Excerpts from the personal papers and diaries of Julian Evans, Earth Ambassador to Antar.
June 10th 2055.
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I come out of stasis feeling nauseous and groggy. My tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth. I am disorientated and slightly phobic. In the final moments of the short stasis cycle I enter a momentary REM phase and dream vividly of Grey and my father, blurred images, Max as a boy, running with Grey along a beach. There is something red in the dream, just out of the frame of my vision, flapping and snaking in brilliant flashes of color, a frightening, strobe like affect. Max holds Grey’s hand and then turns with him to look back along the shoreline He is pointing. At first the beach is empty, but then things begin to erupt from the wet smooth sand. Heads and arms begin to emerge, like curious shoots, all around, as far as I can see. Max laughs in delight, and slowly a huge vast army of male S’eeth pull themselves up out of the shining, golden ground. Their slick muscled torsos are wet as if through birth, and tattooed with the curious symbols of an ancient language. Soon the beach is crowded with a vast multitude of S’eeth, holding their hands high and staring at Max. I awake with a start.
The glass top of the cubicle slides up and my ever-thoughtful personalised computer plays Vaughn Williams `variations on a theme of Thomas Tallis’. I stumble out into the semi-dark, and almost fall over Maraq who is squatting on the cabin floor. My hand touches the top of his head. I feel his hair, the knotted long plait, and through it, the bony ridges of his skull. How long has he been sitting here? I think through an apology. I shower and emerge feeling slightly more human. I lean down and squint through the small porthole window. Earth Orbital crowds the view and behind, the deep blue disc of Earth. I sense that Maraq is both anxious and excited. `It will be alright, Maraq.’
`I have heard it said that the Hathmans calls us Lizards?’
`Some do, many do not. No doubt the same people who call the Shalloth, skins!’
`You must not leave me, Julian Grey! You must protect me on earth as I protected you on Antar!’ I feel his anxiety, in part I am relieved at his vulnerability.
`Maraq it will be fine, we shall protect each other’ This placates him.
I dress quickly and make my way to the bridge. The flight has been routine, although I gather there has been a lot of hostility from the commercial crew who were retained to operate the ship, The first word from the Captain’s mouth is compensation for lost commercial transit. I agree immediately to an absurd sum of money. Durvan beckons me over. `Feeling better?’ He hands me coffee.
`I will after this – what’s the adjusted date?’
`June 10th – we took slightly longer than we thought.’ He looked at the Captain and smiled, `A mild touch of revenge perhaps? But Earth Orbital is unusually busy.’ The Valaens are the most humanoid of the Antarian races. They are almost identical to us, except for mild telepathic abilities and enormous strength. I have worked with Durvan for years. I like him, but I am distressed now to feel suspicious already, as if through all this talk of conspiracy a shadow has fallen between us. I suggest we pull diplomatic rank but this has already been tried. I suggest calling the President. That’s been tried as well.
Durvan informs me there are already piles of holotext messages waiting for my urgent attention. `So what's the delay?’ I notice we are in a tight orbit, stacked up at the back of a long queue of vessels. Durvan nods to the wide bridge windows. As we come around on the Orbital again, I see several large warships are in dock. I frown, feeling uneasy. Two are Antarian Shalloth vessels, the others are European Federation warships, including the newly commissioned dreadnought Athena. Standing off at some distance is the Federated States of America (FSA) fast clipper Pride of Boston. `This looks unpleasant’ I say. I fake official impatience and go and find the communications officer. After several polite but firm interventions, we are finally moved forward and given full diplomatic clearance.
I go and check my mail. Alexandria has written several, and there is one from Kyle, another from Michael. There is also one from Maria. I play hers first. It is a beautiful, affectionate but outraged denunciation of my summoning Michael to Antar. Unfortunately it has been transmitted in the clear over a commercial channel. Bless Maria! So much for keeping things quiet! Michael and Kyle are bemused but compliant in their messages, even enthusiastic, and careful in transmissions as well. Clearly the President’s dinner party and the night visit to Bone Hill House have brought them up to speed. I am suddenly filled with a deep and profound affection for the Roswellian tribe, aging though it is. The President’s emails are odd, cryptic, full of subliminal warnings. Elaborate plans have been laid to get us all to a meeting secretly as soon as possible but there is `currently a small international crisis’. I think about the war ships. Durvan calls down to say there is more delay – would we like to teleport down? I decline.
I go into my locker and remove from the sole of my boot, the flat disc of the codex. I hold it in my palm for a long time until I can screw up enough courage to play it again. I have already looked over it briefly. Like Pandora, I feel compelled to open it. I insert it into my own private console. There is a pause and then suddenly it streams out a long line of dates and entries. I had already accessed Grey’s last entry. I now go to the first entry made. To my surprise this starts in 1998. I had not noticed this before. The copy that Maitland edited, based most likely on the version kept by Michael, started in 2003, after Grey had moved to Bone Hill House. The serialised codex authorised by the Supreme Court’s ruling earlier this year had started in 2006, with a Preface written by Grey himself in which he said he had started the codex then. I was sure of this. As I start to access May 10th 1998, Durvan calls me to tell me we are docking and will be escorted down to the surface immediately. I remove the codex and put it back into my boot.
Excerpts from the personal papers and diaries of Julian Evans, Earth Ambassador to Antar.
June 11th, 2055.
We are in Vermont, in a secure intelligence facility under ground. We have all arrived here by difficult and circuitous routes to avoid any attention. The President is supposedly in Brussels, shouting at the Europeans. I am with an ill friend in Washington State. Aunt Iz is opening some charity event in Brazil. I am amazed that these political deceptions work at all in world that has, on average, twelve holographic imaging pods per household! In reality of course, my family and friends are gathered about me, as if this is a sort of school re-union. Kyle is sitting quietly talking with Maraq. Kyle wears the golden robes of the Head of a Theravada Buddhist Order. He, like his peers about him, is in his early 70s but looks considerably younger (as do his peers).
The consequences of hybridity are indeterminate, but they certainly imply longevity. Aunt Iz looks as beautiful now as when he was in her late forties. Her hair is a white-blonde, and curled up into a bun. Her complexion is faultless, a flinty patrician elegance, enhanced by her style of clothing and her manners. She is looking at me and smiling faintly, but she is thinking of Max. He is keenly missed, more so because he is now known to be alive. So is Liz and Om. There is no news of them or none that we have yet been given. Two chairs sit empty. I desperately want to see my mother.
Michael is sitting with his hands behind his head, rocking on the chair liked a bored schoolboy, but in reality all ears. He has his hair short now, but it makes him look especially young, almost frighteningly so. He is tanned from a recent holiday following his wedding anniversary and looks handsome, distinguished, like a writer or an artist. I love Michael deeply, every part of him. He is still part heir apparent, part thug, still the enfant terrible of the Roswellians (a role he adores!). In his complexity lies great strength, and my Uncle has been strong over the years, rooted in the earth, like a great tree. Maria is at home in France pretending that he is there with her, still angry but according to Michael `coming around’.
Alexandria is looking rather dramatically presidential, and oddly, disconcertingly attractive with it. She is in her late fifties, dark skinned, dark eyed. Since my return we have spent a great deal of time with each other, and I would be lying to myself if I did not confess to feeling vaguely aroused by her presence again. Is it just the memory of our brief and intense affair, of frantic but expert love making in her offices in the Senate? Or is it that I find powerful women in formal dresses sexually attractive! I smile and as I do so I see Maraq looking at me quizzically, as if I he cannot readily translate what it is I am thinking. Ours eyes meet, and he looks quickly away, his face darkens a deeper shade of blue. You may well blush young man!
There are other people in the room. Several service chiefs, two career secretaries of state from Defense and Homeland Security. Between them sits an attractive man in a pin strip suit, the recently appointed Attorney General. Jesse has aged most of all it seems, but as a Hathman that is to be expected. His thick black hair is streaked with white, and he has thickened slightly about the chin, but he remains a lively man, still astoundingly in love with my Aunt, still immensely capable. We have taken a break from a long briefing on current affairs, and are just about to resume. The room is crammed with the latest technology, communications, surveillance, monitors everywhere, even weapons.
All through the briefing I am aware of information streaming down to us, to Alex, to Jesse, and to Iz – now acting Minister for Antarian Affairs. She had spoken first, calmly, with precision. During our trip out on the Santa Fe, the political situation on Antar has deteriorated rapidly. There have been incidents between the Shalloth and S’eeth over the genetic regeneration program and over territories, which, under the Bone Hill Protocols, were to have reverted to the S’eeth after a period of forty years, but have been delayed. These, along with a rumored discovery of a pro-K’ivarian conspiracy within the Shalloth, resulted in the collapse of the Provisional government three days ago. The Valaens are mediating, with the other two races (the Krell and the Iciini), and trying to form a caretaker administration. There have been calls for another investigation into the disappearance of Max, which so far all but the S’eeth have refused.
To complicate matters further, two Shalloth warships turned up 72 hours ago, claiming to have been invited by the European Federation. At this stage Iz handed over to Alexandria. She paints a complex picture. The Europeans, after some initial embarressment, remembered suddenly that they had invited the Shalloth, as part of some on-going negotiations brokered by the former Ambassador, about trade and exploration rights. Yet there is evidence that the European Federation (EF) has promised to recognise Shalloth independence in exchange for some technological and trading agreements. Such a move would definitely re-start the war. I interrupt to point out – tactfully in the presence of Maraq – that the position of the S’eeth has changed dramatically. I do not go into details, but no doubt Maraq sees in the back of my mind the images of S’eeth Sia Ova surrounded by a vast number of newly hatched males. The Americans have issued an ultimatum to the Europeans that Antar is a sovereign political unit, and that any agreements with a faction of the Shalloth is in effect a deal with a secessionist movement. There is now visible tension on Earth. A summit has been called.
Alexandria then informs us that Maitland has disappeared, and investigations reveal that he is the most likely candidate for the human seen coming through the portal into Eqbatana and then back to activate the Granolith. He has been missing for over three weeks, having feigned illness. Nothing of any significance was found in his offices or his private house except for a large amount of Grey’s early research work – dating from 1996-2001 – touching on the Boston Institute but more significantly, his involvement in the mapping of human chromosome 22 in 1999. Furthermore, Alexandria confirms that she has only just been made aware that a little over three weeks ago, someone broke into Bone Hill House, through the library windows. (`that brings back memories’ says Michael to some general laughter). Alexandria then asked me to summarise my findings on Antar. I described my meeting with S’eeth Sia Ova and the portal that connects (or had connected) Bone Hill House to Eqbatana. There had been a stunned, shocked silence. I did not describe what I saw through it. The room is buzzing with anticipation, a tangible feeling that we were at last approaching some clarity.
The Roswellian Codex. CC Teen/Mature. 42nd bit (05/06/
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Patroclus76
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Last edited by Patroclus76 on Sun Apr 16, 2006 2:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Patroclus76
- Addicted Roswellian
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hey gosh thanks for all the nominations - I am `gob smacked' as we say in the British Midlands......
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Extracts from the personal papers and diaries of Julian Evans, Earth Ambassador to Antar.
June 11th extract continued..........
_________________________________________________________________
We resume with fresh coffee. Isabel puts her hand firmly on Michael’s thigh to force him to sit properly in his chair. She smiles fiercely at him. `Ok, lets talk about time’ says Alexandria. `And let us talk about the conspiracy and Max, as much as we can; She looks at Maraq `You will appreciate that many of us find this whole concept of a conspiracy through time to be a little hard to grasp’. Kyle smiles at this. His face is smooth and his eyes blue, almost ageless. `And lets talk about the Granolith as well, since they seem to be related concepts’ she adds. Maraq is standing. He is wearing an Antarian cape and bodice, and has been given the blue pendant of ambassadorial rank by Isabel to ensure the Antarian legation do not complain (although they have), and that there is no outcry from Antar (which there is). At the equivalent age of 17 he is Antarian Ambassador to Earth, despite having no accreditation from his government and no experience of diplomacy.
Undeterred, Maraq narrates his story. He looks magnificent, statuesque, but rather mysterious. His long hair plait falls over his back, and I notice that on his high forehead, near his temples, he has a strange mark, a tattoo I have not seen. I see Michael looking at him with his eyes narrowed slightly, a look I have not seen on my Uncle’s face for many years, as if he is listening very hard for something. Maraq tells us a story we have heard before, but the point of view, the position of the story is changed. As Maraq himself remarked, the context of a tale is all. I summarise below what was said, omitting innumerable interruptions, mostly from Michael and Isabel. Some I have retained. Maraq spoke for a long time.
(Maraq’s testimony to the Council).
He began by informing us, rather cryptically, that S’eeth Sia Ova had definitive proof that Max was alive, both from the painting and from the codex. He then left this rather intriguing bit of information dangling in front of us and started with Max’s first visit to Antar in 2006, and ended with his last visit, in the down seasons of 2044-5. When Max had first visited Antar with Grey, Om and S’eeth Sia Ova his claimed identity had met with some scepticism. Max did not look like Zan – that was obvious – nor did he act like him. Yet his claim was proven. Om was enough proof on his own, and as the Antarian saying goes `the genome does not lie’. Moreover Max had begun to change on Antar, a subtle, inner change, but one that Grey noticed as did Liz, on his return to Earth. The more frequent his visits, the more distinct the change, and the more his popularity on Antar grew.
Maraq noted that this was of course, true to a lesser extent of all the hybrids, and the Yantras. (There was a typical Michael aside at this point. Kyle laughed!). As I listened I too recalled noticing the changes in my father as I grew up. To put it simply, crudely, Max became more kingly – despite the abdication address, and despite the professed republicanism of a majority of the Antarian races. I recalled again the image of Max with Grey on the terrace, emblematic, almost heraldic. Max became particularly interested in Antar and the regeneration programs of the government. Paradoxically he grew into a role he had earlier abandoned, as a young man, on the eve of the exile from Roswell. He became, surprisingly perhaps, popular among the Shalloth as well, who saw him as holding the S’eeth to their side of the bargain struck in the run up to the coup against K’ivar. Max and Om emerged as key figures in the radically changed politics of the Qu’ra Novaa’ta, the New Era, and alongside Michael and Isabel, they became key arbiters between Earth and Antar.
Yet for some segments of the Shalloth, there remained the concern that Om, and the manifest recovery of the S’eeth genome, was merely an interlude for a return to a race war, and there were concerns over Max’s popularity. The planned regeneration program authorised the S’eeth to clone 1,000 S’eeths using Om as a template, and then, thirty-five years after, to clone another 1,000. `Why the delay?’ Jesse had asked, to which Maraq had answered that the first clones needed to become female, which took forty years or so. After the Malaquev ceremonies, these would then mate with the new males. The last of the eugenic program would be abandoned. (Isobel said softly, `So back to good old fashioned sex?). I had suddenly had a rather disconcerting image of Maraq and Om as a couple – a deliberate but insidious match that would be typical of S’eeth Sia Ova! These tensions were known about, and the Provisional government did its best to calm the situation and to offer assurances, as did Max. Max had been utterly convinced that the Antarian S’eeth had mended their ways.
In 2040, several Shalloth approached S’eeth Sia Ova and confessed to having worked on a project aimed at building a Granolith during the late war. They admitted that the Granolith had been completed but not activated because K’ivar had been killed and the war ended. It also transpired that the key to be device had been lost in the wake of K’ivar’s assassination. S’eeth Sia Ova did not, of course, reveal that by this time the key was hidden safely in Eqbatana, having been guarded by Grey until his death. Michael lay with his head on the table. I wondered if he was thinking of a much earlier time when he, Isabel and Kyle had stood inside a Granolith, confronting Tess with murder. Michael had, after all, with Liz and Maria, actually held a key to a Granolith. They had living proof that this technology was very real. I saw Kyle and Isabel look at each other, a faint recognition of the enormity of that moment so long ago.
The Shalloth conspirators had then briefly outlined to S’eeth Sia Ova what K’ivar had planned to do had he lived. Maraq explained once again the proposed trip through time, something I had already touched upon earlier. Yet reiteration is a useful device in such circumstances and with such complexity! Maraq, somewhat mysteriously however, added a few more details. He noted that, in planning the conspiracy, K’ivar had been determined to simply kill Zan, but the Shalloth, whose expertise he needed, and whose loyalty he needed to re-stabilise his regime and win the war, said they would only cooperate if, instead of killing Zan, K’ivar merely prevented him from saving Liz Parker, which would produce the same outcome. Maraq repeated what S’eeth Sia Ova had told me in Eqbatana, that it was Tess’ return with a human child that alerted K’ivar to Liz’s existence. K’ivar must have also understood – probably by spying on S’eeth Sia Ova as he cross examined Tess – that Max had inherited the abilities of the Antarian Kings and had already altered Liz’s DNA. K’ivar also came to know that Nasedo was dead. The Shalloth could not risk another child being born, this time to Liz, because as a Yantra, she would most likely produce the necessary child the S’eeth needed. But they would not agree to killing Zan. (`but they tried here several times’ put in Michael, `and they had killed Nasedo’).
The Shalloth conspirators had then explained to S’eeth Sia Ova that they had chosen this moment (2040) to approach her because, despite K’ivar’s death and the current Peace, they had reason to believe that elements of their own race had decided to renew their search for the key, and to carry out K’ivar’s original plot for the sake of their own preservation. `Preservation?’ Isabel had asked indignantly. Maraq replied that the S’eeth had known for many years that, as always, the Shalloth were divided. A majority were for the new era, and still have faith in the new government, but there were those who feared that as the S’eeth mating approached, the restoration of the S’eeth to their former genetic greatness would lead once more to their repression. `It is hard to understand the old hatreds of the Shalloth. The S’eeth bear a terrible responsibility for this, but so deep was it within some of the Shalloth that they were determined now to strike, at all costs’.
S’eeth Sia Ova asked them if they were prepared or able to identify where the Granolith was situated. They all stated that, to the best of their knowledge, the Granolith was on Earth.'
`Alas S’eeth took this as confirmation that it was hidden in Bone Hill House, although Om said that they had long eliminated the possibility of the Granolith being there through years of constant vigilance and searching.'
