All Too Human *Series* (AU, TEEN), Complete, 10/11

Finished stories set in an alternate universe to that introduced in the show, or which alter events from the show significantly, but which include the Roswell characters. Aliens play a role in these fics. All complete stories on the main AU with Aliens board will eventually be moved here.

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Kathy W
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All Too Human *Series* (AU, TEEN), Complete, 10/11

Post by Kathy W »

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Banner by Misha. Thanks a million, Misha!



TITLE: All Too Human, Book 4 in the Shapeshifters series.


SUMMARY: It's 1959, and a decade of exile finds the Warders (shapeshifters) restless and the hybrids growing more slowly than expected. In Roswell, Sheriff Jim Valenti is bracing himself as the town goes Hollywood—"They Are Among Us" is about to start filming, meaning more tourists—and more trouble—than usual. One new arrival is a man named James Atherton. Another is a young woman named Courtney.....but she hasn't come for the movie. She's come to find someone who doesn't want to be found. And when she finds him, two opposing sides collide with ramifications that reach decades into the future.

Watch the formation of the Special Unit, see Courtney's rebel Skins in action, learn what deal "Nasedo" made and why he made it, how the Destiny Book wound up in the library, why River Dog was entrusted with a painting on a cave wall, and how a set of pods landed in a New York City subway in All Too Human.


CAN YOU JUMP IN AT BOOK 4? : Yes! The next post contains a character guide and synopses of the first three books. That, along with what you know from the show, will give you enough background to start reading with Book 4.


AUTHOR: Kathy W


RATING: TEEN, for occasional language and very occasional implied sexual situations.


CATEGORY: Backstory/Prequel. No couples. Unless you consider Nasedo and Langley a couple. ;)


PERSPECTIVE: Those responsible for making it happen—the shapeshifters.


SERIES SUMMARY: I’ve always been fascinated with what happened before the pod squad hatched, and I’ve had a million questions. Why don’t the hybrids remember more? Why was the Destiny Book in the library instead of in the pod chamber? Why did the Dupes wind up in a sewer in New York City? Why did both shapeshifters appear to abandon their charges after hiding them so well in the very beginning? Was Nasedo really working for the Skins? Why was Langley so unwilling to help Max? And so on and so forth.

This is the story from the viewpoint of the shapeshifters, my own little fantasy about what happened, why it happened, and what went wrong. It will probably wind up being six or seven separate stories, each a sequel to the other. They will closely track the show; my intention is not to rewrite Roswell, but to fill in some of the blanks. The story begins on the ship headed to Earth, and will likely end with Max’s encounter with Langley many years in the future.



SEQUEL TO:

And the Stars Fell From the Sky: First book in the series. Chronicles the shapeshifters journey to Earth and the creation of the hybrids. Can be found here: viewtopic.php?t=1302&postdays=0&postorder=asc&&start=0

Alien Sky: Second book in the series. Covers the aftermath of the crash and the capture of the two surviving shapeshifters. Written around and through the Roswell episode "Summer of '47". Can be found here: viewtopic.php?t=1302&postdays=0&postorder=asc&&start=0

Comes The Inquisitor: Third book in the series. Covers the period from 1947-1950 when one of the shapeshifters was held captive by the U.S. military. Can be found here: viewtopic.php?t=7879&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

This particular book covers a period of several months in 1959, including the filming of the movie "They Are Among Us" in Roswell. It begins nine years after Comes The Inquisitor ends.

In previous books the shifters have referred to each other by their Antarian names, and the question of which was Langley and which Nasedo was up in the air. That question is settled in this book.




DISCLAIMER: I own nothing. Nothing anyone wants, anyway. :D I’m just borrowing these wonderful characters to amuse myself. And hopefully you.

Some of the events in this story are taken from Roswell episodes. In addition to characters from the show, there are also a few real people in this story. I know precisely none of these people, and am borrowing them strictly for this little tale.
Last edited by Kathy W on Sun Nov 01, 2009 1:45 pm, edited 94 times in total.
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Kathy W
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Post by Kathy W »

If you're new to this series, here's a Character Guide and Synopses of the first 3 books to get you started.


Pronunciation and Character Guide:

Aliens

Antarians:

Brivari—Zan’s Warder: “var” rhymes with “far”
Jaddo—Rath’s Warder: “a” as in “ah”, soft “J”
Valeris—Ava’s Warder, now dead: “ler” sounds like “lair”
Urza—Vilandra’s Warder, now dead: sounds like it looks
Covari—The name of the shapeshifters’ race: Rhymes with “Brivari”
Riall—Zan’s father: Ree-all
Argilians—The name of Khivar’s race: “g” is soft, like “j”
Malik, Amar—Two of the five shapeshifters who helped perfect the Argilian's (Skins) husks after they faked their own deaths and remained behind while on a mission to Earth. Malik is the only one still alive. Ma-lick ("a" as in apple), A-mar (rhymes with “far”)


Argilians (Skins):

Athenor—Khivar's second-in-command, known to his inner circle by the human name of "Nicholas". Now living in Malik's and Amar's former house in Copper Summit. Ordered the deaths of the Royal Four without Khivar's knowledge; killed Rath himself. Ath-eh-nore.
Greer: Athenor's second-in-command.
Walt and Ida Crawford: Athenor's real parents.
Vanessa Crawford: Athenor's lover, posing as his human sister. Will be Vanessa Whitaker in the future.
Courtney: Daughter of the leader of the rebel Argilians, those who want Rath on the throne.



Humans

Civilians:

Dee Proctor—First discovered the Antarians’ ship on Pohlman Ranch when she was 8 years old; now 20 and married to...
Anthony Evans: Dee's childhood friend, now husband
Philip Evans: Anthony and Dee's firstborn, now a toddler. Yes, Philip Evans from the show is a toddler!
David and Emily Proctor—Dee’s parents
Mac and Rose Brazel—The Proctor’s next door neighbors. Mac worked on Pohlman Ranch at the time of the crash. It was Mac who first brought the ship fragments that he and Dee found to the attention of authorities.
George Wilcox—Chaves County Sheriff (Roswell and the crash site are in Chaves county.)
James Valenti, Sr.—Roswell Sheriff
Andrea Valenti (Andi): Sheriff Valenti's wife
Jimmy Valenti: Sheriff Valenti's son, James Jr., our very own Valenti from the show
River Dog: A Mescalero Apache whose family helped hide Brivari.
Quanah: River Dog's father


The Army:

Lieutenant Colonel Sheridan Cavitt—Formerly Captain Cavitt. Co-commander of the operation concerned with experimenting on/with the aliens. In charge of security and military intelligence. Now deceased.
Lieutenant Colonel (Dr.) Daniel Pierce—MD/Psychiatrist and co-commander of the operation concerned with experimenting on/with the aliens; in charge of the medical and psychological aspects. Future father of Special Unit Head Daniel Pierce.
(Former) Major Bernard Lewis—Army physician who advocated a "living autopsy" on the alien prisoner in order to study it without it turning to dust. Resigned from the Army rather than face a court martial and went to work for the FBI. Will be the first head of the Special Unit.
Lieutenant Stephen Spade—Was in command of the security detail at Eagle Rock. Assisted in the escape of the alien prisoner. Went AWOL in 1950 with Yvonne White.
Lieutenant (Nurse) Yvonne White—Assigned to assist in experimentation on the captive aliens. Assisted in the escape of the alien prisoner. Went AWOL in 1950 with Stephen Spade.
Captain Brian Thompson—Assisted in the escape of the alien prisoner in 1950 when he was a corporal. Now stationed at Eagle Rock.





AND THE STARS FELL FROM THE SKY




There has been a coup on Antar. The King's chief rival, Khivar, convinced the king's sister, Vilandra, that he would ask for her hand in marriage, causing her to lower the palace's defenses to allow him inside. But instead of a marriage proposal, Khivar appears with an army which takes down the unprepared capital city and kills the royal family.

Each member of the royal family is assigned a Warder, or bodyguard, from a race of shapeshifters known as "Covari". In the wake of the capital's fall, the Royal Warders flee the planet with the dead bodies of their Wards: The king, Zan, his wife, Ava, his sister, Vilandra, and his chief military officer and second-in-command, Rath. Also on board is a piece of experimental technology called the Granolith, which Antar was building secretly in defiance of a treaty which mandated the sharing of new technology with their sister planets. On board the ship, the Warders begin the attempt to resurrect their Wards by combining genetic material from their bodies with that of donors from a species on a distant planet called "Earth" for two reasons: Direct cloning produces too many errors in the copy, and the donor species possesses a powerful brain which will make their Wards incredibly powerful in their new incarnations. The result is 200 embryonic Antarian-human hybrids, or 50 sets of the Royal Four. A malfunction in their ship causes it to crash land on Earth, damaging the incubation chambers in which the hybrids are housed. The crash is witnessed by an 8 year-old girl named Dee Proctor, who thinks she saw a shooting star.



ALIEN SKY


(The events in Alien Sky are woven around and through the episode "Summer of '47".)

The Warders' ship crashes during a thunderstorm, hiding the event from all but an 8 year-old girl named Dee Proctor who happens to be looking out the window when it occurs. Thinking it to be a meteorite, she tells her next door neighbor, William "Mac" Brazel, that she thinks it fell on the grounds of Pohlman Ranch where he works. Mac agrees to let her accompany him to the ranch to look for her "meteorite".

On board the ship, the news is not good. The crash has seriously damaged not only the ship but the incubation pods in which the hybrids were housed, causing many to die. The Warders decide to hide both the remaining hybrids and the Granolith in a nearby abandoned experimentation chamber once used to conduct tests on human subjects. It needs to be enlarged, and the work begins.

Meanwhile, Dee has found her "meteorite"; she only sees it for a moment, and Mac doesn't see it at all as Valeris, Ava's Warder, is capable of shielding it from view with a mind warp. Mac finds several pieces of a strange metal which he collects and brings to Chaves County Sheriff George Wilcox, who calls the nearby Eagle Rock Military Base.

Dee befriends the aliens and discovers that she is capable of communicating with them via their telepathic speech. The Warders heal her after an encounter with a bully, and when the military locates the ship before all the hybrids are moved to their new hiding place, Dee convinces her father to help. Two sets of hybrids and two Warders are still on board when the Army arrives, along with Dee. Only Dee escapes. Urza (Vilandra's Warder) and Valeris (Ava's Warder) are killed, and the hybrids captured. The two remaining Warders, Brivari (Zan's Warder) and Jaddo (Rath's Warder) make plans to rescue them.

A Roswell deputy, one James Valenti, has seen some things that don't add up. He relentlessly pursues the Proctor family and tries to answer as many of the endless "alien calls" the sheriff's station receives in hopes of finding information on the real aliens, which he is sure exist.

Within the Army, Captain Sheridan Cavitt leads the hunt for the aliens, establishing a compound in an unused building on the grounds of Eagle Rock, while two of his subordinates, Private Stephen Spade and nurse Yvonne White, begin to question the way the situation is being handled. The two remaining Warders manage to rescue the captured hybrids with the unwitting help of one Captain Hal Carver, but Brivari is captured with the aid of tranquilizer darts. Jaddo is also hit by a dart and only barely escapes; it falls to the Proctor family to retrieve the hybrids and bring them back to their house for safekeeping.

When Jaddo revives, he hides the hybrids in the pod chamber and attempts to rescue Brivari. He fails, and winds up captured himself. The book ends with a new arrival at the Army base, one Major Daniel Pierce, a psychiatrist and neurologist assigned to study the aliens.




COMES THE INQUISITOR



Both surviving aliens have been captured by the military, but Brivari (Zan's Warder), manages to escape. Based on data gleaned during that escape, Dr. Pierce concocts a serum to suppress the remaining alien's (Jaddo, Rath's Warder) ability to shapeshift and the use of his powers, allowing the humans to keep him prisoner.

Both Nurse Yvonne White and Lieutenant Stephen Spade, who is in charge of the compound's security detail, agree to help Brivari free Jaddo. Yvonne allows Brivari to take her shape at various times during the day, enabling him to visit his colleague and search for a means of escape. Brivari encourages Jaddo to give the humans what they want, or at least appear to, so they will keep him alive, and after a series of confrontations with Dr. Pierce and Major Cavitt, he reluctantly complies.

The first escape attempt is foiled by two other Covari (shapeshifters) living here on Earth in the Arizona town of Copper Summit, defectors from a previous expedition to Earth. Both are now working for the Argilians (Khivar's race), helping them construct a seal for the shells they are building which will allow them to survive in Earth's atmosphere. One, Amar, is a sworn enemy of the crown, and blames Zan and his father before him for breaking faith with the Covari race which helped him attain the throne. The other, Malik, shares Amar's concerns but is uncomfortable with Khivar's coup and the way he is behaving. In the absence of a body to prove Zan's death, Khivar is both unable to convince the people that the king is truly dead and unable to obtain the royal mark (royal seal) which identifies Antar's ruler. In order to distract his detractors, he flings accusations at neighboring worlds, accusing them of harboring the royals' bodies and the Granolith, among other things. The distrust Khivar sows destabilizes the five planets, causing a breakdown of diplomatic relations and periodic fighting between them.

The second escape attempt is foiled by the arrival of two more Covari and four hunters, who attack the base and attempt to capture both Warders. All Covari are capable of seeing the infrared spectrum, and all emit an infrared signature that makes them recognizable to others of their race. Hunters are Covari specially bred to lack this signature, making them invisible to other Covari. Besieged by his own kind, Brivari flees south of Roswell to a cave on the grounds of the Mescalero Indian Reservation, where he is befriended by a teenaged boy named River Dog and his family. In the wake of the aliens' attack, the Army constructs a more secure holding cell for Jaddo made of white tile.

The compound at Eagle Rock where Jaddo is held prisoner is led by a Major General Roger Ramey, a decent man at odds with those in the military who feel the alien is too much of a security risk and wish to have him killed and dissected, chief among them Major Sheridan Cavitt and Major Bernard Lewis (future first head of the Special Unit). Ramey introduces a new method of alien detection, that of an x-ray which reveals the aliens' very different bone structure no matter what form they take, and lays his career on the line to keep Jaddo alive. In return Jaddo willingly works with Ramey to provide the human military with tactical advantages, the first being a night vision device and the second being the repair of their ship, while Brivari takes down the hunters one by one. It is in the summer of 1949 when the last two hunters locate Brivari near River Dog's village and the events described in "The Balance" occur. In the wake of the sweat and Brivari's near fatal reaction to it, both remaining hunters are killed, River Dog learns of Brivari's extra-terrestrial origins, and the friendship between Brivari and River Dog's family is strengthened.

This is no shortage of people who claim to have been abducted by aliens, and by sheer chance, David Proctor meets one of them, a man by the name of Charles Dupree. Charles' story is quite a bit different from that of other abductees, but it rings true for David, who recognizes several details. The Proctors subsequently learn why the Antarians had been coming to Earth for years prior to the crash—to harness the power of the human brain in an effort to enhance their own race. Experiments were conducted in hidden experimentation chambers like the one which eventually became the pod chamber, and the subjects were always young children, young enough that parts of their brains had not atrophied from lack of use. This revelation angers Emily Proctor so much that she bars Brivari from their house, touching off a year-long feud with her daughter, Dee. Everyone eventually reconciles, largely by agreeing to disagree, and the Proctor family continues to be a source of support for the Warders. And Dee now has an accomplice, one Anthony Evans, who lives a few houses away. Anthony is instrumental in helping Dee out of several sticky alien situations, but Dee is reluctant to tell him everything that's going on for fear that doing so will put him in danger. Dee and Anthony will become Max and Isabel's paternal grandparents.

On other fronts, Yvonne White is on a mission to discover what happened to Betty Osorio. With her and Spade's determined digging plus the efforts of Deputy Jim Valenti, they locate Richard Dodie, who harbors a grudge against Cavitt, and Hal Carver, who is holed up south of Roswell and reveals the events which led to his resignation. Their suspicions that Cavitt is responsible for Betty's death cannot be proven, however, and further investigation is halted by a disaster. Dr. Pierce has discovered the aliens' reproductive cells and has been secretly attempting to impregnate Yvonne with an alien-human hybrid. When he succeeds, she nearly dies, and it takes Brivari and a healing stone to save her life. In the process, Brivari and Malik reach an understanding of a sort, and Malik decides to help Jaddo escape.

When repairs on the ship are nearly complete, the Warders contact home via the ship's communications equipment and speak with Larak, who warns them that Khivar's second-in command, Athenor (Nicholas), is on the way to Earth with a task force dedicated to hunting them down. Removing Jaddo from the compound becomes a necessity as he is a sitting duck while captive and without powers. Plans for his escape are coming along nicely when an engineer working on the aliens' ship accidentally activates the security system, which locks it, leaving it in the condition in which Max finds it in the episode Control. The ship cannot be opened without a particular power crystal (the key), and no one is able to find it. General Ramey's detractors blame the prisoner for this occurrence and take the opportunity to seize control of the compound and attempt to execute Jaddo. Brivari convinces Ramey to work with him, and Jaddo is successfully rescued in June of 1950. The remaining Covari pursue; all are killed except for Malik.

Jaddo kills Sheridan Cavitt in retaliation for his captivity, making it look like a suicide, and ushers General Ramey past an attempt to murder him on his way to Korea, where war has broken out. Dr. Pierce attempts to abduct Yvonne White and continue his hybrid experiments, but Spade flees with her to safety; Pierce continues his work in secrecy at a mental hospital, using the female inmates as incubators. Major Lewis resigns from the military to avoid a court martial. Richard Dodie pays a visit to Hal Carver to tell him that Cavitt is dead, keeping to himself the revelations that it was he who sent Betty the key to the morgue where the glowing sacs were being held, and he who ran her off the road on Cavitt's orders in order to retrieve the files Carver had given her. Anthony Evans becomes a full member of the "I Know An Alien" club, and Malik sells the house that belonged to him and his fellow defectors in Copper Summit. Unfortunately he doesn't see who buys it. It's Walt and Ida Crawford and their two children, Vanessa.....and Nicholas.
Last edited by Kathy W on Sun Oct 14, 2007 5:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Kathy W
Obsessed Roswellian
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Joined: Thu Oct 31, 2002 5:06 am

Post by Kathy W »

All Too Human



CHAPTER ONE

June 16, 1959, 1:30 p.m.

Roswell, New Mexico




"We're almost there," Anthony said as the bus rumbled around a corner.

"I know," Dee said tonelessly, gazing out the window as Roswell's streets rolled by, familiar sights and sounds flooding back. She hadn't lived here in four years and, truthfully, she hadn't missed it. Compared to Albuquerque, Roswell was just so....pedestrian. This would be a long summer.

"Look," Anthony said, pointing out the window as the bus stopped at a red light. "They've got a UFO Center now. Bet that'll be fun."

"Oh, sure," Dee said dryly. "Loads."

"See?" Philip said, pointing.

Dee smiled as her son pressed his face against the window and stared at the winking lights on the UFO Center. He'd slept most of the way from Albuquerque, awakening only now as the bus had slowed and passengers had begun moving around, anticipating its arrival. Of course Roswell wouldn't look pedestrian to Philip. Everything was brand new and exciting when one was only twenty months old.

"Aren't they pretty?" Dee said as Philip banged his chubby fist on the window again and again, turning his head sideways as they passed to keep the lights in view as long as possible. "Pretty lights!"

"Light!" Philip echoed.

"We should go see the center sometime," Anthony said.

Dee's eyebrows rose. "You can't be serious."

"Sure I am," Anthony smiled. "Besides, Philip would like it. And it would get you away from the house for awhile."

And that, all by itself, is a reason to go just about anywhere, Dee thought privately as Philip began bouncing up and down on her lap, having sensed the excitement on the bus. She'd waited until the very last minute to take her parents up on their offer to spend the summer with them before she started law school in the fall. Anthony was looking forward to their stay here as he'd been hired to advise the town council on their plans to build an observatory, but Dee had no such job waiting for her. Ordinarily she'd be thrilled at the prospect of a large block of time with no homework, no exams, and nothing more pressing than playing hide-and-go-seek with Philip, but not when that large block of time would be spent under her mother's roof.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we've arrived in Roswell, New Mexico," the bus driver's voice boomed as the bus pulled into the station and came to a halt. "Please exit the bus in an orderly fashion, and be sure to take all personal belongings with you. Your luggage will be unloaded from the back within a few minutes. Thank you for traveling with Greyhound."

"I still don't see why we didn't take your parents up on their offer to drive us down from Albuquerque," Anthony said as everyone on the bus stood up at the same time and the aisle promptly clogged. "We all could have fit in their back seat. It only would have been a few hours."

Which would have felt like a few years, Dee thought as she hoisted Philip onto her hip and waited for the crowd to clear. It certainly would have been more comfortable to travel in her parents' car. No waiting in bus stations, no noisy travelers waking up Philip just as she'd coaxed him to sleep, and the ability to stop anytime they wanted had made her parents' offer mighty tempting. But after enduring her mother's vocal disapproval for having a baby while still in college, Dee was loathe to act like she and Anthony couldn't manage on their own. The last thing she needed was to feel dependent on her parents, which is why this summer was proving to be difficult even before it started.

The crowd finally thinned and Anthony stepped into the aisle, letting Dee go ahead. She walked off the bus into a throng of travelers and the people waiting for them, the hot June sunshine and the familiar smell of desert permeating the air. The first thing she noticed was a giant green cardboard alien with a mechanical arm waving back and forth and a cheery "Welcome to Roswell, Home of the Aliens!" lettered beside the head. Here was something else she wasn't looking forward to, the national obsession with Roswell as an alien headquarters which produced all manner of nuttiness, even if the nuts were essentially correct. Fortunately she'd be staying in her hometown of Corona, northwest of Roswell and hopefully out of much of the fray.

"Dee!" a voice called. "Anthony! Over here!"

Dee braced herself as she saw her parents working their way through the crowd with Malik behind them. Her father looked his usual smiling self, Malik was waving, and her mother....her mother had her eyes on only one thing.

"He's so big!" Emily exclaimed delightedly, gazing at Philip as though she'd like to eat him for breakfast. "My goodness, he's huge! He was so tiny last time I saw him.....I just can't get over how fast they grow! Your bus is late; we've been here over an hour. I still don't see why we couldn't have driven you down, it would have been so much easier....may I?"

Emily had stopped mid-sentence and held out her arms to her grandson. Dee handed him over, grateful that her mother's infatuation with the baby had stilled her tongue because if she had continued in that vein, Dee certainly wouldn't have stilled her own. "How they got here doesn't matter," David said lightly, always the intercessor. "I'm just glad they're here. Did you have a good trip?"

"Yes, Daddy," Dee answered, giving her father a hug.

"Good to see you, Mr. Proctor," Anthony added.

"Good to see you too," David smiled. "Want some help with the luggage?"

David and Anthony migrated toward the end of the bus where the driver was just beginning to pile suitcases on the curb, while Emily wandered off with an excited Philip in her arms, pointing to everything in sight and naming it. "You still have your apartment in Roswell, right?" Dee asked Malik, the only one of the welcoming committee left.

"Sure," Malik said. "Why?"

"Because I might need to move in. After I strangle my mother, that is."

Malik broke into a wide smile. "I doubt you'll need to get that dramatic. She'll be so busy playing grandma that she won't have nearly enough time to play mom. I'll bet Philip's feet won't even touch the ground for awhile. Welcome home, by the way."

"We'll see how 'welcome' I am after a few days of butting heads with Mama," Dee said.

"So why'd you come back?" Malik asked. "You never have before, not for longer than a week."

Dee sighed, having gone over this a million times in her own mind. "We're trying to save some money. The money you gave us from the sale of your house easily covered tuition for both Anthony and me until we got married and had to move out of college housing. And then we had Philip, and I'm going to law school, and Anthony decided he needs a masters in physics, and Mama and Daddy invited us last month when they came to graduation, and there's no one else to stay with since Anthony's parents have moved to Texas, and....well.....I decided it was at least worth a try. If it doesn't work, I'll ring your doorbell. So how are you?"

"Good," Malik answered, stepping aside as more luggage was piled on the curb. "Business is good; something always needs fixing, and human technology is easy to fix. At this stage of your development, anyway."

*And what about Brivari and Jaddo?* Dee asked, switching to telepathic speech as passengers wandered by, probably wondering why two people were facing each other without saying anything....anything audible, that is. * Did either of them hear a word I said last Christmas?*

Malik hesitated. *No, I'm afraid not.*

Dee's mouth dropped open. *Do you mean to tell me they're both still skulking around like they're being chased? Good Lord, how long has it been?*

*I know, I know,* Malik said. *But they both went through a hell of a time. It may take a while for that to wear off."

*Nine years?* Dee said skeptically. *If it hasn't worn off in nine years, it's not going to.*

*It might,* Malik countered. *Jaddo is obsessed with finding Pierce, which is why he spends so much time at the base. He'll succeed eventually, and when he does, we'll know if that will be enough to let him move on with his life.*

*And what about Brivari? Is he still living in that cave?*

*No, but he does visit that place a lot,* Malik answered. *He has allies there, you know, allies every bit as strong as your family.*

*And what about the rest of the time?*

*He stays with me, stays with your folks, stays.....well, I'm not sure. It's hard for them,* Malik continued when Dee rolled her eyes in disgust. *They're Royal Warders—they're used to guarding their Wards. There's not much guarding to be done with those Wards hidden away, so the Warders don't know what to do with themselves. They have a long time to wait, and they're almost completely at loose ends.*

*I guess that's good, in a way,* Dee allowed. *I suppose having too little to do is better than having people chasing you. Has anything happened? At the base, maybe, or with your people? Is that why they're both still so twitchy?*

*Jaddo hasn't heard anything from the base, and none of us have seen or heard anything of our enemies,* Malik answered. *If they did actually make it here, they're lying very low. Of course they wouldn't be able to recognize us, and from what we've heard, we wouldn't be able to recognize them either, so that stand-off could continue right up until the royals emerge.*

*Assuming their Warders haven't gone nuts by then,* Dee muttered, unable to believe that both still hadn't seen fit to settle down and develop something of a life for themselves.

*You're welcome to keep working on them,* Malik said. *There's a golden opportunity coming.*

*Like what?* Dee asked curiously just as Anthony and David appeared with the luggage and stroller.

*Haven't you heard?* Malik smiled. *Roswell's about to go Hollywood.*




******************************************************



Roswell Sheriff's Station



"So I'll need Main Street completely shut down for two full days for shooting, and I mean completely. As in no shops open, no traffic, hell, even the traffic lights waltzing on my command. You're going to have to block every single side street, sheriff, because I can't have some stray passerby blundering into my frame. I'll let you know a day or so ahead of time. And—"

Seated at his desk, one hand propping up his chin, Sheriff Jim Valenti suddenly regained consciousness. "A day ahead of time? You want downtown Roswell to roll up its sidewalks for two full days on only one day's notice? Look, Mr. Seinfeld—"

"Steinfeld. Morton Steinfeld. And yes, I do."

"Well, forget it, Mr. Steinfeld," Valenti said firmly. "You can't shut down every business on Main Street for two full days. You can't even shut them down for one day on only a day's notice. People make their living off those businesses, you know."

"Right!" Steinfeld said triumphantly, waving his smelly cigar for emphasis as Valenti's nose wrinkled. "The very same people who like to go to the movies, which is how I make my living."

"I can safely say I don't care how you make your living," Valenti said crossly. "I'm not shutting Main Street down for two days, and that's final. Pick a side street."

"But it can't be a side street!" Steinfeld protested. "I'm striving for authenticity here!"

"And what exactly does 'authenticity' have to do with Main Street?"

"Sheriff, Sheriff, Sheriff!" Steinfeld said sorrowfully. "Everyone knows the aliens chased the population of Roswell down Main Street while they ran for their lives, screaming for help! I mean to reenact that heart-stopping moment on film, and I need the Main Street to do it!"

" 'Chased the population'....Jesus Christ Almighty, where'd you get a ridiculous idea like that?" Valenti demanded.

"And where do you get off calling that ridiculous?" Steinfeld challenged. "Were you here when the aliens landed?"

As a matter of fact, I was, Valenti thought wearily, leaning back in his chair as Steinfeld held forth about all the supposed witnesses to the citizens of Roswell being chased by aliens down Main Street in the summer of '47. Witnesses that no doubt included those who had made countless calls reporting supposed alien sightings, alien abductions, or alien anything that deputies from both the Roswell and Chaves County station had answered for years, although Roswell had borne the brunt of it for the past decade or so, having been declared the de facto alien Mecca by popular consensus. Which is precisely why this pompous, balding, chain smoking, Hollywood B movie producer was strutting around in Valenti's office acting like he owned the town.

"When the town council voted to allow me to film my movie in Roswell, they assured me I'd have full support," Steinfeld was saying, "and that was a wise decision, if I do say so myself. Do you realize how much business I'm bringing into this town? We'll be hiring dozens of people as extras, we'll need lodging for the cast and crew, laundry services, catering—the list is endless! And every dollar of that goes into Roswell's economy. Surely you can understand that's worth shutting down Main Street for a couple of days."

"What I understand, Mr. Steinfeld, is that parts of Roswell's economy stand to gain from you filming here, while others don't," Valenti replied impatiently. "And my duty is to all of the citizens of this town, not just those fortunate enough to benefit from your august presence. For example, there's a physician and a lawyer who have offices on Main Street. How is it going to 'help' them if their patients and clients can't reach them for two full days with basically no warning?"

"Well....I....." Steinfeld paused, struggling to come up with a rejoinder. "Look, sheriff, the town council won't like it if you're less than helpful," he warned. "Like it or not, I will shoot my movie here and I will shoot on Main Street, and if you're smart, you'll cooperate. And if you don't, I'll—"

"You'll what?" Valenti interrupted, rising from his chair as the director backed up a step. "I'll have you know that I don't take kindly to threats," he continued darkly when Steinfeld didn't reply. "I don't care if the town council voted to kiss your ass, they also voted me Sheriff of Roswell long before you showed up. You don't take that tone with me in my office, or I swear to God, I'll point the aliens in your direction and make sure I'm too busy to answer the phone. Now, you park that oversized mouth of yours in that chair and ponder how you're going to finish that sentence, and when I come back, we'll see just how smart you are. And put that stogie out. It stinks."

Eyes wide, Morton Steinfeld obediently sank into a chair, his face nearly as ashen as the cigar he stabbed into an ashtray. Valenti stepped outside his office and closed the door with a bang that made the director give a very satisfying jump. He knew he was being ornery, but he couldn't help it—this guy just set his teeth on edge.

"Sir?"

"Hanson!" Valenti exclaimed as his ranking deputy appeared. "What is it? Has there been an accident? An emergency? A phone call? Anything to get me away from this moron."

"Driving you nuts, huh, sir?" Hanson said sympathetically. "What's he want now?"

"He wants to close off all of Main Street for two full days, shut everything down, close all the shops, the whole nine yards."

"Wow," Hanson said. "But....you do know that the town council is all excited about the revenue his movie will bring into town, don't you?"

"Don't think he hasn't reminded me of that at least a dozen times in as many minutes," Valenti said irritably. "I don't care if the guy is dropping bucket loads of cash from airplanes, I will not have him closing down my town!"

"But do you really think people would mind, sir?" Hanson asked. "I mean...it's a movie. A real Hollywood movie! Everyone I've talked to is all excited about it. They can hardly believe that Roswell got picked for a Hollywood movie."

"It's a movie about aliens, Hanson, so it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why they want to shoot it in Roswell," Valenti said.

"But you've got to admit it's exciting, sir," Hanson argued. "The whole town will turn out to watch. My son can hardly wait. And a lot of local businesses stand to make a good buck looking after everyone who—"

"So I've heard," Valenti interrupted impatiently, "and you know perfectly well that for every local business that profits from this nonsense, there'll be another that's hurt by it. Jesus, Hanson, whose side are you on?"

Hanson flushed. "Your side, sir. Of course. It's just that....well, I.....well, Mr. Steinfeld is......"

"Is what?" Valenti demanded.

Hanson swallowed. "Casting people from Roswell as extras in his movie."

"I heard," Valenti said. "So?"

"Well.....I thought....I thought maybe I could.....you know....be in....I mean, try out for......" Hanson stopped, his face on fire.

