The Roswellian Codex. CC Teen/Mature. 42nd bit (05/06/

[Patroclus76]

28th March, 2006.

I have lost track of the last few days and as a result had fallen behind with the journal entries. I managed to find some time this evening before dinner, holed up in my study, to set out my thoughts but they are not so much unfolding as exploding. I feel like someone who, in retirement has been turned out in the dead of night to start their life again. I feel overwhelmed, slightly phobic, my ears full of static. I do not know this version of my life, and yet somehow it fills me with hope.

After our long debate on the terrace I had quickly resolved to help the Roswellians (?!)* as quickly and as efficiently as I could. I proposed that they stayed with me until I had either proved that all was well with Liz or, on detecting a problem, come up with some feasible way of dealing with it. I still had to hear of Max's proposal. I hoped that I could do this without further compromising myself but the information I had retained following the Boston crisis might prove vital for saving Liz. Despite my own inner voice, despite my own shame (there is no other word) I had resolved to keep quiet for the time being.

This would not be easy, especially with Michael, who had some form of sixth sense. How odd, how strangely beautiful that day was! We had walked indoors and I had I found myself confessing that the house was very large and that I would enjoy their company. `I do not know how you come to a decision on such matters’ I had confessed, `but that is my proposal nonetheless'. Michael, who had still not quite dropped his guard, smiled beautifully. `Well we have evolved from a monarchy to an oligarchy and then onto a liberal democracy in under five years, so we’ll vote on it! I'm sure we’ll agree to stay` Maria came forward and kissed my cheek. `You have no idea what this means to us’. She said simply.

(later) Over the last few days I have presided over the complete overall of my plans to stay at Bone Hill, and the complete transformation of the house itself. The visitors have proved invaluable in seeking to help me set up my laboratory, repair the roof in places and renovate several rooms. Ever practical, Kyle and Isabel appear capable of fixing almost anything, including to my amazement, the empty leaf filled swimming pool behind the library. On a more practical basis, I managed to convert a long gallery on the third floor into a large research facility with the help of Max, Michael and Isabel, who combined to levitate most of the crates and boxes of equipment up the main stairwell. Witnessing them with their right hands raised, moving large boxes about, illuminating dark spaces with their palms, and creating electricity on tap proved to be rather exhausting and I was under the constant fear that Wilcox would walk in mid performance. I am running out of places and pointless errands to send Wilcox at the moment. I will have to resolve this problem soon and just tell him. It isn’t fair for him at his age, and when he is in the house, Michael is always following him about and asking him irritating questions! One afternoon Michael managed to blow a large hole in a wall by error and Wilcox came running in only to be told it was a gas leak. We don’t have gas in the house and Wilcox knows this perfectly well. I dislike having to go to Max to get him to talk to Michael and call him off because it makes them argumentative as well and Michael glares at me sometimes. I am also anxious he might be mind-reading, an ability I am all too familar with. This turned out to be no idle fear.

One the afternoon of the 25th I was on the second floor gallery of the library, trying to find stored diskettes of DNA profiles I kept in locked metal cabinets since the move. I would need this for my examination of Liz and in order to undertake a DNA comparison. I was sitting on the floor trying to decipher my index cards when I heard the main door of the library open and heard Max say `Fuck!!’ It was the first time I had heard him swear. He had walked in, followed by someone, `Just look at this place! It’s just beautiful! And certainly more beautiful in the daylight’
`How did we manage to get into this place without breaking a leg!’ Max was with Isabel. I sat up, on the verge of shouting something down, but then I heard someone else join them. `Hey do you think he’s read all this crap?’ It was Michael. I crouched down with my head just over the banister. They were standing together, far below, Max holding his sister’s hand.
`Probably’ Isabel walked to the great window, `he isn’t what I expected’ she mused, looking at Max.
`Don’t you trust him Iz?’
`Yes’ she had sounded uncertain.
`I don’t’ said Michael directly. `He’s hiding something. I can sense it. How did he know that Liz had developed latent powers after you had saved her life Max?’
`I don’t know. He’s a clever man. He studied the children from Phoenix, he would have seen that their DNA was changed. He might have guessed a connection with me. And then there is that stuff about his father having been abducted’
`Maxwell! Jessie told us to be careful. He knows more than any of us about Grey and yet even he doesn’t know much. He could be working for the FBI still, the whole name and shame and dismissal thing could just be a ruse, a cover’ Isobel dropped Max’s hand angrily and turned to Michael
`Jessie was his lawyer! He would have had to know something about the case for God’s sake, and Jessie gave him the benefit of the doubt’ her voice was emotional.
`I don't give him the benefit of the doubt' said Michael, `Not yet. The government stopped the trial and paid Grey off! Jessie saved his ass and got him compensation on a technicality, all the files were classified as top secret and had been removed before Jessie got to them!’
`Michael! Don't start, please!’ Max had used that half pleading, half nagging intonation that I had already heard on several occasions `We need his help! We have to trust him. Look how kind and generous he’s been to us. Liz and the baby’s life may depend on it!’ There was a silence. Then Michael had asked Isobel quietly `Have you dream walked him?’ I glanced down, curious at the phrase.
`Yes, of course I have! He’s complex, rather dark. He dreams about his wife, and he dreams about dead babies?’
`Dead babies?' questioned Max, `the children from Phoenix?’
`No, babies. It can’t have been the children. There were only four children referred to the clinic in Boston following your healing extravaganza, and they would have been much older, between three and five. No, Michael is right in so far as he is hiding something, but I sense fear in him. He is afraid of what Liz might have inside her’ I had felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck. Michael had looked at Max with a quick triumphalflash of his feral brown eyes `You see!’
`And Wyndham’ continued Isobel, interrupting a protest from Max, `Wyndham means something else to him, something other than Liz intended. The title Midwich Cukoos, I sense it makes him’ she paused `it makes him ashamed’.
`Your wife is too bloody clever, Maxwell’ snapped Michael
`Tell me about it! Listen, we have to trust him.
`Talk to him Max, try and get him to tell you' said Isobel, `He likes you, he empathises with you’
`Everyone loves Max' said Michael dryiy, `Its the labrador eyes! Come on, lets go'.

My guests have worked out a routine for `helping Wilcox’ prepare meals and that night Michael and Maria supervised. We have also opened up the old formal dining room, which has been closed since my wife and I had moved in. It was an impressively panelled room hung with dark, rather sinister landscapes, and dominated by an impressive Queen Anne table that could sit thirty people. It was a bit of a logistical nightmare getting hot food up from the kitchen, but in their inimitable style, my guests microwaved their dishes with their own hands as soon as Wilcox had been sent out again on some pointless quest. Isabel lit a fire in the rather embarrassingly, excessive baronial fire place, but it warmed the chill from years of disuse and soon the smell of lamb and spices replaced the earlier, all pervasive smell of camphor and dust. I sat feeling morose, like Macbeth, terrified I would give myself away. I wanted to tell them but felt that the moment had gone, that I was so wrapped up in my deception that I had no choice but to cling to it for dear life. And the longer I kept the lie the harder it would be. I was aware that Max kept looking at me, thoughtfully, far away in hisown head.

For their part, my guests were in high spirits. They talked about the past and their life in Roswell, and their many extraordinary adventures, like veterans at a reunion, and there was much laughter. They all seemed younger, their hard cautious exteriors peeling away to show young, extraordinary people. Liz and Kyle recounted a very funny story about Max and Kyle drunkenly breaking into her bedroom to sabotage a blind date with a college graduate organised by a local radio station. Max claimed to have no memory of the events, and then Michael recounted a story of a ruined New Year’s Eve party when he drank too much and levitated over Liz’s bed.
`Liz’s bed?’ I asked, conspiratorially, cheering up a bit, living my life vicariously through theirs.
`We swapped lovers for a night’ said Max, reaching out for Maria’s arm that was on the table caressing her wine glass. `Mine was a real party animal’
`Mine washed dishes all night if I remember anything’ Michael stroked Liz’s hair, `But she let me have her bed’ Maria made one of her shocked, wide eyed gestures that I came to love. Kyle was looking at Isabel, his blue clear eyes wide and thoughtful. `Kyle?’ I prompted. He looked to me, smiled, `oh yes, the fun years! My picture appeared in the local school magazine holding down Liz’s blind date on her bed while she ran off with Max. Poor dog boy! So many guys asked me out after that’ but his eyes lingered on Isabel
___________________________________________________________________
*the collective term for my guests has varied with the years. The Roswellians started as a joke between myself Maria and Kyle, when we proposed writing an opera about their adventures. Maria used the term pod squad but as a sort of in-house dig at Max, Isobel and Michael, or when they rowed but it was an intimate term of abuse which I never felt able to use. The generic term used by all in more serious moments was hybrids. The Antarian language made a complex distinction - inpart premised on their own spiritual code - between the original three `Qa vendi'(the pod squad) and the Yantra's - people transformed from within - Liz and Kyle. I stick still to the Roswellians, and even now, in the gathering winter of my life, it raises a smile. (edited 2nd January 2016)

[Patroclus76]

27th March 2006.

I told Max today. I told him everything. I am sitting in my study in darkness like a small boy, still emotional, still prone to crying. I don’t understand quite why I told him, but in some odd way he made me.

Three paragraphs sequestered under article 15/7 of the FIA.

By late afternoon I had completed setting up my new research facilities. Most of the equipment needed careful calibration, having been in storage for a long time in damp conditions, but I had assembled a reasonable laboratory, with a fair amount of computing power. I was however lacking some of the more recent technological breakthroughs in genetic sampling and analysis. In retirement I had kept up with the intellectual gains made in my field, (having contributed a fair few myself), but I had slipped badly behind in terms of hardware. I was not sure how I would make up for this. Nonetheless I felt tired but elated. I stood back looking down the wide high room. I had not felt this engaged in work for five years or so.

Someone behind me said `knock, knock’. Standing in the doorway was Max. He was wearing knee length shorts, an old Breton T shirt, and had a lollipop in his mouth bulging his left cheek. God knows where he had got it. He had been swimming all afternoon with the others following the official opening of the pool by Kyle. He asked me if he was disturbing my work. I said no, and remarked that I had been on the point of coming to look for him. In fact I had been avoiding Max for a while, unable to endure the way he watched me, as if he was sifting carefully through my thoughts, or rather trying to re-arrange them. As if he was shouting out my name in a crowded, noisy place, trying to get my attention. Standing amid the equipment, I looked at him cautiously, like one stares carefully into a bright opening after a long confinement in darkness.

He seemed evasive, unsure. Who was Max? I was not sure how he contrived, if he contrived at all, to shift from dark angst ridden young man to small boy all in one seamless movement. I presumed he did it in the same way he fused being an exiled king with an itinerant, an alien with a human. Where was the slightly sinister man who had stood at my window, whose dark beauty conveyed a hardness and determination of purpose, even a hint of violence? Now he bore an uncanny resemblance to Christopher Robins from Winnie the Poo. His ability to transform, to mutate, to navigate the impossible tension between differing worlds seemed miraculous to me. He asked me when we could start with Liz’s scan since she was growing anxious.
`We could do some scans tonight if Liz feels up to it.’ Max approached me, his hair chaotic as usual, corded across his forehead and incredibly black. He pulled himself up on the cabinet by my desk, and proceeded to swing his legs beneath him. He was close to me. I could smell chlorine on him. `Max’ I began, removing my glasses and fiddling with them, in part an affectation, in part a nervous habit. I heard myself say `Max’ like someone hears a call from afar, a sort of distant echo.

`Max, I have to tell you something’ I was speaking as if under water, my lungs hurt, I had problems articulating the words. I sat – or rather dropped – into my chair.
`Sure’ he took the lollipop out of his mouth. His tongue had been stained red. He seemed concerned for me. `Is everything alright?’ I stood up again and half walked to the window, and then back again. I looked at him, his eyes, and their extraordinary intensity. I saw myself reflected in both, a curved image of my head and shoulders, and behind, a brown- golden fisheye of my lab like a medieval painting, each image crammed with incidental ornate detail. I sat down again. `I haven’t been entirely honest with you, with any of you’ I ran my hands through my hair and buried my face. I heard him drop down, `Julian, tell me’ he said. I tried to compose myself. He was squatting, half kneeling in front of me. I thought of the dead, murdered babies, I thought of myself – typically – and a line from Sylvia Plath: once one has seen God what is the remedy?* Where does one begin, how impossible to start.

