulated for getting him into the alcove with the feltisk was discarded in a matter of microts
when Mafflelle came bounding down the stairs into the room, six legs flying in an excited flurry. The cub
stopped at the bottom of the stairs, viewing the room and its occupants carefully before charging under the
table and out the other side to leap playfully at Rygel’s hovering Throne Sled.
The Dominar let out a brief cry and steered himself closer to the ceiling. “Predator,” he accused.
“Come here, fur ball,” John invited. “You’re not a dog, but you’re cuter than Rocky the Flying Frog up there.”
He scooped the feltisk up in one hand and flopped back onto the padded bench, automatically resuming the
position he’d taken the day before -- lying on his back with the cub on his chest. Mafflelle jumped after his
wiggling fingers for seven or eight microts, then abruptly flopped down on his chest and went promptly to sleep.
John yawned, resting his hand on the spotted fur.
Aeryn saw Vossmarr laughing silently as he climbed the stairs out of the gathering room, then she laid down
and went to sleep as well.
* * * * *
This place was familiar … frighteningly familiar after the disorienting strangeness of the last dozen or so places
he’d found himself. To his left and right, the light-colored walls of the hospital corridor faded into misty
nothingness, leaving him suspended in the one remaining segment that held the door. That door. He knew
who was on the other side of that door, although he’d never walked through it … back then. He hadn’t been
able to walk through it then, and he couldn’t do it now. John Crichton sat huddled on the floor with his forearms
on his knees, lips pressed against his wrist as he stared at the door, and waited for something to change. It
always did. His world mutated around him endlessly now, an odd collection of realities that confused him.
She was calling his name again, but this time there were two voices merging into the one summons. There was
the higher pitched tone that he had callously ignored back then, and the deeper, more insistent voice, the one
he still couldn’t locate and never left him alone. The first gnawed at him, left him consumed with guilt. The
second was annoying, but reassured him. It was the single constant in his existence, a welcome irritation.
They called to him again, but the voices were distinctly separate this time. One voice pleaded with him to enter
the room, but he knew what lay behind that smoothly white door. Death waited there. The other voice plucked
at his interest, inviting him to venture into the unseen areas at the end of the corridor. He wouldn’t move until
he had it figured out. He glanced from one destination to the other, shifting only his eyes, pondering his
choices while the two voices rang endlessly in his mind.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
Chapter 4
Aeryn walked out of the small healing center, squinting as she stepped into the silvery morning sunlight. The
medical facility was airy and bright inside, but she’d spent the remainder of the night inside, and her eyes
weren’t prepared for the natural light, no matter how diffuse. She slid down the wall to sit on the ground
beneath the slanting roof that protruded from the front of the building. There were several chairs and benches
scattered there to provide seating for waiting relatives, but she found it more comforting to sit with her back
against the cool ceramic wall and her knees tucked up against her chest.
“How are they?” John was lying on his back on one of the benches, precariously balanced on the narrow
surface. He hadn’t changed, and his clothes were stiff with mud and blood, which was why he hadn’t been
allowed inside the building.
Aeryn opened her mouth, but no noise came out. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Chiana will
recover. D’Argo’s alive.” She rubbed her hands together, trying to remove the last of the blue stains from her
palms. Nebari blood was more tenacious than that of other species, she decided, rubbing at a knuckle. “First
time,” she said quietly. First time she’d ever come in contact with the blue life source -- or that volume of it, at
least.
“What did you say?” John rolled off the bench and stood up, stretching.
“Nothing.” She looked up at him. “You should go get cleaned up. Aksal left some clean clothes for you. I’ll get
them.”
“Don’t bother. I left D’Argo’s Qualta blade out there. I want to go get it first.” John walked to the edge of the
sheltered area and leaned against one of the pillars, making no move to begin his errand. He stretched left
and right, then settled back against the upright.
“You carried D’Argo all the way back. Without resting.” Aeryn leaned her head back against the wall, and
wondered how soon she could find a place to lie down and get some sleep.
“Yup. No biggie.” He sighed. “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.” He shifted slightly, easing his shoulders with a
motion that was too familiar to an ex-Peacekeeper who’d suffered through more exercise-damaged muscles
than she could count. “Where’s Rygel?”
