Children of the Molecule (DW XO CC, Teen) 28/28 Aug 7 2011

[Chrisken]

Part Eleven

"Maria, move ahead," Michael's voice came from behind her in the cramped robot access tunnels beneath the floors somewhere in Kaalto colony. (And probably above the ceilings of one level down, too, as if she needed to be reminded of the theoretical possibility of crashing through somebody's roof. Though, generally, the surfaces on every side of her seemed too solid and sturdy, not the reverse.) Maria scrambled forward, and bumped almost immediately into Isabel's feet and calves.

"Michael, I tried, but..." she started, but Michael's calm reply cut her off.

"EVERYBODY, move ahead," he clarified.

"I'm going," the Doctor called back from the head of the line at nearly the same time. It was several seconds before Isabel moved sufficiently for Maria to have somewhere to crawl to again, but by then everybody seemed to have worked up to a pretty rapid scramble. She heard Michael moving behind her, and realized that Michael had managed the turn with incredible speed, and then seemed to be lagging behind slightly.

"Wait up for just a moment," he said. "I don't want to get lost back here.

"What's going on?" she asked him nervously.

"Trying make sure that the robot is pointed somewhere else than up our trail," he said. "It's hard to pick it up and move it with my powers, but - yeah, it's moving along now, good."

"Right, okay," Maria said, taking a deep breath, and resumed crawling, trying to make sure that she was more or less between Isabel and Michael.

The five of them carried on like that for what seemed like a long while, following the instructions that had been given them for navigating through the tunnels, and watching out for service robots that might be controlled by a crazy alien college student and his pet computer genie', and in any event could be very dangerous in the enclosed tunnels. Isabel had the opportunity to use Michael's trick of pushing robots back or pointing them in other directions a few times, from her spot in the middle of the procession, while the Doctor did his best not to move into a possible collision course, and when he had no other option, a little quick work with the sonic screwdriver would temporarily disable robotic circuitry. Alex repeated the turnings yet to take under his breath, just in case the Doctor lost track of his route with all of the hatches that he had to take care of.

"Doesn't it just figure that when I get let out of jail, it's to go through something like this," Isabel complained at one point. Michael chuckled to himself.

"But it makes the whole deal to be reunited again, doesn't it sweetie?" Alex teased his girl back. She couldn't quite bring herself to agree with that sentiment, but seemed to crawl with a bit of a lighthearted bounce in her elbows for a little while.

Soon enough, they were drawing near. After taking one last turn, the Doctor peered forward to the spot where they'd have to climb out of the tunnels - and mumbled under his breath angrily. "Should have expected that."

"What is it?" Isabel called up.

"There's a bot waiting right underneath the access point. Has to be a sentry posted by the Genie, against anyone who might try this route to shut it down. No bots on ordinary business would stay still down in these tunnels, for any reason. They'd be traffic hazards."

"Okay - can you use the screwdriver on it?" Alex asked.

"Yes, but we'd still need to get it out of the way, and - I've got a bad feeling. Just a second..." The Doctor scrambled carefully forward, and though nobody else could see what he was doing, (only Alex could see any trace of him,) they could all hear the hum of the sonic screwdriver in action one more time, and more muttering that might actually have been Gallifreyan cursing. (The TARDIS field didn't translate if that was it - perhaps it had a PG-13 filter on it.)

"What is it this time?" Isabel asked. "Alex, is he okay?"

"Yeah, umm, he's on his way back, and just a little out of breath," Alex reported. "Doctor?"

"Somehow the Genie managed to deadlock seal the robot," the Doctor muttered. "I wouldn't have thought it was possible. Guess we should be lucky that it didn't think of - well, never mind."

"Yeah," Michael called back up. "Just in case any robots around have sound pickups, we shouldn't give it any ideas." The possibilities were starting to sound ominous to Alex, though. If their enemies had only a few deadlock seals to use against the Doctor, the two most likely places to employ them were the robot standing guard, there - and the hatch above, that they had to find some way through. And was it possible that another trap had been laid here, with other robots encircling them and waiting to close in?

"There's no time to waste," Alex suddenly blurted out. "Umm - Michael, Isabel, do either of you want to try your luck?" He had actually named Isabel somewhat belatedly and because he was uncertain whether she'd want to get called on, feeling more confidence in Michael in a crisis situation like this.

"Yeah," Michael agreed. "No time for everyone to try to crawl out of my way. There's another cross tunnel to the right here, and things seem to be laid out on a fairly regular grid. I can get around to the bot from this side, yeah?"

"Yes," the Doctor called back. "After that right, take the next two lefts. But there isn't a junction at the access point, just a straight tunnel."

"I don't think that Michael can here you now," Maria said unhelpfully.

"A straight tunnel could work to our advantage," Alex said. "If that robot can't turn around in place, then Michael won't be facing the same end that you were. Do you figure it's as dangerous from both sides?"

"Couldn't say," the Doctor put in. "But unless Michael can blast it into molecules, then we won't be able to get to the access point from both sides - the robot, or what's left of it, will block one."

"Then let's all go around and follow him," Maria suggested. It was easier said than done, but everybody made the effort. Isabel was the next to lead the way, on the grounds that she would be the best to help Michael out if he still needed any backup against the robot when they got there.

He did - not that he'd been in much danger, but had been straining his powers to the limit just to keep the thing pushed back away from him, and hadn't been able to manage a truly disabling blow at the same time. Isabel was able to take over some of the push, peering around from behind Michael, and let him use the handprint of death strike. Together they pushed it back towards the way the Doctor had first come, and rushed forward to examine the access point.

"Quickly!" Alex exclaimed, though he knew that he wasn't really being helpful either. "I hear more bots closing in.

"Then come on," Isabel called back. The Doctor came first, then Maria, and Alex himself. Apparently whether or not the access hatch had been deadlock sealed, it had been vulnerable to Michael's talent for unlocking doors with his powers. Alex hadn't expected that - surely in a place like this where many people had such powers, doors would routinely use a technology that thwarted them - but he wasn't complaining now.

But now, just where he had expected a smooth completion to their mission, there was apparently one more complication. "Oh, no!" Maria was exclaiming. "Rose, and Kyle!"

Sure enough, an image of a Kaaltan sidewalk cafe off a pedestrain walkway was being shown on one of the flat walls of the room, a display that actually changed perspective as you moved, so that it nearly looked as if it was a window with the walkway beyond. Clearly Rose was lying on the ground, hurt, and Kyle was bending over her, worried, and calling for help.

"Oh, no," Michael muttered. "The Genie's got hostage."

"The Genie's bluffing," Doctor muttered. "And I'm not going to give it a chance to hurt anybody else." And with that, he dashed towards the lectern-style console, nearly digging his sonic screwdriver into it. There did seem to be a pained electronic sort of scream. "The memory chip the Bailiff gave you, Alex?" the Doctor asked. Alex rushed forward with it, and put it into the slot that the Doctor indicated.

After a few seconds, the image of the sidewalk cafe vanished. "Oh, no," Maria breathed.

"Oh, yes," the Doctor countered, turning back to her. "The Genie's trapped and powerless now. I guess it was holding that image open actively, so it vanished when its access here was revoked."

"But what about Rose?" Isabel asked, and then after a moment she thought of pulling out a communicator. The Doctor nodded at that, and accepted the device after Isabel punched a few buttons and held it out to him.

"Kyle, hello, how's... yes, of course, call the medical emergency line, of course. You should have no problems getting through now." He hung up again and turned to the others. "He wasn't able to use the communicator to call for help - our Genie must have been blocking it."

"But will Rose be okay?" Alex asked.

"We'll have to wait and see - but I think so. Neither the Genie nor the master had any reason to injure her fatally - just to try and distract me or use her as leverage against me. But their leverage is gone now." He looked around the little computer access chamber, which didn't have much aside from just enough room for the five of them and the lectern. Michael had closed the access hatch and was standing on it, to try and muffle the sounds of angry robots that could be heard a few moments ago. Presumably they were all remembering their old duties at this point.

"Can we get out of here?" Maria asked. She stepped towards the most likely door, but it didn't open when she pressed the contact, just started a little yellow light blinking. "Guess we don't have access to be in here - or get out."

"Well, it'll all get sorted out," the Doctor said, scrolling through the interface of the communicator himself. "There'll be some time taken with explanations, I don't doubt, but the Bailiff strikes me as an on the ball kind of man, when faced with a problem that's within his scope. He'll trace down the evil Genie, find out his true Master, and he won't forget what we did to save them - or that we were falsely accused." That seemed to satisfy him. "I'll get back into the TARDIS again tonight, and anything we still need to research won't be a problem."

"I hope so," Maria said, stepping over to Michael and hugging him. "We've been through so much already. I'm not sure that I'm up for Antar's past as soon as we go home and pick up Max and Liz."

"Oh, come on," Michael insisted. "This was just the pre-game. We can't stop now."

She shot him an unimpressed look. Isabel didn't seem that much more comfortable with the thought of their next trips, but as she ran her hand over the back of Alex's hand, all she muttered was, "Well, let's see how we all feel when we've had a bit of a chance to rest and relax."

-------------

"Here I am, good as new," Rose insisted as she nearly bounced into a waiting room, and threw her arms first around the Doctor, and then Kyle. (Kyle seemed a little disappointed about that order, but didn't actually voice a complaint.) "These Kaaltan healers do good work, once they get to you."

"Yeah, I know how that is," Kyle admitted. "So how much of the story do we need to catch you up on?"

"Umm - more than half, probably," Rose admitted. "I heard bits while I was waiting for them to be sure they'd got all the burn damage - something about a rogue Genie, that the Doctor and his friends had crawled through a dark maze to put back into confinement, and I sort of gathered that was the explanation for that murderer that you were being suspected of."

"Yeah, we just heard that they caught the Genie's master," Maria said, shuddering slightly. "And found some witnesses among the other college students who've testified about how much he despiised the poor boy that he killed. I just hope that whatever the Bailiff does to Xamev, he won't be able to get into my dreams again. Oooh."

"I think that he's got that part taken care of," Isabel admitted. "Must be one of the things that they've had to deal with before." She sighed. "I tried to pay a visit to Alex last night, and it just felt like he was never dreaming."

"Well, maybe I didn't get that much good sleep, honey," Alex pointed out. "It didn't feel like I had in the morning." Isabel shrugged.

"And the authorities are being very nice, probably trying to make up for the fact that they arrested us and accused the Doctor, and then we saved their asses," Michael said. "We've all been invited to another fancy dinner - just us and half a dozen of the biggest VIPs in the township. The Doctor didn't want to confirm that he'd make it until he was sure that you were okay."

"Okay, alright," Rose said, sitting down. "But back up, to this morning at least. They have Genies here?"

"Computer genies, sw- umm, sweetie," Kyle reminded her, taking her hand. Rose smiled sweetly at him and then shot a somewhat uncertain look over at the Doctor. "You knew about them, remember? Like the ones that Michael used to get the pages."

"Oh." Rose shook her head, trying to reconcile that little revelation. "But someone, what, someone reprogrammed a Genie to kill for him?"

"That's certainly what it looks like," the Doctor said soberly. "A dangerous combination of technology and complacency. I wonder of the Kaaltan Bailiffs will be able to figure out a way to prevent it from happening again - but that's their worry." He sighed. "And, more importantly than the dinner, we'll have an opportunity to access the College library computer again before we leave, to find out a bit more. Without using a genie, I suspect, but we've probably learned enough from our first try to track down some more references. And tomorrow, it's back to Roswell."

"But you didn't really tell Rose the whole story," Kyle pointed out. "Why don't you take it from the hallway, Alex, and what you guys found out there?"

-----------

"Is everything to your liking?" the Kaalto governor asked as her dinner guests began on the appetizer course.

"Yes, excellent, thank you very much," Maria assured her, bobbing her head in an excess of politeness.

"I'm so pleased to hear," the governor said. "I was so sorry to hear that last night one of you came down with a bad case of food poisoning from a beverage with Wolee stalk as one of its ingredients."

"Yes, ma'am, that was me," Alex said. "I'm feeling much better now."

"That's good," the governor said. "However, it would be fair to warn you that news of that incident has spawned some interesting rumors in my community. You see, we have a few Earthling expatriates and crossbreeds passing through here - that is, people with ancestry tracing back to a nearby industralized and nuclear-capable world, known as Earth, whose national governments have not mastered the technology for interstellar travel or established diplomatic relations with other worlds. Still, I hear that it is an interesting world, crowded with life and many cultures for its capacities. Have you heard of this Earth in your travels, Doctor?"

"Umm - why yes, I must admit that I am well familiar with it," the Doctor muttered after a surprised moment.

"Wait a second," Maria put in. "If these Earthlings don't have interstellar travel, how do you have any of their people here?"

"Spaceships from other races have been landing on Earth, undetected, for centuries," one of the other township officials put in with an alien chuckle. "Some take along hitchhikers, or slaves, or what have you. The question of 'what to do with the children of Earth' has been a matter of some debate across the Antar cluster, and even further afield."

"Right," Isabel said, nodding. "So, just what do these rumors concern themselves with? Just circulating the supposition that some or all of us are Earthling?"

"Not that alone," the governor said. "Have you ever heard of the Royal Four?"

Again a pause, and again the Doctor carefully began an answer. "Well, yes, just recently, in the histories we have accessed at your college," he admitted. "The old Liaret King of Antar - Sanren of Liaret - he had five children, and the eldest two, Princess Vilandra and Prince Zan, were fairly close in age. Zan married a girl named Ava, and Vilandra was betrothed to one of her brother's friends, Rath. The four of them became quite well known as a group to the common people, sort of unofficial mascots of the Liaretian dynasty, and also as competitors in some kind of sport or combat sompetion - I didn't really follow all of that part. When Sanren was assasinated, Zan succeeded him to the throne - typically patrilineal but I won't get distracted about that - and the other three became his closest of councillors, with Rath appointed as his Prime Minister and the High General of the Royal armies. And, well..."

"And when Kivar took power, the four of them were captured together, and executed together," Michael put in, when the Doctor hesitated. Alex coughed quietly. "Umm, and that's all that we know about them."

"Really?" The governor watched them all closely. "There is another part of the story, which was long secret, but has started to become well-known, if not univerally credited. A modern legend of the Antar sector, as it were - that a secret project initiated by Sanren's widow, the Queen Emeritus Alinda, who escaped from Kivar's forces herself, was somehow able to ressurect the Royal Four, and that they would come back to Antar when the time was right to overthrow the usurper and re-establish the old line. In this legend, it is said that the Royal Four were hidden on Earth, that Kivar's agents searched that world long for them, that eventually he found them, but could neither capture nor kill them, and now waits in a triply guarded castle for them to make their move."

"Wow," Kyle breathed immediately. "Quite a story, but I wouldn't believe much of it myself. There have been so many times I've heard that kind of prophecy propaganda used as a last ditch defense against a mightier enemy."

"Does the legend say that the Royal Four will return looking like humans?" Rose put in. "I assume that's why you brought it up. The people here are suggesting that some of us might be those long-dead Kings and Queens?"

"Tellings of the tale differ on details like that," the Governor agreed. "One that I have heard a Bard sing of related how the genes of the Royal Four were mixed with human blood, to bring them forth again as crossbreeds. The notion seems too fanciful to work in reality, but in any event... though I would discount such tales myself, the sad fact is that my Liege Lord, Larek of Rahlicx, is a believer. He was a close friend of Zan, in his youth, and recently has told many of the spirit journeys he made to New York and Roswell in the United States of America, how he met a boy named Max Evans who was created from Zan Liaret." She sighed. "Because of this, I have sent Larek a message telling him of your arrival, and my people's reactions to it."

This time the pause was the longest. Isabel felt the craziest notion to declare her own origin, begotton of Vilandra Liaret betrothed to the house of Selezir. But that impulse was fairly easy to squash down. They had all heard Michael's story about the crazy Kaaltan scientist who had broken him out of prison to run tests on him - now it seemed that even trashing the lab and letting the man go might have not been enough, that he might have learned something about Michael's genetic makeup and been using that to feed the rumors. Isabel had met Larek back in Roswell that one time, and sort of liked him, though the situation had been dire. But now, if they were going to leave him a message from two of the Royal Four, it could only be in some way that would not be detected until the TARDIS was well on its way back to Earth. They couldn't risk any more complications at that moment.

Finally Maria broke the silence. "What did - this Larek tell you?"

"That if the Royal Four were under my hospitality and wished to remain anonymous, I should respect that, and accord the retinue of a Time Lord every possible courtesy no matter who his Companions are or where they come from."

"Good advice," Rose pitched in. "Now, I think somebody said something about an entree course."

"Yes, certainly," the governor agreed. Soon, a dish was brought in that was roughly turkey-sized, but almost cube-shaped and apparently without bones - when portions of it were served out, it seemed to taste more than anything like spicy tuna. For a while, though the 'Royal Four' were not mentioned again, the officials present tried to draw their guests out on the exact nature of the research that had brought them on their errand. Most of these questions were left for the Doctor to answer, which he did pleasantly and vaguely, and managed eventually to bring the story around to some of his recent adventures in time and space, which he also kept relatively abstract, mentioning few connections with Earth and humans, although he did call attention to a few of them in an offhand 'by-the-way' manner.

Once the dinner was over, and the visitors had said goodbye to each other in the corridor, the Doctor was getting ready for a night's sleep in the TARDIS when Rose appeared in his doorway. "It's good to be back home, isn't it?" he told her brightly.

"Yes, I suppose," Rose agreed, though it did seem a bit funny her to that she thought of the TARDIS as home now, and not London. "There - well, there's something that I wanted to ask you about privately, about Antarians, and - well, the places that we've been, and the things that we've seen."

"Go ahead," the Doctor said, sitting down on the edge of his bed and gesturing towards a comfortable armchair in the corner of the room, which Rose took with a grateful smile. "I think that I have a notion what this is going to be about, but go on.

"Alright, let's see," Rose said, taking a breath. "As interstellar distances go, the Antarians really are quite close to Earth, aren't they?"

"Well, yes," the Doctor allowed. "Only eighty or ninety light years, which is miniscule compared to the size of the Galaxy, really."

"So are they the closest planets to us that are, you know, inhabited? By other intelligent life?" Rose pressed.

"Well, I'm not sure that it ever occured to me to work out the map of the neighborhood and measure the distances, but - I'd say not quite, but close. I happen to know of somebody off nearly in the opposite direction who'd be closer than Kaalto and the other nearby Antarian outposts, and a few others who are nearly the same direction as the Antar cluster - off perpendicularly, as it were. Mapping space gets complicated, you know, with three dimensions to consider."

"Four dimensions," Rose said, and the Doctor looked up in surprise at that. "We musn't forget time."

"No, I suppose not." The Doctor's eyes narrowed slightly. "Is time relevant to what you're working up to asking me about?"

"Of course it is," she said. "You've told me - and shown me a little - about the great and bountiful human empires, and times when the influence of earth's children is felt across galaxies. What happened to the Antarians, by that time in the future? Do you know anything about that?"

"A - a little," the Doctor admitted, sighing. "It's good that you asked me this in private, and I'd ask that you not repeat what I'm going to tell you - to anybody. Knowing too much about the future - about anybody's future, can be a terrible burden on your present, but I suspect that I wouldn't get far with refusing to tell you anything." Rose nodded. "Alright."

"After humans from Earth *do* invent interstellar spaceships of their own, they're thrown into natural rivalries with the Antarians and their other neighbors in this part of space - challenges that are economic, social, and political all rolled into one. Umm..." The Doctor paused in his lecture to gather a few thoughts, and probably to set others aside. "The Antarians had considerable advantages, between their established technological base, established alliances with other species, and their natural powers. But parts of their civilization were sliding into decadance, and the whole Antarian sphere had been weakened by internal wars." He met Rose's eyes. "I'm not clear on the details, but humanity became - culturally dominant. I don't think that the Antarians were opressed as such, but they lost a lot of their power and influence even on their homeworlds."

"And that's it, as much as you know?" Rose pressed. "Did they entirely lose their identity as a people?"

"Eventually - yes, I think so," the Doctor admitted. "Not until after the era of the fourth empire, at least, since I'm aware of a few prominent people around that time who still proudly proclaimed Antarian heritage, though they had lost their homeland by then." Rose whimpered softly at that prospect. "But even after the identity was gone, that was not the end of the legacy of the Antarian people." And now the Doctor smiled with a private joke. "Do you remember Lady Cassandra, and her claims to be the last true human?"

"Of course!" Rose shuddered in remembered distaste. "Not like I'm going to forget an experience like that!"

"And what I told you about the people of New Earth, of her time?" the Doctor pressed, his grin widening.

"Umm - that they had genetically altered themselves, or - or interbred with other species, so that they weren't perfectly human anymore..." Now Rose got up, and she looked back at the Doctor with an uncertain smile of her own. "So was one of the species that they got it on with..."

"When humanity was emerging into its adolescence among the stars," the Doctor declared with some gusto, "Antar was the hot older girl living right next door. You heard what the governor said about their being hybrids, even now. Suppose that humans set up a domed city just across the way from Kaalto, and invites the township over for mixers. You'd have intermarriages and cross-matings going through the roof. By the time of the establishment of New Earth - well, I'd be suprised if less than a quarter of the population have Antarian DNA in their cells, and not just a chromosome here and there. Though probably not that many of them remember it."

"I guess that does make me feel a bit better," Rose said uncertainly. "Alright - see you for breakfast tomorrow?"

"Yes," the Doctor agreed. "Let's go down to the dining hall, it'll be our last chance to eat there all together I think."

"Yeah." She got up and waved as she left the room.

------------

"Okay, I'll ask the question that's on everybody's mind, Doctor," Michael said. This time, all seven of them were gathered in a research room on Kaalto campus - one that was two floors and five long hallways from the site of the murder attack, which made them all feel a little bit less jumpy. "What are you still looking for? We've got plenty of details on the Moon that Tess has taken over, and some workable ideas about visiting the Royal Palace back in King Sanren's time? Why are you still digging into the seaside resort alternative?"

"Just - still following a hunch," the Doctor said distractedly as he stared at the display screen, speed-reading through numerous personal accounts of the lives of the Liaretian royalty as they flashed through at a speed that no real human would have found comfortable or helpful, though Data the android would have found the pace still remarkably sluggish. A chorus of sighs, mostly feminine, greeted that vague remark, and with a long breath of his own, the Doctor flipped a contact to pause the playback and look up at his new friends. "Which I will not be indulging myself in for much longer, I promise. But - well, we're not on a particular schedule for our trip back to Earth today, and the TARDIS is packed and parked just down the hall, so we won't need to find our way back through the entire township. Why don't you talk more amongst yourselves while I keep reading, okay? Just give me - um, half an hour more, tops?"

"Hey, take all the time you need, Doctor," Alex said with a soft laugh. "It's not like we can leave without you or anything." Maria let out a wry chuckle at the not-too-funny joke.

"Okay, okay, a bit of other conversation to deflate the tension and help the time pass more quickly does seem like a half-decent idea," Kyle said, a bit too loudly. "And I've got a topic. Overall impressions, as our first visit to an alien world draws to a close?"

"I guess that I'm a bit relieved to see how - well, how normal Antarians can be, at least here," Isabel decided. "Sure, there's weird technology and different cultural standards, but you could say the same of - I don't know, Japan or somewhere else on Earth. Except that there's nowhere else on Earth where the technology level is as high as here, on an antiquated backwater of the Antarian sphere of influence, but that's not so big a deal really. The people here are just people - going to their jobs from 0100 to 2400, helping out strangers in trouble on the hallway, going out on dates and parties, trying to build a better life for their children, the whole fifteen yards." Michael snickered at that phrasing. "You know what I mean."

"Yeah, I guess that I do," Maria admitted. "I'm still a bit more weirded out by some things - like the whole experience of getting arrested for a crime that I didn't commit - and I wasn't even in lockup for as long as you guys. Maybe I'm not so much cut out for travel." She shot a so-sorry, puppy dog eyes look over at Michael, who just sort of shrugged in about as sweet and tender a way as he could manage.

"Does that mean that you're thinking of backing out on our other TARDIS vacation lines trips we have scheduled?" Alex asked. "Next stop, Antar's illustrious past."

"Umm - no, at least, not for that one," Maria said, a bit reluctantly. "If two out of two go badly, then I might beg out of the final showdown with Tess, I think. But this time, well, here the point is trying to learn more about where our alien friends came from, specifically. I'm up for that - and having Max and Liz around improves our odds, I think. Also your Dad, Kyle - though to be honest I'm hoping that Mom doesn't decide to tag along."

"Well, maybe this little tidbit will help you feel better about our trip, Maria," the Doctor announced from over on his own side of the room. "It certainly reassures me about our prospects."

"Why, what is it?" Mar Alex and Michael were the first to rush across and start reading the screen, which was once again paused on a single screenful of text, helpfully translated into English by the TARDIS field.

"What the - there's records of a Time Lord and his entourage visiting Sanren's court while they were 'holidaying' by Brok bay?" Michael summarized in disbelief.

"Not too much detail here, which is good I guess, I'd hate to hear too much about what we're about to do before we do it - assuming that this reference is about us," Alex said. "Arrived somewhat unexpectedly, greeted with much pomp and ceremony, asked a lot of questions, fairs and - and some kind of tournament held in our honor, and then left after a bit more than a week." He turned to the Doctor, and waved a hand near the screen to get his attention. "Do you think that - that this reference was here the first time we went to research, or when we arrived here? Or - or is it possible that the things that we've learned, and the choices we've narrowed down, actually changed the historical data, even before we leave to go to Antar?"

"Umm - hard to say, it could go either way," the Doctor admitted. "We're into temporal causality loop territory here - in my experience, some of them are fixed in the fabric of space and time, some are flexible, and most - like this one actually, are indeterminate, like that poor little cat of Erwin's. Since we didn't actually look at this reference, or have a Genie check it for us specifically, before Brok Bay had made our short list, it's completely impossible to determine what it read then. And, frankly, does it matter? Save your brain cells for the temporal paradoxes that matter to your life, is my advice. They have a tendency to generate headaches when considered at all."

"Here, here," Isabel chimed in. "So, we're going to the waterfront, then?"

"I think so, yes," the Doctor agreed, getting up.

"And what if it's actually about another time lord?" Kyle asked. "You said that you didn't want to run into an old friend on purpose - can you really take the risk that you'll do so by accident?"

"Hmm - I hadn't really considered that possibility, I have to admit," the Doctor Who muttered. "But, again, like the Cat, there's really know way to know for sure until we go and take a look, and I think that I'm up for that risk, rather than miss out on what looks like the best opportunity to pay off on this side of my bargain with Max and Liz and avoid other complications."

"Yeah, okay," Rose said. "Okay, last one back to the TARDIS is Dalek vermin." Despite that faint jibe, nobody really scrambled to get in, but they were all set and ready to go in five more minutes.

----------

"Nobody's there," Maria complained after taking a peek out the TARDIS door. "Roswell, at least - but I'm so going to kick your ass if you landed us in 2004. We'd be back to square one entirely on college applications, after being heard from for so long - and poor Max and Liz, just waiting, waiting, waiting for us to come back..."

"Okay, let's not jump quite so far, yet," Alex pointed out. "First thing is, how do we find out the date and time here in Roswell?"

"I can get that for you in - umm, three minutes," the Doctor volunteered, fiddling with part of the TARDIS controls and thumping something. "Sorry about this."

"Two minutes," Michael countered. "There's a corner store just down the street. They always have newspapers on sale, and a clock up on the wall."

"Assuming it's open," Isabel put in.

"It's obviously midmorning, so of course the store will be..."

"I can make it twenty seconds," Alex realized, stepping out of the call box, getting a good dozen paces away, and bringing out his cell phone. It had been off for most of the trip, never adjusted by the Doctor to connect to anything but the local AT&T network, but with just a few button clicks and a short pause, it had gotten an adjusted time from those very same cell phone towers. "Everything is more or less alright," he called back to Maria, waiting behind the half-open TARDIS door. "We're ten minutes early for the rendezvous. They'll be coming along soon."

"You know, that would be a good feature for my cell phone," Rose told the Doctor absently. "Get it rigged up to show me the current local time, by whatever standards are currently in effect. Unless that's too much for you."

"Ooh, hey!" Isabel said, stepping out through the door herself, and pointing off across the corner of a small local park, where they could all see a familiar black Jeep coming down the cross-street. "I think that Max and Liz are going to be nearly ten minutes early too. Ohh, and they've seen us. Hi, guys!" She waved, and two even more familiar figures in the car waved back.

"Good," Michael decided. "We can move their stuff in, and be gone more quickly than we expected - oh, except that we'll still have to wait for your Dad at least, right Kyle? We promised that we wouldn't go without him, this time."

"My dad won't be too late, and he'll probably be travelling light," Kyle pointed out. "I'm up for trying to leave quickly, instead of being spotted hanging around a police call box by somebody who doesn't understand about - well, anything."

"I'm not sure that anybody really understand about the police call box," Maria put in. "Even Rose, and if the Doctor does then he isn't telling."

"Do we know what Max and Liz told their folks about where they're going to be all day?" Rose asked, ignoring the subject of police call boxes. "If they just leave the Jeep parked in this neighborhood all weekend, empty, then if somebody who recognizes it spots it..."

"It won't be suspicious enough to make many waves," Kyle breezed back, and Rose just shrugged. "Especially since this spot is still pretty close to Michael's apartment."

"Okay, yeah. They can say that they caught a lift with a friend - which is sort of the truth I suppose. Hi Liz!"

Sure enough, by this time the Jeep had parked, and Max and Liz had come out. Liz hardly acknowledged Rose's greeting - but that was just because she embraced Maria very hard as soon as she could. "Are you okay?" she said. "I had - like a weird premonition dream, it was almost a dreamwalk, except I knew that you couldn''t... but somehow I was sure that you were in trouble."

The Doctor looked curiously over at Isabel, who just sort of shrugged. "Umm, yeah, we're all fine," Maria said, "but I won't lie to you, there were parts of our stay on Kaalto that weren't fun. We've got the info we need, though, and hopefully the rest will be a cakewalk."

"Why doesn't that reassure me?" Max said. "Maybe you should tell us all about it, before we take off again." From the look on his face, it wasn't just a friendly suggestion. Michael looked around at the others uncertainly, but Maria was nodding, almost eager for a second opinion, and nobody else objected. "Okay, let's go upstairs and gather around. We could get some pizza again - it'll be nice to have a little taste of home in between so many meals of alien food, I won't deny."

"No, no pizza," Liz insisted. "I feel like I'm still full of cheese from the first night the Doctor and Rose came to town - was that really two nights ago?"

"Much more than that, for us," Alex said in a soft whine. "But maybe mexican would be okay."

"You guys all head up," Kyle said. "I'm not that hungry yet, and Dad might get worried if he waits for too long outside the police call box without anybody answering."

"Okay, but don't wait long," Rose said, shooting him a sweet smile before stepping next to the Doctor. Max and Liz exchanged a bemused look, as they headed off to Michael's apartment.

TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Part Twelve

"Oh, hello Mister Valenti," Isabel said as the door to Michael's apartment opened, and let both the Valenti men in. (She hadn't been talking to Kyle though.) "What took you, we're almost finished the story - not in great and minute detail, I admit, but..."

"A shelving emergency ran long at a clients' house, if you can believe it," James Valenti said with a small smile. "I was a bit worried that I'd miss out on the scheduled trip time entirely, but Kyle said that Max put a hold on the flight."

"Yeah - I'm almost ready to say that we're ready to go, but we might as well finish the story," Max agreed, before taking a bite out of a burrito sitting on a paper plate. "So, the computer genie was frozen in its digital tracks, and then what?"

"Not too much," Isabel reported. "We waited a while for them to let us out of the vault with the override control in it, went first off to check on Rose and make sure that she'd be okay, and then everybody really just wanted to go back to our rooms and relax. The Doctor had a fawning call from the college Bailiff, assuring us that the guilty party was in custody and we didn't need to worry about any other 'inconveniences' - like prison." She sighed. "And then, dinner with the Township governor and a few of her trusted intimates, which was full of surprises."

"How so?" Max asked. The Doctor took up the tale here, concisely explaining what the Governor had told them about the rumors, how people in her colony and across the Antarian sphere saw the legends of the Royal Four, and the conversation that she had had with Larek on the matter over a long distance communicator.

"Okay, I see," Max said, after a long moment. "I understand your reasons for keeping silent, but - well, I do wish that you could have sent some sort of message to Larek."

"Who do you think you're talking to?" Michael put in. "Of course we left him a message - or at least, we tried to. The Doctor rigged it up with his sonic screwdriver..."

"Now, this time, I can't accept all the credit," the Doctor admitted. "I'm usually the man with the clever idea, but I wouldn't have thought of manipulating the circuits in that way if it hadn't been for your boy Alex's inspiration..."

"WHAT did you rig up?" Liz interrupted in a kind of pleased exasperation.

"A video message from Isabel and Michael, to be sent to the Governor's private line thirty minutes or so after the TARDIS was gone," Maria told her excitedly. "Admitting, or claiming, to be two of the Royal Four, and suggesting that Larek find some pretext to visit the moon Nunyes soon. The Doctor did his best figure out the timing of when we'd be arriving there, most likely, by the Antarian calendar, and we gave him that estimate and a margin of error."

"Okay, thanks," Max agreed. "I do feel better about the idea of him being around to back me up with Tess."

"And I'm going to be there," Liz said. "And to Antar in the past. I - well, I can understand why you guys might be somewhat hesitant about going back for another trip, but I'm not about to let anxiety stop me, and somehow I can tell that my alien soulmate feels the same way." Max smiled at the way she'd put that. "So, is there anything else to sort out before we head back?"

"Yeah, what about my mom?" Maria asked. "She said that she'd leave word with you if she couldn't be here, Mister Valenti. Does this mean that..."

"I'm afraid not, honey," Jim said fondly. "There's a part of her that wants to share this with you, I know, but - well, she's still scared of 'alien stuff', no matter how much of it she's come through with her attitude intact. Stepping into a Police-call-box time-and-spaceship to travel into the history of an alien planet - that's more than a little much for her." He chuckled ruefully. "I can hardly believe that I've signed myself up for it."

"You can still back out, you know," the Doctor offered, and then added: "Nice to meet you, sir, by the way. Heard many good things about you."

"Likewise, Doctor," Valenti said, offering his hand for a shake, and then tipping his hand once the other formality had been finished.

"Do you know if she's at our place?" Maria pressed. "I - well, I'm going to need to swing by there to drop off some things and grab a few other necessities."

"What kind of necessities didn't you already have packed?" Liz asked. "I know that you shouldn't need laundry service."

"Bathing suits, ones that I wouldn't be humiliated to death to show myself in," Maria told her. "This place that we're going, Brok Bay? Certain watersports are etiquette musts, and the traditional water costume for local females is - brief. I don't want to have to depend on loaners."

"Ooh, I hoped you hadn't found that little detail," Michael muttered in a stage whisper. Kyle chuckled.

"What, you really wanted everybody to see me in some itty bitty bikini?" Maria shot back, complete with a dangerously arched eyebrow.

"Not that so much, but I was really looking forward to seeing the look on your face when the lady-in-waiting showed it to you," Michael put in, making several of the kids break out in laughter.

"Hmm - I actually think that I'm looking forward to trying out a 'loaner,'" Isabel decided, and Alex twitched and swallowed hard. "Though maybe I should go back home and pick up my electric blue bikini. It could be a hit with the summer court. What do you girls think - Liz? Rose??"

There was a short pause. "I suppose that I've got an open mind," Liz admitted. "Makes some sense to pay one more visit to my dresser, time permitting, and pick up the most daring and least daring of the pool outfits I got in Florida last summer." She shot a smile over at Max, and he grinned back, remembering the vacation that they'd taken together for two weeks while school was out. "Maybe I've got room for one in-between as well. And as far as that goes, I might as well try on one of the traditional costumes when we get there." She shrugged nonchalantly.

"And I don't exactly have any opportunities to raid a closet of my own," Rose pointed out, "and don't really want to get into bathing suit shopping, so I guess I don't have many choices. Never been a big one for etiquette, though, and I may try to come up with some flimsy excuse to stay out of the surf."

"Alright, then, we've got a lot of driving around to do before we head out, then," Max summarized. "Let's get to it."

Before she left with Alex, who was going to drive her back to the Crashdown while Max took Isabel back home, Liz managed to pull Maria into Michael's bathroom for a momentary chat. "Did you happen to find out anything about the traditional bathing suit for guys?"

Maria grinned a wicked grin. "Don't even ask, we'll be seeing it soon enough. I don't think Michael even clued in to turnaround. See if you can find out whether Alex knows, without giving the whole thing away."

"Yeah, sure. He'll probably suggest swinging by his place for some of those baggy swim shorts of his," Liz pointed out. "Okay, see you in fifteen to thirty."

"Yep."

------------

It was definitely approaching half an hour, but not any longer, before all ten of them were filing into the TARDIS with luggage for a second trip through space and time. Maria started playing tour guide immediately as the Doctor took his place at the controls and launched them into the Time Vortex. This time, it seemed to be a rougher trip, with a fair amount of turbulence, but they weren't pitched back and forth around the room for too long before things settled down again. Rose opened the door of the box and took a look outside before reporting back.

"Right on a beach full of kinduv peach-colored sand. Not a bad landing this time, Doc."

"Assuming that it's the RIGHT peach beach," Michael pointed out. "Assuming that we're on the right planet, there are probably, what, tens of thousands of beaches on Antar, most of which aren't anywhere near Brok Bay."

"More like hundreds of thousands, if it's anything like Earth," Isabel corrected. "Or millions."

"Oh, ye of little faith," the Doctor scoffed. "I got us to the Kaalto township administration district, didn't I? Not to mention Roswell at the right place and time to find teenage aliens."

"Yeah, and anyway, standing here and arguing about if we're in the right place isn't going to tell us anything," Max pointed out. "We should head out, stay together and look for the Royal vacation palace that you mentioned - or any other nearby settlement that we find. Eveybody stick together. We don't need to worry about locals getting inside the TARDIS, right, Doctor?"

"No, it can generally take care of itself," the Doctor said. "Rose and I have keys."

"That'll do," Max said. "Any questions before we get going?"

"Yeah, umm, I have one," Maria said, pulling out the handle on her wheeled suitcase, and hoping that she wouldn't have to drag it across the sand. "Do we have to hide the fact that we're from Earth, like we did on Kaalto? I know that they won't know anything about a connection between the Royal Four and Earth, because the Royal Four's lives aren't even in danger yet, but..."

