Birthright
Part 3
“How long did it take John to learn his way around Moya?” Jack asked as Aeryn led the way through the tiers.
Every intersection and every corridor looked nearly the same. They stepped through an arched opening into a
chamber with five other exits plus an open vertical shaft that penetrated both the floor and the ceiling. Every
route leading out looked identical to the one they’d used to enter and he wondered if he’d missed some sort of
markings that would tell a person where they were in the vessel.
Aeryn laughed, but the effort sounded strained to his ears. “Many cycles,” she answered, detouring around the
shaft and gesturing for him to pass through one of the exits ahead of her.
“He got lost at first,” Jack theorized, assessing the laugh and her look of amusement.
“Many times. He learned very fast though. John soon knowed how to repair most of Moya.” Jack started to
correct her English, but decided it wouldn’t matter in the long run. They turned into another chamber with a
vertical shaft, identical to the last one, but this time Aeryn chose to swing onto the ladder and scrambled down
a level. Jack waited until her fingers were off the rungs before following her down, moving awkwardly until he
got used to the oval openings in the structure.
“Quickest way,” she explained, pointing to the shaft, and then turned to lead the way again.
“Wait,” Jack requested as he detoured to one side of the latest corridor. The interior bulkhead between the
arched ribs was missing here, providing a view into a chamber larger than most of the others he’d been in so
far. He stepped cautiously to the edge of the floor and looked down into another maintenance and hangar
area -- this one filled with smaller craft. “Hangar bay four?” he asked, remembering Ian’s brief description.
“Yes,” she confirmed, moving to stand beside him. “Prowler,” she pointed at a lethally sleek looking craft, and
he understood Ian’s ‘dradest’ remark for the first time. “Nebari short range fighter, Sheyang fighter, Kalish
courier, transport pod,” she listed, pointing each one out. “More there,” she added, indicating the hangar bay.
“The Farscape,” he added, spotting a battered and scorched little spaceship tucked into a corner, its stubby
wings folded in toward the fuselage. “Does it still fly?” A part of him wanted to go down and smash the
once-white module into junk metal, as though destroying it could reverse what had happened years ago,
returning his son to him.
“It can, but it has not been flown in many cycles. John will not let us throw it out.” She smiled tolerantly, a look
very like Leslie’s expression when he’d insisted on keeping a favorite pair of pants or a tattered jacket. She
jerked her head and they resumed their progress through the gleaming hallways.
“I wish I’d stopped him from going,” Jack blurted, remembering the desperation as he’d yelled ‘abort’ again and
again until it was certain that the module had disappeared, taking his son with it. He’d wanted to yell John’s
name that day, plead with him to turn back as the transmissions began to break up, but he’d been too aware of
the other men and women around him in the control room and had refrained from voicing the impassioned
plea. He’d been left with the single word -- ‘abort’ -- falling from his lips repeatedly, as though the mantra could
draw John back. It hadn’t worked.
“I too,” Aeryn responded in a slow depressed voice.
Jack stopped walking, so shocked by her answer that his feet stumbled to a halt. “You would want him to have
never come here?” he asked incredulously.
“No. Not the same moment.” She bit her lip for a moment and then shrugged. “There was a day a very long
time ago when John thought he was going home. Maybe if I said he should stay he would not have gone. That
was the start of many things that went wrong. If I had spoken that I loved him, then maybe …” She stopped
walking, staring blindly into middle space. “Maybe this is my fault. He is sick because of me.”
“I don’t believe that, Aeryn,” he offered, trying to comfort her despite an almost complete lack of details. “I don’t
believe you’d do anything that would cause him harm.”
“Things were not always this way,” she continued shakily. “When John goes to where he thinks is Earth, he
found a species not human. He found out that he is not on Earth but they put information in his head about
wormholes.”
“Put it in his head? How?” The mildly nauseous feeling was back in his stomach as he considered what had
happened to John.
“They just --” she made a pressing movement with both hands “--put it in. It is in there now. Then others found
out he has this in his mind. They chase him, torture him, hurt him.” Aeryn looked away from Jack, taking
several long breaths. “Maybe it causes what is wrong now. If I had just said … stay. If I had just told him not to
go.” She turned back to face him, tears brimming. “John is sick because of me!” she said in anguish.
“No. It’s never that easy, Aeryn Sun. This other species put the knowledge in his head. It’s their fault as well.
I’ve only heard a small portion of what happened, but I’m sure that this is not your fault. I couldn’t have stopped
John from flying the Farscape that day, any more than you could stop him from doing anything he sets his mind
to doing. Some things happen in life because they happen, not because of someone’s actions.”
“Fate?”
“I prefer the word destiny.” He gestured for her to lead and they began walking again.
“It does not feel like destiny,” Aeryn resumed. “It feels like a curse. John is kind and gentle. He does not
deserve this sickness.” She led the way through two more intersections then drew to a halt in the middle of a
deserted corridor. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
Jack nodded, unconsciously pulling himself up as ramrod straight as the woman before him, his body braced for
the next few moments even if his mind wasn’t sure what he was about to see. He glanced left and right,
registering for the first time the wide latticed bars that served as doors for each of the chambers they’d been
passing, tucking a question about that away for later. “Yes. I’m ready,” he answered.
Aeryn moved past two more doorways, then waved her hand past a glowing sensor on the wall and a heavy
grate swung up, sliding into a recess in the wall. She looked back the way they’d come as D’Argo and several
of the others appeared, moving slowly and quietly to join them. They spread out in the corridor, their diffident
stances all speaking of stress and anxiety, waiting silently as Aeryn led Jack into the chamber.
“John?” she called quietly.
Jack followed her, his gaze flicking toward the bed, surprised to find it empty. Someone in the room was
humming so quietly it was almost subliminal. He cocked his head to listen more carefully and it sorted itself into
a song his wife had loved and had sung to the children whenever they were sick. Aeryn was standing at the
foot of the bed, looking down toward the floor and he moved to stand beside her. There was a figure huddled
there, arms wrapped around its knees as it sat on the floor humming quietly and rocking slightly from side to
side.
It was John. It was an older version of the young man he’d last seen on the gantry leading to the space shuttle,
his body thickened with age, face lined with wrinkles, all vitality missing. The black clad man looked up at him,
jaw gaping open with a glitter of spittle creeping along his lower lip, vacant gaze examining his visitors. Jack
Crichton took two fast steps backward, recoiling in shock. He struggled to recall everything that his grandson
and Aeryn had told him since they’d appeared in his kitchen, finally admitting that at no time had they ever
intimated that it was John’s body that was failing instead of his mind. He’d jumped to that conclusion on his
own, assuming that disease meant a physical affliction.
Jack’s carefully constructed greeting evaporated, the words he’d prepared to address his lost son disappearing
in a flash, leaving him stammering and short of breath. Despite everything he’d been through over the past
hours, the rattlers had been remarkably absent … until now. The snarl of sensations jangled the nerves in his
stomach into painful cramping tightness. He’d somehow envisioned a weakened body, perhaps with feverish
eyes staring out of an ashen face. There’d been several possibilities flitting around in his head, but this wasn’t
one of them. He wasn’t ready for this.
