Birthright (G)

[KernilCrash]

Birthright

Word 6.0 Printable Version

* * * * *

First posted:  December 12, 2002

Rating: G. 
Disclaimer:  Not mine, no profit.
Spoilers:  Not much.  Takes place sometime in the future
Feedback:  Receiving feedback makes me want to flip open the laptop and write another story.
Beta-readers:  Aangelhart and Scrubschick. 

Notes to the reader:  For those of you who read my silly fic ‘Once Upon A Microt’, I'd just like to say that this story was written first, so the name ‘Ian’ started here and was carried to the other fic.  Secondly, I have said several times that I write ‘Crichton-centrically’; my tales usually revolve very strongly around John.  This is a Jack Crichton story.  Not everyone likes those, so I figured I’d give you this single heads-up before we start.  This story sprang into my head pretty much fully formed, but the ending sort of mutated as I wrote it.  It doesn’t end the way I’d originally planned. 

* * * * *

Part 1

“Trick or treat!” 

Jack Crichton laughed at the odd looking assemblage of cartons and tin foil sprouting legs, and tried to find some sort of opening where he could insert the Milky Way bar.  A cardboard doorway in the front of the creation flopped open and a blue plastic shovel emerged to accept the treat.  Jack chuckled as he offered a second reward for imagination and the shovel reappeared to accept it.  “Thank you!”  Nimble sneakered feet hopped down the front steps without a single misstep, the blocky pseudo-machinery disappearing up the sidewalk toward a close encounter with another homeowner. 

“If that one winds up in the space program we’ll be on Mars a week later,” the elder Crichton grinned as he shut the door behind him.  He’d gotten barely halfway across the living room before the doorbell sounded again, followed almost immediately by a vigorous pounding on the door.  “You have got to be kidding me!” he grumbled.  The siege on his supply of candy bars had been nearly continuous for several hours, and he was beginning to suspect that he’d have to shut off the lights and play possum until the last of the trick-or-treaters went away empty handed.  He opened the door to the sight of nearly a dozen children, each with his or her gaping bag held upward in supplication.  A chorus of thank you’s echoed off the front of the house as they ran down his walk, and he was cleaned out with the exception of four bite-sized Snickers bars.

“That’s it.  Sorry spooks, no more candy,” he muttered, sliding his hand down the outside-light switch.  He wandered through the house, flicking the lights off one by one, and then stretched as he wandered into the kitchen, thinking about a snack and some television before going to bed. 

There was someone sitting at his kitchen table, and he felt a muscle twinge as he hurriedly tried to change his yawning stretch into a stance resembling something more defensive.  “What the hell are you doing in my house?” he attacked, hoping the slender figure wasn’t carrying some sort of weapon. 

The intruder got to his feet slowly, turning both hands outward, holding his arms away from his body.  “I’m not armed,” he said with a trace of an accent.  Jack’s breath nearly stopped in his throat.  The young man standing before him wasn’t much older than fifteen or sixteen, the leanness of youth showing clearly beneath a black t-shirt and black leather pants that hung low on slim hips, and he looked uncannily like John had at that age.  The hair was darker, nearly a jet black, and the eyes were an odd steely grayish-blue, but the features were entirely Crichton, as were his movements. 

“I need your help,” the young man started.  He lowered his hands slowly, hooking his thumbs into the waist of his pants.  The pose looked unnatural, as though he were accustomed to resting his hands there, but not in that specific spot.  “I’m here because of John Crichton.”

The sound of his lost son’s name on this stranger’s lips ignited a guilt-driven anger that Jack Crichton thought he’d finally conquered a little more than a year ago.  One portion of his mind marveled at his overreaction while a different portion delighted in it and egged him on.  “My son is dead!  What sort of sick Halloween trick is this?” Jack began to rage.  “Did you and your friends find a picture of him in a newspaper article or that stupid write-up in ‘Scientific American’, and decide that you looked enough like him to pull this off?  Get the hell out of my house you little bastard!  I don’t know what game you’re playing here, but I’m not going to fall for whatever con you’re trying to pull.”  Jack took a single step toward the youth, and pulled himself up short.   

Several summers ago he’d been fishing in the early morning, letting the boat drift as he spent more time concentrating on the stillness of the water and air than he did on his supposed attempt to catch breakfast.  The fog had rolled from one side of the cove to the other before he’d even noticed the wave of cooler air, drifting out from between the trees to waft slowly across the water, closing out sight and sound until there was nothing but the enveloping coolness, damp tendril fingers crawling along his skin to create a shiver of anticipation, and a thrill of wonder at the beauty of the moment.  The moment replayed itself as a woman stepped out of the pantry and moved to stand behind the young man.  She was calm, she was cool, and she was beautiful –- she was that fog, drifting into his kitchen this time.   

She was tall enough to look him in the eye without tilting her head, blue-gray eyes staring into his without the slightest hint of self-consciousness, glossy black hair pulled severely back to leave the angling cheekbones free to speak of competence, intelligence and strength.  A sensation he hadn’t felt since Leslie died gripped his stomach, taking his breath away and leaving him momentarily confused.   

She didn’t walk; she floated.  A long glide took her to a point next to the young man’s shoulder, beside him but slightly behind, hovering in something other than protection –- something more like support or to provide a presence to back him up as Jack’s yell tapered off into stunned silence.  The teen looked over his shoulder at her, taking a single second to check on her expression before turning back to face Jack.  She nudged his elbow, and he gnawed on his lower lip for a moment, the trio standing silent in the warmth of the kitchen as though time were suspended. 

“I’m his son,” the young man said at last.  “Their son,” tilting his head to indicate the woman. 

“Whose son?” Jack demanded, contending with a level of confusion he hadn’t experienced since his first day on the job at NASA decades ago.  “What the hell are you talking about?” 

“John Crichton’s son.  This is my mother, Aeryn Sun, and I’m your melnatnic,” he explained, stepping forward and awkwardly extending his hand.   

“Grant-son,” the woman corrected in a thick accent. 

“Ach,” he growled in disgust.  “Grandson.  I am your grandson.  My name is Ian.” 

Jack ignored the outstretched hand, fumbling for the back of one of the kitchen chairs instead.  He yanked it across the floor with a clattering screech, and sank into it, leaning heavily on the table.  “John’s great grandfather was named Ian,” he mumbled, feeling numb all over.  He looked up into the almost gray eyes and this time saw the mixture of John and the woman standing six feet away.  This youngster certainly looked the part that someone had chosen him to play.   

“I know,” the young man said softly, moving closer.  “My father told me about his great-grandfather.  But eiyan also means something sort of like ‘small miracle’ in my mother’s language, which is why I have to wander around with such a hideous name.” 

“Wait a minute,” Jack protested, slowly recovering from the shock.  “John disappeared three years ago.  This is all bullshit.  What are the two of you trying to pull?”  Anger flooded back in, driving out the confusion and replacing the sick feeling in his stomach with something warmly familiar.  Something closer to rage. 

The woman smiled broadly and repeated “bull-shit”, the word more comfortable on her tongue than her other single offering to the conversation.  The two trespassers exchanged grins, finding something funny about the word, and the rattlers arrived with a vengeance.  They were too amused by his term, too familiar with it, and he was suddenly irrationally convinced that these two people knew John intimately. 

“Would you please explain what is going on?”  He surrendered to the absurd, waiting to hear and willing to accept almost anything they told him. 

The explanation took almost two hours, leaving Jack with a headache and a cramped knot in his stomach even worse than he’d experienced the moment when they’d lost all telemetry on the Farscape I three years earlier.  He sat quietly through a long description of what had happened to John after that fateful day, interjecting a few questions when the conversation occasionally veered off in a new direction.  The woman, Aeryn Sun, remained silent through most of it, allowing her supposed son to do all of the explaining.  Jack watched her body language carefully as he listened to Ian’s story, watching the muscles shift from tension to calm relaxation to anxious tautness and around again.   

He learned of John’s involuntary passage through a wormhole to a distant portion of space, of the group of strangers he’d met, of the family they’d formed, of battles, enemies, love, anguish, renewal of trust and the pursuit of a life where a son could be raised in safety. 

“Do you believe this that we tell you?” Aeryn Sun asked when Ian had finished, shifting on the hard kitchen chair. 

Jack watched her adjust the weapon on her thigh with unconscious ease -- the type of habitual motion that he knew came only from thousands of repetitions, the type of motion that he’d cultivated as an astronaut.  Her leather pants were buffed to a smooth sheen beneath the holster, the pistol’s grip worn in distinctive patterns, each detail telling him how many hours and days the weapon had rested in that particular spot.  He hadn’t entirely believed their tale until that very moment, when the small motions and the gleam of a weapon’s grip told him that this woman was who and what she claimed to be. 

“Yes, I do believe you,” he admitted reluctantly.  “I shouldn’t, but I do.  I have two questions before I give up and just buy this lock, stock and barrel though.”  She nodded for him to continue.  Jack held up a single index finger.  “First, why are you letting him do all the talking when you very obviously know English?” 

Aeryn Sun answered him in a harsh, guttural language, but Jack began shaking his head.  “Don’t give me that crap.  I’ve heard you speak English, and you understand me.  Why let the junior representative do all the talking?” 

“I hear everything.  I do not speak it well,” she explained slowly.  “It is very tired?” she confirmed. 

“Tiring,” Ian corrected her, then turned back to Jack.  “I speak English much better than she does.  What’s your second question?” 

Jack held up a second finger.  “You haven’t explained the small detail about how you’re this old when John disappeared only three years ago.  How is that supposed to work?”  Jack leaned back in his chair as a fast, unintelligible argument broke out.  He watched the dynamics without the barrier of words and knew for a certainty that these two were in fact, mother and son. 

Ian finally leapt to his feet, gesticulating wildly, shouting at his mother.  “Why come then?” he yelled, and descended into another flood of words that sounded vaguely middle-European.  The argument raged back and forth until the slim shoulders began to sag beneath the t-shirt, the son giving way before the mother’s argument, and he slumped back into his chair, resting his forehead on his hands to stare at the table top between his elbows. 

“I can’t explain that to you,” the boy answered.  “The answer is too dangerous.” 

“All right.”  Jack hesitated, wondering what secret was tied up in the disagreement causing the friction between his two uninvited visitors.  He rummaged through all the things that hadn’t been said, of the missing bits such as why the woman was so tense, why both of them looked like they hadn’t slept in days, why John had never come home, and how he had a grandson who spoke a very unusual sounding language fluently.     

“Are you aware that you’re speaking two languages?” Jack asked him instead, trying a topic that he thought might not be as threatening as the one concerning his age.  Listening to Ian was like listening to a badly tuned radio that kept flipping from one station to another, merging the blather of two disc jockeys into a single, unintelligible mess. 

“It’s probably more than that,” Ian said agreeably.  He raised his head off his hands and grinned, looking more relaxed.  “I was raised listening to about ten different languages and understanding them all so sometimes I have trouble keeping them straight.” 

“That last sentence was perfect,” Jack observed.  “Not one word in anything other than English.” 

“If I concentrate on what my father sounded … sounds like, I can stay on track.” 

“Sounded,” Jack pounced on the slip.  “What do you mean sounded?  What’s happened to John?  Is he dead?  Is that why you’ve come here?  To tell me that he’s finally dead?”  He paused, realizing that his reasoning was flawed.  It had taken almost two years for him to accept that John was gone, but he’d been operating on the assumption that his son was dead for almost a year now; they hadn’t needed to come from outer space just to confirm his assumptions. 

“Worse than dead,” Aeryn offered carefully, making one of her rare contributions to the conversation.  “He is ill.  We need your help.  Please.” 

Jack listened to the anguish in the short, stumbling phrases, watched the flow of emotions clearly transmitted through elegant musculature and wondered how John had found this woman, this beautiful, strong woman.  “What do you need?” he said immediately. 

“DNA,” Ian answered.  “We need a supply of your DNA … a fairly large supply of it, as a matter of fact.  Would you be willing to let us take some blood back with us?” 

“No,” Jack returned emphatically.  They’d just handed him the lever he needed to force them to answer his earlier question.  “Not until you tell me what’s going on and you’re going to have to tell me how the hell he has a teenaged son.  Either explain all of it or get out of here and go back to wherever you came from.”  It was a risk, he knew.  They might elect to leave without telling him the rest of what he wanted to know, but he felt that this was the only way he was going to get them to tell him the whole truth.

Ian’s shoulders slumped beneath the thin covering of the t-shirt, his gangly teenaged frame creating semaphore signals that transmitted his emotions faster than words could have accomplished.  He turned toward his mother and waited for her ruling.  Jack shifted his focus to Aeryn Sun, keeping Ian’s loud body language in the corner of his eye.  The strong features remained motionless, only her eyes darting around the room as she considered the ultimatum. 

“It is too much risk to tell you,” she announced at last.  “We cannot.” 

Ian jumped to his feet with a growl of anger, kicking over one of the spare chairs and stalking to the back door.  “Gervok tre ruchinis prani fulgeko!” he snarled. 

“IAN!” his mother barked at him. 

“D’Argo says it all the time,” he challenged her without turning around. 

“I don’t care!  You don’t say that kind of words!” she reprimanded her son, the vehemence undiminished by her struggle with English.  The target of her wrath yelled something back at her with an equal degree of fury then turned his back again, stiffly rigid shoulders loudly communicating his anger.   

Jack watched the exchange, puzzled by the boy’s incomprehensible outburst, and amused by the spat, which looked far more familiar to him.  A staccato scolding was fired in the teen’s direction, her voice becoming more controlled and icier as Ian continued to stand with his back turned.  Jack gathered his feet under him, ready for a hasty retreat as he saw something in this woman that he’d seen only once or twice in his life, and only then in trained soldiers.  Ian’s posture was familiar as well.  He was standing at the backdoor, staring into the dark with stubborn resolve the way John had learned to defy him as he neared adulthood. 

Aeryn suddenly banged her fist on the table, unleashing another fast barrage at her son, saying something that broke through to him.  “Mother,” he pleaded, turning around, “we made it here without trouble.  If we don’t tell him, he won’t help us and Dad won’t get better.  Please let me tell him.”  Ian picked the chair up off the floor and set it back in its place, a physical apology of sorts for his outburst.  “Please.  He’s Dad’s father.  He won’t do anything to mess this up.” 

She ran a trembling hand over the top of her head, fingering the already smooth hair as she stared down at the floor.  Seconds ticked by, the movement of the kitchen clock suddenly loud as they waited for her decision.  “We come back through time to find you,” she said in a near whisper, then raised her head to look at Jack.  “This is a very, very dangerous thing to do.  It could destroy this.” 

“Destroy this what?” Jack demanded. 

“This entire uni-verse.” 

“I think you’ve got a lot more explaining to do,” Jack recommended, and settled more comfortably into his chair. 

* * * * *

Aeryn crossed her legs and squirmed her way into the corner formed by the support strut of the ship and the hull wall, trying to make herself comfortable for the trip back to Moya.  The entire endeavor had gone hideously wrong, just as so many of their plans over the past cycles had twisted into one near disaster after another.  The goal had been to punch through to Earth, get the genetic samples they needed, and then get out again without being discovered.  Lo’La had performed admirably despite the ship’s aging components, transitioning the wormhole without damage and remaining cloaked while Ian and she made their way to and from Jack Crichton’s home.  D’Argo’s tinkering over the past ten solar days had resolved the three cycle old difficulty with the cloaking shield shutting down at the most inopportune times, and the power cells hadn’t exercised their peculiar habit of completely discharging just as they were out of range of Moya. 

But it wasn’t the ship that had caused the problem this time. 

Aeryn looked at Jack Crichton’s lean form bending over Ian’s spot in the pilot’s seat and tried to figure out how they’d managed to talk themselves into a position where John’s father could insist on coming with them or not helping at all.  One microt she had won the argument with Ian, convincing him that they couldn’t reveal that they’d used the wormholes to travel back in time, and mere microts later Jack Crichton had issued his ultimatum.  Take him with them, or he wouldn’t allow them to take samples of his blood. 

They’d confessed to Jack Crichton that they’d taken a hideous risk to find him, told him how a slow degenerative disease was attacking John, one that no Diagnosan had ever encountered, and explained how his only hope of recovery rested on a substantial supply of unaltered genetic material than neither John himself nor his half-breed son could provide.  She was the one who had admitted that their time on Earth was severely limited, attempting to force Jack into complying with their request, and had completely underestimated the influence of the father on the son.  He’d become just as obstinate as John had ever been, insisting that John’s survival would be better served if he came back with them. 

No description of John’s involuntary trip to the Uncharted Territories had been enough to convince Jack Crichton not to accompany them.  Her entreaties that he might become another human lost on the far side of the universe hadn’t swayed him the slightest bit.  She’d finally had to concede that they’d already risked setting off inter-dimensional ripples with the potential of destroying myriads of unrealized realities, and that it would be foolish to leave without achieving their purpose.   

“I can’t think of anything that would cover this situation, so I don’t suppose I’ll write a note,” Jack had stated nonchalantly, ignoring her final angry demand that he remain on Earth.  “Let me get a jacket, though.  I hear outer space is chilly this time of year.”  And before she could marshal another argument, he’d been standing at the door to his living structure, shrugging into his coat with the same fast movement as John.   

Ian had been less troubled by the unexpected change in plans, taking it in stride the same way he’d learned to accept all of the strange and frightening events that had frequented his life.  Her son had arrived in the universe in the midst of a panicked starburst by Moya, had been left alone to alternately scream and burble at an attending DRD for the first two arns of his life as she’d hobbled off to help D’Argo rescue John, whose safety line had snapped while he was clearing wreckage off Moya’s outer hull, and had gurgled happily through his first night, cradled between her body and John’s. 

That first night with her son resembled a summary of their lives.  She’d been sore and battered from the delivery and the ensuing rescue, struggling to cope with motherhood as her body struggled to heal; John had gazed in wonder at his son as his body had recovered as well, shivering its way through his recovery from hypothermia; and Ian had smiled through it all, seemingly unaffected by being deserted as soon as he’d come into the world. 

Aeryn watched the fast, assured movements of her son, and could barely believe that her eiyan had survived those first cycles.  There’d been so many close calls, ranging from an nearly successful attack by Scarrans in an attempt to capture John, to the time the toddler had decided to follow a particular DRD into an interior conduit and had then fallen asleep while the DRD had moved on.  John had wormed his way through motras of tunnels to reach the screaming child that time, emerging filthy and bloodstained from where he’d forced himself through too-tight openings in his rush to get to his son.  Ian had emerged from the conduit laughing again, enjoying the game of having his father slide him ahead and then slither after him. 

“Is everything all right, Aeryn Sun?” 

She jumped, startled by Jack Crichton’s solicitous inquiry.  He was crouching beside her and she hadn’t even noticed his approach.  “Yes.  Fine.  Why do you ask?” 

“You were staring out the windshield for so long I thought maybe there was something out there that the others couldn’t see.  Something that shouldn’t be there.” 

“I am only thinking,” she explained.  “How are you doing?”  Jack had adjusted to almost everything he’d seen so far with his grandson’s equanimity, but she suspected he might be reaching the end of his ability to cope. 

“I’m having a great time,” he smiled.  “I never thought I’d get into space again, and I can’t wait to see this space ship of yours.”  He touched her lightly on the shoulder, and went back to his spot standing behind the two at the controls. 

She wondered if he was truly prepared for his first sight of Moya.  Ian had enthusiastically described their floating leviathan home to Jack during the short walk to where Lo’La was sitting in what they suspected might be one of John’s ‘beige-ball fields’.  He’d broken off his rush of explanations only long enough to comm D’Argo that they were about to arrive so he could uncloak the ship.  Jack had muttered something about ‘Romulan tech’ when the Luxan craft had suddenly appeared four motras ahead of him, but had scrambled aboard willingly, waving away her final objection. 

Jack’s expression had been far less enthusiastic when he’d been greeted by an impatient and worried luxan, and he had nearly run her over as he backed up in alarm.  He’d eyed Ian’s relaxed scramble past D’Argo to reach the cockpit however, and had taken a seat behind the huge warrior so he could watch his grandson while they got the ship off the surface and into space.  He was still watching the process now, listening to every word that Ian uttered as though it were some sort of bewitching music that had entranced him.  Jack’s gaze alternated between his newly discovered descendant and the view of his home planet hanging to one side of Lo’La.  D’Argo had the ship arcing along in Earth’s orbit, several thousand metras beyond the planet’s outer most ring of artificial satellites, preparing to enter the wormhole that they’d carefully charted when they’d arrived.   

“It recognizes DNA,” Ian explained as he pulled on a pair of black gloves.  Jack’s expression was a mixture of fatherly pride and John’s look of wonder as his grandson prepared to take over at the controls of Lo’La.  “Dad has always called it the messiest ship he’s ever flown.”  Ian held his hands out and D’Argo spat liberally into his palms.  “We tried to override the recognition program several times, but all we ever managed to do was blow out a pile of Moya’s electromagnetic systems and –- ”

“Moya.  That’s the big space ship, right?” Jack confirmed as Ian rubbed his gloved hands together and took the controls.  “You’re going to do the flying now?”