`Om knew of this?’ I had asked, surprised by the tone of hurt in my voice. `The sneaky little bastard!’ was Michael’s shorter, more pertinent contribution. It transpired that, so too, did Max. (`then Liz would have known as well’ said Isabel to Michael, who said `yeah, figures’).
S’eeth and Max undertook one last thorough search of Bone Hill House, now of course a Museum, but could find nothing. Om had then suggested that the search ought to be widened to Roswell, New Mexico, and the site of the former pod chamber. `Did they not think to look at the painting?’ asked Isobel, a question that Maraq ignored. S’eeth Sia Ova wanted to involve some of the Shalloth in her investigations because of their understanding of temporal mechanics, and Max agreed to recruit two Shalloth who might help with the investigations. Bone Hill House was treated with extreme caution, and from that point Max never went there, and Om had gone to Roswell but had found nothing amiss. S’eeth Sia Ova watched the provincial government closely, and the Shalloth factions as well as she could.
Then, four years later, in 2044, she asked Max to come in secret to Eqbatana. Something significant had come up. The on-going rebuilding of the Valaen city of Ar’gar had revealed something sinister. During the excavations for new irrigation canals, the architects had come across a series of hidden laboratories, all dating to the late period of K’ivar’s regime. Such finds were not uncommon, but this one was clearly unusual. They contained a lot of complex temporal technology, much of it quite new and clearly experimental, and plans and designs for the construction of what had clearly been a massive device. Intriguingly, plans and schematics found referred to Eqbatana itself, the ancient fastness of the S’eeth. Sia Ova feared that these plans referred to another Granolith, but then a second series of documents were found that aligned Eqbatana with a series of coordinates on Earth, coordinates in both time and space. The temporal coordinates were September 20th, 1999, and the spatial coordinates were Roswell, New Mexico.
At this stage S’eeth Sia went to the Shalloth representatives in the provisional government itself and presented the evidence officially. There was a momentary crisis. Earth was involved to mediate the Emergency, acting, under the Bone Hill Protocol, as a guarantor of Antarian integrity. There was a shake-up in the government and several ministers were dismissed. A secret investigation was set up headed by a Valaen, Minister Faran, the former head of the Valaen war ministry, with a wide remit to look into finding the Granolith, and to oversee the destruction of the temporal technology found at Ar’gar. Alexandria had interrupted at this stage to seek clarification as to whether the Bone Hill Protocols did not specifically outlaw temporal weapons (as they did genetic experimentation).
Maraq replied that they did not, since they had not been acknowledged during the war, and many considered them hypothetical. Moreover the Granolith was considered a sacred object and not a weapon. (Maraq had pointed out that the word Granolith was derived from the Shalloth word for sacred house, or temple. By this stage he seemed to be clearly enjoying himself). Alex had then asked why, in the light of S’eeth Sia Ova’s information concerning Bone Hill House as the likely source for the Granolith, it had not been considered to involve Earth in the official remit of the investigation, even if it had been secret. Maraq looked slightly uneasy at this stage and went a little blue (I heard Michael say `oh yes’).
It then transpired that documents in Ar’gar revealed further evidence that the then, US FBI had been involved with K’ivar directly, confirming earlier sources found at Eqbatana with the discovery of the key. (`how is that even possible!’ whispered Isabel). Alexanderia had looked to her two ministers of state. Maraq added `You were not then in power, Madam President, and we were unclear who to trust officially if some of Earth’s security and intelligence services appeared to be already compromised’. Everyone looked baffled, except Jesse, who seemed to be thinking hard to himself. He was beginning to remember things. Isabel, attentive, had pressed Maraq at this point.
`Tell me how my brother vanished'
Maraq’s account of Max’s `disappearance’ differed profoundly from that offered to the joint Earth-Antarian Commission of Enquiry set up in 2046. The official version was that Max went missing during a routine flight from the Antarian Moon Antri Pri following a meteor shower, a notorious hazard of the Antarian system. Debris from a space ship was found weeks later, but was never categorically proven to be from his vessel.
All of us in the room lived through that dreadful moment again – the sheer horror – Liz, numb, sitting looking at the senior army staff outside her house, with the Minister for Antarian affairs, a S’eeth, already painted in ash. Isabel struggled even now to keep her feelings, and I saw Michael take her hand. I sensed Maraq both see and feel these emotions about him. `In reality Max was ambushed while on a secret mission in Ar’gar, having closed in slowly on the leading Shalloth behind the conspiracy’. I sat watching Maraq keenly. The room was utterly silent, all eyes focused on him. Everyone was holding their breath
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Extracts from the personal papers and diaries of Julian Evans, Earth Ambassador to Antar.
June 11th extract continued..........
_________________________________________________________________
We resume with fresh coffee. Isabel puts her hand firmly on Michael’s thigh to force him to sit properly in his chair. She smiles fiercely at him. `Ok, lets talk about time’ says Alexandria. `And let us talk about the conspiracy and Max, as much as we can; She looks at Maraq `You will appreciate that many of us find this whole concept of a conspiracy through time to be a little hard to grasp’. Kyle smiles at this. His face is smooth and his eyes blue, almost ageless. `And lets talk about the Granolith as well, since they seem to be related concepts’ she adds. Maraq is standing. He is wearing an Antarian cape and bodice, and has been given the blue pendant of ambassadorial rank by Isabel to ensure the Antarian legation do not complain (although they have), and that there is no outcry from Antar (which there is). At the equivalent age of 17 he is Antarian Ambassador to Earth, despite having no accreditation from his government and no experience of diplomacy.
Undeterred, Maraq narrates his story. He looks magnificent, statuesque, but rather mysterious. His long hair plait falls over his back, and I notice that on his high forehead, near his temples, he has a strange mark, a tattoo I have not seen. I see Michael looking at him with his eyes narrowed slightly, a look I have not seen on my Uncle’s face for many years, as if he is listening very hard for something. Maraq tells us a story we have heard before, but the point of view, the position of the story is changed. As Maraq himself remarked, the context of a tale is all. I summarise below what was said, omitting innumerable interruptions, mostly from Michael and Isabel. Some I have retained. Maraq spoke for a long time.
(Maraq’s testimony to the Council).
He began by informing us, rather cryptically, that S’eeth Sia Ova had definitive proof that Max was alive, both from the painting and from the codex. He then left this rather intriguing bit of information dangling in front of us and started with Max’s first visit to Antar in 2006, and ended with his last visit, in the down seasons of 2044-5. When Max had first visited Antar with Grey, Om and S’eeth Sia Ova his claimed identity had met with some scepticism. Max did not look like Zan – that was obvious – nor did he act like him. Yet his claim was proven. Om was enough proof on his own, and as the Antarian saying goes `the genome does not lie’. Moreover Max had begun to change on Antar, a subtle, inner change, but one that Grey noticed as did Liz, on his return to Earth. The more frequent his visits, the more distinct the change, and the more his popularity on Antar grew.
Maraq noted that this was of course, true to a lesser extent of all the hybrids, and the Yantras. (There was a typical Michael aside at this point. Kyle laughed!). As I listened I too recalled noticing the changes in my father as I grew up. To put it simply, crudely, Max became more kingly – despite the abdication address, and despite the professed republicanism of a majority of the Antarian races. I recalled again the image of Max with Grey on the terrace, emblematic, almost heraldic. Max became particularly interested in Antar and the regeneration programs of the government. Paradoxically he grew into a role he had earlier abandoned, as a young man, on the eve of the exile from Roswell. He became, surprisingly perhaps, popular among the Shalloth as well, who saw him as holding the S’eeth to their side of the bargain struck in the run up to the coup against K’ivar. Max and Om emerged as key figures in the radically changed politics of the Qu’ra Novaa’ta, the New Era, and alongside Michael and Isabel, they became key arbiters between Earth and Antar.
Yet for some segments of the Shalloth, there remained the concern that Om, and the manifest recovery of the S’eeth genome, was merely an interlude for a return to a race war, and there were concerns over Max’s popularity. The planned regeneration program authorised the S’eeth to clone 1,000 S’eeths using Om as a template, and then, thirty-five years after, to clone another 1,000. `Why the delay?’ Jesse had asked, to which Maraq had answered that the first clones needed to become female, which took forty years or so. After the Malaquev ceremonies, these would then mate with the new males. The last of the eugenic program would be abandoned. (Isobel said softly, `So back to good old fashioned sex?). I had suddenly had a rather disconcerting image of Maraq and Om as a couple – a deliberate but insidious match that would be typical of S’eeth Sia Ova! These tensions were known about, and the Provisional government did its best to calm the situation and to offer assurances, as did Max. Max had been utterly convinced that the Antarian S’eeth had mended their ways.
In 2040, several Shalloth approached S’eeth Sia Ova and confessed to having worked on a project aimed at building a Granolith during the late war. They admitted that the Granolith had been completed but not activated because K’ivar had been killed and the war ended. It also transpired that the key to be device had been lost in the wake of K’ivar’s assassination. S’eeth Sia Ova did not, of course, reveal that by this time the key was hidden safely in Eqbatana, having been guarded by Grey until his death. Michael lay with his head on the table. I wondered if he was thinking of a much earlier time when he, Isabel and Kyle had stood inside a Granolith, confronting Tess with murder. Michael had, after all, with Liz and Maria, actually held a key to a Granolith. They had living proof that this technology was very real. I saw Kyle and Isabel look at each other, a faint recognition of the enormity of that moment so long ago.
The Shalloth conspirators had then briefly outlined to S’eeth Sia Ova what K’ivar had planned to do had he lived. Maraq explained once again the proposed trip through time, something I had already touched upon earlier. Yet reiteration is a useful device in such circumstances and with such complexity! Maraq, somewhat mysteriously however, added a few more details. He noted that, in planning the conspiracy, K’ivar had been determined to simply kill Zan, but the Shalloth, whose expertise he needed, and whose loyalty he needed to re-stabilise his regime and win the war, said they would only cooperate if, instead of killing Zan, K’ivar merely prevented him from saving Liz Parker, which would produce the same outcome. Maraq repeated what S’eeth Sia Ova had told me in Eqbatana, that it was Tess’ return with a human child that alerted K’ivar to Liz’s existence. K’ivar must have also understood – probably by spying on S’eeth Sia Ova as he cross examined Tess – that Max had inherited the abilities of the Antarian Kings and had already altered Liz’s DNA. K’ivar also came to know that Nasedo was dead. The Shalloth could not risk another child being born, this time to Liz, because as a Yantra, she would most likely produce the necessary child the S’eeth needed. But they would not agree to killing Zan. (`but they tried here several times’ put in Michael, `and they had killed Nasedo’).
The Shalloth conspirators had then explained to S’eeth Sia Ova that they had chosen this moment (2040) to approach her because, despite K’ivar’s death and the current Peace, they had reason to believe that elements of their own race had decided to renew their search for the key, and to carry out K’ivar’s original plot for the sake of their own preservation. `Preservation?’ Isabel had asked indignantly. Maraq replied that the S’eeth had known for many years that, as always, the Shalloth were divided. A majority were for the new era, and still have faith in the new government, but there were those who feared that as the S’eeth mating approached, the restoration of the S’eeth to their former genetic greatness would lead once more to their repression. `It is hard to understand the old hatreds of the Shalloth. The S’eeth bear a terrible responsibility for this, but so deep was it within some of the Shalloth that they were determined now to strike, at all costs’.
S’eeth Sia Ova asked them if they were prepared or able to identify where the Granolith was situated. They all stated that, to the best of their knowledge, the Granolith was on Earth.'
`Alas S’eeth took this as confirmation that it was hidden in Bone Hill House, although Om said that they had long eliminated the possibility of the Granolith being there through years of constant vigilance and searching.'
`Om knew of this?’ I had asked, surprised by the tone of hurt in my voice. `The sneaky little bastard!’ was Michael’s shorter, more pertinent contribution. It transpired that, so too, did Max. (`then Liz would have known as well’ said Isabel to Michael, who said `yeah, figures’).
S’eeth and Max undertook one last thorough search of Bone Hill House, now of course a Museum, but could find nothing. Om had then suggested that the search ought to be widened to Roswell, New Mexico, and the site of the former pod chamber. `Did they not think to look at the painting?’ asked Isobel, a question that Maraq ignored. S’eeth Sia Ova wanted to involve some of the Shalloth in her investigations because of their understanding of temporal mechanics, and Max agreed to recruit two Shalloth who might help with the investigations. Bone Hill House was treated with extreme caution, and from that point Max never went there, and Om had gone to Roswell but had found nothing amiss. S’eeth Sia Ova watched the provincial government closely, and the Shalloth factions as well as she could.
Then, four years later, in 2044, she asked Max to come in secret to Eqbatana. Something significant had come up. The on-going rebuilding of the Valaen city of Ar’gar had revealed something sinister. During the excavations for new irrigation canals, the architects had come across a series of hidden laboratories, all dating to the late period of K’ivar’s regime. Such finds were not uncommon, but this one was clearly unusual. They contained a lot of complex temporal technology, much of it quite new and clearly experimental, and plans and designs for the construction of what had clearly been a massive device. Intriguingly, plans and schematics found referred to Eqbatana itself, the ancient fastness of the S’eeth. Sia Ova feared that these plans referred to another Granolith, but then a second series of documents were found that aligned Eqbatana with a series of coordinates on Earth, coordinates in both time and space. The temporal coordinates were September 20th, 1999, and the spatial coordinates were Roswell, New Mexico.
At this stage S’eeth Sia went to the Shalloth representatives in the provisional government itself and presented the evidence officially. There was a momentary crisis. Earth was involved to mediate the Emergency, acting, under the Bone Hill Protocol, as a guarantor of Antarian integrity. There was a shake-up in the government and several ministers were dismissed. A secret investigation was set up headed by a Valaen, Minister Faran, the former head of the Valaen war ministry, with a wide remit to look into finding the Granolith, and to oversee the destruction of the temporal technology found at Ar’gar. Alexandria had interrupted at this stage to seek clarification as to whether the Bone Hill Protocols did not specifically outlaw temporal weapons (as they did genetic experimentation).
Maraq replied that they did not, since they had not been acknowledged during the war, and many considered them hypothetical. Moreover the Granolith was considered a sacred object and not a weapon. (Maraq had pointed out that the word Granolith was derived from the Shalloth word for sacred house, or temple. By this stage he seemed to be clearly enjoying himself). Alex had then asked why, in the light of S’eeth Sia Ova’s information concerning Bone Hill House as the likely source for the Granolith, it had not been considered to involve Earth in the official remit of the investigation, even if it had been secret. Maraq looked slightly uneasy at this stage and went a little blue (I heard Michael say `oh yes’).
It then transpired that documents in Ar’gar revealed further evidence that the then, US FBI had been involved with K’ivar directly, confirming earlier sources found at Eqbatana with the discovery of the key. (`how is that even possible!’ whispered Isabel). Alexanderia had looked to her two ministers of state. Maraq added `You were not then in power, Madam President, and we were unclear who to trust officially if some of Earth’s security and intelligence services appeared to be already compromised’. Everyone looked baffled, except Jesse, who seemed to be thinking hard to himself. He was beginning to remember things. Isabel, attentive, had pressed Maraq at this point.
`Tell me how my brother vanished'
Maraq’s account of Max’s `disappearance’ differed profoundly from that offered to the joint Earth-Antarian Commission of Enquiry set up in 2046. The official version was that Max went missing during a routine flight from the Antarian Moon Antri Pri following a meteor shower, a notorious hazard of the Antarian system. Debris from a space ship was found weeks later, but was never categorically proven to be from his vessel.
All of us in the room lived through that dreadful moment again – the sheer horror – Liz, numb, sitting looking at the senior army staff outside her house, with the Minister for Antarian affairs, a S’eeth, already painted in ash. Isabel struggled even now to keep her feelings, and I saw Michael take her hand. I sensed Maraq both see and feel these emotions about him. `In reality Max was ambushed while on a secret mission in Ar’gar, having closed in slowly on the leading Shalloth behind the conspiracy’. I sat watching Maraq keenly. The room was utterly silent, all eyes focused on him. Everyone was holding their breath
Last edited by Patroclus76 on Tue Apr 18, 2006 4:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Patroclus76
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S’eeth Maraq’s testimony to the council continues.............
In the winter of 2044-5, S’eeth Sia Ova, ever watchful, intercepted a series of encrypted messages sent from the vicinity of Ar’gar, to the Ministry of Technology and Information in the capital Antr Setr, and then relayed to the Antarian Legation on Earth by courier. (`She intercepted diplomatic transcripts?’ asked Alexandria) They were payments and instructions to the Antarian Ambassador to pass to someone called Henry Maitland, then a Senator in the US Congress, to lobby to stop the publication by the then US government of Grey’s codex.
If legal obstructions failed, the communications listed a whole series of entries that had to be removed from the codex before it could be published. In addition to these precise instructions, there was also a list of names from several other governments on Earth, including the former director of the Bone Hill House estates, with a series of instructions to destroy documents in the library archives, and more payments to the head of Homeland security, as well as to two former directors of the FBI.
For S’eeth Sia Ova the mentioning of the codex was a revelation – since she had on her the original that Grey had given to her just before he died. The codex has been of immense sentimental value, but it had never occurred to her to look at it. Now, not only did she have the original, she had a list of instructed deletions to be carried out on the copies held on Earth. Once in Eqbatana, Max, Om and S’eeth Sia Ova matched the planned deletions against the original entries. They were numerous and revelatory.
Together the three of them set a trap. They ensured that a reply was signalled back from Earth asking for a meeting in Ar’gar, urgent and too sensitive to detail, because difficulties had arisen on Earth concerning the Senate hearings, and Maitland was proving unreliable. The meeting was agreed, giving a precise location and time. Max, Om, two other S’eeth, the Shalloth technician and Valaen Faran went to Ar’gar to expose those at the heart of the conspiracy.
Only Om and Faran returned. They had met the conspirators within the secret facility. There had been a fight, and before government forces could turn up, a temporal charge had been detonated that sucked Max and his two S’eeth guards into another dimension. The circumstances were too sensational to publish, and so the government concocted the crash story as a cover up.
Maraq stopped. There was a shocked silence. Michael was shaking his head slowly. He, Isabel and Kyle had all experienced, long ago, the skins use of time weaponry. I suspect that they had less trouble than the rest us in comprehending Maraq’s story. Michael asked `So Om saw his father vanish? Why did he never tell us this!’