`What happened to the children from Phoenix, Julian, the children I cured?’ I looked at him horrified.
`The children you saved from the cancer ward developed powers within a year or so of being cured. Some had quite marginal powers but others were impressive. Four children came to my institute in Boston. You probably know all about this’ I said, wryly. `What do you know about me, Max? That I studied on the Human Genome project in London, England and then headed up the Virology unit at CDC? That I was a ruthless, ambitious academic that linked viral interaction to the evolution of base sequences in human DNA?’
`Julian – ‘ Max had reached out to touch me but I had pushed my chair back. `When the children came to us we called them the Midwich Cuckoos, or rather I did, I thought it appropriate’. Max stood slowly and pulling out a nearby chair, wheeled it around and sat down close to me. It felt like I was in a sort of interrogation or a form of debriefing. `I was supposed to help them’ I said softly. `When I examined the children I noticed that in all of them their DNA had been re-written, recoded. In the males there was something even more unusual. The Y chromosome, which is usually the least significant in terms of genetic coding, has been crammed full of new base sequences and was much larger than the normal human sex chromosome. It was in the boys that the greatest powers appeared to develop. In the two girls there was also power but it was in th boys that most power lay, as if the Y chromosome was the main site. Everything looked the same but the entire coding was different’`What sort of powers did the children have?’ Max asked softly.
`Telepathy, a form of mind warping that enabled the child to create disassociative hallucinations on either one or a number of people, abilities to move objects.’ I paused. `We had the government crawling all over us in weeks once the news got out. It took all my influence to keep the patients under my supervision. A specialist team of geneticists were brought in from Japan and Germany and allowed to carry out utterly unethical experiments’ I closed my eyes again. I felt Max willing me to go on.
`What happened?’
`Initial analysis implied that the new re-sequenced DNA was part of a new genome, a new entity, alien. If the children’s modified DNA was crossbred it was possible that a new, entirely alien phenotype – appearance - might develop. A decision was taken to replicate the re-written DNA from the Midwich cuckoos, pair it between the two boys and the two girls, and then clone the new sequence using stored human eggs stolen from the Federal Human Fertility Authority. The plan was to try and breed a strain which concentrated the new genetic material into one organism, in crude eugenics, to breed a pure type.’ I felt cold hard tears forming in my eyes. I could not bear to be so near to Max. `I participated in these experiments. I was interested in what would happen! I objected but in the end I complied’
`Jessie told us that you saved the original children from Phoenix when you discovered that the government was going to terminate them’ said Max quietly
`We both saved them’ I said. I suddenly remembered Jessie, strong, paternal, calming the frightened children with his smiles and his calm. They were dressed in their pyjamas, bewildered and afraid. It was a cold winter night, sleeting over the turnpike as he sped off into the darkness. I felt nauseous.

`What happened to the test tube babies?’
`They were born in surrogate mothers, but they all exhibited the same genetic defect: massive cellular aging, and dreadful powers. Some became capable of manipulating their physical environments while still technically unborn. Of the twelve that were engineered, three died, the rest were fully developed after six weeks, and they proceeded to age rapidly after birth. Within two months they were about twelve and conscious of their dilemma: that they were going to die unless someone helped them, but they did not know how to ask for help’ I put my head in hands.
`What happened?’ I felt Max touch the top of my head.
`They were destroyed along with thirty two of my co-workers who could not be told anything about the plan in case the children mind read them. They had killed several guards and my attempts to assure them was wasted’ There was a long silence. Tears fell silently down my face as if from an open wound.
`Julian – ‘ I looked up, recalling the first time he called me by my first name. His face was wet with tears. `Julian its OK’
`Its not Ok Max’ I said softly, `it will never be OK. This is what might well happen with your baby. Liz’s pregnancy has already been massively accelerated.’ I glanced at Max. He knew that, he had followed my argument carefully. `Is there any clue to what is causing this?’ he asked. I shook my head. How many times had I asked that question?

`I have no idea. It is possible that this new genome – the one we are trying to restore – is defective in some way. Crossing-breeding, or technically back-breeding can activate recessive genetic disorders. To find the cause and to alter the sequence after fertilisation is difficult however, theoretically possible, but it has never been tried, and this is alien. It is possible that on examining your DNA I might get a clue’. I sounded desperate. `I am sorry Max, I had an idea, I had an idea that the problem lay on the enlarged Y chromosome but there wasn’t time’
`You will find a way’ he said simply. `I saved those children, thoughtlessly, breaking into their lives and curing them. I started this. I share this guilt with you’ I looked at him thinking how odd it was that we had shared this before we had met.
`No Max, you acted to save them. I wanted to study them –‘ I pressed on over his interruption, `I did Max! I wanted to know, I wanted to find the truth, without humility. So I saved the original donors, like a man who with a good conscience saved Jews in Germany who were his friend, but who remained a member of the party and went to the rallies’
`That isn’t fair’ said Max, `Listen, Julian!’ his voice was firm, angry. We were both standing now, facing each other as if in a row `Do you know why I saved them? Because I stood by and watched a man die saving his daughter from an oncoming car, I watched him die, and in order to live with myself I went and saved the lives of children to appease myself, because I could, because I thought it was best for me– I didn’t stop to think about the consequences this would have on the children. I know all about power with out responsibility, and I know about pity and remorse!’
`Like Christ at the tomb of Lazarus’ I said quietly, `You were moved to pity’
`And like Christ I was not sent to just bring back people from the dead because I could, and Julian I am not Christ!’ he took my hand `I am as human as you are. It is time to let go of this’. To my surprise he put his arms about me, embracing me quietly and efficiently, lowering his head slightly so his chin locked on to my shoulder. Woodenly, cautiously I put my arms over his broad, hard shoulders.** We stood locked together in silence for a long time.
____________________________________________________________________
* Plath `Daddy' in Ariel. Faber and Fabr, London 1960

**As I came to know Max I grew almost to fear his intimacy, his remarkable tactility. What I found most uncomfortable was the way he always inclined me to confide in him, to drop away the artifice and the veneer of being a man, and to ask for his forgiveness, to forgive a failed and childless life.

[Patroclus76]

March 27th – 28th, 2006.

I had walked down with Max from the laboratory to my study. He had held my hand as if I had been given bad news, or as if I was being led away from the scene of an accident. I had asked him if we should tell Liz everything and he said it was her right to know, that he would tell them all over dinner. I could not bear to be there. I locked myself away and started to write my journal, horrified, relieved, free at last. As I regained my sense of composure I mused on the fact that Max had started a chain of events that had inevitably led him to me, or was it the other way around? Max was not Christ, but there was something numinous about him, something that changed the way I related to the world and myself. I stopped writing and tried to grasp what it was that made Max so singular to me, and through him, his wife and `family’. Max was in his early twenties, he was no child, and yet there was a quality about him that made me deeply protective towards him. Or was it that? Was it not rather that when I was with him I thought oddly and disconcertingly of my father, that I felt Max to be almost part of my father’s memory, a man I loved but hardly knew, whom I never believed in and who in some sense I finally rather callously abandoned.

I was awoken at 2.40 am by the sound of someone outside my door. I had fallen asleep at my bureau reading some old letters from my wife. I heard hushed whispers, Max with someone else. Then someone knocked. I was inclined to ignore it but then I heard the lock click back and someone knocked again. I said `come in’ rather too loudly and Maria appeared holding two medium thimble glasses of whiskey. `Hello fellow human’ she had said, bringing on one of her beautiful, radiant smiles. She closed the door and walked over. She asked me if she could have a moment to talk with me. She handed me my drink. I congratulated her on the neat trick with the door lock and she winked at me, `My secret accomplice, he’s very good with his hands’. She was wearing a green turtle neck top with a scarf over her shoulders and a tartan-checked skirt, it gave her an odd 1940s feel. Her red-blond hair was up in a bun, revealing elf like ears and a beautiful neck. She said that I was missed at dinner without any trace of sarcasm or irony.
`Sorry Maria, but I just feel a little overwhelmed. I had a painful conversation with Max he’s probably told you about it’
`He has’
`I suppose Michael was not in the least surprised about this’ I said rather un-necessarily. She raised her eyes expansively, drinking with real film noir charm. `We were all really upset and all incredibly pleased you trusted Max enough to tell him’

I drank my whiskey, feeling its burn the back of my throat. Would I have told Max had I not over-heard them in the library? `Maria, can I ask you something?’
`Of course’ she looked at me with her sparkling, slightly ironic eyes, an arm across the back of the sofa. `Is Michael always this’ I struggled for the word, `well, rude?’ She laughed `you have no idea, Julian! You have no idea what I have gone through with this man. It has been a roller coaster hike from hot space boy to boyfriend to ex-boyfriend, to `just friends’ to having a relationship, to being lovers, to what –‘ she shrugged, a beautiful intimate gesture and took another nip of whiskey, `He is direct, he is blunt, he can be staggeringly rude and extraordinarily insensitive, but he is utterly loyal, and in his own way he always, always trying hard to be better. It’s the trying I find so endearing. And he will be loyal to you, Julian’
`Because Max asked him to?’
`No, because he will eventually open up to you and drop the Doberman guard dog routine he assumes around Max.’

She had leaned forward conspiratorially, `you have to understand where they’re coming from. Max and Michael are best understood as brothers – they’re not of course – but they combine the whole spectrum of emotion that brothers would have, or - think twins! Max’s ideas of leadership are St Francis of Assisi combined with the Dali Lama, Michael’s is Brave heart with Jeepers Creepers 2! Both are useless, but together! When I first got involved in this wild, mad chaotic adventure they were either sneaking about each others bedrooms hiding things from each other, planning to protect themselves or just fighting’
`As in seriously fighting’ Maria nodded, deeply appreciative. `Oh yes, awesomely so! I recall Max actually punching him to the ground after a particularly blatant piece of sneakiness, and Isobel had to part them but you could see they that both enjoyed it immensely!! Bickering and snapping at each other over every key decision and then sulking and making up! When they really go at it – and in our trustworthy camper van this was quite frequently the case in the first year - the only person who could safely intervene was Isobel’ she fanned herself as if recalling some spectacularly erotic incident.

I felt relaxed with Maria. I appreciated her company and she was also the only one of the Roswellians who drank with me. `I just feel Michael is watching me all the time and judging me, and poor bloody Wilcox, which I deeply resent’ I drained my glass. It was incredibly late now, but I felt talkative and Maria seemed wide-awake. `Maria?’
`Julian?’
`I am also worried about my attraction to Max, well not worried about it, I didn’t mean that, and attraction is well – ‘ I had started to mumble. Again Maria made a soft, open shrug with her arms like a diva about to receive a bunch of roses. `Max has that effect on everyone Julian; he is only slowly growing to understand it. Max affects men, women, small animals, children, I am sure he affects the gravitational field of far off comets. I mean it’s embarrassing! We are constantly having to rescue our leader, or rather ex-leader, because he is charmingly, beautifully clueless, that is why Michael is so invaluable’
`It is very strange.’ I said quietly. `I mean he makes me feel very strange. He makes me feel connected to things, or perhaps he makes me feel transitory, as if he lives on the margins of the physical world, liminal places aligned with the spiritual world. As a particular form of scientist I am not used to this sentiment’.

There had been a silence. `He does that to me as well’ said Maria, eventually sounding serious, `There are times when he looks at me and I just want to sob, like really sob, because he is still there and still Max after everything we have gone through and everything is still hopeless and will never be right and then there are times when he looks at me and we just smile and everything in my life is clear and understood and in alignment. I love Max, Julian; deeply and profoundly, everyone does. Don’t be afraid of loving Max, it is his gift’ She yawned. It was 3.30 am. `One final question young lady’ I had asked
`Of course’
` Who left me the $400 after the first break-in?’ Maria laughed, `That was Kyle’s idea: he said we should not rob you with out some form of compensation, its his Buddhism, its generated a curious respect for private property’
`Bless him’
`Try and spend time with Max and Michael together Julian, otherwise Michael gets edgy and slightly jealous. Do a bit of old male bonding, do you play golf?'
`Yes I do actually'
`Take them out together'
`I will, thanks Maria'
`Oh and let Michael play for money if he wants to, not much, but enough to give him an incenstive'
`OK, Goodnight Marian’
`Oh and let him win'

March 30th, 2006.