“Yes, Moya’s our home, and she got a bit tired of having all her systems randomized by Dad’s attempts to make this ship flyable by everyone in the crew, so she told Pilot that if he tried it again, Dad would have to find somewhere else to live.”  Ian nodded to D’Argo, and the Luxan took his hands off the controls. 

“I am Ian’s uncle,” D’Argo offered haltingly, turning toward Jack now that he was free of piloting duties.  Aeryn shook her head at him, nearly laughing at his crestfallen glower.  Despite his efforts to learn English over the cycles, his pronunciation remained unintelligible.  Jack looked from his grandson, who was concentrating on the readouts, to the huge alien holding out one hand, to Aeryn watching the process with an expanding smile.   

“He is named Ka D’Argo.  He is uncle to Ian,” she translated.  “He wishes to shake your hand.” 

“Uncle.”  Jack looked D’Argo over in disbelief then examined Aeryn’s physical appearance more carefully, trying to work out the relationship. 

“He’s not my real uncle,” Ian offered, glancing over his shoulder at his worried grandfather.  “I’ve got several self-proclaimed aunts and uncles of various species.” 

“You don’t have a problem with that?” Jack asked, taking the large hand cautiously and wincing as it was pumped with crushing enthusiasm. 

“Do you want to be the one to tell D’Argo he’s not my uncle?” Ian laughed.  “Get ready.  Thirty microts.”  D’Argo released Jack’s hand and casually waved him to a seat, but Aeryn thought he looked like he’d prefer to yank Jack into one of his rib cracking hugs.   

“Are you sure this is the right one?” Aeryn called to her son in Sebacean as D’Argo slid back into his seat.  “You know what happens if we miscalculate –- ” 

“I’ve been over it a hundred times, Mother.  This is the right one, and I swear I know where to get out.  Scout’s honor.” 

Jack moved to a seat closer to Aeryn, glancing at her from time to time as they watched the mismatched pair at the controls direct the craft toward an apparently empty portion of space.  “How many times has Ian flown a wormhole before?” he asked quietly. 

“Once,” she answered, holding up a single index finger to confirm her choice of word.

“Once?” he nearly bellowed.  “You spend all that time trying to impress on me how dangerous it is to travel through wormholes, and then you let a student driver take us through?” 

“Here it is,” Ian warned them.  The interior of Lo’La was filled with an unholy blue light, as though they were flying into a gigantic cold flame.  Jack whipped around in time to see the mouth of the behemoth gaping before them, and then they were sucked in.   

* * * * *

[KernilCrash]

Part 2

“Sweet Jesus,” Jack gasped as the spacecraft bucked and shuddered, veered to one side, and punched into normal space.  “I’ll never be able to tell anyone about that ride, but if I could design a rollercoaster based on that, I’d make millions.”  Ian’s ‘uncle’ was slapping the young man on the back, growling at him in what he could now see was approval, then he turned to Jack and pointed out the front of the cockpit, bestowing more of the almost-English sounding syllables on him. 

“Moya,” Aeryn Sun said from behind him. 

Jack ducked down to look where the alien was pointing, taking several moments to pick out the designated object.  He missed it the first time simply because it was too big.  He’d been looking for something the size of an aircraft carrier, somehow equating the idea of landing this spaceship on another one with the concept of landing a jet aircraft on a large boat.  A fast estimation as they accelerated toward the golden behemoth suggested that he’d been off by at least three or four aircraft carriers as far as length was concerned and a hell of a lot more in terms of mass.  In a single instant his calm acceptance of everything that had happened to him that evening was shattered.  His mind balked at the sight, yipped and scrambled around inside his skull trying to cope with what his eyes were transmitting to his brain.  “That thing is a living creature?” he stammered. 

“That’s Moya,” Ian grinned over his shoulder at him.  “She’s kind of pretty, isn’t she?” 

Ian looked so much like John in that instant, it helped Jack get a grip on himself.  This was John’s home, he reminded himself.  It was a gentle beast, according to Ian, that had provided John with refuge, safety, and even love. 

They were approaching the leviathan from slightly above her, giving him a good view of what appeared to be dorsal openings and the wandering patterns that traced her hull.  At first he thought Ian was realigning their trajectory to bring them alongside the beast’s flank, but he realized belatedly that the stars beyond Moya weren’t shifting.  He clamped his teeth together to keep his jaw from gaping open as the living ship rolled along her axis, looking much like a whale turning in the water as she made the adjustment to welcome them into her hangar bay.   

His impression of whales and water strengthened as the spacecraft jolted once and then moved smoothly toward the maw of the hangar, feeling no different than when a strong current grabbed a boat.  Jack was going to compliment Ian on his approach to the huge ship, but both pilots had their hands off the controls, ignoring their trajectory.  Jack grabbed convulsively at the edge of his seat, bracing himself for an impact as they arced toward the opening without slowing.   

“Dock-ing net,” Aeryn said from behind him. 

“Web,” Ian offered automatically without looking around, and she repeated the correction. 

“Incredible,” Jack added as they were sucked inside.  The process of getting landing gear deployed and the actual touchdown was lost on him as he peered out at the arching bronzed walls, gleaming ribs, and the vast empty expanses. 

“Pilot brought us into hangar bay two.  Mom’s old Prowler and the other ships are all over in bay four.  If we have time, maybe I can show them to you.”  Ian maneuvered lithely between the seats, leading Jack toward the rear of the ship.

“Are you very ready for this?” Aeryn asked as the rear-facing hatch opened and the steps extended automatically.  “Moya has many species living aboard.”  Jack nodded, feeling more uncertain than he was willing to admit, and let her lead the way. 

‘How did John cope with this?’ was the thought that kept running through his head as he was assaulted by a mob that wouldn’t have fit in even at Mardi Gras.  A fast count came up with a dozen individuals hemming them in before they could move ten feet from the ship.  And if the discussion on the floor of the U.N. was polyglot, then this was mega-glot.  No two languages even resembled each other, ranging from D’Argo’s barking grumble to the clacking tones of two brown-furred creatures with six limbs.  They were all talking at once, arguing about something from the looks of their body language, or perhaps only distressed about something. 

“They’ll quiet down in a few microts,” Ian said next to his shoulder.  Jack jumped, startled by the quieter voice, and turned to look at his interpreter.  Ian was fastening a holster about his lean hips, giving a quick twitch with his leg to shift a heavy looking pistol into position, and then securing it against his thigh. 

Jack wanted to voice a protest about his teenaged grandson wearing a weapon as though it were part of his body, but his tired brain refused to come up with words sufficient to the moment.  “Is …?” was all that came out of his mouth in the end as he was completely overwhelmed by the events of the strangest Halloween of his life.  He tried to form another question but at that moment the crowd swirled and shifted, the jabbering currents disgorging two aliens who came to circle around him in bobbing, clattering excitement.   

“The Kallimitri have the best geneticists in the universe,” Ian raised his voice over the chaos.  “This team has developed an experimental process that they claim will restore a patient’s genome to an earlier condition, provided they have a template to map the sequences.” 

The quadrupeds looked disturbingly similar to a rather ugly antique chair his great aunt had owned.  Their leg joints and feet pointed in four cardinal directions, making it difficult to figure out just which way was forward at any particular moment.  Trying to anticipate their movements was futile because although their upper bodies jutted up from between two of the legs suggesting a ‘front’ to the creatures, their waists were so flexible they were able to turn their shoulders in any direction.  Their heads and shoulders would be facing to the right, and their feet would suddenly scramble to the left, as though some indecisive ghost were rearranging the furniture. 

The mixed species group encouraged Jack to follow the pair of scientists toward a workbench, their hand signals reassuringly uniform despite the continuing linguistic furor.  The confused human allowed himself to be herded to the corner where a blood sample was quickly and painlessly extracted.  The armchair aliens clicked cheerfully at him for several seconds, then the brown-furred whirlwinds spun erratically out of the large chamber with more than half of the gathering trailing along behind them.  Jack put a hand on a workbench, waiting for his whirling brain to come to a stop, using the sudden silence as a steadying influence. 

Something squeaked next to his hand and he jerked to one side, stumbling over several pieces of machinery strewn across the floor.  Gathering his balance and his wits at the same time, he examined the small yellow object that was quietly chirping at him.  Two flexible antennas waved about, pointing lights at him and he stepped cautiously to one side, concerned that it might be some sort of defensive machine. 

“It’s a DRD,” Ian yelled from the other side of the chamber.  “They do maintenance on board Moya and they’re harmless.”  The explanation ended there as the teen turned back to his conversation with Aeryn and another woman.  Jack split his attention between the yellow sphere and the hushed discussion, noting the drooping, splinted antenna on the device and the slumping shoulders on his grandson. 

“Hello there,” he offered to the ‘DRD’.  It blinked at him.  “Nice to meet you,” he tried.  It blinked once. 

“You’re talking to Moya,” Ian said, coming to stand beside him.  “These are mechanoids.  They’re sort of like little automated repair shops that can reach most anything that needs to be maintained on the ship, but they’re directed by Pilot or Moya.  They’re not sentient.” 

“Cute,” Jack offered, at a loss for words after everything he’d seen so far. 

Ian scooped the unit off the workbench and set it on the floor.  “Go play,” he ordered it.  The unit zipped between the lad’s feet and headed for the door.  The pair watched as the yellow drone’s course curved to the right, until it was no longer aligned with the door.  It stopped, spun around clockwise until it was pointed toward the left side of the opening and set off again, arcing out of sight, drawn inexorably to one side.  Ian shrugged, the brief motion seeming to comment on the uneven progress of the unit.  “That one’s more of a pet than anything else.  One-Eye’s been banged around a lot over the past cycles, so he gets light duty.  He was my nanny while I was growing up.”   

“Nanny,” Jack repeated in disbelief.  “Son, you’ve got to give me a few seconds to catch up.  My brain is spinning.”  He looked around the nearly empty bay, studying his new environment for the first time in an attempt to accept what was happening around him.  “This is all part of a living being,” he stated, waving at the arching golden support ribs and echoing spaces of the large chamber. 

“Yup.”  Ian wandered around the various benches and arrays of tools.  “How about a tour?  We could go up and meet Pilot, and the terrace will probably blow your mind.  I can show you Mom’s Prowler.  It’s a bit outdated, but it’s still one of the dradest things to fly in the entire universe!”  The teen was practically bouncing, exuding energy as though he had his own personal power station providing megawatts to be expended freely. 

Jack smiled, finding the youthful exuberance refreshing after the almost too-adult self-control exhibited by Ian up until this point.  “I want to see the whole thing, Ian, but first I want to see John.”  The smiling excitement disappeared in a split-second, replaced by an awkward discomfort.  “I’m looking forward to having you show me around this place, but I haven’t seen your father in over three years.  Let’s start there.” 

Ian made an odd sideward shrug with his shoulders, his upper body writhing with what looked like discomfort.  “All right,” he mumbled, looking down at his feet.  “But I think my mother should take you to Quarters.  She’ll be up on Command.”  He jerked his head and started away in a hurry, his thoughts obscured behind an enigmatic mask that Jack wouldn’t have expected out of anyone other than a mature adult.   

“Ian, I do want to see Moya,” he started, thinking that it was the young man’s disappointment over the rejected tour that was causing the strain. 

“It’s all right.”  Ian began walking faster, accelerating to a pace just short of a jog.  “I don’t like going down there, that’s all.” 

Jack abandoned his attempt to memorize their route after just three turns as they hurried through one identical corridor after another, concentrating instead on the abrupt mood change of his guide.  “You don’t like going where?  To see your father?” Jack asked, straining to keep up with the long legged stride.  Ian shrugged and accelerated. 

“Stop!” Jack ordered sharply, resurrecting the barking tone he’d used on all three of his children when the single-mindedness of youth had deafened them to milder commands.  Ian jerked to a halt.  “What’s bothering you, Ian?” he asked more gently.   

“Nothing.”  The sullen reply was all too familiar, the stubbornness so reminiscent of the boy’s father that it brought a lump to his throat.  It was like having John back for one short moment, miraculously restored to him through a trick of time. 

“Don’t give me that bull.  There was something more going on in that … that cavern place where we landed than just a bunch of people welcoming you back.  What’s happened?”   

Ian didn’t turn to face his grandfather as he stood with one hip cocked, his hand resting on the butt of the heavy pistol as he stared at his feet.  They remained poised like that for almost ten seconds before the young man turned around rubbing at one of his eyes with the heel of a hand.  “Dad has good days and bad days.  I’d hoped that maybe he’d be better today, like maybe he’d have one of the good ones.  But Chiana -- she’s the one Mom and I were talking to earlier -- ”, Jack nodded his recognition of the pale skinned woman who’d lingered behind while he’d been talking to the robot, “-- she says that he’s worse today.  She says it’s the worst she’s ever seen.” 

Jack watched him struggle to stay in control of his emotions.  “He’s getting worse,” Ian quavered, starting to cry.  He smeared the tears roughly to one side with the back of his wrist, fighting to stop his outburst, then yanked the bottom of his t-shirt out of his pants to dry his face more thoroughly.  “I’m acting like a dren-head,” he finished, taking a deep breath. 

“Dren,” Jack prompted, focusing on the one thing that might divert the teen’s attention away from his fears.  “Would that be as in ‘bull-dren’?”  Ian laughed shakily and nodded, a weak smile appearing.  “Hang on a little bit longer, Ian.  Let’s wait to see what those geneticist creatures of yours have to say before you go deciding that it’s hopeless.”  His grandson nodded a second time while hastily tucking his shirt back into the waist of his leather pants. 

“We’re almost at Command,” Ian explained after clearing his throat several times.  “Let me show you that and maybe one of the others will be willing to take you to Quarters.”  He glanced at his grandfather sideways, checking for a reaction to his unwillingness to take him to see John. 

“That sounds good.  Lead on.” 

   * * * * *

Aeryn took two steps back, pulling out of the small group that had gathered on Command to wait for the determination from the Kallimitri as to whether Jack Crichton’s DNA would fulfill the needs of their mysterious procedure.  Chiana’s news had been delivered gently, but it was no less devastating for the concerned tones or the small amount of privacy the nebari had provided while telling her of John’s latest downward slide.  She let the discussion flow around her, watching the familiar gestures of the distraught group as they tried to cope with the possibility of losing John Crichton.  He’d saved every one of their lives at one point or another over the cycles, often putting his own life at risk to accomplish the goal.  Every person on board had grown attached to the singular human, and they’d begun lashing out at each other as the situation had grown increasingly bleak. 

“Mother.”  She spun around fast, recognizing her son’s guttural mumble that signaled a complete loss of emotional control, expecting one of his rare breakdowns.  He shambled onto Command looking sheepish for some reason, his grandfather trailing behind.  His fast glance in her direction revealed the reddened, blurry eyes, and she wanted to hug him, knowing he’d been crying.  His restraint had hardened over the past few cycles as he approached adulthood, gradually depriving her of the moments when she could offer him a mother’s comforting embrace or reassurance.   

Ian turned half away from her as she approached, his hesitant motions exhibiting his discomfort with her solicitous concern.  “He wants to see Dad.  I … ”  He ran his hand through his hair, leaving much of it standing on end.  “Can one of the others take him down there?” he asked switching to Sebacean, “I … I don’t want to go.”   

Aeryn flattened his hair, letting her hand slide quickly down his cheek and then grasping him carefully by the back of the neck.  “Of course.”  She gave him an almost imperceptible shake, trying to tell him that she understood his anguish, then let him go, deferring to his recent requests that she not embrace him in public.  “I’ll take him myself.” 

Ian turned away, beckoning to his grandfather.  Aeryn watched as he jerked his head up straight and squared his shoulders, doing his best to emulate both of his parents by facing the difficult moments in his life straight on.  He’d inherited his father’s stubbornness, displaying the same recalcitrant behavior regardless of whether he was acting like an adult or indulging in one of his less mature moments.  That obstinacy had gotten him in to trouble with almost the same frequency as it had John, and she’d almost despaired of getting him through his rebellious streak alive. 

The reckless bullheadedness had been epitomized the time he’d tried taking the Prowler for a spin before she’d finished teaching him how to fly it, convinced that he could handle the craft on his own, and Moya had been forced to follow the out-of-control fighter across an entire solar system before it ran out of fuel and they could haul the ship and the defiant youngster back inside.  His belligerence had driven D’Argo to the edge of hyper-rage dozens of times, and only Ian’s ability to fit into unbelievably small spaces aboard Moya had saved him from an enraged assault on at least three occasions over the past several cycles.  She could see some of her less admirable traits in her son as well.  He was a perfect melding of his parents’ personalities, at times showing the brilliance and discipline of their best qualities, and at other times descending into displays of their worst behaviors.   

She watched with pride as he showed Jack around Command, explaining each piece of equipment with an expertise she hadn’t realized he’d mastered.  He’d followed his father around the leviathan since he’d been old enough to walk, watching as John repaired aging or damaged circuits, but until this particular moment she’d never realized that Ian had become an expert in his own right.  The idea of continuing his upbringing alone, without John, sometimes kept her awake at night, but she watched the confident movements and told herself that they’d be all right.  She could do it as long as Ian was there.  She could go on without John as long as she had their son to remind her of what they’d shared over the last twenty cycles.

“There’s one question I didn’t think of until those scientists of yours were taking my blood,” Jack was asking Ian.  “Why couldn’t they use John’s own DNA to map this transformation process?  Why me?” 

Aeryn stepped to meet them even before Ian’s distressed look turned in her direction.  He knew most of the stories, but there were tales that they’d withheld from him until he was old enough to understand.  “John has been …”  She searched for the word, finally resorting to feeding the Sebacean term to her son. 

“Injured,” he translated, sounding puzzled, “or it works out to damaged depending on how you use it.” 

“No.  Not the same.”  She searched for a term that would be more accurate, coming up empty.  “There were things that happened to him when he first gets here.  It is not why he is sick, but it changes John.  His DNA is not good enough.  The Kallimitri say it is, um … broken.” 

“What happened to John?” his father asked, sounding worried.  “What sorts of things?” 

Aeryn thought of the chip, of the twinning, of death, and of hypothermia; of getting spaced without a suit, bitten, frozen, stunned, shot, and knocked out more than once by a pantak jab, and didn’t know where to begin.  He’d been through so much, and every morning she woke up and wondered which of those assaults on his physiology might have caused this slowly progressing disease and whether she could have stopped it.  Had it been heppel or lakka or wormholes or Scorpius?  The Diagnosans hadn’t been able to determine the cause, so she was forced to wonder if his problem had been caused by his foolish but selfless penetration of the Gammak Base so many cycles ago and his brutal interrogation in the Chair -- the first time she’d truly understood how much he loved her. 

“Too much,” she whispered, fixing her gaze on her own son.   A future without John wasn’t entirely bleak as long as she could hang on to the thought that one good thing had come out of all the pain and sorrow.  “Too many things happen to him.  He is not very often sick though.  Not until …”  She consulted with her son.  “Not until six month ago.”

Jack stared at her, his face unreadable, and she knew where John had learned to mask his thoughts.  He glanced once at Ian before coming back to gaze steadily into her eyes.  “John is my son.  I need to know what’s happened to him and I need to see him now.”  He stepped aside, motioning toward the doorway. 

Aeryn hesitated both mentally and physically, trapped between trying to protect this familiar looking stranger from the truth of John’s life, and his need to understand the life his son had been living.  “Ian, give us a moment,” she said in Sebacean, reaching for his hand to assure him that she wasn’t shutting him out.  He squeezed back briefly and went away willingly. 

“John said always that life here is much more wonderful than Earth but it is very hard … very dangerous.”  Jack nodded so she continued, casting back to the first days she’d lived alongside the strange being known as John Crichton.  “When he gets here, he does not know how things work.” 

“I can certainly believe that,” Jack smiled thinly, glancing past her toward where several of the crew had gathered. 

“Yes.  He got hit, drugged, attacked, captured.  He fights, he cares about all of us.”  Aeryn took a deep breath, remembering how much trouble John’s compassion had gotten him into at first.  “Maybe this sickness is caused by something that happened because he tried to save my life more than twenty cycles ago.  He got caught by someone named Scorpius and he gets …”  She stopped, unable to say the word despite knowing its English equivalent.  When she looked up Jack was pale and quiet, a type of anguish in his eyes that she’d seen in John’s eyes when Ian had been sick or injured.  “John was tortured.”   

“I don’t think you need to tell me any more,” the father said.  “But despite all of this he chose to stay.” 

“At first because he did not know how to go home.  Later he stayed because of me.”  And that had resulted in even more violence and suffering.  “He was given knowledge of wormholes by aliens.  There was a time when he almost decides to go home to you.  But he stayed.  For me.” 

“I can see why,” Jack smiled at her.  “I want to see him now.  I need to see John.”  Aeryn started to object.  “Ian warned me already.  Take me to see my son, Aeryn Sun.” 

