Whispers
Chapter 11
At John’s request, Hox led him to a different place where they could wait until Aeryn and D’Argo joined him
aboard the Kyelligg. This one was smaller and warmer, tightly bounded by steep embankments planted with
foliage so dark that it appeared black, and was tucked in under an overhanging walkway so it had a roof. To
one side, just inside the entrance, a stream splashed its way down a rocky bed, and gurgled sideward into a
culvert. Steam rose off the surface. The plants hanging over the sides of the rivulet dripped with
condensation. John held his hands in the vapor, warming them, and thought about the closed ecological
system of the Kyelligg and why the water would be hot.
“Cooling system from some sort of power plant?” he asked.
Hox chirped a quick agreement, followed by a concerned query. “You are feeling unwell?”
Crichton stretched, testing his body’s reactions. He felt less wobbly and unsettled than he had earlier, but
there remained a wandering, unpleasant chill to warn him that his body wasn’t going to tolerate much more in
the way of psychic weirdness. “My species doesn’t come with the equipment package for this sort of thing, and
my body’s getting a bit ticked off at all this mental wizard crap. It’s about to call a strike.” He wandered about
the close confines, examining his surroundings for several microts, then asked, “Why me? Why did you do this
to me specifically? There are other species wandering around this portion of the universe better suited for this
kind of modification.”
Hox squinted a hvisk smile at him. “You are accustomed to the silence in your mind. It does not bother you as
it does us.”
“I don’t understand. Why does that matter?”
Hox drummed the toes of one food against the ground for several microts, producing a hushed clicking against
the metallic surface. Finally, he sang, “You felt the minds of the ones who attacked us -- the emptiness that
was there.”
“Heckle and Jeckle? Yeah. No big deal. I’ve felt it a bunch of times aboard the station.” The purple-crested
head swung from side to side several times. The motions sorted themselves out into what Crichton was able to
identify as dejection. “I should have mentioned it, huh?”
“For now, it is of little consequence. Those are only the infected ones, the ones who have come in contact with
the one we seek. We cannot get close enough to his mind to be certain, but we believe the one we ask you to
search for goes by the name of Klamik. He was one of the first whose thoughts disappeared from among us.”
“Klamik,” John said, making sure his spoken version of the name matched what he had received from Hox.
“Again, why me? Why can’t you search for him the same way you sent thoughts to other people a little while
ago?”
Hox spent some more time tapping his toes, considering the question. “Try to imagine what it would have been
like to join your mind with that of your ship only to discover an absolute void of awareness.” He beckoned.
When John went over to him, the hvisk took John’s bandaged left hand in both of his and held it up where they
both could look at it. “If you became that same nothingness, merged with it until there was only one set of
thoughts, would even this have helped draw you back from that place?”
“I don’t know. There was still me there, separate from Moya. It’s tough to imagine what you’re talking about.”
“That is because you naturally exist in solitude. We do not. If we find and merge with a damaged mind, we are
unable to draw back from that void. We succumb to The Mindlessness. To locate Klamik is to doom the
person who searches for him. In desperation, we have sent several to find him. Each time, they suffered the
same fate. Some were recovered and cured. Others have been lost to us. They cannot spread the infection,
as does Klamik, but neither can they escape from its clutches without help.”
“Help as in the machine gizmo that did this to me,” John said, gesturing toward his head. Hox nodded. “Okay,
that’s half the answer I’m looking for.” John waved a bandaged hand at the station around them, indicating
more than just the portions that were currently in sight. “Your people come in contact with lots of species and
individuals, most of whom aren’t telepathic. Why me? Why John Crichton? My mind has already been messed
up, messed with, messed around, and frelled into the ground. I didn’t need another cranial overhaul, old man.
Why did your people pick on me?”
"Because you are gentle,” came the answer.
John barked out a surprised laugh. “Gentle? Man, if this is what gentle gets me, then I gotta work on growin’
me a mean streak.” He boosted himself up to sit on the edge of the wall near the stream. The air was warmer
there. “No, when I first got here maybe, but not anymore. Sometimes a person has to change to survive.”
“Yes. Gentle. It is your core, the thing that makes you unique. You do not desire the death of others and you
have compassion.” Hox got up and went to stand beside Crichton. He placed a hand on his shoulder and
warbled another long series of notes. “To take aggression and violence into our society would only worsen the
affliction. And we do not desire Klamik’s death. We request only his capture. You have learned to do what is
necessary to ensure your continuation, but that part of you has not taken over your heart.”
John took several deep breaths and stared into out into the street, watching the passing throngs.
“Surely you were aware of this?” Hox asked.
John condensed his experiences into one short sentence. “It’s been a bad couple of cycles.”
“You grieve for portions of your life that you have lost.”
“More than you can imagine.”
“You veil your thoughts and your words. What do you hide from me? What sickens your heart?”
John hopped down, walked to the edge of the small alcove, and looked up at the traffic flowing along the street
on the far side of the station. The Kyelligg was the most amazing piece of engineering he had encountered so
far. The station represented every good thing he had run into on this side of the universe. He had found
hatred, bigotry, violence and violation, abuses of the sort that humans couldn’t even begin to conceive of, and
yet there was a degree of magnificence to the life he had found here that was almost enough to offset all the
pain and suffering. The hvisk habitat and its people embodied much of that positive aspect, demonstrating how
much humanity had yet to learn and the wonders that lay ahead of his species.
He stared up/down into the happily integrated crowd, feeling the contented thrum coming from millions of minds
existing in the constant security that they belonged and were valued and loved, and didn’t know if he was
looking at heaven or hell. Belonging to a greater whole was the heaven part; having every thought and action
under constant scrutiny and his destiny predetermined by an entire society would be a living damnation.
Hox was waiting, exuding a hopeful aura that he might get an answer to his question.
“What sickens my heart?” John repeated slowly and deliberately. He hesitated. Another twenty microts ticked
by before he decided to answer. “For a while I thought I’d found the one single thing that I needed in order to
feel that my life in this part of the universe was worth staying here. When I first got here, all I could concentrate
on was finding a way home. Then one day I woke up and discovered that there was a better reason for
staying. Starting on that day, I didn’t care so much that I couldn’t figure out how to get back to my own planet.
I didn’t precisely give up on the dream, but if my efforts produced the Edsel of Wormhole Land, it didn’t matter
quite as much. I could stand it.”
Hox nodded several times. “Peculiar words,” he sang eventually. “Many make no sense to any mind except
your own.”
“Story of my life. Tell me something that’s new.”
“What has changed?” Hox sat down on one of the benches. Once seated, he tucked his knees up in front of
his chest and arranged his robes so nothing but the hooked claws of his toes showed beneath the draped
edge. The similarities to a large bird perched on a roost increased to an unavoidable level.
Crichton turned away and focused on something other than the comparison. “It’s too soon to be certain, but I
think I’ve lost the one factor that makes life here bearable.” He took a deep breath and said the most painful
part out loud for the very first time. “I can’t get home, I’m about to deliberately destroy some research that
might help me get back where I belong, and I don’t feel like there’s any reason worth staying on this end of the
universe anymore. Hope isn’t enough when there’s no evidence that it’s going to be enough to get her back.”