After my conversation with Maria I had gone to bed but was unable to sleep. I looked over some old sources of comfort; Marcus Aurelious `Meditations’, Waugh’s Vile Bodies. I looked up Auden's epigrams `the logic of the tyrant: what is possible is necessary'. I fell into a light doze and awoke when poor Waugh fell off the bed and hit the floor. It was 5.32 am and just getting light, that odd transformative moment when even a familiar room still looks strange, unformed. I turned the lamp on and walked through the long corridors and down to the kitchen. The house was always at its quietest at this hour, its most secretive, gathered in on itself like a large animal sleeping. I made myself a powerful shot of caffeine and walked across to the breakfast room and out onto the terrace. Another glorious morning was spreading itself out in front of me. The valley lay still and slightly misty to the first screen of birch trees and then on the first ridges, these elegant statuesque trees gave way to furs and pine. I breathed in deeply and evenly.

What an odd coda to my life Bone Hill House was turning into! I thought of Dorothea, my late wife, what would she have made of my new friends? I could not help thinking that the dynamics of our first few days together would have been altogether different had she been alive. Suddenly my eyes caught sight of something far off to the southeast, low over the emerald hills. It was a flat elongated shape hovering at a height of about 20 meters. A small ribbon of blue lights threaded themselves from one end to the other, disappearing and reappearing at regular intervals. Somewhat randomly a bright dot of blue white light would flash from the base. I watched it, calmly holding my coffee for several minutes and then turned and walked briskly into the house.

Max and Liz slept at the front, on the first floor almost above the breakfast room. I knocked gently and went in. Max lay on his side, his body covered from the waist down by a sheet and discarded bits of clothing lay about the floor. He was facing away from me, curved over Liz who he held tightly to his chest. I saw his broad muscled back, with a line of crenulated spine curved inwards like a brush stroke. The top vertebrae showed at the base of his neck, powerful, shadowed in the dim light. To my surprise, and despite having 22 bedrooms, Michael was sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag. I touched Max’s shoulder and shook him. He awoke quickly and efficiently, his head turning to me `What is it?’
`Quickly, get up, there is something you must see’ as I said this Michael stirred and sat up `Max?’ Max disentangled his arms from Liz, who didn’t wake, and swung out of the bed in a quick feline movement, climbing over Michael. `Quickly!’ I turned around and almost ran back into the hallway and towards the main staircase. I heard Michael ask sleepily `Is it the feds?’ I made the terrace and to my relief, the object was still visible, although it had moved more to the south. Max appeared, then Michael, and both followed my gaze.

The object was hard to make out for a moment, having increased its altitude. Max drew along side me, shielding his eyes with his hand. At that moment the blue ribbon of lights started again. Michael stood just behind me and whispered `Holy crap!’ I stood mesmerised. Slowly the object started to descend, becoming much more visible as it fell below the tree line of the nearest ridge. `Its not the US Airforce that’s for sure’ said Max, more to himself, `I hope to god it isn’t Kuvar’ he said cryptically. As he spoke, the object suddenly moved towards the house and started to approach at speed. As it did so it gained height. We stood rooted to the spot. It was over the valley now, and as it approached it became clear that it was of an enormous size. I stepped back into Michael, who but his hands on my shoulders and said `Its ok, it’s going to pass over us’. About 15 meters away, at a height of about 40 meters, it turned sharply upwards into a vertical ascent, revealing a powerfully shaped triangle of metal, and then it literally vanished in one enormous burst of power, with no sound except a low deep bass rumble. As it did so something happened to Max that I had never seen before. At the base of his spine a brilliant while-blue flash of light travelled to his forehead and then burst about us. The light formed a distinct V shape of spheres centred on Max like a constellation or a sign. For a second or so it remained a blinding three-dimensional imagine until it radiated away. We all stood in amazement and it was only as I shook my head to clear the image from my eyes that I realised both Max and Michael were completely naked.

[Patroclus76]

March 30th- 31st, 2006.

After the sightings (in all senses of the word) everything became a bit of a blur. We had hastily convened a sort of working breakfast to review our options. `I am glad to see you took my advice about male bonding so literally’ said Maria. She had been fetching in milk from the kitchen. `I thought they’d have dressing gowns or something, or at least shorts’ I had mumbled, to which she laughed long and hard. Later I thought how deficient they all seemed in personal boundaries (or were mine just too high?) They had, after all, lived in close proximity to each other for several years. The news was out about the ship in minutes. Maria and Isobel, having heard the commotion on the first floor caused by Michael, had emerged, followed by a sleepy eyed Liz to see me looking stoically at both Max and Michael awkwardly conversing with them as if they were clothed. `Boys, boys, boys’ chuckled Maria. Liz had just said `Max!’ and laughed (she had a beautiful laugh) while Isobel had ignored them effortlessly and said `what is it? What’s wrong?’
`A ship of some kind, a space ship’ I could hardly bring myself to use the word.
`Antarian?’ Isobel looked at Max.
`It didn’t look like ours, it looked much bigger – Michael, can you recall what Tess’ ship looked like?’
`Nothing like that – that was an escape pod of some form. This was massive!’ We had then gone inside, Michael wearing a tea towel proffered by Maria. Later, as the house awoke, two helicopters appeared low over the estate and thundered about like giant, dangerous insects. Max kept everyone in doors and had sent me out, pretending to do something to the lawns. They were US Army Choppers from the nearby base at Macedon. They hovered and swirled about like bloodhounds sniffing out a trial. I had waved at them pathetically as if they flew over my lawns everyday. Wilcox appeared to ask what all the fuss was. I had looked at Max and shrugged and then glared at Michael daring him to suggest another gas explosion.

There had been little conversation over breakfast, rather a contagious, edgy nervousness. Finally Max asked me how long it would take to carry out a scan on Liz and take blood tests. It all seemed rather academic to me now, and I said as much. `Whoever is on that ship probably knows a great deal more about your genetic makeup than I will ever know’
`That ship most likely contains our enemies’ said Isobel sharply, `It might even contain Kuvar himself’
`Who is Kuvar?’ I asked, having heard Max mention the name earlier. Kyle rolled his eyes, `Do you want the long or the short version?’
`Any version will do at this stage’. Isobel was given the job of explaining, amid bites on her croissant, the role Kurvar had played in their exile and in the betrayal of Tess.* Max added a brief diversion on the skins, (which confused me greatly partly because Michael kept interrupting and correcting him) before he finally cut short the whole debate by stating that `We have to do something Maxwell, something soon, this will bring the Feds down on us if nothing else’ I agreed with him. `And it the skins have finally turned up we are going to be hard put to it’

I then asked about the holographic constellation that had so impressively exploded over Max. Kyle looked up `That is the royal seal of Antar, it authenticates Max as the true leader’ he had then, for some rather obscure reason, smirked at Michael who responded by sticking his tongue out back at him. Max polished up the explanation with the fact the V constellation was Antar and constituted the main systems of the Antarian Imperium. I asked where this star was situated and he said he did not know.** It was not clear how the proximity of the ship had activated the seal. `I wonder if they saw us standing there?’ I asked, at which Isobel laughed and suggested it would be quite hard to miss us. Max smiled, his face relaxing and Michael laughed. `They probably think Julian is the leader since he was actually dressed for the occasion!’


`Has anyone ever contacted you from your home world since the death of Tess?’ I had asked, getting the better of my mirth. I always spoke her name carefully. It was a name that had not to be used to often or too casually. `No’ said Liz with effort. There had been a silence. Even the helicopters had gone. Wilcox appeared with more coffee. A completely artificial silence fell and remained while the poor man went around refilling cups. To my relief, after he had left Isobel said `We have to tell Wilcox now for god’s sake – it makes little difference’ Michael typically protested but for once Max over-ruled him, with Isobel in support. I had winked at Maria. Max sent Michael out to talk with Wilcox. I turned to Max and Liz. `Let’s think about this in terms of a hypothesis: why have the Antarians come for you now? Why now and not say two years ago?’ Kyle looked at Maria and frowned, Maria raised her hand as if in class. `I know, Liz’s baby?’
`Exactly!’ I said, and the mood in the room had suddenly turned serious. Michael came back in looking vaguely putout. It had transpired that Wilcox had known all along.

Max turned to me again, relentlessly. `We must press on with the tests now, Julian, before things get any more complicated’ I had agreed. I suggested we could scan Liz almost immediately. Then to my surprise Max asked me to blood test them all for DNA sampling. When I had pointed out that this was not strictly necessary, he had asked me to indulge him. I had smiled quizzically at his sudden effortless authority. I then pointed out the potential difficulties I would face if, in the worst case scenario, Liz’s child was exhibiting the same genetic defect as the cloned babies. I would need access too much more sophisticated equipment than I had at my disposal here. Michael asked me what I would need and where it could be found. I mentioned the Human Genome Institute (HGI), which was affiliated to the University of Seattle. He suggested that they could break-in and acquire the equipment `to order’ if necessary. `We’ve done that before’ said Kyle, resting his chin on the table, `We’re the original Mission Impossible. What is this general plan, Julian?’

What was my plan? I hesitated. They were all looking at me, Max in particular; looking right through me. `Well, the simple version is this. I will be able to see almost immediately from the sonogram whether Liz’s baby is suffering from the same accelerated growth syndrome that affected the cloned babies. They were growing so quickly their cells were in a constant state of flux’ I had shuddered again at the recollection, a haze of rapid cellular growth fogging up the scan. `If this is the case, I need to identify the chromosome that contains the defective gene and switch it off’
`Is that possible?’ asked Liz, incredulously.
`In theory yes, I have already identified the Y chromosome as the likely site of the problem, but isolating the specific gene sequence will take time and very specialised equipment.’
Max said `so in effect you’re saying that you can correct the cellular aging in the baby before it is born.’
`Yes’ I had sounded unsure, `in theory’.
`And after birth?’ asked Liz.
`Its much more difficult, but in theory it can be done. Viral RNA is used with a catalysing agent, which switches off the pre-identified genes, altering the metabolism of the cells to normal. The mapping of the viral RNA has to be absolutely precise and the risk of a virus or a cancer developing is very high. In a majority of cases the patient is dead on the operating table in a few hours’ I was not quite sure why I had said that.
`Has this ever been done before?’ Maria looked at me in that candid, open way of hers `No’ I had said quietly. There was a silence. It was nearly 9 am. `OK’ Max said, with sudden firmness, `Lets get to it’


Later…


After the breakfast summit I had gone up and showered, my mind everywhere and nowhere. As I washed I looked at my body critically and with an element of disgust. I was still fit for my age, but in comparison with Max and Michael the signs of age were starkly apparent. I had not thought about my own body image for some time, but the sight of my young friends earlier had begged a futile comparison. I thought of Max’s back, the power of it, like a whale, primordial, breaking through the surface of things. What did he look like, stripped of his human DNA? Why had Nasedo and the Antarians modified him and his friends with human DNA in the first place? How long had our two worlds been in association any way? Had Max ever thought of that?

I thought of age, the curious transformation that overcame all of us. I walked through to my bedroom towelling my hair. On my bedside cabinet was a series of photographs. One of me in 1974 in Oxford, England, tanned, starring back from a summer long gone, irretrievably lost. A wedding picture, a family scene, and a house we bought and hated on Cape Cod. Did these places ever exist? Was I ever that young – and was that person me? Was it all surface and illusion, the body taught, the muscles defined and in place, and then slowly, like a crumbling house, the slow decay of years and the gradual abandonment, the retreat into memory and nostalgia?

At 11 am I had found Liz waiting in the lab. She was sitting on the end of the bed in a green surgery gown, with Max holding her close to him, kissing her ear. She looked beautiful, radiant, her black hair complimenting Max’s. Their intimacy was at times alarming. I coughed politely, and then wheeled out an ultrasound monitor and sensor. Liz lay down, and Max peeled open her gown and started to lubricate her swollen abdomen with gel. He smiled mischievously. `I could get into this’
`Yeah?’ Liz sounded nervous `I couldn’t, its cold Max! Max!!’
`I’ll warm if for you’ he blew on his hands and continued to massage her stomach. `Right, this shouldn’t take long’. I moved the scanner head around and out from Liz’s belly button. Her pregnancy was clearly well advanced. He skin was taught, brown, and full of life. I kept an eye on the image scanner, moving the screen towards me. Max, almost lying next to Liz, calmed her, kissing her forehead and stroking her stomach. `Keep your hands out of the way’ I said humorously. My mind switched into the routine of interpreting the grey white image. `Ok, lets see’ I altered the imaging sensor to focus the scans. What I saw both relieved and intrigued me.

