Birthright
Part 4
Jack paced around the Farscape module for the fifth time, running his fingers across the hull, occasionally
stooping to look at a modification. The last time he’d touched the craft it had been brand new, gleaming under
florescent lights, and his fingers had skated across the polished surface virtually without friction. Now it was
singed and pitted, even the hardened ceramic nosecone showing signs of wear, every inch of the hull looking
as though it had been sandblasted. The stumpy little craft was responsible for more grief in his family than
Leslie’s death had caused, but looking at its familiar lines, Jack felt a tingle of pride run up his spine. Ultimately,
John’s theories had been right, and if it hadn’t been for the wormhole, he would have proved it to the entire
world.
He crouched down to look at a blackened scorch mark, rubbing at it to verify that the discoloration was a deep
burn in the skin of the module rather than a superficial layer of soot. Ian had related his version of a few of
John’s more recent adventures, the deepening adult voice cracking into the child’s higher pitched tones as his
memories took him back to a more exciting, more pleasant time of his young life. Between Ian’s enthusiastic
descriptions, and Aeryn’s quieter hints, he’d been forced to conclude that John had survived even more
battering than his spacecraft had over the years. Jack rubbed a hand across the faded emblem on the side,
clearing away dirt from the American flag, and grieved for everything that John had been forced to endure.
A quiet chirrup drew his attention to the doorway. The first DRD he’d encountered aboard Moya waited there
for him, assigned to guide him to wherever Ian was located. Jack had remained in the infirmary for almost an
hour after the treatment had begun, patiently watching over John, but when the rest of the crew had filtered out
one by one, he’d decided that it might be time to let Ian show him around the huge ship. The teenager had
responded to a summons from his mother, appearing from wherever he’d gone to deal with his emotions, and
had guided him on the proverbial whirlwind tour of the leviathan. They’d worked their way up and down, back
and forth, front to back, Ian excited to bouncing exuberance by the opportunity to show his grandfather his
unusual home.
They’d toured more of what they termed ‘Quarters’, with the accompanying explanation that Moya had been
used as a prison ship, which resolved his earlier question about the heavy bars that served as doors.
They’d explored hangar bay four, Ian spouting performance statistics about each of the craft parked there the
way a license-hungry teen on Earth could recite displacement, torque, and horsepower figures. The ‘terrace’
had been every bit as spectacular as he’d been promised, the sense of standing in space multiplying when
Moya had gradually rolled along her axis so that a massive nebula had seemed to rise over the side of the ship
until it rested overhead. He’d learned about ‘starburst’ when they’d stood in the chamber deep within the ship,
the walls a glittering anthracite black from the reinforcement needed to contain the energy required for Moya to
pierce the boundary between dimensions.
Jack had finally been forced to beg for a few moments of peace and quiet to let his spinning head settle down,
asking specifically to be left alone in the hangar to contemplate the vehicle that had started the adventure,
responsible for bringing first John and then himself to this unbelievable place. He glanced at his watch,
verifying that just under an hour had passed since he’d been dropped off here, giving him an ‘arn’ to himself.
According to the digital readout, it was seven o’clock in the morning at his house on Earth, explaining the
fatigue that dragged at his shoulders and back. He’d flipped off the lights in the living room a little before nine,
and had been on the far side of the universe before midnight.
“And the girls complain about how far they have to travel to come home on the holidays,” he offered to the
DRD. It spun around clockwise and chirped at him. “Come here,” he invited it. The DRD pointed itself about
five feet to his left and arced toward him, once again drifting uncontrollably to the right.
“The circuits that make him move are starting to fail,” Ian explained, walking into the maintenance bay. “This
problem started about twenty days ago. I’m afraid he’s getting too old. We’ll let him keep going until he only
travels in circles, and then we’ll probably shut him down.”
“It can’t be repaired?” Jack asked, picking the unit up and turning it over.
“When DRDs get damaged, they’re often recycled for the materials they’re made from. It’s easier for Moya to
grow a new one than repair a badly damaged unit. He’s just too old.” Ian pointed to several of the small circuits
on the underside of the chattering robot that weren’t illuminated. “I tried replacing these, but it’s his internal
systems that are toasted. There’s no power getting to these motivation gears.” The non-stop clicking and
squeaking continued. “Shut up,” the boy ordered the inverted DRD, and it quieted down to an occasional
chirp.
“Do these pull out?” Jack asked. Ian nodded. The older man deftly plucked six circuits out of the left side of
the DRD, mirroring the darkened spots on the right. “There you go, scooter,” he said, setting the drone down
on the floor. “Try that.” One-Eye clicked several times and sailed in a straight line toward the open door.
“Why didn’t I think of that?” Ian muttered in disgust. “I kept trying to fix it. I didn’t think to disable more of it.”
“You probably had something else on your mind,” Jack suggested, handing him the spare components. “And
you’ve probably never had to cope with pushing a shopping cart with one bad wheel. You get inventive when
you have to cope with that sort of thing.” Ian remained silent, merely giving him a peculiar look in response to
his comment. The DRD came zipping back toward them, chirped at them half a dozen times, made a neat left
turn and headed back toward the door, enjoying its restored capacity for traveling in a straight line. They
laughed together as it made three left hand circles and then disappeared into the corridor.
“I can’t seem to think about anything but my dad,” Ian admitted, wandering over to a workbench, his back
turned toward Jack. “No matter how hard I try to concentrate on other things, it’s all I think about most of the
time. I can’t eat … my stomach hurts … I barely hear what the others are telling me sometimes.” He fiddled
with a tool, finally flipping it onto the work surface and turning to face Jack. “How do I make it stop?” he
pleaded.
“Have you talked about this with your mother?”
Ian shook his head. “She’s got it all under control … all of this I mean. Nothing ever gets to her.” He sighed,
the bony shoulders rising and falling under the thin shirt. “I wish I could be like that.”
Jack suppressed a wry smile, knowing it would be misunderstood by the unhappy teen. “You should ask her,
Ian. You might be surprised at the answer you get.” The young John-look-alike made a full body squirm, using
the same motion his father had used as a youngster to suggest that he didn’t agree without actually saying it
out loud. “Aeryn might have it concealed, Ian, but she feels every emotion you do -- every bit of grief, every bit
of fear and concern and uncertainty. It’s only human to feel this way, and there’s no way to stop it.”
“But she’s not human,” Ian insisted, “she’s sebacean.”
“I know. I remember what you told me in my kitchen, but I’ve managed to figure out exactly two things since I got
here.” Jack gestured with both hands to indicate that ‘here’ meant Moya. “First, I figured out how to make a
DRD run in a straight line.” Ian let out a short laugh. “And second, I’ve noticed that every person I’ve met here
so far seems to act pretty human, including your mother. Talk to her, Ian.”
“Yeah … maybe,” came a disbelieving mumble.
“So, what’s next on the tour?” Jack asked, changing the subject when he recognized that Ian had listened to as
much adult advice as he was going to tolerate. “What else should I see?”
“You haven’t met Pilot yet. Some of the others say he’s kind of freaky looking when you meet him for the first
time, but he’s the gentlest, kindest person on board. How about going up to the Den?” Ian was grinning now,
his eyes shining with renewed enthusiasm.
“Sounds good,” Jack encouraged him, motioning toward the door. He waited until Ian’s back was turned before
peeking at his watch. The Kallimitri had started their treatment a little before his version of two
o’clock, so John had been subjected to the genetic modifications for over five hours. Curiosity and concern
were teaming up to urge him to check back, but logic told him it was too soon to expect a substantial change.
He would follow Ian for a while longer before asking to return to the ship’s sickbay. Jack lengthened his stride
to catch up with his grandson, using the time to remove his wristwatch and tuck it in his pocket where he
wouldn’t be as likely to consult it every ten minutes.
* * * * *
Aeryn sat cross-legged on the spare medbed, watching the surges of blood and chemicals flow through the thin
tubes connecting John to the Kallimitri devices. The scampering creatures had checked on their equipment six
and a half arns earlier, verifying that everything was working correctly, and hadn’t been back since. They’d
declared that there was nothing more to be done for at least two solar days, and had left it up to Moya’s crew to
make sure the setup remained undisturbed. When Chiana had checked on them two arns ago, the quartet of
geneticists was in the Center Chamber eating their way through the food stores faster than Rygel ever could
have. The stray thought of the Dominar summoned a smile. The last time they’d visited the restored monarch
he’d been perched on his throne behind a pile of marjoules nearly twice the size of the Hynerian himself,
happily munching his way through the delicacies as he conducted the affairs of his empire.
“Any change?” Ian walked hesitantly into the chamber, his feet stopping and starting like a fuel-starved Prowler
running on the last dregs of froonium.
“It’s only been twelve arns since it started. It’s too soon to expect any improvement, Ian.” She waited several
microts, expecting Jack to appear, and then asked, “Where’s your melnatsa?” using the Nebari term that Ian
preferred.
“He wanted to sit with Pilot a little longer. He can’t understand single word of course, but Pilot was showing him
some recordings of Dad from the first cycles he was here.” Aeryn thought of those stored images, and
understood why Ian had abandoned his grandfather to Pilot’s care. She’d reviewed some of the recordings
when John’s illness had first begun to rob her of the love of her life, and the bounding vitality displayed on the
screen had only served as a cruel reminder when compared to the more recent edition of John Crichton.
