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The coughing began again, the sharp pain far beneath my right
breast deeper than usual. Scorpius was by my side in a trice,
lifting the oxygen mask to my mouth and nose; even though I was
perfectly capable of using it myself, and he knew it.
"I'm ok, really, Scorpius", I said.
"The pain is really bad again", he said, stating fact.
There was never any use trying to bluff him, a fact that usually
caused me pleasure. It relieved me of the necessity to lie. Though,
I do wish that I could deceive him sometimes, to take the pressure
off him. The fact that I was so often in pain worried him, his
empathic nature meant that, unshielded, he felt it almost as
acutely as I did whilst the arthritis that afflicted his right
knee and elbow, did not bother me at all; except on those rare
occasions when he couldn't suppress a grunt of pain.
Many years ago, whilst defending Scorpius from a Peacekeeper
Assassin I had received a knife thrust in the right lung. Unfortunately
my system resisted the effects of all the available regenerating
drugs, so that after the space of a few months, my lung tissue
at the site of the old wound would begin to break down again,
resulting in pain, mucus build-up, and coughing. At present,
we had exhausted all available healing techniques. To be brutal
about it, my lung would not heal again, and I would die within
a few months. ... the various drugs I had taken had caused a
general metabolic deterioration .... I bruised easily, tired
easily, had a poor appetite, and occasionally passed a spot or
two of blood in my urine.
Strangely, I did not mind dying so much, for I had a full, rewarding
life to look back on; a life made possible by the Scarran-Sebacean
hybrid that now sat on my bed, looking at me with such concern
in his beautiful, slate-grey eyes, even now only slightly dimmed
by age. I reached up and stroked his cheek, Scorpius caught my
hand and held it there. What caused me anxiety was Scorpius;
I was afraid for him, I didn't want his loyal heart to break,
yet break I feared it would. On more than one occasion I had
held him in my arms, and heard him say. "No one, and no
thing shall part us again, not ever".
I didn't want to leave him, but by all the Gods, I did not want
to take him down into death with me.
We have been lovers now for over one hundred and fifty years,
and, although there have been many difficult and dangerous times
for us, it has been good to us. Scorpius and I were still having
of sex; that primordial, lustful force that first brought us
together still played an important part in our lives; though
nowadays things took a little longer, he was a little slow to
get started. I found that taking his sex into my mouth and sucking
on it for a while usually brought it to performance capability.
And on those occasions when it didn't, well, there was always
the pleasures of cuddling, and kissing, and talking long and
loving until the small hours of the morning.
The mornings here are beautiful, that clearing of the sky, the
gentle breezes from the mountains soughing through the fruit
trees, and the multitudinous birds singing in the crisp clear
dawn air.
Outside one of our bedroom windows we could look over the valley
to the East and watch the lightning of the dark, fading to palest
blue as the sun rose. From the other we could watch the sunset
at night, watch the spread of colours flow from blue to bluer
to black, watch the stars come out. If we weren't too busy, that
is.
And when the glories of nature begin to pall, our chauffeur drives
our personal flier over to the City where we can sit in a roadside
cafe, eating "Don't Ask" kebabs and drinking tea, and
watch the people passing by. We occasionally point out some delicious
creature that, once upon a time, we would have tried to seduce.
We were beyond that now, it was too much like work to have to
go through the whole rigmarole of seduction, of negotiating what
would and would not be done to whom. With just the two of us,
we knew how to please each other, so there was no fuss, no conflict,
and no disappointment.
From time to time, Scorpius would attempt to write his memoirs,
but it always resulted in him giving up; there was much that
he regretted, and much that saddened him.
I could not regret though. The fruits of his works were too wonderful.
His gift of wormhole technology did enable the Peacekeepers to
utterly rout the Scarran empire, freeing hundreds of subject
worlds from tyranny. The war also resulted in the serious weakening
of Peacekeeper might, enabling many of their subject worlds to
revolt, and free themselves, especially after Scorpius had given
them access to wormhole physics. The fact that many of these
worlds proceeded to create their own tyrannies did not negate
this. The necessity to resist the "non-violent" Nebari
incursions into this new found liberty caused many worlds to
unite, with even Scarran remnants joining in to preserve the
integrity of their Home System. The fact that many thousands
of Scarrans also died in the service of sentient freedom everywhere
resulted in a softening of speciesist attitudes towards them,
except on those few Sebacean planets where supremacism still
prevailed. But they were mainly isolationists, and their refusal
to join in the World Party didn't spoil it one bit.
I did wonder sometimes if a new, resurgent PeaceKeeper force
would not someday emerge from these isolationist planets to terrorise
Sentients again, but, as Scorpius always says: "That will
be somebody else's problem."
