Love will last forever (CC, I/A, ADULT) Pt 37/37 - Feb 1 09

[Chrisken]

Part Eleven

Isabel groaned, shaking her head, looking from Tess, who was meeting her gaze with a sparkly blue stare, to Alex's ghost. Alex, who Tess couldn't see without Isabel's help, was shrugging helplessly himself. "I... I felt like I needed to understand your state of mind at this point, Tess," she started uncertainly. "To figure out what precautions we need to take. It's not my place to punish you, but this group of us is stuck together for a while, as far as anybody can see, and you killed somebody that I love, Tess. You kept secrets and you kept doing something that was clearly becoming harmful, because that was the only way you could see to keep your dirty laundry from coming out."

Tess sighed. "Yeah, yeah, that's pretty much right. And it pretty much goes without saying that all I managed to do was get everything dirtier and dirtier... and bloodier." She sagged at the table unhappily. "You're right - I don't have any reasonable expectation of privacy from you guys. I know that you wouldn't have been rooting around in my noggin if you were dreamwalking for the fun of it. Ehhh."

Isabel nodded again herself, surprised and pleased that Tess was taking that attitude. "I'm glad you think so. And yes, what happened between you and Alex was incredibly stupid... but I'm a little bit reassured by what I saw inside your mind. You're... you're not a monster, Tess -- you've done things that I don't like, but if I'd grown up the way you did, I might have made some of the same choices. Hopefully, if you keep behaving yourself, we can ditch this stupid guarding Tess routine, and let everybody get back to building some kind of life here in Roswell."

Isabel looked very intently into Tess' face as she said that, looking for a flicker of anything that might betray a different reaction - looking for any trace of that Tess monster that she had said she didn't believe in. For someone looking out of Tess' eyes that was a little too pleased with the prospect of having more freedom... who didn't feel any remorse for Alex's death or the sorrow that his friends had gone through. But she didn't see that, and hoped that nobody like that was capable of hiding behind Tess' pale features without being recognized.

"I... I'd like that, obviously. But... but I almost feel as if you shouldn't be *too* quick to trust me," Tess put in. "I... I'm sorry for what I've done, and I'd like to try to make up for what I've done wrong... follow a kind of path to atonement or something like that. But... but I'm also scared that if I get a chance to do something mean and selfish again, some way to let you and Max down for trusting me... that it won't be so easy to resist taking it."

"Hmm." Isabel considered that. "Alright. Maybe we need to help you beat the, umm, the nastiness habit one step at a time. Like an addiction to smoking or something like that." She sighed. "Though I'm not quite sure how that would work. Oh well."

"At least you believe in me enough to *want* me to change," Tess said softly. "That means the world right now." She smiled, and Isabel smiled back. "How's Alex doing today??"

"Pretty good, actually," Isabel answered after a moment. "He was telling me old stories that touch on this electronics store in Abilene - Max and Liz are probably going to be driving out there tomorrow. They may have a Jaz drive that can read Nasedo's big computer disk."

"Cool," Tess agreed. "Does he... I mean, I guess he headr about..."

"Yeah, he knows that I wanted to take the first move in trusting you, instead of getting stuck in distrust." Isabel looked over at Alex, and saw him nod. "Even though you hurt him more than anyone else, he approves of my decision."

"Great," Tess said, smiling. "So... what finals do you still have to take before you can graduate?"

-----------

"Are... are we sure that we're ready for this?" Michael said, looking around in the eerie blue light of the Pod chamber.

"The references are pretty clear," Isabel insisted. "Now that we have an idea what the resonance chamber is. Earth will only be at the appropriate spot for comunication for about six minutes though, so if we're going to do this thing, we'd better hurry."

Michael shrugged, looked at Maria, who took a deep breath, and nodded supportively. It was Saturday morning - Max and Liz were well on their way, probably already past the Texas state line, and Tess was helping Kyle move some of his stuff back into his room. The three of them, plus Alex, had gotten together to go over Nasedo's notes and the book translation, and then driven up to the pod chamber after Alex had done some rough calculations and figured out that the chamber's communication antennae would be in the right orientation for transmission to a hopefully-friendly colony world for a few minutes of each day... except for most of the months of late June to July. For that time, the colony star would be 'behind' the sun, as seen from Earth, or at least close enough that radio noise would probably drown out the signal.

"And... and what if the people that you reach aren't as friendly as we hoped??" Maria asked. "There's a possibility of danger there, isn't it?"

Isabel took a deep breath. "Maybe. If... if both you guys don't want to go through with it today, then I'll hold off." Of course, if Michael didn't volunteer to hold the second orb, Isabel probably couldn't make the communicator work all by herself anyway, and this didn't seem like something that Alex could help her out with. "But... but I just want to get things moving in some way - or at least try. You can understand that, can't you??"

"Yeah," Michael said. "Okay, we'll give it a shot. So, umm..." He took a step closer to Isabel and accepted the Orb that she gave him. "We... we just concentrate on activating the Orbs, like last time? What happens if we get the message from your mom again? How do we get it to contact anything else?"

"I don't know," Isabel admitted. "Oh, except that the book said something about speaking out loud, to create an outgoing message. Just ask for anybody on that planet to answer if they hear us, I guess."

"What was the planet called?"

"Umm..." Maria picked up the translation pages and tried to pronounce the word that surrounded the star chart entry Isabel had circled in red pen. "Garvickle Wean?" Michael shot a sidelong look, and Isabel shrugged.

Alex and Maria both watched as their hybrid sweethearts concentrated, and the alien orbs in their hands began to glow with soft light. "Umm, hello," Isabel said once she opened her eyes, talking to the empty room uncertainly. "We're here on planet Earth, and want to talk to - well, nearly anybody friendly actually, but specifically someone from Garvickle Wean. My name is Isabel Evans, I'm here with Michael Guerin... and we're Antarian hybrids." She looked a question at Michael, he concentrated for a moment and then held up a hand at shoulder level, flat up and down - obviously to signify 'wait and see.' There wasn't any point in revealing more about their identities until they'd gotten a response. Ideally they might be able to hold off on any such conversation until they knew about the political sympathies of whoever they were talking to. If somebody who got the message knew their human names already and exactly whose hybrids they were... well, that was a risk they'd probably have to take. It seemed dangerously rude to make the call without being willing to say ANYTHING about who they were.

Suddenly there was a faintly transparent image of someone else in the chamber with them... someone who definitely looked human, if on the short side of normal. She was maybe four feet ten inches tall, looked in her mid-thirties, with straight light brown hair, and a sweet friendly face. "Umm... hi Isabel," she said, and all of the kids jumped a little at the sudden familiarity of this contact from far beyond the edge of reliable earthly information. "It's very, uh, surprising to hear from you. Never got a communique from 'Earth' before. I don't suppose that you could confirm your planetary co-ordinates for me?"

Isabel shot Michael a look. Out of anything that she'd been expecting, this kind of reasonable, businesslike question had never made the list. "Umm... not at the moment, though we have some star charts, and we might be able to work it out for you the same way that we found you."

"That's all right, sweetie, umm, let's see... I've got you reading from... oh, my, lookit that. It was right in front of my nose the entire time. Javiur catalog 11075, third planet, referred to as 'Earth' by the natives. You know, I think a lot of species do that before they start meeting other planets... calling their home planet by the same word as dirt or rock or something of the sort. Once you start communicating and trading with other species, you have to pick new names or it'd just get too incredibly confusing."

"Alright, we'll try to remember that," Michael said. "Javiur catalog 11075, third planet?"

"Yep. J one one oh seven five dash three for short. Umm... okay, you said that you wanted to reach someone from Garvickle. I'm here, but I'm just central switchboard. Any notion how I can further direct your call, or will chatting with yours truly be sufficient?"

Isabel laughed, deciding that she liked this alien lady. "Well, first, you could tell us your name, so that we don't have to just cally you 'central switchboard.'"

"Aww... isn't that sweet of you... you're kids, right? Not more than about a quarter of the way through a... oh, geez, well, through an 'earthling' lifespan??" the operator mumbled. "Call me Erinyemd."

"I'll try, Erinyumud," Isabel stumbled over it. "And, yes, uh, a quarter way through is about right, I suppose, and yes, that makes us adolescents. Not quite full adults on Earth." Of course, there was the whole issue about having been in their incubation pods for decades, but she didn't really feel like explaining all this to Erinye. "So, uhh... " - time to go for all the marbles. "Could we talk to, umm, somebody in the colonial government?"

"Well, all right. I'll run you right through to the Council headquarters, with an interstellar priority flag on it. The Chair-one will probably take it if he's free."

"Thanks, Erin baby," Michael said. "Love ya."

"Call back anytime, hun," she said, and suddenly blinked out. There was a pause, and Michael was just about to go over and hug Maria 'offscreen' when a much taller and broader figure appeared in Erinye's place... a man with a remarkable shock of purple-ish red hair. "Isabel... Evans? Of earth??"

"That's not exactly a p-p-polite way of s... saying hello," Isabel stammered. "Yes, I'm Isabel. Nice to have occasion to meet you... chair-one?" She tried to pronounce it the way she thought Erinye had... tChair-wun. Maybe it was the ultimate non-gender-specific, non-species-specific, non-anything-specific way of saying chairman.

"Chair-one Wwwheeleng was unable to take the call. I am Vice-chair-one Acxtar Ploomi. We do not know much about the planet Earth here on Garvickle, but I have heard the name 'Evans.'" Isabel tried to keep from swallowing too hard. This was it. "Max Evans. Are you... Are you Max Evans' sister, Isabel??" He nearly snarled the question out, towering above her by eight or nine inches.

She quickly looked around, and despite this guy's hostile attitude, didn't see that there was much point in ducking the truth. "Yes. I am." And then, not knowing quite why, she blurted out, "I am his sister by human law and family, and some say that I was his sister back on Antar, when we lived other lives there. I was born from the DNA samples of Princess Vilandra, he of King Zan. And also of human blood, mixing in our veins."

Something about that forthrightness seemed to impress Acxtar. "Very well, Isabel, who was in part Vilandra. Your Antarian predecessor carries something of a dark name around with her, even beyond the grave, though. That of 'Betrayer of her family.'"

Isabel tried to reply, but the words didn't come. Michael stepped back into 'shot', and Alex hurried right past it, stepping up behind Isabel and wrapping his arms around her waist. The support from Alex was welcome, but still she didn't know how to reply. She didn't know what the real story was with Vilandra, so she couldn't defend herself and wasn't sure if she should have to. Michael's voice rang out, though. "We didn't call you up, to put Isabel on crime for Vilandra's crimes. If you don't want to answer questions, or even speak to us, then you don't have to, but I don't think bringing up the ghosts of the past is worthwhile."

Acxtar shook himself slightly. "Who... who are your friends, Isabel?"

What?? A dim suspicion ran through Isabel's head, but she shook it off as completely impossible. "Umm, this is Michael," she said, waving at him. "The hybrid who is... is descended from Rath the general."

"Vilandra's scorned fiancee," the Vice-chair said, and Isabel fought to control her flinch at his harsh words. "And the other young man??"

"WHAT?" All four of them asked. Isabel looked behind her, and Alex took her hand and stepped up beside her. "Do... do you see someone here?" she asked, nodding in his direction, away from Michael.

"Of course!! The visual filters in these communicators can be a little unpredictable - always showing other people in your own species, but I know that you see him too, Isabel. Very high and somewhat spindly, with dark hair and protruding ears. What is his name??"

Okay, Isabel decided. Mental note - these communicators show us aliens in human forms and show us in alien shapes, and translate the languages automatically too. Perhaps for the same reasons, they were capable of transmitting Alex's ghost form - maybe because they needed to get into Isabel's mind while she was operating one of the orbs, and dialed into Alex that way. "His name is Alex Whitman, and he is my love," she said firmly. Don't mention anything about him being dead unless it's necessary.

