BENJAMIN

It was strange to sit there, butt growing numb on the cool, 
sharp rocks and 'see' through the eyes of a whole universe of 
strangers. On Dale I knew everyone. There was no such thing as a 
stranger and our mindspeech, except when under the influence of 
the most potent of Lichenleaf and our other mind expanding 
plants, was limited to a few words implanted here and there like 
darts. In comparison this... There are no words to describe this 
kind of wonder. The sheer numbers, the wisps of private hopes 
and desires that managed to flow through me like the lyrics of a 
song, and so much texture. Did the sharp-edged thoughts all come 
from men and the sad and soft ones from the women? Women... 
Control... Mulder was right... I couldn't allow myself to become 
disturbed by even so marvelous a distraction as the very idea of 
women, especially now that they ask why we have come.

I 'saw' Mulder's answer in images of machinery and a flash of 
light. That would be the light from the first small explosion, 
the one that would trigger ever and ever widening rings of 
destruction. In his 'tale' only one tiny ship escapes while in 
the background the rock we are now so uncomfortably sitting on 
goes up like a fiery bomb leaving... nothing.
                                        
There was no panic. These people have learned that they must 
suck in patience as readily as breath if they are to survive. 
Still, the calm was to their credit.

*We have a ship, * they repeated like so much ghost wind.

*But we don’t have a pilot. * This came from Billy and seemed a 
message that he has said before.

*Disable the artificial gravity, * came from a no-nonsense woman 
with whom the name Kathy seemed to be associated. It was weird 
to get to know the 'voice’ of a person who wasn’t even there but 
I got to know hers. *It's what they always do before they take 
off. After that, spin alone will lift the ship off this turd. 
Saves fuel, too. *

*Big deal, we're off the ground, * Hector interrupted, a lean, 
rock-bearing brown man, or so I could see through his neighbor's 
eyes. *Then we're adrift. Without a pilot or navigator we'll 
still need someone to pick us up. *  
                 
If thoughts could turn, they turned on Mulder, but Mulder sat 
silent in front of me, a dark silhouette against the purple sky, 
as quiet in his mind as in his body.

*Charley will take you, * I said, the shapeshifter's image 
rising in my mind. *He's the one who sent us here..*

There was a stunned silence and then a general hiss like a 
thousand snakes.

*Not that one!* And the hiss rose quickly to a dull roaring, 
nearly chaos.

A burst like an explosion from some vast mountain of air 
exploded amidst the arguing thoughts, scattering them like 
petals. *Stop!* and there was instant silence.

Heart pumping wildly in alarm, I found myself looking for a 
storm and found only Mulder, sitting bolt-upright, face hard. 
Sweat glistened around his hairline despite the cool, thin air. 
*He'll take you if I ask him. There isn't anyone else. But let's 
leave that discussion for later. You have far worse problems. 
You say that you have a ship. You must think that it’s large 
enough. How are you going to get everyone inside this ship 
without being stopped? *

*My friends and I work at the camp where the ship is," the woman 
Kathy explained. *We lug in supplies, we scrub up after their 
filth, but we aren't any more dumb rock carriers than Billy's 
group is. We know the way in, * she said with confidence. * We 
know when they aren’t watching. * 

*And we've been preparing for this for months, * Billy 
explained, and from below at the end of the line of rock 
carriers I caught his eye through a parting in the long, lank 
hair that fell over his forehead. He was as assured as the 
woman. Strong. But then they had been through so much that they 
would have to be strong or they would have laid down and given 
up long before. "Whenever a ship is ready to depart, they blow a 
horn, like a fog horn.*

The young man Gary, who had disappeared in the Oregon woods at 
the same time that his friend dropped a sizzling flashlight, 
seamlessly continued the narrative. *When the whistle blows, the 
gray workers, the elders, and all of their allies retreat into 
their own closed rooms underneath each research facility because 
the gravity is going to be shut off. The scum on the work 
details, that’s us, have our own bunkers for these times. Dark 
and smelly, they're little more than sardine cans.* If a mind 
could spit in disgust, this one would have.  *But we're such 
obedient, will-less beetles that no one seriously checks to see 
that we actually hide out in there. We could as easily head at a 
dead run to the ship camp. The most distant work crews are only 
twenty minutes away. There's always at least that much time 
before the gravity generators are actually powered down to the 
point that it's dangerous.*

*What about the air?* I asked, envisioning it drifting off as 
well.

*The spin and the barrier hold it in, what there is of it, * 
Gary explained.

*What we're telling you, * the woman Kathy insisted sharply, * 
is that we can get to the ship, most of us anyway. We can’t help 
the test subjects in their cages in the labs. It’s something we 
all understand because it could happen to any of us. *

Mulder stood, absently rubbing his numb backside. He was looking 
off to our right where another glow over the too-near horizon 
lit the sickly colored sky. I knew as well as he did, by 
whatever method such information was conveyed, that the ship 
camp was there. *Too long,* he mused, his emotions so dulled it 
was if they were under water. "If you don't want to be followed, 
we need to blow this rock, which we were sent to do anyway, but 
if we have to wait for your people from the far camps to get to 
the ship we'll need to set too long of a timer. There's too 
great a risk that the explosives will be discovered.*

*Then set your changes a few minutes AFTER the warning horn. 
Wait for that. The 'masters' can move fast when their little 
gray skins are on the line. Most will be safely hidden away by 
then.*

*And we must prepare soon,* Kathy interjected. * At the latest 
the ship will be here only a few days. It's been here too long 
already. *

*Our people in the far camps only need the word to know to start 
immediately. You're going to be targeting the main generators, I 
take it?* Billy asked.

*I need to check on that,* Mulder replied clearly irritated at 
being rushed. *If we do, and IF I remember the plan of the 
camps, timing will be very close. *

*Agent Mulder, we don't have a choice!* Billy snapped. *Any day, 
any hour, especially since all this mind traffic has started 
going over the air and distracting so many of our people, we 
risk their finding out that we’ve been faking our reaction to 
the last few rounds of biologics. Once discovered, we'll be 
watched so we can't get away and later drugged with stuff that 
might just work the next time. This may be our only chance! *

Mulder began to pace. Worse than that the worry line on his brow 
was just about as deep as I had ever seen it. Fingers traced 
furrows in his unkempt hair. The storm of his emotions 
significantly darkened what little light there was in the day. 
"What's the problem?" I asked in real words as if that would 
keep it more private between us. He blinked as his mind shifted 
to this more primitive form of communication.. 

"Ben, I've never been happy about Charley's plan. Yes, I have 
killed, more than my share, but in defense of my life, or 
Scully, or the innocent, when the perpetrator is right before 
me. But this...” His arms came up in strength and then dropped 
empty. “Benjamin, despite her best efforts, Mrs. Mulder never 
raised her son to be no terrorist. Even if we get most of the 
prisoners off, there will be the ones we won't get off. And what 
about the aliens here? Not all are guilty except guilty of doing 
their job. *

*He means he's a policeman, not a soldier, * Someone mindspoke. 
So much for privacy. * There will be guilt. It's not easy to 
kill for an idea. * It was Raymond speaking, the hard words not 
without sympathy. *I was a soldier, marine. Even for us, it was 
hard. *

Mulder's head hung wearily. *Charley's is a rather all or 
nothing solution. I would be happier just blowing up a lab or a 
computer system.*

*I don't think that we're going to have that choice,* I answered 
gloomily. 

All at once I had to touch him. This pure mind stuff had left me 
cold. Odd that I should react so since I was the one who had 
been raised on a world where such talent was merely uncommon, 
not rare, not alien. How much more keenly must Mulder be feeling 
this. But he didn't reciprocate with a hardy handshake or a 
manly jab to the arm. He didn't even lean into my hand on his 
arm. It was as if he'd been taking stone icon lessons from 
Charley he was that inside himself. Maybe he was that afraid 
that he would break if moved one inch from center.

He must have sensed my worry for he eventually turned to me, 
apology in those dark eyes.

"Sorry."

"How can I help?"

"Nothing now but later probably a lot."

I don't know who I thought I was hiding the thought from but I 
leaned closer to him, whispering, "Mulder, can we -- can YOU -- 
save these people?"

His tight-lipped smile had not one grain or humor in it. "Just 
how large of a ship would that take?"

Stupid, that that was what he was holding so close about. Fear, 
real gut-squirming fear. "Maybe it wouldn't need to be so large. 
Maybe we'll have to stack them in the corridors like cordwood." 
He expression was dubious. "So let's go find out, unless you 
want to let this Kathy at the ship yard just show it to you." I 
tapped my temple.

Mulder stretched to ease what must be a tension headache of 
mammoth proportions. "You're right, but this is something I need 
to see with my own eyes. Find out how much worrying I really 
need to do.
                                        
So we began picking our way through the sharp, black rock with 
all those disembodied voices whispering behind us. It was like 
walking at the head of an army of ghosts.                                     
                         


Distances are deceptive when the horizon is so close. Only ten 
minutes took us within a stone's throw of the most outer of Ship 
Camp's perimeter of flood lights and that included time spent 
being sure that we had no visitors before we crossed an open 
space. Mulder had walked with jaw set, back straight and eyes 
burning. I knew that look. Into hell and damn the consequences. 
As before, we crept up upon the last hundred yards and found a 
shadow from which we look down upon the camp. Unlike Gamma 
Camp's rugged terrain, Ship Camp's great smooth bowl looked as 
if it had been formed from molten rock that had been allow to 
cool slowly in a mold and then rubbed smooth. The floodlights 
were arranged in two great circles, an outer circle of white and 
an inner circle of red. 