The Doctor shot a look at Max, who shrugged just slightly. "No, if you want my advice, we can be completely open about that," the Doctor said. "It seems to me that they're much less clear about Earth at this point in Antarian history, even though a few 'abducted' Earthling refugees are already in the Antarian sphere. I certainly don't see any way that it would complicate the reason that we're here and what you want to learn - not as much as vagueness and evasiveness would."

"And what if we accidentally say something about Earth that gives somebody the idea of sending the Royal Four there, years hence?" Alex asked.

"Then our past history fufills itself," Max said. "That's better than doing something that might change it, right?"

"More or less, yes," the Doctor agreed. "Sometimes the fabric of space-time is determined to tie itself in a minor knot. Best to just stay out of its way and hope that the knot is a neat and tidy one."

"Alright, anything else?" Liz asked. Nobody ventured anything much other than unclear mumbles, and there was much shuffling of feet. "Okay, let's head out!"

-------------

The first decision that faced them was which way to search along the beach. Michael immediately broke with Max's plan as far as suggesting that they split up and each side go ten minutes in a different way, then return to the TARDIS to compare notes. The balance of conventional wisdom was against him on that, though, especially the Doctor's tart comments about his companions 'always running off at the first opportunity,' and Alex even added that an arrangement like that was unlikely to save them much time compared to the entire company trying ten minutes first in what direction, and then going back to try the other if they didn't have much luck.

Max proposed that they proceed to the left, based on the orientation of the TARDIS' front door, which faced out towards a large bay with a faintly purplish tone to the water. To the right they could see a good long stretch of the seashore, with nothing in the way of structures except for what seemed to be very small cabins or shacks, more than a mile away. The other way, on the other hand, any such view was obstructed by a copse or stand of tall, otherworldly trees, less than a quarter of a mile distant, which encroached on the beach and made their way almost all the way down to the waterside.

As soon as the party from Earth had skirted the edge of those trees and could look past them, it seemed as if they'd chosen the right way to go. Sitting on a grassy hilltop just at the edge of the beach, half a mile further on, was a definitely impressive building. Something about it didn't immediately fit with what Liz had expected as a Royal beach pleasure palace - probably not the size, though it wasn't enormously large - bigger than any houses that she'd seen, even the McMansions up on Twin Diamond road, and probably spread out over more space than the UFO museum, but not bigger than the high school. It did remind her of some pictures that she'd seen of beach houses, in that the construction put most of the floors up above the ground, with empty spaces underneath where air could circulate, though as far as Liz could tell this wasn't a feature across the whole buidling, (unlike the beach houses) -- somewhere in the center of the complex it seemed to be much more grounded. Neither was it a completely solid construction - there seemed to be mostly-enclosed courtyards that could be reached by narrow footpaths between walls and porches. Beyond this, Liz didn't stop and stare enough to let more impressions solidify.

There were a few people visible, out on the beach in front of the mansion - not a crowd, but... Liz had to count to get the number straight. Six, and out of them three could easily be guards of some type - staying back from their charges, but watching in all directions for possible trouble while trying to not make it obvious that they were looking. One of these had already noticed the group of strangers suddenly appearing on the edge of this stretch of beach, and was heading over at a brisk trot. Liz supposed that the other two would quickly notice that their colleague was moving out of position, and would be calling for backup just in case this situation turned out to be more than they could handle by themselves.

The other three Liz couldn't immediately see much of, on account of distance and that they were gathered in a tight knot, without moving around much or making much clear from their body language. One was a woman, somewhere between childhood and the mature adult years - in fact, her impression was that all three were in that range. The second was definitely a handsome young man, and she couldn't immediately guess even a gender for the third figure. They seemed to be sitting on some rough wooden benches, so engrossed in some kind of conversation that they weren't even noticing the hot sun and the water twenty paces away, never mind guards and visitors.

By this time, the first security man was nearly within easy shouting distance, and the Doctor suggested "Leave the talking to me at first, Max," in a low undertone, and then waved with exaggerated friendliness. It was hard to tell if the recipient of the wave was more relieved, surprised, or suspicious, but he slowed to a walk and called out, "This is a forbidden area without invitation. Do you have an explanation for yourselves?"

The Doctor paused, obviously thinking about the best way to reply to this unforgiving challenge. The kids crowded closer, until an irritated gesture conveyed the idea that he'd be more comfortable if they spread out further in a casual way. As they did this, the kids naturally stepped close to their significant others, and hands were held comfortingly. Jim, Kyle, and Rose all ended up in a somewhat looser clump to the right side of the Doctor. "I'm sorry, we didn't mean to intrude on private property," the Doctor replied, not shouting but projecting his voice loudly enough that the guard had to hear him clearly. "Just landed over on the other side of those trees, the next beach I suppose if you consider it a division, and we were trying to get our bearings." He paused just a moment. "But, if this area is forbidden because it is the summer residence of King Sanren of Antar - then you should know that we have come to this planet, and this region, to meet with him."

Now it was the guard who seemed uncertain of how to handle things. "An emissary for His Majesty? Surely you must know that many petitioners come to request a boon of the King - and that he cannot spend time with everybody who wishes to attend even the Great Court in Capital City. My lord has even less patience for those who attempt to pester him and his family here, where they come in an attempt to leave behind as many of the cares of ruling a planet as they possibly can."

"Yes, of course," the Doctor immediately answered. "But we are not ordinary petitioners."

"Because you come from another planet in a starship?" the guard shot back. "I suppose not, but that does not put you as far out of the everyday crowd as you might hope. What is your home world, by name?"

"This is it," Liz muttered very softly so that only Max could hear her. If what the Doctor had to say wasn't impressive enough, they could be in some trouble already.

"I am a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey," the Doctor answered ringingly. "Travelling with me - are a distinguished group of residents of the planet Earth, sons and daughters of good families."

There was a momentary tableau, and then the guard inclined his head. "I - I did not realize, your lordship. You had better come with me to the household. My supervisor will - will insist on reviewing your credentials before you are brought to an audience with His Majesty, strictly a formality you understand, but..."

"That's quite alright, my good man," the Doctor added magnanimously. "I do understand about security precautions and the need to be careful about impostors, though I'm not quite sure what the protocol is for verifying a supposed Time Lord. Oh, and it looks as if we have some company already."

"What?" The guard actually turned around far enough that his back was facing most of the Roswellian party, and Liz realized that this was shoddy technique, in that if the line had been an intended distraction from the Doctor, he would have been vulnerable. However, the Doctor had been true enough in what he'd said. There were indeed more guards around the beach area now, a surprisingly quick mobilization, and the three people who she'd noticed sitting on the benches were on their way over to see what the commotion was about. Now that they were closer, Liz could see that the girl was petite and very pretty by any standards, though there was something about the structure of her face that might have attracted unkind comments back on Earth - as well as the rosy tint to her skin that wasn't exactly human. (Already Liz was starting to see the Antarians as just people and look past such small differences in their appearance.) She was wearing a kind of a halter bikini top, and a mid-thigh length skort. There was something about her that was familiar, but Liz couldn't immediately place it.

The taller young man had a friendly smile and an appealingly lean build on his bare upper body, and Liz wondered immediately if they were going to meet Prince Zan so soon and without any more buildup than this. The third person was also a boy, but younger and shorter, just on the younger side of puberty it seemed, but full of youthful high spirits. He was wearing a long-sleved but very thin white shirt that was apparently fastened up the back for no good reason that Liz could see, and something like cut-off shorts.

"You shouldn't be here, my lords... and my lady," the guard protested with a tone of voice that seemed a bit resigned - as if he suspected such warnings would be futile against these particular people. "These people, while claiming to be respectable visitors, are strangers and have not been thoroughly checked yet."

"But I'm bored, Nire," the girl complained, "and some of them look very interesting. Where are you from?"

There was an awkward pause, and more than one of the newcomers looked at the guard, Nire, as if expecting him to decide if they could answer or not. "If I let them answer, my Lady, do you all promise to go back to your own business until after Security has finished its job?"

The girl didn't hesitate noticeably before haggling with her advantage. "No - for that promise, I want to exchange full introductions with our strange visitors."

A soft sigh. "Then go ahead, Lady."

"I'll handle the introductions for my side," the Doctor put in. "I'm a Time Lord, and you can call me the Doctor. My companions are from the planet Earth - there's Lady Rose of London, and a crowd of the best people of Roswell - Patriarch James Valenti the Second, and his son Kyle - Isabel Evans and her brother Max, Maria De Luca, Alex Whitman, Michael Guerin, and Liz Parker."

"So pleased to meet you all," the taller boy said. "My name is Larek, and I'm a student of Government from Rahlicx, here on an official student exchange. And it is my profound pleasure to introduce the Lady Ava Dervensee, and Prince Tolecnal, of the house of Liaret."

"So - so nice to meet you all," Liz stammered, hoping that they wouldn't realize the true reason that she was tongue tied. (Well, to be honest, how could they?) "What - what has the three of you talking so intently on the beach today and not enjoying the water?" Nire shot her a mean look as some of the other guards drew near, but Liz didn't feel that affected - she was curious about this scene and didn't mind asking questions.

"We're planning a surprise for my big brother!" little Tolecnal exclaimed. "It's his names-day, the - the day after tomorrow."

"Oh, I see," Max said, with a small smile. "Crown Prince Zan, you mean?"

"Well, I've only got the one brother, don't I?" Tolecnal replied. "Or didn't you know that, since you know his name? Plenty of sisters, but just one brother."

"Well, I hope he has a great day," Michael said. At this point, one of the other guards showed up and started rushing the authorized guests and family members away from the strangers. Ava giggled and waved as she was practically dragged off.

"That was interesting," Liz breathed, hardly voicing the words and wondering if she was just saying them to herself or to Max as well. Each of the three of them had a particularly close tie to Prince Zan, or would - his only brother, his close friend who was also destined to become a planetary ruler, and the girl who he would someday marry. Liz found herself inordinately interested in that last connection - not jealous at all, not with Max right beside her and all that they'd been through together. But - were Zan and Ava in love at this point? Would that come later, or had the marriage only been one of political convenience? They wouldn't necessarily stay long enough to find all the answers, though hopefully the information they found out first hand might be combined with the archives that had been retrieved from Kaalto for a three-dimensional perspective on personal history, as it were.

"Come on, Liz," Max muttered in a much louder whisper, and she realized that they were the only two of the TARDIS party who hadn't started to make their way up to the house in a ragged line. Even Nire had gone, leading the way, and one other guard was gazing at them sourly, as if that was the only way to drive home the point that he was waiting for Liz to clue in and follow her friends.

"Oh, so sorry," she mumbled, and linked Max's arm with hers before heading along, because that always made her feel closer to him.

-----------

"This is actually starting to feel somewhat routine," Alex commented as he started unpacking a few things in the guest room that he would be sharing with Isabel. The room wasn't that similar to the spherical chamber that they had had in Kaalto township - in fact, in comparison, it seemed very much like his parent's room at home or the hotel room that he'd shared with Max when they'd both been on the West Roswell team that had gone to the State Academic Decathlon finals in Albuquerque.

There was a single bed, about what he'd think of as Queen size, and it was almost perfectly comfy for humans. They'd asked about the sleeping furniture in the guest room, and found out that some, but not all of them, were specially set up with non-specialized matresses, because on occasion the King *did* invite representatives from other species here for informal visits. The Doctor had asked for permission to 'convert' more mattresses with his sonic screwdriver, and this had been graciously granted. It was only at this point that Alex remembered that they'd completely forgot to convert any of the beds back to their original configuration when they packed up to leave Kaalto, and hadn't even informed anybody of their actions there. The next Antarians to get assigned to those rooms would probably be disappointed.

"Yeah, well, at least the view is better," Isabel answered, and Alex looked around a bit in surprise, because her voice hadn't come from within the room itself. For a brief moment, he'd thought that she was literally hanging out the window, and then he came to the natural conclusion.

"Ooh, do we have a balcony looking out on the beach?" he asked, stepping back around the bed, towards where a full-length window had obviously been slid aside like a door. He could just make out that there was a flat surface beyond, but not much about it.

"Not really, but better."

"Better?" he repeated quietly, and followed her out - then he saw what she meant. The space outside their patio door might be considered a balcony of a sort, but certainly not the kind of protruding balcony that he had expected, like the ones that are often seen outside hotel rooms. Instead, there was a large communal space, like an upper-floor deck or something of the sort, with several glass doors from different guest rooms all leading onto it, in the same way that the main doors of their rooms all led out onto the same corridor. "It must be built on the ceiling of something on the floor beneath us," he decided in a soft whisper.

"What was that, honey?" Isabel said, turning from the railing at the far end of the deck, her smile so brilliant that he almost felt as if he would need to shade his eyes and avoid looking directly at her.

"Um - nothing important," he insisted. Isabel's face brightened, and she swung her hand up vigorously into the air. Alex tentatively waved back, and then heard a soft swishing sound and felt slightly foolish enough. Sure enough, when he turned to look, one of the other doors was opening and Max was stepping out onto the deck. "Hey, man. Nice, huh?"

"Not bad," Max had to admit. "Is this space private just for us, do you think?"

"Well, let's see," Isabel said, stepping back towards them. The deck wasn't really that deep - maybe about twenty feet or so, so she covered the distance fairly quickly. "That'll be Michael and Maria, Alex and me, you and Liz, Kyle and his dad, the Doctor and Rose. We have one more door opening up on the deck that's unaccounted for - it might be empty, or there might be a few other VIP guests at court, I suppose. Oh, and there's something that looks a bit like an elevator door over that way," here she pointed off to Alex's left, "and a flight of stairs on the other side that lead down into one of the courtyards."

"Hmmm - that elevator - I think that the kitchen was in more or less that area, so it could be for food service, if we want to have breakfast up here," Max suggested. "And the stairs would make sense as an emergency escape. We could ask about our privacy, or just wait and see what happens."

"Of course, we shouldn't really be spending that much time in privacy amongst ourselves," Liz said, stepping through the door of her room out onto the deck. "That's not what we're here for, a vacation where we can spend a lot of time together? Like we don't do that practically every day back home? The point is to spend time with our hosts, get to know things about them."

"When she's right, she's right," Alex chimed in. "And nice costume, by the way." Liz was possibly the last of them getting to the deck because she had taken time to change clothes from what they'd arrived on Antar wearing - she was now dressed in a relatively modest black two-piece bathing suit, with a knee-length, slightly transparent maroon wraparound skirt added on top. Her hair was pulled up into a ponytail with a scrunchy, and she had put on flip-flop sandals, so the effect seemed nicely 'beach chic' to Alex. He didn't think that he was the only one who thought so - Max had grinned as he put an arm around Liz, and Isabel had narrowed her eyes just slightly and she was almost trying to edge past Alex to the doorway to their room, as if the transformation in Liz reminded her of a wardrobe change that she wanted to make herself.

"Oh - did they tell you about the bathroom situation, Liz?" Max said suddenly, as if he'd just remembered it himself.

"Well, yeah - each room shares a washing chamber with the one next door, pair-wise," Liz rattled off. "So we're stuck with the Valentis - not the most horrible situation that we could be in, I admit."

"Go on, try to make yourself more stunning if you like, honey," Alex whispered to Isabel, and kissed her on the cheek. "Not that I think you can improve on what's already perfection." She actually blushed slightly before slipping back through the doorway and drawing it closed. Max and Liz headed over to a small table surrounded by four seats, and Max waved Alex over. "Hi there, guys," he said as he sat down.

"Okay, so - what did you think of His Royal Majesty?" Max asked. All of them had been there in the brief audience with King Sanren and Queen Alinda, where the Royal couple had mostly exchanged pleasantries with the Doctor and assured them all that they were welcome to his hospitality for at least the twelve days that he and his court would be staying at Brok Bay. Alex had been a bit too jumpy to pay much attention, caught off balance more than he expected by a completely different alien setting than Kaalto, and really expecting that Zan, Vilandra, and Rath would be entering the semi-formal reception chamber at any moment. However, none of them had yet so much as seen a glimpse of Max, Isabel, and Michael's past-life selves.

"He seemed nice," Liz said after only a momentary pause to think. "Stern but with a soft center, and enough of a sense of humor about his role in the world. Of course, that's mostly just an instinctive reaction, so I may have to revise as we get to know more about him."

"Yeah, but for what it's worth, I think that I had the same impression," Alex said, and stretched. "Well, my lovely girlfriend had a point - we probably should be going back inside or anywhere but here, looking for people and information, instead of staying here."

"Maybe you feel ready for that," Max said with a little sigh. "I think that I need to acclimatize to the notion that I'm on Antar at last, and that Prince Zan is somewhere nearby, younger in Antarian terms than I am. This seems to be a good spot to sit and think about that kind of thing - not for too long, just to try and get used to it."

"Sounds good to me," Liz admitted, taking Max's hand. "You guys didn't immediately start looking up historical records as soon as you got to Kaalto, did you?"

"Umm - no," Alex admitted. "We stayed in Michael's room, watched videos, and got food delivered. Rose, the Doctor, and Kyle went to a banquet that the Governor invited them too, and he got an appointment there for us to ask permission to access the College archives. But..."

"Oh - do you remember the convention banquet in the UFO center?" Liz asked Max. "Last night?" And the two of them were off chatting about the ridiculous things that humans dressed up as aliens or alien hunters could manage to do.

Alex sighed and sprawled back into his chair. Despite what he'd said, he really didn't want to start wandering around this beach palace by himself. Maybe when Isabel was changed and ready.

By that time, actually, Michael, Maria, Jim Valenti, and the Doctor had all showed up on the deck. "So where are - um, Kyle, and Rose?" Max asked, looking up from Liz. Alex snickered. "What's so funny?"

"Well, I'm not sure how far it's gotten yet, but..." Alex started to explain, and then suddenly choked off the explanation when he realized that Mister Valenti might not necessarily approve of his son becoming involved with a girl who was several years older than him, and routinely travelled to alien planets and eras much stranger than anything that Roswellians routinely had to deal with. Well, Kyle might be upset that Alex had spilled that much, but if he and Rose had already snuck off together, then the father figure was probably bound to figure it out himself sooner or later. "Never mind."

"Yes, we've got bigger issues to settle," Maria said, jumping in with a natural diversion. "Now, even though talking with the Royal Four may be helpful, I think that there are certain pairings who we don't necessarily want to bring together too closely too soon. Not that it'd necesarily make the space-time continuum blow up, to have Max close to Zan or whatever, but - like with the New York kids, you might be similar enough to chafe personalities, and we certainly don't want them to realize the similarities. We're going to have to be creative with the dinner plans, considering that."

"Yeah," Max agreed. "Umm - we could try and contrive a split into two different dinners, say? Tell our hosts that some of the party would like a casual dinner upstairs, out here on the deck or some other space that's big enough for a handful of people, and - and invite Prince Zan along?"

"With the two of us hosting?" Isabel asked. Alex looked up, having not realized that she had emerged and was listening until just then, and smiled to see her. He'd sort of expected Isabel to actually change into a swimsuit, like Liz had, since there had been so much discussion of those types of outfits before they'd left, but instead her new selections featured tan shorts, and a thin white blouse over a rose-pink halter. "Michael and I, I mean?"

"Yeah, that would follow," Liz agreed. "We can certainly ask. I'm not quite sure what the protocol and etiquette is for a situation like this, but I think that being under the protection of a Time Lord should help us out of some gaffes."

"Yes, but don't try to push that one too far," Michael warned.

"I think that with your example, all of us will be more cautious," Max said. "Okay, all three of us who weren't at Kaalto should probably go down for the big dinner in the main hall, along with enough friends to help us navigate the food and table manners. Those who stay for a meal up here will have to know what to ask the kitchen staff to deliver I suppose."

"Yes. I think I'll remain with the upstairs group," the Doctor decided. "Maria? Can you help Max and Liz, and Mister Valenti out?"

Maria turned to Michael, who just shrugged and gave her a big hug. "We'll be seeing enough of each other in the days to come," he promised. "This makes sense for tonight. I'll see you again after the feasting, and the songs or storytelling or whatever they have for after-dinner entertainment here."

"I guess I should probably go downstairs too," Alex said, looking around.

"Yeah, I think that'd be okay," Isabel told him. "So if Zan comes alone, we'll have a cozy dinner party of four, that's not bad."

"What if he wants to bring Vilandra or Rath with him?" the Doctor suddenly pointed out. "It might not be the best idea to tell him no."

"Then we can adjust our own choices," Michael decided. "Don't tell him that we'll be there, first off - just you and some of your friends, and see what he says?"

"Alright, I guess I'd better go and find someone that I can deliver the invitation to," the Doctor said, standing up, "or ideally somebody who can take me directly to Zan so that he can hear it firsthand."

"Actually, I'll come along," Isabel decided. "Not to say that I'm with the invite, specifically, but - as much as you may know about aliens in general, Doctor, we've got a bit more experience with the Antarian psyche. I might be able to head off a problem."

"I suppose," the Doctor agreed. "In the meantime, somebody could start with preparations for the kitchen."

"Sure, I'll handle it," Michael said.

"We both can," Maria added.

"And maybe we should go looking for some pre-dinner conversation," Liz said. "But we'll come back to check in before everything is arranged, or try to."

"Yeah," Max agreed. "Communication and co-ordination might become a problem here. Our cell phones don't work - what about those alien ones that you guys got on Kaalto?"

"No compatible signal in this area," the Doctor informed him. "Unfortunately. We might be able to find out if they have something similar around the palace."

"Yeah," Alex agreed. "Lots to figure out." He stood up. "Might as well get to it."

------------

"Are you sure that it's a good idea to be wandering around this place by ourselves?" Kyle asked a bit nervously.

"Oh, come on," Rose insisted as they wandered down a wide spiral ramp. "It's a perfectly safe palace - I think that I've seen enough to be able to tell by now. Oh, hello, nice to meet you." They both stopped at the same time as a pretty girl wearing a shiny, flowing dress that went nearly down to drag on the floor. Three or four nervous smiles were exchanged.

"Hello - who are you?" the girl said after a moment. "I heard something about visitors landing on the next beach over, but - umm, well, not much more than that I guess."

"Umm - I'm Kyle, and my friend's name is Rose," Kyle said. "We're from Earth - have you ever heard of it?"

"Earth? Uh - I'm not sure," she muttered, and Kyle couldn't tell if she was just hedging to be polite. "But welcome to the summer palace, I suppose. I'm Vilandra Liaret, daughter of Sanren and Alinda."

"Ohh... pleased to meet you, your Highness," Kyle managed to say, bowing slightly, while all the things that the other kids had told him about Isabel's past-life self ran through his mind. Had she really been a traitor, and if so, was that true at the moment, or would it not start for a while yet?

"Likewise, I'm sure," she said, and started to proceed past them.

"Umm - I'm sorry to impose, but are you planning to do anything that we could accompany you for?" Rose said. "We're new here, just trying to settle in, and - well, I'd like to get to know you, Vilandra. Or - or 'your Highness', whatever you prefer I call you."

Vilandra turned around and stared at her, and then the first traces of a warm smile started to tug at the edges of her mouth. "Umm - I was just intending to spend a bit of time with - with my friend." She flushed a paler shade of pink than normal, (which ironically was more like a human's ordinary skin tone would be than her appearance moments before.) "Not doing anything that we'd be comfortable having new friends around for. But..."

"No, it's okay, if we'd be imposing..."

"Well, I suddenly have this other idea that sounds like a lot of fun too, in its way," Vilandra told them, stepping near. "You're completely new around here, right? Never been to this province before?"

"Hey, until today, we'd never even been to Antar before," Kyle said, honestly enough.

"Then you've probably never even ridden in a fin-car, have you?" Vilandra said, and both Rose and Kyle had to shake their heads. "Okay, we'll take you for a ride, across the stalky plains and show you the old Square of Stones. We can grab some food in the kitchens before we go, and not be back until well after dark. You both willing?"

Kyle's eyes glinted, and he felt up for the challenge. Rose didn't seem so sure, but he took her hand and squeezed slightly, and after a second she squeezed back once. "I think I have an idea what's good for a picnic, and they pointed out the vehicle garage on the way in. You go and get Rath and tell him the plan, and meet us there?"

"Sure, just a - wait a second, how did you know I was talking about Rath?" Vilandra asked.

"He's just a good guesser," Rose told her with a giggle, before they headed on in the same directions that they'd been going before they met, but now with a common goal in mind.


TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Part Thirteen

"Okay, I guess that leaves just the two of us to enjoy the evening together, Alex," Jim Valenti said, after Michael and Maria had left through the door into their room. "Unless you're going to invent some errand to go off on too."

"No, I'm okay right here, keeping you company, Mister V," Alex drawled back. "Figured that it'd help to have a friendly face nearby, so that you don't freak out or anything."

"Actually, yeah it does," Jim admitted. "It's not that strange to be sitting here on an alien planet, though it probably should be - but frankly I've been expecting something like that to happen since I started to learn more about alien politics, that eventually I'd get sucked into it enough that I'd find myself in the middle of something really unearthly. But the idea that we've also gone back in time - I didn't even realize that aliens could do that until a few days ago."

"Yeah, well, I only heard about Max and Future Liz a few hours before you did," Alex shot back. "Though I can understand about her wanting to play it close to the vest."

"But still," Jim muttered, and Alex looked up at him in surprise. "I mean, the last thing that I want to do is reopen old wounds, but most of the gang had heard, one way or another, before the Doctor came to town."

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Alex agreed, actually laughing at it. "I'm always one of the last to know - but I guess I've made my peace with that, as long as they include me once it does make sense to start telling people what's going on. Kyle hadn't been told either, and nobody really told Michael, he just happened to find out while making out with Maria. That's the way it goes."

"Well - again, forgive me if I'm asking about things that are none of my business, but do you ever - ever find things out from Isabel, that way?" Jim asked.

"Well, occasionally, not very often. Neither has Maria, actually. We're not entirely sure if that's the fault of our partners, not opening up, or if humans aren't as good at receiving as hybrids are. Max and Liz seem to have something much more like a two-way street when it comes to flashes. It is what it is."

"Okay." There was a short pause. "Speaking of receiving - do you hear something, really faint? Like a chime or a bell??"

"Hmm? No." Another beat. "Okay, yeah I heard it that time. Coming from inside one of the rooms, I think."

"Oh!" Valenti suddenly charged up onto his feet, passing by the patio doorways one by one, moving fairly quietly when he did, and pausing in utter stillness every two steps or so - outside each door and between each pair of doors. Alex tried to ask just what he was doing, but got clearly shhed, and soon the answer occured to him - the lawman was listening to see which room the sound was coming from. Outside the room that Isabel and Alex had moved into, he turned back to Alex and gestured him over. "It's for you - a doorbell I think, and you probably shouldn't keep your guest waiting any longer."

"Oh, right!" Alex exclaimed, and scrambled to his feet himself, stepping across the threshold of the patio door, which had been left open since the air outside was so fresh and pleasant, and pressed his thumb against the hallway door. After a moment, it slid open to reveal a young Antarian man about his own age or a little younger, and not one of the castle residents that they had met before. "Greetings, may I help you?" he asked, and the caller shook his head slightly, seeming slightly surprised at that response. Unsure how else to respond without a clue to the identity of his guest, Alex shot an instant look at Mister Valenti, (who seemed also somewhat bemused,) and added, "Would you like to come inside, sir? Alex Whitman, at your service."

"Umm, yes please - we can all go out to the balcony, if that pleases you," the young Antarian said, and Alex turned off to lead the way back outside. only to freeze in his tracks when Valenti made a kind of gulpy swallowing sound, as if he had just figured out that Alex had done something wrong. Totally nervous now, Alex turned back around to face the new guy, who had just stepped through the hallway door and let it slide closed behind him. But Alex still had some momentum in the direction of the balcony, and half-tripped backwards over the little ridge that guided the sliding door, which stood up about an inch from the floor.

"It's alright," the Antarian said, smiling in what was probably a reassuring way. "And yes, to answer your question, I hope that you can help me. My name is Zan Liaret, and I believe that one of your friends was looking for me, Alex."

"Your highness!" Alex blurted out, suddenly realizing why Jim had been so stricken - it was a horrible breach of etiquette with Earth royalty to turn your backs on them, unless given very explicit permission - or at least that had been true in the heydey of the great European royal families, Alex remembered. Was there a similar tradition here? Very carefully, Alex took a step backwards over the door ridge. "It - it's a great honor to have you visiting us..." He broke off, wondering if he should try some kind of a deep bow. Probably he'd been starting to flex his waist a little in preparation.

"Alex, I'm good," Zan repeated firmly with a faintly dramatic gesture. "In fact, I much prefer to avoid the bowing and scraping and the constant references to great honors, especially when I'm here at Brok Bay. I admit that I was a little - um, surprised that you didn't immediately start that routine when you first saw me, until I realized that you didn't even recognize me as a Prince. But come on - you were doing all the right things - you were still being respectful and polite and all, just not..." He broke off, apparently not sure how to finish that sentence.

"Not overdoing it," Alex filled in with a smile.

"Exactly, that's perfect. Almost poetic," Zan mused, and Alex had to wonder what Antarian turn of phrase that fairly ordinary English word had been translated into.

"Well, it's nice to meet you, Zan, and this is Jim Valenti," Alex said, waving at his older friend, and as Zan nodded in princely fashion, Alex quickly backed the rest of the way out to the balcony and stood next to a chair, still facing back towards the room.

Zan made a sort of a barking laugh sound. "Nice to meet you, Jim - but I see what you did there, Alex." He strode out to the chairs on the balcony. "And it seems I'm going to have to force the issue once, and see if you get the point. I insist that you take your seat first."

With a little shrug, Alex sat down, and Zan waited until Jim had wandered out and reclaimed his original seat before seating himself. "So, now that we're finished with that nonsense for now," the prince continued, "can we get to the matter that brings me here?"

"Umm, yes, certainly, but just let me catch up for a moment," Jim said. "You got a message that - I guess that Isabel and the Doctor wanted to talk to you, but because they were looking for you all over the palace themselves, you couldn't find them directly, so you came up here to see us?"

Zan paused thoughtfully for a moment. "I suppose that may be what it amounts to. I didn't realize that they were in search of me directly - usually in a situation like this, if you tell the help that you want to meet with so-and-so, you also give a location for a rendezvous, to avoid these kind of problems. When there wasn't a destination included with the message I thought it was implied that I should go to one of their rooms - and you answered at the door that I was told was Isabel's, Alex."

"Yeah, we're both in there," Alex explained. "And the protocol that you explained makes a lot of sense, but I guess it's something that we're not used to."

"Oh." Zan's face fell. "So do we have to wait for them to return in their supposed failure to find me, or until someone helpfully explains that I was headed here?"

"We could send a message to them through the same network, couldn't we?" Jim suggested thoughtfully. "In the meantime, I think that we can handle their business on their behalf, right Alex?" Alex nodded a bit doubtfully. "The Time Lord was wondering if you could join him and a few of our friends - well, up here for dinner, actually. A more casual affair than the big dinner downstairs with your parents and friends, I think."

"Hmm - an interesting offer," Zan said, mulling it over just briefly. "Am I permitted to invite a few friends along with me?" His tone was softly teasing.

"Like we could stop you, your highness?" Alex shot back. "Umm, who were you thinking of?"

"Is there somebody that you don't want me to be thinking of?" Zan asked in his own turn, his blue-black eyes suddenly penetrating.

"Not that we don't want you to... umm, but I know that the Doctor was curious about if you'd want to bring - well, your eldest sister, or - or Rath. If you do, then - well, then his own guest list might have to be adjusted," Jim blurted out, and immediately looked annoyed with himself for having mentioned that, "which is really a very long story."

"Indeed," Zan said, nodding. "I do love long stories. But - no, I wasn't thinking of Vilandra's company or Rath's - they can enjoy the hospitality of downstairs if they please. But - but there is a certain young lady that I think I'd like to bring along for a casual dinner with fascinating visitors from faraway places."

"You mean Ava?" Alex asked, and winced slightly in his turn as Zan turned a shocked look on him. "We, umm, well, we met her on our way in, and - umm..."

"Yeah, that's her," Zan admitted, and shook his head slightly and sighed. "I really like her, ever since I first met her, at Dimaras Rock. And Ava - well, she's always happy to spend time with me or anything, but - well, I keep watching for a sign that she really likes Zan, and isn't just humoring the Crown Prince."

"Umm, yeah, it can be hard to tell that kind of thing, I know," Alex admitted. "And your royal status - must just make it harder."

"Maybe she's just shy," Jim put in, and Alex shot him a surprised look. "Have you made it clear to Ava that you - well, that she's very special to you, not just a passing fancy?"

"I - well, I've kind of tried," Zan said slowly. "It's hard to find the right words to say that kind of thing for the first time, and not have them sound foolish." He looked around. "It seems strange that I'm burdening you with these deep concerns about my personal life when we've only just met."

"No, that's okay," Alex said, something deep inside him thawing at Zan's all too relatable teen angst. He had some legitimate axes to grind against Tess, but Ava wasn't Tess, any more than Zan was Max, and just because Max and Tess didn't belong together didn't mean that Zan and Ava shouldn't take what pleasures they could before tragedy cut their lives short. (And of course, he couldn't risk changing the course of their lives anyway.) "So, what is Ava doing up here at Brok Bay, if the two of you aren't..."

"Well, we are kind of paired together already, but it's complicated," Zan explained. "I told you that I've asked her to - to do things together, get to know each other, and she's gone along with that. My parents - well, they can tell that I'm interested in making something more of my friendship with her, so that's why they invited her out here to spend time with us. Father's had Ava's family checked out, and Mom keeps saying that sixteen isn't too young to be thinking about a Royal Wedding for." He stretched again, not really noticing the impact that his words were having. "So when are we all sitting down to dinner?"

"Umm - well, the plan was actually that we were going to be going downstairs," Alex said. "But maybe we can reshuffle things somewhat."

"I'd like that," Zan said. "But I don't mean to be any trouble, really. Have dinner wherever you like. We can talk more tomorrow."

"Why don't the two of you keep talking about your lady friends," Jim said, with a smile. "I'll find a servant to find, to let our friends know that they can wander back here when they're ready."

"Okay," Zan said, and focused a very penetrating gaze on Alex. "So, is Isabel your lady, if you're staying in the same room together?" Surprised, Alex could only nod, and then Zan was speaking again. "Are you - married, betrothed? Do they even have conventions like that on Earth?"

Alex had to laugh. "Yes, we do have marriage, and - well, not betrothals commonly, at least not around the place where I live on Earth. There's 'engagements,' which is slightly more informal I guess - the man asks a woman to marry him, often offering her a valuable ring as a token of the promise at the same time, and they tell their friends and family, and start to make plans for the wedding."

"Oh." Zan considered this. "The friends and family aren't consulted beforehand?"

"Oh - that depends. Before 'popping the question' - asking the woman, a man will often ask his family, his friends, for advice - and may ask her friends as well, usually swearing them to keep the secret until the moment that he asks. Sometimes he'd ask her friends for their help in selecting a ring that she'd like, if he isn't sure about picking them out himself. And there's a lot of old traditions about asking the father for permission before you pop the question, but I'm not going to get into all of that." Alex took a deep breath. "To answer your more specific question, no, Isabel and I aren't even engaged. We're both in high school - that's the later stage of public schooling in our homeland, though the later teen years of adolescence more or less. It generally isn't common for young people to get engaged while they're still in school, because when they marry they're expected to have a source of income to support themselves with."

"Right, okay," Zan said, nodding. "I think that part is mostly the same here on Antar, if you don't happen to be..."

"...The prince," Alex finished in unison with him. "But Isabel and I are an established couple, and I love her very much. We don't share a bedroom back home, but this trip is something like a holiday, and our chaperones aren't being particularly picky, so why not take the chance to spend some quality time together?"

"No reason that I can see," Zan agreed. "I wish I got chances like that - though I guess Ava wouldn't be too receptive if I suggested something like that out of the blue."

"Yeah, you have to work up to it," Alex admitted.

"So - tell me, what was the first time that you realized that Isabel was that somebody special for you?" Zan asked him. "I've asked Vilandra about this kind of thing, but she's never helpful."

Alex blinked, momentarily overwhelmed by that contrast of Isabel and Vilandra in adjacent sentences - then decided to let Vilandra fall back out of his mind and concentrate on the question about Isabel. "Umm, I guess that was on a camping trip - a big group of us from school, students and parents, and Isabel - well, she didn't really want to be there. But I was sitting near her, out in the woods together as the night closed in, and started watching the stars. She knew more about them than I did, and pointed out all kinds of constellations and even another galaxy or something, I think." Alex looked up at the sky, but it wasn't dark yet, though Antar's reddish sun was starting to dip close to the bay. "It doesn't sound completely amazing or anything, but I guess that was when I really knew that I was falling in love."

Zan nodded contentedly at that. "Maybe - maybe it doesn't need to sound completely amazing to anybody else."

-------------

"Whoo, yeah-hah!" Kyle exclaimed as Rath turned the vehicle called a 'fin-car' into a hard left turn, and then twisted back to the right and stamped on a pedal to accelerate and resume the speed that had been lost in the showy maneuver. "I thought my car back home was a sweet ride, but - is it hard to learn how to drive one of these things?"

Rath just let out a booming chuckle that faded away quickly as the wind blew past them. Vilandra made a sound that was much more like a snort. "No, it's not hard," she said, "but Rath *never* lets anybody else work the controls of his fin-car. It gets really annoying sometimes, how persistent he is about that."

"What, never?" Rose asked curiously. "Have you tried being, ermm, very persuasive about it?"

"I think she's tried just about every persuasive trick she knows," Rath said, while Vilandra sat back in her seat and looked nettled. "What can I say, she's my baby?" He let one hand stray from the steering controls for just a moment to stroke the side door contentedly. "Maybe for a special occasion I'll let V give her a spin."

"Ahh, I see," Rose said, nodding. Kyle was looking somewhat perplexed and disappointed, but Rose thought she knew what was going on. She'd known guys like this Rath back at home - stubborn men who just dug in their heels harder no matter how hard you teased or wheedled them, if they really cared about something. Vilandra was going to have her hands full with this Antarian fool - but maybe he was worth the effort. Even if they only had a few years before...

She shut a mental door on that line of thought, not liking where it would lead her to.

It was only a few minutes later that Rath fishtailed to a stop, at the other end of a flat expanse from the Brok Bay palace - he hadn't been driving the fin-car in a straight line the whole way, but joyriding hither and yon around the area, which must have been nearly five miles across. Now, they were more or less parked next to a monolith that reminded her somewhat of her one trip to see Stonehenge - (which had been courtesy of the Doctor, not long after construction had finished on the second circle,) but whatever culture had arranged this monument clearly had different geometric preferences than the Stonehengians.