"A human lover? How..." Acxtar broke off whatever he had been about to say, possibly interpreting the expression of protective anger on Michael's face. "You... you implied that you have questions. Ask them, and I will answer if I can."

Isabel took a deep breath. "Do you know where I can find those who were responsible for our creation? The genetic scientists and whatever other technical specialists were required??"

"Oh, boy," the vice-chair said, suddenly sitting down on a chair that the Orb didn't project.

----------

"Wow," Liz muttered. Michael and I had just finished telling her and my brother about our interstellar communication. "I... I have to say I'm scared, hopeful, and astounded all at once. Speaking to an alien leader on another planet... almost as if he were standing in the room with you, like I am?"

"Yeah," Michael agreed. "Whoever built that communication system knew what he, she, or it was doing. The system was pretty slick." He chuckled. "You guys have got to see it working, and soon."

"Yeah, I think that'd be a good thing," Max agreed. "But come on - don't keep us in suspense! What did he have to say about the cloning tech??"

"Not much," Isabel admitted, frowning a little. "In fact, he sort of clammed up once I mentioned that. Made a lot of excuses - that he'd have to talk with the chairman, with the entire colonial council... need to check references in the library, communicate with learned men on other planets. Just when I thought I was getting him to the point, the communication window ran out."

"For the record, Isabel - you were good, but I think he was still giving you the runaround," Michael said. Isabel shot him a dark look.

"I guess it's understandable that they'd act pretty weird about that secret," Liz said slowly. "Think about it. If it does what the Antarians believe about it, at least, this cloning and essence transfer thing looks like the fountain of Eternal Life. Everybody's probably after it - and can you imagine what it would mean to somebody like an alien Hitler?"

"Or Kivar, for that matter," Michael put in. "If the things we've heard about him are even halfway on target."

"Yeah, that's possible," Max said. "Of course, just because the essence can be moved between different living bodies with enough of the same DNA, that doesn't mean that it'll last forever. Maybe souls age if they're in an active body, and the person just doesn't want to go on living if the soul is dying. Zan, Vilandra, and Rath - they were killed while very young - their souls had a lot of time left. So should Alex's."

"Yeah, good point," Isabel agreed. "But it doesn't stop people from coveting the secret - and thinking that their souls are still good for another seventy years." She sighed. "And there have to be all kinds of people who die too young on alien planets - getting their equivalents of cancer, end up in a battle without knowing what they're doing... or getting run into by a hover-car or whatever the heck they have. Tears were filling up her eyes as the conversation suddenly hit too close to home.

"Well, we'll see what we can do," Max said, reaching out to put his hand on top of hers with a smile. "Maybe my Kingly authority can get us further than your discredited reputation, Isabelandra." She managed a hollow chuckle at that, though Max grimaced when he realized how tasteless his joke might sound. "So, I guess I'll go down, join the others."

He stood up, and Michael did too - he must be eager to get back to Maria. "Isabel - Liz said that you were starting to come around on the Tess question?" Max sounded somewhat incredulous at the words he was pronouncing.

Isabel smiled slightly. "Yeah - more than a little, but... heck, I can't really forgive her yet for what she did... that may take a long time. But I'm starting to trust in her intentions a little, and I think that it would be okay if we stop treating her like our worst enemy. Her judgement is still a little dubious... but she didn't want any of this to happen. I'm *certain* of that."

"Okay," Max sighed. His shoulders seemed to sag a little as a weight of responsibility landed on them. "Well, I trust your instincts, but... maybe I need to spend a little more time around her with an open mind, and see what I see." Isabel nodded. "And no time like the present."

"One more thing that all of you guys should know," Liz interrupted before Max could leave Isabel's room. "I... I think that Ava was related to Kivar, and that was the reason that Nasedo told Tess she had to have Max's baby."

That declaration certainly caused a stir. Michael blurted out "Ed told her WHAT?" at the same time as Max, who had heard that part, nearly shouted "She's related to *WHO*??" Even Isabel's mouth dropped, though she didn't add an exclamation of her own.

"It's only a guess, so far," Liz hastily qualified, "based on the supposed prophecy that Isabel heard in Tess' dream, some of the Nasedo notes in Tess' cache, and the Book translation."

"Maybe... maybe Tess made it up," Michael muttered. "She had the notes - and the translation, she could have altered them. And used some lucid dreaming technique to make Isabel think that scene was real, when..."

"But why would she fabricate this?" Max asked. "It doesn't earn her any sympathy points or excuse any of what she's done. It makes us *less* likely to trust her on the whole, I'd say. In fact, if I were her, I'd have covered up any evidence leading in that direction - if she suspected."

"Yeah, my impression is that Tess doesn't have any clue," Liz agreed. "But the name Andraikus, that Nasedo said was Tess' family name... it's associated with 'the rebel' as well in the Book. The tyrant who overthrew the good king. It has to be the same as Kivar. And there are references in Nasedo's notes that he made a deal with 'Andrai K.'"

"A little circumstantial, but yeah," Max agreed. "Maybe we should let Tess know about this - see how she reacts to it?"

"Hmm... alright," Liz agreed. "But wait until we join you." She smiled and made a playful shooing gesture. Once they left, Liz turned her grin on Isabel. "How... how's Alex doing, anyway? I'd have asked you earlier - but... I dunno, I still feel a little weird talking about him in front of Max." Giggled. "Maybe I just don't want him to think he's got anything to worry about from the second most important man in my life."

Isabel smiled in reply. "I made him blink out. He was looking really tired when we came back in from the Pod chamber." Isabel blinked. "Ohh, my god!! I forgot to tell you or Max about this! Alex showed up on the communicator! He went and hugged me when the alien guy mentioned Vilandra - I guess we've just gotten used to the notion that nobody can see him. But it was clear that he could."

"Wow," Liz said softly. She didn't offer any theories, which was okay since Isabel had enough of her own on this particular score. "So - I guess you probably don't want to hook this up until he's back?" Liz reached into her knapsack, and pulled out an oddly shaped package - an external, USB-one Jaz drive, wrapped up in plastic bubble sheeting and taped securely together.

Isabel smiled a little fiercely. "No, hand it over! Alex told me enough about this - I don't think we'll muck it up." Liz passed the package over, Isabel crossed over to her computer desk, and unfastened all of the tape connections from the bubble wrap backing. "Okay, drive unit, connector cable - umm, where's the power adapter? Tell me you didn't leave Abilene without it!"

A nervous look crossed Liz's face, but she poked into her bag a moment longer, and with a sigh of relief, produced another black cable, longer and thicker, with a huge heavy rectangle in the middle of it, a three-prong electrical plug on one end, and a much smaller cylindrical power jack on the other end. She tossed is underhand across the room so that it landed in Isabel's lap, and she hooked it up to her power supply bar, then fastened the data connection cable to the Jaz drive, and then to a small rectangular port on the front of her tower. "Come on," she muttered, moving the mouse back and forth across the desktop, waiting for it to reply. "Come on - recognize!! He said that it should recognize automatically..."

"Hey, that's a cute wallpaper," Liz said, pulling up the ottoman to perch on and watch what was happening on the computer. Isabel turned around to smile at the other girl - she had gotten the before-prom party pic scanned and made it into her desktop... the sight of Alex with his arms around her midsection always made her heart beat faster - and Max and Liz looked really cute on the other side of the line. Even Michael in his apron had a fun twinkle in his eye, as if he was thinking about how he was going to surprise Maria later that night at the prom.

"Oooh, there it goes!" Liz called out, and sure enough, a little computerized thought bubble appeared in the corner of her screen. 'System has detected an unknown device. Please wait.' Okay, well, that looked slightly promising. At least it knew that something had been hooked up. Isabel's computer hummed a little louder, and the empty Jaz drive whistled tunelessly, but if they were trying to communicate with each other, it didn't sound like much productive was being accomplished. Finally a 'wizard' popped up on the computer screen, claiming that he would be able to resolve the difficulties and get Isabel's hardware working. (Even though she mostly knew better, Isabel was always depressed when a computer-automated Wizard didn't come with a graphic of an actual man in a cloak and a pointed hat, with a white beard and carrying a gnarled staff.)

"Okay, let's see what you've got, wizard," Isabel muttered, clicking on the 'next' button. Okay... we don't have a CD with Jaz drivers, do we?" Isabel asked. Liz shook her head. "Connect to microsoft driver database - yes. Search my hard drive... umm, no. Let's just go with Bill Gates and see how well he does." Liz snickered. "Go."

The database search seemed to take a while, and then driver installations began. And kept on going. Liz sighed. "If you wanna go down and meet up with Max, go ahead," Isabel insisted. "I wouldn't mind."

"Nah, I wanna see if we can get Jazzy working," Liz said, reaching out to touch the drive with her finger for just an instant. "OOh, the bar's moving! Or at least it was. Hrm."

They waited awkwardly, as the progress bar alternately crawled and waited, and then went over the same ground a few more times for good measure. (At least it seemed to move faster and faster, as if it was more confident about walking in a straight line now.) Then another 'please wait' message replaced the bar, and finally a little notification square.

"Your drivers have been successfully installed. However, the system needs to reboot, and will be shutting down in 9 seconds. Hope you saved all your work, and have a nice day!" The 9 quickly counted its way down to 1, then the screen blacked out, flashed several bright colors, and then went back into its usual startup routine.

"Huh, I've never seen quite that same message, and I've managed to install a few peripheral devices," Liz commented. "Somebody with a slightly mean sense of humor?" Isabel just shrugged - she hadn't been working on anything else on the computer, so the abruptness of the reboot didn't bother her. Finally, she entered her password to identify herself, and looked inside the 'my computer' icon. With a breath of surprise, she realized that it had apparently worked! She had an E drive now - Jaz01! The two girls looked at each other, mutual triumph radiating between them. "Okay, do you have Nasedo's disk?" Liz asked.

"Umm, yeah, somewhere." After searching the computer desk for a few seconds with no results, Isabel remembered something and rushed over to her bedside table, pulling its drawer out as far as it would go without falling. Yeah, there was the oddly five-sided 'disc.' She brought it back to the computer, considered a moment, and inserted it into the Jaz unit. It didn't go in happily.

"I think that's backwards," Liz pointed out, and Isabel let the other girl adjust the orientation. Finally the Jaz drive started humming... and then a little message box popped up on the screen. 'This disk does not appear to be formatted,' it read. 'Do you want to format it now?'

"No!!" Isabel exclaimed out loud. Liz looked at her oddly as Isabel clicked the corresponding box and ejected the Jaz disk from the drive again. "Umm, uhhh..."

"Why so vehement?" Liz asked her. It looks like the disk is a dud - it's gone bad or gotten corrupted. Makes sense not to futz with it in case we can get anything off of it using Alex's special brand of magic, but..."

"I've got another idea," Isabel said, her voice a low hiss for no particular reason. Nasedo was crazy paranoid, right? What if it was possible to encrypt the formatting... the file system of this disk? That way, anybody without the right encryption software and the right codes would see a dud disk... and if they reformatted they'd make it even harder to find anything relevant."

"Whoo." Liz whistled. "Yeah, I didn't even think of that. Okay, put that back into your bedside drawer until Alex is back." Liz got up. "Come on, let's go and watch the movie or whatever."

Isabel grinned, used her powers to open up the drawer, toss the disk across the room without having it land with more than the slightest of impact, and slide the same drawer closed again. Liz was already out the door when Isabel turned to follow.