In the old days I never dreamed that Scorpius would give his
precious wormhole physics development to everyone, once his revenge
had been visited upon the Scarrans, but, you see, his revenge
was towards the Peacekeepers also. John had referred to Peacekeeper
victory as a Pyrrhic one, and it was what Scorpius had intended
all along.
Oh, and incidentally, it had resulted in Scorpius becoming extremely
rich. His one-time shadowbank account, that Natira had schemed
so hard to wrest from him, was as a prowler to a leviathan, compared
to what he later acquired. Nowadays he regularly gave twice that
amount away to Reconstruction projects charities without blinking,
generosity being an almost unconscious thing with him.
I said, I had not regretted anything; but this is not true. The
death of those Banik slaves.. if only I had been there to tell
him how much gratitude, how many loyal supporters he would have
gained if he had only freed them instead of giving them so casually
to the rapacious Natira. This was the worst example of his impulsive,
careless generosity.
The happier result of his generosity was displayed in the holograms
that sat on my dressing table. M'Lee and her offspring. There
were seven of them, pure-bred calcivores, every one, strong,
well-fed, and as beautiful as their mother. I cherished every
picture; but the one I cherished most was the one of M'lee and
her mate, standing at the gate of their cattle farm. The one
located just five clicks away, the one I had visited only two
days ago, with Scorpius.
Also on my dressing table was a holo of Moya, and her son Talyn,
probably the handsomest gunship you ever saw. This had been taken
over a hundred cycles ago. I wish I knew what had become of them,
and the gentle, selfless Pilot.
One holoimage was conspicuous by it's absence, Stark, our sometime
sex-partner, my sometime friend. I still held some affection
for his memory, and would have kept his picture, but Scorpius
could not bear to look at it. Stark's final betrayal and death
still hurt him.
"Poor Stark, he never could stay faithful to anyone, or
anything. Not even to himself"; Scorpius had once said.
There was my holoimage of John Crichton; we had only met once,
briefly, during the only serious period of estrangement from
Scorpius. I had stopped in at a repair station on some gods-forsaken
asteroid in the wakket-hole of nowhere; whilst I waited for some
surface damage to my prowler was being repaired, I took a walk
in a nearby square, and saw Scorpius's adversary just squatting
in front of a beggar-bird, crumbling bread in his fingers and
feeding the woebegone creature. I started a conversation with
him, beginning by asking why he fed such vermin.
"His answer, that the bird reminded him of birds he used
to feed back home, called "pigeons".
And we talked for a while. I ended up telling him about my quarrel
with my boyfriend (without mentioning names, of course); and
he ended up telling me about his girlfriend's refusal to commit
to a monogamous relationship; and for a while, I wondered if
any of my brothers had turned out to be as, as nice, as this
young man appeared to be. I had been struck by his generous spirit,
his humour under adversity.
Crichton never knew that I was Scorpius's lover; but once my
love and I had been reconciled, I took great pleasure in telling
Scorpius all about it; forbearing to point out that, had we still
been lovers, I would have felt it my duty to inform Scorpius
of his whereabouts immediately. In fact, I'm rather glad our
union had been dissolved at that time. I would have hated to
have the betrayal of John Crichton on my conscience. Scorpius
always regretted the way he and John had become enemies. The
truth is that he had never met anyone he admired more than John
Crichton, never met anyone whose friendship he had wanted; and
had never met a man who so inspired his lust - and not just for
wormhole technology.
And so, he kept a guardian eye over the welfare of John's children,
long-distance, ever since. The Princess was happily married,
or so the Publicity Department said, and we had no reason to
doubt them. More importantly to Scorpius, she was a wise and
popular leader; a combination almost impossible to achieve; but,
being John Crichton's daughter, she had managed it. Her mother
had abolished the custom of the living statues.
As for the two sons born to John and Aeryn; one was a talented
musician celebrated throughout several systems. The other was
reputed to be leading the resistance against one of the few remaining
Peacekeeper dictatorships of....., Scorpius had been supplying
his movement with guns and money, anonymously, of course. For
this, still young (by Sebacean standards) man still blamed Scorpius
for the premature death of his father. He never believed that
John Crichton, grief stricken by the death of Aeryn Sun, had
simply gone back to Earth. Well, Scorpius and Rygel were the
only witnesses.
Scorpius saw me looking at the blurry, 2D "photo-graph"
of the young man, who looked more like Aeryn than John, and said
"One day, I will give him the co-ordinates", he mused
for a while "I would have liked to have seen earth."
