MULDER A large hand fell on my shoulder. Though I made no move to comply, neither did I find the strength to turn and run. "Fox, please. Let us be civilized. I can call down my men to help me. You don't want them down here, believe me you don't. They'll expect payment for their trouble of a particularly intimate kind. It's either this bed here and now or the bed in the other room first and this later." Curse the man but I knew that he told the truth. When Ben and I approached Government House only a few hours before I had seen an surprisingly large number of men about the grounds. All tried to look busy but each one watched us, and in particular me, with that hungry look I had seen first in John Ironlegs and then at the May Day festival. I still saw it in Ben; though knowing my feelings, he had learned to hide much. No, Ben's rather plaintive wanting was not at all on the same level as what the mayor's handpicked men hoped for as they circled like carrion crows. As if testing the waters of an unknown pool, I began by placing one hand on the bed. Despite its wicked color, it felt very much like the carpet of thick, course moss it appeared to be. The small, scarlet plants seemed to come alive at my presence, however. They sprang up curling around my fingers. Pressing down, I found that the springiness of this bed went inches deep. *See, nothing to fear. Go on. * The gods help me, but I did, mostly because there was no choice. All too aware of my nearly bare butt -- the loincloth had somehow managed to remain intact -- I knelt first, my knees sinking deeply into the loom. Then slowly I stretched myself out, on my back, of course. I was not so spaced as to lie face down. And then I waited. My skin itched a little for the surface was scratchy, but, surprisingly, it didn't hurt. Not yet, I told myself. I was concentrating so strongly on the sensation of the small, red plants wiggling slightly about and under my body that I didn't feel the old man's first contact with my chill, sweating skin. I just happened to open my eyes to find his bulk hovering immediately over me, the fingers on one hand spread over my chest. Clearly, something was going to happen and he was going to be right there to watch. "It takes a while," he said softly. "On the street, when they talk about Daniel's bed, they are referring to this one, not to my sexual prowess. I encourage the rumors." A finger ran down my skin to linger overlong about a sensitive nipple. "What's going to happen?" I asked in a tight voice. His smile beamed. "Wait and find out." His fingers explored some more. By the casual way he went about it, I was led to believe that this handling was just a kind of perk and not part of the main event. The main event was supposedly going on at the interface between my skin and the mossy, pulsing carpet. That skin felt increasingly warm but that was all. *It's not too late you know, Fox. You can tell me now and I can end this before it goes any farther. * *And miss the experience? * I asked, wondering why my voice sounded so odd. *I daresay you could live your life quite fully without this particular experience, * he replied. He was running a fingertip along my jaw now and staring into my face, his voice dreamily creepy. *You have such an incredible face, such amazing bone structure. I wish I had known you in your teens, in your twenties, any time before Bek got hold of you again. I see too many new lines that I guess were not there last year. You have no idea how you stand out here. You're like a piece of fine art among all us old weathered acorns. In exchange for just a few hours of your time and a few scruples, you could demand anything. * He had to have felt the shudder that passed through me that even the drugs couldn't suppress. "Very well, maybe not. But even though you don't indulge yourself with Ben now, you will want to take partners in time. You'll truly go crazy in the place if you don't. I just wanted to warn you not to sell yourself short." All this advice only confirmed my deepest fear, which was not the one you might think. Dan Rowe didn't plan to remain on Dale much longer, but he expected that I would be. He was determined to take my place, my berth home. There was no time to worry about that now, however, short of staying silent. My back was beginning to get more than warm. Visions of a slow-acting acid that in time would strip the flesh from my bones began weaving into my brain. I found I wanted to move, had to move. "Stop!" Daniel warned his voice surprisingly insistent. "You will hurt less in the end the longer you stay completely still." Maybe so but his continuing to idling stroke my balls though the scrape of loincloth wasn't helping any. He must have seen the direction of my gaze, for with an apologetic smile he moved the hand to casually rest on my thigh near the sensitive shotgun scar, not a lot better. "You're beginning to feel it now aren't you? An unbearable heat? But you must bear it." It wasn't only heat. All at once I felt a sudden sharp prick on the calf of the leg his hand rested on. It was rather like being stung by a very small bee. The old man must have felt the leg jerk slightly in response for he gave that leg a little pat. "Yes, things are moving along. I take it that that was the first one? Red Dan is a plant with stingers. Don't worry, there's not any poison involved. What they have are tiny but very effective grappling hooks." I could believe that; five more just got their hooks into my butt. "It's a primitive planet geology-wise. These small soil builders just developed a rather unique mechanism for clinging to and breaking down rock." Ouch! This unique mechanism just fired off about three dozen more of these little pincers, and, I knew with horror, I was lying on thousands of the little soil-builders. Then there was no more time to think. Just as a pan of popcorn begins with a few kernels popping, and then a few more, and then more and more, faster and faster. The little explosions, each on its own rather minor, were going off in the hundreds. A cry was wrenched out of me as my body tried to bow away from the attack. Daniel was there, however, which was the real reason why he had waited over me. He threw his not inconsiderable weight against my chest, holding me down. "Intimacy is not my sole intent here," he assured me, grunting with the effort. "They won't attach in the same place twice so you _ must _ not _ move _ or the results will be twice, three times as bad." Maybe true, but I wasn't in any position to believe him at the moment. Like the popcorn, the rate of new stings, now that about a thousand had gone off, had slowed, but each of the little wounds still hurt, each and every one of them. Daniel knew this, too, and had removed most of his weight. From somewhere he came up with a cloth of surprising softness and began wiping gently at the sweat that was running like a stream down my face. "I know it's painful. Just a little while longer." Oh, god... oh, god... oh, god... oh, god... I think I would have preferred to have been tied down. Then I could strain against the bonds and still not actually move. It was this dependence upon self- control alone that was a killer. There were tears of pain running down my face now as well as the sweat and my body was shaking. I pressed my lips together tight to stifle the nearly overwhelming compulsion to scream. "We'll do fifteen minutes. For some infractions, the down time on the bed is half an hour, for severe crimes of revenge or cruelty, an hour. The hook is actually the sharp tip of a new taproot. It's working its way in now, microns at a time, rooting itself into your skin. It flourishes on nerve the same way that Earth plants seek water and sun. It must be nerve to explain how much agony they cause. Hush, hush, be still. The implantation phase will soon be over. For your contemplation, this is just a taste of the misery this planet is capable of delivering in the right hands." I didn't know how much longer 'a little while longer' actually was. When forty percent of your skin surface is on fire nothing is 'little'. Finally, he said in the calmest voice, "I think that's sufficient. You can get up now." Only I couldn't. To a large extent it was exhaustion and shock from the massive attack on muscle and skin and nerve, but not all. Like Gulliver among the Lilliputians, I had become attached to the earth, not by one tiny bond, but by thousands. As had probably been his intent all along, Dan Rowe, my tormenter, became my savior. He took my shoulders in his large, strong hands and gave a mighty heave. I did scream this time. It was as if chunks of my flesh were being ripped out by the roots. Not a totally inaccurate description. While I was still at the top of the pain curve, I was thrown down face first onto the dungeon's heavy, wooden table. With the speed and skill of long practice, the old devil slopped onto my enflamed back, butt and legs some thick substance that sank immediately into each of the legion of wicked fishhook wounds. Another scream was torn from me and even to my ears the sound was barely human. I can't remember how long I screamed before the wings of the merciful dark came to carry me away. I was still face down but on something softer when I came around the next time. Daniel's bed, his other bed, the one in the center of the blue room on the other side of the stairway. I was tied down, wrists and ankles, and every inch of my body hurt with a mile deep kind of agony. The open wound of the exposed half of me felt an acre in size and throbbed like a giant heart. What woke me was the sensation, not altogether