MY TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY 07: In the Belly of the Beast (1/3) DATE: 04/08/01 AUTHOR: Sue Esty CONTACT: Windsinger@AOL.com RATING: PG CLASSIFICATION: XA series SPOILERS: REQUIEM, 7th season, Deep Throat, Sixth Extinction, Per Manum, Colony, End Game, Kitsunegari, Kill Switch, Within/Without, and others. KEYWORDS: Mulderangst, Muldertorture SUMMARY: Mulder has survived his first days on the ship (at least the ones he's been conscious enough to remember) and the boredom of his life with in the mindspeaker colony. Less than intact, he survives testing, which for the first time reveals to Charley that Mulder's `speaker' talent has been destroyed. While Charley decides what to do with his damaged prisoner, Mulder is allowed to recover in the company of a young woman whose ancestors were taken from Earth four generations before to live out a barren existence in a few rooms on a huge alien space station. At the end of part six, Mulder lies sleepless in the dark waiting for morning when the Hunter will take him on the next stage of his journey, a journey that Mulder can only pray will eventually lead him home. ARCHIVING: Gossamer, Emphereal, ATXC, and anywhere with permission and as long as the author's name is retained. DISCLAIMER: No, the X-Files and the characters of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully do not belong to me, I would have treated them better. AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is seventh in a series of `short' stories chronically Mulder's confusing, agonizing, torturous, lonely and wondrous adventures following his collection in Oregon. Two more to go. (I may try to loop back into CC's universe. Whatever I do will make a lot more sense then what CC has given us.) My older work can be found on Gossamer under 'Esty, Sue' with the newer pieces at http://members.aol.com/windsinger. MY TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY 07: In the Belly of the Beast (1/3) That damn, sadistic bastard, he's doing it again. Even though I know it won't help much I scramble up unto my knees and out of the meager nest of warmth I'd made for myself. Frantically stretching up with my arms, I push down with my legs. At least for now I wish that the padding on the 'ceiling' and 'floor' did not have so much give. Close eyes, grit teeth, deep breath. Even though I'm braced as well as I can, my stomach tumbles right along when the tube under my knees starts to buck and the walls to madly spin. I fight screams. Charley doesn't like screaming. He'll make me sit up front again today if I do, so I force my cries to vanish like subsonic blasts out of the top of my head. The tube's gyrations become more frenetic. It flips right, left, spins, dips, plummets, all at once. In time its all a blur. And when the world finally turns inside out, so do my insides. I lose hold of whatever bracing I had managed and I'm immediately grateful for every millimeter of boringly gray plastic foam. Thrown from floor to ceiling and from one end of the tube to the other, my body almost immediately exceeds its ability to feel individual impacts. There is no describing the pain as all the old bruised places are bruised all over again. My screaming is no longer subsonic. I don't know how long that goes on either for my throat is soon as raw as my knees and elbows. When abruptly all motion ceases, one final wail still echoes down the tube. I know it can be heard throughout the rest of the ship as easily as here and I would give anything to call it back. Need I mention that there's a dimension to space sickness at faster than light speeds that seasickness can't even begin to touch? I am so tired. Charley does hear. I know because he sends a little present my way. Just when I thought the gymnastics were over, the world turns inside out one more time, my stomach rises and tries to come up out of my throat. Lucky for me I haven't eaten in three days. A second time I wait. I'm curled in a ball now on what was the ceiling and shake like a dog that's been whipped. Like the screaming, the flesh is weak. The stillness has lied so often that there is nothing to do but stay alert and listen. Are the fireworks really over for now? I don't trust the sneaky bastard, but the silence is indeed entire this time except for the ringing in my ears. All right, maybe the ship has stopped but that only means that he'll be coming for me all that much sooner. I wish I could stand and face him, but there's far too little head room even if my legs were not the consistency of watery Jell-O, so I stay were I am, a ball of misery in the corner of the tube. Arms hugging my chest, I try to at least to stop the trembling before he comes, but the shakes are really bad this time. It's useless to tell him that I'm trying to control them for even though I am they seem to be getting worse, not better, no matter what I do. "You'll acclimate." Charley told me casually, after the very first maneuver when I thought I was going to die and when I did lose my last four meals and then had to clean it all up afterwards. Thankfully, it is not as hard to do in zero-G as you might think since I was locked in the tube at the time so there is only so far that the nasty, little buggers could float. So why haven't I acclimated? Beats the shit outta me. Yeah, well, that happened, too. I concentrate on the fact that my sweat has turned cold and I should towel off because it's not helping my shakes, only I don't move. Mostly I don't because I don't have a towel, but I'm also too busy dreading Charley's return. Oh, Scully... Whenever I have a moment I find myself being astonished again and again that this is all happening. I keep praying that I'll wake up from this nightmare. More importantly, I pray that you'll be the one to do it. You'll let yourself into my room and stand there in those ridiculous blue silk pajamas, your hair all tousled from the pillow, and shake me awake. The expression on your face reproves me for once again disrupting your sleep, but as always your eyes are full of concern. But you aren't here. You never were and never will be. There are only the hours, each impossible, one following after another. Why for all those years of brave words about believing do I find this so unbelievable? And, damn it, why me? Were my genes engineered? Or is it only by chance that I ended up with the magic combination that my intergalactic demons find so fascinating? A winning lottery ticket would have been more useful. Exactly when did I start becoming the prey rather than the hunter, or has it always been this way? Charley tells me that I have been watched for a long time. How long? I keep seeing before my eyes that folder with Samantha's name on the label and my name under. I was going to be the hostage and then I wasn't. Who made the change? In years past when we were out on a case, I would so often look at those to whom 'things' happened and I would envy them their specialness. Now I would give anything to give mine away, to be normal, bored. Home. Whoa, gotta slow down. Too few miles to Depression City that way. Better that I fill my red-headed Muse in on what has happened during those last moments with Ness while I waited for the hammer of doom to fall. Ness.there was a situation that I should have handled better. As expected, when the lights returned that last morning they came on flashing which meant that Charley was already waiting. There was no tearful leave-taking. We both needed the distance and neither of us wanted to provide that kind of show for whoever may be watching and we always knew someone could be. I will never forget her eyes as she followed me out. I refused her her heart's desire and yet at the end she shared my fear of where my exile would lead me next. Here is one sin I will carry on my conscience until the day I die. On the bright side, that day may not be so far away considering how angry Charley clearly is right now. Charley's message to Ness was that I was being taken somewhere by ship. What I wasn't told until we were underway and I had already been sick once, was that he and I would be alone in this two-man carnival ride. Nor did I find out until even later that I would have to work for my bed and board. That revelation came how many days ago? Four? A week? Hard to tell with all the blackout time. It drives me crazy that I still haven't been told where we are going or why, nor do I understand why I'm the chosen one yet again. I thought I was damaged goods. I harbored this faint hope that maybe I could convince them to throw me back. The shakes have just begun to subside when a metallic whir indicates that someone is activating the hatch, which is the only way in or out of the tube. The round opening halfway down the long dimension opens with a faint creak. He makes no move to enter, nor any sound, but I can sense him nevertheless. He's waiting for me to come out. I don't want to -- by the gods, it's the last thing I want -- but if I don't surrender on my own he'll just reach in and drag me out. There are marks on the padding from the second time we engaged in that little activity. I note that the blood left over from my bleeding fingernails has turned brown. The place did need some color but from my point of view such a uniquely personal reminder of my humiliation is not an improvement. Note that I didn't complain about his pulling me out the first time. I resisted to a certain point just because I try as a rule to be as contrary as possible around the Hunter. In truth I was relieved to get out of the tube and the remains of my half -digested breakfast