`Because your friend was not dead, and because Max set off the temporal charge deliberately as part of a wider plan.’
More silence. Isabel opened her hands in a gesture of bewilderment, `and why Maraq, why would he do that?’ To my surprise, Maraq asked me for the original codex, which I dutifully if not rather dramatically removed from the sole of my boot. Maraq then asked the President to display for us the entry for April 15th 2006 that was published on the web recently, following the Supreme Court’s ruling earlier in 2055.
It read:
As I watched, S’eeth began to draw something from out of the head itself, a long cylindrical object like a baton, something that had been hidden or buried in the head itself. The object was hard to discern, but I could tell by the way it refracted the light, that it was made of some form of crystal. I had started to turn to walk quietly away from the doors when S’eeth had turned towards me and said `Grey? I have something to ask of you.
The full entry in the original codex continued
. I had started to turn to walk quietly away from the doors when S’eeth had turned towards me and said `Grey? I have something to ask of you.’ I had stopped obediently. In my mind I thought simply `so we come to it at last’ I had turned and walked back into the library and closed the doors. `Do you trust me, Grey?’ S’eeth had sounded tired; it was the first time I had ever noticed a change in her voice.
`I want to, S’eeth Sia Ova, I have warmed to you since you arrived. You are, however, making it rather difficult for me at the moment with all this skulking about, and now this – ‘ I had pointed at the head `Very Edgar Allan Poe’
`There are those on Antar who do not wish these children to be born. K’ivar feared that we would succeed in restoring the Genome and the Shalloth are trapped between their loathing of him and their hatred of us.’
`K’ivar is dead – the definitive proof is in your hand.’ I had walked over and put a light on, it made the scene only slightly less theatrical. S’eeth held up the crystalline key and turned to look at me. I thought I noticed a slight discoloration around her face and neck, a sort of redness. `What is that?’
`This is a key to a Granolith, a powerful device, invented by the Shalloth, it is capable of traveling through time, or moving objects through time. I have reason to believe that just before his regime collapsed, K’ivar had built one to go back in time and destroy the only real chance that these children would be born.’ It seemed futile to protest my disbelief in time travel, I had seen more than enough in the last few weeks to make me slightly more open minded. `To kill Max?’
`Yes, or simply to stop him saving Liz. Her DNA would remain unaltered, the genome would not take.’
'Where is this device?’
`I have no idea. After K’ivar’s death, I found this key in his personal quarters along with the architectural plan and designs of this house.’ I raise my eyebrows and look rather owlishly at my friend. Had I not seen aliens in my laboratory, alien heads in jars, or aliens appear and disappear at will into thin air, I would have dismissed this latest twist as impossible. But I no longer thought like that. `I see, so that is why you have been `casing the joint’ as Michael puts it so eloquently. How odd. Another coincidence?’ I asked half in jest. S’eeth Sia Ova came the closest I had seen her to smiling.
`You do not believe in them, Grey. It means that somehow K’ivar had come to know of this place. He had come to know that Max and Liz would seek you out, that you would be involved in helping the children, yet K’ivar was dead before Max even arrived here, such were the delays in getting the ships to Earth after the war.’ I attempt to construct a time paradox in its simplest form. `Bone Hill house is the last event in the extraordinary adventures of my friends; the first was in a café in Roswell. Strung out between them is a whole series of events, which, if slightly altered, could have proved fatal to Max, Liz and the children – even Clayton Wheeler. He was pretty – forgive the _expression – seminal.’
`We must find this device and destroy it. Until then Max will never be out of danger. We must keep the key safe, you must help me in this for without it, the Granolith cannot be activated’ I agreed. But I had also unfortunately thought out the time paradox. `But it hasn’t worked, S'eeth Sia Ova. K’ivar’s possession of the plans of Bone Hill House before Max came here to know of it, already indicate that the Granolith has been activated and we have failed.’
Maraq stops narrating the text. There is silence.
`Sorry guys, I still don’t get this’ says Michael slowly, squinting at the monitor. Maraq merely underlies the final paragraph on the screens about us as if we are a class of remedials. He does this without moving as much as a finger, incidentally. I `get’ this, sort of, but then Maraq has already taunted me over my failure to understand time while running through the caves of Eqbatana towards the hopper and an urgent trip home.
I am about to say something to my Uncle, when Maraq says, directly and with some affection `Michael, it is very simple. If I went back in time to last Monday and shot someone in front of you, you would remember it now – sitting here with me – even if it had not happened the first time, because the time line would have altered for you leaving no memory. If I went back to the Sunday before the Monday on which I shot someone and decided that I had changed my mind, you would again have no memory of a shooting on the Monday because it would never have taken place’.
There is a startled _expression about the room, more so at the curious tone in Maraq’s voice than with the puzzle he has set. Jesse has stood up and is walking about the room, running his hands through his hair. `I am beginning to understand, God! This is unbelievable!’
`What is? Jesse?’ Isabel looks about her, as if she is missing something irritatingly obvious. Kyle slaps the table with his hand, `Extraordinary! The answers are all in the codex, because we have all, including Grey, lived through the conspiracy as it happened. And the conspiracy has failed, but the evidence remains in the unedited codex, evidence that leads now to the conspirators on Antar! That is what now concerns the Shalloth!’ Maraq smiles at Kyle, a curious secretive smile, that starts in his eyes.
`Indeed. What Grey recorded, incidentally, as he experienced them, were the numerous attempts the Shalloth had at altering the time-line, and the innumerable times they were stopped – ‘
`Stopped?’ asks Isabel, still bemused.
`By Max and his assistants’ I answer, slowly, like someone guessing an answer.
`Hold it, hold it right there’ Michael has stood up now. `I know I am a bit dense at times, and I'm vaguely embarrassed to ask this, but what the fuck are you all talking about – sorry Alex – Max vanished in time in 2044, and just under three weeks ago, a group of time bandits go back to September 1999 to kill Liz – how could he have stopped it, how can it be over already?’
`Michael’ says Maraq again, with a familiar tired patience, `it doesn’t matter when Max left, it matters when he arrived. He and S’eeth already knew when the original `time bandits’ were going, so he detonated the temporal charge to go back three days earlier than they did. What then happened, entirely off-center to your lives as you now recall them, was a struggle to track down and eliminate the people who, three weeks ago, when through the portal. Likewise, it is not important when Max decides to return, it is important when he arrives'
Placated, or bewildered, Michael sits down again, his eyes once more narrow and suspicious, as if Maraq is beginning to irritate him. I have, in the meantime, been distracted by Jesse, who is still pacing about like a caged bear. `Jesse, are you alright?’
`Sort of, I mean, I might throw up actually’ Alexandria frowns, and reaches over for a bin, `Jesse, just in case, I have just had this facility upgraded’. She seems relieved. `What is it Attorney General?’ Jesse sat down next to Isabel; he puts his arm around her. She smiles, quizzically, as if he is about to ask her something.
`When I went to Boston in the winter of 2002, after we separated, I went straight into a top legal firm, head of their litigation division. An old friend, Chris Hobson, had tipped me for the job. It had been an astounding break for me. Because of the pain of leaving you, I just threw myself into work. Jesus, I worked my ass off! Then one day I got a message by email from Hobson saying someone wanted to meet me. It was late November 2002. Hobson had sounded spooked, and said that this guy needed to meet me secretly over some government litigation that was extremely sensitive. All very cloak and dagger. He arranged a meeting, at a Genetic Research Institute, just on the outskirts of Boston.’
`You’re talking about Professor Grey? He wanted you to help him fight the FBI and the government over the cloning experiments and the closing of his institute?’ Alex asks this. She is thankfully still sitting, but looks as if she too is likely to stand up at any moment.
`No. I didn’t meet Julian Grey. I met Wilcox.’
We are all stunned. Michael’s mouth is literally open. Maraq then adds to this element of the bizarre by leaning forward and shutting his mouth for him. He places his hand under his chin and closes Michael’s jaw like it is a sort of mechanical device, smiling with such immense affection that Michael pulls his head back, suddenly, an instinctive move from such an unforeseen intrusion into his personal space `Hey, Maraq!’ he frowns at the Antarian, but there is an odd light in his eyes. `If we could all just focus on Wilcox for the moment.’ says Alex looking at Maraq and then at me as if I ought to understand this behaviour. Jesse, who is also looking at Maraq, resumes.
`He told me that the government were running secret experiments on four children that had, somehow, been miraculously cured in Phoenix. He said that experiments were being run inside the institute despite the objections of a Professor Grey, head of the facility, and that the government were now threatening to remove him. Grey needed legal help – urgently - would I be able give it? He then said something really weird. He said that I was to keep an eye on Grey because he was a good man, but that he might fail without encouragement, fail to do the right thing. I had no idea what he meant. Wilcox then asked me to contact Max and tell him that, when the need arose, in a few years time perhaps, Grey would help him, and that Max must trust him for help.’
`He said that! He mentioned Max’s name!’ Isabel sounds incredulous.
`Yeah, he did. I had just stood looking at him, wondering whether he was an alien, a government agent, a bad guy, a good guy. He must have sensed me in complete turmoil because he said to me that I must have faith, trust in my love for Isabel, trust in the love –‘
`In the love?’ Michael looks puzzled `that sounds familiar?’ but Isabel interrupts.
`But didn’t you recognise Wilcox three years later when you turned up at Bone Hill House, the day that Maria and Michael were married!’
`Sure, sure I did. But I just assumed that he’d told you, and - come on – so much weird stuff had gone down with Alien Open Day and all that, but I never really wondered how, and in what way, Wilcox had known Grey would help with the babies before Grey had even met him – he bought Bone Hill House in the autumn of 2003, and before Liz became pregnant.’
`Darling didn’t you ever ask him?’ My aunt is an octave below being outraged.
`No – when I saw him again, at the Michael and Maria's wedding reception that evening, when I walked in with you and Grey, he waved at me!’ Jesse’s eyes narrow `I am think he put his finger to his lips and winked’
Maraq smiles warmly, an astoundingly beautiful smile. As if the world has been reborn. Again, without moving his hands, he gets the main monitor to access an entry from the Codex dated December 12th 2002, an entry edited from the 2055 web version under 15/7.
December 18th, 2002.
A truly awful day, beyond words. I return home exhausted, angry. Dorothea, who knows nothing of what is going on in my life, withdraws to her work after dinner, stung by my mood. Why in god’s name do I not tell her? I sit in my study close to tears. My institute is being taken away from me, lab by lab, floor by floor. Each time I try to cooperate, I find I am compromised. I feel like an appeaser of Nazi aggression, first the Rhineland, Czechoslovakia, then Poland, where will it end? I know where it will end. I will collaborate and then I will capitulate. The children fascinate me – they have been touched by something, someone profoundly alien – their entire genome has been recoded – why in the name of God cannot I research this at my own pace and in a proper manner, without the wretched FBI and their quisling scientists trying to run everything!
Today was ugly, unpleasant. Today I saw a protocol that set out exactly what it is they are planning to do. How do they know so much about these things – how long as this unit been working away at the heart of government, in the USA, in an elected democracy? God! I am I so naive. Agent Forster saw me today and said that if I wrote to the press once more, I would be `removed’ and there was some unpleasant innuendo about Dorothea and my property, threats, implied violence. He also told me clearly that if I considered legal action, I would suffer the same fate. Am I a man? What does that mean? I am ashamed, passive, cowardly, debilitated. I am a eunuch. Where will I find the courage to stop this madness?
December 19th, 2002.
I slept badly and got to work early. I dread sleeping because I dream of my father. I identified a number of my co-workers and scientists that I trust. It is time I worked on some breakout plan. Over breakfast, I had asked Dorothea is she would consider leaving Boston and moving out north west somewhere. She looked at me and said yes straight away, `it doesn’t even have to be democrat!’ I wrote to Sweden and to the UN, and I started to remove work from the data files – discretely. Like all thugs, the FBI goons are not clever. They lack intuition.
At 10 am, I received a telephone call from a lawyer called Jesse Ramirez, who works for some prestigious law firm, something, something and Sullivan. (He said it too quickly for me to catch but I checked it out later). He had read my letters in the press and wanted to help me. I was suspicious at first but my options were limited(,) so we arranged to meet for lunch out near Duxbury. It took me about an hour to shake off someone on my tail. Boston was a nightmare for them – no proper grid system – they panic at the first hairpin.
Jesse was an attractive, polite man from New Mexico. He was Latino, with a brilliant white smile and a handshake that implied integrity. I relaxed a little. We drank a cold and beautiful Chablis in some European restaurant with small tables and heavy starched tablecloths. I asked him what he thought he could do for me. He seemed hesitant, as if he was not sure where to begin. He said that he had helped people suffering from governmental persecution before, and that there were various legal devices that might help me retain control of my institute and cite copyright to protect my findings, especially where minors were involved. I had laughed at the word persecution, a forced, horrible sound, and he had seen straight through me. What a curious, intense man, he seemed to know a great deal about my work but said nothing about it. Is he a plant? Can I trust him? I so desperately want to. That afternoon I felt optimistic for the first time since this nightmare started.
There is a silence. Isabel says `Jesse, when Max asked you for help in 2006 when he discovered that Liz was pregnant, and you suggested that we seek out Professor Grey, didn’t that strike you as odd?’ She is clearly not going to let this go. Jesse shakes his head, `Isabel, I just assumed, I guess I just thought it was a coincidence!’
Maraq laughs at this, a boyish laugh, the way that Kyle laughs, for the joy of a thing.
Maraq says `But Jesse, you know that Grey didn’t believe in coincidences!’ and he says this in such a way that I know immediately who he is.
In the winter of 2044-5, S’eeth Sia Ova, ever watchful, intercepted a series of encrypted messages sent from the vicinity of Ar’gar, to the Ministry of Technology and Information in the capital Antr Setr, and then relayed to the Antarian Legation on Earth by courier. (`She intercepted diplomatic transcripts?’ asked Alexandria) They were payments and instructions to the Antarian Ambassador to pass to someone called Henry Maitland, then a Senator in the US Congress, to lobby to stop the publication by the then US government of Grey’s codex.
If legal obstructions failed, the communications listed a whole series of entries that had to be removed from the codex before it could be published. In addition to these precise instructions, there was also a list of names from several other governments on Earth, including the former director of the Bone Hill House estates, with a series of instructions to destroy documents in the library archives, and more payments to the head of Homeland security, as well as to two former directors of the FBI.
For S’eeth Sia Ova the mentioning of the codex was a revelation – since she had on her the original that Grey had given to her just before he died. The codex has been of immense sentimental value, but it had never occurred to her to look at it. Now, not only did she have the original, she had a list of instructed deletions to be carried out on the copies held on Earth. Once in Eqbatana, Max, Om and S’eeth Sia Ova matched the planned deletions against the original entries. They were numerous and revelatory.
Together the three of them set a trap. They ensured that a reply was signalled back from Earth asking for a meeting in Ar’gar, urgent and too sensitive to detail, because difficulties had arisen on Earth concerning the Senate hearings, and Maitland was proving unreliable. The meeting was agreed, giving a precise location and time. Max, Om, two other S’eeth, the Shalloth technician and Valaen Faran went to Ar’gar to expose those at the heart of the conspiracy.
Only Om and Faran returned. They had met the conspirators within the secret facility. There had been a fight, and before government forces could turn up, a temporal charge had been detonated that sucked Max and his two S’eeth guards into another dimension. The circumstances were too sensational to publish, and so the government concocted the crash story as a cover up.
Maraq stopped. There was a shocked silence. Michael was shaking his head slowly. He, Isabel and Kyle had all experienced, long ago, the skins use of time weaponry. I suspect that they had less trouble than the rest us in comprehending Maraq’s story. Michael asked `So Om saw his father vanish? Why did he never tell us this!’
`Because your friend was not dead, and because Max set off the temporal charge deliberately as part of a wider plan.’
More silence. Isabel opened her hands in a gesture of bewilderment, `and why Maraq, why would he do that?’ To my surprise, Maraq asked me for the original codex, which I dutifully if not rather dramatically removed from the sole of my boot. Maraq then asked the President to display for us the entry for April 15th 2006 that was published on the web recently, following the Supreme Court’s ruling earlier in 2055.
It read:
As I watched, S’eeth began to draw something from out of the head itself, a long cylindrical object like a baton, something that had been hidden or buried in the head itself. The object was hard to discern, but I could tell by the way it refracted the light, that it was made of some form of crystal. I had started to turn to walk quietly away from the doors when S’eeth had turned towards me and said `Grey? I have something to ask of you.
The full entry in the original codex continued
. I had started to turn to walk quietly away from the doors when S’eeth had turned towards me and said `Grey? I have something to ask of you.’ I had stopped obediently. In my mind I thought simply `so we come to it at last’ I had turned and walked back into the library and closed the doors. `Do you trust me, Grey?’ S’eeth had sounded tired; it was the first time I had ever noticed a change in her voice.
`I want to, S’eeth Sia Ova, I have warmed to you since you arrived. You are, however, making it rather difficult for me at the moment with all this skulking about, and now this – ‘ I had pointed at the head `Very Edgar Allan Poe’
`There are those on Antar who do not wish these children to be born. K’ivar feared that we would succeed in restoring the Genome and the Shalloth are trapped between their loathing of him and their hatred of us.’
`K’ivar is dead – the definitive proof is in your hand.’ I had walked over and put a light on, it made the scene only slightly less theatrical. S’eeth held up the crystalline key and turned to look at me. I thought I noticed a slight discoloration around her face and neck, a sort of redness. `What is that?’
`This is a key to a Granolith, a powerful device, invented by the Shalloth, it is capable of traveling through time, or moving objects through time. I have reason to believe that just before his regime collapsed, K’ivar had built one to go back in time and destroy the only real chance that these children would be born.’ It seemed futile to protest my disbelief in time travel, I had seen more than enough in the last few weeks to make me slightly more open minded. `To kill Max?’
`Yes, or simply to stop him saving Liz. Her DNA would remain unaltered, the genome would not take.’
'Where is this device?’