In the first instance, the scan showed none of the telltale signs of rapid aging at all. However, the scan did show that Liz was expecting not one child, but two. The foetuses were facing each other, heads bowed, as if preparing for a judo match. They were well advanced, possibly seven months gone. I was conscious throughout of Max and Liz watching me intently and I was also aware that the image would be visible on my glasses as well. I looked quickly for the genitalia of the first child. It was male. I then looked at the second child. Max, his senses taught, sensed me looking intently. There was something different about the second foetus altogether. It was of a slightly different size and the image showed it to look slightly elongated, and with what appeared to be some sort of exoskeletal structures on its shoulders and spine.
`What is it?’ he asked.
`Good news’ I said emphatically. `There is nothing here to suggest that the aging process is anywhere as rapid as in the Boston babies, and you are having two babies Liz!’
`Oh my god’ she said, delighted, Max hugging her, kissing her, but he had not dropped his guard. `Wow, twins!’
I couldn’t see the genitalia of the second foetus because of the angle and the position of the umbilical cord. `Max, can you gently try and manipulate Liz’s stomach?’ he smiled at me knowingly, `Why I would love that – more gel, Professor!’
Max!’ Liz’s voice had all the suppressed excitement of someone who is ticklish and begs to be tickled. I directed him as much as I could. The male started to kick slightly, the other remained quite still. Then, just when I was going to give up, it kicked as well, and turned slightly towards me. The cord moved and I saw another male. `And.’ I said evenly, breathing through my nose. `You have twin boys, Liz’.
`OK, that’s enough excitement for one day’ I handed Max a towel to wipe Liz and then his hands. `I’ll print this off and try and clean up the scan’. Max was watching me as I pushed the screen away, and downloaded the images to file. `And now for some blood tests’.

Max had already pro-offered his arm. Behind his elbow his veins were thick and knotted under the brown skin. I slipped a tourniquet up over his strong forearm and had difficulty getting it over his biceps. I could feel his body heat and feel his blood pumping. `If there is no visible signs of rapid aging why is the pregnancy so advanced?’ he asked me quietly.
`All in good time’ I said looking at him, swabbing his skin with a sterilised cotton wool. `Curious’ I had said, more to my self, as I opened the needle. He heard me.
`What’ he spoke in that soft deep whisper of his, like a purr. `You’re musculature. For someone who doesn’t appear to work out you have extraordinary definition – have you ever wondered who you human donor was?’
`No. We found out Michael’s by accident. I have never thought about mine’. He gave me one of his coded smiles, the one that started somewhere in the corner of his eyes. It then rolled out and illuminated his face, before bleeding away from his dark features like winter sunlight over a somber landscape. `What do you think? Some alpha male thoroughbred?’ he suggested, raising an eyebrow. I felt Liz hit him on his other arm. `Stop boasting!'
`But I wonder why human DNA? Why here?’ I inserted the needle into his arm gently and then placed the sampling phials into the syringe. They filled up thickly with rich blood. I looked at him briefly, almost coyly. `The Antarians must have known earth for a long time to send you here for safety. Perhaps they had other reasons as well? There, that didn’t hurt did it?’
`You make it sound very mysterious’ he flexed his arm and removed the strap.
`But it is, Max, all of this is. Mysterious. You are especially mysterious. You have lived in the mystery too long to see it. Think about it. Clearly the Antarians are accustomed to genetic manipulation and have perfected it to a fine art. Hybridising differing species is extremely complicated, and unless they are closely related to humans, I have not the slightest idea how they managed it’.
`What are you getting at, Professor Grey?' he said mischievously

I had just been about to say something when Michael came in followed by Maria and Isobel who were laughing over something. `I’m next’ Michael announced. He walked past Max, roughing up his hair with his hand and kissed Liz briefly `Hey. How’s it going?’ Isobel and Maria went straight to Liz, hugging and feeling her stomach. I told them the good news and the news of the twins and there was great joy and excitement. They had then were arranged themselves around the bed in a pleasing symmetry, like a sort of Renaissance allegory: female fecundity next to male beauty. I took blood from all of them in turn.

Typically Michael played up the most, getting to strap his arm was like trying to get some nervous, edgy colt into a starting gate for a race. He disliked the needle and claimed it would hurt. He kept flashing his eyes at me as if I was doing this all deliberately. Max told him to stop fussing and they started wrestling when Max took the strap off me and had a go. In the end Isobel took his blood instead of me, with Michael submitting meekly. Maria was serene even though her arm was so narrow the strap wouldn’t fit. Michael squeezed it for her. `You brute’ she said. Kyle arrived on queue for his sample. Max thought it safe to go out for a swim in the warm air.

As I had stood to go and process the samples there came a sharp loud buzzing from down in the depths of the house. We all froze and for a moment, and I had looked as puzzled as they did. So long had I lived alone that I had forgotten the sound of the main doorbell, activated from the lodge about half a mile from the main house. Someone was visiting.
____________________________________________________________________
* I later discovered that Max had rather judiciously edited out of his accounts of their adventures to me any reference to Kuvar, including Kuvar's attempt to abduct Isobel on her honeymoon. There had been an account, of sorts, of Isobel's wedding but no reference was nade to Jessie (see above)
** I was later to discover in discussions with the Antarian Emissary S'aarth Sias Ova that the main Antarian homeworld orbits the star Tau Ceti, which lies in the constellation of Cetus the Whale and is visible in the northern hemisphere in the autumna and winter, between the top of Orion and the Polaris. This constituted the base point of the V constellation.

[Patroclus76]

March 31s - April Ist 2006.

I had heard Max running back towards us, his proposed swim interrupted. `What is that?’ he said, breathlessly. `It’s someone ringing from the lodge. We have visitors. You had better stay well hidden, god knows the place is big enough!’ Michael flashed me one of his interrogatory looks. `I suspect it is either the Sheriff’s department, the Feds or someone from Homeland Security’ I commented, trying to look calm. The helicopters had already indicated that the Antarian ship had been spotted or at worst, followed. `Perhaps its all three?’ Kyle had added helpfully. I could not help smiling. Should I live to see the end of the world I decided there and then that I would want Kyle with me for company. My guests were already dispersing into the huge house when Wilcox appeared and said that Deputy Marston was on his way with some officials from the FBI to talk with me. Michael paused and looked again – an eyebrow crooked up like a question mark – before Maria reappeared to retrieve him. I had smoothed my hair down, adjusted my tie and walked down the long corridors with Wilcox. `That young man would benefit from a good hiding, Professor’ he had said of Michael. I had agreed but pointed out that neither of us was probably up to giving it. To my surprise Wilcox had suggested approaching Maria. As I reached the main hallway I spied Max standing right up on the fourth gallery looking down at me. Was he anxious for me? Was he afraid I would betray them? I smiled up at him. `Go with Michael to the second floor gallery in the library and hide there. I will come and find you when they have gone’. I had already proved the place useful for eavesdropping.


It was well past noon. I had walked out into blinding sunlight just in time to hear the sound of wheels on gravel and to see the deputy sheriff, uniformed, climbing out of a jeep. From the rear passenger seat two men had stepped out on either side, suited, smooth slick hair, both in their mid thirties. Short of having a large placard stating that they worked for the FBI they could hardly have drawn more attention to themselves. I had assumed the air of an affable, retired scientist baffled as to why I was being disturbed.
`Professor! Sorry to barge in on such a glorious day, this is Agent Anderson and Agent Wilkins, FBI’
`Gentleman’ I said, gripping their hands in turn. One thing I knew the FBI appreciated was a full on, wrist wrenching handshake. Wilkins was smiling and open faced, while Anderson had mirror sunglasses and no smile at all but a thin line of lip. It was like shaking hands with myself on camera. Wilkins then said the usual things about the house and the grounds, right down to the semi-incredulous, `So you live here all alone?’
`I lived here with my wife, but she died, suddenly’ I added almost as an afterthought. `What can I do for you? Can I get you some tea?’ In my long experience with the FBI I had come to realise they hated tea. It struck them as foreign or affected. `No that’s fine Professor, we just wanted to have a brief discussion with you about something rather urgent, can we go inside?’ I led them into the main hall slowly as if I did not walk far. Newcomers to the house were always silenced by it. It had been designed to convert lumber money into class, brawn into elegance. One had the impression of walking into the jaws of a massive whale. `This is some place you have here,’ whispered Marston. I led them at length into the library, dark at this time of the day and rather imposing. When they had settled on the small nest of Chesterfield sofas Anderson had been forced to remove his shades. He had dark rather rodent like eyes. I let them sit in silence for a while, watching them curiously with what my wife has once called my `Lady Bracknell’ look. It was clear that they thought me already eccentric.

`Professor, I will cut to the chase.’ said Wilkins in a soft, southern accent. `We are fully aware of your research work and of your previous involvement with the bureau. I am sure you know that’
`I understand’ I had said. `I have not really continued my research since I retired. Are you here because of the Midwich Cuckoos?’ Anderson exhaled rather loudly. `I see you get to the chase as well, Professor’
`It is usually the best way, Agent Anderson in my experience. My memories of the Boston years are not good, so brevity is less painful’. Anderson stood up, and walked towards the great mullioned windows that looked out over the pool. He had twirled his glasses in his hand. `We have reason to believe that some people might try and approach you soon, asking for help, help of a scientific or medical nature? Unless they are already here?’
`People?’ I looked at them and then at Marston as if `people’ was not a word I entirely comprehended. `Does this refer to the itinerants you warned me about a week or so ago?’ He did not answer but deferred to Anderson, who answered for him. `Yes. We think that one of them is a man called Max Evans, and that the rest are a group of young people who are on the run from Roswell, New Mexico’
`On the run?’ I had tried to sound concerned as opposed to doubtful. `Oh dear’
`They have been in Seattle and have been in the north west for time, be we lost track of them just under a month ago.’ Wilkins had added breezily, as if he was referring to a lost herd of sheep.
`Are they dangerous?’
`They are highly dangerous. They have left a trail of destruction right up from the south to the Pacific Northwest. And they are very persuasive, very charming. They have perfected their abilities as a team. We believe that they are in the area and have in fact been observing you for sometime.’
`Good gracious. I am certainly not aware of being observed, Agent Anderson. Do you have any idea what they want help for?’
`We believe that one of them is ill and requires someone professionally trained to examine them. For obvious reasons they cannot go to a state or private hospital’
`For obvious reasons?’ I queried. Over the years I had perfected the art of playing the FBI like a fish on the end of a very long line. It needed consummate skill. One had to feign just the right amount of ignorance to arouse contempt as opposed to suspicion. `Professor, Max Evans is an alien, I am sure you understand this. He is an alien, he is not from this planet’. I had nodded gravely, wondering if Anderson understood the meaning of the word tautologous. I had momentarily thought of my father, a sting of regret still. `We believe that this is the man who cured the children you experimented on from New Mexico’ Anderson added. I ignored the emphasis.
`We have reason to believe that they have come to know of your involvement with those children. It might even by that the illness is of the same kind of genetic defect that you encountered with them, which would make you the ideal guy around here to lend a hand’ put in Wilcox again, smiling like a salesman. I looked at them carefully. `I have no facilities here for anything but a cursory medical examination, gentleman. However, I will be on alert. If they come will you offer me protection?’ Asking this directly had been risky. They could jump at the offer and plant someone here, straight away. `Not immediately, but the offer is appreciated’ Anderson had glared about him at the huge splendour of the library `you might enjoy the company! We want you to take them in and befriend them, but contact us as soon as they show up. Is that understood?’ It did not seem much like an offer.

Anderson had stood over me for a moment and then Wilkins and Marston had stood up slowly indicating that our meeting was at an end. As they walked towards the hallway I had said innocently `of course there is always the possibility that they have gone home’. Anderson stopped and turned briskly. `Excuse me? What are you talking about, gone home?’
`There was a ship over the house this morning. It appeared to be taking off from somewhere close to my estate. A space ship, that is. I assume you saw it?’ Anderson’s lips whitened and appeared almost to vanish. Even Wilkins struggled to look neutral. It was evident that they had seen and thought about it a great deal. `Thank you Professor, call us when they arrive. We have left you alone all these years, Julian. You owe us for that. Remember our deal?’ We had reached the driveway. No one shook hands. I had waited until the car had gone and returned indoors thoughtfully.


