Out of Legends

by Soledad

Author's Notes:

For disclaimer, rating and other details see the Introduction.

The conversation between Tyr and the Hoffan healer has no scientific basis whatsoever. I've made the whole thing up, from the scratch. And yes, I know that techncally, the Lagrangian point would be called differently in Commonwealth science. But that's the term that is familiar for us, mere Earthlings, so I used it.

As always, my heartfelt thanks go to erinnyes for the beta reading and for letting me pick his mind about technology and warfare. All remaining mistakes are mine.

Chapter 07 – Revelations

Tyr Anasazi stared at Chancellor Druhin as if the old Hoffan had suddenly sprouted a new head.

"A… Stargate," he repeated calmly, in the manner of a man who doesn't want to upset his obviously insane but otherwise harmless conversation partner. "Is that some sort of urban legend?"

"No," Druhin replied. "It is a device, built by a long-dead civilization we call the Old Ones. If powered up, it somehow creates a connection between two planets – you can bridge the distance within seconds. We don't really know how."

Tyr glanced at Harper and Rekeeb. "Is that possible at all?" he asked.

Harper scratched his head. "Well, it sounds a bit far-fetched, unless…" he snapped with his fingers, excited. "Of course! Wormhole technology!"

"But creating a stable wormhole is incredibly difficult," Rekeeb said doubtfully, "unless…"

"Unless they've found a way to focus huge amounts of energy and regulate the energy flow, so that it would be safe for the travellers to use the wormhole," Harper finished. "Oh man, I definitely need to see this. I mean, I know that it's theoretically possible, but nobody has ever managed to create a working prototype, not even in the heyday of the old Commonwealth."

"Could this device be our way back home?" Tyr asked, looking at the practical side of things, as always. Harper shrugged.

"Well, I can't say anything before I've actually seen it, but… nah, I don't think so, even if we won't take the temporal shift into consideration. The energy needed to reach even the closest planet must be astronomical. Crossing galaxies would increase the energy consumption exponentially. Besides, I doubt that a ship of the size of the Andromeda would pass through such a gate."

"It won't," Chancellor Druhin said. "Even the Wraith darts can barely pass through… or the small spaceships the Earth people call a shuttle. But if you want to see the Gate, I'm willing to show it to you – under the condition that you'll not tell its location anyone."

"Your people don't know about its existence?" Rekeeb asked.

"They do; they just don't know its location," Druhin replied. Tyr nodded.

"So that they cannot leave for other planets," he guessed. "A wise precaution."

"Truth be told, there isn't really anywhere to go," the chancellor said. "The Wraith are everywhere. I haven't heard of a single world that wouldn't have been culled regularly."

Rekeeb frowned. "Why the secrecy, then?"

"Because every gate can open both ways," the chancellor explained. "And we don't want to allow the Purists to bring the Wraith upon us that way."

"But Officer Goral said that this Purist leader had already visited other planets," Tyr said. "I thought I had misinterpreted his words, but apparently, I have not. How comes that she has not revealed the Wraith the existence of your Stargate?"

"The Wraith know we have one," Druhin said. "Practically all inhabited worlds do; this is the legacy of the Old Ones to us, younger people. But the Wraith only use orbital Gates, or those that stand in free, open places. Ours is hidden underground. Their gliders would be smashed against the wall. That's why they come to us on their large hive ships. Those have hundreds of gliders – and a lot of firepower. We never stood a chance against that."

"Would the Andromeda stand a chance?" Tyr asked Harper.

The little engineer rolled his eyes. "Have I seen a Wraith hive ship?" he asked rhetorically and gave a prompt answer. "No, I haven't! Do I know how big it is, what kind of weapons it has? No, I don't. So stop bothering me as long as you can't give me any specifics to work with." He whirled around and looked at the chancellor expectantly. "Can I take a look at that Stargate of yours now? I won't say a word to anyone, I swear!"

The chancellor turned to his young aide with a tired smile.