“Excuse me everyone,” Pilot’s calm tones interrupt the subdued hubbub in Command.  Aeryn turned to check on Jack who was making a choking noise behind her, but he was only staring at the image floating in the clamshell, his eyes wide with shock.

Pilot’s enigmatic gaze swiveled to gaze at the new human aboard the leviathan, and then continued.  “The Kallimitri have advised me that the genetic samples obtained from Jack Crichton are suitable for their procedure.” 

“Pilot, do they have enough DNA for the entire procedure?” D’Argo asked.

“They report that it is sufficient.”  Pilot’s holographic image turned in Jack’s direction.  “Thank you for coming to help your son, Jack Crichton,” the large symbiote said to the human visitor.  “He means more to Moya and me than we can ever express.”  The image disappeared from sight. 

“What was that?” Jack breathed into the small silence following Pilot’s announcement. 

“Pilot.  He is one with Moya.  He said thank you for coming to help John,” Aeryn relayed for him. 

“One with?”  Jack fumbled at a gleaming ovoid table and sank down onto a seat.  The surrealism of his surroundings assaulted him, pressing in with a nearly physical force.  He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on the one item that promised to make this insane venture worthwhile -- a chance to see his son.  He was trembling slightly as he considered how ludicrous it sounded for a single human being to travel clear across the universe in order to make a house call of sorts on his ailing offspring.  “I need to see John now,” he repeated, hoping the familiar sight would help him cope with the strangeness of his surroundings. 

“We will go in a microt,” Aeryn said from behind him.  “I must talk at the others.  You are all right?”  Jack nodded numbly and she moved away.

He shut his eyes again, reminding himself that he had traveled to the moon and back at a time when some people on Earth still thought the first lunar landing had been faked on a Hollywood set.  His entire career had consisted of pushing beyond limitations and expectations, seeking and achieving goals that most people only dreamed about.  “Well you found it this time, Jack,” he said quietly to himself, feeling marginally better.  He’d talked himself into going somewhere that very few individuals on Earth would be willing to admit even existed.  He’d demanded that they bring him here, so it was up to him to cope with the new environment.     

“Okay?”  Jack jumped at the high voice, opening his eyes and refocusing on his surroundings. 

“What?”  The white-haired woman he’d seen talking to Aeryn in the hangar was standing next to him, head cocked at an angle to look into his face. 

She poked his chest lightly with a single finger.  “Oh … kay?”  It seemed they’d all learned some English from John, adapting to his presence as he had certainly adapted to theirs. 

“Yes.  This is all a bit overwhelming though.”  It took a concerted effort not to talk in pidgin English, forced to remind himself every time he opened his mouth that they could understand everything he said.  “Ian told me a little about everyone on the way here.  Who are you?” 

“Chiana,” she stated, smiling.  She began pointing to the others.  “Nerri.”  A man with the same gray skin, but jet-black hair.  She put her two fists together, curled thumbs bumping against each other. 

“Your husband?”  Head shake.  She tried placing her palms together and then separating her hands.  “Brother?”  Yes. 

“Hendlah.”  Next person, same species, a woman -- Nerri’s wife, as conveyed by Chiana’s clasped hands.  She introduced him laboriously to each of the individuals in the room, the process proceeding more quickly as they worked out hand signals for various relationships.  D’Argo’s son Jothee and his young wife, D’Argo’s fiancée, which took five tries to convey, two other unrelated individuals of Chiana’s species, three Sebaceans, and the hologram that he’d already been told was the pilot, were all pointed out and labeled for him. 

“Are there more aboard?” he asked her.  She nodded and began firing out names, counting on her fingers as she progressed.  Another fifteen were added to the list.  “Quite a collection.  I’m glad John had so many good friends to help him when he got here.”  The woman at his elbow looked grief-stricken, and in a flash of intuition, Jack knew that it wasn’t the prospect of losing John that was causing the reaction.  “Not so many at some point,” he suggested. 

She pointed to herself, D’Argo, and Aeryn, adding Pilot at the last minute.  Her high, chirping voice explained something that he would never understand, then she added the others in the room one by one, working through everyone present in the order that they’d joined the small community. 

“Jack Crich-ton?” D’Argo called awkwardly, waving him to join the group. 

“They say you can go back to Earth now,” Ian translated as Jack moved into their midst.  “Since the Kallimitri have confirmed that your DNA is close enough to Dad’s, they think you should leave to avoid any chance of getting stuck here.”  Ian scratched at the top of his ear, looking mildly embarrassed by the pronouncement, as though he didn’t agree with the suggestion. 

Jack folded his arms and glared at the assembled group.  “Folks, I don’t know what John has told you about me over the years, but if you think I’m leaving without seeing him, you are all out of your minds.”  An argument broke out immediately.  “Wait a minute!” Jack yelled into the discussion.  “Why exactly don’t you want me to see John?” 

“Melnatsa,” Ian said gently, “he isn’t the person any of us knew before.  It’s not Dad anymore.  They say you should go home remembering him the way you knew him before.”  Jack watched the son of John Crichton try to offer him some comfort while coping with his own loss and grief, and knew that he had to see the man who had raised this remarkable youngster, even if it destroyed his memory of John in the process. 

“Take me to him,” Jack ordered.  “I’m not leaving until I see John.”  No one moved except to look at each other, all appearing equally uncomfortable.  “Aeryn Sun … take me to see my son now,” he ordered, turning in her direction.  “You’ve been stalling ever since I got on board.  Either you show me where he is right now or I’ll start searching this ship room by room until I find him.” 

Aeryn turned on Ian, spouting an impassioned demand of some sort.  One by one the others joined back in, the argument escalating until they were all yelling at each other again, accompanied by wild hand motions.  It was truly incredible, Jack realized, watching Ian throw himself back into the discussion.  His grandson, barely an adult, was serving as the liaison between him and several other species.  He watched as the young man looped his thumbs behind the buckle of his belt, standing with one hip cocked as he babbled in what was now detectable as several different languages, his body calmer than the rest of the group despite the fact that he was talking just as loudly.  Jack looked at the stance and recognized the habit he’d identified as familiar but uncomfortable when they’d been standing in his kitchen.  Ian was accustomed to standing like that, but he hadn’t been wearing the weapon, and had resorted to hooking his thumbs into his trousers instead of behind the belt to the holster. 

For an instant, Jack was able to see John in the chamber, standing with his shoulders slightly rounded as his focus moved inside his own mind, a stance his mother had tried to break him of saying it would ruin his posture.  He squinted his eyes, blurring the scene before him, and he was able to see his son, the heavier, more mature body commanding more attention in the group, John arguing back, completely at ease living with these … people.  The image brought him back to the battle being waged, reminding him that they still hadn’t ceded to his request.  Jack counted slowly to ten then turned and headed for the doorway. 

“Wait!” Aeryn yelled behind him, following up with a flood of her own language.  The rest of the group went quiet as she strode after him. 

“I couldn’t understand any of that,” Jack returned.  He waited, halfway across Command as she growled in frustration then snapped something at Ian.

“We’ve been through this!” he yelled.  “We can’t give him translator microbes.  It creates too many problems!”  He fired off another long spiel, lapsing into something other than English. 

Aeryn turned her back for several seconds, her shoulders squared and rigid, then turned back, eyes blazing with something Jack thought might be anger.  He took two steps away from her, concerned about the level of emotions in the room and the weapon in her holster. 

“Frell!” she screamed in frustration.  A DRD zipped out of a maintenance hatch, headed for the doorway and the corridor beyond on a trajectory that unfortunately took it within range of Aeryn’s feet.  Jack dodged to one side as the blameless robot sailed into the corridor with an electronic wail of dismay, coming to a clattering impact against the curving wall.  Aeryn turned to glare at Jack next, and he took another step back, moving away from her. 

“I am sorry,” she offered, the anger evaporating in a single second.  “It is very … ” she clenched both fists and shook them in front of her body. 

“Frustrating?” he offered. 

“Frus-rating,” she repeated.  “We have germs in our heads that tell us what others say to us.  John has these too.  If we give them to you, it will be bad when you go back to Earth.” 

“Germs?” Jack asked, turning toward Ian. 

“Microbes actually.  We could inject you, but it might cause a problem in the wormhole going back, because you’d be taking back something you didn’t arrive with, creating an imbalance of sorts.  And if someone on Earth were to find them –- ” Ian spread his hands, inviting Jack to theorize about the outcome. 

Jack nodded, understanding completely.  “Don’t even begin to speculate.  The problems would be enormous.”  He turned to Aeryn.  “We’ll muddle through without them.  This is why you understood everything but let Ian do all the explaining when we first met.”  She nodded.  “All this is fine and very interesting, but I want you to take me to see John.  Now.” 

Aeryn nodded and gestured toward the doorway.  Jack glanced over his shoulder as he left Command, checking on Ian, but the youngster showed no inclination of accompanying them.  Several members of the crew were drifting along behind him, falling behind as Aeryn moved to take the lead, hurrying into the passageways.  Jack lengthened his stride to keep up with her, all other concerns falling away as he focused on the fact that he was going to see his son again.       

   * * * * *

[KernilCrash]

Part 3

“How long did it take John to learn his way around Moya?” Jack asked as Aeryn led the way through the tiers.  Every intersection and every corridor looked nearly the same.  They stepped through an arched opening into a chamber with five other exits plus an open vertical shaft that penetrated both the floor and the ceiling.  Every route leading out looked identical to the one they’d used to enter and he wondered if he’d missed some sort of markings that would tell a person where they were in the vessel.   

Aeryn laughed, but the effort sounded strained to his ears.  “Many cycles,” she answered, detouring around the shaft and gesturing for him to pass through one of the exits ahead of her. 

“He got lost at first,” Jack theorized, assessing the laugh and her look of amusement. 

“Many times.  He learned very fast though.  John soon knowed how to repair most of Moya.”  Jack started to correct her English, but decided it wouldn’t matter in the long run.  They turned into another chamber with a vertical shaft, identical to the last one, but this time Aeryn chose to swing onto the ladder and scrambled down a level.  Jack waited until her fingers were off the rungs before following her down, moving awkwardly until he got used to the oval openings in the structure. 

“Quickest way,” she explained, pointing to the shaft, and then turned to lead the way again. 

“Wait,” Jack requested as he detoured to one side of the latest corridor.  The interior bulkhead between the arched ribs was missing here, providing a view into a chamber larger than most of the others he’d been in so far.  He stepped cautiously to the edge of the floor and looked down into another maintenance and hangar area -- this one filled with smaller craft.  “Hangar bay four?” he asked, remembering Ian’s brief description. 

“Yes,” she confirmed, moving to stand beside him.  “Prowler,” she pointed at a lethally sleek looking craft, and he understood Ian’s ‘dradest’ remark for the first time.  “Nebari short range fighter, Sheyang fighter, Kalish courier, transport pod,” she listed, pointing each one out.  “More there,” she added, indicating the hangar bay. 

“The Farscape,” he added, spotting a battered and scorched little spaceship tucked into a corner, its stubby wings folded in toward the fuselage.  “Does it still fly?”  A part of him wanted to go down and smash the once-white module into junk metal, as though destroying it could reverse what had happened years ago, returning his son to him. 

“It can, but it has not been flown in many cycles.  John will not let us throw it out.”  She smiled tolerantly, a look very like Leslie’s expression when he’d insisted on keeping a favorite pair of pants or a tattered jacket.  She jerked her head and they resumed their progress through the gleaming hallways. 

“I wish I’d stopped him from going,” Jack blurted, remembering the desperation as he’d yelled ‘abort’ again and again until it was certain that the module had disappeared, taking his son with it.  He’d wanted to yell John’s name that day, plead with him to turn back as the transmissions began to break up, but he’d been too aware of the other men and women around him in the control room and had refrained from voicing the impassioned plea.  He’d been left with the single word -- ‘abort’ -- falling from his lips repeatedly, as though the mantra could draw John back.  It hadn’t worked.   

“I too,” Aeryn responded in a slow depressed voice. 

Jack stopped walking, so shocked by her answer that his feet stumbled to a halt.  “You would want him to have never come here?” he asked incredulously. 

“No.  Not the same moment.”  She bit her lip for a moment and then shrugged.  “There was a day a very long time ago when John thought he was going home.  Maybe if I said he should stay he would not have gone.  That was the start of many things that went wrong.  If I had spoken that I loved him, then maybe …”  She stopped walking, staring blindly into middle space.  “Maybe this is my fault.  He is sick because of me.” 

“I don’t believe that, Aeryn,” he offered, trying to comfort her despite an almost complete lack of details.  “I don’t believe you’d do anything that would cause him harm.” 

“Things were not always this way,” she continued shakily.  “When John goes to where he thinks is Earth, he found a species not human.  He found out that he is not on Earth but they put information in his head about wormholes.” 

“Put it in his head?  How?”  The mildly nauseous feeling was back in his stomach as he considered what had happened to John.   

“They just --” she made a pressing movement with both hands “--put it in.  It is in there now.  Then others found out he has this in his mind.  They chase him, torture him, hurt him.”  Aeryn looked away from Jack, taking several long breaths.  “Maybe it causes what is wrong now.  If I had just said … stay.  If I had just told him not to go.”  She turned back to face him, tears brimming.  “John is sick because of me!” she said in anguish. 

“No.  It’s never that easy, Aeryn Sun.  This other species put the knowledge in his head.  It’s their fault as well.  I’ve only heard a small portion of what happened, but I’m sure that this is not your fault.  I couldn’t have stopped John from flying the Farscape that day, any more than you could stop him from doing anything he sets his mind to doing.  Some things happen in life because they happen, not because of someone’s actions.” 

“Fate?” 

“I prefer the word destiny.”  He gestured for her to lead and they began walking again. 

“It does not feel like destiny,” Aeryn resumed.  “It feels like a curse.  John is kind and gentle.  He does not deserve this sickness.”  She led the way through two more intersections then drew to a halt in the middle of a deserted corridor.  “Are you sure you want to do this?”

Jack nodded, unconsciously pulling himself up as ramrod straight as the woman before him, his body braced for the next few moments even if his mind wasn’t sure what he was about to see.  He glanced left and right, registering for the first time the wide latticed bars that served as doors for each of the chambers they’d been passing, tucking a question about that away for later.  “Yes.  I’m ready,” he answered. 

Aeryn moved past two more doorways, then waved her hand past a glowing sensor on the wall and a heavy grate swung up, sliding into a recess in the wall.  She looked back the way they’d come as D’Argo and several of the others appeared, moving slowly and quietly to join them.  They spread out in the corridor, their diffident stances all speaking of stress and anxiety, waiting silently as Aeryn led Jack into the chamber.

“John?” she called quietly.   

Jack followed her, his gaze flicking toward the bed, surprised to find it empty.  Someone in the room was humming so quietly it was almost subliminal.  He cocked his head to listen more carefully and it sorted itself into a song his wife had loved and had sung to the children whenever they were sick.  Aeryn was standing at the foot of the bed, looking down toward the floor and he moved to stand beside her.  There was a figure huddled there, arms wrapped around its knees as it sat on the floor humming quietly and rocking slightly from side to side.

It was John.  It was an older version of the young man he’d last seen on the gantry leading to the space shuttle, his body thickened with age, face lined with wrinkles, all vitality missing.  The black clad man looked up at him, jaw gaping open with a glitter of spittle creeping along his lower lip, vacant gaze examining his visitors.  Jack Crichton took two fast steps backward, recoiling in shock.  He struggled to recall everything that his grandson and Aeryn had told him since they’d appeared in his kitchen, finally admitting that at no time had they ever intimated that it was John’s body that was failing instead of his mind.  He’d jumped to that conclusion on his own, assuming that disease meant a physical affliction.   

Jack’s carefully constructed greeting evaporated, the words he’d prepared to address his lost son disappearing in a flash, leaving him stammering and short of breath.  Despite everything he’d been through over the past hours, the rattlers had been remarkably absent … until now.  The snarl of sensations jangled the nerves in his stomach into painful cramping tightness.  He’d somehow envisioned a weakened body, perhaps with feverish eyes staring out of an ashen face.  There’d been several possibilities flitting around in his head, but this wasn’t one of them.  He wasn’t ready for this.

“When you told me he was sick, I thought you meant he was ill,” Jack objected, unable to take his eyes off the stranger sitting on the floor.       

“He is ill,” Aeryn insisted.  “He is sick.”  She moved slowly to sit on the foot of the bed, transitioning the last two feet with infinite caution.  “Hello, John,” she spoke softly, then waited until the blue eyes turned in her direction.  “How are you feeling today?”  He blinked at her, then looked back at his father, his gaze wandering from head to foot and back. 

“John?” Aeryn’s voice summoned the stare back in her direction.  “I’m Aeryn.  Do you remember me?”  There was no response.  “This is not an injury.  We have made sure of that. This is a sickness.”  She was talking in a soothing cadence now, keeping her voice low and calm.     

“I thought you meant physically.  I didn’t understand … I didn’t … ”  Jack moved forward step by step, his feet connecting with the floor a moment too early, slapping down without sensation as the shock divorced him from his body.  A small voice inside his head insisted that this was not John Crichton; this was not his son, his offspring.  This was not his lost child.  His son was a brilliant scientist and an astronaut who had been lost from him during a bold mission, not this elderly soul with a failing mind. 

But reality sat on the floor before him, forcing him to face the truth.  John had grown old.  Jack had to remind himself that this was not his ‘present’, and that he was very probably dead by now, but that reminder did nothing to quell the grief when he saw what ravages time had wrought on his son.  The brown hair had gone completely gray, not silvery like his own thick shock of hair, but a lifeless, lackluster gray.  It was cropped short, standing up in disorderly tufts as though someone had run a hand through it repeatedly.  Aside from the unruly hair, John was clean, tidily dressed, and appeared well fed, obviously well cared for by his friends. 

“Hello John.  I’ve missed you,” he pushed out past the lump in his throat, his voice thick and rasping.  The old man on the floor stared at the newcomer for several more moments, leaned to one side to check on the others standing near the door, then returned to contemplating his visitor.  The empty gaze turned into something approaching recognition as he studied his father, then a tenuous smile appeared.  Jack went down on one knee beside him, thinking that perhaps things weren’t as bad as he’d originally estimated.   

“Hi Dad!  Did you come to pick me up?” John asked brightly, the uncertain smile turning into a happy grin.  The eager, innocent voice coming out of the aged face was a cruel contrast, in a single moment treating Jack to the agony that John’s friends had endured during his decline.  It wasn’t as bad as he’d thought … it was worse.     

“Not exactly, John.”  Jack searched for something to say to this stranger wearing portions of his son’s physiology.

“Mom said she was going to pick me up after the science fair, but she hasn’t shown up.  Did the guys at NASA let you out early?  Want to see my project?”  John faltered and looked confused.  “You never saw my project.  You weren’t here.”  He looked around him, finally taking more interest in the other figures standing just outside the door.  He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.  “Who are they, Dad?  Did they come with you?” 

“No, John.  They were already here.  They came to see your project.”  Jack rifled through his memory, but he couldn’t remember ever seeing any of John’s science projects … not one.  He knew that Leslie must have told him about the youngster’s efforts, but he’d never really listened or taken the time to examine the inventions, and now he could offer no details to ease John’s anxiety.  There had been a row of framed award certificates on his son’s bedroom wall, but he’d never paid any attention to the budding genius living in his home until John’s degrees and theories had led him to a position at IASA.  Not until his work had ultimately led him to this.  “Tell me about your project, son.  What did you build this year?”   

The question came too late.  The fleeting memory had been lost, and John was backing away from him, suspicion in every movement.  “I don’t remember you.  Why are you here?  Did Scorpius send you?”  John scrambled across the floor on his hands and feet, working his way into a corner where he huddled into the niche, wrapping his arms around his bent knees and eyeing Jack warily over his forearms.  “Go away!” he demanded.  “I don’t want you here.”

“John, it’s me.  I’m your father,” Jack implored him, watching for any sign of recognition as he eased forward. 

The angry expression mutated into something far more anxious as he grew closer.  “Go away!” John barked at him.  “Don’t touch me!”   

Aeryn pulled at Jack’s arm, startling him.  He’d momentarily lost track of the fact that there was someone else in the chamber.  “Come.  It is no good now,” she urged as he looked up at her.  “He will not let us near now.”

“There must be something, Aeryn, something I can do to make him realize it’s me.”  Jack rose to his feet and took two reluctant steps away, responding slowly to the insistent tugs. 

“This is what Chiana told us when we landed.  He knows no one today.  Some days it is better, but today it is at its worst.”  She grabbed him firmly by the arm and steered him out of the cell.  “Do not look back.  It makes you feel only sadder.”   

“What about the procedure?  When will you start that?”  He followed her into the corridor, looking between the woman who had spent the last two decades with John and the small group that was still waiting outside John’s quarters.  “What’s going on?” 

“Come with me,” she tried again, pulling lightly at his upper arm.  “Do not stay here.” 

