Whispers
Chapter 13
He was carried back to consciousness on the rocking waves of an incoming tide. From a restful spot in a realm
of unmarred solitude, he was wafted to a place where he could almost reach out and touch the thoughts of the
people around him. Whispers, both internal and without, disturbed him, and then the wave hissed into foamy
nothingness and he dissolved along with it.
The roll and boom of the breakers brought him back. “Allow him to sleep,” someone said inside his head. He
was carried out to sea before he could tell them that sleep sounded like a wonderful idea.
“Radiation. Massive radiation.” He stumbles and falls into her arms.
John Crichton lies motionless once again, this time with arms outstretched. Winona slithers out of a nerveless
grasp and falls to the silvery metalloid flooring with dull clattering finality. He is barely breathing. A fine
glistening sheen of sweat, a leftover from the chase and the battle, lights his features into a semblance of
vitality, mocking her with the pretense that he is alive and will recover. Two images tangle into one, Crichton
upon Crichton, bound together by the emptiness in her chest and an aching clench in her stomach that this
time carries the promise of permanence.
By the grace of Cholak, this can’t be happening.
Whatever was hovering just beyond his reach ached. The pain defied description. It beckoned to him,
spattering fizzing suggestions that he needed to be somewhere else. He hissed up the beach where he swept
languid and fluid around obstacles, lacking the energy to grasp onto anything solid. Without an anchor to hold
him there, he listened to their voices for the space of three or four microts, mumbles and grumbles that might
have been about him if only he understood what they were saying, and then he turned and rushed back into
the dark.
Not again. I can’t do this again. I love him too much to live through this a second time.
The tide was coming in. Each small roller cast him further up the sandy grade, sucked him out to sea to wallow
where it was quiet and he could rest in the rocking swells, and then returned him to the sun-baked grittiness
and screaming of gulls. With each return, he was carried higher onto the beach and had more time to think
before coasting back into the depths. There weren’t any seagulls, he remembered. Something else was
making the birdlike noise. The darkness enfolded him once more. In, out, in, out, and back in one more time.
The summons, when it came, shattered his peaceful existence into irreparable fragments.
CRICHTON?
“God … D’Argo, you don’t need to shout. I’m right here.”
John didn’t dare open his eyes. He had joked about something like this happening whenever he tied one on in
college and had a hangover -- this time he was certain that his brain was in danger of leaking out of his head.
What was going on inside his skull was so far beyond a headache, it didn’t qualify as ‘pain’ anymore. It was a
living presence that interfered with life, not to mention rational thought.
“I didn’t say anything, John.”
D’Argo had only been thinking about him, not shouting into his ear from a distance of one dench … even
though that was how it felt. John covered his eyes with his hand, carefully jacked one eyelid open, and peered
out through a slit between two fingers. Nothing catastrophic happened; his brain and his skull remained intact.
“There was a fight,” he said.
D’Argo stared down at him with a combination of amused tolerance and impatience. “You found Klamik and the
other two that attacked us.”
John closed his eye and let his memory reassemble itself gradually. It took some time. “Is Aeryn okay?” he
asked once all the pieces fit into place. There was a vague recollection of her voice somewhere nearby. He
couldn’t remember if that was real or part of a dream.
“Aeryn is fine. She left a few microts ago. When it looked like you were waking up, she went to get one of their
healers.”
John took another surreptitious peek through his fingers. He was lying in one of the round hvisk beds with
nearly a dozen cushions tucked in around him in an attempt to make him comfortable, covered by what he
decided was the largest, ugliest, feather boa in the universe. “Where are we?”
“One of their medical facilities.”
“What happened? Did I get shot? Get this thing off me.” He was struggling with the fluffy, feathery blanket,
trying to look underneath to see the extent of the damage. It was tangled around his feet, and portions he
couldn’t get a firm grip on were pinned beneath his body. Pulling a blanket off wasn’t supposed to be this
difficult. The fact that his hands refused to do what they were told didn’t help.
“You weren’t shot,” D’Argo answered. “Crichton, what are you trying to do?”
“I’m in a WWF Death Match with this frelling thing.” His skirmish with the insulating layers, although
unsuccessful, revealed something important. His clothes were missing. He got one leg free only to discover
that the bottom edge of the covers was attached to the bed. That didn’t explain the full extent of the difficulty
he was having getting out of bed.
D’Argo grabbed John’s wrists, putting a stop to the battle with the boa-blanket. “When the fighting ended, we
found you lying unconscious underneath the one you killed. The hvisk seem to know what caused you to pass
out, but none of us can understand what they are trying to tell us.”
Crichton renewed his efforts to get up. “I didn’t pass out. Someone knocked me out. D’Argo, get me out of this
oversized cupcake tin.”
“John! Wait for one of their healers. You’ve been unconscious for over six arns.”
That put a stop to his uncoordinated attempts to get up. Crichton sagged back into the cushions and stared at
his friend. “Six arns,” he said flatly, then repeated it. “Six arns?” Some of the fragments he thought were
dreams suddenly made more sense. If he had been unconscious for that long, then no matter how calm and
collected her exterior, on the inside Aeryn would have been on the verge of flipping out.
“Six,” D’Argo confirmed. “Wait for Aeryn to come back with one of them. It shouldn’t be long.”
Crichton lay back and stared at the ceiling. While they waited, he used the time to consider several
inconsistencies between what he recalled and his current condition. The fight had involved slashes, cuts, and
blood. He checked his hands and forearms, and then fingered the cheek that had been ripped raw. There was
no sign of damage. Even his left hand, the one burned by the DRD’s laser, was unmarked.
“They took care of all that while you were unconscious,” D’Argo said. “They have a device that regenerates
living tissue. Your jacket wasn’t so lucky.”
“Were either of you hurt in the fight?”
For an answer, D’Argo stuck his fingers through several rents and tears in his clothing. “Aeryn did better than
either of us.” He held up a hand to forestall an anxious demand. “It was nothing more than a few scratches,
and they healed everything.”
“Aeryn’s idea of what constitutes a few scratches is a bit skewed. You’re talking about the woman who hiked
out of the Barren Lands on a broken leg. I’ll believe it was minor damage when I see her.” John managed to
yank the feathery covering to one side. “Help me sit up … and where are my damned clothes?”
Reluctantly, D’Argo put out a hand and pulled him to the side of the bed, then handed him a pile of clothing.
John discovered that the rents and tears in the leather had been mended, and the inside of his jacket, where
most of the bleeding had occurred, had been washed clean. The hvisk were being solicitously helpful now that
he had completed the job they had thrust upon him against his will.
Dressing took longer than normal. Although the headache had first eased and then disappeared altogether,
the rest of his body was being spectacularly uncooperative when it came to small things like getting his feet into
his socks or his arms through the correct openings in his shirt. It wasn’t so much that he felt wobbly or
disoriented; it was more a case of not being able to control his limbs with precision. John sat down on the edge
of the bed to put on his boots and started to topple over backwards.
D’Argo snagged the collar of his jacket before it went too far, merely holding Crichton in place until he regained
his balance. “I think you should wait for the hvisk to return,” he said.
“I don’t.” Laces were tugged tight and then stuffed down inside his boots. Knotting them would have to wait
until his fingers started to follow the instructions from his brain. John tottered over to where his pulse pistol was
lying in a snarl of belt, holster, and tie-down straps. He had untangled the mess and was fastening the belt
when the door swung open and three hvisk entered the room, followed by Aeryn.
He ignored the hvisk. “Are you okay?” he asked Aeryn.
Just as D’Argo had promised, she showed no signs of having been wounded. Extending his thoughts carefully
at first, taking his time to ensure that he still had control of the telepathy despite the unexplained blackout, he
gently tested Aeryn’s thoughts to make sure she wasn’t hiding an injury. He ran into an impenetrable wall.
“I’m fine,” she said. The small assurance, like her thoughts, lacked any vestige of emotion. Aeryn was staring
at a spot in midair a motra in front of her.
