Title: Inaccurate Perception
Author: McJude
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Has Tyr fathered a child, or is it part of a devious scheme?
Disclaimer: Andromeda is property of Tribune.
Author's Note: After reading several reviews of IMMACULATE PERCEPTION and engaging in some on-line discussion, I decided that the "on its face" interpretation of this story is leaves much to be desired. So I have given it some thought and come up with this possible solution. As this is an Alternative Episode it is heavy on spoilers for both IMMACULATE PERCEPTION and BUNKER HILL. Because this story discusses the origins of this child Tamerlane, there is sexual discussion. I have tried to keep it at the level of that on the show, but still would not recommend this for children.
Tyr Anasazi fingered the lock of curly black hair on which he had just completed the spectral analysis of the DNA. The results were what he expected. The hair was a perfect genetic match with that of Drago Musevini the progenitor of all Nietzscheans. His mission regarding this child had just become even more difficult. He had to call upon his best Nietzschean guile to attempt to convince Captain Dylan Hunt that the child was dead, and he was not completely sure that he had been successful. Even if the Captain suspected that he was not telling the truth, he had faith that the place he had hidden the child and his guardian was sufficiently remote that they would not be discovered. There were further tests that needed to be done, but he was hesitant to begin them. If the tests produced the results he now foresaw, the future was problematic.
* * *
Freya appeared to have been so very glad to see him, and not just because he had come to rescue her pride. Once the two of them had a relationship. She had sworn once to be his wife. He still had her armband and considered himself her husband. But they both knew things had changed, why was she acting as if they had not?
She had come to him with open mouth, ready to accept, if not return his kisses. She had willing submitted to sex with little preparation or foreplay. It had been almost two years since they had mated. His body had been engineered to respond to her touches, her smell, her taste. . . so the sex had been hot and passionate. But all Nietzschean sex was like that, or at least it had been for him.
It was only when she told him that they had a child that he had began to feel skeptical. In the last communication he had with her, she told him that she was going to abort the child she was carrying -- his child. He didn't blame her. If she had been his sister and conceived under a similar situation, he would have supervised the procedure himself. As much as he wanted a child, he knew that it was not the time for that child to enter the world. Why had she changed her mind, if she had in fact changed her mind? Why had she gone through with the pregnancy and then not told him when the child was born?
When Olma appeared holding the most beautiful child he had ever seen his heart made a giant thud in his chest. Could such a perfect baby have come from such an imperfect relationship? Perhaps Rev Bem had been right when he talked about the guidance of the divine. As much as he wanted to believe, he had to use his inbred Nietzschean analytic capacities to find another view of this situation which might reveal what the bitch Freya had set up to defeat him this time.
"This is your son Tamerlane Anasazi out of Freya by Tyr." It sounded so wonderful. But he knew it wasn't true. His son never was born. Who was this baby? Why were people willing to kill and die, entire prides would be willing to die, for this child? Perhaps he was no better than them, as he sent the pride away to its certain death leaving only Freya, the child and Olma to be protected by him. He knew it was only a matter to time until he snapped Freya's neck and took the child as his own. No one would question him for doing it. But he realized there had to be more to the story, more than anyone was willing to tell him.
He had not needed to kill Freya. That had been done for him. All he had to do now was take the boy, possibly his son, either with him or to someplace safe.
"Where did you get this baby?" He asked the guardian. She of course answered back that it was Freya's baby, his son.
"We both know that this is not true. Just how stupid do you take me to be? If it were my son, Nietzschean family protocol would have insisted that I be here for the naming and the test to see his genetic connection with the progenitor. You would have contacted me a long time ago."
"Freya believed that it was best if you thought she had aborted the child. It was only after we discovered the child's genetic heritage that we contacted you."
"Please, it was only after the Genites discovered THIS CHILD's genetic heritage through your thoughtlessly sent communications that you contacted me. And even then the communication was not for me to come to save MY SON, but to save your trifling excuse for a pride. I believe that this child just recently came into your possession, necessitating the request for my assistance."
The guardian did not respond. She did not have to respond. Tyr knew he was right. This child, had another set of parents. He was not the child of the last of the Kodiak pride and his blond wife from the Orca pride. If the child were in fact a genetic match with the mummified body he carried with him on the Andromeda, he knew he could not possibly be the father.
Drago Musevini was the first Nietzschean. His parents were not Nietzscheans. His father was a human. His father had made changes to the child's DNA that was passed on through the Nietzschean genes. For as long as Nietzschean's mated and exchanged their precious genes, they could not create a child who would genetically match the progenitor, because they were Nietzscheans, they had been changed from the original progenitor. To revert to the genome of the progenitor, either the child would have to be cloned, or have a human father. Because he carried the body of the progenitor with him, Tyr was fairly certain that cloning had not happened.
Maybe that was why the Kodiaks were chosen to guard the remains. Cloning protocol had been known for centuries. Other prides might have been tempted for to have the progenitor would be an easy road to controlling all Nietzscheans. Perhaps only the Kodiaks who fought the idea of unification could be trusted not to perform this act, to wait patiently for the impossible to happen.
