Finished Canon/Conventional Couple Fics. These stories pick up from events in the show. All complete stories from the main Canon/CC board will eventually be moved here.
Rating: Suitable for teens but with some adult themes. Disclaimer: The characters and storyline of "Roswell" belong to Jason Katims, Melinda Metz, WB, and UPN. They are not mine and no infringement is intended.
Title: The Roswellian Codex I Bone Hill House.
The starting timeline is 2055, but the period covered follows the events from the end of series three. The events presented here take place during the year 2006.
There are two parts to this codex. The second codex is called The Antarian Conspiracy.
A CODEX: A series of documents and manuscripts attached or edited together. A collection of ancient manuscripts or sources. A collection of preparatory medical tonics and pharmacological treatments
______________________________
2323/223 SC 6
Transmitted to Office of the President
Priority: Normal.
From Attorney General’s Office, Geneva, European Federation.
April 22nd 2055.
Dear Madam President.
I am pleased to inform you that our deliberations are over and that the Supreme Court agreed unanimously this morning to release the Roswell Codex to the general public under the Freedom of Information Act as most recently amended (FIA 2036). I enclose the entire manuscript here, although it was decided to post instalments via this dedicated web site, and to transmit on WAP and TDMT formats where appropriate on a regular if not daily basis, usually arounf 18.00 CET. This form of dissemination has been determined in part because of the length of the codex, and also because of the unusual way in which it has been written. The Supreme Court has thus overturned the late Government’s decision to sequester the codex with immediate effect on the grounds that it is ultra vires of the constitution.
The Court did agree however to remove certain sections of the Codex and to hold these over under article 15/7 of the FIA indefinitely. Article 15 empowers censorship not on the basis of international security but on the basis of existing Privacy Laws, and where an involved party has explicitly requested that the information be withheld. The Court believed that these deletions did not impair the integrity of the codex or its importance to the general public.
On a personal note, I would like to thank you for your support in assisting this case. It remains my hope that the entire history of Roswell will now be placed firmly in the public domain. This is a landmark decision, and will have important implications for records held between 1999-2006, immediately prior to the period covered in this codex, and for the entire Roswell archive dating back to 1947. I also believe that, in the current political climate, this verdict sends a very clear signal to our allies concerning our commitment to racial tolerance and to open and transparent debate.
I would like to acknowledge the continued help and guidance of Ambassador Julian M Evans, who despite very pressing matters on Antar, never failed in complying with our requests and in providing access to materials of his late father’s estate, often at very short notice. The staff and curators at Bone Hill House have also been exemplary in their efforts to meet our often ill-considered and unreasonable deadlines.
Yours sincerely
Henry K. Maitland.
Attorney General
Federated Territories.
_________________________
I am not sure how decent it is to keep tinkering via edits - thanks for many suugestions pm'd to me and thanks for s-e-r for some really helpful comments and constructive criticisms.
Last edited by Patroclus76 on Sat May 06, 2006 4:29 am, edited 50 times in total.
My name is Julian Grey and I am a retired microbiologist. I directed a very specialised unit in Boston that worked on the manipulation of human genetic material, using a technology that had been pioneered in London, England. During my professional life I became an expert on base sequencing in the human genome, and part of the emerging if not controversial field of genetic modification. I headed up and directed the US side of the Human Genome project, which successfully mapped Chromosome 22 in 1999. I am currently an Emeritus Professor of Oxford University, England and of the Harvard Institute of Molecular Biology.
My wife was a journalist and a regular contributor to The New York Times as well as a city magistrate for a brief stint. We had no children, in part the outcome of two busy lives, but for the most part because I was infertile. As a geneticist I accepted this with grim humour, evidence perhaps that God was into irony. Somehow it made my work more precious to me, more mysterious. We considered adoption but in the end we became childless, model citizens. In 2003 we sold our property and bought a large, run-down villa and estate in Washington State, not far from Mount St. Helens. I was 54 and tired of city living, and frustrated by the growing regulation and legislation of my institute’s research agenda by the government and increasingly by the FBI. The final straw came in the fall of 2002 when I was involved in a series of experiments that I knew to be un-ethical and illegal.
Seven pages sequestered under article 15/7
These experiments resulted in the death of thirty-two of my colleagues and several volunteers, twelve of them children. I narrowly escaped with my own life and I managed, with the help of a young lawyer, to assist in the escape of four other children thathad been brought to my institute from New Mexico. These events traumatised me, both personally and professionally. My attempts to seek redress through the press resulted in threats to my wife and to myself. My license to carry out gene therapy research was revoked along with a majority of the funding. A legal case against the government allowed me to sequester some of my equipment away, but on the whole our only real alternative was to move and to remain silent. I decided at that stage to keep a journal. Not a diary, but a diary, a personal (too personal) account of what had befallen me. We moved to Washington State in the autumn of 2003. The diary has been stored electronically. I had never deleted or amended anything but I have sometimes added a postscript. This will be indictated with the date of inclusion in italics.
Frugality (or meanness?) meant that we were well off and able to buy what was, in many senses, a rich man’s folly. Bone Hill House had been built by a lumber merchant cum industrialist in the 1920s, ten miles from the nearest town, but he committed suicide in 1932 as his assets collapsed during the depression. It was a rambling, brooding pile of Elizabethan-gothic, with spectacular turrets and towers crammed onto every vantage point. It had been designed loosely on Burley House, in Lincolnshire, England, home of the Cecil family. It was permanently cold, with vast long rooms running around a square design. Large mullioned windows looked out west across mountain and pine, and east into a long valley partly landscaped, partly abandoned. In was quintessentially English, which appealed to our Bostonian snobbery.