“You grieve,” Hox sympathized.
“She’s not dead. Aeryn’s alive.” John looked away from Hox, hiding his face while he struggled to get his
emotions under control.
“You grieve for what has been lost.”
The question seemed to set everything loose in his soul, intermixing all of the equally painful emotions, braiding
every thought about Aeryn into a single thick cable that tightened his throat and threatened to strangle him.
When he managed to speak, his voice was thick and guttural. “This doesn’t help. Let’s get back to business.”
He wandered two motras into the street, stopping near a long planter full of flowers.
Hox didn’t follow. He tapped one toe lightly against the smooth stone of the bench, and whistled in John’s
direction, refusing to end the discussion. “What do you desire most? If you could have anything you have ever
wished for, what would it be?”
Crichton squatted down to finger several of the plants. The leaves were luxuriantly soft against his fingertips.
They had an overly plush, velvety surface that dribbled a dusting of tiny green fibers across his hand. A gentle
breath sent the swarm of detritus sailing into the air. He watched the bits float away on the wind, and thought
about whether he wanted to answer the question. It didn’t matter whether he put his desires into words or
merely envisioned them. Hox would pick it up either way. He tried to change the subject. “Can we just drop
this and get on with finding Klamik? I don’t need my head shrunk. I know what’s bugging me.”
The elderly hvisk remained on his bench-perch, crest half-raised in curiosity, and watched Crichton with calm,
unrevealing eyes. “What is it that you desire most?” he asked again.
The images were there, spilling about untidily in his mind, and he knew that if he couldn’t find something else to
occupy his thoughts, that Hox was going to hear the answer anyway. Once again, he was far too late. The
black eyes blinked at him several times, and Hox dropped his head, crest drooping in depression. Two microts
later, the words were tumbling out of John before he knew what was happening. He heard his own voice,
couldn’t bring himself to believe he was speaking, and had time to wonder if he had been wrong all along and
the hvisk did, after all, have the ability to influence his thoughts.
“What I want more than anything else is to go to sleep, and when I wake up I want to discover that I’m flaked out
on the couch in my living room and this has all been some sort of bizarre dream. I want to go back to a life that
has cornflakes and pizza and mindless television shows and all the books I could ever hope to read. I want the
worse things I have to worry about to be remembering to renew my subscription to Playboy, whether the milk in
the fridge has gone sour, and who’s going to make it to the Superbowl. When someone gets pissed off at me,
I want them to call me a dickhead instead of pulling out the heavy weapons in order to kill me and everyone I
care about. And most of all I want to crawl into my own bed, pull the covers up over my head, and sleep until
the pain goes away.” He thumped himself in the center of the chest, indicating where it hurt.
Crichton flopped down onto one of the benches, turned around so he was facing away from Hox, and covered
his face with both hands.
Hox was tapping one toe against the bench. It went on for dozens of microts: a rasping, evenly timed clack of
nail against stone. Except for that clicking reminder, the old hvisk had disappeared. He had become a
comfortable but impenetrable knot of thoughts hovering several motras to one side. The whistle, when it came,
was so quiet it was almost inaudible. “You are not being truthful. That is not truly what you desire.”
Crichton shook his head, refusing to look up at Hox. “They’re coming,” he said instead of answering the
accusation. “I can hear D’Argo.”
“They are not close. There remains some little time to talk as yet. And there is another one coming this time.
One I have not met.” The tapping stopped.
The silence went on long enough that Crichton finally raised his head and looked to see what Hox was doing.
The hvisk was staring toward where Moya was located with a look of puzzled regret.
“Don’t! Don’t read her and don’t presume you can understand.” John lunged to his feet. He wasn’t sure what
he was going to do, but he was intent on stopping Hox from seeing who and what was coming toward them. It
was too late.
“But you are alive. You are not dead.” Hox cocked his head to one side, then the other, still trying to work it
out.
“Leave her alone! Aeryn just needs some time.” John could feel it for himself now: the overly controlled
emptiness striding along beside D’Argo; the bundle of suppressed thoughts and feelings leaking out short-lived
sparks of anxiety, concern, guilt, and desperation; and the underlying, nearly hidden portions that sometimes
came close to feeling like love.
Hox continued to stare down the street in the direction leading toward that conglomeration of emotions, looking
both confused and intrigued. Crichton lunged toward him, wanting to shove the hvisk or hit him or do anything
to break into the intense look that meant Hox was delving into Aeryn’s thoughts and memories. He pulled up
short, incapable of hitting Hox, and then spun around in a circle, venting a small measure of frustration.
“Don’t! Don’t do that to her!” Crichton blurted out the only thing he could think of that might distract Hox’s
attention away from Aeryn. “That’s what I want, dammit! That’s the one thing I can’t have, and it’s the only
thing I want in this entire stinking, frelled up universe!”
The black eyes turned his way at last. Hox sang to him in a haunting minor key that raised the hair on the back
of John’s neck and sent an uncomfortable chill racing down his spine. “Young one, you both make the same
error. Grief cannot be denied. You must embrace it, examine it in all its intricacies, and understand it before
you can comprehend how to live with it. Left to fester, it will destroy your soul. Do not turn your back on it.”
Hox got to his feet and placed both hands on John’s shoulders, hvisk eyes staring down into human ones. “You
approached the question from two directions, and yet avoided addressing the true nature of your dilemma.
Answer it now. What is the worst part about the prospect of losing the affection of this female? What causes
you the greatest portion of grief?”
John slipped out from under the three-clawed hands and moved to the far side of the small enclosure. He
dipped his fingers into the flood of warm water, then flicked them, spattering droplets across the foliage. “I have
no where to go,” he finally admitted. “I can’t imagine staying here without her, and I don’t want to go back to
Earth if she doesn’t go with me. Nothing has any meaning without Aeryn. Without her I have no home.”
“Can you find your way to your home? Is it possible?” Hox continued to hammer away at him.
“I don’t know. I got here, I should be able to get back, but the knowledge is hidden and I don’t know if I’ll ever
untangle it. I need someone like you to get in there and pull it out in the open where I can make some sense of
it.” John glanced over his shoulder at Hox. “Can you do that? Is there someone on this station who can get
inside my head and pull that crap out where I can use it?”
Hox whistled a soft negative. “We do not have the ability to do what you request.”
“Then I’m probably pretty much screwed. If we manage to pull off the lunacy we have planned, I’m not sure I’ll
ever figure out how to get back to Earth.” He let out a brief barking laugh. “Hell, I’m probably going to get killed
in the process anyway.”
The old man squinted at him, smiling benevolently at his pupil. “You have a place, youngling. If all else is lost,
you may come and live with me in my cubbling. You are welcome here. Everyone aboard this living-place
knows who and what you are, and they too would open their homes to you. I believe you will find your way
home some day, but should that quest end in failure, you have a place where you will be welcome and valued.
Your thoughts belong among such as ours.”
John stared at him. Moya was his home in this particular universe, her burnished walls and eternal rumbles
both familiar and soothing. When he thought of her gleaming corridors and muted light, there was a warm
sensation in his chest that used to be reserved for his room when he was in high school: a place full of familiar,
cherished possessions where he could be exactly who he wanted to be without worrying what anyone else
thought of him.