horrible, this time of something cool being poured onto those huge, raw wounds. I wasn't allowed to enjoy it, however. A pair of large hands began massaging the solution deep into what was left of my skin. Under the circumstances, this was not the most relaxing of experiences. It was all I could do not to give out with a shriek yet again and it would not have been one of those girly screams, Scully, let me tell you. I chose to faint again instead. Far too soon I heard a voice. "Welcome back," cooed Daniel's voice from very close behind me. I had no doubt that the large hands that had so roughly 'attended' to my back had also been his. I groaned and didn't mind if he heard it. I don't even dream any more, Scully, that you'll be beside me when I fight my way out of the deep. They've taken even that from me. "What was that all about?" I growled, vainly struggling against my bonds. "Immediately after? Neutralization phase to kill off any living Red Dan. Necessary unless you want the root to continue to grow and grow uncontrolled throughout your body. In time they'd intertwine around your nerves until they reached the spinal cord, the brain--" "--I get the picture. And after that? The massage?" "My apologies," but he didn't try to hide the satisfaction in his voice. "Had to work in some antiseptic and topical analgesic to fight infection and give you 'some' relief. On rare occasions we've had some deaths --- from shock." "Heaven forbid that the condemned should die." He nearly chuckled and ruffled the hair on the back of my head as if I were that child again, and he the parent. " Believe it or not, I am not a bad or evil person, Fox. I am, however, a very, very tired person. Do you have any idea what it is like to be responsible for a whole world, not only for the people's survival, but for their being here at all? And we died and we continue to die. Don't you see how important it is that I talk with Bek?" "My place," I murmured. "I believe that you -- " The slightest breeze across my damaged skin stopped my breath dead for a second. "-- that you had your chance." I felt him move from where he'd been sitting on the bed near my hip. "Is THAT what this silence is all about? You believe that I would be fool enough to go back and play the dog to Bek?" "So you're perfectly content here ruling your little piece of botanical hell?" "If one is strong enough, I won't deny that one can find satisfaction even in hell but so much still needs to be done. All I want is to talk. All I want is a chance to argue the case for my people." "Which I can do... if I see Charley... if he really does come back." The old, lined mouth was tight and bitter. "I don't think you can. You are weak, Fox. Just see all you did at my bidding today. No wonder Bek has no respect for you." If I had not still been tied down, I would have risked tearing the skin of my back in two to turn around just to get a look at the old man's face. I had not detected the slightest sarcasm in that voice; he had sounded utterly sincere, and, therefore, utterly insane. If he honestly believed that having the tricks and the tools to torture another human being made him the superior man and more worthy of respect, then this world and Benjamin and I were in more serious trouble than I thought. A sociopath is far more dangerous than a man who is merely desperate. "I'll find the place," I vowed, "and if Charley comes he will listen." "I don't think so. You have been on Dale... what? Half a growing season? What do you really know about our lives? We need medicine, minerals, and vitamins to replace what this planet leaches out of us. We need tools and better seed. We need a cure for what killed our women and real families." The scene was surreal. The blue room smelled of mildew and old lust. My bloody back, buttocks and legs lay exposed to the wide open air while a mad dictator spouted the party line the way, I assumed, that he had during every one of the colony's uncontested mayoral campaigns over the last thirty years. And I didn't believe a word of his being content to rule here. Unfortunately, there were quite a lot of words so that, as he paced, I found my eyes droop closed. There was a hypnotic quality to that deep voice. Luckily, I fell asleep from sheer exhaustion long before he was able to change my mind. He may even have forgotten about me, enthralled as he was by the sound of his own voice. In any case he left me alone and allowed me some sleep. I dreamed though as is the way with fever dreams I didn't remember much. As my dreams go I believe that these were only disturbing. Mostly they were about the ghosts of all those who have been humiliated here. The wept in every corner. In general I was ignored. They must have mistaken me for one of their own, just one more of the dead... or one nearly dead... or one soon to be dead. Sleep lasted for perhaps two hours. Daniel came then and silently and without undo melodrama pumped his pound of flesh into my body. Then he left me alone once again with the dead. They're better company, let me tell you. At least he released my bonds with strangely gentle hands before he left. Finally, his heavy footsteps vanished up the stairs and I heard a bolt far away slide true. I was left with the silence. The silence was good. I sucked in the quiet as if curling into my tomb. Alone with the ghosts I had a good cry. Does the soul a world of good. On this occasion it didn't help my body much however. Even the slight struggling for breath to get around my congested nose triggered outrage from the hundreds of tiny pieces of wickedly sharp dead roots that were still imbedded in my skin. The agony kept me awake until, like a kennel of sleepy puppies that are temporarily awakened from slumber, the disturbed nerve endings gradually quieted. I got a little more sleep then until I woke coughing from the damp. That brought tears to my eyes and not tears of self-pity time. It also brought an end to sleep for that night. Neither did I expect that I would get much for many nights to come. With that cheery thought, I decided that it was past time to go if I could. Stiff and in the kind of pain that in my old life would have told me instantly that it really was far too early to leave the hospital, I levered myself off the bed and began to dress. It was agony. Use of any of the muscles in the vicinity of the stingers triggered a chain reaction of pain that was beyond description. Worse, the nearly imperceptible points of the hooks caught on my clothes so that tear-wrenching showers of hurt accompanied every move I made, breathing included. This, I decided, was going to get old real fast, so old that I won't even try to describe the experience of climbing the stairs. It was only when I got to the frozen panel at the top that I remembered the sound of a bolt being thrown. I could sit and wait on the cold, damp steps in total darkness or make my agonizing way back down the stairs and wait in the room of blue luminescence. I went back downstairs but I didn't hurry. Nothing to do but wait till morning which seemed a very long time in a sadist's lair with no moons, nor stars, nor hint of coming dawn. For what felt like days, I lay on my stomach across the bed and tried not to move, not even to breathe too deeply. My fever rose and fell like waves on the ocean. At last, I heard faint scratching sounds from the panel door at the top of the stairs. Only then did I crawl the steps again. The panel swung open with the tiniest pressure this time. I found Reese waiting for me though he discouraged conversation. He gave me a chunk of bread and a cup of water for my breakfast, showed me the back door, and indicated that I was to wait. I cursed the hundred-year-old slowness of my steps but it was as fast as I could go. The completely passive expression on the old newcomer's face indicated that he had seen men in my condition before, probably often. Outside in the small yard between the house and barn, I looked for a place to sit before I fell down. I had to make due with a pile of firewood that had splinters of its own though I leaned against it rather than actually sat down. I had certainly fallen far from privileged guest status. It seemed an hour before Daniel finally appeared, dressed neatly for the day while, with practically no sleep and no desire to tighten my clothes lest they touch my skin any more than they did already, I must have resembled the most addled of newcomers. "Had time to think, Fox?" "'Mulder'. As for time, I've had sufficient but then I didn't need any. Nothing has changed." "I disagree. We know each other so much better. In your gut you already know that I will win, that I have won, but I know that I will have to punish you harshly and often before you will acknowledge that in your mind. As for your name, I will continue to call you Fox, if for no other reason than you don't like it. Bek, or Charley as you call him, did intend this to be your purgatory, after all or he wouldn't have sent you here. He would not want me to be gentle." "Don't worry, you haven't been." I made no attempt to keep the hardness out of my voice. "Now is there really any point to continuing this melodrama? Where's Ben? May we leave now?" "He's finishing his breakfast and will be with us soon. If you insist on leaving so quickly, then I must be brief. I've been thinking again on a topic that came up the last time you were here. I'm considering keeping you here with me." Fear twisted in my nearly empty stomach. "And your reason?" "As Mayor, I don't need any. I want you near me; that's enough. I would have your most desirable figure decorate my cellar room