Jack pulled away, suddenly alarmed despite her gentle entreaties.  “Why not?  What are you going to do to him?”  He looked behind him and Ian was headed into John’s cell, trailing behind Nerri and two individuals he hadn’t met yet.  “Ian!  What’s going on?” 

The young man wheeled, coming to join them as Aeryn spouted a long string of Sebacean, aimed alternately at Ian and Jack.  “We have to take my father down to where the Kallimitri have set up their equipment.  It’s a chamber that we use for an infirmary.  That’s where they’ll perform the procedure.”   

“Good.  Let me help.”  Jack started back toward the chamber, hearing D’Argo’s quiet grumbling garble inside. 

“No, please go with Mother.”  Ian caught Jack by the elbow, arresting his progress.  “Go with her, grandfather,” he pleaded, motioning Jack away and using his English title for the first time.  “We’d hoped he’d recognize you long enough to do this another way, but we’re going to have to force him out of his room.  It’s awful.  He doesn’t remember where he is so he gets confused and frightened and won’t let anyone take him out of his cell,” the words tumbled out of the boy in a distressed rush.  Jack looked into the blue-gray eyes, so like John’s, so like Aeryn’s, and saw the anguish that the teen was somehow managing to keep almost completely hidden.  “Don’t watch, melnatsa.” 

A high-pitched screech of anger and fear emanated from inside the cell, followed by a long wail of pure unhappiness from a voice that was unmistakably John’s.  “Crichton, calm down!” D’Argo’s voice insisted, the last word nearly lost beneath another scream of anger.

“What about you, melnatnic?”  Jack found the word surprisingly comfortable on his tongue.  “This has to be difficult for you.  I should help.”   

Ian gestured with his head, indicating something behind Jack.  “Please go with her.  I can’t do anything to help her, and sometimes Dad remembers me,” Ian insisted.  “Go with mother … please.”  The last word was pronounced in tones that were entirely John’s, destroying Jack’s resolve to remain near his son.   

Jack looked at Ian more closely, noting the trembling hands and the glittering threat of tears.  “I should help,” he insisted, thinking that no teenager should have to cope with this situation.

“D’Argo and the others will do the work.  I’m only here in case Dad remembers me.  Sometimes it helps.”  Ian took a deep breath and plunged into the chamber, ending the conversation. 

Jack turned away, automatically following Aeryn as she headed away from the wheedling voices that were attempting to calm John, his ears registering nothing except the level of distress coming from his son’s voice.  He trailed after Aeryn, seeing the source of Ian’s outer strength in her straight spine and squared shoulders.  “Wait, Aeryn!” he called ahead as she hurried through the curving corridors, accelerating to a near run as they drew further away from Quarters and could still hear the echoing yells of the struggle being waged. 

She came to a halt, back still turned, and he began to ask why she didn’t help comfort the distressed person in that chamber.  Then he remembered the visits to Leslie’s hospital room in the last few days before her death, and how he’d had to steel himself every time to face the person in that room –- the person who had taken the place of his laughing, vibrant wife.  She’d still been the person he’d fallen in love with, but something integral was gone and he’d never quite been able to see his beloved Leslie in that depleted figure beneath the blankets. 

“Aeryn,” he said quietly, pulling at her shoulder.  She resisted his efforts, every muscle screaming out that she wanted to be left alone.  “It’s all right to feel this way,” Jack whispered, walking around the statue she’d become until he faced her.  “How long has he been this way?  This bad?” 

“He got worse … about …” Aeryn took a deep breath, letting it out in a shaking sigh, “a quarter yee-arh ago.”  She stood stock still at first as he hugged her, then suddenly leaned into his embrace and buried her face in his shirt.  A short collection of clipped, consonant dominated words was mumbled into his chest as they stood in the middle of the tier, simply holding each other as they shared their loss, then Aeryn pushed away from him and wiped at her eyes. 

“It was … gradual?”  Jack nodded that she’d chosen the correct word.  “Slow at first.  Just forget this, that.  Then John forgets more.  One day John forgets Ian, next day he forgets … ” Aeryn swallowed hard, her voice cracking slightly as she continued.  “The next day he forgets me.  It all comes back, then another day he forgets again.” 

They walked together through the tiers, Aeryn gradually describing what it had been like to watch one of the most important people in her life slowly disappear.  “First we think John was hurt too much, too often.  It is the injuries from the past that are doing this.  We find a –- ” she slid into Sebacean. 

“I didn’t get that one, Aeryn,” Jack stopped her.  She made a frustrated motion. 

“One who checks him for injury,” she prompted. 

“A doctor, medical personnel of some sort,” Jack provided.  “Go on.” 

“We find one.  He telled us that it is a sickness, one he does not know.  We go –- ”  Another frustrated growl emerged.  Aeryn pointed to several places in midair, switching from left to right several times.  Jack simply nodded his understanding.  “Look for someone who can fix this thing.  John forgets more.” 

“You finally located the Calamari …”  He stopped when Aeryn burst out laughing, tears beginning to trickle down her face in a horrible combination of humor and grief.  “What?” he asked, concerned about her emotional stability. 

“Kallimitri,” she corrected.  “John does this also … did this.”  Aeryn turned away, hiding her expression from him. 

“You found the Kallimitri and they can repair the damage, but there wasn’t a suitable sample of DNA to begin the repairs.”  She nodded, still facing away from him.  “So you came all the way through time and space to find me just to cure John.”  Aeryn nodded again, wiping away the tears.  “Why come back into the past though?  Why not some other time?” 

She held up one finger.  “We wanted to be sure we find you healthy and not old.”  He nodded his understanding and she held up a second finger.  “We must not go back before John leaves.  It would be good to get his own DNA but meeting him there would be very, very bad.”

“Destroy entire universes?” he quoted what she had told him in his kitchen just hours earlier, feeling mildly disoriented by how much had happened in such a short time. 

“Yes.”  Aeryn held up a third finger.  “Big item.  We come to a place called Tormented Space to find wormholes to bring us back.  Most do not go where and when we need to go.  It took ten solar days to find one even close.  Kallimitri cost much currency.  We cannot wait any longer.  Must come to this time in your life.  John cannot wait any longer.” 

“I was wrong about one thing, Aeryn Sun,” Jack said, gathering her into a single-armed hug.  He was treated to a short Sebacean phrase with an upswing at the end, which he assumed was an encouragement to tell her more.  “I thought you and John loved each other the way I loved his mother, but I’m not convinced I’m capable of loving another person the way you love him.”

* * * * *

“Aeryn?”  D’Argo’s voice burst over her comms, breaking into the short moment of peace she’d found enclosed in the arms of someone who loved John enough to travel all the way across the universe to help him.  She pulled out of Jack’s enveloping embrace, making a gesture that she hoped he’d understand meant she had to answer the summons. 

“Yes, D’Argo,” she prompted. 

“We’re in the infirmary.  I had to tongue John.”  The voice dragged the words out, depression leaching all vitality out of the announcement.  “They’re getting started down here.” 

“I’ll come down.”  She thought of all the cycles that D’Argo had remained aboard Moya despite the opportunities he’d had to make a new life with his own species, and of his long friendship with John.  “I’m sorry,” she offered, knowing that the luxan detested knocking John out that way, considering it a violation of the trust they’d shared for so many cycles. 

“He was fighting too fiercely, Aeryn.  I didn’t have a choice.”  A long sigh hissed over the comms.  “But he had more energy than usual, so perhaps it wasn’t a bad sign.” 

“Thank you, D’Argo,” she offered, knowing that they were all grasping at the small things to convince themselves that there was some hope left.  John’s energy levels generally rose and fell in a direct relationship with his degree of anxiety.  If he was able to fight off a luxan and three adult nebari, it only meant that his disorientation and fear were at an all time high and his memory had reached a new low.  “Is Ian with you?” she asked, gesturing for Jack to follow her as she started toward the infirmary. 

“No.  He …”  The deep voice hesitated.  “Ian couldn’t stand to watch, Aeryn.  He took off at a run.” 

“I’ll ask Pilot to see if the DRDs can find him,” she responded, suddenly torn between her need to check on John and the instinct that commanded that she first find and comfort her son.  The comms channel closed with a muffled chirp, and she turned toward the visitor. 

“We go see John,” she stumbled, wishing there was some way to give Jack translator microbes.  Transitioning from Sebacean to English felt as though she had run from solid ground into neck deep mud in a single step.  Every word had to be teased out of her memory, painstakingly pronounced in the hopes that she was getting it right.  She rarely paid attention to the sounds that actually emerged from John or Ian, listening only to the version that her microbes fed directly into her brain, so reproducing the right noises was a constant battle. 

“That was a longer conversation.  Is there a problem?”  He fell into step beside her, both of them accelerating as she indicated which way to turn before they reached each intersection. 

Aeryn tried to come up with an explanation for a luxan tonguing, her vocabulary falling far short of what was necessary to describe what occurred when someone got hit with the venom barb of D’Argo’s nearly prehensile tongue.  “No problem,” she assured him.  “They made John go to sleep to get him to the --”  She resorted to the Sebacean term for a medical chamber, unable to remember the English version. 

“Made him go to sleep,” Jack parroted thoughtfully.  “You sedated him?” 

“Yes,” she confirmed, deciding that was close enough to the truth.  She considered comming Ian to ask him to resume his duties as translator, but decided that it was more important to give him time to cope with the upheaval of seeing his father so debilitated.  He’d exhibited a maturity far beyond his years during the first stages of John’s disease, giving in to grief and the resulting uncontrollable outbursts only when his father no longer remembered him.  “Ian is somewhere else,” she told Jack.  “We will do our best to explain things to you without him.” 

“He’s been through a lot.  He deserves time to deal with this.”  Aeryn glanced at him, reminding herself that this reserved, dignified man was a parent as well, and knew all too well the agonies of fatherhood.  She wondered if he’d played on the floor of his home with his young son as John had played with Ian.  Her parenting skills had taken a jump forward the day she’d found John lying on his belly in Command, scrawling crude drawings across Moya’s golden floors with a lump of blue pigmented wax so his four cycle old son could color them in with the rest of the collection they’d concocted.  Three motras of floor were covered with the rainbow hued figures; two DRDs waiting patiently to clean off the artwork once the laughing pair was finished.  She’d seen the joy in John’s eyes and the delight in Ian’s and had finally understood what childhood was supposed to be like. 

“Do you need some time to deal with this, Aeryn?” Jack asked her as they approached the infirmary.  “I can stand in a corner and watch if you’d like to be somewhere else.” 

She shook her head emphatically.  “One way or other there will be time for me later.  With John or without.  I must be with him now.”  She motioned him to lead the way through the doorway, and they joined the group that was already gathered in the large chamber. 

   * * * * *

Jack stepped to one side as he entered the room, giving his tired brain a few seconds to adjust to the chaos, wondering if every gathering of personnel aboard this ship was always such anarchy.  Not being able to understand the bedlam of multiple languages had to be contributing to the pandemonium, but it seemed that everyone aboard the leviathan always talked at once, rarely without some form of argument taking place. 

He recognized D’Argo and his son, and Chiana’s brother was standing with the other two men of his species that had gone into John’s cell less than an hour earlier.  Chiana appeared from behind D’Argo, leaning to one side to spot Jack, and then beckoning for him to join the group.  He moved into the cluster, waiting with the others as Aeryn went to the far side of the chamber where four of the brown-furred Kallimitri were working around a padded table.  He jerked his head to one side, indicating to the group that he was stepping away, and followed Aeryn.  Sliding past D’Argo’s bulk, he spotted John’s unconscious body on the raised bed, small attachments stuck to his forehead and torso, several greenish tubes sprouting from his wrists and ankles. 

“What’s happening?” he demanded.  The rattlers seemed to have taken up permanent residence in his stomach.  It had been over twenty years since he’d sat at his son’s bedside, comforting John through a bout of chicken pox, and he’d missed the remainder of the childhood diseases completely.  NASA had put demands on him that had taken him away from his children for too much of their lives, and he felt ill equipped to act as a father to this elderly patient lying before him. 

“Scanners,” Aeryn explained to him, pointing to the round, silvery attachments.  “Kallimitri cure,” she added, pointing to the semi-translucent tubes.  One of the clicking aliens scuttled between them and the bed, rudely nudging them out of the way as it examined each of the additions to John’s body.  The creature’s upper body spun around almost one hundred and eighty degrees, allowing it to lean past the head of the bed to tap a fast cadence across several control surfaces.  The entries initiated a quiet hum that grew to a louder, pulsing thrum as more and more of the equipment was activated. 

“It begins,” Aeryn announced. 

Jack watched as a series of monitors sprang to life, displaying what was clearly a human brain mapped out in three dimensions.  Another screen burst from black into multi-colored pinpoints, spinning and evolving into the twisted strands of human DNA.  The Kallimitri gathered around that display, their vocalizations switching to a low buzzing that flowed in dissonant contrast to the tones of their equipment. 

“They think it is too simple,” Aeryn smiled as one of the geneticists made an adjustment and then scratched its head.  “They saw this when they do tests, but thought maybe when they started it would be more complexer.” 

“Complex,” Jack correctly absently, focused on the scientists.  “That’s good news isn’t it?  If human DNA is simple, they should be able to fix it.” 

“They do not find the source of the disease yet.  They search more.” 

Jack switched back to watching the readouts of John’s brain, fascinated by the increasing amounts of information being layered into the depiction as they located the damage that had robbed John of his ability to remember and reason.  One of the Kallimitri scuttled between him and the readouts, dancing about on all four legs as it pointed out myriad dark areas where no activity was being detected.   

“My lord.  That …”  Jack leaned closer, waiting to see if any of the blank areas would fill in with data, but they remained colorless.  “That’s Alzheimer’s,” Jack blurted, “but he’s too young for that.”  He looked back at the still body, and realized that at this particular spot in time and space, John was nearly the same age as himself, and was old enough to fall victim to the degenerative disease.

“Az-heimers?” Aeryn mimicked the new word as she turned to face him.  “This is an Earth sickness?  It is not a thing he catches here?”  She crossed her arms in front of her body, shaking slightly, looking both relieved and close to fainting at the same time.  “He does not get sick because he is here?”  She bit her lower lip and looked over her shoulder at John before meeting Jack’s eyes. 

“No … well, maybe not.  It’s possible he’s been carrying it for over twenty-five of your cycles,” Jack admitted.  “Our scientists aren’t quite sure what causes it, but they think it’s partly genetic, coupled with outside triggers.  He’s sick because of something he inherited from me.”  And the guilt was almost more than he could handle.  Jack looked at Aeryn and suddenly understood part of the reason why this woman had traveled across space and time to find him.  “You thought it was something you did, something about his being here that had caused this, when it was probably me or his life on Earth all along.” 

Aeryn nodded jerkily, tears brimming even as she smiled.  “How bad is this Azheimers?” she asked, her struggle with English robbing her voice of emotion. 

The elder Crichton rubbed his forehead for a moment, trying to remember what little he’d learned about the disease from cursory readings.  No one he knew had fallen to the affliction, so he hadn’t made an effort to learn much about it.  “Have his language skills suffered yet?” he asked.  She shook her head, resorting to an easier method of communication, then held her hand up with two fingers a hair’s breadth apart.  “I think this is still in its early stages then.  But …” he jammed his teeth down on his tongue hard, mentally cursing himself for thinking aloud.  The group behind him had gone silent as he explained, listening carefully while waiting across the chamber. 

Chiana’s light babble intruded, clearly demanding something.  “But what?” Aeryn repeated in English. 

“At some point -- and I don’t know when this happens, Aeryn –- at some point the damage begins to kill off portions of the brain and at that point some memories may be permanently lost.”  Jack turned toward the group and watched the depression sink into already weary bodies.  He tried to reverse the effects of his pessimistic comment.  “But we don’t know how to reverse this on Earth.  We’ve never had anyone recover from this disease, so I can’t tell you whether the damage will be irreparable …”  He was only making it worse, he realized.  His assurances were only serving to remind these people that John’s physiology was under attack from a source they had never encountered in this part of the universe.

The Kallimitri continued to ignore the discussion around them.  Although there were only four of the creatures, the flashing blur of their legs as they hurried around the chamber gave the impression that John was surrounded by a mob of the six-limbed geniuses.  They finished adjusting their machines, checked their patient one more time, then flooded out of the infirmary, leaving the crew transfixed in a suddenly silent chamber.  Chiana and Aeryn flipped a shimmering golden cover over John’s inert body, and then stepped back, staring at the pale, lifeless face. 

“Now what?” Jack asked, looking to the others for some sort of sign.  D’Argo sighed and grumbled at him.  “We wait,” Jack interpreted on his own, his assessment confirmed by nods from the rest of the group. 

* * * * *

[KernilCrash]

 Part 4

Jack paced around the Farscape module for the fifth time, running his fingers across the hull, occasionally stooping to look at a modification.  The last time he’d touched the craft it had been brand new, gleaming under florescent lights, and his fingers had skated across the polished surface virtually without friction.  Now it was singed and pitted, even the hardened ceramic nosecone showing signs of wear, every inch of the hull looking as though it had been sandblasted.  The stumpy little craft was responsible for more grief in his family than Leslie’s death had caused, but looking at its familiar lines, Jack felt a tingle of pride run up his spine.  Ultimately, John’s theories had been right, and if it hadn’t been for the wormhole, he would have proved it to the entire world. 

He crouched down to look at a blackened scorch mark, rubbing at it to verify that the discoloration was a deep burn in the skin of the module rather than a superficial layer of soot.  Ian had related his version of a few of John’s more recent adventures, the deepening adult voice cracking into the child’s higher pitched tones as his memories took him back to a more exciting, more pleasant time of his young life.  Between Ian’s enthusiastic descriptions, and Aeryn’s quieter hints, he’d been forced to conclude that John had survived even more battering than his spacecraft had over the years.  Jack rubbed a hand across the faded emblem on the side, clearing away dirt from the American flag, and grieved for everything that John had been forced to endure.     

A quiet chirrup drew his attention to the doorway.  The first DRD he’d encountered aboard Moya waited there for him, assigned to guide him to wherever Ian was located.  Jack had remained in the infirmary for almost an hour after the treatment had begun, patiently watching over John, but when the rest of the crew had filtered out one by one, he’d decided that it might be time to let Ian show him around the huge ship.  The teenager had responded to a summons from his mother, appearing from wherever he’d gone to deal with his emotions, and had guided him on the proverbial whirlwind tour of the leviathan.  They’d worked their way up and down, back and forth, front to back, Ian excited to bouncing exuberance by the opportunity to show his grandfather his unusual home. 

They’d toured more of what they termed ‘Quarters’, with the accompanying explanation that Moya had been used as a prison ship, which resolved his earlier question about the heavy bars that served as doors.  They’d explored hangar bay four, Ian spouting performance statistics about each of the craft parked there the way a license-hungry teen on Earth could recite displacement, torque, and horsepower figures.  The ‘terrace’ had been every bit as spectacular as he’d been promised, the sense of standing in space multiplying when Moya had gradually rolled along her axis so that a massive nebula had seemed to rise over the side of the ship until it rested overhead.  He’d learned about ‘starburst’ when they’d stood in the chamber deep within the ship, the walls a glittering anthracite black from the reinforcement needed to contain the energy required for Moya to pierce the boundary between dimensions. 

Jack had finally been forced to beg for a few moments of peace and quiet to let his spinning head settle down, asking specifically to be left alone in the hangar to contemplate the vehicle that had started the adventure, responsible for bringing first John and then himself to this unbelievable place.  He glanced at his watch, verifying that just under an hour had passed since he’d been dropped off here, giving him an ‘arn’ to himself.  According to the digital readout, it was seven o’clock in the morning at his house on Earth, explaining the fatigue that dragged at his shoulders and back.  He’d flipped off the lights in the living room a little before nine, and had been on the far side of the universe before midnight. 

“And the girls complain about how far they have to travel to come home on the holidays,” he offered to the DRD.  It spun around clockwise and chirped at him.  “Come here,” he invited it.  The DRD pointed itself about five feet to his left and arced toward him, once again drifting uncontrollably to the right. 

“The circuits that make him move are starting to fail,” Ian explained, walking into the maintenance bay.  “This problem started about twenty days ago.  I’m afraid he’s getting too old.  We’ll let him keep going until he only travels in circles, and then we’ll probably shut him down.” 

“It can’t be repaired?” Jack asked, picking the unit up and turning it over. 

“When DRDs get damaged, they’re often recycled for the materials they’re made from.  It’s easier for Moya to grow a new one than repair a badly damaged unit.  He’s just too old.”  Ian pointed to several of the small circuits on the underside of the chattering robot that weren’t illuminated.  “I tried replacing these, but it’s his internal systems that are toasted.  There’s no power getting to these motivation gears.”  The non-stop clicking and squeaking continued.  “Shut up,” the boy ordered the inverted DRD, and it quieted down to an occasional chirp. 