that I'd left slowly spinning therein. That was, of course, before Charley gave me my first lesson which explains the claw marks on the upholstery before my second. I've lost count of which one this is. The twelfth? Okay, okay, I know that I'm procrastinating and that he won't wait much longer. Do I really want him to drag me out of the tube again? No, I decide. I'm far too tired and sick and my shoulder and elbow have stiffened from where they were half- dislocated the last time. Still, just because I decide to save myself some bruises doesn't mean that I hurry. Inevitability doesn't mean that the condemned sprints for the hangman's noose. As I emerge headfirst from the small hatch, he is waiting. I don't look at his face. I don't want to see even a flicker of triumph acknowledging I've come at his call like some well- trained lapdog. Instead I concentrate on getting my shoulders through the hatch. The ship was made for smaller beings, the little workers perhaps, so I barely fit. I would have had a harder time if the gravity were not so low. I estimate that it's similar to that on the Moon, but that's only a guess. The truth is that I know we're not on the Moon, but on a tiny ship with not a hundredth of the gravity stabilization of the mindspeaker colony ship that collected me to begin with. If only I was that close to the Moon and home and you, I would be the happiest man on Earth. Only I still wouldn't be ON Earth, so I guess... Never mind. Back to my current meeting with Charley. From his expression, he's perturbed by my lack of promptness but not overly so. I came. I didn't hurry, but I came. "Stand still," he orders. I expect this. Before anything Charley looks into my eyes. He is checking to see if I'm having one of my headaches. I can't blame him for not just coming out and asking. He has no reason to trust my answer. There won't be any training if the headache is bad. Using that criteria, I would swear that I had headaches on a rather continuous basis. On the other hand, if my head really did feel as if it were full of evil nanobots wielding sharp knives and sledgehammers, I might very well say that I'm fine when I'm not. Under the influence of 'a-really-bad-one', murder-suicide begins to look good. Half a dozen sessions back, we found out how nearly disastrous it can be for Charley to try to train me when's my brain's on fire. This is the reason why he looks in my eyes to read the truth there. I'm out of luck this time. I'm dog tired and bruised and a more than a little nauseous but no headache. Time to go forward. The ship is so small that the distance we have to cross is less than twenty feet, yet every step of the way Charley's hand weighs heavily on my shoulder. What does he expect me to do? Run? How I would love to feel the spring of turf under my feet and sun on my face. Here, however, there is no running. There is, literally, no where to go. The Rock waits for me in all its ugly and massive power. It's an 'object d'art' that the Marquis de Sade would have loved. Though this is far from the first time I've seen it, the room tilts on its axis for a moment. At the same time I feel Charley's hand tighten on my shoulder. So, that's what he's afraid of, that I'll faint again. How sweet; he doesn't want me to accidentally hurt myself before he has a chance to drive me insane. Embarrassingly, I did faint the first time he brought me before the sacred Rock, but then I was unprepared. I had just extracted myself from the tube after my first trip, the one when Charley took us safely out of City's airspace, and I got so messily sick. His nostrils flared and his lip curled in disgust at the sight and the smell of me. First he had me clean the tube, then he took me to a closet, a very small, elbow-whacking closet, where there was something like a shower. Relatively clean and air-dried, I stepped out and he indicated for me to proceed him. I thought he was taking me to where I could get some clean clothes. There I was wrong. He brought me to the command room and the Rock. Unlike everything else on the ship, which by necessity is as minimal as possible as can be expected from its size, the Rock loomed absolutely huge in my vision, an obscene throne fashioned in what seemed like dark granite. It was positioned under one of the cones of brilliant light so that its sharp metal accouterments could shine all the brighter here and there and everywhere. I suddenly felt very warm and my heart began to pound alarmingly. Worse, I seemed to be flying farther and farther away from the room, my body, my mind, light. I woke to sheer agony, the most unimaginable pain in my wrists and ankles. I find out later that Charley has laid me out naked on the Rock and sharp, massive spikes have just been driven through skin and tendon and muscle into the spaces between the lower leg and arm bones. I've been in five-point restraints more than once and I'll take that any day to this. In the midst of that first wake up scream, a hand came down on my forehead, holding my head down and immobile against the headrest. So startled was I by his touch, firm but almost gentle, that the scream died in my throat. Images, smells, sensations, were flashing like bombs in my head. Shit, I'd been here before. My very skin and bones knew this position all too well. It's fortunate for Charley that I fainted or I would have fought to the death to stay out of it. That brawl would come later, the same time I redecorated the tube with my bloody fingers. But for now this was the first time -- and yet clearly was not the first time. "Relax, mooncalf," he whispered to me. "Give yourself time. Go ahead -- think and feel and remember. Just don't let it come back too quickly." Yeah, sure. Just try, piss-head. Toes to fingertips, terror and pain flowed over my skin and my body began to seize, pulling with agony against the bolts. From behind Charley leaned over and placed one hard and massive hand on either side of my face, to prevent my dashing my brains out against the Rock as I convulsed. When it was over and I lay totally limp with exhaustion, he released his hold and stepped to the side so that he could see my face and I his. "Fuck." I breathed. "That I've been here before," I frowned. "But until I walked into this room, I hadn't been." "Confusion is natural. You have not, in fact, been here. You have, however, been interfaced with a type of examination station much like this at least three times before. Over your lifetime, probably more. Three times on the Portjam." "Why can't I remember?" "Listen to your body. Your body clearly does." I close my eyes and not only because the light hurts. Grudgingly, a haze of red images from somewhere in my gut floats to the surface. Against my eyelids flashes an image of a glistening arm of metal. It's spinning. Like the world's most obscene dentist drill, it's wailing and sliding towards me, aiming at my mouth which has already been forced open in the most obscene manner you can imagine. With machine efficiency it drills itself into the incredible sensitivity of my upper palette, driving into my brain. Shit, it left a calling card behind though not like Scully's, more like the one Billy Myers and his classmates carried seven years ago. I jerk violently against the bolts hoping the pain will prevent the next scene from replaying itself. Like the overpowering dread in a nightmare I know what is coming. It's a tiny but wickedly sharp circular saw and it's gliding with purpose and menace on its robot arm towards the area of my unprotected chest. Without conscience, it cuts sharp and deep and precise. The scene ends in a scream of unbearable agony and bright fountain of blood. More gray. Not as good as black but I'll take oblivion when I can get it. From the fuzziness, I knew I had seized again. I had not lost touch for long this time. From the walls, I could still sense the last vibrations from that last nightmare screaming. Charley's hands were holding my head down again but he steps back seeing that sense has returned. "When.?" I croaked. "The first time was just for processing, early on when you were still recovering from the injuries you received upon arrival." That was when they'd left the object that now sat like the radio collar for some wild beast up against the surface of my brain. "The second time, later during that same recovery interval. That was for evaluation. The third time was for medical intervention after you so inconveniently nearly died from the brain scan. You had a very curious reaction during your first session. We thought." He paused, making a motion with his hand as if to dismiss a thought. I think I know what had intrigued them so. Hidden within the flood of nightmare memories, was one shining jewel. Splayed out on something like this Rock, ill and scared and despairing, I had, for an instant, felt your presence. I swear I even heard your voice, far away but calling my name. The memory is so clear that I can almost feel you now. SO close. Close enough to touch me, close enough to save me, if you only knew where I was. But even though I cried `Ssscuuullleeeee!' with all my soul, you couldn't hear me. You faded away and I was left with nothing in my hands but air. I feel the tears on my face again like those I cried then and, as before, I can't even raise my hand to wipe them away. "Why haven't I remembered before?" "Human's find their experiences with this particular apparatus exceedingly painful, as well as frightening. As a kindness, we suppress the memory of these sessions." "But it comes back -" "--each time you come face to face with its like