Roswell Fanatics

Author's note:

Well, thanks for the few determined feedbackers who have been following this story of late, and glad that you liked the frequent updates! This should be the last of the spate for a little while - I'm going to be doing stringMo at the Stringing Words Site, and I've decided to start that event by focusing on 'Runaway with me', which I might be able to finish within the month.

It's wild to think that I started this story about five and a half years ago, and have only just gotten to some of the parts I've been looking forward to the whole time, like Alex finally getting the translation done, and Isabel going to visit Larek and messing things up a bit along the way. Hopefully I'm sort of edging towards the home stretch at this point, whoohoo. And please enjoy this chapter!

Part Fifty-one

(Max):

I felt an inexplicably odd sensation come over me as I stepped into the room, and Liz noticed me shudder. "Something wrong?"

"Ehh, something's weird. May not be anything more than that," I admitted.

"Maybe just that we're in your room together, while all the rest of your family is home?" she said with an oddly flirty smile. "Excepting your extended podarific family."

"Hmm... maybe that has something to do with it," I admitted. Mom was on some kind of hosting company kick, and had gone directly to Liz to ask her over for dinner when I hadn't been quite quick enough to pass along the invitation myself. We didn't have to sit around and act sociable with the parents at this point, before eating - that would be coming after dessert, though. And there was a slightly guilty fascination that was adding itself, in this situation, to the usual excitement I felt at ever being near to Liz.

That didn't really fit with what I had felt, though. "Or maybe I'm just a bit worried about how Michael and the others are getting along in Manhattan."

"Well, in that case, I would say 'Relax, Max,'" she quipped, stepping up close to me and pulling my head down for a quick kiss. "All three of them know how to take care of themselves, and there's no particular danger that we know of in New York anymore."

"Right," I agreed, and felt myself relax, the tension of that uncomfortable moment slipping away. "So, we've got over half an hour before my Mom pulls the chicken out of the oven. Got any notions for how to spend the time best, now that we're already in my room?"

"Hmm, maybe just a few, but I bet you've got more notions," Liz shot back. "Come on."

And I chuckled low down, swept Miss Parker up in my arms, deposited her on the bed, and proceeded from there along the best routes that seemed to occur to me at the time. It wasn't long at that rate before she was nibbling in the most delightful way I could imagine at my earlobe, and I had one hand up under the front of her sweater and exploring, the sensation of forbidden territory more exciting than...

*FLASH!* The image was simple but oddly affective - a handsome man with chalk-gray skin and a prominent ridge above his eyebrows, sitting on an imposing silver-trimmed chair, which in turn was sitting on a raised dais. A throne, perhaps? Not a grandiose one, but it did sort of seem to fit. The man had no crown or royal scepter, or robes any of the other trappings. In fact the cut of his clothes didn't seem too far from a business suit, though it wasn't one that I literally recognized. He wore no jewelry at all unless you counted the glasses, which weren't richly adorned frames or anything, but something seemed a bit strange about them. I didn't have too long to look for more details, though. The man nodded, a bit reluctantly, and then I was staring at Liz, who also had a flashed expression on her exquisite face. "What did you see?" I asked. No matter how in sync we are, we seldom get the same flash at the same time, I've noticed. It's like a perspective thing, never the same imagery for different brains.

"Your - your mother, Max. Or - I think she was. The same lady as we saw in the Pod Chamber, didn't look quite the same, but the resemblance was clear. Lying on a bed, with people gathered around her. Some of them were aliens... but I think one was Isabel."

"Wow," I muttered, wondering what the meaning of that might be. A question occurred to me, and though I was reluctant to ask it of Liz, part of it forced its way out of me. "As if... as if she were..."

"What?" Liz asked softy, and then a few seconds later rearranged herself into a more comfortable and innocent position. I sat beside her and stretched an arm warmly around her shoulders. "As if she were dying? Maybe. I'm not really sure, but it didn't really seem out of place for a deathbed gathering - or just for a sickbed."

"Okay," I said, nodding. "Alinda, that was the name that was in the translation, right?"

"For what it was worth, yeah," Liz agreed. "Alex told you that it didn't work perfectly on proper names."

"But still, it gives us something to use when we speak about her." Liz nodded. "And... well, I guess I've wondered what it would be like to meet her. Those words that were in the message still ring in my minds sometimes..."

"'And that I may hold you in my arms once more - I live for that day'," Liz quoted surprising me. "Yeah. She loved Zan and Vilandra so much... it's easy to tell that much."

"And - and I've suspected that no matter what Antarian lifespans are like, she wouldn't be around for that much longer, if she was old enough to have grown children at the time when Kivar took over, which was before forty-seven," I continued. "I wonder why you saw Isabel and not me."

"You might have been in the crowd, and just had your face turned away from me," she admitted. "One guy had hair about your shade, come to think of it." I smiled at that. "So, what about yours?"

"Umm... a guy sitting on a chair," I said, suddenly wondering what that had to do with Alinda - if the two flashes were connected at all. "Alien guy, kind of tough in a smart way. I guess that - that it could be Kivar."

"Boo, hiss," Liz immediately responded.

"I don't know... I mean, I don't really want Kivar to stay in charge, but I'm getting a bit less sure that he's a villain. We've read the propaganda of the old royal family, and heard the party line from Kivar's lackeys, and the truth is probably somewhere in between."

We ended up doing more talking about alien political history after that, and discussing some of the worries that each of us had about the notion of traveling anywhere in the Granilith. There was a little bit of kissing, but we didn't really get back to making out - in fact, we'd almost gotten back to that point when my Mom called up, said that dinner was almost ready, and asked me to check on Isabel since she wasn't answering.

I didn't expect anything important when I opened Isabel's door and stepped inside, but the flash of alien power was impossible to mistake. At first, it just looked like Isabel was asleep, lying on her back, on top of her covers, wearing casual day clothes, but I got a sinking feeling when I realized that the alien power was concentrated in the rejoined whirlpool pendant, clutched to her chest. Sure enough, as much as I shook my sister, she showed no signs of rousing - one eye fell open after a bit, but it stared out at me completely unseeing.

"Oh, god," Liz muttered, stepping up behind me. "What - what's wrong with her?"

"I... I don't know," I said, concentrating on her with my powers. I couldn't get a decent connection for healing, but my other alien senses were telling me that it probably wouldn't have helped either. Isabel's body was whole and undamaged, perfectly healthy, except for... well, even her brain wasn't hurt or damaged exactly, but brain activity in the topmost sections that handled sense perception, higher reasoning, and personality were very low and quiescent. What could have caused that, and how could I change it back? Extending my senses, I realized that some of the energy fields that I could normally perceive with ease were missing or severely faded, as if the spirit that made her the Isabel I knew and loved had - just gone somewhere else. That was as much as I could tell, and I wasn't able to make much more sense of things.

"I don't think that I can bring her around quickly," I muttered. "Maybe - maybe one of us should see what we can to do head off Mom and Dad."

"I'll see if I can sell them a quick excuse, but I'm not leaving for long and you shouldn't either," Liz said, surprisng me with the vehemence and certainty in her tone. "She *needs* us. Your parents finding out wouldn't be a huge sacrifice to make if it means that she's okay."

"Hmm... alright," I said. "Do you want to know what I've figured out so far?"

"Of course." So I explained about everything that I'd sensed, from the first flash of power centering around the restored pendant.

"Alright - maybe it's a booby-trap or something. Can you sense anything actually harmful about the pendant?"

"Hmm." Considered it. "No, not malicious or... or adverse, but it -- it's dangerous. Something that - that she might have used the wrong way, and it hurt her though it wasn't meant to do that."

"Radio in the bathtub syndrome?"

"Oooh, come on." I winced at the image.

"Okay, sorry," Liz admitted. "Well, that could be it. Or - or maybe somebody sensed her using the pendant, and used a long-range alien attack to keep her from telling its secret to the rest of us?"

"Well, maybe, I guess... doesn't seem to fit with what I saw in her brain - an attack wouldn't peel off those energy layers so cleanly - it would leave debris and ragged edges behind I would think."

"Max, what's the damn holdup?" Dad called from down the hall, and I got an ice-cold sensation down my back.

"Isabel's taking her sweet time staying woken up," I called back, because it was vaguely like the truthand would explain why we were hanging around. Suddenly, to my horror, Liz leaned over the bed and took the pendant in her hand, leaving it cose to Isabel but concentrating on the design fiercely.

"Liz, be careful," I muttered. "Are - are you trying to figure out what happened to..."

"No, just - had an intuitive guess about what needed to be done," she muttered. "I'm shining a light to help her find her way home."

"Home from WHERE?" I muttered. But then, it did seem to fit, that Isabel's energy, her soul, had left her home body voluntarily. Where might she have gone, heedless of the dangers of not getting back on time? I waited, with bated breath, as Dad knocked on the door, and watched as he pushed the door open, a bit more slowly than I had.

"Isabel? Are... are you sure that she's just asleep?"

There was a long pause, during which I struggled to try and find the right words to say. And then a miracle happened.

Isabel groaned and half-turned over onto her side. I'd been so worried that I hadn't been watching her aura or her brainwave patterns, but both were almost normal and still recovering. It might be a litte while before she was up and eating dinner, but at least she'd be okay.

Liz dropped the pendant and looked around, still a bit nervous. But she must have seen the relief in my face, because she smiled back at my Dad. "Sure I'm sure. Wonder if it's not having a summer job that makes her so lazy."

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

"Yes, I really am sort of looking forward to senior year," Liz said, and took a sip of the french vanilla cappuccino that Mom had offered her after dessert. "I'm a school geek, I know it. But Mister Seligman said that he'd help me come up with an independent study program for third period that would look great on my application to Harvard's faculty of Science..."

"Since she's already finished all of the senior-level science classes in her junior year," I put in, letting all the pride show in my voice. "Well, except for that geology one I guess."

"And that's on the schedule too," Liz shot right back.

"Harvard's a great school, and I'm sure there's a lot of amazing things that you could learn there," Mrs. Evans put in. "But, well, it's such a long way from your family and the great friends that you have here, Liz. Are you sure that you want to go away for four years?"

"Mom!" Isabel exclaimed.

"What?" After looking at Isabel, she must have been able to interpret the glare quite well. "No, not because she's a girl or anything honey - I'd say the same to any of you who had their hearts set on an Ivy League place..."

"It's alright," Liz insisted. "Actually, I'm not that sure I want actually to GO to Harvard - but I'm bound and determined to earn a spot there. Then I can decide if I'm taking it or telling them I'm taking a pass."

Dad immediately hooted with laughter and appreciation at that declaration. "Oh yes. Have I mentioned that I'm starting to like you more and more these days, Liz?"

"No - and does that mean you didn't like me so much when Max first met me, Mister Evans?"

"Don't call me Mister Evans any more, really. Would 'Phil' be too much to ask for?"

Liz hesitated, and then somebody knocked on the front door. After a silent moment, Mom got up and answered it - and brought Tess and Kyle into the front hall. "Umm, sorry to break up the party," Tess said, "but I needed to talk to, err..."

"Maybe it's about time we tackled the dishes, anyway," Dad said in a low, slightly regretful voice. A lot of dinner had been strained in a way that Mom and Dad had obviously been unable to account for, and things had only just really started to loosen up when the moment had been lost.

"Yeah, thanks Mom," Isabel said when she saw her nod agreement. "Hopefully it'll go better tomorrow, with Alex's welcome home shindig."

"One can only hope," my mother said philosophically. And then Isabel made a quick round of the younger people in attendance, nodding meaningfully at each of us, before leading the way up to her room.

"Okay, here's what happened," she whispered once Kyle had closed the door behind him. "I - I went to another world, Rahlicx. Like the way that Larek comes here. I talked with him briefly, and he's going to try to get back here or send us word some other way. It was probably stupid, and I could have killed some poor girl in the Autarch's palace and ended up a vegetable, but..."

"I... I'm not sure that 'stupid' quite covers it," I said, shocked. This was the first opportunity that Isabel had had to tell Liz or I what had happened. "Why, why didn't you at least wait tell one of us..."

"I don't really know," Isabel admitted, "unless the exhilaration of putting the pendant back together and figuring out what it was for was affecting my judgment. Probably nobody else should get as deeply into resonance with it as I did, just in case."

"You put the pendant back together?" Kyle asked.

"Yeah, maybe you'd better start at the top, Isabel," Liz suggested.

"One question first," I said. "How did you guys know to come by?" This was directed at Tess and Kyle. "Or was there some other issue you wanted our help with?"

"No, Liz called me, said we'd better come by around eight thirty," Tess said. "And that something had happened to Isabel, but she was okay now."

"Alright, let's see," Isabel said. And she told us the whole story - how she'd been trying to figure out the importance of the pendant, realized the impressive properties it gained when joined together using molecular knitting, and ended up using it to pay a visit to Larek. She went into a lot of details about her experience at the palace, what it was like to have her soul sharing somebody else's body, her conversations with the Court Healer Smeet, and her brief conversation with Larek.

"He's going to get pissed at us soon," Kyle joked. "Bothering him for every little thing."

"The Gandarium trying to wipe out life on Earth was not 'little'," Isabel snapped, not getting the joke. "And this thing - I admit that no worlds hang in the balance, but we've got a decision to make that will affect our entire lives and not enough information about at least one of the choices."

"Actually, it might affect the course of at least one world," Liz put in. "If Max is still considered a King figure on Antar and his people are waiting for his return to set them free or whatever..."

"Well, no point in worrying about that unless some strange guy shows up and says that he's Larek," I pointed out. "Pretty sure that you're right, Isabel - he wouldn't be able to use Larek as a host anymore and it might be a bad thing if he were to try."

"What does it take for somebody to be a host, though?" Kyle asked. "I mean, if Isabel was able to just pop into the body of this Birena girl..."

"And nearly killed her, if Veren hadn't been there," Isabel pointed out. "Plus, since Birena lived in the Autarch's palace, maybe she was on standby for someone else to use her body on business - the leader of one of the other planets, for instance. They didn't recognize that she was abducted right away, but I didn't arrive at a pre-arranged time, and I didn't announce mysef according to the usual protocol, whatever that might be..."

"Yeah," I said. "So how *did* they get you home to us?"

"Well... they didn't have anything exactly like the pendant on hand, but Larek was able to get his hands on something that was an aid to concentration that he thought might help. And I was trying really hard, and I managed to seperate from Birena, and I was trying to follow resonance back to my own body, but I couldn't really sense it anymore. Then I sort of saw a bright blue light shining, and headed for it, and bang, I was over Roswell and homing in on our house, with the blue light just dying out over it. I'm convinced that was you, Liz, using the pendant to give me a signal."

"I'm just glad that something worked," Liz said modestly. "If I really did help out, then great."

There was a lot more talking about the implications of Isabel's trip before Liz, Kyle, and Tess went to their respective homes, but none of it really added up to much - we all knew that nothing had really been settled until Larek arrived, or until we admitted that he wasn't going to come, which I was more than a little worried about.

I waited around unobtrusively until Isabel went to sleep, a deep but natural slumber, and then went to tackle one job that I felt had to be done before the day was out, and since Isable had not taken it upon herself, (and I'd been watching for any signs of her taking a private moment for this,) it seemed to fall to me. I picked u the phone and dialled a long-distance number and an extension that I probably wouldn't need ever again after this.

"Hey, sweetie."

"Oops," I told Alex, and he chuckled nervously. It hadn't occured to me that he'd see the caller display saying 'EVANS' and automatically jump to the conclusion that it was Isabel calling him since she wasn't there with him.

"Hi, Max - what's up, and to what do I owe the..." He stopped before actually saying 'pleasure', and I wondered if he could sense that if I had to call, it wasn't exactly good news.

"Well, unm, I wanted to make sure that you'd at least heard the cliff notes about this. We can tell you more when you arrive tomorrow, but..."

"What happened to her, Max?"

"Umm... Isabel's all right now," I insisted. "A bit worn out I think, but... she tried to go much too far, and almost didn't find her way back." Sheesh, this was horrible. Maybe I'd have been better off not telling Alex anything until we could afford to speak about the whole story in private.

"Like, with jogging?" Alex asked, and somehow from the way he was talking I could tell he knew the real answer.

"Something like."

"Well, thanks for saying she's okay at least. I had the oddest vague premonition a few hours ago, and it's been bugging me all night. I guess I can wait for the full scoop."

"Okay, glad I was some help." Suddenly I remembered my own 'odd vague premonition,' which I hadn't connected to Isabel's experience until just now. Was that when she'd first left? If I'd been paying closer attention to my feelings, could I have figured it out then and... well, what good would it have done? I don't think that Liz or I could have drawn her back until she'd been trying to return, at least. "How goes the packing?"

"Ehh, not great, but somehow I'll get everything into my mom's car tomorrow. Better do a bit more now that my shoulders are less weighed down with worry, and get to bed."

"Sure. Can't wait to see you at dinner, man."

"Right."

And that was it for the phone call. I went to sleep myself fairly soon after.

----------

(Maria):

"I'm... I'm okay," Lonnie muttered a few seconds after her strange outburst. "Just - well, just had a weird mental picture. Isabel was jumping up into space without a protective suit or anything."

"Hmm... sounds very unlikely," Michael admitted. "Doesn't have nearly enough strength in her calves for that."

Ava gave him a nasty look. "Maybe we should call her on your cell phone, Michael."

"Hey, come on, I don't have a good cross-country plan."

"We'll try mine," I said, producing it, but I wasn't able to get a line through to Roswell for some reason, and gave up for the time being. "You sure everything's fine now, Lonnie?"

"Ehh, I'm doin' alright," she said. "About as much as I could tell you."

"How comforting you're not," Michael muttered.

So things were pretty quiet the rest of the way back to the suite that Ava had gotten for us, and as soon as we were inside, Lonnie started with the 'all business.' "I don't suppose any of you have a computer along with you that's actually capable of reading that floppy disk?"

"We don't have a computer of any kind," I admitted. "Might have been an idea to ask... well, then again, I'm not sure who has a laptop we could have borrowed, except for Alex, and he wasn't home yet when we left. Wonder if they've heard how long he'll have to stay in Las Cruces yet."

"Would have been helpful to have that reference material available," Lonnie grumbled.

"Can't we read the disk ourselves and project it in light onto the wall or something?" Ava suggested.

