Feedback!
Summary: “Aeryn, what made you run? It wasn’t fear, not completely. You could have easily turned us in or volunteered for a mission to retrieve Moya and regained your standing. What made you walk away from everything you had ever known? You may have been raised to be infantry, it may have even been beaten into you from the time you took your first breath, but there is so much more to you. You think independently, and something tells me that you always have and it’s probably managed to get you into trouble on more than one occasion.”
I never saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
Yet know I how the heather looks,
And what a wave must be.
I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in heaven;
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the chart were given.
~Emily Dickenson
“It’s Earth, you know. Not Erp. You always say it wrong.”
She’d chosen this place for a reason, knowing he’d find her here. How they’d started sitting in this alcove on the terrace, staring at the stars and talking, Aeryn couldn’t understand. It had just happened and something told her to not question it. If she did, he might go away and as irritating as he could be at times, she enjoyed even his silent company. She didn’t like the butterflies that emerged in her stomach every time he was around. It actively bothered her that she noticed how the color of his eyes was the same color as the split in space at the beginning of starburst. If he looked alien she could handle it, but other than being harrier than the males she was used to, he didn’t look any different than any Sebacean man. Every part of her mind abhorred the way her body yearned to recreate with him – but that didn’t stop him from entering her dreams at night, especially since that kiss on the transport pod. Cholak, she wanted him. It went against everything she believed in, everything she was, but she wanted him.
“Eart …” her mouth tripped over the strange language as she said the word in his tongue. She tried it again, listening. “Eart …” In a way, it was similar to her dialect of Sebacean, but the vocal patterns formed in reverse order over her tongue. The breathy sound at the end of the word was difficult, but not unmanageable. “Eath?” She finally tried.
“Earth,” he repeated, patiently.
“Earth.” She finally managed her mouth around the strange word. “Earth.”
“Terra Firma. It’s the scientific name for it, but it means the same thing.”
“Terra would mean … planet … then? Firma … hard? Firm?”
“Something like that.”
“Many Sebacean colonies use a similar … strategy to name their worlds.”
“What world are you from? I mean, I know you were born into service but there has to be a home planet somewhere.”
She blinked. World? He actually assumed she was a low-life planet dweller? “I was born aboard an Icarion Carrier, under the command of Commandant Jenko Braca.”
“So that’s where the Icarion Company comes from?”
She nodded. “Icarion Carrier Companies are bred for fighting and piloting.”
“Have you ever … lived … planet side?”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“I don’t know. Firm ground beneath your feet. Blue sky above you. Sitting on a porch swing at the end of the night, listening to Garth Brooks or Styx, surrounded by books and bugs and feeling the sweat of the beer bottle in your hand.”
She didn’t even try to understand half the sentence, but, if she was honest with herself, listening to his strange words was part of the fun of their late night conversations. “Beer?”
“It’s a drink. Mild intoxicant. Can be really good or really watery. There’s a brewery in the mountains in the country I’m from …”
“Contry?” Again, her mouth tripped over the language. Hezmana, why couldn’t everyone just speak Sebacean?
“Country. Um …nation state. Territory.” He sighed. “And they make the best pale ale. I did a semester of study under one of the physicists at the big university in the area …” he glanced at her again … “School. And I tell you, not being able to get the Uintah brews when I got back to MIT was tough.”
“M-I-T?”
“Yeah, where I studied physics and theoretical sciences.” He sighed. “I wonder …”
“Wonder what, John?”
“Well, on Earth, big technological breakthroughs always come with one thing, you know. And then the door opens and suddenly everything changes. Maybe, just maybe, my studies opened that door. Maybe Earth won’t be so isolated. Maybe we can join your great colonies in the skies. We’ll realize that things like money and crime and corruption and war and death are universal. Somehow, actually, that makes me feel better.”
She watched him watch the stars for a while, wondering what it was he saw when he looked at them. She’d been born in space. To her, the vastness was as commonplace as breathing. But he’d never been here, never traveled through the stars. What would it be like to see the universe through his eyes? She reached out and put a hand over his.
“I grew up thinking I wanted to meet aliens, Aeryn. My life was spent dreaming about the stars and the moon. I spent so much time in school figuring out how to get up here. And now … now I’m stuck here, and I can’t tell anyone at home about anything I’ve seen. I can’t pick up the phone and call Dad or Caroline. I can’t tell DK that the theory worked. God, I don’t even know where Max is.”
“Max?”
John grinned. “My dog. Max. He’s this old mutt … god I’ve had him since I was twenty years old. I was driving back to school after summer break and I saw this … thing … lying in the street. I stopped, worried, and realized it was a puppy. He didn’t even have his eyes open yet. I wrapped him up, took him back with me, nursed him to health. He went through college with me, studied with me. God, he was … is … was … the best dog in the world. I hope he’s okay. I hope Bobby has him and is taking care of him.”
“Your … dag?” Again, she tried the word in his tongue.