"Turval, would you be so kind as take Mr Harper to the Gate? No offence, Mr. Anasazi," he added, looking at Tyr, "but we prefer if as few people know the location as possible. And as an engineer, Mr. Harper is better suited to understand the importance of the Gate than anyone else."

As much as Tyr hated being left out he had to admit that the chancellor was right. The Stargate was the Hoffans' best-kept secret, and they had no reason to trust him, just because he'd helped to smoke out that Purist group. Harper, on the other hand, might find out at least something about the working of the Gate.

Hopefully something that the Andromeda crew could use, too. If not for getting home, then, at least, to get to other planets, where they might get more help to reach their ultimate goal.

"You can continue here until Harper gets back," Tyr said to Rekeeb. Nominally, he had no authority over the Perseids, of course, but the chinheads were practical people who allowed those used to be in command to give the orders – and even followed said orders, if it seemed the sensitive thing to do. So Rekeeb simply nodded and kept working on the various sonograph devices, and Tyr looked around impatiently.

"Where is my wife?" he asked. "She was supposed to watch over Harper."

"She went to the infirmary," the lovely female Hoffan engineer Harper had called Madge answered him. "She felt a little… queasy, which is not unusual for first pregnancies. Don't worry, we have got excellent healers here. I'm sure they'll be able to give her something to lessen the effect."

"I see," Tyr said calmly; showing his concern would have been tactically unwise, even in front of potential allies. "I would like to go to that infirmary of yours then, if I may."

"I can show you the way," the chancellor offered. "I need to get my medicine anyway… my heart doesn't serve me as well as it used to before… before the most recent crisis. These are unsettling times for us all."

He escorted Tyr to the medical facilities that were situated next to the research labs where the infamous anti-Wraith virus had been produced. In a small anteroom they came to some sort of shrine: two paintings, hanging on the wall, and hundreds of small lights blinking reddish-golden in front of them, upon a high-legged little table… like memory candles used in a Wayist monastery.

One of those paintings depicted a lovely blonde woman, wearing the usual, conservative Hoffan clothing, looking up from under her thick eyelashes with a demure smile. The other was the portrait of a man, with an open, handsome face, slicked-back dark hair and the brightest blue eyes Tyr could remember to have ever seen – well, aside from those of Charlemagne Bolivar, perhaps. The man wore some sort of non-descript blue uniform… definitely not a military one, and not even close to Hoffan fashion.

"Who are these people?" Tyr asked. "They must have great importance for you if thy are held in such high honours."

"They are, indeed," the chancellor replied, while plucking an already burned-down candle from one of the upper rows and replacing it with a fresh one from a wooden box. "They are the ones who've freed us from the Wraith… in a manner of speaking. The woman is Perna Rayac, she was the best medical researcher of her generation. She'd done most of the preparation work and research for the virus. The man is Carson Beckett. He was – well, he still is, as far as we know – a medical researcher from the Earth people we've told you about. With his unparalleled knowledge in genetics, he provided invaluable help to the perfection of the virus. Without him, it would have taken our scientists several more generations to finish the project.

"Would it?" Tyr gave the picture a closer look. The man didn't look all that different from any kludge he'd met in his life, but appearances could be deceiving. And a geneticist of such excellence was someone a Nietzschean could always use. "And where are these two now?"

The chancellor sighed. "Perna was among the first healthy volunteers to test the virus. She… she was also one of the first casualties. A terrible loss for our medical science," he added sadly, "but it was her own choice. Everyone volunteered for the inoculation."

"You do not need to defend your decision," Tyr said with a shrug. "I do not judge the methods you try to protect your world with. But what happened to the Earth doctor?"

"He left us with the other Earth people," the chancellor replied. "They couldn't understand why we did what we did… and they were not willing to accept our decisions. Beyond that, Doctor Beckett blamed himself for the death of our people… of those who didn't survive the virus."

"Humans are hopelessly sentimental," Tyr commented in disgust. "They may declare that the end results justify the means, but they back off most of the times when it comes to determined action."

The chancellor sighed again. "They have their own set of morals… and we have ours. The two are not always compatible. They will learn, given enough time, that sometimes… sometimes one has to do morally ambiguous things, out of sheer necessity. Or they will perish, if they can't learn that."