for the entertainment of my friends and your own education. You see, I realized during my middle-of-the-night visit -- sorry, but I couldn't sleep at the thought of you down there -- what your problem really is." "And what's my problem?" "You do not know your place. You have not accepted how things work here. You do not see what to everyone else is so obvious. Clearly, our Benjamin, for all his graces, has not been the best teacher for you." "And what should he have taught me?" The old test pilot began to circle like a university professor before freshman. "That this colony is not a democracy and never has been. We live too fragile an existence for that. I have the responsibility for this world and with the responsibility comes ownership. I, therefore, own this world, and everything and everyone in it, including you. I decide their fate. I decide who farms and who is to be trained in other skills. I decide what is to be planted and how it should be divided. I decide what farms should perhaps be given over to another's keeping or left to go fallow. I am -- as I went into last night -- lawmaker, judge and jury. What you experienced last night," he brushed his hand across my back forcing, I regret, a heart-stopping spasm of pain, "is only a taste of what I can do and no one will stop me. You are a bright man, Fox. Bek would not have chosen otherwise, but your stubbornness has been your downfall. You've had your chance with Bek. It is time to let another try." "You failed as well." "And had thirty years to regret it. Besides, I'm not doing this for myself." "I said that I'd talk to Charley." "My apologies but I can't risk throwing away this world's only chance." His voice had been firm but unheated. Now it grew softer. "I know you despise your life here. Once I'm restored to my proper status I will be in a position to help the entire colony, including you." I wanted to laugh. "My apologies, but I've been fucked over so thoroughly for the last eight months that last night barely registered. So excuse me but I'm not ready to trust anyone right now. And if I were, you wouldn't be at the top of the list." "You're the one who doesn't understand. Trust is not the issue. Ownership is, power is. I own you, just as I own Benjamin. And I'm not asking, I'm telling. It is also my responsibility to know everything about every resource available to me and you are one of those resources. In the end, you will live where I tell you to live. As far as fucking goes, you will allow yourself to be fucked by whom I say. You will tell me everything about Earth that I need to know, everything that has changed in twenty years. To show that I am not unreasonable I will allow you to go home with Ben today. It's a less stressful environment from which to contemplate your future, but realize that that could change tomorrow. In the meantime go ahead, exhaust yourself. Bring in crops, construct cathedrals. The colony can use both. You wouldn't be so worried about the winter if Charley were returning before spring so I can afford to be patient. But be warned, if I do not have the information I have requested by the time the harvest has been taken in, there will be changes." I hoped that my voice was as cold as I intended. "I've lived with Charley, so have you. You know, therefore, that there is nothing you can do to me physically which would force me to change my mind." "Not to you perhaps but have you considered how your continued recalcitrance could affect our mutual friend?" I should have known that it would come to this. "Why involve Benjamin?" "Because you care. Why do you think that I let you stay there so long? That sweet boy can worm his way into anyone's heart. I have only to decide that it is not an efficient use of the colony's resources to keep a farm going that's so distant. I can pull him into town. Without a farm he no longer qualifies for a BoB. I bring you into my household. He can work in the community fields." "Take away his land and it would break his heart." "You talk about breaking hearts, you who would see the last of our women and children in their graves." There was no point in continuing this particular argument. I very much doubted that Dan Rowe would even remember the names of the dying women and children once he had his feet on the deck of a spacecraft again. Even less would he endanger his position with Bek by fighting for people he need not ever see again. "You can, of course, remove your little friend from this matter, Fox. You come to my house willingly and he can keep his hermit's existence. There needn't be any questions or disgrace. There have been sharecroppers before who have given up their BoB's for incompatibility. Either way, you will live with me here and work in the house. Nights mostly, that's when I entertain the major landowners. Truthfully, after thirty years we are dead weary of each other's company and the sight of each other's faces... as well as other parts of our anatomy. I'm serious. Sooner or later you will tell me what I need or your life as you have known it, here, there, and for all time, will be over. If you are very stupid, I will have to tie Benjamin's well being into the deal as well, because neither of you is as important as the survival of this colony." "I'll tell Ben." "He won't believe you. I'm God the Father here. At the most you'll disillusion him and strip away what little security and happiness he can find in this world." At that moment Daniel looked up, distracted, at a noise from the house and then sighed deeply as if he had just completed an unpleasant task. "I believe that that gives you enough to think about until we see each other again." At that moment Ben came out the back door, black hair tousled. A smile beamed in greeting as he saw me. He glowed with health, and happiness and the satisfaction of a young man well laid. There had to be way... ... To make it through the next weeks despite the pain in my body that threatened to pull me to my knees even now ... To protect poor, innocent love-struck Ben ... To find the elusive rendezvous point, before Daniel did. I had only to stall. Right. "I'll think about it," I told my Lenin wanna-be. "Then I'll see you in two weeks." BENJAMIN Year 31, Week 2.1 through 9.0, Dale Reckoning Summer. It is the season of the year that makes life possible on Dale or at least bearable. Taking into account the amounts and timing of sun and rain, it had not been the best summer for crops but neither had it been the worst. As in any summer, there were not enough hours of daylight to accomplish all that needed to be accomplished before the busy harvest season and dreaded winter that always followed. I was so busy that I failed to notice for weeks that there was something wrong with Mulder. When I did I couldn't remember back to when it started. After my second incredible night with Annie I was not only exhausted but completely obsessed with thoughts of her. The following day passed in a blur. I only remember that Mulder was not eager to have Mac work on the left side of his face. That surprised me since he never complained of any particular pain associated with having the right side done, but his steps dragged as he went down the street towards the surgery. Now that I think of it, his eyes looked as exhausted as mine felt, but I figured that if he stayed up all night playing chess and talking the high talk with Mayor Dan that he had no one to blame but himself. Come to think of it, he dragged on the road home as well even though he slept a few hours on his stomach in Mac's garden before we left. Funny, I don't remember us talking much at all that day. Wrapped in my own thoughts, I would all at once find myself striding meters ahead and then would have to wait for Mulder to catch up. I had never known him to be slow. Maybe it only seemed that way since I was eager to get back to see if the beans needed fertilizing yet. "Fertilizing as in spreading fertilizer?" Mulder asked. His tone was listless as though he was only asking out of politeness. "As in playing midwife," I corrected as I looked down on the tiny flowers hiding among the thick green leaves of the bushy plants. "These are an earth species. On earth inserts would pollinate them. On Dale --" "No insects." "We're the insects. It's a manual process." We proceeded to spend the next three days on our knees with damp wads of cloth brushing the stamens of every tiny flower. When I think back, that's when I should have first noticed that Mulder was ill. Those were hot, sunny days and while I worked stripped to the waist, Mulder kept his shirt on insisting that he wasn't hot even though the sweat rolled off him in sheets. Only in hindsight do I see that day. Mulder worked as hard as ever, harder even, but he worked slower and with less attention. He dropped things. The lines on his face are deeper. On a rare warm night I took my mat to the barn to sleep and the next morning witnessed Mulder rising from his. He didn't think I was awake yet. It was painful to watch he was so stiff. He had also slept fully clothed. It hurt that he trusted me so little. Respecting his wishes, I had made no advances for weeks. Did he think I was going to waste away pining over him? Well, Winter bite him! I had Annie. But I did worry that he might be sick. When I tried to bring up the subject, he curtly cut me off and then refused to take a break in the afternoon as we usually did. We were well started on the extra room, or sauna as he called it, and he would work on that from before dawn sometimes until after dark. What worried me more than anything, however, was that there was no light in him any