“When you told me he was sick, I thought you meant he was ill,” Jack objected, unable to take his eyes off the
stranger sitting on the floor.
“He is ill,” Aeryn insisted. “He is sick.” She moved slowly to sit on the foot of the bed, transitioning the last two
feet with infinite caution. “Hello, John,” she spoke softly, then waited until the blue eyes turned in her direction.
“How are you feeling today?” He blinked at her, then looked back at his father, his gaze wandering from head
to foot and back.
“John?” Aeryn’s voice summoned the stare back in her direction. “I’m Aeryn. Do you remember me?” There
was no response. “This is not an injury. We have made sure of that. This is a sickness.” She was talking in a
soothing cadence now, keeping her voice low and calm.
“I thought you meant physically. I didn’t understand … I didn’t … ” Jack moved forward step by step, his feet
connecting with the floor a moment too early, slapping down without sensation as the shock divorced him from
his body. A small voice inside his head insisted that this was not John Crichton; this was not his son, his
offspring. This was not his lost child. His son was a brilliant scientist and an astronaut who had been lost from
him during a bold mission, not this elderly soul with a failing mind.
But reality sat on the floor before him, forcing him to face the truth. John had grown old. Jack had to remind
himself that this was not his ‘present’, and that he was very probably dead by now, but that reminder did
nothing to quell the grief when he saw what ravages time had wrought on his son. The brown hair had gone
completely gray, not silvery like his own thick shock of hair, but a lifeless, lackluster gray. It was cropped short,
standing up in disorderly tufts as though someone had run a hand through it repeatedly. Other than that the
unruly hair, John was clean, tidily dressed, and appeared well fed, obviously well cared for by his friends.
“Hello John. I’ve missed you,” he pushed out past the lump in his throat, his voice thick and rasping. The old
man on the floor stared at the newcomer for several more moments, leaned to one side to check on the others
standing near the door, then returned to contemplating his visitor. The empty gaze turned into something
approaching recognition as he studied his father, then a tenuous smile appeared. Jack went down on one
knee beside him, thinking that perhaps things weren’t as bad as he’d originally estimated.
“Hi Dad! Did you come to pick me up?” John asked brightly, the uncertain smile turning into a happy grin. The
eager, innocent voice coming out of the aged face was a cruel contrast, in a single moment treating Jack to the
agony that John’s friends had endured during his decline. It wasn’t as bad as he’d thought … it was worse.
“Not exactly, John.” Jack searched for something to say to this stranger wearing portions of his
son’s physiology.
“Mom said she was going to pick me up after the science fair, but she hasn’t shown up. Did the guys at NASA
let you out early? Want to see my project?” John faltered and looked confused. “You never saw my project.
You weren’t here.” He looked around him, finally taking more interest in the other figures standing just outside
the door. He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Who are they, Dad? Did they come with you?”
“No, John. They were already here. They came to see your project.” Jack rifled through his memory, but he
couldn’t remember ever seeing any of John’s science projects … not one. He knew that Leslie must have told
him about the youngster’s efforts, but he’d never really listened or taken the time to examine the inventions,
and now he could offer no details to ease John’s anxiety. There had been a row of framed award certificates
on his son’s bedroom wall, but he’d never paid any attention to the budding genius living in his home until
John’s degrees and theories had led him to a position at IASA. Not until his work had ultimately led him to this.
“Tell me about your project, son. What did you build this year?”
The question came too late. The fleeting memory had been lost, and John was backing away from him,
suspicion in every movement. “I don’t remember you. Why are you here? Did Scorpius send you?” John
scrambled across the floor on his hands and feet, working his way into a corner where he huddled into the
niche, wrapping his arms around his bent knees and eyeing Jack warily over his forearms. “Go away!” he
demanded. “I don’t want you here.”
“John, it’s me. I’m your father,” Jack implored him, watching for any sign of recognition as he eased forward.
The angry expression mutated into something far more anxious as he grew closer. “Go away!” John barked at
him. “Don’t touch me!”
Aeryn pulled at Jack’s arm, startling him. He’d momentarily lost track of the fact that there was someone else in
the chamber. “Come. It is no good now,” she urged as he looked up at her. “He will not let us near now.”
“There must be something, Aeryn, something I can do to make him realize it’s me.” Jack rose to his feet and
took two reluctant steps away, responding slowly to the insistent tugs.
“This is what Chiana told us when we landed. He knows no one today. Some days it is better, but today it is at
its worst.” She grabbed him firmly by the arm and steered him out of the cell. “Do not look back. It makes you
feel only sadder.”
“What about the procedure? When will you start that?” He followed her into the corridor, looking between the
woman who had spent the last two decades with John and the small group that was still waiting outside John’s
quarters. “What’s going on?”
“Come with me,” she tried again, pulling lightly at his upper arm. “Do not stay here.”
Jack pulled away, suddenly alarmed despite her gentle entreaties. “Why not? What are you going to do to
him?” He looked behind him and Ian was headed into John’s cell, trailing behind Nerri and two individuals he
hadn’t met yet. “Ian! What’s going on?”
The young man wheeled, coming to join them as Aeryn spouted a long string of Sebacean, aimed alternately at
Ian and Jack. “We have to take my father down to where the Kallimitri have set up their equipment. It’s a
chamber that we use for an infirmary. That’s where they’ll perform the procedure.”
“Good. Let me help.” Jack started back toward the chamber, hearing D’Argo’s quiet grumbling garble inside.
“No, please go with Mother.” Ian caught Jack by the elbow, arresting his progress. “Go with her, grandfather,”
he pleaded, motioning Jack away and using his English title for the first time. “We’d hoped he’d recognize you
long enough to do this another way, but we’re going to have to force him out of his room. It’s awful. He doesn’t
remember where he is so he gets confused and frightened and won’t let anyone take him out of his cell,” the
words tumbled out of the boy in a distressed rush. Jack looked into the blue-gray eyes, so like John’s, so like
Aeryn’s, and saw the anguish that the teen was somehow managing to keep almost completely hidden. “Don’t
watch, melnatsa.”
A high-pitched screech of anger and fear emanated from inside the cell, followed by a long wail of pure
unhappiness from a voice that was unmistakably John’s. “Crichton, calm down!” D’Argo’s voice insisted, the
last word nearly lost beneath another scream of anger.
“What about you, melnatnic?” Jack found the word surprisingly comfortable on his tongue. “This has to be
difficult for you. I should help.”
Ian gestured with his head, indicating something behind Jack. “Please go with her. I can’t do anything to help
her, and sometimes Dad remembers me,” Ian insisted. “Go with mother … please.” The last word was
pronounced in tones that were entirely John’s, destroying Jack’s resolve to remain near his son.
Jack looked at Ian more closely, noting the trembling hands and the glittering threat of tears. “I should help,” he
insisted, thinking that no teenager should have to cope with this situation.
“D’Argo and the others will do the work. I’m only here in case Dad remembers me. Sometimes it helps.” Ian
took a deep breath and plunged into the chamber, ending the conversation.
Jack turned away, automatically following Aeryn as she headed away from the wheedling voices that were
attempting to calm John, his ears registering nothing except the level of distress coming from his son’s voice.