"Is it okay if we go and take a closer look?" Kyle asked, getting up out of his seat and running around to open Rose's door, which was a sweet touch.

"Well, sure," Vilandra said. "Why wouldn't it be, and why else would we have brought you here?"

"It's hard to tell with stuff like this," Rose said. "People often have very particular rules about things like this."

"Oh, right," Rath said. "I keep forgetting that you don't know about local stuff. There's no particular taboos or proscriptions, other than damaging the monument - but it's probably not smart to touch it if you haven't been trained to handle energy discharges. They're not usually reactive like that, but you can never really tell when something's up with a particular part of a particular cube - until it's too late."

"Yeah," Vilandra said. "Other than that, go nuts, explore as much as you can."

"Alright," Rose said, taking Kyle's hand in the excitement of this excursion. 'Cube' was definitely an apt description - though the cubes were obviously not perfectly regular, not anymore at least, they had obviously been constructed with that objective in mind - very flat surfaces, right-angled edges, perfect corners, and the dimensions were all very close to identical except for the obviously intentional difference between large and small cubes - which surprised Rose more than anything, as she approached the nearest one. Each cube seemed to be fashioned of very heavy stone - but if they had been made as long ago as they looked to be, wouldn't the stone have sunk into the soft ground? And if these were just the projections above ground of much longer stone slabs, then how was the height of the portion that poked above the surface controlled so well? Did the level of the soil never vary in this area?

After a moment, almost as if the Doctor was prompting Rose inside her head, she realized that she was making an assumption. "How - how old are the cubes?" she asked. If they had been fashioned and placed here recently, then...

"Something like two and a half thousand years," Vilandra said, from not far behind her. Okay, so that wasn't as old as Stonehenge, if Rose had her dates right, but old enough to not give her an easy out with her questions. She decided not to worry about puzzling it out just at that moment. Kyle seemed to be appreciating the cubes for what they seemed to be, and not asking any big questions about the why and how of them, so she should be able to match his attitude.

The largest cubes were something like eight feet high and wide, dark gray with brown tints, and arranged in a square formation, with perhaps fifty yards between the nearest of them. As they walked around one stone cube, Rose saw that there was another aspect of the monolith within that great square, made up of smaller cubes, less than three feet on a side. At first she couldn't make out any pattern to those smaller rocks, and then Rose thought that they were laid out in an octogon. Finally, as Rath took the lead and brought them to the center of the outer square, Rose worked out enough to realize that the smaller stones, too, were meant to be a smaller square with the same midpoint - but the smaller square wasn't marked out at the corners, but with two stones along each of its sides. She had been 'cutting off' the unmarked corners in her mind, drawing the angled line between stone markers, and that had turned the square into an octagon.

"This is a special place for us," Vilandra volunteered, while Rath slowly turned around to gaze at each of the stones in turn, looking like the master of all he surveyed. "And my little brother Zan, and Zan's friend Ava."

"Why is that so?" Rose asked. Kyle had an odd look on his face, and she locked her eyes with his, but he shook his head slightly. She didn't even know what unspoken question he thought he was saying 'no' to.

"Well, it's the foursquare," Rath explained, as if that should make everything obvious. Kyle blinked, and Rose shook her own head at Rath. "You don't know that we do an exhibition foursquare?"

"I - I don't even know what that would mean," Rose told him. "Though I'd like to hear about it."

"No idea at all what foursquare means?" Rath repeated, as if stunned by that concept. "Kyle, what about you?"

"Umm, not really, Rath," Kyle said. "Unless we're talking about a game involving bouncing balls on a hard court that's divided into four square sections. Or - or some kind of a reference to a group made up of two romantic couples, but I don't even really understand that one too well myself."

"I - I see," Vilandra said. "Well, let's back up. You know about Antarian's inherent powers, right?"

"A little," Rose said, more brightly because she actually did understand that part, she felt. "The Doctor found some old poems and other references. You can change the molecular structure of things, and - and move objects with your thoughts, and..."

"And some of you can heal or change what people think they see and hear, or go..." Kyle broke off awkwardly. "There are a lot of specialties, right?"

"Yes, both in terms of innate talent and practice," Vilandra agreed, smiling. "And we can connect to other people, share thoughts or energy - and work together towards a goal that just one person could never manage alone." Rose nodded. "Just about inevitably, these abilities have been used for the sake of combat and warfare for hundreds and even thousands of years - maybe as long as we've had them."

"Okay," Kyle said. "I think I follow all of that, so where does this foursquare fit in?" Neither Vilandra nor Rath answered right away. "Oh - is it a way to combine your powers, four people at a time, to attack somebody or something else with much more firepower?"

"Not to attack," Rath qualified, though he didn't sound too disappointed about that restriction. "The foursquare is - is badass, but it's badass defensively. Maybe not exclusively - you can still use your powers to hurt the other guy when you're in foursquare, and even turn some of the boosted energies of the foursquare to your attack, but that's not really the way it works best. Protective uses of the power - shields and self-defense fields and squelching attacks so that they don't hurt you - those are the primary advantages to going into foursquare, and the main liability of that mode is that you can't move once you've established a foursquare without letting it fall apart. That's good for making a last desperate stand, or covering the retreat of friends, but not for pursuing your enemies."

"Or escaping safely yourself," Rose put in. "I would think. You might be invulnerable as long as you stay where you are, but if you're stuck there, then the bad guys could eventually surround you with too many soldiers to fight, and just wait you out."

"Yeah," Vilandra agreed. "The perfect shield, even one that points in every direction, isn't a perfect salvation, but as Rath said, you can fight back from inside the foursquare too. None of us have ever been in a truly dangerous situation to use it in, if you don't count the exhibition stuff, which isn't intended to hurt anybody, but could get dicey if something goes seriously wrong. Mom's upset that we're still doing it, but we've never even slipped up once."

"Okay, wait a second," Kyle said. "Just how does this thing work, and can any Antarians do it?"

"Not hardly," Rath boasted. "Though it's a bit of a gray area in terms of the talent versus training spectrum, along with the x-factor of how a group of four works together as a team. We've been working on it for a little over a year, ever since Larek commented on how much psychic resonance there was between the four of us as a group. I think that we all score high for - for 'aptitude' at a four square, and then we had to learn just how to connect the right way to make it work. It's a pattern of links that doesn't really make that much sense until you've felt it working, I think. But - but the sense of being untouchable is such a high, as well as the fun of doing something that only a few other people on the planet can match. There's a lot of people who can do foursquares to a certain extent, they have special platoons for them in the Armed forces, but we're among the best, and getting better as we practice and train."

"Umm, interesting," Rose said, feeling like she was on information overload, but that neither of the young Antarians would appreciate it if she changed the subject at this point. "So, how does it actually work in practice? Do you have to be holding hands or something??"

------------

"Hey, how's it going?" Maria called as she rushed down the corridor to join Max and Liz near one of the spiral ramps leading up. She was holding Michael's hand at the time, so he was following along nearly abreast with her.

"Pretty good," Liz said, impulsively hugging her old friend. "Michael, can you find your way up to the balcony from here? Zan and Ava are up there already, along with the Doctor and Isabel."

"Umm, sure," Michael said. He gave Maria a kiss goodbye, so far to the side of her face that it was nearly on her ear, and Max a high-five as he passed through. "I'll say hi to your opposite number for you, Maxwell?"

"Don't make too big a deal of it, Michael," Max called back as he disappeared up the ramp. "So, what took you guys so long, Maria? I know you were supposed to be working out a menu with the kitchen, but we sent a message there, and they said that you'd left nearly half an hour ago, or the equivalent."

"Getting lost in corridors, thank you very much," Maria said peevishly. "This place may not be that big, but the floor plan is still - needlessly intricate." Max coughed awkwardly, and Maria glared at him. "What??"

"Oh, nothing," Liz said, and her face became a much too innocent smile. "I know that getting lost always smears *my* lipstick." Maria instantly blushed. "Speaking of, hold still." Liz waved her hand slowly across the front of Maria's face, and then nodded critically. "Much better."

"Come on, most of the other dinner guests have already gathered," Max said, leading the way on down the corridor. "Except for Kyle and Rose, Rath and Vilandra. Well, I guess that they won't be dinner guests if they don't show up soon. Looks like they might have all taken a little field trip together."

"Interesting," Maria admitted grudgingly. "And in my own defense, I'll admit that yes, Michael and I did sneak off somewhere private to fool around, but the getting lost was after that, and it really happened."

"Of course," Liz assured her.

"So, what have the two of you been up to since we broke huddle, anyway?" Maria asked. "I can't even remember what your mission was."

"Nothing very critical," Max admitted. "Just looking for somebody interesting to talk to, who we don't have to avoid for any particular reason, which is harder than it originally seemed. For instance, Liz pointed out that it might get very tricky for me to make much of an impression on young Larek."

"Oh, right," Maria said, shaking her head. "Because you've already met him, so if he recognizes you - then, and not just as Zan, but also as Max who came visiting Brok Bay one time... then he'll know that we're time travellers."

"Well, he'll probably realize that it's the Doctor who's the time traveller," Liz said. "But he might be able to guess when the Doctor comes to Roswell, and that's probably mischief that we don't need."

"Even when we already told him when to expect us on Nunyes?" Maria said. "Okay, yeah, it's complicated enough, let's not argue any more." She sighed. "So, did you find anybody interesting?"

The answer to that question was muchly delayed, because the three of them arrived in the dining room, where the other members of their company were enjoying refreshing drinks and appetizer snacks, but seemed to be eager to start on the next course. The seating arrangement had been set up so that the visitors were not all together, but scattered into different groups, so that Maria was between Alex and Larek, and Max and Liz were together, between Queen Alinda and a little sister of Zan and Vilandra.

Once a ceremonial and nonspecific thanks was recited for the food, Max took the conversational initiative and started asking his hosts some background questions about their political situation and the history of this vacation home where they were all staying. Maria was trying to follow the answers, which got a little complicated, (or maybe she was just missing the necessary background context,) when somebody tapped her on the arm. Maria turned around to see what it was, and found herself staring into a pair of rose-purple Antarian eyes.

"If I could possibly draw you away from the fascinating lecture on governmental theory, the Danza sauce dish is just on the other side of your plate there," Larek pointed out.

"What? Oh, this?" Maria reached out to something that did look a bit like - well, a cross between a gravy boat and a miniature honest-to-goodness rowboat, filled with a kind of blue cranberry jelly. and had a small spoon stuck into it.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Larek nod as she touched the rectangular plate that the boat was sitting on, so she carefully lifted and passed it over to him. Larek murmured a soft thanks as he used the spoon to serve a small amount of the sauce onto a pile of white lumpy things on his plate.

"You're welcome," she muttered. "I'm not really that interested in the political stuff, I admit. What are these things anyway?" she asked, identifying a nearby serving bowl with more of the same kind of lumps, and bringing several over to her plate. "Not just 'what are they called,' really, so much as 'where do they come from?"

"Well, they're called Zafrangan, and they - they grow in the ocean. Not as fish do, but - they are underwater plants, I guess you would say."

"Plants?" Maria repeated, prodding one of them with the two-tined fork. "Like seaweed?"

"No, not a weed," he explained. "More -umm, starchy. Like a floating tuber."

"Huh? Ohh..." After thinking for a moment, she tried some of the blue sauce, cut up a white lump, and put it in her mouth. Yeah, it did sort of taste like a soggy roast potato with some kind of spicy gravy on it. Not too bad, actually. She smiled thanks at Larek and turned back to what King Sanren was explaining.

She had more to chew on than the Zafrangan, though. Maria knew that she loved Michael, and they weren't even fighting about anything much this week, but somehow she had felt a thrill go through her when talking to Larek. She'd never been one of the ones to meet him via Brody Davis, back in Roswell, but she'd liked Brody a lot as a friend and even flirted with him. But - so she was attracted to a man other than her Spaceboy. That was nothing to worry about, right?

TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Part Fourteen

"So, tell me about yourself, Lady Ava," the Doctor said as they started to sample the first round of appetizers - mostly little crunchy biscuity things. As she sat back and let them talk, Isabel found it hard to actually believe that she was actually talking with Prince Zan and Ava - not hybrid versions who had lived all their lives on Earth like she had, but the Antarian originals, the crown prince and his maybe-girlfriend who would in only a few Antarian years, become King and Queen. 'And after that, dead and deader,' some bitter part of her mind thought, but she managed to avoid blurting that out loud. Michael shot her a surprised look, so Isabel tried to put on her best Ice Princess face, cool and detatched.

"Umm, I feel like there's not that much to say, yet," Ava said, and giggled faintly, reaching out and idly running her fingers along the wall of the small room. "Grew up with my parents, mostly in the raised hives of the Capital City, and my older brothers and sisters. I'm the baby of the pack, actually. My mother is an officer in the Merchant's and trade guild, and father's a performance artist. As far as me, well - I'm still in secondary schooling, though it's been a while since I actually went to class at Everwind..."

"Don't make it sound like you're a dropout, honey," Zan said. "Ava takes classes with the Royal tutors while she's - a guest of the family. We make a small but decent class if you gather all of us 'students' together. And the education is on par with the best schools on the planet."

"Yes, yes, thank you Zan," Ava said, with a mix of exasperation and affection coming through clearly in her voice. (Would it be as easy to tell that if not for the TARDIS translation field, Isabel wondered - aside from all the other difficulties they'd have in understanding Ava and Zan's very words if not for that convenience. She shook her head and tried to leave that distracting thought behind.)

"Think nothing of it," he said grandly. "Tell them about the refugee work you do."

"Refugees?" Michael asked.

"It's not like I've done any of that lately, either," Ava replied, sighing. "And you make it sound like the really in-person thankless stuff or something, but well okay." She looked at the Doctor, Isabel, and Michael in turn, as if she couldn't decide which one to focus on. The way they were arranged in the small dining room didn't allow her to aim at all of the guests at once, as it were.

"Back when I first met Zan, I was involved in public activism, raising awareness for - well, a kind of refugees, strangers to this sphere of space. I'd actually have liked to meet some of these people and help them out a bit more directly if I had an opportunity, but being in the city at the time, trying to meet with government leaders and plead their case was what I could do for the cause."

"And sometimes that's the hardest and most painful part," the Doctor added, with the voice of experience.

"Wait a second," Michael put in. "What kind of refugees are these? You're not talking about - about earthlings, are you?"

"Earthlings?" Zan asked, seeming unable to place the word for a moment, while Ava looked just as confused. "Oh, those poor folk who were abducted from their primitive planet two sectors over?"

"They're not THAT primitive," the Doctor muttered in an undertone.

"No, no, of course not," Ava said, shooting Zan a dirty look. "But there's no such easy turn of phrase for 'industrialized but without interstellar travel of their own', is there?"

"In any event, resettlement and integration policies for Earthlings are old news," Zan said. "Father had implemented those before I was born - in fact, the process might have been started in my grandfather's time."

"Though it does relate," Ava said. "Certain Antarian conservatives will go on and on if you let them about the slick slide of generous immigration policies, and how they don't want their beautiful world to become overrun with the 'discarded living.'"

"Eww." Isabel wasn't the only one to shudder at that turn of phrase, though she expressed the sentiment out loud succintly with that sound.

"Yes. But to return and fully answer the question, the refugees I had taken the cause of were from the Norhu drift, nearly a thousand parsecs away from Antar. Two nearby races waged such a terrible war that little is left of their home systems but lingering clouds of eta radiation."

"And the survivors from one or another of those races came here looking for a new home, and bit of a hand rebuilding from the loss of their old world?" Michael asked.

"Both races," Zan said, with a little smile. There were soft gasps of surprise. "Yes, that part surprised me too. But the living of Norhu, these ones at least, had the courage to reject the gaps between their species that had led to war, and if they hadn't worked together, pooling their resources and their technological skills, they probably wouldn't have made it to the Antarian sphere."

"Nice story," Isabel admitted. "So how did things work out there?"

"King Sanren took up the cause himself, after meeting me," Ava said shyly. "And passed a resolution through the Senate - for some reason, this sort of thing can't be done unilaterally by the King. It's a constitutional limit on power." She shrugged. "Actually implementing the resolution in practice has caused a few problems already, and things aren't nearly settled, but I'm - well, I gave it my best shot."

"The drift was the only thing on Ava's mind when Larek introduced us," Zan teased her. "I'd been hoping for a liason that was a bit less political and more - personal."

"Oh, give me a break," Ava shot back. "Half of the reason I talked about the Nurho so much was that I was so nervous about being face to face with a Prince that I could hardly think of anything else - and the other half was that I was convinced I'd never see you again, so I needed to seize the opportunity for the cause when I could."

There was a short pause, and Isabel realized that Zan was gazing at her pensively. She wondered what was going through his mind, and then the prince cleared his throat. "Speaking of personal alliances, if I might in this somewhat unusal company - there is something that I've been wanting to ask you about, Ava." Ava let out a little squeak of excitement or nervousness. "We've been spending a lot of time together for nearly a year, but never spoken of - certain things. Anything more than being friends, wanting to be close to each other because we share some of the same attitudes and interests." Zan strode over to Ava's chair, crouching down close to her and taking one of her hands between both of his. "But - but I do feel more for you than just friendship, Ava, and I need to know if you do as well."

"Zan, Zan, Zan." Ava sighed, and after a silent moment she took her own hand back, which made Zan's face fall - but she rose out of the chair and embraced him. "I - I feel a little foolish talking about this in front of our visitors, but what the interstellar. Of course I like you very dearly, as more than a friend, something that might be close to falling in true love. I have known for many moons that you felt that way about me, even if we never said it out loud before, and thought that you knew the same about my heart."

"I - I only hoped," Zan admitted shyly. "I could feel great love when I touched you, but admittedly couldn't be certain if it was yours I was sensing or only the reflection of my own."

"However, if we are speaking of such things to each other now, there is something I must make plain," Ava said, holding both of Zan's hands in hers and settling back to her chair. The Doctor quickly scrambled out of his own seat and pushed it over so that Zan could sit and remain next to Ava. "I - I am not yet ready to become a princess bride, and I know that your family is hoping for you to marry soon, and father a living heir unto the third generation."

"Yes, they hope," Zan agreed. "But - but I won't let them wheel us into the bonding chamber, when neither of us is ready for that kind of commitment."

"I know that - and I believe that you can stand firm against your parents' most forceful wishes for a long time, my darling," Ava said. "Long enough for me to actually want to become your lawful mate, quite likely - but that doesn't mean that it would be a fun period, for either of us." She smiled. "I've thought about this, though, and they're unlikely to try exerting much leverage as long as neither of us makes a public declaration of our affections."

"Oh." Zan's face fell obviously. "That makes some sense, indeed. But I can't say that I'm not disappointed."

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Ava?" Isabel blurted out, surprising herself at how she was stepping into the middle of what had been a private conversation, though not one private enough that it didn't have an audience.

"Well, I might be, possibly," the Doctor muttered softly. "But wherever would we find enough bowler hats and a stockpile of marmelade, here on Antar?"

Everybody stared at the Doctor for a long moment, while he kept his face straight. But as soon as Michael snickered, the Doctor let a smile emerge, and Isabel grinned and giggled herself. Zan and Ava still looked mystified. "Sorry, guys - Earth humor. I can't really explain the joke, so I'll just apologize for letting the Doctor inflict it on you."

"Alright, apology accepted," Ava said. "But, well, I was slightly lost in the conversation even before it took that sharp turn."

"Allow me to explain in a bit more detail, then," Isabel said. "What if the two of you plan a special moment for Zan's name-day party, that isn't a public declaration of affection, but that lets everybody who already 'kinda knows' that the two of you like each other, know that you've talked about how much you like each other and are growing closer? While still not officially meaning anything at all in terms of the usual cultural conventions? That wouldn't give the King and Queen any particular push to marry the two of you, would it?"

"Umm, no, I suppose not," Zan admitted. "But I'm not sure I know what a 'moment' like that would be."

"I haven't gotten it all worked out yet myself," Isabel admitted. "But I've got a few ideas. Let me talk about it with the rest of my friends, right? We've got more than a day to prepare."

"Well, thank you for all of your help, Isabel," Ava told her. "I'm so glad that you've come."

"Happy to drop by and get to know you all," Michael said magnanimously, stretching his arms up and out contentedly.

------------

"Come on Rath," Vilandra called out in a petulant tone. "I've seen you fly in the air more than often enough lately. It's getting dark and chilly out here, I'm hungry, and I want to go back to the palace."

The first response from the airborne Rath was a scoff, and then he swooped down somewhat and hovered not far over her head. "What if I'm not ready to go back yet?"

"Then I'll give you one more opportunity," Vilandra said, reaching up, and something small zipped down from Rath into her hand. "Are you going to take me back home, or will I have to pilot the fin-car back and leave you to fly home all by yourself?"

"Hah!" Rose exclaimed. "That's the way to get to 'im, sister!"

"Bit of a low blow," Kyle remarked under his breath in a surface show of male solidarity, but he wasn't really too upset about it. Something about Rath's flamboyant confidence had been starting to get on his nerves.

Rath drifted down slowly to the sparse grass, and reached out his hand towards Vilandra's face with such a hangdog expression that Kyle almost did feel sorry for him. "You know that there's only one answer to that choice, honey," he said morosely, and Vilandra kissed his fingers and then handed back the small object that she had taken - some sort of alien equivalent to an ignition key. The mood was definitely subdued as the four of them piled back into the car, and Rath started up its motor.

And also, the darkness had indeed closed in surprisingly quickly, on the heels of an impressive sunset. Kyle pondered that vaguely as the vehicle started into motion. Could it be something about the Antarian atmosphere, that made twilight brief? But that would be controlled by how light was scattered by the air, and if there was less scattering, wouldn't they have noticed that in the daytime sky? He remembered noticing that the Antarian sky had been a very Earthlike blue, a bit jarring considering the expectations he'd had for some totally different color.

Rose reached out to squeeze Kyle's hand with her fingers, as if warning him about sinking down into his thoughts, and a bare second later a wave of cold wind seemed to slam over the open fin-car, forcing out the breath of all four occupants and shoving the vehicle itself sideways and down. "What - what was that?" Vilandra asked, sounding concerned, and maybe just a little bit frightened.

"A cold air mass that formed over the bay," Rath replied through gritted teeth, fighting to steady the car. "Nothing to worry about..." Unfortunately, he had only gotten those words out when something else made the car shake - not another blast of wind, but something tugging at it from underneath, or...

"I'm getting a very very bad feeling about all this," Rose muttered sullenly.

"It's the fins underneath the car," Kyle realized. "We got too low, and they're dragging on the foliage or the terrain itself." The uneven nature of the next bout of shaking seemed to bear out his guess. "Rath, can't you give us any more altitude? The wind isn't blowing us down any..."

"I've been trying, but it's not working," Rath snapped back. "Something much have damaged the matter repulsor subsystem." Once again, the ship dragged. "I'm going to have to retract them and land us, and this might be bumpy."

He hadn't been overstating the case. Though Rath obviously tried to brake against forward velocity, their final touchdown in the middle of the dark field was accompanied by a vicious forward jerk of inertia as the chassis lost all its forward velocity a second before absorbing the passengers. Another blast of cold wind chose that moment to pass over them. "So what do we do now, stranded away from the Castle in a fin-car that doesn't work?" Rose asked.

"We fix it," Rath declared confidently, rummaging around under the 'dash' of the car and pulling out a small box with rounded-off edges and corners. "Kyle, you're with me."

Kyle immediately felt an internal conflict. In general he approved of the sentiment that it was the job of the menfolk to resolve roadside emergencies and take care of the vehicle. However... "I don't know if you didn't realize this, Rath, or just forgot it, but we don't have anything like fin-cars on Earth. So I'm not sure how much help I'm going to be to you. Maybe Vilandra should..."

Rath leapt over the side of the car and turned to glare meaningfully at Kyle. "Can you make a light for me?" he asked in a low growl, raising his hand and making it shine with visible alien power.

"Umm - well, no. Earthling," Kyle felt compelled to point out. (Actually, that wasn't 100% true, since Max had saved his life with alien powers, but it didn't seem a good idea to betray that here in the past. Also, light had never been an ability that Kyle had had much luck with himself, on the few occasions that Liz and Max had persuaded him to practice for future emergencies.) "No Antarian powers."

Rath seemed doubtful about that, but he let the light of his hand fade and opened up the box. From this, he produced a small orb, and with a touch of a small icon on its surface, the orb also produced a bright glow. "Can you HOLD a light for me?" Rath asked rhetorically, tossing the orb over to Kyle.

"Well yeah," Kyle said, catching it easily and getting out of the car himself, the less flashy way that involved retracting a 'door' down towards the ground. "I can hold your - your emergency tools or whatever, too, so you have your hands free." He had to fight down a sense of foolishness making the offer - was it really any different than what he'd done for his Dad when they were first learning auto mechanics. This was certainly such a new kind of engine, it made sense that he'd need to start back at the beginning.

Of course, Rath wasn't as gracious about it as Kyle's father. "Sure. I'm unlikely to need to use anything other than my powers a o which one of the repulsor fins had retracted.

It took a little while for Rath to check all of the fins and the rest of the 'subsystem' that powered them, as the weather got worse around them. Vilandra seemed to be silently exerting her power on the bitter rain when that started, driving as much of the spray as she could away from the vicinity of the car, but she couldn't keep them dry especially when the wind shifted direction suddenly.

"There's - there's nothing mechanically wrong with it," Rath insisted after checking the last panel. "I thought that something might have broken or been blown into the circuits when the first blast hit, but I'd have seen some evidence of that by now. The only other thing that fits is that somebody was using his or her powers to drain away the energy of the repulsors."

"That's ridiculous, paranoid - and beyond the point, Rath," Vilandra answered. "I've been patient, and not even brought up the communicator while you checked the car out yourself, but now it's time. I'll call for security, and they'll come out and get us."

"Oh, come on," Rath wheezed, stepping around to stand next to Vilandra's seat, outside the car. "Does it have to be security? I'm not saying that we don't need some help at this point, but couldn't you ask somebody a bit less annoying?"

"Who?" Vilandra asked, taking a short wand from the from where it was clipped on the dash console. "Everybody else will be at dinner, or after-dinner. There's no time to ask some servitor to find them, after all." Rath considered this silently, and without waiting for his reply, Vilandra held the wand closer to her face, pressing down with two fingers on a brightly colored band a little over half way up the stick. "This is Bluebird calling the bear's uncles. Repeat, Bluebird calling for emergency assistance."

"Good to hear from you Bluebird," a deep but pleasant voice announced from all around the fin-car. "What's your alpha? We have confirmed reports of an unidentified psychic presence exerting the Power outside. Can you confirm..."

"Yes, um, we're quite all right," Vilandra insisted. "Some mechanical difficulties with the transportation, and unexpected weather, but if that's all that an unidentified psychic power can do, then I for one..."

"At five one five do all the bells ring," Rose suddenly called in a strangely lilting tone of voice, "and as with the sound of a weapon firing, so does the dawn break. 'The saviour and his book', speaks and sceams the matron of the portal. The spheres of kismet yet continue in their courses, and though you are not here, still continues my love for you."

"Rose!" Kyle exclaimed, trying to climb back into the car to reach her, but the 'door' had retracted back up, and he couldn't seem to figure out how to work it from outside. By the time he'd charged around the parked vehicle and reached Rose, she had collapsed with her head hanging next to her knee.

"What was that?" the voice of security asked.

"Our condition is red as blood!" Rath screamed. "Location is two kilometers north by northeast of the palace. Get as many people as you can here, quick!"

-----------

None of the diners in the downstairs great hall had left the table, though dinner was clearly over. After sampling a few 'after-dinner refreshments', and been warned off one by Alex, who'd made quite a study of ingredients in Antarian cuisine that would not agree with human biology, Max had settled on something whose name he couldn't pronounce or even remember, but whose taste and consistency made him think of an peanut M&Ms milkshake.

Jim and the King had been dominating the after-dinner conversation - Mister Valenti hadn't seen any reason to hide his own background in Earth law enforcement, and Sanren of Liaret was apparently well familiar with many issues of public safety and crime that were relevant to his realm. Some things apparently were very similar between the two worlds, though Jim obviously despaired at the notion of policing a world mostly full of individuals with alien powers - even if the police all had them too.

Suddenly, Queen Alinda gasped loudly, her head rolling back slightly. "My girl!" she gasped out. "Something's out there - in the storm - with my daughter. Where could it have come from??"

Max shot a curious look over at Liz to see what she made of this - and realized that she was also experiencing some kind of alien flash, and trying not to make it obvious to anybody else at the table. Fortunately, none of the native Antarians seemed to be paying any attention to her - Larek had immediately started telling silly short jokes to distract the little kids from worrying about their mother, and Sanren leaned close to his bride and mate, whispering something indistinct into her ear.

In a moment someone new had hurried into the dining hall - a tall, uniformed Antarian man that Max had taken for a butler before, but now seemed to emanate a different kind of authority. After conferring with the King, this person addressed the entire company. "The queen has had a presentiment of a hostile psychic presence in the area, and the weather has turned foul in the past few minutes," he reported crisply. "Can anyone else corroborate Her Majesty's impressions?" There was a few seconds of silence. "If any of you have information, I urge you to share it. We need to know what we might be dealing with."

Max sent Liz a 'be strong' look, but it seemed that she had already made her decision to muddle through with some attempt at honesty and see where that left them. "I - I don't even really know what I sensed," Liz said. "I saw a storm, which is crazy because the weather is so beautiful out."

"It got cool very suddenly a bit earlier," one of the young girls of the Liaret family reported, eager to show off knowledge. "Zan and the Time Lord had to move their dinner inside to the upstairs lounge from the patio."

"Yes," the uniformed man confirmed. "And now there are strong winds and some rain."

"Is Princess Vilandra really outside the palace?" Jim asked, a little sharply.

The uniformed man bristled slightly, and somehow from that expression Max suddenly was sure that he was a head bodyguard - reacting to the implied slight against his performance of his duties. "We have been instructed to not keep a close watch on their Highnesses while they are here at the Bayside palace," he explained. "The princess has not been located within the building complex, and there is a..." The bodyguard suddenly cocked his head, reacting to some source of information that the rest of them couldn't perceive, or even tell if it was technical or psychic. "An emergency call has just come in over short-range to the palace switchboard. Technical difficulties with a vehicle - yes, it's the princess."

"I see," Sanren put in with a weighty nod. "See that she gets whatever assistance she requires, Penner. No indication of other distress?"

"No, she seems calm," the bodyguard reported. "Anything else?"

"See that my eldest child is brought here when she comes inside," the King decided. "No - I'll retire to the Noble study and meet her there. But I want to have a conversation with her."

"Very good." With a nod, the bodyguard withdrew and headed towards a door out of the dining hall - and paused, then spun back to the head of the table. "There - there's something new now! Lord Rath - he's reporting a codeword that I'm not familiar with... more than that, he seems genuinely frightened of whatever's happening!"

There was a momentary tableau, then Sanren leapt to his feet. "Everybody move!" he roared, taking several steps away from the table himself, and then reconsidering. "The young children..."

"I'll keep them busy," Maria immediately volunteered. "Been a few years since I've worked as a babysitter, but it's like riding a bike."

"What's a bike?" Larek muttered, but nobody thought it was an important subject to get into at that time.

It wasn't really everbody from the dining room but the little kids and Maria who charged out into the stormy night to check on Rath and Vilandra - Queen Alinda also chose to help babysit, and Alex decided to go up and let the upstairs dinner party know what was going on. That turned out to not be entirely necessary - the Doctor and Prince Zan emerged down a different rampway to join in the search party, and after a moment's hesitation Max mumbled a completely intelligible excuse and rushed down a corridor, wondering what he would do next, assuming that getting lost was not his only option.

It seemed clear that even getting lost was preferable to spending much time with his alien progenitor in this particular circumstance, though. Max wouldn't have been able to shake the sensation that the two of them being together might be the cause of, or a contributing factor to, whatever was happening to Vilandra and Rath.

-------------

To Kyle, it seemed like only a moment after Rose had collapse and Rath had started yelling into the communicator before the search party ground vehicles approached the fallen fincar. (Liz later told him that it must have taken them more than ten minuted to get that close.) Just as he spotted the brightly colored headlights approaching them, Rose started to stir in her seat, mumbling and sounding very confused and disoriented, and Kyle reached out to comfort her. When the first of the groundcars pulled to a stop, with bodyguards and Lord Larek piling out, the rain had almost finished falling and the winds were dying down.

Suddenly, with a shake, the fin-car lifted into the air again, its fins slowly arrowing down into the space that it had left. "Umm, okay, now I'm starting to feel a little bit asinine here, calling you out here," he said, "calling you all out here so melodramatically and there being so little to show for it. But - but the fin-ster was NOT working, couldn't levitate at all, and..."

"It's okay, Rath," Larek assured him. "It wasn't just the vehicle either, was it? We - we had portents back at the palace."

"Portents?" Kyle asked. "Like, fortune-telling stuff?"

"No, just psychic sensitivity," one of the guards said with a perfectly straight face. Well, maybe in Antarian society there was a valid distinction there, if most of the population had natural talents in the same veins as Kyle's hybrid friends.

"Who picked it up?" Rath asked. "What did they sense? Is it still here?"

Those questions provoked a little consternation among the would-be rescuers, and Sanren was the one to finally attempt a clear answer. "It was Alinda who got the clearest sense, but - she was shaken by what she saw. I thought it would be safer not to bring her closer. Who was it that corroborated... Liz?"

"Umm, yeah?" Liz said, seeming surprised.

"One of the earthlings?" Vilandra said, sounding faintly dismissive. "I can tell you about the mental presence. I admit, I was close enough that I couldn't see it to start, my senses overwhelmed, but I can be sure that it's gone now."

"None of us know what psychic talents the Earth natives might have," Larek insisted. "Even themselves, since they haven't learned the ways to test for and practice those powers." He turned to Liz as if expecting a reaction from her too.

"Yeah, ummm - I'm still not sure what I sensed, but it seems more likely that it's gone away than that it's still lingering, I'll agree with that," Liz muttered awkwardly.

"And I will corroborate that impression as well," the Doctor declared grandly. "A Time Lord's psychic talents are different from the Antarians', but I did sense something clearly - that's why I was on my way down when you were on your way outside, your Majesty. The mental presence is no longer here, but - but there was something strange about the transition, something that I don't understand." He sighed. "It seems we have a mystery facing us here as well."

"As well?" Rath asked. "Where else have you been presented with challenges like this?"

"Umm - well, nothing exactly like this, and explaining where might be a bit confusing," the Doctor muttered, and let his voice trail off as naturally as he could.

"Well, we don't need to keep talking out here into the night, though the weather is becoming less unpleasant," his Majesty observed. "If the fin-car appears operative now, then follow our lead back to the Palace, Lord Rath. We will be staying close enough to render assistance if it seems needed."

"And far enough away to avoid a collision if you should lose control unexpectedly," Larek pointed out.

"Yes, please," Liz said, and followed Larek back to one of the wheel-vans.

-------------

"Thank you very much," Ava said, as she lifted up the mug that Alex had brought to her - the liquid that she drank from it was a dark reddish, thick and frothy, and smelled faintly like chocolate milk and peach tea. "I almost feel like I should have gone out with Zan to make sure that Vilandra and Rath are okay - they've been so kind to me. But something was so frightening about the mind that is lurking out there, that having seen it clearly, I guess I couldn't..." She broke off, shuddered, and took another long draught. "Maybe that's the reason for the 'power divide' - oh, but you guys wouldn't know anything about that, I guess, would you?"

"Tell me about it," Isabel suggested.

"Well, there are a lot of exceptions, but the conventional joke is - when the old creators gave Antarians powers, the females received the psychic perceptions to sense danger - and the men got the active abilities to face it." Ava made a sour face. "I never really liked that, possibly because it's mostly true for me."

"Hmm," Micahel said, considering this rather obviously. Alex couldn't help but think of the applications either. Tess had never seemed that sensitive, in the use of her powers, and the mindwarp was certainly an active ability that had gotten her out of many dangerous situations, though it wasn't as effective if somebody knew that she was there. But otherwise, the experiences of their little group seemed to back up this notion as well.

"Well, let's talk about something else," Isabel suggested, and then sighed as an awkward silence descended on them.

"How - how much do you actually know about Antarian politics?" Alex blurted out. "I mean, well, there's no particular reason that you should be an expert, just because you're... you're friends with Zan, but..." Isabel and Ava absolutely burst out into giggles at this point, cutting him off. "What - what did I say?"

"I'm sorry, you'd probably find it funny too if you'd been here for the big scene earlier," Isabel told him. "Ava, do you mind if I tell Alex?"

"Umm - let me," the Antarian girl said. "Alex, Zan and I are - more than friends. He just made that very clear, and we have an understanding, though neither of us are going to make a big deal of it with his parents."

"Oh, why not?" Alex asked. "Don't the King and Queen approve of you?"

"They approve of her rather too much," Michael put in from where he was sitting near the corner. "Ava doesn't want them to pressure Zan to ask her to marry him, just yet. Hence it's better to leave things at least partly unspoken."

"Right, and I sort of committed us to helping Ava come up with a nice little 'unspoken' moment for Zan's big party, day after tomorrow," Isabel said, smiling at Alex. "Umm - but we don't have to start planning for that before getting to your question, sweetie. Politics?" She turned back to Ava.

"Umm, I don't know that much, but - should I start by assuming that you don't know anything at all - except that there's a Royal family, I suppose."

"Yeah, that'll be a good place to start," Michael agreed. "How long has the Liaretian, umm, what's the word, dynasty been at this point anyway? How long have they ruled? I feel like I should at least have studied enough to kno that, but I can't remember it at the moment."

"Oh, umm, not that long, at least not uninterrupted rule," Ava said, smiling and obviously feeling comfortable with this question. "Sanren is, I think, the fourth Liaretian king since the Granas Constitution. That was Sanren's great-grandfather, actually, Granas Liaret, and he had a claim to a much older Royal lineage that hadn't been much honored through the ages of the Planetary ruling council, and then the Supreme regional assemblies."

"So, were those older systems - democratic?" Alex asked, looking startled. "As in, people voting for their representatives on the council or the assemblies, one person one vote?"

"Umm, I'm not sure," Ava said, frowning this time. "About the details of the old council at least - we can look it up. For the assemblies, yes, there were regional elections, and I think some of the assemblies had 'one vote per person' and some didn't."

"But they went from that to a Constitutional that installed a King?" Isabel asked. "And one where the King wasn't just a figurehead, as far as I know, but one with some real power in the government."

