On Tue, 22 Jan 2002 06:38:34 +0000 "Sally M" smanton@hotmail.com writes:

Mmmmm ... that doesn't sound *at all* like Avon to me. I would think he'd be fairly indifferent to the child at least until it was born - I really don't see him getting gooey over anyone's pregnancy (not even had *Anna* had his child). Certaibly not one he was a passive and unwitting 'specimen' to (I think he'd loathe that).

Possibly. When I started working with this idea (which, I admit, hasn't really gone anywhere), I was thinking more in terms of the interaction between Avon and Cally.

The scene would go something like this:

Avon connected another wire and adjusted the power settings, scanning the readout. He was still 10% off of optimum. The problem wasn't in the magnetic resonance. He'd checked that. Maybe in the imaging sensors? The crystals were all aligned properly, but what if he'd missed some fracturing? He started to test them, one by one, barely noticing when the door opened behind him.

"Avon?" Cally said.

"Are you done with Orac?" Avon said without turning around. "It's about time. I need it to analyze these readouts."

"I - yes - I - Avon, I need to talk to you."

No, it wasn't the crystals. Maybe in the spectrum analysis? "What is it?"

"The tests I had Orac run. They - they were medical tests."

The stress in her voice finally registered. Avon looked up from his work bench, frowning. Cally was pale, the skin across her face rigidly tight with the effort of holding onto her normal calm. "Medical tests?" he asked, a small knot of uneasiness starting somewhere inside him, though he wasn't certain why. Theoretically, there wasn't anything but old age that was incurable. Radiation, poison, plague, they'd survived it all. There shouldn't be anything the ship's medical scanners could tell show her that they couldn't at least hope to find a cure for. "What kind of medical tests?"

"I -" she hesitated, swallowed. Closing her eyes, she finally forced the words out in a whisper. "I'm pregnant, Avon."

Avon heard the words, but they didn't make sense. "What?"

She opened her eyes, agitated. "That is the human word, isn't it? Pregnant? To have a child - inside me - growing - _my_ child. Is that the word?"

"I - yes, that's the word - _pregnant_?" Tarrant or Vila, if he thought of them at all, were dismissed. He'd seen how Cally was around them. She thought of them as friends, nothing more.

Besides, she wouldn't be here talking to him if either of them were responsible. The knot in his stomach turned to lead. Cally had been on her own in enough dangerous situations, facing Federation guards, outlaws and madmen. But she'd never said - he'd never thought - No, he realized, he'd never thought.

"The father?" Avon asked.

He could see the strain on her. For a moment, struggling to say it, she seemed like glass ready to shatter under an enormous weight. But he never expected her answer. "You are, Avon."

Avon blinked, trying to find another meaning in that. "Cally . . . ." he began, wondering how to explain the facts of life to a sheltered Auron.

But Cally wasn't quite that sheltered. "The Ultra," she whispered.

There was a long silence as that sunk in.

"Oh," Avon said at last. The Ultra, bizarre aliens interested in nothing but collecting information - and physical subjects - for their encyclopedia. He and Cally had both spent a fair amount of time unconscious in their labs. Awaiting disposal, after their minds were drained, Avon had thought. Apparently, he'd been wrong.

"Orac - Orac was certain. About the time, I mean. And the DNA -"

"I understand about DNA," Avon said. He rubbed his forehead. "Did Orac have any theories why the Ultra did this?"

Cally shrugged helplessly. "Orac thought - humans and Aurons are similar but no one . . . no one's ever proven if we're different species or subspecies or . . . . Related species can interbreed, but . . . ." Her voice trailed off.

"I understand," Avon said, sparing her the need to try and say more. It made sense. And the Ultra couldn't have expected to see any Aurons after Cally. She was almost the last. "What . . ." Avon groped for words, ". . . what are you planning to do about it?" he asked, not even sure what he meant.

Cally seemed to shrink back into herself, but her voice was fierce. "Avon, this is my _child_. I have to - I _can't_-"

Avon had a brief, intense memory of Cally's clone sister, Zelda. She had died on Auron rather than abandon the children entrusted to her care. And she had been the last family Cally had. All the rest, her parents - almost her entire race - were dead. She couldn't do anything but fight for its life. "I understand," he said.

Which is about as far as I've taken it. Avon's initial involvement is more from the fact that Cally is about at the end of her emotional resources (and, frankly, I'm not sure what her physical resources are at this point. Going by her small build alone, she's at high risk for all sorts of delivery complications and there's plenty of room for more worries [after all, if she knows the _Auron_ word for pregnant it's probably only because she'd heard Zelda use it discussing her work. She grew up on a planet where no doctors she ever dealt with would think of protecting a patient's ability to bear children as a priority and where they might even have reasons to damage it (giving her some kind of boosters for her immune system when she went into exile)]).

I still think of this as AU, mainly because I think it would temporarily derail Avon from going after Blake (I do like the thought of him telling Zen to be quiet before Zen can explain that the incoming call says it's from Blake). Whether he feels paternal or not, he wouldn't have time for other problems while he came to grips with the situation.

As for Avon as a parent, as a _single_ parent he'd be pretty bad. Oh, I think he'd do his best. I just don't have much faith in his ability to provide decent emotional support without a lot of coaching.

As for putting Cally down on Kaarn, it doesn't quite work for me. Besides, I think, once Avon decides to look out for someone, he likes to have them where he can see on a regular basis that they haven't gotten captured or killed.

That's just me. Since I haven't been able to work this into a story (as I said, the whole problem is a conversation or two that are rather fun to write followed by Avon doing his best to derail any further complications or dangers resulting from this situation [sure, he may decide to find a decent doctor for Liberator but, since he'd probably only take someone Orac and every other resource he could muster cleared as gifted but nonthreatenting, this doesn't look like a fruitful plot device either]).

Ah, well.

Ellynne ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/.