And in the center, in the very center sat the ship. Billy's 
ship, Gary's ship, Kathy's ship, and now my ship and Mulder's.

I heard Mulder's strangled intake of breath and only then 
allowed myself to breathe. The words that came out were a 
proverb from Dale: "The gods have sent us snow soup!"  The 
meaning is that you've been given something useless, even 
harmful. We say it a lot in the late winter when the food's 
nearly gone and we get another storm.

We had wished for a courier ship that we could cram full, 
something not much larger than the Beast that Mulder had first 
trained on. 

What we got was more than just more snow, we got a blizzard.

The ship was a monster. Nothing that could fly, even in my 
imagination, could be so large. This was a mountain, a mountain 
of startling, white metal. 

Next to me Mulder was shaking, his face bone-white. 

"I t-take it that the Beast was smaller?" I asked. I'd been led 
to believe that that had been agony enough to pilot, most of the 
time anyway.

A smile curled up, so brittle that I thought it would crack. "If 
Ray were a chair and the Beast a house -- "

"Then this would be?'

"All of the Dale highlands. A moon."

"Mulder, you can't!"

"I thought your opinion was that I didn't have choice."

"Not this. We'll wait for another ship."

A voice came out of the dark, a real voice. "No!" That one word 
sent a chill up my back because the tone was that which I had 
heard perhaps twice in my life. A woman's voice. Simultaneously, 
we stared behind our left shoulders. The woman was as tall as a 
man and had short, dark, curly hair. Her features in the sharp 
shadows of this place were broad so she may have been handsome 
rather than pretty except for the six long scars that 
partitioned her face. Like the others She was thin though in a 
completely different way than a man. This had to be Kathy. 
Except for the scars, which I never would have imagined on a 
woman, her appearance went with her mental voice.

"He can't," I told her, putting as much horror in my voice as 
possible. "You don't understand."

"He must. Now that he's here, we're making mistakes, missing 
cues, reading instructions not yet given. It's only a matter of 
hours, not days, and we are dead."

"You'll kill him. You can't want that!"

"We have to try something!" She dropped down beside us in our 
shadow with what was to me nearly a supernatural grace. She was 
so close that our knees nearly touched. I thought I would swoon. 
I might as well have been just one more of the Rock Four's ten 
billion building blocks, however, for all the attention she paid 
to me. Mulder had it all. "Don't shut us out," she begged. "We 
know. Your pain is ours, your fear ours, but we have our own as 
well. We... are... terrified! Not only for ourselves but also for 
what, through us, they want to do to our families, to everyone 
we left behind. What they have done to some of us, and plan to 
do to the rest of us and our world is an abomination. We have to 
get out of here! We have to!" 

Mulder had moved so that his pale face was in shadow but I could 
still see his eyes smoldering. They burned into the face of this 
woman. "And if I fail? Then we all fail." 

"There is failure only if this hell survives. You have the means 
to destroy it. Then do so. Our survival is secondary. We accept 
the possibility that we may not escape. We don't desire death 
but we have no fear of it. Better to fall back into the funeral 
pyre of this terrible place than to become their tools and bring 
their kind of horror back to Earth. We're being cruel and we 
know it, but we have been gone too long, we have been dragged 
over wastelands of cut glass too many times. Agent Mulder, we 
just want to go home, or if not that, then at least we'll know 
that our lives did not contribute to their suffering." There was 
not acceptance of this second option in her voice, however. This 
is one who had walked through the wastelands of cut glass and 
probably dragged legions along with her, whether they liked it 
at the time or not. Compromise was not in her nature.

No one said or even thought anything after that for Mulder had 
shut that door, that gateway that allowed the thoughts from 
nearly a hundred minds to flow through. The strained moment 
became two. Mulder rose and paced. Temporarily out of the shadow 
of the jag of rock we had been hiding in, he no longer looked 
stern only tired. Incredibly tired. 

"I know what you mean." Wearily, he looked in my direction. 
"It's almost over, Ben. The last mile. One last sprint before 
the end. But oh, God...."

"Mulder, stop..." I was going to say but someone beat me to it.

Another woman rose up from behind a pile of slag in the 
direction from where Kathy had come. I notice such things the 
same way that I would notice an elephant in my cabin. This one 
was different from Kathy, however. She was as small and fair and 
slight as Kathy was tall and dark and hard as a tree that had 
been standing in the wind and the weather too long. 

Mulder was instantly aware as well and his reaction was far 
greater. Stunned would only begin to describe it.

"Ness..." he breathed, the word hardly making a sound.






BENJAMIN

"Fox Mulder. I wasn't sure whether to believe them." Her voice 
was not loud. The words were strangled with emotion. Clearly, 
these two knew each other. Then I remembered the girl's name 
from stories Mulder had told of his time on the space station 
called City.

"I didn't want to come," she said, "but they begged me to. They 
thought that I'd be able to convince you. I told them that they 
didn't need any intercession from me, that you would do the 
honorable things. You always have." 

Mulder winced visibly.

"You look well," she added into the silence.

"For the moment." There was a world of information in that 
statement. Information such as 'no, I haven't been, but don't 
bother to ask.'

"I heard you were still with Rodan. As I remember you call him 
Charley."

"Also for the moment."

Gingerly, Mulder sat down again on a boulder that looked 
slightly more comfortable than the others did. "How did you get 
here? Is all of the family here?"

"Yes, all of us. A couple of months after you were taken away, 
Rodan came to see us. He was cold. He said that they didn't need 
a control group any more." She looked close to tears. 

Mulder had told me so the story many months ago as we worked in 
my fields; all about a group of humans, the Family, who had been 
maintained for generations in a few rooms on a huge space 
station. Theirs had been a lonely, purposeless existence. "We 
were thrown onto a ship and brought here, just dumped into the 
general pot of available human subjects." She no longer even 
attempted to smile. "So many are dead now from one experiment or 
another -- Rene, my sister, my mother and father, two of our 
men, Alex and Peter, so terribly, so uselessly. Like their lives 
didn't mean anything at all." 

She glanced down but at what I wasn't sure. Was she embarrassed 
by the stained and ragged clothes she wore? They had once been 
bright with color. It s seemed an odd time to worry about such 
things but Mulder's eyes were also fixed on that filthy cloth.

"Do they know?"

"The Grays? No, and it doesn't make sense. It must just be a 
screw up. You know, information not passed.  If they knew, I 
wouldn't be here, pretending to be zoned out on their drugs. 
Instead, I'd be in a cage someplace, underground, incubating and 
being tested and tested again as I wait for this." Her hand 
reached out suddenly and took Mulder's hand and pressed his palm 
to what I could see now with shock was a slightly rounded belly. 
He allowed his hand only the barest touch before snatching in 
back. "Mine?"

"He swore it was. He came back only a few minutes after he took 
you away and did it. I was still in tears." 

"There wasn't time."

Her smile had no humor. "Doesn't take long. A little squirt."

"Again, it can't be; it's too small."

"Not too small for four months. How long has it been for you?"

"Six, maybe seven months."

"We've both been traveling. Who knows how that mixes things up? 
The time on the ship we traveled on to get here is certainly a 
blur."

Mulder was frowning, very unhappy.

But it's a child! I thought in wonder, never having seen a 
pregnant woman except for once a year and then at a distance. 
And Mulder was denying it? Unheard of where I came from where, 
before women were kept in isolation, a dozen men claimed every 
birth.

"It's not my fault!" she snapped. "I told them that showing you 
this wouldn't make any difference, that you wouldn't bend to 
that kind of pressure, but they wouldn't listen. Forget me and 
it!" Her hand went to her belly again as she spun around to 
leave. "Just do what needs to be done. I've heard my friends die 
in agony. I've seen them live in endless hopelessness. End this 
and let's go on if there is anything to go on to."

Mulder's eyes had widened while she talked. Now he nodded, 
approvingly. "You've grown, Ness."

"I've had to."

"You don't make this easy."

"When has life ever been easy."

His gaze went back in the direction of the valley where the ship 
squatted like a wide upended bowl the size of a city. "This 
ship, Ness, this ship is huge. Most likely I'll fail. Most 
likely, we'll fall back into the inferno, if we manage to get 
off the ground at all." 

"Then you and your friend take the other ship and at least our 
story will live on."

No, way! My mind whirled in protest. I'll stay! You take this 
girl and her child and go! Before I could protest though, Mulder 
spoke.

"There is no other ship."

"Of course there is another ship," Ness snapped back. "The one 
you came in."

Yes, and our little black 'Ray' could barely hold two people if 
after that landing it could get off the ground at all. Mulder 
was standing at the edge of the overlook, brow as furrowed as I 
had ever seen it, his eyes mere slits as he frowned at the vast 
weight and bulk of the shining ship. 

"Why!" he asked to . "We could so easily have used something so 
much smaller. There's only -- what did Billy say -- less than 
three hundred people? Three hundred in that monster will be like 
grains of sand in a bucket." 

I looked over my shoulder at the slight and -- to my eyes -- 
exquisite and nearly mythical creature, who, if I heard right 
was carrying Mulder's child. Not that it mattered whose it was. 
"Mulder, just stop arguing. Set the charges and then you and 
Ness get to safety. I'll stay."