longer. He found no joy in his efforts as if it were all of a sudden just work to him. I didn't actually notice the sadness in his face so much until after the bandages came off from the second of Mac's operations. As before, the job was well done. Handsome before, I found myself dreaming of that now-restored face, so I guess I lied when I swore that my lusting days were over. On the other hand, maybe it wasn't desire, because what I dreamed of was seeing him smile because he didn't.... not any more. The Tensday after the one when the second operation was performed, he woke me while it was still dark -- which in mid summer is very early -- so that we could start for the north country to look again for his landing place. He didn't need to tell me why we needed to leave so early. He was afraid of our being followed again. As it turned out, we weren't, but we returned late and footsore instead of rested, as we should be after a free day. Worse, Mulder saw nothing that looked like the land around where he had been dropped off. The week that followed was much the same. Mulder was tense and frustrated, but he refused to talk to me about what was bothering him. We worked like newcomers on the sauna house. I worked just as hard as he did even when I would have liked to be sitting in the sun enjoying this time of comparative peace before harvest season began. With one wall against the chimney of the cabin, one against the hill but lined with stone and the other two free standing and thick with stone, the sauna was an impressive structure even if I did not quite fathom its purpose. Mulder swore, however, that in the depths of winter I would be happy to have it. I'll take his word on that. It will be worth the trouble if it makes him happy, though a warm, hard-muscled body next to mine would have been as welcome and less trouble. Guess it has been too long since Annie. When it came time to be on the road to Stony River to keep our appointment with Daniel, I didn't have to remind Mulder. Again, he didn't act as if he wanted to go. It was more as if it were a punishment than the honor it was. His shoulders slumped and he ate even less than before at dinner. Arniesse was once more at table and despite my preoccupation with that presence I couldn't help but notice that there was even more tension between he and Mulder then before. Mulder was always careful not to get too close. A small, mean part of me wondered if he was jealous. Served him right, though I couldn't imagine why. Could he want Annie for himself or was he just regretting that I had someone and he didn't? It was morning before I even found myself thinking of Mulder again. I had finished breakfast and was going outside to find him so that we could start for home when Daniel took me aside. I will not write here what he told me in secret, nor from what I was intended to infer from a twist of those thin lips and the sweep of those large hands. Nor could I, even if I tried, describe with any accuracy the storm of conflicting emotions that conversation started boiling within me. What it did mean was that when I saw Mulder again, I saw him through different eyes. For one, he looked terrible. He had seemed unwell the last time we left Daniel's. He seemed far worse this time though it may only have seemed so because I was less preoccupied with my own affairs. This time I saw beneath the exhausted drag of his feet and the stiffness behind his every movement. He was in a sullen mood as well, like so much of the time since our previous visit with Daniel. Now I saw his bad mood for what it was, a gathering darkness, a deep depression of spirit, a soul that had been forced to look into the face of a future reality to which death must seem more welcome. My poor Fox. I would have wept for him if I could. I would have railed and beat my fists to the skies if that would have helped. Meanwhile, he held it all inside and Daniel warned me to say nothing. A month went by. Four weeks since Daniel opened my eyes and, Almighty Spirit, help me, but I held my peace. To watch him struggle through each day under his horrible burden was agony. He worked as if possessed, as if a fire burned within that only a blanket of exhaustion can dim and then only for a little while. I admit that there are other reasons for my silence. Pity. Spite. Resentment. Even my relationship with Annie was not the bright thing it had been. If finally got through to me that she had been brought in only to complete the foursome, to keep me busy. Mulder and Daniel had discovered that there were things that they wished to do together while there was still time and I would have been in the way. Daniel, after all, knew my opinion of rough play. I thought I was right because it explained why Mulder was so tired and sore after each visit and did little more than stare at the ground as if shamed all the way home. He was doing things with Daniel, bad things, hard things, when he had refused the gentle, good times he could have had with me. I found no more pleasure in my life than Mulder did. The only bright spot during the whole end of the summer was seeing how the crops grew. What was going on between Mulder and Daniel couldn't tarnish that for me. How green the plants were, how tall or lush according to the nature of each, and how bountiful their fruits. The more they grew, however, the deeper became the shadows under Mulder's eyes. More weeks passed and the crops were golden or red or pump in the fields or on the trees. It was Cup Day, which meant that harvest would officially begin the next day. Every year before this one I had spent Cup Day in town, celebrating and getting drunk with my friends in preparation for the big push of digging and cutting and picking. It was not that all the crops ripened at once, it was just that we have to leave them as long as we can or starve before spring. This was the latest we dare leave the Earth plants out in the fields because when winter comes, it comes with a vengeance. A week more and the town of Stony River will host the Harvest Festival. It's the most important event of the year because it's only then that we'll know how many of us are likely to survive the winter. If there is already snow and there are still crops out in the fields, then not many. This year I did not spend Cup Day in town. "I just want you to know that I won't spend another holiday crawling over these hills with you!" I grumbled testily as we walked down the last slope of the northern uplands. Over the months we had covered all of the north and only the fertile and more populated eastern quarter remained. Mulder knew it, too and was in even a worse mood than I was. He turned on me, growling, "Then you won't need to worry about missing any more of your rustic hoe-downs! If I haven't found the damn place by this time next week, then it will be too late. We won't need to come!" "Wrong. We'll have to find it within the next hour because there won't be time to come back. You're just going to have to learn to live without knowing!" In response Mulder turned to his right and stalked away. It was growing late and, as it was also overcast, it would be too dark to see even earlier than usual. Mulder had become increasingly frantic over the past hours. Undernourished as he was from barely eating these past months and burning up what he did eat, he stumbled over rocks and any sudden rise of ground. His hands were scraped, as was his chin and his knees. This must be how an animal behaves, a creature moving on instinct and emotion rather than thought. I had hoped that Daniel's warnings were wrong, but I saw it all coming to pass before my eyes. Would the final breakdown come today, before the harvest? I had hoped that we would at least have that. Anger had left me for pity when I finally spoke. "Mulder, it's not here." His body whipped around. The tired red of his eyes blazed back at me. "It has to be here! Do you think I sprung fully formed out of the earth like one of your dirt devils!" "Of course not, but maybe it's not as you remember it. What you remember may not exist. You were very sick those first few days." Even in the near darkness I saw his face change, the anger flowing out of him to be replaced by the utter misery beneath. As if all his strength evaporated with the anger, he gingerly sagged down onto a rock, dropping his head into his folded arms. "I have to find it," came the muffled words after a moment. "Oh, God, please, I have to." "You won't tonight. We have to get back; it will rain soon. You're weak already. Do you want to get sick?" Slowly, the head came up with, amazingly, a sliver of a smile. "For a moment there you sounded so much like Scully." "Then she had sense." "That's right, she did -- she does -- but I didn't listen to her either. Ben, did it ever occur to you that looking in the rain, in the dark may be just what I need? That's what it was like when I came down." "What good will it do if it kills you?" I sulked. "What good will it do if I don't find it?" "That's rather hard for me to answer since you've never told me why it's so important. You said you would tell me later." "And it's still not later enough, Ben. You have to trust me." I was silent and I looked off down the trail towards home. "Do you, Ben?" I still didn't turn back to him right away. When I did it was with a jerk. "Trust you? How can I when you do such mad things? How can I when you don't talk to me anymore, when you care so little about my feelings that you don't even take care of yourself? And then you insult me by rejecting everything I have to give and do it with --" Enough, I sprang to my feet and