“He said something along the lines of not becoming an appetizer for the creature and took the second transport
back to Moya.” Aeryn got to her feet and moved to stand next to him. She ran her hand firmly down John’s
back.
“Ouch,” he admitted.
“Get Aksal to take care of it.” Vossmarr was watching over D’Argo. No one knew yet whether his vigil would
end in joy or grief.
“It’s just stiff muscles. There’s no damage.” John sighed. “This was my idea, Aeryn. I’m the one who set this
up.” He gazed out over the distant marsh where the events he’d set in motion had come to their culmination.
“Someone else is paying again.” They were her words, but it was the source of the guilt that had him glued to
one spot, unable to move forward physically or mentally.
“We all had our chance to turn back. You walked out of Command, giving us the chance to go somewhere
else. Coming here wasn’t your fault. D’Argo and I argued to go into the marshes when you wanted to stay on
the walks. That part wasn’t your fault.” She followed his gaze toward the marshes. “This isn’t your fault,
John.”
He almost told her then. He almost admitted that he had let the thing get past him, but he couldn’t bring himself
to confess his monumental error in judgment.
He had stood in the maintenance bay just days earlier, arguing over the fate of Pilot and Moya, and Stark had
asked him, ‘What have these strangers done to so earn your trust?’ when he’d been willing to abandon their
gentle host in favor of transferring to the Pathfinder ship. Crichton stared out at the marshes and tried to figure
out how he had once again convinced himself that an obvious threat was benign.
“This wasn’t your fault, John.” Aeryn repeated the phrase when he didn’t say anything.
“Next time, I’ll make sure I’m the one who jumps in front of the runaway train.”
He hadn’t done it. His lack of action had placed D’Argo and Chiana squarely in the path of disaster instead,
leaving him to run impotently but safely through the mud after they’d been smashed by the locomotive.
“I need to find D’Argo’s Qualta blade,” he told her. “He’ll want it when he wakes up.”
* * * * *
John lowered himself to sit on the edge of the wooden walkway, taking a few moments to look at the remnants
of their footprints in the few areas of firmer ground below. Most of the heavy gouges had disappeared, the
viscous mud flowing into the depressions to erase the tale of their frantic movements in the dark, but a few
signs of desperate scrambling remained. It seemed like a nightmare now, a surreal journey through disjointed
images linked only by the common theme of darkness and damp.
“You’re traveling through another dimension,” he chanted, deepening his voice. “A dimension not only of sight
and sound, but of … mud. Deep, dark, mysterious mud that holds god only knows what.” John sighed and slid
into the blackish water. It had been easier in the dark. He hadn’t known what he was wandering through then.
He followed the sporadic footsteps upstream, found the heavy gouges where he’d scrambled up into the grass,
and cut off at what he thought was the same angle he’d followed last night. He ran into a huge pool of greenish
water instead.
“Well, that ain’t it,” he griped.
He worked back to his tracks, surveyed the outline of the treetops, and tried a tangent leading toward a tall
cluster of leaves that looked familiar. He worked from one mound of foliage to another, hopping across a
labyrinth of black muck with a foul, oily scum of rotting vegetation shimmering on the surface. He couldn’t quite
believe he’d slithered through the sludge the night before, sometimes on his belly, sometimes on his hands and
knees, but when he looked down at the carapace that had dried on his clothes, he concluded that it was the
same material.
“Hooooeeee. Good Cajun potluck. One hun’red percaint garranteeeeed!” He bounded across a particularly
bilious looking puddle, trying for a large mound of marsh grass, but his mud caked foot slipped off the hummock
as he landed. John dropped awkwardly into the puddle, arms waving wildly for balance, almost caught himself,
and splashed belly first into a reddish custard of mud and rotting grass. His hand caught something warm and
firm as he pulled himself out of the mud, and he looked up into another set of eyes.
He yelped and rolled away, startled beyond rational thought. He pushed himself to his knees and looked more
carefully at what he’d found. Then he turned away, crawled to an area of firmer ground, and threw up.
He glanced at his find when he finished retching, testing his ability to hold his now empty stomach in check.
When nothing else clamored for ejection, John pulled off his vest and shirt, and wrapped the item into a
bundle. He covered it with his shirt first, then fastened his vest around it again, numb hands taking their time
buckling it into a tidy package.