She was gone. Whatever small portion of healing had taken place over the past few days had gone missing
while he was unconscious. John turned away from that impassive statue and concentrated on fastening his
holster. He had known it might happen. When he had seen and felt the first break in her painstakingly erected
emotional barricade, he had told himself that he had to enjoy it while it lasted and be ready for Aeryn to retreat.
But he hadn’t expected such a thorough regression. If anything, she was even more tightly constrained than
when she had gotten off the transport pod several days earlier.
“It isn’t fair,” he whispered to himself. He was certain it was the six arns he had spent lying senseless that had
caused this. If it weren’t for the hvisk and their blackmail, this wouldn’t have happened. Aeryn Sun had lost
John Crichton only once. He was being forced to lose her repeatedly and incrementally -- sometimes almost
able to touch her only to have her disappear once again.
“Give her time. You must allow her sufficient time to discover how to live with prospect of loss.”
“Hox!” John turned, starting to smile. But Hox wasn’t there. Instead, one of the three hvisk had stepped away
from the other two and was cautiously making his way toward Crichton. It was the stranger who had whistled to
John and impersonated Hox’s familiar mental touch.
“What the frell?” He looked at the hvisk more carefully, summing up the bright green crest and the sharpened,
shining cockspurs on the insides of its wrists. Although the active mental presence was an unfamiliar addition,
it was unmistakably Heckle. Crichton moved away from him, scrabbling to get his pulse pistol out of its holster.
“Please, do not fear me. I will not harm you,” Heckle whistled.
“Frell that! Stay where you are, and explain what’s going on. Better yet, get Hox in here. I’m willing to trust
him.” John maneuvered so the round bed was between him and the slowly advancing hvisk.
“John, what’s going on?” D’Argo was standing uncertainly, Qualta blade at the ready, watching the three hvisk
and John’s retreat without intervening. “What’s wrong?”
“That’s Heckle … only it’s not.” John stopped moving. The situation suddenly made more sense. “Wait. I get
it. You’ve been treated. You’re cured.” All the pieces, all the hints, all the misunderstood clues snapped into
place at once. John turned toward his two crewmates. “They were deaf! That’s all. They simply couldn’t hear
anyone, and once they weren’t able to hear, they became mute as well.”
D’Argo made a half-mocking objection. “When we first spotted them, they were talking to each other. Or
maybe you’ve forgotten that part.”
“He means mentally,” Aeryn interjected quietly.
“You are correct,” Heckle whistled. He didn’t look pleased with the breakthrough in understanding, however.
The green crest wilted under the influence of some invisible force.
Crichton watched the puzzling reaction with a growing sense of unease. He couldn’t catch a glimpse of the
cause of Heckle’s depression, only the sense that it was something that the hvisk considered catastrophic. His
concentration on the small mystery was distracted by D’Argo’s strengthening desire to receive what the luxan
would consider a coherent explanation.
“The infected hvisk are telepathically deaf. That’s why they didn’t show any reaction when Aeryn and I talked to
them right before the fight began. Normally, they don’t need translator microbes in order to interpret what other
species are saying. But without the telepathy, they couldn’t understand what we were saying. It’s why they go
insane and become violent. The Mindlessness … It makes so much sense now that I understand.”
D’Argo’s tone changed from simple confusion to a more familiar, disgusted growl. He rolled his eyes in
frustration and propped both fists on his hips. “Well maybe you could share a little of your incredible insight
with the rest of us, John, because I still do not know what you’re talking about.”
“Every single person in this society is a receiving telepath, Big Guy. They live their entire lives wrapped up
inside a single, civilization-wide moral code. Every thought and every action they take from the first microt after
they’re born has an impact on everyone around them, and they can hear how their behavior affects the others.
What would happen if someone flipped a big power switch and turned that off without warning?” John glanced
at Aeryn before continuing. “Think of what it would be like to suddenly be cut off from the support and approval
of everyone you’ve ever known. They were more lost than I’ve ever been. Both their moral and their emotional
guidance disappeared all at once.”
“When Lo’Lann died, I believed I would go insane without her,” the warrior said, nodding his comprehension.
I had this life. I liked it. It had rules. I followed the rules and that made everything right. And then you come
along and you frell everything up … You are like a plague, John Crichton. And you have ruined my life.
John found himself on his knees, clinging to the side of the circular bed to keep from falling face first to the
floor. D’Argo and the hvisk were gathered around him: one hovering, helpless to assist, while the other three
whistled and chirped their concern. Aeryn’s thought had lanced through his control like a heart-seeking
missile. The Patriot battery didn’t exist that could protect him from that sort of unexpected assault, and this time
it had knocked him right off his feet. He waved Heckle and the other two away before accepting D’Argo’s help
getting up.
“I’m okay. It was just a little left over from the fight.” Aeryn hadn’t moved a muscle. She was right where she
had first stopped when she entered the room, the squared-away Peacekeeper standing at attention. Only her
eyes had shifted. She was watching him with every bit of the fierce intensity that made her such a good Prowler
pilot. John couldn’t decide if that was good or bad.
“You must allow us to verify that you have not suffered any damage,” Heckle said. He made several of the
bobbing little bows, a supplicant seeking divine permission. One of the hands that just a few arns earlier had
tried to kill first Aeryn and then Crichton gestured toward the other two hvisk, indicating that they were there to
examine him. “Please allow them to make sure that you have not been injured.”
John overheard a more thorough explanation for their distress. They wanted to check for neural injury. He
wasn’t supposed to be alive.
“Why --” He stopped. Asking them why he was supposed to be dead right in front of Aeryn was possibly the
stupidest thing he had started to do in the past four cycles. Instead, he envisioned what he had just learned
from their leaking thoughts, trusting that they were listening to him, and demanded, “Explain.”
Waves of confusion flooded off all three of the hvisk. They were baffled by his lack of comprehension; they
thought he should understand without any additional explanation. If he rephrased the question to clarify that he
was missing some information, it would mean revealing what he had just learned from Heckle. John chose his
words carefully, making sure he skirted far enough around the mystery of his not-death that Aeryn wouldn’t
make one of her intuitive leaps. “If you don’t want to clear things up, then get Hox in here and have him explain
things to Crichton the Nitwit.”
Heckle twittered. It was a fluttering, disorganized series of distressed notes without any mental context. He
repeated the noise and turned around in a circle.
“What the frell is going on?” John demanded. “Just tell me!” “If I’m going to die, just spit it out and
let’s get it over with,” he sent silently.
“Not you, not you. You will not die,” sang one of Heckle’s companions.
Heckle produced a wandering, haunting melody: One that conjured up memories of a gray, raw day when John
had stood alone before a freshly planted headstone that glistened in the rain, and couldn’t think of anything to
say to his dead mother. “Repeat that,” he said. It didn’t matter that he had heard it clearly the first time; he
needed to hear Heckle say it again before he was willing to believe it.
Neither the tune nor the message changed as a result of being repeated.
“Hox is dead.”
* * * * *
At John’s request, Heckle led him to the moss-carpeted, leafy enclosure where John had sat with Hox and
taught him about leviathan anatomy. Crichton wandered about the area for several microts before choosing a
spot on a bench opposite where he had sat beside Hox only a few arns earlier. There was a half-finished
jigsaw puzzle in his head: some portions were strung together in a discernable pattern, other portions were
missing no more than one or two pieces, and the remaining expanse was a wasteland of information. Although
his life would go on without difficulty if he never learned the answers, Hox’s death demanded a full accounting.
He wanted to know how and why Hox had died, and that meant filling in all the missing chunks. The only
problem was that he didn’t know where to start.
Heckle solved the problem by starting first. “Your companions have abandoned you here?”
Crichton had asked D’Argo and Aeryn to give him some time alone. After a brief argument, they had agreed to
return to Moya while he remained aboard the Kyelligg. Rather than wasting the time to put the account into
words, John replayed the remembered conversation in his mind, allowing Heckle to pick it up in its entirety. The
young hvisk merely blinked, and then gave the fast down-up bob that signaled his understanding.
“Who killed Hox?” John asked.