“Pilot will have one of the DRDs show him the way here when he’s ready,” Ian finished.
“Have you been up there all this time?” she asked, knowing they’d been headed for the Den arns ago.
Ian shook his head. “We went to get something to eat, talked for a while, and melnatsa got a couple of arns
sleep in my cell. We went back up to the Den about an arn ago.”
“How much longer before he has to leave?” She kept John’s motionless body in her peripheral vision as she
watched her son drift around the chamber always remaining at least a motra from the medbed as though a
defense shield were keeping him from crossing the last distance to his father’s side.
Ian looked out the view portal for several microts, his gaze flickering across the nebulas and proto-galaxies of
Tormented Space. “Not more than five arns. It’s the last one that’ll do for at least a cycle.”
“Last what?” Jack asked, striding into the bay with the assured movements that she was realizing was a trait
common to all of the Crichtons. The drone that had been guiding him spun around, elevated its eyestalks long
enough to survey the human, then accelerated away into the corridor.
“Last wormhole,” Ian answered bluntly before Aeryn could stop him. “You have to go back in under five arns.”
“Will John be better by then?”
Aeryn answered in a rush before her son could deliver an ungentle assessment of the situation. “Probably
not. The Kallimitri think it could take up to fifteen solar days and as many as five treatments before the process
is finished. They can’t predict the final outcome yet.”
Jack glanced at her then turned to look at Ian. “I got ‘Kallimitri’ and nothing else. Could you translate for me?”
Aeryn slapped herself gently alongside her head, realizing too late that she’d spouted the entire thing in
Sebacean, but Ian delivered it verbatim in far gentler tones than her own hurried response.
“So I won’t know how he is before I leave?” Jack protested. “There’s got to be another bus after this one. You
can’t really expect me to just … ”
“Aeryn?” A fourth voice entered the conversation, weak and quavering, but loud enough to be heard over
Jack’s complaint.
Aeryn leapt off the medbed, nearly falling to the floor as one leg buckled, nerves tingling from loss of
circulation. She limped to John’s side, shouldering her way past Jack in her rush. She heard Ian in the
background, comming Pilot and the others with the news that John was awake, but the remainder of her
attention was centered on one person only.
“Hi there. How are you feeling? Remember me?” She caught his hand as he tried to reach for her, preventing
him from disturbing the thin tubing that was connected to his forearm.
“Of course I remember you.” He looked around, taking in the medical chamber and the two other figures
standing next to him. “What’s happened? Where the frell are we?” John tried to sit up.
“Slow down, slow down,” she crooned to him, a single hand pressing him back against the padding. “What
about these other people here. Do you remember them?”
John stared at his teenaged son, the first signs of anxiety and confusion appearing as he considered her
question, and after several microts shook his head. His gaze flickered as Ian spun away and left the room at a
run, but the hurried departure had no further impact on John as he focused on his father. “I don’t want to know
about wormholes,” John said angrily. “Stay away from me.”
“That’s not who he is, John. He’s not one of the Ancients. Think for a microt.” She switched into English for
Jack’s benefit. “He is someone from Earth. From your life on Earth. You know him.”
John stared at the lean figure suspiciously for several moments before shaking his head. “Aeryn, I’m tired. If I
fall asleep, will you keep him away from me? Don’t let him give me anything about wormholes, all right?” He
was becoming increasingly distraught as he tried to keep both Aeryn and Jack in sight, his eyes bouncing from
one to the other as they stood alongside him.
Aeryn glanced once at Jack’s strained expression, then leaned over John long enough to give him a brief hug.
“Yes, go back to sleep for a while. You’ll feel better when you wake up.” She smoothed his hair back from his
forehead, and held on to his hand until she was sure he was asleep again. “I am sorry,” she apologized to Jack.
“It’s not your fault, Aeryn,” he sighed. “At least he remembered you. That’s an improvement, isn’t it?”
“He remembered me two solar days ago,” she confessed, wrapping John’s fingers around her own hand and
pressing them into place. She released the outer grip and the arranged grasp stayed in place, creating the
illusion that the sleeping man was holding on to her. His hand was as warm and firm as ever, the strength
hidden beneath the lack of direction from its owner. Her hand firmly enclosed in his had been a source of
strength for so many cycles, her body responded to the fakery as though John were there. “There are
moments when he is almost normal, but then he slips away again.”
“How long are they going to keep him sedated like this? Wouldn’t it be easier to tell if it’s working if they let him
wake up?” Jack reached tentatively toward his son’s forehead, brushing his fingers across it lightly before
retreating. “When will they let him wake up?”
“He sleeps because of the changes, not because of drugs,” Aeryn explained, gesturing with a shoulder toward
the Kallimitri devices. “It will take away his energy. They say not to worry, that it will not hurt him more even if it
does not make him better. But --” She took a deep breath and ran a knuckle along one eye.
“But how can you not worry?” Jack finished for her. He looked past her suddenly, focusing on the open door
behind her. “Speaking of worry, shouldn’t someone go after Ian? That was pretty tough on him.”
“He hides,” she stated flatly. Jack raised his eyebrows at her. “He hides very well. No one can find him when
he goes like this. Ian hides from the time he is this size,” Aeryn indicated a height about mid-thigh, “when he is
unhappy. Moya is very big, lots of hiding places.”
“Aeryn!” D’Argo and Chiana ran into the chamber, nearly colliding with Jack as they hurried toward where John
was once again sleeping. “Ian commed us that he was awake. Isn’t he awake?”
“He was,” she explained. “He might have been marginally better, but he didn’t remember Ian or his father.” She
folded her arms across her chest, holding herself as tightly physically as she was emotionally. “They did warn
us that it may take several days before we know if there’s going to be an improvement.”
“Get one of those furry frellnicks down here,” Chiana insisted. “Have them tell us whether he’s getting better.”
“They won’t come,” D’Argo growled. “I tried to pry one of them out of the Center Chamber earlier and it tried to
bite me.” He looked around as four more of the crew hurried into the medical bay, their disappointment
apparent as they spotted the again unconscious Crichton. “They are more like Rygel than I’d originally …
what’s that?”
“What’s that?” Jack’s alarmed question mimicked D’Argo’s last comment almost perfectly, and Aeryn whipped
around to face him, thinking he’d somehow managed to understand the brief Luxan outburst. Jack’s attention,
however, was fixed on the same flashing displays that had alerted D’Argo to a potential problem. She finished
the fast spin so that she again faced the bed where John was still resting peacefully. Another display beyond
him began to chirp, a stream of indecipherable symbols appearing at the bottom of the screen, all of which
looked equally menacing even though she couldn’t read them.
Aeryn activated her comms, nearly shouting her message. “Who’s close to the Center Chamber?” she asked
everyone at large. She sorted out Nerri’s and Jothee’s responses among a total of five alert voices. She called
back to the entire group, “Get down there with some weapons and bring the Kallimitri to the medical chamber at
the end of a rifle if necessary. There’s something wrong with this treatment. Hurry.”
“Aeryn?” Jack asked, sounding even more worried than she felt. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. We’re getting the Kallimitri now.”
* * * * *
Jack rubbed his stomach as the furry scientist scampered away, and then carefully sat up and swung his legs
over the side of the raised bed. “Ouch,” he complained quietly to himself. In the two hours since the
geneticists had been summoned to the infirmary, they’d taken half a dozen different samples from his body,
searching for the tissue or fluid that would allow them to resolve the problem their process had encountered.
The DNA they’d started with was undamaged, a good match for John, and apparently not what they needed to
realign every portion of John’s physiology.
The flashing displays and stream of information had turned out to be nothing more than the machinery’s
announcement that the process wasn’t working, neither damaging nor improving John’s condition. The overly
simplistic double helix of a human was turning out to be more resistant to adaptation than the scientists had
expected, resisting modifications. The Kallimitri had scratched their heads and announced, according to Aeryn,
that they required a different type of tissue sample.
“Undifferentiated,” Jack had suggested when Aeryn hadn’t been able to convert the Kallimitri word into English.
“Maybe they need some sort of tissue or fluid where the genes and proteins aren’t adapted to an organ or a
body part,” he theorized. The furry creatures had surrounded him, orbiting his body like a reverse edition of
musical chairs. Their survey of his anatomy had been disquieting, as though they were sizing him up for a
meal.
“Our scientists … they um … Could you please stop that?” he finally requested, dizzied by their circling. The
four scientists halted, but that only made him feel like he’d been hemmed in by furniture. Jack concentrated,
closing out the aliens. What he was about to suggest scared him because he was going to have to trust aliens
who looked more like pets than scientists not to injure him. “How about spinal fluid?” he proposed without
knowing if that was a better source for their needs.
They shook their heads in concert and he sighed with relief. One of them clattered at him, making a statement
rather than asking a question.
“No,” Aeryn said firmly.
“What?” Jack asked.
“They wanted brain tissue,” she relayed.
“Un unh,” he confirmed her decision. “You’re going to have to try something else.”