He trailed after Aeryn, seeing the source of Ian’s outer strength in her straight spine and squared shoulders.
“Wait, Aeryn!” he called ahead as she hurried through the curving corridors, accelerating to a near run as they
drew further away from Quarters and could still hear the echoing yells of the struggle being waged.
She came to a halt, back still turned, and he began to ask why she didn’t help comfort the distressed person in
that chamber. Then he remembered the visits to Leslie’s hospital room in the last few days before her death,
and how he’d had to steel himself every time to face the person in that room –- the person who had taken the
place of his laughing, vibrant wife. She’d still been the person he’d fallen in love with, but something integral
was gone and he’d never quite been able to see his beloved Leslie in that depleted figure beneath the
blankets.
“Aeryn,” he said quietly, pulling at her shoulder. She resisted his efforts, every muscle screaming out that she
wanted to be left alone. “It’s all right to feel this way,” Jack whispered, walking around the statue she’d become
until he faced her. “How long has he been this way? This bad?”
“He got worse … about …” Aeryn took a deep breath, letting it out in a shaking sigh, “a quarter yee-arh ago.”
She stood stock still at first as he hugged her, then suddenly leaned into his embrace and buried her face in his
shirt. A short collection of clipped, consonant dominated words was mumbled into his chest as they stood in the
middle of the tier, simply holding each other as they shared their loss, then Aeryn pushed away from him and
wiped at her eyes.
“It was … gradual?” Jack nodded that she’d chosen the correct word. “Slow at first. Just forget this, that.
Then John forgets more. One day John forgets Ian, next day he forgets … ” Aeryn swallowed hard, her voice
cracking slightly as she continued. “The next day he forgets me. It all comes back, then another day he
forgets again.”
They walked together through the tiers, Aeryn gradually describing what it had been like to watch one of the
most important people in her life slowly disappear. “First we think John was hurt too much, too often. It is the
injuries from the past that are doing this. We find a -- ” she slid into Sebacean.
“I didn’t get that one, Aeryn,” Jack stopped her. She made a frustrated motion.
“One who checks him for injury,” she prompted.
“A doctor, medical personnel of some sort,” Jack provided. “Go on.”
“We find one. He telled us that it is a sickness, one he does not know. We go -- ” Another frustrated growl
emerged. Aeryn pointed to several places in midair, switching from left to right several times. Jack simply
nodded his understanding. “Look for someone who can fix this thing. John forgets more.”
“You finally located the Calamari …” He stopped when Aeryn burst out laughing, tears beginning to trickle
down her face in a horrible combination of humor and grief. “What?” he asked, concerned about her emotional
stability.
“Kallimitri,” she corrected. “John does this also … did this.” Aeryn turned away, hiding her expression from
him.
“You found the Kallimitri and they can repair the damage, but there wasn’t a suitable sample of DNA to begin
the repairs.” She nodded, still facing away from him. “So you came all the way through time and space to find
me just to cure John.” Aeryn nodded again, wiping away the tears. “Why come back into the past though?
Why not some other time?”
She held up one finger. “We wanted to be sure we find you healthy and not old.” He nodded his
understanding and she held up a second finger. “We must not go back before John leaves. It would be good
to get his own DNA but meeting him there would be very, very bad.”
“Destroy entire universes?” he quoted what she had told him in his kitchen just hours earlier, feeling mildly
disoriented by how much had happened in such a short time.
“Yes.” Aeryn held up a third finger. “Big item. We come to a place called Tormented Space to find wormholes
to bring us back. Most do not go where and when we need to go. It took ten solar days to find one even close.
Kallimitri cost much currency. We cannot wait any longer. Must come to this time in your life. John cannot wait
any longer.”
“I was wrong about one thing, Aeryn Sun,” Jack said, gathering her into a single-armed hug. He was treated to
a short Sebacean phrase with an upswing at the end, which he assumed was an encouragement to tell her
more. “I thought you and John loved each other the way I loved his mother, but I’m not convinced I’m capable
of loving another person the way you love him.”
* * * * *
“Aeryn?” D’Argo’s voice burst over her comms, breaking into the short moment of peace she’d found enclosed
in the arms of someone who loved John enough to travel all the way across the universe to help him. She
pulled out of Jack’s enveloping embrace, making a gesture that she hoped he’d understand meant she had to
answer the summons.
“Yes, D’Argo,” she prompted.
“We’re in the infirmary. I had to tongue John.” The voice dragged the words out, depression leaching all vitality
out of the announcement. “They’re getting started down here.”
“I’ll come down.” She thought of all the cycles that D’Argo had remained aboard Moya despite the opportunities
he’d had to make a new life with his own species, and of his long friendship with John. “I’m sorry,” she offered,
knowing that the luxan detested knocking John out that way, considering it a violation of the trust they’d shared
for so many cycles.
“He was fighting too fiercely, Aeryn. I didn’t have a choice.” A long sigh hissed over the comms. “But he had
more energy than usual, so perhaps it wasn’t a bad sign.”
“Thank you, D’Argo,” she offered, knowing that they were all grasping at the small things to convince
themselves that there was some hope left. John’s energy levels generally rose and fell in a direct relationship
with his degree of anxiety. If he was able to fight off a luxan and three adult nebari, it only meant that his
disorientation and fear were at an all time high and his memory had reached a new low.
“Is Ian with you?” she asked, gesturing for Jack to follow her as she started toward the infirmary.
“No. He …” The deep voice hesitated. “Ian couldn’t stand to watch, Aeryn. He took off at a run.”
“I’ll ask Pilot to see if the DRDs can find him,” she responded, suddenly torn between her need to check on
John and the instinct that commanded that she first find and comfort her son. The comms channel closed with
a muffled chirp, and she turned toward the visitor.
“We go see John,” she stumbled, wishing there was some way to give Jack translator microbes. Transitioning
from Sebacean to English felt as though she had run from solid ground into neck deep mud in a single step.
Every word had to be teased out of her memory, painstakingly pronounced in the hopes that she was getting it
right. She rarely paid attention to the sounds that actually emerged from John or Ian, listening only to the
version that her microbes fed directly into her brain, so reproducing the right noises was a constant battle.
“That was a longer conversation. Is there a problem?” He fell into step beside her, both of them accelerating
as she indicated which way to turn before they reached each intersection.
Aeryn tried to come up with an explanation for a luxan tonguing, her vocabulary falling far short of what was
necessary to describe what occurred when someone got hit with the venom barb of D’Argo’s nearly prehensile
tongue. “No problem,” she assured him. “They made John go to sleep to get him to the --” She resorted to the
Sebacean term for a medical chamber, unable to remember the English version.
“Made him go to sleep,” Jack parroted thoughtfully. “You sedated him?”
“Yes,” she confirmed, deciding that was close enough to the truth. She considered comming Ian to ask him to
resume his duties as translator, but decided that it was more important to give him time to cope with the
upheaval of seeing his father so debilitated. He’d exhibited a maturity far beyond his years during the first
stages of John’s disease, giving in to grief and the resulting uncontrollable outbursts only when his father no
longer remembered him. “Ian is somewhere else,” she told Jack. “We will do our best to explain things to you
without him.”
“He’s been through a lot. He deserves time to deal with this.”