Heckle’s mind went as silent as when he had been afflicted by The Mindlessness. The shutdown was
remarkable in its thoroughness. One moment there was a sentient, thinking person sitting next to John; the
next moment Heckle disappeared as a living entity. The body continued to sit on the carved stone bench, his
crest bristling at random, disorganized angles, but the portions of Heckle that John had come to associate with
a sentient creature winked out of existence. The black eyes turned away to stare at the opening in the hedge
leading to the street.
John could reach only one conclusion. It must have been Heckle who, in his disease-generated insanity, had
killed Hox. He got up to leave, unable to remain in the company of the person who had murdered the cheerful,
peaceful old man. But there were too many questions begging to be answered, and he paused and turned
back before he reached the edge of the moss carpeting. Heckle was sitting the way Hox used to: feet pulled
up on the bench, knees tucked in under his robes with nothing but his toes peeking out from underneath.
The similarity was too much for him. John turned to leave. He would find some other hvisk to answer his
questions.
Heckle’s whistling stopped him. “It was not I. I did not kill Hox.”
“Then who did it? Was it Jeckle? The other one who was with you? Or was it Klamik?”
Once again, Heckle closed him out. John tried something simpler, hoping that if he got Heckle talking, the truth
might eventually emerge. “What’s your real name?”
After four tries, Heckle’s tune sorted itself into ‘Tulev’; it was a label that was somehow related to the future of
the hvisk culture. As with the name ‘Hox’, there was an underlying significance to Tulev’s name … one that
continued to elude Crichton. After six additional, futile attempts at providing an explanation that made sense to
a non-hvisk, Heckle-Tulev gave up with an exasperated honk.
John shrugged at him, content in his new role as ‘baffled’ instead of ‘baffler’. “Why are you my new
chaperone?”
Heckle-Tulev squinted a pleased smile at him. “Because I will be Hox.”
The explanation deepened John’s sense of loss. It didn’t matter whether Heckle was lying or telling the truth
about killing Hox; what it all boiled down to was that if Heckle hadn’t been under Klamik’s influence, the elder
hvisk wouldn’t have died. It didn’t seem fair that the green-crested youngster had been assigned to take his
place. Anger started to build, turning his next question into an aggressive challenge. “Hox was wise and gentle
and had seen more cycles in this universe than anyone I’ve ever met. Great-Grandad MacDougal was the
oldest crotchety old fart I ever knew, and he only lived ‘til he was ninety-eight. That doesn’t begin to hold a light
to Hox. What makes you think you can ever hope to take his place?”
“No, no, no. You do not comprehend. I will be Hox.”
The tune had changed, but the mental version coming through was the same. John shook his head.
“I’m missing something.”
Heckle-Tulev scratched the tip of his beak. It was eerily reminiscent of Hox’s mannerism. Then he tried again.
“Obi-Wan Kenobi,” he whistled.
John felt like his heart had stopped beating. There was a fluttering, crawling feeling under his breastbone, and
his stomach was doing the jitterbug. It was a very unpleasant experience. He searched for a logical
explanation. “You could have picked that up from D’Argo. The Big D knows about Obi-Wan,” he said slowly.
Heckle-Tulev considered for several microts. Then, instead of whistling, he let an image loose. The heat of
thorough embarrassment crawled up John’s neck, wrapped around his ears, and inflamed his face. The vision
Heckle-Tulev had created was of an old man, scrawny bare legs protruding from under a nightshirt, bouncing
gleefully on a rumpled bed. Hox was the only person who could have overheard the original thought and
passed it on to Heckle. And John was convinced that Hox wouldn’t have shared that mental indiscretion with
anyone else unless he was dying.
John sat down, pulled his feet up onto the bench, and hugged his knees, considering Tulev’s claim. It took him
a while to figure it out. “You can do a telepathic memory download, something similar to genetic memory.”
“In a perfect existence, none would be lost. We do not, as yet, have the ability to preserve all. However, there
are some who cannot be forfeited. Hox was such a one. It was determined long ago that he must be
preserved. It will take several cycles for me to integrate all that he was, but with the gift of time, I will become
Hox.”
“Why you? How does that work? The guy who kills him is rewarded by taking up his life? There is something
so incredibly wrong with that equation, it defies explanation.”
“Not all have the capacity to become one such as Hox. It is the one of the rarest of genetic qualities among our
people. My potential was identified at birth, and I was selected to become Hox many cycles ago. It was
because of my abilities that I was chosen to seek out Klamik. Hox was too valuable to be risked.”
“That’s how Hox knew when you had been infected, and that you were hanging out somewhere close to Klamick
… because you were sent to try to locate him to stop the spread of the disease.” The pieces were falling into
place one by one. “And Jeckle, the other one who was with you when you attacked us, he was special also.
Otherwise he wouldn’t have been sent to find Klamik.”
Tulev’s entire upper body bobbed up and down. “Correct.”
“And I shot him.” John let his feet slide to the ground and leaned back against the shrubbery behind him. He
stared at the leafy walls in dejection. “No wonder Hox tried so hard to stop me from pulling the trigger. I killed
one of your Mensa members.”
“You form strange words,” Tulev warbled.
“Yeah, I know. Hox mentioned it. Damn it, why the frell didn’t Hox mention all this before the dren hit the fan?
He must have been able to hear that I didn’t understand the whole ‘no killing’ part of the mess.”
John wandered across the moss, absentmindedly bouncing with each step, playing with the resiliency underfoot
while he spent some time mourning Hox’s death. There was a fast flicker of a thought from behind him. Heckle
hadn’t put up a total block, and while his control was impressive, it was nowhere as thorough Hox’s had been.
Except for when he had shut down his thoughts completely, he had been leaking small flashes from the first
moment he had walked into the room in the medical facility.
John continued his slow tour of the garden, tightened up his own control until he felt like his brain had formed a
muscle cramp, and listened carefully. It was like chasing fireflies on a warm summer’s night: a hint, a flash, a
fast moving shadow, and then another blink of illumination. John turned to face him. “What do you mean that’s
not the real reason for no killing?”
Tulev looked like a canary that had eaten a cat: simultaneously guilty and sick to his stomach.
Crichton attacked. He crossed the garden in a rush and yelled at the cringing youngster, taking advantage of
the small opening that had been created. “Tell me what you’re hiding! Tell me now. Tell me what Hox and you
and every other birdbrain on this frelling station haven’t bothered to explain to me from the very start. You’ve
all been covering something up, if not from the very beginning then at least from when I woke up an arn ago.
Tell me, damn it!”
Tulev clacked his beak together several times. He looked and sounded uncertain. “I have not been given
permission to enlighten you. It is not allowed. I cannot.”
“I’m going to find out one way or another. I won’t quit until someone aboard this one-species ark tells me what’s
going on. There’s something big and ugly happening on here that I don’t know about. You’ve got Godzilla or
one of his city-stompin’ buddies lurking right around the corner waiting to trample me. I can smell it. Now tell
me!”
Tulev spent another thirty microts silently debating, then instructed, “Come sit here.” He gestured toward his
feet. “I will allow Hox to teach you. I will pass on his memories to you, and then you will understand what you
wish to know. That way, it will not be I who explains to you. It will be Hox.”
Crichton looked at the moss between Tulev’s feet, hesitating. He wanted an explanation so badly he was ready
to slam the hvisk up against a wall and pound him into the surface until he broke down and answered his
questions. He wanted that outpouring of energy, the releasing of the anger and frustration in a hammering,
bludgeoning orgy of violence. Instead, he was being told that he would have to sit quietly and open his mind to
the influence of another person. For once he understood Aeryn’s occasional need to just shoot something.
Using Winona to incinerating an inanimate object felt like a wonderful idea at that point.
He shifted the pulse pistol on his thigh, tugging it into a better position, and then dropped into an inelegant
cross-legged huddle in front of Tulev. “Hit me.”
Confusion. “You request that I strike you?” Tulev asked.
“It means go ahead with what you’re planning to do. Fire away. Go for it. Have at it. Engage.”
Tulev’s hands cradled the sides of John’s head below his ears, clawed fingers resting with a protective pressure
against his jaw and cheeks, and then he melted into another time and place.