“Do these pull out?” Jack asked.  Ian nodded.  The older man deftly plucked six circuits out of the left side of the DRD, mirroring the darkened spots on the right.  “There you go, scooter,” he said, setting the drone down on the floor.  “Try that.”  One-Eye clicked several times and sailed in a straight line toward the open door. 

“Why didn’t I think of that?” Ian muttered in disgust.  “I kept trying to fix it.  I didn’t think to disable more of it.” 

“You probably had something else on your mind,” Jack suggested, handing him the spare components.  “And you’ve probably never had to cope with pushing a shopping cart with one bad wheel.  You get inventive when you have to cope with that sort of thing.”  Ian remained silent, merely giving him a peculiar look in response to his comment.  The DRD came zipping back toward them, chirped at them half a dozen times, made a neat left turn and headed back toward the door, enjoying its restored capacity for traveling in a straight line.  They laughed together as it made three left hand circles and then disappeared into the corridor. 

“I can’t seem to think about anything but my dad,” Ian admitted, wandering over to a workbench, his back turned toward Jack.  “No matter how hard I try to concentrate on other things, it’s all I think about most of the time.  I can’t eat … my stomach hurts … I barely hear what the others are telling me sometimes.”  He fiddled with a tool, finally flipping it onto the work surface and turning to face Jack.  “How do I make it stop?” he pleaded. 

“Have you talked about this with your mother?” 

Ian shook his head.  “She’s got it all under control … all of this I mean.  Nothing ever gets to her.”  He sighed, the bony shoulders rising and falling under the thin shirt.  “I wish I could be like that.” 

Jack suppressed a wry smile, knowing it would be misunderstood by the unhappy teen.  “You should ask her, Ian.  You might be surprised at the answer you get.”  The young John-look-alike made a full body squirm, using the same motion his father had used as a youngster to suggest that he didn’t agree without actually saying it out loud.  “Aeryn might have it concealed, Ian, but she feels every emotion you do -- every bit of grief, every bit of fear and concern and uncertainty.  It’s only human to feel this way, and there’s no way to stop it.” 

“But she’s not human,” Ian insisted, “she’s sebacean.” 

“I know.  I remember what you told me in my kitchen, but I’ve managed to figure out exactly two things since I got here.”  Jack gestured with both hands to indicate that ‘here’ meant Moya.  “First, I figured out how to make a DRD run in a straight line.”  Ian let out a short laugh.  “And second, I’ve noticed that every person I’ve met here so far seems to act pretty human, including your mother.  Talk to her, Ian.” 

“Yeah … maybe,” came a disbelieving mumble. 

“So, what’s next on the tour?” Jack asked, changing the subject when he recognized that Ian had listened to as much adult advice as he was going to tolerate.  “What else should I see?”   

“You haven’t met Pilot yet.  Some of the others say he’s kind of freaky looking when you meet him for the first time, but he’s the gentlest, kindest person on board.  How about going up to the Den?”  Ian was grinning now, his eyes shining with renewed enthusiasm. 

“Sounds good,” Jack encouraged him, motioning toward the door.  He waited until Ian’s back was turned before peeking at his watch.  The Kallimitri had started their treatment a little before his version of two o’clock, so John had been subjected to the genetic modifications for over five hours.  Curiosity and concern were teaming up to urge him to check back, but logic told him it was too soon to expect a substantial change.  He would follow Ian for a while longer before asking to return to the ship’s sickbay.  Jack lengthened his stride to catch up with his grandson, using the time to remove his wristwatch and tuck it in his pocket where he wouldn’t be as likely to consult it every ten minutes.   

   * * * * *

Aeryn sat cross-legged on the spare medbed, watching the surges of blood and chemicals flow through the thin tubes connecting John to the Kallimitri devices.  The scampering creatures had checked on their equipment six and a half arns earlier, verifying that everything was working correctly, and hadn’t been back since.  They’d declared that there was nothing more to be done for at least two solar days, and had left it up to Moya’s crew to make sure the setup remained undisturbed.  When Chiana had checked on them two arns ago, the quartet of geneticists was in the Center Chamber eating their way through the food stores faster than Rygel ever could have.  The stray thought of the Dominar summoned a smile.  The last time they’d visited the restored monarch he’d been perched on his throne behind a pile of marjoules nearly twice the size of the Hynerian himself, happily munching his way through the delicacies as he conducted the affairs of his empire. 

“Any change?”  Ian walked hesitantly into the chamber, his feet stopping and starting like a fuel-starved Prowler running on the last dregs of froonium. 

“It’s only been twelve arns since it started.  It’s too soon to expect any improvement, Ian.”  She waited several microts, expecting Jack to appear, and then asked, “Where’s your melnatsa?” using the Nebari term that Ian preferred. 

“He wanted to sit with Pilot a little longer.  He can’t understand single word of course, but Pilot was showing him some recordings of Dad from the first cycles he was here.”  Aeryn thought of those stored images, and understood why Ian had abandoned his grandfather to Pilot’s care.  She’d reviewed some of the recordings when John’s illness had first begun to rob her of the love of her life, and the bounding vitality displayed on the screen had only served as a cruel reminder when compared to the more recent edition of John Crichton. 

“Pilot will have one of the DRDs show him the way here when he’s ready,” Ian finished.

“Have you been up there all this time?” she asked, knowing they’d been headed for the Den arns ago. 

Ian shook his head.  “We went to get something to eat, talked for a while, and melnatsa got a couple of arns sleep in my cell.  We went back up to the Den about an arn ago.”   
 
“How much longer before he has to leave?”  She kept John’s motionless body in her peripheral vision as she watched her son drift around the chamber always remaining at least a motra from the medbed as though a defense shield were keeping him from crossing the last distance to his father’s side.

Ian looked out the view portal for several microts, his gaze flickering across the nebulas and proto-galaxies of Tormented Space.  “Not more than five arns.  It’s the last one that’ll do for at least a cycle.” 

“Last what?” Jack asked, striding into the bay with the assured movements that she was realizing was a trait common to all of the Crichtons.  The drone that had been guiding him spun around, elevated its eyestalks long enough to survey the human, then accelerated away into the corridor. 

“Last wormhole,” Ian answered bluntly before Aeryn could stop him.  “You have to go back in under five arns.” 

“Will John be better by then?” 

Aeryn answered in a rush before her son could deliver an ungentle assessment of the situation.  “Probably not.  The Kallimitri think it could take up to fifteen solar days and as many as five treatments before the process is finished.  They can’t predict the final outcome yet.” 

Jack glanced at her then turned to look at Ian.  “I got ‘Kallimitri’ and nothing else.  Could you translate for me?”  Aeryn slapped herself gently alongside her head, realizing too late that she’d spouted the entire thing in Sebacean, but Ian delivered it verbatim in far gentler tones than her own hurried response. 

“So I won’t know how he is before I leave?” Jack protested.  “There’s got to be another bus after this one.  You can’t really expect me to just … ”

“Aeryn?”  A fourth voice entered the conversation, weak and quavering, but loud enough to be heard over Jack’s complaint. 

Aeryn leapt off the medbed, nearly falling to the floor as one leg buckled, nerves tingling from loss of circulation.  She limped to John’s side, shouldering her way past Jack in her rush.  She heard Ian in the background, comming Pilot and the others with the news that John was awake, but the remainder of her attention was centered on one person only. 

“Hi there.  How are you feeling?  Remember me?”  She caught his hand as he tried to reach for her, preventing him from disturbing the thin tubing that was connected to his forearm. 

“Of course I remember you.”  He looked around, taking in the medical chamber and the two other figures standing next to him.  “What’s happened?  Where the frell are we?”  John tried to sit up. 

 “Slow down, slow down,” she crooned to him, a single hand pressing him back against the padding.  “What about these other people here.  Do you remember them?” 

John stared at his teenaged son, the first signs of anxiety and confusion appearing as he considered her question, and after several microts shook his head.  His gaze flickered as Ian spun away and left the room at a run, but the hurried departure had no further impact on John as he focused on his father.  “I don’t want to know about wormholes,” John said angrily.  “Stay away from me.” 

“That’s not who he is, John.  He’s not one of the Ancients.  Think for a microt.”  She switched into English for Jack’s benefit.  “He is someone from Earth.  From your life on Earth.  You know him.” 

John stared at the lean figure suspiciously for several moments before shaking his head.  “Aeryn, I’m tired.  If I fall asleep, will you keep him away from me?  Don’t let him give me anything about wormholes, all right?”  He was becoming increasingly distraught as he tried to keep both Aeryn and Jack in sight, his eyes bouncing from one to the other as they stood alongside him.   

Aeryn glanced once at Jack’s strained expression, then leaned over John long enough to give him a brief hug.  “Yes, go back to sleep for a while.  You’ll feel better when you wake up.”  She smoothed his hair back from his forehead, and held on to his hand until she was sure he was asleep again.  “I am sorry,” she apologized to Jack.

“It’s not your fault, Aeryn,” he sighed.  “At least he remembered you.  That’s an improvement, isn’t it?” 

“He remembered me two solar days ago,” she confessed, wrapping John’s fingers around her own hand and pressing them into place.  She released the outer grip and the arranged grasp stayed in place, creating the illusion that the sleeping man was holding on to her.  His hand was as warm and firm as ever, the strength hidden beneath the lack of direction from its owner.  Her hand firmly enclosed in his had been a source of strength for so many cycles, her body responded to the fakery as though John were there.   “There are moments when he is almost normal, but then he slips away again.” 

“How long are they going to keep him sedated like this?  Wouldn’t it be easier to tell if it’s working if they let him wake up?”  Jack reached tentatively toward his son’s forehead, brushing his fingers across it lightly before retreating.  “When will they let him wake up?” 

“He sleeps because of the changes, not because of drugs,” Aeryn explained, gesturing with a shoulder toward the Kallimitri devices.  “It will take away his energy.  They say not to worry, that it will not hurt him more even if it does not make him better. But --”  She took a deep breath and ran a knuckle along one eye. 

“But how can you not worry?” Jack finished for her.  He looked past her suddenly, focusing on the open door behind her.  “Speaking of worry, shouldn’t someone go after Ian?  That was pretty tough on him.” 

“He hides,” she stated flatly.  Jack raised his eyebrows at her.  “He hides very well.  No one can find him when he goes like this.  Ian hides from the time he is this size,” Aeryn indicated a height about mid-thigh, “when he is unhappy.  Moya is very big, lots of hiding places.”   

“Aeryn!”  D’Argo and Chiana ran into the chamber, nearly colliding with Jack as they hurried toward where John was once again sleeping.  “Ian commed us that he was awake.  Isn’t he awake?” 

“He was,” she explained.  “He might have been marginally better, but he didn’t remember Ian or his father.”  She folded her arms across her chest, holding herself as tightly physically as she was emotionally.  “They did warn us that it may take several days before we know if there’s going to be an improvement.” 

“Get one of those furry frellnicks down here,” Chiana insisted.  “Have them tell us whether he’s getting better.”

“They won’t come,” D’Argo growled.  “I tried to pry one of them out of the Center Chamber earlier and it tried to bite me.”  He looked around as four more of the crew hurried into the medical bay, their disappointment apparent as they spotted the again unconscious Crichton.  “They are more like Rygel than I’d originally … what’s that?” 

“What’s that?”  Jack’s alarmed question mimicked D’Argo’s last comment almost perfectly, and Aeryn whipped around to face him, thinking he’d somehow managed to understand the brief Luxan outburst.  Jack’s attention, however, was fixed on the same flashing displays that had alerted D’Argo to a potential problem.  She finished the fast spin so that she again faced the bed where John was still resting peacefully.  Another display beyond him began to chirp, a stream of indecipherable symbols appearing at the bottom of the screen, all of which looked equally menacing even though she couldn’t read them.     

Aeryn activated her comms, nearly shouting her message.  “Who’s close to the Center Chamber?” she asked everyone at large.  She sorted out Nerri’s and Jothee’s responses among a total of five alert voices.  She called back to the entire group, “Get down there with some weapons and bring the Kallimitri to the medical chamber at the end of a rifle if necessary.  There’s something wrong with this treatment.  Hurry.” 

“Aeryn?” Jack asked, sounding even more worried than she felt.  “What’s going on?” 

“I don’t know.  We’re getting the Kallimitri now.” 

   * * * * *

Jack rubbed his stomach as the furry scientist scampered away, and then carefully sat up and swung his legs over the side of the raised bed.  “Ouch,” he complained quietly to himself.  In the two hours since the geneticists had been summoned to the infirmary, they’d taken half a dozen different samples from his body, searching for the tissue or fluid that would allow them to resolve the problem their process had encountered.  The DNA they’d started with was undamaged, a good match for John, and apparently not what they needed to realign every portion of John’s physiology. 

The flashing displays and stream of information had turned out to be nothing more than the machinery’s announcement that the process wasn’t working, neither damaging or improving John’s condition.  The overly simplistic double helix of a human was turning out to be more resistant to adaptation than the scientists had expected, resisting modifications.  The Kallimitri had scratched their heads and announced, according to Aeryn, that they required a different type of tissue sample. 

“Undifferentiated,” Jack had suggested when Aeryn hadn’t been able to convert the Kallimitri word into English.  “Maybe they need some sort of tissue or fluid where the genes and proteins aren’t adapted to an organ or a body part,” he theorized.  The furry creatures had surrounded him, orbiting his body like a reverse edition of musical chairs.  Their survey of his anatomy had been disquieting, as though they were sizing him up for a meal. 

“Our scientists … they um … Could you please stop that?” he finally requested, dizzied by their circling.  The four scientists halted, but that only made him feel like he’d been hemmed in by furniture.  Jack concentrated, closing out the aliens.  What he was about to suggest scared him because he was going to have to trust aliens who looked more like pets than scientists not to injure him.  “How about spinal fluid?” he proposed without knowing if that was a better source for their needs. 

They shook their heads in concert and he sighed with relief.  One of them clattered at him, making a statement rather than asking a question. 

“No,” Aeryn said firmly. 

“What?” Jack asked. 

“They wanted brain tissue,” she relayed. 

“Un unh,” he confirmed her decision.  “You’re going to have to try something else.” 

They had tried several times, each sampling equally painless and equally futile.  This latest effort had extracted some of the cells from some portion of his intestines, resulting in the residual uncomfortable twinges and the clattering discussion seemed happier this time.  Aeryn motioned to him, indicating that he could get up, and Jack joined the dozen or so individuals who were standing or pacing around the chamber, beginning his own small repetitive route near the view portal as they waited for a determination. 

“Come on,” he snarled quietly as the minutes stretched into a quarter hour.  The Kallimitri were still huddled together, chattering cheerfully as they consulted their machines, and Jack began to consider whether he could stay here, perhaps permanently, if they weren’t successful by the time he was supposed to leave. 

Every person in the bay turned quickly, facing a single point in the chamber as D’Argo stepped away from three of his friends and unloaded a growling verbal barrage at the scientists.  Jack tried to watch every reaction at the same time, glancing from one side to the other as the Kallmitri cowered and the crew showed a variety of expressions ranging from amusement to anger to nodding agreement. 

“He --” Aeryn stepped close to translate. 

“--said he was tired of waiting and they should hurry up,” Jack proposed. 

“Yes,” she said, her voice rising in surprise.  “How do you know?” 

“Look at the group to D’Argo’s right,” he explained.  The tight cluster of Chiana, Jothee, Nerri and two others had provided the full gamut of reactions that had provided all the translation he needed.  Beside him, Aeryn nodded her understanding, then snuck one hand up to wipe quickly at her eyes.  Jack stepped to her side, one hand urging her to turn so that they looked out at the stars, their backs to the assembled group.  “Take a deep breath,” he suggested quietly. 

“John would do that,” she explained.  “He would watch us and know what we were thinking before we can say it.”

Jack searched for a topic that would divert her attention away from the painful memories.  “Can you explain something about this procedure they’re trying?  If they’re mapping John’s genes onto my DNA, aren’t they going to convert him into some version of me?” 

She shook her head emphatically, then stared at the floor for several seconds as she considered the question.  “They have John’s pattern,” she started, Jack nodding his understanding at every pause, “but it has mistakes and changes in it.  They have Ian’s pattern, very much the same but partly mine.  Not quite human.”  Jack nodded.  “They need something close to John’s to see what the correct pattern should look like, to fill in missing pieces for a human.  They need a son, a father, a brother, or a clone.”  Aeryn bit her lip and turned away for almost a full minute.  “There is only the father, so we must find you.  More than that I do not understand.”

They stood quietly together, watching the slow migration of the stars.  “Aeryn,” Jack began, about to suggest that he stay, no matter how long it took for them to find a cure, but he was interrupted by a sound similar to rattling sticks.  The Kallimitri were making an announcement behind him.  Aeryn dug her fingers deep into his shoulder when he started to turn around, holding him firmly in place.  She started to shake, the tears sneaking down her cheeks, and he knew it was all over.  “It won’t work,” he whispered, resigning himself to losing John a second time. 

“No,” Aeryn contradicted him.  “It will work.  They have what they need.  They are sure this time.”  She released the painful grip but continued to steady herself against him, swaying slightly as she wiped away the last of the errant tears.  “They do not know how well it will fix him, but they can do it now.”  She glanced over her shoulder, eyes widening, and then took one long step away from Jack.  “Look out.” 

He turned in alarm, but it was only D’Argo striding toward them, an enormous smile showing beneath the braids and tentacles.  Jack was treated to a deafening roar of luxan and then he was swept into a hug that he swore broke his spine. 

“He said thank you for coming here,” Aeryn laughed as Jack verified that all of his body parts still functioned. 

“You’re welcome,” he returned automatically, taking a long breath to see if his ribs were still intact.  “Happy to do it,” he wheezed, slowly recovering from the embrace. 

“If you had not said you must come with us, you would not be here to make this work.  We would have brought back only your blood, and it would not have worked,” she expanded the implied thanks.  D’Argo nodded his beaming agreement behind her, tentacles bouncing from the fast, pleased motion. 

“He’s my son,” Jack offered simply, still feeling a bit squashed from the luxan’s hug. 

Aeryn treated him to a cool, endlessly calm smile as she grasped him firmly around his upper arm, steadying him as they moved the short distance back to where John was lying.  The Kallimitri spun around the machinery, making dozens of fast adjustments; then they all stopped for five seconds, watched the display, and scurried out of the room. 

“We wait again,” Aeryn confirmed, “but you must leave now.” 

“No,” Jack insisted.  “There’s got to be another way, Aeryn.  I will not leave this way, not without knowing if he’s going to be all right.  You’ll have to locate a different wormhole.”  She shook her head.  “This is my son, Aeryn.  Could you walk off and leave Ian under the same circumstances?”  Jack turned to the small crowd, scanning the faces in hopes of finding an ally.  The expressions all exhibited varying degrees of sympathy, but not one person showed any sign of agreeing with him. 

“There is not another wormhole.  You must go before this one changes.” 

“A wormhole’s a wormhole.  What’s the difference if I go through now or in ten days?” he argued.  “They’re subspace, outside the realm of normal physics.  It’ll be there next week.” 

But Aeryn was shaking her head.  “No.  They change,” she asserted.  “I do not have the words.  Ian must tell you of the things that make wormholes change.” 

Jack looked at John again, every cell in his body screaming that he could not leave him this way … not without knowing if he would recover.  Cold logic whispered into the back of his mind, though, easing one argument after another into his consciousness that said he had to leave.  There was the rest of his family to think about, who had already suffered enough as a result of John’s inexplicable disappearance.  If he were to mysteriously vanish out of his home it would tear them apart.  If John recovered, his presence would be superfluous; and if John didn’t recover, there was even less that he could do here. 

Aeryn was talking behind him, her slow, accented apology breaking in on his private internal dispute.  “I am sorry.  This is part of why we said you should not come here.  We knew you would have to leave too soon.” 

Jack turned away from everyone, walking back to the spot by the portal where he could look out at John’s universe.  “All right,” he surrendered past a lump in his throat, remembering how it had felt when he knew that his final trip into space was almost over.  He’d floated weightlessly, staring at his home, feeling close to a spiritual epiphany at its beauty, and had nearly cried from knowing that he would never leave the planet again.  That horrible collision of emotions was mild compared to what he was experiencing now. 

He would return to Earth with the knowledge that John was alive and raising a family, with at least another fifteen or sixteen years of happiness ahead of him, and would have to grieve for his loss all over again, magnified by the uncertainty of his future.  He’d gotten into space one more time, but at a horrible cost.  He’d seen wondrous things, only to have one of the most wondrous pieces of his life taken away from him a second time.  “There is a time for everything,” he whispered to himself, admitting that life was a matter of give and take, ebb and flow … and that he had to leave.     

“You win,” he confirmed.  “How much time do I have to say goodbye?”  There was a short discussion behind him. 

“We must have time to take you back and return here,” Aeryn explained.  “We can spare one or two arns.” 

Jack nodded, his back still turned to the room, and the group behind him began a more hushed discussion, not more than half of the voices joining in for a change.  He looked out at the groupings of stars, searching in vain for a familiar constellation, the sight confirming how far he was from his home. 