`I have no idea. After K’ivar’s death, I found this key in his personal quarters along with the architectural plan and designs of this house.’ I raise my eyebrows and look rather owlishly at my friend. Had I not seen aliens in my laboratory, alien heads in jars, or aliens appear and disappear at will into thin air, I would have dismissed this latest twist as impossible. But I no longer thought like that. `I see, so that is why you have been `casing the joint’ as Michael puts it so eloquently. How odd. Another coincidence?’ I asked half in jest. S’eeth Sia Ova came the closest I had seen her to smiling.
`You do not believe in them, Grey. It means that somehow K’ivar had come to know of this place. He had come to know that Max and Liz would seek you out, that you would be involved in helping the children, yet K’ivar was dead before Max even arrived here, such were the delays in getting the ships to Earth after the war.’ I attempt to construct a time paradox in its simplest form. `Bone Hill house is the last event in the extraordinary adventures of my friends; the first was in a café in Roswell. Strung out between them is a whole series of events, which, if slightly altered, could have proved fatal to Max, Liz and the children – even Clayton Wheeler. He was pretty – forgive the _expression – seminal.’
`We must find this device and destroy it. Until then Max will never be out of danger. We must keep the key safe, you must help me in this for without it, the Granolith cannot be activated’ I agreed. But I had also unfortunately thought out the time paradox. `But it hasn’t worked, S'eeth Sia Ova. K’ivar’s possession of the plans of Bone Hill House before Max came here to know of it, already indicate that the Granolith has been activated and we have failed.’
Maraq stops narrating the text. There is silence.
`Sorry guys, I still don’t get this’ says Michael slowly, squinting at the monitor. Maraq merely underlies the final paragraph on the screens about us as if we are a class of remedials. He does this without moving as much as a finger, incidentally. I `get’ this, sort of, but then Maraq has already taunted me over my failure to understand time while running through the caves of Eqbatana towards the hopper and an urgent trip home.
I am about to say something to my Uncle, when Maraq says, directly and with some affection `Michael, it is very simple. If I went back in time to last Monday and shot someone in front of you, you would remember it now – sitting here with me – even if it had not happened the first time, because the time line would have altered for you leaving no memory. If I went back to the Sunday before the Monday on which I shot someone and decided that I had changed my mind, you would again have no memory of a shooting on the Monday because it would never have taken place’.
There is a startled _expression about the room, more so at the curious tone in Maraq’s voice than with the puzzle he has set. Jesse has stood up and is walking about the room, running his hands through his hair. `I am beginning to understand, God! This is unbelievable!’
`What is? Jesse?’ Isabel looks about her, as if she is missing something irritatingly obvious. Kyle slaps the table with his hand, `Extraordinary! The answers are all in the codex, because we have all, including Grey, lived through the conspiracy as it happened. And the conspiracy has failed, but the evidence remains in the unedited codex, evidence that leads now to the conspirators on Antar! That is what now concerns the Shalloth!’ Maraq smiles at Kyle, a curious secretive smile, that starts in his eyes.
`Indeed. What Grey recorded, incidentally, as he experienced them, were the numerous attempts the Shalloth had at altering the time-line, and the innumerable times they were stopped – ‘
`Stopped?’ asks Isabel, still bemused.
`By Max and his assistants’ I answer, slowly, like someone guessing an answer.
`Hold it, hold it right there’ Michael has stood up now. `I know I am a bit dense at times, and I'm vaguely embarrassed to ask this, but what the fuck are you all talking about – sorry Alex – Max vanished in time in 2044, and just under three weeks ago, a group of time bandits go back to September 1999 to kill Liz – how could he have stopped it, how can it be over already?’
`Michael’ says Maraq again, with a familiar tired patience, `it doesn’t matter when Max left, it matters when he arrived. He and S’eeth already knew when the original `time bandits’ were going, so he detonated the temporal charge to go back three days earlier than they did. What then happened, entirely off-center to your lives as you now recall them, was a struggle to track down and eliminate the people who, three weeks ago, when through the portal. Likewise, it is not important when Max decides to return, it is important when he arrives'
Placated, or bewildered, Michael sits down again, his eyes once more narrow and suspicious, as if Maraq is beginning to irritate him. I have, in the meantime, been distracted by Jesse, who is still pacing about like a caged bear. `Jesse, are you alright?’
`Sort of, I mean, I might throw up actually’ Alexandria frowns, and reaches over for a bin, `Jesse, just in case, I have just had this facility upgraded’. She seems relieved. `What is it Attorney General?’ Jesse sat down next to Isabel; he puts his arm around her. She smiles, quizzically, as if he is about to ask her something.
`When I went to Boston in the winter of 2002, after we separated, I went straight into a top legal firm, head of their litigation division. An old friend, Chris Hobson, had tipped me for the job. It had been an astounding break for me. Because of the pain of leaving you, I just threw myself into work. Jesus, I worked my ass off! Then one day I got a message by email from Hobson saying someone wanted to meet me. It was late November 2002. Hobson had sounded spooked, and said that this guy needed to meet me secretly over some government litigation that was extremely sensitive. All very cloak and dagger. He arranged a meeting, at a Genetic Research Institute, just on the outskirts of Boston.’
`You’re talking about Professor Grey? He wanted you to help him fight the FBI and the government over the cloning experiments and the closing of his institute?’ Alex asks this. She is thankfully still sitting, but looks as if she too is likely to stand up at any moment.
`No. I didn’t meet Julian Grey. I met Wilcox.’
We are all stunned. Michael’s mouth is literally open. Maraq then adds to this element of the bizarre by leaning forward and shutting his mouth for him. He places his hand under his chin and closes Michael’s jaw like it is a sort of mechanical device, smiling with such immense affection that Michael pulls his head back, suddenly, an instinctive move from such an unforeseen intrusion into his personal space `Hey, Maraq!’ he frowns at the Antarian, but there is an odd light in his eyes. `If we could all just focus on Wilcox for the moment.’ says Alex looking at Maraq and then at me as if I ought to understand this behaviour. Jesse, who is also looking at Maraq, resumes.
`He told me that the government were running secret experiments on four children that had, somehow, been miraculously cured in Phoenix. He said that experiments were being run inside the institute despite the objections of a Professor Grey, head of the facility, and that the government were now threatening to remove him. Grey needed legal help – urgently - would I be able give it? He then said something really weird. He said that I was to keep an eye on Grey because he was a good man, but that he might fail without encouragement, fail to do the right thing. I had no idea what he meant. Wilcox then asked me to contact Max and tell him that, when the need arose, in a few years time perhaps, Grey would help him, and that Max must trust him for help.’
`He said that! He mentioned Max’s name!’ Isabel sounds incredulous.
`Yeah, he did. I had just stood looking at him, wondering whether he was an alien, a government agent, a bad guy, a good guy. He must have sensed me in complete turmoil because he said to me that I must have faith, trust in my love for Isabel, trust in the love –‘
`In the love?’ Michael looks puzzled `that sounds familiar?’ but Isabel interrupts.
`But didn’t you recognise Wilcox three years later when you turned up at Bone Hill House, the day that Maria and Michael were married!’
`Sure, sure I did. But I just assumed that he’d told you, and - come on – so much weird stuff had gone down with Alien Open Day and all that, but I never really wondered how, and in what way, Wilcox had known Grey would help with the babies before Grey had even met him – he bought Bone Hill House in the autumn of 2003, and before Liz became pregnant.’
`Darling didn’t you ever ask him?’ My aunt is an octave below being outraged.
`No – when I saw him again, at the Michael and Maria's wedding reception that evening, when I walked in with you and Grey, he waved at me!’ Jesse’s eyes narrow `I am think he put his finger to his lips and winked’
Maraq smiles warmly, an astoundingly beautiful smile. As if the world has been reborn. Again, without moving his hands, he gets the main monitor to access an entry from the Codex dated December 12th 2002, an entry edited from the 2055 web version under 15/7.
December 18th, 2002.
A truly awful day, beyond words. I return home exhausted, angry. Dorothea, who knows nothing of what is going on in my life, withdraws to her work after dinner, stung by my mood. Why in god’s name do I not tell her? I sit in my study close to tears. My institute is being taken away from me, lab by lab, floor by floor. Each time I try to cooperate, I find I am compromised. I feel like an appeaser of Nazi aggression, first the Rhineland, Czechoslovakia, then Poland, where will it end? I know where it will end. I will collaborate and then I will capitulate. The children fascinate me – they have been touched by something, someone profoundly alien – their entire genome has been recoded – why in the name of God cannot I research this at my own pace and in a proper manner, without the wretched FBI and their quisling scientists trying to run everything!
Today was ugly, unpleasant. Today I saw a protocol that set out exactly what it is they are planning to do. How do they know so much about these things – how long as this unit been working away at the heart of government, in the USA, in an elected democracy? God! I am I so naive. Agent Forster saw me today and said that if I wrote to the press once more, I would be `removed’ and there was some unpleasant innuendo about Dorothea and my property, threats, implied violence. He also told me clearly that if I considered legal action, I would suffer the same fate. Am I a man? What does that mean? I am ashamed, passive, cowardly, debilitated. I am a eunuch. Where will I find the courage to stop this madness?
December 19th, 2002.
I slept badly and got to work early. I dread sleeping because I dream of my father. I identified a number of my co-workers and scientists that I trust. It is time I worked on some breakout plan. Over breakfast, I had asked Dorothea is she would consider leaving Boston and moving out north west somewhere. She looked at me and said yes straight away, `it doesn’t even have to be democrat!’ I wrote to Sweden and to the UN, and I started to remove work from the data files – discretely. Like all thugs, the FBI goons are not clever. They lack intuition.
At 10 am, I received a telephone call from a lawyer called Jesse Ramirez, who works for some prestigious law firm, something, something and Sullivan. (He said it too quickly for me to catch but I checked it out later). He had read my letters in the press and wanted to help me. I was suspicious at first but my options were limited(,) so we arranged to meet for lunch out near Duxbury. It took me about an hour to shake off someone on my tail. Boston was a nightmare for them – no proper grid system – they panic at the first hairpin.
Jesse was an attractive, polite man from New Mexico. He was Latino, with a brilliant white smile and a handshake that implied integrity. I relaxed a little. We drank a cold and beautiful Chablis in some European restaurant with small tables and heavy starched tablecloths. I asked him what he thought he could do for me. He seemed hesitant, as if he was not sure where to begin. He said that he had helped people suffering from governmental persecution before, and that there were various legal devices that might help me retain control of my institute and cite copyright to protect my findings, especially where minors were involved. I had laughed at the word persecution, a forced, horrible sound, and he had seen straight through me. What a curious, intense man, he seemed to know a great deal about my work but said nothing about it. Is he a plant? Can I trust him? I so desperately want to. That afternoon I felt optimistic for the first time since this nightmare started.
There is a silence. Isabel says `Jesse, when Max asked you for help in 2006 when he discovered that Liz was pregnant, and you suggested that we seek out Professor Grey, didn’t that strike you as odd?’ She is clearly not going to let this go. Jesse shakes his head, `Isabel, I just assumed, I guess I just thought it was a coincidence!’
Maraq laughs at this, a boyish laugh, the way that Kyle laughs, for the joy of a thing.
Maraq says `But Jesse, you know that Grey didn’t believe in coincidences!’ and he says this in such a way that I know immediately who he is.
Last edited by Patroclus76 on Wed Apr 19, 2006 2:43 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Patroclus76
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goggles on.................
`But Jesse, you know that Grey didn’t believe in coincidences!’ and he says this in such a way that I know immediately who he is.
Michael does as well, perhaps he knew before me. Isabel is still unsure, still looking curiously. Kyle – I think Kyle knew the moment they met. Look not at the form of something, the outward appearance, look within. Beyond our tight circle, Alexandria and Jesse have noted the change in the atmosphere, the stillness of revelation. We are all looking at Maraq – at Max – and Michael stands up and walks towards the Antarian Ambassador. I am still unable to move, to really comprehend what is happening. I see a single tear fall down Michael’s cheek. He does not speak. Everyone is standing now; Isabel has her hands to her mouth, her eyes wide. Michael suddenly embraces Maraq.
`Mind the fascias, Michael, they can be sharp’. I hear my father’s voice for the first time. They remain locked together for an age. I could almost hear Michael’s anguish. `How many times can I bear to lose you, Max, and not lose my fucking mind! Where in god’s name have you been’ he says slowly, his mouth trembling, his voice unsteady. Isabel approaches, as if in a dream. `Max?’ she looks at the young male S’eeth, trying to see her brother. `How is this possible?’ and then she looks at me. I am stunned – there is no other word – I cannot really hear anything, and I can only look at my father as if he is a picture, a memory of someone.
`Julian?’ Michael pulls away and reaches for my arm. Maraq kisses my cheek, his own eyes are shining, and I notice that they are no longer blue, the brilliant shocking blue that I first noticed on Eqbatana, they are deep brown, luminous, flecked with gold. I break down sobbing. He holds me close, as close as I can to his shoulder ridges. `Why did you hide from me?’ I say softly.
`Because I love you, and because we still have a small, somewhat dangerous job to finish, Julian. I so wanted to tell you, to run to you on the landing pad at Eqbatana – and walking through the darkness to S’eeth, I wanted to tell you a thousand times who I was'. I recall the journey, the intensity of Maraq, I could feel him burning his thoughts into mine. My face glows with relief. `I should have recognised you.’
I stand back for Isabel, who in some senses still seems unable to accept this. `Will you stay this way, Max?’ she asks.
`For now. Shape shifting is a very painful process, and it is best to do it as infrequently as I can, but I have done it rather a lot over the years’ he smiles at Jesse who nods in recognition. `Besides, I quite like being 17 again.’ He smiles. We become aware of the President. Jesse smiles faintly and shakes his head. He looks at Max for a long time, and then he says `Hello Wilcox!’ I look sharply at my father and he is laughing. `No flies on you, Mr. Attorney General!’ and they shake hands and embrace.
`Wilcox?’ asks Isabel, who is clearly one revelation away from a major breakdown.
`Iz! It’s Ok. It’s a long and complex story, incredibly dangerous, and incredibly long for me! But god it was funny!’ he suddenly laughs. I have never really seen the S’eeth laugh before, and in some senses I have never heard Max laugh like this. `Michael I never realised what a horrible teenager you were, or how sickeningly couply I was with Liz, or how MUCH we loved each other, all of us!! Or how mean you were to Maria! And as for those futile attempts to not tell me who you all were!! I almost burst out laughing the day you were sent to tell me, Michael!’ These revelations bust from him as if he has been struggling to keep them to himself.
Michael frowns and then distantly remembers, `You mean when I went and told Wilcox – you? – that we were aliens!’
`Yes! Isabel and Max sent you out to find me!’ and Max laughs again, `the day the Antarian ship showed up, March 30th 2006!! You were so put out when I said I knew all about you! That I had always known about you’
`Max that was nearly fifty years ago!’
`Sorry – this is not a time to joke – but all of this is running around my head – to me it is very recent you see, just a few weeks ago, seeing you all, seeing all of us again, in Bone Hill House, meeting Grey again, that was hard, seeing that beautiful man again’ he seems to get the better of his mirth, and then he smiles again `but god that was very funny as well! Grey would say to me `Look Wilcox, Michael doesn’t like you, and I have to say I am not terribly taken with Michael, but there it is! He thinks you’re a spy, he is always watching us!I must go and talk to Max about this!’ Isabel and Michael are laughing now.
Excluded from this odd reunion, I look bemused from face to face. Michael shakes his head, with tears running down his face. `God I knew you were a spy, you bastard! I knew it!’ Maraq – Max – looks at the time, `Madam President, indulge me just a moment and then we have to go!’ The codex entry - seemingly by itself - shifts forward from Grey’s first meeting with Jesse to October 31st 2003, another part of the codex that Maitland has excluded. `You have to look at this!’ Max sounds like Max at 17, but only Isabel, Kyle and Michael can remember.
October 31st, 2003.
We arrived after breakfast, having driven through a breathtaking landscape of mountain and pine. Approaching the house form the lodge is like the opening credits in a sort of historical drama on TV. I cannot believe that this is our house! Am I mad – are we both mad? In the wide blue light of midmorning Bone Hill House stood like a city in its own right, a forest of turrets and towers and wide blank windows. Dorothea seemed to be having second thoughts, either that or she was suddenly aware of the size of the place. I reassured her. We had plans. We could do anything with this place! We could make it into a theme park!! We could be safe here. I parked the car. Dorothea crunched off over the gravel to a solid neo-Elizabethan doorway, a wide terrace on either side, to the left a conservatory with long elegant windows like an Orangery.
Two people were standing in the doorway of the house, the housekeeper Miss Clever, and a tall man wearing an overall and holding a broom. This was the handyman come general dogsbody called Wilcox. We had inherited these two with the House, and they had been acting as caretakers, since the property fell vacant several years ago. It was an odd feeling having domestics; it had made me feel uncomfortable, as if I was adopting an affectation. (Or was I embarrassed that I secretly liked the idea?)
I greeted Miss Clever and shook hands with Wilcox. He grabbed my hand very firmly and seemed oddly emotional. When I looked at him he looked almost tearful, and I had the most curious sensation that he knew me, knew me rather well in fact. He said he was so glad to meet me after all this time. I had felt myself blushing slightly. `Do I know you?’ I had asked carefully, looking at him keenly, trying to remember his face.
`Not yet Julian, I mean, Professor Grey, not yet, but you will’ he had seemed a little flustered.
`Julian is fine, of course you must call me Julian.' he had still been holding my hand. `And your first name?’ I could not possibly go about calling him Wilcox. It made him sound like a butler or a dog. He looked bemused, and he had stared at Miss Clever in such a way as to imply he wasn’t sure he had a first name, or if he did he couldn’t remember. Miss Clever looked rather helplessly at us all. `Oh, look Wilcox will do just fine, Julian, really.’
I thought him very odd, but likable. He watched me walk into the house, and the then he said to me with odd prescience, `I think this room will make an excellent study for you. It has a fantastic view of the terrace and a good light'. He had led me to the front of the house, and I had noticed, in the inside pocket of his overall, a copy of The Tempest.