"Yes," Ava agreed. "By that time, the system of the regional assemblies wasn't working well - corruption was rampant in most of them, small petty wars had started to break out, and bandit tribes were growing in disputed regions where none of the Assemblies could or would chase them down. And though there were some people who were pushing for the formation of a planet-wide republic, others thought that still wouldn't eliminate the political infighting and democratic delays. So, the Granas constitution established a monarchy with strong powers, but checks and balances on the rights of the King as well. The regional assemblies still take care of local affairs, though the rules for their elections have been reformed, and there is a planetary assembly as well, and a Senate Council formed of delegates sent by the regional assemblies."

"Yeah, I can see how that could work alright," Michael said.

"Unfortunately, there's a lot of prominent people, even in the Assembly and the Senate, who are speaking out against the power of the Throne now," Ava said, sighing. "Saying that it was necessary to unite the regions, but that power should transition to the people now. Zan says that they just think they can win power for themselves in electoral campaigns. I had a political science teacher back when I was in school who had a theory that the political history of Antar was cyclical - one form of government arises from public activism, is established, rules well for a while, then grows either weak or corrupt or both, and is overthrown by another revolution. Maybe the royalty will be overthrown within my lifetime."

There was another awkward silence for a moment. None of the Roswell natives wanted to comment much on that possibility, because they knew far too much. "Okay, so, let's talk party plans," Alex put in, and Ava laughed with some relief.

Just then, somebody knocked on the door and said "What party?" Isabel wasn't the closest to the door, but she was the first who got up and went to open it, probably because she was the most familiar the voice of the newcomer.

"Max?" she said, pulling open the door. "I thought you were going with the search party, along with..." Suddenly the possible problem with that occured to her. "Did they only just get going? Zan and the Doctor left here ages ago."

"Nice to see you too," Max said, giving Isabel an affectionate sibling hug. "And no, I - well, I kinduv hurried off quickly once I saw Zan, and got a bit lost, but then I bumped into one of the downstairs maids, and remembered something that somebody had said at dinner about asking the help if you needed anything. So she was able to direct me here."

"Why didn't you want to meet the prince, Max?" Ava asked, and Michael only managed to cover his groan halfway.

"That, umm, that's kind of complicated, Ava," Isabel said. "I'm not even sure if we can begin to explain, but - we want to learn more about the Prince, of course, but we decided that Max shouldn't be one of the people who spends a lot of time with him."

"So, was that part of the reason that you invited him to have supper with you up here, while Max ate downstairs?" Ava asked shrewdly.

"Yes, it was," Alex said. "But please, don't keep asking further. There are things that we are not allowed to explain further, on the orders of the Doctor as well as for other reasons."

Ava considered this for a moment. "You mean nobody here harm? Zan or his family, Lord Rath, Lord Larek - or me? The servants too, I suppose."

"On my word and honor, I so swear it," Max insisted, and the others all agreed out loud too. "We - we would help protect you if we could, but that also might not be allowed."

"Is it a question of disrupting future history, then?" Ava guessed. There was no answer. "Come, it is said that the Time Lords can travel into the past or the future - for what other mastery would they get their name. We of Antar have not mastered such energies, but our poets and storytellers have been fascinated by the notion of temporal paradox for many years. It isn't hard to guess that is what concerns you."

"You're on the right track," Michael agreed guardedly after a moment. "But please, don't even tell Zan..."

"No, I shall keep your secret," Ava said, looking haunted. "It would be better if he and the others do not know - in fact, I am starting to wish that I hadn't guessed, for now I cannot stop thinking of what my biography reads. Don't worry, I will ask you no more questions in that wise."

"Umm, thanks," Isabel said. "So now what?"

"To answer your question, Max - it is Zan's naming day party, of course," Ava put in. "You have heard of that already, for his younger brother told you in my hearing."

"Oh, right," Max said, smiling. "So what about it - besides the fact that I'd better stay on the edges of the crowd, which won't be news to me."

"Stop me if you've heard this one before..." Isabel started

TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Part 15

Rose groaned when she realized that she was lying down, though it wasn't as if she were laying on anything particularly hard. In fact, it felt like a bed considerably softer and fancier than... well, than any she'd been in, as far as that went. There was something that had given her a big headache, though.

It was about at this point, as she was pondering what could have given her a headache and why she was lying down on a fancy bed, that Rose realized she was just waking up. For the moment, it seemed just about as plausible as anything that this was the morning. But the morning after what? She remembered - she remembered their first day on ancient Antar, but not any details about how the night had ended up. Maybe there had been significant quantities of some strong Antarian drink... which hopefully didn't have any worse after-effects for her than ordinary alcohol...

"Hi, Rose, how are you feeling?" somebody said, and the voice was so familiar and concerned that she immediately opened her eyes. That wasn't the best idea she'd ever had, but the light wasn't completely overpowering, so she tried to lift a hand up in front of her eyes to shade them somewhat, (which didn't work too well, her arms having surprisingly little strength and co-ordination just at that moment,) and then settled for closing eyelids halfway, and squinting through them, which did bring a face into focus. "Kyle! What are you doing in my room? Were we naughty last night?"

"A little, but not in any of the really fun ways," somebody else chimed in, and it was a voice that Rose recognized immediately even without squinting for a face. "You scared us more than a little, dear sweet Rose."

"And the Doctor." She sighed happily. "Both of my guys, in here with me. What could I possibly have done to scare you, Doctor?"

"What - what do you remember?" That question was Kyle again, and she felt the mattress shift and the nearness of somebody sitting next to where she lay, on top of the thin blanket. That had to be Kyle as well, she figured.

"Let's see. We got here, met the Lady Ava on the beach, and were presented to the King and Queen. Then - then you and I snuck off, young Master Valenti, and ran into somebody on the ramp who offered to take us out cruising. R-Raff?"

"Rath came later," Kyle corrected her softly. "It was Princess Vilandra on the ramp. Do you remember cruising with them?"

"I - I remember Rath talking our ears off about the power and majesty of the Four square, and how we'd have a chance to see it for ourselves if we stayed until - until today?"

"No, that would be tomorrow, still," Kyle said, his voice again gentle as he clarified. "It's sometime in the middle of the night, but this is Antarian clock, like the one on Kaalto. The new day only starts at the morning twilight, or something like that."

"Alright." Rose thought about that more. "I... I'm not sure if I can remember anything else. Did a Genie attack us out at the standing stones?"

"No, no Genies out there, Rose," Kyle reassured her. "We started to drive back, or fly back, hover back, something like that, and there was a storm, and a - well, you said something strange. I don't remember all of the words, but it was like alien free-verse poetry, with a bell ringing five times, and love never ending, and the sound of a gun, and..."

"The alarm still rings at five AM, the day goes off like a rifle," the Doctor softly muttered. "Missus Jones next door is still extreme, goes on and on about the Bible. What goes around still comes around, sun goes up, sun goes down." He took a quick breath. "And love goes on. Love goes on, even when you're gone."

"Yes, that's - well, those weren't the exact words, but that sounds like another version, a different translation," Kyle said. "What is it?"

"Country and Western music - maybe still in your future," the Doctor said. "Surprised that both Rose and I remembered it, even if it was just subconscious for her - that isn't really the favorite thing of either of us. But whatever happened to Rose, it must have been looking for a suitable sentiment to express, and those words were the basis for it."

"But - but what was it?" Rose asked, starting to become truly frightened at Kyle's descriptions.

"I'm not sure, especially since I wasn't there," the Doctor muttered. "I did sense some sort of hostility out in your direction, and the Antarians, who are possibly more experienced in such things, say that it was a psychic presence. But even they can't explain it entirely - in their experience, a psychic presence has to either arise naturally from a nearby mind, or be projected in from outside. Neither of those appears to be the case here. There was no sign of projection from outside the area, and none of the four of you could or would do what was done, it seems."

"But you said that it used Rose's memory to form words," Kyle put in.

"Yes, but as far as I can tell that was a psychic influence that came upon her from without, in that time, not something that was buried deep inside her. I would have recognized if she was under psychic influence earlier today. I checked everybody before we came, just in case - and anyway, the TARDIS would probably have known itself."

There was an awkward silence. "So what do we do now?"

"I'm not sure, except that we should all get some rest. The royal guards are onthe watch for any more suspicious incidents, not that I think any such things will happen so soon. We can discuss what's happened in the morning."

"Alright, then I guess I should say goodbye for now."

"Goodnight, Kyle, and - and thanks for whatever, for everything," Rose whispered, and managed to lift her hand enough to wave to him. Then the Doctor leaned over and put a hand over her forehead, and she felt herself falling backwards into a restful sleep.

-----------

"Okay, break it down for me," Max told Liz as he sawed off a piece of the triangular Antarian bread, that they called 'Darva.' "Did anybody mention any theories to you the whole itme?"

"No, I think that the security people are completely mystified," Liz said, and stopped to ruffle her hair slightly as a breeze blew in off the bay. The two of them were apparently the only ones who had woken for an early breakfast on the balcony. "In fact, well - I said something about ghosts, mostly just because I was curious. I'm not sure if any of them had thought of such a thing before, but I don't think that Antarian culture tends to run to such superstitions in general. But one of the guards was talking to Prince Zan about it after we parked back here at the palace. I hope that I didn't accidentally convince people that we're all living in a haunted house or anything."

"I don't think we need to be too concerned with any such thing," Max told her with a tolerant smile. "If it really is a new cultural meme to them, then I can see everybody being interested in the idea, but that doesn't mean that they'll suddenly believe in it."

"Yeah, I hope that you're right." She heard one of the doors on the patio slide open, and raised her voice. "Hello, come on, sit down."

"How - how did you know that I was here?" To everybody's surprise, the answer did not come from the doorway, but somewhere out near the edge of the patio. As Liz blinked in astonishment and waved at Mister Valenti, who quietly stepped over the threshold and slid the door closed behind him, Max hurried over towards the edge.

"Your Highness," Max said after taking a look, in a voice loud enough that Liz and Jim could both hear him. "We actually didn't know that you were coming - Liz was speaking to Mister Valenti."

"Oh, umm... then should I consider the invitation rescinded?" Vilandra replied in a much smaller voice.

"No, by no means, if you've come to see us or spend time with us, then my all means come on up." After a few seconds the Antarian princess emerged, stepping up the last few steps of a staircase that connected the patio with a lower courtyard, and she made an elaborate courtesy.

"Thank you for - well, for being somewhat happy to see me, if nothing else," Vilandra said as she took an empty seat at one of the hexagonal tables that had been pushed together. (There were more of them stacked leaning against the wall, and yesterday afternoon they'd figured out how to set up the tables and Alex had gotten started on a ramble about how many different patterns X many hexagons could be arranged in.) "I feel so sorry about what happened to your friend last night."

"Come on," Liz replied. "It wasn't - well, I don't understand the entire situation, of course, but I really doubt that any of it is your fault. And Rose is doing fine - Kyle too, he wasn't hurt or anything. You just wanted to be a good hostess and show them someplace interesting."

Vilandra didn't look too convinced by Liz's argument, and for a moment there was a slightly heavy silence, broken only by the sounds of the brisk breeze. "So, is there anything particular planned for today?" Jim asked, possibly trying to start on an easier conversation topic.

"Um, I'm not too sure," Vilandra mumbled, but a smile was getting itself started on her face. "We're not really that big on daily plans here at Brok Bay - Father has too much of that particularly, all the rest of his life, so when he's taking a break here it's a rare chance to just let whatever happen whenever, and so we've all fallen in with that idea of life without schedule."

"Oh, I see," Liz said. "I guess I'm not as used to unstructured vacations myself." Max chuckled softly at that.

"Well, perhaps I overstated the case," Vilandra added, cocking her head to the side slightly. "It's impossible for a royal lifestyle to ever be completely unstructured, after all - maybe I've just gotten to feel like it's relatviely unimportant and have started to ignore the schedule here." She considered for a moment. "There's somebody coming out to visit this afternoon - some relative of Ava maybe, and I think that mother said that she wanted to have a Chorus of Songs."

"A what?" Max asked. "I mean, I'm not familiar with the term, it sounds like it's something musical, but..."

"Oh, yes, it's - hmm..." Vilandra seemed to be pondering how to explain something that she took for granted to such strangers. "It's a small social event, where different people from the attendants, usually not professional musicians, sing or perform for the pleasure of the others. And there's a kind of alien crystals that are used, which scan the mind of the performer, and create sound from their memories, recreating instruments that aren't actually available."

"Karaoke, alien karaoke," Jim breathed, and Vilandra shot him a look, probably even more confused by whatever the japanese word was translated into. "That's a similar even back on Earth, usually done in public restaurants or bars, but - again, they have amateurs singing, and instead of your crystals, an electronic sound system, rigged with a library of instrumental recordings of popular songs."

"Oh, good," Vilanda said, shaking her head slightly in her delight. "Then you can all join in. I'm sure that the crystals won't have any problems accessing your minds, so you can sing us Earth songs."

"Umm - not all of us are big karaoke stars," Liz disclaimed. "I think you'll be able to get Maria and Alex up there without too much trouble - both of them have musical aspirations that go beyond the 'amateur', actually. But for the rest of us..."

"It'll be best if you don't try to get too stubborn," Vilandra laughed back. "I can be *very* persuasive. Just ask... ooh." And something about that phrase seemed to instantly kill her high spirits, and Max wondered if it had something to do with the night before.

"Will you join us for breakfast, your highness?" Liz asked with a friendly smile. "Or have you already eaten?"

"Um, no I haven't, so I suppose I have no excuse," Vilandra put in, shaking her head so that her hair flew back and forth in a way that Liz thought she had probably practiced. (Just as Liz had tried a few such feminine mannerisms over the year, as much as it embarassed her to think about spending time on such things.) Somehow the gesture seemed to draw Liz's attention to the color of the princess' hair, which was a multitoned pale blue, something that she'd noticed in passing when meeting Vilandra and Rath outside in the fin-car, but hadn't really paid much attention to. It was a color that Liz might have seen back in Roswell, but only from a very expensive artificial dye job. (The cheap punk haircolor kits didn't give you that kind of shading, just one hue of blue or whatever.)

Somehow, on Vilandra, however, the blue hair combined with her pink-silvery skin tone and burgundy eyes to look - natural, even right. It was a strange effect, and Liz found herself staring as Max passed Vilandra a tall cup of a hot stimulating beverage that neither she or Max had found a taste for yet.

"Hmm?" Vilandra also stared at the cup for a moment, then shook her head again. "Umm, I don't mean to be overly particular, but could you pour it into one of the big wide mugs?" She pointed off at one of the dishes that Liz had actually taken for soup bowls with handles on the side. "Sorry, that's just how I always have my Kahtee, ever since I started drinking it."

"That doesn't mean that you can't try something new," Valenti pointed out as Max set the tall cup down on the table so that he could better reach for a mug. "Doesn't mean that you have to either, just - experiencing new things, or even familiar things in slightly new ways, can be very broadening. Believe me, I'm getting an education in that just now."

"Yes, I suppose that you are," Vilandra said, reaching out partway towards the translucent plastic cup before her arm froze. "It - it seems foolish that I can't vary from my routine in just this little way, when you've come to a brand-new planet that you can't have known very much about before coming here, but on the other hand - I just don't really see the benefit of compromising in such a little way. I'll try something new in a familiar way later today, honest I will, but..."

"It's okay, don't let the Sheriff badger you," Max told the princess with a reassuring smile, as he picked the cup up again. "We're here to find out what a reasonably normal life is like for you guys, after all, not to get you to change things around for our benefit." He started to pour the hot liquid from the tall narrow glass into the much larger, if shorter mug. "So, why do you like Kahtee so much, anyway? I tried it, and even if..."

Just at that moment, something seemed to shoot over the edge of the patio and smacked Max in the shoulder. He nearly dropped the glass he was pouring out of, managed to keep ahold of it, and in the process dropped the mug. It bounced off the table, spilling hot Kahtee all over it and splashing some on himself, and then crashed onto the flour, shattering into a few big pieces, some smaller fragments, and probably hundreds of shards of brown glassy stuff. "Wow," Liz muttered. "Max, are you..."

"I'm fine," he insisted. "Not much actually landed on my bare skin, and it's not THAT hot." Quickly he set down the plastic cup, (which didn't have much left in it,) and brushed some of the warm liquid from his left forearm, managing mostly to smear it over a larger area, which was a little bit of a relief at least. "Did anybody see what hit me? Where did it go?"

"I think it dropped to the floor beside you," Vilandra said, vaguely gesturing as she hurried up the other side of the table towards the ruins of her mug. "Wow, these really do just go all to pieces when they're dropped, don't they? Something a bit more durable would be the practical choice I admit, but I love the look and texture of this sort of glass ceramic, and I guess they can't combine that with perfect strength just yet." She sighed, looking at all the fragments. "I should clean the shards up with my powers. You won't be disturbed by that, would you?"

"Um, no," Liz said, brightening slightly. "Can you restore the broken pieces into a mug again?"

"Oh." Vilandra looked hard at all the little shards. "I, I suppose I could, but it would be very difficult. Not so much for the-- hmm..." She considered for another moment. "If you wish it, Liz of Roswell, then I will try. It should not be beyond my powers, though I have not tried such a thing before, and that wasn't what I meant when I planned to 'clean it up.' I was thinking of just gathering the broken pieces and connecting them together in any old shape, just so that they're not in the way or anything, you know?"

"Umm, yes, I guess I know what you're getting at," Liz said, smiling slightly. "To restore the mug as it was - will you have to put every piece in exactly as it was?"

"Not necessarily," Vilandra answered, concentrating on the fallen fragments of glass and starting to move them. "Some of the - the little pieces, the molecules, right? Some of them could be broken out of the structures that they're already in, melting the glass essentially, and then resolidifying it in a new shape, without letting the fundamental properties of the silicon structure alter."

"Cool," Liz said, grinning exactly as if she'd never seen anybody do the same thing before.

Meanwhile, Max had found the offending object that had struck him - which turned out to be a small, tightly folded wad of paper. With Valenti's help, he was able to unroll it completely, and read the message that was written on it as if the letters were English in the latin alphabet. (Amazing how well the TARDIS translation field worked, even when the phone box was parked over on the next beach over, he thought.) "Your Castle is under siege," he read aloud, shocked. "The Noble house of Selezir has asked for arbitration in its grievances, and received no hearing. Thus, with this notice, they and their royal allies are declaring a siege. Your mission, which you have no choice but to accept, is either to hold the Castle until sunrise tomorrow morning, or sortie forth and meet the beseiging army on the field of battle. The enemy must reclaim the Jewel of Kindarra before the time limit expires. North Tilles rules of engagement are in effect until then. Message ends."

"What?" Valenti exclaimed. "Somebody's besieging the Castle? I thought that, well, I'm not quite sure what I thought, except that..."

"Relax," Vilandra said, laughing slightly as she handed a restored brown ceramic mug to Liz, who nearly dropped it in her own surprise. "That note is - well, it's not entirely what it seems to be, though it isn't entirely a trick either. More like... like full immersion into the fantasy." She looked out towards the edge of the patio. "I wonder if they knew I was here, or even meant for me to be remaining here as your guide into the conflict."

"Wait a second." Liz shook her head. "Are you trying to say that this is - is a challenge to something like a live-action roleplay, a game that's played according to certain rules but meant to represent an actual combat?" Vilandra paused, and then nodded. "And who's they? Zan, Rath, Ava??"

"Rath and Zan for sure, I would guess," Vilandra agreed. "Rath's family is the noble house of Selezir, and he made a point of mentioning royal allies in the declaration so that members of my family could be on his team, though I suppose if he didn't realize that..." She cocked her head as something occured to her. "No, of course, he must have known that I'd be on the defender's side. The point of the game wouldn't work otherwise, he set it up that way."

"Why's that?" Max asked, and then a possible answer occured to him.

"Because this is the jewel of Kindarra." Vilandra ran her fingers under a white shiny chain hanging from her neck, making the little pendant hanging near her decolletage shift slightly. It was actually a finger-ring hung from the necklace, Max realized, with a gemstone on it that seemed to somehow be red and yellow at the same time, but not any shade of orange in between. "Rath gave it to me, actually, a few months ago - as a sign of our understanding, after he got Father's permission to court my royal self. He would't take it away, not for real. But for a game of siege, it'll make an interesting objective. I'm on your side, except that I can't put myself into the line of fire without risking losing everything."

"Like the Kings in chess," Valenti breathed. "Umm, that's a board game back on Earth, with pieces named after different sorts of people or units in combat."

"You'll have to tell me how to play, later, after this game is done," Vilandra said. "Okay, first thing is we need to figure out who else is on their team."

"No, first thing is that you need to tell us what North Tilles rules of engagement are," Liz countered. "That's the rules for this sort of fake battle, right? Detailing what we can do and can't do without making it more than a game."

"Oh, right," Vilandra said, brightening.

"And I think that somebody might want to play a turncoat and join Rath's team," Max pointed out. "That'd be allowed, right?"

"Umm, seriously playing for the other side, not just trying to spy on them?" Vilandra asked.

"Yes, we don't have to all be on the same team," Liz chimed in. "I'll go and see what people think." She headed immediately for Isabel and Alex's room, obviously having come to the same conclusion that Max had. There would probably come a time when they simply couldn't keep up the 'don't let present and past selves' meet ruse, and would have to remember to simply let it go gracefully and not make it obvious what they were trying to do. At the moment, though, that time didn't seem to have yet arrived.

"Well, should I start the rules with just the two of you, then?" Vilandra asked.

"The rules to what?" Michael asked, opening the sliding door next to Isabel's and sticking his head out. "And what's all the fuss about out here?"

"We've been challenged to a siege war game, by Rath," Max told him. "You and I are in charge of the defense, once we find out what the rules are."

"Interesting," the Doctor said, stepping out of his own room. "I'm not so wild about battle, but I *love* games."

"And in answer to your question, Vilandra," Jim said, "you should probably hold off on explanations until we've found out what our count is. To wit, I'll go and see if Kyle's ready to get up to take part in the mission."

"How long are they going to give us before they attack?" Michael asked Vilandra.

"Since it's your first time, probably an hour after defiance was sent," the princess told him, settling down on a chair to wait.

-----------

"Got it," Isabel said to Liz after she'd been briefed on the details of the situation, and changed quickly into some day clothes. "I'm with Zan and Rath, and you'll get no mercy from me once I'm accepted as one of their own." She turned to Alex. "Do you wanna come with?"

"Umm." Alex hesitated for a few seconds, then offered her a weak smile. "I'll come if you need the moral support, but otherwise - well, I do have a few questions for her Highness, and this might be my best opportunity to ask them. We don't have to be joined at the hip, do we?"

"Well, no, I suppose. I can think of more interesting ways to make contact anyway," she teased them, and disappeared out the door into the hall. She took the first route downwrads that she could find, a fairly conventional switchback staircase, but on the ground level that led to a point where three dim hallways met. None of them seemed to proceed for long without twisting, and she hesitated, trying to figure out which way to go. "Eeinie meenie... well, I know how this is going to end up," she muttered, and charged down the first passageway that she had counted off as 'eeinie.' Around the sharp twist, she nearly collided into Queen Alinda, who had one silent servitor, or possibly a bodyguard, following her.

"And where are you off to in such a hurry, young lady... umm..." The Queen obviously seemed to be trying to remember one of Isabel's names, and failing gracefully.

"Your majesty," Isabel started, and suddenly something occured to her. "Are you in defense of the Castle?" she asked quietly.

Alinda looked at her guardian, then shook her head slightly. "I support my son in this matter, and His Majesty will not interfere until he must act for the good of all Antar. And you? I have heard that the Time Lord and his friends would be loyal."

"I..." Isabel had meant to say 'I want', but somehow it didn't come out until she tried: "I need to cry sanctuary from Lord Rath in this matter. My brother and my love refuse to let me stand safe with them."

"Really? And why?" Isabel shrugged awkwardly. "Well, let us adjourn to Rath's base camp and see what he says."

"Thank you, Majesty."

"Be not overly grateful yet, Lady Isabel." Alinda led the way back to the intersection, and along a different twisting way.

----------

"Do you really expect us to believe that you've been thrown out by your companions?" Prince Zan snapped, seeming truly angry at Isabel. "It's a transparent ploy to plant a spy in our midst. Once you've found our plans for assaulting the Castle, then you'll..."

"You may hold me here as a prisoner of honor, or whatever you call it," Isabel snapped. "I have no intention of returning to the Brok Bay palace until the siege is over in any case. OR of attempting to send any message to them, in case you suspect me of that."

"Would you swear that on your honor?" Alinda asked her, and Isabel immediately nodded.

"Would you allow me to touch your mind, to verify this?" Ava asked.

Isabel froze. What could she possibly say to that? "Is - is it alright if I erect barriers around certain parts of my mind and core identity?" she asked. "There are certain secrets that I cannot betray, and would sooner withdraw from this siege entirely rather than reveal."

The beseiging commanders exchanged a series of looks. "That could merely be a further trap," Rath hissed. "If her core identity is hidden, then the public mind that she reveals to us could be merely a facade, a deception to reassure us."

"I think not," Larek countered. "Very few of any species are capable of that sort of constructed schizophrenia, and I think that an Earthling would be less likely to show such a talent than many, since they are said to have no acknowledged psi in their culture."

"I accept your terms, Isabel," Ava said. "But I will not pass you unless I am completely satisfied in what you show me, quantitatively as well as qualitatively. You must reveal as much as you can, to convince me of your sincerity. In return, I will not pass on further what is not relevant to the siege."

"I accept," Isabel muttered, even though a part of her was protesting that she should back out entirely, that this mental touch would complicate their mission and possibly even endanger the present. But somehow, she couldn't bring herself to say anything else as Ava stepped close, took both of her hands, and looked her in the eyes.

A quick barrage of mental impressions flashed through Isabel's mind - Zan in ridiculously formal clothes, in a dim room, possibly the edge of a dance floor, and smiling. A great hall, with Sanren, Alinda, Zan, and Vilandra all seated on thrones of varying decorativeness, and a small delegation standing apart from the crowd, led by an Antarian man with shoulder-length blue black hair and an intensely black gaze. A moonlit gathering out of doors, possibly a wedding, though the faces of the young man and woman who were the focus of the ceremony seemed to be blurred or unclear.

And then she was once again standing in the sun, surrounded by the portable beach furniture of Rath's 'command headquarters,' and staring into Lady Ava's eyes. "She - she is true to her given word," Ava told her fellows. "She will serve our side faithfully in the siege, though for some reason she is chary of seizing the Jewel of Kindarra from Princess Vilandra herself. More than that I cannot say yet."

"Well enough," Rath said, sighing. "Would you have us include her in our war council, then?"

"I might have something to contribute, once you explain the rules of this siege," Isabel pointed out. "I had to leave before Vilandra covered that much."

"I think I would like to speak with the Lady Isabel privately," Ava said more softly. "Excuse me from the council, please. We will watch for scouts coming our way from the Castle, together, and cry warning."

"Not really a job that takes too," Zan muttered under his breath, but he didn't object to Ava's proposal, and Isabel was glad enough to follow Ava away from the beseiger leadership.

"Do you mind if I speak of what I saw in your mind, Isabel?" Ava asked quietly once they were out of easy earshot. "I think I picked up on much that you might rather I didn't, though I can tell that you also did keep some things hidden."

"Yes, I suppose so, though you must be certain not to let the secrets stray further," Isabel said severely. "Even to Prince Zan."

"Of course. At this stage in our relationship, I stil have a secret part of my own mind that he does not hold the keys to, and to this I commit what I have learned from you."

"Thank you," Isabel said, and wondered about what would happen to those secret parts of Ava when she married and became the Queen. Well, it was probably better not to belabor that point now. "What would you wish to speak of?"

"Umm, I'm not sure where to start," Ava said, her cheeks starting to flush a pale orange color. "You - you're from the future, and you know things about Antar's future?"

"Yes," Isabel agreed. "Please understand that I absolutely cannot tell you any details about that. Creating a paradox in the time-space continuum could..."

"No, of course, I understand," Ava said quickly. "Might I ask - how far in the future?"

Isabel hesitated only a second before lying at this point. "Two hundred years, perhaps - I'm not sure of the exact figure. Many generations."

"So everyone living here on Antar, even the babe who was born yesterday, has long died in your time?" Ava asked, and Isabel nodded. It was much better for her to believe that, and Zan, if he ever found out any of the truth about their visit. "Very well, I will move on somewhat. You - you believe that you are part Antarian, yes?"

"I am reasonably certain of it," Isabel said. "Does that mean that you can't trust what you saw of my loyalty to the besiegers?"

Ava laughed a bit wryly. "No, if you could control what I saw when I touched your mind very well, you could have kept me from even seeing these things. You have considerable talents in the Antarian fashion, I believe, especially walking through dreams, but your control is definitely somewhat imperfect. Perhaps that was because you had to learn your abilities nearly by yourselves. Weren't your Antarian parents were not able to raise you as your own children? I clearly saw a mother and father in your mind, and you think of them as entirely Earthling. You haven't even told them about your true nature?"

Isabel swallowed, somewhat overwhelmed by the rapid-fire questions. "No, we - umm, we were found by Earthlings as young children, and didn't even understand that being alien was why we were 'different' at the start. And it was many more years before we realized that we did have a human side to our natures as well, that we were cross-breeds."

"So I was also right in seeing that you aren't the only one of your party with Antarian heritage?" Ava pressed. "Your brother Max, and... and Michael?" Isabel nodded. "What about Liz? I thought I felt a bit of confusion there..."

"Liz was - she was born human," Isabel hedged, wondering if Ava would get it from there. Maybe she expected Lady Ava to, because it had been her namesake, Ava from New York, who had first mentioned the idea of Liz being 'changed' and no longer human after Max saved her life.

But Ava just nodded. "So you have the Time Lord, and three Antarian hybrids, and an Earthling escort for each of them..." She took a moment to add up visitors. "That leaves Miss Tyler, and the Valenti men, yes?"

"Rose is... well, she's been the Doctor's travelling companion for a long time," Isabel explained. "The rest of us only met them a short while ago."

"And you immediately asked him to take you to visit Antar?" Ava asked. "That makes some sense, I suppose, if you grew up on Earth without knowing much about Antarians. But why so far into the past?" Isabel didn't immediately answer, and Ava's face suddenly screwed up as one or more unpleasant answers occured to her about that.

"That was pretty much an accident," Isabel blurted out. "The Time Lords can send their TARDISes through time, but they don't always emerge where they meant to. We were just trying to figure out where and when we'd landed - when we met Larek and you and the little prince on the beach."

"Nice job keeping your cool, then," Ava said with a relieved laugh. "I really did think that you'd come to visit the King and the rest of us on purpose."

"Well, we've gotten used to thinking quickly and reacting on our feet," Isabel admitted.

"Yes, I've seen glimpses of the troubles in your past," Ava agreed softly. "Eathlings who fear visitors from other worlds, or want to control them for their own reasons. Other 'aliens' who decided that you were their enemy, even though all you wanted was to go your own way. And - forgive me, but who was Tess, and what happened to her?"

Isabel coughed several times. She had certainly never wanted Ava to learn enough to be able to ask this question, but at the same time, she didn't really want to evade the truth any more than she had to. "She - she is another half-Antarian hybrid who we were fairly close to for more than a year. She - she became pregnant with Max's baby, though he didn't love her and I don't think that Tess really loved Max, though she wanted to win him away from Liz. That part's really complicated. But - but she left for Antar or some other nearby world, and Max - he wants to find out what's happening with his child."

"Was that when you were trying to go?" Ava asked, and Isabel shrugged. "Okay, well, thank you for telling me a little more about your background, and I think I'd better not pry any longer right now, though I might want to talk with you privately about it a bit more later."

"Thanks, yeah, I think that'll be okay," Isabel told her. "I'm going to need to tell my friends about this, that you know some of our secrets, and so maybe they'll be willing to talk to you about it too." Or maybe it would be better not to involve too many people, Isabel thought silently to herself, since that would probably increase the chance of somebody telling Ava a wrong thing by mistake. "Umm, if you're done, do you mind if I ask a question of my own? I did get a few flashes, impressions from your mind, when you touched me."

"I'm not surprised at that, now," Ava answered. "But just one question, then I should start actually telling you about the siege." There was a moment's pause. "I'm kidding, ask of me however much you wish."

"No, I think one question and then we get to the business at hand makes some sense," Isabel agreed. "I'm just trying to figure out how to phrase it. Let's see... one image I got involved a sort of a throne room, with the royal family all sitting to hold an audience or something like that. And the people who they were approaching the throne - well, one person in particular, a very - striking man with a lot of presence, dark hair and eyes. Do you have any idea who that was, just based on my description?"

Ava shuddered violently. "Kivar Andraikus," she whispered. "That scene was many months ago originally, but I dreamed of it in the middle of the night and woke up, so I guess that's why it was close enough to the surface of my mind for it to leak through. Striking, presence, and dark are all good words to describe Kivar, but 'please may I leave the room' is another phrase that comes to mind."

Isabel tried not to show that a dark chill had settled on her from the moment Ava mentioned the name. "So you haven't spent much time near him? I suppose I can understand it, if the guy creeps you out that much."

"No, I've only met him a few times, in social settings, and I wish it were fewer," Ava admitted. "But unfortunately even the King cannot simply order him away from court. Kivar has many powerful friends."

"Alright, so what about this game?" Isabel asked, glad enough of an excuse to change the subject.

TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Part 16

"So overall, this does sound like a game or sport we have back on Earth, capture the flag - well, at least a little," Max said once Vilandra had recounted the rules of the 'siege' that Lord Rath and Prince Zan had challenged them to. "Except that only we have a flag that they need to capture - that pendant that Rath gave you."

"Which I hope that he'll actually have the decency to give back after he wins," Maria grumped, but the Princess smiled pleasantly back at her.

"And we just have until sunset to play defense," Michael summarized. "If we can protect the jewel of Kindarra until then, or incapacitate all the rebels, then we win. What about - umm, using Antarian powers?"

"Only kinesis - moving people or things with the power is allowed, except that you can't actually injure an opponent," Vilandra recounted. "That's a serious foul, even if powers aren't involved, so you can't strike anybody or pick up a weapon to use against them." She considered. "That may be a serious disadvantage for us, since none of you have kinesis."

"Actually, maybe we're not as deprived in that respect as Rath and Zan might think," Max said, reaching out a hand to one of the mugs on the table and letting it rise about two feet into the air, and float there.

Vilandra's eyes widened. "Can - can all of you..."

"No, just... just Max, Michael - and I can do it a little," Liz replied. "Oh, and Isabel can too." She looked over at Kyle, but though he had been practicing with some alien powers lately, he had never been able to master kinesis or levitation at all. He made a face at her.

"Doesn't that mean that they'll find out, soon or already?" Rose asked. "I mean, if Isabel's gone and joined the enemy?"

"I'm not sure," Alex said thoughtfully. "When they get to that part of the explanations, she'll volunteer her own abilities, like Max just did. They're similar enough in that respect. Whether she'll tell them that some of the rest of us have such talents, I'm not so sure about."

"You told me," Vilandra pointed out.

"But it's more important strategic information for our side," Mister Valenti said. "And - even if she doesn't make that clear, they might guess that some of us can match her abilities... or maybe that all of us do, which would make them overestimate our defensive readiness, and only you'd be able to guess what their response to that would be, your Highness." He sighed. "So if neither side can hurt the other, how can we incapacitate any of our enemies?"

"Just bondage," Vilandra said, and Maria snickered. "It's perfectly legal to tie someone up in any way you can - by levitating them first, grappling them, or tricking them."

"But for somebody like Rath or Zan, that's got to be very tricky," Kyle protested, "unless we can overwhelm them with numbers. They have strong kinetic powers of their own, right - and they seem physically powerful, and not idiots."

"Yeah, that's the fun part," Vilandra said with a little smile. "I'm not entirely sure who they've recruited, but I think that we have the advantage of numbers here in this room, even if we can't get anybody else here in the palace to take our part." She considered. "Maybe we should practice the bondage part, if you haven't had experience with that before." This time, it was Alex, Michael, and Kyle, who broke out laughing. "What's so funny about that word?"

"Umm - it's one of these lost in translation things, I suppose," Liz said, flushing brightly. "Not sure if it's at all the same thing for you, but in English, the word 'bondage' usually refers to - to intimate activities between two people in the bedroom - or occasionally more than two, I suppose..."

"Oh. I didn't realize." Vilandra pondered that. "You can have sex while tied up?"

"When, umm, when one person is tied up, yeah," Kyle mumbled. "Especially if they're, well, if they're naked first."

"Ahh, yeah, I suppose that would work," Vilandra agreed, with a slightly wicked gleam in her eyes. "But, well, rope tricks, then - is that anything with a double meaning for you?"

"I - I guess it'll do," Max said with a sigh. "We can practice, sure, but what about other strategy. Where should we be defending you? I suppose it makes sense to have some guards spread out - even if one guard by him or herself won't be able to stand against the rebel forces."

"Yes," Vilandra agreed, looking out from the balcony over the courtyards of the Brok bay palace and the tall grasslands beyond it. "It's a shame, because the weather's so perfect today and I'd like to stay out here on the balcony, but you're right that it's pretty exposed. Hmm... I'm not sure what the most defensible place that we could actually use as our headquarters would be, though. The palace has really been designed to be airy and open, which works against us in a situation like this."

"Can Rath use his powers to sense you at all, sense your mind?" Liz asked her. "I mean, both practically, and in terms of the siege rules? If he has the ability naturally, I think it'd be hard for anyone to prove a foul if it's against the rules of the siege, actually."

"Possibly, and yes," Vilandra said. "Informational uses of powers aren't a foul, no, but I think I could fuzz out his awareness of me, or Zan's. A bit like using a cloud to hide the location of a bright light."

"Could you create fake lights, in places where you're not?" Alex asked. "That would be of more use to us, I think."

"Hmm... yes, the possibilities are interesting," Vilandra admitted. "You're adapting to this kind of thing easily. Are you sure that you don't have mental powers of your own?"

"No, just in the habit of helping Isabel out with hers," Alex said. "Well, are there any maps of the palace building? We should be able to go through some possibilities on that, more quickly than actually going from place to place."

"Maps?" Vilandra seemed confused by that question for a moment. "Of course, umm..." She looked around as if half-expecting to see a map on one of the tables on the balcony, and then immediately focused on the rooms. "Can I use one of your..."