They had tried several times, each sampling equally painless and equally futile. This latest effort had extracted
some of the cells from some portion of his intestines, resulting in the residual uncomfortable twinges and the
clattering discussion seemed happier this time. Aeryn motioned to him, indicating that he could get up, and
Jack joined the dozen or so individuals who were standing or pacing around the chamber, beginning his own
small repetitive route near the view portal as they waited for a determination.
“Come on,” he snarled quietly as the minutes stretched into a quarter hour. The Kallimitri were still huddled
together, chattering cheerfully as they consulted their machines, and Jack began to consider whether he could
stay here, perhaps permanently, if they weren’t successful by the time he was supposed to leave.
Every person in the bay turned quickly, facing a single point in the chamber as D’Argo stepped away from three
of his friends and unloaded a growling verbal barrage at the scientists. Jack tried to watch every reaction at the
same time, glancing from one side to the other as the Kallmitri cowered and the crew showed a variety of
expressions ranging from amusement to anger to nodding agreement.
“He --” Aeryn stepped close to translate.
“--said he was tired of waiting and they should hurry up,” Jack proposed.
“Yes,” she said, her voice rising in surprise. “How do you know?”
“Look at the group to D’Argo’s right,” he explained. The tight cluster of Chiana, Jothee, Nerri and two others
had provided the full gamut of reactions that had provided all the translation he needed. Beside him, Aeryn
nodded her understanding, then snuck one hand up to wipe quickly at her eyes. Jack stepped to her side, one
hand urging her to turn so that they looked out at the stars, their backs to the assembled group. “Take a deep
breath,” he suggested quietly.
“John would do that,” she explained. “He would watch us and know what we were thinking before we can say it.”
Jack searched for a topic that would divert her attention away from the painful memories. “Can you explain
something about this procedure they’re trying? If they’re mapping John’s genes onto my DNA, aren’t they going
to convert him into some version of me?”
She shook her head emphatically, then stared at the floor for several seconds as she considered the question.
“They have John’s pattern,” she started, Jack nodding his understanding at every pause, “but it has mistakes
and changes in it. They have Ian’s pattern, very much the same but partly mine. Not quite human.” Jack
nodded. “They need something close to John’s to see what the correct pattern should look like, to fill in missing
pieces for a human. They need a son, a father, a brother, or a clone.” Aeryn bit her lip and turned away for
almost a full minute. “There is only the father, so we must find you. More than that I do not understand.”
They stood quietly together, watching the slow migration of the stars. “Aeryn,” Jack began, about to suggest
that he stay, no matter how long it took for them to find a cure, but he was interrupted by a sound similar to
rattling sticks. The Kallimitri were making an announcement behind him. Aeryn dug her fingers deep into his
shoulder when he started to turn around, holding him firmly in place. She started to shake, the tears sneaking
down her cheeks, and he knew it was all over.
“It won’t work,” he whispered, resigning himself to losing John a second time.
“No,” Aeryn contradicted him. “It will work. They have what they need. They are sure this time.” She released
the painful grip but continued to steady herself against him, swaying slightly as she wiped away the last of the
errant tears. “They do not know how well it will fix him, but they can do it now.” She glanced over his shoulder,
eyes widening, and then took one long step away from Jack. “Look out.”
He turned in alarm, but it was only D’Argo striding toward them, an enormous smile showing beneath the braids
and tentacles. Jack was treated to a deafening roar of luxan and then he was swept into a hug that he swore
broke his spine.
“He said thank you for coming here,” Aeryn laughed as Jack verified that all of his body parts still functioned.
“You’re welcome,” he returned automatically, taking a long breath to see if his ribs were still intact. “Happy to
do it,” he wheezed, slowly recovering from the embrace.
“If you had not said you must come with us, you would not be here to make this work. We would have brought
back only your blood, and it would not have worked,” she expanded the implied thanks. D’Argo nodded his
beaming agreement behind her, tentacles bouncing from the fast, pleased motion.
“He’s my son,” Jack offered simply, still feeling a bit squashed from the luxan’s hug.
Aeryn treated him to a cool, endlessly calm smile as she grasped him firmly around his upper arm, steadying
him as they moved the short distance back to where John was lying. The Kallimitri spun around the machinery,
making dozens of fast adjustments; then they all stopped for five seconds, watched the display, and scurried
out of the room.
“We wait again,” Aeryn confirmed, “but you must leave now.”
“No,” Jack insisted. “There’s got to be another way, Aeryn. I will not leave this way, not without knowing if
he’s going to be all right. You’ll have to locate a different wormhole.” She shook her head. “This is my son,
Aeryn. Could you walk off and leave Ian under the same circumstances?” Jack turned to the small crowd,
scanning the faces in hopes of finding an ally. The expressions all exhibited varying degrees of sympathy, but
not one person showed any sign of agreeing with him.
“There is not another wormhole. You must go before this one changes.”
“A wormhole’s a wormhole. What’s the difference if I go through now or in ten days?” he argued. “They’re
subspace, outside the realm of normal physics. It’ll be there next week.”
But Aeryn was shaking her head. “No. They change,” she asserted. “I do not have the words. Ian must tell
you of the things that make wormholes change.”
Jack looked at John again, every cell in his body screaming that he could not leave him this way … not without
knowing if he would recover. Cold logic whispered into the back of his mind, though, easing one argument after
another into his consciousness that said he had to leave. There was the rest of his family to think about, who
had already suffered enough as a result of John’s inexplicable disappearance. If he were to mysteriously
vanish out of his home it would tear them apart. If John recovered, his presence would be superfluous; and if
John didn’t recover, there was even less that he could do here.
Aeryn was talking behind him, her slow, accented apology breaking in on his private internal dispute. “I am
sorry. This is part of why we said you should not come here. We knew you would have to leave too soon.”
Jack turned away from everyone, walking back to the spot by the portal where he could look out at John’s
universe. “All right,” he surrendered past a lump in his throat, remembering how it had felt when he knew that
his final trip into space was almost over. He’d floated weightlessly, staring at his home, feeling close to a
spiritual epiphany at its beauty, and had nearly cried from knowing that he would never leave the planet again.
That horrible collision of emotions was mild compared to what he was experiencing now.
He would return to Earth with the knowledge that John was alive and raising a family, with at least another
fifteen or sixteen years of happiness ahead of him, and would have to grieve for his loss all over again,
magnified by the uncertainty of his future. He’d gotten into space one more time, but at a horrible cost. He’d
seen wondrous things, only to have one of the most wondrous pieces of his life taken away from him a second
time. “There is a time for everything,” he whispered to himself, admitting that life was a matter of give and take,
ebb and flow … and that he had to leave.
“You win,” he confirmed. “How much time do I have to say goodbye?” There was a short discussion behind
him.
“We must have time to take you back and return here,” Aeryn explained. “We can spare one or two arns.”
Jack nodded, his back still turned to the room, and the group behind him began a more hushed discussion, not
more than half of the voices joining in for a change. He looked out at the groupings of stars, searching in vain
for a familiar constellation, the sight confirming how far he was from his home.
He walked slowly to stand at John’s side and gathered one of the lax hands into his own. Jack turned it over
carefully, making sure he didn’t disturb the greenish tubes, and looked at the palm. The scar from John’s
motorcycle accident was still there, slashing across the heel of his hand, telling a tale of a normal teenage life.
“How did we get here, John?” he asked the still figure.
The only answer was the hum and swish of the Kallimitri machinery performing in counterpoint to the thumps
and grumbles of the leviathan around them. He put the hand back on the bed and stared at the monitors,
seeing a lifetime of squandered opportunities to talk to his son instead of the bouncing data points before him.
Something drew his attention back from the mental images he was reviewing. “Aeryn …” Jack called,
interrupting the conversation that continued unabated to one side. “Look at this and tell me what you see.” He
pointed to several of the dark spots displayed on the image of John’s brain, then pointed again to several of the
spikes on the monitor showing activity.
The entire crowd hemmed him in, jostling each other slightly to see what he was indicating. “These are
smaller,” he said as he referred to the dark spots, “and these are larger,” pointing to the spikes. “It’s working.”
He turned to check on their expressions and then looked back at John. “It’s working.”
“We know that it will work at least part way,” Aeryn said in a condescending tone.
“Don’t you see?” Jack cried, startling several of his audience. “We can’t do this on Earth.” He examined the
depressed expressions, shaking his head when he saw that he’d failed to convey the magnitude of what was
happening. He tried again. “Alzheimer’s is incurable for us. This disease isn’t contracted from a germ or a
virus on Earth; it just happens and we don’t know why. And we can’t fix this.” He jabbed excitedly at the
display. “If John were on Earth, this would be permanent.”
There was another of the multi-discussions, several of the crew patted him on the shoulder, and then they
filtered out of the chamber one by one, leaving him alone with Aeryn.
“They don’t get it,” he suggested as the last person disappeared.
“They do un-der-stand,” Aeryn objected, struggling through the longer word. “But you have to understand.
The Kallimitri do not say if this will get better. They can make it work now because you are here for more
samples, but it still may be only part way fixed.” She moved to John’s side, staring down at the man sleeping on
the medbed, obviously hesitating. “And there is also the other part.”