-----------

It was late that night - in fact Isabel had already taken care of her evening ablutions, changed into a pretty nightshirt, and was about to slip into bed alone - when Alex popped back in on her. *Darling,* she said to him silently, turning the bedside light back on. *Come look at the computer drive!*

Alex was more than a little disoriented... starting from the typical confusion of appearing from his timeless slumber and not being quite sure where or when he was. In addition, Isabel suspected that the words of greeting she'd used hadn't been anything like he was expecting, and his attention strayed, (accompanied by a smile on his face,) to the acres of bare leg revealed beneath the hem of her chosen nightly outfit. But he followed her over to the computer desk, and nodded in some comprehension as Isabel clicked on the Jaz-drive icon and triggered the unformatted disk message.

"Ahh, right. You were wondering if it isn't as unformatted as it seems?" Isabel nodded quietly. "Could be... some sort of file structure that your version of Windows doesn't support directly. Hrmm..."

"I was wondering," Isabel whispered quietly out loud, since it wouldn't be entirely out of character to be muttering to herself at the computer, "if Nasedo might have found a way to encrypt the file system."

"Hmmm..." Alex considered that for a long moment. "That's deeply paranoid stuff - not that he wasn't - and if he was able to encrypt it very solidly, we may not be able to recover much. But I think the Enigma disk suite supports re-encoded file systems, as well as nonstandard ones, and even has routines to brute-force-attack FS codes." He looked up at Isabel. "I don't suppose I can convince you to let this go until tomorrow morning?"

Izzie shook her head sadly. *I... I need to know as soon as I can. Wouldn't be able to dream happy dreams with this hanging unresolved anyway.*

Alex smiled. "Okay, then. I'll take care of installing the Enigma software, and you catch me up on what I missed."

*You just can't resist the sound of my voice,* Isabel teased silently, and Alex nodded, not arguing with the sentiment. Hmmm... *Oh, you probably need the CD to install with, right?*

"It'd help," Alex admitted, and Isabel got up, hurried over to her bag, and bent down to extract all the software cases that they had paid for. A look backwards showed that Alex was gazing right at the point where her shirt had ridden up the most, showing off a tiny piece of ass and a glipse of her silky underthings. Isabel smiled to herself and straightened up to strut back, sorting through the disks as she went. "Here it is, Enigma." She passed it on to Alex. *When - when I send my thoughts to you silently, what's it like to you?* she asked him. *Do you hear my voice? For me, it's hardly different from any other time I think in words... just a bit clearer and more deliberate maybe.*

Alex smiled, in the middle of opening the CD-rom tray on her computer. Isabel took out the thin disk and inserted it. She knew that Alex liked exploring the mysteries of their new connection. "Yeah, I can definitely recognize your voice in silent thoughts... even some of your patterns of tone. The sound is slightly different, like it's got a slightly windy character to it. And sometimes when you're not quite sure what you're meaning to send, there's a kind of a soft chittering before the word comes out. I tentatively tagged that as your mental stutter."

Isabel was stunned by that. "I - I d-don't stutted out l... out loud, do I?" she said, and then just realized that she had demonstrated that she actually DID.

"Not very often, out loud, no," Alex assured her. "But I think you usually take some time to put your thoughts in order before speaking, and you can't do that so easily when all you end up with are thoughts. Don't worry, it's actually very cute." He laughed softly. "I really like your chitter."

Isabel shook her head, feeling a fain flush coming to her face - and noticed that Alex was already working his way through the InstallWizard boxes. *Well, let's see. What you missed... Not too much really. Liz and Max showed up with the stuff from Abilene, and we told them about our communique session--*

Isabel didn't linger over the events that she was describing particularly much, but the install routine didn't take that long, and it finished aroung the time she was telling Alex about everybody leaving after the movie. (Except for Max, since he lived here too, of course.) The desktop rebooted and came back up, and Alex engaged the Enigma software and told it to access the Jaz drive, while Iz tried not to wait on the edge of her seat. (It kinduv helped, to a certain extent, that putting too much weight on the edge of her seat was uncomfortable in this outfit. Enigma ran through the various 'exotic filesystems' without a match and moved on to search the possible coded indices. *Oh, mom had some news for me while you were out,* Isabel said as they waited. *Someone from the school called. I've passed all my finals, and Graduation is in a little under two weeks.*

"Huh?" Alex said, his attention still focused on the screen. Then a fraction of a second later, what she'd said seemed to penetrate. "Hey! Congratulations!! I can't believe you tried to pass that off so casually." He grinned. "I can't wait - I'd better make sure to get plenty of blink time beforehand, because I intend to be right there in the front row as you get your diploma."

*Well, that should work fine,* she pointed out. *Nobody will complain or even try to kick you out, and you probably couldn't be much further back away that the first row anyway, given our distance limit.* Alex grinned loonily. *Come on, it's not that big a deal, is it? We knew that this was coming, and there wasn't much chance that I WOULDN'T be graduating."

"True, we were expecting it, but for me that doesn't diminish the celebration that actual fact deserves," Alex replied. "You..." he broke off, considering, then continued. "You made it out of high school alive."

Isabel stared for a moment, then swatted Alex on the arm. *You utter goob...* At that point she broke off, spotting a new message on the screen. 'Filesystem found at USC NTFS code 1947. Mount in Windows Explorer? (Y/N)'

"Oh lord, we've found it!" she breathed quietly. "What does all of that mean, anyway?"

"Umm, I'm not sure," Alex admitted. "NTFS is an advanced windows disk format... New Technologies File System or something like that. USC refers to the coded filesystem variant, maybe meaning that it was developed at the University of Southern California. And 1947 would be the code number that Nasedo picked to obfuscate the indexes with - every cell on the disk boils down to a long number, and so he was adding 1947 to each number, though it's a little more complicated than that."

*Yeah,* Isabel agreed silently. *Modulus math, right? If you go above some maximum limit while adding up, then go back and start at 0.* Alex looked at her. *I've been doing my reading, ever since this started. And it just figures that he'd pick 1947... with the crash and all.*

"Yeah," Alex agreed. "Well, go ahead and mount it so that we can take a look at his stuff!"

"Sure?" Isabel replied. "Shouldn't we be careful for some other kind of booby trap?"

"Hmm..." Alex thought about that carefully. "I don't think he'd have loaded a custom or virus on it... too hard to be sure that he could access it when he needed to without getting infected. There might be a trojan horse set up to delete key files. We just need to be very careful about what programs we run from the drive."

*Okay, you take control,* Isabel sent, backing away from the desk and letting Alex take her place. He clicked on a few buttons and brought up a listing of the root directory of the Jaz drive.

"We should probably use the option to copy the entire disk contents to your hard drive," Alex suggested, "and make a backup to CD-R if we can. That way, nothing can get permanently deleted."

Isabel's face fell. *I don't have a burner yet. My parents said maybe next week they'd get me one as a graduation present or something.*

"Hmm." Alex sighed. "Maybe we should just do the hard drive copy - it'll take a while, and you get some sleep. We know that the basic deal works, right?" Isabel thought about that, and nodded. "Assuming that you can sleep while the drives are working."

"Well, if I can't," Isabel whispered, "then we'll just have to find some other way to amuse ourselves in bed."

Alex shook his head - and followed her.

-----------

Sunday was a day of fevered planning and preparation, mostly done by Isabel, Alex, Max, Liz, and Maria. (Michael was busy during most of the day, between cooking at the Crashdown, and hunting down leads for a second job to take for the summer.) One point of considerable debate was Alex's customer built home computer system, which was a much more elaborate piece of harward than Isabel's or anyone else in the group's, and which would prove very useful in accessing the secrets of Nasedo's Jaz drive, and possibly with other tasks that they would need a computer for before reaching the end of Isabel's objectives.

Some of the equipment in Alex's room, it turned out, had actually been acquired secretly by Tess, either for preparatory explorations in advance of Alex's 'trip to Sweden', or followup processes that she had used to access the vast amount of symbolic logic that lay behind the quantum transliteration process, whenever a wording or interpretation in the first translation had been far from clear in context. When Isabel passed along the specifications, Max was very impressed, and admitted that they were first rate and beyond what he'd expected even of Alex's expertise.

"But the problem is how we get at it without Alex's parents getting suspicious," Isabel moaned softly. "That's the trouble. Even... even asking about it seems kinduv ghoulish, especially if it was as good as all that. Makes us look incredibly insensitive and materialistic."

"I dunno," Maria commented. "It's a tricky situation, I'll grant you that much. But... come on, there's got to be a way if we think about it hard enough." She put a mightily pensive expression on her face for a moment that lasted maybe thirty seconds. "Maybe we say something about a group assignment that needs to be handed in before one of us gets a final grade, that got forgotten about in all the shock of finding out that Alex was dead?"

"Hmm... it might work for getting very quick access to the computer," Isabel pointed out. "Though Liz and I already tried something like that when we were trying to find clues about the true reason for his death." She sighed. "The thing is, we'll need it for a lot longer to really get into all of this. The story about a lost assignment won't get us that."

"Well, we don't need to figure it all out right now," Liz said. "There's, umm..." She broke off and made a face at this point, because Isabel was glaring fiercely at her. Lately she didn't even like anything that seemed like a mention of a delay.

"I have..." Alex started, and then muttered under his breath in frustration. "Izzie, do you think that you could handle all of us inside your mindscape?? I... I have some big stuff that I need to propose. In fact, maybe Michael should be here for it... no, never mind that. We can't wait for him."

"Umm... um, okay," Isabel said, and explained Alex's proposal to the others quickly.

"Err - can - can we be sure that we won't be bothered here??" Maria asked. They were up in Liz's room above the diner. "If... if your parents come in, Liz, and find all four of us here, apparently asleep... well, I don't even want to know what they'd think, but it'd certainly be suspicious."

"Not to worry," Max replied. "Last time we tried something like this, Isabel worked out how to extend some of her powers back out into an awareness of the space around her. She was able to kick me back out and return to outside full outside awareness when my Dad called for us. Pretty cool actually."

"Alright I guess," Maria said. Isabel created a mental space that looked like a comfortable living room in a pretty fancy and spacious house, along with drinks and snacks on the immaculate coffee table. "Nice place you've got here."

"Yeah," Alex agreed, "but I should get right to the point. Maybe... maybe you should tell my parents exactly what's going on, and why you need my gear. Including... well, including the big secret."

"Wow," Max muttered. "Umm... are, are you sure that they could deal with it, man? I... I think I'm feeling a bit less uptight about the secrecy deal that I used to, but... but aliens and ghosts and stuff is a big mouthful. And if they start to take it wrong... well, any other parent or pair of parents, we could probably let the child deal with them, try to talk them down, but you're not in a good place for that, Alex. It... it seems like a lot to jump on."

"Yeah," Liz said reluctantly. "Alex... you haven't seen your folks much lately since the few days after the funeral I think, because Isabel hasn't." Isabel jumped slightly at that final phrase, but Alex just nodded. "They... I think that they're fighting to put their lives back together, and this alien thing might not help. Even... even the stuff about cloning, because it's so uncertain and leaves things unsettled." She took a deep breath. "How... how about manifesting as a ghost to your parents, Alex?? Without getting into all of the other stuff. I... I think you might be able to help them get some closure, if they don't just absolutely freak out and think that they're hallucinating. And..." She sighed. "Maybe you could find a dignified way to mention some last wishes for your stuff... that you want it to go to friends who will get good use out of it."

"Hmm." Alex considered that for a long moment. "Has... has possibilities, I guess. Mom... mom would believe me, somehow I know that for sure. Dad... dad might take a bit of a harder view. The part of me that didn't believe you when you told me about aliens, Liz - I got that from my Dad, definitely. But... but it's worth a try." He took a deep breath. "However, to let my parents see and hear me, not in a dream or a mental vision like this one... it'd have to be Tess' powers to bridge that gap. Nothing else would cut it. Do... do we want to let her do that?"