There were 22 bedrooms and enough reception rooms to sink a battleship. It had a spectacular library, and a massive imposing entrance hall as impossible to heat as it was to light. We had various plans. I hoped to equip it with a lab and to continue some of my research work. It had been many things – a country club, an army recuperation home, a hotel. We inherited a peculiar staff of two: one general dogsbody called Wilcox, and a cook called Miss Clever. We joked about opening a country club or a theme park. Yet things rarely go to plan. In 2005 my wife died suddenly of cancer, followed quickly by the death of Miss Clever. I found myself alone with Wilcox in an old grim mansion, ridiculously large, partly modernised, but stubbornly and at times morosely pre-war. In the spring of 2006 I decided that, even at the risk to my own personal safety, I would sell up and return east.
Six volumes sequestered under article 15/7.
Last edited by Patroclus76 on Fri Apr 21, 2006 12:58 pm, edited 4 times in total.
Awoke to the sound of thunderous rain. The roof leaks in so many places! This is not a house at all but a gazebo. In the evening I retreated to my study where I read through the mail. Several letters from Jessie Ramirez, forwarded from my old house. Enclosed in one was an invite to his wedding in May. I am not sure I will go. His law firm was outstanding back in 2003 and he showed me and my wife many kindnesses, but I found him oddly, persistantly interested in my work. Perhaps he is a failed medic? Its good to stay in touch though, I liked him, although he might be a bit of a crank. His new wife is French, a lawyer. I sat down to read Giddon’s paper on viral-RNA. Interesting stuff.
At 8.45 Wilcox came to me looking perplexed and unhappy. He said that recently certain things had gone missing from the kitchen and from the storehouses, mostly foodstuffs but recently he had noticed that two large barrels of kerosene had gone. He said that there was no sign of any break-ins and the locks on the storehouses were intact. I said it seemed unlikely that someone could do this without revealing their presence. I had inherited a rather elaborate alarm system that I diligently set every night, and the kitchen was not an easy place for the casual bugler to penetrate. I suggested very delicately that he might just have misplaced things.
I thought he would take unkindly to this suggestion but instead he sat down opposite me, nodding. He said that he too had thought this the most likely explanation, but tonight he had found $400 dollars on the kitchen table and a list of things that had been taken! I looked at him in amazement. He handed me the money. It was in brand new consecutively numbered 10 dollar bills. The list was typed or word-processed on a sheet of grey, poor quality paper, the sort you used to wrap meat or fish in. Dumbfounded, I said I would keep them safe and that we would have to keep a close eye on things. After he left I wondered whether or not he was getting too old to potter about. Only the other day I had rescued him from otherwise certain death on top of a ladder overhanging the central stairwell. I locked the money in my bureau and went to bed at about midnight, after re-arranging the water pots in the conservatory to cover fresh leaks. I dreamed of my father. He was sitting on a low bridge telling me his story of alien abduction and I, as always, feigned interest.
March 4th, 2006.
Wilcox had clearly been up all night patrolling various parts of the house. He looked grumpy and set fire to the toast. He wanted to set up watches, but I thought that the leaving of a note denoted finished business, hardly the sign of someone likely to come back for another spending spree. It stopped raining at 11.32 precisely! Just before lunch we had a visit from the local Sheriff’s department, a jolly man called Hanson. Wilcox was up in the eastern wing trying to fix leak number 3342. Hanson took his hat off and kept saying `god alive’ which must be a local expression. Curious man, he clearly thinks this is my ancestral home or something and that he should avoid looking at me out of deference. He told me (or rather he told my tie, since this is all he looked at) to be on guard for immigrant workers from the South West casing up property while seemingly looking for casual labour. `They’re probably Mexican’ he said, winking as if this explained everything. `I am sure they’ll stand out like a sore thumb’ I said but sarcasm can only work in very specific circumstances, and this was clearly not one of them. I did some gardening later and mused on the concept that immigrant workers would pay for their break-ins? Hanson made no mention of missing dollar bills. Why any self respecting Mexican would want to get up to Washington state was also a mystery. Sat up to watch a film on Crick and Watson. Awful. I have over 100 channels and not one decent program on any. In the end I went to bed with The Tempest.
(thanks for the interest - I hope that the suspense can lead into the plot without the diary format making it too episodic or long winded)
March 11th, 2006.
Something very odd is going on in my library. Today I was able to prove beyond all doubt that several books have disappeared and reappeared over the last few days on a regular basis. Some are returned in the right place but upside down, while others are left on the main library table as if pointedly revealing their use. I am mystified by this and slightly alarmed. The books are primarily research monographs on gene splicing, extremely advanced manuals on proposed experimental techniques for cloning, and several texts on retroviruses. I spoke with Wilcox and managed, in a round about way, to ascertain that nothing else appears to have gone missing and that no more money has turned up. I didn’t let on what was happening. He will only fret or start walking about with a shotgun. Bloody odd. Played golf and then rattled about the east wing looking at the state of decay. Truly dreadful in places. I discovered in a high tower room a lot of unused gym equipment!
March 15th, 2006.
The odd happenings in the library have continued, on and off, for over a week but today something very sinister took place. I am now genuinely alarmed.
Over the last few days several more highly technical works have gone missing and NOT returned. Yesterday I walked about the outside of the great library window, and around the inner courtyards near the empty discarded pool looking for marks of any kind. None. Not even a shoeprint. No signs of any break-ins or trespass. This morning, however, I discovered that several of my own monographs had somehow been removed from their bindings – summaries of experimental work on intra-species hybridity. The bindings were, however still in place in a locked cabinet? How is that possible? Am I going mad? At first I suspected Wilcox, but Wilcox has a wholesome dislike of `reading' and sees the library as some sort of Faustian cave, best left alone, and besides I like and trust the man. As I was leaving to go for breakfast however, I noticed that a book had been placed on the Chesterfield sofa by the fire, with a note in it. The note said simply JULIAN. When I picked it up a deep chill passed over my spine.