“Dog.” Again, he corrected her. “They’re … kind of like Rygel, actually. You know, communicate with grunts and barks and whining. Eat anything and everything pretty much. Smell really bad sometimes. Not aquatic, though and they’re domestic and loyal to their masters.”
“So, not completely like Rygel.”
They shared a smile.
“Who … your companions? Carline? TK?” Her mouth protested the strange characters but she found herself wanting to learn some basic structures of his language and since he wanted to talk tonight, it was a perfect time to tuck her knees up and listen. Somehow, it made her miss Jenril, Crila, and Valorek just a little bit less.
“DK … my best friend since we were kids. Met him when we moved to Florida, when my Dad’s work just kept us there most of the time. Smartest guy in the world but can’t take a test to save his life, so I was always helping him cheat. He deserved to get into school, but he was just a crappy test-taker. So, I helped him out and he … he’s one of the greatest scientists on our planet. Without his modifications, the module would never have even flown. Caroline … she’s a girl I knew. Great girl, I really liked her.”
“She’s your mate,” Aeryn didn’t know why it hurt to say out loud.
“No! God, no. I did care a lot about her, though. She’s a researcher at IASA.”
“Did you have … a mate …?”
“No, not really. Almost. Her name was Alex. We went to college together. She went on to a job at Stanford; I went on to the Farscape project. She’s a researcher – looks at extreme conditions and what they do to human physiology. We split up a couple of years ago, right before my shot at the space program.” He shrugged and met her eyes again. “You have people you left behind? A mate who would now find you irreversibly contaminated?”
Did she detect a hint of jealousy in his voice? It made her feel better about her own jealousy toward this Alex woman. But she sighed, refusing to tell him about Valorek. “Not really. A few friends and comrades.”
“I’m sorry.”
She frowned, “For what, Crichton?”
“Dragging you out, getting you in trouble with your people …”
But she just shrugged. “You know something, John … it could be worse.” They both chuckled and she found herself resisting the temptation to lean over and kiss him.
“Really?”
She nodded. “I don’t … don’t trust what I’m doing here. I’m not sure why I am still alive, but I’m here, and that has to mean something, right?”
“Searching, maybe, for Earth?”
“What do you mean?”
“A home. That home that maybe you could find?”
“My home was a Command Carrier under the command of Captain Bialar Crais.”
“Yeah, the big hairy bug who thinks I killed his brother and who looks at you like he’d eat you alive if he could.”
“Eat me alive?”
“It’s a saying. If you’d sleep with him he’d probably revoke that warrant they’ve got out for your arrest. But beyond that, he’s a predator, Aeryn.”
“He’s a warrior, John.”
“Warrior or not, I don’t like the way he looks at you. He wants you.” He looked at her carefully. “Is it against regulations to have sex with your commanding officer?”
“Why would it be?”
“Romantic entanglements. It’s … against regulations on Earth.”
“It sounds to me like Earth is a rather repressed culture. Sex is a biological reaction to tension.”
“It’s more than that, Aeryn. I mean, yeah, it is a biological reaction to tension but it’s also something to be enjoyed, something to bring two people together. Something that could lead to something more …”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean marriage. Mating. For life”
She frowned. That was what his culture did? She knew it happened, of course. Even with Peacekeepers, but it was not what she had been bred for. She’d been bred to fight … and to die. Suddenly, she felt sick. She’d been bred, by her people, to be nothing more than cannon fodder. She’d been bred not for advancement through the ranks, but to die gloriously in battle against an enemy.
“What is it, Aeryn?” He was leaning forward again, his hand on hers. “Aeryn, you’re pale.”
“I’ve never given any thought to that kind of life, John.” It was a lie. She had. Once. But her genetics had outweighed even her love of Valorek. Would she do that again? Would her genetics demand that she betray this strange human whom she had come to care for in order to regain what she’d lost? “I wasn’t bred to even think of that life, John. There are those who are but it is not what I am.”
“Are you so sure?” His hand traced her cheek. “Aeryn, what made you run? It wasn’t fear, not completely. You could have easily turned us in or volunteered for a mission to retrieve Moya and regained your standing. What made you walk away from everything you had ever known? You may have been raised to be infantry, it may have even been beaten into you from the time you took your first breath, but there is so much more to you. You think independently, and something tells me that you always have and it’s probably managed to get you into trouble on more than one occasion.”
She gulped and her fingers touched his. She leaned into his touch, “I didn’t want to die,” she whispered. “I didn’t want what I’d spent my life fighting for to vanish at the hands of a firing squad. I didn’t want to have to live, if I lived, in a colony where I’d be nothing but a guard of rabid prisoners. The full pardoned offered? It wouldn’t have really meant that much.”
“So you wanted to live, to taste life?”
“Taste life?”
“Yeah.” He leaned forward and his lips touched hers. “Something like that, maybe?” He asked as their lips parted. She just stared at him, wondering exactly what he meant by the question. But when his lips descended onto hers again, she realized neither of them needed a verbal answer.
fin