He knocked on a door on his left, and a friendly, middle-aged female healer came to answer it. Recognizing him, she nodded politely. "Chancellor… it was time for you to fetch your medicine. We've prepared it for you days ago."

"Unfortunately, my schedule isn't entirely of my own choosing," Chancellor Druhin replied, taking from her the small wooden box with the tightly stopped little flasks in it. "Oh, and Mr. Anasazi here would like to see his wife."

The healer nodded again. "Certainly, Mr. Anasazi," she said. "Please, do come in. Your wife is fine; it was just a temporary dizziness."

"I'll leave you to your own devices, then," the chancellor said. "I'm sure you have family matters to discuss. I'll see you after the Council meeting again."

The young aide led Harper into a windowless room, deep under the government complex. The room hinted at a technology millennia beyond he'd seen on Hoff so far, with one of its walls consisting of a huge window, beyond with another room could be seen, filled with unknown machinery but with nobody operating said machinery. Perhaps it was out of use… had been for quite a while, most likely.

The large room was abandoned, too. It was dimly lit and almost empty, save from a few wide steps that led to a strange structure which looked like a huge circle, made of some unknown material that could have been either metal or stone, by the look of it. The circle stood in vertical position; however, the lower rim of it seemed to disappear in the room's tiled floor. It as big enough for a slipfighter to pass through – well, if the pilot was very skilled – so it probably could be seen as a gate, based on the sheer size of it. But basically, it was just a semi-metallic circle, at least for the naked eye. Strange symbols were glittering in a matte greenish light all around it, like on some gigantic clock-face.

"That's a gate?" Harper asked in honest bafflement.

"That's the Gate," Turval replied with emphasis.

"And its' supposed to…" Harper trailed off, because despite wormhole theory being, well, theoretically sound, the whole thing still sounded a bit ridiculous.

"…to take you to other planets, yes," the young aide finished for him.

"To other planets," Harper repeated blankly. "That empty ring of steel and flashy lights. You're pulling my leg, aren't you?"

"Not at all," Turval assured him. Not that the Hoffan would have understood the exact meaning of the figure of speech Harper had used, but he thought – correctly – that the stranger was suspecting an elaborate joke. "Those lights… they are actually coordinates of certain places in our galaxy. There are unnumbered combinations for them, or so I'm told, and many of those combinations represent a code that connects our Gate to another one on a different planet. Six symbols appoint a location – the destination of the journey – while the seventh represents the starting point: this place, where we are."

Harper nodded. That actually made sense – in theory, at least. One needed six coordinates to confirm the location of a certain point in three-dimensional space. The practice, however, was an entirely different thing. "I think I can see now how you navigate," he said, "and I understand the scientific theory behind wormhole travel. It's a known one where I come from, although we haven't managed to make it work in practice so far. But how do you choose the symbols? Not manually, I guess."

"Of course not," Turval said. "We have a device… do you want to see it?"

"If I wanna see it?" Harper glared at him in disbelief. "Are you kidding, man? Of course I wanna see it!"

"Come with me, then," the young man said. "The device is in the other room."

The device was a circular console, about the height and the size of a small table, but it seemed massive, and was apparently made of the same semi-metallic substance as the Gate itself. Upon its surface, there were large, flat, slightly trapezoidal-shaped keys, bearing the same symbols that were glittering all around the Gate.

"Man!" Harper said in awe. "This is so cool! And it really works?"

"It works," Turval assured him. "I've gone through the Gate myself, several times – it's a strange feeling, but it's not unpleasant. We don't really understand how it works, but the important thing is that it does work… and it enables us to travel to other planets, even though we don't have spaceships."

"I don't suppose I could see it when it opens, could I?" Harper asked tentatively, but he wasn't really surprised as Turval shook his head in apology.

"Not without the express authorization of the Council, I'm afraid," he said.

"No prob," Harper said, "I know what confidential technology is. Perhaps later, when we know each other a little better," but he let his fingers glide over the keys wistfully, not pushing any of them, just getting a feeling of the smooth, strangely cool material. By the time the Hoffans decided to trust them, he might not be around to give the Gate a try.