"You want to do that, fine. Not much chance that you'll muck up the disk beyond repair, but you could get tired keeping the whole routine going." She considered. "If there's paper, we could print to it by adjusting the shape of the pulp molecules enough to induce a color change."

"Toilet paper," I quipped, unable to resist the jab. "Not much else that I know of."

"Sheesh, did you guys make any preparations for this search at all?"

"I didn't realize that it was going to be so much like a business seminar," Michael added, smiling.

"Maria, could you run down to the lobby office?" Ava suggested. "Russell will have printer paper around."

"Really?" I hadn't thought of Russell as a very computer-friendly guy, but then again I didn't know him nearly as well as Ava did. "Well, why m..." Oh, right. If any part of Ava still didn't really trust Lonnie, then she'd want to stick with Michael so that they couldn't be attacked singly - and it was rude and stupid to make that obvious. In any event, it was sort of childish to complain. I headed down, found Russell there in a fairly professional looking workspace, and he loaded me down with quite a thick sheaf of paper to bring back up. When I got back up, Lonnie was already lecturing to Michael, using something in the little journal as notes that he could follow along in.

The stuff that we learned that afternoon was definitely odd, even given my expectations. Lonnie explained that since the issues with human birth control not working were mostly mental, the answer had to be through mental discipline, a kind of regimen of frequent meditation and constantly repeated thought patterns. The required techniques were both complicated and frequently hard to explain, but nobody complained. Ava was working as hard at learning it as Michael and I did - maybe she figured that she'd be putting this stuff to use soon enough with Kyle. I wondered if some of our friends who'd stayed behind back home would be interested in learning, too, and tried to memorize what Lonnie was saying. Finally, a break was called by mutual agreement, Ava called in a pizza delivery, and we watched a bit of television on the little set in the living side of the room.

None of us paid much attention when Lonnie went off to use the bathroom, and it was only when I felt my own bladder making requests for a drainage opportunity, (I'd had two cans of soda with my ham and tomatoes pie,) that I started to watch the clock and wait for her to emerge. At six minutes I called out to ask her when she was going to let me use the facilities, and got no answer at all.

"Oh, no," Ava said, suddenly getting up a few seconds after.

"What's wrong?" Michael asked. "Maybe she's just being laconic - unless you think that she passed out on the crapper or something..."

"She's not in there," Ava said, before flinging the door open. Confused, I got up, and followed her in, There was no sign of anybody, and Ava opened up the window and looked. "Might have tried going down here and closing the window after her, or snuck through the next room." She gestured at the opposite door, leading to the room that we shared the bathroom with. "I don't think that they're home at the moment."

"But - but why?" Michael asked. "Why would Lonnie make such a big deal of coming back and helping us, only to skip out?"

I thought about that for a moment, and then suddenly got an idea. Took only a moment to check it. "Frying hellbitch, SHE TOOK MY RING!"

"Oh, man," Ava whispered, suddenly seeing it. That ring that Michael had used as my engagement band was an alien artifact, the family treasure of Rath's house back on Antar. Somehow New-York-Rath had gotten it here on Earth, and given it to Lonnie as a token of their alliance, since its powers could only be used by those of the feminine persuasion. When Rath, Nicholas, and Lonnie had made their final push to overpower us and failed, Michael had spotted the ring, recognized it on some instinctive level, taken it away from Lonnie, and later given it to me when he proposed. But of course she'd want to get it back, and even go to these lengths to get a chance to pickpocket me without my even noticing it. I'd been keeping the ring in a small flat case in my pants pockets, and the case was definitely missing now. That probably hadn't even been much of a challenge for Lonnie's street skills, to get it away from me without me noticing, and then slip away from all of us and get a good head start before we'd tumbled to the caper.

"She's NOT going to get away with it," Michael vowed. "I don't know how we're going to find her, but..."

"Take my hand," Ava said. "Zan and I could do this trick together to sense other aliens at close to medium ranges. I think that it'll work with you." Michael looked very doubtful, but his determination to find Lonnie and get back what was ours overwhelmed reluctance. He took Ava's hand in his, and nodded.

"Maria," he said to me, his voice low and tender. "We... we're going to have to chase Lonnie down to get the ring back, and that's going to be quite a wild ride. May need to... to use alien powers and work fast, and so..."

"Yes, of course!" I interrupted, putting my finger on his lips. "You and Ava need to go, and I'd just slow you both down. There's nothing too likely to harm me here for this evening anyway. Just go, before she gets further away!"

"Alright." He kissed me, and then they hurried away. I sighed. locked and chained the doors just in case, tried to watch television a bit, then groaned and picked up my cell phone to try calling Roswell again. As well as asking about Lonnie's premonition, (that wasn't a fake-out, was it? It didn't seem to help her scheme any,) I should tell them about Lonnie and what she'd pulled. They wouldn't really be able to help in case there WAS danger for me here in the room, or coming to the room, but...

"Maria, honey, how's New York!" My mom answered me at home.

"Umm... interesting." Michael and I hadn't mentioned anything about the birth control stuff when telling her about the trip - she'd probably have been both thrilled that I was taking such care to not make her a grandmother, and worried that it was so much harder for aliens than for humans. "Sorry to have to ask so quickly, but are Kyle or Tess home?"

"No, umm, they said that they were heading over to the Evanses."

"Oh. Do, umm, do you mind if I hang up and call over there? I love you."

"Hmm... okay, yes, I'll let you get away with that. And say hi to Michael for me."

"I will." When I can. "Bye, talk to you soon." Hung up - alright, so where was Isabel's number? Ahh, I still had it filed under Amidala, wasn't that a blast from the past? After six rings, I was surprised to hear Liz's voice saying hello. "What are you doing answering the phone over there?"

"Umm... I'm over at Max's place for dinner, and I was using the bathroom, so I was closer to the phone than anybody in the dining room," she said. "What's up?"

"Okay, first, did anything happen to Isabel? Something hurt her, I mean?"

"Ehh, yeah - but she's okay. She hasn't had a chance to tell us much about it yet, actually.."

"Alright I guess." I sighed. "I'll get the full scoop later. Let's see, umm, we ran into Lonnie again."

"New York punk Lonnie? Huh, I didn't realize she'd go back to the big apple, but I guess it's the turf she knows best. What happened?"

"Well, she pretended to be friendly and helpful, and if she was saying wasn't just a pile of crap she might have actually helped Michael and I with what we came here for," I admitted. "Then she stole the engagement ring and took off with it!"

"Oh my god," Liz breathed. "The ring that Michael gave y... well, yeah, I guess I can see why she might think that she was entitled to it back."

"Yeah, Michael and Ava are off chasing her now." I sighed. "Go back to dinner."

"Okay. Do you want me to tell the others about Lonnie?"

I thought about it. "Nah, don't worry about it. Sounds like you've got other stuff to straighten out."

"Right, okay. Hope to see you back here soon."

"Yeah, me too. Bye Liz."

"Bye."

I hung up, sighed, and started going over the printouts that had been made from the disk. Lonnie hadn't done any of these herself, I realized, she'd been too busy pontificating. So that backed up the notion that they, at least, were valid info - as valid as wherever they'd gotten onto the disk from, at least.

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

It was around an hour and a half before Michael and Ava knocked on the door, looking tired but triumphant. Michael presented me with the ring box back, and I think that he was looking for something to say that was witty but not on the mean side. I just hugged and kissed him thank-you for retrieving it.

"I don't think that she realized we had a way to track her until she'd spotted us for the first time," Michael related. "Down and across one of those avenues. It was quite a chase - up to the roofs and jumping across them with our powers and so on, but she didn't try anything crazy when we cornered her in a high-walled dead-end alleyway. Spouted out the typical stuff that you'd expect about how it wasn't my ring to take away from her in the first place, and then she gave it back up."

"Right," I said, settling down onto the loveseat beside him. "Did you ask about all the stuff that she taught us?"

"I did, though I think I already knew the answer," Ava said. "She said that she was playing it straight, and that she knew I'd have been able to guess if she tried to mess things up. In her twisted mind, I think that she thought helping us out with this was a sort of payback for being able to take the ring away again."

"Well, if she'd have proposed that as a trade straight out, I'd have considered it," Michael said. I had to think about that one myself... it was a beautiful ring, a symbol of Michael's love for me, and a powerful tool in its own right, but if we'd have had to trade it for the information about how to share our love in a more immediate and physical way - well, MAYBE if there was no chance that we could figure it out on our own, but we'd expected to be able to work it out ourselves when we came to New York City, right? It certainly wasn't worth just getting the information a little more easily.

"Okay, so then, is there anything else keeping us here in New York?" I asked.

"I don't think so," Michael said. "We should call the airline, and see about getting a flight back tomorrow if possible."

"Okay. Time to sack out, then." Ava looked around the room. "Tempting as it would be to let you guys have the bed now that we've found what we're looking for, it probably isn't the best of ideas."

"Hmm... I dunno," Michael argued. "Yes, we know that the full protective effect won't be up and running until we've been maintaining the meditational discipline for nearly two days... but I think that from the practice we did today, Maria and I can sleep side by side and not test the limits. What do you think, honey?"

"Uhh." So the whole question was up to me? "Yeah, um, let's give it a try." I thought about it. "If we start getting busy when half-asleep without realizing it, I think that we'll be able to keep it from getting too far. But we'd have to wake Ava up at that point."

"If you're getting busy in the same room as me, then I'm awake," Ava pointed out with a bit of a grin. "Light sleeper. Rath and Lonnie actually proved that to me more than once. I might be able to pull you apart before you're able to seperate yourselves."

"Don't pull too hard!" Michael exclaimed, and we both laughed at his reaction.

So we got changed for bed, and Ava started making up the couch to sleep on. I looked out the window at the evening lights of New York City, disappointed that I wouldn't get a chance to go and really explore the city's legendary nightlife... but considering what I'd heard about Isabel, it made a lot of sense to be heading back to Roswell as soon as we could. "Oh, I called back home while you were gone. Liz admitted that something weird happened with Isabel, but that she was fine. Couldn't go into many details yet - it's probably something that she wouldn't want to talk about over the phone even when she knows."

"Oooh, that's a relief, yeah," Michael said.

"And - how did you leave things in the end with Lonnie? Don't ever try to contact us again?"

"Ehh, not quite that final, but close," Ava said. "Let her know that she crossed a line by stealing from you, that we wouldn't be giving her any phone calls or come chasing her if she seemed to be in trouble, and that we didn't want to be bothered with her life for a good long time."

"Okay, sounds good to me," I admitted, and headed over to join Michael in the bed. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight." Ava reached out a hand, and switched the light off. I think I must have fallen asleep quite quickly, because I don't remember laying in Michael's arms for long.

And that little boy in the pod was in my dreams again, even more clearly. As disturbing as the possibilities of that image were, his face was starting to look pretty cute I have to say.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Part Fifty-two

(Kyle):

"Okay, and at this point, we're almost through and done," Amy DeLuca assured the company. "We go through the 'I do's, first Jim and then me, and put the wedding bands on each other. Father Lewis invites us to kiss, introduces us as Mister and Missus Valenti, and there's applause..."

As you might have guessed, she was talking about the upcoming wedding to my dad, which after months of being 'way off in the future somewhere', was suddenly closer than I expected - with the big day less than two weeks off. It still seemed a bit early to get dragged off for an 'onsite walk through,' but that was probably just because Amy was so excited about having picked a site at all - and a pretty one I had to admit, a little open-air chapel in the botanical gardens. Hopefully this would keep her more or less happy until the full dress rehearsal, two days before the main event - or was the bachelor party two days before and the rehearsal the next night? I'd have to ask Dad about that.

So I listened as Amy prattled on about the recessional order, knowing that I wouldn't really need to pay that much attention because I could just take my cue from Tess. The wedding party lineups have switched more than once since they were first picked, but most recently Amy insisted on taking some of 'the gang' out, arguing that it might seem strange for them to be attendants to the wedding of parents of their friends. Tess, Maria, Sean, and I didn't get off the hook on that basis, of course, because we're part of the new blended family, and Liz was allowed to stay in as a bridesmaid because of how long she's been a family friend of the DeLuca clan. (Considering the shade of her dress and the fact that she has to process and recess up and down the aisle on Sean's arm now, she's probably not that wild about the privilege, but I haven't heard her complain in public.)

Once the entire ceremony had been 'walked', and a few question asked and discussed, the non-family adult members of the group took off, and the rest of us went out to dinner, bringing significant others along - which turned into a pretty big table, since it meant that Maria could bring Michael, I could invite Ava, and Liz took Max. We all ended up at Mario's in the end, sharing three big pizzas and everybody having a side pasta or something else all to themselves.

"So, any big plans for the rest of summer?" Dad asked us kids lightly.

"Well, we've got dinner over at Max's place tomorrow night for Alex's big welcome home," Liz said.

"Wasn't that supposed to be today?" Tess asked. "I mean, if it was, then you probably couldn't have made the rehearsal and dinner there, so probably good on that level, but..."

"He got stuck in Las Cruces for another day," Max said. "Project business, a few details that the big guy in charge wanted to make sure were sorted out so that nothing might delay their chances to publish. I know that Alex was disappointed, especially because he knows that Isabel... wasn't feeling so great yesterday. But she's doing better today, and they agreed that it made sense for him to finish tying up all the loose ends before running home for the last time."

"You know, we should do something of our own to celebrate Alex's homecoming," Michael suggested. "Road trip to the beach or something?"

"Nah, nothing that would take us out of town," Maria said meaningfully, and I wondered about that for a moment. Oh, right, we were sort of expecting an alien stranger, or at least an alien in a strange body. (Not that I'd ever met Larek myself, any more than Maria, Michael, or Alex had.) Wouldn't really be polite to skip town when he might be coming and looking for us.

"Yeah, Alex has been away from Roswell for too long as it is," Tess chimed in. "We can put something fun together for him here, right?"

"Yeah, I think so," Maria agreed. "Need to talk with Isabel, though. I mean, she's not going to let herself get cut out of the party planning in the first place, and she'll probably throw herself into it with more energy than any of us, so she should have her say."

"Good point," Max put in dryly.

"Where is she tonight, anyway?" Liz asked. "I mean, the 'wedding party and significant others' rule really only leaves her out from the gang, until Alex gets back."

"Home, and poring over course calendars for correspondence courses, among other things," Max said. "Probably hasn't even noticed that I'm gone."

And that was it - everybody changed the subject, probably several of us realized just how alien the 'other things' could be. Not only was there the book translation stuff and Liz's research files, but apparently when Michael, Maria, and Ava had come back from New York, they'd come with a surprising amount of information on 'psychic birth control', among other pot pourri, and I can see that Isabel might be interested in that sort of thing, now that she and Alex are going to be in the same city again. I still remember seeing and hearing a little bit too much of their amorous adventures over the fourth of July weekend. Ava and I have talked about that stuff a little, and sort of agreed that we're not really ready to get that far, (which is sort of a new notion for me, that I'd care enough about a girl to really want to take things slow,) but that it was sort of comforting that the facts were there for when we needed them.

There was a bit more talking about summer plans, and the fact that school would be starting in only around three weeks, and then Amy and Tess got started on the wedding decorations again. As we finally finished up and started to leave the table, Ava stepped close to me and whispered that she wanted to go walking alone together after saying goodbye to my dad and the others, and I had to agree with that idea. Soon we were heading west on Riviera, heading generally in the direction of the school, and I tried to think of something to say because Ava was being quiet.

"Have you thought about school, when it starts up?" I suddenly blurted out. "Don't figure that you ever paid much attention to that before, but..."

"Hmm, honestly, I'd sort of like to sign up for classes at West Roswell," she admitted, "but it might be more of a hassle to show all the paperwork and satisfy people here that I'm a resident and entitled to attend, than it would be to just stay off the radar and act like I'm too old to go - or like I'm perfectly satisfied to be a dropout."

"Do you have any identification at all?" I asked, curious.

"Faked birth certificate, Social security card, New York driver's licence. They cover the basics, but still, there'd be a lot of awkward questions."

"Yeah, I suppose so," I admitted. "Would you just keep working at the UFO center, then? I don't know if Brody would think it was weird for you to not be in classes."

"I guess I could ask him," she said. "Of course, no matter what, I'd be sure not to work TOO hard and be around for fun stuff once three-thirty rolls around, or whenever."

"Always a relief to hear," I told her, and cued in by 'fun stuff', gave her a quick kiss, which managed to morph into an extended makeout session. "It's your life, and your decisions to make, or avoid making," I mumbled with my lips still only a fraction of an inch away from hers when the kissing stopped. "Just - I care about your life, and things like that. I hope it's okay that I ask."

"Of course it is," she told me. "Guess I'm not that good at taking care of myself in some ways, which is why it was so easy to stay in Lonnie and Rath's orbit way back when, instead of striking out on my own." She thought about it. "Maybe I should try the GED home study thing."

"Might work better than regular school, in your case," I agreed. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"Do you really think that Larek is going to come back to town, or are people just waiting for somebody who isn't going to show up?"

"I... I dunno," she said. "I'd like to think that we can count on the guy, but - even if he means well, anybody who's got a whole planet to run has got to be busy."

"Yeah," I muttered. "Well, we'll see I guess."

"Hopefully."

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

(Liz):

"Alex!" I exclaimed, happier than I'd expected just to see him. "How was the drive home?"

"Really boring - I'm SO glad it's the last time I'll have to make it for a LONG time," he said, and hugged me hello. "Max, buddy, great to see you."

"You too... did they try to make you stay one more day?"

"Nah, not really - if only because I was so gung-ho about doing anything they could possibly have asked me to finish off yesterday." Alex laughed, and waved us in from the front porch of his house, where he'd come out to greet us. We had to let Isabel step back to get through, because she'd come to the doorway to come out too. "I guess I probably shouldn't have even planned to get out a day early, but - well, it had seemed like a promising plan at the time."

"You're here now, and that's the most important thing," I told him. "And has Isabel suggested the idea of throwing a party or doing something special with the whole gang to celebrate your return? Anything except going on a road trip."

"Hmm, really?" He thought about that. "As odd as this might sound, I'm tempted by the thought of trying to organize a private pool party, just us in the gang, but nobody has a house with a pool, not even the new Valenti-DeLuca-Harding's, and it would be a waste of money just to rent one for a party day."

"Hmm... okay, let me think about that one," Isabel said. "There has to be a way to get a private pool without having to pay... at least, not paying an excessive amount for the occasion." There was a very determined look in her eyes, and I decided to just stay out of her way when she really got started on - on whatever she had in mind.