And yet Hox’s offer of a refuge was several degrees beyond attractive: A floating space station filled with
millions of peaceful individuals amongst whom he might have a chance of hiding, spending his days doing
something more productive than killing, running, hiding, fighting, and fleeing from Scorpius and every other
badass on this end of the universe who wanted to get at the knowledge stored in his brain. He had been
handed an option -- an alternative in the event that everything went horribly wrong over the next several solar
days. With the logical side of his brain insisting that he would never take Hox up on his offer, and that Scorpius
would eventually find him here if he did, the frightened, emotional side that he rarely allowed to rule his actions
relaxed a micro-dench, comforted that he had a choice even if it was an unrealistic dream.
“Thank you,” he said after several microts. There wasn’t any way to explain what Hox had just offered him.
“I understand,” Hox said, nodding. The thick beak swung up and down several times, confirming that the hvisk
had overheard John’s thoughts and understood the significance of his offer. He patted Crichton gently on the
upper arm. It was a more formal version of the pattering touches the flock of children had used several arns
earlier to distract and reassure him.
It was a kiss, John realized. The revelation was like getting hit with a mild jolt of electricity. It was the hvisk
version of a gesture that was impossible for a species with a beak. He had just been smooched by a six-foot-
tall version of a sentient chicken, and an elderly male one at that. He glanced at Hox, silently cursing himself
for the errant images and praying that they hadn’t gotten loose. The hvisk look of mild amusement that greeted
his fast peek delivered the bad news. “Crap. Sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”
Hox hooted a long, good-natured laugh at him.
D’Argo and Aeryn were no more than forty motras away, searching for some sign of him and Hox in the midst of
the crowds. John commed them, telling them to stay where they were and that he would come to meet them,
then spoke to Hox. “Let’s get a move on. Now that I understand about the infection, I should be able to find
Klamik pretty quick.”
* * * * *
Hox clattered along shoulder to shoulder with John, moving quickly but without haste toward the spot where
Aeryn and D’Argo were wandering back and forth along the street a short distance looking for them. They were
ten motras away when Hox came to an abrupt stop and let out a two-microt stream of tuneless chattering. The
fast clicking refused to convert into anything worth calling a coherent sentence. In spite of the lack of mental
translation, John could feel concern and a small degree of alarm streaming off Hox.
He came to a stop and asked, “What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”
“My, my, my, my,” Hox chirped in a series of one-note bursts. “When my mate felt like that, I found it preferable
to find somewhere else to sleep for the night. Much safer, yes. Much, much less hazardous not to enter my
cubbling when she was in this state of mind. I believe your life may be in danger.”
John looked back and forth several times between Hox’s squinting expression of humor and Aeryn’s distant
figure. Before he could ask for an explanation, Aeryn turned and spotted him. One microt later he was treated
to a neuron-toasting blast of fury. John cringed for a moment, both mentally and physically, then reached out
with his mind, intent on finding out what had her so angry. Diplomacy was always easier when he knew where
the pitfalls were located, he reasoned, attempting to justify his decision to invade Aeryn’s thoughts.
On the easily detected outer level, she was her usual, ultra-contained self: focused, fierce, and ready to fire at
the smallest sign of a threat. Deeper inside, buried beneath several layers of defenses, he discovered a
hurricane. The tempest was mixing anger, concern, hurt, guilt, and a dozen other feelings into a tumultuous
stew that he couldn’t hope to decipher. One portion of that inner core was coming through all too clearly,
however. D’Argo had spent some of the extra time aboard Moya filling her in on the attack by the two infected
hvisk, and she was furious that he hadn’t kept her informed. She was intent on protecting him from another,
similar assault, and was close to lashing out at him herself because, at least from her perspective, he had been
keeping secrets. D’Argo was being held blameless, and he, John Crichton, was going to take the brunt of
Aeryn’s aggravation … as usual.
“Oh … dren.”
“Is this as perilous as I perceive?” The thoughts arrived on a wave of hvisk mirth. Hox was laughing at him and
his predicament.
Crichton managed a grin. Inexplicably, getting laughed at made it easier to cope with Aeryn’s shift in attitude.
“She’s pissed and she’s armed. It’s never a good combination.”
Aeryn had gotten D’Argo’s attention; the pair was walking toward where John waited with Hox. He looked at the
pulse rifle cradled in the crook of Aeryn’s arm and idly wondered if he needed to worry about something more
severe than a pantak jab. The exterior bits of Officer Aeryn Sun looked as calm and repressed as ever; inside,
the maelstrom of emotions had increased to an unequalled level. He could feel it the same way he had felt
Moya’s mental energy flowing across his hand. The sensation was nowhere near as pleasant this time.
The short-lived break in her unrelenting grief, the pleasant interlude when he could relax and enjoy Aeryn’s
company, hadn’t ended with a return to her icy reserve. Instead, it had been pre-empted by an all too familiar
set of behaviors. John discovered that he didn’t mind. As difficult as it was dealing with Aeryn when she was in
one of her more volatile moods, he would willingly accept it over the stony silence and averted gaze that had
wandered Moya’s corridors for the last several solar days.
Hox continued to tease him. “Should you run? I can recommend some very good hiding places. Some are
quite comfortable if you should need to sleep there for several nights.”
John turned away from the approaching pair and looked at the person beside him instead. Hox had progressed
to full-blown laughter; purple crest fully erect with delight, beak open, he was emitting puffing little hisses of air.
John glared at him in mock anger. “What do you know about being in the dog house with the little woman, you
wrinkled old geezer?”
“Again you use strange phrases. Your thoughts, however, are clear enough for me to understand your
accusation.” Hox drew himself up straighter and squinted happily at Crichton. “I was blessed to spend many
cycles with my one and only beloved. She was a terror when she was displeased, much like your mate, and I
miss her very much now that she is gone.”
John assumed that Hox had picked up enough information to know how fragile his nearly non-existent
relationship with Aeryn was at that moment, and elected not to debate the ‘mate’ portion of the comment.
Instead, he asked “How my cycles were you together? And how old are you?”
“I was hatched over eight hundred cycles ago. I cherished my mate for nearly six hundred of those cycles.”
Aeryn and D’Argo were four motras away. John had time to ask one more question. “How long do hvisk live?”
Hox patted him lightly on the shoulder. “Perhaps nine hundred cycles. Rarely more. The string of my life
grows short.”
“How is Pilot?” John asked as soon as his crewmates came to a halt beside him.
“He looks like this,” D’Argo said on a relaxed laugh. The warrior crossed his eyes, tilted his head from one side
to the other, tanktas waving about with each change, and let his arms flop and dangle. It was a masterful
recreation of what a dopey, half-conscious Pilot might look like and more importantly, D’Argo’s humorous
answer told John what he really wanted to know. The crisis was over and Pilot was going to recover. If the
prognosis were in question, there would be no relaxed demeanor or joking about his condition.
Aeryn provided a more business-like answer. “We left a swarm of DRDs in the Den with orders not to let Pilot
touch anything. Rygel, Chiana and Jool are taking turns keeping an eye on him until he begins to make some
sense.”