Valenti's eyes widened. "Do you mean to tell me that just when the whole town is about to fall apart, just when I need every single deputy I have and more besides, that you want to run off and pretend to be chased down Main Street by aliens? If you do that, you'd better like it a whole lot, because that's all you'll be doing!"

"Yes, sir," Hanson stammered. "Sorry, sir. It was just....never mind. I—"

"Am I interrupting something?" an amused voice asked.

Valenti whirled around to find his wife standing behind him looking sympathetically at Hanson. "Ma'am," Hanson said, nodding toward Andi and beating a hasty retreat before Valenti could protest.

"You know, I already had dinner planned for tonight," Andi said dryly, "and 'fillet of deputy' wasn't on the menu."

Valenti sighed deeply and hooked his hands behind his head. "Okay, so maybe I came on a little strong—"

" 'Maybe'?" Andi echoed, her eyebrows grazing her hairline.

"Okay, so I did come on a little strong," Valenti allowed.

"A 'little'?"

"Can't you cut a sheriff a break?" Valenti complained.

Andi smiled as she reached out to straighten his badge. "Nope. As the wife of said sheriff, I feel obligated to point out that the entire town is really looking forward to the movie being filmed here, even with all the attendant inconveniences. So even though you see this as nothing more than a pain in the neck, the least you could do is try to be a bit more accommodating. Oh, and try not to chew your favorite deputy out in the middle of a hallway where just anybody can wander by and hear you."

"You're not just anybody," Valenti murmured, pulling her closer.

"No, I'm not," Andi agreed. "I'm your own personal, walking, talking, kick in the pants. Now, what's so bad about Hanson taking a once in a lifetime opportunity? When is he going to get another chance to act in a real Hollywood movie?"

"I need my deputies," Valenti insisted, "now more than ever."

"Why not borrow some from your friend, Sheriff Wilcox?" Andi suggested. "Didn't he borrow you from Roswell back when all the alien stuff hit in the forties?"

"I suppose I could give George a call," Valenti said grudgingly. "But this idiot producer wants to shut down Main Street for two whole days with almost no notice, and that's just not going to work."

"So what would work?" Andi asked.

"One day," Valenti said after a moment's thought. "One day with a week's notice."

"Then go tell him he can have one day with a week's notice, and that's that."

"Just like that?" Valenti asked.

"Just like that."

"I wish it were that easy," Valenti said. "This is the biggest thing that's happened since they made me sheriff, and I don't want to screw it up."

"You won't," Andi promised. "You're the sheriff."

She leaned in and kissed him then, and it took precisely two seconds for the catcalls to start from the main office, with whistles and cries of "WooHoo!" followed by applause when she finally pulled away. "You know you're bad for my image, don't you?" Valenti whispered.

"Awful," Andi agreed with a smile. "I need to go get Jimmy. He's out looking at the patrol cars; you know eight year-olds. We just stopped in to say 'hi'. Now, go show that producer who's boss, and stop fretting."

Valenti watched appreciatively as his wife walked away, her lithe figure accentuated by the wide sweep of her skirt. He wasn't her only admirer, and several heads quickly turned away when they saw him noting this fact. But he wasn't sore; he was a lucky man, with a beautiful, brainy wife anyone would hanker after. Look all you want, guys, but hands off, he thought. She's mine.

"Mr. Steinfeld," Valenti said when he opened his office door, "I've—"

"I'm sorry, sheriff," Steinfeld said abruptly, popping nervously out of his chair. "I was presumptuous. Roswell will be going out of its way for us, and I should return the favor. After all, there is literally nowhere else on Earth I could shoot this movie. So you just tell me when and how long I can have Main Street, and I'll work around that."

"Well....thank you," Valenti said slowly, making a mental note that Steinfeld's bark was far worse than his bite. "That's mighty accommodating of you. You can have it for a full day, and I'll need at least a week's notice."

"Done!" Steinfeld said. "And call me Morty. May I call you Jim? No, of course not," he added hurriedly when he saw the look on Valenti's face. "Not professional, of course not. Well, sheriff, I'll just be off and not waste any more of your valuable time, but....there was one more thing."

"What's that?" Valenti asked, knowing this had been too easy.

"Morty's" eyes darted left and right as though checking for eavesdroppers. "A minute ago, when you said you'd point the aliens in my direction, did you....would you.....sheriff, do you know any aliens? Did you see something back in '47 that would give the lie to that that ridiculous weather balloon story?"

Did I see something? Valenti repeated silently as Steinfeld waited breathlessly for an answer. He'd seen a little girl jump out of a crashed spaceship and run away, unseen by a throng of soldiers around her. He's seen glowing, pulsing lumps in the back of a truck. He'd seen the imprint of a huge, long-fingered hand in soft dirt, and a dead alien collapse into a pile of ash. And he'd gone on a long ride with an Army officer on a night in 1950 when something had escaped from the nearby military base, something no one had seen hide nor hair of since. Which was good news, he supposed, but there wasn't a day that went by when it didn't cross his mind that at least one of Roswell's residents might not be human.

"No," Valenti answered as Steinfeld's face fell. "The only thing I saw were a bunch of frightened, confused people who didn't know what to believe after the Army changed its story."

"Darn," Steinfeld said disconsolately. "I was so hoping you'd actually seen an alien."

"Well, you know what they say, Mr. Steinfeld," Valenti replied as he sat down at his desk. "Be careful what you wish for."



******************************************************



Copper Summit, Arizona




"That's the last of it," Bill Rahn said, puffing up the stairs to the second floor. "I certainly won't miss this staircase. Damned thing is so steep, you need oxygen to climb it." He paused at the top, puffing. "Helen? Helen, where are you?"

"In here," came a muffled voice.

Bill sighed and headed for one of the bedrooms, the smallest one under the eaves near the front of the house. His wife stood just inside the doorway, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief, her massive shoulders heaving. "Now, Helen," he said uncomfortably. "Don't go all misty eyed on me. We both agreed this house is too much for us at our age. We'll be much better off in Tucson. Our new town house is only one floor, and—"

"Oh, I know, I know," Helen broke in, shaking her head. "But it's so hard leaving, Bill! Do you realize that I rocked all four of our babies in this room? The cradle was always against that wall because it was the warmest spot."

"I remember," Bill said. "Our bed was right on the other side, and they were always hollering. Come on, let's go."

"In a minute," Helen said crossly. "We've lived here forty-five years, and I'm not going to have you rushing me out!"

"Fine," Bill sighed. "Suit yourself. I'll go commune with the luggage while you kiss the house goodbye."

Men, Helen thought sourly as Bill trundled down the stairs. How could he just walk away with nary a look back? How could he not be moved by the memory of voices that had once filled these halls, the sticky handprints on walls long painted over, or the window ledge where their youngest daughter had always lined up her stuffed animals? Everywhere she walked a flood of memories followed, carrying with it a lifetime of joy, sorrow, and ultimately, contentment. Raising her children and building a home had been one of Helen's greatest joys. In some sense, this house was one of her children too, in a way it never had been for Bill. Bill had been a good father and a good provider, but work had been his life, with the house merely a way station before going back to work. Perhaps that was the difference; this house and everything that had happened in it was her work, her castle. Whoever had said a man's home was his castle had been mistaken.

Sniffling, Helen moved to her and Bill's bedroom for a last look. Their new place was quite small, so they were leaving some furniture behind, to the delight of the nice father and daughter who had bought the house. It had been a comfort to see it sold to someone who could love it as much as she had, and that had softened some of the sadness she felt at parting with some of the larger furnishings. Like that huge, ugly-as-sin lamp which they had only tolerated because it had been a gift from their eldest son when he was about eight or so. She picked it up now, wrinkling her brow at the huge base, turning it over to look at the underside....and froze. Lettered on the bottom in shaky cursive handwriting were the words, "To Mama and Papa with love, Richard".

That does it, Helen thought fiercely, tugging the plug out of the socket. Ugly or not, this lamp was coming with them. And to think that she'd almost left it behind! She rolled the cord into a neat bundle and was just about to leave when she spied movement on the second floor of the house next door. Curious, she bent over and peered out the window at her next door neighbor's house. The Crawfords were acceptable neighbors, she supposed. Walt and Ida seemed like respectable people, and their daughter was tolerable, although she seemed rather aloof. But that son of theirs, that Nicholas, was the most rude, patronizing little twerp Helen had ever met. If any of her boys had ever dared talk back to her the way Nicholas mouthed off to Ida, she'd have boxed his ears so soundly he would never have given a second thought to a second attempt. Unfortunately Nicholas' attitude didn't stop with his mother. Many times he'd taken the same tone with Helen, usually when he was asking one of his endless questions about Carl and Tom. He seemed very interested in the two who had lived in that house before his family.....very interested......

Helen gasped, what she saw in the bedroom window across the way pulling her back to the present. Why, Nicholas and his sister were....kissing! Passionately! On the mouth! And on the.....

"Oh, my stars!" Helen exclaimed, jerking upright. Why that little.... A minute later she had marched downstairs and out the front door, barging right past her confused husband and out to the car. How revolting! Previously reluctant to leave, now she couldn't get out of here fast enough.

"Are you off then?" a voice said just after she'd slammed the car door.

Ida Crawford was approaching, smiling as always, a steaming pie in her hands. "I made something for you to take with you," she said. "You can keep the dish. Just a little something to remember us by."

"I seriously doubt I shall have any difficulty remembering you," Helen burst out, her usual veneer of civility stripped away by what she'd just seen through that upstairs window.

Ida's smile faltered. "Why, Helen, what's wrong? Have I done something to offend you?"

She looked so genuinely befuddled that Helen relented a bit. "God knows, Ida, that I would never tell another woman how to raise her children, but that boy of yours....do you have any idea what he's doing up there?"

"Why....no," Ida answered uncertainly, her gaze straying toward the second floor of her house. "Whatever's wrong?"

Helen leaned out the car window, glancing left and right as though afraid of being overheard. "He's up there with your daughter as we speak, and they're.....they're....." Helen paused, at a loss for the proper words for that which simply wasn't spoken of. "They're necking," she finished, feeling her face growing warm at the mere memory. "And don't take that to mean that they're stopping at the neck!"

"Oh, dear," Ida said, flustered, the pie wavering in her hands.

"Now, I know that boy likely has issues because of his height, but this is simply unacceptable behavior," Helen continued sternly. "This is incest, Ida! That boy needs help! Not to mention what his poor sister must be going through, being set on by her own brother!"

"All ready to go?" Bill asked, having locked the house and joined Ida beside the car. "Ida, why do you look so upset?"

"It's all right, Bill," Ida said, dredging up a smile. "Helen was just apprising me of a....situation, that's all. Here," she continued, handing him the pie. "Best of luck in your new home, have a safe trip, and be sure to write. And thank you, Helen, for having the courage to tell me what you saw."

"You're most welcome, Ida," Helen said, feeling vaguely like she needed a bath. "I know it's not spoken of in polite company, but if anyone gets wind of this, it will spread through town like wildfire, and your family could be ostracized. You've been good neighbors these past several years, and I wouldn't want that to happen to you."

"Of course not. Well....goodbye," Ida said, and promptly fled back into her house.

"What in tarnation was that all about?" Bill demanded.

"Never mind," Helen said grimly. "Just drive. The sooner I get away from here, the better."



******************************************************



"Do you think she saw us?" Vanessa giggled, gazing out the bedroom window.

"Who cares?" Nicholas said lazily, tugging her back onto the bed with him. "She's a busybody, that one. Always in everyone else's business, but she doesn't seem to know a thing about where those Covari scum went when they left."

"You didn't really expect them to leave a forwarding address, did you?" Vanessa said dryly.

"No, but I expected the busybody to know anyway," Nicholas replied. "She knows everything else; why wouldn't she know the one thing I want to know?"

"What good would knowing do?" Vanessa reasoned. "Two were dead when we got here, and if the other two live, I'm sure they're long gone, as long gone as the Warders and those infernal royals."

"Don't remind me," Nicholas said darkly.

"We have more operatives coming off the ship every day," Vanessa said soothingly. "Eventually we'll be able to deploy spies all over this planet. We'll find them, and when we do, we'll return in triumph with the king's tiny human head on a platter. And then Khivar will forgive you and restore you to your rightful place as his second in command. It won't be long now."

It hadn't better be, Nicholas thought sourly. Nine years—it had been nine years of tedious waiting, with not so much as a peep from either a Warder or a hybrid. Nine years of fruitless searching, nine years of wearing this child-sized husk, Khivar's punishment for ordering the execution of the royals against Khivar's wishes. Or rather, most of the royals; Nicholas hadn't wanted Vilandra dead, had even issued specific orders that she be left alive. But the faction within Khivar's ranks that despised Khivar's infatuation with the Antarian princess had seen an opportunity and used it to rid themselves of her. He could respect that—heaven knew he'd taken advantage of the chaos that day to rid himself of Rath—but the deaths of all the royals had resulted in their Warders snatching the bodies and running, leaving Khivar in a precarious position because he could not produce the body of the dead king, take the royal mark, and legitimately ascend the throne. Now Khivar sat on the proverbial bottom step of the dais, gazing at the still empty throne with a fury that needed a target. And had found one just as soon as that traitorous Covari, Orlon, had ratted Nicholas out to Khivar.

The ensuing uproar had not been pleasant. Khivar had a copy of one of Nicholas' transmissions to Orlon, so there was no whitewashing anything being said in one's own voice. Through it all Nicholas had stoically insisted that he had never ordered Vilandra's death, and had only ordered the deaths of the King and Queen to make certain the much loved, idiotic boy monarch would not become a focal point for the people following Khivar's ascension, or, worse yet, freed by rebels. Whether Khivar had believed him or not was unclear, but his punishment was not; Nicholas had been condemned to wear a child's husk originally meant for another member of their expedition. Virtually everyone under his command towered over him.

Initially, he hadn't seen how this constituted punishment. They all needed husks to protect themselves from Earth's harsh environment, and the smaller husks were actually more prized as they were closer to their race's true size, thus requiring less time to get used to. But there was more, and it wasn't until they'd left for Earth that the full measure of Khivar's punishment became apparent. Khivar had sent along both of Nicholas' overbearing parents to keep an eye on him, and to make matters worse, they were assigned to pose as his parents Earth side. His lover, who used the human name Vanessa, had been assigned the role of his sister, something Nicholas was most unhappy about when he learned that human siblings did not engage in connubial adventures. And the final stab, not to mention the most petty of all to Nicholas' way of thinking, was the sabotage of his new husk. Husks were true life forms, grown from human genetic material purloined from the Antarians' visits here in their efforts to harness the riches of the human brain for their own ends. There was a direct link between the husk and an Argilian's brain, allowing them to feel the sensations relayed by the human nerves in the husk, including sight, sound, pressure, temperature, pain....and pleasure. Yes, humans had a most interesting method of mating, a method Nicholas could hardly wait to try, only to discover that those particular nerve pathways in his husk had been destroyed. So while Vanessa was capable of enjoying the full range of sensation from all those delightfully sensitive human places, Nicholas didn't feel a thing. The Argilians' equivalent of the human Lothario had been essentially emasculated.

The only thing that made any of this bearable was the notion that it wouldn't last long. They would reach Earth, hook up with their almost useless but still needed Covari slaves, capture the Warders and the hybrids, and return home, where he could shed his husk and be himself again. No such luck. Nine years later they were still here, still painstakingly educating their people on their ship, some of whom they'd hoped never to have to send into the field. Nine years later he still had to put up with his parents watching his every move, still had to pretend his lover was his sister, still had to watch enviously as his subordinates enjoyed the full use of their husks. To say that he was anxious to get out of here would be a gross understatement.

"What are you thinking?" Vanessa whispered in his ear.

"Nothing you'd like to hear," Nicholas grumbled.

"Come on," she coaxed. "Think about happier things. Like this."

She slipped her blouse aside, revealing those wonderfully soft protrusions human females sported on their chests. They were called "mammary glands" if he remembered his training rightly. Something to do with feeding human young. But feeding young was the last thing on his mind as....

.....he found himself flat on his back on the floor, his mother standing over him with a look like grim death.

"After all I've done for you, all I've given you, this is how you repay me?" she spat. "By blowing our cover?"

"What the hell are you doing?" Nicholas sputtered as Vanessa scurried backwards on the bed.

"Knocking some sense into that little head of yours," Ida growled. "You know perfectly well that human siblings don't carry on the way you two just were, so don't you dare let me catch you doing it anywhere a human could see! Like a human just did, I might add. Helen Rahn was scandalized."

"Who cares?" Nicholas said impatiently, pushing himself to his feet. "She just left, didn't she? Besides, it might do the old biddy good to—"

"Don't take that tone with me," Ida interrupted severely. "After everything we've gone through because you failed, I will not have you failing again!"

"Who do you think you're talking to?" Nicholas thundered. "I am Athenor, second in command only to Khivar himself! You do not speak to me that way—"

Slap! Vanessa's eyes widened as Nicholas sat down abruptly on the bed, one hand to his cheek as Ida hovered over both like a fury. "Now you listen to me," she ordered. "If you'd done what I told you, we wouldn't be here right now. If you'd just killed the king and let the others live, Khivar would be Antar's rightful monarch, and we would be at his side as we should be. But you couldn't stop with just Zan, could you? You had to kill them all, kill Ava, kill Rath, kill—"

"I did not order Vilandra's death!" Nicholas exclaimed. "Jesus, how many times do I have to say that?"

"Don't take the human Lord's name in vain," Ida commanded. "People don't like it. And I know you didn't order her death; the point is you should have realized others would try to kill her, and prevented it. If you want to rule, you need to learn to anticipate. How many times do I have to tell you that?"

Nicholas glared at her in silence, rubbing his sore face. Or rather, the husk's sore face; his own face was safely hidden beneath layers of human tissue which was unfortunately responsive to pain. Very responsive.

"Don't let me catch you two carrying on like this again unless you're in a closed room with the windows covered," Ida ordered. "And for that matter, don't let me catch you like this again period. It looks....weird."

"Gee, Mom, you sound almost human," Nicholas said sarcastically.

"Don't provoke me," Ida advised severely. "And you," she continued to Vanessa, "don't lead him astray or I'll have you out of that pretty little husk and back on the ship before you can blink. I bred my boy to rule, and rule he shall, even if he is too stupid for words sometimes. Now, pull yourselves together. The Rahns have left, and Greer just put out a call. They'll be here shortly."

"We've been on this rock way too long if my mother is starting to develop human mores...or any mores, for that matter," Nicholas said angrily to Vanessa after Ida swept out of the room. "Time to step up the search. We need everyone off the ship and out looking for those blasted Warders. I want to go home."



******************************************************



Copper Summit, one hour later




"It's all yours!" the real estate agent chirped cheerfully as she pulled the car into the driveway. "The previous owners left today, so it's yours a day early!"

"Thank you," the man in the front passenger seat said politely. "I appreciate you letting us know. We're very anxious to move in."

"I'm sure you are," the real estate lady agreed. "And what about you, dear?" she asked the man's young daughter seated in the back. "Are you all excited about your new house?"

"Absolutely," the girl answered tonelessly.

The car stopped and everyone piled out, the agent talking non-stop about what a fine house it was, so well cared for, etc., etc. The girl squinted in the sunlight which was still too bright and climbed out of the back seat on legs that still seemed too long, even after eight years. She'd just closed the car door when a boy appeared to her right, his husk wearing a smile every bit as fake as the smile he'd worn back home.

"Hello, Courtney," Nicholas said pleasantly. "Welcome to your new home."



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


I'll post Chapter 2 next Sunday. :)
Last edited by Kathy W on Mon Oct 15, 2007 12:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
BRIVARI: "In our language, the root of the word 'Covari' means 'hidden'. I'm always there, Your Highness, even if you don't see me."
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Kathy W
Obsessed Roswellian
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Post by Kathy W »

Hello and thank you to everyone reading, and welcome to any new readers!
kj4ever wrote:I LOVE that Phillip is Dee's son. Won't it be ironic if Phillip ends up knowing about the aliens the whole time?!?!?!
That's a possibility. ;) He's young enough here that it could go either way. I confess to a certain amount of enjoyment at having Philip be a baby in diapers. I never liked Philip Evans very much....always found him rather pushy and bossy, very much like his fictional mom can be...so having him as a toddler is fun sometimes. :twisted:
I also love your explanation on why he is stuck as a 13 year old boy, and LOL at the cut nerve endings. Serves him right.
Nicholas has always creeped me out, and I've always wondered how he wound up in a child's husk. One more question "answered"! And he was such a lech with Lonnie, I just felt like giving him one more reason to hurry home.
This is the book with Nasedo's deal, right?


It is indeed. The question of Nasedo's loyalty or lack thereof seems to be a sore point with many fans, so when my take on it is posted, I'll make certain I'm wearing body armor. ;)

I'm so glad you're enjoying the series! Thank you for taking the time to read it, and for letting me know.

Shiesty23: I'm delighted you're enjoying it too, and I really appreciate your recommendation, everyone's recommendations. This isn't the typical fanfic, so it's hard to describe and a hard sell. (Shapeshifters? No pod squad (yet)? Huh?) Thanks for all the time you've spent reading and all your feedback over the books! :)
Michelle in Yonkers wrote:Love your perfect assessment of small-town life -- Valenti will pass his badge on to his son, and apparently Hanson will, too! ;) And the son will be a chip off the old block, :lol: .
Welcome back! Yep, lots and lots of nepotism in Roswell. :mrgreen: It keeps some characters we know, or characters who know characters we know, right in front of us. Any little bit helps when we're this far back. But this is the last book where that will be an issue. Our pod squad hatches in Book 5, so then we'll have lots of characters we know. :)





CHAPTER TWO


June 16, 1959, 2:30 p.m.

Copper Summit, Arizona





Amazing, Courtney thought, looking down on Khivar's second-in-command. The mighty Athenor didn't look so mighty when he was several inches shorter. The last time she'd been this close to him, neither of them had been wearing a husk. She'd hadn't been looking forward to being in such close proximity after all these years, but the difference in height almost made it worth it. Almost.

"So how do you like your new house?" Nicholas asked, standing much too close to her. "Right next door to mine."

"Such an honor," Courtney said, trying to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. "You really shouldn't have taken time out of your busy schedule to greet us, Nicholas. Really. You shouldn't have." She took a step forward and stumbled on a stone in the driveway, grabbing the car for support.

Nicholas' eyebrows rose. "Can't walk straight?"

"Of course I can," Courtney said impatiently. "I've worn this husk for years now."

Nicholas leaned in even closer. "And what a pretty little husk it is. I picked it out for you myself."

Catching a glimpse of her father, Courtney bit back a sharp retort. Being around Nicholas for even a short time still made her skin crawl. Both of them.

"But how could I let one of my best operatives move in without a personal welcome?" Nicholas continued, mercifully backing away and throwing an arm around her father's shoulders, or trying to, anyway; Courtney's father towered over her, not to mention his master. "Welcome to the neighborhood, Michael!"

"Thank you, sir," Michael said sincerely.

"That's 'Nicholas'," Nicholas reminded him. "Never call me 'sir'. It'll sound weird to humans."

"Remember, Papa, he just looks like a little boy to humans," Courtney said sweetly.

"Another family is moving in on Sunset Avenue," Courtney's father said hastily, throwing her yet another warning glance as Nicholas' expression darkened, "and the word is you've ordered everyone into the field. Is that true?"

"Absolutely," Nicholas answered. "We've been waiting for the Warders to slip up and give themselves away for years now, and that's gotten us nowhere. Time to get more aggressive. I want off this rock."

"I understand that, s—Nicholas," Michael answered, "but I'm concerned about those of us who aren't quite ready. Some of the husks matured only recently, and their recipients haven't had much time to get used to them—"

"So they'll just have to get used to them faster," Nicholas interrupted. "Everyone's finished their training, and we own a third of the houses in this town now, along with various properties around the globe. All of them can expect visitors in the next couple of weeks, including you. I'll send crutches."

"Such compassion," Courtney deadpanned.

"I'm compassionate," Nicholas insisted. "Why else do you think I made sure that every operative had at least one family member with them for this mission? I knew we could be here a while, and separation from one's loved ones is a real trial."

"And I'm grateful that I was allowed to bring my daughter along," Michael assured him.

"Gee, I thought the idea was that if anyone turned against you, you could threaten their relatives to make them tow the line," Courtney said innocently.

Now it was Michael's expression which darkened, but Nicholas broke into a wide smile. " 'Tow the line'? Someone's been listening in vocabulary class. Very good, Courtney. You were always a quick study."

"I'm sure she's just joking," Michael said, his eyes boring into his daughter's.

"Why would she be joking?" Nicholas asked. "She's right; having family members around could prove useful. There were a group of dissidents who tried mighty hard to put Rath on the throne. They infiltrated the very top layers of Khivar's command; hard to believe, but I even found a few among my own troops. Who knows if we found them all?"

"Filthy traitors," Michael scowled.

"Exactly," Nicholas agreed. "And very good at what they do, which is why Greer and I screened everyone very carefully for this mission. But just in case I missed something, perhaps their relatives will rat them out."

"I can't imagine you missing anything, s—Nicholas," Michael said as Courtney resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

"That's my man," Nicholas smiled. "Enjoy your new house," he added as he began walking back to his own, his gaze lingering on Courtney. "I'll be over later to help you.....move in."

Michael put his arm around his daughter as he waved goodbye, the fingers digging into her arm a silent message that she should do the same; she obliged readily, always glad to see Nicholas leave. He had barely disappeared into his house when her father steered her up the driveway, hissing in her ear.

"How many times do I have to tell you not to provoke him? This isn't like home, where he was far away and out of earshot. Now he's right next door, so we mustn't be careless."

"What's wrong, Papa? Afraid I'm going to 'rat you out'?"

Michael ushered her through the doorway into the house, which smelled strongly of the humans' favorite cleaning solution, ammonia. "I just don't want to see you hurt," he said gently. "We're right where we want to be now, off the ship and freer than we've ever been, but I had no idea he was going to move us in right next door."

"Athenor's good and faithful servant," Courtney said dryly.

"Don't use his real name," her father said sternly. "We never use our real names. Never. Even with each other. If we slip back into our old habits, we'll reveal ourselves."

"Isn't that why we came here?" Courtney asked. "To reveal ourselves?"

Her father sighed heavily. "Yes. But only to the right people. And first we have to find those people. Now that we're in the field, that should be a lot easier. Ignore Nicholas, and keep your eyes on the prize."

Assuming we live to claim it, Courtney thought as her father planted a kiss on her forehead and headed back out to the car for their belongings. What would Khivar's right-hand man think if he were to learn that her father, one of his most trusted operatives, was none other than the leader of the dissidents he'd just spoken of? Dissidents whose sole reason for being here was to find and protect the four reincarnations of Antar's fallen royal house. And in order to do that, they needed to find the one who warded the member of the Royal Four they felt most suited to rule. Which meant revealing themselves to one of the most despised races on their planet.

Courtney wrapped her arms around herself and shivered in spite of the heat as her father began piling luggage on the front porch. Shapeshifters. The very thought of them made her blood run cold. Everyone loathed Covari, and she was no exception. And these weren't just any Covari, but Royal Warders, the most feared and hated of all. To think her father, her own father, would have to meet with them, talk with them, parlay with them. How could he possibly survive that? It almost made her.....

No, she rebuked herself sternly. That wasn't fair. After everything they'd been through, everything her movement, her people, her entire world had been through, it was selfish of her to secretly wish that her father would fail.




******************************************************



Proctor residence




"I think your mother planned for the baby to sleep in the guest room," Malik said as Dee plopped Philip's little suitcase on the bed in her old bedroom. "She thought you and Anthony would sleep in here."

"No way," Dee said firmly. "I have enough trouble convincing my mother I'm an adult now without the specter of me sleeping in my childhood bed. Philip sleeps in here, and Anthony and I will sleep in the guest room."

"Suit yourself," Malik shrugged. "I'll move the crib."

Dee knelt on the window bench and gazed out the window the way she used to when she was younger. Below her David and Anthony were emptying the car while Emily was regaling the Brazel's with the grandson she'd gotten so mad about, swinging him on her hip and smiling broadly as though she hadn't acted like the world was coming to an end when Dee had told her she was pregnant. Philip had enjoyed his grandmother's undivided attention while he sat on her lap on the way home from Roswell, and Dee hadn't minded. She and Anthony had traded the holding of a sweaty toddler all the way from Albuquerque, so having her lap to herself for a while wasn't such a bad idea.

"All set," Malik said behind her, unfolding the crib and settling the mattress inside. "Was this your crib?"

"Yes," Dee answered, still looking out the window. "Mama and Daddy kept it in the attic all these years, along with all my baby clothes, baby toys, baby everything."

"That would explain the huge pile in the guest room," Malik smiled. He joined her at the window, glancing down at her parents below. "You've got a good view from up here," he commented. "The angle is just right so you can see way off into the distance instead of just looking into the house next door."

"I know. That's how I saw the ship crash."

Malik stared at her in surprise. "You did? I didn't know that."

She nodded, her eyes far away, back on that night in '47 when she'd watched a thunderstorm from this very spot. "It was raining that night, pouring, lots of thunder and lightning. And I saw this bright flash come down from the sky toward the ground, and heard this huge clap of thunder. Daddy thought it was a meteor, but the next day Mac and I went looking....and that's when I found the ship."

"So that's why nobody noticed," Malik said. "I knew it came down in the middle of the ranch, but I was surprised that no one seemed to hear anything. It must have just been passed off as more thunder."

Dee's eyes strayed toward the bed, and a moment later she was digging beneath the mattress. "I wonder if they're still here?" she murmured as her hand felt around between the mattress and box spring. "I know I left them here.....there they are." She pulled out a pile of crayon drawings and laid them out on the bed end to end as Malik knelt beside her. "My adventure in '47," she said. "These first ones are when Urza and Valeris were hurt when the Army found them. And these are from when Urza came to me in a dream when he was dying and showed me what your world looked like."

"Our moons," Malik murmured, holding up a drawing of three orangey moons against a reddish sky. "And this.....this is Dimaras Rock, a favorite place of the king's. They say he met his wife there."

"I had a picture of the 'V' constellation too, but I gave it to the nurse from the base," Dee said, pointing to a gap in the narrative.

"And you say Urza showed you all this in a dream?" Malik asked. "I had no idea he could do that. But these are such accurate representations that it couldn't be anything else. It almost makes me....."

"Homesick?" Dee offered.

Malik hesitated a moment. "A little," he admitted. "I've been here so long....sometimes I forget what I left behind."

"Do you ever want to go back?"

"No," Malik answered, shaking his head. "I mean, I'd love to see home again, but not the way I know it would be now. Covari aren't just second-class citizens; we're not even citizens."

Voices echoed up the stairway, David's, Anthony's, and a moment later, Emily's. Dee gathered up the drawings, trying to imagine what it was like to be less than a second-class citizen. The court-ordered integration of the schools in Little Rock, which Little Rock was fighting to this day, had provided a startling example of what second-class citizenship looked like. Her experiences with both aliens and Indians had propelled her toward law school because she wanted to be one of those who fought to erase any prejudice enshrined in law.

"Anthony's getting the rest of the luggage," David said when Dee and Malik appeared from the second floor. "Everything okay?"

"We were just...reminiscing," Dee answered. "Anthony and I are in the guest room, and Malik set the crib up in my old room."

"But I thought you'd want to sleep in your old room!" Emily protested with Philip on her hip.

"Well, I don't," Dee said evenly.

"But—" her mother began.

"That's fine," David broke in. "I'll put your bags in the guest room. It doesn't matter which room they sleep in," he added when Emily started to protest again. "What matters is that they're here, right?"

Not to Mama, Dee thought sourly as she watched her mother sigh in obvious exasperation. What matters to her is that she's running things. But a moment later, Emily's attention had returned to her now favorite subject: Her grandson. "Are you thirsty?" she asked the grinning toddler. "I'll bet you are! Grandma will get you some juice."

"Juice!" Philip agreed enthusiastically.

"Water," Dee corrected.

"Oh, don't be silly," Emily said, heading into the kitchen. "I always gave you juice when you were this age."

Dee stared after her mother in amazement for a moment before following her into the kitchen, where Emily was busily pouring a bottle of apple juice as Philip toddled around the kitchen floor. "Mother, I said water," Dee insisted. "And he drinks out of a cup now, not a bottle."

"You still had a bottle at this age," Emily replied calmly. "Lots of babies do."