"Well, I hope you don't mind us dropping by early," Max told Alex, smiling that smile that told me he really didn't expect any objection. "We don't have to leave to get back to my parent's place and the big dinner for nearly an hour and a half. Um - are your parents home?"

"No, dad's at work, and Mom said that she had to head off to do some shopping - not really sure what she had in mind, since all the things that I could possibly have expected her to stock up on in anticipation of my return are here in large quantities."

"Maybe it doesn't have anything to do with you, bub," I kidded him. "All of these warm welcome back homes are starting to go to your head I think. Your mom does have a life that doesn't quite revolve entirely around you."

"Okay, yeah." Alex led us further into the house. "Handy, since I'm thinking that we need to talk about some stuff privately. Like this... this Larek business?"

"Yeah - what about it?" Max asked softly, and quite seriously. "Has Isabel told you all about her experience?"

"Actually, no, I, um - I didn't really have time to go through the whole thing in detail," Isabel said, her mouth quirking slightly. "Other stuff came up. Would you guys mind much if I went through the whole thing again now?"

"No, I don't think so," I said, and Max nodded after a moment. So Isabel explained about how she'd been pondering the meaning of the whirlpool pendant, thinking about if it could contact someone friendly on an alien planet, who could tell us about the current situation - how the sudden resonance and sense of potential when she used her powers to rejoin the two parts of the pendant had been too much for her to refuse using in that impressionable state, and she'd seperated from her body, travelling to the planet Rahlicx, borrowing the body of a girl in Larek's castle, or palace, or wahtever. Her tone got a bit clipped as she explained how she hadn't had long there, because of the same sort of difficulties that had made one of Larek's visits here short when Isabel had tried to use Brody's resonance to the alien leader to summon him here, but she'd spoken with a healer who had helped the serving girl survive the experience, and talked to Brody for just long enough to explain their concerns to him before having to return.

It was interesting to hear a second version of the tale - the first time, Isabel had still been quite shaken by all that she'd been through, and that nervousness, (unusual for her, but understandable given the unusual circumstances,) had colored most of her descriptions, making her repeat herself and focus on probably-insignificant trivia while forgetting more important details. Now, she was clearly much more in charge of herself and more composed about the whole thing, downplaying the risks that she had accidentally undertaken and the danger of her feat. Probably she was more concerned about Alex being worried for her in retrospect than anyone else around her.

"Okay, so, if we trust Larek to keep his word, which I think that we do on principle and because of the way he's behaved on previous encounters, then we expect him to get word to us somehow, but don't really know how or when," Alex summarized. "He might be able to come here in a human body again, though probably not through Brody, but he might just as likely find some other way to institute communication - there might be some alien agent here on Earth working for Larek, who he might choose to send a message through. Or who knows."

"An alien agent?" Max said, seeming a bit surprised and curious about the notion. "Like the Skins were working for Kivar?"

"Along those lines, yeah," Alex agreed. "Probably not as many as the Skins in Copper Summit."

"Yeah, it does make sense," I put in. "We don't really know what the requirements for mentally 'abducting' someone are - I mean, Isabel, you did it without any prep-work on Rahlicx, but not well, and that girl might or might not have been already prepped for other Very Important Aliens. I think I find it easier to believe that someone actually in New Jersey was involved in what happened to Brody Davis on the turnpike, than that Larek was able to do it all from another planet with his own powers."

"Whatever it was that actually happened, yeah," Isabel chimed in. "Did he say something about the aliens having cured his cancer, or am I just thinking about the daughter?"

"No, that's definitely something he told me," Max agreed. "That night that you and Michael wanted to kill him. Long before we knew that his daughter had cancer too."

"And probably that was why Brody was trying to find his aliens again," I said. "Thinking that if they'd saved his life and cured him, maybe they could do the same for her." Giggled as a thought struck me. "He may not know it, but one very special alien did just that."

"Yeah, and put a silver handprint on her, which Brody knows enough about the writings of Atherton and the stories of Hubble to be suspicious of," Max agreed somberly. "May not think that Michael or I have anything to do with what happened to Sydney in Phoenix, but I do think that he's convinced that it was alien-related."

"Not that anyone would really believe him, with his reputation," Alex said. Max just shrugged.

"Okay, that's enough of this topic," Isabel decided firmly. "What else can we talk about?"

"I'm pretty excited about all of the wedding hooplah by this point," I had to admit after a moment. "You guys are all going to come, right? I know that you each got invitations..."

"Oh, sure, yeah," Isabel said, and Max and Alex both rolled their eyes slightly, realizing that her 'sure' was committing both of them to going for certain. "Understand about the whole wedding party deal - it's still just a small ceremony, right?"

"Well, pretty small," I agreed. "Something like fifty or sixty people counting the wedding party and all the invited guests." Decided to try needling Alex just a bit more. "You've *got* to come look at the chapel before the dress rehearsal, Isabel - it's just gorgeous."

"Alright, alright, I'm using my own change of subject card," Max put in. "And I've got another topic. Just what kind of stuff did they have you doing to keep you another day, Alex? I'm curious."

"Really, you wanna know all the techy details?" Alex asked with a grin

Max sighed. "Maybe half of the less-techy details?"

"Okay, well, let's see. Bunch of stuff that I was expected to have on my laptop and my lab account space about documenting what I'd done and my ideas - most of it was in order, some things that I'm sure nobody had told me about. Very good thing that by this point, I'd cleared out any indication of the sort of things we didn't want them to know about. There were run-throughs of the algorithms and other stuff that I'd written for the project, to try and make everything as clear as possible to the other project members so that they'd understand my work after it was gone - how they did what they did, why I'd written them that way, and a little about how they could be adapted to other uses..."

----------

Dinner was great, Max and Isabel's mother and father were really nice to all of us, but I couldn't help but feel like I was eating Damocles' dinner - with the proverbial sword hanging over my head the whole time. It was nothing that either of the grown-ups did - Mister Evans was charming and mellow, chatting with Alex about what he thought of the Las Cruces university campus, asking a few questions about the project that seemed designed to not lead off onto technical tangents. Mrs Evans was a perfectly graceful hostess, offering us all seconds of the 'mexican stir-fry' and taking particular care that Alex's glass of root beer never ran out. Still... I couldn't shake the feeling that something was funny about the way that they'd arranged this entire get-together.

The other shoe dropped over coffee and cookies - I remember seeing Phil and Diane glance at each other sidelong and thinking 'oh boy, here it comes.' "Liz, Alex... you know that we like both of you a lot and, in general, approve of the influence that you've had on our dear children, in your unique ways," he started. "However - well, as awkward as this might be, we thought that having a bit of a talk, all six of us, might be a good idea."

"A talk about some serious things," Mrs Evans chimed in. "And I hope that we can all be... mature and considerate about it."

Isabel looked like she'd possibly been about to go off half-cocked, but the 'mature' line managed to get her to keep some of her indignation in check. "Is this - is this all because of Alex and I spending most of the summer in Las Cruces? And - and the amount of time I may have been spending in his bedroom? Because - well, really, that was just a convenient place to hang out, and..."

"No, honey," Mr Evans told her. "It, well, it might have been a bit of a catalyst, but that's not the whole reason. For one thing, I wouldn't have brought Max and Liz in if that were all we were concerned about. Just - it's become impossible to miss how serious you k... how serious you are about each other, and those kinds of feelings do bring choices and ramifications with them. I... I was hoping that we could talk about some of those issues together - if you didn't feel like your parents brought nothing at all to the decisions that you had to make."

Max rolled his eyes. "So, essentially, this is just the sex talk version 2, with significant others thrown in. Wasn't it traumatic enough for both of us the first time, Dad?"

"Maybe, but... you're important enough to me that I'm willing to go through worse than this," he said quietly. "Umm, well, okay - I'm not quite sure how to organize this. You probably don't want to just jump in with your own questions and intimate details, and we don't really want to turn this session into another lecture, so..." He trailed off at this point, not seeing another alternative.

"Why don't you share your own intimate details, to break the ice?" Isabel put in. "The first time you - you know."

"Isabel, what are you ASKING for?" Max said, irritated.

"Come on, Max - be mature and adult," she said. "I admit I'm idly curious, and... if they want to give us the benefit of their 'wisdom and experience', then they should have to spill about what happened when they were young. Might keep this whole thing from deteriorating into hypocrisy."

"Well, I guess we could," Diane muttered. "If you're all sure that you want to hear."

"I'm okay with it," I said, and Alex nodded his agreement too. Max held out for a little while, and then gave in. I'm not going to share all of the details that they told us - it was a fairly private trust, after all, and a lot of details that I wouldn't be comfortable repeating even if it wasn't for that understanding. But the outline will bear telling - they'd met and started to date in their sophomore year of college in Reno, Nevada... ended up sleeping together for the first time not long before graduation. Sort of awkward the first time, yet pleasant and sweet too, and they were SO glad that they waited. (More than one of us kids rolled our eyes at that.) That summer they got engaged, and decided to wait to move in until after the wedding. Max made a point of asking if either of them had been with someone else before this, and everyone was a little embarassed when Dad answered no for himself and Mom said yes, with a guy who she'd thought had been the love of her life in high school and had broken up with her freshman year of college.

And then, hesitantly, we started to admit things of our own - where we were in terms of that sort of stuff, how we felt about it and what we were worried about. No, I'm not going to go into a lot of details about us either - I talked fairly openly about most of what Max and I had done, (we only mentioned the 'playing doctor incident' and such in the most vague ways,) and I think that Isabel was even more coy about things - and Alex followed her lead, as I might have expected. But - well, in a weird way, I'm glad that the Evanses got the ball rolling.

Max drove me home, and the two of us were oddly quiet. Wanting to bring up a new subject, I suddenly said, "What was Larek like, the time you met him in New York?? I mean, personally. Anything like Brody?"

"Hm - not really, though it's a bit hard to keep them seperate, with the same face, and so on." He sighed. "Guess that's going to be especially weird if Larek shows up inside another 'abductee'." He didn't say anything as we parked in the Crashdown lot. "He wouldn't put up with any of Nicholas' nonsense in the negotiations, and he was the only one there who really treated me with any kindness or concern. It was a bit weird to talk with him, mostly because it was obvious how little he understood about life here on Earth, but... there was one bit at the end, where he said something about how much I reminded him of Zan. That was after I pretty much told Nicholas to go stuff Kivar's offer up his butt and go back where he came from, and got all the other leaders upset with me. From the words Larek was saying, he was sort of telling me off too, or dressing me down, like a teacher who's disappointed in the progress of his favorite student. Said that Zan failed in what he tried to accomplish while he was king because he tried to do too much too soon, and history was repeating itself. But - but even though I hated being spoken to like that, I could... could sense how much he'd cared for Zan. It isn't so hard for me to see why he was Zan's best friend."

"Wow," I said, trying to digest all of this. "I didn't realize you felt that way, when we called on him to help with the Gandarium."

"Yeah, well, we weren't really sharing a lot of stuff back then, were we?"

"Nope. I hope that I get another chance to meet him."

"Me too." We got out of the Jeep, and kissed goodnight. Unlike any other night, we didn't really get carried away with the making out, just shared one really good kiss and said goodnight, and I headed upstairs. I guess that's it.

----------

(Tess):

"Come on, Maria, we're ready to go!" I called up the stairs.

"Why don't you just leave then," she called. "I can get Michael to pick me up."

"No dice, we're all going as a family," Kyle countered. "Saves gas that way. We'll wait a bit longer, but PUT A MOVE ON!"

I had to admit that I was looking forward to the 'welcome home Alex' Pool party. Yes, Isabel did manage to find a pool that we could borrow, but more on that later. At the moment, I was feeling a bit uncomfortable about Ava, who'd come over because she wanted to ride over with her boyfriend. Yeah, I wanted Kyle to be happy, even if it was with my long-lost clone, but - I dunno, sometimes it's still hard on me when they're acting so cutesy that... no, I shouldn't say that. It's hard on me when it's pretty obvious that they're so happy to be falling in love with each other.

Ava was definitely decked out for the occasion, with a little triangle-cup bikini top, really tight cutoffs over whatever the skimpy bottoms probably were, sandals, and a gauzy-thin 'coverup shirt' that hardly seemed to qualify as covering anything, when you could see right through it, and even a breeze would probably go through like it wasn't there. I'm not sure if anybody's mentioned this, but she's trimmed her hair even shorter than it was when she came back to Roswell following Lonnie and Nicholas and Rath... just kind of collarbone-length, which really does look good with her face, and I've been growing mine out more and more - as if we both feel the need to make it easy to tell who's who. I think she didn't get her hair that short until - well, it was after the whole Utah flying saucer raid, and before she left for New York. That kind of narrows it down a bit, right?

Myself, I'd dressed up a bit more casually for the whole thing - pink t-shirt and loose tan shorts over a blue one-piece tank dealie, running shoes and white socks and trying out a puffy ponytail just for the heck of it. Kyle looked just about the same way he always does - well, actually, he was trying out a wife-beater top, which I'm not sure if he's quite ghetto enough to pull off, and jeans that weren't exactly either tight or baggy, which is normal enough. Not sure if he was wearing swimming shorts under the jeans or if they were in the same bag as his towel. And I haven't really seen Maria since breakfast, so I wasn't sure what she'd look like when she finally appears. Okay, then, satisfied? (Well, maybe you didn't even care about any of that. Excuse me!)

It was at around this point I started to suspect that I had blood sugar that was on the low side, and headed into the kitchen to grab some snacks to keep me going. Isabel had said that lunch was going to be provided when we got to the party, but I wasn't actually sure what she had in mind - setting up a barbecue grill maybe, or ordering in pizza? The stack of pringles was empty, and I suspected that Kyle was the one who had put the container back in the cupboard instead of throwing it out - I ended up taking several unsalted soda crackers.

I'd only started on my second cracker when Maria made a big production out of appearing. Like me, she was covered up, (probably so that she could make a much bigger dramatic moment of stripping down to her suit when we got there - well, not like I really didn't have the same idea in mind, not that anybody's going to pay as much attention to me as Michael will to his Maria. Sorry.) Umm - right: she was wearing a sort of a white peasant blouse and a knee-length patterned skirt, with cute black flat shoes and wearing her hair down, almost straight. "Alright, let's go," I said, and Kyle almot cheered his agreement.

"You look great, Maria," Ava said as I headed to the door, and Maria smiled and thanked her, returning an appropriate compliment and saying how 'daring' Ava's suit was. (Which somehow was completely un-backhanded the way she said it, just approval and a bit of wistful envy.) I immediately started to obsess over how I should probably have said something like that to Maria myself, and how long it would take before I could try praise of my own so that it would sound sincere and not be obvious parroting of Ava's own sentiments.

Okay, yes, I get into a complex about this kind of thing. Except with Kyle, who I do know loves both of us, just in different ways - I seem to be haunted by the notion that everyone else in the gang sees Ava as the 'good' twin - the friendly one, and so on. And it's pretty obvious what that makes me in comparison - the manipulative bitch who did more than enough to make everybody hate me - even if we steer clear of the 'e' word. Of course, Ava can be sneaky and a bit mean herself, but she's never really targeted anyone in the group, just the outsiders. Which is the way I *should* have played things. All the others - they say that we're friends and everything, but do they actually compare me to Ava and find me wanting?

I said something to Maria about how much I loved her skirt as I was just about to park the car. She acted like she hadn't even heard me.

----------

"Alright, glad you guys made it," Isabel said from the deck. I followed the others and looked with a slightly impressed expression at the outdoor pool sunk into the deck. "Everybody else is here - well, except for Michael, go figure."

"Alright," Maria said. "What about... the proprietor?"

"I told you," Isabel insisted. "Brody agreed to clear out for the whole thing when I asked to use his place. I'm sure he doesn't want to get a reputation for perving on high school girls running around in... really small bikinis. And on that note, hi Ava, nice to see you."

"Though we didn't expect to see quite that MUCH of you," Alex wisecracked from next to Isabel. Ava had already taken off the see-through shirt and was in the process of peeling her cut-offs down her thighs. The bikini bottom underneath wasn't QUITE just a piece of string, but... well, anyway.

"Come on," Ava said, pressing close up against Kyle. "Let's try out the pool." Faced with an invitation like that, it shouldn't be too surprising that Kyle shucked off his clothes as quickly as he could - and then remembered too late that he DIDN'T have his swim trunks on under his pants, just boxer shorts. "Umm, maybe I should go change... inside or something."

"Oh, fine, if you wanna be that way," Ava said, turning away from him with a theatrical smile on her face.

"There isn't a pool house, is there?" Maria asked.

"No, the place is fancy, but not quite that 'Dynasty', or whatever," Liz said. "But going inside should be fine." Kyle was already opening the patio doors and stepping carefully in. "Just don't poke around in anything that obviously isn't your business, hint hint!"

"So, what's on the agenda?" I asked. "Enjoying the pool, grabbing some grub at some point, sounds great - is there going to be any more structure to the event than that?"

"Are you hungry?" Isabel asked solicitously.

"Actually, a bit." I took out the last cracker that I hadn't eaten on the way over from the front pocket of my shorts and considered it for a moment, and then devoured it. "Headed over right after morning shift at the Crash, so I didn't really have time for lunch."

"Oh." Isabel looked around a bit awkardly. "Not sure about the rest of you knew people - we'd sort of figured that we didn't need to order food for two hours or so, but if you're really that hungry."

"No, don't worry about it, I'll be o--" I stopped as Isabel shot me a 'cut the bull' look. "Okay, yeah, it'd probably be good to get something more in me before then, but I don't really want to inconvenience everyone else."

"Would it be really a bad thing to raid Brody's kitchen?" Maria suggested. "Just for a little snack?"

"Hmm." Max weighed that against the other possibilities. "Yeah, worth a try. Even though you said that we'd be ordering in food, Isabel, he probably expects that. I'll offer to make it up if Tess happens to scarf down one of his favorites without realizing it."

"Okay." I looked at Max and Ava. "You guys probably know him best from working at the Center, so maybe you should come with me?" Thought about that. "And Maria too?"

"You just figure he won't get so mad if he knew that she was in on it?" Ava laughed. "Okay, alright."