"I... I say yes," Isabel told them flatly. "She... she deserves the chance to prove herself to us. This - it's a situation where she could cause a lot of havoc and confusion, yeah, but that's really the only way of making a fair test. Obviously she's going to play nicely when we give her no other choice." Isabel considered. "Maybe one of you old friends should be there, though, and be included in the mindwarp. That way, you can help keep an eye on the situation. If Alex's parents seem to be reacting to anything other than what you're seeing and hearing, it should be possible to tell that. Especially since that'd be hard on Tess to keep up."

"Alright," Liz said. "Sure, I'd be happy to do that, and I don't think Maria would mind either." She sighed. "We'll have to arrange that very carefully, though, having the two of you girls somewhere nearby so that you're within range and yet not really part of the obvious situation."

"Okay," Maria said. "Now... when are we going to break the news to Tess that she was one of the bad guys?" Max shook his head. None of them had remembered, or felt like the time was right to have that talk the night before.

"We don't know for sure about her character back on Antar," Isabel insisted. "Just who she was related to. and... well, the fact that, umm, the king was married to a relative of the guy who overthrew the royals is - evocative. I'm convinced that doesn't mean Tess has to be one of the bad guys, here on Earth."

"I'm a little worried about anything that might give her the idea that throwing in with Kivar is an option," Liz admitted. "Especially considering that she probably knows enough of the Granilith instructions to launch it - and she might still be holding out on us about the key."

"I... I don't think even Tess is stupid enough to think that she can go to Kivar," Alex said reluctantly. "She can't force any of you into the Granilith against your will I think, and she's not going to be getting Max's baby, EVER. Will he be pleased with her arrival, all alone?"

"Maybe, if he wants the Granilith badly enough," Maria pointed out.

"Then maybe we should make sure that we have the key, and put it somewhere safe, before we tell her," Liz suggested. "Just to be sure."

"Great," Max groaned. "Where do we look for it?"

"*This key*??"

With the words, Isabel's imaginary living room went swimmy, and suddenly they were all back in Liz's bedroom, looking around frantically - and spotting Tess standing outside the window. Liz crossed over, opened up the window, and glared at Tess, not touching the crystal rod that she was holding out. "HOW did you know what we were talking about, Tess??"

"I... I didn't mean to eavesdrop on your little confab," Tess muttered, and Liz shot her a very dubious look. "Maybe my mental powers are sensitive enough that I'm picking up some stuff without even trying. Seriously. Anyway... the fact that I know you were talking about this," and she waved the key, "doesn't explain why I had it with me. I... I was coming over to give it up anyway."

"You've had days to tell us that you knew where the key was," Max said in a low voice to her. "You must have known that we'd be looking for it."

"Maybe you should've been the ones to ask first," Tess said, and then shook her head. "Sorry, I didn't mean to snipe like that. I... I didn't want to volunteer to give it up, though. It... it was one more reminder of all my secret plans, of why I did what I did to Alex... and I wasn't eager to rub that in your faces. But I don't want to use it myself, now... and so I want you to have it. Hide it from me if you feel like you have to, if you still don't trust me. I don't blame you." She waved the crystal around a bit, to see if Isabel would take it, and then gently tossed it into the room. It bounced once on the bed and came to rest in front of Max. "I guess I'll be..."

"Wait," Liz said, and reached out to brush Tess' hand with her own. "Co-- come in, Tess." She stepped back slightly. "There's something that I think I should tell you... about that prophecy Nasedo told you, and about Queen Ava back on Antar."

Without a word, Tess climbed through the window, looking around as if she felt very out of place, coming into the inner sanctum of her long-time rival.

TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Part Twelve

"So... so Queen Ava was - was related to the bad guys?" Tess asked shakily. "What - why would Zan have married her then? And - and was she..."

"We don't have anything other than some very tenuous guesswork so far, Tess," Isabel admitted, as they and Isabel's closest friends sat around Liz's bedroom. "As far as why the marriage... probably it was before anyone realized that Kivar was 'a bad guy.' If he and his clan had political asiprations that the Royals wanted to keep in check, maybe the Royal marriage was a bribe of some sort - a ploy to keep them from more direct action. And Ava's own motives are far from clear." She took a deep breath.

"Tess, none of us hold this against you. I think that we've all come to firmly believe that we don't have any responsibility for whatever happened in our past lives, and so as far as I'm concerned, that goes for you too. I thought that you should know what we found out, but I'd hate for the news to damage our new understanding."

"Yeah, I, uhh... I guess that occured to me too," Isabel admitted. "I don't want that either, Isabel - I'm serious about proving that if you can learn to trust the new me, you won't regret it." She sighed. "What... what about my Dad's part in all this?"

Isabel blinked in surprise - partly because she'd never heard Tess use that phrase before - 'my Dad.' "You mean Ed-sedo? Umm... I'm not sure, but that prophecy he spouted off about is - is kinduv damning, in this new context."

"Wait a sec," Maria broke in. "What about the prophecy? The one he used to convince Tess to go after Max, before he died?"

"Yeah," Tess agreed. "In light of the family replationship, it seems pretty clear that he was telling me how to bring the right political capital back for Kivar, which suggests that he was loyal to Kivar's side - or secretly in their pay. I'm not quite sure what that means - was he really our appointed guardian, suborned by the enemies of those who chose him? Or... or an impostor, who killed the true gardian and then took his place? In the absence of some kind of very secure mental seal, it's kind of impossible to prove that one shapeshifter is or isn't another."

"Yeah," Max agreed softly. "Okay, new topic. We were thinking about you possibly arranging a ghostly visitation for Alex's parents, Tess."

"Hmmm." She lifted her eyebrows in surprise. "Interesting. And yes, I'm willing to mindwarp them if you ask me to. Tell me more about the reasons why, though."

----------

"Yeah, I think you're right," Michael said a little while later - talking with Isabel, Kyle, and Liz in his living room. "Nasedo was as crooked as a four-cent nickel, or something equally dubious." He sighed. "I've been going over those papers, and there's no doubt about it. If Tess read a quarter of them and didn't realize that there was something fishy about his plans, then she's a lot more naive than I'd have thought."

"Well, we can ask her about that," Liz said. "Maybe she *didn't* go through them - though that seems a little unlikely, from what I know about her. As far as naivete...." She thought about that one hard. "Maybe Ed was a blind spot for her usually canny instincts. Once you've made up your mind to trust someone completely, no matter how inexperienced or emotional you were when that decision was made, it can be hard to reverse it, even if there's a whole lot of facts piling up on the other side." She sighed at the look on Michael's face. "Maybe you've never started to trust someone unconditionally like that... and I don't mean that as a dig - there's good aspects to that kind of, ummm..." Liz's usual loquacity failed her as she struggled to come up with a word to end that sentence on that didn't sound unkind.

"Cynicism?" Michael said, smiling a little fiercely, and Liz relaxed slightly, seeing that he wasn't taking the idea terribly personally.

"So - what kind of specific details have you found in the handwritten notes, Michael?" Isabel asked. "Anything useful??"

"Ehh... I'm not sure I've got anything solid yet," Michael complained. "Bunch of scattered references to meeting with 'a friend of K' or something like that. He used to jot out these hypothetical scenarios... at first they just looked like part of keeping himself ready for the worst at a moment's notice. People attacking, or certain bad things happening, how would he react?? But later on - it was almost as if he was using them for some kind of revenge fantasies against us? Bad thing happen, and he saves himself and leaves Max to fry, usually the rest of us too."


"Makes some sense," Kyle admitted. "Even without the Kivar angle... he got sent to a place that, in Antarian terms, is probably considered the ass-end of the boonies, well beyond the edge of civilization. When they crashland, some of his colleagues die, the two survivors risk everything to make sure that your pods are safe, and then get captured. Tortured by the special unit, Nasedo escapes, gets hunted back and forth all across the country and maybe further, and when you guys show up... well, you never exactly showed much gratitude for everything that he did. I mean, I understand your side of things too, but... eh, whatever." Kyle's voice was very quiet by the time he finally stopped speaking.

"That's as much as I want to talk about Nasedo or any of this stuff," Liz declared. "In fact, I should probably get going. Say hi to Maria when she makes it over, Michael."

"Now, what makes you think that Maria's going to come over here once she's finished with her shift?" Michael teased. Liz just shook her head at him.

It took a few minutes for things to sort out. Isabel and Kyle actually played a friendly round of rock paper scissors for who got to give Liz a lift home, and Kyle tried to cheat, but in the end gracefully admitted his defeat. "So, how's Alex?" Liz asked her softly. "I - I haven't heard much from you about him in a little while."

"Ehh, he was hanging around until we got to Michael's - just didn't want to keep saying things because he feels awkward when I'm repeating on his behalf." Isabel nodded, reasonably satisfied with this state of affairs. "And then he had to pop out again. I know that he's eager to visit his parents and hopefully get the computer stuff sorted out, though. Do you think we can arrange it for tomorrow?"

"Hmm... I'm not sure," Liz admitted. "One of us will probably have to go visit the Whitman's house and scout out to figure out our best opportunity... no sense in trying to organize schedules beforehand." She thought about that. "Maybe you and I should go, or you and Maria. The three of us girls, for that matter. I know that Alex will appreciate a chance to see his parents, even if they can't see him too."

"Yeah, you're right," Isabel agreed, frowning slightly. She shouldn't have had to have Liz suggest that to her - she hadn't been over to Alex's house since... since the night after the wake, the time that she had verified the old essay, (thus reassuring herself that Alex's spirit was really him and not her imagination,) and examined Alex's personal effects with Liz in an effort to solve the mystery of his death. But it was absolutely obvious that Alex would miss his parents, and if he hadn't put that need into words to her, it was just because he still felt nervous about presuming on her time - and that just meant, in Isabel's mind, that she needed to get proactive about attending to his wishes. She loved Alex so deeply that she could hardly stand it, and there was nothing that she wouldn't do to see to his welfare. He would just have to accept that, accept that she would sacrifice everything for him. Isabel didn't intend to let him have any other choice.

"Well, call me in the morning," Isabel said as she pulled up to the sidewalk outside the Crashdown's dining room door, "Or I'll call you. Maybe you or Maria should try calling Alex's parents to ask if we could drop by and visit them for breakfast again. I... well, I'd do it, but I haven't known either of them as long as you have."

"I wouldn't have thought that was something that would stop you," Liz said with a gentle laugh and a friendly smile - and then took off, jumping out of the car and seemingly into the diner in a single bound.

When she finally got into her bedroom, Isabel was a little surprised to see Max waiting for her there, sitting on her bed against the headboard. "You're determined to take the lead in our relationships with Tess, aren't you?" he asked softly. "With you breaking trail for her rehabilitation, or for friendship or whatever, I haven't got a chance of standing against you."

"You better believe it," Isabel muttered under her breath, and sighed. "Do you *want* to stand against me??"

"I... I'm not sure I'm confortable at the pace you're setting," Max admitted uncomfortably. "I'm not sure I want Tess to be a prisoner or an enemy for the rest of her life... but I think about how she betrayed all of us, how she plotted behind our backs. I think about what she almost managed to do to Liz and me, what she very nearly made me want to do with her, and it makes my skin crawl. I hate that we can't manage to punish her more openly for every wrong thing that she did to any of us." He sighed. "And it kinduv seems weird to me that you're not reacting the same way. She hurt you about as badly as she did me, or maybe even worse. Yes, Alex isn't really dead for keeps - his soul lives on, and we might just manage to rebuild his body, or something like that." He sighed. "But Tess definitely didn't realize that any of this would be possible until long afterwards. What she did would have taken Alex away from you forever, if not for the accident of the two of you bonding just beforehand, and... and I would think that you'd hate her guts forever over something like that."