He walked slowly to stand at John’s side and gathered one of the lax hands into his own.  Jack turned it over carefully, making sure he didn’t disturb the greenish tubes, and looked at the palm.  The scar from John’s motorcycle accident was still there, slashing across the heel of his hand, telling a tale of a normal teenage life.  “How did we get here, John?” he asked the still figure.  The only answer was the hum and swish of the Kallimitri machinery performing in counterpoint to the thumps and grumbles of the leviathan around them.  He put the hand back on the bed and stared at the monitors, seeing a lifetime of squandered opportunities to talk to his son instead of the bouncing data points before him. 

Something drew his attention back from the mental images he was reviewing.  “Aeryn …” Jack called, interrupting the conversation that continued unabated to one side.  “Look at this and tell me what you see.”  He pointed to several of the dark spots displayed on the image of John’s brain, then pointed again to several of the spikes on the monitor showing activity. 

The entire crowd hemmed him in, jostling each other slightly to see what he was indicating.  “These are smaller,” he said as he referred to the dark spots, “and these are larger,” pointing to the spikes.  “It’s working.”  He turned to check on their expressions and then looked back at John.  “It’s working.”

“We know that it will work at least part way,” Aeryn said in a condescending tone. 

“Don’t you see?” Jack cried, startling several of his audience.  “We can’t do this on Earth.”  He examined the depressed expressions, shaking his head when he saw that he’d failed to convey the magnitude of what was happening.  He tried again.  “Alzheimer’s is incurable for us.  This disease isn’t contracted from a germ or a virus on Earth; it just happens and we don’t know why.  And we can’t fix this.”  He jabbed excitedly at the display.  “If John were on Earth, this would be permanent.” 

There was another of the multi-discussions, several of the crew patted him on the shoulder, and then they filtered out of the chamber one by one, leaving him alone with Aeryn. 

“They don’t get it,” he suggested as the last person disappeared. 

“They do un-der-stand,” Aeryn objected, struggling through the longer word.  “But you have to understand.  The Kallimitri do not say if this will get better.  They can make it work now because you are here for more samples, but it still may be only part way fixed.”  She moved to John’s side, staring down at the man sleeping on the medbed, obviously hesitating.  “And there is also the other part.” 

“What other part?” Jack exclaimed, thinking they’d kept some part of John’s illness from him. 

“We all live for many cycles.  John lives for many less.”  Jack shook his head, puzzled by the simple statements.  “I will lose him too soon.  Now or later, it is the same.  We have little time left.”  She gestured at the Kallimitri devices.  “This will give him back for maybe ten or twenty cycles, then will I lose him again.” 

“I’m sorry, Aeryn Sun,” Jack whispered, finally understanding the battle she was waging.  He’d lost Leslie far too soon, the single love of his life taken from him before his life was barely half over.  He tried to imagine what his choice would have been if a miracle cure could have given her back to him, but only with the guarantee that he’d lose her again ten years later.  He was about to ask Aeryn if the extra years were worth the agony of knowing she’d lose him again, but he thought of her trip to Earth, the passage through the wormhole, the effort and the risk she’d put into this single venture, and had his answer.  “Perhaps you will get more than that.  His grandfather lived into his nineties.” 

Aeryn let out a short barking laugh and pushed a lock of hair off John’s forehead.  “I will live into my –- ” she lapsed into Sebacean then caught herself.  She held up two fingers, then both of her fists clenched. 

“Two hundred?” Jack asked incredulously.  She nodded.  She would have John for only half her lifetime.  “And Ian?  How long will he live?”  She shrugged.  “He’s half human, half sebacean,” Jack summarized.  “You don’t know which half will determine his life span.”  Aeryn didn’t respond.

He looked at his aged son and the aching knot in his stomach took a tighter grip, restricting his ability to even breathe.  They’d been so happy when John was born, their days full of laughter and excitement, their lives full of the promise that life in middle class America was supposed to be all about.  And now he stood at a crossroads in time and space where he was healthier than his own son.  He searched for something to say to Aeryn, to express his sympathy for the impending loss that would hover over her even if John recovered, and came up empty. 

“I will leave you alone to say goodbye,” she suggested.  “I go find Ian and we come back in an arn to get you.”  Jack nodded numbly, words deserting him.  “If you want to leave, you ask that,” she pointed at a waiting DRD, “to take you where you want to go.” 

“Thank you, Aeyrn.”  She leaned close to give him a careful hug, then left him alone with John.  Jack waited until the sound of her footsteps faded then turned back to the occupant of the medbed.

   * * * * *

Jack stood for several moments looking down at his son, finally seeing the young man in an orange flight suit who had cheerfully waved one last time before stepping through the gantry entrance to the shuttle.  He tried to summon the words that should have been said that day, and came up as short as he had the first time. 

“John.”  The slow breathing continued without a break.  “I guess I’ll have to say my goodbyes trusting that you can hear me in there somewhere, son.”  Jack stared, breaking out of his trance when his feet began to tingle from standing in one position for too long.  He started to look at his watch to see how long he’d been lost in thought, but he couldn’t remember what time Aeryn had left.  The patterns on the displays continued their hypnotic undulations, showing little change beyond what he’d noticed earlier. 

“I suppose I’ll have to take the changes we noticed as a positive sign, John, and assume that you’re going to be all right.”  Jack stopped again, his thoughts trundling to a dead end.  There was a whisper of a noise behind him, and he turned to find Aeryn standing less than six feet away.  Either he’d been completely lost in thought or she was able to move more quietly than a cat. 

“Time to go?” he asked, wondering if he’d really used up an entire arn just standing there like an idiot. 

She shook her head.  “Pilot said maybe you could use some company,” she explained, gesturing at the DRD. 

Jack started to say something about spies and surveillance, the thought evaporating when it occurred to him that this crew was as concerned about him as they were about John.  “I don’t know what to say to him,” he confessed.  “I want to say goodbye, but …” 

“But you do not want to say goodbye.”  Aeryn’s quiet smile put him at ease, taking away much of the frustration inherent in the situation.  “What would you say to John if he was awake?” 

Jack tried to focus his thoughts toward a farewell exchange between two people, but his mind continued to spiral inward to the single fact that he would never see John again and that this was the worst way in the universe to leave him.  “I don’t know.  Sometimes John and I didn’t communicate very well.”  He gave in to a short, cynical laugh.  “Who am I kidding?  We had a lot of trouble talking.  It seems like the things we didn’t say to each other outnumber what did get said by about a hundred to one.” 

“He talked to you when he first got here.  Very often,” Aeryn offered.  “He told you about everything that he sees and finds.” 

“How do you mean?” Jack asked, puzzled by her description. 

“He has a thing that he talks into.  A recording device.”  Her hands sketched out the dimensions of an object scarcely larger than his palm. 

“The tape recorder from the module!” Jack concluded with excitement.  “May I … may I have it?  Could I take it with me?” 

Aeryn shook her head.  “I am sorry.  The tapes go to pieces many cycles ago.”  Her hands pantomimed disintegration.  “The machine got thrown away or lost.”  Jack felt slightly disoriented as he once again had to cope with the time disparity resulting from traveling into the future, forced to admit that twenty years was too long for the fragile tapes to survive.  “My point is that he talks to you when you are not here.  John talks to you all the time.  If he did not talk to you when he was young, that changed when he came here.  You are here now, so maybe you can talk to him.  I will wait there,” she pointed toward the passageway. 

“Thank you, Aeryn.”  Jack waited until she disappeared from sight before turning back to his son, trying to see the young man that had arrived in this universe so long ago and had managed to adapt to a new, incredibly alien lifestyle.  “It must have been a frantic few days at first, John.  I don’t know how you managed to keep it all together.  The moon was a long way from Earth but at least I knew what I’d find when I got there.”  He paused, trying to imagine what sorts of things John would have recorded on those tapes -- what sorts of impressions, experiences, hopes and fears had been lost when the tapes crumbled into fragments.

“Yesterday was Halloween, John.  You’ll never guess who showed up at my door.  Space aliens.  I don’t suppose you’ll be too surprised to find out that Rodenberry and Speilberg and all those other Hollywood geniuses weren’t even in the ballpark.  One of the space aliens turned out to be a pretty amazing young man, and there was this drop dead gorgeous woman with him.  Don’t suppose you’d know anything about that either, would you?”  He paused, imagining the grin that would have greeted his teasing. 

“You’ve done good out here, son.  I can see that just by the friends you’ve made and how much you mean to them.  I’m proud of you.  I won’t say it hasn’t been hard on us since you disappeared, but now that I know a little about what you’ve been doing, I guess …”  Jack took a deep breath, and watched John, hoping for at least a twitch.  “… I guess I don’t mind losing you so much anymore.  I can’t exactly tell your sisters about all of this, but I think if I’m not so angry about that day, that maybe they won’t miss you so much either.  We’re going to start moving on now, getting on with our lives while we assume that you’re okay somewhere.  At first the girls will probably think their old man has lost a wingnut somewhere along the way, but once I get back to Earth and adjust to what year it is back there, I’ll know for sure that you’re doing fine out here, and your sisters will buy the new attitude eventually.  We’ll miss you, but we’re going to do better from now on, son.”

The chamber was silent for a few moments while he thought about the types of things he’d never said when John was on Earth.  “I guess goodbyes are partly about making yourself feel better, so I want you to know that the day you disappeared was the worst moment of my entire life.  It was even worse than losing your mother because I felt responsible for you being out there that day.  I’ve spent the last three years thinking that maybe if I hadn’t been your father -- if you hadn’t been trying to prove something to me -- that maybe you wouldn’t have been in the Farscape module that day.  Maybe if I had let you be your own kind of person we wouldn’t have lost you.  Now that I’ve seen all of this and met Aeryn and Ian, I don’t mind quite so much.  I don’t feel quite as guilty, John, so at least one good thing has come out of my trip here.” 

Jack stepped closer to pick up one lifeless hand in his own.  “I’m glad that you found these people, and this woman, and are happy here.  You’ve got one hell of a family, including some of the weirdest looking cousins, aunts, and uncles I’ve ever run into.  When my other grandchildren get old to start showing up with tattoos, purple hair and body piercings, I suspect I’ll find it pretty tame.  These people love you, John, so fight like hell and come back to them.  And that’s an order for once.  The last one I’ll ever give you, son.”

Jack set the lax hand down and stepped back, his eyes lingering on the closed ones.  “Last time I get to see you, John.  Not exactly the way I wanted it to be.  I kind of imagined that we’d get to say a real goodbye this time with hugs and those stupid things that people always say when they’re standing in the driveway with the car door standing open.”  The room was silent except for the sibilant swishing of the machines.  “John … I wish you’d wake up just long enough to say goodbye.”  He waited, hoping for the last moment miracle. 

“Okay, son.  I love you.”  Jack Crichton put his hand on his son’s forehead for a moment, stroking the warm skin with a thumb.  “Goodbye, John.”  He turned and hurried from the chamber, stumbling slightly as he turned to the right and followed Aeryn toward the hangar bay. 

Behind him, a DRD eased along the ceiling, descending from where it had been waiting silently for the odd, newly arrived biologic to finish talking before moving to its next repair.  It swiveled its eyestalks between the doorway and the biologic that continue to lie on the medbed, considering the situation, and then shunted its recording of the one-sided conversation to Moya and Pilot to be evaluated and possibly added to the datastores.     
 
   * * * * *

[KernilCrash]

 Part 5

Aeryn could hear the argument even before they reached the corridor leading to the maintenance bay.  She broke into a run as she recognized D’Argo’s enraged tones, leaving Jack to trail along as she arced around two corners at high speed.  Echoes reverberated through the tier, only slightly distorting the bellowing growl that was never heard unless Ian was on the verge of driving D’Argo into hyperrage.  Her course through the doorway was gauged perfectly, allowing her to make the turn without losing any traction, accelerating into the middle of the screaming quarrel without a microt’s hesitation.  She grabbed Ian roughly and flung him away from the incensed luxan, sending her son stumbling across the expanse as she turned to face the physical threat.  The next flood of furious Luxan got past her microbes unaltered, which meant that he was resorting to pure profanity. 

“What’s going on!” she yelled back over his racket.  D’Argo took a step in Ian’s direction, his body shouting out his anger, and Aeryn slid between them, her pulse pistol out of its holster and aimed at his head before he could take a second step.  “Calm down, D’Argo!” she ordered.

The warrior drew up short, eyes slightly crossed as he contemplated the muzzle of the pulse pistol mere hentas from his nose.  He was breathing hard as his body began producing the energy necessary to sustain hyperrage, his fists clenching and unclenching with the need to grab and pummel the target of his fury. 

“What happened?” Aeryn demanded again, hoping she could draw him back from the brink.  If D’Argo had already crossed the boundary into hyperrage he would not have allowed a single person, armed or not, to stop him from going after Ian. 

“The frelling fekik!” Ian yelled from behind her, aiming his ire at D’Argo.  Aeryn turned toward the smaller combatant, cutting him off with an angry gesture, and in that moment D’Argo slapped the pulse pistol out of her hand and went after the teen.  Ian’s eyes widened in alarm, recognizing that he’d pushed too far, and he sprinted for one of the vertical ladders leading to an overhead walkway.  Aeryn flung herself at D’Argo, trying to slow him down long enough to let Ian get away, but he grabbed her and tossed her three motras across the maintenance bay, barely pausing in his pursuit. 

Aeryn scrambled to her feet, her head spinning as much from her brief flight as from the impact with the floor, scanning rapidly to find D’Argo.  If he’d crossed into hyperrage he could very easily kill Ian without meaning to, and would very probably find a way to get himself killed in battle later out of remorse for what he’d done.  She had to stop him or slow him down long enough for Ian to hide. 

There was an enormous bang in the bay as one of the suspended lights exploded, sparks showering down on everyone and igniting a fire in a barrel full of waste components.  Aeryn froze, looking for the source of the explosion.  The first thing she spotted was D’Argo standing at the bottom of the ladder, one foot on a rung as he looked around the maintenance bay, equally bewildered and miraculously under control again.  Ian’s dark haired head peeked tentatively over the edge of the upper flooring, checking on his status as a fugitive, and she began to relax, still searching for the cause of the distraction.  Jack Crichton walked nonchalantly from where he’d been concealed behind one of the vertical stanchions, examining the pulse pistol as he made his way toward her.  He turned it over in his hands one last time and then handed it to her butt first. 

“Nice weapon,” he observed.  “No kick but a bit noisy.”  He surveyed the debris from the light littering the floor, the stream of black smoke coming from the waste container, then he jammed his hands into his pockets and wandered off as though nothing unusual had happened.   

Aeryn smiled at his composure, took a deep breath to help release the tension of the last few microts, and jammed the pistol into its holster.  “All right,” she tried again, “what happened?”  She pointed up at Ian and then gestured to the floor, ordering him to come down.  He shook his head, bangs flopping back and forth on his forehead.  “Get … down here!” she barked, knowing that he was almost certainly the source of the problem.  He swung a leg reluctantly over the railing and slithered down the ladder, putting it between him and D’Argo as he got to the bottom. 

“What did he do?” she asked D’Argo, assuming Ian’s guilt.

“I overreacted as well, Aeryn,” the big luxan confessed.  “He said he would take Jack Crichton back to Earth on his own --” 

Aeryn snorted her disapproval of the idea and began shaking her head. 

“-- to which I said he would most certainly not, and it got out of hand very quickly.  Neither of us handled it well.”  D’Argo hung his head slightly, looking embarrassed.   

“It’s not your fault, D’Argo.  We’re all on edge.”  Aeryn was about to say something about how short tempers were understandable under the circumstances, but at that point a small mob poured into the maintenance bay, led by Chiana. 

“We heard a pulse weapon,” she said in alarm, glancing around at the small signs of destruction.  “What happened?” 

“Nothing,” D’Argo grumbled, quieting the group with a glare.  “It was a … misunderstanding.” 

“Someone misunderstood that a pulse weapon would make a light explode?” Jothee mocked, staring up at the smoking remnants.  “Or maybe they didn’t understand that pulling the trigger would make the pistol go off?”   

“What are you all doing down here?” Aeryn demanded, changing the subject. 

“We thought it would be nice if we said goodbye to Crichton’s father,” Chiana explained.  “We didn’t get to talk to him, or get to know him much, but that doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate what he did.”

Aeryn ran a hand over her head, smoothing back her hair.  She’d taken to wearing it in a tight braid again because it seemed to trigger to most memories in John, harkening back to a time of intense emotions both good and bad.  She glanced behind her, ensuring that Ian hadn’t bolted while she was distracted, and then beckoned to Jack.  “I need time to talk to Ian.  The others would like to say goodbye and thank you.  Can you stand it on your own if no one is there to tell you what they are saying?” 

“I don’t believe it can get any more confusing than the last few hours.  Go ahead.”  He smiled at her, took a deep breath and headed for the waiting group, muttering something that she thought sounded like “tattoos and body piercings”. 

Aeryn shook her head, knowing she must have gotten that one wrong, despite her microbes’ confirmation, and gestured to Ian as she headed for the doors to the hangar bay.  He shambled along behind her looking both defiant and sheepish at the same time.  “No,” she started the conversation. 

“I can get there and back on my own!” he objected immediately.  “I’m not some little kid.” 

“You have flown a wormhole exactly twice,” she said firmly.  “I am confident that you can do it, but I am not letting you go off on your own like this.  Ian, one mistake, one miscalculation and you’ll be as lost as your father was on several occasions.  He managed to get himself back here every time, but he never returned to his home.  I’m not taking a chance that the same thing might happen to you.”

The youngster wandered in a fast circle, letting out some of his aggravation, shoulders and arms dancing with his frustration.  “I can DO it!!” he yelled at her.  “Sending someone with me only means that two of us might get lost.  Why take that chance?  Let me take him back on my own.” 

Aeryn watched the energy pour out of her son, the need to embrace him almost overwhelming her restraint.  He would shove her away if she reached for him at this moment.  She also knew that it would only make him more recalcitrant if he detected her concern for him.  “No,” she dictated. 

“No one else on board has flown more than two wormholes!  You’ve only flown one once yourself.”  Ian’s voice cracked as he tried to persuade her. 

“It isn’t about flying, Ian.  It’s about surviving if you don’t make it back.  It’s about figuring out what to do next.  You have no idea how confusing and strange it can be.” 

She realized that he was probably old enough to finally hear about the disasters and fiascos, the unpleasant tales that didn’t have the exciting endings.  They’d never told Ian about moments like Jocacea, when they’d managed to truly frell history despite their best efforts, or about events like their collision with the Pathfinder ship and the price they’d paid to free Moya, or about the choices that had been made after the twinning, which had led to a litany of grief.  Ian didn’t even know about the duplicate or the fact that she’d grieved for John Crichton once before.  He had no idea what lay before him, or how difficult it was to cope when you were truly alone. 

Aeryn turned away, giving some consideration to his argument.  Ian was correct that no one on board Moya had ever flown more than two wormholes … except for John.  Sending someone with him might actually serve to make him more careless.  She’d noticed that when he was given something important to do without any oversight, he generally made a better job of it than when he was relying on the supervision to catch his mistakes. 

But it was her son.

“No,” she said firmly, using the tone reserved for letting him know that the subject was closed.  “Someone goes with you.  We went to Earth with three people, came back with four.  We all know that maintaining some sort of balance of mass and energy helps to prevent problems, so you take two people with you aside from Colonel Crichton.”  She scanned the group that was gathered around Jack.  “D’Argo and Nerri,” she suggested, giving him a choice. 

Ian strode toward the door to the maintenance bay, frustration and anger turning his usual sloppy walk into a sharp march.  He turned to face her.  “Jothee and Vellum,” he countered.

Aeryn scowled at him, working hard to smother a laugh at Ian’s sharp negotiating skills.  Jothee remained one of the more unpredictable members of the crew, no more mature or sensible than when he’d been on board Moya the first time.  And Vellum, a deserter from the Peacekeepers and the latest addition to the growing leviathan community, was quite possibly the most unreliable individual ever to take up residence aboard Moya.  The young sebacean, recruited when he was almost fifteen, had somehow stayed alive through his training despite the fact that he was a complete coward, and had already demonstrated an unequalled ability to betray whoever necessary to ensure his own safety. 

She considered Ian’s strategy in offering up the two most unreliable individuals possible.  “D’Argo and Sella,” she suggested, naming the two harshest disciplinarians she could think of in a hurry.

“Chiana and Jothee,” he fired back, knowing that pairing remained out of bounds even after twenty cycles.  Even their quarters were on opposite ends of the ship, just to avoid any problems.   

“I fly Lo’La myself and take whoever I want with me,” she threatened him, letting Ian know that his attempts to improve his bargaining position was going to backfire. 

He was silent for more than fifteen microts before suggesting, “Nerri and Hendlah,” in a calmer tone. 