So soon enough, I was set up with one of those instant mugs of dried chicken-veggie-noodle soup, and a small but reasonably filling sandwhich, and was eating and sipping out on the deck, well pleased with the results of the 'raid.' Getting back to the question of activities for the day," Alex said with a smile, "maybe we can organize a game out in the pool." Kyle had finished changing by this point, and the two of them were swimming about and splashing each other."

"Water polo?" I wondered, pointing to a plastic ball down on the grass.

"I dunno, it's a bit small for a polo pool," Max said, "and I never really liked playing that in gym class anyway."

"Yeah, I have some sort of a weird feeling about water polo, like it's a submerged psychological trauma," Isabel said.

"Oh, lordy," Maria put in. "Well, how about pool volleyball or something?"

"Is there a net we can set up?" Alex said, sounding curious about the prospect.

"There's netting over there, in the corner," Maria said, pointing more to the side of the deck than any corner, but oh well. "And you clever hybrids can rig up something to hang it from, now can't you?"

It wasn't quite as easy to do as she'd said, of course, especially considering that we couldn't really leave any evidence of alien powers for Brody to find later. But eventually two metal poles were molecularly fused into the sides of the deck, and an appropriate amount of net strung between them. Michael showed up in the middle of all this, and his arrival distracted Maria so much that she fell off the pole, (she'd been working on hanging the highest level of the net, with Kyle steadying her,) but she was okay after surfacing in the pool.

"Okay, so how do we work this?" Liz asked, looking at the nine of us and passing the ball idly from hand to hand.

"Guys versus girls," Kyle immediately declared, as irrepressible as ever. "Toss a coin for first serve."

There were a few uncertain looks about this, but everyone ended up going with the suggestion, mostly because it seemed simpler than choosing captains first or any other division. Nobody had a coin at this point, (everybody having changed into swimsuits or stripped down,) and Liz went back up to where she'd left her purse to fetch out a penny - which then landed in the pool the first time she tossed it, and so on. Eventually the guys won the right to first 'serve' fairly, and we started the play.

Of course, the relationship to real volleyball was somewhat vague, especially because regular 'bumps' and 'serves' couldn't be done in the water. Serving usually consisted of taking the ball in both your hands and tossing/heaving it over the net, and then each side had three touches or tips to try to get the ball to land in the water on the other side of the net, not in the water on their side, or anywhere on the deck.

It was a lot of fun, actually.

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

"Hmm, we need something else to do while we eat," Ava said, pulling some pizza cheese between her fingers and looking around Brody's back yard.

"Are we desperate enough to try Truth or Dare?" Maria joked. Yes, I'd guessed that Isabel's plans for ordering food meant pizza when I saw that there wasn't a barbecue, and it seemed to fit the tone of the party pretty well. Oh, also - we beat the guys in volleyball, three games to one - one game was something like twenty-one for us to six for them. Just wanted to get that in the record.

"I'm up for it if everyone else is," Max said seriously, surprising just about everyone.

"Really?" Isabel was the first to ask.

"Well - why not?" was his reply. "I mean, I never played it much when I was younger, but - if there was ever a group big enough to make it work that I totally trusted, then it's you guys. Might be a good bonding kind of deal." Michael, Kyle, and Maria all chuckled a little at that line, and I realized that if the game did get underway, several people might be going out of their way to hand a little friendly mean-ness to Max. As tempting as the prospect was, I had a few other ideas in mind.

"Alright, so who gets to go first?" Isabel asked, as practical as ever."

"One of the girls," Alex suggested. "Since they won the volleyball so handily."

"Hey, they did have more players," Kyle complained.

"And you had the shallower end of the pool," Ava reminded him. "Fairs fair."

"Well, if it's the volleyball game we're thinking of, then Maria was really the star," Liz put in. "I nominate her to get first go."

Ava made a big dea of pointing out that Isabel had probably spiked in more points for us, but Isabel demurred and said that she was fine with picking Maria, so that was the way it went. Maria considered for a long moment, and I wondered what was going through her head. 'Should I pick Max first? I won't be the only one, which means he's going to have some turns of his own, and I don't really want to be top on his list either...' "Okay, Ava. Truth or dare."

"Hmm?" For a second, Ava seemed very surprised to get 'turned on' by the girl who she had nominated to have first pick. (Then again, that meant that Ava would have second turn, but that wasn't obviously a favor unless Maria went easy on her.) "Umm, truth I guess."

"Okay... are you still in love with Zan?"

Ooh - not a gimme. Either way, this could change Ava's relationship with Kyle, for him to hear the answer. Would she admit to still being in love with the Dead Dupe, admit that her affections had moved on this quickly - or try to hedge?

"No, not really. I mean, I still care a lot about his memory, but... but he isn't here with me anymore, and I guess I hold onto the idea that he'd want me to move on with my life. That's the truth - satisfied?"

Maria considered a moment. "Yeah, alright."

Now Ava considered her options. "And I can't turn it back on Maria, right?"

"That's the usual rule I think," Isabel said. "Keeps two people from monopolizing the game. Leaves triangles possible, but they're less likely to form on their own."

"We could say that a triangle can't loop through two times," Alex suggested.

"That's a lot to keep track of," Max countered.

"Well, we're not drunk or anything," Kyle shot back. "I mean... well, whatever. I don't really care one way or another."

"Let's not worry about anything but 'no reversals' for now," Liz said. "Ava?"

Ava suddenly turned to Liz with a determined look. "Cornball. Truth or dare!"

"Eek," Liz actually said. "Okay... um. Dare. What the heck?"

"Hmm... I dare you to take off your top?"

"Hey, this isn't strip poker," I said.

"No, but it falls under the limits of a reasonable dare, I would think," Michael put in. "Especially since it wasn't delivered by a guy."

And that was enough to get everybody arguing for a minute or so. Eventually it was agreed that strip dares were perfectly fair, but Ava had changed her mind by then, (possibly regretting bringing the idea up,) and was allowed to make another pick. "Okay, then, I dare you to do the Macarena like you mean it. At least one minute!"

Before Liz could even shake her head and groan, though, Isabel gasped in shock and toppled off the pool ladder, where she had been sitting, into the water. Alex was by her side in moments, helping steady her and make sure that she hadn't swallowed any water. "Is something wrong?" he asked.

"No, just - just unexpected," Isabel gasped out. "Larek -- Larek is coming *here.* I don't even know how I know... but he'll be here in just a couple of minutes!"

Everyone kind of looked at each other and around the peaceful scene, hardly able to grasp that eerie pronouncement. "Well, no time to get dressed, I guess," Michael muttered, and Maria swatted him.

"I wonder if Rahlicxians like spicy meatball and hot red pepper pizza," Ava wondered out loud.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Part Fifty-three

(Alex):

It was a tense few moments before somebody made his way to the backyard fence door, worked the little metal lever, and entered. I nearly laughed out loud - of all faces for an alien ruler to take when visiting the Earth, a short, pudgy, sixty-ish guy with shaggy dark hair and dusky Hispanic skin wouldn't have been what I'd expected. He scanned the group of us. "Max? Isabel??"

"Hello - Larek?" Max hazarded. Larek nodded and came in.

"It was a bit difficult to find you," Larek said testily. "Not at any of your homes, jobs, or even regular hangouts. Considered tracing your energy signatures, but I hadn't remembered to bring along a Tritium resonator and didn't have the spare energy to do the trace unassisted."

"So - how did you end up getting here?" Liz asked.

Larek turned to look at Liz closely for a long moment before answering the question. "Went and asked at the Evans house. Used a tiny mental lean to get an answer that Diane probably wouldn't have given to a stranger, and to make sure that she won't remember the incident very clearly. Is - is there some reason for the unusual outfits?"

Isabel laughed out loud. "It's a pool party, Larek," she said, gesturing to the pool itself. "Social event with swimming and other water sports being a central focus. Because Alex has come home from - the place he was working on translating the book."

"Oh, I see," Larek considered the pool. "Seems like you wouldn't be able to enjoy as much of a variety of watersports as in the... but then, you don't have any oceans around Roswell, and precious few rivers or lakes."

"Yeah," Maria agreed. "Just the Frazier valley stream, pretty much. Hi Larek, nice to meet you. Maria DeLuca."

"Hello," Larek said evenly, and he took a seat on the porch when Max gestured to the chairs there. "So - Isabel. I've given a lot of thought to the things that you asked me about when you popped across for a visit, and if it's handled well, I actually think that this would be a very good time for some or all of the reborn Royal Four to suddenly appear again on Antar, with the Granilith."

There was a hush after that pronouncement. "Okay, so how should we handle it best?" Max asked. "Land right in Kivar's court and dare him to arrest us or take the Granilith back? Find somewhere secret to hide where no-one will find us immediately and spread rumors about our own arrival? Or maybe..."

"Quiet, please," Larek said. "Apologies, but it's still a bit hard to phrase things in a human language." He only paused in silence for a few seconds. "Neither, quite. Arriving in a situation where Kivar has authority and great numbers of troops at his disposal is, obviously, overconfident. However, Liaretian supporters - that is, loyalists for the old royal family of which Zan, Vilandra, and their father Sanren were part - have gathered together and defended the northern plains of Tilles continent, on Antar, across the Plantan ocean from the great capital city, and I would advise that you should set your course there and join them. The old queen mother, Alinda, is not on Antar but some secret estate in a somewhat distant star system, but her standin will be at Tilles, and also younger members of the Royal family, children of those who survived Kivar's purges."

"So Max and I aren't the last remaining heirs of the crown?" Isabel put in. "How will that figure into the rules of succession? Do we take precedence? Who was older, out of Zan and Vilandra, anyway?"

"Vilandra was elder, by a year and a half, but would not have taken precedence over the first-born son," Larek said. "Traditional thing."

"Discrimination by sex," Maria shot back impulsively.

"More or less." Larek got back to the issue. "Public opinion and the Granilith would be the keys to deposing Kivar without drowning the planet, even the entire interstellar neighborhood, in blood, Max. One good thing, though, is that what you did at the Summit in New York has already set the stage of winning the people over to your banner."

"The summit?" Max asked. "I totally bombed over there - you told me so. I got the leaders of three whole planets pissed off at me..."

"I warned you that you had been rash, to speak as you did," Larek admitted, with a sad look on his face. "You were, but sometimes rashness meets with good outcomes. The planetary heads of Breoll, Gevina, and Taliernar would still not like you, I'd hazard a guess - but then, Breollyn are not known for their tendency to like anybody, even each other most of the time. The people, even some of the important faction leaders on Antar and the other planets, respect the truth of what you had to say, though."

"If they hadn't, that'd make them idiots," Liz suddenly volunteered. "I mean, really! Kivar offered to make Max a puppet king without any true power, and in return, he wanted Max to call for all the Liaretians to give up fighting and Max to hand over the Granilith. Even if he'd stuck by that bargain, it wouldn't have been a good deal for Max, and it wouldn't have been a good decision to make for the people who trusted him. I don't even think it would have been very good for the other people involved in the fighting, but that makes less of a difference. It's only fair for him to look out for his own group first, as long as he's willing to work for a fair peace next."

"And if Max had said, 'Okay guys, give up fighting,' and they didn't, because seriously who would," Michael chimed in, "that would give Kivar a great opportunity to say that Max wasn't living up to the deal, and bump him off, right?"

"Yes, all of these are things that have been said over and over, on Antar and Rahlicx, and likely elsewhere," Larek agreed. "The deal was an unfair and unwise one, and you did show courage and resolve to refuse it so firmly, Max. More than I gave you credit for at the time, in fact." Max smiled. "If you follow that up by returning the Granilith to the Liaretian supporters on the homeworld and lead by example in carefully defying Kivar's rule, then the balance of power may begin slowly to shift. Kivar is not well placed to immediately attack the North Tilles area with full force, and any delay would be seen as a sign of weakness. As the public and minor power factions turn against them, Kivar's own sworn vassals will likely turn against him to save their own skins."

"Alright, I have to admit, I do like the way that that sounds, a little," Max said, and sighed. "There's still a lot to talk about though. How long can you stay here, this time? And - does your host body need food? We've got plenty of pizza."

"Humm." Larek stared at the open box that he proffered and seemed to be considering for a long time. It didn't seem like he recognized the word or the food, and was trying to judge what kind of an experience he was in for. "Alright." He took one slice out into his hand and bit off the point. "Not bad. So... what's next?"

"How about... you and the royal four, back on Antar?" Tess asked. "Especially... Zan. We know that you were old friends. We need to know a lot about... them, to figure out how to move against Kivar, and what kind of a reception we'll get back there."

"But, when you arrive, you'll consult with the local leaders of the Liaretian government-in-exile," Larek protested. "They'll be the ones - well, planning the strategy. Your input will be considered, but.."

"But we need to know what kind of strategy they might have in mind for us, before deciding if we'll go for it," Max said. "Come on, just tell me the story. Let's not worry about the rest."

"Alright." Larek stretched out a bit and took some more pizza. "Well, we met when I was about... umm, in human terms, ten or eleven years old. I was already an Autarch-in-training for the Planetary Dominion of Rahlicx, and King Sanren of Antar organized a foster brother scheme with the Rahlicx republic, because Zan was around my age, and he saw a lot of value in the two of us spending time with each other as we grew into our responsibilities."

"And you were selected, the Autarchs are always selected, on the basis of computerized test scores?" I put in. "That was mentioned in the books. So based on some standardized test, they put you into a unique track at your school, training you to become the chief administrator for the whole planet."

"That's the way of it, yes," he agreed. "In fact, I was taken to a different school, with frequent trips back home to see my family and so on. But you wanted to know about me meeting the Royal Four."

"Yes, we did," Michael agreed.

"Well... I first saw any of them in the welcoming committee at the Royal Castle's landing field," he said, sounding very nostalgic. "There was a small group of young people, including all of the children in the Royal family, some family of trusted councilors and staff members, and a few other kids who had already been invited over as suitable companions. Zan, Vilandra, and Rath were together near the front. Ava, as you might or might know, didn't come until much later."

"Was... were Rath's parents among the help, or was he an invitee?" Michael asked.

"Mostly an invitee - his father sometimes consulted with Sanren and the Royal Council in person, but he wasn't around the Castle full-time. He was minor nobility, and had other affairs to manage back home - which, as it happens, was also in North Tilles."

"So that's where we'd be going, Rath's home ground?" Michael confirmed, smiling, and looking over at Maria. She put her hand on top of his.

"Yes. His family, the house of Selezir, was a large part of the reason why the friends of the old Royal Family are welcome and safe there."

"But why didn't Kivar attack them long ago?" Ava asked.

"A couple of reasons, that I know of. He has had a lot of enemies to worry about, ever since overthrowing the Liarets and claiming the throne. And the Selezirs' rangers are much more at home in the wilderlands than his troops are - able to hide between one stone and the next, and shoot as soon as your back is turned. Kivar would have to bombard a huge area from orbit to be sure, and apparently he never wanted to resort to such measures. Now that there are fortified underground shelters in Tilles, probably even that wouldn't be enough."

Nuke 'em from orbit, I thought with an inappropriate mental chuckle. It's the only way to be sure. "Okay, so back to you, Zan, Rath, and Vilandra as kids," I said. "We probably don't want hours and hours worth of stories, just impressions and a few standout moments."

He did end up telling stories for nearly an hour, actually, and most of the time we were all rapt enough to not notice the time passing. Each story was fairly insightful... from school lessons with the Royal tutors, to juvenile shenanigans played out in the corridors of the castle long after their lights were supposed to be out, to camping trips out on the great grasslands and some kind of a sledding holiday in the mountains. Zan and Larek had visited Rahlicx together after a few years, and on the trip back some dissident faction had attacked the spaceship, sending it down in a rough landing near a small Antarian town. Zan's two surviving bodyguards, worried that there might be collaborators on the spot, that the dissidents had intended to bring them down exactly at that spot, had refused to let the boys go into town for help, or to take orders to go for help themselves, and had even held would-be good samaritans back at gunpoint until a confirmed Royal rescue airship was dispatched to the scene. Even though an investigation had revealed no evidence of co-conspirators in the area, the bodyguards had been commended for their caution and for the boys' safe return.

"Zan met Ava when we were all three... well, stubling headlong into adolescence," Larek said with another of those fond rememberey smiles. "She was a socialite from the capital city, daughter of a well-placed construction magnate, and friends with the kinds of superficial, arrogant heiresses who I could never really stand. But after I met Ava, and introduced Zan to her at his request, I started to realize that she wasn't really one of the flock of paper-thin songbirds. She had a shy streak about two feet wide, and was involved in a... well, a sort of political cause, advocating the resettling of refugees from war refugees that had arrived at the Antarian sector from some distant calamity of war. She certainly never thought that she was the right sort to be a Royal Bride before that night, or schemed to attract Zan's eye - but when his parents found out that he was infatuated with a young lady from that background, they made a point of finding out about her, and found her a suitable potential match, I guess. Ava was formally invited to court, and King Sanren took up the issue of the refugees personally, though he couldn't simply order them resettled without winning a vote on the issue in his Royal Council."

"At about this point, Rath made his move, formally asking the King in front of the whole court if he had permission to court Vilandra. Think that took Sanren by surprise, because I'd never seen the man stall for time like that before." At this point in the story, Isabel suddenly squeezed my hand in hers, and I thought I knew why. Were we going to get Larek's perspective on the whole Vilandra scandal? "But - well, as firstborn daughter, Vilandra had already been manipulated by Sanren's enemies, who thought that winning her hand might strengthen their influence to use against her father."

"Like Kivar," Max guessed.

"Yes, first and foremost that one. Vilandra was... a somewhat free-spirited girl, and I think that she was torn between resenting all the attention of her royal post and being flattered by the charm with which such men attempted to woo her. So Rath's suit was politically expedient - he was fiercely loyal to Zan and his family, and so... I'm not sure, but I think that Vilandra's parents persuaded her to assent to the betrothal. She wasn't deeply in love with Rath, as he was, but liked him well enough, and resigned to grow into an affectionate marriage slowly."

"But Kivar had already used more tricks on her than anyone suspected, maybe," I said, hoping that it was the right thing to say and wouldn't upset Isabel any further. "Was he well trained in using his powers to affect the minds of others?"

"A master, easily. Kivar and Sanren first rivalled because the King had outlawed the teaching or practice of mental combat and persuasion techniques that Kivar had originated." Like 'the mind rape.' No need to mention that out loud. "And yes, I think the same, that Kivar had already planted such suggestions deep within Vilandra's subconscious mind, that she could not help but arrange secret meetings with him if he wished it so."