started off towards home. "Stay if you want to! Go and get yourself killed! Run out on me and get lost. What do you care? It will be my shame, not yours!" "Benjamin! Damn you, Ben, get back here!" The first use of my name had been angry. The second more commanding and a little anxious. I kept walking, almost running into the pre-storm gloom. I didn't know what else to do now. I wasn't going to beg him; I couldn't beg him, but what he proposed was completely irresponsible. Then I heard the quick footsteps behind me. They were almost silent what with the rising of the wind as the storm came nearer. Then I heard his heavier than normal breathing. He must have run to catch up. "Benjamin, stop..." "From all you've said, the doctors are good where you come from. But here, even though we can cure a lot, we can't afford to be stupid. We can't cure everything. You could die." "I hear you; hear me! I need to search for just a little while longer, but I also need you if only to walk me out of here. Please believe me, the last thing I want is to humiliate you in front of your people but I must find this place." Not waiting for my answer his eyes drifted away towards the hills, already planning. "Maybe if we --" It was while he wasn't looking that I swung around and hit him with my work-hardened, open palm. I would never have thought myself capable of such a thing. It was with all my strength, too, which is a lot what with all my pent up frustration at the ruin of what I had expected to be a beautiful summer. Even more surprising I found him on the ground at my feet, staring at me with an expression of dumb astonishment and blood on his lip. That image sent pain through me in a way I didn't think possible. Blindly, I began stumbling, shaking, and weaving with no direction across the dry plain. After a few moments I heard his pounding footsteps behind me. When he took my arm I tried to wrench it away, but he was ready this time and hung on. "Ben, stop. All right, from your point of view I know that I deserved that. So why...?" Why am I crying was what he meant. I hated the sound of my slurred voice when it finally came out. "Because it's going to happen again." His hand went to his mouth. "I certainly hope not." "It is! You don't know, but Daniel told me!" I stared at him, at those wide, intelligent, half-amused eyes and the tears came harder. His mouth became firmer. A tight line. "What did that serpent tell you? Whatever it was, don't believe it." "Mulder, let's go home." "Tell me!" "Don't make me. I don't want to. Let it be as it is for as long as it can be." He studied me, in a way that should have made me angry, but didn't. There was such a mixture of emotions on his face and in the stance of his body. Had I just confirmed what he had already suspected? If so, he should be in mourning for his dying mind, but instead his eyes, his self, were all for me. Oh, Spirit, there was some affection for me in him after all and all this time I thought he didn't care. Not love, nothing sexual -- you can't have everything - - but with part of his soul anyway. This Scully, whatever perfect creature she may be, did not have all of him. And what harm could it possibly do for him to find this place he had been seeking for so long if it brought him some peace for a little while. "I know where it is," I confessed. As simple as that after all these weeks, it felt has if a huge burden had lifted that I hadn't even known I'd carried. He was staring at me, a break in the clouds allowing a wash of sunlight gold to find his face and accentuate every perfect bone. "You what?" "I know where it is, the place you described." I had braced for angry words, there were none, just a harder set to his jaw before he indicated for me to lead on. Though it was growing steadily darker, we made and lit no torch. We'd retain our night vision longer that way. We moved at a fast walk. When the ground was fairly free of rocks, we trotted. Mulder followed in silence. There were still neither questions nor recriminations. Those would most likely come later. Until then we still had a half-hour of hard traveling. The land rose and fell, became at times more wooded then less, and yet after all these weeks of hiking its slopes were nearly as familiar as my own fields. Finally we got to a ridge and I paused at the top to catch my breath before speaking. In the distance the growling storm was drawing closer. A rising breeze caught at our sweat-dampened hair. "It's near here. We split up that day," I said and gestured to my right. "You went that way. I went to the left. We agreed to meet at the top of that hill." I pointed further on but more in the direction that he went that day than I. Mulder's eyes narrowed. "I remember, but that was when? During our third day of searching?" That simple fact clearly stung. There was no point in trying to explain. I headed down a steep slope to my left, the same way I had gone that day. At the bottom I turned left to once again crawl over the ankle-twisting rubble at the foot of a tall outcrop of rock that had hid the land beyond from the top of the low ridge. A faint intermittent lightning lit our way though we were more blind after it faded. I guess that it was because of this vision of bluish lights and black shadows that I didn't catch on until later what was so different about the place than I remembered. First, there should have been a belt of tall trees just on the other side of the cliff. There were only a few there now. Confused, I stumbled into what should have been a bowl-shaped meadow. Instead, the space appeared to be only one end of a long plain that stretched to the next rise of ground hundreds of meters away. There was a bit of scrubby forest but only on two sides and that just dark smudges even with the lightning. My steps faltered. "I don't understand. It was here, just as you described it. A meadow ringed with trees with a little pond in the center. When I saw it there wasn't much water, but I could tell that there had been more during the rainy season. But where are the trees?" I started walking. My feet could sense the land falling slightly and then rising again where the pond should be but the ground was thick with lush rush grass. "Where's the pond?" If no pond, then I would have expected a patch of dry mud. Anxious, I looked in Mulder's direction expecting to find accusing eyes on me, but there was none of that. He didn't even seem to remember that I was there. He had followed me out and stood, head down, examining the rough tufts of the rushgrass. Then his eyes went to the tall rock outcropping that we had passed. "Stay here," he ordered and headed in that direction. In the near darkness I could barely see him moving around under the few trees. >From time to time he stooped to search the ground then moved a few yards and stooped again. He traveled out from there, cris-crossing the field that was ten times too large for the meadow he had described. For more that fifteen minutes he moved from one location to another. As the evening became increasingly darker, I watched him but I was equally as aware of the storm. It was moving closer but slowly, the thunder growling louder and louder as it rolled against the cliff. Finally, he returned to me, his expression thoughtful and still surprisingly free of anger. "Mulder, I swear, this was the place." "I believe you. The ground is cut up all around the base of the cliff. A lot of trees were taken down recently and even their stumps pulled out before the ground was leveled again, or at least they tried to level it. In places they did too good a job. They even put sod down in the bare patches." Both stiff and tired, he crouched down and soon his long fingers were searching with determination among the roots of the tough grass plants at our feet. Soon he rose and brushed off his hands though I could tell that not all the dirt came off easily. Mud. "As far as the pond goes, it's wetter down under the sod than it should be. There was water here at one time but water can be drained off and this time of year will not be replaced very quickly. Then there's your growing season. It's short so vegetation has to mature early if it's going to at all. Look at your fields. Weeds can be planted just as easily as crops and will grow just as quickly, if not more so. Ben, someone spent a lot of time here a few weeks ago, taking out trees, draining the pond and then covering the evidence. Knowing how hard it is to fell a single tree here without good tools, we are talking about a lot of manpower. The cliff makes this whole area look different but I didn't see the cliff then because of the large number of trees and it was dark and rainy that night. I do remember a particularly dense patch of what I thought was woods. If that was the cliff masked in part by the tallest trees, then..." he thought and after a moment pointed to the South. "The moons would have risen in that direction on the night I arrived. Am I right?" He was pointing to a patch of cloudy sky where he said that he had seen the Moon and his brother just above an entire line of trees though there were only a couple in that area now. "It would be in that direction, yes," I told him. Numbly, I stared around, still unable to comprehend the change. "Are you saying that all of this was done on purpose? What purpose?" "Ben, who did you talk to about what I was searching for?" I don't know why he asked. He already knew. I could see it in his eyes. "But I didn't tell him where. At the time I hadn't found it yet." His hand made a dismissive movement. "It doesn't matter how. He has." I looked at the changes again; the amount