again, yes." Like a lecturer, he clasped his hands behind his back and proceeded to walk slowly around and around where I lay on my back fixed like Prometheus on my rock. His movements make me dizzy so I close my eyes. "I won't be taking the memories again," he informs me. "It's important that I don't." "Why?" I ask though I didn't think I really want to know. "Why is it so important that I remember now and not before." "Because you're going to be given a great deal of new information to input and analyze and we can't risk gaps. The stations you have had experience with before this were designed for medical investigation and treatment. The one you shall become acquainted with today is for an entirely different purpose." I opened my eyes and he caught and held them. "The time you were hooked up for evaluation, you called out to your partner." And sobbed afterwards. "None of your business." "She was there at the time. Outside the ship, not fifty yards away." A shiver of amazement and desire and joy surged through me. So close. She had come so close days -- or had it been weeks? -- after I had been taken. So much had happened. The ship had moved on and collected more and more from all over and yet she had tracked it down. Wonderful, determined, incredible woman! So close. Not close enough, but nearly as sweet was the knowledge that I was not forgotten. In my hours of deepest despair I have often wondered whether anyone at all noticed by absence. "Naturally, we thought," Charley was saying, "that your `speaking' talent had become active again. We were encouraged. We found out only later that your inner ear had been surgically deafened. So how could you have known? I have been asking myself that for some time. The only conclusion I can come up with is that you sensed her because your nervous system was connected to the ship at the time and the ship had recorded her presence." "That's unusual?" "Exceedingly unusual. That's why you have been brought here." I strained against the bolts pinioning my arms and legs. The points of contact had become blessedly numb. "Other than to be used as a pin cushion, what am I doing here?" "You are going to learn to fly this ship." * * * * * * * * My first experience with the Beast went steadily downhill from there. First off, there's a lot that I haven't yet told you about how the Rock and its pilot interface and how sick it leaves me afterwards. Then there's Charley's profound frustration and disappointment over my total lack of progress. Then there is having to go through it all again and again and again. What session did I say this one was? Twelve. Some things have changed. For example, I work my way out of my one-piece coverall on my own now. It's less painful than having Charley do it for me. Then I climb up and into the Rock by myself. It's hard, literally and figuratively. Every fiber of my being wants to be anywhere but here but, again, it's better than having Charley stun me into unconsciousness to get me into it. That's happened too many times. My being naked it also damn weird as well as uncomfortable. It's like being in a morgue and laid out on a cold marble slab. For just an instant each time I expect to see your face hovering over me, but if that were true I would be dead, and despite everything I'm really not ready for that yet. If it were only me, I would hang it up here and now but I'm not alone in this tragedy. I can only imagine the nightmare that it must be for you. Not knowing is a hell that would go on past any death of mine and all the way to yours, a little evil gnome of sorrows to sit on your shoulder throughout eternity. Not a very nice going-away present. Back to the Rock. Sorry that my mind keeps wandering, though escaping would be a better description. The Rock fits around you so one is more in it than lying on it. The pilot's legs fit into channels and hang at a ninety-degree angle. There are more channels for my arms and my head. I can't tell you what an uncomfortable position this is. After only a few minutes my lower back is going into spasms. I stare at the ceiling and try not to tense up for what's going to happen next, but I do. The Rock reaches out and connects to your body. This happens in two stages. I've mentioned the bolts. They connect in approximately the same places for each session and leave behind raw, livid wounds so that the attaching hurts more each time. It's a given that I'm powerless to prevent any of this. And there's more fun. Immediately after my limbs are pinioned, I'm treated to many sharp little pains as innumerable little hooks latch onto my skin and PULL. This is a torture you cannot possibly imagine. This is a particular agony on my face. The extent of the disfigurement that is going to be left behind after weeks or months of this is truly depressing. Will you even be able to look at me? Even more than the pain, it's for this reason that I don't dare move no matter how cramped my muscles get. If I do I'm terrified that I'm going to rip something significant. At least there are no equivalent grippers for the really important stuff down below. I guess they don't think that biofeedback from that part of the anatomy is particularly meaningful. Now that the pilot is all hooked up he lies there, legs dangling, already in pain and waits in dread for the real horror to start. At this point I find myself obsessing a lot on Ellens Air Force Base. Remember Ellens, Scully? Since they went through my brain with a hole punch, the details of that case have never been clear. From your report, however, and my own notes I have a good idea about what I thought we'd find. Too bad that we'll never know what I actually did. If you remember, what got us started -- all right, what got me started -- was investigating the disappearance and mental breakdowns of some of their special pilots. Remember Budahas's alternately vacant and belligerent face? Remember McLennen's slow, obsessive compulsive behavior as he worked on his fishing flies, one after another after another? I know how they got that way now because Charley is determined that I be introduced into that select brotherhood. This ship, therefore, is no longer an 'unidentified flying object', not to me, but it certainly is unfathomable. Imagine, Scully... For a man who can't find his way out of the woods, just the idea of my piloting anything is pretty scary all on its own. Why is Charley doing this? I have no idea. Could be for the torture value alone but I don't think so. He's not someone to waste anything. Not time, not his own skin, and not my sanity, which he seems to think worth saving. Besides, Charley could inflict pain and humiliation without providing me with a skill that I could possibly use. Use to do what? One guess, partner. That's the only thing that keeps me going. The scenario replays over and over in my mind as I wait for the pain to start and after as I try to remember who and what I am and then wait for the terrible sickness and disorientation to go away. I lie awake nursing the cramps in my stomach and my back and plan what I will do when I catch Charley napping. Because he does nap, though not for long. Obviously, I haven't tried anything on my own yet for the very good reason that my chances of even hitting the correct solar system would be about the same as a two-year-old landing a 747. But someday, someday, I'll lay my body down in the Rock's arm and just go. Go home. Why across millions of empty miles can I still sense your skepticism? It's so strong maybe I can use it as a homing beacon. You want to know if there are any drawbacks to my little plan. Oh, just little details like I have no directions and like I haven't figured out how to disengage from the Rock by myself. Even if I could, once out I'm totally incapacitated for hours. But Charley manages without tribal scarring on his face and bolt holes in his arms so it must be possible. After all, what is there that a practically indestructible, shape-changing, acid- bleeding alien do that I can't? Don't answer that, but at least I now have a goal. It's better than being all but dead inside. Besides, Charley seems convinced that I can learn. If it's possible to wrestle freedom from this terrible slavery then I will. I must. There is nothing left for me but that. Grim reality forces me to admit that these are pretty fancy words from someone who hasn't been able to keep anything down for days and spends eighty percent of his conscious curled in a ball and shaking like a leaf. The lessons aren't simple, either. Oxford was like pre-school compared to this. One of the big hurdles is to manage the graying of the line between the physical and the mental. We -- meaning men and women of the Western World -- tend to make a pretty big distinction between activities of the body and those of the mind. Not so with some of the eastern religions or with piloting this ship. They should have recruited Buddhist monks. A subtle twitch of an eyelash here, a held breath there, my very thoughts and moods can make tons of mass skitter or slide, flip or fly. Maybe if there were an Owner's Manual I'd have a chance, because Charley certainly isn't much help. He's a firm believer in trial and error. Unfortunately, when I send signals the ship can't interpret, the lab rat gets more than a minor shock. Let's just say that 'Try again' is not in the Beast's vocabulary. I don't know what it uses as a reward yet, not having earned any, but an absence of pain and the terrible sickness at the end would be much appreciated. On the opposite end of the scale, I have tried refusing to participate by neither