"And if Kivar wanted it to seem as if Vilandra had betrayed her brother and her fiancee, out of love for him - then she would do what he needed her to do," Michael said scathingly. "We do need to teach that bastard a serious lesson. One other thing, though. You mentioned how loyal Rath was - I heard about a plan to defuse the crisis by putting him up as a compromise leader, one who..."

"Not that Courtney nonsense again, honey?" Maria said. "Sorry, sweetie - I love you very much, but you're not The Big Man like that."

"No offense, but I'd tend to agree," Larek said, and Michael made a face. "I wasn't there when a few court moderates proposed that plan and called on Rath to take his place, but... it was a crackpot scheme. Rath made the only decision he could to refuse to go along with it... not just out of loyalty, but logical judgement of the good of the planet, and self-interest. Either Kivar's or the Liaretian's hard-liners might have killed him first if he'd tried it. There wasn't enough support for a compromise, moderate republican leader like that."

"Ah, okay," Michael mumbled. "Just wanted to make sure about that part."

"Another tricky detail that's always bothered me," Max said. "Sanren - just how did he die? I've always suspected Kivar of being involved there, but it didn't sound like anyone had ever called it an outright and obvious assasination."

"Well, it was obviously an assasination, but not so clearly Kivar's doing," Larek said, sighing. "This, too, was after I was back on Rahlicx, training in one of the executive departments of the planet. But - Sanren had travelled to the province of Grawti, near the southern sea about the Antarian pole, to arbitrate a protracted dispute between a powerful mining corporation and striking workers. There was a diversion, with a carefully arranged fake threat to distract the Royal bodyguards. While they were escorting his Majesty to a place of safety, a bolt of power shot out from a hiding place and fractured Sanren's skull. One of the guard was a healer of moderate strength, but he was attacked as well and could not complete his working in time." Larek scowled. "It was a very negative mark on the prestige of those Royal guards. The initial impression was that it was maverick miners who were worried about the Royal army being sent in to order them back to work, but my twice-predecessor as Rahlicx Autarch made his own investigation, and shared the results with Zan and myself. The entire operation had been planned very carefully, and two of the guard had been suborned to leak the contingency plans and change the filed duty schedule without letting their fellows know."

"Pretty clever plan, yeah," Kyle muttered unhappily. "Okay, my turn, even though I don't think I'mat all likely to go along with this thing. How are any of you going to learn the language, if you decide to go to Antar?"

"Yeah," I agreed. "We have the Antarian-English translation dictionary from the book, but that doesn't have any information on how the words are actually spoken - and anyway, trying to learn a whole language from those kinds of resources without having other speakers to practice on..."

"We can learn by immersion, once we get to Antar," Max suggested. "There have to be some people with the Liaretians who have learned how to use touch connection techniques to speed language learning. It seems an obvious application."

"Yes, but I think you have an easier way available to you," Larek said with a smile.

"What's that?" Tess demanded.

"The Granilith itself?" Michael guessed. "Just how much CAN it do?"

"I'm not going to start into a history of that impressive relic," Larek said. "Or what I think its known powers are. But - in the book, are there instructions for activating the Granilith key in static mode, or something of that sort?"

"Yes," Isabel and Max agreed at once.

"Try that, when you next have a chance. AFTER giving me a window to get home, not that I think you're likely to do anything to disrupt the travel of my spirit, but - well, then I have deniability in case anybody ever accuses me of aiding you in experimenting with the Granilith's powers. You may need that Antarian-English dictionary to understand its displays at first, but not for long." He sighed. "My time is growing short. What else?"

"Just who are the important people in Kivar's organization and other nearby planets?" Max asked.

"Do you know anything about the biology of partially Antarian human hybrids?" Maria chimed in at the same time.

"How are they likely to treat us when we get there?" Tess added afterwards.

"Both hybrids and humans?" Liz clarified.

"Do you know anything about the Gem of Kindarra?" Michael put in, and looked sheepishly around at everyone else who had asked.

"Oh, boy," Larek sighed. "I'm not sure I have time for all of that."

----------

There was indeed a lot still to talk about, and Larek begged off with the expected explanations about his host's state of health and his own mental strength long before my friends and I ran out of questions. My own head was spinning with all that we'd heard before the end of it - so I mostly just sat there next to Isabel and kept my arm around her. She seemed to appreciate that as a gesture of support.

Oh - and Brody Davis showed up, and was a bit surprised at the stranger there on his deck. Guess he'd probably figured that we'd be out of there by that point - not sure what Isabel had told him about that. Max and Liz traded a look, and then Max said, "Hey, Brody - this is Larek. Larek, Brody Davis." Brody seemed stunned by the name, but not really knowing where or how to place it, so he greeted Larek and went back inside.

"You did a pretty good job of healing him, Max," Larek said approvingly. "I'm sorry that things got out of hand with him with that electrical shock - no offense, but you humans shouldn't be fooling around with direct human-computer connections until you learn an awful lot more about biochemistry and neurology."

"Was that what it was?" Liz asked. "When he said virtual reality, I thought it was - just a helmet with special stereo earphones, gyrosensors, and a liquid crystal screen, hooked up to the computer system. Was he directly connecting the computer outputs to his brain somehow?"

"Pretty close, I think," Larek replied. "Might be secret reverse-engineered technology from the crashed ship. Figures that somebody like Brody would have access to it." Larek chuckled. "I took advantage of that some myself, while his brain was still open to me."

"Speaking of alien abductions," Isabel put in, "since you've been hinting that you'll have to go again before too long... is there any way that we can get back in touch with you? Though the whirlpool pendant was effective enough to get a bat-signal to you, it doesn't look like we'll have the opportunity to really train to use it right..."

"Sorry, excuse me?" Larek put in. "A... a bat signal? Is this a reference to sonar calls specifically?"

Most of us broke out laughing at that one. "Cultural reference, man," Michael put in. "Batman, the comic book hero. Sort of a folk literary figure, in a way. The local police commissioner summons him by shining a bright light with a distinctive outline against the sky."

"Hmm... that doesn't sound like it would be effective on a clear, starry night," Larek said thoughtfully. "Or during the day."

"I think that he can shine it on big buildings at night," Maria replied. "And you never need to call Batman during the day. That's part of his modus operandi."

"Okay, alright," Larek said, shrugging. "Getting back to the original question... I did prepare for that request, Isabel." He reached out and passed a small shiny orb to her. "One of the simplest and most reliable models of interstellar communicators. Not impossible to tap into, but I doubt that Kivar's people will notice if you don't overuse it. Whichever of those three color buttons you press will also show up on the matching unit back at my headquarters. The red and blue lights simply activate for a seconds or so and then fade, while the white will remain on until a red or blue is signalled on one of the two units, and can be repeated to light a brighter and brighter beacon signal for emergencies, up to five times I believe."

"Okay," Isabel said, trying the buttons just to test them, and judging what the triple white signal looked like outside in the summer evening - not that impressive, but noticeable. "And just what kind of a signal can we send with red and blue lights?"

"You'd need a code system," Alex said, "but I don't think that we know any of the ones that would be established on Rahlicx. Even the book doesn't have that kind of appendix."

"No, but I've acquired some information on a usable Earth code - standard international morse code," Larek said, and I could see Liz's face light up as she saw how that applied. "Red for a dot, blue for a dash. I won't be able to watch my end personally, but somebody trusted on my personal or communications staff will keep an eye on it whenever possible, and the full code will be available. This is the best I was able to come up with on short notice."

"It's appreciated, definitely," Max said. "Um - one other thing. Queen Alinda - you said that she wasn't on Antar. Do you happen to know - where, and if she's in good or poor health? When we got the recorded message from her a year ago this past spring - well, if we're going to head over to that part of the galaxy, I'd hate to not have a chance to meet her."

"I believe that she's doing fairly well, considering her age and some of the... well, she's hale enough," Larek put in. "The name of the planet won't mean much to you, but it's a safe Sanctuary where Kivar doesn't even suspect that the Liaretians have a base of support. If you can take care of him, then she'll get her reunion, and vice versa."

"Except I think that all of us have come to the conclusion that we aren't the royal kids she lost, not really," Isabel put in. "We have some resemblance, but aren't the same people. Even - well..." She looked over at Tess.

"No, even I'm on board with that," Tess said reluctantly. "Much as I'd like to be, I'm not really the genuine Queen Ava, just... a reasonably good imitation."

"Imitation nothing," Liz unexpectedly piped up. (Well, I hadn't called it beforehand.) "You're a brand new and amazing person, Tess, half regal alien queen and half - sweet human orphan." Tess considered this and nodded very slightly.

"So, is there anything else?" Larek asked, and each of us tried to think of anything. We had the maps that he'd drawn of Antar which sketched out the suggested landing zone, and just about any point of idle curiosity had been adressed over the course of the visit.

"Oh, yes, one thing!" Michael suddenly remembered. "Do you have any intelligence on other aliens here on Earth, I mean physically here? We know that Lonnie's probably still in New York, but aside from her..."

"What about Nicholas and Rath?" Larek asked. "I haven't had traces of their activity recently, but wasn't able to find out if anything happened to them."

"We happened to them," Max said, actually sounding modest. "Or, well, they captured us and tried to torture the Granilith's secret out of us. Lonnie was in on it too. But with Ava's help, we were able to turn the tables. Nicholas and Rath - were killed, and Lonnie surrendered and agreed not to challenge us openly again."

"Alright, that fits," Larek said. "But to answer your own question, Michael, let's see now... Kivar's last reserve squad of Skins evacuuated the planet during the Gandarium threat, and probably they're still in His Presumtive Majesty's dungeons for showing cowardice in the line of duty. Nicholas tried to get aboard the emergency return ship, and was refused access, because he'd lost his Copper Summit followers, and failed to nab you at the Summit, which was probably why he was desperate enough to team up with Lonnie and Rath again."

"Okay, I guess that's good news," Ava said. "Kivar doesn't have anybody here on Earth? Like really here the whole time?"

"Not as far as I know," Larek qualified. "In fact - well, there's one Breoll observer, a shapeshifter, who was in Moscow, about two weeks ago, and is probably there still. And then, there's my own Girl Friday, Christin - or that's the name she uses here."

"You have an agent here on Earth yourself?" Isabel said, blinking. "I... why didn't you just send her here in your stead? Or... well, when the Gandarium..."

"I don't really have the time to explain," he said. "This time, it didn't seem like the advantages of delegating were worth the effort. And last March - well, Christin was working on a backup plan in the event that the Gandarium did manage to infect Laurie. Oh, that reminds me Michael, how *is* Miss Dupree doing?"

"Umm - well enough. I guess I'll need to give her a call soon," Michael muttered. "But - is it time?"

"It is indeed." Larek stood up. "It's been good to see you all. Until next time, which - I suspect won't be here in Roswell." And with that, he turned and left the way that he'd come. After about a minute, we heard a car engine starting up and racing away.

"Wow," Max breathed. "So..."

"I want to go," Maria said, surprising me by declaring it first, if not with what she had decided. "Obviously, it's a big decision, and we have to leave time for all of what we've heard today to sink in, but... but I propose we set a timeline, to keep anybody from, well, from dragging their feet about it. The day before school starts again, maybe. That'll be after Mom's wedding."

"And it's only around a week and a half," Liz protested. "Rushing much?"

"Maybe." And Maria looked up at Michael. "But I think that it makes a kind of sense. Better to make a clean break before we're sucked into senior year, and it's a good line to draw in the sand that can't be pushed back further."

"Maybe not a big surprise, but I'm with my lady," Michael admitted. "Everything that Larek said about how the Antarian situation was good for us to make our move - that might change at some point soon. If he's obviously at a disadvantage, with his throne at risk, then Kivar's probably already working on some way to force a reversal and come out on top. We can't let him complete whatever that scheme is."

"I'm inclined to go with that, as a tentative timetable," Max said. "If anybody can come up with a compelling rationale by then for why it makes sense and is in the best interest of all of us to delay further, then we can consider it."

"You mean, YOU'LL consider it," Isabel answered calmly. Max turned around to look at her. "I didn't mean that as a criticism, except possibly at the hint of hypocrisy. Max, you are going to make the final decision, when it comes to the Granilith. You've been acting protective of it ever since... I found it, and I don't begrudge you that. That thing is important, and... and you're probably a better person to take on the responsibility of it upon yourself than I am. Important enough that the final decision can't be left up to a committee. You'll do your best to be fair to everybody, and consider different opinions, strive for consensus... but in the end, it's your duty. You know that. We all know that, and it's no good pretending that things are any different."

Max squirmed slightly under his sister's matter-of-fact appraisal. "Ava was the one who had the key," he said. "She volunteered to put it at our disposal, but still, that implies that she should have some say in..."

"No, sorry Max," Ava said. "The key is just a formality - no good without a lock to put it in, and that was left here with you. In point of fact, I think that I should be leaving it in your custody from now on. We'll take care of that later tonight or tomorrow."

Max looked around at all of us, as if he was expecting someone else to protest this position of power that Isabel had nominated him into, but nobody did. "Alright. So, after the wedding and reception are over, later that night or the next morning, we meet and discuss the situation. If the launch countdown is not pushed back for any reason, then we... sorry, force of habit." He nodded meaningfully towards Isabel. "Then *I* use the key and set the Granilith to launch, with a programmed landing in North Tilles. Whoever wants to go, gets their things ready and shows up twenty-four hours later."

"We still can't mess around with that timeline?" Michael muttered.

"Countdown can be aborted up to about fifteen minutes in advance," Max admitted. "But I want to leave that for a last-resort scenario."

"I think I'd rather leave on Monday morning than late Sunday night, which suggests that we should meet the day after the wedding, Sunday morning," Maria suggested. "Labor day, I guess. Why did you want to make the final decision AFTER the reception, anyway, Max?"

"I dunno." He shruggd. "Just seemed that it was just possible something would happen at the wedding or at the party that might change everything around on us. Stranger things have happened, here in Roswell."

"Yeah, a stranger might show up, a REALLY strange stranger," Liz put in. "Okay... well, I'd better get home."

"Okay, I'll drive," Max said.

"But I need to change clothes first," she said, kissing him and giggling.

I looked over at Isabel, and I guess she must have realized I had a question I couldn't put into words. "I don't think my parents will care that much if I show up late," she said. "Can we go and drive out into the desert, and talk there?"

I thought about it for only a moment. "Sure. I'll get the keys."

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

(Maria):

Mom was sitting in the living room when Kyle, Tess, and I finally got back in. (Ava had been dropped off along the way.) I shot a look over at the other two, silently pleading for them not to get into the Larek business right now. Wasn't quite sure if either of them got the point or not.

"I didn't think that you were going to be out at the party this late," Mom said mildly.

"Yeah, well, uh... we started talking about stuff, and got really into the conversation, and lost track of time," I explained. "Even after Mister Davis got back home. Sorry."

"That's okay I guess." She stood up. "I know how excited you are to have Alex back home. How's Michael?"

"Um - doing fine, I guess."

"Alright. Well... having done the ceremonial waiting up, I guess I'm off to bed now." She hugged me en passant, and then headed for the stairs.

"Uh - mom?"

"Yeah, sweetie?"

No, I couldn't quite bring myself to say any of what was really on my mind, so I settled for... "I'm really happy for you - and Jim. That you've got things sorted out and everything, that you're getting married so soon. Hope that you stay together, deeply in love... for a really long time at least."

"Well, that's a sweet thing to say honey." She turned back around, and I could see that her smile was slightly puzzled as well. Maybe I hadn't said it in really the best way - oh well. It had been completely the truth... and all of that stuff salved my guilt somewhat at the prospect of leaving her behind. Jim would be able to take care of her... and if Kyle did stay behind, then she could focus her leftover mothering on HIM.

None of us felt like staying up much longer, and as Tess and I got ready for bed in our, (sigh,) shared room, it was lie each of us was expecting the other to start speaking first. "Okay, here's the way it breaks down, as I see it," Tess suddenly said. "Isabel and Alex, Kyle and Ava, aren't really interested in going for any particular reason. You and Michael, and myself, we're definitely taking off, and Max feels like he has to come too. He may resist the realization for a while, but the plan won't work nearly as well without him. That's obvious. And as much as it may tear Liz apart inside to leave, she won't let Max go without her. So that puts all five of us in the Granilith. Think we can avoid clawing each other's eyes out on the way?"

I had to laugh softly. "Come on, Tess - the days when we were catfighting, figuratively speaking, are long behind us."

"Yeah," she agreed. "And Kyle probably regrets the fact that we never made it literal, just once, for his benefit." I had to let out a snort of laughter. "Okay - am I right about you??"

"Not sure," I admitted, sitting down in front of the mirror, considering hair for a moment, and then picking up a brush. "I know what I said back there, but... I guess I'm going to have to sit with it for a while and make sure that I can go through with it. And there's Michael's reaction as well... I know that he usually says he can't wait to leave this 'stupid little planet', but recently I've gotten to appreciate what a softy he is inside, and if he's not ready to go, then I'm not heading anywhere either." The phone rang. "Oh, that's him probably."

Tess got to the phone first. "Hello? Yeah, of course." She handed it towards me. "Guess you do know him pretty well."

I had to chuckle at that - took the phone and told Michael hi. He was asking if it was okay that he'd called, I assured him that it was, and at the same time decided to give up on brushing my hair for now, getting into the bed instead. "Actually, I needed to hear your voice now. Tess and I were talking about - the big escape, and I was wondering if you and I are both up for it."

"Hmm." Michael breathed softly at his end of the line. "Yeah, gut check isn't an instant thing for a decision this big - well, not as long as we've got time to let it settle in, but I think I'm excited about the whole deal, and what you've said about trying again for - for another baby. Maybe not right away, but - but I do love you, and I loved little Keva. Our child is going to be somebody incredible."

"Yeah, I know," I said. "Oh, I miss... I miss going to sleep with your arms around me. Do - do you think that we're good enough with our meditations for me to sleep over tomorrow? I'd have suggested it tonight, but - well, with mom, it wouldn't have been a good time."

"Yeah, I think that I can manage it, and you're doing better at the chanting than me," Michael said, laughing softly. "What do you think about Max, Liz, Ava, Isabel, and Alex?"