of manpower it must have taken was incalculable. "Why would he do this?" "To keep me from finding this spot. Maybe even to keep a certain someone from finding it from above --" From a space craft he meant. "-- so that same certain someone would have to contact Dan Rowe if he wanted to find me. Probably both." A bright flash of close lightning dazzled our eyes, immediately followed by the first true crack of thunder. The wind rose even stiffer and a few fat drops of rain began to fall. "Let's go home, Ben. We have a harvest to bring in," and he headed off towards the cliff with a swinging, nearly carefree step, oblivious of the storm. MULDER: Year 31, Week 9.8, Dale Reckoning The mid to late summer months were hell but now life is comparatively pleasant-- just as long as I don't move too suddenly or try to sleep on my back. I almost regret leaving so soon. Not that I'll miss digging potatoes, a bushel of which is almost as heavy as a box of rocks, but I will miss knowing how they taste in a warm stew when you know that you grew them yourself. I won't miss cutting and processing ropeweed. It leaves a sticky residue on your hands that only hard work in serious dirt will remove, but I will miss not having the experience of leisurely winter nights braiding rope and telling stories and having no one after your hide except perhaps Old Man Winter. I won't miss hand-fertilizing beans, but I'll miss shelling the pods and then soaking the stems and leaves to make what passes here for paper. Nothing taken for granted, nothing wasted. Most of all I'll miss Benjamin, of course. I'll miss his free and easy smile and generous nature and the quiet passion in his eyes when he looks over his land. I won't miss that same passion when he looks at other things. It hurts me as much as it must hurt him when I pull away. But we have come to a peace, he and I, and I think that over time we could be friends with no need for walls. If all goes as planned, however, we won't have the time so I guess the wall stays. I freely admit that if life with Ben has not been idyllic these past months then it has been my fault. I'm sorry that I ruined this short time we had, but what could I do? I was locked into seeing that devil Daniel. The man is nothing if not intelligent. Threatening Benjamin was the most effective blackmail he could have come up with. Every two weeks I sat at his table and forced myself to make torturous small talk with the happy threesome. With the departure of the lovers I was then compelled to participate in torture of an entirely different sort downstairs. Unfortunately, my trip to Daniel's Bed was only the most physically enduring of our nighttime activities. We won't go into the psychologically enduring parts. His intent was that I not forget him during my weeks off and, believe me, I wish I could have. Poor Benjamin. I can't imagine what he must have thought once my visits with Daniel began to go bad. Even after two weeks of healing, I still can't move an inch of skin that has touched that bed without pain. The level of discomfort is simply in inverse proportion to the time that has passed since our last visit. Add the fact that I was frustrated to the point of obsession for so long over not being able to find the rendezvous point, and my disposition has been truly rotten. Over the years, Scully, you had a chance to become accustomed to my 'black' moods -- well, maybe not used to them, but after seven years you certainly were able to identify them. Imagine how totally bewildered Benjamin must have been. Looking back, he was more than that. He was nearly crazed with worry and only my damned insensitive, obsessive, selfish myopia kept me from seeing that. Poor, poor, Benjamin. No wonder he believed whatever Godfather Daniel told him. Once I could find the rendezvous point whenever I needed, you would think that things between Ben and I were able to get back to normal -- it there ever was such a thing. Instead, he was even more confused than ever. Oh, I was out of the black time but you know what that means, Scully: I was on aggressive hyperdrive, bad jokes, and all. Me bi-polar? Naw, watch that sickle fly! I knew that I was working like the possessed, but I had to do something with all my frenetic energy while I waited for 'the day' to come. It was not that the effects of my four trips to Daniel's bed were not still with me. They were. Thousands upon thousands of tiny roots like minute cockleburs had dug themselves irrevocably into my hide and I could count every one as I laid awake at night wondering how I could exhaust myself even more the next day so that I could get at least some sleep. There was relief. As I've said, the resting threshold subsided on the off weeks, which harvest week was. The resting threshold was what I could still feel even after lying perfectly still for some minutes You would think that on the off weeks at least the days were bearable. They were, but there was never any real relief, only the dread of the cycle beginning all over again on the next free day. As I've said, however, with the finding of the rendezvous point the worst of the blackness lifted. Knowing where as well as when I'd be leaving I finally knew for certain that I wouldn't have to sit through another of Daniel's dinners and the hell that always followed. As long as it had taken me to pinpoint the 'where', it had taken me almost as long to nail down the 'when' and I still wasn't a hundred percent sure of that. Let's just say that since we were due to appear on Daniel's doorstep the next evening a least some wish fulfillment went into the calculation. So how did I finally determine that the next night would be the night? Because that is also the night of Harvest Festival, the official ending to all the digging and reaping. It was also the night of Brother's next full moon, though there was some guesswork in that because it was more often overcast at night than not. Both of Charley's instructions would then be fulfilled -- the first full moon after the harvest -- and I'd be off this muddy dirt ball. I'm certain that in the beginning I over-analyzed Charley's cryptic instructions. I assumed for too long that both moons would need to be full before he returned, but Charley never said that. Similarly, the Harvest Festival wouldn't begin until sundown and would last all night, but I counted on Charley's not meaning that the rendezvous would be the first full moon after the festival. That would mean the next full moon after this one. After all, he said 'harvest' not 'Harvest Festival'. Not that I didn't worry. Charley might argue that Brother is not the 'Moon' and, therefore, cannot be a full moon but, no, I won't go there. That is the path to despair. I must get out of here even if it is only to get beyond Daniel's grasp. I've called him Godfather and that is as good a title for him as I can think of. He's ruthless in what he is willing to do for his 'family' and I fear that if I am not gone soon that I'll find more than a dead horse's head in my bed this winter. Have I remarked that the winters on Dale are very, very long? Winter was also not so far away. It had been a frosty night, and frosty nights always make going to the latrine in the early morning a truly religious experience. It had also been a very brisk day for fall. Our exertions kept us warm enough, but when we stopped our sweat cooled instantly. It couldn't have gotten over fifty degrees Fahrenheit all day and with a clear twilight coming the air cooled fast. I'd worked since first light with Benjamin alongside me. As it had been for weeks, however, Ben kept a grudging silence all day except for the most commonplace statements about the weather and occasionally nagging gripes to me to eat or take a break, neither of which I did often. He had been bending and ripping great tufts of the tall rice-wheat grass from their roots with an elaborate twisting motion. He was skillful from long practice. I followed along binding the long stems into sheaves. They need to stand thus like little cornshucks for a week to dry. Their golden tassels release their pearl-like grains better then, or so I'm told. After two fields of this our movements had become hypnotic. I saw little more than the ground of crumpled stalks in front of my face and thought only about how much less of a torture this would be if I did not have to manage with Daniel's handiwork written in the skin of my back. At least it had been seventeen days since our last trip into town. If it were four or five, or even ten, all this bending and stretching would have killed me or at least I would have been ready to consider death as an acceptable option. Last week during the really bad days we picked applepears and dug potatoes so at least the activities were varied. Free today of any need to concentrate on the task at hand, my mind dwelt most often on how much I should tell Benjamin about my leaving and when I should break the news. Part of me wanted to wait until the next day, the last day, until early afternoon, just before I needed to start heading north if I was going to reach the rendezvous point by nightfall. That wouldn't give us much time for good-byes. But what can one say at a time like that except for the obvious? Still, it felt wrong to just drop the ball and run. You might think that since we had acted almost like strangers for most of the summer that that the going away would be easier. It didn't. It was worse. I would have the last memories be better than that. What it came down to was that I owed him more than a wave and a handshake. "And thanks for all the fish...." I murmured under by