The book did not belong to me, and had, on examining the bookplate and the slipcover inside, once been the property of West Roswell High School. The book was a novel by the British science fiction writer, John Wyndham, The Midwich Cuckhoos. I had a long and complicated involvement with this book. In many respects it was singularly appropriate to me, and it spoke directly to my fears and anxieties of the last few years. Whoever had left it for me knew me intimately and more to the point knew a great deal about my past and about my work in Boston. I felt cold and deeply shaken and stupidly hid the book deep in my safe as if it needed burying. I worried and fretted all morning. Was this a threat? If so why had someone not thrown a brick through the many suitable windows in my house, or painted obscenities on the wall, or rang me and hung up at 2 in the morning? Was there something more subtle – more invidious – at work here?
I took a walk after lunch through the beech woods and tried to stay calm. I resolved to ring Jessie in Boston. We had once talked about contacting each other should the need ever arise, and his recent letter and wedding invite seemed fortuitous. Tried to calm myself by reading and sorting out the catalogue of paintings and prints throughout the house. Nothing really valuable, one or two interesting reproductions. In one of the drawing rooms there is a splendid copy of Benjamin West’s Death of General Wolfe. I felt myself anxious and angry.
Later…………I rang Jessie after dinner but I kept getting his answer phone. Before I went to bed I emailed him from the study. I seriously considered the possibility of sitting up all night in the library waiting but my nerves failed me. I slept badly and when I slept I dreamed of the children, their silent studious faces and the green grey walls of the depleted uranium cells. I had not dreamed about them for years.
codicil 1 attached, Copy of email trascript. Copyright Bone Hill House Estate
___________________________________________________________________
Date: 15 March 2006 23.20+0000
From: "Julian.Grey@tiscali.*******
To: Jessie Remeriz
Subject: urgent: can we meet in person?
Dear Jessie
Thanks for forwarding the recent mail from our old address - I had rather hoped the the postal service would re-direct them, but thankfully I have you to fall back on!! I cannot understand why the property is still empty but as it isn't mine anymore who cares!
Jessie I need to talk with you urgently concerning a series of events that have taken place over the last week or so here at home in Bone Hill House. I am concerned that I am the victim of either a series of pranks or that there is something more sinister going on. Someone has explicitly linked me to the events that took place in Boston in 2002-3. I can tell you how I know this in person. But I have no doubt that whoever is behind these events knows of the institute and the experiments that were carried out there. I need to speak with you. This email is from an encrypted server but
I am still not happy to discuss issues like this on email and certainly not on the phone.
I know you are immensely busy, but please try and make time.
I can come over to Boston if necessary. I recall talking to you about the protocols for contacting you if the need arose. I now fear it has.
Thanks for the wedding invite by the way. I will try and get over for that - although at the moment August seems a long way away!!
yours ever
Julian.
__________________________________________________
Win a BlackBerry device from O2 with Yahoo!. Enter now.
Several more books have gone. And this morning one of my monographs was returned – annotated would you believe!! I have tried not to think about these events and have busied myself with preparing to sell the house. I can’t stay here now. If were younger and more determined I would put up a bit of a fight, but I am worn out, and in truth lonely. When I now use the mirror in the mornings to shave I see my father looking out at me, the same lines, the same thickening, hooded eyes. Have I seen as much with mine as he claimed to have seen with his? Alas he was dead and gone before I could, on the basis of my own shocking experience, acknowledge that his stories of abductions and UFO sightings were real. That saddened me. There could never be any reconciliation between us now. He had gone where I could not follow.
Nothing of interest in the mail, no word from Jessie. Wilcox came in around lunchtime and asked if he could shoot the heron up on the pike pond because it was eating the fish. I told him no (how brutal these locals are!). I rang some estate agents in Seattle. While I was holding for various people my mind kept wandering. What criminal or social activist (or FBI agent for that matter) would return a monograph covered in notes, and several highly relevant questions and queries? If these were the itinerants from the South West, they were clearly majoring in biology! I tried to make light of it. Somewhere in Roswell, (and how more south western could you get than that!) a high school library was missing one novel. How it had arrived here was now not such much a threat as a puzzle.
March 22nd. 2006.
Seattle is no good. Clearly selling this place is not going to be walkover. I don’t want an auction. I rang Wenatchee, about twelve miles west of Bone Hill, and eventually spoke to the same man I had bought the property through in 2003. While he was being brought to the phone I heard his secretary whisper to him `Its Julian Grey, you now, Doctor Frankenstein!!’ I smiled grimly to myself, more over the fact that this made Wilcox my Igor. Even in small town Wenatchee something of my work and expertise had passed around the local bars. Frankenstein wasn’t quite right though! I arranged a meeting with the agent on Wednesday. Weather really wet and windy but the air is warming quickly now. I rang Jessie’s office again which I considered risky but I am desperate. I spoke to his PA who said he was in Paris. I hope he is alright?
March 23rd,, 2006,
Meeting with the estate agent was pretty depressing. Market is slow and Bone Hill House has a `reputation’. He seemed to have forgotten he sold it to me three years ago! I hate estate agents, tedious contrived little frauds most of them. Walked about the town feeling slightly paranoid and unwelcome. At first I thought it was my appearance, having retained an irritating habit of wearing heavy tweeds and ties and cardigans, something that gives me the air of a lawyer, but I came to the conclusion that I am simply not liked or again that some rumour, some vague thread of attachment, has followed me out from Boston. I am becoming obsessive. Clearly I need a vacation! Somewhere warm and hot.