"This one doesn't," Dee said firmly. "I'm his mother, and I say he gets water."

"Don't make such a fuss, Dee; it's just a bottle of juice. There you go," Emily said to Philip, who held out his hand eagerly for the bottle only to have it snatched away by his mother, causing him to promptly burst into tears.

"Now look what you've done!" Emily admonished. "You've gone and made him cry over a simple little thing like juice!"

"No, you've gone and made him cry over a not-so-simple little thing like the fact that I am his mother, and I make the decisions about what he eats and when!" Dee snapped. "How dare you ignore me like that? We both know what would happen if someone ignored you like that."

Dee walked to the sink, unscrewed the bottle cap, unceremoniously dumped the contents down the drain....and discovered she had an audience. Malik, David, and Anthony were all gathered in the kitchen doorway, and her mother looked like someone had slapped her.

"Let's get something straight right now," Dee said tersely as she picked up her still whimpering toddler. "Philip is my son, Mama. My son. Not yours, mine. And if you can't accept that, I'll just get on a bus right back to Albuquerque, money or no money."

Dee left through the side door, walking around to the back of the house and setting Philip down in the back yard so he could wander around. She'd worked so hard teaching him to take a cup, and now that good old grandma had just offered him a bottle, there would be hell to pay. And to make matters worse, she'd wound up looking like the bad guy, taking away something her son wanted.

"Was that really necessary?"

Dee turned around to find that Anthony had followed her outside, with Malik a polite distance behind him. "Why don't you ask Mama that?" she said crossly. "She started it."

"We haven't even been in the house an hour yet," Anthony said gently. "I knew this might be difficult, but—"

"But you hadn't counted on just how much my mother loves to run things? She was giving him a bottle, Anthony! She can't do that!"

"I agree," Anthony said patiently, "but you can say that without getting all mad, can't you?"

"I did say that," Dee protested, "and she completely ignored me! Honestly, I think I'm going to join Brivari and Jaddo in their cave for the rest of the summer. Where are they, anyway?" she asked Malik. "I could sure use some advice from an alien warlord right about now."

"Why?" Malik asked. "You're doing so well on your own." He smiled faintly when she glowered at him. "The Warders should be back later tonight. They had something important to attend to."




******************************************************




Trinity Cemetery,

New York City





"How much longer are we going to be out here?" Janet grumbled. "It's boiling!"

"Shh," Bernice whispered. "This is Marie's friend, and we offered to come."

" 'Friend'?" Janet muttered. "I should have 'friends' like these."

Standing between them, Marie felt rather than saw Bernice throw Janet a withering look. Her eyes were locked on the ceremony, several yards away, partially obscured by the crowd in front of them. It had been so difficult to decide where to stand. Too close and she would be noticed; too far away, and the same thing could happen. Being noticed wasn't something she'd had to worry about for nearly a decade now; having to do so again was disquieting.

"Let us lift up our eyes unto the Lord," the minister was saying, "and ask Him to take Roger Allan Ramey into His eternal presence...."

"What's a three-star general doing in a New York cemetery?" Janet asked. "Shouldn't he be at Arlington?"

"He wanted to be buried near his family," Marie murmured. "He was like that."

"How did you know him? Were you in the military?"

Marie hesitated a moment. "No. He was a friend of the family."

"So your family is here today too?" Janet asked.

He wanted to be, Marie thought silently. They had long since abandoned the notion that they couldn't be seen together in public, but being seen together at Ramey's funeral had seemed imprudent. Better safe than sorry.

"They're out of town," Marie answered. "Which is why it was so important that I be here today to represent them. Now shush."

Janet obediently fell silent as the minister continued with the service. Very few had turned out for the burial of Lieutenant General Ramey, most likely due to the fact that he was being interred in a family plot. According to Marie's military contact, there had been a military memorial service earlier in the month which had been attended by all sorts of people she wouldn't have wanted to see, plus a few she would love to see but couldn't afford to. Being able to attend Ramey's burial in safe anonymity was a blessing she had never expected.

"Amen," the minister intoned, having finished his prayer.

"Amen," murmured the onlookers.

Everyone began to file slowly past the coffin, paying their last respects. Marie scanned the small crowd carefully for familiar faces before joining the line toward the back, grateful that the family had not stayed to greet the guests and ask questions which would put her in an awkward position. The line moved briskly, and Marie soon found herself at the head of it, laying the single rose she'd brought with her on top of the coffin as hot tears welled in her eyes. Ramey had been 69 and only a few years retired when a stroke had felled him. And she'd gone to great pains to make sure that it had been a stroke, breaking all kinds of confidentiality laws and pulling every string she could find to be certain that foul play hadn't been involved.

"You were a credit to the Army and the American people," she whispered to the coffin. "A man who stood by his principles even when it cost you, and a much needed light at the end of a very long, very dark tunnel. Rest in peace, sir. You've earned it."

As Marie turned away from the coffin, she noticed a man standing across from it at some distance, watching her intently. He was nicely dressed but unfamiliar, and his stare made her extremely uncomfortable. She could feel his eyes boring into her back as she walked toward her friends who were waiting at a respectful distance, and when she reached them, he was still there. Damn. "Let's go," she said to Janet and Bernice, walking quickly toward the cemetery entrance. "I'll pay for the cab."

"No way," Bernice protested. "This one's on us. You're the only doctor I know who gives nurses the time of day."

"Resident," Marie corrected. "And I used to be a nurse, so if the day comes that I don't listen to a nurse, you have my permission to slap me."

"Third year resident," Janet clarified. "Almost an attending, and an inspiration to us all. And I'll be glad to. Slap you, that is."

"Try not to look forward to it too much," Marie said, scanning the cemetary one more time. But there was no sign of the man who had been watching her as they left, or when they hailed a cab. A few minutes later they were sailing down Riverside Drive, back to Columbia Medical Center where all of them worked, and when they arrived with no sign of pursuit, Marie had relaxed. By the time she was approaching the tiny room which served as her office on the fourth floor of the one of the buildings, she'd forgotten all about it.

"How was lunch, Dr. Johnson?" asked Claire, one of the secretaries in the pool which served the residents.

"Good," Marie said briefly, sidestepping the questions that would inevitably accompany an announcement that she'd just attended a funeral. Setting her bag down on the floor, she sat down in her chair and eyed the latest additions to the two stacks which never disappeared from her desk, the stack of mail and the stack of charts. She smiled when she saw the return address on the top letter in the mail stack, but charts meant patients, and as patients were always more interesting than mail, she started with those. A few minutes later, a soft knock made her look up.

"Dr. Fenton stopped by," Claire announced. "He has a patient he wants to refer to you."

"Fenton?" Marie repeated in surprise. "You mean I'll-never-work-with-a-woman-doctor-if-you-put-a-gun-to-my-head Fenton?"

"That's the one. The chart's in your pile."

Marie thumbed through the stack. "I don't think so; I recognize all these names. Do you remember his patient's name?"

"Not offhand. I told him to leave the chart on your desk," Claire added with an exasperated sigh, "but maybe he couldn't bring himself to enter a woman's office. Let me check my desk."

She disappeared as Marie smiled and went back to her charts. Being a woman doctor was hard enough even when one entered a so-called "soft" specialty like pediatrics, but in neurology it was even harder. Of course Columbia was no stranger to woman doctors; their own Virginia Apgar had helped establish anesthesiology as a specialty in its own right and invented the famous Apgar score in 1952, a way of evaluating a newborn baby's health at birth. Dr. Apgar was on sabbatical now, and there were rumors she wouldn't be returning to private practice. But her legacy lived on; she had blasted a hole in the thick wall of male dominance surrounding the practice of medicine through which a few determined women like Marie had managed to crawl, even if there were days when it didn't seem that way.

"Yvonne....."

Marie's head jerked up to find Claire standing in the doorway, peering at a chart in consternation. "What?"

"I'm sorry," Claire said. "You asked what Fenton's patient's name was and I can't pronounce the last name. Looks Polish, or something. But her first name's Yvonne. Very old fashioned. Haven't heard that one in a while."

Claire dropped the chart on the desk and left the office as Marie sank back in her chair, her heart pounding so hard she was surprised Claire hadn't heard it. In all the years that she had been "Marie", she had never had trouble responding to her new name; "Marie" was her middle name, so getting used to that had been trivial. What had not been trivial, however, was learning not to react to her real name. Fortunately Yvonne was not a common name, so she rarely ran into it. The few times she had, she'd practically had to clap her hands over her mouth to keep from yelling "that's me!".

Stephen had it easier. Sergeant Brisson had obviously put a lot of thought into their pseudonyms, and the effort had paid off. "Stephen" had simply been misspelled as "Steven", and his last name changed to "Johnson", a very common surname and possibly an homage to the alien who had saved her life when Dr. Pierce had managed to impregnate her with an alien-human hybrid. Yvonne had become Marie, her middle name, and her last name had changed to Smith, a practically untraceable surname given the millions of Americans who sported it. But untraceable surnames hadn't stopped them from laying low for a full year at Stephen's grandfather's cabin in the mountains of upstate New York, nursing him through his final days and venturing out with great trepidation when it seemed the coast was clear. The first time they'd presented their fake birth certificates was to get their marriage license, and they'd been so nervous, they could barely stand it. The clerk had smiled indulgently, no doubt mistaking their agitation for pre-wedding jitters, but the birth certificates had sailed through without a hitch. So had the fake transcripts when she'd applied to Columbia Medical School in 1952. She'd graduated in '56 with a medical degree and begun her residency that June, about the same time that Stephen, having worked his way up through the ranks with his own experience and fake credentials, became head of security at the medical center. Despite their worries, neither of them had ever felt so much as a whiff of pursuit. As far as the Army was concerned, Captain Stephen Spade and Lieutenant Yvonne White had gone AWOL in June of 1950 and never been found.

Marie rose and walked to the tiny window, looking down on the sidewalks below. Her office might be little more than a closet, but at least it had a window; any source of natural light in the gray of a New York winter was welcome. Getting used to the seasonal extremes in this part of the country had been difficult, but the hardest part of their exile was the care that had to be taken when approaching their families. Contacting them without arousing suspicion had been tricky; coming up with a suitable explanation as to why they'd gone AWOL had been even trickier. Written communication had been simpler; the top letter on her mail stack was from her mother, a missive to "Dr. Johnson" that likely bore no outward resemblance to a mother-daughter letter but still contained all kinds of news from home. Face to face meetings were risky and rare; she and Stephen had seen their families only a handful of times since they'd run, and each time the happiness of holding their loved ones had been overshadowed by fear of pursuit. But there had been no pursuit for nine years, so perhaps it was safe to be a bit bolder now. Ramey's death seemed like the end of an era, a door closing. Granted, Pierce was probably still out there, but she'd heard nothing about him.

Or anyone else, she thought, her eyes straying from the window to the framed picture hanging beside it, a piece of black construction paper with five white crayon dots in the shape of a "V". She had never heard from the aliens again, never learned what became of them. Reluctant to give herself away by returning the drawing to the child who had made it, she had kept it, first at home, then hung on her office wall. Neither she nor Stephen had ever seen this particular symbol in all their years at Eagle Rock, so it was doubtful anyone knew what it meant. Still, Stephen had objected to her bringing it to work just like he'd objected to her going to work. He'd insisted that laying low was the best option, and woman doctors were so rare that laying low was practically impossible. But Marie had been unwilling to let what had happened to her during her three years at the compound rule the rest of her life, so she'd gone ahead with her plans over Stephen's misgivings, with him taking a job with university security to keep an eye on things. Thankfully there'd been nothing to keep an eye on; no one had guessed that Steven Johnson and his wife weren't who they said they were.

Shaking off her reverie, Marie resumed her seat and paged through the chart of Dr. Fenton's patient, Yvonne what's-her-name. The irony was that most of what had gotten her started here had come from Pierce, either from what he'd taught her during John's captivity or from the research she'd taken from him right after he'd almost killed her. Fearful of the pages she'd ripped from Pierce's notes being discovered in her quarters, she had carried them with her in the large tote bag which had served as her purse at the time, so she'd had them with her when she and Stephen had fled. Those notes had directly contributed to several highly regarded papers she'd written, winning her not only good grades, but the accolades of an often reluctant male faculty. Technically those accolades were based on stolen research, but she didn't dwell on it. As far as she was concerned, she couldn't take enough from Pierce to make up for what he'd taken from her.

"Dr. Johnson?"

Claire was back. "What is it?" Marie asked.

"There's a gentleman here to see you."

"A doctor?"

"I don't think so."

Marie's heart skipped a beat. "Military?"

"No. No uniform." She paused. "He says he knows you."

"What's his name?"

Claire shook her head. "He won't say. All he'll say is that he used to work with you."

Marie's heart was pounding again, just like it had been moments ago when she'd heard her real name spoken aloud. This was not good, especially coming on the heels of Ramey's funeral. "Get rid of him," she told Claire. "Tell him he needs to make an appointment. And—"

Too late. A man had appeared behind Claire, and Marie realized with horror that it was the man from the cemetery, the one who had been staring at her across Ramey's coffin. "Good afternoon, doctor," he said politely.

"I....I'm sorry," Marie stammered. "Have we met?"

"We certainly have," the man assured her, slipping past Claire into Marie's office. "Although it was a very long time ago."

Claire looked helplessly at Marie, who was desperately trying to keep calm. She and Stephen had planned for this moment, had rehearsed it many, many times. Still, she hadn't felt cornered like this in nearly a decade, and it was a most unpleasant sensation, even if it was familiar. "Claire, has my husband called back yet?" Marie asked in a brittle voice.

"What? No," Claire answered, mystified.

"Then could you call him please? It's very important that he stop by as soon as possible."

Claire's eyes flicked back and forth from Marie to the man waiting calmly behind her. "Right," she said slowly. "I'll get right on that."

Marie struggled mightily to maintain her composure as Claire scurried off. Claire was smart; she'd figure it out. Assuming I'm still here when Stephen gets here, she thought in despair, turning around to find the man deep in contemplation of the crayon "V" drawing. Of all the diplomas, photographs, and whatnot on her walls, he'd zeroed in on that immediately. Who? she thought desperately. Someone from the Army? One of Pierce's minions? Whoever it was, she had no intention of going quietly, and to that end, she moved to the desk and slipped her letter opener into her hand. It wasn't much, but something was better than nothing.

"I'm afraid I don't remember having met you," Marie said, every nerve on edge. "What was your name again?"

She braced herself as the man turned around.....and gasped when she saw his face. A face he hadn't been wearing only moments ago. A face that was very familiar.

*Good afternoon, lieutenant,* John said. *I can't tell you how good it is to see you again after all these years.*





~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


I'll post Chapter 3 next Sunday. :)
BRIVARI: "In our language, the root of the word 'Covari' means 'hidden'. I'm always there, Your Highness, even if you don't see me."
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Kathy W
Obsessed Roswellian
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Joined: Thu Oct 31, 2002 5:06 am

Post by Kathy W »

Hello to everyone reading!
Michelle in Yonkers wrote: What a terrible way to have to live -- cut off from your former life and all your loved ones. And it must be hard to fake, too -- the college on her transcripts might have been alma mater to one of her colleagues, and 'reminiscing' questions might have been embarrassing.
Cut from this chapter was a line that mentioned how Brisson made certain her alma mater, years attended, and degree/diploma obtained stayed the same--he only changed the name. So she would be able to talk knowledgeably about the school and what it was like when she attended. That wouldn't solve the problem of, "Gee, I can't imagine why I don't remember you.....", but most doctors wouldn't know anything about a nursing school/program. It would be the nurses she'd have to worry about!
How old is he now? 2? Hope she hasn't potty-trained him yet.) ;)
Hah! Philip is 20 months old; he'll turn 2 in October. I gave him one of my kid's birthdays so I could remember it. :P
The Amy and Jim thing was a tragic waste!
I adored Amy and Jim! That was excellent casting because Maria really came off as a chip off the old block, and I agree that watching Amy learn the truth would have been loads of fun. She would have dealt with it, I'm sure. Valenti certainly did, and so did Philip and Diane (albeit at the last minute, show-wise). I even softened my opinion of Philip when I saw how he dealt with it, and that's saying something. ;)

kj4ever: Roswell was chock full of magnificent characters, wasn't it? Even the minor characters, those we didn't see all the time, never seemed "minor" to me because they were so vivid. Even those who showed up for only a few episodes left a lasting impression. Like Pierce. *shiver* And Langley--he was in only 2 episodes, I think, not even qualifying for the term "few". And those we only saw once--Hal Carver, Betty Osorio, Yvonne White, Dodie and the younger Hal....ah, hell, I'll stop listing names and just say I love'em all!

Misha: I forgot to answer your (e-mail) question about how old Dee was when she got pregnant--sorry! Yes, Dee was 18 when she got pregnant; she turned 19 in August of 1957, just a few months before Philip was born in October of that same year. She wasn't trying to get pregnant--he was a "whoops".





CHAPTER THREE


June 16, 1959, 3:45 p.m.

Columbia Medical Center, New York City






Marie's eyes widened as she realized who was standing in her office, looking exactly the same as he had years ago save for the suit. A moment later he didn't, his features sliding back into those of the man she'd seen earlier at the cemetery. No wonder he'd been staring at her, and thank God he hadn't approached her. Her resulting shock could have attracted attention.

*John?* Marie said as she hastily closed her office door, telepathic speech coming easily even though she hadn't used it in years. *Is that really you? Or.....I should probably call you Jaddo now. But—* She stopped, suddenly realizing there was no way to know if this was indeed the alien she'd spent three years with. What if it wasn't? What if one of the enemy aliens had succeeded where the Army had failed?

*The last time I saw you,* the man said, *you were sprawled on the floor of my cell, having just been slapped by Major Lewis. Corporal Thompson escorted you from the room. I regret that I was unable to defend you. Had I done so...* He paused, his voice having tightened with anger *....had I done so, Major Lewis would have died where he stood.*

Marie sank back on the desk with relief. *It is you. I....I'm sorry. It just occurred to me that it might not be, that—*

*Don't apologize,* John said firmly. *You were quite right to confirm my identity. It's good to see you are still vigilant.*

*We haven't had to be for a quite awhile now,* Marie said, not at all enjoying the familiar wave of fear that had washed over her at the thought of being discovered. *But never mind about me; what about you? How—* She stopped short. How are you? didn't seem to cover it, especially after three years of captivity, several near death experiences, and nine years of exile. And that was just on his side of things.

*I am well, thank you,* John said, once again answering her unspoken question. *You appear to have prospered,* he added, inspecting one of her diplomas.

*I'm a doctor now. I guess you could say I became a real healer.*

*Believe me when I say you were always the only real healer in the compound.*

Marie flushed. *Yes...well....is Brivari still....I mean, is he....*

*Alive? Yes. Here? No. We both attended the general's military memorial service, and he felt one funeral was enough for him.*

*What about the rest of you?*

*Malik survived; the rest did not,* John answered. *We've seen nothing of any other enemies since my escape, and the military gave up pursuit almost immediately due to the convenient onset of another war. For the moment, we have no hunters.*

*Good,* Marie said, privately noting that the Korean war had certainly started at an advantageous time, diverting the military's attention from their escaped prisoner. Her only regret was that she hadn't been available to help; the Army could certainly have used more nurses overseas.

*And what of the captain?* John asked.

*Steven works here too,* Marie said. *He's head of security. We married years ago.*

*Of course you did,* John said, as though that were obvious. *You did an excellent job altering your appearance, lieutenant. It took me a minute to discern if it was really you.*

* 'A' minute? Doesn't sound like I did such a good job."

John smiled faintly, taking a seat on the corner of her desk. *For one whose life revolves around visual subterfuge, a minute is a very long time indeed. Was it difficult for you to adjust?*

Very, Marie thought, passing a hand over her very short, very dark hair. She'd braced herself when she'd had it cut and colored, certain it would be awful, but unable to think of any other way of drastically changing her appearance except for the dark eyeglasses she wore. *It was a while before I could recognize myself in a mirror,* she admitted. *Was it hard for you when you could finally change your shape again?*

John's eyes drifted away and he didn't answer, giving her the distinct impression she'd touched a very raw nerve. How much of him was still whole after what had happened? Granted, there were plenty of prisoners who had been held captive much longer than three years. But John had been captive in body as well as place, unable to do what his kind took for granted: Change his shape. He had once likened that to her being unable to walk, and she couldn't help but wonder how she would have fared if she'd been held captive in a wheelchair for three years. Was it even possible to emerge from such an experience unscathed?

*I have an idea,* Marie suggested gently. *Why don't we go for a walk?*

John's eyes returned to hers. *A walk?*

*Yes, a walk. We were always stuck in one room. We never had a chance to take a walk together. It's a nice day out. Would you like to see some of the university?*

Five minutes later the two of them stepped from the relative cool of Marie's building into the hot New York sunshine. Claire hadn't managed to reach Steven, so Marie had told her to direct him to the grassy lawn that served as a courtyard between buildings, hoping he'd be able to catch up with them. They walked for several minutes in silence punctuated by the noise of traffic and the general din of a large city.

*So what should I call you now?* Marie asked at length.

*What you always have,* John answered, *although I imagine the same can't be said for you.*

*I'm 'Marie' now. That was my middle name: Yvonne Marie White.*

* 'Middle name'?* John echoed. "Gracious, I thought having two names was confusing. Does everyone have three?*

*Most people do.*

*Whatever for?*

Marie smiled; he certainly sounded like the same old John, impatient with anything he considered excessive and impractical. *It's tradition, I think. Our first names tell who we are, our last names tell who our parents were, and our middle names...well, I don't really know where those came from.*

*Obviously from one who had too much time on their hands,* John said dryly. *And what is the captain's pseudonym?*

*He's still Steven, just spelled with a 'v' instead of a 'ph'. And our last name is a very common name, making it harder to trace.*

*Good thinking,* John said.

*Sergeant Brisson's thinking,* Marie clarified. *He made up a full set of papers with our false names for both Steven and me. Without those, we'd still be in hiding.* She paused, an old regret creeping back. *Without those, Brisson might still be alive.*

*It was my understanding that Pierce killed Brisson over more than mere false identification.*

*I know,* Marie sighed. *I just meant that he was so bent on keeping me away from Pierce that he wound up in the line of fire.*

*You blame yourself for his death?*

*Of course I do,* Marie said, annoyed as always at John's way of coming right to the point. *If it weren't for me, he wouldn't be dead.*

*Correction—if it weren't for Pierce, he wouldn't be dead. My Ward died in an attempt to protect his king. Is his death the king's fault, or the fault of the usurper who attacked?*

*You can pretty it up any way you want, and I'll still feel responsible,* Marie argued.

*And you shouldn't,* John countered. *Those of us responsible for the protection of others accept death as a possible outcome. Captain Spade did. So did General Ramey.*

*How did you know the general had passed away?* Marie asked, eager to change the subject.

* 'Passed away'?* John repeated. *What an interesting euphemism. But to answer your question, I spend a great deal of time at the base.*

*Why would you want to go back there?*

*Because I'm looking for someone, lieutenant, someone who has so far escaped me.* He paused. *Do you know where he is?*

Marie stiffened slightly, needing no clarification as to whom John was referring. *No. I haven't heard anything about Pierce since we ran.*

*Nor have I,* John said. *Your 'country' is quite large, and I have only managed to canvass about a third of it so far.*

*Why are you looking for Pierce?* Marie asked uncomfortably.

*Why do you think?*

Marie stopped abruptly, certain that a long held suspicion was about to be confirmed. *You killed Cavitt didn't you? Oh, I know it was supposed to be a suicide,* she continued when John raised his eyebrows, *but you and I both know Cavitt would never kill himself. He was much too arrogant to think he'd fail. It was you, wasn't it?*

*I would dearly love to take credit for the Colonel's death,* John answered, *but I can't. I did go to his cell that night for the express purpose of killing him, but I'm afraid the colonel's heart simply couldn't take it. He died of fright much too quickly for my taste.*

Marie blinked. *Are you kidding?*

*I wish I were,* John said bluntly. *Although I enjoyed his terror, Cavitt deserved much worse than he got, and I intend to see that Pierce doesn't enjoy a similar reprieve. Do you have any idea how I would locate him?*

*Why would you think I would know how to locate him?*

*Because I note from the testimonial on your wall that you have studied the same substrate of healing as Pierce,* John answered. * 'Neurology', I believe it's called. I am also given to understand that there are few 'neurologists', so it stands to reason that one could locate another without too much difficulty.*

*So you want me to find him for you so you can kill him?*

*Of course.*

*John, I can't do that!* Marie exclaimed.

*Why not?*

*Because....because it's like sending a hit man. Like hiring someone to do him in.*

*Are you saying you would object to his death?*

*I object to anyone's death,* Marie said.

*Even if they pose a threat not only to yourself, but to others? Pierce nearly killed you, and you know perfectly well he's likely out there as we speak doing to others exactly what he did to you.*

*He can't,* Marie countered. *Brisson and I destroyed the cells, remember?*

*That will not stop him, and you know it,* John pressed. *Look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn't sleep better at night knowing he was no longer a threat to you or anyone else.*

Marie felt John's eyes boring into her as she kept her gaze on the ground. *Of course I would sleep better,* she admitted. *Who wouldn't? But if I were to find him and send someone to kill him, I'd be acting just like he did.*

*Nonsense,* John scoffed. *There is no possible way that the removal of an dangerous enemy compares to the systematic abuse both Pierce and Cavitt practiced. There is no shame in protecting oneself.*

*You're not 'protecting yourself',* Marie pointed out. *This is revenge, pure and simple.*

*And there is no shame in taking revenge on one who has tortured you, or in deriving pleasure from it, for that matter. Pierce and Cavitt certainly enjoyed themselves enormously at my expense.*

*Which brings me back to my original point,* Marie argued. *It does us no good to become that which we hate.*

*But it does us plenty of good to remove a monster,* John countered. *What possible good would come from keeping Pierce alive to inflict himself on others?*

What indeed? Marie thought, privately agreeing with John....and feeling guilty for doing so. Pierce was a menace, there was no denying that. But to simply take his life, to act like that was her decision to make....how was that any different from the way Pierce had used her, used John, used anyone with whom he had come into contact? She had been a nurse and was now a doctor; her instinct and responsibility was to repair, not destroy. As much as she'd love to know Pierce was no longer a threat, she didn't want the responsibility that came from actually participating in the taking of a life. She'd rejoice more than anyone if he were to be hit by a bus, but to actually steer that bus.....

*I apologize,* John said softly, breaking into her thoughts. *I've upset you, and that's not what I came for.*

*No,* Marie sighed. *You came to find Pierce.*

*And to see you again,* he added. *The one does not invalidate the other.*

They stood facing each other in the middle of the campus lawn for several long seconds before John spoke again. *It was good to see you again, lieutenant. I'm glad to learn that you and the captain are prospering, and I'm certain Brivari will be also.*

*It was good to see you too,* Marie said sincerely. *We always wondered what happened to you.*

*Perhaps I can return sometime and see the captain,* John continued. *And you can show me around 'New York'. It's quite a sight, though a bit loud for my tastes. Tell me, is there an 'Old York'?*

*No,* Marie laughed. *Well....I guess so. 'New' York was named after the city of York in another country called England."

*Ah. That makes more sense than some of the other place names I've come upon.* He paused, looking out over the campus. *If you should ever need to reach me, you can do so by contacting the family of the child who made that drawing which hangs on your wall. Just in case you ever come across any information you think I might find....useful.*

Marie's face clouded. *Right,* she said quietly. *Just in case.*

John nodded. *Goodbye, lieutenant. And good luck.*

*You too,* Marie whispered, watching him walk away, wondering where he was going next. Probably looking for Pierce, she thought sadly. He'd spent nine years scouring the country for him and hadn't found him. That told her that Pierce had gone very far underground indeed. Still, the national pool of neurologists was very small. If she really wanted to....if she put her mind to it.....

No, she thought fiercely, pushing the thought away. She and John had disagreed on many subjects; this was just one more. She wasn't like that. She wasn't going to let revenge consume her. Let him hunt all he wanted, and leave her out of it.

"Yvonne?"

For the second time that day, Marie froze in terror at the sound of her real name, dark thoughts of Pierce filling her head. But it was only Steven, looking concerned when he saw the look on her face. "Don't call me that!" she admonished. "I told you never to call me that in public!"

"I'd hardly call this 'public'," Steven said. "We're all alone in the middle of a huge lawn."

"Still, I....just don't call me that," she finished in a whisper. "Just don't. Not ever. Not even in private."

"Okay," he said soothingly. "I'm sorry. Why are you so upset? I got here as fast as I could, but....is this about that guy you were talking to? Who was that?"

Marie looked off into the distance where John was only just visible. "You're not going to believe this."




******************************************************



5:00 p.m.

Proctor residence





"Can I help with dinner?" Dee asked, coming into the kitchen.

"No," Emily said shortly, her knife flying through the onion. "I can handle it."

"Well, how about if I set the table?"

"Already done."

Dee hesitated in the doorway, uncertain of how or whether to continue. Emily had been short and sullen for the rest of the afternoon after Dee had gotten angry about the bottle of juice she'd tried to give Philip, avoiding conversation and answering questions in clipped tones. Anthony had prevailed upon Dee to make a gesture of conciliation while Philip was napping by offering to help with dinner, but it seemed that was going nowhere.

"Is that a pot roast?" Dee asked, cracking open the oven door.

"Close the oven, Deanna," her mother ordered. "It won't cook evenly if the temperature keeps going up and down."

"Always does when I cook it," Dee observed.

"Have you ever cooked a pot roast? You're up there in that apartment, trying to go to school and raise a child. When would you cook?"

Dee straightened up, taking a moment to restructure what would have been a sharp retort. "This might surprise you, Mama, but Anthony and Philip and I actually eat in Albuquerque. Real food, that is, not just macaroni and cheese or Spam. And I'm not 'trying' to go to school and raise a child, I am going to school and raising a child. Why does that bother you so much?"

"Because it's not right," Emily said. "Women in my day didn't go to school when they had children, or even have a job. Our children were our job."

"Except during the war," Dee reminded her, "when lots of women went to work to the do the jobs men couldn't do because they were overseas. And lo and behold, the country didn't fall apart."

"Many of those women were delighted to be back home after the war ended," Emily said.

"And many weren't. Just because I'm not doing it the way you did doesn't mean my way is wrong."

Emily stopped chopping and stared at her. "This isn't about you, it's about your son! Look at him! You're trying to make him grow up too fast for your own convenience."

"What on earth are you talking about?" Dee demanded.

"Well, let's see, which of the dozens of available examples should I pick?" her mother said sarcastically. "Let's start with this cup business. You never touched a cup until you were almost three, and then you go and act all huffy when I offer my own grandson a bottle."

"Philip has no problem drinking out of a cup, and bottles are a pain to clean and sterilize," Dee said, struggling to keep her temper.

"But this afternoon, he wanted that bottle," Emily pointed out.

"Of course he 'wanted' that bottle, Mama. Bottles are easier. I don't recall you always letting me take the easy way out of anything."

"That wasn't hard," Emily said with a touch of asperity. "You never did anything the easy way."

"I certainly come by that honestly," Dee said bitterly.

Emily set the knife down with a sigh. "I don't want to argue with you, Dee. I just want what's best for Philip."

"And what's best for Philip appears to be some other mother, some perfect mother who does everything exactly the way you did," Dee retorted. "Which is really odd, Mama, because of all the ways I'd describe you when I was growing up, 'perfect' isn't one of them."

Dee spun on her heel and marched furiously out of the kitchen, but not before she'd seen her mother's shoulders stiffen. Good, she thought sourly. Let her see what if felt like to be found wanting. She let the screen door close with a bang and plopped herself in one of the porch rockers, closing her eyes as a welcome breeze stirred the hot summer air outside.

"I was given to understand that 'fireworks' occur during the month following this one," a dry voice said nearby.

Dee's eyes flew open to find Brivari leaning against the porch railing. "You heard that?" she asked self-consciously, shifting in her chair.

"I'm not the only one," Brivari noted, nodding toward Rose Brazel, who was tending flowers in her front yard and casting uncomfortable glances toward the Proctor's house. "You and your mother have voices that, shall we say, 'carry'."

"In other words, we're loud," Dee translated.

"I was being tactful," Brivari said, taking a seat beside her. "Welcome home, by the way. How was your journey?"