“Good idea. We wouldn’t want him instructing Moya to starburst while she’s docked. But he’s going to be
okay? No permanent damage?”
“It looks that way.”
Without the telepathy, he might have made the mistake of thinking she was calm and under control; he might
have even gone so far as to think that she wasn’t worried about either him or Pilot. The recently added sense
revealed a different reality. Aeryn was fizzing like a well-shaken bottle of soda. The random snaps and
sparkles of more than a dozen different emotions radiated from her non-stop, drenching him in what felt like a
shower of super-charged effervescence. It was a marvel of self-containment, and he felt like he was within
fallout range of a nuclear power plant in the first throes of a meltdown. He clung to that knowledge and tried to
steel himself to be patient, calm, and understanding -- all qualities that usually went right out the window within
the first few moments of an argument with Aeryn.
She stepped closer, turned her back on Hox, and spoke softly. “Forget to tell me something?” It wasn’t a
question; it was an aggressive accusation.
“We were busy. It didn’t seem all that important at the time.”
“You were wrong.”
Crichton wondered if a matador about to be gored by a bull felt this way. He was certain that no matter which
way he turned, he was going to get skewered. “We were busy with Pilot, and --”
“And D’Argo started to mention it and you stopped him. I heard you. Stop treating me like an idiot.”
“That’s not what he started to mention and I’m not treating you like an idiot. You’re the one who has it wrong.”
Behind him, he could feel Hox’s mental laughter. The old man was enjoying the whispered battle. This time
providing entertainment for someone else didn’t help his attitude. Crichton started to get angry. “There wasn’t
enough frelling time to discuss it!”
“What about now?” The emotionless mask dropped away. Aeryn scowled at him. The matador versus bull
feeling grew more pronounced.
He wanted to say, “What the frell do you care what happens to me anyway?” It was pressing against the back
of his teeth, demanding that he lash out with all the hurt and neglect he had suffered over the last few solar
days. Reason locked his jaw closed for the length of time it took to quash the impulse. Throwing that in
Aeryn’s face wouldn’t improve the situation; it was more likely to provoke physical violence.
John looked over his shoulder, vainly searching for an ally. D’Argo had prudently retreated to a spot several
motras to one side, out of earshot of the whispered argument. The warrior was studying a moss-covered
statue with an un-luxan degree of interest. John expended a single microt wishing that craven retreat was a
viable alternative, then he turned back to Aeryn, and said, “Right now we’re not discussing it either. You’re
ticked and you’re beating me up over a judgment call.”
“Your judgment puts the rest of us at risk by not telling us the dangers involved. If you pull this sort of thing on
the Command Carrier, you’ll get everyone killed.”
“No one else …” He stopped before he could finish telling her that he was the only person at risk. Heckle and
Jeckle had come straight at him. There hadn’t been any detectable thoughts to tell him why, but it had been
clear that he was their target. Aeryn didn’t need to know that, he decided.
Crichton ran through the various options available to him: frontal attack, evasion, deception, or run like hell.
Going head to head with Aeryn rarely succeeded, deception was what had gotten him into this mess in the first
place, and it was obvious that she wasn’t going to let him run away from the subject. That left evasion. He
needed to change the subject. “I was concentrating on what you were asking me to do to save Pilot.
Remember that part?”
Liar.
It was another of the ultra-clear messages that rivaled even Hox’s well focused thoughts, and again he
wondered if she had sent it intentionally. Either way, the silently delivered accusation hurt, and because she
hadn’t said it aloud, it meant that he couldn’t respond to it without risking a denial or an angry backlash. John
bit down on the snarling retort he had come up with, and tried a different form of evasion: the delaying tactic. It
was too much to hope that she would forget it completely, but if he was lucky she would be calmer in a few
arns. “Can we table this long enough to finish what we need to do here? You can flog me over the head with
this all you want once we leave the Kyelligg.”
He could feel her begin to relent several microts before it showed in her expression. Aeryn glanced toward
D’Argo first, taking several microts to sum up his overly nonchalant poise near the sculpture, then turned to one
side, using the change in her position to invite both D’Argo and Hox back into the conversation.
“What were those things inside Moya?” She bestowed her special Aeryn Sun ‘I’m Angry’ Glare on Hox next.
The pulse rifle, still nestled casually beneath her arm, shifted so it pointed generally in the hvisk’s direction.
Hox’s amused grin disappeared. He watched Aeryn and the rifle just as intently as she was regarding him.
John let out a held breath. Provided nothing else set either one of them off again, which was always a
possibility, it looked like they had made it through the small argument without adding to existing injuries.
Starting with a minimal introduction -- “Aeryn, Hox, Hox, Aeryn” -- he provided the barest summary of what he
had learned about the eel-creatures. “The Kyelligg has more miles of pipeline to be maintained than all of
OPEC put together.”
Hox’s look of confusion matched D’Argo’s and Aeryn’s to perfection.
John rephrased. “The station has hundreds of motras worth of fluid transfer conduits. The wriggling Hynerian
snacks are pipe cleaners. They slither around inside the station making sure there are no build-ups in any of
the pipes. Since this place is purely mechanical, the hvisk can keep the population under control by restricting
how much they get fed.”
Aeryn understood immediately. “Except Moya is a living being and they found an unlimited food supply.”
John nodded. “It was just our bad luck that the food supply they latched onto is what keeps Pilot alive.” He felt
the next question building in D’Argo’s mind, and answered it without waiting. “The hvisk are luring them out with
a chemical that mimics a natural pheromone. Hox guarantees that Moya will be worm-free in a couple of arns.”
“Pheromone,” D’Argo said thoughfully. “As in …”
“As in eel sex.” John leered at him. “Big slithering orgy.”
“I could have lived the rest of my life quite happily without thinking about that sort of thing,” D’Argo grumbled.
“Why did the hvisk put them inside Moya?” Aeryn aimed her demand straight at Hox.
John answered, “It was an accident. A valve got left open that was supposed to be closed.”
“You’re sure it was accidental, John? There’s no chance it was deliberate?” D’Argo said.
“Yeah. No question about it.” He indicated Hox with a jerk of his head. “They’re actually pretty embarrassed
by what happened. They don’t usually screw up like that. Frelling with visiting ships to the point of killing off
customers is considered bad for business.”
Hox added his own whistled apology.
“All right, now what?” Aeryn asked.
“Now I go hunting for one specific person, and you tag along to shoot anyone who tries to stop me.”
“You must not shoot them!” Hox’s protest emerged on a distressed honking. “They will be cured. Cured, not
killed.”
John translated the anxious demand. “No killing allowed. Set phasers for stun.”
Aeryn was gazing into street above her head. She asked, “How long will the search take? There are millions of
hvisk on board this ship. How long will it take for you to find a single person?”
John shrugged and made a wild guess. “Couple of arns maybe? I know what I’m looking for now so all I need
to do is listen until I hear someone whose mind has gone silent.”
D’Argo objected. “How can you listen for something that isn’t there? You’re not making sense.”