I stopped by at Wenatchee’s only a second hand bookshop – The Classic Companion. The owner is a retired logger with an interest in classical literature and we have, over the last few years struck up a vague familiarity. He indulges me in the fiction that I am well read. I wanted to check out if any of books he had were ex-library stock and if so, if anyone could have bought the Wyndham book locally. I asked him if he did any ex-library clearances from schools or private houses. He got quite excited, evidently thinking I was planning to sell my own. In the end I learned that he never bought ex-library stock on the grounds that they were overused and usually falling to pieces `and dirty’ (he meant unclean as opposed to pornographic).
There was no one in the shop and he seemed in a conversational mood. I asked him if he liked science fiction, to which he replied with relish that he only stocked the classics. Wyndham was one of them. He thought that some of the British stuff was very good if not a little parochial. He removed a box from a high shelf and handed me a yellowed 1970s edition of The Day of the Triffids. I recalled seeing a truly dreadful film version of this in the 1960s. He handed me The Kraken Awakes saying that this was very appropriate for today’s planetary concerns since it was about sea level rises and the end of the world. I nodded in agreement. Most of Wyndham’s books were about the end of the world in some way of other. We talked about Cruise in War of the Worlds, a film I was deeply disappointed in.
He started telling me about the difficulties of adapting science fiction to film in an era when people just wanted special effects and lots of `flash to bangs’. Suddenly he asked me whether I had ever seen the British Pinewood Studio’s version of Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos? I looked at him sharply, but the conversation seemed to have moved in this general direction easily – naturally - enough. The film was called Village of the Damned. The American director Carpenter remade it in the 1990s. I settled back down near the counter and next minute found that he had offered me a coffee. He had as much time on his hands as I did. I told him I was not familiar with the books or the films.
He explained that the book was about unexplained pregnancies from outer space, a sort of invasion of the body snatchers. The village of Midwich suffers a mysterious blackout, and when everyone comes around, all the women of child rearing age are pregnant. The children are born with special powers and in the end the local doctor tricks them and kills them in a school with a bomb. Only then do the British authorities learn that all over the world mysterious children have been born but have all been killed by the authorities, along with all the adults because the children were telepathic and would otherwise have known what was being planned. I felt suddenly nauseous and immensely old. Hearing him speak to me about my own life broke down a wall of silence in my heart, a painfully constructed stronghold against guilt and the horror. I found my hand shaking.
I made my excuses and needlessly bought Day of the Triffids. As I turned to leave I noticed two young women were standing across the street looking directly at me through the shop windows. Both were in their late teens or early twenties, both attractive, but one dark almost Hispanic looking, wearing a hat and shades, the other pale and strawberry blonde. Very casually they started to talk to each other. The shop owner turned around to see what I was looking at so intently and clearly thought I was being lewd because he smiled broadly and winked at me. He said he had noticed these two `hotties’ for sometime. I remarked that they were a little young for me. I walked out back to my car, deliberately not looking until I was sitting in the driving seat. The two girls had followed me at a distance; one was on a cell phone. As I started the car I noticed that the dark shorter girl was expecting a child.
When I got home there was the oddest, weirdest email I have ever had in my life (and that, frankly, is saying a lot!!) It was from Jessie and had been sent from London. It read
Dear Julian, I am en route to Paris to reassure my nascent French in-laws that not all Americans hate them (the French that is)! Don’t worry about the book – the Duke of Milan is on his way to you, trust him. You will be in safe hands. You are to help him reclaim his Dukedom (and yours!) And please trust me’ Jessie R.
I sat back and stared at the screen until my eyes watered. I had made no mention of a book, it was something I had not been prepared to discuss over the internet. Clearly Jessie was involved in this. Part of me felt deeply outraged at this betrayal, and yet part of me was deeply, deeply relieved. As to his reference to the Duke of Milan, clearly the use of literary metaphors and biographical references was not confined to Wyndham. Jessie was a clever man, well read, articulate. Just before I had left Boston we had both gone to see The Tempest together, a new version by a Canadian student company. It had been a beautiful radical adaptation. At the end Jessie had asked me why I had been weeping. I found it difficult to explain.
After dinner I locked myself in my study to think. It had started to rain heavily again and the central hall was full of the soft dripping of water. Throughout my career I have often responded to instinct. For someone given to clear deduction and experimentation this may sound unusual, but it has rarely played me false. In my mind various things were starting to come together. Jessie had always it seemed, had an ulterior motive in his relationship with my institute and me. Now the women outside the café, Wyndham, West Roswell High School, and the odd series of break-ins were all related. One of the young women I had seen was pregnant – was that the connection? Did it have nothing in a sense to do with my experiments? (How guilt can so often make the sum of 2 plus 2 equal 10!) This was not some sort of malicious vendetta; it was a carefully researched, patiently executed plan, almost like a seduction. Someone was enticing me into a maze, leaving a trail I would follow. And the Duke of Milan – Prospero himself – I did not get that connection at all*. I went to bed early but a storm had blown up and kept me awake, or was it my mind racing?
Shortly after midnight I threw aside my native caution and utilised Google to search around a series of topics that seemed somehow to mesh together, to overlap like a Venn diagram. I knew something of Roswell, the alien crash in 1947, the so-called cover up. Aliens. Alien invasion. That linked to Wyndham? The book linked me to children and or pregnancies but thereafter the trail petered out. The web is a brilliant resource, like an old box room, it collects the debris of the half known and the scarcely possible buried amid the factual and tediously precise. Roswell not surprisingly produced a long string of topics. I sifted through them. Lightening briefly illuminated the dark room about me, and slowly, eventually, I heard a bass rumble of far off thunder.