`What was Wilcox’s first name!’ says Max, sounding exasperated. Michael laughs. `He never told us the first time, so you never knew!’ Isabel is also smiling, but vaguely, like someone who is still waiting for the punch line. `What happened to the real Wilcox?’ she asks.
`You still don’t quite get this do you!’ Max turns serious, and looks at Alexandria as if suddenly aware that she is the President. `I am sorry – forgive me – its just it has been such a unique experience!’ Alexandria smiles and stands
`There is nothing to forgive, Max. It is an honour to meet you, in whatever form. At some stage I would like an explanation of the painting, if only because that rather alarmed me.’
`I will, there is a lot still to explain, but we have to go to Bone Hill House, urgently. Madam President. In a few hours time, Liz and Om will come through the portal, and something rather dramatic will happen. In the meantime, the Shalloth warships might try and destroy what they can of any remaining evidence. Oh’ he pauses, as he puts his arm around me, `and bring some body bags’
`But Jesse, you know that Grey didn’t believe in coincidences!’ and he says this in such a way that I know immediately who he is.
Michael does as well, perhaps he knew before me. Isabel is still unsure, still looking curiously. Kyle – I think Kyle knew the moment they met. Look not at the form of something, the outward appearance, look within. Beyond our tight circle, Alexandria and Jesse have noted the change in the atmosphere, the stillness of revelation. We are all looking at Maraq – at Max – and Michael stands up and walks towards the Antarian Ambassador. I am still unable to move, to really comprehend what is happening. I see a single tear fall down Michael’s cheek. He does not speak. Everyone is standing now; Isabel has her hands to her mouth, her eyes wide. Michael suddenly embraces Maraq.
`Mind the fascias, Michael, they can be sharp’. I hear my father’s voice for the first time. They remain locked together for an age. I could almost hear Michael’s anguish. `How many times can I bear to lose you, Max, and not lose my fucking mind! Where in god’s name have you been’ he says slowly, his mouth trembling, his voice unsteady. Isabel approaches, as if in a dream. `Max?’ she looks at the young male S’eeth, trying to see her brother. `How is this possible?’ and then she looks at me. I am stunned – there is no other word – I cannot really hear anything, and I can only look at my father as if he is a picture, a memory of someone.
`Julian?’ Michael pulls away and reaches for my arm. Maraq kisses my cheek, his own eyes are shining, and I notice that they are no longer blue, the brilliant shocking blue that I first noticed on Eqbatana, they are deep brown, luminous, flecked with gold. I break down sobbing. He holds me close, as close as I can to his shoulder ridges. `Why did you hide from me?’ I say softly.
`Because I love you, and because we still have a small, somewhat dangerous job to finish, Julian. I so wanted to tell you, to run to you on the landing pad at Eqbatana – and walking through the darkness to S’eeth, I wanted to tell you a thousand times who I was'. I recall the journey, the intensity of Maraq, I could feel him burning his thoughts into mine. My face glows with relief. `I should have recognised you.’
I stand back for Isabel, who in some senses still seems unable to accept this. `Will you stay this way, Max?’ she asks.
`For now. Shape shifting is a very painful process, and it is best to do it as infrequently as I can, but I have done it rather a lot over the years’ he smiles at Jesse who nods in recognition. `Besides, I quite like being 17 again.’ He smiles. We become aware of the President. Jesse smiles faintly and shakes his head. He looks at Max for a long time, and then he says `Hello Wilcox!’ I look sharply at my father and he is laughing. `No flies on you, Mr. Attorney General!’ and they shake hands and embrace.
`Wilcox?’ asks Isabel, who is clearly one revelation away from a major breakdown.
`Iz! It’s Ok. It’s a long and complex story, incredibly dangerous, and incredibly long for me! But god it was funny!’ he suddenly laughs. I have never really seen the S’eeth laugh before, and in some senses I have never heard Max laugh like this. `Michael I never realised what a horrible teenager you were, or how sickeningly couply I was with Liz, or how MUCH we loved each other, all of us!! Or how mean you were to Maria! And as for those futile attempts to not tell me who you all were!! I almost burst out laughing the day you were sent to tell me, Michael!’ These revelations bust from him as if he has been struggling to keep them to himself.
Michael frowns and then distantly remembers, `You mean when I went and told Wilcox – you? – that we were aliens!’
`Yes! Isabel and Max sent you out to find me!’ and Max laughs again, `the day the Antarian ship showed up, March 30th 2006!! You were so put out when I said I knew all about you! That I had always known about you’
`Max that was nearly fifty years ago!’
`Sorry – this is not a time to joke – but all of this is running around my head – to me it is very recent you see, just a few weeks ago, seeing you all, seeing all of us again, in Bone Hill House, meeting Grey again, that was hard, seeing that beautiful man again’ he seems to get the better of his mirth, and then he smiles again `but god that was very funny as well! Grey would say to me `Look Wilcox, Michael doesn’t like you, and I have to say I am not terribly taken with Michael, but there it is! He thinks you’re a spy, he is always watching us!I must go and talk to Max about this!’ Isabel and Michael are laughing now.
Excluded from this odd reunion, I look bemused from face to face. Michael shakes his head, with tears running down his face. `God I knew you were a spy, you bastard! I knew it!’ Maraq – Max – looks at the time, `Madam President, indulge me just a moment and then we have to go!’ The codex entry - seemingly by itself - shifts forward from Grey’s first meeting with Jesse to October 31st 2003, another part of the codex that Maitland has excluded. `You have to look at this!’ Max sounds like Max at 17, but only Isabel, Kyle and Michael can remember.
October 31st, 2003.
We arrived after breakfast, having driven through a breathtaking landscape of mountain and pine. Approaching the house form the lodge is like the opening credits in a sort of historical drama on TV. I cannot believe that this is our house! Am I mad – are we both mad? In the wide blue light of midmorning Bone Hill House stood like a city in its own right, a forest of turrets and towers and wide blank windows. Dorothea seemed to be having second thoughts, either that or she was suddenly aware of the size of the place. I reassured her. We had plans. We could do anything with this place! We could make it into a theme park!! We could be safe here. I parked the car. Dorothea crunched off over the gravel to a solid neo-Elizabethan doorway, a wide terrace on either side, to the left a conservatory with long elegant windows like an Orangery.
Two people were standing in the doorway of the house, the housekeeper Miss Clever, and a tall man wearing an overall and holding a broom. This was the handyman come general dogsbody called Wilcox. We had inherited these two with the House, and they had been acting as caretakers, since the property fell vacant several years ago. It was an odd feeling having domestics; it had made me feel uncomfortable, as if I was adopting an affectation. (Or was I embarrassed that I secretly liked the idea?)
I greeted Miss Clever and shook hands with Wilcox. He grabbed my hand very firmly and seemed oddly emotional. When I looked at him he looked almost tearful, and I had the most curious sensation that he knew me, knew me rather well in fact. He said he was so glad to meet me after all this time. I had felt myself blushing slightly. `Do I know you?’ I had asked carefully, looking at him keenly, trying to remember his face.
`Not yet Julian, I mean, Professor Grey, not yet, but you will’ he had seemed a little flustered.
`Julian is fine, of course you must call me Julian.' he had still been holding my hand. `And your first name?’ I could not possibly go about calling him Wilcox. It made him sound like a butler or a dog. He looked bemused, and he had stared at Miss Clever in such a way as to imply he wasn’t sure he had a first name, or if he did he couldn’t remember. Miss Clever looked rather helplessly at us all. `Oh, look Wilcox will do just fine, Julian, really.’
I thought him very odd, but likable. He watched me walk into the house, and the then he said to me with odd prescience, `I think this room will make an excellent study for you. It has a fantastic view of the terrace and a good light'. He had led me to the front of the house, and I had noticed, in the inside pocket of his overall, a copy of The Tempest.
`What was Wilcox’s first name!’ says Max, sounding exasperated. Michael laughs. `He never told us the first time, so you never knew!’ Isabel is also smiling, but vaguely, like someone who is still waiting for the punch line. `What happened to the real Wilcox?’ she asks.
`You still don’t quite get this do you!’ Max turns serious, and looks at Alexandria as if suddenly aware that she is the President. `I am sorry – forgive me – its just it has been such a unique experience!’ Alexandria smiles and stands
`There is nothing to forgive, Max. It is an honour to meet you, in whatever form. At some stage I would like an explanation of the painting, if only because that rather alarmed me.’
`I will, there is a lot still to explain, but we have to go to Bone Hill House, urgently. Madam President. In a few hours time, Liz and Om will come through the portal, and something rather dramatic will happen. In the meantime, the Shalloth warships might try and destroy what they can of any remaining evidence. Oh’ he pauses, as he puts his arm around me, `and bring some body bags’
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Patroclus76
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the penultimate episode...........
_____________________________________________________________________
Excerpts from the journals of Julian Evans. Earth Ambassador to Antar,
June 12th 2055.
The elaborate plans that have been made to disguise our location, and the equally elaborate devices laid to ensure we leave without being seen, are all abandoned as we run to the waiting Hoppers. We surface through what appears to be a sort of sports club, and there is genuine consternation and surprise as the President and several leading figures of the administration walk out of a broom cupboard. I smile at people as we run past. Maraq Max swirls out, his cloak about him and his piercings jingling. Several people instinctively bow, while Iz is immediately recognised and there is some clapping. `People will think it’s an election stunt’ says Michael, elated, like an old warhorse that is suddenly back in harness. `God I have missed this!’ he exclaims.
I see Alex pressing her earpiece communicator hard to the side of her head, and nodding. She beckons to Maraq Max, `The shalloth warships are moving in – what do I do? Should we shoot?’
`Not yet Madam President, I’ll contact them in a moment, hopefully earlier plans on Eqbatana are coming into play. My S’eeth brothers should be very close behind by now.’ She acknowledges this. `And can I leave the Europeans to you?’ he adds and the President grins. I look at my father. The absurd notion that this young Antarian male is my father makes me laugh, and as I laugh I feel once again the immense, inexpressible joy of knowing that Max is back with me. We clamber into the Presidential Hopper, while a guard detail appears from nowhere and clambers into another. I see overhead, already forming, an escort of fighter aircraft. We jump up into the sky and a small crowd of bemused well-wishers wave at us.
During the short hop across the old heartlands of the former United States, I doze pleasantly, the soft buzz and grogginess of an afternoon powernap. I hear the President talking behind me, rapidly and yet calmly to various people, Prime Ministers, Presidents, Secretary-Generals. She doesn’t even break a sweat, and when she sees me watching, she smiles, mid instruction. In front, I hear howls and cahoots of laughter as if Maraq-Max, through magic, has managed to regress the rest of my family back to match his age! They are all over the place in time. Max apologises to Kyle for being `unreasonable’ during some incident in 1999 and they start laughing again. `I never told them to rough you up, and Liz went ballistic when she found out’. They are now talking about Wilcox again and my father is recounting all the times that he and S’eeth Sia Ova kept running into each other at Bone Hill House, both looking for the Granolith.
`It would usually be at night, and S’eeth would creek by pretending to be `stretching’. I was always pretending to be cleaning and levelling paintings. S’eeth Sia Ova was very interested in art, but I am afraid I had to make up a lot of the titles and the artists because I was so ignorant’ more laugher.
`But why didn’t you just tell S’eeth who you were and show him where the Granolith was!’ Iz sounds exasperated.
`Because I didn’t know! Don’t forget I went back before Michael’s time bandits went back, so I did not know about the portal. They came through into September 1999 in Bone Hill House, which was of course at that stage, empty. In fact it was only with Julian in Eqbatana just now, looking through the portal from the Antarian side that I finally realised where it is!’ I wake up and listen attentively.
`And where is it?’ asks Kyle.
`Well, S’eeth and I believed that it was between Bone Hill House and Eqbatana, on the threshold. The Shalloth technicians who worked with us told us that it was possible to hide the Granolith in time itself. And as you know, my Enlightened friend, all of the Antarian races are drawn to liminal, threshold spaces, it would have appealed to the Shalloth. Yet when I took Julian to show him the portal and the painting, I recognised the doors of the portal.’
I turn around to look at him, recalling my entry in this diary a few days ago: ` Maraq turns left and takes me to a huge doorway set in the walls. It seems to be made of dark matt coloured wood, beautifully and intricately carved. I have seen these doors somewhere before’
`I finally understood. The Granolith is not hidden in Bone Hill House, it is Bone Hill House. The doors in Eqbatana are the same as the doors to the library. And that is were the main operating panels must be.’
`You know,’ chimes in Michael, `and I am not just saying this now with the benefit of hindsight, but I always thought Bone Hill House seemed larger on the inside than it looked from the outside. I mean, I used to play a lot of golf in there –
`Yeah, and it drove Grey mad! You used to play with his best Bavarian crystal tumblers! I used to pick up your balls all the time –'
`Yeah, whatever Max – he gave me those tumblers in the end as a wedding present, for your information and Maria smashed the last one a few weeks ago! Anyway, what I am getting at is that it seemed sometimes to change. Sometimes rooms were there and then not, and sometimes well, corridors were longer and then shorter’
Isabel is frowning and rolling her eyes. `You’re just making that up! I still think it is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen!’
Alexandria is trying to listen to this conversation, as well as conduct some form of link diplomacy with Brussels at the same time.
We are coming in over Washington state on a brilliant summer morning, and soon Bone Hill House will roll and pitch into view, set in its green estate and the wide vistas of the mountains. `Is that what you plan to do now Max’ Alex asks `To find the Granolith and de-activate it?’
`Yes – to destroy it - but first Liz and Om have to come back through it otherwise they will be trapped in 2009, the year that Wilcox died. Just before I came forward they had overwhelmed Maitland and his last surviving assistant, he was about tot ell them everything. Hopefully Liz will have worked out what I now know – and will be going about removing the key’
`Is that possible?’ asks Michael. `The last Granolith I saw the key sort of just vanished inside and, once started, it couldn’t be switched off’
`That was an old design. This is the Mother of all Granoliths – the perfection of the art of temporal technology, the temple to end all temples. It could be used endlessly and the key could be removed and reinserted at will. It also had multiple portals, although some were fake, to confuse and disguise. It was like a giant hall of mirrors. One of the portals led to Eqbatana, another to the original pod chamber in Roswell, others led no where, or back on themselves, loops i times.’
`Jesus’ says Michael. The Hopper pitches suddenly nose down and we swirl towards a landing. `How did Liz and Om manage to travel back to you? I take it that Liz was Miss Clever?’ asks Isabel, with a slightly raised eyebrow.
`Yes’ Max smiles to himself, `But she couldn’t stay for long. She kept dropping in and out, although Om had more luck. When we found the secret facility in Ar’gar in 2044 we discovered a lot of new and unusual technology. Just before we set the trap by replying to the intercepted messages sent to Earth about the bribes, several key Shalloth collaborators were able to explain to us what we had found. They were not temporal charges, or temporal displacers – such as the one we all experienced in Roswell many years ago. These new devices were a form of short term hand held time machine, the Shalloth call them taggers, able to project an individual to a specific pre-set time and then back again. Clearly by the 2040, the new leaders of the conspiracy were abandoning the idea of ever finding the key to the Granolith, and were trying out alternative forms of technology to jump to a given time reference and carry out what was in effect an assassination’
`Hmm, that’s why you found the coordinates to Roswell in Ar’gar, and the date September 1999’ Iz has followed this more than she thinks.
`Yes – although we knew that the original Granolith time frame was the same, we had known that in 2040. When I jumped to Roswell the first time, a few days ahead of the date I discovered that there were a stock pile of taggers in the original Pod chamber. I removed several and hid them somewhere else. So when I came forward to 2055 I sent Liz and Om there to use them and come back and help me keep the timeline straight’.
`Why did you not return to the same time you left from, 2044?’ I ask.
`Because I was able to find that the original time bandits came from 2055, so initially at least to avoid a time paradox, I came back just after they had left.’
`Now you know where the Granolith is you’re not going to have to go back, are you?’ I say this with evident anxiety. Max reaches out and rubs the back of my neck with his fingers, playfully
`No, the Granolith will come to us, since we’re fresh out of tags’
`And this shape shifting business’ I ask, `How is that possible? I mean you’re incredibly beautiful and strapping but I want my father back!’ Max laughs.
`It has been growing on me for some time, since I started to spend time on Antar, but it was an extraordinary side effect of the use of the time tag. It seems to have released some form of radiation that has switched on a series of genes otherwise dormant. Om of course, as you probably knew, has always had the ability, he-she never really understood how to use it.’
Bone Hill House is below us, splendid, vast. There is a lot of activity on the formal lawns in front of the main façade. `It must have been hard for you’ says Kyle to Max suddenly `as well as fun, living through it all a second time. There must have been things you wanted to change, such as the death of Alex, the escape of Tess?’ I catch a strange look in Max’s face, a strange empty look of great sorrow. `Yes, but we were sworn to keeping the line as we had experienced it, every awful, shocking moment, every single act of betrayal was to stay the same.’ I think it an odd expression to use, betrayal.
My mind runs over Grey’s codex, as fresh in my mind from its recent publication as Max’s time in Roswell and Bone Hill House is in his. I recall the curious conversation between Grey and S’eeth Sia Ova outside the library. It is April 17th, 2006. They had been looking at the Caravaggio painting `The Taking of Christ’ Grey, un characteristically stung by S’eeth’s interest in the picture had asked `is this about betrayal or forgiveness?’ I am not the only one to have picked up a thread, or tone to Max’s reply.
Michael looks at Max and says `Please tell me now that this has NOTHING to do with Tess!’
`Max – can you come here a minute’ Alex asks, her voice showing the first signs of concern. She is holding out a communicator link for him.
On the lawns stand a crowd of officials, and some regularly army units appear to be hurriedly mounting some form of gun placement. As we land we see two V shaped vessels above us, garishly painted in red and black zigzags – with Antarian writings (in the Shalloth script) down the side of the hulls. They are descending slowly. Above these I see two FSA short range star ships coming down as well. As soon as we come to a stop we all bound out.
The air is warm and deep with the smell of pine resin and damp earth. Max walks forward, looking up at the ships; the light catches his eyes and the smooth curve of his cheek. His long hair plait makes him look like a Native American, his body armour, which for the first time strikes me as oddly erotic, makes him look like a warrior. I see the tattoo on his forehead clearly. It shows a sort of cubic design, joined by an X. He is a shaman now, someone from outside time itself. I do not know him. I hear the sonic boom as more ships enter the atmosphere.