"Sure, anything," Alex said, gesturing to the door to his and Isabel's room, though he wasn't entirely sure what the alien princess had in mind. She got up and hurried into the bedroom, sitting down at the small desk-like piece of furniture that he hadn't really paid much attention to during all the other events of arrival and the first night of their stay at Brok Bay. Alex circled around Vilandra to sit on the edge of the king-plus sized bed, and Max and Liz stepped into the room as well and stood near the door. All three of them were surprised when Vilandra tapped a particular spot near the back right corner of the desktop, and a bright blue whirlpool galaxy icon coalesced out of thin air, floating flat about an inch above the surface of the desk.

"An integrated computer terminal?" Liz asked softly, and Vilandra shot an 'of course' sort of look at her. (It was remarkable how much facial expressions like that seemed to be much the same between pure Antarians, humans, and those in between - and even Time Lords, when it came to that.) "Well, we have the same thing in our room, and I guess I thought it was just an ordinary desk, a piece of furniture made out of wood or something like it, that you can write on the top of, or put a mechanical or electronic device on top of to work it, with storage drawers."

"Hmm - probably our desks started as the same sort of thing," Vilandra said thoughtfully. "Since people associated them with work, they were a natural place to build computer interfaces for utility and productivity applications." She swiped her fingers through one side of the whirlpool, and said: "Confirm voice access pattern."

"Access confirmed for Princess Vilandra Liaret. How may I be of assistance, your highness?" the computer asked her in a smooth baritone voice.

"Show me a floor plan map of the Brok bay palace - each level seperately I suppose, with color coding to indicate stairs, ramps, and other points of access between different floors," Vilandra said. It took only a few seconds before the schematics appeared vertically above the desktop, replacing the horizontal projection of the whirlpool.

"Seriously slick computer system," Alex breathed. "Okay, this is going to take a bit more time to figure out than I thought." Seen all at once like this, the palace grounds were even more complex than they had seen when approaching the building. "Any idea where Rath will make his base camp?"

"A few notions," Vilandra admitted, "but he might try to confound me - and there's no guarantee that he'll be attacking from that direction, instead of circling around." She sighed, considering the map. "We'll have to pick someplace that's pretty much equally defensible from every direction."

------------

"I know Vilandra," Rath insisted, tapping the blue wooden surface of the TARDIS phone box idly and then leaning against it. "It won't occur to her to leave the balcony, or if she does she won't go far, and probably not down - your rooms, or one of the rooms on the other side of that corridor, like the chamber where you girls had your dinner last night. The area's not perfectly defensible, but that won't occur to her until too late."

"You may know the princess, but I know my friends," Isabel countered. "Once the rules of the siege are explained to them, they'll think about defensibility, and somebody will be able to convince her highness to abandon the balcony area. By the time we get there, they could be anywhere in the palace."

"I think she may have a point, Rath," Zan said. "The more time we give them, the better they'll be able to fortify my dear sister's hiding place, while we can't really increase the strength of our offensive by spending more time in preparations for it. By al means, we should make sure that we're ready for action, but as soon as that can be done, let us to the field of battle!"

"Hear, hear," Larek chimed in, and Isabel turned to look at him, once again wondering how much of this he'd remember in sixty years. They hadn't really planned for anybody who was still active in Antarian cluster politics in their own time to be here at Brok Bay - except for Queen Alinda. Maybe it had been foolish not to expect that Zan and Larek would be separable at this time,though.

"Well, once you get close to the castle, you should be able to sense Vilandra's mind, right guys?" Ava asked, and both Rath and Zan nodded. "Then it seems to me that you should both be in our primary raiding party, which should be as strong as we can make it - no splitting up and allowing them to divide and destroy us. Well - perhaps one small suicide soldier should come from a different direction, to create a diversion." She looked meaningfully at Isabel.

"Sure, I'm up for that," Isabel said. "I'm probably the most expendable out of the six of us."

"Good," Zan said, nodding. "Any thoughts which route you should take, soldier?"

Isabel smiled to herself. "Exactly where we'd all go if we thought they were stupid - to the last place we knew they were. The balcony, and from there to the rooms on the corridor there. If they don't have any rear guards in that area, I'll just..." She drew a blank on the castle interior layout. "I'll just wander around trying to attract the attention of the defenders in any way that I can, I suppose."

"Good luck, Isabel," Ava said, reaching out and holding Isabel's fingers in her own for a moment. Isabel flinched, expecting another connection flash, but realized after the moment was over that Ava had somehow been able to block out such a mental intimacy, leaving only normal skin to skin touch.

"You too," Isabel replied. Making friends with the Antarian lady Ava had not been at all what she'd expected when they came here, but it seemed that it was happening anyway.

It felt odd to be going into battle this way, on her own and without any sort of a weapon, though considering that many of her 'enemies' in this fighting would be her oldest friends, Isabel decided that she didn't really want to have anything available to hand to beat on them with. The rest of the 'attacking rebels' moved out of base camp at the same time that she did, but they would be staying under cover of the strips of forest trees for a little while, so that they would only emerge when Isabel's diversion had been noticed. This, at least, had been the plan, and a necessary one.

Nobody really seemed to be paying much attention as Isabel hiked her way across the white beach sand towards the palace grounds again, jogging for short stretches whenever she felt up to it. After only one missed turning, she found her way to the stairs up to the balcony outside their room. Nobody was sitting at any of the tables, though it looked as if the area had been abandoned quickly, with dishes and half-eaten breakfast foods still in evidence.

Isabel loitered around, snacking on long skinny yellow cakes, and trying to make it look as if she were investigating the scene for clues of some sort, though that really wasn't right for this game anyway. Then one of the doors slid open, and she looked up with her mouth full of cake. "Well, look who's come back?" Kyle drawled.

Isabel took a long moment to finish swallowing as gracefully as she could manage under the circumstances. "You know why I'm here, Kyle," she muttered, trying to make the words sound as intimidating as possible. "Are you the rear guard they left behind, to see if anybody came here looking for the Princess first?"

"Nobody left me behind," Kyle put in. "I thought it would be a good idea to stay close."

"Well, that remains to be seen," Isabel said, swaggering towards him just slightly. "You may have some trace of alien abilities, but they won't serve you here. I can make sure that you don't get a warning out."

"Then why don't you go ahead and tie me up?" Kyle smirked.

Isabel kept up her threatening glare, even though inside she was worried that Kyle had seen through the whole ploy. She *wanted* Kyle to cry the alarm, so that reinforcements would be drawn here, out of position for guarding the Princess Vilandra, However, if Kyle already guessed that, then she suspected that she wouldn't be able to bluff him into going along with the plan.

"Because it's more important to throw things at you first," Isabel tried, picking up a cup from the table and chucking it in his direction - not close enough that it might actually make contact, because that might be a foul, but close enough that it might be startling if he hadn't expected it.

As the cup shattered against the wall, Isabel felt dizzy for a moment, and by the time she had recovered from the vertigo, Kyle was pointing his palm at her. A faint yellow-green pulse of energy shot from his hand into Isabel's thigh, and her entire left leg went weak and tingly, as if she'd been sitting cross-legged and it had gone to sleep. "Hey!" she cried, grabbing for one of the chairs to help support herself and make sure that she didn't lose her balance entirely. "I CRY FOUL! No using powers other than kinesis, and I didn't even know that you'd learned a trick like that. Did Michael or Max teach it you?"

"You don't ask the questions, Princess," Kyle snarled. "I want the jewel and I want it now." In a few steps, he was next to her and had grabbed Isabel's shoulders in his hands, shaking her back and forth slightly in that demeaning way that always seemed to happen to plucky heroines in books. "Where did you hide it?"

"This - this is all wrong," she protested. "I'm not the Princess with the jewel, and I'm working with the rebels to steal it from her. You're one of the defenders, trying to keep the Princess safe from us."

"I'm not falling for your tricks, Princess," Kyle told her shortly, with another little shake for emphasis, and squeezing her upper arms so hard that it was uncomfortable. "Your room - which one is yours?"

"Come on, Kyle, you know very well which room is mine," Isabel said, staring him in the eyes - and then, if she hadn't been held up by Kyle's arms, she really would have reeled in astonishment, because there was no real recognition of her in there. What was going on? "Okay, okay, it's the last door over here, this way," she said, pointing in the right way.

"Lead the way," Kyle told her gruffly, pushing her in the appropriate direction, which nearly had her sprawling on the tiles of the balcony because her leg still had very little strength left in it. With a bit of effort, she managed to push herself towards the wall between Maria's door and Liz's with her good leg, and use that to prop her up. (Or, alternatively, they could be Michael's and Max's doors, or any other appropriate combination.) Using one hand on the doors or walls to support some of her weight, she managed to hobble over to her own room, and open the door, while Kyle glared at her distrustfully.

He followed quickly after her when she entered, though, so that she had no chance to close the door behind her. He was so close that Isabel considered trying to turn around and touch him, overstimulate his nerves and then push him with mental kinesis. In the end, though, her nerve failed her and she lost her chance. Whatever had happened to Kyle, this new persona of hers truly scared Isabel, and she wasn't sure which worried her more, that Kyle might hurt her while he was like this, or that Isabel might hurt Kyle and have to face that when he got back to being himself. Or, then, what if he never did come back to the Kyle that she had generally not liked that much, but...

"Okay, darling, where's the jewelry box?" Kyle demanded of her.

"Well, back home, on Earth!" she snapped, and immediately added, "I'm not the one who's trying to play games here, Kyle! I don't really understand what you want of me, and I'm trying to co-operate. If - if you want to see what little jewelry I packed to bring with me, I can get out the suitcase and show it to you. Is that what you want?"

"I... I don't know, so let's give it a try," Kyle muttered, and so Isabel picked up the small airline suitcase with its wheels and extending and handle and all, set it on the bed, and opened up the smallest little flap pocket in the front panel. Kyle pushed her aside again, made a point of checking through the rest of the suitcase first, as if he expected her to lead him the wrong way, and then considered the small collection of golden chains and charms that had been in that small pocket. Finally he withdrew a long necklace with a cloudy green stone held in a golden framework that allowed it to be seen from every side. "Did you think that I wouldn't recognize this when I saw it among the others, like a purloined letter?"

Something snapped furiously inside Isabel at the thought that this - this stranger wearing Kyle's face and body might take the necklace from her, over whatever crazy misunderstanding, believing that she was Princess Vilandra, and he was getting the gem of whatever that was the point of the siege. Alex had bought her that necklace for her nineteenth birthday, and she loved it. The stone was a peridot, and as her adopted birthday fell into the Libra astrological sign, it was her Zodiac birthstone.

Isabel put her hands together and then pushed them apart, using each one to channel a seperate wave of kinetic force. The effect should have torn Kyle and the necklace apart, sending the stone towards the hallway door and Kyle's body hurling out onto the balcony. But though her alien powers lifted them both off the ground, some opposite force was in effect to keep Kyle's hand strongly gripping the golden chain, and probably reinforcing every weak point so that neither the necklace nor Kyle's bones broke under the strain. After a few seconds, most of Isabel's powers could not maintain the full strain of pulling at full strength against those bonds, though she kept him floating with some effort.

And at that moment, the door flung open, and King Sanren Liaret was there, royal indignation clinging to him. "What the tarnation is all this?" he bellowed. "I don't object too strongly to the siege gaming, but do you Earthlings not understand the concept of the fouls?"

A new expression flickered over Kyle's face, a fear and apprehension that he hadn't shown when dealing only with Isabel. Lifting his free hand as he floated, Kyle started to let loose the paralysis bolts again. Isabel saw the King get tagged near the side of his waist, and growl in outrage. Then she was shot in the center of her collar, and the effects travelled almost instantly down her spine and up into her brain stem. She blacked out immediately.

-------------

"This is getting to be a bit much," Alex muttered, when the healers finally let him into the room that he'd shared last night, and he finally caught a glimpse of Isabel. She seemed to be sleeping comfortably on her back, but he looked over at the blue-robed Antarian for reassurance. "You're sure that she..."

There was a pause, and instead of speaking, the healer started to indicate something with a series of hand gestures that Alex couldn't make anything of. Just at that moment, though, Prince Zan stepped into the room, and after watching the gestures for a moment, he nodded. "Yes, her - her nervous system has been through a shock, but she's alright, and she's resting. She might not wake up for many hours, but it'd do her good for you to hold her hand and for her to hear familiar voices."

"Oh." Alex pulled the desk chair towards Isabel's side, and it bumped into her suitcase, which was lying askew on the floor, with a few pieces of jewelry strewn over and around it. Rather than bothering with cleaning it up right then, he sat down on the chair where it was, reached out for Isabel's hand, couldn't quite reach it, and settled for putting his hand on the bedcovers, feeling her knee underneath them. "What, umm, what's the deal with the sign language?"

"Oh." Zan blinked slightly. "Many of the most talented healers on Antar belong to a group called the Avernists. They don't speak aloud during the daytime, from sunrise to sunset."

"Huh, that's interesting," Alex said, smiling slightly. "Is it a religious vow, something that they have promised to God because they think he wants it, or for some other reason?"

Zan looked over at the healer, who just shrugged enigmatically and left the room. Both young men chuckled as Maria came inside. "I don't know that much about them - the Avernists are a semi-religious organization I think, at least they say that they believe in something called 'the Divine Universe,' and they learn, teach, and practice their art according to the details of their belief in that divinity. And the silence deal is something along the lines of a province, but I'm not sure if it's something that they promise to the universe for religious reasons, or to each other in more practical ways... or what. Maybe we can ask them - tonight, after sunset." He sighed. "Were you having some problems with the chair, Alex? Could I help?"

Alex shook his head and sighed. "No need - your highness. I'll get it myself." And so he bent down and managed to get Isabel's suitcase safely on the desktop, hoping that it wouldn't set off some dangerous computer circuit there, and gathered up the jewelry in his hands before pushing his chair closer to Isabel and taking her hand. "Do you know anything more about what happened now?"

"Not really," Zan admitted. "I didn't sense the psychic presence this time, any more than I did last time, but - well, you were there when my mother and Liz seemed to recognize at the same moment that something was wrong on the other side of the palace." Alex nodded. That had been after some serious fighting between the defenders and the rebels, after Michael had escorted Princess Vilandra away from the fighting. "Neither of them really sensed anything specific, just scenes of a warrior and a princess that seemed like they might be drawing from the siege itself. Father, when he came into the room, he says he thought that they were just playing rough, not understanding the rules - and he got hit with a kind of a neural disruptor blast, stunned thoroughly enough that he didn't see your friend leave."

"That part almost worries more than Isabel being knocked out," Maria breathed. Alex looked up and shot death ray eyes at her. "I mean, obviously what happened to Isabel is serious, but at least the healers have been able to check her over and everything. We don't know what happened to Kyle, why he might have been fighting with her, and what posessed him to run off like that."

"Except for the hints that it might be something like what happened to Rose last night," Alex agreed dully. "And if so, then 'posessed' might be very much the key word. I never used to believe in hauntings or anything of the sort, but that's what this looks like more and more. A malevolent spirit, posessing earthlings who don't have the strength to fight it off - which means that you and I are vulnerable to the effect too."

"I don't know the earthling stories about that sort of thing," Zan started carefully, "and though many things are possible with Antarian powers, a spirit that continues to survive with a body is something that's hardly ever even rumoured of. If a - a ghost was posessing Kyle, then does it make sense to you that it should give him the ability to shoot neural disruptor blasts??"

There was a long pause. "Hell with it, we've got to tell them now," Maria muttered. "It could be important now." Alex shrugged, still holding tightly to Isabel's hand, as if he could squeeze his own life into her.

There was a short pause. "Tell me what?" Zan asked quietly. "It might not have to go any further than the three of us."

"Kyle was - I think he was practicing something like those blasts, back on Earth," Maria muttered. "Michael was teaching him."

Zan considered this for a moment again. "So were we wrong in thinking that humans were incapable of anything like our - our unique natural powers?"

"No, most humans - certainly aren't," Alex insisted. "Kyle, and Liz - they were. No, I should probably back up." He took a deep breath. "Promise me that you won't tell the others what they don't need to know?"

"I promise," Zan said softly. "Though Ava might already have figured out some of this, actually."

"Ava?" Maria asked. "How?"

"We - well, we weren't sure of Isabel when Alinda brought her out to rebel headquarters, thought she might have been a spy for your side instead of a sincere volunteer to the rebel cause." Zan laughed hollowly. "It's funny how that doesn't seem to matter anymore now. Anyway - we agreed that Ava would connect with her, to touch her mind, and Ava vouched for Isabel, but also said that she'd learned some things that were none of our business. The two of them went off to talk about thing privately for a little while."

"What a tangled web we might weave, when we try to keep secrets," Alex said with a slight smile. "Well, yes, Ava might have picked up some of this, if they connected. Max and Isabel are - they're part Antarian, though they're not sure who their parents were exactly. Max - he has the healer's gift, and he saved Liz's life when she was at the point of death. The same thing happened to Kyle - that he was shot and nearly died, and Max brought him back, nearly a year later. We don't really understand how, but it seems that somehow each of them was changed by that near-death experience, that they're not entirely human anymore, and have some traces of Antarian powers now. That's probably why Liz is sensitive to these psychic manifestations, whatever they really are."

"Okay," Zan said. "And why didn't you want to tell me about this before?" Zan asked.

"It seemed like it might become awkward," Maria said. "I mean, what if you were able to trace Max and Isabel's father - and find out that he was an outlaw, wanted by the crown?"

"Do you think that we'd really throw them into prison for the literal sins of their father?" Zan asked incredulously, and both of them shrugged. "Well, maybe you didn't really know what to expect from us. And I will respect your secrets, since I so promised."

"That's as well," a soft British voice intoned, and everybody looked up to see the Doctor, who had appeared at the balcony door without a sound. "At this point, I want to know what's causing these psychic manifestations, and I want to know ten minutes ago - except that would bring its own share of headaches." He laughed without any humour at all.

"What about finding Kyle and making sure that he's... well, doing whatever we can to care for him?" Zan asked.

"Your father is organizing the search party," the Doctor told him. "Kyle's father and Rose are going along - on the grounds that those who are closest to him might be able to help trained Antarians sense his mind. Following the low-level connection between minds that share an affinity, as it were."

"What about - well, I suppose out of all us kids, Liz has known him the longest," Maria suggested. "Maybe she could help."

"I think that too many possible affinities would just confuse the trail, not make it clearer," Zan said. "Rose is - is the one who is closest to him at the moment?"

The Doctor made a bit of a face, and Alex snickered. "They've only known each other for a few days really, since the Doctor first came to us," Maria said. "She's been travelling with him for a lot longer. But - well, there have been a few signs of a whirlwind romance developing."

"I think I understand," Zan said. "Very well - Doctor, is there anything I can do to help with your investigations?"

"I hardly know where to begin," the Doctor said, looking troubled. "Which is very unusual for me, actually. Kyle reacted when he was somewhere in the palace, we have to assume, with Isabel probably close by. Rose had her own episode when driving back from the ruined stones, with Kyle and Vilandra and Rath."

"Is the locale important?" Alex asked.

"Until we know more, anything might be a factor," Zan put in.

"Then - maybe it started at the foursquare cubes," Maria suggested. "And Kyle brought it back with him somehow, but didn't react until some other stimulus triggered it."

"We need to investigate further," the Doctor decided. "Both at the cube monument, and here around the palace." He looked around. "Lord Zan, will you be my guide to the monument?"

"Certainly," Zan agreed. "And what of the two of you?"

"Alex should stay here and wait to see how Isabel's doing," Maria put in. "I'd be happy to team up with you again on another investigation, Doctor, but perhaps I should take charge of poking into the skeletons in the closets here."

"There aren't any remains of the dead in our... oh, is that an Earthling idiom?" Zan asked sheepishly. Maria nodded. "What's the meaning, just ugly secrets??"

"There are a lot of different interpretations, but that'll probably do for now," Alex said. "I - I don't have to stay here..."

"Yes, you do, Alex," the Doctor told him kindly. "We'll figure it out so that nobody else has to get hurt like Isabel did."

"Alright." Alex sighed, and stroked Isabel's fingers with his own. "You'll tell us if there's any news, right?"

"Of course, Alex," Maria said, smiling at him. "You'll be the first person I run to."

"Hmm..." Zan considered as the three of them filed out of the bedroom. "I wonder if Rath is distracted enough that I'd be able to steal the control stick for his fin-car."

-------------

"It's Rose, right?" Ava said, making eye contact across the back of the air-van, which had bench seats down the left and right sides and an empty space in the middle that could hold cargo without needing to move anything out of the way. "We haven't really had much of a chance to get to know each other, aside from meeting on the beach yesterday, but..."

"No, we haven't I suppose," Rose said. "And yes, that's me, obviously. Sorry, I'm trying to deal with all of this as best I can, but it's just starting to get a bit much." She drew in a ragged breath and tried not to let it sound like a sob.

"I understand," Ava said softly. "I'm not trying to make things harder on you, but - has it occured to you that from what little we know about Kyle's running away, it just might have something to do with - with your experience on the way back from the foursquare cubes last night?"

"Well of course I saw the possibility, I'm not an idiot," Rose grumbled. Jim Valenti looked up from where he'd been contemplating the floor of the van near the doors and looked a bit reproachfully at her. "Sorry, I didn't mean to be short there, but yes - I've seen the similarities and it doesn't make me feel any better. I don't even know what happened to myself, and it's certainly not like anything that I tried to..."

"Of course, of course," Ava assured her. "I - I just wish I knew a way to find out more about it, to explore your subconscious memories of what happened last night with your powers, but - well, try as I might, I can't think of a way that I or anybody else at Brok Bay could do something like that. Somebody could try walking into your dreams, but there's no guarantees that you'd be dreaming of anything relevant."

"What we need is a hypnotist," Jim commented with a rueful laugh, as if he could hardly believe how prepostorous the notion was. Rose shot him a dirty look back, but Ava seemed to be intrigued.

"What would one of those do?" she asked. "What is it??"

"It's a who," Rose explained. "A friend of me mum used to say that she had a college degree in hypnosis, but as far as I could tell it never really worked. The idea is that just by talking to somebody, and encouraging them to relax, you could encourage them into a suggestible state, and leave ideas that would stay with them even after they 'woke up from the trance state', or even get them to remember things that they'd consciously forgot, or regress into past lives."

"And before you say it," Jim grumbled, "no, this stuff doesn't really work on the poor pitiful little Earthlings, it's just a notion that people keep spreading because, well, really I'm not sure why, but..."

"Actually, I was thinking that it seemed an interesting idea, and why shouldn't it work?" Ava said. "Not necessarily the same way all the time, because people and their minds are complicated, but we react to what other people say to us in a lot of ways that we're not consciously aware of or in control of. That would seem to be obvious on the face of it. It's not something that Antarians would tend to think of lately, though - with so much emphasis on the use of mental powers, I guess that just influencing each other with words and tones of voice has passed out of vogue." She sighed. "None of your friends that came with you know anything about this hypnosis stuff?"

Rose shrugged helplessly. "If the Doctor's picked some of it up over his hundreds of years of time-travelling with humans, then he's never mentioned anything to me about it," she said. "I'd feel a bit silly asking him what he thought of it, but if you think this is so important, then I guess I should try."

"No, it wouldn't have to be you, Rose," Jim told her. "Especially not if you're the one who's to be hypnotized - I can see how that might be awkward for you. In terms of the Roswellian contingent - Maria might have read a book about it. I'm pretty sure that her mother's got some around." Jim sighed. "I can certainly ask her, and I'll volunteer for asking the Doctor if I get a chance too."

"Alright," Ava said. "But - well, maybe we should stop worrying about this stuff and focus on the stated reason that we're out here." She shifted down the seat. "Do you mind if I try sensing through you first, Mister Valenti? You've known Kyle the longest."

"No. It's weird, that after talking about hypnosis, this alien powers stuff seems easier to deal with." Jim sighed. "How does this work - I just let you touch my hand and let you do your thing? Should I try to focus on Kyle, or keep my mind blank, or what?"

"Thinking of him will probably help," Ava said, smiling. "Thinking back on long-ago memories of him, if you can, happy times, and not letting yourself dwell on any worries you're feeling at the moment. Ready?"

Jim nodded as Ava took his hand, and let the flood of memories overwhelm him.

------------

"I have to admit," Vilandra complained, "I'm not really sure what we're supposed to be looking for."

"I'm not either, really," Maria agreed, and looked over to Max to see if he had any ideas. Both of them shrugged. "Anything weird, with unexpected implications on alien powers, that could possibly explain all the psychic manifestations around here lately."

"There really isn't anything weird around here," Rath complained as he opened the door to a ladder shaft that appeared to lead down into the basement of the palace. "Aside from the foursquare cubes, but it's Liz, Zan, and the Doctor who've gone to check them out. The entire palace is entirely normal - that's why the royal family uses it as a getaway place, after all. The King's ordinary job is weird enough that he doesn't want more of it when he's off on vacation."

"Wait a second," Max said, as he took hold of the ladder and started to follow Rath down. "Maybe we're going about this entirely the wrong way. What if it isn't about the palace, but about the royalty. Sanren isn't an ordinary man - I don't think that he's doing any of this to his guests deliberately, but what if it's something that was targeted on him, or on his family, that went awry? Has anybody who isn't exactly friendly visited the palace in the last few days?"

"Umm, day before yesterday, there was this guy who I didn't recognize," Vilandra said. "Father didn't seem terribly pleased that he'd dropped by. But I don't think that means that he's done something to give us 'hauntings' or whatever."

"No, but it means that he's a promising suspect, whoever he is," Maria suggested. "We just need to figure out who he was, why he might have wanted to do this, and how?"

"Is that all?" Rath said. "I think that you're following quite a chain of assumptions. What if all of this nonsense has to do with the Time Lord, say, and travelling in his little box?"

"No," Maria insisted. "He wouldn't have taken us with him if the TARDIS was dangerous to humans. And Rose has been travelling with him for - well, for years anyway, so it's quite a coincidence if it's happened to her and Kyle at just the same time."

"Does this TARDIS usually take quite so many people on board?" Vilandra asked.

"No, I don't think so," Max said under his breath. "Well, I suppose we might ask him if there's any possibility of a connection, but I don't want anybody to press him further than that on the subject. You don't know him like we do."

"Just how well do you know him, Max?" Rath asked.

Max didn't bother answering, partly because he realized that they were all standing in a dark passageway, that looked something like he would have thought of as a 'catacomb.' "What is this place, anyway?"

"Just the brandy vault," Vilandra told him idly. "Don't try to sneak a sample - I don't think it agrees with Earthlings."

"Yeah, how would you know, anyway?" Rath asked.

"I pay attention to my tutors - sometimes."

"Well, no ghosts down here that I can see," Maria said, peering into the shadows as Max made a soft light with his hand. "Where to next?"

Rath chuckled. "Well, there's always the foundations. Maybe some poor soul got accidentally buried alive in the liquid cement."

Max sighed. "Lead on, MacSelezir."

TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Note: The song that Maria sings later on might have slipped through the TARDIS time vortex - though there's hints in the dialog that she wrote it herself, in our universe it's by Clark, Ritchey and Shapiro, and appears on Terri Clark's 2009 album "Long Way Home."

However, I think that it sounds like the sort of song that Maria 'could have' written on a really great day.

Chapter Seventeen

"So these are the foursquare cubes?" the Doctor said, as the fin-car drew up at the ancient monument.

"If you want to call them that," Zan said with a little chuckle. "They've had a lot of names over the years, but seldom called that until my friends and I came around, at least."

"It'll do for us, for now," Liz decided, hopping out of the car. "So, what next, Doctor? Should we start looking for a secret passage down into an underground chamber or something?"

"Well, that would certainly be interesting and worth investigating if we should happen to blunder across any such thing," the Doctor said with a smile, "but I think that the tip of the iceburg is enough for us to be examining at this point."

"Meaning, the cubes themselves?" Michael asked. He hadn't wanted to come out to see the cubes with them, but had reluctantly come along at the last possible moment after realizing that Maria and Max would be searching the castle with Vilandra and Rath. He still didn't want to spend much time with his opposite number. "How exactly do we search them?"

"Not with a ladder and a magnifying glass," the Doctor told him with a laugh. "Your highness, is it true that these cubes are just the visible protrusion of longer shafts of rock that go deep underground?"

"Yes, that's what we were always told, and you can see it sometimes in the spring after a hard rain - the clay soil drops away, eroded, but the cubes still go down - as deep as we can test, anyway."

"Hmm." The Doctor considered two of the stones that were closest, and stepped in between the narrow space between them. "I almost feel a little foolish trying this, but it's the only thing I can think of that might help shed light on the situation."

"I advise against touching the stones," Zan warned him. "They sometimes react by discharging dangerous psychic energy."

"Dangerous to Antarians, or to humans, yes," the Doctor replied. "As a Time Lord, my tolerance for such a discharge is much, much higher. I'm not worried." He cocked his head, considering something. "Just on the off-chance, though, that my appearance should change drastically, though - don't be alarmed, and let me rest. It's a Time Lord thing." And with that, before any of the others could stop him, he raised his arms out to either side, touching the two great stone cubes at the same time, and drew in a deep breath.

"Are - are you okay, Doctor?" Michael asked.

"Not - not exactly," the Doctor said, his face quirking slightly. "The physical energies involved are hardly that intense, but - but there seems to be a resonance of the mental frequencies involved that - that I might be losing myself in. I - I need an anchor, and quickly..."

"I can handle that, I think," Liz said, stepping forward, and surprising herself with her confidence. "Look into my eyes, Doctor, concentrate on them. I will be your anchor - if you just stay with me, I will keep you in the here and now, or - or at least, keep enough of you here that you can find your way back."

The Doctor met her stare and smiled, though Liz had to fight not to stagger with the intensity of the Time Lord's gaze. "Thank you - very much, Miss Parker, that was exactly what the situation called for. I'll - I'll be back with you entirely in just a moment, just..." he drifted off, apparently deep in thought.

"Don't close your eyes on me, Doctor," Liz called warningly, for his eyelids did seem to be fluttering slightly.

"I'm not going to," the Doctor promised her. "It's just a little difficult, trying to absorb all of this without letting my eyes close." He took several more rapid breaths.

"Maybe you shouldn't be trying to absorb it all, however tempting that is," Michael put in. "That could be where you're getting into trouble."

The Doctor breathed rapidly several more times, let one of his arms drop first, and turned to look at the other hand that was still flat against one of the cubes. He stared at his own fingers as if completely surprised that such a thing could exist in the universe.

"Is it stuck to the cube, Doctor?" Zan called, sounding worried.

"Just a moment." The Doctor stepped back away from the cube that he was still touching, and his hand came back just as easily as you might expect it too. "Ooh." The Doctor immediately started rubbing that hand with the other.

"I think that the nerves in my hand weren't responding," the Doctor said, peering at it. "As long as it was in contact. Oh, well."

"So - what did you sense?" Liz asked him, reaching out her hand as if to pull the Doctor away from the cubes before he could make contact again.

"There's a considerable psychic resonance in these cubes," the Doctor said slowly, "and a lot of history, but nothing at all active enough to cause the psychic events that we are looking for. I suspect that we're growling up the wrong tree here."

"That's what Security said, when they investigated after last night," Zan muttered, and all three of the others shot him looks. "Well, they did."

"You could have mentioned that little tidbit," Michael told him. "Your highness."

"Would it have dissuaded any of you from wanting to come and check for yourselves?" he put in. Liz sighed.

"Is there anything else that you think we can do productively out here, Doctor?" she asked.

"No, probably we've spent enough time and energy. Sorry all for dragging you out here - but it did make sense to double-check." They all headed back to the fin-car and climbed in.

Zan spent a moment looking through the long, narrow pockets of his royal outfit. "Okay, who took the key-stick from me?"

Liz, Michael, and the Doctor each disclaimed any knowledge of it. "Well, it's not here in the slot, and it's not in my pockets."

"Let's spread out and look for it, then," Liz said. "It may have gone astray, but it can't have gone far."

It hadn't, but they looked for nearly ten minutes before the Doctor tried reaching down into a small animal burrow that they hadn't noticed amidst the grasp. "Oooh, that's strange," he muttered.

"If it's moving, pull your hand out very, very carefully," Zan advised. "The venom of the plains-munk is quite dangerous - at least, to all species that I've heard of, except possibly the Klenthorr.

"No, that's not it," the Doctor said, but he pulled his hand out fairly slowly anyway, and showed them the key-stick. "Zan, did you notice anything unusual when you retrieved this from Rath?"

"Well, no, not really, except that he didn't notice that I'd got it," Zan said sullenly, walking over to collect it.

"Just a second," the Doctor said, pulling the key away from Zan's expectent hand. "Liz, Michael, would either of you oblige me by touching this and trying to get a psychic flash or impression?"

"Umm, okay," Liz said, and took the key when the Doctor handed it to her, as Zan looked on, a sullen and discontent look on his royal face. "Umm, maybe something," she said, handing it off to Michael. "Couldn't really say what I was sensing, and I might have imagined it because you put that thought in my head. Michael?"

"Nothing, really," Michael had to admit, and tossed the key back to Zan. Zan screwed up his face to concentrate on the key, and shook his head also. "What did you get, Doctor?"

"It was quite faint, I admit," the Doctor said, "but a sense of something hostile, a psychic impulse that... well, I'm not sure what the purpose might have been, but almost as if this key was a trap that was deliberately set for someone."

"Are you saying that Rath is responsible for all this?" Zan asked irritably. "Or that someone is trying to frame him?"

"I don't know," the Doctor said softly, "except that we need to find out more about the sequence of events that transpired out here last night, and what part the key-stick played."

"Well, we can ask Rose - and Vilandra and Rath," Liz said. "If they've had any luck finding Kyle, we can see if he remembers anything too."

"Rose didn't remember much," the Doctor put in, "after we'd arrived at Brok Bay."

"And so Kyle may have had his memories affected too," Michael said, seeing it. "Well, we'll figure something out. Come on now."

"Agreed," Zan said, and he got the fin-car floating before Liz and the Doctor had taken their seats.

As the fin-car approached the palace, they could see that an air-van was also drawing near. "It's the search party, they've come back," Zan said, and he flashed the warning lights on the fin car three times quickly, then twice more slowly. The van responded with a much more complicated pattern of blinking lights. "They've found your friend Kyle!"

"Couldn't you just have picked up the car phone and talked to them?" Michael asked, shaking his head.

-------------

"We found him!" Rose called out as soon as the doors of the air-van opened on one of the exterior courtyards of the palace, with a lot of the guests and staff crowding round. "For a second I was worried that he would stay stuck in whatever delerious state he'd been sent into - no, not delerious, what's the word I mean. It's a d word... deluded? Maybe, that's closer..."

"Max, Larek, Rath," Jim Valenti called out, deliberately raising his voice just enough to be clearly heard over Rose's distracted babble. "Come here and help me carry him out."

"No, I can handle it by myself," Rath said. "Just give me room, guys." Stepping close enough to see into the interior of the van, he concentrated - and Kyle's body floated gently out of the vehicle, his back perfectly straight as if he were strapped to an invisible hover-board of some description. Rath backed away slightly and let Kyle pass him by. "Where am I taking him?"

"Umm, use the bed in one of those rooms off the green hall," Ava suggested, hopping down out of the van. "They're big enough for the healers to get some work done, but small enough to be comfortable, and close by. And set him down gently, Rath."

"Hey, I'm all about gently," Rath boasted. Rose was looking after Kyle with an overwhelmed expression on her face, so Maria hovered over to her.

"You thought that he would stay - a little bit out of touch with reality," Maria prompted, "and then what happened?"

"Umm - Ava said that his Da' should try to talk to him alone," Rose said, her accent becoming more pronounced as she shook herself, "and Kyle was getting really worked up, agitated, like, yanno? And then, all of a sudden, he just fainted and collapsed there in the clearing, way out there in the woods."

"A bit like you did," Maria said gently. "Well, we'll figure out what's going on, and how to stop it. The Doctor's on the case, and everybody's pitching in. No matter what's going on, or who's causing this, they can't stand against the lot of us forever, can they?"

"No, I suppose not," Rose agreed, sniffing slightly. "Where is he, anyway? The Doctor?"

"I think that he was going off to visit the cube stones," Maria said. "With Zan, and Liz - and I think Michael might have gone with them - if not he's taken off somewhere else so that Rath doesn't find him."

"Oh." Rose seemed to deflate again at the idea that the Doctor wasn't there to meet her. Maria felt an impulse to console the English girl, and another worthy thought suddenly popped into her head.

"Come on, let's see what we can find for a late lunch. It's got to be getting on into the afternoon, Antarian time, and between the siege and all the furor over Isabel and Kyle, nobody's had a bite to eat since breakfast."

"Yeah, alright," Rose said, smiling slightly. "I could do with a bite, I admit." She looked around, and nodded slightly at Max, who seemed uncertain whether he should join the two of them or follow the Antarians and the Valentis who were crowding in through a small door into one wing of the palace.

Just as Rose was opening her mouth to ask something, Maria made a dramatic 'turn around' gesture towards Max, and shrugging, he did just that and followed Larek inside. That set Rose off giggling, and Maria laughed heartily too, feeling something inside her relax as she did so. "Okay, umm, so what do we do to get food in a place like this?" Rose pointed out sensibly. "Just find our way to the kitchens and ask for something?"

"Hmm." Maria considered this. "Maybe we should go to the dining room first - perhaps they set out something on the sideboard, or they've kept whatever was on the menu on the warming plates just waiting for the Royal Family to show up. They can't have been expecting the siege to pop up so suddenly - and even so, the help must have known that people would be getting hungry soon."

"Alright, that works," Rose said. The two girls found an entrance into the palace interior from the other side of the courtyard, and somewhat to both their surprise, they quickly realized where they were and found their way to the large dining room without much trouble. The hall was deserted and had no signs of lunch being ready when they arrived, but only a few seconds after the two girls had stopped looking around, a uniformed Antarian man, looking very much like a butler or headwaiter, popped through a discreet door at the back of the room.

"Good afternoon, my ladies. What is your pleasure?" For a second, neither Maria nor Rose could come up with an answer to that question, so the butler tried again. "Is there anything you would like me to help you with?"

Maria laughed. "We're looking for lunch."

He smiled a broad, toothy smile. "By all means, Lady Maria. Will there be anybody else joining the two of you?"

"Um - we don't exactly know - probably sooner or later, but not just at the moment," Rose tried. "Just..."

"There you are," a feminine voice called out from the door that they'd entered by. Everybody turned to see the Princess Vilandra standing there and smiling serenely.

"Or maybe there'll be at least one more, just at the moment," Rose added with a slight sigh. "Hello, your highness. Care to join a couple of Earth girls for lunch?"