"Hmm." Isabel considered that seriously, sitting down on the computer chair in front of her desk. "You've got a point. There's the fact that I honestly don't think that Tess realized Alex would die before he had, and that if she'd seen it, if she'd realized, I believe she'd have backed off, or called you in to help, whatever was necessary - even if it meant all of her ill-done deeds coming out at the worst possible moment. She *did* confess at the end, when she could have just skipped down or tried to fight harder, and that's something,"

Isabel groaned, turning the tiny threads of motivation over in her mind - Tess' motives for what she'd done and hadn't done - her own for extending the olive branches that she had so far - Max's reasons that he had confessed to her for wanting to hold a grudge. "The bottom line, though, is more practical than these somewhat dicey ethical questions. I want Tess to be my friend... because it's the best way that I can see to keep my other friends safe. She's powerful, but her heart is... well, there's something worthwhile that I've seen down there underneath all of the crap that Nasedo shoveled on top of her while she was growing up. I think it's possible that Tess can be a loyal friend of ours, and when that happens, not only would she never turn on anyone close to us ever again, but she'd be the best and truest guardian that any of us could ever have. That seems like a much better chance than watching her like a hawk for every moment of the next five or ten years, or however long. She's resent us and start to think like a prisoner, who wants to escape or to hurt us or both... and eventually, she'd get a chance." Isabel sighed. "I just want that not to happen."

Max smiled slightly. "And the possibility that Tess will help on your quest to bring Alex back to life?"

"Well, I guess that's a factor too," Isabel admitted. "This is my quest, and I want Tess to really want to help - and not just out of guilt. Maybe around 30% out of guilt - that seems like a healthy fraction." She sighed. "Is it okay if I get ready to crawl into bed now?"

"Oh, crawl away." Max got off of her bed, pulled back the covers, and made a gesture as if waving her into bed immediately. Isabel shot Max a somewhat dark look - she was still dressed and made up.

"One other thing - not sure if you were wanting to see Liz tomorrow morning, but she might have other plans. Going over to Alex's house to see when we have an opportunity to do the ghost thing."

"Hmm." Max thought about that. "Couldn't you and Maria handle that?" He smiled teasingly.

"Possibly... and if you want to make your own pitch to your girlfriend, go ahead," Isabel admitted. "We'll see who has a greater hold over her I guess." And with that she yawned. "Right now, I just want to get to sleep."

"Alex around?"

She shook her head. "Still blinked out. Not sure how long he'll have to stay out. Doing the communication-in-internal-mindscape thing seems to be even harder on him than being in my dreams or out in the real world." Like everything else that defined Isabel's new life since the night she met Alex by his grave, that seemed to be an awkward tradeoff... it was a way to be closer to him, in better-controlled circumstances, than any other - but the costs were noticeable, both in Isabel having to withdraw herself from the real world in a more direct way than dreaming, and in forcing Alex's presence to be dormant for longer and longer times. She just couldn't have it all... not until and unless she managed to get the cloning thing working. And the next step in that direction... was helping Alex pay a ghostly visit to his parents so that they could maybe get ahold of his computer. Everything was getting so convoluted.

Max smiled slightly, gave Isabel a big-brotherly hug, and left her room. Isabel sped through her evening pre-bed ritual, and crashed beneath the sheets with her face still slightly damp from being washed, and wearing nothing but a white silky bra and panties set.

-------------

She woke up, with the desert summer twilight only just begun to brighten, to find Alex in bed with her - a surprise pleasant enough to make her forget the need for silence and squeal in happiness. Alex quickly put his finger up to her lips, (not his own,) and made a tender, gentle shhing sound at her. *When... how long have you been here?* she send excitedly.

"Umm, a few hours, I think. Just enjoying watching you sleep. I knew that you needed to get your rest."

*Yeah, I did.* But somehow, going back to sleep, or even lying quietly and calmly with Alex next to her, was suddenly impossible. Isabel grabbed the fabric of Alex's pajama sleeve... (Had he popped in in pajamas, or changed into them himself? Had the rules changed recently? At first, Alex's ghost had apparently only been able to change clothing when Isabel deliberately wished them to change...) worked her other arm around his neck and onto his back, and then rolled over onto HER back, turning away from Alex on the large matress. Because of the way she had been holding onto him, this led to Alex getting pulled on top of her, (somewhat to his surprise,) and also threw the blankets and bedsheet into some disarray. Isabel didn't care about the untidyness, though, or even about any noise that she was making or would be making soon. Alex's lips dipped so close to hers that she could smell his breath, (was that all in her imagination?) though he didn't actually let his mouth touch any part of her face, and his weight was absolutely real to all of her body's own senses... his chest pressing down against her hardly-covered breasts, his hips touching her crotch. Alex reached out with one hand to steady himself, grabbing her upper arm just below the shoulder, not clutching her skin or squeezing too tight on the sleek muscles beneath, just holding her in what seemed like the perfect combination of tenderness and strength.

"Are... are you sure about this," he managed to ask, gasping as Isabel squirmed teasingly beneath him. "Your... your parents might wonder what's going on, and Max would... if he wakes up, he'll know, and that'll probably be weird for him."

"Too bad for Max... or my parents if it comes to that," Isabel breathed quietly, moving her left hand to rest at the base of Alex's head just above his neck - bringing his face down to meet hers in a fiery kiss. "I... I need you too much - need to kiss you, to be with you out here in the real world, not a dream or a mindscape. Worrying about what other people think isn't going to stop me..." Isabel licked at his neck, and began moving her other hand around in the beginnings of a journey that would bring it to Alex's taut but pokeable behind. "....And... and I don't intend to run away and hide somewhere sealed off like the Granilith chamber either. Are - are you up for it?"

"Umm, yeah, I'm up, I can hardly help that," Alex muttered. "In more than just the, umm, what would previously have been the biological sense. I... I just hope that you don't regret this." But he kissed her back, earnestly, and began to work his fingers down between their panting chests, using what he'd learned just before he died, and afterwards, to drive Isabel even crazier with desire than she'd been before.

It wasn't quite like any other time that they'd made love... partly just because of the mutually felt need for speed and as near an approach as could be made to total silence. Neither of the young paramours were in the mood to dispense entirely with their favorite forms of foreplay, though... there were heated kisses and the silent dragging of tips of tongues across warm, smooth, skin. Fingers caressed, hands fondled. As they approached the central act, Isabel concentrated and blinked away Alex's pajama bottoms, and Alex in turn stared as Isabel's panties, and they faded away into nothingness, only to reappear the same way on the corner of the bed, a little ways beyond her pillow.

Holding each other close and practically glowing afterwards, Isabel and Alex panted, their skin completely slick with sweat, (though no sweat stains were developing on Alex's side of the sheets.) Alex ran his hands lovingly through Isabel's hair. "So, what's planned for today?"

Isabel smiled over at him. "Well, I expect that we'll be going over to your house sometime to visit your parents. Maybe for breakfast again." She was looking closely enough to catch the delighted smile that showed on his face only for a moment. "I wish that you'd reminded me that you wanted to see them again, but I guess you had your reasons."

"Hmm." Alex thought about that. "If you know that I wanted to see them, exactly why would you need to be reminded?" he teased her.

"Because I know now... after Liz mentioned going to visit them, it finally sunk through," Isabel admitted. "Looking back in retrospect, I can kinduv see the signs. But... but I wish that I'd thought to do this days ago." She sighed. "And not *just* because I'm sure you miss them, actually. I want to get to know your folks, too. I never took the time to as much as meet them before, really."

Alex took a deep breath and thought. "Well, I'll certainly enjoy it, if that's what you want me to admit out loud." Isabel giggled softly. "And... I kinda get the impression that you're hinting around for something a little more general. That you want me to say I'll talk to you more about things that I want to do and say, in general."

"Yeah, I guess I was wanting to convey that... um, something along those lines," Isabel admitted. "I mean... in a way, it's like my life is a car that you're stuck in, and I'm in the driver's seat. I don't want to make all the decisions myself just because I happen to be stuck at the controls. I know that'd be incredibly frustrating for me if the circumstances were reversed."

"Oh, but the circumstances could never be completely reversed, because we're different people with different personalities," Alex pointed out. "You're... you're type A and a bit of a control nut, my dearest dear darling. Of course being powerless in your existence would be terribly hard on you. Come to think of it, that might be part of the reason you've become so, umm, so intent about these plans - you feel that you're nearly powerless to help me, with only a few - well, admittedly they're pretty slim chances. And you respond just by getting fiercer and more determined." He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. "It's part of what I love about you. Myself... even though I don't mind driving when there's a need, I'm also laid-back enough to not mind being a passenger. I've gotten an eye-opening look at what your life is like over the past, erm, week and a bit, or however long I've been with you like this... and a perspective on why things are different for guys and girls, among other things. I... if I really feel a need for any particular thing, that you can provide and doesn't look like it'd be awkward to fufill without me having a real body, then I'll make a point of telling you about it. But in general... I'm having a blast just being with you like this." He waved at her bed. "In more ways than the blindingly obvious."

"Well, I guess that's good to know," Isabel said, unable to restrain her laughter at the end of his speech.

"So... back to my parents," Alex said. "Trying to figure out what would be the best time and place for me and Tess to do the ghost trick?"

"And me, too," Isabel insisted. "I'm an important part of it, and even if I weren't... I don't think I'd leave you alone with Tess just yet. I want to trust her, but I'm not gonna be stupid about it." She considered. "Do you think maybe we should try the alien communicator thing again at the Pod Chamber, with Liz and Max this time?"

"Hmm." Alex considered. "Maybe better to leave it another day to see how far the wheels of bureaucracy can grind on another planet. But we'll do it soon. I think I want to try talking over the link more. It's just fun knowing that they can actually SEE me there."

"Sure, we'll make sure to do that," Isabel promised. "Okay, umm... maybe we should get up." She reached out for her panties, brought them down under the covers, and then thought better of it. "Wanna go shower with me? I mean, I realize that you don't NEED to wash to get clean any more - but it could be fun, huh?"

"Oh, man," Alex grinned. "If I weren't already a ghost, I'd say that you were gonna be the death of me."

"Guess it's a good thing that I don't need to worry, then." Isabel slipped out from between the sheets, and lifted her hands up behind her back to unfasten her bra, (which wasn't exactly fitting in it's usual way - Alex had pulled it more than halfway off as he slid past second base. "Last one in's a rotten alien!"

Alex didn't even try running - but he was standing in the shower/tub by the time Isabel got there. "Damn, I didn't realize that you could do that on cue."

"Neither did I," Alex admitted. "Grab that scented shower gel that makes you feel like a field of orchids."

"It's right behind you," Isabel pointed out. But she grabbed some of Max's manly-musk soap to try using it on Alex, and then got inside, turning the hot water on. The pipes hadn't had a chance to warm up at all yet, though, and Isabel squealed with the cold blast hitting her and jumped into Alex's arms, and he caught her and held her steady.

It took her a second before she ever realized that that was strange in the circumstances. As she slowly warming water sprayed down against their lower bodies, she looked up into Alex's face. "You... you caught me? How could you..."

"Maybe you were never really unbalanced, or you caught yourself," he said softly. "You just wanted to *think* that I had done it."

Isabel smiled and handed him a bottle of shampoo. "Okay, ghost boy. Wash my hair, then." Alex sighed and started to carefully move her back so that ther hair would get thoroughly wet in the shower spray. Once that was done, he squeezed out a small blob of the tropical flowers aroma shampoo and began to inexpertly, but calmly, spread the lather throughout all of her hair.

Distracted by the sound of the running water and Alex's presence, so real, so close to her, Isabel never heard a telephone ring. She very faintly heard the bathroom door open and Max call out to her. "Hey, Isabel! It's Maria on the phone for you."