“What other part?” Jack exclaimed, thinking they’d kept some part of John’s illness from him.
“We all live for many cycles. John lives for many less.” Jack shook his head, puzzled by the simple statements.
“I will lose him too soon. Now or later, it is the same. We have little time left.” She gestured at the Kallimitri
devices. “This will give him back for maybe ten or twenty cycles, then will I lose him again.”
“I’m sorry, Aeryn Sun,” Jack whispered, finally understanding the battle she was waging. He’d lost Leslie far too
soon, the single love of his life taken from him before his life was barely half over. He tried to imagine what his
choice would have been if a miracle cure could have given her back to him, but only with the guarantee that
he’d lose her again ten years later. He was about to ask Aeryn if the extra years were worth the agony of
knowing she’d lose him again, but he thought of her trip to Earth, the passage through the wormhole, the effort
and the risk she’d put into this single venture, and had his answer. “Perhaps you will get more than that. His
grandfather lived into his nineties.”
Aeryn let out a short barking laugh and pushed a lock of hair off John’s forehead. “I will live into my -- ” she
lapsed into Sebacean then caught herself. She held up two fingers, then both of her fists clenched.
“Two hundred?” Jack asked incredulously. She nodded. She would have John for only half her lifetime. “And
Ian? How long will he live?” She shrugged. “He’s half human, half sebacean,” Jack summarized. “You don’t
know which half will determine his life span.” Aeryn didn’t respond.
He looked at his aged son and the aching knot in his stomach took a tighter grip, restricting his ability to even
breathe. They’d been so happy when John was born, their days full of laughter and excitement, their lives full
of the promise that life in middle class America was supposed to be all about. And now he stood at a
crossroads in time and space where he was healthier than his own son. He searched for something to say to
Aeryn, to express his sympathy for the impending loss that would hover over her even if John recovered, and
came up empty.
“I will leave you alone to say goodbye,” she suggested. “I go find Ian and we come back in an arn to get you.”
Jack nodded numbly, words deserting him. “If you want to leave, you ask that,” she pointed at a waiting DRD,
“to take you where you want to go.”
“Thank you, Aeyrn.” She leaned close to give him a careful hug, then left him alone with John. Jack waited
until the sound of her footsteps faded then turned back to the occupant of the medbed.
* * * * *
Jack stood for several moments looking down at his son, finally seeing the young man in an orange flight suit
who had cheerfully waved one last time before stepping through the gantry entrance to the shuttle. He tried to
summon the words that should have been said that day, and came up as short as he had the first time.
“John.” The slow breathing continued without a break. “I guess I’ll have to say my goodbyes trusting that you
can hear me in there somewhere, son.” Jack stared, breaking out of his trance when his feet began to tingle
from standing in one position for too long. He started to look at his watch to see how long he’d been lost in
thought, but he couldn’t remember what time Aeryn had left. The patterns on the displays continued their
hypnotic undulations, showing little change beyond what he’d noticed earlier.
“I suppose I’ll have to take the changes we noticed as a positive sign, John, and assume that you’re going to be
all right.” Jack stopped again, his thoughts trundling to a dead end. There was a whisper of a noise behind
him, and he turned to find Aeryn standing less than six feet away. Either he’d been completely lost in thought
or she was able to move more quietly than a cat.
“Time to go?” he asked, wondering if he’d really used up an entire arn just standing there like an idiot.
She shook her head. “Pilot said maybe you could use some company,” she explained, gesturing at the DRD.
Jack started to say something about spies and surveillance, the thought evaporating when it occurred to him
that this crew was as concerned about him as they were about John. “I don’t know what to say to him,” he
confessed. “I want to say goodbye, but …”
“But you do not want to say goodbye.” Aeryn’s quiet smile put him at ease, taking away much of the frustration
inherent in the situation. “What would you say to John if he was awake?”
Jack tried to focus his thoughts toward a farewell exchange between two people, but his mind continued to
spiral inward to the single fact that he would never see John again and that this was the worst way in the
universe to leave him. “I don’t know. Sometimes John and I didn’t communicate very well.” He gave in to a
short, cynical laugh. “Who am I kidding? We had a lot of trouble talking. It seems like the things we didn’t say
to each other outnumber what did get said by about a hundred to one.”
“He talked to you when he first got here. Very often,” Aeryn offered. “He told you about everything that he
sees and finds.”
“How do you mean?” Jack asked, puzzled by her description.
“He has a thing that he talks into. A recording device.” Her hands sketched out the dimensions of an object
scarcely larger than his palm.
“The tape recorder from the module!” Jack concluded with excitement. “May I … may I have it? Could I take it
with me?”
Aeryn shook her head. “I am sorry. The tapes go to pieces many cycles ago.” Her hands pantomimed
disintegration. “The machine got thrown away or lost.” Jack felt slightly disoriented as he once again had to
cope with the time disparity resulting from traveling into the future, forced to admit that twenty years was too
long for the fragile tapes to survive. “My point is that he talks to you when you are not here. John talks to you
all the time. If he did not talk to you when he was young, that changed when he came here. You are here now,
so maybe you can talk to him. I will wait there,” she pointed toward the passageway.
“Thank you, Aeryn.” Jack waited until she disappeared from sight before turning back to his son, trying to see
the young man that had arrived in this universe so long ago and had managed to adapt to a new, incredibly
alien lifestyle. “It must have been a frantic few days at first, John. I don’t know how you managed to keep it all
together. The moon was a long way from Earth but at least I knew what I’d find when I got there.” He paused,
trying to imagine what sorts of things John would have recorded on those tapes -- what sorts of impressions,
experiences, hopes and fears had been lost when the tapes crumbled into fragments.
“Yesterday was Halloween, John. You’ll never guess who showed up at my door. Space aliens. I don’t
suppose you’ll be too surprised to find out that Rodenberry and Speilberg and all those other Hollywood
geniuses weren’t even in the ballpark. One of the space aliens turned out to be a pretty amazing young man,
and there was this drop dead gorgeous woman with him. Don’t suppose you’d know anything about that either,
would you?” He paused, imagining the grin that would have greeted his teasing.
“You’ve done good out here, son. I can see that just by the friends you’ve made and how much you mean to
them. I’m proud of you. I won’t say it hasn’t been hard on us since you disappeared, but now that I know a little
about what you’ve been doing, I guess …” Jack took a deep breath, and watched John, hoping for at least a
twitch. “… I guess I don’t mind losing you so much anymore. I can’t exactly tell your sisters about all of this, but
I think if I’m not so angry about that day, that maybe they won’t miss you so much either. We’re going to start
moving on now, getting on with our lives while we assume that you’re okay somewhere. At first the girls will
probably think their old man has lost a wingnut somewhere along the way, but once I get back to Earth and
adjust to what year it is back there, I’ll know for sure that you’re doing fine out here, and your sisters will buy the
new attitude eventually. We’ll miss you, but we’re going to do better from now on, son.”
The chamber was silent for a few moments while he thought about the types of things he’d never said when
John was on Earth. “I guess goodbyes are partly about making yourself feel better, so I want you to know that
the day you disappeared was the worst moment of my entire life. It was even worse than losing your mother
because I felt responsible for you being out there that day. I’ve spent the last three years thinking that maybe if
I hadn’t been your father -- if you hadn’t been trying to prove something to me -- that maybe you wouldn’t have
been in the Farscape module that day. Maybe if I had let you be your own kind of person we wouldn’t have lost
you. Now that I’ve seen all of this and met Aeryn and Ian, I don’t mind quite so much. I don’t feel quite as guilty,
John, so at least one good thing has come out of my trip here.”
Jack stepped closer to pick up one lifeless hand in his own. “I’m glad that you found these people, and this
woman, and are happy here. You’ve got one hell of a family, including some of the weirdest looking cousins,
aunts, and uncles I’ve ever run into. When my other grandchildren get old to start showing up with tattoos,
purple hair and body piercings, I suspect I’ll find it pretty tame. These people love you, John, so fight like hell
and come back to them. And that’s an order for once. The last one I’ll ever give you, son.”
Jack set the lax hand down and stepped back, his eyes lingering on the closed ones. “Last time I get to see
you, John. Not exactly the way I wanted it to be. I kind of imagined that we’d get to say a real goodbye this time
with hugs and those stupid things that people always say when they’re standing in the driveway with the car
door standing open.” The room was silent except for the sibilant swishing of the machines. “John … I wish
you’d wake up just long enough to say goodbye.” He waited, hoping for the last moment miracle.
“Okay, son. I love you.” Jack Crichton put his hand on his son’s forehead for a moment, stroking the warm skin
with a thumb. “Goodbye, John.” He turned and hurried from the chamber, stumbling slightly as he turned to
the right and followed Aeryn toward the hangar bay.