Scorpius assisted me to my feet, lifting me bodily out of the
huge carved bed that Rygel the XVII gave us when Scorpius announced
his intention to retire here. It was in fact my idea to retire
to Sykar. It was the first Peacekeeper subject planet to successfully
throw off it's oppressors, and as such has sentimental value
to me.
Scorpius carried me to the door of the cleansing room before
setting me on my feet. When I left it, freshly washed and evacuated,
he was waiting for me. I nearly sent him downstairs, wanting
to make it down the shallow staircase under my own power. On
the stairs, however, a coughing fit overtook me, and I had to
lean on him until it passed.
We sat on the veranda, on woven grass chairs; whilst our Delvian
housekeeper served breakfast of cracked grain porage, sweet breads
and hot gworm tea. He also managed to eat several pieces of fruit,
for age has not diminished his healthy appetite.
He glanced at a holomessage that had arrived on his personal
screen during the night, whilst I watched the ground birds chasing
each other playfully across the lawn. I asked him what the message
had been about.
"The University of The Hynerian Empire has invited me to
give a series of lectures on Wormhole Theory; I've decided to
turn it down."
"Oh, Scorpius! Why?"
"You are not well enough to travel, and I will not consider
leaving you behind."
"But, wouldn't you like to visit the Dominar again? You
know how much he likes you."
"I fear his offspring will be disappointed if I turn up
without you, you know how they love to hear your stories",
said Scorpius with a smile.
I remembered the royal palace, and how Scorpius and I had to
stoop to enter the doors, and keep ourselves stooped once we
were through most of them. Amidst all that luxury, the royal
children bounced about like so many rubber balls, strangers to
discipline, strangers to want or fear; yet so easily bribed into
good behaviour by the promise of a story. It always embarrassed
me that I could never remember all their names: embarrassed me,
but amused them. I sighed, suddenly sad, because I knew I would
never see them again.
Scorpius took my hand.
"We can't put the subject aside for any longer;" said
Scorpius, "We both know that you will die soon".
"Please don't give me the 'we shall never be parted' again,
Scorpius, you know I want you to outlive me, it scares me to
think that I...."
Scorpius interrupted me by putting his black gloved fingers to
my lips.
"Very well then, I won't." he said."But there
is something I know you very much want to do once more before
our time together is over".
The old familiar warmth began to flow through my groin. Old I
may be, but dried up, never.
"Apart from that", Scorpius smiled knowingly.
I poured some more tea.
"I know you won't tell me what it is, so I'll tell you."
he said. "You want to travel through a worm-hole once more
before you .. before you." he could not finish the sentence,
but took my hand and put his lips to my fingers instead.
I had always loved travelling via wormhole: the exhilarating
speed, the dizzying rush through the panoply of swirling blues
and silvers, the sudden delicious shock of emerging into unknown
fields of space! My heartrate surged at the thought.
"So, I commandeered Farscape 3 several days ago. I want
us to make one final journey together before your pain becomes
too bad." said Scorpius.
"Scorpius! When for?"
"Today, this afternoon, in fact."
"So you thought you would just present me with it, just
like that".
"Yes" he said. "you see, I know what you want.
When will you ever learn the folly of trying to conceal your
dreams from me?"
Within two arns my love and I sat in the forward cabin of Farscape
3; Scorpius in the pilot's chair, and me - wrapped in a thick
velvet blanket, with the oxygen mask slung around my neck, in
case I needed it. The adrenaline of excitement, mixed with a
measure of anxiety, increased my lung capacity, a phenomenon
that I had observed before .... it wouldn't last, but I determined
to enjoy it while it lasted.
"The only remaining problem with wormhole technology is
the apparently unbreachable limit to the length of the wormhole.
I've been working on the theory, John's theory, for the past
few weeks now, ever since it became clear to me that you were
not going to survive. I have found a limitation in it that he
and I and all the other scientists who ever worked on it before
failed to see. And, I believe I have found a way to overcome
that limitation, to potentiate the
negative force...."
"Scorpius," I interrupted, exasperated, "You know
I don't understand physics! Please, love. Get to the point!"
"The silver nebula", he said. "No-one has ever
reached it before".
I looked at him, appalled.
"I'm going to try and reach it" Scorpius announced.
"We shall see it together".
"But, Scorpius! The last five attempts ended in the death
of the test pilots!"
"Yes", he said calmly. And then he reached for the
Initiator.
"Oh my Scorpius, my love, it can't end this way, it mustn't!"
"It's not over yet", said Scorpius, and his sweet black
lips met mine tenderly. "Trust me".
The swirling blue vortex opened up before us.
On the other side, the silver nebula was more colourful and beautiful
than we had ever imagined.
by Morgan
Scorpion
Copyright Julia Morgan
2001 |