"Fine, until I saw Mama," Dee said darkly. "Malik was at the bus station. What's this I hear about you still living in caves?"

"Malik exaggerates. I don't 'live in caves', I merely visit people who have a cave nearby."

"Malik has an apartment," Dee pointed out. "Why would you spend your life 'visiting' when you could get a place of your own?"

"And why would you return to a home where you're so unhappy?"

Dee looked away. "So now you're an expert on mother-daughter conflict?"

"No. I'm an expert on power struggles, which is exactly what you have here."

Dee snorted softly. "Right. As in my mother is struggling for power. According to her, I never do anything right because everything should be done her way."

"And if you want to change that behavior, you'll need to get to the root of it. Why do you think she behaves that way?"

"Because she likes to run things," Dee said flatly. "Why else?"

"Look deeper."

Dee shot Brivari an annoyed glance. He was starting to sound like a school teacher, or perhaps one of those prissy pre-med students eyeing psychiatry. "If you have something to say, stop beating around the bush, and say it."

Brivari smiled faintly. "My goodness, but you remind me of him. So impatient."

"Him who?"

"Never mind. My point is that the desire for conformity, for others to make the same decisions we have made, is really an expression of fear."

"Fear?" Dee repeated blankly. "You think my mother is afraid of me?"

"Not you personally, but what you represent. You are her child, yet you are no longer a child. She may fear you don't need her any more. And whenever you make a different decision than she made, that forces her to reassess her own decisions, reminds her that she could have made other choices...and makes her wonder if she should have."

"So....you think Mama is second-guessing herself?" Dee said slowly. "Why would she do that?"

"I have lived longer than you ever will," Brivari said, "and believe me when I say that I still 'second-guess' many of my own decisions."

"What for? What's done is done. What's to be gained from rehashing it?"

"Very little," Brivari admitted, "although that doesn't seem to stop the process for any species."

Dee considered this for a moment, then shook her head. "That doesn't make sense. Mama sounds perfectly sure of herself. She's just picking on my decisions and trying to get me to do what she did."

"Of course she is," Brivari said calmly. "Seeing others copy us validates our own choices and makes us feel we did the right thing, while seeing others choose otherwise makes us question ourselves. But I'm repeating myself."

"So what good does this psychoanalysis do me?" Dee said with a touch of impatience. "She's still treating me like a child."

"Naturally. You're acting like one."

Dee's eyebrows rose. "Thanks for the support," she said sourly.

"You have to stop losing your temper," Brivari continued, ignoring her. "Your mother is having difficulty accepting the fact that her child has become a mother. Every time you argue with her, that vision of you as a child is reinforced."

"So what do I do, then?" Dee asked in exasperation. "Just let her do whatever she wants?"

"Of course not. You state your position calmly, and you do not argue. You do not offer explanations beyond the most perfunctory, debate the merits of your choice, or weigh other options. Doing so sounds like you're trying to defend your decision, which in turn sounds like you feel there is good reason to question it and invites further questioning. You must strive to sound confident, not defensive. A defensive posture is, by definition, a weak posture."

Dee swung a leg back and forth, watching Mrs. Brazel work on her roses, loathe to admit that Brivari was making sense. She had been doing nothing but defending, explaining, backing away even as her mother advanced further into her territory. "Is that the same advice you gave your king?" she asked.

"Many times. Too many, perhaps."

"Was he as young as Queen Elizabeth when he took the throne?"

"For an Antarian," Brivari nodded. "Although I must say he did not possess her presence and sense of certainty, both of which she has in abundance."

Dee smiled, recalling how Brivari had followed the career of Britain's current monarch with keen interest, reading every newspaper item about her and watching her coronation on television with great relish. "Did the king fight with his parents?" she asked.

Brivari shook his head. "No. He fought with me. His parents doted on him, and his father left the teaching of statecraft to me. Believe me, he did me no favors."

"Because he was like me," Dee said.

"In some ways," Brivari allowed. "He had a temper too, although he held it more tightly. A bit too tightly, in my opinion."

Dee rocked her chair, imagining a young king on another planet trying, and failing, to win Brivari's approval much the same way she was failing to win her mother's. "I need to get out of the house," she said, "and I know you certainly need to get out of your cave, or wherever you're living at the moment. Malik told me they're filming a movie in Roswell about aliens. Want to go check it out?"

Brivari gave her a skeptical look. "And why would I want to do that?"

"Because it'll be fun!" Dee said mischievously, some of her good humor returning. "Just think of all the laughs we could have. And word is they'll be hiring all sorts of townspeople for different jobs. You could get a job as an advisor on all things alien."

"And then my life will be complete," Brivari deadpanned.

"Oh, come on," Dee coaxed. "Philip would love to walk around downtown. Besides, Anthony will be busy working on the observatory and Daddy will be at work, so I'll be alone with Mama. I can't stay here all the time, or I'll strangle her. If she doesn't strangle me first, that is. What do you say?"

"Perhaps," Brivari said noncommittally.

"Dinner!" Emily called from inside.

"Maybe you could stay for dinner and work some of your magic with Mama," Dee said as she climbed out of her chair.

"Dinner, perhaps," Brivari answered. "But this particular scuffle is yours."

"Actually it's Mama's. She started it."

Brivari smiled and shook his head as he followed her inside. "I once advised a young man that if he wanted others to view him as a king, he needed to act like a king. Likewise, if you want others to view you as an adult, you will need to act like one. If your mother has started something you do not wish to continue, put a stop to it. That's what an adult would do."




******************************************************



New York City




"I cannot for the life of me understand why you wouldn't want to help him find Pierce," Steven declared. "I only wish I'd been there. I'd have seriously considered packing my bags and joining him."

Marie pushed her dinner plate away with a sigh, her appetite gone. Steven had been fretting ever since he'd found out John had reappeared. Fretting because he'd missed him. Fretting because she hadn't asked all the questions he would have asked had he been there. Fretting because John had offered something Steven very much wanted....and she had turned him down.

"Why not nose around a bit?" Steven was saying. "It's not like the country is overrun with neurologists. You know he didn't just retire and take up golf, so he must be in the medical community somewhere."

"Steven, I got my M.D. three years ago, and you've never asked me to do this," Marie said in consternation. "Why the sudden interest?"

"Because now I know both Warders are alive and capable of going after him," Steven answered.

"Great," Marie said sourly. "Now you've found a hit man, so now you want to go hunting. Need I remind you that you had a fit when I decided to go into neurology precisely because it was such a small field and you were afraid I'd stick out like a sore thumb? How much do you think I'll stick out if I trot around asking about Pierce?"

"You wouldn't ask about him directly. Ask about secret projects, about what the Nazi doctors that were given asylum are up to now, things like that."

"Right," Marie said dryly. "Because everyone asks about secret projects and Nazi doctors. Of course they do."

"Very funny," Steven said. "You know what I mean; go at it sideways, and you'd find him."

"And then what?"

"And then we let John know where he is, and he'll take care of it."

" 'Take care of it'?" Marie echoed. "Don't you mean 'kill him'? Since when did you belong to the mafia?"

"Since I got tired of hiding," Steven retorted. "Since I saw a chance to stop doing that."

"Steven, we went AWOL!" Marie exclaimed. "We can never stop hiding! Even if Pierce conveniently drops from a heart attack tomorrow, we still can't go back to being who we were."

"Of course not," Steven agreed, "but just think of what a world without Pierce would look like." He reached across their tiny kitchen table and took her hand. "Since we ran, I have lived every single minute of my life in fear that he will find you. That fear has colored everything we do, from where we ran, to where we live, to how and when we contact our families.....everything. Pierce is far more of a threat than the Army is, and frankly, he deserves anything the aliens want to dish out."

"I'm of no use to Pierce anymore," Marie said gently. "I'm 36 now, much too old for anyone interested in fertility. Besides, he doesn't have anything to experiment with. Brisson and I destroyed it all."

"You mean you think you destroyed it all," Steven corrected. "Brisson wasn't positive about that, and we can't be either."

"If Pierce were up to something, he would have been caught by now," Marie argued.

"Not necessarily. Look how long he tried with you. When you only get twelve chances a year, nine years isn't as long as it sounds."

"It's over, Steven," Marie insisted. "It's been over for almost a decade. Let John go after Pierce if he wants to, even kill him if he wants to. I won't mourn his passing. But I also won't help commit murder."

"So you won't help do it, but you don't mind if someone else does?" Steven said skeptically. "A bit on the hypocritical side, don't you think?"

"I can't stop John," Marie said.

"Would you if you could?"

Marie pulled her hand away and stared at her plate. "That's not fair."

"Yvonne—"

"Don't call me that!" she snapped. "I told you never to call me that! It's not safe!"

Steven sat back in his chair and studied her for a moment. "I don't get it," he said at last. "I know it's easier for me because my name is the same, and I know that in the beginning, we both had to get used to using your middle name. But we've long since gotten used to it, and there's absolutely no reason I can't call you Yvonne in the privacy of our own apartment."

"I told you, it's not safe," Marie insisted. "What if you slip up in public?"

"I've never slipped up in public," Steven said. "Why would I do that when I worry every single day that Pierce will find you?"

"You wouldn't do it on purpose," Marie said impatiently, pushing her chair away from the table and emptying her plate into the trash. "It would be an accident, and it could cost us. And besides, there's no reason to call me that because I'm not that person any more."

"What does that mean?"

"Yvonne White was an Army nurse," Marie said. "Marie Johnson is a doctor."

Steven's eyes narrowed. "Do you usually refer to yourself in the third person?"

"I'm done with this ridiculous conversation," Marie said flatly, beginning to clear the table even though Steven wasn't any more finished than she had been. He sat in silence for several minutes, watching her work. She had all the dishes in soapy water before he spoke again.

"So that's how you did it."

"How I did what?" she asked irritably.

"How you stayed sane. I always wondered how somebody could have something like that happen to them and not go mad. John does it by seeking revenge. And you do it my splitting yourself in two. Pierce almost killed Yvonne...but you're not Yvonne any more. You're Marie, someone Pierce hasn't touched. Until today, at least, when you were reminded that he had."

"That's silly," Marie declared. "There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about what happened to us at least once. It's not like I could forget."

"Maybe not," Steven allowed. "But you could mentally assign it to someone else....someone named 'Yvonne', maybe.....and just step back from it the way you do with your patients. They taught you not to get too involved. Maybe you applied that same logic to yourself and—"

"Would you please stop talking about me as though I were a patient?" Marie snapped. "I don't have a split personality, I've dealt with what happened, and I'm not going to send someone to kill Pierce. Which is how this conversation started, in case you forgot."

A chair scraped behind her as Steven rose from the table. "You don't remember what happened that night you almost died," he said quietly, "but I do. I remember it like it was yesterday. And if I ever get the chance to take Pierce out or help someone else take him out, I'll do it. I'll do it in a heartbeat, and I'll feel one hell of a lot better afterwards. And so will you, even if you won't admit it. Even if all he's doing now is sitting in a rocking chair with a cup of tea, he's still dangerous....and he always will be."



******************************************************




Somewhere in the United States




"Shit!"

Daniel Pierce peeled off his surgical cap and threw it across the room, narrowly missing one of the nurses, who ducked. Across the table, Dr. Burke stepped back hastily as bodily fluids from the misshapen fetus which had just collapsed ran off the table, narrowly missing his shoes. Alien bodies collapsed into piles of fine dust; this messy lump was the compromise between the alien and human DNA which was this fetus' heritage. He knew they'd get no information from it now. They'd stood at this crossroads before.

"How's the mother?" Burke asked the nurse, who lowered her eyes and shook her head.

Burke looked over at Pierce, who was pacing back and forth with his hands on his hips, then at the rest of the medical team who had been trying to keep the mother alive.

"Give me the room," Burke ordered.

The team filed out, casting uneasy glances in Pierce's direction. Burke waited until the door had closed behind them before stripping off his gloves and surgical mask. "Daniel—"

"I know, I know," Pierce interrupted. "I shouldn't get all upset over what I knew was going to happen anyway. It's just the unpredictability of when it will happen that's killing me. Last time we had a little over twenty-four hours only to discover something interesting just before it collapsed. This time we knew what to look for, and it collapsed right away. It's maddening, I tell you." He sighed, running a hand through hair that was much grayer than it had been when he'd started years ago. "I will apologize to the team, of course."

"That's not what I was going to say," Burke said. "I'm afraid I'm the bearer of bad news."

Pierce's eyes narrowed. "You're not going to tell me that they're shutting me down."

"No. But they want fresh blood. New perspectives. They want to expand the team."

"Absolutely not," Pierce said firmly. "Too many cooks spoil the broth. You know that."

"Daniel—"

"I thought I had the board's full support," Pierce interrupted sharply. "That's what you're always telling me, what they're always telling me every time I attend a meeting."

"You do have their support," Burke said soothingly. "You wouldn't be here if you didn't. But you've got to admit that you've put them in a difficult position. When you arrived, your chief goal was to impregnate. It took you six years to perfect that, and when you finally did, when subject after subject began conceiving, subject after subject also began dying."

"Oh, good Lord, this isn't the morals police again, is it?" Pierce snapped.

"Look at her!" Burke ordered, pointing to the mother of the fetus that had just collapsed. "She's dead just like the rest of them!"

"And four years ago, they died much more quickly," Pierce retorted. "Within a week of conception, if not less. Now I can keep them alive for almost three months, and the resulting fetuses are far more developed and far more interesting to study....when they don't collapse in short order, that is," he added bitterly. "The alien told me their bodies disintegrated precisely so they couldn't be studied. I'd like to find whoever did that and wring whatever he has that passes for a neck."

"What makes you think it was a 'he'?" Burke asked dryly as he pulled off his cap. "I know you've made great strides, and the board knows that too. But the fact remains that every single mother winds up dead. That's an awful lot of patients we have to invent a cause of death for, and frankly, the sheer numbers are beginning to draw the attention of the state. They're sending a regulatory delegation a week from tomorrow to audit our procedures, so we're going to have to hide any trace of what we're doing here and make certain we're all on the same page as to how these women died."

"Like the state would wear widow's weeds over the deaths of some mental patients," Pierce grumbled. "On the contrary, they're probably pouring champagne and congratulating themselves on having fewer inmates to feed and house. In private, of course."

"Whatever their true feelings, the fact remains that they can shut us down," Burke said firmly. "Let's not give them a reason to. Then we can both go back to what we do in private, be it toasting or experimenting. We have no more subjects pregnant at the moment, so we need to lock this project up tight until after the regulators leave. And while you're enjoying your vacation, we can discuss who else we're going to bring on board."

"I said no one," Pierce reminded him. "I'll not have—"

"Daniel, you either accept new members on the team, or the board will shut you down."

Burke winced as Pierce gave the stretcher holding the dead mother a savage kick; it jerked sideways, the mother's arm falling off with an IV line still attached. "Damn it, Joshua! What if one of those new members suffers a sudden attack of soft-heartedness? Doesn't the board care that bringing in strangers will make us vulnerable to exposure?"

"We're already vulnerable to exposure," Burke said. "The regulators, remember? There's no guarantee they're going to buy the notion that dozens of our inmates have fallen down stairs, suffered heart attacks, committed suicide, or whatever we come up with. Besides, we need new ideas. Our German colleague is dead, and the fields of genetics, neurology, and perinatology have all made great strides in the last decade. It can't hurt to have some of those with the most current knowledge contributing."

"That depends on who you had in mind," Pierce said.

Burke hesitated. "The board asked me for a short list three weeks ago, when we first found out about the audit. I called everyone on it earlier today."

"What?" Pierce whispered. "You.....do you mean....you already approached these people? Without consulting me?"

"That was the board's decision," Burke replied. "You wouldn't know any of these people anyway; you must admit you've been out of the conventional research loop for a very long time."

"Jesus H. Christ," Pierce muttered. "And when do I have the honor of learning who made this exulted list?"




******************************************************



10:45 p.m.

New York City




"Coming to bed?"

Marie glanced over her shoulder at Steven, standing in the bedroom doorway wearing only pajama bottoms. "Later," she said tonelessly.

"You should get some sleep."

"I'm on call, remember? I'll probably just doze in the chair."

She heard footsteps behind her, felt his hands on her arms, bare in her sleeveless nightgown. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

"For what?"

"For what I said earlier. About....about how you...."

"Forget it," Marie said quickly, not wanting him to repeat it. "We both got a big shock today. It'll take us a while to sort it out."

"Yeah." He squeezed her shoulders. "You're probably right." She felt a gentle kiss on top of her head before the hands disappeared. "Try to get at least some sleep, okay?"

"Okay. Good night."

"I love you," he added.

"I love you too."

Marie waited until the bedroom door had closed before putting her head in her hands and letting out a long shaky breath. She'd been holding herself together ever since their argument, pushing the fear aside until she had a moment to herself to look at it, examine it, see if there was any merit whatsoever to Steven's charge that she had effectively split herself in two in order to stay sane. Much as she hated to admit it, there was a lot of truth to that assertion. The first time she had successfully used her new name, she'd felt like a huge burden had been lifted from her, like she could finally put the past behind her and move on. It was only after she'd become "Marie" that she'd been able to use toothpaste again or keep track of her cycles; prior to that, every tube of toothpaste had reminded her of the drug Pierce had used to knock her out for his "procedures", every mark on a calendar of how Brisson had surreptitiously tracked her periods. Maybe she really had compartmentalized herself. Maybe all that had happened to Yvonne, not Marie. And maybe that wasn't such a bad idea. There were worse ways to keep one's sanity.

The phone rang, it's jangle making her jump. Good, she thought as she lifted the receiver. Work would be good for her. Anything to take her mind off what had happened today. "Dr. Johnson," she said into the receiver.

"Good evening, doctor," came a man's voice. "This is Dr. Fenton. Did you have a chance to look over that chart I sent you?"

"Dr. Fenton?" Marie repeated in surprise. "I....yes, I saw it. Why?"

"What did you think?" Fenton asked.

Marie paused, uncertain as to where this was going. "Well, the patient has been in a persistent vegetative state for two full years now, so the prospect of recovery is remote. But....certainly you already knew that."

"Of course I knew that," Fenton replied. "I just wanted to make certain we concurred before I brought you in."

"Brought me in where?"

"The hospital. As soon as possible. I've received the most interesting phone call, doctor, and I need to speak to you as soon as possible."



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


I'll post Chapter 4 next Sunday. :)
BRIVARI: "In our language, the root of the word 'Covari' means 'hidden'. I'm always there, Your Highness, even if you don't see me."
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Kathy W
Obsessed Roswellian
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Post by Kathy W »

Hello and thank you to everyone reading!
Michelle in Yonkers wrote:They really are right at the pivotal point, though -- the Women's Liberation movement was just cranking into gear.
kj4ever wrote:My own Grandmother refused to be 'put back in the kitchen' (as she used to call it) once WWII was over, and it caused a great rift between her and my Great Grandma. It is a time in our history that is swept under the rug way, way to often.
Oh yes, the women's movement and the broader civil rights movement were both gathering steam, and sometimes I have to remind myself that this is not a period piece, that it's about shapeshifters and hybrids, not life in the late 50's, because part of me would love to address that. So I try to find ways to add period details to the story to both anchor it in time and satisfy my own lust for history. :P A shadow of the women's movement is seen when Dee and her mother have this particular argument, and racism comes up later, albeit from an alien perspective.
Michelle in Yonkers wrote:Hunting down a war criminal is just bringing justice, and this guy's much colder than a lot of others who were war criminals.
kj4ever wrote:God Yvonne, just tell them where Pierce is. I understand the concept of being the better person, but sometimes I don't agree with it, you know?
I think she's afraid of exactly what she accused Jaddo of--becoming that which she hates. His response that she has a responsibility to go after Pierce because of what he'll do to others is much more in line with my thinking. (Well.....truthfully, what I was thinking was more along the lines of "Get the b*stard!", but the responsibility angle just sounds more noble. ;) )
Michelle in Yonkers wrote:You meant off the table, right? (gulp)
*bursts out laughing* Whoops! Yes, I meant off the table. Oh, my. What a visual! :shock: :lol:
Michelle in Yonkers wrote:Good grief! What were they using as the test case to decide that Marie was 'right' for this position?


Nothing, actually, She's tagging along. But you'll see that in this chapter, so I'm getting ahead of myself!






CHAPTER FOUR


June 16, 1959, 11:45 p.m.

Columbia Medical Center, New York City




It was nearly midnight when Marie pushed the door to the neurology floor open and strode down the hallway, thoroughly perturbed. Granted she was on call and might have had to make this trip anyway, but to make it for a cryptic meeting over what was essentially a hopeless case was irritating, to say the least. But William Fenton was an attending at Columbia who was said to have the ear of the chief of neurology, and since Marie was nearly through with her residency and soon to be applying for attending status, it would not be wise to annoy him.

"Where would I find Dr. Fenton?" Marie asked one of the night nurses.

"Room 314," the nurse answered.

Room 314 turned out to be one of the few private rooms available at the hospital, occupied by an unconscious female patient whose chart Dr. Fenton was examining as Marie came in. "Doctor!" he said cheerfully as though he hadn't just dragged her out of her apartment in the middle of the night. "So glad you came. Close the door."

Puzzled, Marie obeyed. Fenton handed her the chart he'd been reading. "Dr. Johnson, in your medical opinion, does this patient have any hope of recovery?"

"Haven't we already been over this?" Marie asked, flipping through the same chart she'd looked at earlier today.

"But will you go on the record?" Fenton asked. "Would you sign off as a second opinion that this woman is, for all practical purposes, brain dead?"

"I've already looked at this chart, and I gave you my opinion less than an hour ago," Marie answered, trying to keep the impatience out of her voice. "Yes, I concur, and yes, I would go on record."

"Excellent," Dr. Fenton said, pulling a pen out of his pocket and handing it to her. "If you wouldn't mind....."

Marie stared at him a moment before taking the pen and writing a note inside the chart to the effect that she, too, considered this patient to be in a persistent vegetative state. "Thank you," Fenton said when she'd finished. "Follow me."

Marie returned the chart to its hook at the end of the bed and glanced briefly at the patient before following Fenton out of the room. So young.....only in her twenties, and the odds where overwhelming that she would never recover. And certainly Fenton knew that, as would any neurologist worth their salt, which made his insistence that she support him all the more ridiculous. What did he need her for?

"Have a seat," Fenton said, ushering Marie into his office, a spacious affair much different then her cramped variety, outfitted with a large desk which appeared to be mahogany. "Would you like anything to drink?" he added, opening a liquor cabinet.

Marie blinked. "Doctor, it's the middle of the night."

"So it is," he chuckled, pouring himself a glass of something or other and taking a seat at his desk. "Call me Bill," he added, gesturing to a nearby chair. "May I call you Marie?"

Marie perched on the edge of the chair, her ire rising more with each passing moment. "You may call me 'Doctor Johnson'," she said firmly. "And I will, of course, address you as 'Doctor Fenton'."

"Right," Fenton said quickly. "Quite right. Well....I understand you're almost done with your residency. Will you be staying at Columbia?"

"I haven't decided yet," Marie said warily, wondering if Fenton was trying to make a pass at her. If so, it certainly wouldn't be the first time a female doctor had been expected to pony up in exchange for a job. Or the last time a female doctor said no.

"I hope you decide to stay," Fenton said. "Despite my misgivings about women in medicine, you're an excellent physician. So excellent, in fact, that I'd like to make you an offer."

"I was under the impression that only chiefs could make job offers," Marie said.

"Oh, no, not a job," Fenton said. "At least not here. I've been offered a position on a very elite team currently undertaking some of the most cutting edge research in the country. They're looking for two neurologists; they've invited me and anyone I wish to bring with me. And I can't think of anyone better for the job than you."

Marie's mouth opened, then closed. Research was the cushy end of medicine, provided you had funding, of course; you kept regular hours, could organize your day the way you wanted, and were never on call. Which is precisely why research was usually reserved for senior members of the profession who had already served their time in the trenches, not residents begging for one of the few attending spots available.

"I....doctor, I don't know what to say," Marie stammered. "But why would you consider me over an attending?"

"Look at the researchers in America today," Fenton said. "Most of them are middle-aged, or pushing it. We need new blood, young blood, with the latest training and fresh perspectives. Like yours."

"Well....thank you," Marie said self-consciously. "What would we be studying? And where?"

"Frankly, I'm not certain," Fenton said. "I'm meeting with a representative from the team tomorrow night, and I'd like you to join me; then we'll know more. If you have a shift, I'll get you off."

"All right," Marie said, still overwhelmed as she pulled a notepad out of her bag. "When and where is this meeting?"

"Midnight, in Room 314."

"Midnight?" Marie echoed.

"This doctor is traveling quite a ways, so we have to be accommodating as to time," Fenton explained.

"All right. And....wait. Room 314 is your patient's room."

"That's right. My patient is an integral part of this."

"How so?"

Fenton swigged his drink. "A patient like mine is the price of admission to this particular club."

"But....your patient is brain dead," Marie said, thoroughly confused. "How could she give consent?"

"She can't," Fenton said. "But she'll need to be institutionalized, and her family has agreed to place her in an institution of my choosing providing there was a concurring opinion as to the hopelessness of her case. Which you have graciously provided."

Marie shook her head. "I understand she'll need care, doctor, but I don't see how she could contribute to research in the condition she's in."

Fenton studied her a moment across the desk. "Doctor, you know as well as I do that the most valuable research is done on live subjects."

Marie's throat abruptly began to itch as though she'd only just become aware of a noose around it. "Do I understand you to be talking about experimenting on a live subject who is incapable of giving consent?"

"Good heavens, doctor," Fenton chuckled. "Don't be so dramatic. Her family will give consent; it'll all be perfectly legal. And she wouldn't be the first to donate her body to science."

"People who donate their bodies to science have finished using them," Marie protested. "This woman hasn't."

"In a very real sense, she has," Fenton replied. "Her brain has, for all practical purposes, stopped functioning. She's nothing but a shell....and I have your signature on record concurring with that opinion."

"I never agreed she should be turned into a guinea pig!" Marie exclaimed.

"No, you didn't," Fenton agreed. "And you don't have to. The disposition of this patient is up to her family, who have left that decision to me."

Marie shifted in her chair, feeling like she'd been backed into a corner even though she was sitting in the middle of the room. "Does her family have any idea what you have in mind for her?"

"Of course they do. And they're in full agreement, especially in light of the financial stipend that would accompany her assignment to this research."

" 'Stipend'?"

"Money, doctor. I apologize if this sounds crass, but it's no secret that an institution would be very costly. The research team in question is willing to provide cooperative families with catastrophically injured loved ones a small stipend as a token of thanks for their participation."

Marie snapped to her feet, her patience gone. "Do you mean they're selling her? Like....like a piece of furniture? Like an animal? Oh, I'm sure it's 'perfectly legal'," she continued as Fenton began to protest, "but 'legal' doesn't equal 'right'. Honestly, doctor, have you been hitting the bottle earlier today? What makes you think you can get away with this? This is a gross violation of about a dozen ethical principles, and—"

"That will be enough," Fenton said sharply. "Simmer down."

"I will not 'simmer down'!" Marie exclaimed. "How dare you try to trick me into something like this? You can bet my next stop will the chief of—"

"Mention this conversation to another living soul, and I assure you, I will say it never occurred," Fenton interrupted. "And who will they believe? An attending, or a third year resident?"

Marie stopped short, realizing she had no way to prove anything. "Now, sit down," Fenton continued. "I realize you're young, and young doctors are all about principle. And that's fine, except when those principles get in the way of good common sense. There are a few things you ought to think about before you go ruining your career by making unfounded accusations against an attending with twenty-five years experience."

Slowly, Marie lowered herself into her chair, every nerve taut. So this was why he'd "chosen" her—he wanted someone he could bully. Someone he could threaten. Someone no one would listen to if she blew the whistle. The universe had seen fit to throw yet another Pierce her way, and right now, she was so furious, she wanted to pick up that glass of whisky and hurl it at Fenton's head.

"I think you need to get your mind around some inconvenient facts," Fenton said. "A great deal of research is accomplished using lab animals, but those results frequently don't translate to humans. A smaller slice is done using live volunteers, but no matter how much care is taken, the fact remains that every time we do a trial of a new drug or procedure, we are pushing the envelope. Accidents happen. Using patients like mine for these trials, patients who have no hope of recovery, who can't feel pain, who are nothing but financial drains on their families and society, minimizes this risk. Surely you can see that."

"How do we know she can't feel pain?" Marie demanded.

"Her brain has largely ceased functioning," Fenton reminded her. "You said so yourself."

"But that doesn't mean all of her senses have shut down," Marie argued. "She's not conscious to ask, so we really don't know."

"Our latest science—"

"Is hardly foolproof," Marie broke in. "Hundreds of years ago, bloodletting was standard treatment for just about everything you can think of; now we know it was not only a waste of time, it was dangerous. Far more people died of bloodletting than of the illnesses or injuries it was supposed to cure. What will we learn ten, twenty, fifty years from now that will make us look back and cringe the way we do when we look at that?"

"I have no idea," Fenton said patiently, "and that's irrelevant. All we have to work with is what we know now. And frankly, that superior knowledge you speak of won't be discovered unless we work with what we have now, imperfect as that might be. It's the chicken and egg all over again, doctor. In order to improve our science, we'll have to work with our current science. And if what we learn makes us cringe at what we once held true, so be it. At least we'll have learned enough to cringe."

"We take an oath," Marie said desperately, "an oath to 'first do no harm'."

"And what possible harm could we do to the woman you just saw?" Fenton asked. "She's not even there, doctor. She has ceased to be herself. By all but the most clinical of measures, she's already dead. That's what you signed off on fifteen minutes ago." He paused, staring at his glass. "I think we're getting a bit melodramatic here," he said in a more conciliatory tone. "I'm not even sure what these people are looking for. Let's talk to our visitor tomorrow before rushing to judgment; we owe it to ourselves to at least hear him out. What do you say?"

Silence. Marie stared at a point over Fenton's shoulder, perilously close to losing her temper and well aware that would do her no good. She needed to get out of here, to clear her head, to think. "Fine," she said flatly, rising to her feet. "I'll listen."

"Good!" Fenton beamed as though she'd just agreed to sign on. "You're doing the right thing, doctor. I realize you're just out of university, and that can make one very....rigid. Open yourself to new possibilities, and your career will be better for it."

"I was under the impression that being a doctor was about helping patients, not my career," Marie said stiffly.

"Oh, of course, of course," Fenton agreed. "But if you can kill two birds with one stone, then why not?"

Marie bit back a retort as she reached for the office door. She just couldn't get out of there fast enough....but a moment later she paused, something having occurred to her.

"You said that the price of admission to this research team was a patient 'like yours'. What exactly was the criteria you were given?"

"A female patient who is a ward of the state or eligible for such a designation," Fenton replied, "due either to injury or illness. And she has to be of child-bearing age with all reproductive organs intact."

Reproductive organs.... Marie suddenly grew cold, so cold that the doorknob she held in her right hand felt cold to the touch. "I see," she whispered, wrenching the door open and fleeing down the hallway, around the corner, down three flights of stairs, and out into the sweltering New York summer night where she sank down on a bench outside the hospital and rocked back and forth, back and forth, her eyes straight ahead, unseeing.




******************************************************




June 17, 1959, 1:30 a.m.

Pod Chamber




Alone in the moonlight on the rock formation which housed the pod chamber, Brivari pressed his hand to the handprint and hesitated when the door opened. Time. On the way to Earth after the coup, he had often wished he'd had more time. More time to think, to plan, to do more than just run. Now he found himself in the position of having too much of what he'd once wanted more of. Now he was afraid he had all the time in the world.

Slowly, he walked inside. A soft glow suffused the pod chamber as the door slid closed. The three sets of pods still leaned against the walls, glowing brightly. All were still healthy; that was a good start, but not nearly enough. With a heavy heart, he knelt beside the Zan hybrid which bore the mark and inspected it closely, careful not to react to what he saw, placing emotion on hold until he'd finished. When he was done, he leaned against a far wall, staring at the pods he hadn't inspected and didn't need to, knowing what he would find. Five full minutes passed in stunned silence as Brivari tried to reconcile what this meant for his future and the future of Antar.