"I'd be delighted," Vilandra declared enthusiastically. "Have either of you a preference?"

"Umm - nothing too spicy, just at the moment," Maria said, hoping that the concept would translate well enough. "Aside from that, I hardly know what to suggest."

"Hmm." Vilandra considered. "Darsin, do you think that the cooks could prepare that surprise that we were talking of last night?"

"Yes, but it will take a little while," the butler replied immediately. "Nobody was sure when to..."

"Come on, we can just have whatever's ready to..." Rose started, but Vilandra cut her off.

"Get it started, and bring us Rynec and Darva to hold off the hunger until..." All of a sudden, what Rose had been saying seemed to penetrate through the Princess' enthusiasm. "There's something else prepared for lunch?" she asked Darsin.

"Yes, your highness," he said. "Just a cold spread, with Andoffer soup to start it off." He rhymed off a few other dish names that Maria didn't recognize.

Now Vilandra turned to Rose and Maria. "You sure that you don't mind?" she asked.

"Yes," Maria said, smiling slightly, because she had a vague inkling of what the big surprise might be. "This setup sounds great for lunch, especially with other people drifting in whenever they can, and we can have your special dish for a late supper or something of that sort."

"Good enough," Vilandra said, nodding with satisfaction. Soon enough the three of them were seated at the long table, all side by side, facing the door where they expected that new people might be drifting in for food. "So - aside from the craziness around these weird psychic events - would it be too strange to ask if you're enjoying the rest of your trip here?"

Rose laughed. "I'm used to weirdness and crazy wherever I go visiting with the Doctor, and yes, Brok Bay has been lovely, and your family are very gracious hosts."

"So where else have you travelled?" Vilandra asked.

"Umm, let's see," Rose said, taking a moment to think of one of her trips that would be of interest to an Antarian princess. By the time the buffet was being laid out, she had told several of her trips to the far future, not mentioning the time travel element, or that many of them featured 'Earthlings' who had spread out across many star systems or galaxies by that time.

As Rose was winding up her retelling of the devil in the asteroid, Maria looked up from her empty bowl of soup and realized that the further hordes had descended. Michael, Liz, Zan, and the Doctor were all talking together over their appetizers at one end of the table. Another contingent was just entering through the doors, including the King and Queen, Larek, and Jim Valenti. Rose broke off in mid-sentence and stood up. "Is Kyle..."

"We're pretty sure that he'll be okay," the King said somberly. "Can't quite say yet that he's none the worse for his little adventure - the balance of energies within his body have been drained by the powers that he used while he was - affected. We've used healing crystals to give him an energy transfusion, and Max volunteered to watch over him for a while. Take heart, Rose Tyler."

"Th- thank you, your majesty, sire," Rose muttered, and looked over at the Doctor, who smiled and waved her over.

"Has - has anyone else checked in on Isabel lately?" Maria asked, suddenly remembering her good friends upstairs." There was some looking around, but nobody volunteered anything out loud. "I - I should go, then - I promised Alex that we'd let him know when there was news about Kyle - and it's only decent to bring him up a tray of food or something..."

"I'll come with you, take care of the heavy lifting," Michael said, jumping up from a place that still had quite a lot of uneaten food. Maria considered for a moment telling him that he should stay behind, but two considerations pushed her the other way - how much she really did want her Spaceboy's support just now, and the notion that Michael might be looking for an excuse to make himself scarce before Rath showed up wanting lunch. So she nodded, and Michael levitated up a fair fraction of the buffet, including two big bowlsful of the hot soup, and Maria helped him keep an eye on all of it on the way up the stairs, making sure that nothing bumped too hard against the walls on the way up the spiral ramp.

When Michael knocked on the door, there was no answer, but Maria had only to open it a crack and poke her head inside to see Alex blinking his eyes open from his seat next to Isabel's bedside. "Yeah, hello, who is it?"

"Guerin and Deluca delivery and news service," Maria joked, opening the door wide and slipping inside. "How's our dreamwalker doing?"

"Funny you should say that," Alex said, yawning and stretching. "Somehow I think that she was able to let me into her own dream, when I made touch contact." He shook his head. "So what are you delivering, aside from news... oh." The answer became evident as Michael followed Maria in, the floating food trailing him.

"Figured that at least one of you could do with some lunch," Michael put in. "And I thought you might not mind having us over for lunch in a more intimate setting than the downstairs hall."

"Meaning, you're dodging Rath again," Alex filled in with an understanding nod. "Well, sure, set the food down - anywhere that looks clean enough to eat off, I guess. Didn't you think of grabbing a few more dishes?"

"Not until I was halfway up the ramp," Michael admitted. "Sorry." They managed to get the pastries and the darva sandwhich fixings all arranged on the desk and dressertop, which Michael used his powers to clean off first. "So, this reverse dreamwalking trip of Izzie's - is that a new one on you?"

"Umm... as far as I can tell, yeah," he said, shrugging. "There's - well, there's been a few times when we've been together to sleep..." Maria cleared her throat meaningfully, then assumed an angelic countenance when Alex turned to stare at her. "Anyway - as often as not, we'd share a dream, but I always assumed that she woke up in the middle of the night, and deliberately dreamwalked me for the fun of it. This is the first time that I've been spending so much time around her sleeping, and touching her so much of the time... at least, the first time in a long while."

"Okay, fair enough," Michael said, and passed Alex a bowlful of soup and one of the odd Antarian conical spoons. "But she's having good dreams, now? Not nightmarish?"

"Certainly on the good side of neutral," Alex admitted.

"Kyle has been found," Maria abruptly announced. "Just wanted to make sure that I told you that, since it was another part of the reason we came to check in." She shrugged, and reached out to take a few slices of darva and some of the cold meats and build herself a sandwich.

"How's he doing?" Alex asked.

"Not so great," Michael admitted. "From what His Majesty said, he was - like I got after being in the sweatlodge, or nearly. Drained and feverish, because whatever was haunting him made him keep using powers and drained his resources of the Balance. They used healing stones on him, though."

"Dammit," Alex muttered. "We have to get to the root of the psychic events, somehow. Did any of you find out anything useful?"

"Bupkus, inside the castle," Maria reported.

"One possible tidbit, from an unexpected source," Michael chimed in. "Doctor thinks that the key-stick for Rath's fin-car might be important, he said that he felt a hostile psychic trace inside it or something. Hopefully that'll turn into an actual lead."

"Yeah," Maria agreed, and opened her mouth wide to take a bite out of her triangular sandwich.

"I hope it isn't changing the time-streams that we're turning the Antarians back onto sandwiches," Michael said with a little smile. Maria tried to say 'what', but it would have been impossible without spewing sandwich filling over Isabel's sleeping body.

"How, now?" Alex asked him instead.

Michael turned to look at Maria as if expecting her to contribute something or nod in agreement, but she just shrugged. "Maybe Vilandra didn't say anything - and I suppose I might be getting ahead of myself, since I just had Prince Zan's reaction to go by. Sandwiches aren't - I don't think that the idea is completely foreign to the Antarians, but they're rare and out of style, or something like that. I honestly think that Zan had never thought too seriously about them. He was getting quite interested in the art of building a Dagwood tower, when I got up to come with you, honey."

"Interesting," Maria managed after swallowing twice. "Wasn't there a star trek episode or something about somebody getting stranded on a primitive planet, and they'd never invented the sandwich, so they made him the High sandwich maker of the village, and acted like he'd been sent there by their Gods as a messiah to teach them the art of making sandwiches?"

Alex looked up crossly at her, as if he was personally offended. "That was NOT Star Trek. That was the writings of the dearly departed master of comedy, Douglas Adams, in the hitch-hiker's guide to the galaxy series. Admittedly, 'Mostly Harmless' is not really Adams at the peak of his genius, but..."

"Sheesh, I'm sorry that I even mentioned it," Maria laughed.

"I... I'm not," Isabel whispered, and everybody turned to stare at the girl lying on the bed in between them. Isabel had not moved so much as a finger, or opened her eyes, but there could be no doubt that she had spoken. "I - I admit that I'm a little curious why you're talking about sandwiches, but somehow... I'm glad of it, and I don't know why."

"How do you feel, honey?" Alex asked her.

"Thirsty, really thirsty."

"Right, umm," Alex muttered. A look around the room confirmed that Michael and Maria had brought no cold beverages along with them, and suddenly Maria felt terribly thirsty herself. The sandwich filling, even the bread-like Darva were all on the salty side after all, but somehow she hadn't consciously noticed the effect until Isabel mentioned her own thirst. "Any chance you feel like you can manage hot soup?"

"Umm, I'm not sure," Isabel answered, sounding puzzled at that offering. "Just a moment." And now, she moved more than just her mouth, stretching and pushing herself back so that she could sit up, propped up against her cushions, trying to open her eyes.

At this moment, Michael rose from the little padded stool that he'd been sitting on, closing a curtain across the glass patio door with his alien powers as he stepped across to the shared bathroom between this room and the one he shared with Maria. In a moment, he was back, with a wet streak splashed across his shirt, and a tiny little porcelain cup cradled in his hands. "Those fountains are a menace," he muttered. "Sinks are a lot less trouble. And who'd have thought today would be the day when I'd beat the both of you to a little common sense?"

"I let you have this one, honey," Maria told him sweetly. "Just to prove that you're capable of showing it when you need to." Michael rolled his eyes, and offered the cup of water to Isabel. She nearly dropped it the first time, but only a little dribble spilled on the blankets, and she seemed quite satisfied to drain the rest of it down her throat. "Do you need more, honey? That's not a very big cup."

"Umm - no, actually, I think I'm ready to try the soup now," Isabel admitted. "And find out what happened next after Kyle zapped me. Did anybody get my birthstone back?"

"He - he took your birthstone, sweetheart?" Alex asked, sounding disappointed. "I don't know if anybody was looking for it."

"Give me that, please?" Maria asked Michael after he'd helped carry over the second bowl of soup for Isabel. It took a moment for him to realize that she was talking about the porcelain cup, but eventually it was handed over. and Maria took one cupful in the bathroom, (being very careful not to get a wet t-shirt herself from the bathroom fountains,) and brought another back into the bedroom to have with the rest of her darva sandwich.

"So, we don't really know much about what happened after Kyle zapped you," Michael was admitting. "He zapped King Sanren a little bit too, and when His Majesty had recovered, you were out like a light, as it were, and no sign of young mister Valenti. Also, I get the impression that he didn't really say much when they found him before collapsing himself. None of us were there."

"No, but Rose was," Maria said, "and - well, yeah, I got that impression. Whatever. Maybe we should hear your side of the story, Isabel - if you can remember it, that is."

"I think I remember most of it, though some parts seem jumbled," Isabel admitted. And while finishing her soup, she told them about her diversionary mission to the balcony outside their rooms during the siege game, how Kyle had been waiting in that area like some sort of a rear guard, and how he'd suddenly changed and started acting as if the premise of the siege was real - and also as if he was one of the rebels, and that Isabel was the princess, trying to hide the jewel of Kindarra that the rebels needed to win the action.

"Very weird," Alex muttered when she was finished with her retelling. "That reversion - it seems as if something in Kyle's subconscious seized on the siege, and what he knew about the duality of yourself and Vilandra, that on some deep psychic level you're supposedly the same soul, and used that as a basis for his actions."

"Yeah," Maria said. "Does what we know about Rose's episode share any elements with that?"

There was a long pause. "We don't know enough, especially about what she might have been orienting on," Michael said. "It seems to be drawing from a few notions of a classic Victorian haunting, or something like that, as far as I know - the dark and stormy night, the travellers stranded on their way far from shelter, the enigmatic chanting. I can't make much more of it than that."

"Right." Isabel stretched. "I feel like I've been stuck in bed for long enough, now - and I do want to go down and take a peek at Kyle, if anybody can lead me there. Maybe the birthstone is still in one of his pockets or something."

"This is one of those moments where we'd better not get in your way, isn't it?" Michael said, and Isabel grinned and nodded. "Not even to suggest that maybe you should eat more?"

"Maybe I haven't worked up as much of an appetite as you guys have, lying here," she complained. "The soup hit the spot, but I don't really need anything more." She struggled carefully out of the bed, needing to choose her movements to avoid jostling any of the friends gathered around her, or their own meals. "Umm - except maybe to hit the facilities after taking in all that liquid."

"By all means," Michael said. "Maybe I'll be done chowing down by then, and can lead you down to the room where Kyle was set up. I don't think that Alex has been there - or you, honey?"

"No, we went in through another door, Rose and I," Maria explained. "What about you guys?"

"Zan wanted to check on him - we landed only about a minute or so after the rescue van," Michael told her. Isabel inched her way past Maria and headed for the bathroom, then turned back.

"Who won the siege??" she asked, smiling.

Maria blinked. "Nobody. Siege was officially called off as soon as we realized that there had been another psychic event," she said. "Which is a bit of a shame, because the action was hotting up nicely at that point."

"How did you figure it out?" Isabel asked.

"Well, I think first security said that the King was down - they'd probably been keeping an eye on him from a distance when he opened the door to yell at you," Michael explained. "I think that they're pissed off, because the whole thing reflects badly on them. If whatever got into Kyle had been a bit more hostile, it could have seriously fried the King, and they weren't close enough to shield him. Anyway, soon after that, Alinda and Liz both clued in to the fact that whatever happened to Rose was back, and closer. It really seems like they're on this thing's wavelength, even though they can't explain exactly what it is."

"Ahh, okay. Tell me more after I'm done," Isabel said, stepping across the threshold and~ closing the bathroom door behind her.

------------

The mood in Brok Bay castle was quite restrained and even a little foreboding through the late afternoon, as if everybody was waiting for the next calamity or psychic incident to strike. The next major event was not immediately calamitous, however - Ava's aunt Shelda and a few younger cousins arrived late for their scheduled visit, their groundcar having run into some mechanical difficulties on the drive over dry, desert-like inland country.

Ava took a good deal of pleasure introducing her relatives to the Time Lord and his earthling friends. Everybody attended dinner in the great hall, with the 'surprise' of dishes that had been prepared to match Earthly recipes finally brought out... and Max, Isabel, and Michael crowding together near the foot of the long table, to avoid their Royal counterparts up closer to the King's right and left side.

Max and Isabel did make their excuses and leave early, reluctantly, when Alinda started to organize the Chorus of Songs. Michael would have gone with them, too, if Maria hadn't grabbed him before he could stand up. "I dont care if you sit in the furthest corner and avoid Rath all night, but I want you to stick around for this, okay?" she whispered.

Michael considered. "Will you sit in the corner with me?" he asked, smiling slightly.

"Most of the time," Maria answered, and Michael mouth scrunched up crookedly in that way that it did sometimes when he was puzzled over a question. "Keep thinking about it, honey," she suggested.

By this time, the collection of peculiar alien spheres for the Chorus has been set up, and Alinda asked for volunteers. Ava, her Aunt, and the oldest of her cousins went up together at first, singing in what seemed like a sort of hymnal/gospel style, but as far as Maria could follow the words, they were retelling a glorious and bloody battle thousands of the years in the past, in an epic ballad style. (She didn't think that much of the poetical style, but figured that it might sound better in Antarian - the TARDIS translation field could handle the literal meanings of the words fine, but she wouldn't be surprised if it had some trouble with rhyme and meter, connotation and allusion.)

Larek, Zan, and Rath took the stage next, doing their number in a sort of 'barbershop trio' style, singing about a young man who was out wandering in the foothills and spotted a beautiful girl that he was instantly and hopelessly smitten with, but then discovered that she was from a sort of legendary offshoot species with wings. There were eight or nine verses of the poor guy following her flock from place to place, and each time failing to convince her to give up life in the air and join him on the ground. Despite the slightly stalker-ish overtones, the tune was irresistible, and well over half the company was joining in the chorus by the end. Maria was one of the first.

So, after the boy's trio filed off, Maria got up, and waved her hand to Alinda to indicate that she was already on her way. She gestured to Alex to join her, but he waved that away with a Cheshire-cat grin, and Liz decided to try backing Maria up.

"What do you have in mind?" Liz whispered. "I don't know your whole repertoire."

"You know this one," Maria muttered back. "I played it for you guys, just a few weeks ago."

"Oh, the one that you wanted to know what we thought of the lyrics before you went to that open mike?" Liz asked, and Maria nodded. "Okay, I'll do what I can."

"So, how do I start this rig going?" Maria asked out loud, gesturing to the alien sound equipment. "Just think at it?"

"Try contact at first," Alinda replied. "Just touch the crystal right in front of you - yes, there." Maria reached out and laid her palm and fingers on it, thinking as clearly as she could of the instrumentals that she needed. Soon enough, a pair of drumsticks sounded tapping against each other, exactly as Markos had done when she'd practiced this song with the Whits, and and then the drums started a more regular rhythm and a soulful bass line began. She took a deep breath, found her place, and sang out as the lead guitar joined in:

"I've got this dream I've been dreaming,
The perfect picture of love.
Sparks and fireworks flying,
Almost too hot to touch."

She made eye contact with Michael in the corner,and he smiled back, having figured out by now why she wanted him there, and why she hadn't promised to stay in the corner with him all night.

"Everything I wanted and then some
Suddenly walked in the room
I said I needed different, but maybe
I spoke too soon..."

Liz joined in with a counterpoint harmony as the chorus started, stumbling slightly on her key but then finding it again.

"It's every kind of crazy I could ever imagine.
A battle raging between my head and my heart
But if you've gotta have it all,
That madness and passion,
Then you'll learn, ooh, you'll learn:
If you want fire...
It better be worth the burn."

A slight cheer went up from everybody after Maria and Liz delivered the last line of the chorus at perfect pitch, and Maria danced back and forth slightly as an 'instrumental' measure played from the spheres before the next verse. She noticed that Alex was miming playing on a keyboard, and concentrated, trying to bring a synthesizer into the mix softly without letting it overpower the guitars.

"We're either laughing or crying,
Flying high or running away.
But in between the thunder and lightning,
There's always another day.
Another day..."

This time, many of the Antarians joined in with singing the chorus. Maria wondered if Sanren and Alinda, for example, still felt that kind of crazy passionate love for each other - and what the Royal Four made of it.

"It's every kind of crazy I could ever imagine.
A battle raging between my head and my heart
But if you gotta have it all,
That madness and passion,
Then you'll learn, oh, you'll learn:
If you want fire..."

This time, an instrumental was supposed to start without the final words of the first chorus, 'better be worth the burn' - they got skipped this time around. Maria put both hands back on the sphere in front of her and poured her soul into the counterpoint of the different guitar lines, and the beat and the synthesizer notes backing them up. She noticed that Vilandra actually sang the missing line because she'd been expecting it, and then looked around awkwardly when she realized that it had been left out on purpose. Maria smiled back encouragingly at her.

Once the lead guitar had risen to an intensely high riff, Maria took a deep breath and belted her own way into the bridge:

"Sometimes it feels all or nothing,
Sometimes it's nothing at all.
But in between those moment's it's magic,
That *softens the fall*..."

She turned to smile at Liz, who had joined in unison with her on that last phrase.

"It's every kind of crazy I could ever imagine.
A battle raging between my head and my heart
But if you've gotta have it all,
That madness and passion,
Then you'll learn, ooh, you'll learn:
If you want fire...
It better be worth the burn.

If you want fire,
It better be worth the burn..."

And then, there was nothing left but the guitar, and Maria couldn't resist miming the instrument in the air. As she played on, she realized that the music of the spheres was actually responding to her air guitar, so she gave Alex and Michael a special solo before letting it fade away.

The entire hall jumped up and cheered their applause for her.

TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Part Eighteen

"So, how are you feeling?" Max asked Isabel as he opened the door of his room and let her come in first.

"Fine, seriously," Isabel said. "I had a nice, relaxing, sleep in the middle of the day, I've eaten well, including a good Antarian take on cheeseburgers and french fries, and I feel like I have plenty of surplus energy to blow off." She sat down on the desk chair, and turned around to see Max smiling tolerantly at her little outburst. "So - what about you?"

"I'm doing well - and wondering if the time is coming when I should meet Prince Zan after all," Max said. Isabel mimed a 'horrors' gesture, opening her mouth in a big wide circle. "Yeah, well - even the Doctor made a point of mentioning to me that he thought we were overdoing the idea of avoiding our opposite numbers, that he didn't think there was any particular danger now."

"Yeah, Rose made sure to pass that message along to me," Isabel said, and sighed. "I don't know, somehow I feel like I'm not quite ready to face up to Vilandra, even if the space-time continuum is okay with it. Maria and Liz seem to like her fine, and say that she's really not a bit like Lonnie." Isabel sighed. "Maybe after we've sorted out all of this psychic manifestation stuff - right now, it just seems like any of us meeting our opposites would be one thing too many, until then."

"Yeah, that's a good point," Max said, sighing with relief. "I was thinking the same thing, but I'm not sure I could have said it so well." He sighed. "Well, so that's the plan. What else?" Isabel shrugged, and Max flopped down onto the bed on his back.

"Guess it's a good think that Brok Bay has rooms for non-Antarian visitors like this," Isabel remarked idly. Max propped himself up on one shoulder to look a question in her direction. "Oh, didn't we tell you about the mattresses on Kaalto? Ridiculous things, full of support rods and gelatin pools in all the wrong places. Great for them, I guess, but just murder on anybody who doesn't have an Antarian spine."

"How did you manage for that many days?" Max asked.

"Well, the Doctor used his sonic screwdriver to customize them, so they were almost as good as my bed at home. Took him a while, that first night. Kyle went all macho and had the guys help him rig up a hammock, so that nobody else needed to go to the trouble of futzing with his single."

"And - what about when you were in holding, with security?" Max asked. "You were in there for at least one night, right?"

Isabel turned half away. "That was tougher. I spent most of the first night on the floor, and then one of the guards noticed and slipped me a sort of padded mat."

Max nodded. "Well, that was nice of him. So, you think that all the Antarians use matresses like that, even though this is decades ago?"

"I guess I assumed so," Isabel said. "It seems like one of the things that they take completely granted unless they're really in the habit of thinking about aliens - as in people of another species, not just Antarians who live on another planet." She snorted. "They forgot about it with Kyle, when they did the healing stones ritual with him and left him to rest."

"Oh, god!" Max groaned. "I was there, and... he did seem restless, but I never thought..."

"That's okay, you didn't know," Isabel told him. "Maria and Rose would probably have clued in, but they didn't tag along with him until they'd gotten him laid down. Don't worry, it's all been taken care of now." She smiled a little bit smugly.

"Thank you very much, mattress Nazi," Max teased her. "So you went down to check in on Kyle before dinner?"

"Yeah, and to check for something else." Isabel sighed. "During the - psychic event, Kyle, or whoever he was at the time - he took my birthstone necklace, the one Alex gave me."

"Oh, really?" Max said, sitting up and immediately assuming a proper demeanour of concern. "And you were checking to see if he still had it?"

"Yes, which he doesn't." Isabel sighed. "Maria and Michael helped me check the balcony and the courtyards nearby, before the sun went down. No luck at all. I'm wondering if I can get a ride out to the same area where they found him, tomorrow morning."

"I'll come with you if you want, of course," Max said.

"Thanks." There was a moment of silence. "Don't take this the wrong way, but - is there something else on your mind, Max?"

"Yeah, actually. I was just wondering - exactly what did we come into the past to find out, anyway? What's here that I really needed to understand before I go and face Tess in our own time?"

"I'm not sure," Isabel admitted. "Maybe it isn't anything you can point to so specifically, just a question of absorbing a bit about Antarian culture and society - and coming to terms with the idea that Zan and Vilandra weren't really legendary figures, just ordinary kids who happened to be born into a royal family, who we can actually make friends with." She smiled. "Or maybe we just needed to learn that there's really nothing we need to learn here."

"Thanks, Princess Yoda," Max chuckled.

"Speak like Yoda, until now, I did not."

-------------

Kyle woke up in the middle of the night, with an odd sort of sound filling the bedroom. He found that he couldn't really remember going to bed, or what else had led up to that moment - which immediately reminded him of sitting on Rose's bed and finding out that she didn't have a clear memory of the trip out to the foursquare cubes. Had - had something else happened to him like that? Was that possible?

What did he remember? He remembered being roused out of his bed in the morning by Liz, telling him about this siege warfare thing, kind of like an alien bondage capture the flag, and sitting out on the balcony as Princess Vilandra explained the rules. He - he had stayed behind in his room, to see if anybody from the rebels' side came into that area to look for Vilandra, and... and that was that.

And WHAT was the sound? Kyle sat up, got his eyes to focus by rubbing his hands against his eyelids just hard enough and no harder, and saw that his father was lying in the other bed, quite undisturbed by anything. It was a rushing sort of sound, not quite like running water and not exactly like a hard wind blowing, but similar to both of those, perhaps even midway in between them.

So Kyle lurched to his feet and over to the door - and gasped in a shock so profound that he nearly lost his balance. Outside, it looked as if the Northern Lights of earth were surrounding the palace - a soft cloud of illumination that gently flowed from one shade to another, passing through just about every pastel color that Kyle could think of and a few that wouldn't have occured to him, filled the sky until it was cut off by the next building across the courtyard. Enthralled by the wonder of it, Kyle rattled his glass door open, stepped out onto the communal balcony - and spotted another beautiful sight that struggled to rival the colors of the night.

Rose was standing only a few feet away from him, dressed in only a light gray t-shirt long enough to fall to her thighs. To Kyle she looked unbelievably beautiful and feminine in the lights of the 'Aurora Antarianis' surrounding them, and the smile that she favored him with when she spotted him just completed the effect of nearly killing him.

"Is - is this a dream, or is it real life?" he blurted out.

"Can't a dream be real?" Rose teased, stepping close to him and letting her eyes wander playfully over his body. Kyle looked down and realized that he was only wearing a wife-beater undershirt and short boxers himself, and that showed off an athletic physique that he'd worked hard on maintaining for years. "What if a dream is more real than the waking?" Another step, and she was so close, almost close enough that Kyle could reach out and touch her. But only almost.

The obvious solution to that problem would be to take a step closer to her himself, but try as Kyle might, he found that his feet and legs wouldn't obey him. "What's happened to me?" he asked. "To us? And why are the northern lights so close?"

"Because they had to come and see for themselves what happens next," Rose told him, and he couldn't quite tell whether she was being sincere, playfully flirting, or perhaps just dreamishly enigmatic. "You and I, Kyle, have been through something - awful and beautiful all at once, and that ties our lives together."

"For- forever?" Kyle whispered, hardly daring to hope.

"I... I'm not sure about that," Rose said, blushing and looking downward just the same way he could imagine her doing under more ordinary circumstances. "My - my destiny lies with the Doctor, and somehow I have the feeling that he's just a guest star in your lives." She sighed. "But for all of our experience in moving from one time to another, Kyle, we really don't know what our own future holds. We can't shape our own paths, not entirely. Right here, right now, I'm with you, and I'm not going to hold anything back because I'm worried about what the future might or might not be. Maybe if we're fearless enough, time will bring us back to each other, or keep us together. Maybe not. Are you ready to take that leap into the deep end of the pool?"

"Every time," Kyle whispered, and it was as if the words broke his partial paralysis. He didn't just take one step closer to Rose, he unintentionally charged at her and swept her literally off his feet, as all of the straining he'd been doing to get close to her came unbound all at once. She grinned trustingly at him, falling into his strong arms, and their lips met in a kiss that felt hot enough to rival the core of a yellow-white sun, at least.

As that passionate kiss continued, Kyle realized that Rose had ended up with her back against the wall of somebody or another's room, and her hands were running playfully over his chest, while Kyle's own, somewhat surprisingly, were holding Rose tight at her shoulder and waist, as if they were slow-dancing without movement or music. And something else started to happen - a flood of memories, of emotions, of self-identity and thought patterns, beliefs and attitudes and behaviours, all of it spread through him and more and more, until he thought he might be drowning in Rose Tyler, or losing his own identity, but what an incredible way it was to go!

And the lights closed in all around them.

------------

Princess Vilandra charged into Maria and Michael's room just as the morning twilight was starting to break through the patio door.

"Sorry," she immediately said. "Sorry, sorry, sorry, this isn't really considerate behaviour of a hostess, but I just had to let you know. We've been challenged, the royal four to defend the honor of the Crown, and it's going to start at sunrise over at the Stones. You have to be there to see us at our best. Say that you'll wake up enough to come - Maria, Michael? Can you hear me?"

Maria was listening, and processing what she heard as well as she could. "Yeah, umm, I can hear you, and - all four of you? Ava, Zan, and Rath??"

"Yeah, of course," Vilandra said. "Hasn't anybody told you about why we're called the Royal four? Well, that doesn't matter so much, I suppose."

"Right, okay." Maria considered, and as Michael stirred, she concentrated for a long moment on relaxation, on gentle waves and other mental imagery that helped her get to sleep. She couldn't really 'send' thoughts deliberately to Michael, but if she concentrated on something when they were in contact, Michael's own Antarian powers and his strong connection to her usually allowed him to pick up what was going through her mind. Apparently it worked for this, as he fell back and started to snore. "I, umm, I can go, but Michael's just dead to the world. Do you want my help seeing if we can persuade any of the rest of the gang to come? I'll - umm, I'll take Alex and Isabel's room."

"Okay, thanks," the Princess said, running out of the room into the hall with an excited bounce in her step. Maria sighed, crawled out of bed, and wrapped a warm dressing gown around herself and the barely-there nighty that she'd slept through the night in. On an impulse, she stepped out onto the balcony, to get a sense for the Antarian twilight and go through to Alex and Isabel's that way, rather than taking the corridor or the bathroom way.

Outside, she nearly cried out in alarm when she realized that she wasn't alone. Two figures could be made out, with one of the oversized bedspreads from the rooms wrapped under and overtop both of them as they slept on the roof tiles, tucked between one of the tables and the wall between the two furthest patio doors. Was - was it Kyle and Rose? Maria whistled loudly to herself and just hurried along. 'Nothing to see here,' she thought to herself - or was it just that it would be better for someone else to officially notice them here? What had made her think of that?

"Hey, guys," she said, sliding open the door furthest away from Kyle and Rose. "Vilandra's all excited and attendance Nazi about some foursquare thing. Isabel, maybe you should fake..." At that point, she saw that Alex and Isabel were each sitting cross-legged on the bed, facing each other, playing some kind of board game that looked like chess, except that there was a half-square offset between the two sides of the board, which she didn't understand how that would work. "Umm, maybe not."

"For heaven's sake, no, I'm not going to fake sleep for the good Princess," Isabel vowed. "Enough is enough."

"So - are you going to come?" Alex asked. "Just stay back, or something?"

"No," Isabel said. "Tell her that we're busy, we're not coming, and we don't want to be disturbed. Got it?"

"Right," Maria said, smiling, though she noticed that Alex seemed a bit disappointed at being Isabel's alibi - had he wanted to see what 'the Foursquare thing' had been about? "Well, when we're gone and your game is over, maybe you should check on Kyle and Rose - I think that they're not going to be ready to go."

"Why not?" Alex asked, but Maria was already backing out of the way. If she wanted to be ready to go herself, she'd need to get dressed quickly.

In less than five minutes, it was clear that the only ones coming along would be Maria herself, Liz, Jim Valenti, and the Doctor. Max had given Vilandra his own regrets in person, saying that after everything that Kyle had been through, he wanted to stay close. As far as Maria knew, Vilandra didn't find out about Kyle and Rose's alternate sleeping arrangements, though everybody else (aside from Michael sleeping, and Isabel/Alex playing their game,) seemed to have seen or heard, and all were quite curious. Maria wondered how late the two of them would manage to sleep - especially once the light of sunrise came.

"So, just what is this foursquare thing about?" Valenti asked, awkwardly working to get both of his arms into a denim jacket. Maria looked for Vilandra, but the Princess had run off towards a ramp. The four of them followed her at a slower walk.

"Well, Max and I found a few references to the Royal Four and their foursquare in notes that Tess left behind," Liz said quietly. "That it couldn't be broken, that even Kivar couldn't have killed them except that they were taken by surprise and didn't have time to prepare." She sighed. "We're still not sure what that means, though."

"Yes," the Doctor said pensively. I came across similarly - enigmatic phrases in the Kaalto college library," the Doctor agreed. "Even asked one of the locals, and they said that they weren't entirely sure of the significance of the foursquare themselves, except that it had something to do with sport or warfare."

"Interesting dichotomy," Maria muttered.

"Not really," Valenti said. "On earth, many sports were originally derived from mock battles."

When they reached the ramp and had walked to the bottom, Ava was waiting for them with a shy smile on her face. "Come on," she said. "You'll all be in the second air-van, if that's alright. Royal protocol says that we should all ride together, and there isn't room for our guests, unfortunately."

"That's quite alright," Maria told her as Ava led the way out to a courtyard where vehicles were waiting - the same one where she'd met the rescue party bringing Kyle back home, the afternoon before. "Thanks for waiting for us."

"That's alright," Ava said. "Frankly, though I shouldn't say this, I'm not that eager for the challenge. I know that we can stand up to anything if we just stay strong and stick together, but I can't help but think - all it takes is for one little thing to go wrong, and one of us could be crippled for life or killed - or more than just one."

"That sounds crazy," Liz said. "Why do you do it, anyway? Why do the King and Queen allow this, when two of their children are risking their lives - and two young friends who I have to believe they've grown very fond of."

"Well, it's complicated," Ava said. "If it were only the risk that mattered, of course they could refuse any exhibition stunts or challenges like this with an element of risk, but - times aren't good for the Royalty as an institution just now. My Lord Sanren needs all the political capital he can get, and when we put ourselves on the line and come through for him - he gets a lot of it each time." She sighed. "And I guess I'm letting myself worry morbidly over almost nothing, really. There's no particular reason to assume that anything will ever go wrong with the foursquare."

That was the last thing that was spoken before Liz, Maria, Jim, and the Doctor were led into the secondary air-van, along with Larek and a few security guards, one of whom was doubling as their chauffeur. "There's no particular reason to assume that it won't, eventually, either," the Doctor said to himself, sadly.

"That what won't?" Larek asked.

"That - that something won't go wrong with these foursquare challenges, eventually," the Doctor explained, a bit awkwardly.

"Yes, I know what you mean," Larek agreed. "Zan's been one of my best friends for years, and sometimes this stuff seems like a slightly crazy risk to take, but - well, I've explained my concerns. It really isn't my choice, and I'm not sure what I'd do if it was, either. They *are* very good at it, after all."

"Just what is the whole thing about?" Jim asked irritably. "Nobody's explained it to any of us."

"No?" Larek smiled a secretive smile. "Then I'm sorry, but I can't either - just because I want to see the look on your faces when it happens."

"When what happens?" Maria asked.

But Larek wouldn't say anything more, and soon the air van had landed at the foursquare stones. Zan, Vilandra, Rath, and Ava had already assumed a formation that was somewhat familiar to Maria and Liz - standing nearly at the points of a square, or a rhombus perhaps, each facing out in a different direction. They were close enough that each could touch at least two of the others if they reached out in the right places at the same time, and Rath and Ava were also close enough to one of the stones that they could touch the side of it, but they didn't yet.

Larek led them over close to where Sanren and Alinda were watching, and trying to look confident about the whole business. There seemed to be Antarians who were recording the proceedings with small handheld cameras of some sort - journalists perhaps, and a few attendants were wheeling something out of a different air-van that looked somewhat like one of the old cannons that all the Roswellian kids had seen on a trip to one of the forts that had been used back in the days of the Mexican wars.

"What is it?" Valenti asked, but nobody answered him. The gun was aimed, clearly just so that whatever projectile or whatever it shot, it would be on target to hit Zan - or Ava if Zan dodged aside at the last moment. The gun attendants waved to signal something, and the four young Antarians, (the royal four,) all linked hands for a moment, then broke again, and Zan waved back. There was some kind of a shimmer or distortion that made them hard to see.

And then the gun was activated, firing a beam of white light so intense that nobody could look straight at it - or at the kids that the beam was pointed at, though Maria had a faint impression of something shining as brightly as another sun over there next to the stone monument. "What the hell?" the Doctor suddenly exploded in fury. "What is the meaning of this? What is wrong with you people?"

"Don't worry, Doctor, they're safe," Larek explained confidently. "They've already proved out the challenge by surviving the initial onslaught for three seconds. Now it's just a bonus, how long they can keep the foursquare shield up for. Zan will signal if they're running low on juice before the Zirconium laser does."

"How is he expected to signal anything, through that light?" Liz exclaimed, sounding nervous herself.

"He'll use his powers to make a sound," Sanren replied gruffly.

"This is a morbid and short-sighted game, Your Majesty," the Doctor lectured him. "What use is political capital, if something happens to your son and your daughter??"

Sanren just chuckled, and pointed over at the laser gun. Everybody looked over at it, and at first the only difference that Maria could tell was that the beam of light was slightly less oppressively bright - and then there was a huge shower of sparks, and the beam winked out entirely, leaving part of the gun smouldering and glowing with a faintly orange light. For a second, Maria could see that there was a mirrored egg-shape surrounding the Royal four, and blocking her view of the bottom part of the monument stone that she knew was behind them. The grass in front of the egg-shell was burnt away or smoking, but just at that instant the egg-shield vanished too, and she could see that the Prince, Princess, Rath and Ava were alright, even grinning in triumph, and the grass at their feat seemed to be trodden down but otherwise unhurt.

"I still don't like it," Jim muttered under his breath. "Like a lottery in reverse - most of the time, you get a decent payout and everything's fine. But what happens if the unlucky number comes up?"

Nobody really had an answer to that, as one of the journalists came out to do some kind of a puff-piece interview with Prince Zan and the Royal Four.

--------------

Michael woke, yawned, and wondered if he'd dreamed the bit about Vilandra barging into their room and Maria wanting him to go back to sleep. It didn't immediately make sense to him, but when he reached out, Maria wasn't there, so maybe that fit into the memory somehow. He sat up and got out of the bed, blinking slightly at the sunlight that came through the edges of the curtains that had been pulled out across the balcony door, found a t-shirt with a band logo on it and some black jeans, and went out onto the balcony, pushing through the curtains.

"Ahh, here he comes," Isabel said as Michael blinked. "Michael, you just missed catching Rose and Kyle in flagrante for yourself."

"Hey, come on, quit it," Kyle grumped, sitting down at one of the hex tables, next to Rose - in one of those singlet undershirts and boxer shorts. "I told you, we didn't flagrante anything, except for one good kiss, and..."

"I feel so confused," Rose admitted, shaking her head. "Are we sure that the TARDIS is where we left it? I could have sworn that I saw it flying by, just before Kyle... umm. Kissed me, yeah, let's stick with that for the time being."