"Oooh." Isabel considered things, and decided that she was perfectly justified in what she was about to say. "Tell her I absolutely cannot come to the phone and will ring her back in... umm, in ten minutes." That would leave only the time for a very quick shower, but she didn't really want to delay Maria any longer than she had to. She still wanted to be able to take her time with Alex here in the shower sometime soon, but apparently this was not the morning for it. There'd be other occasions for it.

Rinsing the shampoo thoroughly out of her hair. Letting Alex lather up her skin as completely as he could in the time available, and scrubbing her clean, then rinsing that off too, and skimping more than a little on the after-shower lotion gel. Isabel wrapped a big bath towel around herself and hurried back into her room to make the call, about thirty seconds late. "Hey, girl. Sorry, I was in the shower, and, well, you know how that goes."

"Umm... Hi Isabel," a voice that was DEFINITELY not Maria's replied. Isabel stifled a groan. Why the heck did she have to start off at a run without listening for who was answering the phone just when Cousin Sean picked up. "Actually, I'm not quite sure how that goes - I tend to take really quick showers myself. But I'd LOOVE to hear you tell me about it." Isabel nearly squirmed from the oily attempt at seductiveness he put into that sentence - and the odd purring coo that he followed it up with.

"Never going to happen, jailbird," she shot back tightly. "Put your cousin on the phone, please.

"Alright." Isabel sighed as she waited, and then jumped slightly. Her hair seemed to be drying itself out without her even concentrating on it, and then gradually a new layer of clothes formed underneath the towel - a gray t-shirt with the words 'LIFE IS NON-ZERO SUM' over the front.

She looked around for Alex, but couldn't spot him, and then there was a new voice on the phone line. "Hey, Isabel?"

"Yeah, it's me. Umm, did you..."

"What did you say to Sean? He sounded really pissed." Isabel tried to formulate a response, but couldn't before Maria continued. "Always like to see that. So, umm... I called Alex's mom, she'd be happy to have us over for breakfast. I'm just about to call Liz. We'll meet you there in forty-five minutes?"

Isabel thought about that. "Yeah. Listen, if Liz tries to get out of it, give her a bit of a hard time for my sake, okay? Nothing too harsh, but just have a little fun with her about it."

"Huh?" Isabel could picture Maria blinking in confusion. "Umm... why would she try to get out of it? She's looking forward to this."

"Umm... well, that depends on whether my brother's gotten to her," Isabel said softly.

"Okay, got it. Umm... maybe you could go distract him?"

"Yeah, alright, once I get..." Isabel broke off, remembering what had been happening before - and somehow, without her even realizing any of the later stages, she realized that she was wearing one of her favorite pairs of casual black pants, and the bath towel was nowhere in si... no, it was on the edge of the bed. She saw Alex sitting in the desk chair, a twinkle in his eye, and waving at her. "I'll just go and do that. Alex says hi."

"Right, okay. Hi back to Alex." The phone clicked off, and Isabel set it down, shaking her head.

"Hi from Maria," she told Alex, to get it out of the way. "Umm... what's with the message on the shirt?"

"Err, kind of a math in-joke," he admitted. "Didn't realize that it was going to do that until it had happened. Does that ever happen when you use your powers?"

"Sometimes," she admitted. "Used to be more often, in the first two years or so. So come on, can you explain the joke to me without going through a bunch of calculus or something?"

"Umm, definitely no calculus, and I'll try to make it simple," Alex replied. "Okay - there's a field of maths called game theory, or at least zero-sum game theory is a field in maths. There are certain limits to how you structure a game... both players make their move at the same time, and reveal them, and consult a kind of board of possibilities to find out what can happen. And the game can be analyzed mathematically. One of the limitations is that when one player wins, the other player loses, and by the same amount."

"Okay, I think I'm with you," Isabel agreed.

"That's zero-sum - you add up how much the players win, with losses being negative numbers. But if you structure a game where both players could win, or both lose, then a bunch of interesting things happen and the analysis moves out of the realm that mathematics alone can cover... you get into psychology, ethics, and a bunch of other areas. Those are non zero-sum games... and they're of interest in all kinds of fields like diplomacy, social situations..."

"...Pretty much life in general," Isabel filled in. "Okay, I get it, and that's cool. It's sort of a philosophical statement, I guess... you can look at life figuring that it's cutthroat, that to win you have to step on other people and take things away from him, or you can work co-operatively with other people, trying to build up things that can be shared. Trying to both win, instead of both lose."

"Yeah," Alex agreed. "What were you saying to Maria that you'd do?"

"Just wait and see." Isabel hurried down into the dining room, catching Max just as he was about to dial the phone, and started ad-libbing a whole rambling speech about her graduation ceremony.

----------

"Well, it's really great to see all three of you girls, of course," Gloria Whitman said, her smile a mix of the sunlight of happiness and the clouds of grief somehow. "Was there anything that... oh, here, this one is done. Who wants it?" She flipped a slice of french toast out onto a plate in the center of the table, and started dipping a fresh slice of bread into the egg mixture.

After waiting for four seconds to see if Liz or Maria would claim it, Isabel called out "Me, I guess," and went for it. She had loved french toast ever since she was a little girl, though somehow she never thought of making it even when she was putting some effort and time into breakfast.

"Umm, nothing really that we came over to ask or to tell you," Liz said a little bit awkwardly. Or at least, nothing that we can really tell you about yet, Isabel thought as she sprinkled icing sugar and tabasco on her toast. "Just thought we'd come by, and see what's been going on lately?"

"Well, nothing terribly much." Mirs Whitman put the next slice of toast, and sighed. "John's been throwing himself into his work, which I guess is lucky for him, in a way. Alex was like him that way, that no matter what's going on, they can find something to do and lose themselves in it."

"Yeah," Maria agreed. "What's the new project?"

"Umm... something a little bit speculative to do with, umm... cloning I think, though I'm not sure of the details." Not noticing the stunned expressions on the faces of the three girls, Gloria got up and checked the microwave, which had just stopped beeping, "Ohh, don't those just look gorgeous?" She opened the door and brought out an oddly shaped plastic gewgaw that held over a dozen strips of bacon upright above grease tracks, and seperate from each other. She busies herself, first draining the bacon fat away into an empty soup can, then taking away the skewers that helped fasten each slice of bacon in place and transferring the hot meat over to a dinner plate with sheets of paper towel on top of it to soak up the grease.

Isabel shook her head, trying to dispel the odd notion that this scene had somehow become a dream. "Did... did you say *cloning*?" she repeated.

"Well, not like in the movies, dear, like bringing somebody's poor departed cat back to life, or making an exact copy of a little girl that got hit by a car... except if it was in a movie, the cloned little girl would probably turn out to be some strange monster who tries to kill the parents, or..." Gloria cut herself off, shaking her head. "It's what they call, if I have this right, 'therapeutic cloning.' Taking donor cells from a patient and cloning them in a lab, so that... that they can be grown into a replacement if a man's heart is weak, or can assume the properties of new spinal cord nerves to replace ones that have died off."

"Wow," Liz said, as brightly as she could. "I had no idea that work like that was being done here in Roswell."

"Well, they keep it fairly hushed, because they're worried about people getting offended by the ideas, and petition campaigns to have the state legislature outlaw the work." Gloria sighed. "Or something like that. Also - well, different companies are trying to get to the breakthroughs first and patent their techniques, and so they're also each keeping what they're doing secret from the others. It's all very complicated, and they have to stay strictly in compliance with existing regulations about the research."

"And just what is Alex's dad's role in the research?" Maria asked. "Alex said that he was, umm... err, an immunological biologist?"

"Yes, that's right. Umm... well, there are a lot of biologists and microbiologists of different specialties working on this project, because they're trying to figure out how basic undifferentiated cells, umm, become bone cells, and muscle cells, and nerve cells, and blood immune system cells, and all of the other types of cells that are in a living creature. So that they can figure out what kind of cells from an adult human might best be able to be clones and fill different uses."

"That's what they call 'stem cells', yes?" Isabel asked, and Gloria nodded.

"I... I've been keeping up with this sort of thing a bit," Liz said slowly. "Another thing that an immunologist might be involved in is trying to figure out and fight the effects of using one person's cloned cells to help another. The immune system generally sees that kind of thing as a sign of a foreign threat that needs to be fought - unless we can teach our immune cells not to."

"Like... like cloned cells from an unborn baby?" Maria said, shuddering a bit.

"Maybe," Liz admitted. "Those are still the best sources of stem cells, because they haven't already decided what they want to be when they grow up, as it were. But of course, there's all kinds of public controversy about that sort of thing." Liz made a little wringing gesture with her hands, as if saying that she wasn't going to venture into that debate herself.

Isabel's mind was still spinning. The reference to 'cloning' seemed to be partly co-incidental, but on the other hand, Mister Whitman and their team probably knew things that she NEEDED to know, or to have Max know, or whatever. One thing that had been nagging at the back of her head, and now came into the forefront, was the question of the sample. If they were going to clone Alex, then the psychic residue in her brain wouldn't be enough - they needed to have a genetic sample of him, one in as good a condition as possible, and his body was already starting to slowly degrade. The only things that had kept Isabel from forcing the issue and leading a grave robbing expedition were... well, first there had been the emotional squeamishness about seeing his dead body again, but also the fact that none of them really knew what they needed to do to take the sample - where on Alex's body they needed best to go, and how they could preserve their sample once they had it. The answers to that particular question seemed to be - over at the well-defended Biolix research plant. Either that or inside the heads of Mister Whitman and his colleages. Isabel forced herself to file all of these ideas away for later discussion, and to get back to the original point.

"And what about you, umm, Gloria?" Maria asked, stealing very nearly the same line Isabel had been about to use herself. "Have you been keeping yourself busy lately?"

"Umm... not as much as I'd like to," she admitted. "Part of the problem is that the biggest things I can think of that need to be done... organizing Alex's things and trying to figure out what to do with all of it - well, I can't seem to get through very much of it without breaking down into tears, or very nearly." She sighed.

The three girls exchanged glances. This seemed to offer... well, it was a possible solution to 'the computer problem,' and if not it was still a way that they, and Alex, could help his parents out. "We'd be happy to help out with that kind of thing," Liz said suddenly. "If... if that's okay with you. And, umm... I'm not sure, but there are probably some things that we'd like to have to remember him by. Or to give to other friends. Always assuming that it's okay with you, I mean, we wouldn't want to presume that anything of his we want is ours to take, just because you're not sure what to do with it..."

"No, of course it's alright to ask us about anything, dear," Gloria insisted, "and I can't think of anything we'd particularly object to, aside from family mementos that have the greatest of sentimental value for us. Anything... anything that you young people who still have your lives ahead of you can put to good use... there doesn't seem to be anything more fitting to me than that you should do so. Alex... he would have wanted it that way. I'll always remember his generous spirit."

"I... I couldn't agree more," Isabel replied softly. "Okay, umm... should we get started right after breakfast??"

"Umm, I've got to ge to the cafe by quarter to eleven, to get ready for the lunch rush," Maria said, sighing.

"And, erm, I have a previous engagement for lunch," Liz said. Isabel caught her eye, and could tell by reading Liz's face that Max had indeed gotten to his girlfriend, though not enough to steal her away for breakfast.

"Okay, umm... well, I'm up for it if you are," Isabel said undeterred, looking at Gloria. She wasn't sure if she'd have the nerve to say anything about the computer if she was all alone, but maybe Alex would be able to give her the words that she could say comfortably, now that Gloria had signalled that she would be receptive to such suggestions and requests. In any event, they could get some of Alex's other things sorted out, and the computer could wait for a later time.