When Jaddo had been freed and they had visited this chamber for the first time in three years, Brivari had noticed that the hybrids looked small for their age. According to Valeris' growth predictions, they should have been approximately the size of three year-old human children; instead, they had looked like infants. He had dismissed his concerns in the wake of the triumph of Jaddo's escape, attributing their small size to the trauma they'd suffered at their fragile beginning.

After that visit, they had stayed away from the pod chamber for a very long time. Uncertain of where the Argilians were or even if they'd arrived, or if the human military intended to continue pursuit, they had deemed it unsafe to approach. Five years later, with the humans consumed with their various wars and not so much as a whiff of their enemies' presence, they had cautiously made another visit, only to find that the hybrids, while certainly larger, were nowhere near as large as they should have been. Jaddo had brushed off Brivari's concerns. "They're alive and thriving," he had said. "So what if it takes them longer to mature than we expected? We can wait."

He can, Brivari thought heavily, staring at the pods in front of him, but I can't. Brivari had made a careful inspection of Dee Proctor's child at dinner earlier that evening. At the age of twenty Earth months, Philip Evans was what his mother described as "big for his age".....and the hybrids were just about his size. This meant that after twelve years of gestation, the hybrids were approximately the equivalent of two human years of age, perhaps less. At this rate, they would not reach adulthood for almost a hundred years. Jaddo was young; he would survive that long....but Brivari likely would not. And that didn't even begin to address what would happen to Antar during such a lengthy absence, or what the Warders would do with an exile which had multiplied by a factor of five.

And that's not the worst of it, Brivari thought, closing his eyes, unable to bear looking at the pods any longer. The recent death of General Ramey had brought home an important point—the human lifespan wasn't even half that of an Antarian. In a hundred years, every single ally they had made would be dead, some long dead, be it the Proctors, Quanah, River Dog—all of them. Even the infant Philip was unlikely to be alive a hundred years from now. Which means they would need to continually make new allies to replace the old, risking exposure every time they did so. And that was assuming that the hybrids were merely growing slowly. If it was something else....if they had all been compromised in a way that precluded development and irreparably impaired them.....then this entire venture was for nothing, and they had failed. Zan would never rule again, and Antar was lost.




******************************************************



Copper Summit, Arizona




"Courtney? Wake up."

Slowly, Courtney began to stir. It had taken forever to fall asleep in the heat of the summer night, but when she had, she'd fallen into an exhausted sleep that was difficult to escape. When she opened her eyes, she had to blink several times to clear her vision before she recognized her father's human face looming over her.

"I know it's late, sweetheart, but I'm in a meeting with Nicholas, and they've arrived. Could you take care of her?"

Courtney mumbled assent as she pushed herself up on one elbow and looked at the clock. Late? That was an understatement. But Nicholas had said that he was ordering everyone into the field, and arrivals always occurred in the wee small, when it was dark and humans were asleep. She rose from the bed, pulled on a robe, ran a comb, or tried to, through her rat's nest of uncooperative human hair, and shambled sleepily down the stairs. Her father waited at the open front door through which she could see a car in the driveway. The back door opened and a young woman climbed out, stumbling a few times as she started forward, caught by the men on either side of her. Courtney watched sympathetically, remembering what it had been like to abruptly be taller; all of one's balance points were suddenly in different places, and that took some getting used to.

"Right in here," her father said soothingly to the young woman and the men who supported her as she approached the front door. "This is my daughter; she'll take care of you. We have a room upstairs all ready for you."

The woman's eyes strayed toward the stairs, alarmed. "That's okay, Papa," Courtney said quickly, recalling how difficult it had been to navigate stairs in the very beginning. "It would be better if she stayed downstairs for awhile. I've got her," she added to the men, taking a firm grip on the woman's arm and steering her inside.

"Thank you, Michael," one of the men said to Courtney's father.

"You're most welcome," Michael answered. "When can we expect her family to collect her?"

"No time soon," the man answered. "I hear they've been assigned to another unit."

Typical, Courtney thought sourly, aiming the woman toward a couch which she sank down upon gratefully as though she just couldn't take another step. After congratulating himself about bringing family members along, Nicholas had gone and split them up; this woman probably had no idea where the rest of her family was stationed, and they were undoubtedly being kept in a similar state of ignorance regarding her whereabouts. It was much more effective to threaten your loved ones when you had no idea where those loved ones were. Her father's high position in Nicholas' ranks was likely the only reason they had been allowed to stay together.

"I'm Courtney," she said to the young woman, who had winced when she snapped on a light, tilting the shade down to minimize the glow. "What's your name?"

"Angela," the woman whispered.

"No, I mean your real name."

Angela's human eyes widened. "I can't tell you that. He forbade it."

Courtney resisted the urge to sigh heavily. "First of all 'forbade' is a very archaic human word. I wouldn't use it, if I were you; it will attract attention. And secondly, how would he know if you told me your real name?"

Angela looked away. "You know how."

Courtney's eyebrows rose. "You've seen him do it?"

"No," Angela allowed. "But I've heard about it. Haven't you?"

Who hasn't? Courtney thought. One of the reasons Nicholas occupied a special place in the Argilian military was because he supposedly possessed a trait few others of his race did. Most Antarians possessed telepathic abilities; all could use telepathic speech, and many could form telepathic connections to some degree. Argilians, on the other hand, were on the shallow end of Antar's gene pool. In addition to their fragile physiology regarding atmospheric conditions, few were at all telepathic. Nicholas, on the other hand, was said to be as telepathic as the most talented of Antarians, able to forcibly extract a person's memories. No one she knew had ever witnessed this including her own father, which left her wondering if it wasn't just another trumped up tale from a known braggart. But even she had to admit it had had a profound affect on Nicholas' troops. The very notion that their commander could take anything he wanted from their minds was a powerful motivator....or demotivator, depending on the circumstances.

"How long have you worn your husk, Angela?" Courtney asked, changing the subject.

"A week."

That bastard, Courtney thought darkly. It sometimes took months to acclimate to a husk, and this poor kid was being dumped outside after only a week? "Why don't I get you something to drink. Are you thirsty?"

"Very," Angela admitted. "When does the sun come up?"

"Not for several hours," Courtney assured her. "And we'll keep the drapes drawn."

"He said to leave them open. He said I had to get used to it."

"And you will," Courtney said, "just not the very first day."

"But he's right next door!" Angela protested. "He'll know!"

"Not if I get you upstairs where the sun is less intense anyway. Don't worry," she added hastily as Angela shrank back in fear, "I won't make you climb them yourself. Not right away. I'll help you."

Courtney went upstairs and fetched a glass of water from the bathroom. New husks took a little while to "settle in", and until they did, they sucked the moisture out of one's system like nobody's business. But that was minor compared to other difficulties. Argilians tended to be taller than Antarians and thus more suited to masquerade as humans, but even so, navigating in a husk took some getting used to. There was the height issue—it felt like you were walking on stilts. Then there were the hands, markedly smaller than their own, making you feel like you were handling everything with just the tips of your fingers. There were the eyes, which were much smaller and lacked an inner eyelid; combined with Earth's glaring sun, the resulting brightness could give one a headache. There were the hair and nails, which grew annoyingly fast and had to be trimmed. There was the disconcerting sensation of inhaling, but not having that air reach your real lungs for several seconds while the husk adjusted for atmospheric content and pressure. And there was the sheer shock of looking in a mirror and seeing an alien stranger staring back at you, moving as you moved, speaking your words with an alien voice. It was an overwhelming experience best undertaken in the confines of their ship, the only truly familiar environment on this planet. She wouldn't be at all surprised to see people go mad from accelerating the acclimation process. Nicholas might wind up sorry he'd pushed....but then what else was new.

"Here you go," Courtney said, handing Angela the glass of water which she drained instantly. Three more glasses disappeared before she leaned back on the couch and closed her eyes, or rather her husk's eyes, exhausted from the sheer effort of existing. Courtney settled Angela against a pillow and was heading back upstairs to get one for herself so she could sleep in the living room when she heard raised voices from behind the closed kitchen door.

"....looking for a needle in a haystack!" someone exclaimed. "They could be anywhere, Nicholas—anywhere. Don't we have at least an inkling of where they are?"

Outside the door, Courtney snorted softly. Anyone paying attention should have more than an "inkling" of where the Warders were, although Nicholas preferred to spread their people so thinly around the globe that they were practically useless. She had no sooner thought that when the door abruptly flew open.

"Courtney!" Nicholas said pleasantly as she gaped at him in shock. "So kind of you to join us. And since you've obviously found something funny, perhaps you'd like to share your joke with the rest of us."

Nicholas stepped back and motioned her into the kitchen, which was occupied by about a dozen men including Greer, Nicholas' nasty second, and her father, who was looking at her with undisguised disappointment. Damn Nicholas' hearing! But since he'd asked....

"The joke is simple," she said. "We're the joke."

Silence. Thirteen pairs of eyes stared at her, ten with shock, one with disdain—that was Greer—one with dismay—her father—and one with interest. "Really?" Nicholas said with what sounded like genuine curiosity. "Was than at an exclusive 'we', as in only those present at the moment, or an inclusive 'we', as in our entire contingent? Just wondering."

Courtney glanced around the room, taking in the expressions ranging from sullen, to surprised, to alarmed. She'd just had a thought, an incredible thought, one that would make her father turn red in the face and scream. Pulling it off would require just the right combination of facts and a willingness to gamble that her father would figure out what she was up to and chime in. Was it possible? If it were, it would be a huge step forward for the resistance....

"Look at us," Courtney said, taking the plunge and pushing past Nicholas into the room, "blundering around the planet with a few people here and there. Even with all of us off the ship, that won't accomplish anything; there's too much planet and not enough of us. We need to concentrate our efforts on the place where we know the Warders will be, if they're not there already—Roswell."

"Roswell?" someone else repeated blankly.

"Yes, Roswell," she insisted. "Or somewhere around there. Somewhere close to the crash site. Given how quickly the humans found their ship, the Warders must have stashed the hybrids close by. And given that we stationed operatives there right after our arrival, which was right after Jaddo escaped, it's unlikely they had time to move them. The hybrids are there, which means eventually the Warders will be there too."

"What a novel idea!" Nicholas said with mock surprise. "Now, why didn't I think of that?"

"Do you think we're stupid?" Greer growled. "We've had operatives in that area for years, and they've never seen a thing."

"Then you didn't wait long enough," Courtney said stubbornly. "How many do you have there now?"

Uneasy glances were exchanged. "One," Greer admitted grudgingly.

"One operative?" Courtney repeated. "You're kidding, right? You should have the whole area covered at all times because that's the most likely place to find them."

"That could take years," someone grumbled.

"We're already been here 'years'," Courtney retorted. "Now that we have a lot more people in the field, it's downright irresponsible not to put more people in Roswell."

"Strong words," Nicholas said. "More of an accusation, really. What do you think, gentlemen? Are we 'downright irresponsible' like the lovely lady says?"

Courtney waited while Nicholas' lieutenants studied him, trying to figure out which way the wind was blowing before declaring a position. Doing what she had just done, taking a stand without knowing how Nicholas felt about the issue ahead of time, was completely unthinkable, which was probably why her father looked ill. Come on, Papa! she thought desperately, wishing now more than ever, that her kind were capable of telepathic speech. This was their chance to put a resistance member in Roswell, right where they wanted to be, where they needed to be. Nicholas wouldn't want to give up a close lieutenant like her father, of course, but her father could suggest someone, and that suggestion would likely be taken. Say something! she commanded silently as her father continued to sit there in maddening silence while her brilliant plan fell apart.

"I have an idea," Nicholas said suddenly. "Since you feel so strongly about this, why don't you go to Roswell, Courtney?"

She blinked, watched her father's eyes widen in alarm. Nicolas was smiling at her, the kind of smile he wore when he'd managed to take something from you that you really cared about. Apparently he'd misinterpreted her longing glances toward her father and used that to decide her punishment for daring to challenge him—seperation from her family, just like Angela. It took her a moment to realize that it didn't matter. She'd gotten what she wanted anyway.

"All right," Courtney replied. "I will."



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


I'll post Chapter 5 next Sunday. :)
BRIVARI: "In our language, the root of the word 'Covari' means 'hidden'. I'm always there, Your Highness, even if you don't see me."
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Kathy W
Obsessed Roswellian
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Joined: Thu Oct 31, 2002 5:06 am

Post by Kathy W »

Hello to everyone reading! *wave*

kj4ever wrote:Ahhh so they were meant to stay in the pods until adulthood? It would explain why Max, Isabel, and Michael didn't have anyone there when they emerged, and perhaps why Tess remembered more of their previous life then them? They never did say HOW long Tess stayed in her pod on the show, did they?
In my little corner of the universe, they were meant to stay in the pods until they were approximately 20 years old; they would emerge as adults, and after a period of adjustment (which would no doubt include accusations, recriminations, confessions, etc.), they would go back to Antar and reclaim it. We all know that's not going to happen.

I have no idea how long the show's writers intended them to stay in the pods; I don't recall it being addressed. I also don't remember it ever being stated just how long Tess was in her pod, only that she came out after the rest of them were gone and Nasedo was waiting for her. I have long thought that they "hatched" too early (here's where Misha covers her ears because she's heard this so many times before :mrgreen: ) , which may well have compromised their memories. Not to mention left a couple of shapeshifters with the unappealing prospect of a little boy who could give them orders!
I know a lot of people didn't like her because she interfered in the Michael/Maria relationship, but man she was a great character. Thank you for giving her the voice she should have received on the show!
You're most welcome! I loved Courtney. I also loved M/M, but I guess I didn't see her as a threat because I didn't find Roswell until S3. So when I got my hands on S2, I blew through the episodes very quickly and Courtney died in short order....and died protecting the Royal Four, no less. This is one of the rare times I agree with Nicholas: Now that's a soldier.
Michelle in Yonkers wrote:Arrgghh! To think Jaddo just left!
He'll be back. ;) Jaddo will have his day with Pierce, I promise you that.

How's your finger? Don't you hate it when a little cut bleeds like you've been impaled by a spear? :P (That always happens to me, and I hate it!)








CHAPTER FIVE



June 17, 1959, 6 a.m.

Copper Summit, Arizona




"You can't do this!" Michael protested. "I'll talk to Nicholas, beg him if necessary—"

"You already tried, remember?" Courtney said. "Besides, I want to do it."

"But it's not safe!"

"Nothing about this mission is 'safe'. You know that."

"You're too new," Michael insisted. "You haven't had enough time in the field, enough training—"

"I've had plenty of training for reconnaissance."

"Courtney—"

"Papa—no," she said firmly, throwing the last of her clothes into her suitcase, which had never really been unpacked anyway. "We have to find Jaddo. We came here to find him, didn't we?"

"Of course we did," Michael said impatiently, "but that doesn't mean I expected you to go gallivanting off by yourself only a day after moving into town!"

"Nothing here is like we expected," Courtney said with a sigh, plopping down on her bed. Early morning sun streamed through the window, it's arrival having been heralded by the sounds of Angela fretting even though her curtains were tightly closed. "We all thought we'd hook up with our Covari operatives—imagine us having 'Covari operatives'—and go capture Jaddo. And then capture Brivari when he tried to rescue Jaddo. Instead, we got here and found the operatives dead or gone, Jaddo free, and both Warders vanished. No one ever thought it would take this long."

"I don't care how long it takes—I don't want you running off by yourself, and I don't want you involved with shapeshifters!" her father declared. "What in the world possessed you to go after Nicholas like that? What were you thinking?"

I was thinking that maybe I could get a resistance operative in Roswell, Courtney thought silently, once again resisting the urge to point out that her tirade last night had been calculated. She'd listened to this lecture several times already, and each time her father grew more upset; telling him she'd done it on purpose would only make him more upset. Better for him to think it was just bad luck while she pointed out all the positives.

"Papa, you've been worried ever since we landed that you wouldn't be able to get to Jaddo fast enough after he was found, and that's a bigger worry than ever now because everyone's been ordered into the field. Both Warders have laid low for so long now they're bound to slip up sometime, and when they do, we'll be swarming all over them like ants. So having me in Roswell is a good thing," Courtney continued as Michael began to protest again, "because we both know that's where we're most likely to find them; they must have hidden the hybrids nearby, and they had allies there. Now you'll have a trusted operative there who can let you know the moment there's any news, and that will give you the chance to mobilize all of us and maybe prevent another tragedy."

Her father sank into a nearby chair. "It all sounds so logical when you explain it," he said dully, "but I'm a father. Fathers, by definition, aren't logical. At least not when it comes to their daughters."

"Afraid I'm going to elope with a human?" Courtney teased.

Michael stared at her uncomprehendingly. " 'Elope'?"

"I'll let you figure that one out on your own," Courtney said lightly, closing her suitcase. "I'll call you when I get settled. I'll be staying with Mark Green, the operative in Roswell, until I find a job. Currency is such a pain."

"What kind of job?" her father asked suspiciously.

"I don't know. I'll find something. The humans are making one of their 'movies' in Roswell this summer, so there should be all kinds of jobs, especially for someone like me. I'm told I have a young, beautiful husk by human standards."

"That's exactly what I'm afraid of," Michael muttered.

"I only look young, Papa. I can take care of myself." She hefted her suitcase off the bed. "I'm ready."

Her father didn't move, just gazed out the window. "Do you know what happened to the first half dozen operatives we sent to approach Rath?"

Courtney gripped her suitcase harder and prayed for patience. "I heard they died."

"Yes," Michael answered in a hollow voice. "All six of them were killed by Jaddo. We sacrificed six of our own to that monster before we even got the chance to ask for a meeting with Rath, never mind actually have one." He paused. "I don't want that to happen to you."

"Neither do I," Courtney allowed, "but you're being a bit dramatic, aren't you? I'm just watching. No contact, remember? And besides, Jaddo already knows about us. And even if he is Covari, I think it's a little unfair to call him a 'monster' when he was only doing his job. Warders are guard dogs, Papa. Pit bulls, not poodles. That's what they're for."

"If he finds you, he'll kill you," her father whispered.

"I won't let him. I won't get that close."

"If Nicholas won't relent, I can go to Ida, beg her to—"

"No," Courtney broke in firmly. "I want to go. I think this is a huge break for the resistance, and you'd be hard-pressed to argue with me."

Michael rose slowly from his chair, an air of resignation surrounding him like fog. "All right. Then take this as a going away present."

Courtney took the box her father handed her and pulled off the lid; inside was a black, five-sided object labeled in Antarian writing. "What's this?"

"Something we've been trying to perfect for the past decade," Michael said. "The Covari who invented it is missing, either dead or defected, and we had only sketchy information to go on. It's our only defense against the Warders. Keep it with you at all times."

"What does it do?" Courtney asked.

"It emits an energy field that blocks their enhanced abilities," her father explained, "but they'll still be able to shift and still be deadly, so be careful."

"Then....why use it at all?" Courtney frowned. "If for some reason I wind up making contact, I'd want to present myself as an ally. The last thing I should do is antagonize them with something like this. I'd just be more likely to get killed."

"Take it with you," Michael pressed. "Just in case. If necessary, it might buy you enough time to present yourself as an ally. Remember, those first six never got that far."

"Right," Courtney said noncommittally, tucking the box into her pocket as she headed down the stairs. She'd take it with her to make her father feel better, but seriously doubted she'd need to use it. Setting her suitcase down by the front door, she pulled a jacket out of the front hall closet and glanced outside. Greer was waiting to drive her to Tombstone, the closest town with a bus station, leaning on the car as he spoke with Nicholas. Came to see me off, she thought sourly, stuffing her coat inside her suitcase. One of the best things about this latest turn of events was that she wouldn't have to put up with Nicholas every day. Having him just next door was unbearable.

"Now, behave yourself," her father warned, sensing her mood. "No sense in leaving on bad terms with Nicholas."

"Remind me again why we can't just get rid of him?" Courtney grumbled.

"Because that would send a loud and clear message that the resistance has infiltrated this mission," her father said patiently. "Not to mention the fact that we need Nicholas' manpower to find the Warders, and his death might result in Khivar recalling us, which we do not want. Like I said, behave yourself."

Courtney braced herself for the usual sarcastic onslaught that accompanied contact with Nicholas, but he was gone by the time she stepped onto the front porch. Thank God. Not that Greer was wonderful company, but at least he didn't shoot his mouth off all the time, or much at all, for that matter. "Ready?" Greer said shortly after Courtney had tossed her suitcase in the trunk and climbed into the back seat, his tone making it clear that he felt himself above the job of being her chauffeur.

"Absolutely," Courtney said. "Let's go."



******************************************************


10 a.m.

Downtown Roswell




"You sure you're going to be all right?" Anthony asked, pulling the stroller out of the car's trunk. "I feel funny just leaving you and Philip here by yourselves."

"Don't be silly," Dee said. "We lived here, remember? It's not like you're dropping us off in downtown Santa Fe. Besides, Philip loves to go for stroller rides."

"True," Anthony smiled, watching his little boy bounce up and down with excitement as Dee lifted him into the stroller. "I shouldn't be more than a couple of hours. I'll meet you right back here."

"Good luck," Dee said. "Say bye-bye to Daddy, Philip."

"Bye!" Philip chirped.

"Daddy's going to go see about building an observatory, little guy," Anthony said, planting a kiss on his son's head. "You be good for Mama." He looked up at Dee. "Are you sure—"

"I'm sure," Dee interrupted firmly. "Think of it this way—it keeps Mama and me away from each other."

"You handled her well last night at dinner, and this morning too," Anthony said, giving her hand a squeeze. "Just like a pro. Okay—I'm off. Have a good time."

Dee knelt beside the stroller and urged Philip to wave goodbye to his father as Anthony drove away; he obliged grudgingly, bouncing up and down in his seat, eager to be off. Philip hated sitting unless whatever he was sitting in or on was moving. That's what had made the bus ride bearable and why the stroller was such an attraction. "Okay, okay, we're going," she chuckled as she gave the stroller a push down Main Street's sidewalk, the already hot morning sunshine a taste of the heat to come later in the day. She strolled at a leisurely pace—it wasn't necessary to go fast, just to go—enjoying her walk down memory lane and the freedom of not having to watch her mother like a hawk. Little did Anthony know that the reason Dee had handled Emily "like a pro" last night was because she'd had a pro sitting at the dinner table, coaching her every move.

Brivari had accepted her invitation to join them for dinner last night, taking a seat near David at the opposite end of the table from Dee. But the length of a table was no impediment to conversation for those fluent in telepathic speech, so when Emily appeared with a bottle for Philip and Dee felt that familiar anger boiling inside, she wasn't surprised to hear a quiet voice in her head.

*You tried it your way, and that's obviously not working. Why not try it mine?*

*Hopefully your way involves heaving heavy objects at Mama,* Dee had replied sourly.

*On the contrary, losing your temper is what you must not do. Every time she sees you angry, she sees a child, not an adult. Don't get angry, don't argue, and don't let her do what you've decided she shouldn't.*

Don't want much, do you? Dee had grumbled privately. But she had to admit her volcanic eruptions hadn't had any effect on her mother's determination to have things her own way, so she certainly had nothing to lose. Philip's hand was reaching eagerly for the bottle when her own caught it in midair.

"Philip uses a cup, Mama," Dee said calmly, as though she hadn't already told Emily this a dozen times. "I'll get him one."

Emily began to protest as Dee rose from her chair. *Go,* Brivari ordered. *Don't let her stop you. There can be no argument if you refuse to participate.*

Dee had obeyed, completely ignoring her mother, whose voice rose as Dee kept walking only to cease abruptly when the dining room door swung closed behind her. She poured the milk into a cup, tried and failed to dredge up a smile, and reentered the dining room wearing what she hoped at least resembled a neutral expression.

*Explain to your son that his grandmother didn't realize how skilled he was, and made an honest mistake,* Brivari instructed.

*Why?* Dee protested. *He won't—*

*Of course he won't. You're not talking to Philip—you're talking to everyone else. Always know your audience.*

Everyone was staring at her, waiting to see what she would do next. Well, not everyone; Malik was politely looking at his plate while Brivari dished up some food, seemingly oblivious to the fact that a confrontation was happening right in front of him. Emily looked annoyed, Anthony looked wary, Philip wanted his drink, and David....David looked pleased. Proud, even.

"It's okay, Philip," Dee said soothingly as she set the cup down in front of the fretting toddler. "Grandma didn't realize what a big boy you are now. Most boys your age can't drink from a cup yet."

"You must be proud to have a grandson so advanced," Brivari remarked casually to Emily.

Dee took her seat and tucked back into her dinner, watching her mother wrestle with just how to reply. What was she going to say? That she wasn't proud? That he wasn't advanced? Brilliant, Dee thought admiringly. Using praise as a weapon had never occurred to her.

*Change the subject before she can protest further,* Brivari advised.

"So, Daddy, how is Mac?" Dee asked, saying the first thing that came to mind. "Has he retired yet? He's certainly earned it."

"What? Oh....well, you know Mac. He'll probably walk that ranch until he can't walk," her father chuckled. "But I understand Rose doesn't agree with that......"

Her father chattered on while Dee stole a glance at her mother. She looked absolutely stunned, her head swiveling from one person to another as though she just couldn't believe that was the end of it....and she wasn't the only one. *I don't believe it,* Dee said to Brivari. *She actually shut up. Thanks.*

*Don't thank me yet,* Brivari warned. *You'll need to repeat this procedure many times, I'm sure.*

He'd been right about that. She'd had to repeat it the very next morning when a bottle had once again appeared. Dee made another calm substitution with a somewhat more pointed tone and was delighted to find that, even though Emily was still basically ignoring her, the whole process had become much easier on both Philip and herself. She knew from experience how exhausting it was to be angry all the time; her year spent angry with Emily for throwing Brivari out of the house had taught her that. This way Philip got his cup, Emily got her comeuppance, and Dee's stomach didn't get all tied up in knots. It was a better outcome all the way around, and she felt almost light-hearted as they reached the nearest corner and rounded a bend with Philip bouncing excitedly in his seat, eager to see more.

*Fancy meeting you here.*

*There you are,* Dee smiled as Jaddo fell in step beside her wearing one of his more familiar faces. Shapeshifters had several different faces much the way humans had several different pairs of shoes. *I wish you'd come by last night. I could have used a soldier.*

*Let me guess: Your mother?*

*Is there anyone who doesn't know we're fighting?* Dee asked in annoyance.

*Try Antar,* Jaddo replied calmly. *I'd wager that would be news there.*

*You're a stitch,* Dee said sourly.

*So who won the battle?* Jaddo asked, ignoring her temper the way she always ignored his.

*I did. With a little help from a king's warder.*

*Brivari was coaching you?* Jaddo chuckled. *Now, there's an irony.*

*Why?*

*Because your mother is doing to you exactly what Brivari did to the king.*

Dee blinked. *Really? Well....he did say something about me being impatient just like the king was.*

*Trust me, that was not a compliment.*

Dee was quiet for a moment, pushing the stroller along the sidewalk with Jaddo walking beside her, eyeing Philip curiously as he did so. She couldn't recall either Jaddo or Brivari ever referring to how well they'd gotten along with those they protected. Perhaps that wasn't suitable subject material for a child, which is what she'd been for most of the time she'd known them. *So....was Brivari right?* she asked. *Was the king impatient? Is that why he got killed?*

They walked another half block before she got an answer. *Zan was young,* Jaddo said. *Young and inexperienced, neither his fault. His father, Brivari's first Ward, held the reins of rule very tightly, too tightly in my opinion. Since he wanted his son to rule after him, he should have begun grooming him for that long before he did. By the time that training started in earnest, he had very little time to learn before the old king died.*

*So Brivari had to teach him,* Dee said, beginning to understand.

*Exactly. And Brivari was of the opinion that Zan should do everything exactly the way his father had, much the way your mother feels you should raise your child exactly the way she raised you. You can imagine how well that went over.*

*I sure can,* Dee muttered.

*Brivari felt that Zan was too lenient, too progressive, too quick to change that which had worked well for a very long time. They argued constantly.*

*So who was right?* Dee asked.

*Both....and neither,* Jaddo answered. *Zan's youth and inexperience made him a target for enemies eager to take advantage of those twin disadvantages, so perhaps it would have been wiser to adhere to his father's policies, for a while at least. But Zan had been raised in a different world than his father, a world that called for a different vision and a different touch. There were those who looked forward to the son being more flexible where the father had not. Zan made allies where Riall never had.*

*Are you sure they were allies?* Dee asked skeptically. *Maybe they were just trying to cash in on all that youth and inexperience.*

*Now you sound like Brivari,* Jaddo said dryly. *My Ward believed those allies to be true.*

*Well, something went wrong,* Dee argued. *The king's dead.*

*Yes, and by his own sister's idiocy,* Jaddo sighed. *Granted, Zan's ascension to the throne had emboldened Khivar and his followers, but they didn't have the wherewithal to topple the king. It wasn't Zan's policies as a ruler that invited disaster, but his lax hand with his sister. That one needed a good thrashing.*

*Sounds like maybe it was the other way around,* Dee commented. *Sounds like he tried to order her around, and she didn't like it. Wasn't she supposed to marry Rath?*

*Don't remind me,* Jaddo said wearily. *A poor match if ever there was one.*

*Oh, my goodness,* Dee laughed. *I'm trying to imagine you with some prissy princess to look after, and I'm not having much luck.*

*Looking after Vilandra would have been Urza's job,* Jaddo scowled, *and I would have happily left it to him.*

Dee was still smiling as she brought the stroller to a halt at a crosswalk. There was quite a crowd waiting for the light to change, and Philip bounced up and down in his seat, unhappy that he was no longer moving and couldn't see anything either. When the light changed and the crowd surged forward, she realized where everyone was headed—they were right across the street from the UFO center, which looked to be doing a brisk business.

*Have you been in there?* Dee asked, nodding toward the UFO center as they crossed the street.

*Perish the thought,* Jaddo said darkly. *It might make me.....unpleasant.*

*Aren't you usually?* Dee teased, enjoying his resulting annoyed look. *I would think it would be fun seeing how wrong everyone is. Let's go in!*

*Tell me you're joking.*

*Heck, no,* Dee said cheerfully. *I could use a good laugh.*

*I shall never understand the things that amuse some people,* Jaddo said in a wounded tone.

*Spoil sport,* Dee said casually. *Catch you later.*

Jaddo walked off shaking his head while Dee motored Philip's stroller to the UFO center. People politely cleared a path for the lady with a baby, and they were inside in just a few minutes. There appeared to be some kind of meeting going on, with various UFO enthusiasts camped out at tables adorned with posters, displays, and leaflets as the public filed by, taking it all in. She passed displays of "alien artifacts", blurry photos of supposed aliens or alien ships, and had to stifle a laugh as she came abreast of a table displaying "pieces of an alien ship". As one who had genuine pieces of an alien ship stashed under her childhood bed, she could confidently attest that these so-called artifacts were definitely not what they claimed to be.

"This is a fragment of the saucer the Army denies having captured back in '47!" the proud owner was telling his awestruck audience. "Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is genuine alien metal! Can you imagine how advanced a race must be to make something like this?"

"Looks like a twisted piece of car bumper," Dee said.

The owner's eyes flared briefly in alarm before he recovered. "We have an unbeliever among us!" he announced as everyone's attention shifted her way. "Miss, don't you believe in aliens?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," Dee answered. "But believing in aliens won't turn that into anything but a piece of car bumper."

The owner hesitated, confused as to how to proceed. He'd obviously expected her to deny the existence of aliens, and now that she hadn't, he didn't know what to do. Meanwhile, the viewing public was growing dubious. "You know, that does look like it came from a car bumper," a man agreed.

"There's even some paint on it," someone else remarked.

"So there is," Dee said pleasantly, peering over a shoulder. "Wow. Who knew aliens painted their ships red?"

Laughter erupted and the owner of the "alien ship piece" scowled mightily at her as his audience drifted away. But he had a new crop within seconds, and his booming voice carried over the noise of the crowd as Dee pushed the stroller along to the next booth which sported nothing more than a pile of books.

"So," a droll voice said. "We have a skeptic, do we?"

Dee looked up to find an older gentleman seated behind the table with a mane of long, white hair and an eclectic choice of clothes that made it appear he was colorblind. "Not necessarily," she answered. "I just know a fake when I see one."

"Good for you," the man said approvingly. "That idiot has been trotting out every bit of detritus he can find for months now, and you wouldn't believe how many people just buy it hook, line, and sinker. I'm glad to see someone's called a spade a spade."