Aeryn glanced at him, reminding herself that this reserved, dignified man was a parent as well, and knew all too
well the agonies of fatherhood. She wondered if he’d played on the floor of his home with his young son as
John had played with Ian. Her parenting skills had taken a jump forward the day she’d found John lying on his
belly in Command, scrawling crude drawings across Moya’s golden floors with a lump of blue pigmented wax so
his four cycle old son could color them in with the rest of the collection they’d concocted. Three motras of floor
were covered with the rainbow hued figures; two DRDs waiting patiently to clean off the artwork once the
laughing pair was finished. She’d seen the joy in John’s eyes and the delight in Ian’s and had finally
understood what childhood was supposed to be like.
“Do you need some time to deal with this, Aeryn?” Jack asked her as they approached the infirmary. “I can
stand in a corner and watch if you’d like to be somewhere else.”
She shook her head emphatically. “One way or other there will be time for me later. With John or without. I
must be with him now.” She motioned him to lead the way through the doorway, and they joined the group that
was already gathered in the large chamber.
* * * * *
Jack stepped to one side as he entered the room, giving his tired brain a few seconds to adjust to the chaos,
wondering if every gathering of personnel aboard this ship was always such anarchy. Not being able to
understand the bedlam of multiple languages had to be contributing to the pandemonium, but it seemed that
everyone aboard the leviathan always talked at once, rarely without some form of argument taking place.
He recognized D’Argo and his son, and Chiana’s brother was standing with the other two men of his species
that had gone into John’s cell less than an hour earlier. Chiana appeared from behind D’Argo, leaning to one
side to spot Jack, and then beckoning for him to join the group. He moved into the cluster, waiting with the
others as Aeryn went to the far side of the chamber where four of the brown-furred Kallimitri were working
around a padded table. He jerked his head to one side, indicating to the group that he was stepping away, and
followed Aeryn. Sliding past D’Argo’s bulk, he spotted John’s unconscious body on the raised bed, small
attachments stuck to his forehead and torso, several greenish tubes sprouting from his wrists and ankles.
“What’s happening?” he demanded. The rattlers seemed to have taken up permanent residence in his
stomach. It had been over twenty years since he’d sat at his son’s bedside, comforting John through a bout of
chicken pox, and he’d missed the remainder of the childhood diseases completely. NASA had put demands on
him that had taken him away from his children for too much of their lives, and he felt ill equipped to act as a
father to this elderly patient lying before him.
“Scanners,” Aeryn explained to him, pointing to the round, silvery attachments. “Kallimitri cure,” she added,
pointing to the semi-translucent tubes. One of the clicking aliens scuttled between them and the bed, rudely
nudging them out of the way as it examined each of the additions to John’s body. The creature’s upper body
spun around almost one hundred and eighty degrees, allowing it to lean past the head of the bed to tap a fast
cadence across several control surfaces. The entries initiated a quiet hum that grew to a louder, pulsing thrum
as more and more of the equipment was activated.
“It begins,” Aeryn announced.
Jack watched as a series of monitors sprang to life, displaying what was clearly a human brain mapped out in
three dimensions. Another screen burst from black into multi-colored pinpoints, spinning and evolving into the
twisted strands of human DNA. The Kallimitri gathered around that display, their vocalizations switching to a low
buzzing that flowed in dissonant contrast to the tones of their equipment.
“They think it is too simple,” Aeryn smiled as one of the geneticists made an adjustment and then scratched its
head. “They saw this when they do tests, but thought maybe when they started it would be more complexer.”
“Complex,” Jack correctly absently, focused on the scientists. “That’s good news isn’t it? If human DNA is
simple, they should be able to fix it.”
“They do not find the source of the disease yet. They search more.”
Jack switched back to watching the readouts of John’s brain, fascinated by the increasing amounts of
information being layered into the depiction as they located the damage that had robbed John of his ability to
remember and reason. One of the Kallimitri scuttled between him and the readouts, dancing about on all four
legs as it pointed out myriad dark areas where no activity was being detected.
“My lord. That …” Jack leaned closer, waiting to see if any of the blank areas would fill in with data, but they
remained colorless. “That’s Alzheimer’s,” Jack blurted, “but he’s too young for that.” He looked back at the still
body, and realized that at this particular spot in time and space, John was nearly the same age as himself, and
was old enough to fall victim to the degenerative disease.
“Az-heimers?” Aeryn mimicked the new word as she turned to face him. “This is an Earth sickness? It is not a
thing he catches here?” She crossed her arms in front of her body, shaking slightly, looking both relieved and
close to fainting at the same time. “He does not get sick because he is here?” She bit her lower lip and looked
over her shoulder at John before meeting Jack’s eyes.
“No … well, maybe not. It’s possible he’s been carrying it for over twenty-five of your cycles,” Jack admitted.
“Our scientists aren’t quite sure what causes it, but they think it’s partly genetic, coupled with outside triggers.
He’s sick because of something he inherited from me.” And the guilt was almost more than he could handle.
Jack looked at Aeryn and suddenly understood part of the reason why this woman had traveled across space
and time to find him. “You thought it was something you did, something about his being here that had caused
this, when it was probably me or his life on Earth all along.”
Aeryn nodded jerkily, tears brimming even as she smiled. “How bad is this Azheimers?” she asked, her struggle
with English robbing her voice of emotion.
The elder Crichton rubbed his forehead for a moment, trying to remember what little he’d learned about the
disease from cursory readings. No one he knew had fallen to the affliction, so he hadn’t made an effort to learn
much about it. “Have his language skills suffered yet?” he asked. She shook her head, resorting to an easier
method of communication, then held her hand up with two fingers a hair’s breadth apart. “I think this is still in its
early stages then. But …” he jammed his teeth down on his tongue hard, mentally cursing himself for thinking
aloud. The group behind him had gone silent as he explained, listening carefully while waiting across the
chamber.
Chiana’s light babble intruded, clearly demanding something. “But what?” Aeryn repeated in English.
“At some point -- and I don’t know when this happens, Aeryn -- at some point the damage begins to kill off
portions of the brain and at that point some memories may be permanently lost.” Jack turned toward the group
and watched the depression sink into already weary bodies. He tried to reverse the effects of his pessimistic
comment. “But we don’t know how to reverse this on Earth. We’ve never had anyone recover from this
disease, so I can’t tell you whether the damage will be irreparable …” He was only making it worse, he
realized. His assurances were only serving to remind these people that John’s physiology was under attack
from a source they had never encountered in this part of the universe.
The Kallimitri continued to ignore the discussion around them. Although there were only four of the creatures,
the flashing blur of their legs as they hurried around the chamber gave the impression that John was
surrounded by a mob of the six-limbed geniuses. They finished adjusting their machines, checked their patient
one more time, then flooded out of the infirmary, leaving the crew transfixed in a suddenly silent chamber.
Chiana and Aeryn flipped a shimmering golden cover over John’s inert body, and then stepped back, staring at
the pale, lifeless face.
“Now what?” Jack asked, looking to the others for some sort of sign. D’Argo sighed and grumbled at him. “We
wait,” Jack interpreted on his own, his assessment confirmed by nods from the rest of the group.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
Part 3
“How long did it take John to learn his way around Moya?” Jack asked as Aeryn led the way through the tiers.