“When do I ever? You’re just going to have to trust me on this. Come on, walking makes it easier to pick out
different minds.” He gestured for Aeryn to take the lead, and the four of them headed down the street.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
Chapter 11
At John’s request, Hox led him to a different place where they could wait until Aeryn and D’Argo joined him
aboard the Kyelligg. This one was smaller and warmer, tightly bounded by steep embankments planted with
foliage so dark that it appeared black, and was tucked in under an overhanging walkway so it had a roof. To
one side, just inside the entrance, a stream splashed its way down a rocky bed, and gurgled sideward into a
culvert. Steam rose off the surface. The plants hanging over the sides of the rivulet dripped with
condensation. John held his hands in the vapor, warming them, and thought about the closed ecological
system of the Kyelligg and why the water would be hot.
“Cooling system from some sort of power plant?” he asked.
Hox chirped a quick agreement, followed by a concerned query. “You are feeling unwell?”
Crichton stretched, testing his body’s reactions. He felt less wobbly and unsettled than he had earlier, but
there remained a wandering, unpleasant chill to warn him that his body wasn’t going to tolerate much more in
the way of psychic weirdness. “My species doesn’t come with the equipment package for this sort of thing, and
my body’s getting a bit ticked off at all this mental wizard crap. It’s about to call a strike.” He wandered about
the close confines, examining his surroundings for several microts, then asked, “Why me? Why did you do this
to me specifically? There are other species wandering around this portion of the universe better suited for this
kind of modification.”
Hox squinted a hvisk smile at him. “You are accustomed to the silence in your mind. It does not bother you as
it does us.”
“I don’t understand. Why does that matter?”
Hox drummed the toes of one food against the ground for several microts, producing a hushed clicking against
the metallic surface. Finally, he sang, “You felt the minds of the ones who attacked us -- the emptiness that
was there.”
“Heckle and Jeckle? Yeah. No big deal. I’ve felt it a bunch of times aboard the station.” The purple-crested
head swung from side to side several times. The motions sorted themselves out into what Crichton was able to
identify as dejection. “I should have mentioned it, huh?”
“For now, it is of little consequence. Those are only the infected ones, the ones who have come in contact with
the one we seek. We cannot get close enough to his mind to be certain, but we believe the one we ask you to
search for goes by the name of Klamik. He was one of the first whose thoughts disappeared from among us.”
“Klamik,” John said, making sure his spoken version of the name matched what he had received from Hox.
“Again, why me? Why can’t you search for him the same way you sent thoughts to other people a little while
ago?”
Hox spent some more time tapping his toes, considering the question. “Try to imagine what it would have been
like to join your mind with that of your ship only to discover an absolute void of awareness.” He beckoned.
When John went over to him, the hvisk took John’s bandaged left hand in both of his and held it up where they
both could look at it. “If you became that same nothingness, merged with it until there was only one set of
thoughts, would even this have helped draw you back from that place?”
“I don’t know. There was still me there, separate from Moya. It’s tough to imagine what you’re talking about.”
“That is because you naturally exist in solitude. We do not. If we find and merge with a damaged mind, we are
unable to draw back from that void. We succumb to The Mindlessness. To locate Klamik is to doom the
person who searches for him. In desperation, we have sent several to find him. Each time, they suffered the
same fate. Some were recovered and cured. Others have been lost to us. They cannot spread the infection,
as does Klamik, but neither can they escape from its clutches without help.”
“Help as in the machine gizmo that did this to me,” John said, gesturing toward his head. Hox nodded. “Okay,
that’s half the answer I’m looking for.” John waved a bandaged hand at the station around them, indicating
more than just the portions that were currently in sight. “Your people come in contact with lots of species and
individuals, most of whom aren’t telepathic. Why me? Why John Crichton? My mind has already been messed
up, messed with, messed around, and frelled into the ground. I didn’t need another cranial overhaul, old man.
Why did your people pick on me?”
"Because you are gentle,” came the answer.
John barked out a surprised laugh. “Gentle? Man, if this is what gentle gets me, then I gotta work on growin’
me a mean streak.” He boosted himself up to sit on the edge of the wall near the stream. The air was warmer
there. “No, when I first got here maybe, but not anymore. Sometimes a person has to change to survive.”
“Yes. Gentle. It is your core, the thing that makes you unique. You do not desire the death of others and you
have compassion.” Hox got up and went to stand beside Crichton. He placed a hand on his shoulder and
warbled another long series of notes. “To take aggression and violence into our society would only worsen the
affliction. And we do not desire Klamik’s death. We request only his capture. You have learned to do what is
necessary to ensure your continuation, but that part of you has not taken over your heart.”
John took several deep breaths and stared into out into the street, watching the passing throngs.
“Surely you were aware of this?” Hox asked.
John condensed his experiences into one short sentence. “It’s been a bad couple of cycles.”
“You grieve for portions of your life that you have lost.”
“More than you can imagine.”
“You veil your thoughts and your words. What do you hide from me? What sickens your heart?”
John hopped down, walked to the edge of the small alcove, and looked up at the traffic flowing along the street
on the far side of the station. The Kyelligg was the most amazing piece of engineering he had encountered so
far. The station represented every good thing he had run into on this side of the universe. He had found
hatred, bigotry, violence and violation, abuses of the sort that humans couldn’t even begin to conceive of, and
yet there was a degree of magnificence to the life he had found here that was almost enough to offset all the
pain and suffering. The hvisk habitat and its people embodied much of that positive aspect, demonstrating how
much humanity had yet to learn and the wonders that lay ahead of his species.
He stared up/down into the happily integrated crowd, feeling the contented thrum coming from millions of minds
existing in the constant security that they belonged and were valued and loved, and didn’t know if he was
looking at heaven or hell. Belonging to a greater whole was the heaven part; having every thought and action
under constant scrutiny and his destiny predetermined by an entire society would be a living damnation.
Hox was waiting, exuding a hopeful aura that he might get an answer to his question.
“What sickens my heart?” John repeated slowly and deliberately. He hesitated. Another twenty microts ticked
by before he decided to answer. “For a while I thought I’d found the one single thing that I needed in order to
feel that my life in this part of the universe was worth staying here. When I first got here, all I could concentrate
on was finding a way home. Then one day I woke up and discovered that there was a better reason for
staying. Starting on that day, I didn’t care so much that I couldn’t figure out how to get back to my own planet.
I didn’t precisely give up on the dream, but if my efforts produced the Edsel of Wormhole Land, it didn’t matter
quite as much. I could stand it.”
Hox nodded several times. “Peculiar words,” he sang eventually. “Many make no sense to any mind except
your own.”
“Story of my life. Tell me something that’s new.”
“What has changed?” Hox sat down on one of the benches. Once seated, he tucked his knees up in front of
his chest and arranged his robes so nothing but the hooked claws of his toes showed beneath the draped
edge. The similarities to a large bird perched on a roost increased to an unavoidable level.
Crichton turned away and focused on something other than the comparison. “It’s too soon to be certain, but I
think I’ve lost the one factor that makes life here bearable.” He took a deep breath and said the most painful
part out loud for the very first time. “I can’t get home, I’m about to deliberately destroy some research that
might help me get back where I belong, and I don’t feel like there’s any reason worth staying on this end of the
universe anymore. Hope isn’t enough when there’s no evidence that it’s going to be enough to get her back.”