He found himself obsessively tucking and straightening the black shirt beneath the vest, making sure the
wrapping was smoothly perfect, and had to shake himself physically to get his hands to stop. He spat a surge
of acid into the weedy growth, then gathered his discovery to his chest and began picking his way back to the
walkway. Three steps later, his foot kicked something that leapt away from him with a metallic clang. John
hoisted the Qualta blade with one hand, cradling his other burden in the crook of his arm as though he were
carrying a baby, and walked slowly out of the marsh.
* * * * *
Aeryn was headed toward the healing center to check on Chiana and D’Argo when she spotted John walking
slowly toward the village. She noted the fresh layer of mud, and stepped through the door of the building to get
the clothes Aksal had left for him. John’s posture and slow gait registered late, and brought her to an abrupt
halt before she got any further than the entryway. She stepped back to the door to look at him again.
Something was terribly wrong; she could tell even from a distance.
“Aksal! Vossmarr? Can someone come here?” she called down the hallway. The distress in her tone was
more than she had intended to convey, but it had the desired result.
Vossmarr hurried out of one of the rooms, wiping his hands on the long front skirt of his tunic. “What is the
matter, Aeryn Sun?”
“Something’s wrong with John.” She beckoned to him, and they hurried out of the building together.
Vossmarr’s long gliding gait carried him toward the approaching human as quickly as Aeryn’s jog, both of them
alarmed by the stumbling, almost blind progress toward the building.
“John!” she called ahead, worried enough to abandon her usual reserve.
His head came up slowly, like some sort of mortally stricken creature. The hollow haunted look was back in his
eyes -- the look she’d seen when he was facing the truth about the neural chip that was taking control, the look
she’d seen when he’d watched Zhaan step onto the bridge of the Pathfinder ship, and the look she’d seen for a
brief flash on the ice planet when he’d looked into her eyes and thought she was an illusion.
John’s gaze switched to Vossmarr. “You said the last person the creature took was a child.” He handed Aeryn
the Qualta blade and used the free hand to pull the vest and shirt away from one end of his bundle.
“Menri,” Vossmarr sang quietly. “Oh, my little man, Menri.” He cradled John’s package in his arms, huddling
over it.
“This is why you asked us to kill that thing in trade. This is why you’re the one who contacted us, instead of one
of your bureaucrats.” John’s voice was a whisper as the Ashrei nodded, clutching the small body to his chest.
“He was my cousin.” Vossmarr fingered one of the few wet tufts of hair that could be seen between the folds of
the shirt. “Oh, my little brother, you would have been one of the great healers. They told me so. Your family
misses you so much, Menri.” He turned toward the healing center, still singing to his lost cousin. “You will be
consecrated as an Aleph, my little man. I will see to it. They’ve already agreed that you may lie alongside the
great ones at the Center. Everyone will know who you were.”
John stared dry-eyed at the receding pair -- one tall and alive, the other a small fragment of memory. “I need to
kill something,” he said flatly. His voice rose to an agonized pitch as he continued. “What kind of thing does
that? What would do that to a child and then … and leave it … and just … What kind of thing?” The figure
was still hunched over its burden as it disappeared into the building. “I need to kill something.” John
summarized.
* * * * *
“Let me ask you something.” John placed one foot on the railing and tipped back in his chair. He was finally
clean, dressed in the same flowing Ashrei clothes that Aeryn wore, enjoying the late afternoon sun from
beneath the roofed porch in front of Sellimarr’s home. “You saw that thing moving down the stream.” Aeryn
nodded. “If that critter could move, say, twice as fast as what you saw -- or even three times as fast -- could it
have gotten from where you found Chiana, all the way down to the lake, and then back up to D’Argo in the time
between the two attacks?”
Aeryn thought about it for several microts. “I wouldn’t think so.”
“So it either flew …” He anticipated her reaction and shook his head just as she did. “Or it cut across the
marsh from side to side …”
“That would certainly have taken even longer,” Aeryn scoffed.
“Or …” He waited for her to make the jump to the conclusion that he would never have formulated without
Harvey.
“Or there are two of those things.”
“Yes. Thing Number One and Thing Number Two.”