Every intersection and every corridor looked nearly the same. They stepped through an arched opening into a
chamber with five other exits plus an open vertical shaft that penetrated both the floor and the ceiling. Every
route leading out looked identical to the one they’d used to enter and he wondered if he’d missed some sort of
markings that would tell a person where they were in the vessel.
Aeryn laughed, but the effort sounded strained to his ears. “Many cycles,” she answered, detouring around the
shaft and gesturing for him to pass through one of the exits ahead of her.
“He got lost at first,” Jack theorized, assessing the laugh and her look of amusement.
“Many times. He learned very fast though. John soon knowed how to repair most of Moya.” Jack started to
correct her English, but decided it wouldn’t matter in the long run. They turned into another chamber with a
vertical shaft, identical to the last one, but this time Aeryn chose to swing onto the ladder and scrambled down
a level. Jack waited until her fingers were off the rungs before following her down, moving awkwardly until he
got used to the oval openings in the structure.
“Quickest way,” she explained, pointing to the shaft, and then turned to lead the way again.
“Wait,” Jack requested as he detoured to one side of the latest corridor. The interior bulkhead between the
arched ribs was missing here, providing a view into a chamber larger than most of the others he’d been in so
far. He stepped cautiously to the edge of the floor and looked down into another maintenance and hangar
area -- this one filled with smaller craft. “Hangar bay four?” he asked, remembering Ian’s brief description.
“Yes,” she confirmed, moving to stand beside him. “Prowler,” she pointed at a lethally sleek looking craft, and
he understood Ian’s ‘dradest’ remark for the first time. “Nebari short range fighter, Sheyang fighter, Kalish
courier, transport pod,” she listed, pointing each one out. “More there,” she added, indicating the hangar bay.
“The Farscape,” he added, spotting a battered and scorched little spaceship tucked into a corner, its stubby
wings folded in toward the fuselage. “Does it still fly?” A part of him wanted to go down and smash the
once-white module into junk metal, as though destroying it could reverse what had happened years ago,
returning his son to him.
“It can, but it has not been flown in many cycles. John will not let us throw it out.” She smiled tolerantly, a look
very like Leslie’s expression when he’d insisted on keeping a favorite pair of pants or a tattered jacket. She
jerked her head and they resumed their progress through the gleaming hallways.
“I wish I’d stopped him from going,” Jack blurted, remembering the desperation as he’d yelled ‘abort’ again and
again until it was certain that the module had disappeared, taking his son with it. He’d wanted to yell John’s
name that day, plead with him to turn back as the transmissions began to break up, but he’d been too aware of
the other men and women around him in the control room and had refrained from voicing the impassioned
plea. He’d been left with the single word -- ‘abort’ -- falling from his lips repeatedly, as though the mantra could
draw John back. It hadn’t worked.
“I too,” Aeryn responded in a slow depressed voice.
Jack stopped walking, so shocked by her answer that his feet stumbled to a halt. “You would want him to have
never come here?” he asked incredulously.
“No. Not the same moment.” She bit her lip for a moment and then shrugged. “There was a day a very long
time ago when John thought he was going home. Maybe if I said he should stay he would not have gone. That
was the start of many things that went wrong. If I had spoken that I loved him, then maybe …” She stopped
walking, staring blindly into middle space. “Maybe this is my fault. He is sick because of me.”
“I don’t believe that, Aeryn,” he offered, trying to comfort her despite an almost complete lack of details. “I don’t
believe you’d do anything that would cause him harm.”
“Things were not always this way,” she continued shakily. “When John goes to where he thinks is Earth, he
found a species not human. He found out that he is not on Earth but they put information in his head about
wormholes.”
“Put it in his head? How?” The mildly nauseous feeling was back in his stomach as he considered what had
happened to John.
“They just --” she made a pressing movement with both hands “--put it in. It is in there now. Then others found
out he has this in his mind. They chase him, torture him, hurt him.” Aeryn looked away from Jack, taking
several long breaths. “Maybe it causes what is wrong now. If I had just said … stay. If I had just told him not to
go.” She turned back to face him, tears brimming. “John is sick because of me!” she said in anguish.
“No. It’s never that easy, Aeryn Sun. This other species put the knowledge in his head. It’s their fault as well.
I’ve only heard a small portion of what happened, but I’m sure that this is not your fault. I couldn’t have stopped
John from flying the Farscape that day, any more than you could stop him from doing anything he sets his mind
to doing. Some things happen in life because they happen, not because of someone’s actions.”
“Fate?”
“I prefer the word destiny.” He gestured for her to lead and they began walking again.
“It does not feel like destiny,” Aeryn resumed. “It feels like a curse. John is kind and gentle. He does not
deserve this sickness.” She led the way through two more intersections then drew to a halt in the middle of a
deserted corridor. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
Jack nodded, unconsciously pulling himself up as ramrod straight as the woman before him, his body braced for
the next few moments even if his mind wasn’t sure what he was about to see. He glanced left and right,
registering for the first time the wide latticed bars that served as doors for each of the chambers they’d been
passing, tucking a question about that away for later. “Yes. I’m ready,” he answered.
Aeryn moved past two more doorways, then waved her hand past a glowing sensor on the wall and a heavy
grate swung up, sliding into a recess in the wall. She looked back the way they’d come as D’Argo and several
of the others appeared, moving slowly and quietly to join them. They spread out in the corridor, their diffident
stances all speaking of stress and anxiety, waiting silently as Aeryn led Jack into the chamber.
“John?” she called quietly.
Jack followed her, his gaze flicking toward the bed, surprised to find it empty. Someone in the room was
humming so quietly it was almost subliminal. He cocked his head to listen more carefully and it sorted itself into
a song his wife had loved and had sung to the children whenever they were sick. Aeryn was standing at the
foot of the bed, looking down toward the floor and he moved to stand beside her. There was a figure huddled
there, arms wrapped around its knees as it sat on the floor humming quietly and rocking slightly from side to
side.
It was John. It was an older version of the young man he’d last seen on the gantry leading to the space shuttle,
his body thickened with age, face lined with wrinkles, all vitality missing. The black clad man looked up at him,
jaw gaping open with a glitter of spittle creeping along his lower lip, vacant gaze examining his visitors. Jack
Crichton took two fast steps backward, recoiling in shock. He struggled to recall everything that his grandson
and Aeryn had told him since they’d appeared in his kitchen, finally admitting that at no time had they ever
intimated that it was John’s body that was failing instead of his mind. He’d jumped to that conclusion on his
own, assuming that disease meant a physical affliction.
Jack’s carefully constructed greeting evaporated, the words he’d prepared to address his lost son disappearing
in a flash, leaving him stammering and short of breath. Despite everything he’d been through over the past
hours, the rattlers had been remarkably absent … until now. The snarl of sensations jangled the nerves in his
stomach into painful cramping tightness. He’d somehow envisioned a weakened body, perhaps with feverish
eyes staring out of an ashen face. There’d been several possibilities flitting around in his head, but this wasn’t
one of them. He wasn’t ready for this.