“You grieve,” Hox sympathized.
“She’s not dead. Aeryn’s alive.” John looked away from Hox, hiding his face while he struggled to get his
emotions under control.
“You grieve for what has been lost.”
The question seemed to set everything loose in his soul, intermixing all of the equally painful emotions, braiding
every thought about Aeryn into a single thick cable that tightened his throat and threatened to strangle him.
When he managed to speak, his voice was thick and guttural. “This doesn’t help. Let’s get back to business.”
He wandered two motras into the street, stopping near a long planter full of flowers.
Hox didn’t follow. He tapped one toe lightly against the smooth stone of the bench, and whistled in John’s
direction, refusing to end the discussion. “What do you desire most? If you could have anything you have ever
wished for, what would it be?”
Crichton squatted down to finger several of the plants. The leaves were luxuriantly soft against his fingertips.
They had an overly plush, velvety surface that dribbled a dusting of tiny green fibers across his hand. A gentle
breath sent the swarm of detritus sailing into the air. He watched the bits float away on the wind, and thought
about whether he wanted to answer the question. It didn’t matter whether he put his desires into words or
merely envisioned them. Hox would pick it up either way. He tried to change the subject. “Can we just drop
this and get on with finding Klamik? I don’t need my head shrunk. I know what’s bugging me.”
The elderly hvisk remained on his bench-perch, crest half-raised in curiosity, and watched Crichton with calm,
unrevealing eyes. “What is it that you desire most?” he asked again.
The images were there, spilling about untidily in his mind, and he knew that if he couldn’t find something else to
occupy his thoughts, that Hox was going to hear the answer anyway. Once again, he was far too late. The
black eyes blinked at him several times, and Hox dropped his head, crest drooping in depression. Two microts
later, the words were tumbling out of John before he knew what was happening. He heard his own voice,
couldn’t bring himself to believe he was speaking, and had time to wonder if he had been wrong all along and
the hvisk did, after all, have the ability to influence his thoughts.
“What I want more than anything else is to go to sleep, and when I wake up I want to discover that I’m flaked out
on the couch in my living room and this has all been some sort of bizarre dream. I want to go back to a life that
has cornflakes and pizza and mindless television shows and all the books I could ever hope to read. I want the
worse things I have to worry about to be remembering to renew my subscription to Playboy, whether the milk in
the fridge has gone sour, and who’s going to make it to the Superbowl. When someone gets pissed off at me,
I want them to call me a dickhead instead of pulling out the heavy weapons in order to kill me and everyone I
care about. And most of all I want to crawl into my own bed, pull the covers up over my head, and sleep until
the pain goes away.” He thumped himself in the center of the chest, indicating where it hurt.
Crichton flopped down onto one of the benches, turned around so he was facing away from Hox, and covered
his face with both hands.
Hox was tapping one toe against the bench. It went on for dozens of microts: a rasping, evenly timed clack of
nail against stone. Except for that clicking reminder, the old hvisk had disappeared. He had become a
comfortable but impenetrable knot of thoughts hovering several motras to one side. The whistle, when it came,
was so quiet it was almost inaudible. “You are not being truthful. That is not truly what you desire.”
Crichton shook his head, refusing to look up at Hox. “They’re coming,” he said instead of answering the
accusation. “I can hear D’Argo.”
“They are not close. There remains some little time to talk as yet. And there is another one coming this time.
One I have not met.” The tapping stopped.
The silence went on long enough that Crichton finally raised his head and looked to see what Hox was doing.
The hvisk was staring toward where Moya was located with a look of puzzled regret.
“Don’t! Don’t read her and don’t presume you can understand.” John lunged to his feet. He wasn’t sure what
he was going to do, but he was intent on stopping Hox from seeing who and what was coming toward them. It
was too late.
“But you are alive. You are not dead.” Hox cocked his head to one side, then the other, still trying to work it
out.
“Leave her alone! Aeryn just needs some time.” John could feel it for himself now: the overly controlled
emptiness striding along beside D’Argo; the bundle of suppressed thoughts and feelings leaking out short-lived
sparks of anxiety, concern, guilt, and desperation; and the underlying, nearly hidden portions that sometimes
came close to feeling like love.
Hox continued to stare down the street in the direction leading toward that conglomeration of emotions, looking
both confused and intrigued. Crichton lunged toward him, wanting to shove the hvisk or hit him or do anything
to break into the intense look that meant Hox was delving into Aeryn’s thoughts and memories. He pulled up
short, incapable of hitting Hox, and then spun around in a circle, venting a small measure of frustration.
“Don’t! Don’t do that to her!” Crichton blurted out the only thing he could think of that might distract Hox’s
attention away from Aeryn. “That’s what I want, dammit! That’s the one thing I can’t have, and it’s the only
thing I want in this entire stinking, frelled up universe!”
The black eyes turned his way at last. Hox sang to him in a haunting minor key that raised the hair on the back
of John’s neck and sent an uncomfortable chill racing down his spine. “Young one, you both make the same
error. Grief cannot be denied. You must embrace it, examine it in all its intricacies, and understand it before
you can comprehend how to live with it. Left to fester, it will destroy your soul. Do not turn your back on it.”
Hox got to his feet and placed both hands on John’s shoulders, hvisk eyes staring down into human ones. “You
approached the question from two directions, and yet avoided addressing the true nature of your dilemma.
Answer it now. What is the worst part about the prospect of losing the affection of this female? What causes
you the greatest portion of grief?”
John slipped out from under the three-clawed hands and moved to the far side of the small enclosure. He
dipped his fingers into the flood of warm water, then flicked them, spattering droplets across the foliage. “I have
no where to go,” he finally admitted. “I can’t imagine staying here without her, and I don’t want to go back to
Earth if she doesn’t go with me. Nothing has any meaning without Aeryn. Without her I have no home.”
“Can you find your way to your home? Is it possible?” Hox continued to hammer away at him.
“I don’t know. I got here, I should be able to get back, but the knowledge is hidden and I don’t know if I’ll ever
untangle it. I need someone like you to get in there and pull it out in the open where I can make some sense of
it.” John glanced over his shoulder at Hox. “Can you do that? Is there someone on this station who can get
inside my head and pull that crap out where I can use it?”
Hox whistled a soft negative. “We do not have the ability to do what you request.”
“Then I’m probably pretty much screwed. If we manage to pull off the lunacy we have planned, I’m not sure I’ll
ever figure out how to get back to Earth.” He let out a brief barking laugh. “Hell, I’m probably going to get killed
in the process anyway.”
The old man squinted at him, smiling benevolently at his pupil. “You have a place, youngling. If all else is lost,
you may come and live with me in my cubbling. You are welcome here. Everyone aboard this living-place
knows who and what you are, and they too would open their homes to you. I believe you will find your way
home some day, but should that quest end in failure, you have a place where you will be welcome and valued.
Your thoughts belong among such as ours.”
John stared at him. Moya was his home in this particular universe, her burnished walls and eternal rumbles
both familiar and soothing. When he thought of her gleaming corridors and muted light, there was a warm
sensation in his chest that used to be reserved for his room when he was in high school: a place full of familiar,
cherished possessions where he could be exactly who he wanted to be without worrying what anyone else
thought of him.