He raises his right hand and threads of blue white light crackle upwards to the lead vessel. He then closes his eyes and speaks words I cannot hear, like an incantation. He maintains this pose for some minutes and then lowers his hand. `We don’t have much time’ he says calmly, `they are divided amongst themselves as ever, and will not listen to me. Madam President, can you take over this and keep them talking, stall them as long as possible’
Alex looks bewildered but complies with extraordinary courage. `Of course’ She stands on the terrace and talks calmly into her link. `This action is in violation of the Bone Hill Protocols and the long peace between Antar and Earth, you are acting against the wishes of the Antarian Government and the governments on Earth. I order you to stand down. I repeat, this is President Alexandria...’
Max turns and walks with us all briskly into the great hallway. Here, where once, many years ago, my Roswellian family posed for photographs, we confront a series of gift shops and desks. Myself, Isabel, Jesse and Michael struggle to keep up, as Max’s long Antarian legs carry him fast down the main spine of the house towards the library. As we approach I notice that something strange has happened. The library doors are slightly open, but they look larger than they should, as if they have been superimposed badly onto the wall itself. Max pulls them open, and I have a vivid recollection of him pulling back the doors in Eqbatana to show the long gallery and the view through the painting. To my amazement Liz is kneeling on the floor of the libary with Maitland in her arms, evidently dead, his shirt burned away and showing a white handprint seared onto his upper chest. Behind her the books and great casings of the library are transparent, wavering like a mirage, unfocused. You can see through the entire room into strange curious dimensions beyond. A tall, beautiful women is standing by my mothers side, looking dejected, with her arms by her side. She is clearly an Antarian, a Valaen perhaps, but then I realise that this is Om.
At our feet, evidently thrown across the marbled floor, is a long crystalline rod covered in blood. Max runs and kneels with Liz, kissing her face and head, holding her to him tightly. We crowd about, Liz looking up and smiling. She looks tired, her white grey hair around her face as if she has been running. She smiles at me faintly. `How’s it going out there, Max?’
`Badly’ he says `What happened?’ He looks at Om, who has nodded to me.
`He tried to regain the key and I had no choice I am afraid, I am sorry father. I have killed my own kin’
Max closes his eyes, tears shine on his blue-grey cheeks. He holds Maitland’s head with infinite care, and closes his eyes. `It had to be done. He was too deep in the treachery to turn back at the end. We have to destroy the Granolith – ‘ as he speaks there is a massive boom and the entire house shakes. `Everyone out, quickly’ he says – Liz, still kneeling, looks at Max and her expression is clear, calm, inscrutable.
I have seen this look on her face before, the acknowledgement of a decision she and Max have already taken. My father kneels still by the body of the dead man and Liz stands. She comes to me and buries her hands in my chest. Max says to me `Go, Julian, go all of you and joint the President, quickly, now!’ I look briefly down at the body. My father retrieves the key `Go!!’
There is another massive explosion and we can hear a lot of screaming. We hear people running through the house from the front entrance. We run out of the library and make the main hall with difficulty. The Shalloth vessels are firing, needle white threads of power burning down at us. I scream as I realise that Alexandria is dead – a huge hole has been blasted in the front of the terrace. I go to run forward but Jesse pulls me back. `There is nothing we can do now, quickly, back –‘ I see, or think I see, more ships coming towards the house, and as I shield my eyes, something fires on the lead Shalloth vessel and it cracks from bow to stern in one great internal whoof of an explosion. The S’eeth have arrived. In fact S’eeth males are materialising around me, seemingly springing from the ground like dragons teeth. `Alex!!!!!!!’ I scream, `Alex!!' Jesse is pulling me back again, and then there is an odd crumbling sound, like walls or floors being stacked together, and all is utter darkness.
codex II concludes tomorrow.........
_____________________________________________________________________
Excerpts from the journals of Julian Evans. Earth Ambassador to Antar,
June 12th 2055.
The elaborate plans that have been made to disguise our location, and the equally elaborate devices laid to ensure we leave without being seen, are all abandoned as we run to the waiting Hoppers. We surface through what appears to be a sort of sports club, and there is genuine consternation and surprise as the President and several leading figures of the administration walk out of a broom cupboard. I smile at people as we run past. Maraq Max swirls out, his cloak about him and his piercings jingling. Several people instinctively bow, while Iz is immediately recognised and there is some clapping. `People will think it’s an election stunt’ says Michael, elated, like an old warhorse that is suddenly back in harness. `God I have missed this!’ he exclaims.
I see Alex pressing her earpiece communicator hard to the side of her head, and nodding. She beckons to Maraq Max, `The shalloth warships are moving in – what do I do? Should we shoot?’
`Not yet Madam President, I’ll contact them in a moment, hopefully earlier plans on Eqbatana are coming into play. My S’eeth brothers should be very close behind by now.’ She acknowledges this. `And can I leave the Europeans to you?’ he adds and the President grins. I look at my father. The absurd notion that this young Antarian male is my father makes me laugh, and as I laugh I feel once again the immense, inexpressible joy of knowing that Max is back with me. We clamber into the Presidential Hopper, while a guard detail appears from nowhere and clambers into another. I see overhead, already forming, an escort of fighter aircraft. We jump up into the sky and a small crowd of bemused well-wishers wave at us.
During the short hop across the old heartlands of the former United States, I doze pleasantly, the soft buzz and grogginess of an afternoon powernap. I hear the President talking behind me, rapidly and yet calmly to various people, Prime Ministers, Presidents, Secretary-Generals. She doesn’t even break a sweat, and when she sees me watching, she smiles, mid instruction. In front, I hear howls and cahoots of laughter as if Maraq-Max, through magic, has managed to regress the rest of my family back to match his age! They are all over the place in time. Max apologises to Kyle for being `unreasonable’ during some incident in 1999 and they start laughing again. `I never told them to rough you up, and Liz went ballistic when she found out’. They are now talking about Wilcox again and my father is recounting all the times that he and S’eeth Sia Ova kept running into each other at Bone Hill House, both looking for the Granolith.
`It would usually be at night, and S’eeth would creek by pretending to be `stretching’. I was always pretending to be cleaning and levelling paintings. S’eeth Sia Ova was very interested in art, but I am afraid I had to make up a lot of the titles and the artists because I was so ignorant’ more laugher.
`But why didn’t you just tell S’eeth who you were and show him where the Granolith was!’ Iz sounds exasperated.
`Because I didn’t know! Don’t forget I went back before Michael’s time bandits went back, so I did not know about the portal. They came through into September 1999 in Bone Hill House, which was of course at that stage, empty. In fact it was only with Julian in Eqbatana just now, looking through the portal from the Antarian side that I finally realised where it is!’ I wake up and listen attentively.
`And where is it?’ asks Kyle.
`Well, S’eeth and I believed that it was between Bone Hill House and Eqbatana, on the threshold. The Shalloth technicians who worked with us told us that it was possible to hide the Granolith in time itself. And as you know, my Enlightened friend, all of the Antarian races are drawn to liminal, threshold spaces, it would have appealed to the Shalloth. Yet when I took Julian to show him the portal and the painting, I recognised the doors of the portal.’
I turn around to look at him, recalling my entry in this diary a few days ago: ` Maraq turns left and takes me to a huge doorway set in the walls. It seems to be made of dark matt coloured wood, beautifully and intricately carved. I have seen these doors somewhere before’
`I finally understood. The Granolith is not hidden in Bone Hill House, it is Bone Hill House. The doors in Eqbatana are the same as the doors to the library. And that is were the main operating panels must be.’
`You know,’ chimes in Michael, `and I am not just saying this now with the benefit of hindsight, but I always thought Bone Hill House seemed larger on the inside than it looked from the outside. I mean, I used to play a lot of golf in there –
`Yeah, and it drove Grey mad! You used to play with his best Bavarian crystal tumblers! I used to pick up your balls all the time –'
`Yeah, whatever Max – he gave me those tumblers in the end as a wedding present, for your information and Maria smashed the last one a few weeks ago! Anyway, what I am getting at is that it seemed sometimes to change. Sometimes rooms were there and then not, and sometimes well, corridors were longer and then shorter’
Isabel is frowning and rolling her eyes. `You’re just making that up! I still think it is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen!’
Alexandria is trying to listen to this conversation, as well as conduct some form of link diplomacy with Brussels at the same time.
We are coming in over Washington state on a brilliant summer morning, and soon Bone Hill House will roll and pitch into view, set in its green estate and the wide vistas of the mountains. `Is that what you plan to do now Max’ Alex asks `To find the Granolith and de-activate it?’
`Yes – to destroy it - but first Liz and Om have to come back through it otherwise they will be trapped in 2009, the year that Wilcox died. Just before I came forward they had overwhelmed Maitland and his last surviving assistant, he was about tot ell them everything. Hopefully Liz will have worked out what I now know – and will be going about removing the key’
`Is that possible?’ asks Michael. `The last Granolith I saw the key sort of just vanished inside and, once started, it couldn’t be switched off’
`That was an old design. This is the Mother of all Granoliths – the perfection of the art of temporal technology, the temple to end all temples. It could be used endlessly and the key could be removed and reinserted at will. It also had multiple portals, although some were fake, to confuse and disguise. It was like a giant hall of mirrors. One of the portals led to Eqbatana, another to the original pod chamber in Roswell, others led no where, or back on themselves, loops i times.’
`Jesus’ says Michael. The Hopper pitches suddenly nose down and we swirl towards a landing. `How did Liz and Om manage to travel back to you? I take it that Liz was Miss Clever?’ asks Isabel, with a slightly raised eyebrow.
`Yes’ Max smiles to himself, `But she couldn’t stay for long. She kept dropping in and out, although Om had more luck. When we found the secret facility in Ar’gar in 2044 we discovered a lot of new and unusual technology. Just before we set the trap by replying to the intercepted messages sent to Earth about the bribes, several key Shalloth collaborators were able to explain to us what we had found. They were not temporal charges, or temporal displacers – such as the one we all experienced in Roswell many years ago. These new devices were a form of short term hand held time machine, the Shalloth call them taggers, able to project an individual to a specific pre-set time and then back again. Clearly by the 2040, the new leaders of the conspiracy were abandoning the idea of ever finding the key to the Granolith, and were trying out alternative forms of technology to jump to a given time reference and carry out what was in effect an assassination’
`Hmm, that’s why you found the coordinates to Roswell in Ar’gar, and the date September 1999’ Iz has followed this more than she thinks.
`Yes – although we knew that the original Granolith time frame was the same, we had known that in 2040. When I jumped to Roswell the first time, a few days ahead of the date I discovered that there were a stock pile of taggers in the original Pod chamber. I removed several and hid them somewhere else. So when I came forward to 2055 I sent Liz and Om there to use them and come back and help me keep the timeline straight’.
`Why did you not return to the same time you left from, 2044?’ I ask.
`Because I was able to find that the original time bandits came from 2055, so initially at least to avoid a time paradox, I came back just after they had left.’
`Now you know where the Granolith is you’re not going to have to go back, are you?’ I say this with evident anxiety. Max reaches out and rubs the back of my neck with his fingers, playfully
`No, the Granolith will come to us, since we’re fresh out of tags’
`And this shape shifting business’ I ask, `How is that possible? I mean you’re incredibly beautiful and strapping but I want my father back!’ Max laughs.
`It has been growing on me for some time, since I started to spend time on Antar, but it was an extraordinary side effect of the use of the time tag. It seems to have released some form of radiation that has switched on a series of genes otherwise dormant. Om of course, as you probably knew, has always had the ability, he-she never really understood how to use it.’
Bone Hill House is below us, splendid, vast. There is a lot of activity on the formal lawns in front of the main façade. `It must have been hard for you’ says Kyle to Max suddenly `as well as fun, living through it all a second time. There must have been things you wanted to change, such as the death of Alex, the escape of Tess?’ I catch a strange look in Max’s face, a strange empty look of great sorrow. `Yes, but we were sworn to keeping the line as we had experienced it, every awful, shocking moment, every single act of betrayal was to stay the same.’ I think it an odd expression to use, betrayal.
My mind runs over Grey’s codex, as fresh in my mind from its recent publication as Max’s time in Roswell and Bone Hill House is in his. I recall the curious conversation between Grey and S’eeth Sia Ova outside the library. It is April 17th, 2006. They had been looking at the Caravaggio painting `The Taking of Christ’ Grey, un characteristically stung by S’eeth’s interest in the picture had asked `is this about betrayal or forgiveness?’ I am not the only one to have picked up a thread, or tone to Max’s reply.
Michael looks at Max and says `Please tell me now that this has NOTHING to do with Tess!’
`Max – can you come here a minute’ Alex asks, her voice showing the first signs of concern. She is holding out a communicator link for him.
On the lawns stand a crowd of officials, and some regularly army units appear to be hurriedly mounting some form of gun placement. As we land we see two V shaped vessels above us, garishly painted in red and black zigzags – with Antarian writings (in the Shalloth script) down the side of the hulls. They are descending slowly. Above these I see two FSA short range star ships coming down as well. As soon as we come to a stop we all bound out.
The air is warm and deep with the smell of pine resin and damp earth. Max walks forward, looking up at the ships; the light catches his eyes and the smooth curve of his cheek. His long hair plait makes him look like a Native American, his body armour, which for the first time strikes me as oddly erotic, makes him look like a warrior. I see the tattoo on his forehead clearly. It shows a sort of cubic design, joined by an X. He is a shaman now, someone from outside time itself. I do not know him. I hear the sonic boom as more ships enter the atmosphere.
He raises his right hand and threads of blue white light crackle upwards to the lead vessel. He then closes his eyes and speaks words I cannot hear, like an incantation. He maintains this pose for some minutes and then lowers his hand. `We don’t have much time’ he says calmly, `they are divided amongst themselves as ever, and will not listen to me. Madam President, can you take over this and keep them talking, stall them as long as possible’
Alex looks bewildered but complies with extraordinary courage. `Of course’ She stands on the terrace and talks calmly into her link. `This action is in violation of the Bone Hill Protocols and the long peace between Antar and Earth, you are acting against the wishes of the Antarian Government and the governments on Earth. I order you to stand down. I repeat, this is President Alexandria...’
Max turns and walks with us all briskly into the great hallway. Here, where once, many years ago, my Roswellian family posed for photographs, we confront a series of gift shops and desks. Myself, Isabel, Jesse and Michael struggle to keep up, as Max’s long Antarian legs carry him fast down the main spine of the house towards the library. As we approach I notice that something strange has happened. The library doors are slightly open, but they look larger than they should, as if they have been superimposed badly onto the wall itself. Max pulls them open, and I have a vivid recollection of him pulling back the doors in Eqbatana to show the long gallery and the view through the painting. To my amazement Liz is kneeling on the floor of the libary with Maitland in her arms, evidently dead, his shirt burned away and showing a white handprint seared onto his upper chest. Behind her the books and great casings of the library are transparent, wavering like a mirage, unfocused. You can see through the entire room into strange curious dimensions beyond. A tall, beautiful women is standing by my mothers side, looking dejected, with her arms by her side. She is clearly an Antarian, a Valaen perhaps, but then I realise that this is Om.
At our feet, evidently thrown across the marbled floor, is a long crystalline rod covered in blood. Max runs and kneels with Liz, kissing her face and head, holding her to him tightly. We crowd about, Liz looking up and smiling. She looks tired, her white grey hair around her face as if she has been running. She smiles at me faintly. `How’s it going out there, Max?’
`Badly’ he says `What happened?’ He looks at Om, who has nodded to me.
`He tried to regain the key and I had no choice I am afraid, I am sorry father. I have killed my own kin’
Max closes his eyes, tears shine on his blue-grey cheeks. He holds Maitland’s head with infinite care, and closes his eyes. `It had to be done. He was too deep in the treachery to turn back at the end. We have to destroy the Granolith – ‘ as he speaks there is a massive boom and the entire house shakes. `Everyone out, quickly’ he says – Liz, still kneeling, looks at Max and her expression is clear, calm, inscrutable.
I have seen this look on her face before, the acknowledgement of a decision she and Max have already taken. My father kneels still by the body of the dead man and Liz stands. She comes to me and buries her hands in my chest. Max says to me `Go, Julian, go all of you and joint the President, quickly, now!’ I look briefly down at the body. My father retrieves the key `Go!!’
There is another massive explosion and we can hear a lot of screaming. We hear people running through the house from the front entrance. We run out of the library and make the main hall with difficulty. The Shalloth vessels are firing, needle white threads of power burning down at us. I scream as I realise that Alexandria is dead – a huge hole has been blasted in the front of the terrace. I go to run forward but Jesse pulls me back. `There is nothing we can do now, quickly, back –‘ I see, or think I see, more ships coming towards the house, and as I shield my eyes, something fires on the lead Shalloth vessel and it cracks from bow to stern in one great internal whoof of an explosion. The S’eeth have arrived. In fact S’eeth males are materialising around me, seemingly springing from the ground like dragons teeth. `Alex!!!!!!!’ I scream, `Alex!!' Jesse is pulling me back again, and then there is an odd crumbling sound, like walls or floors being stacked together, and all is utter darkness.
codex II concludes tomorrow.........
Last edited by Patroclus76 on Thu Apr 20, 2006 12:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Patroclus76
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Excerpts from the journal of Julian Evans, Ambassador-Designate to Antar. December 19th, 2044.
There has been a lot of confusion recently concerning the whereabouts of my father. Four days ago I received a high priority message from the newly build Orbital Relay to say that there had been some form of accident, following a heavy meteor shower in the vicinity of the Antarian moon. Max was apparently returning from a conference with my brother and their ship was reported lost. Tau Ceti (the Antarian star) is notorious for meteors and comets of all kinds, being draped in a huge net of debris.