“When you told me he was sick, I thought you meant he was ill,” Jack objected, unable to take his eyes off the
stranger sitting on the floor.
“He is ill,” Aeryn insisted. “He is sick.” She moved slowly to sit on the foot of the bed, transitioning the last two
feet with infinite caution. “Hello, John,” she spoke softly, then waited until the blue eyes turned in her direction.
“How are you feeling today?” He blinked at her, then looked back at his father, his gaze wandering from head
to foot and back.
“John?” Aeryn’s voice summoned the stare back in her direction. “I’m Aeryn. Do you remember me?” There
was no response. “This is not an injury. We have made sure of that. This is a sickness.” She was talking in a
soothing cadence now, keeping her voice low and calm.
“I thought you meant physically. I didn’t understand … I didn’t … ” Jack moved forward step by step, his feet
connecting with the floor a moment too early, slapping down without sensation as the shock divorced him from
his body. A small voice inside his head insisted that this was not John Crichton; this was not his son, his
offspring. This was not his lost child. His son was a brilliant scientist and an astronaut who had been lost from
him during a bold mission, not this elderly soul with a failing mind.
But reality sat on the floor before him, forcing him to face the truth. John had grown old. Jack had to remind
himself that this was not his ‘present’, and that he was very probably dead by now, but that reminder did
nothing to quell the grief when he saw what ravages time had wrought on his son. The brown hair had gone
completely gray, not silvery like his own thick shock of hair, but a lifeless, lackluster gray. It was cropped short,
standing up in disorderly tufts as though someone had run a hand through it repeatedly. Other than that the
unruly hair, John was clean, tidily dressed, and appeared well fed, obviously well cared for by his friends.
“Hello John. I’ve missed you,” he pushed out past the lump in his throat, his voice thick and rasping. The old
man on the floor stared at the newcomer for several more moments, leaned to one side to check on the others
standing near the door, then returned to contemplating his visitor. The empty gaze turned into something
approaching recognition as he studied his father, then a tenuous smile appeared. Jack went down on one
knee beside him, thinking that perhaps things weren’t as bad as he’d originally estimated.
“Hi Dad! Did you come to pick me up?” John asked brightly, the uncertain smile turning into a happy grin. The
eager, innocent voice coming out of the aged face was a cruel contrast, in a single moment treating Jack to the
agony that John’s friends had endured during his decline. It wasn’t as bad as he’d thought … it was worse.
“Not exactly, John.” Jack searched for something to say to this stranger wearing portions of his
son’s physiology.
“Mom said she was going to pick me up after the science fair, but she hasn’t shown up. Did the guys at NASA
let you out early? Want to see my project?” John faltered and looked confused. “You never saw my project.
You weren’t here.” He looked around him, finally taking more interest in the other figures standing just outside
the door. He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Who are they, Dad? Did they come with you?”
“No, John. They were already here. They came to see your project.” Jack rifled through his memory, but he
couldn’t remember ever seeing any of John’s science projects … not one. He knew that Leslie must have told
him about the youngster’s efforts, but he’d never really listened or taken the time to examine the inventions,
and now he could offer no details to ease John’s anxiety. There had been a row of framed award certificates
on his son’s bedroom wall, but he’d never paid any attention to the budding genius living in his home until
John’s degrees and theories had led him to a position at IASA. Not until his work had ultimately led him to this.
“Tell me about your project, son. What did you build this year?”
The question came too late. The fleeting memory had been lost, and John was backing away from him,
suspicion in every movement. “I don’t remember you. Why are you here? Did Scorpius send you?” John
scrambled across the floor on his hands and feet, working his way into a corner where he huddled into the
niche, wrapping his arms around his bent knees and eyeing Jack warily over his forearms. “Go away!” he
demanded. “I don’t want you here.”
“John, it’s me. I’m your father,” Jack implored him, watching for any sign of recognition as he eased forward.
The angry expression mutated into something far more anxious as he grew closer. “Go away!” John barked at
him. “Don’t touch me!”
Aeryn pulled at Jack’s arm, startling him. He’d momentarily lost track of the fact that there was someone else in
the chamber. “Come. It is no good now,” she urged as he looked up at her. “He will not let us near now.”
“There must be something, Aeryn, something I can do to make him realize it’s me.” Jack rose to his feet and
took two reluctant steps away, responding slowly to the insistent tugs.
“This is what Chiana told us when we landed. He knows no one today. Some days it is better, but today it is at
its worst.” She grabbed him firmly by the arm and steered him out of the cell. “Do not look back. It makes you
feel only sadder.”
“What about the procedure? When will you start that?” He followed her into the corridor, looking between the
woman who had spent the last two decades with John and the small group that was still waiting outside John’s
quarters. “What’s going on?”
“Come with me,” she tried again, pulling lightly at his upper arm. “Do not stay here.”
Jack pulled away, suddenly alarmed despite her gentle entreaties. “Why not? What are you going to do to
him?” He looked behind him and Ian was headed into John’s cell, trailing behind Nerri and two individuals he
hadn’t met yet. “Ian! What’s going on?”
The young man wheeled, coming to join them as Aeryn spouted a long string of Sebacean, aimed alternately at
Ian and Jack. “We have to take my father down to where the Kallimitri have set up their equipment. It’s a
chamber that we use for an infirmary. That’s where they’ll perform the procedure.”
“Good. Let me help.” Jack started back toward the chamber, hearing D’Argo’s quiet grumbling garble inside.
“No, please go with Mother.” Ian caught Jack by the elbow, arresting his progress. “Go with her, grandfather,”
he pleaded, motioning Jack away and using his English title for the first time. “We’d hoped he’d recognize you
long enough to do this another way, but we’re going to have to force him out of his room. It’s awful. He doesn’t
remember where he is so he gets confused and frightened and won’t let anyone take him out of his cell,” the
words tumbled out of the boy in a distressed rush. Jack looked into the blue-gray eyes, so like John’s, so like
Aeryn’s, and saw the anguish that the teen was somehow managing to keep almost completely hidden. “Don’t
watch, melnatsa.”
A high-pitched screech of anger and fear emanated from inside the cell, followed by a long wail of pure
unhappiness from a voice that was unmistakably John’s. “Crichton, calm down!” D’Argo’s voice insisted, the
last word nearly lost beneath another scream of anger.
“What about you, melnatnic?” Jack found the word surprisingly comfortable on his tongue. “This has to be
difficult for you. I should help.”
Ian gestured with his head, indicating something behind Jack. “Please go with her. I can’t do anything to help
her, and sometimes Dad remembers me,” Ian insisted. “Go with mother … please.” The last word was
pronounced in tones that were entirely John’s, destroying Jack’s resolve to remain near his son.
Jack looked at Ian more closely, noting the trembling hands and the glittering threat of tears. “I should help,” he
insisted, thinking that no teenager should have to cope with this situation.
“D’Argo and the others will do the work. I’m only here in case Dad remembers me. Sometimes it helps.” Ian
took a deep breath and plunged into the chamber, ending the conversation.
Jack turned away, automatically following Aeryn as she headed away from the wheedling voices that were
attempting to calm John, his ears registering nothing except the level of distress coming from his son’s voice.