The keys lit up under his touch like a firework.

"What was that?" he demanded, snatching his hand back, as if it had been burned. Turval shrugged.

"No need to worry," he said. "The device reacts to some people that way. It's a rare thing, but completely harmless; and it doesn't influence the working of the device in any way, as far as we can tell."

"Well, I dunno," Harper eyed the console warily. Fooling around things left behind by a much more advanced race wasn't a wise thing, in his opinion. At least as long as he hadn't found out what made those things tick. "I'll better not touch anything else here."

"It's probably for the best," Turval agreed, relieved that he wouldn't have to prohibit it. "I'll escort you back to the lab, then. Engineer Draal can tell you more about the gate, if you have any further questions. He's the one who keeps a list of working Gate addresses and has descriptions of the planets our people have already visited. I'm sure you'll find it interesting."

"Cool," Harper said and jogged after him, back to the engineers' lab."

"Really, Tyr, you have no reason to be concerned," Freya smiled up from the examination bed at her husband. "I am fine; and so is our son. We are both fine."

"Our son?" Tyr's eyes lit up in excitement. "You had the in-vitro scanning done? And it is conclusive already?"

Freya nodded. "I thought we would better do it here than aboard the Andromeda," she said. "This is a simple enough examination, and the healers here are very good at learning to deal with medical equipment."

"You have lifted the scanner from the medical deck?" Tyr grinned. "I bet Trance will be… displeased when she realizes that they are gone."

"I do not care," Freya replied coldly. "I wanted a reliable examination, and I do not trust that creature to give me one. And while we are at it, I want you to be tested, too."

"What for?" Tyr asked with a frown.

"I want to know what Trance has really done to you when cleaning you from the Magog infection," Freya said grimly. "I want to know if there was any lasting damage from that rather… unorthodox treatment you have received."

"There was none," Tyr said. "I am every bit as healthy as I was before."

"Or so Trance says," Freya corrected. "I would like to see the proof for it. These healers can do the tests; and they are generally good at genetics."

Tyr shook his head. "This is ridiculous, Freya!"

"And I will readily laugh with you, once it has been proven that I was wrong," Freya said; then she switched to the formal mode of conversation: the one Nietzscheans only used when the most important alliances and treaties were negotiated, and added. "I insist that these tests be made, Husband. This is not negotiable."

"You truly believe that Trance would deliberately harm me?" Tyr asked doubtfully. He would trust everyone with the worst possible intentions on principle, but he couldn't see why Trance would want to harm you in the first place.

"I would not put it beyond that creature," Freya said. "But even if the damage was not deliberate – do you think it would admit that it has damaged you by accident? Well, I do not."

Neither did Tyr, actually. But even if he did, he'd have no choice but allow the tests to be made. Contrary to common belief, in Nietzschean society the women were the ones who made the important decisions, at least as far as family matters were concerned. There was no higher authority in a Pride than that of the Matriarch. Even if said Pride currently only consisted of two people and an unborn baby.

"Very well," Tyr said. "But whatever the results may be, I do not want them to leave this room."

"You don't have to worry, sir," the healer said. "This all falls under healer-patient confidentiality. We've all sworn an oath here. Now, if you would sit down here and give me your arm…"

Aboard the Andromeda Ascendant, Radiance of Wisdom had finished the next round of her scans and was now checking the results. At first, it seemed that there would be no different readings than before, but then…

"Interesting," she murmured. "Andromeda, can you scan this particular area in more detail?" She gave the coordinates, and Andromeda repeated the scan, this time in a more detailed version, aimed the small area the Sapphire Than had requested.

"Interesting indeed," the hologram version of the AI blinked into life at the blue bug's elbow. "An artificial structure. The first that we've found so far. I think Dylan will find it interesting, too.

She was soon proved right. Dylan Hunt did find that particular piece of news interesting.

"What kind of structure is it?" he asked. "A ship? A drift?"