It took a moment for my words to sink in. I think neither of 
them had remembered that I was there. His initial surprise 
changed to approval as he put his hand on my shoulder; a 
significant gesture for Mulder touched seldom. "Magnanimous of 
you but I couldn't. Better to send you and her and I'll stay."

"But you can't pilot Ray long distance!" 

"Which is why we all go or we all stay." His bleak expression 
told me that in his heart he believed that staying would be the 
most likely but staying meant being consumed in flame.

"But what about Scully? You have to get back to earth, back to 
her. That means everything."

That soft look came over his face, the one he wore when he 
thought of her. It was mixed with a far deeper regret than 
usual. "Scully would be the first to understand and approve. 
There's a lot you don't know about us, about what we did. 
Dangerous stuff. We both nearly died so many times. A thousand 
times it could have happened and neither of us would have turned 
away from the job. This is no different except that --" He 
paused to clear some catch in his voice. "-- there is no looking 
into each other's eyes this time. It was always a sort of 'good 
luck' and 'good bye' at once. I'll have to go on with just the 
memory of those previous thousands of times."

"But she'll never know."

"Maybe we can find a way," he mused darkly, "but we'll talk 
about that possibility later if we get that far. If there is no 
way to send a message still in her heart, I think she'll know. 
I'm not saying that it won't hurt. It took years and years but 
in the end I did come to realize that she really loved me, not 
that I deserved it. But she's also a realist, my Scully. Just as 
I'll do my job here, she'll move on. Besides, it probably is 
better this way; there's a definite outcome one way or the 
other. It's problematical that Charley would ever have fulfilled 
his part of the bargain and let me go. However, if I drop two 
hundred and fifty illogical human refugees in his lap, he'll 
probably be so terrified of this becoming a pattern that he will 
be only too glad to wash his hands of me."

He spoke lightly, but there was none of that light in his eyes 
unless flames counted. The flames were there already.



He turned to the tall, raw-boned woman. "Kathy, you say that you 
know the ship?"

"Between me and my work crew, inside and out."

"I need a virtual tour."

"We can do that."

"Meanwhile, Ben needs a guide to the power plant. Ben, I need 
you to scout out a good location for us to bestow our gift."

"Sending me is next to useless," I replied. "What I know about 
machinery you can float in a mug of tea." 

"Then you'll need a knowledgeable guide."

There was a pause and then a soft female voice said, "I'll take 
him." It was Ness. Mulder looked surprised. "I know, I didn't 
know much on City, only how to weave and what lessons were 
handed down by oral tradition generation after generation, but 
since they tore us from our nice, sterile home, it's as if my 
mind's been making up for lost time. This has been both the most 
horrible and the most wonderful time of my life. I know every 
inch of the generator plant -- that's been my assignment -- 
especially the areas where they don't want us to go."

That drew a near smile from Mulder. "Sounds like the kind of spy 
we need. The two of you go then and we'll meet back here."

It felt odd leaving Mulder, but I could see the logic in 
dividing our forces. We'd been tied at the hip for so long, 
however, that I felt naked without him.

My guide and I didn't talk for the first few minutes. I followed 
the woman -- the girl -- Ness as she led us over the rough and 
broken ground. The truth is, I couldn't keep my eyes off her. It 
wasn't like there was anything better to look at. The terrain 
was not much different than what Mulder and I had covered before 
on our travels across Rock Four. Black, sharp rocks and more 
black, sharp rocks. Because of the low gravity, we didn't have 
much trouble maneuvering around or over them. We passed a place 
where she warned me with a hand gesture to slow down. Here there 
were streaks on the rock itself that were not only smooth but 
also glassy as if they had melted. With the low gravity such 
patches would be nearly too slick to walk on. 

Finally, we crouched above another camp. By then I realized why 
everything seemed downhill. It was because the horizon was 
always so close. So once again we were high up but this camp was 
far different from the others we had seen. Its primary structure 
was a forest of towers and vents, tubes and pipes, all of metal 
or ceramic. Strings of tiny lights outlined the primary 
structures though there was also many floodlights. So this was 
the power station. It would have been wondrous to my eyes if our 
mission had not been so serious. The tallest tower rose more 
than a hundred meters into the air and spouted clouds of warmth 
that shimmered the air above it like a ripple on clear water. 

Ness threw a stone and the oldest man I had yet seen crept out 
of a cleft in the rocks below to climb with difficulty to join 
us. She had known he would be there.

"John," she said, "I need some clothes like ours for this man."

The old man eyed my intact flight suit and my well-nourished 
body. "He certainly isn't one of us."

"That's what we need to conceal."

His old eyes saddened. "I have what you need, unfortunately, in 
my hole. I was waiting to bring them back to the bunker after 
shift," and he left to climb painfully down to his hiding place.

There had been a dark undercurrent to their exchange. 
"Something's wrong," I surmised.

She fingered the length of dirty cloth that was wrapped around 
her body, all that covered her. "The only way there could be 
clothes so readily available is if someone died today." Her face 
was full of shadows. I didn't ask more; it was time for silence. 

In a short time the old man came puffing back bearing three 
folded lengths of cloth that were similar to the ones Ness wore 
though different in color and weave.

Seeing them her mouth opened with a quiet cry of dismay. 
"Clarise! Oh, Clarise... How did it happen?" she asked as her 
hands caressed the signature pattern of the material that her 
friend had woven and wore.

"She was with the workers, solderin' and resolderin' pipe as so 
many of them are doin'. Something came loose above, a section of 
railin'. She knew something was fallin', she must have heard it. 
She could have looked up, she could have gotten out of the way, 
but to do so would have given away that fact that she was 
'aware'. She played her part until the end. At least it was 
quick, better than with so many of the others."

It hit me like a hard fist to the gut. It was more than a 
dangerous game these people were playing. It could be deadly, 
and even the brave could die. They could die as easily as 
Clarise, without even being able to fight back.

"I'm sorry," I said to the top of her bowed head and I meant it. 
When she turned her face to me her eyes were dry, if a little 
red around the rims. "She wasn't the first. I just pray she's 
the last." Her voice hardened. "Now out of those clothes and put 
these on. See how John wears his? The men wrap theirs 
differently than the women do."

"I can manage, close enough."

Gingerly, I lowered my pack of explosives and immediately began 
to release the closures on the maroon flight suit. I was so 
intent on moving quickly that I only remembered she was there 
when she made a tiny sound as I pulled my shoulders free. She 
was trying not to stare at the naked upper half of my body. Had 
I done something wrong? It was impossible to read the look on 
her face. I'm not unaware of my body's musculature. It's trim 
and tan from years of working the soil. Men have remarked on it, 
but I'd never had an opportunity to reveal myself to a women.
 
"What's wrong?" I asked. Maybe I'd stumbled over some cultural 
taboo. Maybe I shouldn't be undressing in front of her. Suddenly 
I felt way too warm even though on this exposed chunk of planet 
rubble I should have been cold. "I'm sorry!" and raised the 
flight suit back up across my chest. "Should I be doing this 
someplace else -- like behind a rock?" I looked frantically 
around to find one tall enough and wide enough for the job and 
began to move in that direction.

"No!" the girl interjected hastily. "No, don't! There's no need. 
When you live as closely with people as we did in the Family... 
and now here there's not much privacy. It's just..." She was 
clearly blushing. A lovely color on her. "You're body's just 
different from those of the men I've known all my life."

Not sure what that meant I finished redressing quickly but still 
ended up showing her everything not covered by my skimpy 
undergarments before I was through. She never looked away. Was 
she picking up the flaws? Did I not measure up somehow?  I had 
always hopedThe climate was definitely too hot for these cloths 
that wrapped around loins and chest. The final one draped over 
my shoulders. 

"Less conspicuous now?"

She was at my side then, very close. Her eyes were intense. She 
stood close enough that I could smell her sweet sweat. I felt 
suddenly tight and jumpy and I was definitely sweating in my new 
clothes. 

Her hands went to my waist; strong, slim, warm hands. "On the 
contrary, you look fine. If I don't do something, however, THIS 
one is going to slither down your hips and then you'll be very 
conspicuous." She tightened something and hesitantly moved back. 
"Does that feel like it's going to stay put?" I walked around a 
little, stretched and crouched, aware that most of both arms 
were bare. 

"Yes."

"Good." 
    
"We're ready then. You'd best leave the pack here for the time 
being, however. John, would you take it down into your hole for 
safe keeping?"

I had forgotten that the man was even there. He had stepped 
discretely away to give us some privacy but not far. I held out 
the straps to the wiry old man and was disconcerted by the 
mischievous grin and wink from the elder before he took the pack 
and began to climb down to his watching place.

"There really wasn't any reason to hurry,"  Ness said when we 
were alone. "We still have to wait till shift change. Then we 
can go down and no one will question our moving around. They'll 
think we've been sent there."

She preceded to sit as comfortably as she could and still peer 
from time to time over the broken rock and down at the activity 
around the power station. I found a place to perch on an outcrop 
next to her. We were too close but there was not much level 
space. Up close her smooth skin had a definitely more rosy tint 
since my striptease and rosier still since she had intercepted 
John's wink. 

We sat for the first few minutes in silence. I'm seldom at a 
loss for words but on this occasion I found my tongue 
frustratingly tied. Luckily, she spoke first.