Behind him, a DRD eased along the ceiling, descending from where it had been waiting silently for the odd,
newly arrived biologic to finish talking before moving to its next repair. It swiveled its eyestalks between the
doorway and the biologic that continue to lie on the medbed, considering the situation, and then shunted its
recording of the one-sided conversation to Moya and Pilot to be evaluated and possibly added to the
datastores.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
Part 4
Jack paced around the Farscape module for the fifth time, running his fingers across the hull, occasionally
stooping to look at a modification. The last time he’d touched the craft it had been brand new, gleaming under
florescent lights, and his fingers had skated across the polished surface virtually without friction. Now it was
singed and pitted, even the hardened ceramic nosecone showing signs of wear, every inch of the hull looking
as though it had been sandblasted. The stumpy little craft was responsible for more grief in his family than
Leslie’s death had caused, but looking at its familiar lines, Jack felt a tingle of pride run up his spine. Ultimately,
John’s theories had been right, and if it hadn’t been for the wormhole, he would have proved it to the entire
world.
He crouched down to look at a blackened scorch mark, rubbing at it to verify that the discoloration was a deep
burn in the skin of the module rather than a superficial layer of soot. Ian had related his version of a few of
John’s more recent adventures, the deepening adult voice cracking into the child’s higher pitched tones as his
memories took him back to a more exciting, more pleasant time of his young life. Between Ian’s enthusiastic
descriptions, and Aeryn’s quieter hints, he’d been forced to conclude that John had survived even more
battering than his spacecraft had over the years. Jack rubbed a hand across the faded emblem on the side,
clearing away dirt from the American flag, and grieved for everything that John had been forced to endure.
A quiet chirrup drew his attention to the doorway. The first DRD he’d encountered aboard Moya waited there
for him, assigned to guide him to wherever Ian was located. Jack had remained in the infirmary for almost an
hour after the treatment had begun, patiently watching over John, but when the rest of the crew had filtered out
one by one, he’d decided that it might be time to let Ian show him around the huge ship. The teenager had
responded to a summons from his mother, appearing from wherever he’d gone to deal with his emotions, and
had guided him on the proverbial whirlwind tour of the leviathan. They’d worked their way up and down, back
and forth, front to back, Ian excited to bouncing exuberance by the opportunity to show his grandfather his
unusual home.
They’d toured more of what they termed ‘Quarters’, with the accompanying explanation that Moya had been
used as a prison ship, which resolved his earlier question about the heavy bars that served as doors.
They’d explored hangar bay four, Ian spouting performance statistics about each of the craft parked there the
way a license-hungry teen on Earth could recite displacement, torque, and horsepower figures. The ‘terrace’
had been every bit as spectacular as he’d been promised, the sense of standing in space multiplying when
Moya had gradually rolled along her axis so that a massive nebula had seemed to rise over the side of the ship
until it rested overhead. He’d learned about ‘starburst’ when they’d stood in the chamber deep within the ship,
the walls a glittering anthracite black from the reinforcement needed to contain the energy required for Moya to
pierce the boundary between dimensions.
Jack had finally been forced to beg for a few moments of peace and quiet to let his spinning head settle down,
asking specifically to be left alone in the hangar to contemplate the vehicle that had started the adventure,
responsible for bringing first John and then himself to this unbelievable place. He glanced at his watch,
verifying that just under an hour had passed since he’d been dropped off here, giving him an ‘arn’ to himself.
According to the digital readout, it was seven o’clock in the morning at his house on Earth, explaining the
fatigue that dragged at his shoulders and back. He’d flipped off the lights in the living room a little before nine,
and had been on the far side of the universe before midnight.
“And the girls complain about how far they have to travel to come home on the holidays,” he offered to the
DRD. It spun around clockwise and chirped at him. “Come here,” he invited it. The DRD pointed itself about
five feet to his left and arced toward him, once again drifting uncontrollably to the right.
“The circuits that make him move are starting to fail,” Ian explained, walking into the maintenance bay. “This
problem started about twenty days ago. I’m afraid he’s getting too old. We’ll let him keep going until he only
travels in circles, and then we’ll probably shut him down.”
“It can’t be repaired?” Jack asked, picking the unit up and turning it over.
“When DRDs get damaged, they’re often recycled for the materials they’re made from. It’s easier for Moya to
grow a new one than repair a badly damaged unit. He’s just too old.” Ian pointed to several of the small circuits
on the underside of the chattering robot that weren’t illuminated. “I tried replacing these, but it’s his internal
systems that are toasted. There’s no power getting to these motivation gears.” The non-stop clicking and
squeaking continued. “Shut up,” the boy ordered the inverted DRD, and it quieted down to an occasional
chirp.
“Do these pull out?” Jack asked. Ian nodded. The older man deftly plucked six circuits out of the left side of
the DRD, mirroring the darkened spots on the right. “There you go, scooter,” he said, setting the drone down
on the floor. “Try that.” One-Eye clicked several times and sailed in a straight line toward the open door.
“Why didn’t I think of that?” Ian muttered in disgust. “I kept trying to fix it. I didn’t think to disable more of it.”
“You probably had something else on your mind,” Jack suggested, handing him the spare components. “And
you’ve probably never had to cope with pushing a shopping cart with one bad wheel. You get inventive when
you have to cope with that sort of thing.” Ian remained silent, merely giving him a peculiar look in response to
his comment. The DRD came zipping back toward them, chirped at them half a dozen times, made a neat left
turn and headed back toward the door, enjoying its restored capacity for traveling in a straight line. They
laughed together as it made three left hand circles and then disappeared into the corridor.
“I can’t seem to think about anything but my dad,” Ian admitted, wandering over to a workbench, his back
turned toward Jack. “No matter how hard I try to concentrate on other things, it’s all I think about most of the
time. I can’t eat … my stomach hurts … I barely hear what the others are telling me sometimes.” He fiddled
with a tool, finally flipping it onto the work surface and turning to face Jack. “How do I make it stop?” he
pleaded.
“Have you talked about this with your mother?”
Ian shook his head. “She’s got it all under control … all of this I mean. Nothing ever gets to her.” He sighed,
the bony shoulders rising and falling under the thin shirt. “I wish I could be like that.”
Jack suppressed a wry smile, knowing it would be misunderstood by the unhappy teen. “You should ask her,
Ian. You might be surprised at the answer you get.” The young John-look-alike made a full body squirm, using
the same motion his father had used as a youngster to suggest that he didn’t agree without actually saying it
out loud. “Aeryn might have it concealed, Ian, but she feels every emotion you do -- every bit of grief, every bit
of fear and concern and uncertainty. It’s only human to feel this way, and there’s no way to stop it.”
“But she’s not human,” Ian insisted, “she’s sebacean.”
“I know. I remember what you told me in my kitchen, but I’ve managed to figure out exactly two things since I got
here.” Jack gestured with both hands to indicate that ‘here’ meant Moya. “First, I figured out how to make a
DRD run in a straight line.” Ian let out a short laugh. “And second, I’ve noticed that every person I’ve met here
so far seems to act pretty human, including your mother. Talk to her, Ian.”
“Yeah … maybe,” came a disbelieving mumble.
“So, what’s next on the tour?” Jack asked, changing the subject when he recognized that Ian had listened to as
much adult advice as he was going to tolerate. “What else should I see?”
“You haven’t met Pilot yet. Some of the others say he’s kind of freaky looking when you meet him for the first
time, but he’s the gentlest, kindest person on board. How about going up to the Den?” Ian was grinning now,
his eyes shining with renewed enthusiasm.
“Sounds good,” Jack encouraged him, motioning toward the door. He waited until Ian’s back was turned before
peeking at his watch. The Kallimitri had started their treatment a little before his version of two
o’clock, so John had been subjected to the genetic modifications for over five hours. Curiosity and concern
were teaming up to urge him to check back, but logic told him it was too soon to expect a substantial change.
He would follow Ian for a while longer before asking to return to the ship’s sickbay. Jack lengthened his stride
to catch up with his grandson, using the time to remove his wristwatch and tuck it in his pocket where he
wouldn’t be as likely to consult it every ten minutes.
* * * * *
Aeryn sat cross-legged on the spare medbed, watching the surges of blood and chemicals flow through the thin
tubes connecting John to the Kallimitri devices. The scampering creatures had checked on their equipment six
and a half arns earlier, verifying that everything was working correctly, and hadn’t been back since. They’d
declared that there was nothing more to be done for at least two solar days, and had left it up to Moya’s crew to
make sure the setup remained undisturbed. When Chiana had checked on them two arns ago, the quartet of
geneticists was in the Center Chamber eating their way through the food stores faster than Rygel ever could
have. The stray thought of the Dominar summoned a smile. The last time they’d visited the restored monarch
he’d been perched on his throne behind a pile of marjoules nearly twice the size of the Hynerian himself,
happily munching his way through the delicacies as he conducted the affairs of his empire.
“Any change?” Ian walked hesitantly into the chamber, his feet stopping and starting like a fuel-starved Prowler
running on the last dregs of froonium.
“It’s only been twelve arns since it started. It’s too soon to expect any improvement, Ian.” She waited several
microts, expecting Jack to appear, and then asked, “Where’s your melnatsa?” using the Nebari term that Ian
preferred.
“He wanted to sit with Pilot a little longer. He can’t understand single word of course, but Pilot was showing him
some recordings of Dad from the first cycles he was here.” Aeryn thought of those stored images, and
understood why Ian had abandoned his grandfather to Pilot’s care. She’d reviewed some of the recordings
when John’s illness had first begun to rob her of the love of her life, and the bounding vitality displayed on the
screen had only served as a cruel reminder when compared to the more recent edition of John Crichton.