"It's too small for a drift," the Sapphire Than replied, "but it's stationary, so it can't be a ship, either. A satellite, perhaps… and an enormous one at that, floating in deep space. It is located at a Lagrangian point and is either an orbital habitat or some sort of defence mechanism, I believe. From this distance, it can't be determined what purpose it might serve – or for whom."

"What point?" Dylan frowned. He wasn't stupid, but astronomical terms had never been his forte.

"Lagrangian points are actually positions, in a given orbital configuration, where a small object affected only by gravity can theoretically stay stationary relative to two larger objects," Rommie answered instead of the Sapphire Than, quoting directly from her own astronomy database. "A good example for that used to be the L-5 space station in Earth's orbit that, if our universes continue a more or less parallel development, will be built in about forty years from now. The Lagrange points mark positions where the combined gravitational pull of the two large masses provides precisely the centripetal force required to rotate with them. They are analogous to geosynchronous orbits in that they allow an object to be in a 'fixed' position in space rather than an orbit in which its relative position changes continuously. They are named after a human mathematician who lived some three hundred years ago."

"I assume you are counting back from the century in which we've managed to land, not the one we are coming from," Radiance of Wisdom sad. Rommie nodded.

"Of course, Wisdom. Otherwise he would have lived in Dylan's original time. And mine." She glanced at the viewscreen. "Whoever the builders of that satellite are, they've apparently managed to develop space-faring technology, despite the Wraith. That would make them much more promising allies than a primitive, pre-industrial world like Hoff could be."

"Could we possibly have found the Earth people we've been looking for?" Hunt asked.

"That's unlikely," Rommie replied. "According to Chancellor Druhin, those humans weren't technically advanced enough to build something like this."

"Assuming that Chancellor Druhin has told us the truth," the Sapphire Than commented. "Or that those humans had told him the truth. There are too many unknown factors to rely on second-hand information."

"Agreed," Dylan said. "We should definitely take a look."

"Shall I plot a course?" the AI offered from one of the other viewscreens. "It is relatively close, we won't even have to go into slipstream – which I would avoid, if possible, in an unmapped galaxy like this."

Dylan hesitated for a moment. The thought to move on and investigate at once was tempting, but…

"No," he said. "We can't leave without the others. At the very least, we would need Tyr and Harper. We can't know if there's someone still at home on that satellite – and how they would react to unexpected visitors."

"I'd be feeling better with my engineer on board, too," the AI admitted. "But we still don't have radio contact with them. You should send the Maru to bring them back."

"That's the plan," Dylan said. "Although Beka probably won't like it."

"She hates planets," Trance chirped. "And she especially hates weather." As Dylan had been playing basketball in the hydroponics garden when he Sapphire Than arrived with the news, she'd heard everything, of course.

"That wasn't what I meant," Dylan replied. "I'm sending Rommie, to prevent further communications problems."

"Ah," Trance nodded in understanding. "She hates to lend her ship to other pilots, too."

"I can't respect that right now, I'm afraid," Dylan said. "We need Tyr and Harper back. The others can stay on that prehistoric mudball and pay babysitter to the Hoffans for all that I care."

"Do you really expect Tyr to leave his wife and his unborn child behind?" the AI asked with an elegantly arched eyebrow.

Dylan shrugged. "It's up to him. Rommie, go down to the hangar while I clear things with Beka. I want you to start as soon as the pre-flight check-up is done."

In the council chamber of the Hoffan government complex, Chancellor Druhin was meeting his advisors. Once again, he keenly felt the lack of a proper ruling body. Before the administering of the virus – which act, or, to be more accurate, the consequences of which – had turned their entire society inside out, the Council had used to have nine chancellors. Druhin had been the Head Chancellor, but that only meant that he'd led the Council meetings and acted as the nominal head of the state whenever they had dealt with the representatives of foreign worlds. In all other things, the chancellors had been equals; their number kept consciously uneven, so that it wouldn't come to fruitless deadlocks at the meetings. They had been legally elected for lifetime… which could be a rather short them sometimes, under the constant Wraith threat.