"I should apologize for staring. It's just that while we lived 
on City, there isn't anything to do -- no physical labor, I mean 
-- so we were all pathetically weak when we started out here, 
the men, too. We've gotten stronger, our muscles have developed, 
but there's not much to eat so there's no one here like you .... 
I mean," she stammered, "your muscles and you're so tanned all 
over." She blushed even brighter and so did I.

"Nothing I planned on," I explained, my tongue only half out of 
its knots. "There's a lot of hard work on Dale and in the summer 
I'm usually out in the fields nearly na -- unclothed."

Inquisitively, she dared to touch my hand with one first finger, 
as if to see if the tan came off. When it didn't she compared 
the color of her skin to mine. Hers was as white and delicate as 
a first snow. Her whole body was like that, as fragile as the 
petal of a dewdrop. What would it be like to hold such a flower 
in my arms, in my bed? 

A wave went through my frame like too much of Max's four-year-
old tanberry liquor. Stop! Remember her eyes when she saw 
Mulder. He's what she wants, but then so do I. Hopeless for us 
both. Better that we 

Better that we what?

To get my mind off 'those' kinds of thoughts, I started speaking 
of Dale, not asking if she wanted to hear about it or not. It 
was dull stuff, the daily life of the seasons: planting and 
growing, harvest, the long, lean months of cold and loneliness. 
Surprisingly, she asked many questions and from the eager 
expression on her face, she wasn't just being polite. 

"To live on a world where you spend your life outside under the 
sun, working to grow the very food you eat. That I would give 
anything to see!" Her mood dimmed. "It wasn't like that at all 
for us."

"Mulder told me about the places he's been. He talked about 
City."

"He didn't like it much."

"What he seems to remember most is being sick a lot." 

That didn't come out right, certainly not what a woman wanted to 
hear. There came an awkward pause. "Ness, I know that I 
shouldn't ask, but is that really Mulder's baby?"

She visibly bristled but only for a second. "To tell you the 
truth, I don't know. The one you call Charley told me that it 
would be." I must have gotten that look on my face again. 
"What's wrong?"

"Sorry, I guess I find it hard to imagine. How can a woman not 
know who the father is?"

It was Ness's turn to study my face to see if I was joking. "You 
have lived an isolated life. I assume that you've never heard of 
artificial insemination?"

No need to rack my brain on that tongue twister. "Sorry, no. 
Dale's about as far out on the fringes as you can get. Since 
I've started traveling with Mulder I've been exposed to a lot in 
a short time, but methods of procreation haven't been high on 
the list."

So she told me in half a dozen words and hand gestures. I was 
shocked at first, never having thought of such a thing, but it 
did make sense. Simple. "He doesn't seem happy to have even the 
chance of a child."

"He's afraid that they've done things to it, genetic things."

Now it all made sense. I knew all too well the anguish he went 
through whenever he thought about how he was 'made'. "I guess my 
people grow up knowing that we came from stock that was 
'different' so it matters less. I know that I'd give anything to 
have a child to raise, even if none of the genes were mine."

I could feel her looking me over. It was penetrating that stare. 
It traveled from my face on down and through my clothes. 

"Don't tell me that you haven't had an opportunity," she 
exclaimed. "I can't imagine any sister in the Family turning YOU 
down."

I felt the heat rising to my face again. "Thanks, I think. But 
there aren't any women on my planet --"

"None!" came out as a garbled squeak. 

"Well, a handful." I wasn't going to go into the newly 
discovered ability of the changelings to bear children. Besides, 
in many ways what was sitting beside me was just as alien.

"So your world needs women..."

"Desperately."

"Most of the Family are female and we'd do anything to see a 
green, growing place with a real sun and a real sky."

We risked sidelong glances. Clearly, neither of us needed 
mindspeech to know what the other was thinking.

"This isn't the time," I said softly, despite the hormones that 
were thrumming through my body. Her eyes were huge and bold. The 
thrum became a surge like the tide.

Damn, but I had known men to look at each other that way when 
they wanted some. I never thought that a woman would, or could, 
want in that same way. 

All at once she was closer, certainly close enough, and neither 
of us had moved. She wanted me to kiss her. She probably wanted 
more, but kissing would do.

"I don't have much experience," I mumbled, even as I leaned 
hesitantly forward. I didn't add 'with women'.  

Tenderly, she kissed me and I found myself returning her welcome 
almost at once with something not nearly so tender. Did I once 
think it cold on this rock?

"Mulder will go back to Earth, to Scully," she whispered when we 
had broken away. "We both know that. Will you be going back to 
Dale?"

"Of course," I replied immediately and realized that I hadn't 
really thought about it before. But there really was no place 
else for me. It was not just a place where I wanted to be, but 
where I needed to be. 

"Perhaps I could come; see your farm. You'll have to be patient 
with me, however. I'm so frightfully ignorant about such 
things." Her eyes were glowing again. 
 
Sweet Mother Earth! 

"I would like that, more than anything, though it's really not 
much. We could add on --" The tiny etching upwards of the girl's 
full lips made me realize how well I had followed her own train 
of thought. Hurriedly, I added. "I do have one hell of a sauna."

"What's that?" 

Which was when it struck me -- she was as much a fish out of 
water in this universe as I was. But maybe all that meant was 
that we were destined to find our own ocean. And we both cared 
for Mulder; that was someplace to start.

As if she were indeed reading my mind, she kissed me again. When 
her hands began exploring, I found that I couldn't breathe. My 
head began to buzz. 

Okay, maybe we had started already.

Withdrawing reluctantly, I realized that the buzzing hadn't 
stopped. In fact it was louder, far off still, but growing 
closer. A horn, a siren, had started blowing back in the 
direction from where we had come but its call was expanding in 
ever widening circles as other voices of other horns took up the 
cry.

Ness was on her feet instantly. She leaned over the ledge of 
rock as far as she could go in order to stare down into the 
camp. I dropped down on my stomach close to her, close enough so 
that we could still hear each other even though the horns were 
now screaming at a deafening pitch.

"What is it?" I cried during a brief lull.

"It's the warning that they're going to cut the artificial 
gravity. It's the ship! Ben, the ship is preparing to launch!" 

"Can't! It's too soon!"

"There is no 'too soon', there's just when. It's not as if they 
ask our permission."

"We can wait for the next one right?"

"Impossible. The next could be days away." As she spoke, her 
eyes never stopped searching the camp that suddenly looked more 
than anything like a Papine nest. Mulder had once compared 
Papine to ants on Earth though they aren't really insects. In a 
body, the workers below had left their jobs and were proceeding 
in twenty broken lines each traveling at a walk but at an almost 
frantic pace.  

"What are you looking at?"

"I'm trying to see -- there! They're definitely heading for the 
ship." 

"How do you tell? Looks like chaos to me."

Eerily, the volume of the horns cut in half leaving a constant 
rumble, more like thunder in the way it could be felt as much as 
heard.
 
"See those iron roofs?" she explained hurriedly in quieter 
tones. "They're the roofs of the bunkers. When the warning blast 
comes, everyone goes under cover. The aliens have their own nice 
shelters in the tunnels. The workers are trained to head for the 
nearest bunker, those sheds, but they are small and fill up 
fast. If one is full, we are taught to go to the next and then 
the next."

I could see that. Lines of workers were checking a bunker and 
then after a pause turning and heading to one further away."

"But how from that do you know that we're taking _ this _ ship?"

"Because I've watched those three bunkers closest to us from the 
start and I've seen lines of people come up to them and turn 
away as if they were full, but no one has ever gone in! They're 
empty. It's a trick! The workers are making it appear that they 
are just looking for an empty bunker but in reality they're 
heading towards the ship. The overseers, what few there are, 
don't care because they are too busy running to reach their own 
shelters and save their own skins."

"But how do they know to head for the ship?" I demanded 
impatiently. 

For the first time since the sirens began Ness turned to face 
me. "As soon as Mulder came into range and the mindspeaker 
network came 'on line' -- at least that's how I've heard it 
described -- they planted a speaker with each group. They know."

"Oh, shit!" I swore and exploded from the rock, cutting the 
palms of my hands as I vaulted from my perch. I raced to where I 
had dropped my jump suit only to realize too late that it had 
been taken away along with my backpack. But John was there 
already. He must have thought me mad when I tore the dark red 
suit from the old man's hands to begin searching through the 
multiple pockets. Finding Charley's Lichenleaf tube, I started 
inhaling. It was a struggle not to breathe too fast. Slow and 
deep was best. Still, by the time I was done, I had to lean 
against the wall of rock behind me. 

"What's that?" the girl demanded, worry and irritation in her 
voice and face.

I stayed bent over, hands on knees, while the dizzying tendrils 
of bright fog looped through my brain opening bright pathways. 
"I was a fool! I'm a weak Speaker. This makes it stronger for a 
while. I should have been more careful. I should have been 
dosing regularly. Stupid!" 

If women made you forget such important things, then maybe they 
weren't worth the trouble.

The first mental sounds I heard reminded me of wind in the 
treetops, the way it can rise rapidly to the wail in advance of 
a summer squall. But there was no storm, could be no storm. This 
wind was voices, all of the eighty-odd mindspeaker voices 
calling to each other at once. No way I could single out one 
conversation from another but the intent was clear enough. Weird 
to hear not a word from down below and have such a tumult going 
on invisibly mind to mind.

"You hear something," Ness said. "What?"

"What you already knew. You're leaving, we're all leaving."