"Well, as much as I'm riveted by this knowledge of what Kyle and Rose did or didn't do last night," Michael put in, "can I get a cup of something at least as coffee, and what the heck is going on this morning? Where are Maria, umm, and Liz, since she's not within reach of you Max, and..." He broke off to count names. Alex was there, within reach of Isabel actually, so that left...

"Kyle's dad, and the Doctor," Isabel filled in, picking up a carafe of something and pouring it into a tall, narrow juice glass, then handing it to him. "It sounds like the Royal Four are demonstrating the Four square, whatever that means. Max didn't ask, and Maria didn't say anything much to us."

"Oh, that thing where they join up with the power of heart or whatever, and nobody can hurt them?" Kyle asked. "Was that the deal?"

Everybody looked at him. "I haven't heard about that deal, but maybe," Max admitted. "It does sound a bit like something that Liz and I read about a long time ago. Who told you about this?"

"Umm - Rath, and Vilandra, when we went to see the stone monument," Kyle said. "You were there, honey, don't you remember... oh, right." He sighed and shook his head tenderly in Rose's direction. "That was just before you had your psychic event, so you don't remember anything about it. They explained a lot about - how the four of them were really good at doing a foursquare, like world champion great, and how it meant when they joined their Antarian powers together, they could come up with defenses that practically nobody else could break through."

"Hmm, interesting," Isabel said, looking meaningfully over at Max. "Part of the reason that the Royal Four became a legend in their own time, maybe?"

"And, speaking of psychic events, did I have one of my own yesterday?" Kyle asked. "Because - well, I woke up in the middle of the night last night, and I couldn't remember much after the siege game started."

"Yes, you had a damn fool psychic event, Valenti!" Isabel flared at him. "You were standing right over there, I was - well, I guess I was trying to bluff you into calling for help, because I was the rebel diversion, and you weren't taking the bait. Then - well, all of a sudden it was like you became a different person. You thought that you were the rebel and I was the princess who was hiding the Jewel of Kindarra, and you thought it was all for real!"

"Really?" Kyle asked, sounding only generally interested. "So what did I do to get it?"

"You zapped me with some fuckin' paralysis energy bolt!" Isabel flared at him. "You threw me around and told me to open my jewelry box, and of course I didn't even have one here. I even opened up the pocket in my suitcase where I kept the few pieces of jewelry that I brought in case there was a formal ball or something, and..." She took a ragged breath, and everybody realized that Isabel was furiously trying to control herself and not start sobbing out loud. "YOU TOOK THE BIRTHSTONE NECKLACE THAT ALEX GAVE ME FOR MY BIRTHDAY!" she screamed. "IT'S STILL MISSING!!"

"Oh, my god," Kyle said, going somewhat pale, realizing that this whole thing wasn't at all funny and not something that he should be 'only vaguely' interested in - not if he wanted to avoid Isabel Evans kicking his ass five ways to Saturday. "You - I'm really, sorry, but... you realize that I wasn't myself, right? You can't really hold me responsible for..."

Suddenly Isabel collapsed, more or less managing to get herself sitting on one of the balcony chairs on the first try, and Alex helpfully shoved her over so that she was in no danger of falling off. "Ob curth, I unnerthann dath, Kyy..." She grabbed a fancy cloth napkin from the table, blew her nose with it and wiped her eyes with the spots that weren't snotty, and started again. "I do understand that, Kyle - but I'm frustrated and disappointed at the thought that we might not be able to find it, that this piece of Alex and my history might end up stranded in Antar's history..."

"We'll go out looking for it together," Alex said, sitting down next to Isabel, rubbing her shoulders with one hand, and eating some breakfast finger foods with the other. "Can we leave as soon as breakfast is done? Rose - do you remember where they found Kyle?"

"Umm - I just might be able to direct you, not sure - but how do we get there?" Rose asked practically. "It's definitely too far to walk. Just find an air-van or something that nobody else is using? And whom among us would do the piloting?"

"Good point," Max agreed quietly. "Also, I think that the Antarian equivalent of ignition keys aren't usually left in the vehicles, even in a quiet place like Brok Bay. And there's enough security around, who'd probably want to know where we're taking the van." He sighed. "I think that we'll need to recruit one of the Royal four, or somebody else who knows the area. How about Ava? She was along with you when you found him, right?"

"Yes, and she might well help," Rose said excitedly. "But - but there's something else, about the psychic events! Umm..." She looked around. "Do any of you know anything about hypnosis? Would Maria or Liz?"

"Hypnosis?" Michael repeated dubiously. "I know that Maria's mother thinks herself quite the expert hypnotist. I don't think that Maria has practiced it much herself - why?"

"Something that Ava and Mister Valenti were talking about, in the air-van, before we found Kyle," Rose said. "That hypnosis might be able to help me access my missing memories of the psychic event on the way back from the Foursquare stones. And I thought that it might work for Kyle, too."

"Hmm." Isabel considered that. "Rose, do you think that the Doctor might be able to shuttle back to Earth and pick up Amy DeLuca? And Maria too, I suppose, maybe Mister Valenti, and have them try to persuade her to come?"

"I suppose he probably can," Rose said, and laughed. "There's always the slight risk that we might be stranded her for a while, if he misses the landing point, but really, that almost never happens."

"Imagine how comforted I am by that assurance," Michael said. "Not."

"Well, we can figure that out when everybody else gets back too," Max said. "Which leaves the question of what we do in the meantime."

"Excuse me?" They all turned to see a little Antarian boy poking his head out from Max's patio door. Michael came closer and realized that the hallway door to Max and Liz's room was open, so probably the tyke had just wandered in. "Do you remember me?"

"Um - from two days ago?" Max said, smiling. "You're Zan and Vilandra's little brother, right? You and the Lady Ava and Lord Larek were the first ones to meet us on the beach." He chuckled. "Sorry that we haven't spent too much time with you - there's been other things going on."

"Yes - my name is Tolecnal," the little Prince said. "And Larek isn't a lord - they don't have nobility where he comes from."

"Oh, right," Isabel said. "But does he have a title? I know that he's an important man - he's going to be the head man of Rahlicx when he grows up, isn't he?"

"Yeah, the Autarch," Tolecnal agreed. "But I'm not sure if there's a word for somebody who's learning to be an Autarch. If there is - then I don't remember it, sorry."

"That's okay," Alex said. "So, do you have any ideas for something fun to do around here?"

------------

"Let's go," Liz said, feeling somewhat sick to her stomach as the alien festivities developed further around the foursquare monument. Suddenly it all felt VERY alien to her, and she didn't want to wait around to congratulate Zan and Vilandra on the successful death-defying stunt that they'd signed up for. As the others filed along after her, Liz windered just what the difference was between this and daredevils on Earth who risked themselves for fame or money.

Then again, she wasn't sure that she'd personally respect a daredevil much, and most of them didn't have other important responsibilities - or so much to live for.

And then again, did it really matter so much if the Royal Four were risking their lives, considering that they were doomed to die young anyway? But if they didn't die in the time and place that they were supposed to, Max would never have been created, and Liz couldn't bear that notion.

"Can you fly us back to the Palace?" the Doctor asked as he pushed past Liz and into the front passenger seat of the van. "Right now?"

"But - what about Mister Larek?" the chauffeur asked. "Not to mention the other members of my squad."

"You can go back for them, or they can find another ride," the Doctor said. "I am offended by this, and I do not want to have to remain to witness any more of it. Please, can you just take us away from here?"

The Antarian looked at him for a long moment, and then nodded. "Yes, of course, your Lordship." They all hurried into the vehicle - Liz climbed into the second seat behind the Doctor, and Maria and Jim went in through the back doors. "May I signal in to the switchboard?" he continued, gesturing at the com handset.

"Well, of course, my good man," the Doctor said as the van climbed up. "I'm sorry if my attitude was a bit much, but - possibly this was just too much to take so early in the morning. Why did it have to be done at this hour, anyway?"

The chauffeur held up the conn before bringing it to his mouth, a clear signal for silence. "This is Phoenix two to the forest nest, Phoenix two to the forest nest. Lord Time was indisposed, and his Earthling friends I think, so I'm bringing them straight home. Rahlicx prime and the rest of my squad are stranded at the four site."

There was a pause, and then the handset sounded a response. "This is the forest nest, phoenix two. Can you drop off your passengers as quickly as posisble and return?"

The chauffeur shot the Doctor a look, and he nodded. "Affirmative."

"Good speed, then, Phoenix two. Over and out."

"I'll make a good report of your service and discretion," the Doctor told the chauffeur. "Of course, for that, I'll need your name."

"Corporal Vannger, if it please your lordship."

"What pleases me, Vannger, is if I'm not addressed with overpompous formality and called 'your lordship,'" the Doctor laughed. "'Doctor' is all the title I ever aspired to."

"Yes - Doctor," Vannger said with a slight laugh.

------------

Nobody was still at the balcony when they got back there, though there was evidence that a good breakfast had been had by Earthlings and hybrids alike. The Doctor stayed to enjoy the scrambled lizard eggs and daiberry popovers, but although Maria, Liz, and Jim were hungry for food, the curiosity about where their friends and family members were was strong enough to overpower that urge for a little while.

They searched for what seemed a long time, finding nobody but security guards and Ava's cousin who had only just woke up himself, until finally Liz heard somebody's footsteps as they walked through one of the downstairs foyers and set off in hot pursuit. She finally threw open a closet in a dim corridor, with Maria and Jim hurrying to keep up with her, and a little Antarian boy immediately told her "That's not fair!"

"What's not fair?" Jim asked, puffing.

"Having more than one person looking at a time - it's against the rules."

"Tolecnal, we're not part of the game of hide and seek," Liz told the little boy. "And I'm sorry, but I think that some of your playmates are not going to be finishing the game."

"Liz, are you sure we can't just..." Maria whispered to her friend.

"Maybe we could," Liz muttered and sighed. "But I'm not going to. I need Max, and the sooner the better." And she turned and hurried back down the corridor, shouting "Come out, come out, wherever you are!"

The ten of them had all gathered in the small dining room opposite their rooms, by fifteen minutes later. (Isabel had fallen back asleep, and it had taken them neary ten minutes to blunder across her hiding place once everybody realized that she wouldn't be coming out on her own.) Once everybody was gathered, the Doctor made sure that everybody had heard of his discovery about the psychic residue trace on the fin-car's keystick, and Jim Valenti explained the idea about using hypnosis to find out more about what had triggered the psychic events.

"Mom could help with that, I'm sure," Maria agreed. "But do we really want to go back to Earth, and the present, in the TARDIS, to find her?"

"I think that it's a worthwhile idea," the Doctor muttered. "Especially since - until this mystery is resolved, it remains possible that we have accidentally brought an outside influence into the lives of the Royal Four, that will alter their futures. None of us want that to happen and not be corrected."

"So wait a second," Liz said, a thoughtful look on her face. "Does this mean it's possible that you could get back to Roswell, and Mrs DeLuca wouldn't remember Michael or Max or Isabel?"

The Doctor considered this possibility seriously. "No - there's a vague rule of thumb about how long it takes for time ripples to travel into the future, and I'm quite sure that I can outrun them in the TARDIS - but we should be leaving as soon as possible, just to be on the safe side. Are you and Mister Valenti up for the trip? I shan't be able to persuade your mother without you." He sighed. "I don't do so well with other people's mothers."

Maria looked around. "Yeah - anybody else want to come, for moral support?"

Michael considered. "Should I come?"

The Doctor shook his head. "No, probably tempting fate - if your presence would be anachronistic, it just might attract unwelcome events ahead of schedule. None of the hybrids should come this time, I think. You're safer here."

There was a long pause. Liz seemed to be torn between coming with her best friend, or staying with her alien boyfriend. "It's alright," Maria told her. "We'll be back with my Mom before you know it."

"Alright," Max said. "Don't let us keep you particularly, but there are a few more plans to be made. I know that Isabel wants to mount an expedition to look for her necklace as soon as we can find transportation, and possibly native guides - but I think that everybody who'll be needed as a possible hypnotic subject should stay here in easy reach. That includes you yourself, Isabel, just on the off-chance that hypnosis could increase your recall of what happened before Kyle attacked you - and also Kyle and Rose."

"Alright," Isabel muttered, though she didn't sound happy about it. "What are we supposed to do in the meantime?"

"Maybe you could finish your nap," Alex told her. "You were up really early."

"No, my sleeping schedule has been thrown off, but I want to get it back on track," she said.

"So that it can just get settled when we take our next big trip through time, and throw it off again?" Rose asked her, as the Doctor, Maria, and Jim made their exits. "Trust me - get your sleep when you can and when you need it."

"Which reminds me," Kyle said. "Did anybody else get woken up by the Antarian lights, aside from Rose and I?"

That question stumped everybody. "I... I guess not," Alex said. "What lights?"

"As in, like the Northern lights?" Michael continued.

"Very much like, except not confined to the north - or the south or any patch of the sky," Kyle insisted. "They were surrounding the whole palace. Rose - you remember that part, right? If you don't, then maybe it really was a dream - except if it was a dream, how did we get out on the balcony together?"

"Umm..." Rose said, and thought hard. "Like a fog of bright pastel colors, every shade you'd find in a box of colored pencils?"

"Something like that," Kyle said.

"Then yes, I remember that - but just a moment," Rose said, frowning. "And that was the very moment when I saw the TARDIS flying past us in the night. Oh, I desperately hope that the phone box is there when they get to the next beach over."

"Wait a second, I'm completely lost now," Liz said. "There's a chance that the TARDIS won't be there?"

"She mentioned seeing the TARDIS in flight last night," Alex said. "About the same time that Kyle was saying that they only kissed, and nothing more. But I think there's something that I'm not following either. Is there any way that somebody else could get inside the TARDIS, or that it could take flight by itself?"

"There shouldn't be, as long as it's locked and the Doctor and I have the only keys," Rose said. "But I don't understand everything about it yet, by a long shot - and I know what I remember seeing."

"Hmm... that's ominous," Liz agreed. "So, moving on slightly - just a kiss?" She grinned over at Kyle, trying to put everybody at ease.

"I'm not sure that I'd say 'just,'" Rose muttered. "Nothing more physical, in the usual way, at least, not that I remember. But - is it possible that - I hardly know how to explain it..."

"Oh, did you have a REALLY good kiss-flash?" Max asked, reaching out for Liz's hand and squeezing it.

"From what you guys have told me about flashes, beyond even that," Kyle said.

"I don't believe you," Isabel said.

"Believe what you like."

"Okay, then try to put it into words," Alex said, laughing. "If you find that words can't measure up to the experience - well, maybe that's the same problem we've had for years trying to sum it up to you."

"Whatever, as if we care what you think," Rose said, and sighed.

There was an awkward silence for a moment. "Okay, I'm the one who had the least breakfast I think," Liz said.

"You know, I think I could go for an early lunch already," Michael put in.

TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Chapter Nineteen

The Doctor would have been quite surprised about Rose's worries over whether he'd be able to find the TARDIS phone box where they left it - though certainly interested in her reasons why. It did take a few minutes for the Doctor, Maria, and Jim Valenti to walk from the Brok Bay palace around the little stand of trees, but once they could see the next beach over, there was the police call box, waiting for them like it was some kind of guardian of the peace itself.

The Doctor lost no time in unlocking the TARDIS door, leading the way inside, and starting to make the adjustments to the instruments necessary to fly through the Time vortex once more, retracing their steps to the year 2001, and Roswell, New Mexico. Nobody said much, as Jim Valenti closed the behind them, and Maria simply sat and waited for the journey to begin.

Once the sound effects of the TARDIS had started, though, and the sensation of inertial effects pulling them one way and then the other, (not too intensely on this particular trip,) came as well, Maria sighed and turned over to Jim. "It's not going to be terribly easy to convince Mom, if she made up her mind not to come, is it?"

Jim weighed this thought silently for a moment. "Perhaps not. If we can get it through her head that we actually need her help, that this isn't just a lark of some sort, then she might not like us for it, but she'll come." He blew out a stream of air through pursed lips. "On the other hand, if we oversell the danger angle, then it might take her a while to stop freaking out and insisting that none of us should go back at all - or only to collect our friends and loved ones as quickly as possible."

"Right," Maria agreed. "Follow my lead, actually, I think I have a bit more experience at persuasive tactics with my mom than you do." Jim raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, yeah, you might have known her longer, before I was born even, but that's my point - for most of the time when I was growing up, the two of you weren't even talking."

"Fair enough," Jim agreed, nodding. "Speaking of which, when are we going to be arriving, Doctor?"

"Let me see, right about..." There was a sense of sudden impact, as if the police box had literally landed on a hard surface. "Pretty sure that we're where and when we need to be, but there was something a bit odd about that landing, can't quite put my finger on it."

Maria hurried over to the TARDIS door, opened it a crack to peek outside, and gasped, stepping away. She tried to reach out to close the door again, but it now wasn't within reach, and all of them could hear Amy DeLuca's voice coming from outside. "Umm - ladies and gentleman, I'm pleased to present to you, as an exclusive of the Alien Worlds bash at the Roswell 2001 UFO Convention... err, some kind of mysterious doorway to alien worlds!"

"Too right she is," the Doctor muttered. "I guess that's my cue to go out and put on a show. Let me see... what do I have that's particularly alien looking?" He considered a few of the obvious suspects, slapped an odd-looking cap on top of his head, wrapped a multicolored cloak around his shoulders, and picked up a rod-like contraption that was two and a half feet long and full of little projections that started to spin or wave back and forth or grow then shrink, as soon as he touched it. "How do I look?" he asked, posing for Maria and Jim.

"How - how did you do that?" Jim asked. The cap that the Doctor had donned seemed to have disappeared, but his skin was bluey-greenish, and his face looked remarkably Antarian.

"Levdorian disguise hat," the Doctor mentioned, and then pushed the TARDIS doors open ahead of him, then proceeded to make his big entrance and put on a show for the customers at Alien Worlds, which was one of the biggest alien souvenir stores in Roswell, and a business partner of Amy's.

At the height of the distraction of the alien spectacle, Maria managed to slip out of the TARDIS without calling too much attention to herself. A few customers did seem to notice her, but she figured that they'd just assume that she was a helper who had been helping to prepare the show 'backstage' and needed to come out on an errand. If anybody recognized her as the MC's daughter, that would only reinforce the impression. And if anybody thought it was unusual for the MC to be getting escorted 'backstage' by her helper and daughter, they kept it to themselves.

"No, come on, I made my decision," Amy said, looking around the interior of the TARDIS. "I'm doing as well as I can with three aliens in my life - or three and a half, however you're keeping count these days. But an entire planet full of them? No way."

"I - I let you get away with that, as long as it was just a question of coming along for the ride, for the fun of it," Jim started, and Maria shot him a look. "But - well, we need your help. Michael and Max and Isabel particularly, they need your help."

Amy looked doubtful. "What could I possibly help with?"

"A - a mystery," Maria tried, doing her best to keep her voice calm and reassuring. "A mystery that needs to be solved before we leave Antar for good - or it could hurt all of them, maybe even..." She trailed off, not quite sure how to explain the possibility that they could cease to exist, so the implication of consequences so horrible that they could not be named would have to do. "And believe it or not, one of your special skills could get us past a road block in our investigation."

Amy gave Maria her best 'Don't give your mother any bull-crap' look. "What special skill?"

Maria took a deep breath. This could be a key moment. "Hypnosis. We need you to help us access memories that Kyle might have repressed from a traumatic experience - and the Doctor's friend Rose, I told you about her, and maybe Isabel too."

"Hypnosis?" Amy repeated, torn between disbelief and intrigue. Maria tried to hide a smile and nodded at Jim to finish closing the sale as best he could. She was certain that he could manage it, now.

"So, are we all agreed?" the Doctor asked as he sprinted back into the TARDIS and tore off the disguise cap. Maria boggled in astonishment as he reverted to his relatively usual appearance. It wasn't like the cap had an Antarian prosthetic mask attached to it that the Doctor had also torn away - more as if the Antarian features on his face puffed away like mist, leaving just the semblance that was human enough to make no difference.

Jim turned to Amy, waiting for her final decision. "Yes, for as long as you need me, I'm along for the ride," she said, and sighed. "Is it a tough ride, travelling through time, Maria?"

"A little bit of turbulence, but nothing too bad," Maria assured her. "At least, nobody's actually gotten time-sick so far."

"Well, let's see if we can keep the streak going!" the Doctor exclaimed, returning to his controls. "And give the UFO fans a big finish to the show of course." As the TARDIS lifted itself into the time vortex, Maria could almost hear the vworp-vworp sound of it disappearing from inside the souvenir shop, and the convention attendees cheering at the 'great special effects.'

When they had landed again, Jim took the first look outside. "We're not back on the beach," he reported, sounding worried.

"Well, no - I'm more familiar with the area now, and figured that none of us really wanted to face that walk again - twice more, if we had an alternative. Do you mind?" Jim backced away from the door to let the Doctor pass, and followed him as he opened the door wide and stepped out. Soon the four of them were looking around, and Maria and Jim had come to the realization that they were inside one of the Brok Bay palace's courtyards.

"Okay, my apologies," Jim muttered to the Doctor, who nodded a trifle smugly, but nobody could hold that against him. "So, let's see, where's our balcony from here, do we have to?" The Doctor pointed to a single-story wall across the courtyard. "Yes, that's convenient too." He turned to Amy, who was looking as if she was only just managing to avoid freaking out at this much, and offered her his arm. "Let's go, my dear - Kyle and Isabel should be waiting for us on the balcony or in one of the nearby rooms, and we'll have to introduce you to Rose."

"Right, yes," Amy said. "If I focus on that, it might help. Umm - you didn't give me a chance to go and grab anything to use as a hypnotic focus."

"What do you need, just something that you can swing back and forth?" Maria asked. "Sparkly or shiny? I'm sure that we can find something that will work, in all of our baggage."

"Baggage," Amy moaned. "Is this going to take more than a few hours?? I don't have a change of clothes or anything."

-----------

"No way," Kyle insisted. "I'm sorry, Isabel, I don't care how bored you are. If you're nearly a match for Whitman with that crazy hyperchess thing, then I'm not going near you on it."

"Quantum chess," Isabel replied offhandedly. "Which means that if he kicked my butt regularly, you'd consider it?" Kyle just shrugged. "How about some other game?"

Kyle looked from Isabel to Rose, back, and grinned. "Strip poker?"

"Hmm... has possibilities," Rose replied.

"Hah!" Isabel shot back. "MAYBE if Alex was here and into the idea, but not on these terms, thanks." She let out a long sigh, and just a few seconds later someone tapped politely on the door of Kyle's room, where they were all waiting. "Yeah, come in!"

"Hey, that's my line," Kyle muttered. "Or my choice." Isabel glared at him. "Well, whatever." The door opened and Prince Zan poked his head in. "Oh, it's your highness," Kyle said. "Didn't you go out with the search party?"

"No, as much as I hope that they find the Lady Isabel's engagement pendant for her, I thought that there were really enough people out on the search," Zan said. "And - well, I was hoping to spend some time with those of you who were remaining be..."

"Wait a second, *hold the phone,*" Isabel blurted out. "My what kinda pendant? Who told you that Alex had... huh?"

Zan looked around the room as if seeking a supporting opinion, then came fully inside the room and closed the door, leaning his back against it. "I'm terribly sorry, Isabel - either I or one of my friends who was telling me about your plight must have made an unwarranted assumption and come to a misapprehension. This - this necklace that you've lost and want to get it back - it's just an ordinary decoration?"

"Well, I wouldn't quite say 'ordinary'," Isabel told him defensively. "It was a birthday present from Alex, and... wait, you guys don't really have birthdays here, do you?"

"Not as a very significant occasion, no," Zan admitted. "They're celebrated more on Rahlicx, and Larek has told me about their birthday customs. Actually, I've had a birthday party and birthday gifts myself, while staying at the Autarch's capital with Larek. Their customs aren't too difficult from our naming day festivities." He smiled slightly. "But continue on - you were speaking of why the necklace is dear to you."

"Yes, I guess I was," Isabel agreed. "I like it a lot, I love to wear it, especially for special occasions or when I'll be spending time with Alex, and I know that he thinks it looks beautiful on me. But it doesn't have any particular implications or significance for our future together. He's talked about buying me a promise ring, around graduation time this year - I've already graduated high school, but he hasn't yet, and..." She trailed off a bit uncertainly.

"So rings are the traditional gifts for commitment between two people who are in love or bonding, on Earth?" Zan asked. "Finger rings?"

"Yeah, pretty much," Kyle agreed. "Promise rings, engagement rings, wedding bands. In American culture, and a lot of others too. Is it always neclaces or pendants, on Antar?"

"Generally, yes," Zan agreed. "There's a spiel about how the chain circles round the head and the pendant hangs close to the heart, but I'm not going to inflict that on you." He chuckled. "I'm sorry, but perhaps you can see how we mis-interpreted. If Vilandra said that she'd lost a beautiful ring, that Rath had given her.."

"Vilandra and Rath!" Rose exclaimed. "That Kindarra thing, that you were playing the game about. Does that mean that Vilandra's agreed to marry Rath?"

"No, umm, not quite, but it might be an analog of your promise ring," Zan said with a smile. "Though it's also a very valuable item in its own right, an heirloom of Rath's family, and a powerful tool in the hands of a trained woman."

"Only a woman?" Isabel asked, curious.

"One of its mysteries," Zan agreed, smiling. "It was Rath's inheritance, but he could not use it himself - and grew up being told that it would be a gift to the girl he grew closest to. I think his father didn't want him to give it to Vilandra until the formal betrothal, but Rath was too curious to see what she could do with it. It changed hands when he officially received permission to court her hand."

"Okay, I think that's enough talk about the ladies' bling," Kyle put in pointedly. "Was there another reason you wanted to hang around with us, Highness? Or are we just an excuse to avoid the search for Isabel's birthstone?"

"Well, Ava mentioned something about the hypnosis trick that you're going to be trying to use to figure out the secret of the psychic events," Zan replied. "Frankly, she wanted to be a witness herself, but she had to go and serve as guide to where Kyle was found yesterday. So I'm under orders to report back to her about all the little details - that is, if you don't mind my watching."

"Umm." Rose shared glances with Kyle and Isabel, and shrugged. "I don't feel self-conscious about it or anything, no." There was a tap on the balcony door, and all four of them looked up. "Oh, good thing too, because the Doctor's back. Hopefully he's brought our hypnotic specialist."

"Yes," Zan said, and looked around inside the room. "Isn't somebody going to go to the door and let him in?"

"Oh, right, that should be me I suppose, since it's my room," Kyle said, and got up. "You know, you could have opened it from outside," he said. "Especially you, Dad."

"Perhaps, but we didn't want to intrude - too abruptly," Jim Valenti said.

"Nicely put," Isabel said, and laughed. "So come on, let's get this over with."

"No, come on, Isabel, you're..." Amy DeLuca shuddered slightly as she stepped up to the threshold of the room. "We're none of us going to get anywhere with hypnosis and that kind of attitude. It's something that you have to be patient with, and more than a little relaxed." She sighed. "Especially me, because I have to lead the way into relaxation, and I'm not doing that well with Antar so far, I'm afraid. And do we all have to crowd into this little room, really?"

"Hello, and welcome to our world, my lady," Zan said, standing up and formally bowing to Amy. "Certainly you have a point - why don't we all abandone this little crowded room and take our ease on the balcony, for now?" Isabel nodded slightly. "My name is Zan, by the way, and this is my family's house."

"Zan," Amy repeated, and took a deep breath. "As in Prince Zan?" Zan nodded. "Jim told me a bit about you. Oh, and I'm Amy - Amy DeLuca, Maria's mother."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Amy," Zan said, and turned to the other Earth natives. "Can any of you think of something I can offer that might help Amy feel more at ease? I'm not sure if Antarian relaxing beverages have quite the same effect on human metabolisms."

Maria grinned. "I think that some Rynec would suit the moment just right, and before you call for a servant or anything, your highness, I think that I can handle the need at this moment." As everybody else stared, she took off for her own door off the balcony, and emerged carrying an oddly shaped glass jug with a handle and a tubular spout on it, and clutching a few Antarian teacups in the other hand.

Isabel chuckled. "You just happened to have a pitcher of Rynec in there?"

"That was Michael's idea," Maria said. "I've been having so much of the stuff that he said it was easier than heading out to find a kitchen or a dining room every time I wanted a cuppa. It's almost as good as Mocchacino that way, though a completely different kind of taste experience." She peered at the cups, and passed one to Maria. "Clean this for my mom, please?"

Isabel stared at the cup as if worried that it might sting her. "I seem to remember telling you many years ago, Maria DeLuca, that I might be willing to use my powers to heat up customer's food and drink, in an emergency or if you asked nicely, but that I drew the line at using them to clean up somebody else's dishes."

There was an odd silence, and Maria started to laugh, shaking her head. "Well, I don't mind," Zan said, reaching over to take the cup from Maria's hand. Isabel tried to get to it first, but she was a little slow to react, and so was Maria when she tried to retrieve the dish for her friend.

"I'm not really that stuck-up, seriously I'm not," Isabel protested as Zan focused on the dish. "Just - well, I was making a joke, that probably not many people at this table we capable of appreciating."

"I think I got some of it," Kyle volunteered. "That was about the time that you volunteered to help at the cafe, because Liz's grandmother was sick, right?"

"Yeah," Isabel said. "You remembered that?"

"I remember how good you looked in the uniform," Kyle said, sighing in remembered appreciation.

"Oh, and here I thought you'd have been a little too busy getting my brother beat up to notice little things like that," Isabel shot back.

"Hey, that was not my idea, for all that Liz broke up with me over it, " Kyle complained.

Zan was looking around in confusion after putting the clean cup back on the table, and met the Doctor's raised-eyebrow look. "Do you have any idea what all of that was about, Doctor?" he asked.

"Not the specifics, no," the Doctor allowed. "But the Roswellian contingent has a lot of shared history that I wasn't in the loop for. I only met them a week or so ago."

"A lot of shared history is probably putting it mildly," Amy said. "I was in town when Liz's grandmother passed away, I remember that, but wasn't aware of any of the rest of this."

"Oh, mom, let me finish getting you your drink," Maria said, taking the cup and pouring expertly from the jug spout. "You should find this pretty relaxing, I hope. It's fruity and sweet and very rich."

"Okay, so let me try to get this straight," Rose asked as Amy took her first sip of Rynec. "Kyle, you and Liz used to go out, except - except somebody beat up Max and she blamed you for it, and gave you the boot?"

Kyle turned to her, and seemed to take a moment about trying to figure out what to say, as Maria and Isabel watched him with superior feminine grins on their faces. "That - that was a long time ago, but yeah. Liz and I started dating the summer before she really met Max - as in, when she found out the big alien secret and everything," He sighed. "I guess I got jealous when I saw the sparks flying between them, when I really should've just gotten out of the way. And no, Liz didn't really believe that I'd ordered my friends on the football team to pound Max, not after I'd told her I didn't. But she did point out that it was ultimately my responsibility, because I'd been complaining about him enough that they got the idea that he was moving in on my territory, and from there on it was just football jocks doing what all jocks do." He looked back at Rose. "Any other questions?"

"Just one, but not for you," Rose said, and addressed Isabel. "You used to work at the Crashdown, too?"

"Not for long," Isabel told her. "Maria guilt-tripped me into helping out while Liz's family was busy visiting the sick grandmother in the hospital." She sighed. "And that was before I was really friends with either of them, and before I'd gotten to know Alex at all, really. I'd probably be more gracious about coming back to work if there was the need for it, more recently - but nobody's asked me."

There was a pause, as Amy drained her cupful and Maria poured her a refill. After taking one more sip, Amy looked around. "Well, I guess the next step is for you to tell me, as simply as possible, what the circumstances were of these missing memories, and what you most need to know."

------------

"Tell me what you see."

Kyle looked around, marveling at the scene that seemed to be nearly frozen in time, though Rath was moving slowly through the air. "We're at the Foursquare stones, the four of us - myself, Rose, the Lord Rath, and her Highness. Rath is demonstrating levitation tricks, flying through the air and he just finished doing a kind of a somersault. Princess Vilandra is just starting to throw a pretty good hissy fit.

"That's good." Kyle couldn't see Amy, but it was hard to mistake her voice. The hard part was in facing the notion that everything that Kyle was seeing was illusory, a memory re-awakened through vivid hypnotic trance, and he was really back on the balcony with Amy, Prince Zan, and the other members of their party. "You don't need to tell me everything that she says at this point, but I'd like the high points, and tell me everything that anybody does over the next minute or so.

"Alright." Kyle repeated parts of Vilandra's rant, feeling a bit funny about saying the bits with mature Antarian words to his nearly-step-mother, but to him they qualified as 'high points,' and it was hard to resist Amy's cues. Seemed easier not to bother. "So Rath swoops down over us, and says that he's not ready to go back yet, and Vilandra's all 'last chance', and she uses her powers to pull the key stick away from Rath and carefully waves it back at him. She tells him that he can still drive his precious car, if we leave now."

"Now, let's stop there for just a moment," Amy said. "Since you first met Rath and Vilandra, this is the first time you've seen anybody but Rath touch the fin car's key stick, right?"

"Yes, definitely," Kyle said. "I didn't even see Rath touch it that often - when he started the car, of course, and when he parked it by the four stones he took it and put it in his jacket side pocket."

"Alright. And can you tell me anything about Rose as soon as Vilandra has the key stick?"

"No, umm, not really - she's turned to look at the Princess, which means that she's facing away from me. She seems to be interested in what's going on, as far as I can tell from her body language."

"That's okay. And how close are Rose and you to the Princess?"

"Rose is really close, close enough for either of the girls to touch the other's head or torso if they reach out, except that they don't," Kyle answered. "I'm nearly six feet further away."

"Okay, so what happens now, how does Rath react?"

"Umm - Rose says something to the Princess actually, 'get 'im girl' or that kind of solidarity remark. I complained that it was really unfair, just sort of mumbling to myself because I didn't want the girl power police on my case. Then Rath landed, he seemed really disappointed more than anything else, and Vilandra kisses his fingers and gives him back the key-stick. We all get back into the car and get in - oh, I get a look at Rose's face as soon as she turns around, and I guess that she seems kind of preoccupied or tired, as if she's really been out for too long and just wants to get home."

"Alright," Amy continued. "Keep paying attention to Rose, to her face, to as much as you can tell me about her mood."

"Well, let's see," Kyle said. "We both get in the back of Rath's fin-car, and it's getting dark. I'm paying more attention to the outside than to Rose, I'm afraid, but I... I do remember looking back to her and noticing a fierce smile on her face. That's just before we hit the first downdraft, and the winds get stronger and the car loses power. Rath lands us, Vilandra's acting very quiet, like she's either concentrating on something or half asleep. And Rose starts to complain a bit at Rath, and that's when Rath starts to act all macho and say that 'the men' can fix it. I'm a disappointment to him I guess - don't have Antarian powers to help with the repair or even make a light for him, don't know anything about the machinery that goes into the car, but I hold a glowing orb in the right place, and he checks everything out."

Kyle paused, wondering if Amy would prompt him again, but she stayed silent, so he decided to just continue. "Nothing's wrong in the engine, Rath suggests that somebody could be using their powers to drain the engine's juice, and Vilandra snaps at him, says that he's being paranoid, but we should call for help on the com handset. Rath doesn't really answer one way or another, so Vilandra calls to security, using some fairly ridiculous sounding secret service code names. They tell us that there's a psychic presence outside, near us, and Rose starts chanting out."

"I don't think you need to repeat the words for me," Amy said. "We know enough about that part. What happens next?"

"I try to get inside to help her, but the door is locked, and by the time I figure out how to unlock it, Rose has collapsed. Security is asking us what the heck is going on, and Rath calls for emergency help as soon as possible, saying that we're red as blood." Kyle sighed. "But we're not, really - the storm and the winds die down almost immediately, and by the time the groundcars from the palace arrive, the fin car is working perfectly again."

"Alright, thanks Kyle, that was good," Amy told him. "Do you want to come back to us now, or are you good to move on to the second time, the siege game with Isabel?"

"I'm up for getting it over with as soon as possible," Kyle insisted, and almost in the blink of an eye he was standing in the palace room he shared with his father, listening as somebody climbed the balcony stairs. "Okay, I'm peeking out of my room, and I see Isabel the rebel, on the balcony. She's munching on a yellow finger cake and looking around the scene that we left behind as all of the other defenders abandoned the balcony for a more fortifiable location, leaving me behind to stand guard. But anyway, Isabel has a look on her face like she's lost track of a makeup compact or her purse and is trying to figure out if she left it there."

"Hey!" Isabel's voice came faintly through the trance-vision.

"Please stay quiet, Isabel," Amy warned. "Alright, so what do you do next, Kyle?"

"I slide the door open and stand where she can see me. She looks up but doesn't say anything, because her mouth is full of cake, so I mutter 'well, look who's here'."

"Alright, and how does Isabel react?" Amy asked.

"Well, she swallows so that she can talk, and then tries to go all alien princess badass and intimidating, asking me if the princess is there and if I was the only defender in the area. Somehow, I guess I could tell that she was just trying to be a good diversion - partly from her attitude, and partly because I knew that she didn't really want to push through an attack to the Princess Vilandra." He almost explained more, then remembered that Prince Zan was listening, and possibly he'd already said too much.

Amy managed to cover with just the right amount of naivete, however. "She doesn't like the Princess, even to get that close to her?" Kyle grunted ambiguously. (He didn't really want to lie about that.)

"So I start baiting her a little, 'why don't you tie me up already,' that kind of thing, because I know that she just wants me to call for help or do something else to help her make herself an effective diversion than she could be by herself. And Isabel, well, she throws a hissy fit and picks up one of the mugs from the table and throws it in my direction. I dodge, and it lands on the paving stones next to me and shatters."

"And what does Isabel do next?" Amy prompted.

"I - I don't know," Kyle admitted. "The replay, the memory, it kind of freezes at that point, just after the mug had broken away in pieces."

"Try to get to what's next, Kyle," Amy said. "It's okay if you have to skip over a bit, but try to tell me as much as you can."

Kyle got to what was next. Unfortunately, he couldn't say anything about it for a moment.

Because he was drowning in watery mud, that was slamming at him from one side, and then another. Every time he tried to open his mouth, it got full of the gunky stuff, and he was flailing helplessly with his arms and legs just trying to stay afloat. Dimly, very dimly, he could hear Amy's voice rising in panic. "I don't know what's wrong, I can't snap him out of it when he's like this. Isabel, can you do..."