breath. If Ben heard, he didn't even ask for an explanation the way he would have that first month. A few minutes later Benjamin's voice came again and it was accompanied by a sigh of surprisingly deep satisfaction. "Mulder, we're finished," cut through the fog. Numbly, I looked up from my bent over position to find no more tall stalks before us. Bone weary, I stood, I winced, I stretched and found to my amazed eyes that the entire field was flat except for the neat bundles of drying shucks. The two fields up slope looked the same. "We're done!" Ben declared with a tired grin. "Completely done and a day early. We were crazy to work this hard but we're finished." All I could do was stare unbelieving at what the last of the light revealed. As I gaped at stubbled fields, empty vines, and overturned earth where we'd dug the 'potatoes', Ben was going on about "Just think, we can sleep in and still go into town early tomorrow." I found that Ben is studying me for my reaction. "Funny. You know that that is just about the last thing I want to do. Not the sleeping in part... but the other." He gave me a broad grin, his old Ben smile from the early weeks. "I thought you'd say that." Just then a stray breeze blew over us full of wet cold. "Brrr..." he said, rubbing his arms. "We may even have snow by morning." "Aching muscles and a cold night, looks like I'd better show you how to enjoy a sauna," I offered. At that he brightened considerably. "I hoped that you'd offer. When I realized we'd probably finish today, I started the fire in the outer oven when I went up to get us something to eat." I couldn't help cocking an eyebrow in his direction. "Looking for ulterior motives?" he asked. "Always." "Look, we've cold, we're exhausted, and every joint in my body tells me what I'm going to feel like when I'm sixty. Nothing could happen." If there was anything that I have learned in my misspent life, it was that nothing is certain. "I do want to know how much heat we can get," which I did since, if I didn't find out on this night, I would never know. Carefully, I revised my comment to, "We may have some cracks we still need to fill. When this wind whistles through them, we'll know." So we headed up the slope towards the cabin. Ben even restrained himself when I swayed slightly, clamping his jaws together to keep the 'I told you so' from getting out. I admit that my blood sugar was in the basement that day. You know that I never feel like eating when I'm tired, Scully. I planned to eat a hearty breakfast. Charley's food was almost not worth eating. The very thought of eating my next evening meal gave me gooseflesh. But not there yet. It was with a sense of accomplishment that I looked upon the addition to Ben's little cabin. It looked rather like a huge stone beehive with a bad tilt, but at least nothing short of a substantial earthquake would bring it down. Ducking inside, I welcomed the toasty heat on my chilled skin and there was comfort in the golden dimness of the light from the slowly burning stove. In one respect, however, I had erred. The chamber was impracticably large for one man alone and would take too much fuel to heat properly. Worse, it would make him feel the emptiness even more than he must in his cramped little cabin. For the first time I wondered if that was why the little dwelling was the size it was and as cluttered as it is, especially now that we had filled its shelves with the fruits of Dale's short growing season. As to the size of the beehive, maybe we would have time to put in a drop ceiling before I went. But then I would have to explain the reason for the rush job. "Did I do it right?" he asked eagerly, referring to the fire. "Oh, yes." Gratefully, I took in a deep lungful of the almost too- warm air. It rolled luxuriously through my lungs all the way to my toes. There was even a mildly tart-sweet scent to the wood he had chosen which was pleasant. Like the huge cat that a neighbor on the Vineyard once had, I dropped down onto my stomach. The ground was cushioned with a thick map of newly cut rush plants that had their own fresh scent. Happily, I moaned. With similar animal pleasure, Benjamin laughed and began almost to tear at his shirt. I couldn't blame him. This was not the place for clothes, but I didn't dare remove mine. Not that I had actually seen my back, but I had seen enough of the back of my legs even in the dim light of my small oil lamp in the barn to know what it must look like. The shirt stayed on. The heat was still glorious, soaking into my muscles all the way to bone. Even though the rushes on the floor had a dryness about the edges from the heat, enough moisture remained to take the warmth to itself. While I muzzily contemplated the greenery before my nose, Benjamin was doing his best to appear nonchalant about removing his loose, draw-string pants at the same time staring at me curiously as if he had questions and didn't know if he should ask. Why had I taken to lying on my stomach these past months rather than sitting like a normal person was probably one of them. He did ask another in a round about way. "You told me that people don't wear clothes when they take these 'treatments'." "They don't. I'm just too tired to move," I lied. The truth I concealed, however, was not the truth Benjamin thought. Like a shadow I saw that hurt look cross his face again. The fact that he covered it quickly made it all the more poignant. I should tell him about my leaving now, there could not be a better time, but Ben cut in with another question first. "I hid what I knew about the landing place, yet you've never blamed me from causing you so much grief. Why?" I propped my chin up on my folded hands and studied the young farmer sitting there in nothing but the little rag of cloth that we used for underwear. He had no idea how good-looking he was. That's when I heard your voice again, Scully, clear as anything: "What a loss." The thought made me smile the tiniest bittersweet smile. When would I ever see you again? Would I ever see you again? For the first time in many months it hit me with full force that returning to Charley with my tail between my legs was only the first step in a long, and possibly, never ending, journey home. "I don't see what's funny," Ben sulked in the midst of my melancholy reverie. "Sorry, I wasn't smiling at what you said but about something else. As far as blame goes, I'm the last person to lay that on anyone's doorstep Daniel you've known your whole life. He's as much of a hero as you have in this place. Who am I?" "You're mine." Ben's handsome face was serious, almost angry. "I don't mean that the way I once did, but you're mine to worry about and I worry about what you think. If I'm not your friend than who will be? Daniel's interested in you but I realize now that he doesn't really 'care' about you. You're just another problem, like finding enough clean water in the summer or keeping mold from the seed corn." "Just what kind of a problem did he tell you I was?" Ben's eyes went to the floor. "He stopped me at breakfast. The second time we stayed the night at the house." While I was left waiting outside with my bread and water and newly scored back. "What did he say?" Ben shrugged. "He asked first how things were going. I said, well, but that you were extremely anxious about something. He said, yes, that he knew about the trip north, but not about what we were looking for." Even in the dim golden light of the fire Ben's face mirrored his distress. "I should have realized then that he was the one who sent the party of Grayrobes to follow us! If only I had thought! I shouldn't have spoken. All that happened was my fault!" His broad hand smashed into his palm with his anger. Stiffly, I moved to his side, wanting to reassure him and yet unsure of how to do it. "Benjamin, it's not your fault. You told him I was looking for the landing place? Well, he already knew that." "I least I didn't tell him where." His lower lip still trembled. "If you didn't, then I believe you." "Then how did he find out?" "I don't know but I'm sure that he has his ways. What did he tell you besides asking you to spy on me?" Benjamin flinched as if he'd been struck. "Two weeks later, he stopped me again at breakfast. He told me terrible things. He said that what happened to the others was also happening to you only later and more slowly." I stared at him dumbfounded. Hastily, he went on. "He said that in time you would be like the others and that it would all be as I had always dreamed, but that during the transition he was afraid that you might become violent or at least erratic in your behavior. For my own protection and that of the colony, he insisted that I report to him everything that you did and everything you talked about. That's why the landing place was so important. If we found it, and you wandered there on your own, I'd need to be able to get a search party there quickly." My expression must have been grim. "And even then you didn't tell." "If you can't find it while in your right mind, how could you after.... after... what Daniel tried to make me believe. And if you did wander off to that place," he stared down between his crossed legs blushing, "I didn't want anyone else to know. I would want to find you myself." Ah, saved once more by Benjamin's youthful infatuation. "You believed what Daniel told you about what was happening to me, didn't you?" "What was I supposed to think? He said that you had had an attack just that night as well as two weeks before. He asked if I had found you changed and I had! It was as if all the life had been sucked out of you. I was so scared." "Then