*Ben! *

I nearly dropped the pack and its dangerous cargo when that one 
familiar voice cut through the tumult. No one else had the power 
to cut through like that. There was something wrong, however, 
something --

*Where are you! *

*A hundred yards before the entrance to the undercrypt of the 
power station. We were waiting for the shift change --*

*Meet me just inside the entrance. Now! And bring Ness. *

And just that suddenly, Mulder's familiar mindspeaking voice was 
gone. Shakily, I shouldered my pack and in a daze started down 
the slope. I almost forgot to gesture for the girl to follow, 
but she was already saying her farewells to the old man and 
warning him to get to the ship himself. That would be a hellish 
journey for a body as stiff and old as his. Familiar with the 
ankle- twisting path, she quickly took the lead. We traded no 
looks of understanding, no shy innuendo, as she passed. Any 
possible future for us had to wait. First we had to survive the 
next hour. 



MULDER

Ben saw it in my face even in the comparative dark of the tunnel 
under the power station. He reacted as if he were looking upon 
my death mask. I suspect he was. I refused to think that far in 
the future, however. Better to notice how surprisingly well Ben 
looked in the filthy but still colorful wraps the Family wore. 
Then I remembered that I had also dressed that way when I was 
recuperating on City. 

"How long do we have?" Ness asked. 

"Kathy says thirty-five minutes. At least that's when we must be 
on board. Billy's group is taking the ship even now. Kathy's 
group managed to lean on the horn as soon as they found out it 
was lifting today. That was ten minutes earlier than they 
usually get that kind of news and we'll need every minute."

"Not much time to get into position," Ness frowned, "but also 
more time to get caught."

"It's what we have. We'll need a miracle either way."

We were half-running as we talked. Ness had not been boasting 
when she said that she knew the way. I was proud her, all the 
more for the guilt I felt at not giving her what she had been 
desperate for back on City. What a romantic adolescent she had 
been on City! I tried not to think of what the violent actions 
of the ship would do to her unborn child. Even at my best it 
would be bad, very bad. I could already hear the screaming of 
all those voices in my head. How could I dare to have any hope 
at all of holding it together?

It was warmer in the tunnel then it had been outside. This 
wasn't surprising since the heat as well as the water and the 
atmosphere for the entire station was generated here. For the 
oddest instant it reminded me of the guestroom in our house on 
Martha's Vineyard. Set above the furnace room, it was always the 
warmest room in the house even with all the vents closed. On a 
chill and rainy Vineyard Sunday, it was always the best place to 
hide with a book.

Why should that come to mind at now of all times?  Probably 
because Ness's people never had had a room like that and the 
abductees never would again if I couldn't get these people away. 
Getting away also meant leaving no one behind to follow or even 
to report that the prisoners hadn't been incinerated along with 
all the little gray workers and the few elders that must be here 
to manage them. Even now they waited in their comfortable 
shelters for the Rock Four's artificial gravity to be shut off. 
If we were successful in our bomb laying, however, that gravity 
would never come back on. There wouldn't be a chunk of the 
asteroid left large enough to need it. 

I hadn't forgotten about those too sick or too weak to make the 
ship. Billy had warned me also that some dozens were imprisoned 
in labs scattered about the various camps. Even if they got the 
word they would be trapped. They would all die of explosion and 
fire if they weren't dead already from an atmosphere sucked into 
the vacuum of space. 

Stop it! 

I had never been a soldier. They are stronger than I would ever 
be.

As this was spinning in my head, we were running ever downhill 
through tunnel after tunnel. Turn and turn and turn again and 
down a long slope. Finally, I could hear the deep Dolby drumming 
of engines, pumps and blowers. The reactors themselves wouldn't 
make any noise but the machinery to move the input and output 
around would be considerable. The reactors would, however, make 
a more than sufficient bomb. More than sufficient to tear Billy 
and Kathy's ship into a million pieces of slag if I couldn't get 
it far enough away in time.  
     
Finally the tunnel opened up into a huge cavern. The reactor 
room. It looked like the engine room of the Enterprise, Next 
Generation style, only about ten times as large and a whole lot 
gloomier. 

I was impressed -- also stunned. Now what to do? 

We hadn't met a gray-skinned soul. All alien life was snuggly 
hidden away in their shelters playing cards or having sex or 
whatever they did during these times. This was stupid and 
sloppy, like the lack of oversight of their slave labor force. 
They clearly had infinite confidence in the biological screen of 
their energy barrier. They also underestimated how tricky humans 
could be. Maybe if they attacked Earth straight on instead of 
spending all this effort trying to work with slimy groups like 
the Consortium and ol' Smoky, and developing ways of spreading 
Black Oil and breeding infected bees, they wouldn't be so hard 
to defeat.

Just so there would be no surprises we left Ness to keep watch 
at the cavern entrance. I had Charley's plan in my mind of what 
we needed to do. Now to line up his schematics with what we had 
here. 
  
It didn't take much time. Charley can plan and my memory was as 
good as it had ever been. The components in our backpacks went 
together so simply that a child could have done it. In just a 
few minutes the deadly thing sat there looking like a dark 
pimple low and to the rear of one of the massive blue columns. 

Ben was surveying our handiwork as I fast-soldered the last 
circuit clip. 

"But will it do what he says?" he asked dubiously. 

"I'm not a mechanical engineer, but I've smelled enough plastic 
explosive to say 'yes' it will. Besides, it's too large to be a 
listening device and I doubt he'd want us to sneak in to improve 
their system performance."

"The timer?"

"Fifteen minutes more than it should take us to get back to the 
ship.

Now came the glitch; there had to be one. When we turned around 
Ness was no longer crouched worriedly by the tunnel entrance. 
She was gone.


Ben was through the door first. He must have heard the same 
voices I did -- real voices, not just those in our heads -- and 
headed towards a room near a branch of the corridor we had come 
down minutes before. What I heard, however, brought back many an 
old nightmare. 

"Woman, what are you doing here?"

Ness's voice was timid, toneless, far from her normal voice. "I 
was sent to the lower levels. I was alone when the horns 
sounded."

"These aren't the lower levels!"

"I was on my way up to find a bunker."

"Later. You have time. Help me with this human."

Realization hit me like a blow in the chest. That was Charley's 
voice.... and yet it wasn't.  This was our bounty hunter, Scully. 
The one we both knew on Earth. How I knew instantly that they 
were not the same despite the identical sounds of their voices, 
I don't know. Must have been my spooky sense just as I have 
always known a lot of things long before Mindspeech. 

Some scuffling sounds came from the room where the two talked. 
"I can't," came Ness's unexpectedly dull and weary voice. "He's 
too heavy."

"Useless creature! Take his feet then. I'll help."

I risked a glance as Ben did. We both pulled back quickly. Ben 
looked stunned; something was very wrong. *No, * I told him mind 
to mind. It all suddenly made sense. In my room on Fred, when 
they thought me too ill or out of my mind to notice I had seen 
Charley morph into Jeremiah Smith before he 'laid hands' upon 
me. Certainly, Charley could shapeshift into anyone he wanted 
but why Jeremiah Smith? 'Smith' was the only shapeshifter to 
line up clearly on the human side and, therefore, certainly an 
enemy. But then why 'display' me on City in a way that would 
generate as much pity as scorn? Why put me down on Dale where he 
had expected me to heal and grow stronger? Why teach me to fly 
and give me a ship? For this job, he said. What was the real 
point of this job? There was far more going on here than the 
need to fulfill some mercenary's contact and now I finally knew 
what it was. 

The creature twenty feet from me, wrestling a limp human 
prisoner onto a table with Ness's reluctant help, did look like 
Charley, though he was wearing a kind of uniform the type of 
which I had never seen Charley wear. It was the voice that gave 
him away. A voice that sparked old, chilling memories the way, I 
realized, 'my' Charley's voice no longer did. I thought it was 
familiarity, but, no, this was Rodan, the original, the one who 
abducted and tortured children, the one Dan Rowe had known in 
his youth, but not, if I was right, the one who took Ben and 
Annicon and I from Dale. 

Ness had clearly known both in City but never knew there had 
been two. More than once, she mentioned that Rodan's mood was 
highly changeable -- from cold to nearly kind.  This was clearly 
the crueler of the two. Yet he gave no sign that he had ever 
seen her before. Rodan was clearly too aloof and too busy to 
recognize, beneath the dirt, the human he had known within the 
Family's sterile circle. He was also the one who had collected 
the others and me from Oregon and tested our bodies nearly to 
death. Charley on the other hand was the one who had given Ness 
her heart's desire the same hour he took me from City. 

Rodan was the one who had decided not to kill me on the 
submarine but to leave me as good as dead. It was he who could 
have 'killed' me 'many times before.' But it must have been 
Charley, in Rodan's shape, who had healed my mother. (Oh, yes; I 
had pulled that out of Spender's mind before he cut into my 
brain.) Rodan, the bounty hunter, could not heal anything; the 
touch from this one could wither a dead branch.

Unexpectedly the pieces to a puzzle I wasn't even aware I'd been 
given, had rearranged themselves revealing an entirely new 
picture. Now I knew why Jeremiah Smith-Charley wanted this place 
blown into the Horsehead nebula and beyond. It must have become 
too dangerous, the game he was playing, posing as the monster. 
It explained why Ben and Annicon seemed to know a different 
Charley than I did. They hadn't known Rodan; I had. Charley -- 
who had taken on Rodan's shape -- had to be particularly careful 
around me. He had tried to tell in that uncharacteristically 
chatty meeting how there were layers upon layers to this war. 
Clearly, he had intended for me to remove one of them.