"Hmm... let's see," I said, trying to think of my own judgements rather than repeating what Tess had said. "Ava - would be up for the trip as a lark, I think, but Tess has probably called dibs and it might be awkward to explain to anyone on Antar about the dupes, so maybe she'll stay on Earth because of that. Also, she's falling hard for Kyle, and he doesn't want to go. Alex - is pretty much the same story, he's curious about this alien stuff, but Isabel isn't ready to go and face the Vilandra scandal, and it really doesn't make sense for Alex to be going without her."

"Max and Liz - will probably be discussing it together and coming to a joint decision. And the guilt trip factor there is really uncomfortably high. I mean - do you really think that the three of us could accomplish much in the political situation there? Isabel staying behind is one thing, but BOTH of them??"

"Yeah - I don't want to put pressure on him in that way, but the circumstances are hard to argue with," Michael agreed softly. "Seems like it's time for Max Evans to step up and take on the heavy weight of royal responsibility, but... I'm not going to be the one to tell him so straight out." He sighed. "Any idea when we're going to try that Granilith language trick that Kivar mentioned?"

"Nah, not really. If there's nothing much going on tomorrow, we can suggest it then - after Ava's turned the key over to Max." I yawned. "Okay, goodnight spaceboy?"

"Of course, my dearest love." He made that odd sound that I now recognized as an attempt to blow a kiss over the phone. "Until tomorrow."

I hung the phone up and looked over at Tess. She was already in bed, with the sheet over her, but I heard a slightly pained sigh. Darnit. I hadn't meant to... well, to talk about sleeping over at Michael's with her listening. At least she wouldn't have been able to hear the endearment he'd used to sign off. I tried to settle myself for sleep too.

Maybe when we got to that other planet, there'd be some perfect Antarian guy for Tess too.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Author's note, if anybody cares: I'm excited about getting this far, but what with NaNoWriMo looming, it might be a few months before I update again. There is just ONE more part before the larger section of this fanfic is done, (though it might be a bit longer than average,) and then there's the 'a few years later' bit, which will probably be 15 parts at most. (Famous last words.) So, here's...

Part Fifty-Four

(Max):

"So come on, what do you think?" I asked Liz. "Tell me." We'd been up on talking on the phone for hours now, it was after one-thirty in the AM, and I'd lost count of the times that Liz had changed the subject or managed to turn it around on me.

"Well, first of all, if you're coming, then I'm coming too," she assured me. That much I'd heard. "In terms of my personal preference... well, as interesting as it is to find out more about where you've come from, or one side of you has come from, and go where nobody on Earth has come back from and told the tale..." She sighed. "There's a part of me that's saying that it's too soon - that I'd want to at least, er, I dunno: finish West Roswell High first, or something, you know?"

"Yeah, I think that I do know what you mean," I admitted. "Even though I've thought about this as an abstraction for a while, there hasn't been much time to get used to the practical reality, and if we stick to the timetable, there won't be."

"And that's the other side of it," Liz admitted. "It's not all about our own wishes. First off - I think that Michael, Maria, and Tess are going to want to go in the window before school starts this year. You can't really deny them that much, not without creating a lot of other problems. When they go, your ticket home goes with them, and we can't be sure when any of them will get back here to Earth. So it might be a chance of 'now or never.' And... and I'm starting to get the sense that it might be better for everyone over there if we do go now."

"Alright," I said. "That's a fair answer... and really it's pretty late. We've both got work tomorrow - not the early shift, but still."

"Yeah, that's true honey," Liz admitted, and yawned. "Just one more thing that I wanted to say that doesn't really have anything to do with a Granilith..."

"Alright, what?"

"Do you have something really great to wear to the wedding?"

I laughed at the change of subject. "Umm, actually, well... I was thinking of using the same tux that... that you saw on my at prom."

"Oh." There was a faint groan over the line. "Sorry, I don't mean to be disparaging... you did look really handsome, but - well, that's still not a very happy memory for me. I guess maybe I shouldn't have opened my mouth and asked. If I saw you in a black tuxedo, maybe I wouldn't have even made the connection."

"Or maybe if you'd seen me in it without warning, it would have bugged you all day without you even knowing why, and ruined the whole day for you," I pointed out. "Maybe I should dress up, and you can see me and figure out how you feel."

"Yeah, that's a good idea," she admitted. "There could be a simple way to make it look new and fresh without having to buy a brand new suit or anything." She thought for a moment. "Did you get that tux specifically for prom, or... did you already have it?"

"Huh." Now it was my turn to yawn. "I know I already had it, and that I've bought it since I've... known you, but I can't really remember when, and I'm sort of surprised that you can't place it, though I'm not sure that you should."

"Really? Well, let's see," Liz laughed, and I could almost almost picture the 'logical scientist' look crossing onto her face. "Oh! Spring fling the year before. We went together... that was about two weeks before Topolsky came back, and then Tess came to town. That was probably it."

"No, actually... it would have been after that," I said sadly. "I remember that dance, of course... but I didn't have the tux to wear that time, just a kind of a blue suit that I had nearly grown out of, from a relative's funeral."

"Yeah, right," Liz admitted. "I'd worn dark blue too, now I remember, and I was so happy that we matched."

And the word 'funeral' had clued me in. "Isabel dragged me out to get something the next summer, after you'd... left for Florida. I had the notion at the time that she wanted to make sure that all four of us had something suitable to be shown in, in case... something happened, because we were all..."

"Worried about mysterious and dangerous enemy aliens," Liz put in. "And speaking of... did you bring it with you to Copper Summit?"

"Maybe, I think so," I agreed. "Okay, there's the story of the tux. When do you want to see me in it again?"

"Tomorrow at four-thirty, I guess," she answered. "But I dunno... between the fear of death, danger, and heartbreak, I'm thinking maybe it's time to retire it."

"Okay, maybe you have a point," I agreed with a sigh. "So let's try this once again. Goodnight, my love."

Liz sighed. "Sweet dreams, Max."

I made a soft noise of agreement before she hung up - probably she had been waiting for something like that.

-----------

(Isabel):

I held Alex's arm closely and looked around at the colors of the botanical garden in late summer, wondering at the same time how long it would be before Missus DeLuca started down the aisle.

The past week or so has been relatively quiet - spending a lot of time with Alex, of course, and the rest of our friends. My parents were bugging me about what my plans were for after summer ended, so I made a few calls, and one of the ladies who was involved with the Christmas hunger drive put me in touch with the Roswell homeless shelter. After labour day, I'll be volunteering with them four days a week, and that news has pretty much got Dad off my back. I also applied to take some classes at the junior college just outside of town, starting in January, but I haven't heard back about that yet.

Alex and I have really settled on our decision, too... it'll be weird for me if a lot of the gang really does go through with leaving, but - but there's just no way I can face going off to Antar at this point. Not with the Vilandra thing hanging over my good name there. Max and Michael told me that they understand, and they'll see what they can do to sort it out while I'm there, so that maybe, if I want to, I can go later. (Assuming that we can scrape up another interstellar ride.) Tess hasn't said it out loud, but I kind of get the impression that she's a bit disappointed in me, that she wishes it was all four of us arriving at once.

But then again, it wouldn't be JUST the royal four, and we're not sure if the Granilith could carry four plus three significant others. Right now the roster is five - Max and Liz told us that yes, they'd made their mind to go, yesterday before the rehearsal dinner...

Oh, and right then the music started up, or changed from whatever 'waiting music' the string quarted had been playing. Here comes the bride, now. (A bit cliche by now, but whatever, it's her big day.) I squeezed Alex more closely, and a few tears slipped out of my eyes, just because Missus DeLuca and Mister Valenti made such a pretty couple today.

So quickly, it seemed, the elegant and timeless ceremony was done, the bride had been kissed, and Max and Liz came up to Alex and me where we sat. (Max had been a few rows further forward, and Liz had been standing up as one of the bridesmaids.) "Okay, you guys ready to leave for the reception?"

"Sure I guess," Alex said.

"No, remember honey?" I said, and gave him a kiss on the cheek. "We promised to stay behind and help with the clean-up. Folding up and stacking chairs, that sort of thing."

"Oh, right."

"We can help with that too," Max pointed out. In fact, once we started, pretty much the whole gang pitched in, and it wasn't long until everything was loaded up onto the rental truck. Alex and I rode in the back of the Jeep, which we had when coming out to the wedding site as well, so that Liz could sit up in front.

"They looked so much in love for their big moment," Liz said, and sighed softly. "I'm happy for them."

"Yeah, me too," Alex agreed. "Even if this does mean that we're one step closer to you guys leaving. I... I don't know what I'm going to do without you and Maria being around, Liz."

"Oh, I think that you'll find some way of managing," Liz shot back, chuckling. "Kyle is definitely turning out to be a good friend, isn't he? And you'll have a certain someone to console you and not leave you lacking for female company..."

"Yeah, but it's not quite the same thing." I bumped my knee into his, not gently or hard enough to hurt either. "Oh, come on, sweetie, you know what I mean, right? Having me around, as great as it is, won't be enough to keep you from missing Max and Michael, now is it? Very different sort of roles we play in your life."

"Hmm... okay, yeah, I'll give you credit for that," I admitted. "On the other hand, maybe if we have to, we'll just become much closer friends as well as boyfriend and girlfriend."

"Yeah," Liz put in. "As long as Alex doesn't end up substituting for Max in another sense."

Alex kicked her chair from behind, and I had to put in, "No, there's *no* chance of my ever seeing him like that. Once you're out of here, Max, I have no brother."

"Oooh, break my heart," he muttered.

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

The wedding reception was one of those things that makes you see someplace completely familiar in a very different light. On the whole, I really couldn't think of a better place for this celebration than the Crashdown dining room, even though I don't think I've ever been to any kind of private party there before.

I had Venusi hen and interstellar tubers for my main course, and after Jim and Amy had cut the wedding cake, the cleared-out space in the front was quickly full of couples trying to dance together. I leaned my head against Alex's shoulder as we swayed together, and tried to soak up the memory, wanting to remember this forever. Not so much because of Alex - it was nice being here with him, but I knew that we'd have chances to make lots more memories together. But this was one of the last times that the whole gang would be together, and... and the talk about it was making me feel maudlin and depressed, I had to admit. Feeling Alex's arms wrapped around me helped.

I didn't really understand most of what Mister Blackwood was talking about in his Best man toast to the happy couple - probably most of it was talking about stuff that us kids hadn't been around for. Maria's litle speech for her mom was really funny... talking about the time that she and Liz nearly walked in on the happy couple having a bit of 'dessert,' among other things. Once the wedding cake was mostly taken care of, Michael started rounding all nine of us up - oh, actually, it was ten, because Laurie had showed up about halfway through the reception and given her congratulations to Valenti, and said hi to Amy, who'd only met her once before.

"Okay, so we head out of town now?" Michael asked.

"Will this cake keep?" Ava said, waving a wrapped piece. "Or should I take it by home beforehand?"

"Wedding cake can survive just about anything," Max told her. "It's tougher than twinkies."

"I just thought of something," Liz whispered back. "If the launch countdown is twenty-four hours, then - well, we'll launch around the same time of day as we put the key in."

"Well, yeah," Maria said. "Your point being?"

"Do - do we really want to blast something like this off late in the evening? Seems like that would be just about the best time for somebody to notice it - dark enough that it'll show up well against the night sky, and not late enough that nearly everybody will have gone to bed."

"Hmm... that's a good point, actually," Tess admitted grudgingly. "So we want the opposite, I guess - after the sun rises, but early enough that not many people have really woken up yet."

"I think so, yeah," Michael agreed. "Which means I guess that we should be going to bed early - those of us who want to be there to set the countdown off, at least."

"But not quite yet," Maria argued. "We - we need to do something fun tonight, just us."

"Alright, any suggestions?" Liz put in.

"Just go back to Michael's place, watch pizza and eat a movie?" Ava said, and then we all started laughing. "I mean..."

"Yeah, we know honey," Kyle said. "And... no, not something like that. How about an outdoor bonfire?"

"Takes a long time to get something like that organized, and plenty of effort," I said. "Think about it."

"Bowling?" Alex suggested. Somebody groaned. "Come on, guys, this may be the last time you can ever go bowling... think about it."

"Actually, I'll support this, more because it's quicker than arguing further than on account of Alex's argument," Max put in, smiling.

"Oh, I've had enough of bowling back home," Laurie said, but it was obvious that the tide had somehow turned in favor of the suggestion in spite of her objection.

"You'll have to tell us more about that, then," Michael told her as we headed out.

----------

(Michael):

"I guess there's not that much to say," my sister said, favoring me with that shy smile as we sat on a bowling lane bench and watched Maria throw what looked like the start of a relatively decent spare. "I told you guys about the class that I was taking, right?"

"Umm, yeah, I think so, yeah," I agreed. "The details are a little fuzzy at this point, I'm sorry to admit. Adult high school education stuff?"

"Yep." She bobbed her head cutely. "A few of us have started going out to a local lane after the thursday night classes. It's pretty late, but the place is open until one am, and we have some fun, and talk about the assigned questions, and it's been nice as a way to, I dunno, interact with people without getting too panicked and shutting down."

"Well, I'm glad to hear that," I said.

"But... but I'm worried about how I'm going to cope once you're gone," she blurted out. "Knowing that you and Maria aren't going to be here for me to come to, to help out if I get into trouble again. Yes, I know that it's a great opportunity for you and I shouldn't get in the way of it, and yes, Isabel and Ava are great, not to mention Kyle and Alex, and they'll be here for me if I call for their help, but..."

"I... I know what you mean," I said, reaching out to take her hand in mine. "I never really had any family until I met you, and I'm scared of leaving you too... and Isabel, and..." At this point I kind of petered out.

"Yeah, but it's not the same thing," she grumped, snatching her fingers back. "You know that you've got this whole other side of your family to go back to, the house of Seldon or whatever, and that they'll be waiting for you when you land. Me... I... I don't have anybody left for me but you, not that way." She sighed. "I'm sorry. I know that there's nothing that you can do for me other than what you've already told your friends..."

"I, I'm not sure what to say, I admit," I said, and sighed. Stood up, because it was my turn. Maria had blown the spare, apparently, and I hadn't even noticed it. "Maybe Maria would be the better person to sympathize and commiserate with... she's giving up all of her family and her roots, except for me. I know that that scares her too."

"Heh, okay." I nodded at Maria as she crossed paths, not quite sure if she'd interpret that mannerism in anything like the right way. Made a big fuss out of preparing for my first roll, just killing time really. I was sort of trying to flub it without being obvious, and therefore, to my bemusement, (yeah, I know that's a fancy word huh?) I got a strike. Luckily, Laurie was before Maria in the bowling order, and Kyle took his turn first.

I looked over into the next lane while I waited for the rotation to come around again, and to distract myself from listening in on Maria and Laurie's girl talk. The competitors over there were Max and Liz, Alex and Isabel, and Tess. Three coming with us, two leaving behind. It was weird how that division seemed to color everything now. The ones who were going to share in this great adventure with Maria and myself, who would be acclimating to an alien planet with us in something like forty-eight hours, and those happy to be left behind. Hmm... except something seemed odd about the split at this point, something that was nagging at me. Well, it was still possible that someone might change their minds. Maybe that was all.

I ended up getting the highest score in our lane, just a few points ahead of Kyle, and the two of us swapped over, by agreement, to take on Tess, Liz, and Alex. By the time those ten frames were done, nobody really wanted to stick around much and eat more pizza squares. I had nearly gotten to Maria's new house when she asked me, "What are you doing, honey?"

"Umm... dropping you off, back at home?"

"Oh, didn't I tell... well, I guess maybe I thought it didn't need saying." The look of confusion on my face in the streetlights as I pulled to a stop at the curb must have been pretty eloquent. "It's their WEDDING NIGHT. I can stay away and say that it's all about her and her new husband, this time, that I want to give them the house to themselves."

I had to chuckle, and in the back seat, Laurie was giggling too. "Have you run this by her in advance?"

"Yeah." Maria snickered. "Just when we were getting everything ready in the park bathroom, minutes before the ceremony started. She probably wasn't in a good frame of mind to refuse me, but still, I got the okay."

"Alright, then you'd better come home with me," I said evenly.

"Yeah. Too bad you're probably not going to get the full, umm, benefit of the chance to be alone together, with me hanging around," Laurie put in.

"Oh, was that a hint, girlfriend?" Maria asked her. "Don't worry, we won't try anything that'll make you feel uncomfortable I think, but it shouldn't be a big problem. I mean, we, umm, we had lots of fun out at your place..."

"Which is a sprawling mansion very unlike my little apartment," I said. "Big difference." Nobody really made a reply to that, and I didn't comment any further, possibly because of how tempted I felt. Maria and I had gotten far enough in the discipline and meditation regimen to actually make love without losing our heads in the glory of full-on alien sex, (though the results did seem somewhat of a let-down by comparison,) and I did want to be with her tonight, but if Laurie felt the need to comment on something like this, then we did have to be sensitive to her feelings. I tried for a small subject change, and got it.

"What about Tess and Kyle? Are they going to find other places to spend the night too?"

"Hmm, not entirely sure," Maria admitted. "Tess was with me when I mentioned it, of course, since she was a bridesmaid too. Kyle might go to Ava's new place, but I don't think that there's room for all three of them there - well, maybe physically, but - talk about an awkward night?"

"Yeah, I know," I said. "Well, we can ask them what happened tomorrow when we meet up at the Pod chamber. Assuming that they all show up. Tess will be there, I feel certain."

"Yeah," Maria agreed, taking my hand in hers.

We *were* together later that night, trying our best to be quiet. When I asked Laurie about it, she just said that she'd slept alright on the couch.

----------

"Okay, so have you thought about what you'll tell... people?" Ava asked me as we drove north along that big road. Two eighty five. "Your parents, specifically. Kids at school, and so on?"

"Well, yeah," I said, taking Alex's hand. "We've talked about it some..." Ava's face fell, and I wondered if she was upset at not being part of that talk. But - well, it wasn't like he had parents or would be going to school. "Just a few of the gang. For Max and Michael, there's a built-in explanation with some credibility. Even partially true."

"Hmm..." Ava considered that for a longer moment than I'd have thought she'd need, but hey - it was early in the morning, and maybe she wanted to think of some of the implications before speaking up. "That they headed off to look for their birth parents? That sort of thing." I waited a second to see if she'd say anything else, then nodded. "Might be hard on the folks, thinking that they weren't good enough for Max anymore."