His father wakes him, telling him that it is time to leave, and then wraps him in his favorite warmth-covering and
cradles him as though he were a tiny hatchling. Hox hears the sorrow in his father’s mind, he feels the cold
hard knot that has formed in his father’s chest, and doesn’t understand either one of the sensations. They stop
in the gathering-room to embrace his mother, and he finds the same chilly place inside her as well. Hox chirps
a reassurance at her, trying to find the reason for this sick, uncomfortable feeling. She does not answer. He
tries again, and when he reaches out, seeking her assurances that everything will be all right, he runs into a
mental block. His mother has closed him out.
“No, no, no,” he whistles, trying to reach for her. His father holds him tighter. Hox can’t squirm free. Now his
father is blocking him as well.
Hvisk never block unless it is absolutely necessary. He is old enough to know that. Not once in his entire life
have his parents blocked him out. They are hiding something from him, and it is starting to scare him. He
warbles his concerns, becoming more afraid with every moment that the blocks stay in place. They pat him,
and then they pat each other, tender touches that go on longer than he has ever seen. His father starts to
leave, Hox in his arms, and then turns and goes back one more time. His mother’s fingers work from Hox’s
head to his feathery tummy, fluttering pats intermixed with firmer touches, as though she is memorizing him with
her hands. Then his parents turn to each other and do the same. The blocks slip. Although the images are
vague, he can feel their love suffocating beneath the grief for something that has not yet occurred.
“What, what, what, what, what?” He lets them know that he is scared and confused. His mind is overflowing
with unanswered questions.
“We must be on time,” his father sings to him. “I will explain as we go along.”
“Both, both, both of you will explain,” little Hox sings. He is frantic because his mother is standing at the
opening to their cubbling, crest downlaid against her skull, and she is not following. He warbles at her,
squirming to get loose, straining for her to take him into her arms. “Both, both, both will come.”
“I will explain,” his father assures him. He wraps Hox’s warmth-covering more tightly around the shuddering little
body and he hurries toward the launchport where the great ship awaits. “She is not among the select. We will
remember her. You will remember her for all time, Hox. We will never forget her.”
His father tells him a story as they hurry toward the space ship. It is a story of how a terrible madness has
seized their world, spreading out of control, destroying everything that the Hvisk ever were or ever would be. It
is an awful story, unlike the usual bedtime tales that his father makes up. Hox doesn’t like this tale, but his
father goes on and on, explaining what is going to happen.
A disease has overtaken their planet. There is only one solution whenever the madness has spread this far.
The annals contain accounts of smaller outbreaks in their past, when the ultimate sacrifice was made to
preserve the species, but never before has it afflicted so many. The madness will have to be eradicated,
stamped out, destroyed … hopefully for all time. A world of culture, peace, and knowledge, forty-three billion
beings strong, must slaughter the more than twenty billion afflicted if the Hvisk are to survive as a gentle,
sentient people. The planet will be a befouled charnel house for centuries, uninhabitable until time consumes
the wasted generations.
His father shows him how it will be done. One for one, mind to mind, hand to hand. For each afflicted, already
identified and located, one healthy mind will remain on the planet in order to kill them. It will cost them almost
their entire species, but it must be done if the Hvisk are to survive. If any survive the horror, they will follow in
the smaller ships.
Little Hox begins to understand, in a childish way of understanding. He knows that he will live while the rest will
die. He knows that his mother will stay behind and kill another to stop the disease. The special ones, each
one carefully chosen because they possess a critical skill or some unique, genetically endowed ability, will set
out into space, to wander until the waiting is over and their planet is habitable again. Hox is special, so he will
live and remember.
“No, no, no!” he hoots. “She will come. She will come! Some day she will come to be with us again.” He fights
to get loose, stretching his arms toward where he can no longer see his cubbling or his mother.
“She will not. We will always love her, but she will not follow,” his father tells him. And then he shows him what
Hox should not have to learn at such a young age. His father shows him why so very, very many of the Hvisk
will die.
Sharing his father's thoughts, Hox watches the afflicted fall in droves, victims of violent, traumatic death at the
hands of their own people. Their mental energy is not absent; it has only been muted by The Mindlessness. A
fast, premature death releases every bit of that energy all at once to lash out and sear the mind of the person
physically closest to them. Psychic shock takes the healthy along with the diseased. In a telepathically
integrated society like that of the Hvisk, killing kills the killer.
Hox wails out his grief in long breath-robbing hoots, screaming for his mother, finally understanding that by
staying behind to kill one of the diseased, she is committing suicide.
His father hugs him tightly, and explains how they and so many others will bear the agony of leaving their loved
ones here to die. The Hvisk will return home some day to carry on, always grieving, always remembering, to
rebuild what was freely thrown away in pursuit of species survival. Their lives are a day-to-day remembrance, a
perpetual mourning for those who have given everything. They embrace the sorrow, take it into themselves,
dissect it until they can comprehend its every facet, and carry it with them into the next generation so that no
one will ever forget the price that had been paid. The Hvisk will survive.
The flood of memories came to an end. John sat with his eyes closed, letting the shared information settle into
place. He drifted, putting a piece just so, turning another so it fit into place, until the pattern was complete.
Tulev had been right. He understood.
“I’m not Hvisk. It might not have killed me.”
“Hox was convinced that it would. He believed that because you are not accustomed to sharing thoughts, you
are even more susceptible to the neural overload, not less.” Tulev waited for a response. After several microts
of silence, he continued. “If not for your presence, Hox would have succumbed to the shock immediately, and
all that he ever was would have been lost forever.”
“If not for my presence, I wouldn’t have blown Jeckle’s head off, and Hox would be alive.”
“No, youngling --”
“I’m not your frelling youngling!” John snapped at the young adult.
Every word of explanation only made things worse. The same thought kept circling in his mind no matter what
Tulev told him: If not for John Crichton, Hox would be alive. It was his fault, his fault, his fault. And hearing
Hox’s casual endearment come out of this youngster’s beak only served to tear more deeply into the already
agonizing wound.
Tulev let out what sounded like a hvisk stammer: a short, rattling noise like a woodpecker attempting to drill
into concrete. He started over, awkwardly skirting the missing term of familiarity. “The shock was shared. Both
should have been killed in the backlash. Instead, both survived. A younger hvisk would have recovered if given
sufficient time to heal. Hox was not so badly seared that he would have died, but his mind was badly scarred.
He would have lived out his remaining cycles much as those afflicted by The Mindlessness: deaf to those all
around him. He chose to let go of the string of life rather than continue in that manner. You must be assured
of this. His passing was most peaceful.”
John covered his eyes with his hands and shook his head. “Leave me alone. Go away and leave me alone for
a while.”
Without a word, Tulev rose and left the garden. John stayed where he was, sitting on the ground, very possibly
right where he had sat contentedly at Hox’s feet several arns earlier while they shared their thoughts and
memories in a form of mental symbiosis. But Hox hadn’t truly understood him any better than he had
understood Hox, which meant that he hadn’t shown Crichton the one critical piece of information that would
have saved the old man’s life.
From the first time he had met Hox, right through to the last moments of the struggle with Jeckle, the old man
had kept repeating one thing: “No killing.” John had thought it was because killing was abhorrent to their
culture. The tragedy was that even with the questionable gift of telepathy, he had not understood what Hox had
been trying to tell him.
The magical, mental machine had been repaired, Heckle-Tulev had been cured in time to take up the mantle
ordained for him since the birth, John had survived uninjured, and Hox -- kindly, generous, wise Hox -- had
died. Logic said that ignorance was to blame, that it had been the result of a misunderstanding, and that no
one should have expected him to cross the cultural divide fast enough to understand the consequences of
killing a diseased hvisk. Logic told him that there had been too much confusion, too little time, and too many
different problems all at once for him to have detected the inner nuances of Hox’s messages.
Logic crumbled into a fistful of cold, lifeless ashes when it attempted to justify the loss of Hox.
John lowered his head to rest on his knees. “I am such a frelling stupid bastard.”