I was still crouched beside a doorway of inhuman size or shape 
and trying to decide what to do, when Ben made a small sound 
like strangled hiccup and rose from his hiding place. Without 
warning he just walked into the room with Ness and that devil. 
There he stood facing the shapeshifter and Ness who had her arms 
full of a comatose man. At first all I could think about was how 
I wished that I had my service weapon like in the far off good 
old days. Only later did I remember to open a crack in my mind 
to hear what in the world Ben was thinking.

I nearly laughed. Ben wasn't thinking of anything. He had acted 
entirely on instinct and having nothing planned beforehand could 
not have been more perfect. He stood there with his empty hands 
and his mouth open and looked as dumbstruck as any newcomer on 
his planet. He also looked utterly harmless.

Through his eyes I saw the familiar granite face turn towards 
him in cold fury. "What do you want?" he snarled. The snarl was 
accompanied by a few words in some other language, all of which 
had to be derogatory.

Ben's mouth closed. Nervously, he wet his lips, and it opened 
again. "We're -- er -- wanted. She and I. Maintenance on 
shelter..." and he waved his hand vaguely in the direction we 
had been heading anyway.

The shifter hissed what was clearly an oath in any language and 
gestured to the patient with which Ness was struggling.

"Help her and then you both can go!"

They began to struggle with the test subject, who was a big man 
and now a dead weight as well, to clamp him down on a bench. I 
could sense Benjamin's distress to be part of such a thing but 
he wisely followed Ness's lead. The man would die if all our 
plans came to fruition though there wasn't much that could be 
done to cure what had already been done to him. His body was 
cold and stiff from what I could feel through Ben's hands and 
his skin had a purplish hue and undulated with innumerable and 
lumps beneath the skin. I was thankful that my agriculturally 
inclined friend hurried in a correctly awkward way and didn't 
focus on the lumps. The last thing my stomach needed was for 
them was to move.

While they worked I peered through the doorway with my own eyes 
and just inside noted a gleaming shelf of what could only be 
surgical instruments though of non-Human design. Stomach 
squirming, I flashed back on steel and sharp edges like these 
actually entering my own flesh early during my little side trip 
to hell. The scar on my chest that I seldom thought about ached. 
A whirling saw had cut there. My sinuses burned so suddenly that 
I thought I might explode with a betraying sneeze. And then 
without warning all the pictures of all the scars on all the 
abductees in my beloved files began to flicker before my eyes. 
Faster and faster they flashed, fuel for a rage to boil darker 
and darker. This creature had the lives of nine cats. What if he 
survived the explosion to stalk me and those I loved again? If 
Charley was willing to play his own dangerous game I could at 
least do this. We all had to be free from looking over our 
shoulders. Too many people, too many terrified children, had 
suffered too much. 

*Keep him busy, * I shot to Ben.

Initially I registered consternation from that quarter, but 
within moments voices raised in the room. I heard scuffing 
sounds, and the shapeshifter snarled. Perfectly aware of the 
reckless act I was attempting and that failure would be 
catastrophic, I spun into the room on silent feet and closed my 
hand over the instrument that was most like an ice pick of the 
appropriate deadly length. Three running strides took me to 
where Ben had clumsily tripped and fallen against the 
shapeshifter who was now partially bent forward. Perfect. Before 
him was a sheet of polished metal on the side of a piece of 
equipment the size of a refrigerator. On that bright, imperfect 
surface I saw my own wolf-like reflection grow huge in the 
instant I closed. For the briefest second his eyes widened. Oh, 
he recognized me despite the funhouse image. It was the fact 
that I was here, when he hadn't seen me since 'Charley' had 
slipped me from his sadistic hands on City months before, that 
was the shock. I used that second to concentrate every ounce of 
strength in my body to thrust the blade home through muscles as 
thick and tough as a bull's and into the base of his skull. 
Until the last I expected him to whip around like something 
supernatural and take my throat in those massive hands. He did 
start to straighten, to turn, but he had those hands encumbered 
with the heavy man he had so recently mistreated, so that slight 
turning was all he managed before the massive form of bone and 
muscle toppled forward 

"Hide your eyes!" I shouted, "Get away! Now!" For even though I 
had turned away almost immediately, my eyes were already 
stinging from the fumes as the foaming green acid that was his 
blood beginning to burn acrid in the open air. 

We were all three out of the room in less than five seconds and 
running. 

"Ben, thank you," I wheezed once Rodan's toxic and very dead 
body, his unconscious test subject, and our bomb had been left a 
significant distance behind.

"For what?" he puffed, as shaky as I, the folly of his rashly 
entering that horrible room to rescue Ness having taken its 
toll.

"For reminding me of how I use to be."

"A crazy fool?"

"Damn right!" I cried. Literally cried. That was a surprise. 
Tears ran down my cheeks and snot dripped from my nose neither 
of which I had time to wipe away. Both, however, were better 
than breaking down into hysterical laughter. What tipped the 
balance and kept me staggering onward on wobbly legs was the 
thought of you, my dear Scully. How furious you would be at me 
for pulling such a fool stunt -- again.  As I recall, however, 
the lecturing sometimes didn't begin until days after the event 
when you were sure that I was going to survive my latest 
escapade. In that respect I was in far better shape than usual. 
So far.

Ben's voice came into my head. Easier to talk this way when 
scaling the steeply inclined path to the front door of the 
buried power station. * Mulder, I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking. I 
just needed to get Ness out of there. *

I mentally shrugged. *Too often it just works out that way. * As 
we rounded a short turn, a harsh light appeared suddenly ahead 
of us. The tunnel entrance. The real race would begin once we 
were outside.

* By the way,  * I panted. * How were you so sure that wasn't 
Charley, our Charley? How did you suspect that there were two? *

Ben refused to look me in the eye, which now that we were 
running side by side outside, he could. Noticing that Ness had 
fallen behind, he slowed imperceptibly for her and took her hand 
and then her arm to pull her along with him. 

*Ben...*

* He didn't want you to know though I knew almost from the 
beginning. Annicon, too."

That came as a shock. *How? *

* Except when you were around, the Charley we knew spent too 
much time in other forms. Keeping his Rodan, or Dan Rowe, form 
didn't seem natural to him. So we asked. *

As easy as that. Out of the mouths of babes... Having no fear, 
they simply asked.

Somehow, Ness had been following what had largely been a silent 
conversation. "Two Rodans on City though not at the same time. 
This makes more sense than you may think. The impostor must have 
played the part before because Rodan has been hot and cold with 
the Family ever since I started taking notice of such things, 
which would have been when I was about -- twelve." She paused to 
catch her breath. The arm that was not clutching Ben's as they 
ran supported the small, muscular bulge of her waist. "If 
Charley took Mulder then it must have been he... who gave me the 
baby. I thought that exceptionally... gracious. Explains why he 
never sought me out here. What better test material?" 

Did it really matter? I didn't trust either of the shapeshifters 
not to perform slight of hand with my genes. 

"So why hasn't Rodan been scouring the universe for me?"
 
"We asked Charley about that. His group doctored the records. As 
a result of your 'testimony', you were taken for study by one of 
the racial purity factions who refused to believe that humans 
could be genetically related to them in any way."

"Dare I ask what supposedly happened to me there?"

Even out of breath, Ben managed to a dour tone. "The subject 
does not usually survive vivisection."

"Ouch." Made my guts twist, that thought did. And the timing of 
when Rodan became Charley, my real Charley, did make sense since 
it was only after I was taken aboard the Beast that I became, 
unwillingly, the demon's apprentice, and was forced to learn the 
gentle art of piloting these fifth dimensional ships. It's a 
dubious skill, you have to admit, considering what I now faced. 

*So if we're on the same side, why didn't he tell me? Why the 
pretense? *

I didn't expect an answer.

*To maintain the pretense in case you ran into any of Rodan's 
confederates. You are being watched, always. You must know that. 
They know your past relationship and could only expect you to 
loathe him. It had to appear that any obedience had been beaten 
into you. *

He had done that well enough, at least in the beginning. So had 
dumping me on Dale with Ben actually been an act of desperation and 
not of punishment? A way of keeping me safe and out of the way 
while something worse hugged his trail? He may not have known what 
a desperate, sadistic bastard the Mayor of Dale had become. And 
Charley had definitely softened since that pickup. Was he 
embarrassed for what had happened to me there?  Good.

While we talked we worked our way at a slower pace through an 
ankle-twisting maze of rock. Now what passed for a plain on Rock 
Four was before us and time was passing more swiftly than our 
feet. Time to run again and run we did. I flashed on Aragorn, 
Legolas and Gimli tirelessly searching across the plains of 
Rohan, though this plain was black rather than green. Better 
than thinking about where we were headed. For that reason I shut 
Ben out, I shut them all out. Learning about Charley had been a 
shock but nothing like the aftershock of the beserker violence 
it had taken to kill Rodan. The bounty hunter dead. After all 
this time it seemed a dream. I needed some time, some quiet. 
Only there was this bomb ticking away that I had laid with my 
own hands. No time.

Hard words stabbed into my mind. No, not mindspeech but memory. 
'It's not all about you, Mulder.' You said that once, maybe more 
than once. You were so angry. Those were not good times. You 
were right then; you're right now. It's not about me, a solitary 
man or at least a kind of a man. It's about what needs to be 
done.