thinking nor moving. This is hard as it's almost impossible not to think about how much it's going to hurt. Even more than that, the Beast doesn't like silence. The Beast is what I call the ship's semi-sentient navigation program. Like an obsessed lover, she demands attention and she is quite capable of exerting considerable pressure to persuade her victim to respond to her demands. The bolts and grappling hooks of the Rock are actually her claws and fangs. A jealous, insatiable, maddened animal is Beast. A very hungry beast. END of CHAPTER 1 MY TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY 07: In the Belly of the Beast (2/3) AUTHOR: Sue Esty (Windsinger@AOL.com) Sorry if I think of her as female. It's no criticism on your sex. I guess it's because ships have been referred to as female throughout history. I thought that was because of their fickleness at sea. Beast, however, is not fickle. Oh, no, she is quite single-minded. She flies and she will fly, only she has no sense of direction whatsoever. That makes her dependent upon the pilot, which is where I come in. Lucky me. As has happened each time before, a hologram displays in the air space above my eyes. It's a three-dimensional map. From the previous sessions, I know that the ship's position is indicated by a small, yellow circle and this lesson's destination as a blood red 'X'. Appropriate. Between here or there are streams and eddies and pools and gravity wells and solar winds. They're all marked on the map which makes it look like a very complex geological survey map, which is what, I suppose, that it is, only on the astral plane. Even as I watch the display shifts subtly. There will be no seeing once the maneuver begins. The eyes, or at least that part of the brain that interprets visual input, shuts down. What that means is that the pilot must memorize dozens of critical points in space -- not just where they are, but where they will be. I assume this is a task that is too complex for Beast but not so for the human or humanoid mind otherwise why bother with such a erratic and, in my case, unwilling source of information. I force myself to concentrate. In dread of the pain to come and daunted by the very complexity of the schematic, I'd not given it adequate attention before. This time I do, however, and oddly, it imprints itself crystal clear on my mind as simply as a story of Poe's or a dozen case reports. More than that, I realize that none of the changes that flicker across the map surprise me. Like the mind of a killer with a knife, it all makes logical sense - at least to me. I feel a surge of hope. Could it be that Charley is on to something here? With my eidetic memory and that spooky insight of mine that is so often half a dozen steps before anyone else's, I may actually be suited for this even though static flat maps have so often left me baffled. In the blink of an eye the ghostly image is gone. No matter, I don't need it any more. My mind is racing, energized by a sudden spark of possibilities. The fear's still there, but it's been offset somewhat by an analytical fervor such as I have not felt for many a month. I've got a puzzle. To solve the insoluble was what I once lived for before all my energies were required merely to keep alive. Another idea nibbles at my brain. Perhaps I've also been wrong about waiting for Beast to get impatient enough to come hunting for what she needs. Maybe I should try being proactive and meet her halfway. Well, if I'm going to, I'd better hurry because I can sense her prowling the edges of my mind now, a black bulk darkly illuminated with arcs of violet flame. The growing tingle in my muscles and the scratching about inside my head are also undeniable signs that she's actively searching for the way in. Anyone would put up defenses, but I've done more than that in the past. I've shut down, thrown up stone walls, barred the gates, dug the mote, and filled it with alligators. It forces her to lay siege. But what if I just let her in? What if I even put out a welcome mat? A reasonable plan, only the kind of fear I have is far from reasonable. Desperate, I need to think this over again only there's precious little time. The problem, Scully, is that I'm shit-sticky, knee-knocking, heart-stopping, heart-in-the-throat terrified. You have no idea the enormity of the power I'm locked into when Beast gets her hooks into my mind. It's nothing compared to the Rock's hooks on my face. I'm just a bug and she's the enormous bully who'd just love to pull off my legs. As if he senses what I was thinking, Charley is beside me. "Coward," he whispers. "Do you think you have a choice? You don't have a choice. You must tame it. You must take the power and you must control." There's an edge to his voice. With the old Spookie sense that seems to have come back in full today I suddenly realize that I know something about Charley -- his reaction to the Beast was very much the same as mine once upon a time. Come to think of it, he still seems a little green around the gills after his own stints in the Rock. I just have never noticed before because I'm green all the way through at that point just from the backlash. Why would any race develop a system as important as this, which is at the same time so hostile to life? Is it possible that the Oz, as Ness calls them, stole the technology from a third party? An intriguing theory but for later. At the moment it's now or never. The illusion of a foul breath on the back of my neck signals that it's almost too late. Though my blood has now gone to ice in my veins, I force myself to mentally stand very still. All the doors are unlocked and all the windows are open. I won't run to embrace it, but I'll go this far. It's worth a try, once at least. Can't be worse that what I have been doing. Oh, shhhhhiiiitt.. She's coming. It's one thing to see the train approaching from a long way off, a tiny pinprick of bright light in a dark tunnel. It's another thing to rise to meet it, to feel the sheer mass of it rumble like an earthquake under your feet, to hear the roar of its massive passage thunder like an avalanche... closer.... closer.... I am harboring serious doubts that this was such a good idea. Too late. Totally unprotected, the pain is less like a thousand knives and more like being hit in the stomach with a medicine ball that has the weight and punch of that locomotive. Skillful claws bury themselves deep in my insides, in my brain, in my gut. Again, it's not much like knives, but does possess a crushing weight so vast I cannot take a breath if my life depended on it. There's still pain as the final attachment is made but I am no longer an animal maddened by it. Amazingly, I have some mind yet and being able to think when my Beast half demands a direction, I'm actually able to pull up a shaky picture. It's so different this time. Her fingers are long, her fingers are deft, they stroke my mind. True, they nick the edges but her touch brings more than pain. There's another layer. It's not sexual, but it is not unpleasant. Until she wants more. Until she wants not only what I've offered but all of me. 'Stop.' But there is no stopping, no ending. My maw is vast, my teeth are bright and my claws are very, very sharp. "You must take control," Charley had said. Sigh... I forgot about that. 'Maybe next time...' is my last tiny thought before the madness begins. Later I'll remember snatches of what happened the way you recall a dream, only this is a Salvador Dali dream. Solid objects melt, sounds taste, time shatters like glass. The star map is not in my head but I am in it like a bird, swimming in a pink and piss-green hurricane. You know where you need to go but it's darn hard to get there. You reach out your hand only to find you've moved your foot. You swim a mile, run two and find you've gone nowhere. You breath out violets and cross a galaxy. There is no 'me' any more. I have no name, no past, and the future is a rich, vast and turbulent ocean. I am the ship sliding on the ice of my tears guided by a thought and the twitch of a toe. It must be black ice for outside my hard skin all is complete darkness. Like the currents in the deepest trenches of the sea, there is no seeing the eddies and riptides that must be ridden or avoided. Other senses are needed for that, senses beyond sense for those who believe in such things. And I do. Ah. Another reason why I was chosen. What is unthinkable to others has long ceased to seem impossible to me. That one thought envelopes me totally, like a bubble of calm in a storm. Safe in my bubble I am suddenly drunk on a fierce joy. The taste of power on the tip of my tongue is sweet. In the midst of this delicious delirium a mad thought flashes firecracker bright. Was this what I was bred for, to yield this incredible power? But then the shiny coin spins and its reverse is dark. Does this also mean that I am destined to lie here until the end of time while my body and soul merge farther and farther into that of a machine? The very idea is enough to burst the bubble, snapping the tenuous synergy between the Beast and its prey like a dry bone. For you see I can still smell my own burned flesh which reminds me that I've been there before and I do NOT want to repeat that experience again. With the lost of my shield I am alone and totally unprotected. The solar winds seer my flesh, a gravity mountain crashes down, and I have as much power over my future as a dry leaf caught in a summer storm. At least leaves have a quiet death, a meaningful death, becoming quickly one with the earth. My drifting peace does not last. I