"Oh, one thing," Maria said, before she left. "I... I'm really sorry that Mister Whitman wasn't able to be here, and - well, this might sound weird, but I'd like to invite the two of you over for dinner sometime. Nothing too fancy, but I'll whip up something. My mom's out of town, so I can use the company anyway."

"That's a lovely offer, dear," Gloria told her. "I'll call John and ask him about it - was there a particular day that you were thinking of?"

"Could be tonight, could be tomorrow," Maria hinted.

"Okay, I'll see. Tonight might be possible... you're sure that you'll have time after your shift for cooking?"

"Yeah, that'll be fine," Maria insisted. Okay, that seemed to be clearly a setup for Alex's ghostly apparition. An intimate setting with Maria and both Whitman parents, in a location that was controllable enough that Isabel and Tess could be somewhere nearby - maybe in Maria's bedroom or her mom's, without Alex's parents needing to know about it. Good enough.

Once Maria and Liz had driven away, Gloria showed Isabel to Alex's room - and nearly tripped over his guitar as she walked in. "Hmm, that's weird. I wonder how this got here. I don't... don't think Alex left it there. Hmm..."

"I'm not sure," Isabel said, though she had an idea. Liz had taken to strumming that guitar while they were looking through Alex's thing for clues. She looked behind her, trying to make the gesture casual, and saw Alex winking at her from the doorway, leaning against the frame. He mouthed a word at her, and after a second Maria got it. "But... well, if I can make a suggestion, we should probably ask Maria if she wants that. She loved music just as much as Alex did."

"Alright." Gloria produced a pad of mini-stickis and a pen from her pocket, wrote 'MARIA' on one of the stickies, and carefully attached it to part of the face of the guitar. "What's next??"

----------

"Okay, that's it," Isabel pleaded. She had never found anyone whose energy for organizing and sorting things exceeded hers, but on this day, at least, Gloria Whitman seemed to have her beat. "I... I have to leave in a bit, and I'm sure that there's some other things you need to be attending to. We'll pick this up another time, when one of the other girls can join in, maybe?"

"We're almost there," the older woman insisted. "There was just one other thing I wanted to as... oh, that's right. Alex's computer. Any ideas??"

Isabel took a deep breath. More than anything else, she didn't want to tip her hand too soon on this. "Are - are you sure that you or your husband don't want to keep that? It's expensive equipment, I know, and you guys probably paid a lot for it, one way or another."

"Mmm, I don't think so," Gloria said. "I don't have that much use for computers myself, and John's still quite comfortable with his old Mac 8 laptop, or whatever it's called. Actually, as it happened, we were talking about this yesterday, just casually. If there's anybody in the 'gang', or in any of his classes, who would get good use out of it, they're quite welcome. As we said, Alex would have wanted us to give it away like that, I think."

"Okay," Isabel took a deep breath. "Well, if that's the way you feel, I actually would tentatively nominate myself." There was an awkward silence. "Alex... well, he was kinduv teaching me a few things about computers, and I'd like to be able to keep learning - things that my current setup isn't really up to spec to handle. And - and you can be sure I'll give the computer a good home and take care of it."

"Well... I have to admit that was the last thing I was expecting you to say, or nearly the last. But we can probably get something worked out. I'll want to run it by Liz and Maria, just to make sure that they don't feel slighted, though neither of them are exactly the 'computer hacker' themselves."

Isabel smiled. "I don't think that they'd have any objections."

"Good," Gloria said. "Well, I suppose that that's it, and you can head off to wherever you were wanting to, dear." Gloria dusted off her hands and led her way around the piled boxes of stuff with sticki notes on them, towards the door.

Somehow, Isabel felt that she was now obligated to explain further, except that she really didn't have anything else that she'd been planning to do specifically - other than spend some time with Alex in case he had to blink out again soon. "Thanks, I'm - umm, I'm meeting a girlfriend for lunch."

"Oh, anyone I know??"

Well, if that wasn't putting her foot in it, Isabel didn't know what was. However, despite the fact that it was in some sense deepening the unintentional deception, she had a response pop into her head and couldn't resist saying it. "Maybe. Have you met Tess Harding?"

"Umm." Gloria blinked. "Yes, we spoke at the funeral, and I think I've seen her once before, though I'm not sure when or where. Was she a good friend of Alex's?"

"No, not really." Isabel sighed, and hugged the older woman. "Goodbye."

When Isabel got to the car, she sighed and looked across for Alex. "I take it we're not actually going to see Tess?" he asked with a bit of a smile.

"No, not if I can help it," she said. "Just... just wanted to see what she'd say. I hope you don't mind."

"No, not at all," Alex agreed. "Well, we got a LOT done this morning. You've asked for the computer and Mom seemed receptive... I kinda thought that you guys were overreacting about being so circituitous about that whole thing, but I guess I didn't want to say anything. Maria set up the venue for my ghostly visit to..."

"That's another thing," Isabel said suddenly. "Just like we were talking earlier about you telling me what you need or what you want, I want you to always tell me what you think, even if you're not sure of your opinion. Just wanted to mention that."

"Hmm." Alex considered. "I guess somehow I expected you to be able to tell what I think, being that I'm in your head and all."

Isabel weighed that in her turn. "No, I, umm, I don't think I really have any kind of direct channel into what you're thinking if you don't tell me. I can try to interpret based on your tone of voice, or your gestures, just like I could with anyone else, but otherwise no." She considered. "What about the other way? Can you tell what I'm thinking if I don't specifically talk or *send* to you?"

"Yeah, um, I kinduv think so," he said. "For instance, I caught a trace of something very important and immediate that you were thinking when Mom and Liz were talking about Dad's new project - the cloning stuff. Something to do with... my grave?"

"You could have been guessing that," she chided, belatedly putting the car in gear and driving out of the area. "But yeah. I just... if we're going to clone you, we're going to need to get a genetic sample from you, and preserve it, and we need to do this SOON. Before the genes start to break up or whatever it is that they do." Alex nodded. "In the absence of more reliable alien information, I thought that human cloning researchers might be able to give a few tips - if we can figure out how to ask them without getting thrown in jail or worse."

"Hmm." Alex considered. "Yeah, that's a good point, though I don't really have any answers just yet." He sighed. "And I think that we don't need to worry about it just now. You hungry again?"

"Yeah, I could eat," Isabel admitted, somewhat surprised by the fact. "Any idea where you want to go? I don't really feel like the Crash today."

"Then just let me direct you," Alex said with a grin. "Turn left here, and then right when we get to Second street."


TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Part Thirteen

"Good evening, Maria, thanks for having us."

Isabel could only barely hear the words from where she, Alex, and Tess were hiding in Maria's room. There were more faint sounds that she indeed couldn't make out at all, as the Whitmans made small talk with their teenage hostess, and the odours of mozarella cheese and beef simmered in a tomato sauce made from fresh tomato sauce difted under the door. Isabel wished that she'd thought to grab something more for dinner before hiding.

"And still we wait," Tess whispered almost silently, a none-too-impressed look on her usually pretty face. Isabel could appreciate the sentiment, but tried to keep from showing it herself, sensing that dwelling too much on the dullness would just make time pass even slower for her two companions. She listened hard and could make out a definite kind of clinking... silverware being laid out or used? Glasses being filled?? It was very hard to tell under these circumstances.

"I know it's hard to be patient in a moment like this," Alex said to her sympathetically. Because of his ghostly status, he was the only one who didn't need to worry about being overheard speaking out loud, since neither of his parents were supposed to know that they were there... at least, that Isabel and Tess were in the house. If everything went according to plan, they'd know that their dearly departed house had been 'there' in some sense before leaving, but... well, not quite like this.

*Yeah.* Isabel communicated mentally with her spectral sweetie with the ease of long practice now. *But... but I think it's worth the privations to do this thing.*

"Hope so," he continued. "Do you want to go mental? We could have a real conversation, and actually include Tess, which would be nice for her."

*Hmm... how are you doing for... umm, extoplasmic energy or whatever? Are you sure that you'll be able to last until your big moment? It doesn't make sense to strain yourself beforehand, I think.*

"Well... I'm rested, I blinked out all afternoon and left you on your sweet lonesome," Alex pointed out, giving her just a trace of the puppy-dog eyes, never mind that he told her a few weeks before he died that he was completely incapable of doing any such thing. "I... I feel fine, but maybe you have a point. I don't always have that much warning when I'm running low on juice, and this IS important."

Isabel smiled slightly. *We can try it a little bit later to zero minute, if you want to... less chance that things will go wrong then, I think.* Alex nodded and smiled at that compromise.

"Are you talking with him again?" Tess whispered. Isabel looked at her, trying very hard not to look as if she'd been caught with her hand in the cookie jar or something like that. It certainly wasn't any of Tess' place to tell her that she COULDN'T talk mentally with Alex and leave her out of it. That was about the first thing on a very long list of requests that Tess had no right at all to make. "Tell him hi for me."

And the righteous fury that Isabel had been building up to fizzled out of her slightly, as she realized that Tess hadn't been upset or judgemental at all... she'd just been a bit lonely, and curious. "He knows what you say... I don't have to relay *that* way," Isabel reminded her. "Thank goodness." Tess smiled back shyly.

"You know, not bringing this up as a way of prying or fishing for anything," Alex mentioned, "but I don't think Tess has really tried saying anything of substance to me... even when she was projecting me for my friends the other time. Since *it* happened, I mean." He looked directly at the petite girl. "If she did have something tlo tell me, I'd be open to hearing it. Just to let her know that." Isabel smiled a little tightly and tried to relay that as briefly as she could.

"Oh, great... um. Well, this doesn't seem like a great moment to get into anything terribly emotional," Tess pointed out.

"Yeah, I realize that," Isabel said. "Alex is nodding too."

"But... well, I will say that I'm sorry, and not just... not just for the obvious things. For what went wrong in Las Cruces, for trying to hide the truth from him when he got back here, and for being the cause of his... of *your* death, Alex." Tess took a long breath, obviously trying as hard as she could to maintain control and not break out in tears that the Whitmans might hear. "I... I'm sorry that I never paid much attention to you, before you had something that I wanted... that I didn't show you any respect. That... that is my great fault, more than any other - and I just hope that you can forgive me for it."

"Hmm." Alex took a moment to process that. "I... I'm not sure that I can forgive it so easily, because that's a big fault, true enough, and it does imply so much else." He reached out to touch Tess' shoulder, and she jerked slightly, looking up into his face though she couldn't see him or hear him. "But... but I do accept your apology, and I'd like to say thank you for offering it."

"DId..." Full of confusion, Tess turned to Isabel. "Did... did he say thank you? I could swear I heard his voice, just a whisper..."

"Wow." Isabel tried to get her brain to focus. "Yeah, yes he did, though that wasn't all he said." Once again, she repeated Alex's full words for Tess. "I... I think we talked about the possibility that he might be able to use my powers to create sounds that other people could hear... but I certainly never expected it to happen like this the first time."

"Yeah, me neither," Tess echoed. "Well, you're welcome, Alex, and I hope that things keep getting better between us." She sighed. "Umm... any idea how long before we can do this thing??"

"Err... maybe half an hour more," Isabel said. "Depends kinduv on how fast they eat." Isabel and Maria had agreed between them that Maria would send the final signal for Alex to appear by going into the bathroom to wash her hands, (which would take her past her bedroom door,) and repeating a key phrase while in the hallway. Once she got back to the dining room - Alex would be on stage, as it were.

"Hmm... I wonder if Maria has any decent games in here," Maria muttered, very carefully looking at one of the bookshelves.

-----------

"I... I don't know how much longer I'll be able to... to stay here with you like this," Alex told his parents. "Maybe I'll be able to come back some day. Quite likely not." He sighed, and then put on a shy smile that cracked Isabel's heart a little. "But... but never forget that I'm doing okay, and that... that nothing can stop my love for you."

