Zhaan is still troubled by the ruse it took to get them here. She tells Tahleen that she felt invaded by the dreams the priestess sent.

Tahleen asks, "How does the pious Zhaan coexist with all that rage?" She promises that she will share great abilities with Zhaan if Zhaan will share her inner calm with her.

To demonstrate, she plays with Crichton’s brain, altering his memories of a day at the beach when he was a boy. Zhaan is more annoyed than impressed -- after all, virtually everyone in the Uncharted Territories has played with Crichton’s brain.

D’Argo is troubled by the similar dreams everyone is having. "We must leave this place," he says.

"Get the food first," says Rygel.

The bitter root

Crichton explores, only to confront an aged priest named Tuzak, who warns him not to touch the sanctity root – it’s both holy and poisonous.

Tuzak seems to think Crichton is a Peacekeeper. "I am insane," he says, "insane because of you."

Aeryn finds out for herself that the temple doesn't like Peacekeepers. An acolyte drives her out when she refuses to surrender her weapon.

Zhaan asks Crichton for advice. First, though, she wants his understanding, and for that she needs Tahleen to open his mind and present a flashback of Zhaan making love with a Delvian man, only to grab his head and kill him.

That, Zhaan says, was the crime she was imprisoned for. Crichton is aghast.

He shouts, "You killed a guy you were having sex with?"

"I need you," Zhaan says.

"For what?" Crichton asks. "Target practice?"

No, she needs to rely on his judgment, now that the past is catching up with her. Tahleen wants her to do it again.

The man she murdered, P’au Bitaal, was a spiritual counselor, and Zhaan’s teacher. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t give up control of the Delvians when his tenure was up, so he and his political allies brought in Peacekeepers to maintain power.

Zhaan killed Bitaal, but his regime lives on, leaving Tahleen’s people as exiles of conscience.

The exiles now want Zhaan to finish what she started when she killed Bitaal. Ordinarily, Delvians succumb to madness when their darker urges take control.

However, Zhaan has not only managed to balance those urges, she can share that balance through the Delvian ritual of Unity. And then the rest of Tahleen's people will be able to kill without fear.

Crichton comments, "Am I just being stupid here or does that sound a little crazy in their own right?" He wishes aloud was Aeryn was present to help.

Hearing this, Tahleen turns to her assistants, Lorana and Hasko. She tells them to prevent the others from interfering in her plans.

Crichton takes a walk and thinks. His old girlfriend Alex walks up to him, asking, "So when do we go?"

Zhaan goes to visit Tuzak, who approves of her choice of murder victims. His obvious madness doesn’t make her choice any easier, nor does his opaque comment that while psychic darkness is normal, "it’s when you reach down to pull it up" that you court danger.

Don't it make my blue eyes red

Hasko prays, focusing his attention upon Moya, orbiting above. Soon after, D’Argo and Aeryn’s plan to go down and retrieve the others falls apart -- Aeryn forgets how to use her pulse rifle, D’Argo sees his son Jothee and Rygel feels himself shrinking to nothingness.

Zhaan has decided, and the answer is "yes." Tahleen tells her that she needs "the smallest seed – point me to the knowledge, and I will spend my life mastering it."

They bond, and merge. Zhaan begins to reveal her inner self.

Tahleen apologizes. She says that what Zhaan has achieved will take her too long to master, and she needs all of Zhaan’s inner strength in a hurry.

As they pull apart, Zhaan cries, "You betrayed me." Her eyes are red.

You’ll need extra-strength Visine for that

When Crichton finds Zhaan later, she says she "made a mistake" -- she has lost her inner control and doesn’t have the strength to recreate it.

Crichton searches for Tahleen, only to find Alex instead, clearly another psychic distraction to viewers, but he is still taken in by the illusion.

Pilot calls Crichton and updates him on the others' weird behavior. Never the brightest of souls, Crichton decides that he and Alex are the only unaffected crewmembers.

He finds Tahleen and confronts her. "This isn’t about freedom," he says, "it’s about power."

He tells her to put things right. As he leaves, Tahleen tells Lorana to destroy his mind if she has to.

Alex finds Crichton again. When he asks her if anybody is messing with her mind, she retorts, "The only one messing with my mind is you."

She waves her engagement ring at him to remind him of his priorities. Dull suspicion creeps across his brain -- "I never gave you that," he mutters -- but another quick memory alteration soothes him.

Alex challenges him to either honor his vow, or to take his ring back and choose Zhaan over her.

Tahleen speaks with Tuzak. "Learn from my error," he warns her.

She says she has: she’s taking action for herself and her homeland. When Tuzak tells her that she moves too fast, she kills him.

Zhaan's eyes have turned red again.

Crichton tells Zhaan to return to Moya. Zhaan refuses -- Tahleen wants to draw the last of her inner calm from her. At this moment, Crichton realizes that Zhaan plans to kill Tahleen.

Zhaan sends him away. Alex – now wearing a white dress – finds him staring at the sanctity root.

"Why do you care for Zhaan so much?" she asks.

Crichton replies, "Think of all the times she’s put herself on the line for us."

Touched, "Alex" tries to tell him that she doesn’t really exist, but this only confirms for Crichton that the Delvians are messing with her mind.

"I love you," he protests.

"I release you from what is not true," Lorana says. She drops Alex’s image and repairs Crichton’s memory.

Crichton asks, "How in God’s name do you call yourself a priest?"

Lorana apologizes for her order’s failings. She has a suggestion that might help restore Zhaan.

Hasko’s conscience has also made a welcome reappearance. He restores the others’ memories, and D’Argo gives him two hours to make things right before they come down ready to fight.

Lorana confronts Tahleen, who doesn’t care about her subordinate's newfound ethics. However, she does fall for Lorana’s ruse that Crichton and Zhaan have fled to the surface.

Zhaan goes to meet Tahleen, only to find Crichton there. He says he will join with her in the Unity ritual.

"You guys were always going on about how hot it is," he says. "I figured I’d give it a go."

Zhaan says the fusion could kill him, and that she sees no purpose to the joining. He makes chicken noises.

"Your translator microbes handle than one?" he asks.

She grabs him. She recites the litany. He opens up to her.

They merge. Crichton compares it to "ten years of really good sex all at the same moment." He sees her soul, and is afraid.

"There’s something in me that you need to see," he says. "Look at yourself as I see you. Gentle, giving -- that’s you, Zhaan."

"Tahleen can’t take that, and she didn’t," he says. "Follow me, Zhaan, see what I say. Build on that peace."

The contact breaks. Zhaan slowly picks herself up off the floor. Her eyes are still red.

"Fight them," Crichton tells her. "Fight all of the things that betray you."

She collapses again. Crichton turns her over, and sees that her eyes have returned to blue.

Crichton chops at the sanctity root. He doesn’t remember the details of Unity, only the feeling.

Tahleen objects. "I’ll destroy your useless mind," she promises, but Zhaan intercedes.

"I am now a P’au of the 10th level," she tells Tahleen. She too came away with something from their meeting of minds.

Tahleen tells Zhaan, "We want the same thing."

"No," Zhaan replies, "we don’t. You reach for the things I leave behind."

Before returning to Moya, Zhaan returns her priestly vestments to the temple because they now feel like "a shroud of which I’m no longer worthy."

She will be a P’au again, she promises Crichton, but she is not today.