He trailed after Aeryn, seeing the source of Ian’s outer strength in her straight spine and squared shoulders.
“Wait, Aeryn!” he called ahead as she hurried through the curving corridors, accelerating to a near run as they
drew further away from Quarters and could still hear the echoing yells of the struggle being waged.
She came to a halt, back still turned, and he began to ask why she didn’t help comfort the distressed person in
that chamber. Then he remembered the visits to Leslie’s hospital room in the last few days before her death,
and how he’d had to steel himself every time to face the person in that room –- the person who had taken the
place of his laughing, vibrant wife. She’d still been the person he’d fallen in love with, but something integral
was gone and he’d never quite been able to see his beloved Leslie in that depleted figure beneath the
blankets.
“Aeryn,” he said quietly, pulling at her shoulder. She resisted his efforts, every muscle screaming out that she
wanted to be left alone. “It’s all right to feel this way,” Jack whispered, walking around the statue she’d become
until he faced her. “How long has he been this way? This bad?”
“He got worse … about …” Aeryn took a deep breath, letting it out in a shaking sigh, “a quarter yee-arh ago.”
She stood stock still at first as he hugged her, then suddenly leaned into his embrace and buried her face in his
shirt. A short collection of clipped, consonant dominated words was mumbled into his chest as they stood in the
middle of the tier, simply holding each other as they shared their loss, then Aeryn pushed away from him and
wiped at her eyes.
“It was … gradual?” Jack nodded that she’d chosen the correct word. “Slow at first. Just forget this, that.
Then John forgets more. One day John forgets Ian, next day he forgets … ” Aeryn swallowed hard, her voice
cracking slightly as she continued. “The next day he forgets me. It all comes back, then another day he
forgets again.”
They walked together through the tiers, Aeryn gradually describing what it had been like to watch one of the
most important people in her life slowly disappear. “First we think John was hurt too much, too often. It is the
injuries from the past that are doing this. We find a -- ” she slid into Sebacean.
“I didn’t get that one, Aeryn,” Jack stopped her. She made a frustrated motion.
“One who checks him for injury,” she prompted.
“A doctor, medical personnel of some sort,” Jack provided. “Go on.”
“We find one. He telled us that it is a sickness, one he does not know. We go -- ” Another frustrated growl
emerged. Aeryn pointed to several places in midair, switching from left to right several times. Jack simply
nodded his understanding. “Look for someone who can fix this thing. John forgets more.”
“You finally located the Calamari …” He stopped when Aeryn burst out laughing, tears beginning to trickle
down her face in a horrible combination of humor and grief. “What?” he asked, concerned about her emotional
stability.
“Kallimitri,” she corrected. “John does this also … did this.” Aeryn turned away, hiding her expression from
him.
“You found the Kallimitri and they can repair the damage, but there wasn’t a suitable sample of DNA to begin
the repairs.” She nodded, still facing away from him. “So you came all the way through time and space to find
me just to cure John.” Aeryn nodded again, wiping away the tears. “Why come back into the past though?
Why not some other time?”
She held up one finger. “We wanted to be sure we find you healthy and not old.” He nodded his
understanding and she held up a second finger. “We must not go back before John leaves. It would be good
to get his own DNA but meeting him there would be very, very bad.”
“Destroy entire universes?” he quoted what she had told him in his kitchen just hours earlier, feeling mildly
disoriented by how much had happened in such a short time.
“Yes.” Aeryn held up a third finger. “Big item. We come to a place called Tormented Space to find wormholes
to bring us back. Most do not go where and when we need to go. It took ten solar days to find one even close.
Kallimitri cost much currency. We cannot wait any longer. Must come to this time in your life. John cannot wait
any longer.”
“I was wrong about one thing, Aeryn Sun,” Jack said, gathering her into a single-armed hug. He was treated to
a short Sebacean phrase with an upswing at the end, which he assumed was an encouragement to tell her
more. “I thought you and John loved each other the way I loved his mother, but I’m not convinced I’m capable
of loving another person the way you love him.”
* * * * *
“Aeryn?” D’Argo’s voice burst over her comms, breaking into the short moment of peace she’d found enclosed
in the arms of someone who loved John enough to travel all the way across the universe to help him. She
pulled out of Jack’s enveloping embrace, making a gesture that she hoped he’d understand meant she had to
answer the summons.
“Yes, D’Argo,” she prompted.
“We’re in the infirmary. I had to tongue John.” The voice dragged the words out, depression leaching all vitality
out of the announcement. “They’re getting started down here.”
“I’ll come down.” She thought of all the cycles that D’Argo had remained aboard Moya despite the opportunities
he’d had to make a new life with his own species, and of his long friendship with John. “I’m sorry,” she offered,
knowing that the luxan detested knocking John out that way, considering it a violation of the trust they’d shared
for so many cycles.
“He was fighting too fiercely, Aeryn. I didn’t have a choice.” A long sigh hissed over the comms. “But he had
more energy than usual, so perhaps it wasn’t a bad sign.”
“Thank you, D’Argo,” she offered, knowing that they were all grasping at the small things to convince
themselves that there was some hope left. John’s energy levels generally rose and fell in a direct relationship
with his degree of anxiety. If he was able to fight off a luxan and three adult nebari, it only meant that his
disorientation and fear were at an all time high and his memory had reached a new low.
“Is Ian with you?” she asked, gesturing for Jack to follow her as she started toward the infirmary.
“No. He …” The deep voice hesitated. “Ian couldn’t stand to watch, Aeryn. He took off at a run.”
“I’ll ask Pilot to see if the DRDs can find him,” she responded, suddenly torn between her need to check on
John and the instinct that commanded that she first find and comfort her son. The comms channel closed with
a muffled chirp, and she turned toward the visitor.
“We go see John,” she stumbled, wishing there was some way to give Jack translator microbes. Transitioning
from Sebacean to English felt as though she had run from solid ground into neck deep mud in a single step.
Every word had to be teased out of her memory, painstakingly pronounced in the hopes that she was getting it
right. She rarely paid attention to the sounds that actually emerged from John or Ian, listening only to the
version that her microbes fed directly into her brain, so reproducing the right noises was a constant battle.
“That was a longer conversation. Is there a problem?” He fell into step beside her, both of them accelerating
as she indicated which way to turn before they reached each intersection.
Aeryn tried to come up with an explanation for a luxan tonguing, her vocabulary falling far short of what was
necessary to describe what occurred when someone got hit with the venom barb of D’Argo’s nearly prehensile
tongue. “No problem,” she assured him. “They made John go to sleep to get him to the --” She resorted to the
Sebacean term for a medical chamber, unable to remember the English version.
“Made him go to sleep,” Jack parroted thoughtfully. “You sedated him?”
“Yes,” she confirmed, deciding that was close enough to the truth. She considered comming Ian to ask him to
resume his duties as translator, but decided that it was more important to give him time to cope with the
upheaval of seeing his father so debilitated. He’d exhibited a maturity far beyond his years during the first
stages of John’s disease, giving in to grief and the resulting uncontrollable outbursts only when his father no
longer remembered him. “Ian is somewhere else,” she told Jack. “We will do our best to explain things to you
without him.”
“He’s been through a lot. He deserves time to deal with this.”