"Yeah, well... at the adoptive parents support group they don't know we know they go to, they say not to think about it in those terms," I countered. "Admittedly, having a kid run away from home abruptly isn't what they call 'a best case scenario' - but in our case, going to Mom and Dad for help tracking our roots down isn't going to help."

"Okay, so let's see," Ava said. "Tess could be on a similar story - not her father, because as far as anyone around here is concerned, Ed was her Dad, and he... well, he just 'disappeared', so she might think that he didn't really run into foul play and she can find him. Or the mother who's somewhat mysteriously missing from her cover story."

"Except that her mom's supposed to be *your* mom, Ava," Alex pointed out. "Isn't that the way you spun it when you came to town? The 'twins separated when very young in the split' story?"

"Oh, umm... yeah, I guess so," Ava admitted. "Well, I guess in those terms, I could have told her where Mom was last." I nodded. "And Liz and Maria - are along because the guys are going, more or less."

"Yeah, that's about the size of it," I said. "Once they're well away, I'll probably mention the Michael/Maria engagement thing - it'll add nicely to the tale." I sighed. "And we still need to sort out what car they're supposedly leaving town in, and 'take care' of it."

"Why?" Ava asked. "Oh - because if there aren't any wheels missing, then people might start to wonder what else really happened?"

"Yeah," Alex agreed. "Isabel's dad is a pretty... determined guy, and he knows how to find a private detective through his work. If we tried to dump a vehicle in some conventional way, it might get found."

"Alright, so - we go unconventional," Ava laughed. "Reduce Big Blue to its constituent molecules? I admit, that sounds like a waste of good automotive engineering, but..."

"Big Blue?" I asked, a second before getting it. "Tess' powder blue SUV - right." It wasn't huge, but it was a pretty big vehicle, I had to admit - and looked larger in comparison to Tess herself.

"Hmm, that makes me think of something," Alex said. "The bit about it being a waste to totally... total the car with your powers. Whichever car it is. Maybe we could disguise or disassemble it in some way that could be put together again."

"Maybe," I admitted, "but that doesn't sound worth the risk. When are we going to be able to use it again?"

"When they come home," Ava pointed out. Oh, right - I hadn't thought of that one, even though I knew I was counting on seeing Max again sometime soon - probably sooner than was realistic. And just at this point, we got to Pod Chamber hill, Alex parked and talked with Ava about cars and Kyle on the way up. They started out on the topic of cars, and switched when somebody suggested asking Kyle about the disassembly thing, since he obviously knew a lot about autos, having worked for so many months as an assistant garage mechanic. But by the time we were up to the chamber door, I realized that Alex was curious about Ava's relationship with young Mister Valenti, and I didn't really mind hearing the little bit of dirt that Ava let slip, myself.

We're all that's going to be left of the gang tomorrow. That thought frightened me enough to make me shiver at that moment. Well, and Laurie, to whatever extent she still 'belonged' without Michael and Maria to hold us together. But the core club would fit on a double date... triple date if we included the parental Valenti-DeLucas. Now that was a scary thought, too - going out on a triple date with parents. Never mind.

Ava opened the door into the chamber, and I brought up the rear behind Alex. From the Jeep parked at the bottom of the hill, I could guess that there'd be people waiting for us inside the Granilith chamber, but I wasn't sure who had been riding with Max. Wasn't too surprised to see Liz, Maria, and Michael there.

"Okay, so, let's see..." Max seemed to do a silent roll call in his head after he saw who we were. "Are we waiting for Tess, or Kyle?"

"What about Laurie?" Ava asked.

"She's sleeping in," Michael put in. "Little doubt that we're really related."

"No," Maria agreed, but she seemed to feel like she needed to excuse the other girl. "Flying here on her own was hard for her, and she and Michael were up talking for hours after we left the bowling alley."

"Oh," Alex's face fell a little. "I was hoping that we'd see more of Laurie around here, but if it's a traumatic experience for her to travel by herself..."

"Well, I guess you'll work that out," Maria said. "Not sure it isn't something that she can get used to easily." Alex and I nodded, appreciating the point, and then there was a silent moment. "Hmm." Maria looked into her engagement ring and concentrated.

"What's she up to?" I had to wonder aloud.

"You remember the trick I told you Lonnie could do with that ring?" Ava said.

"Oh." The gem was really an alien artifact, and my worser half had been able to spy out her surroundings beyond a straight line of sight with it. I'd even experimented with it a bit myself after Michael first took it from her, but after he asked Maria to marry him and gave her the ring - well, for a long time he hadn't wanted her to try using it in case that hurt the baby, and after she lost the baby I'd forgotten that it was anything other than an engagement ring...

"There's a third car down there," Maria said in a hoarse whisper, and... and they're a third of the way up the hill. Tess and Kyle, both of them."

"Come on," Michael told her, his eyes twinkling. "Let's see if we can open the door just before Tess is about to handprint it and startle them."

That idea didn't work out so well, because Maria wasn't able to keep up the spying for so long, and Michael was late enough on the timing that Tess thought she'd actually opened the door herself, and was just surprised by the two of them 'lurking there.'

"Come on, time's getting on," Max called from inside, and soon all nine of us were gathered around. "Anybody feel like they need to say anything beforehand?"

"You're the fearless leader, Maxwell," Michael heckled irrepressibly. "If anybody's going to make with the speechifying, it should be yourself."

"Hmm." Maxwell considered that, and then slid the key into some spot in the wall without a sound, and let his hand hover over it for several seconds. Parts of the wall brightened, and turned into a display that was clearly a complicated countdown. "Alright, we have twenty-four hours. Everyone understands that, right?"

"Exactly," Liz breathed, staring at the Granilith. "I mean, I could understand the Granilith adjusting to one spin of the planet earth, but - it's counting off in seconds, and there are sixty circles there, and twenty-four longer bars. How does it know our conventions so well?"

"Could have been programmed into it way back when the Pod chamber was made," Alex pointed out. "Our units of measurement haven't changed in all those years, and the shapeshifters could have found out about those easily enough."

"Yeah, I guess so," Liz said. "Okay, first minute is about to count off, I think." Sure enough, the moving spot for 'seconds' finished its first lap, and one of the 'minute circles' blinked and went out. It didn't look anything like a traditional Earth clock, but as Liz said, there was no doubt that it was using Earth time.

"So, it's our last day on the planet, officially," Tess said. "Any plans?"

"I think I need to take a nap," Liz said. "I couldn't get much sleep last night either."

"Okay," Max said, stepping close to her and draping an arm across her shoulders. "I'll get you home okay."

"And then what, brother mine?" I asked, smiling theatrically. "This is the last day before we must part, it seems. How to best make it count?"

"Hmm..." Max considered that. "One last road trip?"

"Ehh," Maria muttered. "Remember, the clock is ticking now. I don't think that it's terribly likely that something might strand you far from Roswell, but it makes sense not to tempt fate, at this moment of all times."

"Oh, come on honey," Michael countered. "I mean - that's a good point, but there's such a thing as being too cautious. One quick drive around, avoiding any place that'll be out of cell phone reception and with an intended time of return in mid-afternoon. Even if there's some misfortune, we'll be able to get back to the Granilith on time."

"Hmm... okay, yeah, that seems worth a try," Maria admitted. "Can I come along? Make sure that you guys don't stay out too long?"

Michael nodded, and Max looked over at Tess. "Only four seats, and - well..."

"No, that's okay," she said, "I've got another idea. Tonight, after you're back, we throw the house party to end all parties. Well, apartment party actually, if we can use your place, Michael."

"Hey, what do I care?" he said. "I don't need the security deposit back or anything."

"Hasn't the super been after you because you haven't paid September rent yet?" Maria asked him.

"Seriously, why should I pay up?" he laughed. "So, are you going to be party planning all day, Tess?"

"Why not?" she answered. "Anyone else up for helping out?" Ava and Alex raised their arms, and Ava shot Kyle a sharp stare. He just shrugged.

"I'll come by once I feel a bit more awake," Liz said.

"I wish you could come on the drive too," I said to Alex.

"Yeah, but I didn't call it quickly enough," he said, stepping close and kissing me.

-----------

"Okay, so where do we want to go?" Maria asked as we pulled out of the Crashdown parking lot, after a fairly long public display of farewelling affection between Max and Liz. "Any ideas?"

"Marathon would be too far," Max said, frowning. "So would Las Cruces, or Santa Fe, or Albuquerque. Hmm..."

"Not that I'd want to go back to Las Cruces at this point anyway," I said. "So what is there that's closer to town?"

"The Mesaliko reservation," Michael suggested. "As a first stop, anyway. Say goodbye to River Dog, and thank him for everything that he did to help us out."

"Sure," Maria agreed.

"Uh, about that," I muttered. "We, um, we can still go, and see the cave, and everything. But River Dog... he's not there anymore?"

Michael didn't get it at first. "What? Where would he have gone? He's lived on that patch for something like sixty-plus years..." And then it twigged. "You mean he croa... passed on?" I nodded silently, but maybe he wasn't looking at me that closely. "Well?"

"Yeah, he's passed," Max said softly. "I... I thought that I'd mentioned that to you, but maybe there was never a good time. Isabel and I didn't find out until months later - none of us had gone to see him since - well, since before Tess came to town, and everything. It would have been... well, a few weeks after Vegas. I can't even remember why Dad was so intent about dragging us out to some sort of a reception in Hondo, but we were both there, and - well, Isabel, you were the one who spotted Frickin' Eddie, right?"

Maria broke out into a spate of semi-nervous laughter. "I... I'm sorry, it just seems a little bit strange that even at this point, the poor guy is saddled with that nickname, just because he left you and Liz in the dark... which River Dog basically ordered him to do, but nobody called him Frickin' River Dog, did you?"

"Hmm... no, that's a good point," I admitted. "It's sort of reached the point of being a settled in-joke. We don't call him that to his face - at least, I don't." Shot a look up at Michael, because I wouldn't exactly put such gaucheness beyond him. "His official name, or the one he uses, is Eddie Pronghorn. So, well - it was more like Eddie recognized - I hardly even remembered him, from that one time that we... we brought you up there for the healing ceremony, Michael." There was a short moment of silence as we all thought how close we'd come to losing Michael way back then. "So, just because it was the only thing I could think of to make conversation, I asked about how River Dog was doing - the wrong thing to say, of course, but I didn't anticipate that beforehand. He caught Bronchitis in the first week of January or so somehow - or maybe he caught the bug earlier, during their christmas party or solstice festival or whatever, and then it progressed into his broncial tubes later."

"I... I know that it can be serious, but to die of an infection like that?" Maria asked softly.

"Maybe it would have been very different if he'd been diagnosed early, and rushed to a decent hospital," Max said softly. "But apparently nobody thought anything was odd about not seeing him, even during the cold weather. And after he managed to find some way to call for help, they spent a few more days - well, the ancient healing rituals of the native peoples do have something to recommend them sometimes - but I gather that chanting didn't help his lungs clear out much. He was brought to the old mission hospital eventually - but too late. That's Eddie's opinions possibly, but I can't tell you anything from more personal experience."

"Hmm... maybe I don't want to go visit the reservation anymore," Michael said, even though we were already heading past the city limits on the East road.

"No, we've got to go, Michael," Maria insisted. "Visit his grave or something like that."

"Hmm... actually, I don't think that any of the Navajo cultures are likely to let 'outsiders' go into a burial ground," I muttered. Wasn't quite sure where I'd got that, but it felt right.

"We can ask," Max said, and shrugged a little.

Let's see. We asked, and nobody actually refused us, but at first people were saying that they didn't know River Dog, or where to find his final resting place, and then started giving directions that I still say were purposely confusing or just plain wrong. Eventually, we went back to the cave where Nasedo had drawn the map, and where we'd found the sign from him, and had a short memorial service that somehow turned into a goodbye to him as well, a farewell that none of us had been ready to say yet, back nearly a year ago when he'd been killed. I probably had as many personal issues with Nasedo/Ed Harding as anybody, but - he really had done his best to keep us safe from a hostile world. Now all that was left of him was some dust still stuck inside the Pod chamber, and he wouldn't get to go home on the Granilith, which I know that he'd have appreciated the chance to. Then again, since I was staying on Earth, he'd either have badgered me into coming too, or insisted on staying behind as long as any of 'his' foursome was still on Earth... or would he have thought that protecting King Max on Antar was a higher priority, as he moved into a different kind of danger, perhaps?

The rest of the trip was just as depressing, because of the number of important landmarks outside of town that we couldn't identify anymore - the campsite that we'd gone to on the father and child camping trip, the place where Laurie had been buried in Frasier woods, the radio tower where Max and Liz had found the orb, and the place where Maria's car had broken down, that day that I reluctantly gave her a ride. Oddly enough, one that we COULD find was the spot that Max hit the horse, when driving with Liz, and ended up in the hospital. After trying the cafe where Hubbard nearly shot Max, the power station that I'd snuck into to save Tess from Whittaker, (well, we found the station of course, but Maria and I couldn't agree on where I'd gone through the fence,) and the place where Alex and Kyle had been trapped by the Gandarium, we were all pretty much ready to go back to Michael's place for the party. I thought about the spot where I'd first talked to Grant, but decided that wasn't really important, or something that anybody wanted to be reminded about.

"Let's eat, drink, and be very merry," Maria whispered as Max charged back into Roswell. "For on the morrow, we shall soon be parted."


TO BE CONTINUED...

Part Fifty-five

(Liz):

I must tell you, that at this point in the narrative, I'm sorely tempted to trade on poetic licence and give you a subjective experience of what I went through. I could tell you what it was like to meet up with Max and the rest of my friends at the Pod Chamber that one last time, to get my molecules transferred into the Granilith and wait out the final seconds before the launch. I'd love to describe in detail as that strange, alien silver cone blasted off the surface of the Earth, up into orbital space without even waiting to circle the planet a few times, and rocket through the Solar system heading away from the sun. It entered the mystery of 'warp space' quickly, at which point the five of us who'd come along relaxed in a sort of interior cabin, and marked off the time until we reached the Antarian home world.

Let's see - what else? There was the landing, the explanations, and meeting with new family of Rath, and Zan, and Ava, first conferences with leaders of the Rebel army and plans. We had to travel quickly across the continent in a rough ground vehicle something a bit like an Army Hummer, while the Granilith was towed, with Max's permission, to another hiding place for its safety and ours. Over that period, we started to learn the local language in earnest from our driver and guards, and all sorts of things about Antarian society and history, especially about what had happened since their genetic samples had first been sent towards Earth.

Once that trip was over, we were settled into a cozy and highly defensible castle in a rolling valley, which reminded me of an iceberg in that about eighty percent of it was buried well out of sight under the ground. There were more meetings with different rebel experts and military officers, and Max, Michael, and Tess started to take day-trips and longer vacations at their request. I don't think that any of the Antarians really knew what to do with Maria or myself.

It was one of those days that I remember watching from a kind of battlement balcony as a convoy of vehicles drove up the road towards the castle. The weather was even hotter and dryer than the Roswellian late August that we left, and I was starting to get used to the greenish clouds in the purple sky. As the first car was parking and several Antarian soldiers spread out from it into an honor guard, I spotted Tess' blonde hair in the middle vehicle, and then Max next to her. I was so excited that they were back, that I waved and called from the edge, and Max looked up at me and nodded. Tess made an exaggerated 'safe' gesture from a baseball umpire's repertoire, and I took that to mean that I should stay where I was, because that's what you do when you're safe on base in the game. So I hung around, and in a few minutes, Max and Tess came in, huffing and puffing from all the stairs that they'd had to climb so quickly... and both with very serious faces on. I could tell immediately that Max had something to tell me that he didn't especially want to say, and that he knew I wouldn't want to hear.

The notion hit me immediately, but I couldn't make myself believe it immediately. Max said that he and Tess had been to one of the Royal estates where Zan and Ava had spent time, that they'd had another intimate moment like the one at the Junior prom that I'd walked into, and were remembering more of their old connection. He said that he still loved me, but was falling for Tess too, and he had no idea what to do about it except for us to take a break and all three of us to see what happened.

Okay, I've been on this tack for most of a page, and I hope you don't hate me too much for it. I could have gone for at least a chapter on this material, describing every little detail, because that's how vividly I still remember every detail. But this seems like the right balance between explaining things as they happened to me, and not being too deceptive - because they didn't REALLY happen. It was just as things were starting to sink in, and I was trying to decide between throwing a temper tantrum or just breaking down and crying... that I woke up in my own bed, in the apartment above the Crashdown Cafe, in Roswell. It was the day before Max and I were supposed to leave, and all of that stuff I just described had been a vivid dream or nightmare, as I caught up on sleep from having been up nearly the whole night before.

I thought about that dream as I got back up and showered, and as Alex drove me over to Michael's place to help get ready for the 'Last day on earth' party. Didn't even mention it to him, but what I'd experienced in my sleep preoccupied me. As upsetting as the last scene had been, I didn't really believe that it could ever happen if I went with Max. Maybe way back when, around the time of the Junior Prom, I'd have been worried. But Max had shown that even after an 'intimate moment' with Tess, he wouldn't stop pursuing me, and I didn't think that was likely to change just because we went to another planet. But... but it was hard to deny that a nightmare like that was probably about anxiety to do with the launch, and I probably needed to figure out what was really bothering me before we left.

Nobody worked too hard on the party stuff, and I remember joking around with Tess while we went through Michael's DVD collection, looking for something that a good fraction of the gang would be happy with watching. She really had become a friend, as unlikely as that had seemed at the start of the summer, never mind last year when she first came to Roswell, and I did wonder how going to Antar with her would change our relationship. For Maria and myself, she would be the only other Earthborn girl that we could talk to, and yet... the distinction of being half alien, or mysteriously royal, might loom larger between us once we were around her people, like I'd pictured it in the dream. Max would still care just as deeply for me, even if the Antarians didn't understand why he had brought some human girl along with him, and the same would hold true for Michael and Maria. But would they really be busy with things that we wouldn't be allowed to participate in directly??

Just as the six of us, (Kyle, Ava and Tess, myself, Alex, and Laurie,) were starting to get really impatient, the phone rang, and it was Michael calling home. Apparently they were still on the other side of Hondo, but driving back home as quickly as they could. Ava rolled her eyes, took Kyle's hand, and asked him if he wanted to 'get some air' with her while we waited. Alex asked her if she was really thinking of breathing fresh air or sharing Kyle's, and I have to admit I snickered.