I walked slowly back to the library, my hands behind my back, musing. I pushed open one of the double doors. Michael and Max had come down from the gallery and were standing by the window, very close to each other. As I entered, Michael stood back, and Max turned towards me, smiling. There was a momentary sense of intrusion. I had the distinct impression that they had been talking about me. Michael was least able to cover the odd moment of frisson. He scratched his eyebrow and said `Hey, what’s up?’ which in the circumstances struck me as bordering on the facetious. `What’s up! We now have the Antarians and the FBI on us at the same time. Which one is worse I wonder?
`The Antarians?’ said Michael blankly, `Followed closely by the Feds’
`You were great’ said Max, with genuine appreciation. He came and sat down next to me, patting me vigorously on the shoulder.
`Fantastic’ echoed Michael sarcastically `so what was this deal you made with the FBI?’
`Don’t start, Michael’ I had said, and he had looked at me opened mouthed and then, to my surprise, laughed. `You sounded just like Max then!’ Max too was smiling.
`Clearly you have worked on this performance before!’ he said, leaning down, his arms on his knees
`With the FBI you have to approach a lie through a series of small truths; you have to give them some logic, some line that will leads them somewhere. So what did you make of it?’ Michael had sat down next to me as well. I thought oddly but vividly of the three wise monkeys.
`Well’ Max looked across at me. He was in a good mood. `They don’t appear to know that Liz is pregnant, which is interesting. And the idea that we might already have left with the ship is one that they have clearly been considering, so all in all, we have bought some time. You need to go and finish off your analysis Julian, and give us some idea when Liz will give birth and try and see if the aging process, however different from before, can still be stopped. I am going to report back upstairs and take my swim – coming Michael?’
`In a minute’.

Once he had gone out into the hallway and vanished, Michael had tapped my foot with his trainer. `So what was the deal?’ I breathed in deeply. I was on the point of saying something really, really offensive to him but there was something in his eyes, something in his mouth and the way the light caught his face that made me relent slightly, as if the real way to deal with Michael was to indulge him. I thought of Maria, her extraordinary elegance and charm, and I thought how much this rough attractive man complemented her. My affection for her had in some way to embrace her love for Michael. For the first time I saw them as a couple and as Michael as someone I wanted to like. I tapped his show back with studied defiance and said `What deal?’ Inspite of himself he started to smile. `Your secret deal with the FBI?’
`Michael, do you know of a man called Winston Churchill?’
`Yeah – British leader dude or something, 2nd world war?’ he sighed, as if this was some form of evasion.
`Exactly. He was a staunch anti-communist and hated Stalin. But when Germany invaded Russia in 1941 he made an alliance with the Soviet Union. He made a famous remark –‘
`”If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make a pact with the devil”’ Michael had finished for me, to my evident surprise. He smirked at me knowingly.
`I saved my life by a false promise, a lie. The promise is immaterial. The FBI is here not because I told them, in extremis, that I would help them in the future if they needed it. They are here because they can be. It is as simple as that. Don’t worry about me, trust me Michael, please. I want to be your friend’
`We are friends’ he had said in surprise, `you think I am this difficult with people I don’t like?’


Later…

We had eaten a late lunch and I had walked about the gardens to clear my head. I needed to go back to the lab but I felt utterly exhausted. Isobel and Liz walked with me for a while and we had chatted. I was made aware of how interested Liz was in genetics and how much Isobel still loved Jessie. Both were odd revelations of a kind. Isobel had asked me whether I had met his new fiancée. She asked for details as if she was making mental comparisons. I had sounded evasive. I later came across Kyle under a tree meditating. I took a powernap in my study at about 4 pm but it went hideously wrong and I was awoken by Max at 7.30 pm to tell me dinner was ready. As I sat up he rather tactfully pointed out I had been dribbling. I had felt about 1000 years old.

After dinner I returned to my lab and pressed on urgently. Max’s question had been direct and to the point: the babies were not rapidly aging but they were still well in advance of four weeks. And why were the two babies different? I started with the sonograms, which had been cleaned up and scrubbed electronically, and re-imaged to remove the distortion caused by the V shaped field of the original scans. Under just a small magnification it was clear that the physiologically of the two babies was very different. These were not twins. The second was longer; the limbs were smoother, with the head rather large. The eye cavities also appeared unusually big. I then noticed that what I had taken to be male genitalia on the second child was in fact a `tuck’ of a long proboscis like object extending from its bottom vertebra. I sat back, startled. At the moment I had a very curious and immediate sense of being watched. I had literally to look about me, down the length of the lab before turning back to my work, to shake off the sensation.

The second child had, literally, a tail, a long tail that on several of the earlier scans I had mistaken for the umbilical cord. I went back to the earlier frames. There was no mistaking it. Was this a mutation? One perfect child, another deformed? Or was it – and my hair had literally stood up on the back of my neck at the thought of this – was it that somehow Max and Liz had bred a pure Antarian phenotype? How was this possible alongside a normal human child? I was disturbed by a soft bleep from the mainframe terminal saying that a provisional mass-X ray and crystalline analysis of the DNA was ready. I quickly and efficiently isolated cells from the remaining samples, stained and mounted them, took prints at high magnitude and managed to isolate the chromosomes relatively easily. My neck hurt from bending and the small of my back ached slightly. I fetched some coffee from a percolator on my desk. I had taken Maria’s human DNA profile as the standard base level for a quick, thumbnail sketch comparison as well as a sample of my own. I squinted my eyes onto the screen. Again there came a direct sensation of being observed. This time it had been so disturbing that I had stood up and walked towards the main doorway at the end. `Hello? Wilcox?’ Silence. I had laughed at myself.

Michael and Isobel showed about a 6% variation from human DNA. Kyle and Liz showed a much more marked variation, 14 and 21 % respectively, implying that Max’s life saving interventions had fundamentally altered their genetic makeup. Yet it was Max that showed the most remarkable difference: his DNA was almost 80% different from Maria’s. I switched over to look at the simple chromosomal pairings. To my surprise, all were normal except again for Max: 22 paired chromosomes, and one set of sex chromosome for all, but with Max showing 44 pairs, twice the human number, with two sets of sex chromosomes, an odd YY pairing and an XY.* Provisional evidence implied, as with the Midwich cuckoos, that all but one of Max’s Y-chromosomes were abnormally large, as large as the human X chromosome, and carrying as much if not more genetic coding. This was exactly the same as the children from Phoenix, but why was the outcome so apparently different? Was this a less severe form of cellular aging?

I had risked theorizing. There was no doubt in my mind now. Despite the extraordinary degree of improbability, Max and Liz were having two very different children: one was human, possibly entirely human; the other was alien, possibly entirely alien. How had this happened? I looked over Max’s data again. He was – typically – an utter mystery. He either had an entirely redundant genome in him (a sort of hidden code for something else) or his genetic coding had been deliberately copied and packed onto a duplicate set of chromosomes. Yet even the rough plates taken with my own electronic microscope implied that the two sets of 22 were different. It was as if there was someone else inside of Max. It was about four-thirty in the morning. I felt totally exhausted, almost faint. At least there was no immediate danger to the children. I could risk coming back to this later, although maturation was possibly only a week away. I switched the desk light off and looked at various screens and stand-by lights glowing. I need assistants. I needed to lose ten years of accumulated age.

There had been a full moon**, glancing through the long line of windows. The curtains were all still parted, and I had left open the shutters. On the floor parallel squares of moonlight had arched away down through the dim interior of the room, curved slightly by perspective. I sat holding my head, thinking of the last few weeks in random, freeze-frame images. A soft wind moved all the curtains simultaneously. I looked up and became aware that one of the slabs of moonlight at my feet showed not just the metal frames of the window, but something else. A line of shoulder, what appeared to be a neck? I stayed calm. I slowly moved my eyes to the window and tried to focus clearly. A tall, thin shape was standing close to the wallinside the room, mostly obscured by the muslin drapes and the curtain. Backlit by the moon, I could see what appeared to be a human, but the head was curiously misaligned with the neck and body, as if it had a very long neck, or was I being confused by the darkness, the odd juxtaposition of shadows? I tried hard to convey no fear at all but mere curiosity. I must have stood staring at the figure for about a minute, until quietly, with a minimum of movement, I turned around and walked calmly and slowly to the door.
______________________________________________________________________
* I appreciate that this level of detail may well strike the general reader with dismay, but I have been loath to tone down the context. By now of course, many of you reading this will be familiar with the authoritative text The Antarian Genome: redundant base sequences and gene manipulation by Liz Parker-Evans and Mishima Nagasoni. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2011.
** thanks to M for correcting this detail.

[Patroclus76]

April Ist, 2006.

I had walked slowly and deliberately through the growing blue dawn down into Max’s bedroom. In some curious way getting Max out of bed in the early morning was becoming a habit. When I reached his room my heart was beating madly and I was perspiring with the recognition of what I had seen.

Max was sleeping with Liz but again to my surprise, Maria was sleeping on the same bed although to one side, one arm under a pillow. Max had moved away from her and lay partly on his back, one arm thrown out over Liz as if he was swimming. In my haste I almost trod on Michael who was once again on the floor. I found the nocturnal habits of my guests bewildering, the various combinations they slept in reminiscent of a rubrics cube. I thought of their time spent in the camper van and wondered if, however unacceptable at the time, that level of intimacy had generated the need to be together. I sat down next to Max. Cautiously I put my hand on his shoulder and shook him. I felt the firm back deltoid, separating down into hard triceps on one side and the top of his left pectoral on the other. Human enough, but almost over-stylised, perfectly designed. Unusually he was deeply asleep. I shook him again, more vigorously. He jumped up, twisting around to look at me through sleepy, boyish eyes. `Is it the ship again?’ he mumbled, rubbing his face with his hand. Maria said something and turned into her pillow. `No, someone is in the house, in my lab, come calmly but quickly’. He sat up immediately. I smiled to see he had taken the precaution of wearing boxer shorts this time.

He bent down and awoke Michael, who appeared with his face crumpled with sleep `What’s up?’ he asked
`We have a visitor’ I said, briefly recalling Maria’s description of Michael as a Doberman. Did he ever leave Max alone? Were they somehow linked? (Was I jealous?) We were walking swiftly through the long marble hallways towards the main staircase. `Is it the feds again?’ Michael was stumbling, still trying to wake up.
`No, I think it is the Antarians’. I said. Michael swore and Max turned around and took my arm, twisting me to look back at him `What!’ He frowned theatrically.
`There appeared to be only one, it had been watching me for some time’ I had noted their look of alarm but urged them on.
`Hurry up, all my results are up there and I don’t want them being destroyed now.’ They broke into a run, sprinting up the main staircase and deftly down long winding corridors towards the back of the western wing. The great mock Elizabethan windows were filling with grey light. Max and Michael made little noise and quickly I fell behind. When I caught up with them they were standing together, just outside the door to the laboratory, with their left arms raised out in front of them. They made an impressive pair, Michael’s hair long and thrown back, now fully alert, his sharp face shining, Max slightly in front, poised to run in. I had stood behind them feeling pretty useless. `I am not sure they want a fight’ I had said rather meekly. `Julian just keep back’ said Michael. Suddenly – dramatically – Max discharged a huge slab of green iridescent light like a shield. It glowed all around him and he himself seemed to grow, a tall dark form manifest with energy, rising out of the young man in front of me. I stept back in amazement. The noise from the green force field seemed deafening, a sort of howling tempest. Max shouted `Get in behind us’ as if he was in a gale. As I complied, he kicked the door open and we all moved in phalanx like, with Michael sending out a great rod of blinding light down the entirety of the room. Several (rather expensive) pieces of equipment shorted and the air was full of sparks. Max looked one way with Michael another, seemingly facing in all directions. The room was empty.