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
Chapter 13
He was carried back to consciousness on the rocking waves of an incoming tide. From a restful spot in a realm
of unmarred solitude, he was wafted to a place where he could almost reach out and touch the thoughts of the
people around him. Whispers, both internal and without, disturbed him, and then the wave hissed into foamy
nothingness and he dissolved along with it.
The roll and boom of the breakers brought him back. “Allow him to sleep,” someone said inside his head. He
was carried out to sea before he could tell them that sleep sounded like a wonderful idea.
“Radiation. Massive radiation.” He stumbles and falls into her arms.
John Crichton lies motionless once again, this time with arms outstretched. Winona slithers out of a nerveless
grasp and falls to the silvery metalloid flooring with dull clattering finality. He is barely breathing. A fine
glistening sheen of sweat, a leftover from the chase and the battle, lights his features into a semblance of
vitality, mocking her with the pretense that he is alive and will recover. Two images tangle into one, Crichton
upon Crichton, bound together by the emptiness in her chest and an aching clench in her stomach that this
time carries the promise of permanence.
By the grace of Cholak, this can’t be happening.
Whatever was hovering just beyond his reach ached. The pain defied description. It beckoned to him,
spattering fizzing suggestions that he needed to be somewhere else. He hissed up the beach where he swept
languid and fluid around obstacles, lacking the energy to grasp onto anything solid. Without an anchor to hold
him there, he listened to their voices for the space of three or four microts, mumbles and grumbles that might
have been about him if only he understood what they were saying, and then he turned and rushed back into
the dark.
Not again. I can’t do this again. I love him too much to live through this a second time.
The tide was coming in. Each small roller cast him further up the sandy grade, sucked him out to sea to wallow
where it was quiet and he could rest in the rocking swells, and then returned him to the sun-baked grittiness
and screaming of gulls. With each return, he was carried higher onto the beach and had more time to think
before coasting back into the depths. There weren’t any seagulls, he remembered. Something else was
making the birdlike noise. The darkness enfolded him once more. In, out, in, out, and back in one more time.
The summons, when it came, shattered his peaceful existence into irreparable fragments.
CRICHTON?
“God … D’Argo, you don’t need to shout. I’m right here.”
John didn’t dare open his eyes. He had joked about something like this happening whenever he tied one on in
college and had a hangover -- this time he was certain that his brain was in danger of leaking out of his head.
What was going on inside his skull was so far beyond a headache, it didn’t qualify as ‘pain’ anymore. It was a
living presence that interfered with life, not to mention rational thought.
“I didn’t say anything, John.”
D’Argo had only been thinking about him, not shouting into his ear from a distance of one dench … even
though that was how it felt. John covered his eyes with his hand, carefully jacked one eyelid open, and peered
out through a slit between two fingers. Nothing catastrophic happened; his brain and his skull remained intact.
“There was a fight,” he said.
D’Argo stared down at him with a combination of amused tolerance and impatience. “You found Klamik and the
other two that attacked us.”
John closed his eye and let his memory reassemble itself gradually. It took some time. “Is Aeryn okay?” he
asked once all the pieces fit into place. There was a vague recollection of her voice somewhere nearby. He
couldn’t remember if that was real or part of a dream.
“Aeryn is fine. She left a few microts ago. When it looked like you were waking up, she went to get one of their
healers.”
John took another surreptitious peek through his fingers. He was lying in one of the round hvisk beds with
nearly a dozen cushions tucked in around him in an attempt to make him comfortable, covered by what he
decided was the largest, ugliest, feather boa in the universe. “Where are we?”
“One of their medical facilities.”
“What happened? Did I get shot? Get this thing off me.” He was struggling with the fluffy, feathery blanket,
trying to look underneath to see the extent of the damage. It was tangled around his feet, and portions he
couldn’t get a firm grip on were pinned beneath his body. Pulling a blanket off wasn’t supposed to be this
difficult. The fact that his hands refused to do what they were told didn’t help.
“You weren’t shot,” D’Argo answered. “Crichton, what are you trying to do?”
“I’m in a WWF Death Match with this frelling thing.” His skirmish with the insulating layers, although
unsuccessful, revealed something important. His clothes were missing. He got one leg free only to discover
that the bottom edge of the covers was attached to the bed. That didn’t explain the full extent of the difficulty
he was having getting out of bed.
D’Argo grabbed John’s wrists, putting a stop to the battle with the boa-blanket. “When the fighting ended, we
found you lying unconscious underneath the one you killed. The hvisk seem to know what caused you to pass
out, but none of us can understand what they are trying to tell us.”
Crichton renewed his efforts to get up. “I didn’t pass out. Someone knocked me out. D’Argo, get me out of this
oversized cupcake tin.”
“John! Wait for one of their healers. You’ve been unconscious for over six arns.”
That put a stop to his uncoordinated attempts to get up. Crichton sagged back into the cushions and stared at
his friend. “Six arns,” he said flatly, then repeated it. “Six arns?” Some of the fragments he thought were
dreams suddenly made more sense. If he had been unconscious for that long, then no matter how calm and
collected her exterior, on the inside Aeryn would have been on the verge of flipping out.
“Six,” D’Argo confirmed. “Wait for Aeryn to come back with one of them. It shouldn’t be long.”
Crichton lay back and stared at the ceiling. While they waited, he used the time to consider several
inconsistencies between what he recalled and his current condition. The fight had involved slashes, cuts, and
blood. He checked his hands and forearms, and then fingered the cheek that had been ripped raw. There was
no sign of damage. Even his left hand, the one burned by the DRD’s laser, was unmarked.
“They took care of all that while you were unconscious,” D’Argo said. “They have a device that regenerates
living tissue. Your jacket wasn’t so lucky.”
“Were either of you hurt in the fight?”
For an answer, D’Argo stuck his fingers through several rents and tears in his clothing. “Aeryn did better than
either of us.” He held up a hand to forestall an anxious demand. “It was nothing more than a few scratches,
and they healed everything.”
“Aeryn’s idea of what constitutes a few scratches is a bit skewed. You’re talking about the woman who hiked
out of the Barren Lands on a broken leg. I’ll believe it was minor damage when I see her.” John managed to
yank the feathery covering to one side. “Help me sit up … and where are my damned clothes?”
Reluctantly, D’Argo put out a hand and pulled him to the side of the bed, then handed him a pile of clothing.
John discovered that the rents and tears in the leather had been mended, and the inside of his jacket, where
most of the bleeding had occurred, had been washed clean. The hvisk were being solicitously helpful now that
he had completed the job they had thrust upon him against his will.
Dressing took longer than normal. Although the headache had first eased and then disappeared altogether,
the rest of his body was being spectacularly uncooperative when it came to small things like getting his feet into
his socks or his arms through the correct openings in his shirt. It wasn’t so much that he felt wobbly or
disoriented; it was more a case of not being able to control his limbs with precision. John sat down on the edge
of the bed to put on his boots and started to topple over backwards.
D’Argo snagged the collar of his jacket before it went too far, merely holding Crichton in place until he regained
his balance. “I think you should wait for the hvisk to return,” he said.
“I don’t.” Laces were tugged tight and then stuffed down inside his boots. Knotting them would have to wait
until his fingers started to follow the instructions from his brain. John tottered over to where his pulse pistol was
lying in a snarl of belt, holster, and tie-down straps. He had untangled the mess and was fastening the belt
when the door swung open and three hvisk entered the room, followed by Aeryn.
He ignored the hvisk. “Are you okay?” he asked Aeryn.
Just as D’Argo had promised, she showed no signs of having been wounded. Extending his thoughts carefully
at first, taking his time to ensure that he still had control of the telepathy despite the unexplained blackout, he
gently tested Aeryn’s thoughts to make sure she wasn’t hiding an injury. He ran into an impenetrable wall.
“I’m fine,” she said. The small assurance, like her thoughts, lacked any vestige of emotion. Aeryn was staring
at a spot in midair a motra in front of her.