“Pilot will have one of the DRDs show him the way here when he’s ready,” Ian finished.
“Have you been up there all this time?” she asked, knowing they’d been headed for the Den arns ago.
Ian shook his head. “We went to get something to eat, talked for a while, and melnatsa got a couple of arns
sleep in my cell. We went back up to the Den about an arn ago.”
“How much longer before he has to leave?” She kept John’s motionless body in her peripheral vision as she
watched her son drift around the chamber always remaining at least a motra from the medbed as though a
defense shield were keeping him from crossing the last distance to his father’s side.
Ian looked out the view portal for several microts, his gaze flickering across the nebulas and proto-galaxies of
Tormented Space. “Not more than five arns. It’s the last one that’ll do for at least a cycle.”
“Last what?” Jack asked, striding into the bay with the assured movements that she was realizing was a trait
common to all of the Crichtons. The drone that had been guiding him spun around, elevated its eyestalks long
enough to survey the human, then accelerated away into the corridor.
“Last wormhole,” Ian answered bluntly before Aeryn could stop him. “You have to go back in under five arns.”
“Will John be better by then?”
Aeryn answered in a rush before her son could deliver an ungentle assessment of the situation. “Probably
not. The Kallimitri think it could take up to fifteen solar days and as many as five treatments before the process
is finished. They can’t predict the final outcome yet.”
Jack glanced at her then turned to look at Ian. “I got ‘Kallimitri’ and nothing else. Could you translate for me?”
Aeryn slapped herself gently alongside her head, realizing too late that she’d spouted the entire thing in
Sebacean, but Ian delivered it verbatim in far gentler tones than her own hurried response.
“So I won’t know how he is before I leave?” Jack protested. “There’s got to be another bus after this one. You
can’t really expect me to just … ”
“Aeryn?” A fourth voice entered the conversation, weak and quavering, but loud enough to be heard over
Jack’s complaint.
Aeryn leapt off the medbed, nearly falling to the floor as one leg buckled, nerves tingling from loss of
circulation. She limped to John’s side, shouldering her way past Jack in her rush. She heard Ian in the
background, comming Pilot and the others with the news that John was awake, but the remainder of her
attention was centered on one person only.
“Hi there. How are you feeling? Remember me?” She caught his hand as he tried to reach for her, preventing
him from disturbing the thin tubing that was connected to his forearm.
“Of course I remember you.” He looked around, taking in the medical chamber and the two other figures
standing next to him. “What’s happened? Where the frell are we?” John tried to sit up.
“Slow down, slow down,” she crooned to him, a single hand pressing him back against the padding. “What
about these other people here. Do you remember them?”
John stared at his teenaged son, the first signs of anxiety and confusion appearing as he considered her
question, and after several microts shook his head. His gaze flickered as Ian spun away and left the room at a
run, but the hurried departure had no further impact on John as he focused on his father. “I don’t want to know
about wormholes,” John said angrily. “Stay away from me.”
“That’s not who he is, John. He’s not one of the Ancients. Think for a microt.” She switched into English for
Jack’s benefit. “He is someone from Earth. From your life on Earth. You know him.”
John stared at the lean figure suspiciously for several moments before shaking his head. “Aeryn, I’m tired. If I
fall asleep, will you keep him away from me? Don’t let him give me anything about wormholes, all right?” He
was becoming increasingly distraught as he tried to keep both Aeryn and Jack in sight, his eyes bouncing from
one to the other as they stood alongside him.
Aeryn glanced once at Jack’s strained expression, then leaned over John long enough to give him a brief hug.
“Yes, go back to sleep for a while. You’ll feel better when you wake up.” She smoothed his hair back from his
forehead, and held on to his hand until she was sure he was asleep again. “I am sorry,” she apologized to Jack.
“It’s not your fault, Aeryn,” he sighed. “At least he remembered you. That’s an improvement, isn’t it?”
“He remembered me two solar days ago,” she confessed, wrapping John’s fingers around her own hand and
pressing them into place. She released the outer grip and the arranged grasp stayed in place, creating the
illusion that the sleeping man was holding on to her. His hand was as warm and firm as ever, the strength
hidden beneath the lack of direction from its owner. Her hand firmly enclosed in his had been a source of
strength for so many cycles, her body responded to the fakery as though John were there. “There are
moments when he is almost normal, but then he slips away again.”
“How long are they going to keep him sedated like this? Wouldn’t it be easier to tell if it’s working if they let him
wake up?” Jack reached tentatively toward his son’s forehead, brushing his fingers across it lightly before
retreating. “When will they let him wake up?”
“He sleeps because of the changes, not because of drugs,” Aeryn explained, gesturing with a shoulder toward
the Kallimitri devices. “It will take away his energy. They say not to worry, that it will not hurt him more even if it
does not make him better. But --” She took a deep breath and ran a knuckle along one eye.
“But how can you not worry?” Jack finished for her. He looked past her suddenly, focusing on the open door
behind her. “Speaking of worry, shouldn’t someone go after Ian? That was pretty tough on him.”
“He hides,” she stated flatly. Jack raised his eyebrows at her. “He hides very well. No one can find him when
he goes like this. Ian hides from the time he is this size,” Aeryn indicated a height about mid-thigh, “when he is
unhappy. Moya is very big, lots of hiding places.”
“Aeryn!” D’Argo and Chiana ran into the chamber, nearly colliding with Jack as they hurried toward where John
was once again sleeping. “Ian commed us that he was awake. Isn’t he awake?”
“He was,” she explained. “He might have been marginally better, but he didn’t remember Ian or his father.” She
folded her arms across her chest, holding herself as tightly physically as she was emotionally. “They did warn
us that it may take several days before we know if there’s going to be an improvement.”
“Get one of those furry frellnicks down here,” Chiana insisted. “Have them tell us whether he’s getting better.”
“They won’t come,” D’Argo growled. “I tried to pry one of them out of the Center Chamber earlier and it tried to
bite me.” He looked around as four more of the crew hurried into the medical bay, their disappointment
apparent as they spotted the again unconscious Crichton. “They are more like Rygel than I’d originally …
what’s that?”
“What’s that?” Jack’s alarmed question mimicked D’Argo’s last comment almost perfectly, and Aeryn whipped
around to face him, thinking he’d somehow managed to understand the brief Luxan outburst. Jack’s attention,
however, was fixed on the same flashing displays that had alerted D’Argo to a potential problem. She finished
the fast spin so that she again faced the bed where John was still resting peacefully. Another display beyond
him began to chirp, a stream of indecipherable symbols appearing at the bottom of the screen, all of which
looked equally menacing even though she couldn’t read them.
Aeryn activated her comms, nearly shouting her message. “Who’s close to the Center Chamber?” she asked
everyone at large. She sorted out Nerri’s and Jothee’s responses among a total of five alert voices. She called
back to the entire group, “Get down there with some weapons and bring the Kallimitri to the medical chamber at
the end of a rifle if necessary. There’s something wrong with this treatment. Hurry.”
“Aeryn?” Jack asked, sounding even more worried than she felt. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. We’re getting the Kallimitri now.”
* * * * *
Jack rubbed his stomach as the furry scientist scampered away, and then carefully sat up and swung his legs
over the side of the raised bed. “Ouch,” he complained quietly to himself. In the two hours since the
geneticists had been summoned to the infirmary, they’d taken half a dozen different samples from his body,
searching for the tissue or fluid that would allow them to resolve the problem their process had encountered.
The DNA they’d started with was undamaged, a good match for John, and apparently not what they needed to
realign every portion of John’s physiology.
The flashing displays and stream of information had turned out to be nothing more than the machinery’s
announcement that the process wasn’t working, neither damaging nor improving John’s condition. The overly
simplistic double helix of a human was turning out to be more resistant to adaptation than the scientists had
expected, resisting modifications. The Kallimitri had scratched their heads and announced, according to Aeryn,
that they required a different type of tissue sample.
“Undifferentiated,” Jack had suggested when Aeryn hadn’t been able to convert the Kallimitri word into English.
“Maybe they need some sort of tissue or fluid where the genes and proteins aren’t adapted to an organ or a
body part,” he theorized. The furry creatures had surrounded him, orbiting his body like a reverse edition of
musical chairs. Their survey of his anatomy had been disquieting, as though they were sizing him up for a
meal.
“Our scientists … they um … Could you please stop that?” he finally requested, dizzied by their circling. The
four scientists halted, but that only made him feel like he’d been hemmed in by furniture. Jack concentrated,
closing out the aliens. What he was about to suggest scared him because he was going to have to trust aliens
who looked more like pets than scientists not to injure him. “How about spinal fluid?” he proposed without
knowing if that was a better source for their needs.
They shook their heads in concert and he sighed with relief. One of them clattered at him, making a statement
rather than asking a question.
“No,” Aeryn said firmly.
“What?” Jack asked.
“They wanted brain tissue,” she relayed.
“Un unh,” he confirmed her decision. “You’re going to have to try something else.”