almost wish it would. Like the thundercloud she returns, sweeping down out of the night full of furious wind and rain. It's no great gift to be saved from drowning like a kitten in a well only to be gobbled up between the slobbering jaws of a tiger. Just shredding teeth and fetid breath and eternal questions... At the end of the madness, for there is an end, there's the dim sensation of being up chucked by that tiger as if I were a hairball to be spewed like so much vomit across a carpet of stars. There's no way to truly describe it. There no reason anyone would want to. Stomach, brains, heart turned inside out. Tender insides raked with claws. Then it's all pushed up your ass. No, that doesn't nearly describe it, but it's as close as I want to go. Unconsciousness when it comes has never, ever been so welcome. At least it's a dark that stays still. * * * * * * * * I float in sweet oblivion for a very, very long time. I don't even try to remember what happened. It's enough to know that wherever I wake up will be worse than where I am. For you see, there's this dream... In the dream there's a bed that is warm and firm enough to support all the aches in my body and the aches in my body are certainly legion. Even better, there are dozens of pillows and mounds of fluffy blankets and acres of clean, cool sheets. The morning sun warms my face and a sweet breeze touches my cheek. It reminds me of a furtive breath whispering as we pass in the dark hands too full of weapons and flashlights to touch, 'be careful', words which could just as easily be 'I love you'. Somewhere leaves rustle. I'm wearing my favorite old worn T-shirt and nearly threadbare jogging shorts. It's Sunday morning and for a polytheist like myself no particular church to attend. All I need to do is lie here and wander from dream to dream. Places I've been pass before my eyes, things I've seen, childhood joys like the River at Quonochontaug golden in the summer sunrise when all the rest of the world still sleeps. An older me watches children play, children who have known no fear in their lives worse than the loss of a favorite toy. I come into a light doze at the sound of someone moving softly about the room. I don't open my eyes but I smile for I can sense the size and shape of the form and I know that clean scent. She glides gently onto the bed beside me and runs her hand almost languidly over the top of the bedclothes. By the way my body responds, the sheets and my comfort rags might as well not be there. Soon they aren't. She undresses me, slow the way I like it. I wait in happy anticipation for the touch of her hand on my flesh, skin to skin. She complies as if she can read my thoughts and I allow myself to enjoy every moment the way a starving man tastes his first food. Too quickly, however, she moves into a realm of hard play with a fervor that leaves me breathless. I try to remember what must have happened to instill this need in her but moving thoughts around in any logical order has become too difficult. Like a recently strung bow, my body is taut. It sings in response to her slightest touch, becoming tighter and tighter as her ministrations becomes more insistent. Oh, sweet muse? I can't bear it. I want to come so bad but then again I don't. A voice in the back of my mind warns that this has got to last me a long, long time. All at once I need to see your face. Until now I hadn't tried because I was afraid of breaking the spell. Now I want to, I have to. It has been so long... I open my eyes just a crack and even through my tears I know that silhouette, that shape. I could pick it up in the dark, in rain, in snow, in blinding sun, in a drug-filled haze. Relief nearly makes me lose control. You don't disappear. Your face, though, I still don't see. For the moment red hair flows down obscuring the view. I would move it aside but your hands are working on me eager and low and I wonder if I can control my own. Better hurry or in a few more seconds I'll be too far gone to care. The hand I finally raise seems to float up on its own, but I manage to push that curtain of silk aside. There I pause. You're distracted by my intrusion and I'm distracted by your face. It IS your face, isn't it? The shapes are all there, and the colors. Cream and blush and blue. Puzzled, I search for what has changed. The edge slowly falls off the blossom, so to speak, as I search determined to understand. It doesn't take long. There is no life here. It's a soulless face. "Scully?" Even as a small finger touches my lips to stop any more questions, you begin to work me so fast and so hard that it hurts and my wonderful halo of pleasure seriously begins to tumble over into madness. Something is wrong... something is REALLY wrong... Trying to push away from this creature who still 'might' be Scully, my hands find a padded surface the feel of which strikes a memory in my very bones. I stare beyond your face - her face -- to see the curve of a wall less than four feet away. "No!!!" With all my strength I thrust the creature away. In response she slams me down with unbelievable strength, not a hint of gentleness remaining in that face or body. She is smiling now, a broad, un-Scully-like grin. Feral and brittle as ice. "You are one sick bastard, Charley!" I growl, "and I don't find any of this very funny." I expect this horrible parody to vanish but it doesn't. Instead, it is getting very, very personal and some serious fear begins to worm into my stomach. How far will he go? Do I have any chance of fighting him? Not much, if this form retains the strength the Charley I know. Besides, what can I honestly do to something that actually looks like Scully? To find that I had almost fired a lethal shot at Scully who was actually a projection created by Pusher's sister had nearly killed me, She has my straining wrists together now over my head, though it seems impossible that those little hands have the strength to hold me. Confusion is taking serious hold but not enough that the pump would notice it. It's been a long time and is well primed as well she knows. Still grinning that cold smile, she beings to lower herself.. I don't know where I found the strength. A healthy does of terror, yes, but mostly disgust. "You sonofabitch! You haven't the right to look like her!" My body and my mind aren't working in unison at the moment, but I manage one all-out effort. Flailing arms and legs may not be a pretty sight but are able to disrupt the status quo. I think I would actually have bitten the iron-strong, yet still delicate- looking, fingers if I hadn't hesitated at the last moment, remembering what would happened if my berserker attack drew blood. I'm actually relieved that the figure is able to snatch its hand away in time. This is when the creature above me changes shape. The last thing I want in my nightmares is to see this parody of your beautiful likeness flowing and blowing up like a balloon into my private devil, but that's what I'm going to get and probably for years to come. I'm gasping now. "Game's over, Charley." So why's he still looming over me? His legs as thick and strong as tree trunks are still on either side of my hips. One massive hand is on my chest and the pressure of his weight is making it nearly impossible to breathe, much less curse. If he keeps this up, he's going to crack a rib. I'm beginning to see black now but not enough to hide his ugly face. So sick am I of that Mount Rushmore visage that I somehow come up with enough spit to give him a good one right in the eye. Really a stupid thing to do considering how pissed he probably is at having his fun spoiled. Remember seeing the volcano erupt? I have twice now and this second time as I watch Charley is the worst. I have seldom seen such fury on a face before and hope not to see again. Talk about the devil incarnate! This is he. This is mindless, animal, god- like fury, and the kind that says that I'm in one heap of a lot of trouble. He raises his hand, the one I tried to bite in its previous incarnation and slaps me. I remember how it was on the submarine a lifetime ago when the world was still full of mysteries. I was helpless against him then and helpless now. It's fortunate that my head was pressed against the padding otherwise I swear that he would have broken my neck. He delivers this particular punishment only once but, stupid me, I'm still trying to fight back, despite the fact that all I'm seeing for a few seconds are stars and supernovas. You know, Scully, when I get back home, I think I will consider those anger management classes you've been urging me to take for I should have accepted his alpha male status long before the situation got to this point. I know that sounds strange considering his latest shape shifting but I could have lived my life gladly without going through what followed. It may not be the most painful of my experiences with Charley to date but continues to be the most disturbing. You see, as he's still not getting any sign of submission from me, my local alien guide goes off the deep end, only its not hot where he shoots off to, but to a very cold place. In hindsight I would have preferred a good beating even with his inhuman strength behind it. Instead, he raises one hand, fingers flexed like a raptor's claw, and brings it down with judgement of Jove onto my head. What he bestows is no blessing but is the most horrible blast of pain I have ever experienced and I've known lots. Black and red and flaming white explode not only in my head but bursts out in one long, slow and terrible wave down my body. I've seized before but nothing like