She was gone. Whatever small portion of healing had taken place over the past few days had gone missing
while he was unconscious. John turned away from that impassive statue and concentrated on fastening his
holster. He had known it might happen. When he had seen and felt the first break in her painstakingly erected
emotional barricade, he had told himself that he had to enjoy it while it lasted and be ready for Aeryn to retreat.
But he hadn’t expected such a thorough regression. If anything, she was even more tightly constrained than
when she had gotten off the transport pod several days earlier.
“It isn’t fair,” he whispered to himself. He was certain it was the six arns he had spent lying senseless that had
caused this. If it weren’t for the hvisk and their blackmail, this wouldn’t have happened. Aeryn Sun had lost
John Crichton only once. He was being forced to lose her repeatedly and incrementally -- sometimes almost
able to touch her only to have her disappear once again.
“Give her time. You must allow her sufficient time to discover how to live with prospect of loss.”
“Hox!” John turned, starting to smile. But Hox wasn’t there. Instead, one of the three hvisk had stepped away
from the other two and was cautiously making his way toward Crichton. It was the stranger who had whistled to
John and impersonated Hox’s familiar mental touch.
“What the frell?” He looked at the hvisk more carefully, summing up the bright green crest and the sharpened,
shining cockspurs on the insides of its wrists. Although the active mental presence was an unfamiliar addition,
it was unmistakably Heckle. Crichton moved away from him, scrabbling to get his pulse pistol out of its holster.
“Please, do not fear me. I will not harm you,” Heckle whistled.
“Frell that! Stay where you are, and explain what’s going on. Better yet, get Hox in here. I’m willing to trust
him.” John maneuvered so the round bed was between him and the slowly advancing hvisk.
“John, what’s going on?” D’Argo was standing uncertainly, Qualta blade at the ready, watching the three hvisk
and John’s retreat without intervening. “What’s wrong?”
“That’s Heckle … only it’s not.” John stopped moving. The situation suddenly made more sense. “Wait. I get
it. You’ve been treated. You’re cured.” All the pieces, all the hints, all the misunderstood clues snapped into
place at once. John turned toward his two crewmates. “They were deaf! That’s all. They simply couldn’t hear
anyone, and once they weren’t able to hear, they became mute as well.”
D’Argo made a half-mocking objection. “When we first spotted them, they were talking to each other. Or
maybe you’ve forgotten that part.”
“He means mentally,” Aeryn interjected quietly.
“You are correct,” Heckle whistled. He didn’t look pleased with the breakthrough in understanding, however.
The green crest wilted under the influence of some invisible force.
Crichton watched the puzzling reaction with a growing sense of unease. He couldn’t catch a glimpse of the
cause of Heckle’s depression, only the sense that it was something that the hvisk considered catastrophic. His
concentration on the small mystery was distracted by D’Argo’s strengthening desire to receive what the luxan
would consider a coherent explanation.
“The infected hvisk are telepathically deaf. That’s why they didn’t show any reaction when Aeryn and I talked to
them right before the fight began. Normally, they don’t need translator microbes in order to interpret what other
species are saying. But without the telepathy, they couldn’t understand what we were saying. It’s why they go
insane and become violent. The Mindlessness … It makes so much sense now that I understand.”
D’Argo’s tone changed from simple confusion to a more familiar, disgusted growl. He rolled his eyes in
frustration and propped both fists on his hips. “Well maybe you could share a little of your incredible insight
with the rest of us, John, because I still do not know what you’re talking about.”
“Every single person in this society is a receiving telepath, Big Guy. They live their entire lives wrapped up
inside a single, civilization-wide moral code. Every thought and every action they take from the first microt after
they’re born has an impact on everyone around them, and they can hear how their behavior affects the others.
What would happen if someone flipped a big power switch and turned that off without warning?” John glanced
at Aeryn before continuing. “Think of what it would be like to suddenly be cut off from the support and approval
of everyone you’ve ever known. They were more lost than I’ve ever been. Both their moral and their emotional
guidance disappeared all at once.”
“When Lo’Lann died, I believed I would go insane without her,” the warrior said, nodding his comprehension.
I had this life. I liked it. It had rules. I followed the rules and that made everything right. And then you come
along and you frell everything up … You are like a plague, John Crichton. And you have ruined my life.
John found himself on his knees, clinging to the side of the circular bed to keep from falling face first to the
floor. D’Argo and the hvisk were gathered around him: one hovering, helpless to assist, while the other three
whistled and chirped their concern. Aeryn’s thought had lanced through his control like a heart-seeking
missile. The Patriot battery didn’t exist that could protect him from that sort of unexpected assault, and this time
it had knocked him right off his feet. He waved Heckle and the other two away before accepting D’Argo’s help
getting up.
“I’m okay. It was just a little left over from the fight.” Aeryn hadn’t moved a muscle. She was right where she
had first stopped when she entered the room, the squared-away Peacekeeper standing at attention. Only her
eyes had shifted. She was watching him with every bit of the fierce intensity that made her such a good Prowler
pilot. John couldn’t decide if that was good or bad.
“You must allow us to verify that you have not suffered any damage,” Heckle said. He made several of the
bobbing little bows, a supplicant seeking divine permission. One of the hands that just a few arns earlier had
tried to kill first Aeryn and then Crichton gestured toward the other two hvisk, indicating that they were there to
examine him. “Please allow them to make sure that you have not been injured.”
John overheard a more thorough explanation for their distress. They wanted to check for neural injury. He
wasn’t supposed to be alive.
“Why --” He stopped. Asking them why he was supposed to be dead right in front of Aeryn was possibly the
stupidest thing he had started to do in the past four cycles. Instead, he envisioned what he had just learned
from their leaking thoughts, trusting that they were listening to him, and demanded, “Explain.”
Waves of confusion flooded off all three of the hvisk. They were baffled by his lack of comprehension; they
thought he should understand without any additional explanation. If he rephrased the question to clarify that he
was missing some information, it would mean revealing what he had just learned from Heckle. John chose his
words carefully, making sure he skirted far enough around the mystery of his not-death that Aeryn wouldn’t
make one of her intuitive leaps. “If you don’t want to clear things up, then get Hox in here and have him explain
things to Crichton the Nitwit.”
Heckle twittered. It was a fluttering, disorganized series of distressed notes without any mental context. He
repeated the noise and turned around in a circle.
“What the frell is going on?” John demanded. “Just tell me!” “If I’m going to die, just spit it out and
let’s get it over with,” he sent silently.
“Not you, not you. You will not die,” sang one of Heckle’s companions.
Heckle produced a wandering, haunting melody: One that conjured up memories of a gray, raw day when John
had stood alone before a freshly planted headstone that glistened in the rain, and couldn’t think of anything to
say to his dead mother. “Repeat that,” he said. It didn’t matter that he had heard it clearly the first time; he
needed to hear Heckle say it again before he was willing to believe it.
Neither the tune nor the message changed as a result of being repeated.
“Hox is dead.”
* * * * *
At John’s request, Heckle led him to the moss-carpeted, leafy enclosure where John had sat with Hox and
taught him about leviathan anatomy. Crichton wandered about the area for several microts before choosing a
spot on a bench opposite where he had sat beside Hox only a few arns earlier. There was a half-finished
jigsaw puzzle in his head: some portions were strung together in a discernable pattern, other portions were
missing no more than one or two pieces, and the remaining expanse was a wasteland of information. Although
his life would go on without difficulty if he never learned the answers, Hox’s death demanded a full accounting.
He wanted to know how and why Hox had died, and that meant filling in all the missing chunks. The only
problem was that he didn’t know where to start.
Heckle solved the problem by starting first. “Your companions have abandoned you here?”
Crichton had asked D’Argo and Aeryn to give him some time alone. After a brief argument, they had agreed to
return to Moya while he remained aboard the Kyelligg. Rather than wasting the time to put the account into
words, John replayed the remembered conversation in his mind, allowing Heckle to pick it up in its entirety. The
young hvisk merely blinked, and then gave the fast down-up bob that signaled his understanding.
“Who killed Hox?” John asked.