Every chancellor had chosen a circle of trusted advisors, and in case of an untimely death, the successor had been chosen from that trusted circle. Consequently, a society of originally about eight million people had been lead by a ruling body of nine, supported by thirty-six advisors altogether. It had been a time-honoured system that had served the Hoffan people excellently for as long as written records reached back.

The death of roughly half the population had changed everything. For starters, the virus had been particularly merciless to the ruling body. From the chancellors, only Druhin survived – because he had not been allowed to become the virus. Partly because of his weak heart, partly because the others insisted that at least one of them should hold back. Their society needed at least one survivor from the government, or else they'd have been drowned in chaos in the aftermath.

This proved to be a wise precaution when all the others died, but it also led to the fact that Chancellor Druhin was now the only Hoffan – save from the various rebel groups – who was not immune against the Wraith. The irony of the whole situation was not completely lost on him.

Some of the advisors survived, albeit only one from his own personal circle: Salia Boulee, a woman of roughly his own age, with whom he'd worked for decades. All in all, there were sixteen of them with some government experience. Sixteen men and women to rule the fate of almost four million people; to deal with the rebels, to reshape their society after the deep shock of losing so many… and to find a way to build up a working defence against the Wraith.

Because the Athosian woman, the one accompanying the Earth people, had been right. Should the Wraith learn that the Hoffans had developed something akin to a biological weapon against them, they'd wipe Hoff clean of all of its inhabitants.

And for that very reason, they couldn't afford to be lenient towards the Purists and other such fanatics. They all knew that. But it was a very hard decision to make.

"News about the arresting of the Purists have already reached wide circles of the population," Salia Boulee said. She looked just as exhausted and worried as Druhin himself, with the additional lingering sadness about having lost her entire family to the virus.

Druhin nodded. "That was to be expected. We can't arrest dozens of people and transport several dead bodies after a firefight without drawing attention. But that's all right. Our people have the right to know the truth. I doubt that we'd have to defend our actions in their eyes."

"On the contrary," Chief Orum Dirige, the head of the militia, replied. "There have already been spontaneous gatherings in front of the government building, demanding the capital punishment for the Purists. Can't say that I blame them."

"Neither do I," Salina Boulee replied. "But how much better would we be than the Purists if we had them executed? Besides, who would do it? Are you ready to order your men to shoot at them, Chief?"

"They have done so repeatedly in recent times," Dirige said with a shrug.

"No," she corrected. "They have shot at people who were well able and more than willing to shoot back and kill them. That was a fight. Execution is a very different matter."

"What would you suggest then?" Druhin asked. Salia was the most experienced and measured person in the entire body of his advisors. He hoped she'd have something useful to say.

"The obvious solution," she replied. "We should send them into exile. Preferably to a planet that had been destroyed by the Wraith, so that they can't spread any news about Hoff."

"But if we leave them on a planet with a Stargate, uninhibited though it may be, what can prevent them to escape through the Gate?" Dirige asked.

"Or to come back and sabotage our Gate?" Hare Seldon, one of the newly chosen, younger advisors, added grimly.

"The Gates can only operate with the help of a symbol-choosing device," Varria Kalosh, another female advisor and an engineer by trade, said thoughtfully. "If we destroyed the device before passing the gate back home, they couldn't go anywhere."

"Neither could the people who destroy the device," Dirige commented dryly. Varria Kalosh shook her head.

"Not necessarily," she said. "Once the Gate is opened, it stays open for about half a cycle."

"With a functioning device," Dirige reminded her. She nodded.

"That is true. But it takes several seconds for the Gate to shut down, after the device has been switched off. A well-aimed shot at the device on the other planet, and the soldier would still have enough time to jump through the Gate."

"That sounds convincing," Chancellor Druhin said.

"There's only one problem," Dirige replied. "We don't have any weapon powerful enough to take off such a device with only one shot. Or two. Or three, for that matter."

"No," we don't," the engineer agreed. "But our new allies might."

"Or they could transport the Purists to a planet without a Stargate," Salia Boulee added. "They've got a starship – and a big one, according to our observatory. They must have holding cells on it."