Aeryn glanced at him, reminding herself that this reserved, dignified man was a parent as well, and knew all too
well the agonies of fatherhood. She wondered if he’d played on the floor of his home with his young son as
John had played with Ian. Her parenting skills had taken a jump forward the day she’d found John lying on his
belly in Command, scrawling crude drawings across Moya’s golden floors with a lump of blue pigmented wax so
his four cycle old son could color them in with the rest of the collection they’d concocted. Three motras of floor
were covered with the rainbow hued figures; two DRDs waiting patiently to clean off the artwork once the
laughing pair was finished. She’d seen the joy in John’s eyes and the delight in Ian’s and had finally
understood what childhood was supposed to be like.
“Do you need some time to deal with this, Aeryn?” Jack asked her as they approached the infirmary. “I can
stand in a corner and watch if you’d like to be somewhere else.”
She shook her head emphatically. “One way or other there will be time for me later. With John or without. I
must be with him now.” She motioned him to lead the way through the doorway, and they joined the group that
was already gathered in the large chamber.
* * * * *
Jack stepped to one side as he entered the room, giving his tired brain a few seconds to adjust to the chaos,
wondering if every gathering of personnel aboard this ship was always such anarchy. Not being able to
understand the bedlam of multiple languages had to be contributing to the pandemonium, but it seemed that
everyone aboard the leviathan always talked at once, rarely without some form of argument taking place.
He recognized D’Argo and his son, and Chiana’s brother was standing with the other two men of his species
that had gone into John’s cell less than an hour earlier. Chiana appeared from behind D’Argo, leaning to one
side to spot Jack, and then beckoning for him to join the group. He moved into the cluster, waiting with the
others as Aeryn went to the far side of the chamber where four of the brown-furred Kallimitri were working
around a padded table. He jerked his head to one side, indicating to the group that he was stepping away, and
followed Aeryn. Sliding past D’Argo’s bulk, he spotted John’s unconscious body on the raised bed, small
attachments stuck to his forehead and torso, several greenish tubes sprouting from his wrists and ankles.
“What’s happening?” he demanded. The rattlers seemed to have taken up permanent residence in his
stomach. It had been over twenty years since he’d sat at his son’s bedside, comforting John through a bout of
chicken pox, and he’d missed the remainder of the childhood diseases completely. NASA had put demands on
him that had taken him away from his children for too much of their lives, and he felt ill equipped to act as a
father to this elderly patient lying before him.
“Scanners,” Aeryn explained to him, pointing to the round, silvery attachments. “Kallimitri cure,” she added,
pointing to the semi-translucent tubes. One of the clicking aliens scuttled between them and the bed, rudely
nudging them out of the way as it examined each of the additions to John’s body. The creature’s upper body
spun around almost one hundred and eighty degrees, allowing it to lean past the head of the bed to tap a fast
cadence across several control surfaces. The entries initiated a quiet hum that grew to a louder, pulsing thrum
as more and more of the equipment was activated.
“It begins,” Aeryn announced.
Jack watched as a series of monitors sprang to life, displaying what was clearly a human brain mapped out in
three dimensions. Another screen burst from black into multi-colored pinpoints, spinning and evolving into the
twisted strands of human DNA. The Kallimitri gathered around that display, their vocalizations switching to a low
buzzing that flowed in dissonant contrast to the tones of their equipment.
“They think it is too simple,” Aeryn smiled as one of the geneticists made an adjustment and then scratched its
head. “They saw this when they do tests, but thought maybe when they started it would be more complexer.”
“Complex,” Jack correctly absently, focused on the scientists. “That’s good news isn’t it? If human DNA is
simple, they should be able to fix it.”
“They do not find the source of the disease yet. They search more.”
Jack switched back to watching the readouts of John’s brain, fascinated by the increasing amounts of
information being layered into the depiction as they located the damage that had robbed John of his ability to
remember and reason. One of the Kallimitri scuttled between him and the readouts, dancing about on all four
legs as it pointed out myriad dark areas where no activity was being detected.
“My lord. That …” Jack leaned closer, waiting to see if any of the blank areas would fill in with data, but they
remained colorless. “That’s Alzheimer’s,” Jack blurted, “but he’s too young for that.” He looked back at the still
body, and realized that at this particular spot in time and space, John was nearly the same age as himself, and
was old enough to fall victim to the degenerative disease.
“Az-heimers?” Aeryn mimicked the new word as she turned to face him. “This is an Earth sickness? It is not a
thing he catches here?” She crossed her arms in front of her body, shaking slightly, looking both relieved and
close to fainting at the same time. “He does not get sick because he is here?” She bit her lower lip and looked
over her shoulder at John before meeting Jack’s eyes.
“No … well, maybe not. It’s possible he’s been carrying it for over twenty-five of your cycles,” Jack admitted.
“Our scientists aren’t quite sure what causes it, but they think it’s partly genetic, coupled with outside triggers.
He’s sick because of something he inherited from me.” And the guilt was almost more than he could handle.
Jack looked at Aeryn and suddenly understood part of the reason why this woman had traveled across space
and time to find him. “You thought it was something you did, something about his being here that had caused
this, when it was probably me or his life on Earth all along.”
Aeryn nodded jerkily, tears brimming even as she smiled. “How bad is this Azheimers?” she asked, her struggle
with English robbing her voice of emotion.
The elder Crichton rubbed his forehead for a moment, trying to remember what little he’d learned about the
disease from cursory readings. No one he knew had fallen to the affliction, so he hadn’t made an effort to learn
much about it. “Have his language skills suffered yet?” he asked. She shook her head, resorting to an easier
method of communication, then held her hand up with two fingers a hair’s breadth apart. “I think this is still in its
early stages then. But …” he jammed his teeth down on his tongue hard, mentally cursing himself for thinking
aloud. The group behind him had gone silent as he explained, listening carefully while waiting across the
chamber.
Chiana’s light babble intruded, clearly demanding something. “But what?” Aeryn repeated in English.
“At some point -- and I don’t know when this happens, Aeryn -- at some point the damage begins to kill off
portions of the brain and at that point some memories may be permanently lost.” Jack turned toward the group
and watched the depression sink into already weary bodies. He tried to reverse the effects of his pessimistic
comment. “But we don’t know how to reverse this on Earth. We’ve never had anyone recover from this
disease, so I can’t tell you whether the damage will be irreparable …” He was only making it worse, he
realized. His assurances were only serving to remind these people that John’s physiology was under attack
from a source they had never encountered in this part of the universe.
The Kallimitri continued to ignore the discussion around them. Although there were only four of the creatures,
the flashing blur of their legs as they hurried around the chamber gave the impression that John was
surrounded by a mob of the six-limbed geniuses. They finished adjusting their machines, checked their patient
one more time, then flooded out of the infirmary, leaving the crew transfixed in a suddenly silent chamber.
Chiana and Aeryn flipped a shimmering golden cover over John’s inert body, and then stepped back, staring at
the pale, lifeless face.
“Now what?” Jack asked, looking to the others for some sort of sign. D’Argo sighed and grumbled at him. “We
wait,” Jack interpreted on his own, his assessment confirmed by nods from the rest of the group.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