"I gather you're trotting this out?" Dee asked, picking up one of the books and inspecting the cover.

"I, my dear, do not 'trot things out'," the man declared. "I am a serious alienologist, dedicated to discovering the truth of the aliens—" here he paused, tapping the book in her hand "—Among Us. I mean business, and I can tell you mean business too. I can always tell when someone means business." He smiled, extending a hand. "James Atherton, at your service."



******************************************************


Dr. Raymond Blake's office

Roswell





"Where's the Doc?" Valenti asked as the office door slammed behind him. "The station told me he called; I got here as fast as I could."

"Hello to you too," the doctor's secretary said dryly. "I'm fine, thanks for asking."

Valenti flushed. "God, Maureen....I'm sorry. It's just that everything's going to hell in a hand basket. I didn't get home till after midnight last night, I missed both dinner and putting Jimmy to bed, the phone rang at 5 o'clock this morning, and now I'll probably miss dinner again....it's been a mess."

"I'm sure Andi understands," Maureen said sympathetically. "She knew you were probably going to wind up sheriff when she married you. Is it the movie that's driving you nuts?"

"The movie, the Crash Festival, that UFO convention which just blew into town, my head deputy getting stars in his eyes wanting to be an actor....you name it, it's gone wrong. Add this morning's murder to the list, and this day just keeps getting worse."

"I wouldn't get all worked up over it, sheriff," Maureen said. "It looks like a simple money job. Go see for yourself. Doc's in the surgery."

Valenti passed the two examining rooms on his way to the back room, larger than the others, that served as Dr. Blake's surgery and a makeshift morgue. Not that they had many bodies; this was only the second murder in Valenti's tenure as sheriff, only the second time he'd be sending a toe-tagged corpse off to the county coroner. Not exactly what he needed just prior to Roswell being invaded by both Hollywood and hordes of UFO nuts.

Ray was standing beside a prone body which had a large-handled knife protruding prominently from its back. "Good thing I skipped lunch," Valenti said dryly. "I'm guessing you didn't call me to help ferret out a cause of death?"

Ray shook his head. "Thanks for coming so quickly, Jim. And no, I think the cause of death is pretty obvious, as is the motive. Check his pants pockets. Guess they were interrupted."

Valenti picked up the pair of work trousers lying on a nearby chair and pulled a wallet out of one pocket and a huge wad of bills out of the other. "Jesus H. Christ," he muttered, counting. "There must be $500 dollars here. Hadn't this guy heard of a bank?"

"A lot of folks don't trust banks after the depression," Ray observed.

"This guy's not old enough to remember much about the depression," Valenti noted, opening the wallet. " 'Mark Green'. It's a Roswell address. Looks like one of Mrs. Bruce's roomers. I'll look him up. But why'd you call me?"

"Because this is weird," Ray said, pointing to the body. "Look at the knife."

"What about it?" Valenti asked.

"It must have pierced his heart. Look at the angle, the point of insertion. There should have been massive blood loss."

"And?"

"And there wasn't. I haven't cleaned him up—this is exactly how he was found. There's blood on the skin here, but not nearly enough, and none at the murder scene either. Simply put, this guy didn't bleed enough."

Bracing himself, Valenti stepped closer. Ray was right; the knife was right at heart level, the flesh closed smoothly around it like it belonged there, and very little blood surrounded the wound. "Are you sure he's dead?" he asked doubtfully.

"I did go to medical school," Ray said with a touch of asperity. "No pulse, no respiration, no reflexes....and no rigor mortis. And watch this."

Ray picked up a scalpel from a nearby tray and made an incision down the victim's back. Bright red blood welled from the wound as it split apart, and Valenti was about to ask what the point was when it became clear that the bleeding was stopping. Ray dabbed at the blood with a piece of gauze, and a minute later, the incision had stopped bleeding completely.

"Is it supposed to do that?" Valenti asked, feeling his stomach turn.

"No," Ray said. "This guy's bleeding like he's still alive, but he's not, not to mention that incredible clotting factor. And not only that, but I made a similar incision on the other side about an hour ago, and look at it now."

"Where? I don't see anything."

"Exactly," Ray said. "It healed. It's completely gone."

"But how can that be?" Valenti asked, confused.

"I haven't the faintest," Ray admitted. "I've never seen anything like this in all my years."

Valenti thought for a moment. "Pull the knife out," he said suddenly.

"What?"

"Pull it out. I need it for evidence anyway."

Valenti produced an evidence bag from his pocket while Ray took a firm grip on the knife; one steady pull and a horrible squishing sound later, it was free. A small amount of blood welled around the gash, but within a minute, it was clear that this wound was disappearing just like the brand new incision close by, already fainter than it had been. "Well, I'll be damned," Ray murmured. "What the hell is going on here?"

Great, Valenti thought sourly, inspecting the knife which had clearly been inserted to a depth of at least 6 inches. Not only a murder victim, but a weird one as well. "Open him up," he said tersely.

"What?"

"Open him up," Valenti repeated. "Do an autopsy."

"But....isn't the county coroner—"

"Screw the county coroner," Valenti interrupted. "I've got a weird murder victim just as all hell is set to break loose in my town, so I want to know what's going on here. Open him up. Call me when you've got the results."

"Okay," Ray said skeptically. "You're the boss."

Damned straight I am, Valenti agreed, taking the murder weapon and the dead man's wallet and cash with him. He was most of the way down the hall when there was a huge bang behind him followed by a loud crash, causing him to drop to the floor just at the waiting room threshold.

"Jesus!" Valenti exclaimed. "Ray? Ray!"




~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


I'll post Chapter 6 next Sunday. :)
Last edited by Kathy W on Sun Nov 11, 2007 10:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
BRIVARI: "In our language, the root of the word 'Covari' means 'hidden'. I'm always there, Your Highness, even if you don't see me."
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Kathy W
Obsessed Roswellian
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Joined: Thu Oct 31, 2002 5:06 am

Post by Kathy W »

Hello and Happy Thanksgiving to everyone reading!




CHAPTER SIX

June 17, 1959, 4:30 p.m.

Dr. Raymond Blake's office, Roswell





Valenti looked around wildly as he crouched on the floor. In front of him, Maureen was gaping at him wide-eyed; behind him, the door to the surgery was still closed, and an eerie silence hung over the office even as his ears rang from the noise. What in the name of God had caused that? "Ray!" he called as he clambered to his feet and raced back down the hallway, reaching for his gun as he threw open the door to the surgery.

The doctor was sprawled on the floor amidst the contents of a steel cart which had toppled over, the apparent source of the crashing noise Valenti had heard. Debris hung in the air, floating lazily down to rest on whatever surface it reached first. And the body....the body was gone.

"Are you all right?" Valenti asked, crossing the room and extending a hand.

"Yeah, I....I'm okay," Ray said, sounding dazed as he grasped Valenti's hand and climbed to his feet. "I.....good Lord."

"What? What happened?" Valenti demanded. "Where's the body?"

Ray shook his head slowly. "Gone."

" 'Gone'?" Valenti echoed. "How can it be 'gone'? I only left a minute ago. Where'd it go?"

Ray's eyes drifted toward the ceiling while one hand gestured around the room. "It's......there. Everywhere."

Valenti looked around in consternation for a moment before he realized the soft, flaky stuff floating around the room wasn't debris. Nothing in the room was damaged save for the metal cart which Doc had obviously toppled himself.

"You mean....you mean this....stuff floating around is the body?"

"What's left of it," Ray said.

"It blew up? How?"

"I was examining the entry wound, " Ray said, "and it had almost healed over. So I started poking around, and....boom."

" 'Boom'?"

"It just....exploded," Ray said uncertainly, as though that weren't quite the right word.

"It looks like skin," Maureen said in wonder, having come in behind Valenti. "You know, like when you have dry skin and it flakes off?"

The three of them stood in stunned silence for a full minute before Valenti regained his senses. "Okay," he said tersely, holstering his gun. "Maureen, lock the office door. Reschedule tomorrow's appointments. No one comes in here; I don't care if it's Christ's mother."

Maureen scurried off to obey as Valenti turned to the doctor. "How is this even possible? If this body was rigged, the whole room should have blown up, and you with it. Not that I'm complaining, but what explodes a body and doesn't take anything else with it?"

Ray shook his head as he fished a container out of a cabinet and started sweeping flakes into it. "I have no idea. Add this to the list of things I've never seen before. But even if I don't know how it was done, it's not a big leap to figure out why."

"A spy," Valenti said grimly.

"That would be my guess," Ray agreed. "Probably Soviet or Cuban, and probably checking up on the Army base. The scuttlebutt is that now that Castro's in power in Cuba, he's going to cozy up to the communists. I know McCarthy was nuts, but he was partially right—there are Americans working for the communists. This might be one of them."

"He certainly didn't look either Russian or Cuban," Valenti muttered. "Tell me you took pictures."

"Of course I did," Ray said, reaching for his camera and shaking flakes off it.

"I'll get the film developed," Valenti said. "In the meantime, clean this up, look it over, and tell me anything you can. And don't breathe a word of this to anyone."

"You're going to call the base, aren't you?"

"Hell, no," Valenti declared, "and you aren't either."

"But Jim, this could be important!" Ray protested. "The military should know—"

"And they will," Valenti interrupted, "but not a moment before I've completed my own investigation. Ray, listen to me," he continued when the doctor began to object. "I've dealt with the military before. If we let the tanks roll in now, we'll never know what happened. They'll confiscate everything, and I mean everything—maybe even us. Whoever this guy was, whatever he was doing here, he was loose in my town, and I intend to find out why. I want samples of everything, copies of everything, and time to nose around before they shut me down. Understood?"

The doctor hesitated a moment before nodding reluctantly. "All right. I'd like to know what happened myself. Although....are you sure you know what you're doing? You could be getting yourself mixed up in something nasty."

"Wouldn't be the first time," Valenti said darkly. "Not by a long shot."




******************************************************



Proctor residence




"No, wait, there's more," Dee insisted as laughter erupted around the dinner table. "Then he goes on to tell me that humans are just a happy accident, a quirk of the universe that couldn't possibly have been repeated, the ultimate life form. So any aliens out there, by definition, must be lower on the evolutionary ladder than we are. Sort of like slightly more evolved apes, or something."

"Unbelievable," David said, shaking his head.

"It doesn't help that he already looks a bit unhinged, what with that long white hair, big bushy mustache, and weird clothes," Dee added. "But then when you hear what comes out of his mouth, it just gets worse."

"So this Atherton fellow actually believes he knows what he's talking about?" David asked.

"What's even more incredible is that he wrote a book about something he knows nothing about and is actually living off the proceeds," Anthony commented.

"Not just the book," Dee said. "Don't forget the lecture circuit. He says that's where the real money is. Plus the lectures drive book sales, and sales of his book get him more lecture dates, so they feed off each other."

"He's just following the money," Malik said. "Aliens are big business now."

"And fear is always lucrative," Brivari added. "Humans fear aliens, so anything that either stokes or alleviates that fear will garner attention, and therefore currency."

Talk continued around the table, but Dee's attention fastened on Brivari. This was the first time he'd spoken this evening save for a perfunctory greeting, spending his time instead gazing rather fixedly at Philip, who was seated next to Dee in her old high chair drinking contentedly out of his much contested cup. She'd had to remove yet another bottle at lunch time, but not at dinner—her mother seemed to be getting the message, albeit slowly, and now regarded Dee with a combination of exasperation and puzzlement, as though she couldn't quite figure out what to do next. Fortunately Dee was in too much of a good mood to let Emily get to her today. Her time at the UFO center had been one hilarity after another, and she'd spent the meal thus far regaling everyone with what she'd seen.

"So these people had 'artifacts'," David said. "What kind of artifacts?"

"Most of them were supposedly pieces of an alien ship," Dee answered. "Basically any piece of twisted metal will do as long as it's not readily identifiable.....and maybe even if it is. Witness the guy with the car bumper."

"People are so gullible," Anthony said. "If there were that many pieces of an alien ship being paraded around, the Army would be all over them in a heartbeat."

"I saw some soldiers from the base there," Dee said. "They were every bit as awestruck as everyone else."

"Back in the forties, only a handful of people ever knew what was really going on at the base," Malik said, "and most of those are long gone. Anyone there now is probably none the wiser."

"The one thing I consistently heard was that the Army held live captives," Dee continued. "Some felt it happened in the past, others that it was still going on. That was the second most popular 'artifact'—so-called pieces of aliens. There were so many jars of formaldehyde that the place reeked."

"Please," Emily groaned. "We're eating."

"And then there was an exhibit which claimed the Army found aliens, but they were all dead," Dee went on. "It had these dolls that reminded me of Mrs. Chamberlain's Crash Festival dolls, this little family with alien parents and alien children who died in the crash—"

"Excuse me," Brivari said abruptly, pushing his chair back.

"There were a lot of soldiers there when Urza and Valeris were carried out," David reminded her. "So people did see them. And a few saw you on the ship and said they thought they'd seen a child. That information was bound to seep into the public's consciousness."

"I don't know," Anthony said doubtfully. "I think we'd be hearing the same stories even if none of that had happened. For example...."

Anthony went on, but Dee was watching Brivari, who had walked out the front door and taken a seat on the porch. *What's eating him?* she asked Malik privately.

*Don't know,* Malik answered. *But whatever it is, it's been 'eating him' for quite awhile now.*

*If it's been that long, how could you not know what it is?*

*Easy. There are certain things they just don't discuss with me.*

Dee blinked. *You mean they still don't trust you? After all this time?*

*Not completely,* Malik said. *Remember, I turned on their Wards once. Warders don't forget.*

Like elephants, Dee thought, picking up her glass of wine and excusing herself from the table. Emily would probably slip Philip a bottle just as soon as she was out of the room, but Anthony could handle this one. Maybe he'd have better luck. She found Brivari on the front porch, staring off into the distance.

"Nice night," Dee said casually as she slid into a chair next to him. And it was, hot but not boiling, the type of dry heat which was easier to live with than humidity.

"It is indeed," Brivari agreed without looking at her.

"Mama seems to be calming down a little," Dee said. "She looks confused, like she can't figure out why I'm not yelling."

"She is on unfamiliar ground and is currently rethinking her strategy," Brivari replied. "You would be wise to do the same, as she will soon try some other means of circumventing your wishes now that her initial method has failed."

"Darn," Dee said, genuinely disappointed. "And here I'd hoped she was just going to wave the white flag."

"Your mother? Hardly. Patience," Brivari advised. "You've won a few battles, but the war has only begun."

Such an optimist, Dee thought dryly, keeping that thought to herself as they sat in companionable silence, Brivari staring into space as she sipped her wine, trying to decide how to broach the subject and settling at length on her favorite approach—the direct one.

"So are you going to tell me what's bothering you, or are you going to make me guess?"

Brivari smiled faintly. "Subtlety was never your strong point."

"Given the way you keep staring at Philip, and the fact that Jaddo was looking at him much the same way earlier today, I'd say it had something to do with him," Dee continued. "But that doesn't make sense. What would Philip have to do with anything?"

"Directly? Nothing."

"So....indirectly," Dee murmured. "Interesting. Okay, I'm off school for the summer, so we can play word games all night if you want. Or I could keep guessing and pester the daylights out of you. Or you could just tell me and save yourself a whole lot of grief."

Brivari added a head shake to his smile, and Dee could have sworn she heard a resigned telepathic sigh. "Let me guess," Dee said. "I sound just like Zan, right?"

"Not this time," Brivari answered. "He wouldn't have noticed something was bothering me." He paused. *The hybrids are not growing at the rate they should be.*

Dee set her wine glass down. Trouble with the very reason the Warders were here in the first place was very bad news. *Are they all right? Is there something wrong with them?*

*Not that I'm aware of. They appear to be thriving, just small.*

*How small?*

*Much too small,* Brivari said heavily. *They are roughly the size of your son.*

*But....I thought they were supposed to grow the way humans did. You've been here....what....twelve years now? So they should look like 12 year-olds, or close to that.*

*Precisely,* Brivari replied. *And they don't.*

*None of them?*

*None of them.*

Dee was quiet for a moment, at a loss for what to say. *Did Valeris leave any notes? Instructions? Anything?*

*A few,* Brivari replied, *but they are unhelpful. Basically, once the process is started, it cannot be altered, at least not positively. It can certainly be impeded, which is exactly what happened when our ship crashed. The hybrids were very young and very vulnerable at that point, and their incubators failed in the crash. It was several hours before we managed to restore power. We lost dozens.*

*But not these,* Dee said.

*No. These have survived every insult....but perhaps not as unscathed as I thought.*

*Wait a minute,* Dee said. *Back up. Wasn't this was the first time you'd tried to make this kind of hybrid? Then how do you know how they grow?* she continued when Brivari nodded. *If this is the first try, this could be just how it works.*

*Perhaps,* Brivari agreed. *But regardless of the reason, the same problem remains: It will take much longer for them to mature than previously thought. It is unlikely I will live long enough to see them emerge.*

Good Lord, Dee thought, leaning back in her chair. No wonder Brivari was upset. After everything they'd been through, to not be there when the king reappeared was a nasty kick in the pants. *What about Jaddo? Will he still be alive?*

*Yes,* Brivari answered. *He is much younger than I am. But he will be alone.*

*But someone will be here,* Dee said. *The hybrids are still healthy, even if they're growing slower than you expected, and at least one of you will be here for them.*

*It looks that way....at the moment,* Brivari admitted.

*So it's not a total loss,* Dee insisted. *I mean, it could be worse, right? Look,* she continued when Brivari arched an eyebrow at her, *I can only imagine how disappointing this must be. But keep in mind that you don't really know what's going to happen because you've never tried it before. Maybe they'll grow slowly for awhile and then speed up. Maybe they'll be born younger than you thought. Or maybe it really will take as long as you're afraid it will. You don't really know, and there's nothing you can do about it but what you've already done, which is keep them safely hidden. So there's no point fretting over what you can't change. All you can do is make a life for yourself here, and wait and see what happens.*

*My 'life' here was supposed to be half over by now,* Brivari said wearily.

*You don't have a life here,* Dee said bluntly. *You're just hanging around, worrying and waiting, and frankly, that's a colossal waste of time. You have an opportunity to have something here that you could never have back home, and instead you've gone on a decade-long mope fest. What good is that going to do anyone? It'll just make you miserable, and it won't make the hybrids grow any faster.*

*I stand corrected,* Brivari said dryly. *You lack not only subtlety, but tact.*

*Call me anything you want, but you know I'm right,* Dee said firmly.

*Did Jaddo happen to mention that General Ramey died recently?*

*I....what? No,* Dee answered, confused. *Isn't he the one who let Jaddo go?*

*Yes.*

*Well....I'm sorry to hear he died, but what does that have to do with anything?*

Brivari rose from his chair and walked to the porch railing, his back to her. *You will all die,* he said quietly. *Every last one of you. If it truly takes as long as I fear for the hybrids to mature, I will have the distinct displeasure of watching every single ally I've made here die. Your parents. You. Even your son will not live that long, not even if the human lifespan increases faster than I think it will. And then I will likely die before the king emerges. First everyone I know and then me, and all without seeing my task completed.* He paused. *What does one do when facing a 'life' like that? How does one even make a 'life' in the face of such prospects?*

Tongue-tied, Dee said nothing as the implications of what he'd just said washed over her. You will all die.... What would it feel like to lose everyone? She remembered her Uncle James' death when he'd killed himself after he and her father had returned from the war, followed by her grandmother's death shortly thereafter, as well as the difficult time her parents had gone through coping with two deaths in such a short period of time. She expected her parents to die before her, but....Anthony? And Philip? No parent was prepared to outlive their own children. The idea of continuing on while everyone around you died was so depressing, it was practically paralyzing. No wonder Brivari was so upset.

*All you can do,* she said finally, *is all any of us can do—you live your life, and you hope for the best. No one knows for certain what will happen in the future; not me, not you, not anyone. I expect to outlive my parents, but I may not. I expect Philip to outlive me, but he....he may not," she continued, her breath catching in her throat at the mere thought that anything could happen to her baby. *You expect to have to wait much longer for your hybrids, but you may not. None of us knows what will happen. So we do the best we can with what we do know, we control what we can, and we don't waste our time worrying about what we can't. Or at least we try not to,* she amended. "Because when we do, we waste the life we have, and we each only get one. We can't afford to waste it. And neither can you. You may live a lot longer than we do, but you still only get one life.*

*I wish it were that simple,* Brivari murmured.

*It is that simple,* Dee insisted. *You're making it harder than it needs to be. Isn't it hard enough already?*

Brivari didn't say anything for a long time, long enough for Dee to drain her wine glass and wish for more. *Give my regards to your parents,* he said finally. *I have to be going.*

Go where? Dee thought as he walked away. To mope some more? Brivari simply wasn't the type to give up easily; seeing him like this was alarming. Still, she couldn't argue that he didn't have a reason to be depressed. She sat on the porch and tried to imagine what he was facing for a few more minutes before heading back inside and hugging the very first person she saw, who happened to be her mother.

"My goodness," Emily said, returning the hug hesitantly as though not quite certain it was real. "What brought this on?"

"Does it matter?" Dee whispered.

She felt a hand on her back. "No," Emily said quietly. "It doesn't."




******************************************************


Ruth Bruce's rooming house,

Roswell





Courtney gratefully set her suitcase down on the sidewalk and squinted at the address on the piece of paper in her hand, then at the house in front of her. 151 Cheltenham Road had turned out to be a large, two-story house about a mile from the bus station and less than a block from Roswell's main street. She'd walked here, having not wanted to spend the precious little currency she had on one of the taxi's lined up outside the station that appeared to be doing a brisk business. Roswell was booming, and the irony was that it had her planet to thank for that. Who would have thought that the deaths of royalty across the galaxy would have such a profound effect on a little town on a primitive planet light years away? Hefting her suitcase once again, she proceeded up the front walk and onto the front porch, where she rang the bell and waited patiently until an older human woman answered the door.

"Hi," Courtney said. "I'm here to visit someone who lives here, Mark Green. Is he in?"

"Upstairs, dear," the woman said. "First door on the right. I'm Mrs. Bruce, the landlady."

"Nice to meet you," Courtney smiled, stepping over the threshold and sighing when she saw the steep, narrow staircase in front of her. A minute later she'd coaxed her aching feet to climb it and was knocking on a door marked "2B". No one answered. She tried again with no result.

"Isn't he there?" Mrs. Bruce called from the base of the stairs. "He might be sound asleep. Stays out late sometimes, that one, and ties one on. Let me fetch my keys."

Great, Courtney thought sourly. All she needed was a drunken roommate. Not that "Mark" would be the first of their expedition to go overboard with Earthly distractions. Most of them had never known the kinds of freedom they were enjoying here, and it wasn't unusual for people to get carried away.

"Here we go," Mrs. Bruce said, bustling up the stairs and inserting a key into the lock. The door opened to reveal a single large room with kitchen appliances in one corner, a sitting area in another, and a rumpled, empty bed near the window.

"Now, that's odd," Mrs. Bruce said. "It looks like he didn't even come home last night."

"Is there anywhere else in the house he could be?" Courtney asked.

"Well, there's the bathroom," Mrs. Bruce said, peering out the door, "but that's empty. The two roomers up here share that one bathroom. My kitchen's off limits because everyone has their own. I suppose he might be in the yard.....oh, there's the bell," she said as the doorbell sounded downstairs. "I'll be right back."

Mrs. Bruce hurried off to answer the door while Courtney wandered around the room, opening drawers and cupboards. Whoever Mark Green was, he ate little, wore little, and from the looks of the bed, slept little. And washed little, she added, wrinkling her nose at the contents of a laundry sack which should have been laundered days ago. She wasn't looking forward to living with a slob, but she didn't have much of a choice until she found a job. Still, any place was better than living next door to Nicholas and his minions. Greer had dropped her off at the bus station with the air of someone washing his hands of a problem, and the feeling was absolutely mutual. Slob or no slob, she intended to milk this Mark for everything she needed to know to live on her own as a human so she would never need to depend on anyone else again.

"Oh my goodness!" Mrs. Bruce's voice floated up from the first floor, sounding alarmed. Curious, Courtney looked up from the drawer she'd been rifling through and paused; a moment later, two sets of footsteps sounded up the stairs. Probably Mark, she thought. If he hadn't checked his communicator, he wouldn't know he was having a visitor, so he'd probably just told his landlady that whoever she'd let into his room was an imposter. Closing the drawer, she repositioned herself in the center of the room as though she'd been waiting politely for the landlady to return.

And return the landlady did, followed by a uniformed human enforcer that was definitely not Mark. "Oh dear," Mrs. Bruce said, obviously flustered. "Sheriff, this is.....oh dear, I never got your name," she said to Courtney, growing downright agitated.

"Courtney," Courtney said hurriedly. "Courtney Harris."

"Miss Harris, this is Sheriff Valenti," Mrs. Bruce said, "and he....I..." She stopped, at a complete loss for words.

"Why don't you let me handle this, Ruth," the sheriff said soothingly.

Mrs. Bruce gave Courtney a sympathetic pat. "The sheriff will help you out, dear," she said, obviously grateful to be off the hook. Courtney eyed the sheriff as the landlady bustled off, wondering what he was supposed to "help" her with. To be facing an enforcer after being in town only a little over an hour was not encouraging.

"Miss Harris, I'm Sheriff Valenti of the Roswell Sheriff's department."

"Hi," Courtney said uncertainly.

"Just arrived?" the sheriff asked, glancing at her suitcase.

"Yes," Courtney said, careful to keep her voice even. What was this all about? Had she done something wrong? Had she given herself away somehow?

"By car?"

"Bus."

"Welcome to Roswell," the sheriff smiled. "You have family here?"

"No."

"Just passing through?"

"I....I'm looking for work," Courtney said. "I hear Roswell's a good place to find a job."

"Uh huh. That it is," the sheriff agreed. He paused a moment, his eyes drifting around the room as Courtney waited in wary silence for the next query. "I understand you're looking for Mark Green."

"Yes, I was," Courtney answered, practically sagging with relief. Mark must have gone and gotten himself into trouble with the human law, something all of them had been strictly ordered not to do. The last thing they wanted was to bring attention to themselves, but obviously that's what Mark had done. Her lessons on human law were fuzzy, but she vaguely remembered something about currency being used to shorten one's imprisonment. If that's what was going on, Mark would just have to wait; she was quite certain her small stash wouldn't be enough to accomplish that.

"Is Mark a friend of yours?"

"Not really," Courtney said truthfully.

"Then why are you looking for him?"

The sheriff's tone was casual, but it was clear that it might not be wise to know too much about Mark Green right now. "I needed a place to stay while I was looking for work, and he said I could live with him for awhile," Courtney said.

"Have you known Mark a long time?"

"No. We'd just met."

"When?"

"A week or two ago."

"Uh huh. Where?"

"At a bar," Courtney answered, beginning to sweat. She hadn't expected to have to come up with this many details, but bars were common human meeting places.

"Which bar?"

"I....I don't remember the name," Courtney said, flustered. "Sheriff, did I do something wrong? I've only just arrived, Mark's not here, and now you show up and start interrogating me—"

"I'm not interrogating you, Miss Harris, I'm just asking a few questions," she sheriff corrected.

"And I've given you a few answers," Courtney said, an edge to her voice. "What say we switch and I'll ask you some questions. Like what's going on here, and why do you want to know how I know Mark?"

The sheriff gave her an appraising look as Courtney forced herself to hold his gaze. I shouldn't have done that, she admonished herself. Rule #1 was don't run afoul of the law. Rule #2 was don't antagonize enforcers because doing so could cause you to violate rule #1 even if you hadn't already. Wonderful. Her first phone call to her father was likely to be from a jail cell. She was just about to backpedal and apologize when the sheriff spoke.

"Miss Harris, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I'm afraid Mr. Green is dead."

Dead? "Dead?" Courtney repeated. "But.....how....."

"His body was discovered earlier this morning," the sheriff continued. "We think someone was trying to rob him because he had a large amount of cash on him when he was found."

Courtney sank slowly down on the end of the bed, shaking all over. Dead? How could Mark be dead? The husk's seal could be broken if one knew exactly how to do it, but the fact that there was something left for this enforcer to identify meant that Mark had been killed while the husk had been left intact. It was very, very difficult to kill an Argilian without also destroying the husk. A husk was a living thing, a life form in its own right that had been designed to either heal quickly or give way entirely, removing any evidence that humans could examine. For Mark to die with his husk intact....that wasn't supposed to happen.

"I'm sorry," the sheriff said gently, kneeling beside her, mistaking her agitation for grief. "I know this is a shock. Rest assured I'll be looking into Mark's death, and I'll let you know the minute I learn anything. Do you know if he has any family?"

"Uh....no," Courtney stammered. "None that I know of."

"All right. Let me get you a glass of water, and you just sit tight while I have a look around his room and see if I can find anything that might help."

Courtney accepted the glass of water with a nod and spent the next ten minutes sitting tensely on the bed while the sheriff combed the little room thoroughly, leaving no drawer untouched. By the time he was finished, she was absolutely nauseous as the ramifications of this latest development became clearer. Husks were life forms and thus could die, but they were essentially separate from the Argilians they housed and would wither at a different rate. Human medicine was primitive, but surely someone would notice that Mark's "body" wasn't decaying the way a normal human body would. Deprived of nourishment, the husk would eventually fail and allow Earth's deadly atmosphere inside, causing instant decompression; she was quite sure the humans would notice if Mark's body suddenly exploded or inexplicably disappeared. And when that happened, they would go looking for answers, and they would start with anyone who had anything at all to do with Mark Green. Thank goodness she hadn't introduced herself as his sister like she'd been planning to do.

"Are you okay?" the sheriff asked, having finished his rummaging.

"No," Courtney said truthfully.

"I thought you said you and Mark had just met," the sheriff said, watching her closely.

"Do people you've just met usually get murdered?" Courtney said sharply, fear making her voice rise. "And that's not all of it. Mark said I could stay with him. Now I have nowhere to go."

The sheriff dropped his eyes and glanced toward the door. "I would imagine Mr. Green's rent was paid through the end of the month. I'll talk to Mrs. Bruce. Maybe she'll let you stay here until then. That'll give you a couple of weeks to find a job. How's that sound?"

"Okay," Courtney said dully. "Thanks."

"I'm really sorry," the sheriff said gently. "Not a very good first day in Roswell, is it?"

"No," Courtney whispered.

"I'll send Mrs. Bruce up on my way out," the sheriff continued. "The two of you can talk things over. One of my men will drop by to collect Mr. Green's things. And if you need anything, Miss Harris, you just call me, all right?"

Courtney nodded wordlessly, holding herself together until the sheriff's footsteps had faded down the stairs before she lay back on the bed, curling into a ball. Now what? she thought wearily. Now what?




******************************************************




11:55 p.m.

Columbia Medical Center, New York City





"Good evening, Doctor Johnson," the charge nurse at the nurse's station said. "Dr. Fenton and his guest are waiting for you in Room 314."

"Thank you," Marie said, heading around the corner and striding purposefully toward Room 314, only to lose her nerve halfway there and duck into the nurses' bathroom, the only one available to her given that most doctors were men. Fortunately it was empty; no doubt the nurses would have found the sight of Doctor Johnson peering worriedly into a mirror and applying another coat of lipstick with a trembling hand to be very disturbing. Marie certainly did. She'd prepped for this all day and now here she was, shaking and scared. She couldn't possibly walk into that room in this condition. If she couldn't pull herself together, she'd have to leave.

The fact that she was here at all was something of a surprise after her reaction to the meeting with Dr. Fenton last night. His announcement of the price of admission to the particular study he'd been invited to join had rattled her badly, so badly that she'd spent a full half hour on the bench outside the hospital in the dead of night before returning to her apartment. "A female patient who is a ward of the state or eligible for such a designation, due either to injury or illness. And she has to be of child-bearing age with all reproductive organs intact." Was it possible that after all this time, all the running and the subterfuge and the care that she'd put into making a new identity for herself, that Pierce had found her again by sheer chance? What were the odds? And if Pierce was behind this research on women of "child-bearing age", what was she going to do about it?