that. He'd have been thrown off if he and I were not grimly connected by the energy still pouring from his body into mine. On the surface of the pain, I'm dimly reminded of the metal finger slaves of the half-human computer locking onto my limbs and nearly electrocuting me on the spot, but dimly is just about how my present experience compares to that, in intensity anyway. It's as if the power is traveling through my body and systematically snapping the links that connect every cell to every other cell. In addition to the pure agony of it, I feel as if I'm now broken into about a million pieces, pieces so small and lightly linked that it's as if I were liquid, like a column of water with the glass pulled away which in a millisecond will collapse. Only it doesn't, there's this power still, continuing to pour in, and Charley there behind it all, the manic artist, forcing frail and tortured skin and bones to flow under those massive hands like so much soft clay. It's an unimaginable sensation and would have been unendurable for more than seconds. I cannot see, cannot hear, but in time the worst of the pain does pass, a blurry sight returns and a sort of fuzzy hearing. But I feel so odd. The world seems somehow to have. shrunk? Or is it that Charley, whose position astride my hips has not changed, who has grown larger or come closer. His hand on my chest feels immense and my wrists that he holds again above my head feel as small and fragile as bird bones. Worse, something deep, deep and more intimately personal than eyes or ears or even skins seems profoundly different. There are no words for what has changed and I do not want the words. I do not want to look and I won't look, not at the walls that seem so far away and certainly not at my body. All that I have left is to stare at Charley's black and angry face. If all he can see is stark terror in my eyes then so be it, he wins this round. "What have you done?" comes out in a wheeze because he still has that one hand on my chest, a chest that feels no more substantial than the bird bones in my wrists. His expression changes like a switch has been flicked. Where the volcano had been, there's just that granite face rapidly losing color. Unbelievable that some emotion can actually affect that cold stone. "What have you made me do?" The words are almost inaudible. As if they burn him, he releases my hands, but I do not move at all, not my hands, not anything. If I were to do much more than breathe, I'm afraid I will fall apart into those millions of pieces. At least I can breathe because he's leaned back removing most of the weight from my chest. My eyes have still not left his face because there isn't anyplace else safe to look. He stares at me with the oddest expression, then he makes some kind of sign. If he were human, I'd say it was equivalent to the evil eye. What does he see? If I'm lucky, I'll never know. Far more gently than the first time and with greater deliberation, he places that massive hand once again to my head. I experience that awesome, inhuman power once more only it is much less of a destructive force this time, as if it were not unmaking, but making. As if water were forced to flow uphill before, the floodgates are open now and the surging streams seek their proper level. Breathless, dripping with sweat from every pore, I come back to myself all the wrongness having snapped back into place. Too bad it wasn't as painless as it was quick. I'm shaking when I come back to myself like one who's been sick but at least I'm alone. Finding that I'm also freezing, I begin with slow, unsteady movements to reach for my ship coveralls and try as best as I can to cover my state of undress. I must have been naked ever since he carried me back to the tube after since I passed out in the pilot's seat. For some reason placing my arms and legs into the proper channels in the garment is taking a very long time and it isn't only the fault of my trembling fingers. It is as if I've forgotten how to move my body, like coming home after an extensive vacation and none of the little automatic routines of daily life are automatic any longer. There's one constant. I'm still on the ship and all too soon the carnival-ride, stomach-churning motions of the craft return with a vengeance. My abused and empty insides heave in the weightlessness. There's nothing to do but roll into a ball and try not to think. Unfortunately, that is one thing I can't manage. What did he do to me? Whatever it was, I'm back. As I dressed, I checked and every bruise is where it should be as is every open wound and every scar old and new. But for an instant there I was terrified and more than anything by Charley's reaction as if he had looked upon his handiwork as something horribly obscene. Whatever it was, he had not done it deliberately. I had made him so angry that he lost control. True, he had put it right again almost immediately but for that instant what had he done? Above and beyond feeling like shit from the ship's gyrations, I don't feel quite myself? not quite? solid. What if he didn't put everything back quite right? END of CHAPTER 2 MY TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY 07: In the Belly of the Beast (3/3) AUTHOR: Sue Esty (Windsinger@AOL.com) * * * * * * * I was left alone for what seemed like very long time. This vacation from Charley's attentions, however, was no picnic. I was sick for even more of this trip than usual thanks to the peculiar nature of the motions of the ship, i.e., very like a camel that is being pulled repeatedly though eyes of needles of continually decreasing size. When the colors in my eyeballs stop running and the trips in and out of the pits of black stars slow to a crawl, then I know we have arrived at our destination, wherever that is. Charley doesn't play games with false stillness this time. He doesn't wait patiently for me outside the open hatch either. He reaches in with the striking speed of a huge snake. My resistance costs me several layers of skin and more than the usual number of bruises and abrasions for my collection. I know what you`re thinking, Scully -- senseless, idiotic, male posturing. If we'd had a tree, we probably would have pissed on it -- but it's more than that this time. Something ice cold has settled in my stomach since the last time he and I went nose to nose, something primitive. All I know is that I can't bear the thought of being in the same room with that alien opportunist and my skin crawls when I think of his touching me. I'm not really given a choice, however. Charley is in devil mode. Clearly, he is still as angry as he was in the tube though from the furious gymnastics of the ship I already knew that. Well, his boil does nothing for my mood either, which switches from fear to fury in a heartbeat. After all, what does he have to be angry about? He wasn't the one to be sexually assaulted by the cruelest of impostors. "Maybe if you cut down on the road rage you wouldn't be so grumpy!" "Quiet!" Charley roars as he hurls me headfirst with the greatest of ease down one of the ship's short corridors. "Are you incapable of learning even that?" The 'man' has a point. Keeping my mouth shut was one I certainly should have figured out by now. Through the pain of cracked elbows and knees I note that I'm been thrown not towards the terrible pilot seat of the Beast as I expected. Instead, I find myself face down in the doorway of a smallish round room that is all too familiar in its own way. In its center there's an opening in the floor like a huge eye with matching eye above that is already throbbing alarmingly with energy. This is the Overseer version of the transporter beam. Though I'd only traveled in the Oregon-to-prisonship direction and far from gracefully, it must be able to run in reverse. Clutching a madly throbbing elbow, I wheeze, "Going on a trip, are we, Charley?" Ship to land or ship to ship? Ugly visions of a new clime for his next series of novel and exquisite tortures dance in my spinning head. "Not we," Charley announces. Swooping down, he picks me up off the floor by the back of my jumpsuit and effortlessly hauls me upright so that my feet barely touch the floor. "Last chance. Willing yet to bend at least on knee to those who hold the fate of your world in their hands?" "Go. to. hell!" His eyes glare into mine, turning the screw tighter in my aching head. "No, that is where you are going. It may not seem so at first but in time it will." Somewhere a generator is thrumming at ever rising pitch. Reaching some threshold, the iris rolls slowly open and all at once there is light, light everywhere. I had forgotten that kind of light. Once upon a time a few million years ago I lost my freedom, my life, to that kind of light. It condemned us both to Dante's seven circles? too bad we were sent to different ones. I think I could bear anything as long as we were together. But we are not, and each day without you is nearly impossible. Charley begins to drag me towards that column of light that now reaches ceiling to floor. But there is no floor, just a hole leading down. For the first time I begin to seriously consider that the monster may be serious. In that case down to where? If I can believe him the trip itself won't kill me, but if Charley selected the destination, it's not going to be somewhere I would have chosen for a holiday. I kick, I twist, I try to fight him, and I don't even know why. It's not as if parting company with Charley is entirely a bad thing. Certainly leaving the ship and the Rock and the Beast behind, is a very good thing. So why fight? Because I