“Or more.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” He considered it for a while. “I don’t think so. If there were more than two, why didn’t
they take us all out last night? God knows they had the chance. They could have gotten us all down by the
lake on the first pass if there were more.”
“You still want to go after these Nessie things,” she stated. “You haven’t changed your mind.” She studied his
reaction carefully.
“More than ever.” John was aware of her stare, but continued to gaze into the distance. He still hadn’t
confessed to her that he’d had a chance to shoot one of the creatures last night, but decided that this was a
bad time to tell her that he’d seen the vague shape moving upstream. That sight contributed to his certainty
that there was only a pair. He was positive that the creature he’d seen moving was the one that had gotten
D’Argo. Thing #2, he labeled it in his mind. The timing and location matched up perfectly. If there were more
than two, he probably would have seen another one traveling with Thing #2.
“What’s your plan?” she asked.
“What I think is my plans stink. My plan is to -- listen to you.” He hit the first two rhymes inadvertently. “I’ll shut
up and follow you, so we can kill Things One and Two. I want to fry them down to the bone, and send the Cat In
The Hat home alone.” Aeryn favored him with her special ‘make-sense’ frown. “It’s called ‘Seussin’, and it’s an
art form.”
“If that’s an art form on Earth, I’m definitely never visiting.” Aeryn looked up at the porch rafters, reaching back
into her extensive Peacekeeper training in order to marshal their meager information into some sort of pattern.
“I have to come up with the plan this time,” she mused. “These creatures are like your Nessie, why don’t you
come up with a way to kill them?”
“Because I never hunted Cecil the Sea Serpent, and because the last time I had a plan, you used words like
‘never work’ and ‘idiot’.” Crichton made a grumbling sound in the back of his throat. “Idiot,” he repeated,
sounding hurt.
“I don’t think trapping or luring these things is going to work. And we don’t have enough people to try another
nighttime engagement.” She slid into military terms as she considered their problem, ignoring his complaint.
“The only thing left would be an assault of some sort.”
“Go after them.” John looked toward the marsh, considering what was beyond it. “They live in a lake, Aeryn.”
“Didn’t you just say you’d shut up and follow me?” She smiled as he clamped his mouth shut. “We can’t search
the entire lake,” she voiced her thoughts out loud. “So our first problem is figuring out where they live in the
lake.”
“No, our first problem is that we can’t breathe underwater.” His feet dropped off the railing with a thump. “I’ll go
talk to Aksal. Maybe he and Vossmarr have some brainiac friends who could help with that part.”
“Pilot?” Aeryn called after activating her comms. “Maybe Moya can help with the first part,” she said as
Crichton went inside.
* * * * *
Vossmarr, Aksal and Sellimarr had joined them in the long family room where the first meeting had taken place.
John was letting Aeryn and Rygel pour over the schematics that Pilot had produced from Moya’s survey of the
lake while he examined the breather system that Aksal’s friends had come up with.
“It seems a bit bulky,” he observed, hefting the system.
“Not once you get it on,” Aksal said enthusiastically. He slid into the backpack arrangement, demonstrating how
the chemical scrubber hugged his spine from neck to hips, moving with him as he moved around the room. “I
told them you would probably be in a fight, so they built the rest with that in mind.” He jammed a helmet down
on his head and demonstrated how the breathing mask, air lines, and face shield all fit tightly together. Aksal
continued to talk inside the mask, his voice muffled into incomprehensibility but the black eyes shining with
obvious pride in his friends’ speedy innovation.
John tried to snag the air lines, pulling at them to see if they could be ripped loose, but they fit tightly against
the Ashrei’s neck, feeding into the mask seamlessly. Aksal’s technician friends had successfully placed the
vital tubing in a spot where the Things would probably rip his throat out before they left him without air. Aksal
pulled the mask away, “They’ll fit a set to each of you.” His grin died away. “Just two of you are going to go
after them?”
John looked across to where Aeryn was hunched over the schematics. She met his gaze, having overheard the
question. “Stark can’t be found, and … Jool?” The judgment remained unspoken.
Vossmarr stood in a corner, black eyes watching the planning. One hand slid up, and he chewed lightly on the
pad of his anterior-thumb. Aeryn looked at him speculatively, watching the unconscious behavior, and then
looked across at where Crichton was testing the connections of mask to helmet. She went back to watching
Vossmarr’s slow worrying of his thumb.