Aeryn considered the option.  She would have preferred that Ian take two sebaceans with him, people who could pass for human if the unimaginable happened and the trio got stuck on Earth, but the two nebari resistance fighters knew more about survival and coping with unusual situations than anyone she’d ever known … even more than John.  The couple had fallen in love almost fifteen cycles ago, had managed to stay both alive and together throughout the chaos now known as The Revolt, and had somehow found time for intimacy even when living in cramped conditions with hundreds of other resistance fighters.  No one aboard Moya was more innovative when it came to survival or discrete when it came to close quarters than Nerri and Hendlah. 

“All right,” she agreed.  “What about D’Argo’s DNA?  Have you taken care of that yet?”  Ian nodded, still looking unhappy with the outcome of their bidding war.  “Ian,” she prompted, trying to get his full attention.  He looked up from his boot toes.  “Be careful.  Don’t frell this up.” 

“Yes, mother,” he sighed with exaggerated patience.  “Can I start the pre-flight on Lo’La, or do you want me to get Nerri and Hendlah?” 

“You start the checks.  I’ll get the others.”  Aeryn watched the lithe form pull itself up the stairs and disappear into the aging luxan ship, biting down on her lip to keep herself from calling him back for a hug.  He’d chosen the black leather jacket today instead of the battered and faded armored luxan jacket he usually preferred.  She knew it was a deliberate attempt by Ian to make himself look more like John, a psychological ploy that he used whenever he wanted to do something he was sure she would prevent.  He was trying so hard to grow up fast, taking on responsibilities and duties that rightfully belonged to John despite every one of her attempts to preserve the last days of his childhood.     

“Be careful, my eiyan” Aeryn whispered after him.  “Cholak watch over you.”  She might be able to survive if she lost one of them, but if she lost both John and Ian at the same time it would be more than she could handle.  The quiet whine of Lo’La’s pre-start sequence broke the silence of the hangar bay, and she went to find the others. 

   * * * * *

The rippling light distortions from the wormhole flickered around the cockpit one last time then faded out as the anomaly disappeared from sight.  Jack shook his head in awe as his eyes adjusted to the dark and the shimmering curtains stars came into view.  Lo’La heeled over in space, the view out the front viewscreen spinning wildly for a moment, and then Earth slid into view.  “Right where it belongs,” he confirmed, complimenting Ian’s piloting skills. 

“Right when it belongs is the more important part,” the youngster smiled thinly, tapping several of the controls. 

“We didn’t --” Jack began to protest, thinking they’d missed the correct exit. 

“No, we’re in the right spot.  I was just … I don’t know why I said that.  It was stupid.  We’re fine.”  Ian glanced over his shoulder to where the nebari couple was talking quietly in the back corner of the ship, their voices all but inaudible despite their close proximity. 

Jack watched the jerky motions, the fast glances at himself and the other two occupants of the ship, and recognized that something was bothering his grandson.  He was about to ask him straight out, stopping only when he remembered how much easier it was to launch into a difficult subject with Leslie if they were talking about something more trivial first.  Earth shifted to one side of the viewscreen as they arced into orbit, Australia slowly crawling out of sight as they slid toward the night side of the planet. 

“Do we have a few minutes to spare before we head down?” he asked his pilot as he tried to think of an innocuous topic.  Ian merely nodded, frowning slightly as he made an adjustment to the throttles.  “Your mother said there are things that can change a wormhole.  What sorts of forces can influence something that operates outside time and space?” 

“Singularities,” came the short answer.  “They reach right through every plane, yanking almost anything out of shape.  And the other really big one is people traveling through wormholes and frelling up history or messing around with different universes.  Sometimes a wormhole will just close up forever if too much gets changed at one end or the other.” 

“But not this one,” Jack replied in alarm. 

“No, not this one.  We’ve been careful and we haven’t changed the past.  You should get back a few arns after you left, so aside from losing one night’s sleep, nothing much will get altered.  This wormhole,” he pointed over his shoulder in the direction of where they’d appeared in space, “is a shortcut past a section of space where a star is going nova.  The gravitational shifts will eventually yank this one somewhere or somewhen else.  That’s why you had to come back now.” 

Ian shifted uncomfortably, glanced over his shoulder at Nerri and Hendlah, then spoke more softly.   “Grandfather … ”  He leaned forward to adjust the controls, and when he settled back there was nothing in his posture that said he was going to continue. 

“What?” Jack prodded gently, letting him get to whatever was bothering him at his own pace.  There was another long silence before Ian made a small noise of indecision and continued.   

“Everyone is trying to be hopeful, but they keep saying that my father may not get his memory back even if the Kallimitri treatment stops the disease.”  Jack waited as the young man worked himself up to the next part, suspecting what was coming next.  “He may not remember me,” Ian whispered, his voice suddenly guttural and thick. 

“He’ll make new memories.  You’ll make new memories together.” 

“If he doesn’t remember me, can I come back to Earth and live with you?” Ian blurted in a rush.  “Can I come and be your grandson?” 

Jack had been prepared for a number of comments or requests, but this one caught him totally by surprise.  He gaped at Ian for a moment, struggling to find an appropriate answer.  “What about your mother?” he asked after several seconds. 

“She’s always been able to get by on her own.  She’ll be fine.  All she ever does is treat me like a kid.  She doesn’t need me to help her through this.” 

Jack began to shake his head, not turning the request down, but knowing that Ian had badly misread his mother’s reserve. 

His grandson continued before he could answer, a trace of a whine entering his voice.  “Melnatsa, I want to have fun.  I want to run around and play jokes and do what guys my age are supposed to do, the things my father did when he was my age.  We hide from enemies, and get in trouble, and I never know if my mother and my father are going to get killed, or if the others are going to get killed.  I had a grandmother of sorts when I was little, and she got killed.  She was ugly and crazy and smelled bad, but I loved her, and I don’t think I can stand it if one of the others dies.  I want to come to Earth and be normal.” 

Jack saw the dilemma in all of its intricacies, and wondered how many of the same fears John had harbored as a child when he had pursued his career at NASA.  “Ian, you are normal.  It’s your life that’s abnormal.  If you came to Earth, do you think you’d get a chance to fly spaceships ever again?  With or without a bucket of spit?”  Ian gave him a short laugh in response, nudging the sealed container of D’Argo’s offerings with one boot.  “You’ve lived with amazing people, experienced amazing moments, with an extended family that loves each other more than your real aunts could ever love you.  Not because your aunts don’t know how to love, but because you risk more every day and that makes each moment more precious, Ian.” 

Lo’la came to a stop, hanging in space with Earth and its moon taking up a third of the viewscreen.  Ian stared at the white and blue planet, breathing hard, fighting back tears. 

“He’ll remember you, Ian.  And your mother needs you more than you can ever imagine.  When you think she’s smothering you, take a better look at what’s going on, because I think you’ll find that she’s wrapping you around her to protect her from the things she can’t control in her life.  She isn’t protecting you from life, she’s using you to protect her from the one thing she can’t face -- the prospect of being alone.  You are her life right now, even if it’s John that’s she focused on.” 

Ian shook his head, the young spaceship pilot finally giving in to his fears and starting to cry despite his best efforts to stay in control.  “It doesn’t feel like that,” he objected.  “How can you tell that’s what she’s doing?” 

“Because it’s what I did when your grandmother died,” Jack confessed.  “The house was so damned empty.  I’d come home from the hospital and all I could hear was the silence.  Having your father and his sisters around was the only thing that made it bearable.  Aeryn needs you, Ian, and she’ll probably never tell you that out loud.” 

“But … my Dad,” came the protest, the other part of the problem.  Jack stole a fast glance at the pair behind them while the boy smeared his cheeks against the sleeve of his jacket.  They were watching with concern, but hadn’t moved any closer, giving their young charge the privacy he desired.  “If he doesn’t get better … I want to come stay with you!” he cried.   

Jack reached for the boy’s shoulders and pulled him into a hug, feeling the young muscles there, promising that this person would grow as strong and solid as his father.  “He’s going to remember you, Ian.  You’ll be the first thing he remembers when he starts to get better.  You’re his son -- he won’t forget you.  It’s difficult at your age to see how much promise lies ahead of you, but your promise lies out there, in space, not tied to a single planet.” 

“Dad has always said that the universe was my birthright,” Ian mumbled, pulling away.  “That I was part of it and it was part of me.” 

“He’s right.  You’ll always be welcome in my home, melnatnic, but your home is back there aboard Moya.” 

Ian sighed, wiped away the last of his tears with a shaking hand, and turned to face the controls.  “I don’t know what I was doing, asking to stay,” he admitted.  “I’ll be all right, I guess.” 

“I’m quite sure you will.”  Jack watched the image of Earth ripple for a second as the cloaking shield engaged.  “And tell me one more time how that time disruption thing works.” 

Ian looked at him sheepishly.  “Rub it in.  When did you remember that I couldn’t come back in time and stay without frelling things up?” 

“Right from the moment you asked me if you could live with me.  Take me home, Ian.”  The last time Jack Crichton had watched the Earth expand in the view screen of a NASA spacecraft had been thirty years ago.  He had floated happily in zero-G, grinning like an idiot as he saw his home from space for what he had thought was going to be the last time.  He watched it this time with the singular knowledge that it wasn’t the only inhabitable planet in the universe, than humanity wasn’t alone, and that his descendants would have a very special place amongst the stars. 

* * * * *

Another year, another Halloween.  Jack Crichton was on the verge of laughter as he watched three spacemen, one unidentifiable alien, and a robot skip down the front walk and let themselves out through the gate.  The neighborhood children had learned all too well that he was a soft touch for anyone dressed up as an astronaut or a space alien, and he’d been forced to buy nearly three times as much candy this year as he had that fateful day four years ago.  Every Halloween served as a reminder of his brief journey into his son’s future, and it had become a bittersweet memory best revisited only once a year. 

He took in a deep breath and stared up into the night sky.  The weather goof on the evening news had blown the forecast completely, predicting warm air and drizzle instead of the clear skies and near freezing temperatures that heralded a frost by morning.  Jack stared at the familiar constellations, wondering which direction pointed toward the Uncharted Territories and the proto-galaxies of Tormented Space.  “Give it up, Jack,” he told himself.  He would never know where his son was living, and would never know how fully the alien cure had worked.  John had a beautiful, strong woman by his side who would not let him suffer a slow, undignified death, and an intelligent, capable son who would carry on the Crichton tradition in a manner none of his ancestors ever would have predicted. 

Jack looked up and down the street, scanning for latecomers, then locked the front door and snapped off the outside light.  He moved through the house, turning off every light so any stragglers would know he was out of goodies, then moved by habit through the darkened kitchen and out the back door.  He wanted to sit in the dark and reflect on the possibilities of past and future as he had done on the last three Halloweens, undisturbed by the neighbors or wandering hobgoblins.   

“Don’t jump,” a male voice commanded. 

“Jesus Christ!” Jack exploded, grabbing at the railing to keep himself from falling down the back steps.  “Don’t jump, my ass.  Who’s there?” 

A tall figure moved out of the shadows, stepping into the rectangle of light spilling from the downstairs bathroom, the only light he hadn’t extinguished. 

“John?”  Jack moved forward, peering at him through the gloom.  “Is that you, son?” 

“Yes.”  The single word let something loose inside, something he’d never allowed to run free when he’d been with his son before, and Jack took three fast steps forward to embrace him.  “Take it easy, Dad.  I’m fine,” John laughed into his ear, and pulled him into a bearhug, clutching him tightly. 

“When … where … Wait a minute.  When did you come here from?”  Jack backed away to look at him again.  His son was young.  The gray hair and wrinkles were gone.  There was experience, sorrow and pain written on his face, but none of the heart-stopping emptiness that had been there the last time he’d looked into those eyes.  “You’re young.  John, I have to warn you …” 

“It’s okay, melnatsa, we came from after that,” another voice laughed from the dark.  Ian stepped up beside his father, a little older and an inch or two taller, the first hint of a mustache feathering his upper lip.  “I told you I got it right,” the young man aimed at his father. 

“Rub it in,” John sneered, taking a light-hearted swing at his son’s head.  “He never lets me drive anymore.” 

“You get lost in wormholes, John,” Aeryn added from behind Jack. 

“You three are going to give me a heart attack if you don’t stop sneaking up on me,” Jack complained, recovering from his second fright.  “How did you get back there without my seeing you?” he asked Aeryn. 

“I was in the kitchen,” she smiled at him.  “You move noisy.” 

Jack returned to the sight of his son and his grandson standing together.  “Ian’s older, but you’re younger.”  He reached out to touch John’s cheek, fingering the unwrinkled surface, finding muscle tone and the firmness of healthy tissue there.  “How?  Are you all right now?  The treatment worked, didn’t it?” 

“Yeah, Dad.  That was two cycles ago and I’m doing fine.  It took a while, but I was ordered to fight like hell, so I didn’t have any choice except to get better.”  John’s grin gleamed for a moment in the angling light. 

“I said something like that …”  Jack looked at Aeryn for a moment, remembering his words in the leviathan’s sickbay.  “There was a DRD there somewhere,” he concluded as all three laughed. 

“Pilot showed me the recording once everyone was sure I wouldn’t turn around and forget it right away,” John kidded, apparently at ease with his past dementia.  He sobered slightly, moving closer to Jack.  “The only thing is, the resequencing did a little more than cure the Alzheimer’s.  It set my clock back a bit.  Dad … it gave me more time with Aeryn and Ian.  A lot more time.  I’ve got an extra twenty or thirty cycles now, probably even more.  We aren’t sure yet, but the Kallimitri seem to have done something that’s slowing the aging process down.”  John stopped, his voice dropping an extra octave during his last sentence.  “I couldn’t get on with my life without coming back to thank you.  And I didn’t get to …” he was breathing hard, fighting to stay in control.     

“You didn’t get to talk to me,” Jack finished for his son.  He could see the outline of John’s head nodding in the dark.  “Can you come inside for a little bit?  So I can see you better?” 

“We can’t stay long,” Ian interjected.

“A few microts, Ian,” John insisted. 

“Not many.” 

“What’s going on?” Jack inquired, watching their bodies transmitting something approaching alarm. 
“Why the rush?” 

“Ask Ian, he’s the pro.  He can surf wormholes like I can beat you at Scrabble,” John joked, referring to an almost forgotten series of hideously lopsided scores during his teens.  “If he says we have to go, we have to go.” 

“I thought you were the expert.”  A piece of a conversation exploded out of Jack’s memory. 

“Dad has always said that the universe was my birthright, that I was part of it and it was part of me.” 

Ian’s comment rang in his memory as loudly as if he’d just uttered the words into the cold night air.   

“Oh my god,” Jack breathed, “I thought D’Argo was letting Ian drive for the practice, that he or Aeryn had given him the coordinates or vectors or whatever you want to call it.  But it was Ian who was selecting the right wormhole and where to get out.”  Every moment of his trip to and from Moya was seen in a new light, comments and shared looks suddenly twisting into a new pattern –- one that made far more sense. 

His son … his strong, healthy, alert son was nodding in the light from indoors.  “Ian was born with the knowledge, Dad.  I didn’t want anyone else to carry the burden of knowing how to use wormholes, but it was imbedded on a genetic level and it got passed on to Ian.  Wormhole knowledge is his birthright.  He can find an instant in time and space like a Kallimitri geneticist picks apart helixes.  It’s still incredibly dangerous, and we could screw up universes in ways you and I can’t begin to imagine, but he can do the one thing I never could.” 

“What’s that?” 

“This.  What we’re doing right now.  He can bring us home for a visit every once in a great while.  Ian can sense how to jump in time without frelling the entire universe, which means you can see him as he grows, and he can bring your great-grand-children home for the occasional visit when the conditions are correct.  We’re not talking every year, but we’ll stop by whenever he says the time is right.”  John gathered his son under his arm and squeezed his shoulder, every inch of his silhouette shouting of his pride in Ian’s abilities.  “He says he’ll do his best to visit on dates that occur after tonight.” 

“That’s very kind of you,” Jack growled at them, trying to envision the confusion that would occur if they showed up before he’d met them for the first time.  “So everything turned out all right, melnatnic?” he asked his grandson. 

“You were right,” Ian admitted, hanging his head for a moment.  He raised it again and looked into Jack’s eyes, his gaze flickering to where Aeryn was sitting on the back steps and then looking directly at his grandfather again.  “You were right about everything.” 

“I’m glad … for all of you.”  Jack turned to stare at Aeryn for several moments, then studied his son again, fixing the dark clothes, the weapons, the assurance, and the obvious strong emotional bond in his mind for all time.  A lump formed in his throat as he considered their bizarre life, one he couldn’t have ever dreamed up on his own, and compared it to his day-to-day existence of mowing the lawn, buying groceries, and doing the dishes.  “I miss you,” he said to all three, choking on the painful constriction in his throat. 

“We’ll come by as often as we can,” John offered, stepping close.  “This set-up was the first one Ian’s been able to locate in two cycles, so we decided to come through even though it was going to be a quick visit.  He thinks he can find a longer interval in the next half-cycle.”  John moved to within a foot of his father, staring intently at the older man.  “I’ll stay on him, Dad.  We’ll come back as soon as we can.”   

“We need to go,” Ian’s quiet voice urged out of the dark. 

Aeryn moved off the steps and went to stand by Ian.  “We’ll be back,” she promised.  “Thank you for giving him back to us.”  The accent was no less thick, but her meaning was crystal clear. This family was intact because he’d insisted on taking a chance that could have consigned him to John’s fate –- permanent exile in a distant portion of the universe.  If he hadn’t gone with them that night, John wouldn’t be here now.   

“I’ll be seeing you, Dad.”  Father and son stared at each other, their tense postures identical as they faced the uncertainty of when they’d be able to see each other again. 

“John … I’ve never been one to …”  Jack broke off, feeling entirely out of his element.  John reached out and pulled his father into a hug, clinging to him fiercely for several microts and Jack returned the embrace in full measure, comforted to have his son’s sturdy body in his arms even if only for a few seconds.  John backed away and Jack had one clear sight of the happy smile, the light in the eyes, and the confidence that he’d thought might be gone forever when he’d seen him last. 

“I’ll leave a light on,” Jack assured him. 

“That’ll run up the electrical bills a bit, don’t you think?” 

Jack squinted into the dark, keeping his eyes on the family as long as he could.  John lingered, staring back at his father, Aeryn and Ian waiting just behind him.  Jack nodded, content with the way they were saying goodbye this time. 

John pointed into the night sky.  “Look up.  We’ll always be there.  Even if you can’t see us, we’ll be there.”  The trio began to fade into the dark. 

“I love you, John,” Jack called after him. 

“I love you, Dad.  See you soon.”  There was a swirling flicker of a black overcoat, and then they were gone except for the sound of their feet rustling through the drifts of autumn leaves and the echoes of their laughter as John and Aeryn hurried into the dark, following their son to their place in the stars.

* * * * *

[KernilCrash]

Part 5¾ - A Mid-Story Epilogue (Is there such a thing?)

Aeryn sat up and pushed the golden thermal sheet to the foot of the spare medbed, unable to sleep.  The quiet susurrence of the Kallimitri machines was sufficiently hypnotic to lull her to the edge of sleep, but it wasn’t enough to carry her past the point where her imagination took over to fill her mind with dozens of possibilities of what the future held for her.  Sleep fled before the visions again and again, leaving her exhausted and ill-equipped to cope with the demands of the new day aboard Moya. 

“Aeryn?” the near-whisper broke into her thoughts.  Chiana slid into the medical bay one hesitant step after another.  Aeryn waved her in, pulling her braid loose with her free hand.  “I can watch for a while if you’d like to go to your quarters,” Chiana suggested, wandering to the edge of the medbed where Crichton continued to sleep through the Kallimitri treatment. 

“I’ve tried.  I wind up wandering between our quarters, the hangar bay, and here,” Aeryn admitted.  “I lie down to get some sleep, and the next thing I know I’m standing in the hangar, waiting.”  It had been eight solar days since Ian had disappeared into the wormhole to take Jack back to Earth, and there was no sign of the luxan ship.  Aeryn wandered about the chamber for a few microts, eventually orbiting back to John’s side as though drawn to an irresistible gravity source. 

“Ian will show up,” Chiana tried to reassure her.  “You remember what happened the last time Crichton dove into a wormhole.  That trip took nearly thirty solar days before he reappeared, and he thought he’d only been gone four.” 

Aeryn gave an uncomfortable shrug, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with the possibility that her son would magically reappear.  It had taken cycles for her and John to learn to communicate openly, but once the last of the barricades had been torn down, they’d shared virtually every moment of their lives, regaling each other with anecdotes, memories, and long tales of moments both good and bad.  His stories had informed her all too well of what sorts of problems and beings Ian might have encountered while transitioning a wormhole. 

“He’s got Nerri and Hendlah with him.  There isn’t anyone I trust more to take care of him,” Aeryn answered at last.  “Except maybe you or D’Argo.” 