can't bear the alternative. At the moment, however, I'm not managing the resisting part very well. The pressure on the nerves where he has gripped the nape of my neck in one iron hand has numbed my arms and hands to near uselessness. I'm pushed to the very brink of the eye in the floor now and his arm is around my throat. I can even feel the edge of the beam licking at my skin. "Listen for one moment you pitiful excuse for a man!" Starving for information, even from such a source, I cease struggling. Besides, I am finding it hard to breathe. "You will waste no more of my time. You may not be the least intelligent representative of your race, but the depth of your self-centeredness is not to be believed. Look around. We are at war. Your people, my people, beings you have not even met, hundreds of billions of lives. And there are more fronts that you can count. It's not all about you." Your voice, exasperated with me - as usual - echo the same words in my ear. "I do not have the time to fight you every day and every night." "Was that what you were doing back there in the tube before? Fighting?" The back of his hand impacts solidly with my mouth and I taste blood. "Believe it or not, I was intending to reward you for your significant progress during the last maneuver." "That's all?" I mumble past the pain. His arm tightens again with a jerk on my throat. "And if that was not all? Do you think that I do not pay a price for taking your form? Let us just say that it is a long journey and for the first time in many journeys I am not alone, but you are the last companion I would have chosen. I was not given a choice, however, for as always I serve the greater need just as I have always served it. That is something you don't understand, you who see only your own desires unfulfilled." Painfully, the hand that slapped me latches onto my hair forcing me to face him." Do you recall the girl Ness? You don't know what real hopelessness is." "You are so wrong." "Am I? For so many years you could turn in any direction, some less easy than others, but you had choices. What choices does she have? What choices will she ever have? None. What they have is forever." "Hey, I'm just the experiment, remember? If you find yourself bleeding so much for them, why don't you do something?" "In all the ways I can I have. As a control group, their usefulness is long past and yet they survive, entirely due to my efforts and those in the faction who think as I do. In a few minutes of painless effort you could have enriched her life and that of her people for years to come." "I am not the one who brought her there!" "But you kept her there. As powerless as you knew she was, you gave her nothing. And you see yourself as a compassionate people," he snarled. "Where was yours for her? We had more." My head is beginning to pound, and not just because he still has a merciless hold on my hair. It doesn't just hurt from the slap from his hand earlier either. It's another of the damned headaches and its timing could not have been worse. My voice is sharper than I intended when I finally reply, "You say that you showed her compassion? Such as? Did you wipe her mind of me?" He let me down so that more of my weight was on the floor and then brought his face down close to mine, far too close for my liking. "I gave her what you refused to." One thing I never would call Charley is a liar. "Mine?" "Yes, even though it endangers my position. At least you 'slept' with her that last night," he hissed, his lips curled with contempt. "Who is to know that that particular experiment was not successful? Only she and I . and you. And to belay your fears, though I don't know why I should, the fetus was not tampered with except to select the sex. A daughter is more useful where she is." His news hurts like a physical blow but whether it's fresh bleeding from the scars I already carry for Ness or because this monster has done what I did not, I don't know. I should have expected this. After all they have the technology. He certainly has access to the necessary genetic material that Ness spoke about as well as the basic sperm. What I find so astonishing, I suppose, is that he had the heart. He must have noticed I was shaken, and leaned back, reducing his invasion of my `space'. "Will you be seeing her again?" I ask surprised by the timidity in my voice. "It's war, who can tell." "Can you send a message?" "I can try. From this distance not all communication packets get through." "Tell her..." What words were fit to travel light-years by who knew what alien means? "Tell her that I wish her happiness." His eyes are freezing as he jerks me by my hair nearly into the air again. "Benevolent of you with the choice out of your hands!" Another hit. A palatable hit. To be called a coward by Charley is more humiliation than you can imagine. By comparison I barely feel this newest assault upon my person except to become reminded of the proximity of the beam that is again sending little ants of energy along my left side. We have both calmed down from where we had been, so has the crisis passed? I have to admit that I'm expecting any minute to hear that he will change his mind about going through with my visit to Purgatory. Most likely, it had been nothing more than a threat all along. Oh, he'd pile on the corporal punishment to drive home his point, but eventually we'd just go back to our endless series of sparring matches until one or the other of us exceeded tolerance again. Something was clearly on his mind for he released his hold on my aching head and for a time neither of us spoke and neither of us moved. "Where to we go from here?" his deep voice asks, more to himself than me. Uncomfortably, the tone reminds me of a parent facing a rebellious adolescent. Weird. "To war? You've not mentioned the war before." "Had you forgotten?" His tone indicates that he finds this impossible. For me, however, the idea of the war these past months has just not seemed relevant, at least not relevant to my survival. It's not all about you, Mulder. All at once, Scully, I found myself missing you so badly that the emptiness my whole, weary, senseless life just came crashing down. And Charley. How I hated his holier-than-though attitude, his war and his sacrifices, his billions of faceless lives when the fate of just two lives - yours and mine, Scully - were all I cared about. It was stupid, but I took a swing at Charley - again. He had relaxed his grip but not his vigilance or his anger. All at once it was all there, his hand on the front of my coveralls, my feet barely on the floor, his coldly furious face in my face. "It ends here! I have places to be." He edged me closer to the beam. It hurt, it hurt a lot, half in, half out. And there was his presence, his smell. It had become too sickeningly familiar. As painfully as he pushed me in, he just as abruptly pulled me out though I was still half-choking and could feel the numbing energy streaming down my back. "Do you know how useless you have become? There are those who I answer to who would leave you here to rot, the strengths and weaknesses of your heredity too tangled to be of use. I think they may be wrong. I think you are worth saving. Why? Because I believe that you possess not only the ability to see beyond the safe and the visible but you have strength and intelligence to bend such an incredible talent to your will. I saw the promise of that control on your last run. But then there is your pride and your anger. Fatal flaws. If you would only allow another to lead, I truly believe that you could see where you need to go." "And who would show me the way? You?" "That remains to be seen." He stared into my eyes, no past my eyes, as if trying to see into dark places I didn't know were in me. I've felt the cold slice of surgical steel in my mind and I felt something similar again at that moment from those eyes. "What did they create when they put you together, Mulder Mooncalf? They thought they knew. I believe that they will be very much surprised before the end. if you live so long." "I'm just a man." "Even you must know by now that there is no `just' about it, but what you are is still the question, one I would learn." The spell broke, the shield dropped over that visage once more. He became all business again. "But first, I think some payment is long past due for your lack of sense." "To Hell, you said. That's rather final." "Finality is for you to decide. From true Hell there is no returning but I plan to come back for you. in time. Until then, you are to stay alive and think. If you have done both then under the first full moon after harvest, find your way back to the place where I will leave you. Then we will discuss the terms of my taking you back." "And why would I want to do that?" I'd meant it to be a growl but it came out as a humiliating croak as my mouth had suddenly gone dry. "Because from this place there is no leaving except through me. Only save me the trouble and stay where you are unless in the future you are willing to follow where I lead you. You never know. on such a journey you may yet see Earth again." I felt the room spin. Home... Scully, I think I may have miscalculated here. He must have seen the backpedaling in my eyes, because before I could even think of a word to placate him, he shook his head abruptly. "Too late, Agent Mulder." This was the second time he has used my name in I can't remember how long. I felt the use of it significant but before I could speak he went and, with an effort of strength and will that was still able to surprise, hoisted me high by the front of