He could not believe that other prides, possessing members with more intellectual capacity than the Orcas, would not have also figured this out. He doubted if a test on the now dead Freya would have shown her genetic make-up any near that of the progenitor or this child. The child had dark skin and black eyes. He looked a lot like Tyr. He wondered if someone would have known the necessary genetic protocol and also attempted to pass the child off as the son of Tyr Anasazi.
* * * *
"Is that what you wanted from me, madam?" Tyr looked over at the woman in his bed and silently swore about how the genetic component of his race manifest itself in the act of sex. "Did you enjoy my large, muscular, black skinned body? Did I perform as you expected? Was the orgasm deep and multi-dimensioned? Was I more stimulating than your more refined husband? What will you tell him when we produce a child that is as handsome as I am?"
She did not answer. He knew she believed that she had been victorious.
"And by the way, Mrs. Bolivar, next time you play the game of musical beds, I suggest you take a shower in-between. Did you not think that I would realize that you had sex just before coming to my bed? Did you think I would not recognize HIS SCENT? Why do you bother with those inferior males?" He walked away without a backward glance, leaving her to live with the consequences.
* * * *
The Genites knew of this child. They had probably picked up their information from the Orcas indiscriminate transmissions regarding the child's genetic make-up. He wondered what other prides knew about this, whether they too would come and try to get the child, or whether they were content to remain anonymous and let the Genites take the credit for his elimination.
"Where did you get this child?" He asked the guardian again.
"I do not know. He was brought to this rock by a group of people who asked us to hide him. I looked into his face and I saw you, Tyr Anasazi. I believed him to your child from a different wife. That is why we contacted you."
"I think not. I have no other wife. If you do not know his heritage, why were those of your pride so willing to die for him?"
"I believe you know that, Tyr Anasazi. We received incomplete tests on his DNA which indicated a strong probability."
"So why hasn't his mother come for him?"
"You probably know that, too. He is not the child of her husband. He is the child of her lover. I assumed the lover was you, Tyr Anasazi."
"So this poor baby gets passed around the rogue Nietzschean prides like a hot potato. I think giving him to the Dragons would have been kinder. When will the members of my species learn that there are times when intrigue is not the answer? I cannot believe that Orcas are so uncompromisingly inferior. Have you ever been able to add two and two and get four? No wonder your pride is now extinct."
"As is yours, Tyr Anasazi."
Tyr ignored the gibe and continued talking. "So I am to believe that the woman who conceived and gave birth to this child does not know is complete genetic make-up, but chose to abandon him only because she though he was not the child of her husband? And you contacted me to save your pride because you thought I might be the child's father. And. . that you thought I would believe that Freya was the mother. Pleeeezzzeee."
"Well let's put it this way. The mother didn't really abandon the child as much as she left it in the care of one of our pride members. That is one of the advantages of being as you put it "uncompromisingly inferior." We Orca can live invisibly inside other prides. When the babysitter realized what was going on with the child, she slipped off with it in the night. I don't believe the mother even realized he was gone for a while." She had a sanctimonious look on her face.
"Until you broadcast his presence to the whole known world."
* * * *
He had walked away as Olma sang quietly to the sleeping child.
His version of the story was still different than what he had been told, based primarily on what he knew and observed. He believed that the child's mother had known the identity of the man who had to father the child from the very beginning. She had planned for the child's conception with a carefully scheduled visit. For her to also include Tyr Anasazi in her plan was a stroke of brilliance. She knew that as the last of his pride and the keeper of the body of the progenitor, he could be looked upon to protect the child with his life. He might even go as far as to claim to be the child's actual father. He could take the responsibility for the child for the present time until the child was old enough and strong enough to unite the Nietzschean world. Only then would she return, claim her child, and attempt to rule the universe.
From the time that his family and his pride had been destroyed Tyr had thought about but had begun to doubt the myth of the Nietzschean messiah. Yet inside every Nietzschean man there existed that small glimmer of hope that he was the one that carried that miraculous DNA that would create such a promised child. He could not deny that he shared the same hope. Someone else had also known that. A very devious someone. Someone who knew that if the child were to be truly hidden, both from the Genites and the other Nietzschean prides, the man to do it was Tyr Anasazi. He would be successful at protecting this child even if it meant also hiding the child from actual father.
In the future he would have to do further tests to confirm what he believed. That the child's mother was Elisbett Bolivar and that the father of the child, promised to be the messiah of the Nietzscheans, was in all probability Captain Dylan Hunt.
Captain Dylan Hunt's restored Commonwealth had produced some, as Rommie had called them, "Strange Bedfellows." The alliances could be vastly altered by the inclusion in the mix of the Nietzschean messiah. At least with the destruction of the asteroid where the Orca had been hiding, there was a good chance that the Sabra-Jaguars, and perhaps Elisbett herself, would think the child had died. He had to take great care to get Olma and the baby someplace safe. A war among those who were now allies was not something that was needed at this time. There are bigger foes to fight, like the three trillion Magog coming at them. The Nietzschean messiah, if the concept were more than just a genetic myth, could wait until later."