I had rushed home to be with Liz and to wait some clarification. When I got to my mothers house she was sitting on her bed with Maria, in silence. Liz’s reaction to the news had been typical, measured, and calm. Her love for my father is beyond my comprehension, as his is for her – they are bound to it – as one – a sort of spiritual union. I was sure they communed with each other! Isabel and Michael were also there when I arrived. My Aunt was bullying some poor official at the Ministry of Antarian Affairs over a hololink. Maria was all for going to Antar immediately. `Can you feel anything? Can you sense Max at all?’ She asked Liz this, several times, `anything?’ Liz shook her head. Michael was walking about picking up objects and putting them back in the wrong place and doing that weird thing with his eyebrow. `He should never have gone. He never listens to me. Why does he never listen to me?
`Michael!’
We had sat about in an agony of anticipation until, around 7.30 in the evening, an FTL message came through from S’eeth Sia Ova to say that there had been some form of `misunderstanding’. Max and Om were alive and well but they were on Earth, at Bone Hill House and would we join them there immediately. The message had then added that Max might not be recognisable at first. We had all stared at each other, blinking. Maria played the message back several times.
`What does that mean?’ asked Isabel
`When was the transmission made?’ Michael snapped, `They must mean he is en route to Earth, for fuck sake, he can’t be here already. I will break that Antarian Stork over my knee when I see her!’. Several calls later it was clear that we were to proceed to Bone Hill House as soon as possible. Liz had cried then, through relief, holding Maria, who was livid. `Some misunderstanding! And why won’t we recognise him? Has there been some form of accident?’ Isabel had called her private transport. We made our way to the roof, pulling on coats and hats against the seasonal chill. `This had better be good’ Michael had muttered, `How can he have been on Antar, and now here in less than a week!’
`Michael don’t get yourself worked up’ Isabel pulled his coat over him properly and straightened his hat. He submitted to this in a way that he would never do with Maria. I smiled to myself. I loved seeing my aunt treat Michael like this. `And don’t argue with him when we meet, its probably S’eeth Sia Ova’s fault, you know how paranoid she gets around him!’ We took off, swinging over New York and the brilliant winking lights of Liberty Tower, heading out west. `I bet it’s more of this cloak and dagger stuff about Grey’s diaries! All this sneaking around, he doesn’t think I notice.’
We had reached Bone Hill House in the early hours of the morning. It had been snowing and the place looked indescribably beautiful. The snow had highlighted each sill, each turret, and each stone façade. In its canopy of blue-white floodlights the mansion looks magical, vast, like a huge grotto, or a child’s advent calendar, each mullioned window like a small door that could be opened to reveal a sweet or a present. Several lights were on, mostly in the main reception hall but the place looked deserted.
We had all trudged off, the swirling snow stinging our faces, great clouds of steam on our lips. Yet as we approached the terrace something odd began to happen. Isabel noticed it first, and stopped to listen. There was a curious solid silence. Not so much a quiet as the absence of all sound. We then all became aware that the ground was vibrating softly, deep down, far into the Earth. `What the fuck?’ said Michael. He was looking up at the House itself, its massive bulk looming into the deep dark of mid winter. We all looked. Bone Hill House was starting to vanish.
At first I thought it was some form of optical illusion, the intense cold after the warm flight, anxiety having given away to exhaustion. But the House was fading. We all stood together, instinctively reaching out for each other’s hands and backing away slightly. Slowly but perceptively, the huge neo-Elizabethan façade disappeared, unevenly, and from the outside inward, so we saw parts of the interior appear, like the cut away diagram used by an architect or an artist, greying into the blue gloom, until they too had gone.
As it neared the end of its mysterious annihilation we saw looming before us, entirely out of scale to the rest of the house, the huge double doors of Grey’s library. They stood open and solid, as the rest of the structures, the walls, the staircases, the furniture, all ceased to exist and blew away. Huge and vast stood the doors, intricately carved, spectral, the designs on the panels moving and swirling in threads of purple light, like an ancient script.
Between them we could see into the library itself, and this too was transformed, out of all proportion and somehow in a different time.
Summer sunshine was streaming through the great windows, westerly evening light, falling out through the doors towards us in great slabs of mellowed gold. The doors continued to grow. `Look!’ cried Liz, dropping my hand. `There are three Antarian S’eeth!’ I squinted into the sunshine, already melting the snow at my feet. I could see S’eeth Sia Ova, and Om, and a young S’eeth male wearing the white livery of a mendicant. I went to move forward but Michael held me back.
`Wait Jules, they’re coming to us’ Bone Hill House had utterly gone, all that was left were the doors, seemingly stretched to the horizon. Through them, their shadows thrown far by the setting sun, the curious trinity walked towards us. As they cleared the threshold, the great doors started to close. They swung silently and incredibly slowly back together, like time’s pendulum itself, extinguishing the light of the library slowly, until just a long luminous thread of gold chinked though the doors and then they closed, to a deep and thunderous boom the likes of which I have never heard before, and have no wish to ever hear again.
S’eeth Sia Ova made a light with her hand, Om and the young male took it up and produced a covering of light about us. It was snowing hard now and was intensely cold. We were in the middle of wide empty space. `What in God’s name just happened?’ asked Michael after a long silence. The rest of us were utterly speechless. `Qua Vendi, Michael’ said S’eeth Sia Ova.
`Whatever, and where is Max? Om?’ Om bowed to me and then turned to the S’eeth male. `This is going to be very hard to explain, but its good to see you all again! I am so glad to be home!’ My father spoke from where the S’eeth was standing. Maria fainted. I raise an eyebrow and Michael said `Fantastic, hey Max - and what happened to our ancestral home?’ but for all his bravado I could see he was deeply shaken.
`It’s a long story Michael’ said Max, and walked towards Liz. She was laughing now, the initial shock having receded. She had the face of someone half excepting some form of elaborate joke. `Max? How is this possible?’ She leaned up to kiss him, feeling his shoulder plates as she did so. `Gosh, are you going to stay like this?’
`No, if I did I will become female in thirty years, but staying 17 again could be fun?’
We walked back to the waiting transport. As we climbed in I heard S’eeth talking to the radio operator. Max apologised to us. `We have to go to Washington D.C. immediately’ and then he asked S’eeth Sia Om `Has Maitland been arrested?’ Om nodded, smiling. `Yes, caught entirely red handed with the transcripts. Arrests are taking place on Antar as well’
`Maitland?’ the name was familiar to me; an important senator rumoured one day to be a likely presidential candidate. I knew him through my lover Alexandria, an American-Lebanese Senator from Vermont.
`Yes, Henry Maitland’ I looked at the rather pretty Antarian male with his earrings and painted face and wondered. As a child I had always suspected Max could change, but never into anything as spectacular as this! I felt secretly happy that I had been proven right after all these years. He saw me looking and smiled beautifully, almost shyly.
`What’s he done? Maitland?’ asked Liz. The loss of Bone Hill House was beginning to sink into all of us. I had grown up there. It had been my home. My father and mother had lived there many years after Grey had died.
Max laughed grimly. `He has been involved in a conspiracy to pervert the course of time. But at least he is alive, we’re going to see him now.’
`All of us?’ It had sounded a little too political form me. At the brink of my diplomatic career I felt I ought to be cautious, especially if it involved Antar. `Is that wise, I don’t know him from Adam – why all of us? Shouldn’t someone from the Ministry of Antarian Affairs deal with this?’
Max looked at me strangely, an infinite sadness in his harp boned face. `Maitland is your half-brother Julian, the son Tess bore me. We are all going because I need to believe he can be saved, that he can be redeemed. Like Grey’s Prospero, I want to be reconciled.’
There was an odd silence. Liz nodded to my father in acknowledgement of something private, intimate, beyond my knowledge. The transport lifted off. S’eeth Sia then turned to my father and gave him something, something small, like a disk of silver metal. He took it in his palms and held it carefully as if it was something precious, timeless.
The End
Antarian S'eeth Burial Song - translated by Max Evans and Julian Grey April 2015, on the terrace of Bone Hill House.
There has been a lot of confusion recently concerning the whereabouts of my father. Four days ago I received a high priority message from the newly build Orbital Relay to say that there had been some form of accident, following a heavy meteor shower in the vicinity of the Antarian moon. Max was apparently returning from a conference with my brother and their ship was reported lost. Tau Ceti (the Antarian star) is notorious for meteors and comets of all kinds, being draped in a huge net of debris.
I had rushed home to be with Liz and to wait some clarification. When I got to my mothers house she was sitting on her bed with Maria, in silence. Liz’s reaction to the news had been typical, measured, and calm. Her love for my father is beyond my comprehension, as his is for her – they are bound to it – as one – a sort of spiritual union. I was sure they communed with each other! Isabel and Michael were also there when I arrived. My Aunt was bullying some poor official at the Ministry of Antarian Affairs over a hololink. Maria was all for going to Antar immediately. `Can you feel anything? Can you sense Max at all?’ She asked Liz this, several times, `anything?’ Liz shook her head. Michael was walking about picking up objects and putting them back in the wrong place and doing that weird thing with his eyebrow. `He should never have gone. He never listens to me. Why does he never listen to me?
`Michael!’
We had sat about in an agony of anticipation until, around 7.30 in the evening, an FTL message came through from S’eeth Sia Ova to say that there had been some form of `misunderstanding’. Max and Om were alive and well but they were on Earth, at Bone Hill House and would we join them there immediately. The message had then added that Max might not be recognisable at first. We had all stared at each other, blinking. Maria played the message back several times.
`What does that mean?’ asked Isabel
`When was the transmission made?’ Michael snapped, `They must mean he is en route to Earth, for fuck sake, he can’t be here already. I will break that Antarian Stork over my knee when I see her!’. Several calls later it was clear that we were to proceed to Bone Hill House as soon as possible. Liz had cried then, through relief, holding Maria, who was livid. `Some misunderstanding! And why won’t we recognise him? Has there been some form of accident?’ Isabel had called her private transport. We made our way to the roof, pulling on coats and hats against the seasonal chill. `This had better be good’ Michael had muttered, `How can he have been on Antar, and now here in less than a week!’
`Michael don’t get yourself worked up’ Isabel pulled his coat over him properly and straightened his hat. He submitted to this in a way that he would never do with Maria. I smiled to myself. I loved seeing my aunt treat Michael like this. `And don’t argue with him when we meet, its probably S’eeth Sia Ova’s fault, you know how paranoid she gets around him!’ We took off, swinging over New York and the brilliant winking lights of Liberty Tower, heading out west. `I bet it’s more of this cloak and dagger stuff about Grey’s diaries! All this sneaking around, he doesn’t think I notice.’
We had reached Bone Hill House in the early hours of the morning. It had been snowing and the place looked indescribably beautiful. The snow had highlighted each sill, each turret, and each stone façade. In its canopy of blue-white floodlights the mansion looks magical, vast, like a huge grotto, or a child’s advent calendar, each mullioned window like a small door that could be opened to reveal a sweet or a present. Several lights were on, mostly in the main reception hall but the place looked deserted.
We had all trudged off, the swirling snow stinging our faces, great clouds of steam on our lips. Yet as we approached the terrace something odd began to happen. Isabel noticed it first, and stopped to listen. There was a curious solid silence. Not so much a quiet as the absence of all sound. We then all became aware that the ground was vibrating softly, deep down, far into the Earth. `What the fuck?’ said Michael. He was looking up at the House itself, its massive bulk looming into the deep dark of mid winter. We all looked. Bone Hill House was starting to vanish.
At first I thought it was some form of optical illusion, the intense cold after the warm flight, anxiety having given away to exhaustion. But the House was fading. We all stood together, instinctively reaching out for each other’s hands and backing away slightly. Slowly but perceptively, the huge neo-Elizabethan façade disappeared, unevenly, and from the outside inward, so we saw parts of the interior appear, like the cut away diagram used by an architect or an artist, greying into the blue gloom, until they too had gone.
As it neared the end of its mysterious annihilation we saw looming before us, entirely out of scale to the rest of the house, the huge double doors of Grey’s library. They stood open and solid, as the rest of the structures, the walls, the staircases, the furniture, all ceased to exist and blew away. Huge and vast stood the doors, intricately carved, spectral, the designs on the panels moving and swirling in threads of purple light, like an ancient script.
Between them we could see into the library itself, and this too was transformed, out of all proportion and somehow in a different time.
Summer sunshine was streaming through the great windows, westerly evening light, falling out through the doors towards us in great slabs of mellowed gold. The doors continued to grow. `Look!’ cried Liz, dropping my hand. `There are three Antarian S’eeth!’ I squinted into the sunshine, already melting the snow at my feet. I could see S’eeth Sia Ova, and Om, and a young S’eeth male wearing the white livery of a mendicant. I went to move forward but Michael held me back.
`Wait Jules, they’re coming to us’ Bone Hill House had utterly gone, all that was left were the doors, seemingly stretched to the horizon. Through them, their shadows thrown far by the setting sun, the curious trinity walked towards us. As they cleared the threshold, the great doors started to close. They swung silently and incredibly slowly back together, like time’s pendulum itself, extinguishing the light of the library slowly, until just a long luminous thread of gold chinked though the doors and then they closed, to a deep and thunderous boom the likes of which I have never heard before, and have no wish to ever hear again.
S’eeth Sia Ova made a light with her hand, Om and the young male took it up and produced a covering of light about us. It was snowing hard now and was intensely cold. We were in the middle of wide empty space. `What in God’s name just happened?’ asked Michael after a long silence. The rest of us were utterly speechless. `Qua Vendi, Michael’ said S’eeth Sia Ova.
`Whatever, and where is Max? Om?’ Om bowed to me and then turned to the S’eeth male. `This is going to be very hard to explain, but its good to see you all again! I am so glad to be home!’ My father spoke from where the S’eeth was standing. Maria fainted. I raise an eyebrow and Michael said `Fantastic, hey Max - and what happened to our ancestral home?’ but for all his bravado I could see he was deeply shaken.
`It’s a long story Michael’ said Max, and walked towards Liz. She was laughing now, the initial shock having receded. She had the face of someone half excepting some form of elaborate joke. `Max? How is this possible?’ She leaned up to kiss him, feeling his shoulder plates as she did so. `Gosh, are you going to stay like this?’
`No, if I did I will become female in thirty years, but staying 17 again could be fun?’
We walked back to the waiting transport. As we climbed in I heard S’eeth talking to the radio operator. Max apologised to us. `We have to go to Washington D.C. immediately’ and then he asked S’eeth Sia Om `Has Maitland been arrested?’ Om nodded, smiling. `Yes, caught entirely red handed with the transcripts. Arrests are taking place on Antar as well’
`Maitland?’ the name was familiar to me; an important senator rumoured one day to be a likely presidential candidate. I knew him through my lover Alexandria, an American-Lebanese Senator from Vermont.
`Yes, Henry Maitland’ I looked at the rather pretty Antarian male with his earrings and painted face and wondered. As a child I had always suspected Max could change, but never into anything as spectacular as this! I felt secretly happy that I had been proven right after all these years. He saw me looking and smiled beautifully, almost shyly.
`What’s he done? Maitland?’ asked Liz. The loss of Bone Hill House was beginning to sink into all of us. I had grown up there. It had been my home. My father and mother had lived there many years after Grey had died.
Max laughed grimly. `He has been involved in a conspiracy to pervert the course of time. But at least he is alive, we’re going to see him now.’
`All of us?’ It had sounded a little too political form me. At the brink of my diplomatic career I felt I ought to be cautious, especially if it involved Antar. `Is that wise, I don’t know him from Adam – why all of us? Shouldn’t someone from the Ministry of Antarian Affairs deal with this?’
Max looked at me strangely, an infinite sadness in his harp boned face. `Maitland is your half-brother Julian, the son Tess bore me. We are all going because I need to believe he can be saved, that he can be redeemed. Like Grey’s Prospero, I want to be reconciled.’
There was an odd silence. Liz nodded to my father in acknowledgement of something private, intimate, beyond my knowledge. The transport lifted off. S’eeth Sia then turned to my father and gave him something, something small, like a disk of silver metal. He took it in his palms and held it carefully as if it was something precious, timeless.
The End
Antarian S'eeth Burial Song - translated by Max Evans and Julian Grey April 2015, on the terrace of Bone Hill House.
Last edited by Patroclus76 on Sun Apr 23, 2006 3:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Patroclus76
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This is a brief companion to codex I (just after GREY has been to the bookshop, and simultaneous with the scene where Grey is searching the web for clues about Roswell. The date in his journal is MARCH 23rd 2006 bottom of page three - this is from Max’s POV. I am posting it as a one off because it is sitting around! The idea is that it is read alongside Grey’s entry – which sounds a bit indulgent – but the idea was to develop multiple narratives. Thanks for DBT who acted as beta – I find Max’s voice very hard to write to be honest, since for me he is primarily signified by silence!
The rain thunders across the roof of the van. The noise is deafening and yet at the same time reassuring, intimate. We are driving through utter, utter darkness. It is as if the world has been unmade and we are all that is left, forgotten, abandoned. I have a feeling of helplessness.
Kyle is silhouetted at the wheel, slightly hunched; squinting through the bubbling screen, looking for the road. He is a good solid driver, indefatigable. Liz lies asleep with her head on my chest, my arm around her. I can smell her hair. I can feel her now, inside my head sometimes, even when she is away dreaming. I can also feel life in her, our child, or is that my imagination? Fear lies here also, nested inside her or me (I can no longer tell now) Fear of something wrong, the memory of another child? Maria lies on my other side, her feet up and resting on Michael’s thighs.
He sits opposite me. I see his outline wavering and swaying with the motion of the van. Isabel leans against his shoulder. We are all neatly folded inside like peas in a pod. Michael hasn’t moved for ages but I can sense him staring at me. His eyes sometimes reflect stray light from a rare passing car, like cats eyes, or the curious optical illusion you can create when you close your own eyes in utter darkness: a brief flash of luminous iris, but inside your own eyelids. My loyal captain, his whole attention is on me.
I wonder if he is having second thoughts now, as we approach the beginning of this? As always he took the longest to talk around. At heart Michael is wild, he is the wildest of us all. In his heart is something not tamed. Something that can strike you suddenly with great force. `What is it Maxwell?’ he whispers. I can’t se his face but I can guess the expression! The eyes ironic, a puzzled knowing look with the lips in a slight smile! I am mystified by his second sight. `Not having second thoughts?’ I reach out into the darkness and brush his knee with my hand
`No, are you?’