it got worse," I said seeing how my blackening mood must have looked from his point of view. I guess that I hadn't been hiding things as well as I thought I had. "I'm sorry about that. I was having some problems physically, but more importantly I should have talked to you. I was just obsessing about our trips north being so fruitless. I get that way. It's hell for the people I'm around and I should have remembered that. Scully got use to it, or at least understood. It was a mistake not speaking but I also wanted to protect you. People close to me tend to get hurt." I looked at him carefully for the truth of this next bit. "Do you still believe it? That I'm 'regressing'?" "No. Now that you know where the meadow is -- or was -- it's all different, or mostly different. Different in a different way. But if you're not sick from that then..." "What?" "Why do you let him hurt you? I know he does. You shouldn't let him. You mustn't let him. I know that he's the Mayor but you don't have to do what he says. There's a way. We don't have to go again." This was the perfect opportunity. It was now or never. "Benjamin, there's something I need to tell you. I won't be going again --" "Let me see," he demanded almost feverishly. "Let me see what he's done to you." And he should know. He's going to be living with this madman. Clearly, the existence of Daniel's bloody bed was not generally known. On the other hand, if I were trapped without hope on Dale where a madman and a sadist ruled, I would be equally wary of speaking out. Though I hesitated I felt Ben's hands lift the back of my shirt. I didn't help a lot but I didn't hinder him either. I heard the hiss of his breath and at the same time was struck by a completely unexpected blast of raw emotion. I couldn't even say what it was. Not pain, not embarrassment, not even sexual in any way. Whatever it was it was incredibly overpowering. This was the time to swoon if there ever was one. Luckily we were sitting on the floor and Ben's hands caught and kept me from slipping sideways. Still dazed, I felt a finger touch the mottled, purple and green skin, felt the pain of sharp little hooks dig a little deeper. I tried to stop the sharp intake of breath but his exploration had surprised me. "I didn't expect this...I'm sorry.... Oh, Mulder, I'm so sorry." He murmured so deep and low that it was as if I could feel the words rumbling in my own throat. I could hear the shock in his voice as well and feel the misery swelling in his chest and the wetness as the silent tears began to slide down his stubbled cheeks. He had been sitting behind me all this time. All at one he bent forward, moved aside the hair that had grown long and kissed very tenderly the back of my neck. I felt the moisture of that kiss on my lips, tasted the sweat of our toil in the fields. A flame shot up into my head and flooded down into my gut all from that one intimate touch. The sensation was exquisite, the dizziness soaring upwards on the soft magnificence of eagle's wings. This sensation I knew. The flame-golden room had begun to spin in a great swirl of rising heat. After a time, however, the turning began to slow and a kind of wavery vision returned. I was looking down in horror at the ruined back of a lean, broad-shouldered man. It was impossible to know whether the skin had been dark or fair because the entire surface was covered with thousands of tiny black and purple ulcers that had blossomed into one huge, mottled bruise. The destruction was solid except for a few inches of nearly spared flesh at the hipline where the band of the loincloth would be if he wore one. But he wore no trousers, not even a scrape of a ragged bit of cloth to cover the most intimate parts. They were just then being cast away. I could feel the desert heat from the fire on my own flesh -- arms and shoulders, belly and back, loins and legs. We are, both of us, quite as naked as two people can be. The injured man didn't speak. His head drooping as if in shame -- or perhaps surrender. He did not turn at the touch of my hands or the feather light caress of tongue and lips when I could a patch of skin not too badly damaged. I realized that I am crying, crying softly in little whimpers, crying in pity and in wonder and in joy. Pity was obvious. Wonder and joy because I could scarcely believe the gift I'd been given, that this poor, battered creature was allowing me to comfort it. He had been all my desire for so long. It truly was a blessing to have something real and important that I could offer. And I would be so gentle; though, it would be difficult to be patient. There was a fire in my groins and a desperate need to fill my hungry arms that had been empty too long. Shifting away from my hand that I had laid too heavily on the ruined skin, he moaned softly. 'Sorry... sorry... I didn't mean to hurt you.' He was crying now, dry sobs in his belly. Beautiful, oh, so beautiful. Again he whimpered. I was hurting him. I was doing this all wrong. I had planned for so long that I would be kind, but it has been months.... I.... Wait... I...? No, it was Ben who was going to be the gentle one. I was... I am... not Ben. Then why was I seeing... myself? No flayed sailor could ever look so bad and yet it appears just the way I thought it would from the way it feels. Felt. Felt for the pain was gone, blissfully gone.... Because I really am outside myself and that is my body, horribly battered thing that it is, and yet I am touching it with insistent love-starved hands, hands whose every crease is darkened with years of toil in the fields. Not my hands, nor my eyes. Shit! Have to close my mind... back away.... It was so hard but at least there was some separation. That's better. There he is. There I am. I could feel hunger but at least I knew that it was his and not mine. Poor Ben. He was starving and my body was just the food he craved. With alarm, I realized that my abandoned husk was not so unresponsive as I thought. Stop. Take a deep breath. Close my eyes this time. But they were closed. I was looking down into my own face and I could see that my eyes were closed. But then how could I see my face? Keep focused. Remember. That's right, the same way that I saw the moonscape of my ravaged back and the vulnerable softness of my neck below the hairline that Ben kissed. Because I was seeing through Ben's eyes just as I could feel the beating of my heart though Ben's hand. A wave of tenderness, headier that a shot of the finest liquor underpinned the desperate rift that I was trying to maintain between what thoughts were his and what were mine. Oh, fuck, but it was hard. And it was hard, I realized with insane amusement. Very hard. Hard and long and thick and in real need to do some deep exploring. I'm talking Ben here. My hapless wanna-be lover hadn't yet mustered the courage to touch mine yet though he longed to. The separation between us was gone again, all focus lost in a child's fingerpainted swirl. I was Ben more than I was myself. We were so helplessly consumed by his lovemaking, our lovemaking, that there was no he or I any longer. What in the hell was happening -- and I don't just mean the sex, which wasn't bad at all. And then... BOOM! Like an explosion, all noise and confusion one second and gone the next. For an instant a sensation of motion, of flying through the air, or Ben was, and then the most terrible pain when his head hit the stones of the opposite wall. The shock threw me out of his head and back into my own. I knew without a doubt that that was true. I don't even need to open to my eyes to be certain because the pain in my back and my legs and my butt that had been mercifully, if inexplicably, gone for those few blissful minutes, was back. What was new was this huge nothingness where Ben's blazing desire had been, his -- love, for that's what it was -- and for the briefest of agonizing moments, his pain. He must be unconscious, I prayed that it was only that. What was left of me besides the baseline ache from my sores and the hole where Ben had been was a body that, incredibly, was still singing in full appreciation of the aroused state it had been left in. Unfortunately, that extraordinary sensation lasted all of about a heartbeat and a half. For now the storm that had torn Ben from me descended in full force. In form it was very much like a great threatening blackness, the kind that spawns tornadoes. It loomed over my head. It bent, it touched me where it shouldn't, or perhaps where it should. It ripped an animal growl from my throat that was part anguish and part ecstasy. The hands are large and strangely cold and all at once they reached for my head and.... I screamed. I wouldn't have chosen to but there was no time to prepare. It's like someone has thrown open a door and a terrible wind of needle-sharp knives exploded in my direction and every one found its mark. The shock was the worst but as that faded there was pain enough left. Pain and I have been enemies for so long, however, that the sensation was almost like meeting an old friend who you no longer care for but with whom you have shared so much. It was one of my headaches, one of the worst. Blindly, my hand groped for my discarded shirt where I'd sewn a crude pocket to store my 'magic' pills, the ones from Mac's friend, the apothecary, that stop the headaches flat. The dark storm cloud had stayed with me, however, and the shirt was kicked beyond my grasp. Then he placed a heavy- soled boot on my chest and ground my traumatized back into the dirt. Through a red fog I sew Dan Rowe standing over me, and partially on me, a satisfied sneer on that face.