It was only on the walk back to the apartment that a modicum of sense had returned. Research was being done all the time in every field imaginable; Columbia itself was at the forefront of many different types. Any research involving reproduction, pregnant women, or children was the most difficult to do because, by it's very nature, research involved a certain amount of failure. While that failure was understood and accepted when dealing with adult subjects, it was much less well tolerated when it affected society's most vulnerable. Perhaps she had overreacted. Perhaps the use of subjects like Dr. Fenton's unfortunate patient was a small price to pay for avoiding the risk with a healthy adult, providing it was done legally, of course. There was the question of what the patient herself would have wanted, but even Marie had to admit that patient was no longer in a position to want anything. And there was the fact that, if Marie were to find herself in a similar state, she would gladly have donated her body to science to be used however it saw fit. By the time she had climbed into bed with her sleeping husband, Marie had resolved to at least go to the meeting and see what was what before jumping to any further conclusions.

Still, she'd found it prudent to take at least some precautions. What if she found herself facing Pierce himself? Granted, her name was different and her hair was now short and a totally different color, but that wouldn't be enough to fool Pierce in close quarters. She'd worn a formal dress coat to minimize her resemblance to the Yvonne White of Pierce's memory who had always worn military uniforms, and donned a hat which swept down partially over her face. She'd even mentally reviewed the building's layout to familiarize herself with possible exits and places to hide. All of this was most likely completely unnecessary, but it had made her feel better....until now, that is, when she had suffered a sudden anxiety attack. What if it really was Pierce? What if her disguise wasn't good enough? She could still walk away, but wasn't it her duty as one of his victims to find out, to prevent that list of victims from growing as John had said? And what if this was perfectly legitimate research, as it probably was, and walking away from it meant passing up the chance of a lifetime?

Marie adjusted her hat a bit lower over one eye and left the bathroom, resolved to at least find out what was going on. She knocked on the door to 314 before slowly pushing it open, unwilling to rush right in until she saw who Fenton was meeting with. A single glance at the man examining the chart at the foot of the bed told her that it wasn't Pierce—he was too short, too young, and had too much hair. So all this fretting had been for nothing after all.

"Doctor!" Fenton beamed, obviously delighted to see her. "I'm so glad you decided to join us. My, how nice you look tonight! I hope we didn't take you away from something."

"I had a previous engagement," Marie said evasively. "I didn't have time to change."

"And I think I can safely say that neither of us minds," Fenton said. "Hospital whites are so boring. Doctor Johnson, this is Doctor Joshua Burke. Doctor Burke, this is Doctor Marie Johnson, a third year resident at this hospital and one of the finest of our up-and-coming neurologists."

"Doctor Johnson," Dr. Burke smiled, extending a hand. "I've heard so much about you, all of it good."

"I'm flattered," Marie replied, accepting the handshake. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch your specialty, doctor?"

"Psychiatry," Dr. Burke answered. "I practice out of a state hospital."

"Which part of the country?" Marie asked.

"Not the garden spot, I'm afraid," Burke chuckled. "The hospital is rather remote on purpose, built out in the desert in case any of the inmates escaped. The ones who are mobile, that is."

" 'Desert'?" Marie echoed, hoping the alarm in her voice wasn't audible.

"I'm afraid so," Dr. Burke said apologetically. "We're in De Baca County, New Mexico, which is rather sparsely populated. But just one county south of us is the famous Roswell, home of everything 'alien'. It's quite the place to visit. You might want to do a little sightseeing when you come for your interview if you've never seen it."

A sudden chill gripped Marie as the temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees. "No," she said faintly. "Haven't had the pleasure."





~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


I'll be gone over Thanksgiving, so I'll post Chapter 7 on Sunday, December 2nd. :)
BRIVARI: "In our language, the root of the word 'Covari' means 'hidden'. I'm always there, Your Highness, even if you don't see me."
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Kathy W
Obsessed Roswellian
Posts: 690
Joined: Thu Oct 31, 2002 5:06 am

Post by Kathy W »

Hello to everyone reading! I hope everyone who celebrated Thanksgiving had a good one. We actually managed to find a small turkey this year, which means I didn't have to get up at the crack of dawn to toss it in the oven and didn't have enough leftovers to feed an army. :mrgreen:
Michelle in Yonkers wrote:Do not tell me that Marie didn't talk this over with Steven?
Okay, I won't tell you.

*Ducks*

She's rather pig-headed, isn't she? So is Steven, so this should be interesting. And noisy. ;)
And -- yes. My finger healed beautifully, sealed together and disinfected by the turmeric. I'm amazed. I play the Celtic harp, and had let it lapse for a bit, but just as I'd been practicing for a few days straight, I had to go and cut the most needed finger. Now I can play again! .
Oh my goodness, I forgot about the harp! :shock: That's probably the worst possible place to hurt yourself for a harpist. Reminds me of the time I got a stress fracture in my foot and had to baby it for 2 years. My doctor said, "Stay off it for 6 months". Right. I'm a dance teacher! It healed, but it took a while. I wish tumeric worked for that too. :P
kj4ever wrote:Ahhh so I can assume that Courntey did know where Michael was the entire time???
Not necessarily. She knows his hybrid is out there, but may not have been aware of when or where he emerged or what happened to him afterward.
Misha wrote:Offers, uh? I don't know, Kathy? She's the beta, so she has the last word
Almost done! Maybe I should streamline my beta-ing (is that a word?) I always read what you send me 3 times: Once for the story, a second time for the mechanics, and a third time in case I missed anything, but that does stretch it out. :oops:







CHAPTER SEVEN


June 18, 1959, 7:30 a.m.

New York City




"I can't believe you're actually considering this!" Steven exclaimed. "Are you out of your mind?"

Marie sighed and stared at her uneaten breakfast as Steven thundered on, reminding herself that she'd deliberately broached this subject before they both left for work because that would give her the rest of the day away from him in case he took it badly. A wise instinct, as it turned out, as he was taking it very badly indeed.

"How could you even think of just trotting out to some hospital in the middle of nowhere when this has Pierce written all over it?" Steven demanded. "Do you have a death wish, or something?"

"Steven, there is absolutely no evidence that Pierce has anything to do with this," Marie said patiently. "I admit it's a little too coincidental that Dr. Burke's hospital is in New Mexico, but the fact is that we don't know where Pierce intended to send me if he ever succeeded. Brisson never said, probably because he never knew."

"He said it was in a 'remote location'," Steven reminded her. "Tell me this doesn't fit the bill."

"Of course it does—just like dozens of others," Marie said. "Many mental hospitals are in 'remote locations' because normal people don't like to have mental patients anywhere near them."

"But this one is near the base!"

"Eighty-five miles north and in a different county isn't exactly 'near'," Marie said. "And distance means nothing. Pierce was an expert with sedatives, which are handed out like candy in mental institutions, so he could easily have knocked me out for as long as it took to transport me wherever he wanted to."

"Okay, then what about this guy, this 'Burke'? What kind of legitimate researcher holds secret meetings at midnight?"

"He came in on a late flight, and the meeting wasn't secret," Marie reminded him. "The nurses knew about it."

"Then what about what he's planning to do with this patient of Fenton's?" Steven continued, unwilling to let it go. "Does her family even know what's going on?"

"As a matter of fact, they do. I made a point of meeting the patient's husband early this morning when he arrived to visit. He knows exactly what's going on. He can't afford the care his wife needs, and this way he gets paid to have her institutionalized, which will help with their children. And I can't disagree that she's basically gone, Steven. Her body is functioning, but her mind isn't."

"But what's Burke going to do to her?" Steven persisted. "You still haven't told me exactly what kind of research he's conducting."

Marie hesitated, this being the one thing that still bothered her about last night's meeting. "That's because he was rather vague," she admitted, "but—"

"There!" Steven said triumphantly. "Why would he be vague unless he had something to hide?"

"—conducting research on this type of subject is undeniably controversial," Marie continued, ignoring the interruption. "Doctors have been blackballed by their own colleagues, and even the families of the subjects have been ostracized if others find out what they've done. It's not necessarily something you'd want to discuss with just anyone—"

"You're a doctor, not 'just anyone'," Steven said crossly.

"—but it is completely legal," Marie finished. "The patient's husband holds power of attorney, all the necessary consents have been obtained, the papers have been drawn up....and that's exactly what makes me think this isn't Pierce. Pierce wouldn't bother with all that troublesome legal stuff. He just takes what he wants, legalities be damned."

"He did when he was a one man show," Steven muttered. "Maybe he isn't any more."

"Look, two days ago you were urging me to find out where Pierce is," Marie said, unable to control her exasperation any longer. "Now you think I'm onto something, and you're upset? What changed?"

"I wanted you to make some phone calls, not deliver yourself directly into his hands," Steven retorted.

"And what if this isn't what you think it is? What if this is perfectly legitimate and unconnected with Pierce in any way?"

"What say we let John find that out," Steven argued. "If it's okay, you can go in."

"And if it isn't?" Marie asked. "Then what? John kills Pierce, and that's it?"

"You aren't really suggesting that would be a bad thing, are you?"

"Do you really think killing Pierce is going to make everything all better?"

"Would for me," Steven declared.

Marie rose from the table and walked to the window, gazing outside at yet another hot day in New York for a moment before she spoke again. "When I went back to the compound right after Pierce almost killed me, I found Brivari in my quarters. He asked me if I was certain about still willing to help John escape, and I told him I had to, had to stop Pierce, had to make certain that what happened to me never happened to anyone else. And he told me I couldn't stop it. Maybe I'd stop Pierce himself, but I couldn't stop the type of research he was doing, or the fact that others would take up the torch. He said you could slow progress or regulate it, but you couldn't stop it; there would always be someone pushing the envelope, breaking the rules, crossing the line, convinced they had a right because it was for 'science', or 'progress', or 'posterity', or however they justified it to themselves."

"He's probably right," Steven said.

"Probably," Marie agreed, "but I didn't want to hear it then. I got mad and asked him if he really expected me to just give up, to do nothing because I couldn't stop it entirely. He said the only way to affect it was to become one of those who would regulate it, who would pass judgment on those who crossed the line. I've never forgotten that conversation. It didn't mean much when I was in school, but now that I'm almost finished with my residency, I'm in a position to choose a path that might make me one of those regulators." She paused, watching people walk by on the sidewalk below. "What if this is something that needs regulating, Steven? Whether Pierce is involved or not, what if this is something that crosses that line? And if it is, then someone needs to blow the whistle, someone that others will listen to....like a doctor. Like me."

"Fine," Steven grumbled. "Then let some other doctor do the whistle-blowing. And I still don't see what this has to do with sending John in there to find out if Pierce is involved. If he is, he's obviously not alone because this Burke guy is in on it, so even if Pierce dies, there'll still be something to blow the whistle on."

"But that's not good enough," Marie insisted. "If Pierce is involved and John kills him, an awful lot of evidence will die with him, and Pierce will never stand trial. And he has to, Steven. He needs to be arrested, tried, and convicted, not only in court, but in the courts of both public and medical opinion. The Pierce's of the world operate in secrecy, and destroying that secrecy is the key to shutting them down. Their dying in secret just maintains the veil that protected them in the first place, and that's exactly what I don't want to do."

"But—"

"Did you ever think that maybe this has been put in my path for a reason?" Marie ploughed on. "If there's a God, maybe He threw this my way because He knew I'd respond. He knew I'd never play ball, that I'd feel a responsibility to—"

"When did this turn into a Sunday School lesson?" Steven demanded. "This isn't about the health of the universe or divine providence, it's about your life, Yvonne, your safety, not—"

He stopped, registering the look on her face from his use of her real name. "Look," he said, making an obvious effort to control himself, "just promise me that you won't do anything or make any promises until we hash this out. There has to be a way for you to fulfill what you see as your obligation and stay safe at the same time. We just have to find it."

Marie turned back to the window. "We're getting ahead of ourselves. The meeting last night was just the first step. If Burke is interested, Fenton and I will be invited for an interview, and then I have no idea if we'll get the job. For all I know, I'll never hear anything more about it. We may be arguing for nothing."

"Right," Steven sighed. He glanced at his watch and did a double take. "Damn! I'm late. Are you home for dinner tonight?"

"Unless I have to do a double shift."

"Good; see you then. And don't go running off to another state without me, you hear?"

Marie smiled and kissed him goodbye, remaining at the window until she saw him walk out the front door below, privately noting that she hadn't made him the promise he'd asked for.....and he hadn't noticed.



******************************************************



Parker's Diner,

Roswell, New Mexico





"Okay, so that's a six hour shift with two fifteen minute breaks at a dollar an hour, plus tips. Schedule's posted in the back. Be here ready to work at least ten minutes before your shift starts. Here's your uniform; it's your job to clean it. Got it?"

No. "Yes," Courtney said helplessly as the proprietor of the restaurant dumped a bundle of clothing into her arms. "Um....would my first 'shift' be posted on the schedule in the back?"

"Your first shift starts as soon as you change into your uniform."

"What....you mean right away?" Courtney stammered. "But..."

"Look, sweetheart, do you want this job or not?"

"I....yes," Courtney said, nodding vigorously. "Yes, I do."

"Good," the proprietor said. "We only just expanded, so we need to get everything running nice and smooth before Hollywood rolls into town in a couple more weeks. Go in the back and change, grab a pad, and get to work. Nancy will tell you which tables are yours."

The proprietor gave her a gentle shove toward the swinging door that apparently marked the entrance to "the back", which turned out to be a hot, smelly cooking area where grease sizzled on cooking stoves and steam made damp clouds. She stood there for a moment, clutching her uniform and watching the humans doing the cooking read the little pieces of paper the servers hung up for them on twirling holders, shovel food onto plates, then plop them on a long, narrow shelf what seemed like only seconds later. Everything moved at a furious pace, and for a moment, she almost lost her nerve. How was she ever going to learn everything she needed to know to survive on her own? Perhaps she should just call her father and have him come get her.

"So you came to eat and stayed to work," said a smiling, older human woman who appeared out of a cloud of steam. "What's your name, dear?"

"Courtney," Courtney whispered.

"Pretty name," the woman said approvingly. "I'm Nancy; I'll be training you. Go on in the bathroom and get your uniform on, and then come find me. And don't forget your button."

"Button?" Courtney echoed. But Nancy had already steered her toward a door off a little back hallway, and a moment later, Courtney found herself alone in a small room with a toilet, a sink, and a mirror, in which she studied herself for a long minute.

"You wanted this," she said firmly to her reflection as though expecting it to disagree. "You decided you were going to stay and at least give it a try. There's no harm in giving it a try. You can always go back home, but if you leave, you won't get a chance like this again."

The pep talk seemed to work. Calmer now, she set her bundle down on the toilet seat and began to sort through it, separating one item of clothing from another until she was certain she knew what went where. Then she began to change unhurriedly, taking her time. If her first "shift" didn't start until after she had donned this uniform, then she couldn't be late.

She almost hadn't been here at all. After the enforcer had left last night, she had laid on Mark Green's bed for a long time, ticking through her options and liking none of them. This was the first time one of their operatives had died, or at least the first she knew of, and his death was problematic in more ways than one because Mark was supposed to teach her the in's and out's of surviving on one's own in the human world. All of the Argilian operatives had received basic training pertaining to this particular part of the planet, including the human language spoken most frequently, human family structure, and the rudiments of human government. This was enough to pass as human while living in an Argilian household and having passing contact with humans; only a chosen subset received the additional training necessary to actually live and work among humans on a regular basis, to infiltrate their organizations and operate independently. Initially this system had been nothing more than Nicholas' typical hubris; having expected to capture at least one Warder quickly, he hadn't bothered with advanced training for all operatives. As time went on and it had become apparent that they'd be here for awhile, the concern turned to defection; Nicholas didn't want large numbers of his troops capable of independence, so he had carefully rationed advanced level training. He'd have to ease up on that rationing now that he wanted everyone in the field, but unfortunately, that didn't do her one bit of good—she had expected to let Mark handle the details of life among humans while she hunted for Warders. She was woefully unprepared for the intricacies of human existence, and there seemed to be more of those everywhere she turned.

Take, for example, the matter of the "lease". About an hour after the enforcer had left, Mrs. Bruce had politely knocked on the door, offered her condolences, and then launched into a conversation that had left Courtney's head reeling. It seemed one had to produce currency called "rent" in order to stay in one of Mrs. Bruce's apartments, and Mark's "rent" was indeed paid through the end of the month as the sheriff had suspected. Mrs. Bruce offered to let her stay in Mark's room until the last day of the month, at which time she would either have to move out or sign a "lease". This "lease" turned out to be a lengthy, confusing document which Courtney had read several times and come away with nothing more than the fact that she was supposed to pay the landlady the incredible sum of $25 every month as "rent". Which meant she needed to find a job immediately, not just when she felt like it. This morning had found her wandering the streets of downtown Roswell wondering how one knew where to look for jobs. The smell of food from this particular establishment had been overpowering; she hadn't eaten since lunch yesterday, and she spent some of her precious currency on a meal which disappeared almost before the plate had hit the counter. It had been while she was gulping her breakfast that she'd seen the "help wanted" sign and impulsively asked the man behind the counter what skills were required for the job.

"Can you talk?" the man had asked.

"Yes," Courtney had answered warily, finding that to be an exceptionally stupid question.

"Can you walk?"

"I walked in here, didn't I?"

The next ten minutes had been the most bewildering of her life, even more so than when she had first left their ship. The man had turned out to be the proprietor of this particular establishment, and upon being assured that she could walk and talk, he'd begun talking to her in rapid fire human too fast for her to process. The conversation had ended with the uniform being plopped into her hands, and now here she was; she'd found a job, but had no idea what it was or how to do it.

Courtney finished tying the extra piece of cloth around her middle and adjusted the headpiece. Fortunately she hadn't been so addled that she hadn't noticed how these apparently useless items of clothing were worn. Examining herself in the mirror, she mentally compared her image to those of the employees she'd seen so far. No doubt she'd gotten something wrong, but close enough. Now she would just have to figure out what she was supposed to do and do it well enough that she could continue to stay here. Because she had to at least try to stay here—that had been the one thing, perhaps the only thing that had been clear last night amidst all the confusion. Sooner or later, the humans would figure out that something was very wrong with Mark's body, which is precisely why Nicholas would recall her in a heartbeat were he to learn of Mark's death. And he mustn't do that. The Warders were tied to this place; the resistance was certain of that because they had information Nicholas lacked—the fact that Larak had spoken with both Warders via a private communication frequency shortly before Jaddo's escape and warned them of the Argilians' pending arrival. With more enemies approaching, the safest thing for the Warders to do would have been to leave the hybrids right where they were. So the likelihood that they were still hidden in their original location was very strong, and that original location must be in this area, near the site of the crash. Even if the Warders weren't living here, they would return, and when they did, the only Argilian to note their presence would be a rebel operative, one who would keep that precious information to herself and her fellow rebels. Nicholas would never know.

Assuming I can pull this off, she thought wearily, gazing in the mirror. But she had to try. Fate had put her here, in the prime position to find what everyone on Antar wanted to find for one reason or another. Now she just had to hold down a human job to provide the necessary currency for her survival, cover Mark's absence, and avoid being killed by murderous Covari. What was that human expression? "Piece of cake," she murmured to herself, as she opened the bathroom door. "Whatever that means."




******************************************************



Mescalero Indian Reservation




"You were up early today, Nasedo."

Brivari nodded in greeting as Quanah eased himself into a seat next to him in the yard behind his house, facing the woods which had been Brivari's refuge years ago. "The sunrise was especially beautiful today," he answered. "But you must know that because you were awake as well."

"This cough has plagued me for some time now," Quanah admitted, his voice gruff. "It interrupts my sleep most nights. It plagues my mother also."

"Is it anything serious?" Brivari asked, genuinely concerned. His friend was as calm and good-tempered as ever, but he looked weary and sounded worse.

"It is only a bad cold," Quanah answered. "I am more concerned for my mother. Even a cold could be dangerous at her age."

"Perhaps you should consult a healer," Brivari suggested. "And no offense, but I don't mean your medicine man."

Quanah smiled, that simple act sending him into a fit of coughing. "I have already visited the doctor at the clinic. He gave me some medicine. And I would appreciate you not mentioning that to Itza-chu."

"Mentioning what?" Brivari asked dryly, knowing full well what the medicine man's reaction would be. Quanah's people seemed to save visits to a truly scientific healer for only the most serious conditions. At first Brivari had ascribed this hesitancy to superstition; in reality, it was more related to a lack of currency. "If you need further assistance, I will be happy to pay for it," Brivari said. "No one need know."

Quanah shook his head. "That is very generous of you, but unnecessary. The doctor was unconcerned for me. This will pass."

"You don't look well," Brivari pressed.

" I am not the only one," Quanah noted. "Your rising early to brood is unlike you."

"I wasn't 'brooding', I was enjoying the sunrise."

Quanah chuckled, producing only a few coughs this time. "That explanation would work with almost anyone else....but not me. I can tell when an old friend is troubled. I know what ails me; what ails you?"

Brivari didn't reply for a long time and Quanah didn't press him, the two sitting in comfortable silence in the summer morning sun. Old friend. That is what he and Valeris had called each other. It seemed both odd and proper to hear those words coming from Quanah, who came closest to occupying the position left vacant by Valeris. Brivari had spent a great deal of time in Quanah's village these past several years, not in the cave, as many thought, but at Quanah's house, which offered more room now that all his children had married and his father had died. Brivari had attended Taklishim's funeral, along with the weddings of each of Quanah's children and the blessing ceremonies for each grandchild, and was as welcome in any of their homes as he was in Quanah's. These "Indians", outcasts on their own world, had become family for this outcast from another.

"I have recently had some bad news," Brivari said at length. "A major task entrusted to me will take much longer than expected."

"And you blame yourself for this?"

"For the additional time needed? No," Brivari allowed. "But for the fact that the task exists at all....." His voice trailed off as he closed his eyes. "My life's work....my crowning achievement, destroyed....that I blame myself for. And now it appears I will not live to see it restored."

"Is there anyone to carry on in your place?" Quanah asked.

Brivari hesitated a moment. "Yes."

"So your 'life's work' may indeed be restored, but you will not be the one restoring it," Quanah murmured.

"Yes."

They sat in silence a while longer, both gazing into the woods, Quanah asking nothing more. He never pried, Quanah, never pressed for details that Brivari was unwilling to give. Their friendship differed from that which Brivari had with David Proctor, who knew so much about Brivari's life and purpose that conversation with him invariably included a great deal of detail. Brivari had discovered merit in seeking the opinion of one who had only an overview of a given situation. Everyone tended to get mired in the details, something one could not do if one didn't know them to begin with.

"You are a fortunate man, Nasedo," Quanah said finally. "Many men have not lived to see the completion of their 'life's work', and you have not only seen it completed, you have arranged for it's repair following it's fall. Few could say the same."

"I believe this is what is meant by 'rose-colored glasses'," Brivari said dryly. "Forgive me if I choose to view this as nothing less than a disaster."

"And there lies my point," Quanah said. "Very often the events which we label 'good' or 'bad' are neither; they simply are. It is our response to those events which makes them 'good' or 'bad', and that response, unlike the event itself, is a choice we make. Many things are nothing more or less than what we make of them."

"So in other words, I should stop moping and go make a life for myself while I'm waiting?"

Quanah chuckled, producing another fit of coughing. "Good advice, although I would have phrased it differently."

"No surprise there," Brivari said. "It comes from one young and tactless."

"All the more reason to listen to it," Quanah said. "When one receives the same advice from two very different sources, one is always wise to consider it."

"And I would," Brivari said, "had I any idea how to follow it. I have no idea how to 'make a life' for myself. My life was my achievement; then my life became the task of restoring that achievement."

"It appears that it still is. Only now you have the opportunity to make your life even more than that."

"If only I'd seen it coming," Brivari whispered. "Preventing it would have been so simple if only I'd been listening."

"We all have regrets, Nasedo," Quanah said quietly, once again seeking no clarification whatsoever as to the exact nature of Brivari's. "A man may be known by his deeds, but a necessary part of those deeds is how he chooses to respond to the inevitable setbacks." He shifted in his chair, triggering more coughing which took several seconds to subside. "When I was young, I often noticed that it wasn't always the strongest, the fastest, or even the most deserving who prevailed, but the one who persevered. I thought this unfair until my father pointed out that it was the Creator's way of balancing the equation, of giving those of us who aren't the strongest or fastest a bit of an advantage. Even the fastest runner will never win the race if he quits before it is over. Success is often measured by nothing less than a refusal to give up."

"More rose-colored glasses?" Brivari said doubtfully.

"You should try them sometime," Quanah smiled. "My point is that you, my friend, are not one to give up. This I know as surely as I know I am sitting here right now. I fought a life and death battle with you; that tells one a lot about a man. You will find a way to overcome this disappointment and you will see your task through to its end, or yours, whichever comes first. You can do no less. It is who you are."

I haven't even told him what that task is, Brivari noted privately. Quanah had a great deal of faith with very little information, a skill Brivari had yet to master....and yet that appeared to be exactly what was needed here. Perhaps Quanah was right. Perhaps it was all in the perspective. Perhaps it was time to move on.




******************************************************



Parker's Diner, Roswell




Courtney emerged from the bathroom with her clothes bundled in her arms, wondering what to do next. She didn't have long to wonder. "There you are!" Nancy exclaimed as though Courtney had been missing for a week. "You can use this locker for your things. Go on," she coaxed as she held open the door to a small storage receptacle. "Toss'em in there and let's get you going. I want you on board by lunch."

Mystified, Courtney pushed her clothes into the "locker" and trotted along after Nancy; wasn't "on board" a nautical expression? "I'm giving you the counter," Nancy announced, gesturing toward the window in the swinging door that had ushered Courtney to her latest challenge. "It's easier to start there: Fewer customers, all close together, you don't have to carry plates very far, and there's always someone close by to ask questions. Here's your pad and pen; remember, everything they order gets written down, along with the price next to it. Don't bother adding up the check; Abigail will do that at the register. Get the prices off the menus until you memorize them. Any questions?"

"One," Courtney admitted, staring at the proffered stack of paper and writing instrument. "What exactly am I supposed to be doing?"

Nancy's eyebrows rose. "Excuse me?"

Wrong question, Courtney thought. "What's my job title?" she amended.

" 'Job title'?" Nancy said with amusement. "You're a waitress, dear. Nothing more, nothing less."

"And a 'waitress'.....waits?" Courtney ventured.

Nancy's eyebrows rose further. "On tables," she said. "Or in your case, the counter. Like one of us did for you when you ate there this morning."

"Yes! Right!" Courtney exclaimed as the pieces fell into place. Her server this morning had produced her food and a slip of paper announcing how much currency was owed. That must be what she was supposed to do. "Got it," she assured Nancy, who was watching her warily. "I just...well....the proprietor didn't tell me exactly what I'd be doing."

Nancy's expression softened. "Mr. Parker would lose his head if it wasn't attached," she chuckled. "No, dear, you won't be washing dishes or cleaning floors. Just write down customers' orders, bring them their food, give them their check, take away the dirty dishes, and repeat. Where's your button?"

"What?" Courtney said, moving from delighted that she'd figured out what was expected of her to alarmed that she'd forgotten something.

"It's in your pocket," Nancy said, fishing a circular item out of Courtney's uniform pocket and pinning it to her collar. "There you go. Mr. Parker's trying to give this place a new image, so we all have to wear our buttons."

Doesn't look new to me, Courtney thought, gazing down at the image of an alien, or what passed for an alien in human circles. Actually the likeness wasn't that far off; change the skin color from green to gray and it would be remarkably close. Someone had obviously laid eyes on a real Antarian. How ironic that her first human job required her to wear a relatively accurate image of her true form. Clutching her pen and pad, she pushed through the swinging door and froze, staring at the expanse of counter in front of her—for some reason it looked a lot bigger from this side. Twelve, she gulped, mentally counting the seats. She'd have to "waitress" as many as twelve different customers at once.

"Hey, doll!" a burly human male in a plaid shirt called. "When you're done gapin' at my handsome face, I'd like some coffee."

Courtney flushed as laugher erupted from several males at the counter. "Steady, Henry," a female voice said. "She probably just can't believe how ugly you are, and who could blame her?"

More laughter, this time at "Henry's" expense. The speaker was a sandy-haired young woman at the far end of the counter who winked at Courtney and nodded toward something behind her. Coffee, Courtney thought after she'd spun around. Coffee was blessedly familiar, bearing the closest resemblance to a popular beverage on Antar. A couple of minutes later she'd poured several cups of coffee, the last one for her rescuer who also had a stroller parked beside her stool which held a small boy.

"This is new," the woman remarked. "Mr. Parker never had anything but the bar."

Wait....I know this, Courtney thought, dredging up some of the proprietor's speedy speech . "He's....expanding. Yes, that's what he said. The bar is on still on the other side, and this is the family side. Or something like that."

"Gotta feed the tourists," the woman chuckled. "First day?" she added as Courtney miscalculated and almost overfilled the coffee cup.

Courtney looked up in alarm. "Is it that obvious?" she asked nervously.

The woman smiled. "I waited tables while I was in school," she said, tactfully avoiding the question. "It can be awfully intimidating, especially when the dirty old men get going."

Courtney glanced over at the men who had teased her; some were certainly unkempt, although none looked like they needed to bathe. "I really have no idea what I'm doing," she confessed in a whisper. "Do I go back now and see if they want something to eat, or do I wait?"

"Go back now," the woman advised. "And take this." She folded up the paper menu she was holding and tucked into Courtney's pocket. "That way you can refer to it whenever you need to. Take it home with you tonight and memorize it; it'll save loads of time."

Courtney nodded, replaced the coffee pot, and returned to the knot of men, fully expecting another round of teasing. But they were much more subdued now, ordering quietly as she dutifully scribbled everything down, wondering as she did so what the difference was between eggs "sunny-side up" and "over hard".

"Better watch yourself around that one," one of the men murmured to "Henry". "Got a tongue like her mother's."

Courtney followed their gaze to the sandy-haired woman who was watching the men closely, clearly ready to jump right in again at the first sign of teasing. Making a mental note to thank her later, she added her slips of paper to the rotating order holder, and turned back to the counter, hoping she'd done that right. There were new customers waiting, and more coffee requested all around. She'd reached the end of the row when the bell on the door dingled again.

"Some for me, too, please?" a familiar voice asked.

Courtney stiffened as the enforcer from yesterday slid onto a stool. "Miss Harris," he said pleasantly. "Fancy meeting you here. Sheriff Valenti, in case you forgot."

Not likely, Courtney thought, trying to hold her hand steady, the coffee pot seeming suddenly heavier. "Of course I remember. I haven't had a day like that ever."

"I'll bet you haven't," the sheriff remarked. "I see you got yourself a job. Is Mrs. Bruce going to let you stay?"

"Yes, she is," Courtney said. "Thanks for talking to her for me. Can I get you something to eat?"

"You know, I heard that a train was derailed yesterday right outside Santa Fe," the sheriff said. "Were you on that train?"

"I didn't come by train," Courtney reminded him. "I came by bus."

"Oh. Right. My mistake," the sheriff smiled. "That's right, you said you came by bus to see your friend, Mark."

"He wasn't my friend," Courtney objected. "I'd only met him once."

"You did say that," the sheriff said apologetically. "That's right, you'd just met him at a bar, I believe....and which bar was that?"

Courtney's heart began to pound. "I don't remember the name. I told you that."

"Right," the sheriff said slowly. "Well, can you tell me where the bar was?"

"I....I said I don't remember," Courtney stammered.

"You said you don't remember the name, but you must remember where you were. Was it here in Roswell?"

"It....it couldn't have been in Roswell because my bus didn't get here until yesterday evening," Courtney said, stalling for time as she tried to come up with an answer.

"Right," the sheriff said. "So the bar was.....where?"

Courtney's eyes locked with the sheriff's. He knows, she thought frantically. And she wasn't familiar enough with the area to come up with a plausible answer, so now what did she do?

"Miss Harris, I can understand you not remembering the name of the bar, but I'm finding it hard to believe that you didn't even know what town or city you were in," the sheriff said. "So I'll ask you again: Where were you when you met Mark Green?"

"You don't have to answer that."

Courtney tore her eyes away from the sheriff's to find the sandy-haired woman standing beside him. "You don't have to tell him a blessed thing unless you want to," the woman announced. "Isn't that right, sheriff?"