They had tried several times, each sampling equally painless and equally futile. This latest effort had extracted
some of the cells from some portion of his intestines, resulting in the residual uncomfortable twinges and the
clattering discussion seemed happier this time. Aeryn motioned to him, indicating that he could get up, and
Jack joined the dozen or so individuals who were standing or pacing around the chamber, beginning his own
small repetitive route near the view portal as they waited for a determination.
“Come on,” he snarled quietly as the minutes stretched into a quarter hour. The Kallimitri were still huddled
together, chattering cheerfully as they consulted their machines, and Jack began to consider whether he could
stay here, perhaps permanently, if they weren’t successful by the time he was supposed to leave.
Every person in the bay turned quickly, facing a single point in the chamber as D’Argo stepped away from three
of his friends and unloaded a growling verbal barrage at the scientists. Jack tried to watch every reaction at the
same time, glancing from one side to the other as the Kallmitri cowered and the crew showed a variety of
expressions ranging from amusement to anger to nodding agreement.
“He --” Aeryn stepped close to translate.
“--said he was tired of waiting and they should hurry up,” Jack proposed.
“Yes,” she said, her voice rising in surprise. “How do you know?”
“Look at the group to D’Argo’s right,” he explained. The tight cluster of Chiana, Jothee, Nerri and two others
had provided the full gamut of reactions that had provided all the translation he needed. Beside him, Aeryn
nodded her understanding, then snuck one hand up to wipe quickly at her eyes. Jack stepped to her side, one
hand urging her to turn so that they looked out at the stars, their backs to the assembled group. “Take a deep
breath,” he suggested quietly.
“John would do that,” she explained. “He would watch us and know what we were thinking before we can say it.”
Jack searched for a topic that would divert her attention away from the painful memories. “Can you explain
something about this procedure they’re trying? If they’re mapping John’s genes onto my DNA, aren’t they going
to convert him into some version of me?”
She shook her head emphatically, then stared at the floor for several seconds as she considered the question.
“They have John’s pattern,” she started, Jack nodding his understanding at every pause, “but it has mistakes
and changes in it. They have Ian’s pattern, very much the same but partly mine. Not quite human.” Jack
nodded. “They need something close to John’s to see what the correct pattern should look like, to fill in missing
pieces for a human. They need a son, a father, a brother, or a clone.” Aeryn bit her lip and turned away for
almost a full minute. “There is only the father, so we must find you. More than that I do not understand.”
They stood quietly together, watching the slow migration of the stars. “Aeryn,” Jack began, about to suggest
that he stay, no matter how long it took for them to find a cure, but he was interrupted by a sound similar to
rattling sticks. The Kallimitri were making an announcement behind him. Aeryn dug her fingers deep into his
shoulder when he started to turn around, holding him firmly in place. She started to shake, the tears sneaking
down her cheeks, and he knew it was all over.
“It won’t work,” he whispered, resigning himself to losing John a second time.
“No,” Aeryn contradicted him. “It will work. They have what they need. They are sure this time.” She released
the painful grip but continued to steady herself against him, swaying slightly as she wiped away the last of the
errant tears. “They do not know how well it will fix him, but they can do it now.” She glanced over his shoulder,
eyes widening, and then took one long step away from Jack. “Look out.”
He turned in alarm, but it was only D’Argo striding toward them, an enormous smile showing beneath the braids
and tentacles. Jack was treated to a deafening roar of luxan and then he was swept into a hug that he swore
broke his spine.
“He said thank you for coming here,” Aeryn laughed as Jack verified that all of his body parts still functioned.
“You’re welcome,” he returned automatically, taking a long breath to see if his ribs were still intact. “Happy to
do it,” he wheezed, slowly recovering from the embrace.
“If you had not said you must come with us, you would not be here to make this work. We would have brought
back only your blood, and it would not have worked,” she expanded the implied thanks. D’Argo nodded his
beaming agreement behind her, tentacles bouncing from the fast, pleased motion.
“He’s my son,” Jack offered simply, still feeling a bit squashed from the luxan’s hug.
Aeryn treated him to a cool, endlessly calm smile as she grasped him firmly around his upper arm, steadying
him as they moved the short distance back to where John was lying. The Kallimitri spun around the machinery,
making dozens of fast adjustments; then they all stopped for five seconds, watched the display, and scurried
out of the room.
“We wait again,” Aeryn confirmed, “but you must leave now.”
“No,” Jack insisted. “There’s got to be another way, Aeryn. I will not leave this way, not without knowing if
he’s going to be all right. You’ll have to locate a different wormhole.” She shook her head. “This is my son,
Aeryn. Could you walk off and leave Ian under the same circumstances?” Jack turned to the small crowd,
scanning the faces in hopes of finding an ally. The expressions all exhibited varying degrees of sympathy, but
not one person showed any sign of agreeing with him.
“There is not another wormhole. You must go before this one changes.”
“A wormhole’s a wormhole. What’s the difference if I go through now or in ten days?” he argued. “They’re
subspace, outside the realm of normal physics. It’ll be there next week.”
But Aeryn was shaking her head. “No. They change,” she asserted. “I do not have the words. Ian must tell
you of the things that make wormholes change.”
Jack looked at John again, every cell in his body screaming that he could not leave him this way … not without
knowing if he would recover. Cold logic whispered into the back of his mind, though, easing one argument after
another into his consciousness that said he had to leave. There was the rest of his family to think about, who
had already suffered enough as a result of John’s inexplicable disappearance. If he were to mysteriously
vanish out of his home it would tear them apart. If John recovered, his presence would be superfluous; and if
John didn’t recover, there was even less that he could do here.
Aeryn was talking behind him, her slow, accented apology breaking in on his private internal dispute. “I am
sorry. This is part of why we said you should not come here. We knew you would have to leave too soon.”
Jack turned away from everyone, walking back to the spot by the portal where he could look out at John’s
universe. “All right,” he surrendered past a lump in his throat, remembering how it had felt when he knew that
his final trip into space was almost over. He’d floated weightlessly, staring at his home, feeling close to a
spiritual epiphany at its beauty, and had nearly cried from knowing that he would never leave the planet again.
That horrible collision of emotions was mild compared to what he was experiencing now.
He would return to Earth with the knowledge that John was alive and raising a family, with at least another
fifteen or sixteen years of happiness ahead of him, and would have to grieve for his loss all over again,
magnified by the uncertainty of his future. He’d gotten into space one more time, but at a horrible cost. He’d
seen wondrous things, only to have one of the most wondrous pieces of his life taken away from him a second
time. “There is a time for everything,” he whispered to himself, admitting that life was a matter of give and take,
ebb and flow … and that he had to leave.
“You win,” he confirmed. “How much time do I have to say goodbye?” There was a short discussion behind
him.
“We must have time to take you back and return here,” Aeryn explained. “We can spare one or two arns.”
Jack nodded, his back still turned to the room, and the group behind him began a more hushed discussion, not
more than half of the voices joining in for a change. He looked out at the groupings of stars, searching in vain
for a familiar constellation, the sight confirming how far he was from his home.
He walked slowly to stand at John’s side and gathered one of the lax hands into his own. Jack turned it over
carefully, making sure he didn’t disturb the greenish tubes, and looked at the palm. The scar from John’s
motorcycle accident was still there, slashing across the heel of his hand, telling a tale of a normal teenage life.
“How did we get here, John?” he asked the still figure.
The only answer was the hum and swish of the Kallimitri machinery performing in counterpoint to the thumps
and grumbles of the leviathan around them. He put the hand back on the bed and stared at the monitors,
seeing a lifetime of squandered opportunities to talk to his son instead of the bouncing data points before him.
Something drew his attention back from the mental images he was reviewing. “Aeryn …” Jack called,
interrupting the conversation that continued unabated to one side. “Look at this and tell me what you see.” He
pointed to several of the dark spots displayed on the image of John’s brain, then pointed again to several of the
spikes on the monitor showing activity.
The entire crowd hemmed him in, jostling each other slightly to see what he was indicating. “These are
smaller,” he said as he referred to the dark spots, “and these are larger,” pointing to the spikes. “It’s working.”
He turned to check on their expressions and then looked back at John. “It’s working.”
“We know that it will work at least part way,” Aeryn said in a condescending tone.
“Don’t you see?” Jack cried, startling several of his audience. “We can’t do this on Earth.” He examined the
depressed expressions, shaking his head when he saw that he’d failed to convey the magnitude of what was
happening. He tried again. “Alzheimer’s is incurable for us. This disease isn’t contracted from a germ or a
virus on Earth; it just happens and we don’t know why. And we can’t fix this.” He jabbed excitedly at the
display. “If John were on Earth, this would be permanent.”
There was another of the multi-discussions, several of the crew patted him on the shoulder, and then they
filtered out of the chamber one by one, leaving him alone with Aeryn.
“They don’t get it,” he suggested as the last person disappeared.
“They do un-der-stand,” Aeryn objected, struggling through the longer word. “But you have to understand.
The Kallimitri do not say if this will get better. They can make it work now because you are here for more
samples, but it still may be only part way fixed.” She moved to John’s side, staring down at the man sleeping on
the medbed, obviously hesitating. “And there is also the other part.”