She glanced at her long-time friend, trying to remember what the nebari woman had looked like that first day when Durka and Salis had towed the captive onto Moya, comparing that memory to the person who stood next to her now.  There was more self-control and restraint overall, but little else had changed over the cycles.  The odd angular twitches had never disappeared, and the shaggy white ruff of hair was as thick and lustrous as it was twenty-five cycles earlier.  The weight of their experiences together seemed to settle onto Aeryn’s shoulders, not as a burden, but as a reminder that there were good friends on board Moya who would help her to continue even if both Ian and John were lost. 

“Has he said anything more?” Chiana’s careful inquiry broke in on her musings. 

“No.” 

John had awakened several times over the past days, but each interval had been depressingly brief and had revealed no improvement in his condition.  The second phase of the Kallimitri treatment had begun by inflicting two entire days of muscle cramps on the patient, requiring that someone stay with him at all times to keep him quiet and still.  He’d had spent much of the two days muttering small complaints in such broken, slurred syllables that even Aeryn couldn’t decipher the fragments of English.  The physical symptoms had faded gradually, yielding up the same unending coma interspersed with occasional confused ramblings. 

“What about the furry frelniks?” Chiana asked, using the term she preferred instead of the species’ true name.  “What do they say?” 

“They think everything’s going wonderfully,” she said sarcastically, referring to the brown-furred visitors.  “But they still can’t predict how well this will work.”  Aeryn took several long steps away from the medbed and eyed a small storage container, wondering if she could kick it all the way into the corridor without hitting anything on the way out.  She’d refrained from that type of frustrated outburst ever since Ian was five and had begun copying her tendency to lash out at inanimate objects, but it seemed a reasonable alternative at the moment.

“Aeryn?”  Chiana’s short inquiry drew her back to her surroundings yet again.  “Why don’t you go for a walk,” she suggested, her gaze flicking between Aeryn and the blameless container.  “Take a few microts to wander around and get some exercise.  Get something to eat.” 

The tension drained out of Aeryn faster than it had built, leaving her trembling with fatigue.  “You might be right.  I could go say hello to Pilot while I’m at it.” 

“I’ll stay here,” Chiana said.  “And …”  Aeryn made a small gesture with her head, encouraging her to continue.  “Well … I checked with Pilot before I came down here.  There’s still no sign of Lo’La anywhere.  Moya’s still flying the pattern they set up to check the entire nexus.  They’ll find him when he shows up.” 

Aeryn’s stomach spasmed unpleasantly as Chiana’s reassurances forced her to consider that Ian might not show up at all.  She nodded and turned away, swallowing hard against the all too familiar discomfort.  She’d known it was a possibility when she’d watched Ian pilot Lo’La out of the hangar bay, but despite her precaution of sending Nerri and Hendlah with him, somehow she hadn’t really believed he’d get lost. 

Ian’s uncanny ability to navigate through time and space had made itself known when he was just four cycles old.  They’d had no inkling of his inheritance until the day that Moya, in an act of desperation, had allowed herself to be flown into a wormhole.  Ian had been in Command with them when the fiasco had begun, and had wound up standing beside his father, one small hand hooked securely into the tie-down strap of John’s holster to steady himself as he gazed happily at the twisting tunnel spooling out ahead of them. 

“Crap!” John had exploded as they’d gyrated toward a four-way branching of the undulating corridor. 

“Which way?” she’d yelled at him.  Moya had agreed to dive into the anomaly as a last ditch effort to escape a nebari ship that had been intent on capturing the resistance leader who had taken refuge aboard the leviathan arns earlier.  Aeryn was flying the huge ship manually, taking care of that single task while Pilot devoted all of his attention to helping his enormous partner adapt to the rapidly changing conditions in the wormhole.  “Which way?” she called again with more urgency as they spun toward the branching choices.     

John closed his eyes and she knew he was trying to ‘feel’ his way to the correct route.  She yanked the control column over hard, the flooring shuddering through her boot soles as Moya’s drive system attempted to comply with the directive to loop around in the confined space:  a desperate move designed to give John time to find the right alley.  They spun around fast, Moya switching end for end in a tight circle, and then they were sliding toward the multiple choices again all too soon, accelerating rapidly. 

“That side down, Daddy,” Ian’s high voice had piped as he indicated one undulating funnel.  He hadn’t quite learned his lefts and rights yet, and resorted to pointing with one small finger. 

“What?” both parents exploded together, the strain of the situation goading them both into over-reacting.  “Which one?” John barked at his small son, sounding harsh due to the danger inherent in their current situation.

“That one?” Ian said anxiously, still pointing.  The grayish eyes flickered between his stressed parents, tears welling up in response to their unthinking yells. 

“Go down and left!” John instructed her, picking Ian up in the crook of one arm while he clung to a console with the other, all of Command bouncing violently as Moya ricocheted off a snaking wall and slid into the indicated branching.  “You da man,” John reassured his anxious son, holding him tight.  “How’d you know?” 

“Was that the correct one?” Aeryn asked more moderately, fighting to hold the steering column steady. 

“Sure was, but he got it before I did.  How’d you know?  Oh frell, here comes another one!” John exclaimed before he could get an answer from the child.  “Six choices!?  Why isn’t anything ever easy?  It shouldn’t be this hard.  Which one, Ian?” he asked, never questioning that his son would know which way to go.

“Middle middle,” the small wormhole expert instructed, pointing. 

“Go for it!” John yelled as Moya spun along her axis.  Their trajectory steadied, headed for the center of the cluster at near-starburst velocities.

“Daddy said frell!” Ian giggled into a quieter moment, steadying himself against his father by hanging on to an ear. 

“He’s gonna say more than that before this is over,” John exclaimed, detaching the hand and directing his son to hang on to his collar instead.  He sat Ian on the console, holding the four-cycle-old securely while bracing himself as well.  “Okay Junior Einstein, Moya needs to get out of here, but we want …”

“Left!”  “That way!”  John and Ian yelled simultaneously as Moya arced around a bend to face a split. 

“We want to go back to the same time we started.  We want a place where it feels the same as when we left.  Get us out, Ian,” John ordered. 

“There!” the boy pointed. 

“Are you sure?” Aeryn challenged the speed of his decision. 

“There!” Ian yelled louder.  “Now … now!”  Moya curved to the right, spun along her axis twice, and flew out of the chaos into the relative peace of normal space.       

“How does it feel?” Aeryn asked John, relinquishing the control stick and watching it sink into the vertical column where it was normally stored.  The floor shuddered once as Moya coasted on imparted momentum, the groans of strain dying away in stages to leave Command almost unnaturally quiet.   

“Perfect,” he responded without hesitation.  He spun Ian around to face him, lowering his head until their noses touched and he had to cross his eyes in order to look at the clear gray-eyed stare facing him.  “Okay, little dude.  We need to talk,” he addressed his son cheerfully.  “How’d you managed to beat your Dad at the find-the-wormhole game?” 

Aeryn emerged from her reverie to find herself standing in Command, leaning against the console where John had faced Ian that day.  He’d been forced to admit that the knowledge he’d tried so hard to eradicate from the universe had been passed on to the most vulnerable member of the growing community aboard Moya.  Only Nerri had been privy to that conversation, listening from the corner where the wounded fugitive had sat huddled against one of Moya’s ribs; and he had sworn to keep the secret no matter what, assessing in an instant how dangerous it would be for the child if anyone knew what Ian’s genes contained. 

“Where are you?” she called in a whisper to her missing son.  The stars shifted across the view screen, drifting incrementally as Moya continued her patrol of the nexus.  “Come home, Ian.  I need you.”  Aeryn scanned the view one more time, watching for any stray bit of light that might turn out to be starlight bouncing off the gleaming metallic hull of a luxan ship, and then walked slowly from Command.   

   * * * * *

Two more days passed without any sign of the missing ship, and aside from some disjointed mumbling there had been no change in John’s condition.  The Kallimitri spun happily around the leviathan, visiting the medical bay from time to time to chatter amongst themselves in tones that indicated their pleased approval of the experiment.  The third phase of their process had begun, they announced, and it was proceeding as they had planned.  The test subject continued to lie silently; all of his energy apparently devoted to coping with the invisible changes. 

D’Argo eased into the medical bay one careful step at a time, letting his weight ease down onto his insteps gradually so his boots didn’t make any noise.  He was trailed by Jothee and the young sebacean Vellum, both moving with as much care as the big luxan.  Aeryn was asleep for once, curled on her side so that she faced John; her mouth gaping slightly as she finally gave in to her mounting exhaustion.  D’Argo backed away, motioning to his two shadows to retreat from the chamber. 

“Let her sleep,” he hissed in a whisper, shooing them before him.  Jothee turned to leave immediately, but Vellum paused, watching the sleeping pair for several microts.  D’Argo grabbed him by the back of the neck and dragged him toward the door, showing little compassion for the Peacekeeper deserter.  Vellum took a deep breath in preparation for a complaint, and D’Argo slapped a large hand across his mouth, stifling any outburst.  “Be quiet,” he ordered into one ear, “or I will gladly break your neck!”

“Officer Sun!” Pilot’s excited shout burst over the comms, shattering the quiet D’Argo had been striving to maintain.  Aeryn snapped upright in a microt, looking disoriented and bewildered.  “Aeryn!” Pilot called a second time as his image appeared in the clamshell. 

“Yes, Pilot?” she answered, rubbing at one eye with the heel of her hand.  She checked on John first then peered at the trio standing in the doorway. 

“D’Argo’s ship has just emerged from one of the wormholes.  I am …”  The remainder of Pilot’s message was lost as Aeryn bolted out the door, scattering the three males in her rush.  They looked at each other in shock, then ran after her, leaving the image of a crestfallen Pilot to view the almost empty chamber.  “They report that everyone is fine,” he finished, then the hologram faded out of sight. 

   * * * * *

Most of the crew was already assembled in the maintenance bay adjacent to the hangar by the time Aeryn turned the corner and slowed to a walk.  The cluster of bodies separated as she approached and Ian turned to face her, looking tired but otherwise healthy.  He smiled at her, looking sheepish, and she felt giddy and lightheaded, as though she’d been holding her breath for several days and was rediscovering oxygen.  Aeryn searched for something to say to greet the son she’d begun to think was lost forever.  The only words that came to mind were, ‘Where the frell have you been?’  She settled for a smile instead, hoping that no one would notice the trembling that seemed to have infected her entire body.   

“They told me it’s been ten solar days,” Ian explained, walking toward her.  “I’m sorry.”  He hesitated no more than a half-microt, creating a barely perceptible pause in his forward motion, and then stepped close to hug her.  “The wormhole started to change earlier than I expected.  We had to find a different route home.”  He pulled her close, indulging in a completely uncharacteristic display of affection. 

“You’re safe.  That’s all that matters,” she said into his shoulder, then pulled away and looked at him more closely.  “How long were you gone by your figures?” 

“Two solar days,” he answered, frowning in concern as she took an additional step back and checked him over head to foot.  “What’s the matter?” 

“You’ve grown again,” Aeryn smiled at him, seeing the man to be standing in front of her.  She crossed her arms in front of her, holding herself both physically and emotionally as the relief flooded over her again.  Several vertebrae in her lower back seemed to be inexplicably missing, leaving her wobbling unsteadily on numb feet as the others crowded around for a few moments to welcoming Ian back.  The furor settled down and the rest of the crew streamed out of the maintenance bay.  The excitement was over for them, normalcy restored with the return of the wanderers. 

“Why don’t you get some sleep?” she suggested when they were alone.  “You look tired.”  She wanted to touch him, to check him over for bumps, bruises or omissions, ensuring that every bit of her son had come home to her intact.  Aeryn folded her arms instead, tucking her hands under her elbows to keep from reaching out, resuming the tightly enfolded position that seemed to help keep her various parts from flying off into space.   

Ian gestured for her to lead and they walked together into the passageway, headed toward the center of the ship.  “What are you going to do now?” he asked instead of answering her question.  Aeryn stumbled slightly, the corridor seeming to undulate as fatigue moved back in to replace her waning excitement.  “You’re the one who needs some sleep,” he accused her.  “Have you been awake the entire ten days?” 

“Of course not,” she snapped at him, reacting to a censure that wasn’t present in his question.  “You didn’t deserve that,” she apologized quickly.  “I wasn’t awake the entire ten days … it was more like eight.” 

“Probably more like nine,” he countered, looking at her sideways.  “Has there been any change?”  His question emerged in hesitating jerks, each word tumbling out with difficulty.       

Aeryn shook her head.  “The Kallimitri are happy, but they haven’t said one word about how well it’s working.  I’m beginning to suspect they have no clue whether or not this will cure him.”  She stopped walking, turning away from the youngster long enough to wipe the threatening moisture out of her eyes.  Ian didn’t need the additional emotional burden of watching his mother dissolve into tears. 

“Mother?” the deeper version of his voice called to her.  She retreated from the visions of despair, turning away from considerations of life without John.  “You’ll be all right even if it doesn’t work,” he asserted.  “You’re strong.”  The tired eyes watched her carefully for her reaction, suggesting to Aeryn that something peculiar had happened to him at some point over the past few days. 

“I have my strength back now,” she agreed, linking her arm through his.  “You’re absolutely right.  I can survive this.”  Some sort of tension flowed out of his body as they turned together and resumed their course through the tier, his frame somehow becoming more relaxed and yet more resilient at the same time, and she made a mental note to conduct a motherly interrogation once they were both rested.  “I’m hungry -- let’s go get something to eat.”       

“What about … ?”

“Chiana’s watching him.  She’ll comm us if there’s even the smallest twitch.  There’s nothing to do down there right now, Ian.”  He nodded and pulled her arm more tightly into his, maintaining the contact all the way to the Center Chamber, pulling free only when they heard voices ahead of them. 

   * * * * *

“I’ll be back in a little while,” Ian told her as he slid off the workbench. 

The lithe, black-clad form disappeared out the doorway of the medical chamber, moving more like his father than ever before.  Aeryn stared at the empty doorway for several microts, considering the subtle but distinct change that had come over Ian in the two days since his return to Moya.  He had always been somewhat phlegmatic, accepting the oddities of his life without any apparent trouble, but he’d also shown flashes of her own mercurial temper on a regular basis.  The past two solar days had revealed a calmer person -- someone who had magically fastened himself to a stable pedestal, resulting in fewer of his volatile outbursts.  Her probes had yielded no clues to explain the change so she attributed it to a natural maturing and tried to adapt to the emerging adult. 

The Kallimitri had answered their questions about the continuing treatments with smiles, assurances, and a tangled explanation that no one on board could decipher.  They’d tried blunt questions requiring no more than a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, and had left the conversation no more enlightened than when they’d started.  Two or three of the crew had been overheard grumbling about the currency sacrificed to hire the geneticists, suggesting that it was wasted credits.  D’Argo, still nominal captain after so many cycles, had invited the malcontents to depart Moya aboard one of the spare ships, taking Vellum with them, and the grousing had miraculously disappeared. 

“Aeryn?”  The baritone query that broke into her thoughts startled her more for its firmness of tone than for who was speaking. 

“John!”  She was by his side without remembering the transition from one point to the other.  “Hi there,” she greeted him.  “How do you feel?”  His eyes locked on to hers for several microts, more focused than any of his previous confused awakenings. 

“A little woozy,” he admitted.  “What’s going on?”  One hand crawled across the padded surface so that two fingers could fumble at her hand, trying to draw her into a grasp.  She fit her hand into his and pressed them closed with her second hand, holding him tight.  There was a hint of a squeeze against her fingers, the only bit of motion coming from him other than the movement of his eyes as he looked around him. 

“Are you going to stay awake for a little while?” she asked.  His gaze wandered uncontrollably, flicking up and down, left and right, before settling back on her face. 

“I think so,” he answered at last. 

“Pilot?” she called, assuming he’d be monitoring the chamber.  “Tell Ian only, please.” 

“He has already been informed, Aeryn,” Pilot’s hologram answered from the clamshell.  “You do not wish the others to be notified?” 

“Yes, but not yet.”  She turned back to John.  He was staring at the purplish image in the corner, his brow furrowed to the point that it looked as though he was scowling at the wavering face. 

“Hi Pilot,” he said a moment later, the frown disappearing.  Aeryn clung more tightly to his hand, bracing herself as her knees threatened to buckle.  It was the first time he’d remembered Pilot in almost forty solar days.  John turned back to her.  “Want to tell me what’s going on, or do I have to play twenty questions?” 

“I’ll tell you, I promise I’ll tell you,” she laughed.  “I’ve got a question for you first.”  Running footsteps pounded down the corridor, a drumming that said she had only microts to find out if one critical piece of his memory had returned.  “John …”  It was too late.  Ian rounded the corner looking flustered, excited and apprehensive all at the same time. 

John craned his neck to look at the newcomer, the customary confusion appearing immediately.  Ian saw the expression and his shoulders slumped inside the black leather jacket.  “It’s okay,” he said in a shaking whisper to his mother. 

“No it isn’t okay, Ian,” John broke in.  “I want to know why you’re wearing my jacket.  Don’t you have one of your own?” 

Ian grabbed at a workbench, supporting himself with his arms as he slowly slid down to sit on the floor, jaw hanging open as he stared at his restored father.  Aeryn abandoned the hand in order to yank John into a hug, startling a yelp out of him as she slid a hip onto the medbed so she could pull herself close against his chest. 

“Would someone please tell me what’s going on?” the confused patient asked one more time as he did his best to hug her back.   

   * * * * *

Nerri and D’Argo were the last of the crew to filter out of the medical bay, leaving Aeryn and Ian to watch over a sleeping Crichton.  He’d managed to stay awake through most of the excited greetings, remembering everyone and even treating Vellum to an angry scowl.  “Why hasn’t someone booted that little twerp off Moya?” he’d asked Aeryn in a whisper at one point.   

“We thought you’d like to do it yourself,” she’d smiled down at him.  He had insisted that he was recovered enough to have her sit next to him, one arm looped around her waist to hold her in place.  “What’s the last thing you remember about him?” 

“Finding him mucking around inside the module,” he growled.  “He almost went out the airlock that afternoon.”  Aeryn sighed in relief at the answer.  That incident had occurred after John had begun to show signs of the disease, suggesting that all of his memory might be restored.

John had lasted through most of the ecstatic reunion, finally surrendering to his growing fatigue all at once.  He’d fallen asleep right in the middle of a sentence, closing his eyes as though concentrating on something, and never bothered to reopen them.  The chamber had gone silent as he dropped off, each person frozen in place as they waited for the second half of his remark.  Hendlah had realized what had happened even before Aeryn felt John’s body relax, her soft whispering laugh releasing the momentarily paralyzed group to drift quietly out of the room.

“Has your heart started yet?” Aeryn whispered to Ian as they watched John shift slightly beneath the thermal sheet.  He’d resumed the twitches and small movements normally expected of a sleeping person. 

“Just barely,” Ian admitted.  “The way he looked at me, I thought for sure he didn’t remember.  Leave it to him to scare me to death over his frelling jacket.”  He stepped to his father’s side to stare down at him.  After several microts Ian wrapped his arms around his ribs and hugged himself.  Aeryn recognized the habit as one he’d picked up from her; an indulgence he allowed himself only when he was distraught to the point of tears. 

“What’s the matter?” she asked, moving to stand beside him.  “He’s better, he’s going to make it, Ian.” 

He shook his head vigorously, and then pointed to John’s chin.  “Look at his beard, Mom.  Look at where it’s growing in.” 

She glanced at the tears creeping down Ian’s cheeks and then bent closer to see what his youthful eyes had picked up.  John’s beard had begun turning gray several cycles earlier, first in a speckled pattern, and then becoming almost pure gray.  His response had been to keep it meticulously shaved, the signs of aging hidden from everyone including himself.  Aeryn peered at the twelve days worth of growth, seeing nothing but the lengthening colorless stubble.

“It’s his beard,” she stated, puzzled by Ian’s emotional outburst.  Ian reached past her, grabbed John’s jaw firmly, ignoring the fact that he was sleeping, and tilted his head to one side. 

The blue eyes opened, swiveling to check on the two heads examining him at close range.  “Oh frell, what’s going on now?” he asked, words distorted by the grasp against his lower jaw.

“Your beard is coming in brown,” Aeryn announced, finally seeing the demarcation that Ian’s sharper, younger eyes had picked up.  She replaced Ian’s hand with her own, rolling John’s head back toward her, and kissed the startled subject.  “It’s working.  It’s all working,” she laughed through her tears.  “They’re fixing everything!” 

“I’m getting younger?” John asked, struggling to sit up.  “No way.” 

“Way,” Ian answered as his father had taught him, starting to laugh. 

“We’re going to be all right,” Aeryn concluded, her tears disappearing, and something dangerously close to a giggle rising up in her chest.  “I’m all right, you’re all right.  We’re going to be all right.”  She pulled Ian to her with her left arm, and then they leaned over together so she could embrace John with her right; the two men that made her life worth living close beside her, keeping her safe.   

   * * * * *

Thanks for reading,

Kernil Crash

Purveyor of Halluncinations