Heckle’s mind went as silent as when he had been afflicted by The Mindlessness. The shutdown was
remarkable in its thoroughness. One moment there was a sentient, thinking person sitting next to John; the
next moment Heckle disappeared as a living entity. The body continued to sit on the carved stone bench, his
crest bristling at random, disorganized angles, but the portions of Heckle that John had come to associate with
a sentient creature winked out of existence. The black eyes turned away to stare at the opening in the hedge
leading to the street.
John could reach only one conclusion. It must have been Heckle who, in his disease-generated insanity, had
killed Hox. He got up to leave, unable to remain in the company of the person who had murdered the cheerful,
peaceful old man. But there were too many questions begging to be answered, and he paused and turned
back before he reached the edge of the moss carpeting. Heckle was sitting the way Hox used to: feet pulled
up on the bench, knees tucked in under his robes with nothing but his toes peeking out from underneath.
The similarity was too much for him. John turned to leave. He would find some other hvisk to answer his
questions.
Heckle’s whistling stopped him. “It was not I. I did not kill Hox.”
“Then who did it? Was it Jeckle? The other one who was with you? Or was it Klamik?”
Once again, Heckle closed him out. John tried something simpler, hoping that if he got Heckle talking, the truth
might eventually emerge. “What’s your real name?”
After four tries, Heckle’s tune sorted itself into ‘Tulev’; it was a label that was somehow related to the future of
the hvisk culture. As with the name ‘Hox’, there was an underlying significance to Tulev’s name … one that
continued to elude Crichton. After six additional, futile attempts at providing an explanation that made sense to
a non-hvisk, Heckle-Tulev gave up with an exasperated honk.
John shrugged at him, content in his new role as ‘baffled’ instead of ‘baffler’. “Why are you my new
chaperone?”
Heckle-Tulev squinted a pleased smile at him. “Because I will be Hox.”
The explanation deepened John’s sense of loss. It didn’t matter whether Heckle was lying or telling the truth
about killing Hox; what it all boiled down to was that if Heckle hadn’t been under Klamik’s influence, the elder
hvisk wouldn’t have died. It didn’t seem fair that the green-crested youngster had been assigned to take his
place. Anger started to build, turning his next question into an aggressive challenge. “Hox was wise and gentle
and had seen more cycles in this universe than anyone I’ve ever met. Great-Grandad MacDougal was the
oldest crotchety old fart I ever knew, and he only lived ‘til he was ninety-eight. That doesn’t begin to hold a light
to Hox. What makes you think you can ever hope to take his place?”
“No, no, no. You do not comprehend. I will be Hox.”
The tune had changed, but the mental version coming through was the same. John shook his head.
“I’m missing something.”
Heckle-Tulev scratched the tip of his beak. It was eerily reminiscent of Hox’s mannerism. Then he tried again.
“Obi-Wan Kenobi,” he whistled.
John felt like his heart had stopped beating. There was a fluttering, crawling feeling under his breastbone, and
his stomach was doing the jitterbug. It was a very unpleasant experience. He searched for a logical
explanation. “You could have picked that up from D’Argo. The Big D knows about Obi-Wan,” he said slowly.
Heckle-Tulev considered for several microts. Then, instead of whistling, he let an image loose. The heat of
thorough embarrassment crawled up John’s neck, wrapped around his ears, and inflamed his face. The vision
Heckle-Tulev had created was of an old man, scrawny bare legs protruding from under a nightshirt, bouncing
gleefully on a rumpled bed. Hox was the only person who could have overheard the original thought and
passed it on to Heckle. And John was convinced that Hox wouldn’t have shared that mental indiscretion with
anyone else unless he was dying.
John sat down, pulled his feet up onto the bench, and hugged his knees, considering Tulev’s claim. It took him
a while to figure it out. “You can do a telepathic memory download, something similar to genetic memory.”
“In a perfect existence, none would be lost. We do not, as yet, have the ability to preserve all. However, there
are some who cannot be forfeited. Hox was such a one. It was determined long ago that he must be
preserved. It will take several cycles for me to integrate all that he was, but with the gift of time, I will become
Hox.”
“Why you? How does that work? The guy who kills him is rewarded by taking up his life? There is something
so incredibly wrong with that equation, it defies explanation.”
“Not all have the capacity to become one such as Hox. It is the one of the rarest of genetic qualities among our
people. My potential was identified at birth, and I was selected to become Hox many cycles ago. It was
because of my abilities that I was chosen to seek out Klamik. Hox was too valuable to be risked.”
“That’s how Hox knew when you had been infected, and that you were hanging out somewhere close to Klamick
… because you were sent to try to locate him to stop the spread of the disease.” The pieces were falling into
place one by one. “And Jeckle, the other one who was with you when you attacked us, he was special also.
Otherwise he wouldn’t have been sent to find Klamik.”
Tulev’s entire upper body bobbed up and down. “Correct.”
“And I shot him.” John let his feet slide to the ground and leaned back against the shrubbery behind him. He
stared at the leafy walls in dejection. “No wonder Hox tried so hard to stop me from pulling the trigger. I killed
one of your Mensa members.”
“You form strange words,” Tulev warbled.
“Yeah, I know. Hox mentioned it. Damn it, why the frell didn’t Hox mention all this before the dren hit the fan?
He must have been able to hear that I didn’t understand the whole ‘no killing’ part of the mess.”
John wandered across the moss, absentmindedly bouncing with each step, playing with the resiliency underfoot
while he spent some time mourning Hox’s death. There was a fast flicker of a thought from behind him. Heckle
hadn’t put up a total block, and while his control was impressive, it was nowhere as thorough Hox’s had been.
Except for when he had shut down his thoughts completely, he had been leaking small flashes from the first
moment he had walked into the room in the medical facility.
John continued his slow tour of the garden, tightened up his own control until he felt like his brain had formed a
muscle cramp, and listened carefully. It was like chasing fireflies on a warm summer’s night: a hint, a flash, a
fast moving shadow, and then another blink of illumination. John turned to face him. “What do you mean that’s
not the real reason for no killing?”
Tulev looked like a canary that had eaten a cat: simultaneously guilty and sick to his stomach.
Crichton attacked. He crossed the garden in a rush and yelled at the cringing youngster, taking advantage of
the small opening that had been created. “Tell me what you’re hiding! Tell me now. Tell me what Hox and you
and every other birdbrain on this frelling station haven’t bothered to explain to me from the very start. You’ve
all been covering something up, if not from the very beginning then at least from when I woke up an arn ago.
Tell me, damn it!”
Tulev clacked his beak together several times. He looked and sounded uncertain. “I have not been given
permission to enlighten you. It is not allowed. I cannot.”
“I’m going to find out one way or another. I won’t quit until someone aboard this one-species ark tells me what’s
going on. There’s something big and ugly happening on here that I don’t know about. You’ve got Godzilla or
one of his city-stompin’ buddies lurking right around the corner waiting to trample me. I can smell it. Now tell
me!”
Tulev spent another thirty microts silently debating, then instructed, “Come sit here.” He gestured toward his
feet. “I will allow Hox to teach you. I will pass on his memories to you, and then you will understand what you
wish to know. That way, it will not be I who explains to you. It will be Hox.”
Crichton looked at the moss between Tulev’s feet, hesitating. He wanted an explanation so badly he was ready
to slam the hvisk up against a wall and pound him into the surface until he broke down and answered his
questions. He wanted that outpouring of energy, the releasing of the anger and frustration in a hammering,
bludgeoning orgy of violence. Instead, he was being told that he would have to sit quietly and open his mind to
the influence of another person. For once he understood Aeryn’s occasional need to just shoot something.
Using Winona to incinerating an inanimate object felt like a wonderful idea at that point.
He shifted the pulse pistol on his thigh, tugging it into a better position, and then dropped into an inelegant
cross-legged huddle in front of Tulev. “Hit me.”
Confusion. “You request that I strike you?” Tulev asked.
“It means go ahead with what you’re planning to do. Fire away. Go for it. Have at it. Engage.”
Tulev’s hands cradled the sides of John’s head below his ears, clawed fingers resting with a protective pressure
against his jaw and cheeks, and then he melted into another time and place.