It would appear that since 2001 Roswell town had been the scene of a series of unusual events culminating in an attempted shoot out at the local school’s graduation ceremony in 2002. From national media sources I read that armed terrorists had seized the school hall and held a series of students hostage, several of which had subsequently disappeared. I could not find any photographs, but I did find a series of names: a brother and sister known as Max and Isabel Evans, a then emancipated minor known as Michael Guarian, two girls by the name of Maria De Luca and Elizabeth Parker and another male, Kyle Valenti, the son of the local sheriff. One of the women abducted by the gang also appeared to have been involved in an earlier shooting at a local restaurant.
Roswell was clearly a rather dramatic place. Another sudden explosion of light, closer now, the storm rolling in from the Pacific. I was tired but oddly excited. Just before I shut down my computer I typed in MAX EVANS into the search field and hit return. A string of hits, a base ball player for Detroit, someone’s long lost father, and then a reference to a armed robbery in Utah, a bright straight A student gone missing, a cult leader. Finally, I noticed an item from a newspaper in Phoenix, referring to a Christmas miracle in which a series of sick children were all found to have been cured of cancer following a break-in to a local hospital. Later some of the children appeared to develop unusual abilities. My mouth was dry. So as always, I ended up with Wyndham. I sat back, as I did so I saw in a CNN.com link the annotated headline `Phoenix Children sent to Boston Institute for Further Analysis….’ And when I opened the link I saw, oddly, disconcerting, a photograph of myself, holding one of the children with all the intense clumsiness of a man unused to holding anyone.
I sat back to work out the consequences of all this, what it meant to me now when suddenly the power failed and my study was plunged into darkness. Wilcox’s generator failed (as it always does!) to cut in. I stood up, as I did so a great slab of light strobed
The room and I saw, distinctively, a youngish man standing at my window watching me, dark, drenched, waiting.
____________________________________________________________
*looking back at this now, of course, Jessie was being too clever, too showy with his play on Shakespeare. Conceit had led me to think that I was Prospero, a intellectual, withdrawn man, given to thinking and not acting, ineffectual, kind but too bookish? I niavely, selfishly thought my lost kingdom was my institute and to some extend my reputation. As soon as I saw him I knew of course it was Max, who had lost far more than I could ever imagine. As I approach the end of my life I am inclined to think I was, if anything, Ariel. Max both released me and yet held me to his allegiance. Like Ariel I had lived amongst humans without feelings but, in the end, I learned to feel. And like Prospero, in the end, Max set me free. (edited 29th December 2015)
Last edited by Patroclus76 on Sun Mar 12, 2006 5:30 pm, edited 2 times in total.
I stood; my dressing gown wrapped about me, holding my breath, my heart pounding. I could hear my own pulse surging in my ears. Another stab of lightening, and again the figure, about three feet from the window, unmoving. My study was on the front of the house and looked out over a broad terrace and the main lawns towards the drive. Suddenly the lights flickered back on and I heard my computer re-boot. The man had not run. He had remained completely still, looking at me, seemingly in as much doubt as I was. My mind flashed back briefly to Jessie, shaking my hand as I flew into exile. I should have known then that he was more than just my defence lawyer! The way he had stayed in touch, always that edge in his correspondence; that guarded curiosity. How blind I had been! But did I trust him? I turned and walked briskly to the door and then across the main hallway amd threw wide the entrance doors. Darkness there and nothing more.
How unreal this feels writing it now, a few days later! It was sheeting down with rain, eberywhere was the sound of water thundering down the gutterings and slamming onto the flagstones. Yet the air seemed warm, and heavy with the smell of spring and the black damp earth of the mountains. I worked my way around to the outside of the study window, drenched through in seconds, but no one was there. I shouted out something like `Who is it!! What do you want!’ I then retraced my steps and headed towards the drive. Away from the ground floor windows it was utterly, impenetrably dark. Finally I said `Max?’ hesitantly, somewhat self consciously, then loudly, urgently, `Max! Max come back!!’ I stood; breathing deeply, oddly embarrassed and then a voice said behind me, `Professor? Professor Grey?’ I swung around.
We stood in silence, the night animated by the storm. Standing a bear two feet from me was a man, slightly stooped, as if pressed down by the wall of falling water, his hands stuffed into his trouser pockets. He was slightly taller than me, but it was too dark to make out any detail and the way he stood made him seem all shadow, a wedge of blackness. Yet in some way I sensed him looking intently at me. `Max?’ I said, taken aback that he was here, now in front of me, as if I had somehow summoned him forth. `Its ok, it’s fine, Jessie emailed me, he is my friend’ I spoke with slow assurance as if I was trying to calm an unbroken horse, coaxing it towards me, afraid it would shy away or kick. `You know Jessie, Jessie Ramirez?’ Max moved his hands out of pockets and seemed to cup them together. As he did so a small ball of light radiated out from his palms like a small brilliant star. I stood back slightly, nodding in acknowledgement, to myself, to him, perhaps even somehow to the memory of my father. I had seen this ability before.
We stood in silence amid the thunderous tempest. For a moment I thought simply he has come to kill me in revenge for what I had done, or rather what I had failed to do back in 2003 but he said, simply `We need your help, Julian’. I found the use of my first name disarming and it caught me off guard, as if he has cast his first spell. The numinous light, leaving his hand to shed light over both of us made him appear like a necromancer, something of unknowable power. Behind him loomed the huge dark mass of Bone Hill House, turrets and towers still outlined by now distant, receding lightening. I said something like `Of course. Whatever I can do’.
`Can I fetch the others?’