Suddenly the light and the noise vanished. Max seemed to diminish slightly and Michael sighed deeply. He looked at me. `Do you sleep at all Julian? It’s a bit early still for me. I’m exhausted, we need Isobel as back up!’ I walked through them towards my desk. Everything, the slides, the scans and samples, the diskettes and even the equipment – including oddly the coffee percolator – had gone. In there place stood an odd round object, like a bell jar, but opaque and without any apparent lid or opening. I went to touch it. `Julian be careful!’ Max had grabbed my hand.
`You have no idea what that might be – it might be a bomb’. I had looked alarmed.
`It was standing here, by the window. It’s taken everything – all the samples and the data’. I must have sounded close to despair because even Michael looked distressed. Max in the meantime had gone to the desk and was looking at the object closely.
`So why leave a bomb for god’s sake?’ said Michael.
Max shrugged. He moved his hand towards it and as he did so there came a loud pure sound, as if a tuning fork had been struck. From behind Max’s head a blue ball of light dazzled all of us, and the V shaped constellation opened up around us in a swirling display of power and colour. The constellation disappeared but the note hung on, deceptively, like a ringing in the ears. `Holy crap – this just gets better and better –‘ Michael and Max both squatted down to look closely.
`Beware Antarian’s bearing gifts?’ I added dryly.
`Perhaps it’s a device like the one used on Roswell that caused the temporal anomaly?’ they had both looked at me as if they expected me to suddenly disappear.
`Can you describe the person – the alien – watching you?’
‘It was difficult, I saw its shadow on the floor first, and it was behind the curtains, but it was rather long and thin, the head rather large, I couldn’t see much, the neck seemed weird’
`Odd’ said Michael, `I thought Antarians were short and green’
`This is not a time for a joke’ said Max firmly, although he struggled to hide a trace of a smile. `And it didn’t attack?’
`No’ I said, with more certainty. `It seemed to be observing my work – curious – I had sensed being watched for some time’.
Our attention turned once again to the curious object. Suddenly, impulsively, Michael put his hands around it carefully and lifted it slightly. It wasn’t heavy. `It contains fluid of some form – I can feel it moving’. Max crouched down so he was at eye level with it. The surface of the `jar’ was white, but not evenly so, it was marbled in a curious way. `Well you have the seal Maxwell, perhaps you should pick it up or something, it seems to belong to you’ Max had looked at me and I am afraid to say I had looked back at him cluelessly. Max breathed deeply and then, his mind made up, he put his hands around it and lifted it off the desk. As he did so the container cleared completely, turning into something more akin to glass or a transparent form of plastic. Under Max’s touch the contents became visible: it was a severed head. We had all cried out in horror and Max had jumped back, dropping it back onto the table.


Later………

I must have slept for several hours because when I awoke it was early afternoon and the sun had shifted away from my bed and the room lay in soft pleasing shadow. I had dreamed of my father again, with him on the bridge, telling me his stories of abduction, This time I had listened attentively. As I lay gathering myself for another afternoon of what Maria had called (rightly so) the `alien abyss’ I grieved for my father with such sudden intense sadness that my eyes watered. He had been taken on three occasions, each time in the early morning. I wondered if the time suited such abductions, the grey tranquillity of dawn, or whether the intended victim was more susceptible, disorientated, in REM sleep, dreaming. Max and Michael had taken the container with the head and placed it for some odd reason in the library. I had wanted to convene a meeting straight away but Max had insisted that I rest. I had been up almost continuously for 24 hours. He and Michael had gone off to confer and again I had felt absurdly ridiculously jealous as they set off, deep in conversation. I wondered if that was really why I disliked Michael, nothing as much to do with his character or personality but his proximity to Max. It was as if I was regressing in age.

When I finally dressed I had been fetched by Wilcox and told that Max was calling a meeting in the library. He said this without the slightest trace of irony. I smiled to think that even Wilcox had succumbed to Max’s charming authority. When I arrived the great book lined vault was filling with warm afternoon light, although under the great banks of shelves and the soft darkness of the high ceiling it was cool and almost silent. As we filed in and sat down I felt like we were swimmers diving about a deeply submerged wreck, the brightly coloured spines of the books like reefs, stretching into the gloom. The heavy panelled stained glass gave the texture and ambience of water.

He had asked me immediately what I had found from the data before it had been stolen and whether I was able to come to any provisional findings. He was wearing a tight black T-shirt that clung closely to him like a second skin. His features were dark, mysterious with his hair falling down in front of his eyes, so much so that sometimes as he spoke, he brushed it away so that it either stuck up in the middle like a dark version of Tin-Tin, or hung out over the side of his face. His eyes, brown and golden flecked, seemed to reflect light even from darkness. Liz sat on one side, her head on his shoulder, with Michael on the other, his hand across the back of the Chesterfield in an inclusive, rather possessive gesture. Isobel had her arm around Kyle, the most intimate I had seen them. Maria was half sitting on the arm of the sofa next to Michael. As I started to answer him I realised, looking at them all grouped together that I would follow these people to their end, where ever it lay and no matter what it involved. nunc dimitiss*

I had started, rather like a detective summing up a murder mystery. Given the existence of the severed head this was not too outlandish a metaphor. `Liz, you are not having twins. You are having two different children.’ There was a sort of shocked silence. `One of them is human, the other is Antarian.’ There was a gasp, Liz held her stomach while Max had looked wide eyed at me. `What? Are you sure!! Completely Antarian?’
`I don’t fully understand how, but yes I am quite sure, the physical evidence is pretty overwhelming’. I had paused and walked over to Liz and taken her hand
`Can you alter the DNA of the Antarian child?’ she had asked faintly.
`No. This is not a defect Liz, its an entirely different genome.’
Michael had been looking at me keenly. `Have you tried coming up with any theories as to how? Or why?’ He was caressing Max’s shoulder, as if he needed comforting. `I have a theory, but none of you are going to like it’ I said. Isobel had shaken her head, as if in disbelief. Max, taking it all in and also sensing the mood about him, asked me to continue.

`Max’s your DNA is very odd, the oddest of the lot. The rest I can understand given my experience at Boston. Michael and Isobel your DNA is 6% different from mine and Maria’s, which I took as the human base line. A 2% variation between species is not uncommon, so that is pretty dramatic, Max’s’ I said softly, looking at him, `is over 80% different, and unlike the rest of us, you have a double set of chromosomes. However, disregarding that for the moment, and based on the work in Boston, my theory is that when you save people, you re-write their DNA, and I don’t believe that this is coincidental. I think it was designed that way. I think who ever designed you assumed that you were likely to want to mate with the person you had saved, well rather, that you would feel an attraction towards them in the first place so that you might have sex’. I was speaking delicately, knowing full well about Tess and the pairings set out in the book provided by Nasedo. Meanwhile Kyle had protested `Max I feel cheated!! We never had sex!’
`I mean reproduce. Well, whatever, you will have to indulge me in this theory for a moment, it doesn’t all add up yet.’ I had felt myself starting to blush. ` So you were designed to genetically re-sequence a potential mate which is actually what happened with Liz. That would dramatically increase the probability of giving birth to a different genome, not just a hybrid, or the chance pairing of two hybrids that would have a fifty fifty chance of producing a human child and a whole series of hybrid variants, but a pure Antarian’
`Why would someone want me to father a pure Antarian baby?’ asked Max. I confessed to not knowing that part of the puzzle.
`And the other child is entirely human?’ asked Liz. She had gone very pale.
`I don’t know Liz, it may well be a hybrid like Max, Michael and Isobel. They all look identical to humans. Until I examine the baby’s cellular level I will not be able to tell. The oddity remains that two different species are cohabiting the same womb. What do you know about the Antarians? They are oxygen breathing?’ I had asked them all, a little like a seminar.
`We know so little’ said Max, more to himself. `Nasedo was a shapeshifter, he could transform his appearance at will. He breathed oxygen, and Langley had survived here and retained the same form for many years until – ‘ he voice had trailed away.
`Shapeshifting?’ I had no idea what the DNA coding for that ability would look like.
`The skins could not shapeshift, and they could not tolerate the earth’s environment for long without their husks’ said Liz. She had remained holding her stomach. `My god Max I am going to give birth to a real alien’ she had sounded horrified. My head was beginning to hurt. I thought of the alien’s tail but remained silent.

`This is so so scary’ said Liz, looking about her, `I feel like I am having Rosemary’s baby or something’ Maria reassured her, stroking her head `Its OK sugar pie, you are in safe hands’ Max was silent, his head bowed. `There is one other thing’ I had said, softly. `When I said this was not coincidental I meant it. I believe that the Antarians are here for the child – their child’.
`How can you know that!’ snapped Michael suspiciously.
`I don’t know exactly!’ I had raised my voice `the beautify of all scientific theories are their simplicity Michael. You seek me out with a curious pregnancy, I identify that the cause of this is some complex, intricate design in Max and then the Antarians do a low fly over in a non residential area and then break into my lab!’
`What!’ Kyle had sat up, with Isobel and the others all looking as equally startled. Liz looked at Max `Is this true?’ He nodded. Maria moved over and took Liz’s hand protectively. `And they left us something’.
Max went to the wide library table and picked up the container where it had been sitting innocuously.
`What’s this?’ asked Maria. As Max picked it up the luminous seal of office once more radiated about him, but as he remained holding the container, the V sign remained now, slowly orbiting like stars in a planetarium. The container cleared as before, so that when Max had held it up with his hands on the base, in the way that a waiter carries a tray, there was genuine horror at the sight of the head. Isobel cried out and Maria screamed, looking away `God Max, that’s gross!’ Liz remained silent, her eyes fixed on it. `This was left on Julian’s desk this morning by his visitor’
`Who is it?’ whispered Kyle in disbelief.
`I have no idea’ said Max. `But it isn’t human. It is the head of an Antarian or some other alien species’ Isobel stood up and walked forward slowly, her eyes wide in disbelief.
`Give it to me’ she had said suddenly. Max looked at her,
`What is it, Iz?’
`Let me have that’ her eyes were on the container and she snatched if off Max and held it close to her face.

The head was pale grey, humanoid but definitively not human. The eyes were wide and black with no pupil and the head was hairless, a high forehead with very small ears. I had been anxious what effect this would all have on Liz. I was distracted however by the look of sheer recognition on Isobel’s face. She suddenly, dramatically fainted and the container hit the floor without thankfully smashing. It rolled away, clouding over as it did. Max and Michael were at Isobel’s side immediately. `Isobel!!’ Kye rushed to her, but she was recovering as they sat her up.
`It’s Kuvar’ she said faintly. Max looked quickly at Michael, his face genuinely shocked.
`What! How can you know!’
`She’d know, even in his proper alien form’ Michael had whispered. He whistled through his teeth, and had walked over to retrieve the container. There was total silence. `Some paper weight. So why make a gift of your former lover’s head?
`Lover?’ I had asked, looking at Max.
`It’s a long story’ he replied, helping Isobel up. `And it looks pretty academic now anyway’ Further silence.
`So what does this mean?’ I asked them collectively, like a tutor asking for a solution.
`A truce?’ suggested Kyle. `They must have known he was your enemy’. Liz nodded, her beautiful face pale. `It means more than that. It means the war is over’
___________________________________________________________________
*Max had been genuiney alarmed when I had thought of him in terms of Christ and Lazarus (see above) but part of me always percieved Max through religious or spiritual symbolism. Even now as I think about God and the manifest complexity of the Universe a great deal (as befits a dying man who needs to make peace with his maker) I dream of Max, of my first encounter with him, his hand out stretched, the dark thunderous rain lit by his own life force and I oddly disconcertingy think of my old University motto: dominus illuminatio mea

[Patroclus76]

___________________________________________________________
2323/223 rep. 2 SC 6
Transmitted to Attorney Generals Office, Geneva Federated Territorities, European Union.
Priority: SECRET AND CONFIDENTIAL
From: Office of the President,
United Nations, District of New York.

26th April, 2055.
___________________________________________________________


Dear Henry.


As you will have gathered there has been much public interest in the codex and in its serialisation, especially on the web. On the whole the matter has unfolded without generating demands for the immediate release of information still held under the old official secrets act and to the general satisfaction of the government.

I have, however received an official delegation from Antar who are concerned that we have not adequately taken into account the sensitivity of the later codex instalments and their reference to the Era of Experiments (Q’ura Memar) that led to the Antarian Wars. I have asked for the recall of Julian Evans for consultation, but believe that the best way to proceed is to show the Antarians the remaining entries by Professor Grey to gauge their opinion. I am not suggesting that we withhold these, even if their reaction is adverse, since this would require us to amend the constitution, which I do not think we could manage now given the current political climate. I am, however, anxious that we do not embarrass our allies and are at least seen to consult them in advance of the entries being networked.

For my part, I have read through the complete manuscript of the codex you sent me and feel strongly that Grey’s depiction of the events and the debates between Maxwell Evans, Professor Grey and S’eeth Sia Ova show all in a positive light, especially S’eeth Sia Ova who sought neither to withhold the causes of the war, the extent and initial motives of Antar’s involvement with Earth, nor that criminal proceedings were in process against him. Can you give me your views on my suggestion and if possible, sound out legal opinion? Under article 15/7 the Antarians could ask for the entries to be sequestered since under the Bone Hill Protocols extra-territoriality extends to them the same rights as we enjoy currently on Antar, including the rights to use Terrestrial law if the needs arise. S’eeth Sia Ova is an influential member of the Science Guild and I do not wish to offend him.