And yet Hox’s offer of a refuge was several degrees beyond attractive: A floating space station filled with
millions of peaceful individuals amongst whom he might have a chance of hiding, spending his days doing
something more productive than killing, running, hiding, fighting, and fleeing from Scorpius and every other
badass on this end of the universe who wanted to get at the knowledge stored in his brain. He had been
handed an option -- an alternative in the event that everything went horribly wrong over the next several solar
days. With the logical side of his brain insisting that he would never take Hox up on his offer, and that Scorpius
would eventually find him here if he did, the frightened, emotional side that he rarely allowed to rule his actions
relaxed a micro-dench, comforted that he had a choice even if it was an unrealistic dream.
“Thank you,” he said after several microts. There wasn’t any way to explain what Hox had just offered him.
“I understand,” Hox said, nodding. The thick beak swung up and down several times, confirming that the hvisk
had overheard John’s thoughts and understood the significance of his offer. He patted Crichton gently on the
upper arm. It was a more formal version of the pattering touches the flock of children had used several arns
earlier to distract and reassure him.
It was a kiss, John realized. The revelation was like getting hit with a mild jolt of electricity. It was the hvisk
version of a gesture that was impossible for a species with a beak. He had just been smooched by a six-foot-
tall version of a sentient chicken, and an elderly male one at that. He glanced at Hox, silently cursing himself
for the errant images and praying that they hadn’t gotten loose. The hvisk look of mild amusement that greeted
his fast peek delivered the bad news. “Crap. Sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”
Hox hooted a long, good-natured laugh at him.
D’Argo and Aeryn were no more than forty motras away, searching for some sign of him and Hox in the midst of
the crowds. John commed them, telling them to stay where they were and that he would come to meet them,
then spoke to Hox. “Let’s get a move on. Now that I understand about the infection, I should be able to find
Klamik pretty quick.”
* * * * *
Hox clattered along shoulder to shoulder with John, moving quickly but without haste toward the spot where
Aeryn and D’Argo were wandering back and forth along the street a short distance looking for them. They were
ten motras away when Hox came to an abrupt stop and let out a two-microt stream of tuneless chattering. The
fast clicking refused to convert into anything worth calling a coherent sentence. In spite of the lack of mental
translation, John could feel concern and a small degree of alarm streaming off Hox.
He came to a stop and asked, “What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”
“My, my, my, my,” Hox chirped in a series of one-note bursts. “When my mate felt like that, I found it preferable
to find somewhere else to sleep for the night. Much safer, yes. Much, much less hazardous not to enter my
cubbling when she was in this state of mind. I believe your life may be in danger.”
John looked back and forth several times between Hox’s squinting expression of humor and Aeryn’s distant
figure. Before he could ask for an explanation, Aeryn turned and spotted him. One microt later he was treated
to a neuron-toasting blast of fury. John cringed for a moment, both mentally and physically, then reached out
with his mind, intent on finding out what had her so angry. Diplomacy was always easier when he knew where
the pitfalls were located, he reasoned, attempting to justify his decision to invade Aeryn’s thoughts.
On the easily detected outer level, she was her usual, ultra-contained self: focused, fierce, and ready to fire at
the smallest sign of a threat. Deeper inside, buried beneath several layers of defenses, he discovered a
hurricane. The tempest was mixing anger, concern, hurt, guilt, and a dozen other feelings into a tumultuous
stew that he couldn’t hope to decipher. One portion of that inner core was coming through all too clearly,
however. D’Argo had spent some of the extra time aboard Moya filling her in on the attack by the two infected
hvisk, and she was furious that he hadn’t kept her informed. She was intent on protecting him from another,
similar assault, and was close to lashing out at him herself because, at least from her perspective, he had been
keeping secrets. D’Argo was being held blameless, and he, John Crichton, was going to take the brunt of
Aeryn’s aggravation … as usual.
“Oh … dren.”
“Is this as perilous as I perceive?” The thoughts arrived on a wave of hvisk mirth. Hox was laughing at him and
his predicament.
Crichton managed a grin. Inexplicably, getting laughed at made it easier to cope with Aeryn’s shift in attitude.
“She’s pissed and she’s armed. It’s never a good combination.”
Aeryn had gotten D’Argo’s attention; the pair was walking toward where John waited with Hox. He looked at the
pulse rifle cradled in the crook of Aeryn’s arm and idly wondered if he needed to worry about something more
severe than a pantak jab. The exterior bits of Officer Aeryn Sun looked as calm and repressed as ever; inside,
the maelstrom of emotions had increased to an unequalled level. He could feel it the same way he had felt
Moya’s mental energy flowing across his hand. The sensation was nowhere near as pleasant this time.
The short-lived break in her unrelenting grief, the pleasant interlude when he could relax and enjoy Aeryn’s
company, hadn’t ended with a return to her icy reserve. Instead, it had been pre-empted by an all too familiar
set of behaviors. John discovered that he didn’t mind. As difficult as it was dealing with Aeryn when she was in
one of her more volatile moods, he would willingly accept it over the stony silence and averted gaze that had
wandered Moya’s corridors for the last several solar days.
Hox continued to tease him. “Should you run? I can recommend some very good hiding places. Some are
quite comfortable if you should need to sleep there for several nights.”
John turned away from the approaching pair and looked at the person beside him instead. Hox had progressed
to full-blown laughter; purple crest fully erect with delight, beak open, he was emitting puffing little hisses of air.
John glared at him in mock anger. “What do you know about being in the dog house with the little woman, you
wrinkled old geezer?”
“Again you use strange phrases. Your thoughts, however, are clear enough for me to understand your
accusation.” Hox drew himself up straighter and squinted happily at Crichton. “I was blessed to spend many
cycles with my one and only beloved. She was a terror when she was displeased, much like your mate, and I
miss her very much now that she is gone.”
John assumed that Hox had picked up enough information to know how fragile his nearly non-existent
relationship with Aeryn was at that moment, and elected not to debate the ‘mate’ portion of the comment.
Instead, he asked “How my cycles were you together? And how old are you?”
“I was hatched over eight hundred cycles ago. I cherished my mate for nearly six hundred of those cycles.”
Aeryn and D’Argo were four motras away. John had time to ask one more question. “How long do hvisk live?”
Hox patted him lightly on the shoulder. “Perhaps nine hundred cycles. Rarely more. The string of my life
grows short.”
“How is Pilot?” John asked as soon as his crewmates came to a halt beside him.
“He looks like this,” D’Argo said on a relaxed laugh. The warrior crossed his eyes, tilted his head from one side
to the other, tanktas waving about with each change, and let his arms flop and dangle. It was a masterful
recreation of what a dopey, half-conscious Pilot might look like and more importantly, D’Argo’s humorous
answer told John what he really wanted to know. The crisis was over and Pilot was going to recover. If the
prognosis were in question, there would be no relaxed demeanor or joking about his condition.
Aeryn provided a more business-like answer. “We left a swarm of DRDs in the Den with orders not to let Pilot
touch anything. Rygel, Chiana and Jool are taking turns keeping an eye on him until he begins to make some
sense.”