I felt myself on the brink of something, like a man on a high narrow springboard stretched out over nothing. There was still time, in that brief moment, to turn away, to go back inside myself and return to the world I had known. And yet I felt then as I was so often to feel with Max: that all my life had been one long, rambling prelude to this moment, that in some odd way this meeting had been waiting patiently for me to find it, to walk into it, as someone walks into a secret beautiful place as if by error. As if the universe unfolds as it should. `Yes, I have room enough inside’ As I said this I heard the sound of footsteps on the gravel. Had they been there always, cloaked in darkness, waiting? Max reached up to the light and took it in his hand and folded it back into himself and we were once more in darkness. I turned and led my unseen guests inside. I did not turn around until I heard the main doors close.
Assembled in the cavernous reception hall were six young people, three women, three men. All looked tired and worn and yet, at the same time, defiant, almost radiant. Each, in there own way, was attractive, striking even. Max stood forward, visible, like a revelation. My mind thought briefly of cults and armed robberies. He still looked guarded, as though I was going to suddenly summon up an entire legion of the FBI. There was a curious tightness to his posture that indicated a powerful, athletic build and a lifetime of watching. I took in his clothes, torn in part, worn. He was unshaven, the stubble dark against the deep brown skin, an attractive, symmetrical face, cautious but also curious. `These are my friends, well, my family actually’ he said and had introduced each one of them in turn. Isabel, Kyle, Michael, Maria and then the last person to come forward was Liz Parker. She shook my hand warmly. `I am really pleased to meet you at last, all of this was sort of my idea’
`Meeting me, or seducing me into meeting you?’ I had asked lightly. They all smiled, and there was a palpable change in the mood, one of relief. `Well both, and I knew you would follow a puzzle’ she said sweetly, looking slightly self-conscious. `You were right’ I said, `I am intrigued, especially after my perusal of Google’
`You mustn’t believe everything you read on the web’ Michael had said briskly. He stood forward to whisper something to Max, his dark shoulder length hair falling over a sharp, Teutonic face, striking, powerful, probably difficult. The contrast with Max was beguiling. Michael was anxious that Liz and Maria rested as soon as possible. I confirmed that Liz looked about six months pregnant.
It was almost 3 am before we managed to improvise accommodation for my guests. Luckily Wilcox (who complains usually of insomnia) did not make an appearance. I fretted about sheets and linen although Maria just kept repeating the word linen over and over like a mantra until Michael led her away. I was also anxious that we didn’t have enough food and that the hot water system would fail. I found Max unloading a camper van that had mysteriously appeared near one of the main garages. No one had opened the gates and I had heard no sound of an engine. I told him we would talk over breakfast. He almost started salivating at the word. Just as I was about to turn in and try and sleep Michael accosted me in the hallway. He wanted to know where the `old man’ was and whether he was reliable. I assumed he meant Wilcox. Intuitively, Michael is going to be the hardest work. He has wide brown eyes, and a powerful straight roman nose and would appear cruel if he didn’t frown so much. When he smiles he is transformed, beautiful. I told him that Wilcox was fine and that he was indispensable, (which wasn’t strictly true). In the end Max appeared with Maria and led Michael off like a dog that had behaved badly. Maria said to me `You just have to say `Michael’ once, firmly, and he’ll be ok’ I had closed my bedroom door, euphoric and yet anxious.
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I retired exhausted, leaving my guests jumping onto beds and running hot water, seemingly in the lap of luxury. I could only guess what discomforts and difficulties they had endured over the last few years. Eventually the house settled down, a faint sound of a door closing, laughter, the soft murmur of people talking. I lay awake for many hours however, my mind running over the events of the last few hours. Were they dangerous? Were they a threat, something I could not comprehend? In Max I sensed something powerful, something hidden within him, in the others I sensed power as well, and an extraordinary group identity, a real sense of tribe, forged through great pain and shared experience. I was also confused now over the use of Wyndham – clearly it referred to Liz’s baby? They needed my help because the child was a human-alien hybrid, and would therefore give them away if she used a normal hospital for the labour? There might be complications? What better person to have on hand than a geneticist specialising in hybridisation? Did they know how I had stumbled into all of this? I was unsure now, in doubt.
If Liz was the only reason they had sought me out it could mean that they didn’t necessarily know about the role I had played in attempting to clone the children from Phoenix, and crossbreed them, and the shocking outcome that followed from this? But somehow they knew Jessie. Jessie MUST have known about what went on at the institute, somehow, all those questions? All that interest. I had to assume that they knew as much about me as Jessie did. How was Jessie involved with them, how had he known Max? And then just as sleep almost came the most difficult question of all: should I lie to them? Should I tell them the truth? I could not tell them that I had worked for a secret government plan the protocol of which was to breed a pure alien genotype at whatever cost.
The cost, of course, being the death of all of the children and their surrogate mothers. I sat up, sickened, hating myself, hating myself for everything I had done. However coerced, however bullied, however threatened, I should have said no. And I could have saved them. But all were now dead. All dead. And I lived on in a sort of stupor, sleep walking, a life of denial. I sat up in bed. It was almost dawn. I thought of Max standing in the pouring rain. How could he ever forgive me? Just before first light I drifted into a shallow sleep and dreamed that my wife was live, that she had returned home to find my guests and had called the police. I tried to explain to her that they were my friends as well as important people, but as I argued with her, Wilcox appeared with a shotgun and told me he had killed them all to save the humans from invasion. I ran screaming into their rooms and found hundreds of little handprints, children’s handprints, freshly red, patted over the doors and walls. . I awoke with a start.
Later……
I awoke to brilliant spring sunshine flooding across the foot of the bed, lying in great even slabs across the carpet and the open door. The air heavy with the soft buzz of empty silence and beyond, muted birdsong, a clock ticking ponderously. Then I was shocked to find Wilcox standing over the bed with a tea tray and a copy of the paper. He seemed quite relaxed. He put the tray down and told me it was very late and that I had overslept. It was well passed 11 am! (he said this with a certain relish). I suddenly remembered my guests. Was it all a dream? A nightmare? I was just about to say something when he added that I ought to bemade aware that the house was full of people, which he assumed were relatives. I said yes quickly, stupidly (I had no relatives, and nor really did my wife) and when he suggested cousins I looked owlishly at him and said something ludicrous like `probably’. What am I going to fdo with Wilcox! I scrambled out of bed to try and sort out a line with Max et al before Wilcox waded in with his twenty questions routine. To my relief they were all still in bed.