'Damn right!' your voice concurs with uncharacteristic 
vehemence. 'The creature was evil, Mulder. Don't you dare feel 
guilty about killing that!'

You always were the predator, Scully. Usually I kill when I'm 
terrified, terrified for some future victim, or for you or for 
myself. I try not to kill in a rage because I have no judgement 
at times like that. I guess I made an exception in Rodan's case. 
But you, you always could kill cold. 
 
'I do what I have to, I always have.'

'Including giving my ass a good tongue-lashing?'

'Including that. Not that I enjoyed it but sometimes I thought 
that I'd go crazy if I didn't. Damn it, Mulder, you didn't leave 
me any choice! What else could I do to keep you safe? Tie you 
down?'

'That would do for a start.'

'Mulder! Please don't. I'm tired. I'm so tired of these games. 
Haven't we gotten past that?'

I knew the answer to that one all too well. 'Even in my 
imagination, I'm still afraid.'

Her voice came soft into my mind like a cool breath across my 
brow. 'Not anymore, Mulder. There isn't time any more for that.' 
Then with sadness surpassing every sadness I've ever known the 
last whisper. 'I guess no time for anything anymore.' 
 
'No, wait! Don't go! Damn it to hell, Scully, you know that I 
tried to come back. You know how hard. It's not fair, you know. 
After all I've been through, after all you must have suffered 
all these months, you would think that we'd be owed that much. 
But Fate doesn't keep score, does it? Just keep rolling the dice 
and somewhere between the rolls we have to make do the best we 
can. Well Fate was some high roller on our watch. Couldn't she 
have let it alone for a while, get a burger, take a leak. Shit, 
go to Hawaii. But, no. Just roll, roll, roll and with loaded 
dice yet!'

'Mulder... Mulder...' soothed the voice. 'We hardly ever said 
the words, we may not have done the 'dirty deed' more than 
twice, but I know, and you must know, that we loved. We loved 
more purely and fiercely than many an old married couple.' 

I wanted to laugh, suddenly, wildly, but I didn't have the 
breath. 'So where have you been?' I whispered. 'All these months 
and only a phrase now and then in my head and now this torrent.'

'Ah.' That Scully sound, that intake of breath. I can almost see 
the slow smile. 'Because you had hope before. On that kind of 
hope you knew that you would see me again. No doubts. But hope 
is all used up. You need me now to remind you that I've always 
been there, inside you. Never... ever... separated from you... 
even here.'
 
Reality came back into focus. Ugly gray-green sky and this plain 
of black gravel. Ben was running like a wounded deer beside me, 
staggering because his right side supported Ness who was gamely 
keeping up with his help. They were running for their lives and 
the child's, while I... 'You're right, Scully. They run for 
their lives while with every step I come closer to leaving mine 
behind me.'

I see the lights of the shipyard over the false horizon now. 
They seem brighter even then before. Ironic; I guess you could 
say that I'm going into the light. At least I'm not being pushed 
into it; I'm going on my own. Scary though, not the light 
itself, but the getting to it. Hell lies between here and when I 
can finally rest.

We top a rise and I can see the ship now. It grows closer and 
more incredibly huge with every footfall. From three, four 
directions, the last few figures are racing for it, humans in 
ragged clothes. By the ship a dark speck holds a light. A few 
more yards, I can make the figure out. It is Kathy, tall and 
strong and anxious, to show us the way in. Now Billy is beside 
her. He looks disheveled, clothes more torn than before, a 
little bloody about the mouth. I don't need to open that door in 
my mind to know that they and their groups now control the ship. 
My heart descends like two full fists of lead are lying in my 
stomach. It drops lower and lower as the distance closes. Four 
hundred yards, three hundred, two... If I could remember eating 
anything I'd be sick. 

There will be no moment for rest and reflection, Scully. I've 
had that. I can see the urgency in their eyes. Other doors along 
the sides of the ship are closing. There are no other figures 
outside except, I note, a pile of silent alien bodies, dumped to 
the side. Alien lives taken during the raid. So we are the last. 
The ship is ready to go except for two things: the gravity 
generator still functions and the ship needs its pilot.

All at once fifty yards from where the two figures fidget and 
urge us on, I feel my feet leave the ground and don't want to 
return. It's an illusion but I feel like I'm falling 'up'. The 
leaden ball in my stomach turns to acid and threatens to rush 
back up my throat.

My arms pinwheel, I must look ridiculous but it’s instinctive. I 
shoot a glance at Ben and Ness. They cling to each other like 
children, their eyes showing the same panic I feel as they 
struggle to stay upright.

Yes, the gravity generators have shut down but at least there is 
still some gravity -- spin from the tumbling asteroid -- so it's 
all relative. We do find some purchase on the ground after a few 
terrifying microseconds. We land off balance and softly, like 
those old films of the astronauts on the moon. Disoriented, 'up' 
from 'down' is not so clear as it once was. Hands reach out for 
us and pull us forward. A dozen, ragged abductees spill from the 
ship, form a chain, and begin to tow us in. 

'Don't touch me!' I want to scream, but I don't, at least not 
out loud and the door in my mind is firmly shut. Desperately, 
they tow to pull the three of us to that small black opening in 
the side of the ship. 

The metal railing is in my hand now, colder than my skin. The 
metal ramp rises up under my numb feet. The hands pulling on my 
arms are hard with desperation. They can't touch, however, the 
place where I hold safe a piece of your soul. One last embrace, 
my never love, my ever love, my constant star. It's the warmth 
of your brightness that I'll follow into the light. When your 
time comes, find me. I'll keep my own light on for you to bring 
you home.




BENJAMIN

Soon after we left the tunnels Mulder shut himself off from me. 
I assume that that meant from everyone. His face... I can't 
describe that kind of despair. The tendons in his neck looked 
stretched to breaking and not only from the effort of running 
though after being so recently ill he wasn’t exactly in prime 
condition. There were tears flying off from his staring eyes 
though I don't think he actually saw anything as we ran. His 
attention was within. I didn’t intrude; it was soon work enough 
keeping Ness on her feet and the both of us even with Mulder. 
She tried the best that she could, but her legs were shorter and 
for obvious reasons she had trouble catching her breath, so we 
didn't talk but we didn't need to. There was only one place to 
go; there was only one thing to do. Get to the ship! Lift off 
and away! Her body was warm beside mine and strong and she 
wasn't too proud to put her arm around my neck when she needed 
it. 

It was odd that feeling of strength and need and truth. Odd and 
wonderful at once. She was so small so deceptively fragile that 
my own body seemed to swell. I felt taller, stronger and my head 
swam as if I'd been drinking too much of Jezadiah's winter ale. 
There was no time to think about such things, however, just run 
and follow Mulder's figure whose stride was not so smooth either 
any more. He ran ragged as if he were running steeply downhill 
and would stop if he could. But there was no stopping this.

The ship when it came into sight gleamed like a star, a thousand 
times brighter than the light of home during the blackest fall 
storm. But then we grew closer and it filled my entire vision 
and the immensity of it struck me as never before. I was finding 
breath to shout something to Mulder when all at once the world 
turned strange. My feet didn't want to touch the ground and Ness 
suddenly clung to me as if she were afraid of falling. The 
heavens rolled as much under my feet as over it. We floundered 
dizzy and disoriented for long seconds before hands grasped ours 
and we all staggered for the boarding ramp. The gravity 
generators had switched off as they were timed to do but that 
meant that we had to leave NOW and we weren't even inside the 
ship. No time to prepare, no time to say ... to say what?

The hatch engine whined behind us and within seconds shut with a 
decisive Boom! I found myself and Ness alone in a gray metal 
tunnel stupidly clutching a safety rail as Kathy and Billy and 
two others hustled a gasping Mulder along at a run. And why 
shouldn’t they?  Who was I? 

Someone who should be there, answered an ache in my chest. 

"Hurry," I panted to Ness. "We have to follow them."

She was bent over, struggling for breath, and holding her side 
and the slight swell of her abdomen at the same time. "You go... 
I'll follow." When I hesitated, she pushed me with surprisingly 
ferocity. "Be with him! Go on!"

I did. I had to while they were still in sight. We wove through 
the ship. Although larger in every way, the interior reminded me 
enough of Fred, Charley's ship, that I wasn't completely 
overwhelmed. Somehow I sensed when we were nearing the command 
room. Don’t ask me how, just a feeling, a slight change in the 
architecture of the serpentine corridors. There were no longer 
any travelers either, ragged men and women looking scared and 
hopeful at once, such as I had glimpsed from time to time nearer 
the entrance. Some had even given me directions.

When I caught up with Mulder and his escort, they were standing 
before a set of wide double doors. Kathy was aggravated, 
demanding that Mulder go inside. Billy was quieter and more 
frightened but also insistent. "We have to go now!"

But Mulder was waiting for something. I saw it in his dead white 
face as I skidded around the corner. He'd been waiting for me. 
"Now I'll go." As a group, we drew closer and the doors slid 
open to reveal a vast shadowy cavern without form or definition 
beyond. I shouldn't have been surprised; on Fred the Command 
Room had been like a cathedral.

Despite his agitation, there was a definite pause before Mulder 
took his first step. We followed. "Only Ben," Mulder ordered in 
a voice so tight that it sounded like that of a stranger. "Get 
the others as ready as you can because when we go, there won't 
be any warning." He took a deep shuddering breath. "And it's 
going to be rough." 