The sheriff, who had turned around in surprise when he was interrupted, now turned back to his coffee, a slow smile spreading across his face. "Good morning, Miss Proctor. Fancy meeting you here."


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


I'll post Chapter 8 next Sunday. :)
BRIVARI: "In our language, the root of the word 'Covari' means 'hidden'. I'm always there, Your Highness, even if you don't see me."
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Kathy W
Obsessed Roswellian
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Joined: Thu Oct 31, 2002 5:06 am

Post by Kathy W »

Hello and thank you to everyone reading!


Michelle: Ah, but dangling is one of the things I do best! Everyone knows the basics of how this story turns out, so I dangle to survive. :P









CHAPTER EIGHT


June 18, 1959, 9:00 a.m.

Parker's Diner, Roswell




I had her, Valenti thought ruefully as the Harris girl's eyes darted back and forth from him to the Proctor's daughter. She'd been about to crack; he just knew it. And now that she'd been given unsolicited legal advice, he may never have her again. Not the first time he'd been stymied by a Proctor, and most likely not the last.

"So....I can go now?" Miss Harris said uncertainly.

"You can certainly talk to him if you want to," Dee said, settling herself on the stool next to Valenti. "But you don't have to unless he's ordering breakfast or asking where the little boy's room is."

The Harris girl's eyes swung back to Valenti. "I just came in for coffee," he said. "It was nice to see you again, Miss Harris. Best of luck with your new job."

"Nice save," Dee commented as the Harris girl fled. "I didn't expect you to concede defeat so quickly."

"One thing you and your family taught me was to quit when I'm behind," Valenti said. "Which I usually was, so I got a lot of practice. So how've you been, Miss Proctor?"

"Good," Dee answered. "Mama said they'd made you sheriff—congratulations. And I'm not a 'Miss' any more."

"That's right; I heard you and Mr. Evans got hitched. No surprise there," Valenti added with a smile. "So it's 'Mrs. Evans' now....and I see you've come up with a little Mr. Evans."

"Call me 'Dee'; Mrs. Evans sounds like my mother-in-law. And this is Philip," she added, hoisting her son up on her lap. "Say hello to the nosy sheriff, Philip."

"Nosy," Philip repeated solemnly.

"I was just asking Miss Harris some friendly questions," Valenti said.

" 'Friendly', my foot," Dee said dryly. "If that's your version of 'friendly', I'd hate to see you when you're really after something. Oh, wait—I have."

Valenti couldn't help but return the smile she was wearing in spite of her tone. There was an awful lot of water under their shared bridge, even though neither had laid eyes on the other in years. Dee had grown tall, her shoulder length hair pulled back in a utilitarian ponytail, those eyes flashing the same challenge as when they'd first met when she was only eight. She was twenty now if he'd done his math correctly, and those eyes hadn't changed a bit; he'd simply had to wait a while for her to grow into them.

"So is Mr. Evans here with you?" Valenti asked, changing the subject.

"He's at a meeting," Dee said, producing a ring of keys for her son to play with. "He just got his Bachelors in astronomy, and he's on the committee to build the observatory in town."

"I heard about that," Valenti nodded. "And you?"

"I got my degree in political science, and I'm off to law school next fall. Anthony's going back for his masters."

"Good for him," Valenti said. He paused a moment, stirring his coffee. "I remember back when you were nine years old and arguing state law with me, so I'm not surprised that you're comfortable giving legal advice even though you're not a lawyer yet."

Dee raised an eyebrow. "About as comfortable as you are giving the third degree to someone on her very first day of work."

"I wasn't giving her the 'third degree', I was asking her a few questions," Valenti corrected. "Just cleaning up some loose ends."

"Horse hockey," Dee said calmly. "You were fishing."

"See this?" Valenti said, indicating his badge. "That's my fishing license. And you didn't necessarily do her any favors. It's a lot better to answer questions here than down at the station."

"Oh, please," Dee smiled. "You wouldn't be sitting here nursing a cup of coffee if you had enough to bring her in for questioning."

"Questioning does fall within the scope of my duties," Valenti reminded her.

"And refusing to answer falls within the scope of her rights," Dee said. "What'd she do, anyway?"

"I don't think she 'did' anything," Valenti said. "But I do think she's not telling me everything she knows. And you know me well enough to know how I feel about people lying to me."

Dee bent in closer, leaning on one elbow. "And you know me well enough to know that there are times when you have to lie. There were even times you had to lie."

Valenti smiled faintly as he reached in his pocket for change. "It's nice to see you back, Miss Proctor—'Dee'," he amended. "That's going to take some getting used to."

"Is it as hard for you to see me as an adult as it is for my Mama?"

"I doubt it," Valenti answered, setting some coins beside his coffee cup. "As far as I'm concerned, you've always been an adult. It just took a few years for your body to catch up." He donned his hat. "Give my regards to Mr. Evans and your parents....and it was nice meeting you," he added to Philip. "See you around."

Valenti walked outside into the morning sunshine, nodding his thanks to the other patron who held the door for him and puzzling over the fates that had decided to send the Proctor girl his way at just this moment. His involvement with her family had indeed taught him the necessity of lying, a skill he'd be using in the very near future after his frustrating conversation with Doctor Blake this morning when he'd called for an update on what had happened to their murder victim with the exploding body.

"I can't make heads or tails of this," Ray had said, sounding completely befuddled.

"You must have some theories," Valenti had said.

A soft snort had wafted over the phone. "Sure, I've got theories. But none you'd want to hear."

"Try me."

"I can't, Jim. You'd think I'm mad."

"You might be surprised at how much it'd take to surprise me," Valenti had answered. "I want to hear your best guess no matter how crazy that guess sounds to you at the moment. I swear I won't tell anyone."

"No, you won't," Ray had agreed, "because I'm not saying a word until I get more information."

"Good Lord, what is it?" Valenti had chuckled. "Aliens?" There had been a long, uncomfortable pause. "I was only joking," he'd added. "Don't get sore."

"I'm not," the doctor had objected. "It's just that if I'm going to make myself sound like a crackpot, I at least want some data backing me up. I need to send this out for further analysis."

"Absolutely not," Valenti had objected. "I'm not taking any chances with this getting back to the wrong people before I'm ready to let it. Can't you do whatever 'further analysis' you need by yourself?"

"I suppose I could use the university's lab," Ray had said grudgingly. "But you'd be waiting longer for an answer."

"How much longer?"

"A couple of weeks if we're lucky. As much as four if we're not."

"Four weeks?" Valenti echoed. "And what am I supposed to do in the meantime?"

"Sit on it. You're the sheriff. If anyone can sit on it, you can."

"I can't sit on a murder investigation for a month!" Valenti had exclaimed.

"If you want me doing the investigating, you're going to have to," the doctor had declared. "Or if you'd rather, I'll be happy to turn the body—or what's left of it—over to the county coroner, who will promptly notify the base."

And take the investigation right out of my hands, Valenti thought sourly. If he wanted to keep control of this, he was going to have to play it Ray's way. "All right—call me the minute you've got something you're willing to say. Even if it's the middle of the night."

"Bet Andi would love that," Ray had chuckled. "Relax, Jim. You said this guy had no family, and he's certainly not going anywhere. Use the time to nose around until I can get my hands on something definitive. Trust me, you don't want your career on the line with what I've got now."

Already had it there, Valenti thought as he climbed into his cruiser; that business with aliens back in the forties had definitely put his career on the line. Aliens....had that long silence meant Ray was actually considering that? But this couldn't be aliens; he'd watched an alien die back in '47, collapsing into a pile of dirt that looked like coal dust. That hadn't been what happened to Mark Green. No, this was something different, and whatever it was, Courtney Harris knew something about it. All he had to do was drag it out of her.




******************************************************




*She'll never change, will she?* Jaddo asked.

*Doubtful,* Brivari replied, overhearing the Proctor's daughter engage in a verbal sword fight with the enforcer as he and Jaddo ate breakfast in a booth only a few feet away, wearing faces no one would recognize. One of the benefits of Roswell being "alien central", as Emily Proctor liked to call it, was that the steady stream of tourists made it very easy for a shapeshifter to hide. An outsider would be spotted immediately in many communities, but not this one.

*She's certainly not one to parse her words,* Jaddo continued. *Though I suppose I should be grateful for that. We might not be here now if not for that tendency.*

Indeed, Brivari thought silently. It was not lost on him that, despite the difference in age and experience, both Dee and Quanah had given him essentially the same advice. Quanah had couched that advice in soothing terms while Dee had been her usual blunt self....but it was precisely that bluntness which had lingered in his mind, invading his thoughts even in sleep. There were times when tact was a detriment, allowing one to rationalize remaining in whatever comfortable rut one found oneself. Brutal honesty had its place.

*Aren't you going to ask me how the General's funeral went?* Jaddo said.

*I imagine it went like most funerals,* Brivari answered, staring into his coffee cup. *Why—did something unusual happen?*

*You might say that. I found the Healer.*

*You found Lieutenant White? Where?*

*In the same city in which the General was interred. She attended the funeral too.*

*And what of the captain? Is he with her?*

*I didn't see him, but they married long ago,* Jaddo said. *The Healer has become a physician, and Captain Spade is head of security at the hospital where she works. Both are using false identities provided by Sergeant Brisson before his death at Pierce's hands, and the Healer has altered her appearance considerably. They have not been discovered since they went into hiding, and appear to be thriving.*

*And did she have what you wanted?* Brivari asked softly.

Jaddo kept his eyes on his food. *No.*

Silence. A waitress circulated, presenting the check and asking if they needed anything else, and Brivari shook his head, never taking his eyes off Jaddo. It had been one of Jaddo's goals to locate the Healer, not only to see how she fared but to find out if she had any idea how to locate Pierce. Brivari had found that unlikely given that the lieutenant and the captain had obviously fled because of Pierce, but Jaddo had clung to the hope that she could point him in the right direction. Dee had argued that Brivari needed something to occupy his time, but Jaddo already had that; his life's work at the moment was to find and punish Pierce, a goal which had eluded him these past nine years.

*I'm not surprised,* Brivari said. *If I were the Healer, I would stay as far away from Pierce as I could.*

*Staying away doesn't mean she doesn't know where he is. There was no harm in asking.*

*Of course not,* Brivari agreed, *and it's good to know that she and the captain are well.* He paused. *I have news as well. I visited the pod chamber while you were gone.*

Jaddo looked up, his eyes suffused with a longing which made Brivari regret having decided to broach this subject now. Jaddo had already had one piece of bad news, and he was about to have another....but then he often disappeared for days in his pursuit of Pierce. There was no way of telling when the next opportunity to discuss this would arise.

*And?* Jaddo demanded.

*They are alive and well,* Brivari said, beginning with the good news. *And about the size of Dee Proctor's child.*

Jaddo blinked, then turned slowly to gaze at Philip Evans, who was sitting on his mother's lap playing with a ring of keys she'd handed him while she continued her thrust and parry with the enforcer. *Are you sure?* he whispered.

*Quite. And Dee tells me her son is 'big for his age'.*

Jaddo set his fork down and pushed his plate away, kneading his hands together in his typical expression of agitation. For Brivari that expression took the form of pacing; Jaddo always appeared to be working his problem manually, as though he could use his hands to force it into the shape he wanted. *But you said they're healthy,* he said at length. *And certainly bigger than when we last looked if they're the size of the child over there.*

*Yes, but it is now obvious that not only is their growth rate far below what we expected, it has actually slowed.*

*Irrelevant,* Jaddo announced. *As long as the hybrids live, our duty remains unchanged.*

*Of course it does,* Brivari said with a touch of impatience. *This isn't about our duty, it's about what we can expect in terms of the length of our stay on this world. At the rate they're growing, I won't live to see their emergence—*

*We have no way of knowing what will happen in the future,* Jaddo interrupted.

*—and the task of completing our mission will fall to you and Malik,* Brivari finished. *Needless to say, I find this distressing.*

*And I find it useless for you to be 'distressed' over a totally unknown variable we are helpless to affect,* Jaddo said sharply. *If we spend all our time fretting over what might happen tomorrow, we miss what happens today.*

*If we spend none of our time considering what may happen tomorrow, we miss the chance to shape the future,* Brivari retorted. *Why does this always turn into an argument? Is it really that difficult for you to face the fact that you may have to see this through without me? If—*

Brivari sighed as Jaddo abruptly rose and stalked out. He had always strenuously resisted the notion that anything was wrong with the hybrids' rate of development, so being confronted with irrefutable proof was no doubt upsetting. He was probably on his way to the pod chamber to see for himself, and then it would be awhile before he broached the subject again. And what of it? Brivari thought as he carried the check over to the cash register and paid his bill. It's not like they didn't have time. Too much time, in fact. Far too much.

Brivari left the restaurant, holding the door for the enforcer who had apparently finished his boxing match with Dee. I was wrong about him, Brivari thought, watching him walk away. When they'd first arrived on Earth, he'd been certain the enforcer would need to eliminated. Instead he had rallied to the Proctors' defense, shielding them from the military and the Warders by association. In a strange way Brivari found it good to know that his judgments weren't always on the mark. Perhaps his judgment about the length of time it would take for the hybrids to emerge was similarly incorrect.

A short walk brought him within range of the UFO center, and he paused a moment, gazing at it. He'd never been inside, never attended any of the numerous events or festivals surrounding the myths they'd started when their ship crashed twelve years ago. But Dee's description last night had piqued his interest, and besides, he could use a bit of amusement right now. Ten minutes later he was wandering past booths of "alien artifacts", "alien corpses", and supposed photographs of aliens, alien ships, alien anything one could name. The amount of sheer fakery was staggering, and Brivari couldn't resist a snort of disgust upon seeing the umpteenth "piece of an alien ship" which was clearly no such thing. Judging from where all these "pieces" had been found, aliens had crashed virtually all over the globe with no one noticing. Even humans weren't that inattentive.

"So.... we have a skeptic, do we?"

Brivari turned to find a man with shoulder length white hair and heavy glasses standing behind him. "Is that a problem?" he inquired.

"Not at all," the man assured him. "Most of this stuff is nonsense, sheer nonsense."

"Except what you have, of course," Brivari said with a touch of sarcasm. "Which is.....what?"

"A book," the man declared with a broad smile, grabbing a volume off a nearby table and holding it up for Brivari's inspection. "James Atherton, at your service."




******************************************************



2:30 p.m.

Roswell





Courtney stepped out of Parker's and into the afternoon heat and sunshine, thoroughly exhausted and thoroughly confused. Her mind was numb, her feet were killing her, and her hands clutched incomprehensible papers which Mr. Parker told her she had to fill out so that she could be paid. Which she hadn't been, something that had come as a nasty surprise when 2 o'clock had rolled around and her "shift" had ended. She hadn't had any idea when her shift was supposed to end, having neglected to ask that question, so when Mr. Parker had announced she was done for the day and asked her to step into his incredibly messy office, she'd assumed she was going to be paid. Instead she'd had this mass of papers thrust into her hands along with instructions to bring them back tomorrow.

"But....don't I get paid?" she'd asked in dismay.

"Sure you do," Mr. Parker said. "End of the week. But you got your tips, right?"

"Tips?"

"Yeah, tips. The money customers left over and above the amount they owed. They usually leave it on the counter, or hand it to you."

"Oh....I....that was for me?"

"Sure it's for you. What'd you do with it?"

"I....I gave it to Abigail," Courtney said, unable to believe she'd actually passed up currency.

"Well, she should've given it back to you," Mr. Parker declared. "You mean she kept it?"

When Courtney had nodded, Mr. Parker had marched out to the cash register and proceeded to question Abigail, a fellow waitress who "cashed out" most of the customers. Abigail insisted it was all a big misunderstanding and handed over a pile of coins with many apologies which no one appeared to believe. "Little thief," Nancy had muttered darkly as Courtney was emptying her locker. "How long did she think she was going to get away with that? You make sure you pocket your tips, honey, and don't let her sticky fingers get anywhere near them. God knows you earned them."

That's for sure, Courtney thought, sinking down on a bench, her feet hurting so badly that every step sent shooting pains up her legs. Glancing down, she saw the tops of her feet spilling over the edge of her shoes, and she reached down to pull one off. Why couldn't whoever had designed husks have spared them at least some of the more annoying side effects of having a human body?

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," a voice said nearby. "You'll never get it back on."

It was her rescuer from this morning, pushing the stroller which held her now sleeping baby. She'd been so busy trying to figure out what various foods looked like and were called, because they never seemed to be called what they were called on the menu, that she'd missed the chance to thank the woman before she'd left and hadn't had time to fret over that frightening conversation with the sheriff. Now it came flooding back, obvious evidence that the sheriff knew something about Mark Green that he shouldn't. Wonderful. What else could go wrong?

"Mind if I sit?" the woman asked, parking the stroller beside the bench and extending a hand. "My name's Dee."

"Courtney," Courtney said, accepting her first ever handshake from a human, having only practiced with her own people before. "How'd you find me? Have you been out here all this time?"

"No," Dee chuckled. "I knew when your shift ended."

"You did? How?"

"I asked Pete. Mr. Parker," she clarified when Courtney looked blank.

"Then you knew more than I did," Courtney sighed, shifting her swollen feet. "Thanks for what you did with the sheriff, by the way. I take it you know each other?"

"Oh, yeah," Dee smiled. "We go way back. Way back. Why's he after you?"

Courtney hesitated a moment before deciding that it couldn't hurt to have someone else hear her side of the story, especially someone who had leaped to her defense unbidden. "I just got into town last night. I was supposed to be staying with a guy who lived here until I got a job, but...well...that guy was murdered yesterday morning."

"Wow," Dee said, wide-eyed. "I'm sorry. Was he a friend of yours?"

"No," Courtney said truthfully. "We'd barely met. But I got here right after it happened, so the sheriff must think I had something to do with it."

"I doubt it," Dee said. "I think he's just covering all the bases. I heard you tell him you came by bus, so all he has to do is check with the bus company and they'll confirm where you got on and when you arrived. You can't ask for a better alibi than that."

Where you got on.... Courtney stiffened, realizing where her trail would lead should the sheriff follow it past the bus station: Nowhere. She'd boarded the bus in Tombstone, but there would be no record of a Courtney Harris in Tombstone, or anywhere else, for that matter. Operatives were provided with all the necessary paperwork to survive in the human world, but the fact remained that those papers were fake, and if anyone was persistent enough to pursue the matter, they might very well figure that out. Which is precisely why Nicholas had operatives depart from somewhere other than Copper Summit and why it was extremely important not to attract the attention of human enforcers, which she'd done just by coming here. Hopefully once the sheriff figured out that she'd been on a bus just like she'd said she'd been, he'd stop there. Hopefully.

"So what burst of madness made you decide to wear heels?" Dee asked, staring at Courtney's swollen feet.

Courtney looked down at her standard issue human women's shoes, and then at the women walking by. "These are the same shoes every woman wears. Except you," she added, noting that Dee was not only not wearing women's shoes, she wasn't wearing a dress either. "Why are you wearing men's clothes?"

"Because shorts and sneakers are more comfortable than dresses and heels, especially in this heat," Dee answered. "Heels were invented by a sadist. That's my theory, anyway," she added when Courtney blinked. "You'll need a pair of shoes like these if you'd like to keep walking. Save the pumps for dressing up."

"Great," Courtney muttered. "I need new shoes, I have all these papers to fill out that make no sense to me, I don't get paid until the end of the week, and the sheriff is after me. Anything else?"

"Do you have a place to stay?"

"The man I was going to stay with had a room, and his landlady is letting me stay there because he was all paid up until the end of the month. But after that I have to sign something."

"A lease," Dee said calmly, as though that were the most natural thing in the world to her. "And what are these? Oh—this one's for federal withholding," she said, leafing through the papers that Courtney handed her. "You'd have to estimate your yearly earnings before you could decide on the number of exemptions. And this is a notice about the Social Security tax because they'll be taking something out of your paycheck for that too....."

Dee's voice dwindled to a buzz as Courtney listened in dismay. She knew what taxes were, of course, but she'd had no idea that there were several different kinds or that she had anything to say about the amount paid. That was the difference between basic and advanced training: Simple information about currency and the various ways it was used versus knowledge of the intricate workings of that system. I wasn't supposed to have to know this, she thought wearily. Not yet, anyway. She was just supposed to move in with Mark and let him pull all the human strings while she slowly learned the ropes. So much for that.

"Tell you what," Dee said, handing the papers back to her. "Is your room nearby?"

"Three blocks," Courtney said dejectedly, that three blocks looking more like three miles at the moment.

"Good," Dee said decisively, rising to her feet. "Let's go there now, and you can put your feet in some ice water while I look at your lease and explain those papers to you."

Courtney studied her for a moment in silence. "Why are you helping me? First this morning with the sheriff, and now here. Why? You don't even know me."

Dee smiled faintly. "I recognized the look on your face when you were talking to the sheriff. I know how he can be. He's not a bad person, he's just a little....intense."

"But what about your baby? Don't you have somewhere else you'd rather be? Don't you want to go home?"

"Not really," Dee said. "My mother and I aren't exactly seeing eye to eye, and....well, let's just say that home is the last place I want to be now. What about you? Can you go home, or are you stuck here trying to make ends meet?"

Courtney's eyes drifted away, across the street where those smelly contraptions called "cars" filed by. "I can go home," she said, "but I don't want to."

"Then that makes two of us," Dee said, releasing the brake on the stroller. "Shall we?"



******************************************************



Copper Summit, Arizona




"Michael!" Nicholas exclaimed upon answering the door bell. "Come in, come in!"

Michael stepped hesitantly into the Crawford's house, nodding to Nicholas and Greer, who was looming nearby. "Thank you, sir."

"No 'sir', remember?" Nicholas answered. "How's Angela?"

"She's....adjusting," Michael answered. "She's new to her husk, so it will take her awhile to get used to it."

"Don't let it take too long," Nicholas warned. "So what do you think of your new house?"

"Very nice, s—very nice," Michael replied, remembering at the last minute to drop the "sir", the use of which was so ingrained that stopping it would be difficult. No one but Khivar would have dared address Athenor without a title back home. "I'm delighted to have such a wonderful home, and it's such an honor to have it right next door to yours. I'm humbled, truly humbled."

"It is an honor," Nicholas agreed cheerfully, "one reserved for my most trusted operatives. I have Greer on my left and you on my right—what else could I ask for?"

Michael plastered a grateful expression on his face as Nicholas droned on. Usually he could go through the motions of fawning over Nicholas with detachment, but he was having trouble this time. Maybe it was because Courtney wasn't here; she had always despised what he had to go through for the cause, and the need to constantly remind her why all the groveling was necessary had served as a reminder for himself as well. Here she'd been gone only a day, and already he was feeling her absence.

Ida Crawford appeared. "Michael!" she exclaimed with a smile. "I'd heard you moved in next door. So good to see you. Welcome to our home."

"Thank you, Mrs. Crawford," Michael said, dipping his head slightly. Athenor's mother wasn't royalty, but she may as well have been. Beneath that seemingly benign, middle-aged husk lay the equivalent of one of Earth's black widow spiders; once she'd gotten what she wanted out of you, usually to advance her son, your life was forfeit. Living so close to her was more unnerving than living next to Athenor.

Everyone continued to stand in the entryway and smile at each other, and Michael began to grow uneasy. He'd known he'd be summoned to pay his respects to Nicholas, but there was a strange expectancy in the air, like everyone was waiting for something to happen. Had Nicholas discovered that the leader of the resistance was one of those "trusted operatives"? Is that what this was all about?

"Michael, I think you and I should take a walk," Nicholas announced as Ida smiled encouragingly and Greer looked surprised.

"A....walk?" Michael echoed.

"Yes, a walk. Downstairs."

Michael blinked. "You want me to go....downstairs with you?"

"Absolutely," Nicholas said firmly, with a pointed glance at Greer, who was now scowling. "Mom and I have decided you've earned it, haven't we, Mom?"

"Yes, indeed," Ida agreed. "I've always encouraged Nicholas to reward his most faithful servants."

"Well, I....I don't know what to say," Michael replied, flustered. "I'm honored, s—Nicholas."

"Of course you are," Nicholas nodded. "Shall we?"

Ida beamed and clicked on the light as the three men headed down the basement stairs, Nicholas leading, Michael following, and Greer bringing up the rear, still scowling. Michael had heard about that light. The Covari who had lived here before could see in the dark, but Argilians enjoyed no such advantage. It was said the light had been quietly installed before Nicholas ever saw the basement because of how much he hated to be reminded of Covari superiority.

"Here we are," Nicholas said expansively, gesturing toward the back wall of the still dark, dank, and largely empty basement. "Would you like to do the honors?"

"Me?" Michael said. "But how..."

"I had the lock encoded for you too," Nicholas explained. "Use it wisely."

Michael stared at him, overcome by emotion that Nicholas probably thought was gratitude but was really a sense of triumph, of vindication, of a long road finally coming to an end. The resistance had patiently infiltrated Khivar's upper echelons for years, working their way up step by painful step. Along they way they'd lost operatives and suffered many setbacks, not the least of which was having their offer of support turned down by Rath. Their numbers had dwindled after that, with some abandoning a cause they now found untenable when confronted with their chosen king's unshakable loyalty. But others had seen Rath's refusal to betray Zan as a mark of character, not weakness, and stayed the course. That course had led here, to the most restricted sanctum on two planets. No one but the chosen few were certain what lay inside. Now he was about to find out. Michael passed a trembling hand over the wall; the lock flared to life, and he pressed his hand to it.

"This wall was sealed shut when we got here," Nicholas commented as the door rumbled open. "It appeared the stone had literally liquefied and fused together. Obviously the work of an enhanced Royal Warder. Here we have the communications center," he continued after they had filed through the door, "the main purpose of which, other than to contact home and take reports from operatives, is to pinpoint the Warders' location should they ever initiate communication with home in any way. So far, they haven't. Unfortunately."

"But can't they track us?" Michael asked.

"Not with portable communicators," Nicholas answered. "Only the comm equipment on their ship could intercept our communications, and that's out of the Warders' reach. The human military still has their ship, and our contacts tell us it's still sealed."

"You have contacts in the human military?" Michael asked.

Nicholas smiled, but didn't answer. "Our operatives report in by communicator only when necessary," he went on. "We don't want to take the chance that someone will stumble in on them and find them talking to a hologram unless there's a good reason to take that kind of risk. Regular reports come in once a month via the human mail system. And over here," he continued pointing to the back of the room where technicians were busy at workbenches, "is where we assemble the TAG's."

Michael recognized the device being assembled, but not the name. " 'TAG's'?"

"Trithium amplification generators," Nicholas said. "What a mouthful. Who has time for that? Humans invented the acronym, and there's no reason for us not to follow suit. I love these babies," he sighed, caressing one of the devices with a finger. "This is the only thing of value we got out of those Covari dogs who were working for us."

"What about the seals on our husks?" Michael asked, immediately regretting it. Nicholas' eyes flared dangerously for a moment and Greer's eyebrows rose.

"The seal was designed by our scientist," Nicholas said in a steely tone, "the one Brivari murdered when he found this place."

"Of course," Michael said deferentially, dropping his eyes and refraining from pointing out that the scientist in question could not have survived here, never mind completed his task, without the help of the two Covari recruited after they'd fled Antar.

"It took us years to perfect these," Nicholas continued, his good humor returning now that he had one of his toys in his hand. "The Covari who invented them had a good idea, but of course he couldn't finish the job. They never can, those shifters. So we did, along with several upgrades. Now they're genuine multi-purpose tools. The one I gave you is the latest model."

And I gave it to Courtney, Michael thought with alarm, wondering exactly what he'd handed his daughter. Hopefully nothing that would give her away at an inconvenient time.

"But more on that later," Nicholas said, one of the techs wincing as he casually tossed the "TAG" onto the workbench. "Let me show you the real reason I brought you down here." He walked to the back wall and revealed yet another handprint. "You still need me for this one," he said, pressing his hand to the lock. "You're not quite that far up the food chain....yet."

Mystified, Michael followed Nicholas and Greer through the doorway and down a set of stone stairs. It's a hospital, he thought as a vast room came into view, partitioned into several different sections; they walked by treatment areas, an atmospheric chamber where husks could be tended to without danger to the host, and....he gasped as he walked by another section and saw what was inside.

"I....I though we didn't have spares," Michael said when Nicholas gave him a hard stare.

"Only for the most important of us," Nicholas said. "If people thought we had spares, can you imagine how poorly they'd behave? Husks are difficult to cultivate. Every husk is precious. Never forget that."

"Yes, s—Nicholas," Michael said, trotting along behind as they advanced further into the room, mentally adding, I'm not the one who forgot. Husks were indeed tricky to cultivate, a point brought home quite forcefully when the journey to Earth had been delayed after Nicholas had decided to increase the size of his forces and ordered his scientists to rush the maturation of several husks, something theoretically possible, but never tried. The results had been disastrous. A husk was a living organism; harvested too soon, it malfunctioned. Sometimes the husk merely died; sometimes the direct physiologic link between the husk and its host failed to form. This could be as simple as preventing the host from breathing or as horrific as preventing ingested nutrients from reaching the husk, causing the husk to feed on the Argilian inside, digesting its host in a vain attempt to save itself. Several operatives had died from donning immature husks, and their delay in leaving Antar had resulted in Jaddo's escape shortly before their arrival. Nicholas had assumed that Jaddo would remain an easy target indefinitely; his bravado had cost him a Warder, dozens of operatives, and all of the spare husks, which had to be destroyed when it was learned that their early harvesting made them lethal. It had been impressed upon everyone that they had to care for their husk, that should something happen to it, there was no recourse other than banishment to the ship, the only place where an Argilian could safely live in this hostile atmosphere. How very interesting, then, that Michael had just glimpsed spare husks for Nicholas, Ida, Walt, and Vanessa. Apparently Greer didn't qualify.

"Here we are," Nicholas said, steering him behind a curtained area at the far end of the room where a scientist stepped back deferentially, giving Michael an unfortunate full view of what lay inside "What no one else knows," Nicholas continued, oblivious to Michael's dismay, "is that we've already started working on the second generation of husks. Hopefully we won't need them here, of course; hopefully we'll find what we came for and go home. But when we do, we'll go home far more powerful than when we came....because of this." He indicated the table in front of them with a nod as Michael's stomach heaved. "Both Zan and his father kept the project from us, Michael. They got what he wanted, enhanced their dogs, and meant to enhance the rest of their race the same way. They thought they could keep it from us, and for a long time, they did. But no more. It's time we evened the score, don't you think?"

"I....I thought our physiologies were incompatible," Michael stammered. "I didn't think this was possible."

"Oh, it isn't," Nicholas agreed, "or rather, wasn't. Not the way they did it. We can't enhance ourselves directly, but we can enhance our husks. They're built from human genetic material, so it's just a matter of figuring out what we need to take and where to apply it. The template is already there; we just need to upgrade it. We've already isolated the area of the human brain which controls the production of bioelectric energy. Eventually we should be able to do everything the Warders can do. And that's where you come in."

"Me?" Michael echoed.

"I need more of these," Nicholas said casually as though he were ordering a set of spare parts. "Several more. We don't have the advantage of servants who can masquerade as mummy and daddy, but we also don't need to conserve resources. We can just grab and go, and use it up completely. As you can see, this one's almost done for."

Nicholas poked the shape lying on the table; it twitched feebly, the restraint which held it seeming hardly necessary. "Poor response to stimuli," Nicholas sighed. "We kept it alive as long as possible, but this is a feeble race; they can't take much study. How did a brain like that wind up in such an inferior body? Must be one of the universe's little jokes," he added with disgust. "Anyway, now that we know what to look for, we can move faster, so we need more specimens. Greer has some ideas for spreading it out so we don't attract suspicion; he'll go over them with you. Get me a half dozen to start with. I'll let you know when we need more. And Michael," he added, coming closer, Michael resisting the urge to back up. "You're to keep this to yourself. No sense getting everyone all excited prematurely; new husks will take several years to grow. Serve me well, and I will see to it that your new husk is considerably more valuable than the one you now wear."

"Thank you, Nicholas," Michael whispered, unable to tear his eyes away from the sight of the small boy on the table, the top half of his skull removed, the grayish-white brain in full view.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~




I'll post Chapter 9 next Sunday. :)
BRIVARI: "In our language, the root of the word 'Covari' means 'hidden'. I'm always there, Your Highness, even if you don't see me."
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