Helped supervise some food and sort out provisions for the next few days. Wilcox wanted to know how long they were staying and when I said `indefinitely’ he dropped the tray. I hid in the breakfast room, so-called from the days when the house had been a gold club, and pretended to read the paper while drinking coffee. It was one of my favourite rooms, adjacent my study and facing the same driveway through a long conservatory with wide French windows. The late morning sun gave to it a shimmering, almost classical feel of space and calm. I sat still in my dressing gown feeling oddly joyous at the thought that there were people in the house. It was an odd sensation, a curious recognition that I was – that I had been – lonely?
By mid day I was getting anxious. I had sent Wilcox off to town to buy up the local store. I had not told him to be quiet about the guests, but that now seemed unwise. Wilcox was not stupid. He would suspect something if I asked him to keep silent. Whatever was about to happen I had to trust these people, I have to tell them the truth. I returned to the kitchen and put on large amounts of coffee, and I decided to merge breakfast with lunch and started boiling and frying. I made a sufficiently large amount of noise to eventually rouse some life although I suspect in the end it was the smell of food that worked. Max typically appeared first. He was wearing an old pair of pyjamas and an overcoat Wilcox used for gardening. He looked boyish with his thick black hair piled over his eyes, almost pre-war, like a print of an Oxford graduate from the 1930s. `You look very human this morning’ I had said, handing him a powerful shot of caffeine. He gave me one of his shy, epigrammatic smiles.* Next to appear, again rather typically was Michael, hair damp and awry, his complexion the soft sheen of the permanently healthy or the unwashed. Later I would work out a parsimonious theory stating that wherever Max was Michael was sure to follow. (Like all parsimonious theories it had no casual explanation, it really just stated the obvious. Michael acted like Max’s bodyguard, principle advisor and sometimes, oddly in the context of Liz, a jealous lover).
Isabel appeared like a Titian painting, or a Carrivaggio, her extraordinary figure draped in a series of towels. She was glowing with satisfaction and thanked me profusely until warned by her brother that she would give me a complex. Maria appeared, disappeared and then reappeared with Kyle. I instinctively took to Kyle, who was curiously self-contained and grounded. Maria had a full, sensuous face with beautiful lips and was a very funny, witty young lady. I mistook them for a couple. Liz finally appeared, again in another coat that made her look diminutive and vulnerable. She chatted to me amid round trips back and forth to the breakfast room.
They all treated me with as if I was either a friendly teacher or a vicar. I do not know when they last ate a proper meal, but I think I have rarely witnessed people concentrating on food so much and with so much relish. Oddly I found myself thinking of Napoleon’s infamous observation that an army marches on its stomach. `So’ I said when we finally sat down on the terrace in warm spring sunshine, `Last night seems a long time ago, but I have hundreds of questions to ask you, but who should go first?’
`Max can go first’ Michael had said, flopping down next to Maria, `Tell him the sad story of the death of kings Max, tell him our sad story’.
____________________________________________________________________ *As we grew together over the years, each one of my friends had a special mannerism that I learned to hold in great affection. While Max had several, it was the bemused smile that was my favourite, partly because he never fully understood the power of it, and so he was always surprised that it worked so beautifully and so well.(edited 30th December 2015
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Max had started their story, slowly at first, almost hesitantly. As it unfolded others corrected him or added their take, so the narration became almost a performance, like a Greek chorus, an epic, tragic adventure. By now almost all of you reading this will know what lay at the heart of this story, how Max saved Liz from a stray, random bullet and how that one act of selflessness put not just him at risk, but Isabel and Michael and changed all of their lives forever. He told the story all the way to the extraordinary events surrounding graduation, leaving almost nothing aside, and stopped after their second year in exile, when they had decided to move towards Canada. Throughout I sat rooted to my chair, sometimes accepting the offer of refreshment from either Maria or Kyle. Sometimes I would look at one of them during a particularly intense moment of the narrative, awed by their tenacity and survival. When they finally stopped I felt like I had been present at some sort of mantra, a rite of passage. I was moved profoundly and for a moment I could not bring myself to say anything for fear that my voice would betray my emotion. How odd that I should have such a small part, almost a coda, in this great song? The afternoon sunlight was heavy about us. We sat in silence, dwelling on our thoughts. My mind returned to Max in the storm last night, dark, enigmatic. It was I who had been washed ashore Prospero’s enchanted island, it was I who sought redemption. Finally I had asked why they had decided to contact me.
`We first came across your work in Boston’ said Isabel thoughtfully. `We heard about you from my husband, Jessie Remeris, well, my ex-husband.’
`Your husband?’ a central piece of my puzzle had fallen into place, deftly and unlooked for. I had assumed they were all paired, but clearly I was wrong (as I was evidently wrong about Maria and Kyle, unless Kyle had no objection to Michael stroking Maria’s neck and kissing it throughout the afternoon). `You employed him for the litigation against the government’s attempts to close down your institute after the explosion’ she said after a pause. My throat had tightened and I had breathed deeply through my nose like a man about to jump into bitter cold water.
`A fine man, one I have been fortunate to know’ I looked at Max, his brother-in-law, `and extremely capable’ Isabel smiled, but strong emotions ran close to the surface. I did not press for details as to how they had become separated. Had I not met his new fiancée I might have suspected that the separation was practical or the proposed wedding a hoax, but I sensed immediately they were estranged. She leaned forward, `He said you were an important geneticist with some interesting ideas and not easily shocked!’