my coverall to hold my body completely within the beam. More than mere energy, I could actually feel the incredible pressure of the light as it flowed over my skin. It was like trying to hold position in a strong current. It is always easiest to go with the flow, then there's almost no sense of movement, but try to fight it and the force is tremendous. In this case there is the added sensation of, not ants now, but large, hairy- legged spiders which are frantically crawling up and down, up and down my body, wave after wave of them. All the while Charley just stands there as solid as an oak, holding me suspended within the tide that strives to suck me down. "Charley... let's talk." The words, their tone embarrassingly pleading, echo doom-like in my ears. Beyond the curtain of light, I see his mouth move. Faintly over the roar in my ears, I hear, "Instead, something more for you to ruminate upon before our next meeting. Everything Ness was promised was true. She would have become pregnant from your one night if you had done your part." Raising his voice, his final words are the clearest of all. "You see, we've played that scenario before." And in that moment without warning or the change of one muscle in that stone face, Charley opened his hand. END of My Travels with Charley 07: The Belly of the Beast. The story continues in part #8 and ends in part #9. * * * * * * * * Prelude to Part 8 There are some laws of physics even alien technology cannot completely override. I spiraled down a whole lot faster than I went up all those months ago over Oregon. It reminded me of Wile. E. Coyote from the Roadrunner cartoons. He runs off cliffs a lot and always falls with plenty of time to be scared shitless but never fast enough to result in any permanent damage. I hope I'm as lucky. Surprisingly, my first emotion was not fear. Knowing deep down that death was unlikely since Charley was clearly not done with me yet, self-righteous fury triumphed over fear. Lucifer must have felt this way, a fallen angel thrown out of heaven by a wrathful and illogical God. Not that there is anything god-like about Charley. Then there's the light. To fall, bathed in sparkling light surrounded by the infinite dark. beautiful. Without any real point of reference it was almost like standing alone on a stage blinded by a spotlight. It was truly surreal. There was something below, only how far down is 'down'? Five hundred feet? A thousand? A mile? I had no idea what the ship's capabilities were. As there was no way of seeing outside the beam, there was also no way to prepare for the end. I expected to feel the pressure of earth against some part of my anatomy at any second. Note 'earth' with a lower case 'e'. Solid ground I may reach but not Earth. I'm certain that I can believe Charley on that, too. Too much time passed and my aching brain began to flicker rapidly from scenario to scenario conjuring up images of how this could end. I very much doubted that I would be deposited gently on a firm forest floor such as what I'd left. No, Charley would be more inventive: A tangle of thorns would be more his style, the crumbling edge of a cliff, or the narrow ledge of a tall building. How about the middle of the ocean in the jaws of some giant, slobbering reptile? A nest of snakes, a coliseum complete with a thumbs-down crowd AND lions, the compound of a concentration camp. And my least favorite -- the supper table of a family of hungry cannibals. Yum! When it came the finale was mercifully quick. One second and I could have been swinging from a parachute, drifting in incredible brilliance; the next and it was as if a giant's hand had snipped the strings while with his other hand he turned out the lights. Charley's games. More one-upmanship. With light-dazzled eyes I plummeted like a rock through inky blackness. Seconds passed by triple time. As I fell, chill wind and a misty wetness hit my face. My landing was not as bad as it could have been but it was inglorious. Butt first in a cold and gooey mud puddle. SPLATT!!! Automatically, I tried to stand. My feet sank ankle-deep in freezing muck. Staring upward I tried to catch sight of my flying torture chamber and its warden so I could proclaim at full bellow exactly how I felt about him and his mother and his whole foul race. All I caught sight of, however, was a passing gleam and maybe a shimmer in the air. Considering the fact that a tangy, acid was rain was pelting down on my upturned face, I was lucky that I saw that. Flicking muddy hair out of my eyes, I began slogging torturously out of the sucking ooze. After months of being inside, even with the ambient temperature kept consistently just low enough to be uncomfortable, the sudden appearance of so much 'weather' was a shock to my system. The sharp bite of a rock on a tender underside of my foot reminded me that I was barefoot. A blast of wind, probably no more than ten or twenty miles per hour, raced down the front of my coveralls. This was how I noticed for the first time that the upper part of my single garment was badly torn thanks to Charley's manhandling. At least the rain would get rid of the mud. Other than that, only snow would have been worse, but then I would be in serious danger of dying quickly from hypothermia. Instead I was only in danger of dying slowly from hypothermia. Charley clearly did not intend that either, otherwise why all the melodrama about his return? How desperate would I have to be to go back? Pretty desperate because the terms would not be good. At that moment a gust of wind-driven rain came up against my already wet clothes and skin and tabled that line of thought for a good long time. Damn, but it was cold. I turned slowly in a circle. Even with my eyes adjusted for darkness now, it was an incredibly black night. There did seem to be tall trees a short distance off in almost every direction. The puddle, therefore, must have formed in a low spot in a meadow, though from the mud oozing up between my toes there was not enough grass to cover all the bare patches. Low in the sky near the horizon -- I have no idea in which direction -- a patch opened in the clouds and I saw, as if through a veil, a tiny moon in third phase. Closer to the horizon was another celestial body, even smaller, which seemed in phase as well. Two moons? Definitely not in Kansas any more, Dorothy. It certainly did look like I wasn't going to get off this soggy mud ball except with Charley's help. And that, I realized, was exactly what he wanted. As I duck-footed it across the terrain, clouds streamed across the sky, alternately obscuring one moon and then the other. Then the sky opened up and it began to rain in earnest. With the headache I had the huge drops hurt when they struck like heavy, slushy hail. Fuck that sonofabitch! They say that groveling is good for the soul. In that case, Scully, I may be very, very good at it by the time you see me next. Uh, I don't think I meant that the way it came out. Having nothing better to go on, I continued slugging my way across the spongy meadow in the direction of the moons. I tried to find clumps of soggy grass to step on but the cold, sticky mud still squished up at times almost to my ankles. The 'dry' ground was drier than the pond but only by degree. At one point my right foot stepped in something that was a different consistency from the rest of the sticky mud. In the dark I had no idea what and didn't want to know. More rain, more wind, no light but that one glimpse of the sky and its two pale travelers. Are we talking miserable here or what? When did Charley say he would be coming back? No time soon from his tone. Weeks? Months? The first full moon after Harvest. Only there were two moons. It was becoming too difficult to think. I had been shivering off and now. Now it was continuous, the real teeth-rattling kind. Think, he said, but my head hurt too much for that. People harvest; a planet by itself doesn't harvest. Then there must be people or a race of some kind with at least a minimal level of civilization. So I wasn't alone down here. That could be good or bad; knowing Charley, I'd say bad. He had also said to stay alive. At the moment that seemed problematical. Having no other options, I just kept walking. I was under the trees now, roots and stones and underbrush forcing me to slow. Unfortunately, the canopy of leaves overhead is not dense. The drops of liquid ice are fewer but even larger than before. The branches droop, forlorn. My feet hurt in more ways than I thought it was possible for feet to hurt. If they weren't numb almost past feeling by the cold, I probably wouldn't be on them at all. The first order of business then was to find shelter or these other people, hopefully both. If I don't, and soon, Charley will be making his return trip for nothing. More slugging now in a cloud of misery. The continuous but lightened rain pelted cold on the back of my neck. A stumble forced my head up and briefly parted the fog in my mind. There were the two moons again, though higher and more distant from each other. The storm clouds fly between them like black ghosts. I taste the wetness from my face. It's sharp and a little salty, a little bitter. Is it the rain on this world I taste or my tears? Both, I think. As I stare at my heavenly companions, I realize that I'm crying and have been for some time. Oh, Scully, how have we came to be so far from each other? The rain comes down heavy once again. It stings my bare skin. I'm wet and cold and so very, very alone. And I want to go home. Continues with My Travels with Charley Part #8 and ends in part #9.