He noticed her stare and jerked his hand down, rubbing the two thumbs against each other. “Apologies. A
very old and unpleasant habit, I fear. I am, perhaps, a bit distracted this evening.”
“You don’t have to be here, Vossmarr. Aksal is helping us enormously.” The Aleph looked as gloomy as his
uncle, and neither had offered anything into the planning as yet.
“Your friend, Ka D’Argo, is doing better than anyone ever would have envisioned. My presence …”
“I was referring to your cousin,” her gentle tone halted his assurance, “and your son, Sellimarr. You’re entitled
to some time to mourn your loss.”
Sellimarr stepped closer to the table. “We are the ones who asked the central authority to notify us if anyone
meeting our requirements contacted the planet. We initiated this, therefore we must participate in its
conclusion. There will be adequate time for grief when this is over. How may we assist?”
“You already have,” Rygel responded. “By offering your gracious hospitality.”
“Perhaps …” Aeryn looked across at John and thought of his emotional swings during the day, and the guilt
he’d been voicing earlier. The symptoms were the same ones that had preceded his nighttime wanderings
aboard Moya. She stepped closer to Vossmarr and lowered her voice. “Perhaps you could make sure Mafflelle
finds her way into John’s lap later tonight.”
He smiled broadly. “I will find her now to make sure she does not wander.”
“I believe I may have something here, Aeryn.” Rygel’s stubby finger rested on what appeared, at first, to be a
blemish on the survey schematic. The entire group leaned over the transparency.
“What is that?” John lifted the Hynerian’s hand to get a better look.
Aeryn leaned closer to see what Rygel had found. “That’s a pile of rocks. The only rocks anywhere on the
bottom of the lake, and the scan shows that it might be hollow inside. Well done, Rygel. I might have missed
that.”
John peered at the blemish, trusting their skilled interpretation of the jumble of symbols. He was better with the
schematics of Moya’s systems. “Think we should knock before entering?”
* * * * *
“Anything else we need to settle tonight? Or can we work the rest out in the morning?” John leaned away from
the table and stretched his back.
The remains of the dinner provided by Sellimarr’s wife were pushed into an untidy corner of the table, together
with a pile of discarded schematics which Aeryn and Rygel had deemed useless. The group was ranged
around one end of the long table with the one remaining survey, the breather equipment, and several pulse
rifles laid out between them.
“I hit Thing Number One last night,” Aeryn said pensively. She picked up a pulse rifle and ejected the chakan
oil cartridge. “I hit it several times and it didn’t slow down.”
John rocked forward, his chair settling with a loud crack against the hard floor. “You picked a fine time to bring
that up.”
“I didn’t remember until just now,” she snapped at him. “I had a few other things on my mind last night.”
“What about D’Argo’s rifle?” Rygel interjected, trying to distract the pair from their instant antagonism.
John flapped his hands and let them fall back to the table. “No one knows except D’Argo. That thing’s too
heavy for me to want to take it underwater, anyway. Aeryn?” She shook her head. “What else do we have on
board Moya?” he prompted.
“Tarak Deployer, grenades, the larger pulse rifle.” She stopped, gaze vacant as she thought about their limited
supply of weaponry.
“Rocks, sticks, spears,” John ran off in a litany. “You?” he looked at the three Ashrei. They simply smiled at
him. “Didn’t think so.” He turned back to Aeryn’s unfocused stare. “What happens when you fire a pulse
weapon underwater?” The question felt like he was leading into a bad joke, along the lines of ‘Why did the
chakan oil cartridge cross the road?’
Her eyes looked into the distance, shifting from side to side as she searched her memory. “I’m not sure
anyone’s ever tried it. I don’t remember it being covered during training, but that might mean that it works
normally. We trained for amphibious assaults, but only to get onto dry land.” Aeryn turned the chakan oil
cartridge over in her hands, examining it for several microts, then slid it back into the rifle. “I don’t know what
will happen.”
Everyone sat silently, looking glumly at the weapons and equipment on the table, their plans derailed at the last
moment by an oversight. John fingered the breather, thinking about how war was waged on his own planet.