`He said that?’ I smiled weakly. `I remember a long discussion over dinner one evening about prejudice and narrow mindedness. He struck me as a man who had experienced great pain’ I wondered what else he had said.
`He also gave us your address when you moved out of the state’ interjected Max quickly. `It was largely coincidental that our paths crossed here. We were resident in Seattle for a while until the Feds appeared, and were moving eastward until about a month ago we had need of your help. Jessie, who we stay in touch with, offered to contact you, and then we had, well Liz had the idea about the novel’ He looked at me, his eyes wide and dark, brown flecked with gold. Max spoke quietly, the end of his sentences a soft growl. I looked at Liz who smiled angelically at me. We had come to it at last. At that moment however I recall Michael leaning forward and saying bluntly `you don’t seem very surprised by our story? Why’s that? Most people have either called the police by now or a mental institute!’ I sensed a complex web of glances between Max and Isobel and Maria, all at one stage or other aimed at Michael. `Well I have already seen Max illuminate the driveway with his bare hands’ I said dryly, trying to avoid the too obvious conclusion that Michael was going to be the one person that I would dislike.* `And as you will probably already know from Jessie, I have some experience of alien genes and have seen testimony referring to abductions. My own father, a reputable scientists in his own day, stuck to his abductions stories even though they eventually destroyed his career.’ Michael blinked and narrowed his eyes as if he was thinking carefully to accept this or not. I thought simply: what is the difference between a lie and an omission.
I had turned to Max then and asked him directly what the problem was that had brought him to me. `We have two problems that we need your help on. The first is that there is something wrong with Liz’s baby. The other is more complex and, well ‘ his voice seemed to trail away - `I think we can talk to you about it after we have solved Liz’s problem. Its more’ he looked at me carefully, `its more of a proposal at this stage’. I looked around them, sensing that the proposal had been long and perhaps rather painfully debated. I nodded in agreement, turning to smile at Liz. She sat in the sun with a magazine open in front of her looking the picture of health. `Why do you think there is something wrong with the baby?’
`She’s only four week’s pregnant’ said Michael again. I looked hard at the magazine cover, trying to compose my thoughts. Ignoring Michael I looked at Liz directly `That can’t be right Liz, you look at least six months into normal gestation?’ She pursed her lips nervously, pulling strands of long black hair from her mouth. `Its right, I know when I conceived, it is four weeks tomorrow’ Maria’s eyes rose very, very slightly. My hands had gone cold, I was pressing the fingers of each hand together so hard that the nails were whitening.
`The pregnancy seems incredibly advanced’ said Max, sounding anxious for the first time. `What could be causing the rapid aging of the baby?’
`That’s why I thought of Wyndham’ interrupted Liz, `I thought it might give you a clue in advance as to what my problems were, and Jessie said you were a fan of the book Midwich Cuckoos’ I forced a smile. In the Midwich Cuckoos the pregnancies were all dramatic and advanced and the children had matured rapidly. I could not hear for the pounding of my heart. My mouth was dry. Please God do not let this happen again to her, to these people.
`Do you have any ideas?’ asked Maria. I was conscious that they were all looking at me. `Well yes’ I said quietly, trying to not sound evasive, dishonest. `it might be characteristic of a hybrid foetus, that is, it might be quite normal. I have a lot of equipment here stored in the basements; you probably know I was planning to restart my research before my wife died. I have a sonogram somewhere; we should take a look for any abnormalities. We can do that soon.’ I was trying to reassure myself more than Liz. `Is it possible that the child will not look human’ she asked delicately. I paused, weighing my thoughts carefully. `Lets see what the ultrasound shows, Liz. Max, Isobel, Michael are all, if I recall the story correctly, hybrids themselves. You are human, so in probability I would expect the child to be human. Even if Antarian DNA is dominant, the DNA required to alter an entire physiology would be huge.’ How far ought I try and explain this? `Nature is very parsimonious, Liz. If your genes were of too great a variance you would not have conceived, or you would have lost the foetus by now. That is a good sign’. I paused. `It’s a complex test, but we can check Max and your DNA, and if necessary that of the child. There is however the issue of Max having saved your life. I take it you now have some psychic abilities like the others?’ Michael looked at me keenly, like a blood hound, sniffing out a trail.
`Yes’ she said. She did not elaborate and I did not enquire further. `That is interesting’ I said to myself, but Max heard me. `Why?’
I realised my hands were gripped about each other, as if locked in some inner struggle. `Because’ I started, hesitantly, `Because there is a possibility that you might have altered her DNA sequences by saving her, or modified parts of her genotype, but as I say, we can soon sort that out as soon as I get some data’. I stood up, feeling that I should bring the proceedings to a close, relieved (appalled) that I had come off undiscovered. And then Michael had asked, casually, `have you ever seen anything like this before?’
`Sorry?’ my response sounded sharp, out of character.
`The rapid aging process?’
`No’ I lied.
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* Re-reading this now, my judgements on Michael seem harsh and unreasonable, and I hope if Michael reads this he will forgive me the tone of the early entries. I did find him difficult to deal with, capricious, volatile, rude (both to me and initially at first to poor old Wilcox who he clearly suspcted of being a spy). Yet in the end I came to an understanding with this extraordinary young man, in part brokered by our love for Max, in part my admiration and respect for Maria. Perhaps to Michael I was always a figure he associated with the arbitrary bleak authoriy of his school years. I was guilty of underestimating him and his intellect but in part he was as much to blame for that as me. He kept what he was deep inside of himself, and only, slowly and cautiously, did he reveal himself to me as a friend.