And even more faintly, Isabel's reply. "I... I'm trying, he won't let me in, it sometimes takes a while when the subject isn't properly dreaming..."

And then - there was a hand, catching his, pulling him somewhat out of the mud. Kyle went along with it, and felt his knees bump painfully against something hard. Then he was able to use his free hand to clear the muck out of his eyes, and he realized that he was half sitting and half lying on a rough wooden raft. Looking around further, he saw that though the raft was floating in the muddy lake or swamp or whatever it was, the storm that had made the water so active seemed to be dying down. And he looked up and beheld his rescuer.

To no particular surprise, it was the Doctor.

"Don't ask me how I pulled this one off," he said in a low voice. "Never managed to psychically enter somebody else's hypnotic vision before - not that there's been much of a reason to try. Maybe spending so much time with your friend Isabel has had a bit of an effect on me."

"I..." Kyle started, and then spat out a fair quantity of brown water before starting again. "I was just wondering where you got the raft."

"It just sort of came with me when I entered the scene," the Doctor muttered. "I was trying to bridge through as a representation of order and safety, so I suppose this was what I needed to be safe in the scene, and to make you safe." He looked around at the mud. "This is what happened when you - when you tried to move forward into memories of the psychic event itself?"

"Well yes, I guess so," Kyle admitted. "There was a storm, and I was drowning in the mud."

"Not a good sign," the Doctor admitted. "Well, should I try to sail us out to safety, or press on? That much is up to you."

Kyle considered it. "Do you think that we need to go on to figure out what's happening with the psychic events?"

"No, now that you come to mention it, I think that we don't need any more clues from repressed memories," the Doctor allowed. "I've got a theory. Proving it out will have to be done in the real world, so help me turn this raft around."

Kyle staggered up. "So, how exactly do we do that?"

------------

"Very well, let us review the sequence of relevant events," the Doctor said, once he had snapped out of his psychic trance and Amy had brought Kyle out from his own hypnotic regression. "Rath and Vilandra take Kyle and Rose out to see the Foursquare stones, the first night that we were here at Brok Bay. Rath drove the fin-car himself, as was his custom - he never allowed anybody else to drive it, but in exasperation and impatience, the Princess Vilandra seized the fin-car keystick from him with her powers and demanded that he drive her home or she would drive the fin-car himself. Rath accedes to this demand, and on the flight back, Rose manifests with a psychic event - winds, rain, the draining of the fin-car's power systems, and a little speaking in tongues."

"Right," Kyle said. "So? If there was some critical clue there, I didn't see it."

"This fin-car keystick," the Doctor continued, brandishing a small silver rod in the air, "might look mostly innocent, but it is in fact the equivalent of a 'murder weapon' for this non-murder mystery. I suspected that when I touched it last night, again out by the side of the foursquare stones. There is a psychic key pattern, not strongly felt now since its work has been done, but the trace still remains."

"How did you get that again?" Zan asked the Doctor. "I slipped it into Rath's room last night."

"And I slipped it out again this morning, after we returned from your foursquare demonstration," the Doctor told him. "It was important, after all. So - the only two people who touched the key stick on the night in question, at the scene of the event, were Rath and Vilandra, and Rath had handled it often before, and well before the event began. My theory is that the psychic charge inside it was triggered to Vilandra, to her touch."

"That makes sense," Zan said, a little doubtfully.

"Since the hypnotic sessions that you were sent to observe are complete, I think that perhaps you should go and find your parents and relate what we have found so far," the Doctor continued. "Your highness. It would mean more to them coming from you, and this is important."

"V-very well," Zan said, rising and bowing awkwardly. "Thank you for helping us with this little problem, I'm sure." He turned towards the doors. "With somebody's permission..."

"Go through our room, if you like, your majesty," Jim Valenti offered, and Zan did.

"There's something that you're not telling that boy," Amy pointed out as soon as the hallway door to the room had closed. "I've read some mystery books in my time, and from everything you've said, neither Vilandra nor the key-stick were anywhere near the balcony when Kyle had his own 'psychic event.' How could they be the triggers?"

"They weren't - that time," Isabel said. "I see it now - It was me, because I'm just psychically close enough to Vilandra that the same trap would work on me - and we can't let Zan, or any of the Antarians, guess that much. The other half of the key would have been - the mug that I threw at him. I'm sure it would have been the first time I'd touched that particular dish." She looked over at the Doctor. "Do you suppose whoever planted more than the two trap items for Vilandra?"

"I'm not sure he planted two deliberately," the Doctor said worriedly. "I offered Rose some Antarian restorative soup the evening after her event in the fin-car, out of a mug quite like the one that Isabel and Kyle described. After making sure that it would be restorative for humans as well, of course." The Doctor paced across the balcony with restless energy. "I'm not sure if that's a co-incidence."

"So let me try and follow through your theory," Valenti said, getting into the armchair sleuthing. "This psychic booby-trap or whatever it is must have been designed to perpetuate itself - Vilandra touches a key item, frees the evil psychic genie from its bottle as it were, and that psychic presence 'possesses' somebody nearby - ideally whoever has the fewest psychic defenses. First Rose, and then Kyle. When Rose had finished her own psychic trip, she accidentally charged the mug with the psychic trap, and Isabel let it loose the next day."

"So where's the trap now?" Kyle asked, worried. "What did I touch or handle first after I was brought in? Could the psychic trap be in that horrible bed they put me in downstairs?"

"No, I don't think it works on beds, or it would have been in mine," Rose put in.

"Plus, I touched that bed when I went to check on you last night," Isabel told Kyle. "Would have started the whole craziness going again if that was it." She drew in a deep breath and faced the Doctor. "It doesn't seem that Kyle had it when his psychic event ended, but - could he have implanted the psychic trigger charge in my birthstone pendant?"

"O-ho," the Doctor said, thinking over the possibilities. "Since we don't yet know all the rules, that does sound plausible. It was certainly something that Kyle's 'possessed' alternate identity was very focused on."

"And Vilandra is out with the search party, looking for the birthstone," Maria said, her words coming out in a rush. "Each psychic event seems to be worse than the last - what if Vilandra touches the birthstone, and Alex goes psychic event - or Liz."

"We have to warn them," Valenti decided. "Get on one of those com handsets, down in the switchboard room."

"No, we can't go that way," Isabel shot back. "There's too much about this theory that the Antarians can't find out about, until we know all the answers and can figure out what to tell them."

"About you and Vilandra?" Amy asked. "I think that we can cover up that bit."

"It's not just that," Isabel said. "I'm thinking about who might have motives to lay a trap of this kind for the Princess Vilandra. We have to be very concerned about changing the timelines. If it's who I'm thinking of, then we can't let King Sanren know the perpetrator unless we're absolutely sure that was in the history of Antar before we started messing with things. It could start a war too early, and change the lives of the Royal Four."

"Oh," Kyle said, nodding. "You think that it's..."

"Who else would have this much control over mental powers, and want to torture the Princess by surrounding her with hauntings?" Isabel filled in, nodding. "This could be step one in Kivar's creepy seduction plan, as much as it kills me to think of that. He might not have laid the charge himself, but I believe that some of his lackeys were in the palace recently. He must be behind it."

"Well, then, if we can't use the Antarian's communicators, then how do we warn the search parties?" Amy asked Isabel.

"You can leave that part to me, I hope," Isabel shot back.

TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Chapter Twenty

"Wow," Alex said, blinking slightly, and walking over to Isabel where she stood next to the line of trees with dark red, hollow conical 'leaves.' "How - how did you get here without my noticing a vehicle arriving or anything?"

"I didn't exactly get here," Isabel put in, and smiled, though Alex felt himself frown with confusion even through his happiness. "It's never been quite this easy to get through the distractions of the conscious mind before, though I guess I've never tried to get to you while you're awake, especially since..." She trailed off. "Anyway, that's not really what I need to tell you about."

"So, you're dream-walking me?" Alex said, wonderingly. "Or mind-walking, I guess I should say, the way you've done to Max before?" Isabel nodded. Alex looked around and realized that he could hardly hear the sounds of the other searchers nearby talking to each other, though the chatter had been loud a moment ago - that must be a consequence of the way his mind was tuning into Isabel's signal, he decided. The rest of his senses were getting less bandwidth, though the forest still seemed to be in clear and brilliant color. "Okay, what's the emergency?"

"How do you... oh, right, the only thing that would drive me to this extremity, huh?" Isabel realized, and Alex nodded. "Though maybe now that I know it isn't so tough with you, we could try this again sometime. But you're right, that there's a reasonably dire need at the moment. The Doctor, he's found out the mystery of the hauntings, or at least come up with a pretty good theory. If we're right, the birthstone necklace is the key - the psychic ghost is in there, so to speak, and if the Princess Vilandra picks it up or touches it, then the ghost will manifest and try to possess you or Liz - and we don't know what it'll make you do this time. Since you're out looking for buried treasure, it might make you start digging underground, and that could be really dangerous."

"Okay," Alex said. "So there's really a ghost?"

"No, that was just a metaphor that got somewhat out of hand," Isabel said. "It's more like a flash, I think, but it's a flash that's designed to get out of hand and overwhelm somebody's personality temporarily. We still don't know all the details."

"Got it," Alex said. "But it's triggered only by Vilandra - or by you?" Isabel nodded. "So we'd have to figure out a way to get rid of it before you get the birthstone back."

"Yeah," Isabel said. "But that doesn't matter now. You need to..." She cocked her head, listening intently, and then disappeared in a split-second. At the same moment, the voices came back up to full volume.

The first words Alex heard were: "Oh, is that it?" And they were spoken by none other than Vilandra herself, probably a few clearings over.

He dove into action as quickly as he could, realizing at the same moment that Isabel must have been able to hear some of what he was missing, and that she had terminated the link in the hopes that would save seconds versus trying to explain the direness of the situation. Furiously, he pushed himself through 'jog' and into a dead run, still paying as much attention as he could on where he placed his foot for each pace. Tripping over a root or a stone would cost far too much time.

He didn't want to get possessed by an alien flash or anything of the sort. It would also not be good for that to happen to Liz, especially if that ended with her getting crushed in some underground cave-in.

As he got close, he risked paying a little less attention to his footing, and a little less to speed, in order to focus on listening again and homing in on Vilandra's voice. But when he heard her ask, "Do you mind if I have a look?" he instinctively tried to go into hundred-yard dash mode, (not that he'd ever really been that good at track and field,) and glanced off the edge of a tree trunk that he hadn't even noticed.

However, that might have been a partly fortunate event, in that the recoil brought Alex into the same clearing as the Princess. She was standing very close to Max, who was holding the necklace out for her to take. Alex was still at least fifteen yards away from both of them, and he screamed out "NOO!" as he rushed to intercept the hand-off. And then he did trip over something and measure out six feet, two inches in the dry ground of the clearing.

He looked up again as soon as he could manage it. "No?" Max asked questioningly, and then seemed to notice the gold chain hanging from his fingers, and Vilandra's hand which had just nearly clasped on the peridot setting. At the last possible instant Max whisked the necklace away, and the Princess looked disappointed and angry all at once.

"Umm, it's a bit hard to explain at the moment," Alex muttered, hoping that Max would recognize that as a cue to not ask him many questions in front of the Princess. "But - well, I'm worried that if the Princess touches the necklace, she might trigger another psychic event - in me, or Liz maybe."

Max considered this and nodded, stuffing the chain and pendant into his pocket. Vilandra looked much more dubious, as could be expected. "I can picture some key item and the right person triggering a psychic reaction like that, I suppose - and I was nearby for one of the events before. But why the necklace, particularly? I haven't seen it before, and though it was nearby when Kyle went psycho, I wasn't." Her mouth wrinkled up. "I hope this isn't just a belief that I caused the first event, the necklace caused the second, so that if the two of us meet we could cause a much bigger one."

"Umm, no, it's not just that, I think." Alex sighed. "I could be wrong, I definitely admit that, but we should check the necklace out before letting you near it, Your Highness. Umm - maybe Liz would be able to tell, she was sensitive to the psychic presence both times after it manifested, right?"

"And are you sure that it would be safe for Liz to touch it?" Vilandra asked, exasperated. Max shot Alex a look, and he shrugged.

Liz, however, was exploring another area about half an hour's walk away, so they had to prevail on Vilandra to drive them in a small air-car that she had borrowed to help in the search. Once Liz had hugged Max hello, and Alex had explained the situation to her, Liz agreed to take the necklace for a chance at a flash, and she notted as soon as the gold surface touched the palm of her hand.

"It's nasty, Max - are you telling me that you couldn't feel even a trace of that?" Max shrugged a bit uncertainly. "I certainly believe that the trace inside here could have driven Rose and Kyle a bit crazy, if it had been broadcast in the right way. And it wasn't here the last time Isabel let me handle the piece - which was a few months ago, admittedly, but I don't think we brought the ghost with us. Could Kyle have implanted it accidentally while he was possessed?"

"We don't know," Alex said, though he was gratified to see Vilandra nodding in acceptance of that possibility. "I - well, I got a sort of a message from the Doctor about the danger of letting Vilandra touch the necklace, before it's been taken care of somehow." That was a half-truth or less, but he didn't want to let Vilandra know that Isabel could mindwalk if there was a way of hiding that information.

"So, what did the Doctor say that we should do next?" Liz asked.

"He didn't," Alex admitted. "I had to move as quickly as I could to keep Vilandra and Max away from each other, so we hung up on each other." Pause. "Not away from each other in the sense that you or Rath might be jealous of, I mean..."

"Of course, I knew that," Liz said with one of her gentle and beautiful smiles. "Well, I suppose it makes sense to call off the search and go back to the Palace." She sighed. "And get something to eat. How late in the Antarian day is it now?"

"Late enough for tea, at least," Vilandra said, looking at the blueish shadow that she cast in the orange-tinted Antarian sun. "We all had a pretty early lunch, before heading out on this search."

Alex shot Max a look, wondering what would be awaiting them when they got back to the Brok Bay palace. Max just shrugged.

------------

By the time the search parties had arrived, the King and Queen had been informed about the potential solution to the psychic event mysteries, and even the word about the retrieval of Isabel's birthstone necklace had reached them. An elaborate afternoon buffet meal had been set out, and the returning questors were encouraged to join in.

Max and Liz took only a quick first pass along the table of Anarian delicacies, and paid more attention to looking for somebody who could explain what was going on while they'd been gone. Max had hoped to get a word with his sister, but she rushed over to see Alex as soon as she spotted them, and Rath was hanging around close to Alex. Liz pulled up seats for both of them opposite Rose and Kyle.

"Good afternoon," Kyle said in his calmest tone. "Tried the steamed calbaree?"

Max didn't dignify that with an answer. "Hasn't anybody been asking awkward questions around here?"

"Not since - since the Doctor had a private word with Their Majesties," Rose whispered back. "I don't know what he told them - it can't have been something that would upset the timeline. I don't even know how the King and Queen told Zan to stop pressing on the truth."

"They'd have their ways," Liz pointed out. "I'm not worrying about our secrets any more - for a little while. Food is good, and that's enough for me." She took a bite out of a layered pasty that tasted more than anything else of a bacon s'more. Despite this description,she loved the mix of flavors.

"We can be satisfied with food for the time being," Kyle put in, "but I think that our secrets won't keep at Brok Bay for long now - certainly not the rest of the week that we were invited to stay by His Majestywhen we arrived. I don't know what the Doctor said any more than you guys do, but if I was anybody in the Royal family, Id wat to know who it was who hatched this plot for Vilandra - which we know, and can't tell them."

"We have a guess, and no proof" Rose corrected him. "Would there really be dire consequences if King Sanren can guess, but not take action?" Kyle and Max shrugged. "After all, if we're worried about the timeline, we have to ask what might have happened if we weren't here. We know that the hauntings can't have killed Vilandra, or any of the other Royal Four..."

Max jumped slightly in his seat. "Could they have been what killed His Majesty?"

"No, we found references to that on Kaalto," Kyle whispered back, looking around the hall. "And don't speak of such things, even if no-one can hear. But we know - how that King from long ago was assassinated. Nothing to do with Brok Bay or hauntings."

"So, can we let them examine the psychic traces left on the birthstone for themselves?" Liz asked. "That's a key question, I guess." She sighed, disappointed that her resolution to not worry about alien secrets over tea had lasted such a short time. "If they would have got the hauntings under control in the end, anyways..."

"But we don't know how," Kyle replied. He seemed to be having some fun playing the role of temporal Devil's Advocate. "What if one of the key items was just lost in a crack in the floor until Vilandra went back to the capital city - or somebody threw it into the waters of the Bay?"

"Well, we can examine the birthstone ourselves, first, see what we can find out from it," Max decided. "If that looks like enough to be dangerous, then maybe some of the traces get accidentally disturbed, we're so very sorry." He sighed. "And getting back to Kyle's more general point about overstaying our welcome, I think I agree.What's the soonest we can take off without appearing discourteous to our hosts?"

"After Zan's big naming day party tomorrow, I would think," Liz said. Max shot her a look. "Yes, I'm looking forward to the festivities, but it's not just that. Ava made a point out of saying that she wanted us all to be there."

"Okay, tomorrow night," Max said, and picked something else off his plate,which was nearly empty. "Once more through the buffet line, my darling? Liz was also nearly out of edibles.

"Umm, yeah, just give me a minute," Liz said, looking around. "Oh, and then we should say hello to Maria's mom, see how well she's acclimating to being here."

"Well, good luck with that," Kyle muttered.

Liz shot him a look. "Something I should be warned of before I go in?"

Kyle just shrugged, and Liz turned to Rose, who was blushing slightly. "She - she caught a look and started asking me a lot of questions," the British girl explained. "But - well, as fond as I am of Kyle, I'm certainly not planning on signing up for the extended Valenti-DeLuca family."

"Fair enough," Max said.

"Yeah," Liz agreed. "Maybe I can say something to her to help explain that. Somehow I doubt that Amy's never had a passionate summer romance of her own."

"Ehh, don't knock yourself out on my account," Rose said. "She seems like a nice lady, but again - not really looking to bond with Kyle's soon-to-be-stepmother."

"Fair enough." Liz swallowed a small piece of fruit and then stood up. "Okay, ready honey."

-----------

As the Antarian sun dropped close to the horizon over the waters of the Bay, members of the TARDIS expedition to Antar gathered on their balcony again. Rose and Kyle hadn't attended themselves, preferring to socialize with Rath and Vilandra, and Jim, Amy, and Maria were talking together in Jim's room, with the curtain closed. Everybody else had come in response to the Doctor's call.

"Ooh, it seems to actually pain me to stay away," Isabel complained as the Doctor held up her birthstone, and Alex squeezed her shoulders comfortingly with an affectionate arm. "Would I have to actually touch it to trigger an event?"

"I suspect so," the Doctor said soberly. "The psychic mechanisms seem to be similar to your 'flashes', and those are drawn from touch contact, as I understand, not 'just a couple of inches away' proximity. Still, it seems better for you to give it as wide a clearance as practical."

"Yeah," Alex agreed. "Just to be on the safe side. So what's next, how can we probe into the mysteries of this thing?"

There was silence, and everybody turned to look over at the Doctor. "No, sorry, I'm afraid I can't solve this one for you," he insisted. "I was able to read something of the enormous energies of the foursquare stone, but the subtle distinction of this trap is something completely different and off my radar, as it were."

"And mine," Max agreed. "The only people who've reacted to it from our company have been Liz - and Isabel, of course, if we count the mug. But that would be the wrong sort of reaction."

"Wait a second," Michael said. "Doctor, you sensed the traces in the key-stick. Weren't those fainter than the active trap would be?"

"Also qualitatively different, perhaps," the Doctor said. "I don't have high hopes, Mister Guerin, but you should probably try touching the chain and stone yourself."

"Well, okay," Michael said, and held open his hand for the Doctor to pass the item along. After only a moment, he shrugged. "Maybe a very slight trace, but nothing I could really tell you much about."

"Well, this is getting us nowhere fast," Isabel complained.

"Have patience, my lovely," Liz quipped. "Well, I guess I've got the strongest resonance to it, but I'm not sure of the right way to use it. There's a distinct feel to the menace there, but I've never felt Kivar's mind, or any of his higher-ups except for Nicholas I suppose, and I don't recognize him in this thing."

"Maybe if you try to get a flash of how the trap got laid in the first place," Max suggested to his honey. "You could get a glimpse of a face, and we could find visual records to compare it against."

"A flash of faces, through two intermediary stages?" Liz asked. "I feel as if that would work better with the key-card."

"I think my better half got that back after the search parties returned home," Michael said. "He'd found out that he was missing it, and got pissed."

The debate continued until the sun had sunk entirely beneath the waves, never really getting anyway, though Liz tried several different techniques for scrying into the past of the necklace and the psychic baggage it contained. Finally, exasperated, she held it in her hands, squeezing her eyes tight for a long moment, and then looked around at all of her friends. "All gone, or at least I left as little trace as I could," she declared, and hefted the tiny little bundle of gold and jewel in one hand. "Catch." Only Isabel had any time to react as Liz threw the necklace, and all that she managed was instinctively to do as Liz had suggested - and then half the group, including Isabel and Max, gasped when they realized what Liz had done, and the implications if her effort to expunge the psychic trap hadn't been successful.

They all sat there for nearly ten minutes in silence, those with any psychic powers straining them to the utmost searching for any hint of a haunting presence, but there was no such sign. "Okay, I guess that's that," Max said, taking one of Liz's hands in his. "Sanren can borrow the birthstone, briefly, if he wants to, but I doubt that he'll have much luck with it now."

"Do you think he'll throw a royal hissy fit over what Liz just did?" Michael asked.

"He doesn't seem to be at all the hissy type, royal or not," the Doctor said.

"And I don't care if he does," Liz said. "Isabel wanted the necklace back, I did what I could to make sure that it would be safe for her to touch her own gift. That's that."

"What can we add to that?" the Doctor asked.

"An ETA for our flight back to the present, and Nunyes moon?" Alex chimed in.

"Tomorrow evening, about 2200 local time," Max suggested, and the Doctor nodded. "I've spoken with Ava, and the Prince's party should be winding down by then. The Royal four want to say goodbye to us all outside the TARDIS doors."

"Sounds alright to me," Isabel said. "Being too close to Vilandra isn't so bad, as long as she won't guess who I am."

"And what are the sleeping arrangements for tonight going to be?" Liz asked, a small sparkle of mischief in her eyes. "With Amy along, we're one over capacity, unless we take the sixth room."

"Let's work it through, shall we?" Michael suggested. "Since she's nervous about this at any rate, Amy should be with whoever would make her the most comfortable."

"Which could be her daughter," Alex suggested, and Michael scowled in disagreement.

"But is probably Mister Valenti," Liz finished, with Michael nodding, more pleased with that. "And if Kyle gets to room with whoever he likes - maybe he'd want to stay with his summer love."

"If Rose is alright with that change then I certainly am," the Doctor said. "As far as my own accommodation is concerned, I can retire to the TARDIS for the evening, especially now that it is parked on the Palace grounds."

"Fair enough - assuming that Mister Valenti, Miz DeLuca, Rose,and Kyle are all fine with the rooming assignments that we've been throwing around on their behalf," Max said with a soft chuckle.

"Yes, but there's something that I don't understand," Liz said, turning to the Doctor. "Aren't you - in love with Rose yourself? I don't mean to pry, but - well, I got that impression after we came here, and... I guess I was just wondering why you seem to be so okay with Kyle monopolizing her."

"What is this thing you Earthlings call love?" the Doctor whispered faintly, staring off into the distance, and everybody started to laugh or giggle as they realized that he was kidding. "I - I care very deeply for Rose Tyler, and want only what's best for her. My own wants and passions don't matter in comparison with that. Being with me, like that - dancing that dance with a time lord, it would be very intense for Rose, and possibly dangerous at this point. I think that you all have some notion of the difficulties involved in interspecies romance with even the most similar of cultures. If she's ready for that before our pathways separate, then I'm looking forward to the opportunity. For the time being, though - I think this dalliance with Kyle will be good for her, she's obviously having a lot of fun with him,"

"That makes some sense, as far as it goes," Max agreed. "But a word of warning from our own experiences - don't let yourself get to the point where 'she's not ready for it' is a crutch, something that you're taking as an article of faith no matter what Rose has to say for herself. You don't want to take a step back for too long."

"Or make yourself a stone wall," Michael chimed in, laughing.

"Or say that you can't be with anyone," Isabel finished. "We've all been there, and done that, and regretted it at leisure. Be cautious about it yes, but jump into the deep end when you have a chance."

"Well, that's advice that I didn't expect to be hearing from anybody today," the Doctor admitted, shaking his head. "Which means that I won't soon forget it. Thank you all."

"You're very welcome," Liz said, grinning. "Okay, so what else does the evening hold for us? I don't really want to turn in just yet."

"You're coming with me to see Prince Zan and King Sanren," Isabel insisted. "To explain what you did to the necklace. After that, you can please yourself."

"Fair enough," Liz said, and turned to Max. "Willing to come with me to see the Prince?"

"Umm - no," Max said, and sighed. "I'll wish him a happy naming day tomorrow, though."

"Just what is the deal with this naming-day stuff?" Michael asked. "I mean, does everybody not get named until they're a few weeks old, and that day when they get their name is their naming day all their life, or is it like there's a big calendar of names, so everybody who's named Zan or Piltook celebrates a naming day on Feblueberry thirty-second?"

There was a short beat, and then Isabel, Max, and Liz all erupted in wild laughter. "S-s-sorry man," Max managed after a little while between heaving gasps. "I needed that, but - really, Feb-blueberry? That sounds like it belongs on the promotional calenders of the cartoon breakfast cereal company or something."

"I think I've come across it in some whimsical fantasy paperback series," Alex said, grinning widely but not joining in the laughter as heartily as the others had. The Doctor just looked bemused. "In any event, I asked Vilandra about that during the siege - before Kyle went psychic-event, and she explained that it's mostly about the names themselves, and what day the names fall on in the traditional calendar, yes. But it usually amounts to the same thing as the other way, because usually the parents will pick the name so that they'll actually be naming the baby on his first naming-day."

"That makes sense," Liz said. She'd quieted down her own laughter by this point, and put a finger up to Max's lips, which did help to shush him up. "Are Antarian kids only ever named out of the traditional book, though? No room for parents to innovate or name their kids creatively?"

"You're one to talk about that," Max teased her. "In fact, we all have very 'traditional' names for where we grew up."

"I didn't get a chance to ask about that," Alex agreed. "But surely we'll be able to before we have to go." He turned to Isabel. "Do you want me coming along for moral support too?"

"Not really, but your company is always appreciated," she told him.

"*I'll* take moral support!" Liz declared, and Max and Isabel laughed.

"I think I'm going to go see if I can track down the lady Ava," Michael decided. "If we're going to have to vortex away tomorrow, then I think I'd like to ask her a few more questions about her background. That might be useful for when we brace Tess."

"Okay, I'll come along for that," Max said.

"One thing that you should probably know," Isabel said, and sighed. "Sorry that I didn't mention this before, but things have been so crazy with the hunt for my birthstone and the psychic events looming over us and all. Ava - when I joined the Rebels team in the siege, I let her connect with my mind."

An ominous sort of quiet descended around the balcony, as the twilight started to deepen. "Do you know how much she read?" Max asked, his voice mild but every word measured carefully.

"Pretty much," Isabel agreed. "That the three of us believe that we're part Antarian, and that we came from her future. None of the specifics about our connection to the Royal Four or anything like that - at least, I'm pretty sure I was able to block those thoughts off from her, and she didn't bring them up."

"Why did you agree to that?" Liz asked. "I mean, I can understand that you wanted to win over their loyalty, but did it occur to you that you were taking much too big of a chance over the siege game?"

"I don't know," Alex said softly. "I mean, if she'd backed out when they asked her to let Ava connect, maybe it would have been risky that way too. We wouldn't want to get the Royals wondering exactly what secrets she was so afraid of giving up."

"Right," Max said. "I'd probably have made the same call if I was in the same situation - but it's water under the bridge anyway. Is there anything else important that she knows about us now, Isabel?"

Isabel closed her eyes, concentrating hard. "Let's see. She does know that I can dreamwalk, that the three of us grew up as orphans, that you saved Liz's life, and we think she's taken on some Antarian traits because of that link. Umm... also, she knows a very little about the special unit trouble that we've had on Earth, and about your history with Tess - but not her own connection to Tess, obviously. She thinks that we were trying to get to Tess, and got flung back in time accidentally."

"Right," Michael said, after a moment. "Well, that's a long list, but none of it sounds very bad stuff to have let slip. I guess either you're good at guarding the most important secrets in a connection, or we're all lucky."

"Yeah," Max agreed. "And thank you for letting me know now, Isabel. This may well change the conversational tacks that we'll take with Ava." He squeezed Liz's hand, and they stood up at essentially the same time. "So, Doctor, what are you going to be up to now?"

"Well, I think that I'll tag along with you gentlemen, if you'll have me," he said, smiling. "Not to ask questions, just to listen, really. I'm as curious about what this 'past life' stuff means in practice as you are, and I never met Tess."

"Alright," Michael said. "Just call us the three Asketeers."

"Huh?" Isabel asked.

"Like musketeers, but with asking questions," Michael mumbled. "Never mind, it was a joke that occured to me on the spur of the moment, and I guess I should have taken more time to consider it."

"Ehh, I'd rather have a bad joke than no joke at all, so thank you Michael," the Doctor said, as Max and Liz kissed. They made as if to head off in different directions, then Liz turned to Isabel. "Do you know where we're finding the King and Prince Zan?"

"Not a clue," Isabel admitted. "Max, do you guys know where you're going?"

"Just looking for one of the help, to send a message for us," Max called back as he stepped over into his and Liz's room.

-------------

"So, tell me about where you come from, Rose Tyler," Rath suggested. Along with Kyle and Vilandra, they were sitting in a small lounge on the bottom floor of the palace, which seemed to be dominated by a sort of an Antarian fireplace, though exactly what was burning inside Kyle could hardly guess. Whatever it was, though, gave off a soft purple glow that didn't really hurt his eyes to look at, though, and just enough heat to warm them without overwhelming them in this small space, nicely balancing the small amount of evening breeze that came in from the one small window in the room, which Vilandra had opened. "We've told you a lot about us, really."

Rose turned to face Kyle, as if hoping that he'd somehow get her out of this. "Go on, honey," he said softly. On one level, he felt very relieved that Rath had picked on Rose - there might be a lot of things that he could safely tell Rath about Roswell, but considering that so much of the town had been shaped by the fact that Rath and Vilandra's remains had crashlanded into the earth not far away - well, not even their remains, but the embryos of their replacement bodies... well, it was a very awkward subject, and he didn't feel much shame at letting Rose take the hit to divert conversation from that direction. London had to be a much safer subject - there had never been any alien sightings there after all, had there?

"London is, umm... it's a big city, and full of people and things happening, but I'm not really sure what to say about it," Rose started, speaking irregularly and pausing frequently, as if trying to find the right words was something that was causing her a lot of difficulty from time to time. "I guess it never held my attention that much - or maybe it was my own life there that I never found exciting, which is why I jumped at the chance to travel with the Doctor when I first met him." She sighed. "Well, let's see. I grew up in a council estate townhouse, which is a kind of - it's a long building that's seperated into many different homes, but each one has their own doors to the outside, and no interior doors to the home on each side, just a solid wall seperating you from the neighbors. It's cheaper than building seperate houses for each family."

"That's a clever idea," Vilandra said. "I don't think we have such a thing on..."

"Of course we do," Rath said. "I've seen rowhouses like that in Little Gevinor outside Karamtha, and a few of the smaller towns in Tilles that my father's visited and taken me with them. You wouldn't see them in the center of the capital city, because land is so expensive. Even many of the rich only have a flat on a skyscraper."

"Yes, that'd be the same with downtown London," Rose agreed, smiling. "You have skyscrapers too?" Both Rath and Vilandra nodded, and Kyle wondered to himself just what Antarian word the TARDIS translated 'skyscraper' into. "Our estate was a lot further out. And another thing - it wasn't really ours, or a rental that Mum had found for herself. The council - the government, had ordered estates like that built, and they were assigned to people who needed a place to live, at a lower rent than you'd pay for a similar place that was on - umm, on the open market, I suppose."

"Right," Rath said, nodding slightly. "Is this the city government, or planetary?"

The question got both Rose and Kyle snickering. "Earth doesn't have a unified planetary government," Kyle told Rath. "There's a sort of international association for squabbling purposes, the United Nations, but that doesn't really have any authority. There are sovereign nations, which control different areas of the land, but - I don't think this is connected to the British national government, is it, Rose?"

"No, not really," Rose agreed. "Nor even London city hall - the councils are even a smaller level, each representing smaller neighborhoods within the city. But I didn't mean to get us sidetracked onto political matters, so let's see, what else about me?" She sighed. "Grew up without really knowing my Dad much. He died when I was just a baby. Grew up running a bit wild, did alright in school when I was paying enough attention to it - had a couple of boyfriends on and off, especially Mickey. Had a job as a shopgirl in the West End, posh place in Knightsbridge actually, but... well, I could certainly never see myself working at that kind of place my whole life. Neither could my supervisor, actually, which was an entirely different issue." She sighed. "And then one day, the mannequins started to move."

"What?" Vilandra exclaimed. "What's a mannequin, and why doesn't it usually move?"

Rose looked around. "Oh, that might be something that you don't have here on Antar - or maybe you haven't had to go to clothes shops yourself, your Highness, if the designers come to you or something." She sighed. "Maybe I shouldn't have said anything, but - whatever. A mannequin is a sort of inanimate object in the rough shape of a person - they're dressed up in clothes for sale, in a shop, to demonstrate how they'd look when actually being worn. Most of the fancier ones, you can alter the pose by physically bending the joints, but they don't do that themselves - at least, not any mannequin that I'd ever seen before."

"Oh, alright, I see," Vilandra said. "So what was it, some new invention?"

"Not an Earthling one," Rose said. "It was something from another planet, the Nestene consciousness, trying to take over the planet Earth as a new food planet. And, I'd have died in that invasion, if it hadn't been for the Doctor, just happening to wander by and realizing that we were in trouble."

"Oh, I see." Rath shrugged, as they all fell silent for a long moment. "Okay, do you guys want to ask one of us a question now?"

"Is where your family comes from very different from here, Rath?" Kyle immediately asked. "Tilles, right?"

"Well, Tilles is a sizable chunk of the planet actually, and the Selezirs have been from North Tilles for hundreds of years," Rath said with a little smile. "And yes, in a lot of ways it's very different from Brok Bay. It's cooler, not cold all through the year, but big swings of cold and warm, and it's quite flat with no lakes at all - some streams and a few rivers, but that's about all. Unless we get heavy rains and the whole plain looks like a gigantic lake about four inches deep, or a very wide and slow rushing river."

"Interesting," Kyle said, smiling. "Is that like a desert? I grew up in desert country, more or less."

"Umm, no, not a desert, I'd say," Rath replied. "Mostly tall grasslands, with some small stands of forests here or there, mostly on the slightly higher rises, where they're not in much danger of getting flooded out. The grass can just start over again from seed after a flood, but trees take longer, you know?"

"Yeah, I get the idea," Rose said. "And what about the towns of North Tilles?"

-----------

"Liz, Alex!" Missus DeLuca called, hurrying down the corridor to catch them before they'd entirely disappeared down one of the palace's spiral ramps. "Oh, and hello Isabel, too."

"Hi, Amy," Liz said, smiling at her. "Where did Jim and Maria get to?"

"They went looking for Kyle and Rose," Amy said. "Jim said that I could just keep in the room if I liked, but - well, I was feeling a bit claustrophobic in there, so I decided that getting lost in the palace was preferable." She scanned around. "I'm no longer so sure about that."

"Well, we can lead you back to the rooms and the balcony," Liz offered.

"Only if it's not a bother," Amy insisted. "Where were you off to?"

"Umm... back to the rooms and the balcony," Isabel repeated. "Where else?"

"But - but I don't remember going up a level," Amy protested, waving to the ramp.

"Oh, that," Alex said, taking Amy's arm with his and leading her down the ramp. "There's a tricky effect in the upper levels of this palace. I haven't run into it myself, but Larek was saying something about it last night at tea. If you go around the right sequence of corridors, around the perimeter, then you can get from the second floor to the third, without actually having climbed stairs or an obvious ramp. Because a lot of the hallways are just slanted a very little bit upward."

"Oh," Amy said, and plodded down the spiral in silence for a moment. "Larek - haven't I heard that name before? Was he the one who was - umm, paying visits to Brody Davis, at the UFO center?"

"Oh, umm, yeah," Liz whispered at Amy. "Best not to say much about that either, but - he's a young Antarian now, or a young Rahlicx, and the Prince Zan's best friend."

"Oh, I see," Amy said. "Yes, somebody mentioned something about that... and then, later, he..."

"He's been picked to rule one of the nearby planets, Rahlicx," Isabel told her. "They have a senate, but the chief Administrator isn't elected - he's picked based on computer tests, and educated to be an efficient ruler, sworn to serve the will of the senate - and they can get impeached if they don't stick to that. It won't be Larek running the show over there for many years, though - there's another Autarch-in-training in line before him."

"Okay, I see," Amy said, nodding. "Thanks for explaining it to me so clearly."

"My turn to ask you something," Alex said. "What did Jim want to ask Kyle and Rose about?"

Amy shot Alex a look, and started to snicker. "Somehow I think that you know what we have in mind, young Mister Whitman. The subject is rooming assignments. I'm afraid that I want to be with Jim for the night, so - well, we were wondering if Kyle would be happy somewhere else."

"Yeah, we were all talking about that earlier," Liz admitted. "I have to admit that I'm a little surprised that you're actually okay with Kyle and Amy sleeping in the same room."

"Well, it's not like he's my own son, yet," Amy said, with a little smile. "All of you kids have shown us that you're mature enough to be making your own decisions, and that does include Kyle. After all, if I'm not making a fuss about Maria being with Michael, then I'm not going to get too preachy about Kyle and his new friend. Somehow I'm not sure that Kyle will take it too far, anyway, just because he might have an opportunity."

"And did you think about where the Doctor would go, if he was bumped out of Rose's room?" Isabel asked Amy mischievously.

"Well, I thought that maybe it would be big enough for all three of them," Amy shot back, just about as coyly.

"I don't think I can really picture that one happening," Liz said. "But I guess we'll find out." They finally got to the bottom of the ramp. "Okay, we're - this way, right?"

"Indeed," Isabel said, leading the way down the corridor to the right.

TO BE CONTINUED...