Technology was a wonderful thing, but so many heroic acts had been performed with the most minimal of
supplies. Fingers, brains, courage. The pulse rifles might work.
I’m not your kind of hero, Dad.
He looked at Aeryn out of the corners of his eyes, peeking carefully to check the expression on her face. She
was staring at him. “I’m willing to try it anyway,” he admitted. Her smile left him feeling lightheaded. It was the
one she only seemed to bestow on him when he did something a Peacekeeper would be proud of, but he didn’t
care. He knew he’d willingly jump right off a cliff if she promised to smile at him like that as he went over the
edge. John dragged his thoughts back to the discussion with an effort. “How about we do a test fire as soon as
we get underwater, and beat feet if they don’t go off correctly?”
“Sounds like a good idea,” she said softly, still smiling.
John turned back to the Ashrei. “You don’t have weapons, but you must harvest grain or cut grass or chop
down trees somehow, right?” Nods. “Can one of your people come up with something REALLY sharp along
one edge, about this long,” his hands indicated the desired distance, “with a handle for two hands?”
“A sword?” Rygel burst out. “You want to go up against those things with a sword?”
“It’s for you to carry when you come along, Sparky,” John kidded. “Actually it’s a backup. Winona and swords
don’t misfire. And I can make seafood shish kabobs if I get bored.”
The discussion ground to a halt as they decided they’d resolved everything possible until morning. Sellimarr
disappeared to close up the heavy shutters that every house in the village had installed when the inhabitants
began to fear attacks in their own homes, while the rest of them cleaned up the detritus from their meal, and
arranged the bench-like alcoves for sleeping. Aksal said his farewells and disappeared toward his own home.
John sat on the edge of one of the bunks looking indecisive. He’d made no move to remove his boots, leading
Aeryn to suspect that he was already anticipating spending the night awake. She didn’t like deceiving him to
get him to sleep, but she knew that her life would depend on his reactions the following day, which dispelled the
last of her hesitancy.
Every plan she’d formulated for getting him into the alcove with the feltisk was discarded in a matter of microts
when Mafflelle came bounding down the stairs into the room, six legs flying in an excited flurry. The cub
stopped at the bottom of the stairs, viewing the room and its occupants carefully before charging under the
table and out the other side to leap playfully at Rygel’s hovering Throne Sled.
The Dominar let out a brief cry and steered himself closer to the ceiling. “Predator,” he accused.
“Come here, fur ball,” John invited. “You’re not a dog, but you’re cuter than Rocky the Flying Frog up there.”
He scooped the feltisk up in one hand and flopped back onto the padded bench, automatically resuming the
position he’d taken the day before -- lying on his back with the cub on his chest. Mafflelle jumped after his
wiggling fingers for seven or eight microts, then abruptly flopped down on his chest and went promptly to sleep.
John yawned, resting his hand on the spotted fur.
Aeryn saw Vossmarr laughing silently as he climbed the stairs out of the gathering room, then she laid down
and went to sleep as well.
* * * * *
This place was familiar … frighteningly familiar after the disorienting strangeness of the last dozen or so places
he’d found himself. To his left and right, the light-colored walls of the hospital corridor faded into misty
nothingness, leaving him suspended in the one remaining segment that held the door. That door. He knew
who was on the other side of that door, although he’d never walked through it … back then. He hadn’t been
able to walk through it then, and he couldn’t do it now. John Crichton sat huddled on the floor with his forearms
on his knees, lips pressed against his wrist as he stared at the door, and waited for something to change. It
always did. His world mutated around him endlessly now, an odd collection of realities that confused him.
She was calling his name again, but this time there were two voices merging into the one summons. There was
the higher pitched tone that he had callously ignored back then, and the deeper, more insistent voice, the one
he still couldn’t locate and never left him alone. The first gnawed at him, left him consumed with guilt. The
second was annoying, but reassured him. It was the single constant in his existence, a welcome irritation.
They called to him again, but the voices were distinctly separate this time. One voice pleaded with him to enter
the room, but he knew what lay behind that smoothly white door. Death waited there. The other voice plucked
at his interest, inviting him to venture into the unseen areas at the end of the corridor. He wouldn’t move until
he had it figured out. He glanced from one destination to the other, shifting only his eyes, pondering his
choices while the two voices rang endlessly in his mind.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