"But we can't find a planet suitable for sustaining life without the help of the Gate," Hare Seldon pointed out logically.

"We can't," Varria Kalosh admitted, "but they can. A starship must have sensors… life detectors… that sort of thing."

"It's possible," Dirige allowed. "But would they be willing to help us?"

"I don't know," the chancellor answered with a sigh. "Were Mr. Anasazi in command of the starship, I would be more optimistic – he's a reasonable man, as long as it serves his own interests. But this Captain Hunt seems to be the same self-righteous sort as Major Sheppard and his friends have been. I don't think we could count on his help, no."

"In that case," Dirige said, "we have no other choice than to bring the Purists to a planet with a Stargate… and hope that Mr. Anasazi can help us to destroy the device."

"At least he wouldn't have problems with getting involved," the chancellor agreed, if I can give him a reason to do so. In the meantime, Chief, we should send out units to the planets known as uninhibited, to see if they are still abandoned. It would do no good to send the Purists right into the open arms of the Wraith. Their knowledge could mean grave danger for us."

"So, Mr. Anasazi," the Hoffan healer said, coming over from the genetic research lab, "your results have arrived. They are… somewhat unusual."

"Unusual in what way?" Tyr asked. "Nietzscheans are unusual as a whole, if compared with ordinary humans. We are a race created by centuries of genetic enhancement and selective breeding."

"Yes, yes, I have heard the laudation of Paul Museveni from your wife already," the healer replied wryly. "But that's not the kind of unusual that I meant. I've compared your genetic make-up with that of your wife and your unborn child, and there are… anomalies."

"What do you mean with anomalies?" Tyr demanded, trying to stay calm. As a rule, Nietzscheans didn't panic easily, but the mere thought of genetic damage was enough to overthrow their inner balance.

"I'm not sure," the healer said thoughtfully. "I'd like to have more time for a thorough mapping of your genetic sequence. But certain signs make me assume that there still is some alien genetic material in your system. There are traces that can't be found by your wife – or your son."

"You mean I have Magog DNA in me?" Tyr asked, fighting back a sudden wave of nausea.

"I can't tell," the healer answered. "I have never seen anything like it. I'll need a sample to compare with your results to say whether it's Magog genetic material or not. But those traces definitely don't belong to your genetic make-up. Fortunately, they're inactive – at least for a moment."

"But they could become active again?" Tyr envisioned the Magog larvae growing back in his intestines and tried very hard not to panic.

"Again, I don't know," the healer said. "I'll have to study them some more, to map you genetic sequence, and, as I said, I'll need a genetic sample from those Magog to compare. But I'm afraid I have more unpleasant news for you."

"What else can there be?" Tyr asked tonelessly.

"Your wife told me that your entire system had been flooded with hard radiation to kill those parasites inside you, correct?" the healer asked.

Tyr nodded. "And with industrial strength poison, yes. It worked… well, it seemed to work back then, although I'm getting doubts."

"Unfortunately, it has also rendered you infertile," the healer said. "If that's only a temporary setback or a permanent damage, I can't tell. Not without further tests. I'm very sorry for you both."

For some time, both Nietzscheans were mute and frozen with shock. After a few endless minutes, Tyr finally stirred.

"I will kill her," he said with an eerie calm. "Slowly and very, very painfully."

"No, Husband," Freya said icily, "I will. But not right away. I will not allow it to die in the faith that it has managed to destroy you."

"I still fail to understand why she would do that," Tyr murmured.

"The creature can sometimes see the future," Freya pointed out. "Perhaps it has seen something in your future that would disturb its own plans, whatever those might be. I do believe that at first we should try to undo the damage done to you." She looked at the healer. "Can you be of assistance?"

The healer thought about it for a while.

"I can give him a fertility treatment we've achieved good results with in recent times," she finally said, "but I can't promise that it would work the same way on a Nietzschean. There are no guarantees. As for the genetic damage… that's beyond my usual field of work. I can consult our best geneticist, of course – I will consult her, in fact. But I only know one healer who could help you with more or less certainty: Doctor Carson Beckett."

TBC