“Good idea. We wouldn’t want him instructing Moya to starburst while she’s docked. But he’s going to be
okay? No permanent damage?”
“It looks that way.”
Without the telepathy, he might have made the mistake of thinking she was calm and under control; he might
have even gone so far as to think that she wasn’t worried about either him or Pilot. The recently added sense
revealed a different reality. Aeryn was fizzing like a well-shaken bottle of soda. The random snaps and
sparkles of more than a dozen different emotions radiated from her non-stop, drenching him in what felt like a
shower of super-charged effervescence. It was a marvel of self-containment, and he felt like he was within
fallout range of a nuclear power plant in the first throes of a meltdown. He clung to that knowledge and tried to
steel himself to be patient, calm, and understanding -- all qualities that usually went right out the window within
the first few moments of an argument with Aeryn.
She stepped closer, turned her back on Hox, and spoke softly. “Forget to tell me something?” It wasn’t a
question; it was an aggressive accusation.
“We were busy. It didn’t seem all that important at the time.”
“You were wrong.”
Crichton wondered if a matador about to be gored by a bull felt this way. He was certain that no matter which
way he turned, he was going to get skewered. “We were busy with Pilot, and --”
“And D’Argo started to mention it and you stopped him. I heard you. Stop treating me like an idiot.”
“That’s not what he started to mention and I’m not treating you like an idiot. You’re the one who has it wrong.”
Behind him, he could feel Hox’s mental laughter. The old man was enjoying the whispered battle. This time
providing entertainment for someone else didn’t help his attitude. Crichton started to get angry. “There wasn’t
enough frelling time to discuss it!”
“What about now?” The emotionless mask dropped away. Aeryn scowled at him. The matador versus bull
feeling grew more pronounced.
He wanted to say, “What the frell do you care what happens to me anyway?” It was pressing against the back
of his teeth, demanding that he lash out with all the hurt and neglect he had suffered over the last few solar
days. Reason locked his jaw closed for the length of time it took to quash the impulse. Throwing that in
Aeryn’s face wouldn’t improve the situation; it was more likely to provoke physical violence.
John looked over his shoulder, vainly searching for an ally. D’Argo had prudently retreated to a spot several
motras to one side, out of earshot of the whispered argument. The warrior was studying a moss-covered
statue with an un-luxan degree of interest. John expended a single microt wishing that craven retreat was a
viable alternative, then he turned back to Aeryn, and said, “Right now we’re not discussing it either. You’re
ticked and you’re beating me up over a judgment call.”
“Your judgment puts the rest of us at risk by not telling us the dangers involved. If you pull this sort of thing on
the Command Carrier, you’ll get everyone killed.”
“No one else …” He stopped before he could finish telling her that he was the only person at risk. Heckle and
Jeckle had come straight at him. There hadn’t been any detectable thoughts to tell him why, but it had been
clear that he was their target. Aeryn didn’t need to know that, he decided.
Crichton ran through the various options available to him: frontal attack, evasion, deception, or run like hell.
Going head to head with Aeryn rarely succeeded, deception was what had gotten him into this mess in the first
place, and it was obvious that she wasn’t going to let him run away from the subject. That left evasion. He
needed to change the subject. “I was concentrating on what you were asking me to do to save Pilot.
Remember that part?”
Liar.
It was another of the ultra-clear messages that rivaled even Hox’s well focused thoughts, and again he
wondered if she had sent it intentionally. Either way, the silently delivered accusation hurt, and because she
hadn’t said it aloud, it meant that he couldn’t respond to it without risking a denial or an angry backlash. John
bit down on the snarling retort he had come up with, and tried a different form of evasion: the delaying tactic. It
was too much to hope that she would forget it completely, but if he was lucky she would be calmer in a few
arns. “Can we table this long enough to finish what we need to do here? You can flog me over the head with
this all you want once we leave the Kyelligg.”
He could feel her begin to relent several microts before it showed in her expression. Aeryn glanced toward
D’Argo first, taking several microts to sum up his overly nonchalant poise near the sculpture, then turned to one
side, using the change in her position to invite both D’Argo and Hox back into the conversation.
“What were those things inside Moya?” She bestowed her special Aeryn Sun ‘I’m Angry’ Glare on Hox next.
The pulse rifle, still nestled casually beneath her arm, shifted so it pointed generally in the hvisk’s direction.
Hox’s amused grin disappeared. He watched Aeryn and the rifle just as intently as she was regarding him.
John let out a held breath. Provided nothing else set either one of them off again, which was always a
possibility, it looked like they had made it through the small argument without adding to existing injuries.
Starting with a minimal introduction -- “Aeryn, Hox, Hox, Aeryn” -- he provided the barest summary of what he
had learned about the eel-creatures. “The Kyelligg has more miles of pipeline to be maintained than all of
OPEC put together.”
Hox’s look of confusion matched D’Argo’s and Aeryn’s to perfection.
John rephrased. “The station has hundreds of motras worth of fluid transfer conduits. The wriggling Hynerian
snacks are pipe cleaners. They slither around inside the station making sure there are no build-ups in any of
the pipes. Since this place is purely mechanical, the hvisk can keep the population under control by restricting
how much they get fed.”
Aeryn understood immediately. “Except Moya is a living being and they found an unlimited food supply.”
John nodded. “It was just our bad luck that the food supply they latched onto is what keeps Pilot alive.” He felt
the next question building in D’Argo’s mind, and answered it without waiting. “The hvisk are luring them out with
a chemical that mimics a natural pheromone. Hox guarantees that Moya will be worm-free in a couple of arns.”
“Pheromone,” D’Argo said thoughfully. “As in …”
“As in eel sex.” John leered at him. “Big slithering orgy.”
“I could have lived the rest of my life quite happily without thinking about that sort of thing,” D’Argo grumbled.
“Why did the hvisk put them inside Moya?” Aeryn aimed her demand straight at Hox.
John answered, “It was an accident. A valve got left open that was supposed to be closed.”
“You’re sure it was accidental, John? There’s no chance it was deliberate?” D’Argo said.
“Yeah. No question about it.” He indicated Hox with a jerk of his head. “They’re actually pretty embarrassed
by what happened. They don’t usually screw up like that. Frelling with visiting ships to the point of killing off
customers is considered bad for business.”
Hox added his own whistled apology.
“All right, now what?” Aeryn asked.
“Now I go hunting for one specific person, and you tag along to shoot anyone who tries to stop me.”
“You must not shoot them!” Hox’s protest emerged on a distressed honking. “They will be cured. Cured, not
killed.”
John translated the anxious demand. “No killing allowed. Set phasers for stun.”
Aeryn was gazing into street above her head. She asked, “How long will the search take? There are millions of
hvisk on board this ship. How long will it take for you to find a single person?”
John shrugged and made a wild guess. “Couple of arns maybe? I know what I’m looking for now so all I need
to do is listen until I hear someone whose mind has gone silent.”
D’Argo objected. “How can you listen for something that isn’t there? You’re not making sense.”
“When do I ever? You’re just going to have to trust me on this. Come on, walking makes it easier to pick out
different minds.” He gestured for Aeryn to take the lead, and the four of them headed down the street.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