His father wakes him, telling him that it is time to leave, and then wraps him in his favorite warmth-covering and
cradles him as though he were a tiny hatchling. Hox hears the sorrow in his father’s mind, he feels the cold
hard knot that has formed in his father’s chest, and doesn’t understand either one of the sensations. They stop
in the gathering-room to embrace his mother, and he finds the same chilly place inside her as well. Hox chirps
a reassurance at her, trying to find the reason for this sick, uncomfortable feeling. She does not answer. He
tries again, and when he reaches out, seeking her assurances that everything will be all right, he runs into a
mental block. His mother has closed him out.
“No, no, no,” he whistles, trying to reach for her. His father holds him tighter. Hox can’t squirm free. Now his
father is blocking him as well.
Hvisk never block unless it is absolutely necessary. He is old enough to know that. Not once in his entire life
have his parents blocked him out. They are hiding something from him, and it is starting to scare him. He
warbles his concerns, becoming more afraid with every moment that the blocks stay in place. They pat him,
and then they pat each other, tender touches that go on longer than he has ever seen. His father starts to
leave, Hox in his arms, and then turns and goes back one more time. His mother’s fingers work from Hox’s
head to his feathery tummy, fluttering pats intermixed with firmer touches, as though she is memorizing him with
her hands. Then his parents turn to each other and do the same. The blocks slip. Although the images are
vague, he can feel their love suffocating beneath the grief for something that has not yet occurred.
“What, what, what, what, what?” He lets them know that he is scared and confused. His mind is overflowing
with unanswered questions.
“We must be on time,” his father sings to him. “I will explain as we go along.”
“Both, both, both of you will explain,” little Hox sings. He is frantic because his mother is standing at the
opening to their cubbling, crest downlaid against her skull, and she is not following. He warbles at her,
squirming to get loose, straining for her to take him into her arms. “Both, both, both will come.”
“I will explain,” his father assures him. He wraps Hox’s warmth-covering more tightly around the shuddering little
body and he hurries toward the launchport where the great ship awaits. “She is not among the select. We will
remember her. You will remember her for all time, Hox. We will never forget her.”
His father tells him a story as they hurry toward the space ship. It is a story of how a terrible madness has
seized their world, spreading out of control, destroying everything that the Hvisk ever were or ever would be. It
is an awful story, unlike the usual bedtime tales that his father makes up. Hox doesn’t like this tale, but his
father goes on and on, explaining what is going to happen.
A disease has overtaken their planet. There is only one solution whenever the madness has spread this far.
The annals contain accounts of smaller outbreaks in their past, when the ultimate sacrifice was made to
preserve the species, but never before has it afflicted so many. The madness will have to be eradicated,
stamped out, destroyed … hopefully for all time. A world of culture, peace, and knowledge, forty-three billion
beings strong, must slaughter the more than twenty billion afflicted if the Hvisk are to survive as a gentle,
sentient people. The planet will be a befouled charnel house for centuries, uninhabitable until time consumes
the wasted generations.
His father shows him how it will be done. One for one, mind to mind, hand to hand. For each afflicted, already
identified and located, one healthy mind will remain on the planet in order to kill them. It will cost them almost
their entire species, but it must be done if the Hvisk are to survive. If any survive the horror, they will follow in
the smaller ships.
Little Hox begins to understand, in a childish way of understanding. He knows that he will live while the rest will
die. He knows that his mother will stay behind and kill another to stop the disease. The special ones, each
one carefully chosen because they possess a critical skill or some unique, genetically endowed ability, will set
out into space, to wander until the waiting is over and their planet is habitable again. Hox is special, so he will
live and remember.
“No, no, no!” he hoots. “She will come. She will come! Some day she will come to be with us again.” He fights
to get loose, stretching his arms toward where he can no longer see his cubbling or his mother.
“She will not. We will always love her, but she will not follow,” his father tells him. And then he shows him what
Hox should not have to learn at such a young age. His father shows him why so very, very many of the Hvisk
will die.
Sharing his father's thoughts, Hox watches the afflicted fall in droves, victims of violent, traumatic death at the
hands of their own people. Their mental energy is not absent; it has only been muted by The Mindlessness. A
fast, premature death releases every bit of that energy all at once to lash out and sear the mind of the person
physically closest to them. Psychic shock takes the healthy along with the diseased. In a telepathically
integrated society like that of the Hvisk, killing kills the killer.
Hox wails out his grief in long breath-robbing hoots, screaming for his mother, finally understanding that by
staying behind to kill one of the diseased, she is committing suicide.
His father hugs him tightly, and explains how they and so many others will bear the agony of leaving their loved
ones here to die. The Hvisk will return home some day to carry on, always grieving, always remembering, to
rebuild what was freely thrown away in pursuit of species survival. Their lives are a day-to-day remembrance, a
perpetual mourning for those who have given everything. They embrace the sorrow, take it into themselves,
dissect it until they can comprehend its every facet, and carry it with them into the next generation so that no
one will ever forget the price that had been paid. The Hvisk will survive.
The flood of memories came to an end. John sat with his eyes closed, letting the shared information settle into
place. He drifted, putting a piece just so, turning another so it fit into place, until the pattern was complete.
Tulev had been right. He understood.
“I’m not Hvisk. It might not have killed me.”
“Hox was convinced that it would. He believed that because you are not accustomed to sharing thoughts, you
are even more susceptible to the neural overload, not less.” Tulev waited for a response. After several microts
of silence, he continued. “If not for your presence, Hox would have succumbed to the shock immediately, and
all that he ever was would have been lost forever.”
“If not for my presence, I wouldn’t have blown Jeckle’s head off, and Hox would be alive.”
“No, youngling --”
“I’m not your frelling youngling!” John snapped at the young adult.
Every word of explanation only made things worse. The same thought kept circling in his mind no matter what
Tulev told him: If not for John Crichton, Hox would be alive. It was his fault, his fault, his fault. And hearing
Hox’s casual endearment come out of this youngster’s beak only served to tear more deeply into the already
agonizing wound.
Tulev let out what sounded like a hvisk stammer: a short, rattling noise like a woodpecker attempting to drill
into concrete. He started over, awkwardly skirting the missing term of familiarity. “The shock was shared. Both
should have been killed in the backlash. Instead, both survived. A younger hvisk would have recovered if given
sufficient time to heal. Hox was not so badly seared that he would have died, but his mind was badly scarred.
He would have lived out his remaining cycles much as those afflicted by The Mindlessness: deaf to those all
around him. He chose to let go of the string of life rather than continue in that manner. You must be assured
of this. His passing was most peaceful.”
John covered his eyes with his hands and shook his head. “Leave me alone. Go away and leave me alone for
a while.”
Without a word, Tulev rose and left the garden. John stayed where he was, sitting on the ground, very possibly
right where he had sat contentedly at Hox’s feet several arns earlier while they shared their thoughts and
memories in a form of mental symbiosis. But Hox hadn’t truly understood him any better than he had
understood Hox, which meant that he hadn’t shown Crichton the one critical piece of information that would
have saved the old man’s life.
From the first time he had met Hox, right through to the last moments of the struggle with Jeckle, the old man
had kept repeating one thing: “No killing.” John had thought it was because killing was abhorrent to their
culture. The tragedy was that even with the questionable gift of telepathy, he had not understood what Hox had
been trying to tell him.
The magical, mental machine had been repaired, Heckle-Tulev had been cured in time to take up the mantle
ordained for him since the birth, John had survived uninjured, and Hox -- kindly, generous, wise Hox -- had
died. Logic said that ignorance was to blame, that it had been the result of a misunderstanding, and that no
one should have expected him to cross the cultural divide fast enough to understand the consequences of
killing a diseased hvisk. Logic told him that there had been too much confusion, too little time, and too many
different problems all at once for him to have detected the inner nuances of Hox’s messages.
Logic crumbled into a fistful of cold, lifeless ashes when it attempted to justify the loss of Hox.
John lowered his head to rest on his knees. “I am such a frelling stupid bastard.”
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