“What other part?” Jack exclaimed, thinking they’d kept some part of John’s illness from him.
“We all live for many cycles. John lives for many less.” Jack shook his head, puzzled by the simple statements.
“I will lose him too soon. Now or later, it is the same. We have little time left.” She gestured at the Kallimitri
devices. “This will give him back for maybe ten or twenty cycles, then will I lose him again.”
“I’m sorry, Aeryn Sun,” Jack whispered, finally understanding the battle she was waging. He’d lost Leslie far too
soon, the single love of his life taken from him before his life was barely half over. He tried to imagine what his
choice would have been if a miracle cure could have given her back to him, but only with the guarantee that
he’d lose her again ten years later. He was about to ask Aeryn if the extra years were worth the agony of
knowing she’d lose him again, but he thought of her trip to Earth, the passage through the wormhole, the effort
and the risk she’d put into this single venture, and had his answer. “Perhaps you will get more than that. His
grandfather lived into his nineties.”
Aeryn let out a short barking laugh and pushed a lock of hair off John’s forehead. “I will live into my -- ” she
lapsed into Sebacean then caught herself. She held up two fingers, then both of her fists clenched.
“Two hundred?” Jack asked incredulously. She nodded. She would have John for only half her lifetime. “And
Ian? How long will he live?” She shrugged. “He’s half human, half sebacean,” Jack summarized. “You don’t
know which half will determine his life span.” Aeryn didn’t respond.
He looked at his aged son and the aching knot in his stomach took a tighter grip, restricting his ability to even
breathe. They’d been so happy when John was born, their days full of laughter and excitement, their lives full
of the promise that life in middle class America was supposed to be all about. And now he stood at a
crossroads in time and space where he was healthier than his own son. He searched for something to say to
Aeryn, to express his sympathy for the impending loss that would hover over her even if John recovered, and
came up empty.
“I will leave you alone to say goodbye,” she suggested. “I go find Ian and we come back in an arn to get you.”
Jack nodded numbly, words deserting him. “If you want to leave, you ask that,” she pointed at a waiting DRD,
“to take you where you want to go.”
“Thank you, Aeyrn.” She leaned close to give him a careful hug, then left him alone with John. Jack waited
until the sound of her footsteps faded then turned back to the occupant of the medbed.
* * * * *
Jack stood for several moments looking down at his son, finally seeing the young man in an orange flight suit
who had cheerfully waved one last time before stepping through the gantry entrance to the shuttle. He tried to
summon the words that should have been said that day, and came up as short as he had the first time.
“John.” The slow breathing continued without a break. “I guess I’ll have to say my goodbyes trusting that you
can hear me in there somewhere, son.” Jack stared, breaking out of his trance when his feet began to tingle
from standing in one position for too long. He started to look at his watch to see how long he’d been lost in
thought, but he couldn’t remember what time Aeryn had left. The patterns on the displays continued their
hypnotic undulations, showing little change beyond what he’d noticed earlier.
“I suppose I’ll have to take the changes we noticed as a positive sign, John, and assume that you’re going to be
all right.” Jack stopped again, his thoughts trundling to a dead end. There was a whisper of a noise behind
him, and he turned to find Aeryn standing less than six feet away. Either he’d been completely lost in thought
or she was able to move more quietly than a cat.
“Time to go?” he asked, wondering if he’d really used up an entire arn just standing there like an idiot.
She shook her head. “Pilot said maybe you could use some company,” she explained, gesturing at the DRD.
Jack started to say something about spies and surveillance, the thought evaporating when it occurred to him
that this crew was as concerned about him as they were about John. “I don’t know what to say to him,” he
confessed. “I want to say goodbye, but …”
“But you do not want to say goodbye.” Aeryn’s quiet smile put him at ease, taking away much of the frustration
inherent in the situation. “What would you say to John if he was awake?”
Jack tried to focus his thoughts toward a farewell exchange between two people, but his mind continued to
spiral inward to the single fact that he would never see John again and that this was the worst way in the
universe to leave him. “I don’t know. Sometimes John and I didn’t communicate very well.” He gave in to a
short, cynical laugh. “Who am I kidding? We had a lot of trouble talking. It seems like the things we didn’t say
to each other outnumber what did get said by about a hundred to one.”
“He talked to you when he first got here. Very often,” Aeryn offered. “He told you about everything that he
sees and finds.”
“How do you mean?” Jack asked, puzzled by her description.
“He has a thing that he talks into. A recording device.” Her hands sketched out the dimensions of an object
scarcely larger than his palm.
“The tape recorder from the module!” Jack concluded with excitement. “May I … may I have it? Could I take it
with me?”
Aeryn shook her head. “I am sorry. The tapes go to pieces many cycles ago.” Her hands pantomimed
disintegration. “The machine got thrown away or lost.” Jack felt slightly disoriented as he once again had to
cope with the time disparity resulting from traveling into the future, forced to admit that twenty years was too
long for the fragile tapes to survive. “My point is that he talks to you when you are not here. John talks to you
all the time. If he did not talk to you when he was young, that changed when he came here. You are here now,
so maybe you can talk to him. I will wait there,” she pointed toward the passageway.
“Thank you, Aeryn.” Jack waited until she disappeared from sight before turning back to his son, trying to see
the young man that had arrived in this universe so long ago and had managed to adapt to a new, incredibly
alien lifestyle. “It must have been a frantic few days at first, John. I don’t know how you managed to keep it all
together. The moon was a long way from Earth but at least I knew what I’d find when I got there.” He paused,
trying to imagine what sorts of things John would have recorded on those tapes -- what sorts of impressions,
experiences, hopes and fears had been lost when the tapes crumbled into fragments.
“Yesterday was Halloween, John. You’ll never guess who showed up at my door. Space aliens. I don’t
suppose you’ll be too surprised to find out that Rodenberry and Speilberg and all those other Hollywood
geniuses weren’t even in the ballpark. One of the space aliens turned out to be a pretty amazing young man,
and there was this drop dead gorgeous woman with him. Don’t suppose you’d know anything about that either,
would you?” He paused, imagining the grin that would have greeted his teasing.
“You’ve done good out here, son. I can see that just by the friends you’ve made and how much you mean to
them. I’m proud of you. I won’t say it hasn’t been hard on us since you disappeared, but now that I know a little
about what you’ve been doing, I guess …” Jack took a deep breath, and watched John, hoping for at least a
twitch. “… I guess I don’t mind losing you so much anymore. I can’t exactly tell your sisters about all of this, but
I think if I’m not so angry about that day, that maybe they won’t miss you so much either. We’re going to start
moving on now, getting on with our lives while we assume that you’re okay somewhere. At first the girls will
probably think their old man has lost a wingnut somewhere along the way, but once I get back to Earth and
adjust to what year it is back there, I’ll know for sure that you’re doing fine out here, and your sisters will buy the
new attitude eventually. We’ll miss you, but we’re going to do better from now on, son.”
The chamber was silent for a few moments while he thought about the types of things he’d never said when
John was on Earth. “I guess goodbyes are partly about making yourself feel better, so I want you to know that
the day you disappeared was the worst moment of my entire life. It was even worse than losing your mother
because I felt responsible for you being out there that day. I’ve spent the last three years thinking that maybe if
I hadn’t been your father -- if you hadn’t been trying to prove something to me -- that maybe you wouldn’t have
been in the Farscape module that day. Maybe if I had let you be your own kind of person we wouldn’t have lost
you. Now that I’ve seen all of this and met Aeryn and Ian, I don’t mind quite so much. I don’t feel quite as guilty,
John, so at least one good thing has come out of my trip here.”
Jack stepped closer to pick up one lifeless hand in his own. “I’m glad that you found these people, and this
woman, and are happy here. You’ve got one hell of a family, including some of the weirdest looking cousins,
aunts, and uncles I’ve ever run into. When my other grandchildren get old to start showing up with tattoos,
purple hair and body piercings, I suspect I’ll find it pretty tame. These people love you, John, so fight like hell
and come back to them. And that’s an order for once. The last one I’ll ever give you, son.”
Jack set the lax hand down and stepped back, his eyes lingering on the closed ones. “Last time I get to see
you, John. Not exactly the way I wanted it to be. I kind of imagined that we’d get to say a real goodbye this time
with hugs and those stupid things that people always say when they’re standing in the driveway with the car
door standing open.” The room was silent except for the sibilant swishing of the machines. “John … I wish
you’d wake up just long enough to say goodbye.” He waited, hoping for the last moment miracle.
“Okay, son. I love you.” Jack Crichton put his hand on his son’s forehead for a moment, stroking the warm skin
with a thumb. “Goodbye, John.” He turned and hurried from the chamber, stumbling slightly as he turned to
the right and followed Aeryn toward the hangar bay.
Behind him, a DRD eased along the ceiling, descending from where it had been waiting silently for the odd,
newly arrived biologic to finish talking before moving to its next repair. It swiveled its eyestalks between the
doorway and the biologic that continue to lie on the medbed, considering the situation, and then shunted its
recording of the one-sided conversation to Moya and Pilot to be evaluated and possibly added to the
datastores.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