Kathy looked angry and made no move to leave as if she wanted to 
make sure that this got done. There was more sympathy on Billy's 
face. He took her arm and was about to lead her away when Mulder 
stopped them. "Just remember," he said sternly, "that with luck 
you'll be picked up by Charley. I know that he’ll be watching 
for us,” he inclined his head in my direction. “It will be 
difficult considering his likeness to Rodan but you have to 
trust him. You have no choice. Just follow Ben's lead." 
Something dark stirred in the otherwise expressionless eyes. “In 
any case, the devil is dead. I know he's dead. Ben can tell you, 
we killed him just a little while ago. That at least you can be 
certain of."

There followed a curt nod of understanding from Billy but he 
didn't move away. He watched as Mulder faced the open doorway, 
took a deep breath, and then, biting down on his lower lip, 
moved into the room. For the first time something like sympathy 
touched Billy's face and even Kathy looked away. As ordered, I 
followed though I would have anyway. The current from the door 
as it slid closed moved the air on the back of my neck.

The control room was a cave, a dim vastness, and at least half a 
dozen times the size of the one on Fred. And it had been 
waiting. As we approached, a light came up, a streak of 
startlingly white that gradually widened to illuminate one of 
the massive, altar-like command chairs.

Mulder had gone ahead and was just standing beside that stone 
throne, staring at it. No, not just standing I could see as I 
came up beside him, but shaking, visibly shaking with the 
fingertips of one hand touching the cold stone. To keep himself 
from falling? Muscles in his face, on his jaw, twitched.

"The flesh remembers," he snarled and as close as I was I got 
slammed by the power of the disgust he felt at the betrayal of 
his body. 

"What can I do?"

He raised weary hazel eyes to mine and then, unexpected, raised 
his hand and laid it along the side of my face. It was chilled 
from the stone.

Time stood still.

"This is new," I said, surprised at the quaver in my voice.

"Saw this in a movie once."

"Mulder, this is absolutely not the time for jokes."

"This is the best time," but there was no humor in the words 
that were raspy with tension.

I felt him open to me or I should say he directed his mind into 
mine. It was like nothing before, like a beam of blazing 
sunshine. Even the tips of his fingers against my face were 
suddenly hot. His thoughts were still a blank to me, however. 
I'd not known him before to have such control. 

"So in the movie what was this for?"

"The main character gave his soul into another man's keeping."

The warmth was gone. A harbinger of winter blew across my heart.

"I don't want your soul."

"I'm not giving it to you; I wouldn't know how. Scully knows 
that I doubt that I even have one, at least not in the religious 
sense. I'm just giving you my journal, everything I've stored up 
about this trip. I want you to find her, she has a right to 
know."

Instantly the chill became the full heart-stopping black cold of 
winter. "I won't be your errand b-boy!" I protested. "You tell 
her yourself!"

"Ben." His voice came soft as the first snow. "You know that's 
not likely. And she has to be told. She has the right to more 
than silence. Not knowing, that's the cruelest thing." His hand 
came away and he seemed to stagger. I reached for him thinking 
he might fall, but he waved me off.

"Let's get this over with." In a sudden fury he began to strip 
off his clothes. There was gooseflesh on that skin that fit so 
smoothly over his muscles. 

Time was moving again, moving far too quickly.

With a leap as if given time to think about it he wouldn't have 
been able to do it, he was draped in the most uncomfortable 
position imaginable over the chair. Head back, wrists and legs 
dangling over the sharp edges, every muscle was as rigid as 
carved ice. There was no molding of this unforgiving throne 
around his body, just cold and heartless stone. 

"Lock me in! Now!" he ordered, and an image burst like a flame 
into mine of what control on the instrument bank on my right I 
had to push. But my gut and my head registered the terror that 
leaked around the closed windows of his mind of just what 
'locking' him in meant. Obscene metal claws leaping out for the 
vulnerable face, three on each side, biting down hard and 
pulling. The metal spikes driving through scarred but healed 
skin into wrists and ankles. The blood spurting, running. Agony.

"No!" I cried. 

"Ben, don't be a fool!"

"I can't!"

"Ben, we don't have time for this. Do you want 'everyone’ to 
die? It may be too late already." 

But I stood, my body frozen, paralyzed. I knew that it had to be 
done, but my body refused to do this terrible thing.    

An inarticulate shout exploded like a bomb in my head. As if all 
the shutters over all the windows and door in his mind were 
thrown back at once, the power like a gun under too much 
pressure burst out. Staggered by the spear thrust of pain I was 
unaware that, literally, the door had flown open and what seemed 
like a herd descended. He had called the four - Billy, Theresa, 
Kathy, and Gary. Behind the four followed the one he couldn't 
have called, Ness. Sweat-stained and pale; she was the only one 
to look in my direction. Distracted by her desperate eyes, I 
didn't see/hear clearly the exchange between the other four and 
Mulder. 

Billy was looking frantically around the huge space beyond the 
focus of Mulder and his chair. "You can't do this by yourself!" 
It was only then that I saw in the shadows what he had seen. 
Four more command chairs ringed around Mulder's central one. 
Kathy, Theresa and Gary were each already moving towards a chair 
shedding their rags, leaving one for Billy.

"No!” Mulder ordered to the three in fury when he saw their 
intent. “Just lock me in and get out of here!"

"We're not exactly giving you a choice," Kathy barked.

"But I’ve never worked as part of a group and none of you have 
done any of this."

"You've never tried to move anything of this size on your own 
either,” Billy argued in a softer voice as he reached for the 
control panel I had refused to touch. “Even if all we can offer 
is moral support, we have to do something. There must be a 
reason for there to be five of these. No more talk, no more 
time!"

With that Billy brought his hand down with a final, desperate 
stab. In response Mulder screamed, screamed with the most 
horrible scream I had ever heard. Billy had found the courage to 
do what I could not.

Coward that I was, I refused to look in my friend’s direction 
even though the worst over.  The strangling sounds from the 
tear-choked throat, however, those I did hear as Billy raced for 
Theresa's chair. Another scream pierced the air as the claws 
leaped out and the spikes drove through her frail skin and into 
bone. Gary's chair -- and another long scream. Kathy's chair -- 
and another, less loud. She was determined to be tough and had 
had more time to prepare. And then there were her scars. She may 
have known worse. 

Billy himself was naked now, leaping. I heard the slap of his 
unprotected skin against the cold stone. "Ness!" he called, the 
word barely recognizable what with the shaking of his voice. So 
he hadn’t been unaffected by what he had done and what was going 
to happen to him. Ness left my side and ran forward. She had 
seen how the locking was done, but I found myself beating her 
there and stabbed at the control myself. A spray of blood caught 
me in the face. If Billy could do that to Mulder, I could do the 
same to him and Ness shouldn't have to. No one should have to 
induce such cruelty who was carrying life the way she was. 

Under my feet, in my bones, I felt huge engines begin to power 
up. "Out of here now!" came a strangled command, I’m not sure 
from who. There was too much pain in that room. I glanced over 
at Mulder. There was blood streaming from the spikes in wrists 
and knees, blood on his strained face so it looked like he was 
weeping black rivers.  

Though he could only move his eyes, that horrible gaze was for 
us. “Be good p-parents.” He had to struggle to find breath, each 
one a heart-wrenching effort.  "And promise... tell S-Scully... l-
loved her..." His mouth moved some more, tugging at the 
impossibly distorted face but I couldn't make out the words. 
Something about the rip tide of misery and hopelessness and 
terror in that room, Ness's hand gripping mine, and the crashing 
like an ocean in my ears, made it impossible to hear more.  Were 
those the engines? Their whine had risen and deepened so that 
they sounded like wild beasts, newly awakened and frantic to be 
free.

Mulder's eyes were closed in strain, as the bloody eyes of the 
others were closed. They were far, far away from us now, locked 
together in their common, impossible purpose. 

Ness was dragging on my arm. "He said 'get out'!" she shouted as 
close to my ear as she could manage.

Had he? We turned and ran, or tried to. The floor bucked under 
our feet just as we reached the door so that we barely made it 
through before the panel slammed shut behind us with a 'BOOM'!

The floor was not rising now; it was more like an earthquake. 
Up, down, sideways. At least at times the ship was off the 
ground or was that only the artificial gravity flickering on and 
off. One second we floated clinging to walls, then we were 
crushed, pushed flat under a giant hand. On the floor beneath 
the carvings on the dark walls of the corridor, Ness, crumpled 
in an awkward heap, was obviously crying but not enough to be 
heard above the roaring of the engines. With a terrible effort 
she reached for me. As quickly, the gravity disappeared 
altogether. My stomach lurched as we were thrown into the air. 
Then it returned, a hundred-fold, to slam us into the carvings 
and down. Ness screamed, not in fright this time, but in a 
sharp, terrible pain mixed with terror. Though our gyrating, 
booming world was doing its best to pull us apart, I groped for 
her. I don't know how I managed to reach her but I did, a 
weeping bundle squashed between wall and floor by invisible 
forces beyond her strength. I huddled around her, my breath in 
her hair, aware suddenly at how much time had past since we had 
set the charges in the power station. Too much time.

No, not too much time; just enough, just barely. Though I didn’t 
know it then, at that moment the charges under the power station 
went off beginning a chain reaction of mammoth, progressive 
explosions along the spine of what would be Rock Four for only a 
few moments longer.  And the ship -- this limping, straining 
white mountain of a ship -- wasn't nearly far enough away.