I would appreciate you dealing with this matter urgently.

Yours Sincerely

Alexandria Sayyid Quarishi

President.

[Patroclus76]

April Ist – 2nd. 2006.

We had stood in silence for a long time, with Michael holding Kuvar’s* head like a trophy. Liz’s conjecture had seemed plausible: what better way to show good will than to literally delivery the head of the Roswellian’s arch enemy on a platter (or at least in a jar)? Yet it had seemed a rather curious way to go about it. I had left them debating how best to proceed. Max had been for directly contacting them, via some sort of communicator they possessed, while the others, led in part by Michael, had wanted to hold off for a while. I sensed that this unexpected turn of events was impinging on a series of decisions the group had taken some time ago, to stay on earth, and to renounce their alien heritage. I had also recalled Max mentioning a sort of long term `proposal’ to me that first morning as we had sat down together on the terrace (how long ago that seems now!). I left and walked long and aimlessly around the great house, finding and losing myself in whole rooms and corridors and turrets I had forgotten existed. What a beautiful if not surreal backdrop to events Bone Hill House presented!

Liz found me eventually, alone, in a long dark sitting room, almost bereft of furniture. A wild sapling, seeded in the guttering, had veined the window with roots and branches. The only other significant feature had been a painting, unfamiliar to me, of a group of people outside what appeared to be a cave. It was dark and curiously out of perspective, sinister. Liz began by apologising about Wyndham.
`I read it so long ago, in my 8th grade. I had forgotten the details. I see now it meant too much to you, and too little to me!’ She seemed small, heavily pregnant, and yet in some senses completely unfazed by everything.
`Not to worry, that is always the trouble when it comes to arguing through allegory or metaphor, they had a tendency to run away with you, or to be ambiguous’. I had asked how the moot was going and she had laughed.
`The moot is still in session. I think Max will try and contact them this evening and see what they want. He will be looking for you soon, at the moment he is closeted with Maria’
`Ah, he is close to her’. I recalled her comments to me in the study. It was Max I had heard outside the door, Max who must have opened the lock. They must have hatched the scheme together to ferret me out of my sulk.
Liz nodded `he seeks her out when he is particularly troubled.’ And then she had looked at me. `But you and Max have become very close as well’ she said, simply.
`Yes, yes I suppose we have Liz, well I feel close to you all. I suddenly realised how much I shall miss you if,’ I paused, uncertain, `if we have come to the end of things’ I felt reluctant talking about Max, he was too close to me, to deep in the meaning of what was unfolding about us to openly acknowledge him.

`Anyway, regarding Wyndham’ I said, steering the conversation back on itself, `it might be appropriate after all in away. Perhaps the Antarians leave their children in the womb of other species, a very economical form of reproduction’ I had said it lightly, but had immediately realised my mistake. A single white tear fell from Liz’s eye. I had felt wretched and had walked swiftly to her and embraced her. `Liz that was an extraordinarily stupid thing to have said!’ She had started to weep. I stroked her hair, comforting her, a man who had comforted no one, not even his own father and barely his dying wife. `I am sure this is going to be all right, Liz. I just feel it. I think this was all planned. I think the Antarians are here because –‘ I had tried to search for words `because they have been trying for this child for a long time, a very long time indeed’.

`Hey’ Max had somehow found us. I had no idea how. I only ever left the central colonised hub of the house armed with a cell phone so that Wilcox could lead me out again when I inevitably got lost. `Is Liz ok? He came towards us, I had gone to disengage from her but he had embraced us both. Liz repeated to Max my views on the baby. `It’s an intriguing idea, Julian, but what leads you to it? That time in your lab, when you took my blood, you seemed to be working out something, about the mystery of the Antarian interest in humans?’ I walked away to the dark abandoned painting. I wondered who had been the last person to look at it. I was not conscious of seeing it before. There was a puzzled silence behind me.
`I have long suspected that the Antarian interest in earth is significant. I am too old to believe in coincidences, Max. I believe that the Antarians have been attempting to modify their own genome for centuries and that they have been trying to integrate Antarian and human DNA, for whatever reason. I think that when the war started and Kuvar killed you all, a plan was executed that had been devised for some other purpose and had been in existence for sometime. It was used more as a contingency.’ I had then looked directly at Liz `You are not giving birth to a monster Liz, you are giving birth to something extraordinarily precious. I have looked at the babies Liz, I see two different species sharing the same blood, the same oxygen, the same mother. I have been a tedious, conceited man for so long I have almost forgotten the meaning of the word miraculous’. Max shook his head gently, `But we were sent here to escape death and to eventually return to help end the war?.’
`Yes, but perhaps there were other reasons as well – your design is, well – too elaborate for that, and the war is over’
Liz’s cell phone went. It was Kyle, Isobel wanted us to meet and vote on opening up negotiations with the Antarians tonight. She walked towards the doorway. We were probably miles from the main house, up under the eves near the back of the house. I had paused to look at the painting. Max had joined me. Liz called us to hurry. The cave was on a high mountain, a dark ragged sky, dimly lit as if by fire. I suddenly realised that the cave was a tomb. It had sent a chill down my spine.

We had sat down to dinner in the formal dining room again. Wilcox had grown to like the idea of elegant settings and since the Roswellians could use their powers without having to send him out now, things went much more smoothly. There had, however, been an atmosphere that night, something almost funereal, as if a moment had passed. The weather, which had been splendid since my guests had arrived, had clouded over and looked stormy, uncertain. The wind had shifted to the northeast and was moaning down the tall mock Elizabethan chimneystacks. They voted after the main course, something very spicy that Kyle had rattled up quickly and which had reduced Michael in particular to a sheen of sweat. To my surprise, the vote went unanimously in favour of contacting the Antarians. I was asked to vote as well. Max had stood and then left the room briefly, he returned with two purple-grey metallic orbs, slightly elongated, with a curiously curled device on each. He gave one to Michael and he held the other. I had the sudden image that we were at a séance. As if on queue, the lights had all flickered slightly. Maria looked up alarmed. `It’s the wind Maria, we have a generator which should kick in if the lines come down’ Bone Hill House dominated its own valley, but the cables were exposed as they climbed up over the first ridge of hills towards Wenatchee.

Max and Michael stood. They both closed their eyes, although Max seemed unsure. `Shall I just speak or something’ Michael had frowned impatiently
`Its not like they’re very far away, Maximillian!**’
`If it fails I can always walk out with a white flag on the end of a pole’ suggested Kyle.
`Max try!’ At this more urgent reprimand from Michael they had both closed their eyes and we had stood watching. Wilcox, assuming that this was some sort of party game, had continued clearing the table and offering more coffee. Then, with remarkable suddenness, each orb emitted a brilliant beam of light that went straight up to the ceiling and seemingly through it. I had the distinct impression that had I been looking from outside I would have seen two great search beams penetrating far into the night sky. Wilcox dropped a plate and made everyone jump again. With equal suddenness the intense beams stopped. `Well, I am sure someone saw that’ said Isobel rather tersely. `Lets just hope that the Feds are tucked up safely in their beds!’

We had gone our separate ways after that. Liz and Maria stayed in the dinning room talking by the fire, while Isobel and Kyle walked about the terrace and had then gone off to watch something on TV. I heard Liz discussing names for the babies. As I meandered through the house, my dressing gown rather eccentrically over my clothes, I had spied Michael practicing golf shots into my best crystal tumblers. A week ago I would have taken the gold club off him or gone and complained to Max. Now I smiled at him, and he mock saluted me down the vast length of the windy chill hall. I arrived at my library to find one of the doors slightly open. The wind was up now, prowling about, sniffing and pulling at the doors and windows. It was gloomy and yet wonderfully theatrical. What better place to be in a storm?

Max was lying length ways across one of the chesterfields. He had taken his shoes off, and his white ankle socks seemed almost luminous in the gloom. He had lit a fire, and was reading under one of the two standard lamps still working. I walked over and sat down opposite him. It had started to rain, and the great mullioned windows were soon chiselled white with water. I had asked him what he was reading. He had held the book up for me, a 1970s Penguin version of The Tempest, the one I had annotated many years ago. I smiled ruefully.
`You’re favourite book?’ he had asked.
`One of my favourites’
`It is one of mine as well.’ He put it down on the table. I had frowned. I recalled Jessie’s bizarre email to me. `Did you know that Jessie referred to you as the Duke of Milan?’ I asked, half smiling. Max nodded and smiled back. More wind, a sudden loud spattering of rain. `Jessie said that you went to see it with him the night before you left Boston?’ Max swung around to sit looking at me `He said you were very emotional about it?’
`Yes’ I had replied, recalling the event vividly. `It was a difficult time, and I am always so deeply moved when Prospero renounces his power, and chooses to be ’ I had paused.
`Human?’ mused Max.
`Yes. To forgive, to ask forgiveness, and to renounce the power of the tyrant, that is to me the most precious moment in English literature’ I had sighed. What did I know of such things?
`Julian. When we came to see you about Liz’s baby, there was something else we had wanted to discuss.’ Max had turned suddenly serious. He had sensed the moment.
`We wanted to ask you to modify us, to `switch’ off the Antarian genes and take our powers away. We know that is in part what you were doing with your research before you got involved with the Feds and the children. Is that possible?’ I was speechless. Outside the storm was close now, late spring lightening, gusty slabs of air moving through the house. `It is possible, in adults it would be difficult and not without risk. Have you all agreed to this?’
`Yes. The last year has been difficult, we want to return to normal, I think Liz and Maria in particular even want to go back to Roswell and start again. But we have to be made human, Julian, we have to stop being special’.
`I don’t think you can ever stop being special, Max, or any of you. It is something you should ask the Antarians, though. Failing their arrival, or if things work out differently, I will try. You know that’. At that moment all the lights had gone out.

There had come a sound of what I took to be thunder, but it was too prolonged and too close. Both of us had stood up. At that moment, Michael had called us on Max’s cell phone and told us to get to the breakfast room as soon as possible. We had both ran. When we arrived there was much activity. Michael was standing in the conservatory with a pair of field glasses that I discovered he had taken from my study – they were my father’s. It was pitch dark outside and he had no hope of seeing anything. `Over there!’ he had shouted however, and we had all seen far down towards the first ridge of the estate an odd pulse of light. It repeated itself. Then, overhead, came the sound of helicopters, many helicopters, each with a searchlight stabbing down into the valley. Another pulse of light, and then to my amazement several brilliant white discs appeared high in the sky and started to descend with great rapidity. More had appeared behind the house. As they came closer we saw a veritable armada of triangular, wedge shaped vessels align themselves in a circle above the house, each one giving off a dull sheen. Michael said `Holy Crap’ – one of his most useful expressions in moments of extremis – while Max stopped Kyle and Maria walking out onto the terrace for a better look. `Stay in doors! It isn’t safe!’ In a few moments the air about the house was full of no less than twelve massive luminous ships. They were much like the one we had watched flying over the house.

At that moment, the nearest swarm of helicopters unleashed a wide burst of missiles, and the night had exploded into tracer fire and lasers, as wave after wave of fire was emptied at the space ships. The Antarian vessels did not return fire, nor did they appear to take any damage, but as Kyle protested to Max to be allowed to go and have a closer look we all heard the high screech of fighter aircraft wheel low over the crenulated roof tops and slam more projectiles at the ships. The explosions were deafening, incredibly close and all the windows and door shook.
`Ok, this might not have been one of our most considered decisions’ I heard Kyle say.
____________________________________________________________________
*I have left the spelling of Kuvar's name unamended, although I am aware that the convention now is to spell it as either Khivar or Khi'var. See Guy Paiterson and Julian Evans. The Antarian-English Dictionary and Etymology. Chicago University Press, 2009
**I have been long bemused by Michael's liberties with Max's name. Maximilian is not the same name as Maxwell, and Max could be short for both of them. Is seems so typical of Michael to make up hisown rules as he went along although I suspect the use of each variant was preserved for a specific mood! (Jan 3rd 2016)

[Patroclus76]

2323/543 PRI 16
Trans to Office of the President via FTL sub-space.
Priority: Secret and Confidential.
From: Julian Evans. Earth Ambassador to Antar.
May Ist 2055.
__________________________________________________

Dear Alexandria.

Firstly let me apologies for such an un-necessary delay in responding to your request but I have been out of station at the Malaquev ceremonies at Eqbatana, and when I returned to the Earth Legation on Antar, I found most of the diplomatic transmits on my desk unopened!! I had planned to be on Earth shortly for Maria and Michael’s wedding anniversary anyway, but I will now leave immediately to see you (and also to try and catch my mother before she sets off again on one of her missions!).