`Nah, lets do it.’ I smile, wanting to hug him, tempted more by the fact he would initially dislike it, that he would momentarily shrink from me, yielding only as I pulled away – as if he must hide even from me, and hide badly.
Kyle says `shit’ and the van slows down. As the engine dies the sound of the storm is almost unbearable. I have rarely experienced rain like this. The van lamps show curtains of water slamming onto the tarmac. Isabel and Liz wake up together. Kyle puts the van into reverse and we grind backward. On our left, looming up into the primordial blackness we can just make out an imposing set of gates and a lodge of some sort.
`I believe that this is it’ says Kyle. I look at the clock on the dashboard – it’s just after 1 am. I sigh deeply. I feel Liz lift her head and kiss my neck, while her hand slips in between my legs and playfully squeezes my balls. `You OK Max?' I suppress an `ouch!’ and kiss her forehead. `Yeah, I’m ok’ I yawn and squint through the side window. `Lets just hope we’re not wrong about this guy!’ I sound doubtful. I feel Michael’s rebuke coming but he says nothing.
Instead he slides the van doors open and vanishes momentarily. The night air slams into us, blowing away our warm stink and sharpening our senses. The air is alive with taste and texture, wet damp earth, the gurgle and splashing of rain, a wild animated night, a tempest lashing and whirling in the still leafless trees. I feel myself suddenly wide-awake, almost excited. Michael opens the gates. They clank back majestically like the entrance to a palace. Far off comes a distant stab of lightening and then, a bombardment of thunder. `Jesus that was hard –‘ Michael is shaking his hand and climbs back in, completely drenched. Maria protests and Isabel dries him with a few economical motions of the hand. `Biblical weather’ says Kyle, `Anyone here believe in omens?’
Kyle drives in between the gates and along a tree-lined avenue that curves into darkness. `Jesus, its weird to think we’re actually going to pay him a visit as opposed to just break into his library again!’ Kyle drives carefully, trying to keep the revs of the van down. He is afraid we shall be heard. The driveway has clearly seen better days, the headlights show potholes and fallen branches. The trees crowd in, as if staring, resentful at this intrusion. It reminds me oddly of Fraser Woods back home. I feel nervous. We come to some garages off onto the right, and a series of out houses. There is no sign of the main house from here. Kyle stops the van and turns the engine off. The sound of the storm is all about us. Thunder crashes about closer now, rolling in from the sea.
`Fuck its like Frankenstein!’ says Michael, but everyone is now apprehensive.
`Well? Shall we go? Professor Brainstorm is alone, and his trusty handyman Wilkins’
`Wilcox – ‘ I correct
`Is in bed I imagine, and no sign of any feds, so if things get ugly we can just tie him up and run!’ Suddenly I am entirely unsure what to do. I hate these moments. I just want to sit here and think about it.
We have planned this for weeks, ever since Liz became pregnant, ever since it was clear that there was something wrong with the pregnancy. Ever since the letter had arrived from Jesse confirming that Grey had emailed him and that he had taken the planting of the Wyndham book hook, line and sinker.
`Max?’ Kyle has half turned in the drivers seat to look back at us. `Maxwell, this is not the time for one of your periodic blackouts!’ Michael touches my nose, which is the last thing I expect him to do and I start in surprise. It works though. `Oh fearless leader?’
`Ok, ok. Its pointless us all getting drenched, let me go and well, introduce us? If all goes well, I’ll come and fetch you all.’
`And what if it doesn’t go well?’ asks Maria, `what if it’s a trap?’
`Then you come and fetch me?’
`We’re all going’ says Isabel with sudden decision. `We made our plans, I trust Jesse, Jesse knows this guy and we have cased him out for the last fortnight. Come on – I am tired’
`Yes m’am – and its not even Christmas!’ Michael gets out again and we follow. The rain takes our breath away, as if we have clambered out onto the deck of the ship during a storm, or dived into deep water. I feel it drilling into my shoulders and my hair and then trickling down my neck. Yet the air feels oddly warm. I shake myself, and move over the gravel. We pack together as we walk towards the House. I think suddenly of my parents. `OK, wait here then’
I turn a corner, soaked through, my clothes sticking to me. My hair beads water down my cheeks like a faucet. It is hard to see the House because of the darkness. I strain my eyes and then, dramatically, it leaps out at me, a millisecond illumination. A great fork of spring lightening streaks down behind it and then, directly ahead, a massive rush of thunder. The intensity of the noise makes me hunch into myself. It seems to make my very body quiver. The House stands in front of me, a massive fortress of stone, ageless and inscrutable. As I approach the terrace I had a strange chilling sense that the House is watching me, that is has been waiting for me to arrive down the years. `Hello Zan of the Antarian Imperium’. I shake off the feeling but it is intense. I wonder if Liz or any of the others can sense it?
There are virtually no lights on. High up in one of the towers there is a small chink of movement, as if I am momentarily observed, but it is hard to look up through the lashing water and so I am not sure. Wilcox? The police? The feds? There are lights on in Grey’s study. The main door is in front of me, solid and definitively closed. The most obvious thing to do is to knock and yet the idea strikes me as sort of stupid. Hardly a time to visit someone we need to help us! I stand for some time, feeling wretched and stupid and slightly sick. Images of Grey come to me. A tall grey haired man, dressed in tweeds, very east coast, almost English in his affectation. Sometimes the pictures I have seen show him to have a kind face, drawn, clear eyed. Sometimes he looks spiteful, locked in some inner struggle, some dark humour of his own. I am already attached to this man. The children I saved at Phoenix link us in some tangible way. But there are secrets here and lots of them. I think of Jesse’s last curious comment `he will help you Max, but he is afraid he will fail, you will need to show him who you are?’ Who am I again? I ask, as if this is a rhetorical question – again – the House knows and seems to answer.
Grey’s study window is a broad bay, a smaller version of the Library ones scaled by Michael and myself on three separate and painful occasions. It is either very old or has been built cleverly to look old. The rain has mottled the surface of the glass and I feel like I am looking through a fish tank or a porthole. Two large table lamps dimly light the room, and Grey is sitting leaning over his computer. He is wearing a long, thick dressing gown of blue check, long and down to the floor corded with a weird looking tassle. He looks like someone from the 19th century, eccentric, rather aristocratic. Even a little mad? His body language is one of puzzlement or confusion. The monitor is turned slightly away from me. I cannot see what it is he is looking at so intently. I stand away from the window, literally soaked to the skin. My mind is flooded with doubt and indecision. Am I prepared to destroy this man’s universe? Am I prepared to open myself to him, to bring my loved ones into his life? I feel ashamed, suddenly, of the chaos and madness we have left behind us. And always at moments like this, like a figure of reproach, I see Alex Whitman walking into prison in Roswell with Liz, at the start of a long road that leads to death. What are we about to do to Grey? I could turn away now; we could try and find another way out of this.
There is a massive, astounding flash of lightening almost directly ahead and such a crash of thunder that it is felt – not heard – in the base of my spine and the lights in Grey’s study go out. Yet in that brief moment Grey looks up and sees me. He looks straight at me, and I have the strangest sensation that he recognises me immediately, that he has been thinking about me. The connection is intense and immediate. There is a moment of darkness and then the lights come back on. Grey has moved and is standing not far from me, looking out, startled and yet calm, I can sense his mind working furiously. I am paralysed as if by fear. We look at each other indecisively, like two armies drawn up but reluctant to fight. He then turns around and half runs towards the door.
I am both angry and excited, alarmed and yet reassured. I turn around and start to walk to the door. He will come out, he will come and look for me – I have to reassure him immediately. I hear the main doors thrown open and I hug the walls, invisible in the night. He is shouting, a strong voice, just a trace of accent. And then strangely he calls my name. `Max?; as if this moment is not a surprise to him. I have such an overwhelming feeling of déjà vu now that I feel dizzy. I walk towards where I think he is, my hands in my pockets. `Here I am, this is me’ I want to say. He has got in front of me, he turns and then sees me. I can hardly make out any detail, just the robe trailing on the wet flagstones of the terrace, as if this is a play and we are on stage. He is talking about Jesse as if this will calm me, like a child. I cup my hands together and I create a small ball of light. I lift it up, away from my heart, I see him looking and I realise he has seen this before. I feel an immense sense of relief flood my soul as he seems to nod to himself, to smile his small ironic smile. `We need your help, Julian’.
The rain thunders across the roof of the van. The noise is deafening and yet at the same time reassuring, intimate. We are driving through utter, utter darkness. It is as if the world has been unmade and we are all that is left, forgotten, abandoned. I have a feeling of helplessness.
Kyle is silhouetted at the wheel, slightly hunched; squinting through the bubbling screen, looking for the road. He is a good solid driver, indefatigable. Liz lies asleep with her head on my chest, my arm around her. I can smell her hair. I can feel her now, inside my head sometimes, even when she is away dreaming. I can also feel life in her, our child, or is that my imagination? Fear lies here also, nested inside her or me (I can no longer tell now) Fear of something wrong, the memory of another child? Maria lies on my other side, her feet up and resting on Michael’s thighs.
He sits opposite me. I see his outline wavering and swaying with the motion of the van. Isabel leans against his shoulder. We are all neatly folded inside like peas in a pod. Michael hasn’t moved for ages but I can sense him staring at me. His eyes sometimes reflect stray light from a rare passing car, like cats eyes, or the curious optical illusion you can create when you close your own eyes in utter darkness: a brief flash of luminous iris, but inside your own eyelids. My loyal captain, his whole attention is on me.
I wonder if he is having second thoughts now, as we approach the beginning of this? As always he took the longest to talk around. At heart Michael is wild, he is the wildest of us all. In his heart is something not tamed. Something that can strike you suddenly with great force. `What is it Maxwell?’ he whispers. I can’t se his face but I can guess the expression! The eyes ironic, a puzzled knowing look with the lips in a slight smile! I am mystified by his second sight. `Not having second thoughts?’ I reach out into the darkness and brush his knee with my hand
`No, are you?’
`Nah, lets do it.’ I smile, wanting to hug him, tempted more by the fact he would initially dislike it, that he would momentarily shrink from me, yielding only as I pulled away – as if he must hide even from me, and hide badly.
Kyle says `shit’ and the van slows down. As the engine dies the sound of the storm is almost unbearable. I have rarely experienced rain like this. The van lamps show curtains of water slamming onto the tarmac. Isabel and Liz wake up together. Kyle puts the van into reverse and we grind backward. On our left, looming up into the primordial blackness we can just make out an imposing set of gates and a lodge of some sort.
`I believe that this is it’ says Kyle. I look at the clock on the dashboard – it’s just after 1 am. I sigh deeply. I feel Liz lift her head and kiss my neck, while her hand slips in between my legs and playfully squeezes my balls. `You OK Max?' I suppress an `ouch!’ and kiss her forehead. `Yeah, I’m ok’ I yawn and squint through the side window. `Lets just hope we’re not wrong about this guy!’ I sound doubtful. I feel Michael’s rebuke coming but he says nothing.
Instead he slides the van doors open and vanishes momentarily. The night air slams into us, blowing away our warm stink and sharpening our senses. The air is alive with taste and texture, wet damp earth, the gurgle and splashing of rain, a wild animated night, a tempest lashing and whirling in the still leafless trees. I feel myself suddenly wide-awake, almost excited. Michael opens the gates. They clank back majestically like the entrance to a palace. Far off comes a distant stab of lightening and then, a bombardment of thunder. `Jesus that was hard –‘ Michael is shaking his hand and climbs back in, completely drenched. Maria protests and Isabel dries him with a few economical motions of the hand. `Biblical weather’ says Kyle, `Anyone here believe in omens?’
Kyle drives in between the gates and along a tree-lined avenue that curves into darkness. `Jesus, its weird to think we’re actually going to pay him a visit as opposed to just break into his library again!’ Kyle drives carefully, trying to keep the revs of the van down. He is afraid we shall be heard. The driveway has clearly seen better days, the headlights show potholes and fallen branches. The trees crowd in, as if staring, resentful at this intrusion. It reminds me oddly of Fraser Woods back home. I feel nervous. We come to some garages off onto the right, and a series of out houses. There is no sign of the main house from here. Kyle stops the van and turns the engine off. The sound of the storm is all about us. Thunder crashes about closer now, rolling in from the sea.
`Fuck its like Frankenstein!’ says Michael, but everyone is now apprehensive.
`Well? Shall we go? Professor Brainstorm is alone, and his trusty handyman Wilkins’
`Wilcox – ‘ I correct
`Is in bed I imagine, and no sign of any feds, so if things get ugly we can just tie him up and run!’ Suddenly I am entirely unsure what to do. I hate these moments. I just want to sit here and think about it.
We have planned this for weeks, ever since Liz became pregnant, ever since it was clear that there was something wrong with the pregnancy. Ever since the letter had arrived from Jesse confirming that Grey had emailed him and that he had taken the planting of the Wyndham book hook, line and sinker.
`Max?’ Kyle has half turned in the drivers seat to look back at us. `Maxwell, this is not the time for one of your periodic blackouts!’ Michael touches my nose, which is the last thing I expect him to do and I start in surprise. It works though. `Oh fearless leader?’
`Ok, ok. Its pointless us all getting drenched, let me go and well, introduce us? If all goes well, I’ll come and fetch you all.’
`And what if it doesn’t go well?’ asks Maria, `what if it’s a trap?’
`Then you come and fetch me?’
`We’re all going’ says Isabel with sudden decision. `We made our plans, I trust Jesse, Jesse knows this guy and we have cased him out for the last fortnight. Come on – I am tired’
`Yes m’am – and its not even Christmas!’ Michael gets out again and we follow. The rain takes our breath away, as if we have clambered out onto the deck of the ship during a storm, or dived into deep water. I feel it drilling into my shoulders and my hair and then trickling down my neck. Yet the air feels oddly warm. I shake myself, and move over the gravel. We pack together as we walk towards the House. I think suddenly of my parents. `OK, wait here then’
I turn a corner, soaked through, my clothes sticking to me. My hair beads water down my cheeks like a faucet. It is hard to see the House because of the darkness. I strain my eyes and then, dramatically, it leaps out at me, a millisecond illumination. A great fork of spring lightening streaks down behind it and then, directly ahead, a massive rush of thunder. The intensity of the noise makes me hunch into myself. It seems to make my very body quiver. The House stands in front of me, a massive fortress of stone, ageless and inscrutable. As I approach the terrace I had a strange chilling sense that the House is watching me, that is has been waiting for me to arrive down the years. `Hello Zan of the Antarian Imperium’. I shake off the feeling but it is intense. I wonder if Liz or any of the others can sense it?
There are virtually no lights on. High up in one of the towers there is a small chink of movement, as if I am momentarily observed, but it is hard to look up through the lashing water and so I am not sure. Wilcox? The police? The feds? There are lights on in Grey’s study. The main door is in front of me, solid and definitively closed. The most obvious thing to do is to knock and yet the idea strikes me as sort of stupid. Hardly a time to visit someone we need to help us! I stand for some time, feeling wretched and stupid and slightly sick. Images of Grey come to me. A tall grey haired man, dressed in tweeds, very east coast, almost English in his affectation. Sometimes the pictures I have seen show him to have a kind face, drawn, clear eyed. Sometimes he looks spiteful, locked in some inner struggle, some dark humour of his own. I am already attached to this man. The children I saved at Phoenix link us in some tangible way. But there are secrets here and lots of them. I think of Jesse’s last curious comment `he will help you Max, but he is afraid he will fail, you will need to show him who you are?’ Who am I again? I ask, as if this is a rhetorical question – again – the House knows and seems to answer.
Grey’s study window is a broad bay, a smaller version of the Library ones scaled by Michael and myself on three separate and painful occasions. It is either very old or has been built cleverly to look old. The rain has mottled the surface of the glass and I feel like I am looking through a fish tank or a porthole. Two large table lamps dimly light the room, and Grey is sitting leaning over his computer. He is wearing a long, thick dressing gown of blue check, long and down to the floor corded with a weird looking tassle. He looks like someone from the 19th century, eccentric, rather aristocratic. Even a little mad? His body language is one of puzzlement or confusion. The monitor is turned slightly away from me. I cannot see what it is he is looking at so intently. I stand away from the window, literally soaked to the skin. My mind is flooded with doubt and indecision. Am I prepared to destroy this man’s universe? Am I prepared to open myself to him, to bring my loved ones into his life? I feel ashamed, suddenly, of the chaos and madness we have left behind us. And always at moments like this, like a figure of reproach, I see Alex Whitman walking into prison in Roswell with Liz, at the start of a long road that leads to death. What are we about to do to Grey? I could turn away now; we could try and find another way out of this.
There is a massive, astounding flash of lightening almost directly ahead and such a crash of thunder that it is felt – not heard – in the base of my spine and the lights in Grey’s study go out. Yet in that brief moment Grey looks up and sees me. He looks straight at me, and I have the strangest sensation that he recognises me immediately, that he has been thinking about me. The connection is intense and immediate. There is a moment of darkness and then the lights come back on. Grey has moved and is standing not far from me, looking out, startled and yet calm, I can sense his mind working furiously. I am paralysed as if by fear. We look at each other indecisively, like two armies drawn up but reluctant to fight. He then turns around and half runs towards the door.
I am both angry and excited, alarmed and yet reassured. I turn around and start to walk to the door. He will come out, he will come and look for me – I have to reassure him immediately. I hear the main doors thrown open and I hug the walls, invisible in the night. He is shouting, a strong voice, just a trace of accent. And then strangely he calls my name. `Max?; as if this moment is not a surprise to him. I have such an overwhelming feeling of déjà vu now that I feel dizzy. I walk towards where I think he is, my hands in my pockets. `Here I am, this is me’ I want to say. He has got in front of me, he turns and then sees me. I can hardly make out any detail, just the robe trailing on the wet flagstones of the terrace, as if this is a play and we are on stage. He is talking about Jesse as if this will calm me, like a child. I cup my hands together and I create a small ball of light. I lift it up, away from my heart, I see him looking and I realise he has seen this before. I feel an immense sense of relief flood my soul as he seems to nod to himself, to smile his small ironic smile. `We need your help, Julian’.
Last edited by Patroclus76 on Sat May 06, 2006 5:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