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

The party was pretty great once our four wandering souls finally got back to town and the festivities could be started with a will. Michael, Kyle, Ava, and Laurie quickly started one of the older 'Die Hard' sequels playing in the living room, while nearly everybody else gathered around the kitchen counter/table. The first time I saw Max, almost all of my insecurities about the dream and leaving with him fled my mind, and I could almost feel myself glowing with happiness.

"Okay, what do we think?" Alex asked, munching on a little english muffin mini pizza. "Play a game? Balderdash or something?"

"I've got a party game," Maria put in, "but it's nothing so ordinary, and kind of more than just a game at the same time. It was something that I was thinking of when we were driving back home."

"Well, go on, Maria," Isabel prompted after a moment's silence.

"It goes like this. We... we've all made our choices, more or less, about whether we're going to stay or go, which basically means which world we're going to be living in for the next few years at least. That choice opens a lot of doors and closes a lot of others. So... I was thinking that maybe we could agree to trade favors." There was another quiet pause. "Maybe it's unfair for those of us that are leaving - I mean, there's a lot of favors that I know I have to ask, and on the other side - none of us really know what's waiting on Antar, and probably most of the things that anybody would be most interested in... it's not really of much value to you to know that we'll do our best to find out about something for you, if it'll be years before you get an answer back, at the least..."

"No, I don't think it's that unfair, Maria," Isabel replied. I should have known that she'd be the first one to jump for it. "If... if you can go to Queen Alinda in my stead, and tell her a bit about me, that I'm sorry I can't meet her myself, and I'm sorry about whatever Vilandra did..." She breathed deeply, probably trying to keep from crying, and held Alex tight. "What would I have to do in exchange?"

"Invite my Mom over for Christmas, or... or go to her place if she really wants to have a big dinner for the Valenti boys." Kyle sighed, and I giggled quietly. "Even if she has them... the first holidays without me are probably going to hit her hard."

"How much have you told your Mom about leaving, Maria?" Alex asked her quietly. "Does she have ANY notion yet?"

"No, not really," she whispered back. "I... I know that sucks on one level, but... but I'm scared of her pitching a fit, and I never wanted to upset things in the middle of the lead-up to her big day. M... Mister Valenti has a message that I recorded, for her to play after we take off." She scoffed slightly. "I... I wish I could have told her in a better way, but..."

"No, you - you have to make these choice yourself. I can understand you being dissatisfied, but we're not judging," Isabel promised her. "I'm not sure what arrangements Max has made for our folks, come to think of it."

"V-video on my computer desk," he said, trembling just slightly in a way that nobody could see, but I felt. "You'll know when to show it to her."

With a bit of a lurch in the pit of my stomach, I realized that this was somthing that I should have taken care of as well. Michael didn't have parents here in Roswell, though he did have adults who were concerned about him and would notice his disappearance, But that was nothing compared to the connection I had with my Mom and Dad... the fact that I owed them as much of an explanation as I could manage of where I was going, and why. I'd thought about this before, but had never managed to put the words together, and now I was running out of time. More than that, I felt like even if I had days and days left, I wasn't sure what I could possibly say to them to explain any of this.

Max obviously noticed some of my distress, at least. "Hey, come on, it's not too late," he said in a whisper. "Michael's got a camera. We can do your farewell message right here, and drop it off on our way out of town."

I nodded silently, because I wasn't sure if I could say anything out loud at that moment. Maybe I was afraid of what I might say, of how Max would take it if I said that it wasn't having the camera that was the problem, but having the nerve to sit in front of it.

"Well, we got wide of the game here," Alex pointed out. "Anything I can do for you guys? Max, Liz??"

I sort of grunted in reply, and Max shrugged and said, "Maybe this isn't a good time." I nodded a momentary appreciation to him and headed off to the bathroom to sit on the can alone and try to organize something sensible out of my thoughts.

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

So, after a while - well, Maria came in to talk to me, and I mentioned that I had a dream about going to Antar and being really lonely and isolated that had shaken me up, and she did the 'sympathetic, but encouraging' thing, trying to cheer me on for it. I can understand why she went that way instead of taking a seriously objective look at the pros and cons with me and if going really made sense - she was very committed to the journey for her own reasons, after all, and definitely wanted me to come along so that I'd be company for her. I certainly couldn't hold that against her, but something deep down inside me wasn't convinced. I didn't mention the Max and Tess part, because I thought it would have the wrong effect on any kind of credibility I did have with her.

So then, I got back out, and let Max lead me into the bedroom, and managed to put together a decent goodbye video for my parents that he approved of. Myself, I still wasn't impressed - I had fallen back on the same sort of tactic that Maria had used on me, being very reassuring and upbeat, telling them that I'd be okay, and that they'd be okay without me, and that they should be happy for me and this journey that I was going to go on, without any details or any kind of a rational argument. And then I let Max talk me into playing 'Clyde's Cloud Castles Two,' because when we left, I wouldn't get a chance to do ordinary stuff like that for a long time again.

The hours of the night passed along more quickly than I would have expected. Kyle brought out some vodka and rum - 'strictly for the human-born', and most of us did actually take the drinks that he started to mix up, in honor of the special occasion. Aside from a half-mouthful of wine that my Dad let me try once the season before the shooting, it was the first time I ever drank anything, and I was surprised at the slightly sour taste and the tingly sensation that quickly started in my temples. There was good music, and another movie, maybe something scary... and kissing Max, and holding on to him as we left the living room, hands all over each other.

I'm pretty certain that I'd overdone the vodka lemonades for my first time, but somehow when Max got to third base, both of us completely naked on Michael's bed, the shocked sensation of what was going on hit me back to cold sobriety, like your cliche splash of ice water. I pulled myself away from Max's fingers, shivering at even that sensation, and blurted out, "I'm sorry, Max. I'm... I'm sorry for leading you on. But we can't do this."

He was disappointed and hurt, even though the light was dim on his face, I could tell. "I... I'm sorry," he muttered, and grabbed for his undershorts. "Thought that you... that we both wanted thith. It could have been - might have been a great way to commemorate our last night..."

"Yeah, yeah, it might," I agreed, going for my own top. "But... but as much as I've been looking forward to... to doing this with you, I don't feel like this is the right moment." Even though my body was already missing his touch. "I mean, I'm a bit t--tipsy, and you... you didn't have one of Kyle's drinks, did you, Max?"

"No, come on, after Valentine's day I know better," he muttered, and then coughed. "Last year's Valentine's day. But Ava - well, she had this trick that one of the other Dupes taught her, to get an apparently safe buzz when you're a hybrid. You need a banana, and some peach, and cinnamon, and honey, and a blender..."

"I don't want a fuckin' recipe," I muttered, and then regretted it. "Sorry, umm... glad that you found a way to, well, enjoy yourself tonight. You guys definitely deserve a chance to blow off a bit of steam safely. But... well, maybe we should just finish getting dressed and go back out, huh?"

"Yeah, of course, honey," Max said, and silently passed over some of my clothes. I smiled as I took them.

Not long after we emerged from the bedroom, Michael and Maria made their move for the privacy that space afforded. I stared after them for a little while. After everything that we'd all been through tonight, there seemed to be no chance that either would be 'on the wagon' in terms of the alien birth control thing, with their minds properly balanced to keep the mating instinct from influencing them. But then... considering that they'd be on Antar in not too long, maybe it wasn't worth worrying about that. (And the same thing could be said about Max and me... if it was a good thing that I'd put on the brakes, or even if it wasn't, that was probably the last chance that I'd had to make a decision about it instead of letting my hormones make it for me.)

"Time for a Malcolm marathon!" Kyle called out, bending towards the tv and nearly losing his balance.

-----------

(Maria):

"Oh, no," I groaned as consciousness returned. Mostly naked, curled up against an apparently all-naked Michael. Yeah, right, poor poor pitiful me. But that wasn't my biggest worry, a possible morning after regret. No... I turned around, looking for his little LED display clock radio, and fought against the first stirrings of panic.

"Michael, wake up, honey," I said, prodding him as vigorously as I could without having to worry too much about setting off his counter-attack reflex. (Yes, I did get into trouble with that once - it was last fall, before we had gone all the way - he'd asked me to stay over and just sleep, because - well, that was a long story. But when I woke him up for school, he managed to throw me a few feet across the room before clueing in that I wasn't a skin of a killer dupe or some other sort of evil alien. Never mind.) "We've slept too late, and we cannot, cannot, CAN NOT be late for this flight? Do you know what I'm saying?"

His eyes flew wide open. "Yeah, I'm up," he announced, just before trying to rise to his butt and half-succeeding. He got a glimpse of the LED, and then tried to stand and got a sort of nervous crouch instead. But his voice was anything but tentative. "Hello, gang!" he called loudly. "Time is short, and we need to move out RIGHT now. There will be no time for packing, other than to grab luggage that has already been prepared, no changing, no use of the bathroom, and no stops along the way. And by all the stars, Max, Tess, you'd better still be here, because I am *not* going to chase you down at this point. Do I make myself clear?"

For a second, there was no reply, and I started to feel worried. "Maybe they already cleared out and left us to sleep?" I mumbled, but I didn't really believe it. We'd have gotten a wake-up call before this, wouldn't we, at the very least? If anybody was in shape to deliver one...

"AM I UNDERSTOOD?" Michael roared again, heading towards the door.

"You're, umm... you're presuming a lot, soldier," Max said sleepily from outside. "But, ergh, the point is well taken. Come on, people, wake up, time's a-wasting."

"I just have one question, Spaceboy," I muttered. "Does 'no changing' include 'no dressing'? Because I think that the trip would be very fun if we have to go to another star with you like that, but..."

He looked down, seemed to notice the full Michael for the first time, and shook his head with a soft growl. "No. *No changing* means no taking off clothes that you do already have on," he clarified, loud enough to be heard outside our room.

I don't think that we stuck entirely to Michael's rules, mostly because there are certain limits beyond which you simply cannot hurry people in the process of waking up and getting ready to go and face the outside world, even in a situation like this, so while the last of the crew were waking, several people did use the bathroom, and I threw some of Michael's things into his bag for him. But we left the apartment in something like ten minutes from the first look I had at the clock, which was pretty good, and the place was a total mess. I felt sorry for the building superintendant if none of our friends ever came back to help clean it up. But that really wasn't anything that he, or I, could worry about this point.

As we charged out of Roswell into the desert twilight, having made no stops indeed on the way out of town, I thought about trying to get a bit more of a nap in the seat next to Michael, and then realized that I was way to keyed up to even close my eyes. Over the past eleven months since Michael had first shown me the Pod chamber, I actually hadn't been that often, but it did seem very appropriate that this would be our last road trip from Roswell, or at least, the last for the forseeable future. It might be hard to find our way back to Earth, but I did not want to give up the idea of heading back. At some time. But right now, I had to admit that I was pretty excited, (and nervous,) about leaving.

As it happened I was in the back of Tess' SUV, along with Michael and Ava, with Kyle riding shotgun up in the front. Isabel and Alex, Max and Liz had gone in the Jeep of course. Once the SUV had been 'disposed of', it would be Isabel and Alex, Kyle and Ava riding back in the Jeep. Laurie was sleeping through the whole thing once again - it was a bit disappointing to not get her a better goodbye, but she wasn't used to this kind of a schedule, and she'd had a lot of Kyle's rum punch last night. (I felt my own head buzzing with a bit of a hangover too, but somehow it didn't detract from the sense of specialness around everything.)

"So when you get to Antar, is the Granilith already locked into that place that you have to go to?" Kyle asked Tess nervously. "North Tacoma or wherever?"

"I don't think it was an available option yet, but we'll take care of it after the launch, honey," she told him tensely. "Nobody's going to forget about that part, not when the alternative is landing someplace where Kivar can capture us all."

"No, I guess not," I agreed. "How are we doing on time before the launch?"

"It's going to be tight, with the climb and everything, but okay," Michael said. "There'll probably even be time for everyone to gather in the Granilith chamber and watch us go aboard."

"How does that work, again?" Kyle asked. "Does it open a door and you can climb in?"

"No, not really," Ava said. "There's no space in the Granilith for passengers while it's in real space, it's solid, but it's capable of holding living molecules in suspension. Max, Michael, and Tess will use their powers to seperate their molecules, and Liz's and Maria's, and they'll sort of transport inside like on Star Trek or whatever."

"Alright," I muttered.

"Is there something else that we're forgetting?" Kyle asked, still shifting nervously.

"Probably, but I don't think that it's anything important," Tess said. "Right now, making sure that we go is the important thing. Everything else will work itself out."

None of us really had anything to add to that.

-----------

Both cars parked in the usual place at the bottom of Pod Chamber hill, (with help from their respective drivers,) and we charged up as one stream of teenagers, without many words spoken at first. It was maybe three fifths of the way up when that changed in another of those moments that change everything. Liz turned to Max and blurted out, "I can't do this. Sorry, honey, but I can't go!"

"We're on the clock!" Michael called out. "Say your piece when we get up to the chamber."

"No, I need to say it now," Liz insisted. "While I think the words are still in order."

"Yeah, okay," Tess agreed, and so we sort of slowed down, still climbing, but also listening.

"Max, sweetie," Liz said, and she reached up to stroke his cheek with her hand. "I love you SO much. If I let it, my love for you could become my whole world, everything that matters to me. But... but this doesn't really seem to be the right time for that. Because - because where you have to go, there are going to be other responsibilities, other important things that you have to do. There's almost literally going to be another world resting on your shoulders, and you're not going to be able to make me your first priority." I was somewhat surprised to hear a sob escape from Liz. "And - and if I went on the Granilith with you, that would be what you'd have to do, to keep me from resenting you, for inspiring me to leave my family, everything else on the Earth that I knew, behind... all your attention. I *know* that I can't fairly ask you for that, so - so the only way out, the only solution, is to stay here and..."

"Ssh," Max said, stopping and embracing her. We all waited - Michael and Tess and I were unwilling to go further ahead without Max. "I think that I understand... can't say that I'm not disappointed, but I don't hold this against you. But... I'll come back here and look for you when I can. It may take me a while... but *I will always come for you.*"

A ripple of appreciation went through the entire group as he quoted Westley from 'The Princess Bride.' "Death might not stop true love," Liz breathed back in a whisper, "but don't you dare die over there, m'kay?"

"Wouldn't even think of it," Max said. "As long as you don't agree to marry some evil prince... or anybody, really, that'd be good."

"I think that I can agree to that, yeah," Liz said, nodding, and looked around. "This scene - I think that I saw this coming, in a flash, long ago. Didn't realize what it would be about, at the time, but all of us here, on this path, I saw it while kissing you, back when we got back together after the prom." She turned around behind her. "Even you, Ava, and this was well before you came back."

"Cool," Ava agreed, without that much enthusiasm.

"Okay," Max said, after kissing Liz emphatically and letting her go. "Time's getting close enough that I don't think it's the best idea for anybody not boarding to go all the way up to the chamber. We can have our goodbyes now and be okay, but not too long, okay?"

I took my cue and rushed past him to hug Liz. "Sorry that you won't be coming along, I'd have loved to have my best friend with me," I said, "but I do understand." She nodded and went 'uh-huh.' "Alex, Kyle, girls... you take good care of my BFF for me, right? It... well, it's going to be hard for her at the start. I can just tell."

"You can cound on us," Alex said. "Best of luck with the Antarians."

"Thanks." I hugged him too, and waited to give Isabel a hug after Michael and Max were through with her, and then we were out of time, and I hurried further up the pathway, waving into space ahead of me, knowing that those behind would still see the gesture and know that it was meant for them.

Tess hurried on ahead just enough to open up the door by the time the rest of us got to the Pod Chamber, and Max led us on towards the Granilith. The countdown was just ticking past two minutes as we got there, and I heard Michael breathe a sigh of relief that we had that much of a window.

"I wonder what'll happen to the Pods when we launch?" I muttered. It wasn't a new thought, but we hadn't been able to figure out how much of an effect the blast would have on what was left behind - which was why our friends were staying a safe distance away from the mountain peak. Max ignored me, went up to the Granilith cone, and started to concentrate while touching it. I sort of expected him to fuzz away into a swirl of color, or maybe float into the Granilith as his outline grew hazier, but it wasn't like that. His body, and the little bag that he'd been carrying, vanished in a bright flash, and at first I was worried that something had gone wrong. But then I could see a picture of him in the reflection from the Granilith, and realized that he was already inside. Tess went too, and I fought back a surge of jealousy at the thought of the two of them being together with Liz staying behind - Liz had made her choice, and Max had made his when it came to Tess. His heart belonged to Liz, and it would stay hers no matter how long they were apart.

Michael came up behind me. "Are you ready?" he asked in a low voice.

"Yeah, just hoping that the Granilith language stuff works alright, and we'll be able to talk to people when we get there." All of a sudden that made a mental connection, and I nearly staggered. "When we get there... I know what's going to happen. I remember it - from that night that we were together, up at the makeout point. The night that we conceived our daughter, maybe. How we meet your cousin, and Alinda's personal aide or whatever, and Max comes up the stairs with a little Antarian nephew or some relation like that..."

"Yeah, I know about all of that too," Michael said. "Ever since we woke up this morning. Wasn't sure how to explain it to you."

"You knew..." I breathed.

"Remember this one thing - it's very important," he told me.

"What?"

"No matter what - look as if you're surprised by everything."

I paused a moment, then laughed and kissed him, and with that, Spaceboy used his powers, and we were kissing inside the Granilith...

Three, two, one... TAKEOFF!!

THE END


AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Until yesterday, I didn't think that 'Fateful moments' would end at this point, but considering how far I've come, I think that this is the right place to put those two words. This fanfic comes in at around 360 thousand words, which is nearly enough for a Steven King trilogy. If I get a good opportunity next year, I may be hacking and slashing it down to a more reasonable length, (which would probably also include taking out the ADULT content so it can be posted in places that don't allow such material in fanfiction.)

What hasn't changed is that the overall storyline doesn't end here. But the bit that involves Max coming back, and what's been going on with Liz and the rest of the gang that stayed on Earth in the meantime, will be made into a sequel instead of a 'second section.'

To all those who have kept up with this fanfiction, or discovered it over the 6 years that I've been working on it and liked it... thanks for your feedback and good wishes! Roswell may be slipping further back into the past as Earth counts time, (it first aired over 9 years ago, wow, and the first two 'Roswell High' books were published in 1998,) but somehow these characters are still a part of me deep inside.