My immediate advice is to relax about the Antarian response to Grey’s journals. They are being read a great deal here but he remains much respected and the friendship he forged with S’eeth Sia Ova and my father has not been forgotten. There is also so much happening here that I think it is an issue only to those directly involved who feel that Grey was an apologist for some of the Antarian S’eeths. My instinct is that the government is largely worried about reparations over the Hathman (human) abductions, which they consider the responsibility of the former regime. Some of the Shalloth (skins) are also irritated by the Codex’s failure to address the war in graphic detail from their perspective but I have pointed out that Grey knew nothing of this at the time and that the Codex was in effect about his encounter with my parents and their friends and the failures of our own government!

The Malaquev ceremonies were extraordinary. I will tell you about them when I see you, at the moment I have not the words to begin. Watching the young males shedding their tails and skins and changing is impossible to describe. It is the first ceremony since the war ended and for many here it marks the final moment of restoration and reconciliation. The universe is such a vast and fascinating place, Alex, to think that my brother S’ias is now my sister, Sath Sia!! How I wish Grey had been alive to see it. I wish that so very much, how he would have laughed at the sheer miracle of life!!

See you very soon. Tell Henry not to worry either!


Julian Evans.

[Patroclus76]

April 2nd, 2006.

We must have looked an odd, incongruous group, crowding into the long conservatory, the stormy night eerily floodlit by the Antarian ships, stationary at about thirty meters from the ground. These awesome vessels, solid against the still gusting wind, had formed a complete circle above us, like the iris of a giant eye. They were all identical in terms of design, although several smaller vessels were now appearing; some rather snub nosed and full of ominous metallic projections. I was still wearing my dressing gown. As the fighter aircraft broke formation and wheeled around for another pass I had wondered suddenly if this was how it would all end.
`God, its like War of the Worlds!’ I had gasped.
`They’re not tripods’ said Michael pedantically. `Its nothing like Wells, they haven’t incinerated anyone yet. It’s more like a super version of Brave Heart!’
`Really?’ I had added sarcastically, `With the Antarians as the Scots I presume?’ Michael had turned around and stuck his tongue out at me. ``Stop it both of you’ said Max. Being rebuked by him had sent a thrill of inclusion down my spine.
`I suggest we all go to the roof’ said Wilcox, with Michael agreeing.
`I was thinking rather of the basement actually’ I added. Max concurred and we had started to move through the many hallways towards the scullery. `I hope to God the Antarians do not return fire at this range, or it’s all over’ I had said, primarily to Max, but everyone heard. Michael was still holding a golf club. He sought me out in the darkness
`Why don’t you try and call someone, call the sheriffs office. Ask for an explanation or something – I mean the war zone is on your property!’ I had agreed and ran off towards the study as we heard another formation of jets fly over and unleashed another round of high explosives. There was a momentary silence, and then the ground shook and the whole massive edifice of Bone Hill had rattled like a giant candelabra. In the study I found the phone line still working. `Bloody air force’ I had muttered, while dialling Wenatchee. All the lines were engaged and then, on the brink of giving up, I got an automated message telling me that a state of emergency had been declared throughout Washington State and I was to contact FEMA if necessary on another number. `But only if it was a supreme emergency’ (!!). The pre-recorded message, measured and polite as if pointing out bargains in a sale, told me to stay in doors and wait for periodic broadcasts. I rejoined the others as they were descending into the bowels of the kitchens. `Why didn’t you use my cell phone?’ Michael had asked. As we settled down for the night, Kyle, Max and then Michael had gone `top side’ to fetch various things, including a radio. As I tried to sleep, wedged between Isobel and Maria, I had heard Maria say `Did they just say they’ve called in NATO?’ As I drifted into sleep I had overheard a whispered conversation between Max, Liz and Michael. `We are not going to return, Michael, whatever. I renounced the throne years ago.’ To my surprise Michael had agreed simply and directly.

Later…

In a curious reversal of roles, I was awoken by Max at about 6 am. I had been dreaming that Kuvar’s head was singing to me. He was telling me a story of a great war but as if it was an opera. In the end I went looking for Max to get him to shut it up. For a long time I could not find him and wandered through the great halls of Bone Hill House alone, angry. Eventually I found Max talking to my father. They seemed to know each intimately and were deep in conversation. I felt embarrassed for some reason, but Max had called me over to introduce me. I told him that I already knew him (?!) and that I needed Max to come down and sort out Kuvar because he had been singing for hours. Max said goodbye to my father, oddly, affectionately, as if they would not see each other again. We had then gone back down towards the library, Max in front, and I had noticed that Max was shoeless, and that his bare feet were wide and padded like a giant cat. I had taken him to Kuvars head – which was still singing – and to my surprise, Max had picked it up and drowned it in the swimming pool. As he pulled himself up out of the water, his clothes wet and heavy about him, I saw he had a long muscled tail that swished and snaked out from the base of his spine like a lion’s.
`Julian, come on, its very quiet out there. Let’s take a look’ I had been shocked to see him in my waking moments, the imagery of the dream vivid and disconcerting. `You drowned Kuvar?’ I had asked, pointlessly. Max had frowned.


The house was still and there was no power. Shrapnel had shattered several panes of glass in the conservatory but everything else seemed in tack. The ships were still there, lit up against the grey dawn. However I was shocked to see cross the great lawns on either side of the drive several burning helicopters and what appeared to be a sort of armoured personal carrier. `Good god!’ I had muttered.
`Why haven’t they tried to contact me directly’ Max seemed horrified at the damage. We heard the sound of Maria and the others coming through towards the breakfast room. I went off and tried to make some coffee with Isobel as a useful power source. `What do you think the authorities are doing about the Antarians?’ I said I had no idea. I poured the hot water into a jug of ground coffee beans. The smell was rich, life giving. `Kyle thinks they might try and nuke us’ she suggested this with a characteristic roll of the eyes and the smile that spoke of anxiety not joy. She looked astoundingly beautiful, like Venus in the Botticelli painting. I thought of her with Jessie, of how striking they must have looked together, his dark Hispanic looks against her tall, almost Germanic paleness. Amid the apparent beginnings of World War Three I had felt suddenly, deeply sorry for her, for her lack of joy. `Well let’s hope the Antarians are one step ahead of any nuking’ I replied eventually. It seemed an unlikely scenario but somehow I would not put it past the collective ill will of the government. `The Canadians would never allow it’ I added, weakly. I had inhaled my coffee and was just feeling it burn the back of my throat when I heard Maria cry out `Max!!’


In the central hallway, in front of the main, elaborate entrance to the house, an odd spectral being had appeared. The figure – the same shape and height as my nocturnal visitor to the lab – materialised within a tight beam of light that wavered and rippled from the high vaulted ceiling. We had all instinctively gathered in front of it, at the beginnings of the broad staircase, eyes wide in amazement. All I was conscious of for some time was my own intellect telling me that what I was seeing was real. This was real. Yet it was difficult to make out any detail because of the ghostly ebb and flow of the light. The Antarian was thin cheeked, grey-blue in complexion, anthropomorphic, but with wide black eyes dominating a face with a small nose and thin mouth. It had no hair, and its thin neck was long, decorated by what seemed to be a piece of external clothing like a Nehru collar.
`Hail Zan VI of the Antarian Imperium’ came a voice, or rather words, or possibly even the shapes of words. It was not clear how to describe it. `Long have we awaited this moment. We have killed the Traitor Kuvar and the Conflict throughout the Imperium is at last over, will you treat with us?’ Max stood at the centre of us all, holding Liz, Michael and Isobel to his left. Kyle and Maria had stood behind. Never had Max looked so majestic as at that moment, the bewildered, even bashful boy had gone completely. There seemed even a radiance to him, as if he had immediately transformed into something else.
`I shall treat with you’ came his simple reply. `We need to speak urgently, and there will be no further violence.’
`It is understood. We regret the events of the last few hours but we had difficulties communicating with your governments’ – the plural sounded odd, as if the aliens were used to unitary authority. `We have now succeeded in this, and have summoned them here for this evening. We have also summoned others here as well’ the Antarian had sounded rather cryptic.
`Here?’ I had added, forgetting myself, suddenly appalled.
`Yes’ The Antarian had turned and looked at me with dark, almost sightless eyes, and it had nodded slightly, as if in recognition. `Hathman Grey, it is good to speak with you at last. But before the governments convene, we have much to discuss with the Royal house.’
`What is your name?’ asked Max, half question, half a command.
`S’eeth Sia Ova, the Commandant of the fleet and member of the Science Council. I am the emissary from the Provisional Government' Suddenly in front of us two other pillars of light descended from the ceiling, almost like water, and within each luminous column appeared the shadowy distorted figure of another Antarian. Max had stood forward slightly, as if to take their allegiance.

`Majesty, members of the surviving Four, and fellow Yantra’s, we come to request your help in healing the disorders on Antar, a product of the late wars and of the machinations of the traitor Kuvar’
`We offer what help we can, and we also seek your help in matters relating to our decision to remain on earth and to become’ Max spoke hesitantly `Human’ I had looked at the Antarian to gauge any reaction. I thought it wise of Max to come out directly with their decision at the beginning. He must have secretly feared that the Antarians were interested no so much in the child as in him. Liz had looked up at him, and then put her head gently onto his shoulder. There was a momentary silence.

`You renounce your kingship?’
Max said yes.
`And you have come to this decision jointly?’ pressed the Antarian. The group spoke its agreement like a collective vow, and I found myself speaking it also. `That is wise. For we have, at the conclusion of the Antarian wars decided to abolish the monarchy and to return to an ancient collective leadership premised on the surviving houses. Your decision confirms our own wisdom. There is however, the matter of the child’. At this Liz stood forward. To my surprise the Antarians bowed low. `I am mother to both children, I will not allow either one of them to be taken against my will or theirs’ Max backed away towards her and touched her arm. I stood forward rather protectively.

`What is the importance of the Antarian child?’ Max asked directly. S’eeth had looked at me again, a curious inclusive gesture, as if I was privy to some decision taken long ago. The beams of light flickered brilliantly and then stopped and we had found ourselves facing three Antarians standing literally in front of us, solid, real. All were tall, of a very similar phenotype, grey-blue skin, no hair, a long physique and a sharp elongated face. They were slim and cloaked, reed like beings. It was impossible to guess their gender or their age.

`Of the two children that you carry Yantra Paker, one is a modified form of Antarian that we have been trying to breed for many centuries. Hathman Grey was correct in his hypnotising’ Max and Liz had looked to me then.
`Julian?’ Max said, as if he required an explanation. Suddenly everything had fallen into place. I nodded at the emissary like a special witness at a trial.
`I have long suspected that the Antarians want human bodies, or rather, to approximate to a human form. I suspected some time ago that they have been suffering from a series of degenerate genetic disorders that they were unable to cure themselves. I think that the enhanced cellular decrepitude – the aging of the Midwich Cuckoos in Boston - was triggered by the way we cloned the children that Max saved in the hospital from cancer, but I think it was something that the Antarians were prone to, the accidental by product of centuries of deliberate genetic manipulation’ S’eeth Sia Ova had nodded to me. `You are correct, Grey’
`You mean that our genes have been harvested by the Antarians to modify themselves?’ asked Liz, incredulously, `like a sort of massive eugenics program?’
`Yes Yantra Parker. Our own history of genetic modification almost destroyed our race because we erroneously bred out of our genome essential DNA required for our long term survival. Our planned breeding programs proved catastrophic, and our collective gene pool material was eroded by the deliberate creation of a series of worker castes deemed to be inferior and under our control’
`The skins’ Michael had whispered, `You engineered the skins!’.
`Indeed Lord Rath, we created the skins and a mortal enemy. We also created other races of the Antarian Imperium who increasingly rebelled against us because of what we had done to them. This is a period we have designate Q’ura Memar, the era of experiments, which led directly to the Antarian wars. We shall not talk of it here. But the ultimate irony was the fact that we could no longer breed ourselves, because we had combined a series of recessive genes that dramatically enhanced out mental powers but withered our bodies through uncontrollable aging. As such we could no longer withstand the skins and their designs on the Antarian govenrment’ There was a silence. I thought of a race destroyed by their own obsession for perfection. Was this the fate that awaited us? `And then you came across Earth’ I added, thinking of my father.