Isabel was finding this experience profoundly strange, and not a little surreal in a reversed way.

She hadn't put much thought into what the process of 'projecting' Alex to his parents would be like for her... vaguely she'd sort of thought that it would be like everything else that had happened out in the Deluca dining room that evening while she'd been hiding in a bedroom - that it was something she wouldn't see or hear much of. Generally, if Alex was away from her, rooms away, she had no special awareness of him, especially if he wasn't calling out to her. Right now Alex was more than one room away, and talking to his parents in a fairly quiet voice... but it was the first time that Tess had tried projecting his ghost self into full visibility when Isabel wasn't there where he was being projected, and between that and a bit of Tess' own powers to see the peoplle and locations where she was using her sensory projection powers, Isabel could see the dining room area clearly. In fact, she appeared to be having a very vivid out of body experience, seeing a ghost copy of herself that nobody else was noticing, except for Alex himself. That was the reversal part... instead of Isabel being in the real world, seen and heard by all around her and accompanied by a spectral Alex who nobody but she could sense... now that Alex was visible, and hearable, and because her own visible self wasn't right there next to him, she became an undetectable ghost herself. It gave her a considerable appreciation for what Alex had been going through, but she wasn't entirely sure that she disliked it... not for just once in a while, at least.

"Of course we... we know that you love us, baby," Gloria Whitman replied. "And... the same goes for you too." Alex's smile got bigger.

"And... if there's somebody or something," Mister Whitman said uncertainly, "who let you come back to us for just this once... thank him or it for us, okay? I... I realize that chances like this are usually once in a lifetime... if we're lucky."

Alex chuckled. "I... I'll mention it to her." He paused, as Alex's parents looked at each other. "Don't worry, Mom - it's nothing like that. She's just... somebody I'm getting to know as a friend." He reached out his hands, and they passed through those of both his mother and father, and with that... the scene dissolved around Isabel, and she found herself back in the bedroom. Isabel lookes around and saw Tess, just starting to relaxi from a state of intense concentration, and Alex, who was grinning down at her.

"I think that went very well, if a bit unexpectedly," he said, and Isabel had to send a nonverbal thought of agreement back. "Now, umm... tell Tess that I said thanks."

*Aww, come on, do I have to?* Alex glared just a bit. *Only teasing...* "Tess, Alex wanted to tell you thanks for making that possible. And... and I would too."

"Sokay," Tess whispered back. "Did... did he make any headway on the computer stuff?"

"Naw, he seems to think I'm capable of handling all of that by myself." Which was true enough, as it seemed... the Whitmans were just going to check and make sure that Liz didn'e want Alex's desktop computer before letting Isabel know that she could have it... isabel was almost certain that Liz wouldn't interrupt the proceedings, but couldn't explain how, exactly, so hadn't bothered. But once she had it... then the quest to bring Alex back to life in a cloned body could take a step forward on that front.

"Well, it probably won't be long now before they leave and we can get out of here," Isabel said, trying to make conversation. "Got any plans for the rest of the vening?"

"Not particularly." Tess sighed. "Back to Valenti's house I guess. I know that you and Alex want some time alone, after being stuck with me for so long."

"Umm... yeah, I guess we do, though that's nothing personal about you," Isabel answered. "Just... well--"

"I don't think you need to explain it," Tess hastily put in, and all three of them started to laugh - loud enough that Isabel suddenly worried that they might have been loud enough to be heard out in the dining room or wherever. But when they got as quiet as they could and listened, there was nothing to hear but a few very faint sounds of conversation that were probably out in the front hall.

Maria came into the room a few minutes later. "Well, they're gone... and, umm, good going Tess. And you too, Alex."

Isabel smiled slightly. "How did the rest of the dinner go? We didn't ever get too loud, I hope."

"No, and it was good," Maria assured her. "Managed to ask a few questions about the cloning stuff without getting your dad suspicious I think, Alex." She sighed. "But... but I'm feeling very tired all of a sudden. Could I trouble someone for a little alien assistance on the dishes before you go?" The hint attached to that request was not especially subtle, but Isabel didn't have any objections to getting out of Maria's hair, or with helping her out first.

But mischievously she blurted out, "Oh, Alex is volunteering."

That took Maria a second to grasp. "But I said... oh, can he use powers too now that he's a ghost??"

"Something like that," Isabel replied breezily. "Probably he's just borrowing my powers, since we're sharing the same noggin right now or whatever. But only one of us really needs to go to the trouble of focusing the energy." Isabel had been wondering if Alex would make a protest or simply refuse to 'perform' on her, but he just shook his head slightly and headed out into the kitchen, unable to completely wipe a devoted smile off his face.

Once Alex had cleaned off the lasagna pan, three plates and some dirty utensils, he walked with Isabel and Tess to her mother's car, which had been parked about a block away from the house to make sure that it wouldn't be obvious to Alex's parents. "Hmm... you know, if I'm out of school as of a few days away, maybe I should put some thought into actually getting my own wheels," she commented idly.

"Maybe you could hint around for one as a graduation present," Tess put in. "Your parents are probably very proud of you for finishing early." She sighed slightly. "Where did Max get the Jeep from, anyway? Was that paid for by the parental units, or... or did he save up for it working at the UFO center?"

"Oh, no, he had the wheels long before he had the job there," Isabel remarked as they got inside. It surprised her a little that as interested in Max as she had always been, she still didn't know little details of his history like this. "He got the job more as a way of keeping an eye on the UFO culture here in Roswell than for the money I think, though a paycheque never hurts." Max's income from the UFO center had definitely helped keep away suspicion about their adventures over the past two years, applied in lots of tiny little ways. "But the Jeep... well, he had some money saved up from little odd jobs, paper route, mowing lawns and so on, and birthday cheques from the grandparents. Max has never been that big of a spender. But most of the Jeep was a sixteenth birthday present from Dad, yeah."

"And did you get anything cool for *your* sixteenth birthday??" Tess asked. Alex grinned at the question.

"Not really, at least not a big ticket item like a car. A stereo CD player for my bedroom and half a dozen of my favorite albums... some fancy clothes like my favorite leather pants." Isabel smiled. "But I didn't really need anything fancy like the car back then, and I didn't mind him having it. Maybe that gets me some credit towards an expensive graduation gift, now that there does seem to be some need for me to have a car. After all... I'm not sure where I'm going to have to travel over the next year, whether any of it is within driving range, as opposed to taking a plane or a spacecraft of some kind, but..."

"But you're going to be a bit more independent anyway," Tess put in, "or at least you hope so, and that doesn't fit with begging your friends for rides or always taking your mom's car."

"That's the heart of it I guess." Isabel sighed. She had started driving while they were talking, and it wasn't a very long trip from the DeLuca's house to Jim Valenti's - they were nearly there already. "Well, um... have a nice evening yourself, and... and would you like to be there when we try to talk to someone on the communicator next? I... I don't know if Max is going to like the idea much, so I won't make any promises, but I thought I'd ask you."

Tess laughed softly. "You don't seem to be very sorry about not making promises... but I guess it's just being snarky for me to point that out, so I take it back. Yes, I'd like very much to come." Isabel pulled up and parked outside the house, and waited for Tess to head up the walk and inside, then about thirty seconds more, before driving away.

"So, what now?" Alex asked, his voice filled with almost childish excitement. "Back to your room??"

Isabel giggled a bit. "Umm... that's up to you I think. Where do *you* want us to go now??"

"Umm... actually, I kinda feel like hanging out with other friends, even if they won't be able to see me or hear me directly." Alex laughed merrly. "Go to the Crashdown? I think Liz is working there, and that means that Max will probably be hanging around."

Isabel giggled. "Sure. I think that Michael will be there too, though whether that's stuck back in the kitchen or not I'm not sure." So she headed off to the familiar buildings at the heart of town, and Max hurried up to whisper to her as soon as she was through the front doors, wanting to know how things had gone at Maria's. (Which was a bit odd, because it wasn't really THAT important.)

She assured him quietly that everythng was fine, that Alex was right next to her, and sat down at the table, deciding that she was in the mood for a plate of martian guts if she could actually get them. (That was a kind of scrambled eggs in fact, with bits of red peppers and chopped up pepperoni added.)

Michael was indeed there, and NOT in his capacity as cook at the moment - it seemed that his shift in the kitchen had ended about fifteen minutes before, he'd called Maria and she'd suggested that she needed a little alone time before seeing him, so he'd started keeping Max company and pestering him with hockey talk that Max didn't really care about and could hardly even focus on as long as Liz was in the room.

Isabel didn't particularly want to talk hockey either, so she tried to draw Michael off his mental track by starting off telling him about her interest in getting a new car and asking both of the guys if they had any opinions on what would be a good ride. Yep, that worked pretty well. Michael wasn't a gearhead by any means, but he was interested in cars as a general thing... though he did manage to fit in a few sarcastic comments about how nice it must be to have rich parents who could afford expensive gifts like that.

Soon, though, Michael took off to pay a late visit to his sweetheart, and Liz drifted back into Max's orbit once there really weren't enough customers left in the dining room to keep her even pretend-busy. In quiet tones, Isabel told them a little about Alex's conversation with his parents, her own out-of-body experience of it, and Tess' interest in communicating with other aliens via the Pod chamber transeiver array, or at least watching.

"Definitely she watches at least once before we put her on to talk to anybody," Liz muttered. "She could say something in an instant that would cause all kinds of trouble for us if she wanted to, or maybe sent a very secretive signal that we wouldn't notice even if it were right under our noses.Maybe we'll have to trust her to talk for us if there's no other alternative... but right now there's nothing but alternative." Max nodded in agreement.

"Okay," Isabel put in. "And... do drop by again to talk to Mrs Whitman sometime soon, or call her. Not to sound greedy, but you're the only thing between me and that computer!"

"Right, sure," Liz agreed. "Did you ever finish backing the jaz disk up to your hard drive, by the way??"

Isabel had to change gears a little. "Umm... yeah, and now I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with it all. Oh, I've gone through some of it actually and backed up anything that looks really important, and small, onto microfloppies. The thing is, I'm terrified of accidentally triggering a trojan horse program, or opening up a document that has a... not a worm, what's the word... a malware routine hidden inside it." She sighed. "We've got the Jaz disc safe, so if there's anything important there it'll always be possible to start from scratch with that. But..."

"Right, I got it," Max said. "Well... between you, Alex, and Alex's computer, you should be able to figure out what to do I think, and if you need anything from me, if there's anything I can do to help, you just have to let me know, right?" Isabel nodded.

Soon after, Max and Liz took off to have a little private time before Liz had to go upstairs to bed, and Isabel decided, (after a brief mental consultation with Alex,) that it was a good time to head for home and the comfy sheets in her room herself.

----------

"Okay, so where's this?" Isabel asked, looking around the room in her dream. She wasn't sure how long it had been since she fell asleep of course, but this felt like most of the night had already gone by... that morning was on its way, perhaps.

"Umm... a folk music club up in Albuquerque that I've been to a few times," Alex replied with a smile. "I guess we showed up after closing."

"Cool," she decided, reaching out and taking a bottle of strawberry fizz that had been sitting out on the bar. Out of curiosity more than anything else, she checked the label after popping the bottle cap and before drinking. Would anything seriously bad happen if she took a drink of something with alcohol in a dream? She wasn't sure, and wasn't too averse to the idea of finding out some day... especially if Alex was in the dream with her. But the fizz said that it was entirely soft.

Then Alex waved her over to a booth, and she deliberately slid in next to him. "So, folk music, huh? Sounds like quite a jump away from alternative."

"Ehh... not so much. Alternative may be synonymous with punk and rock metal and a lot of 'new' stuff, but what it's really about is looking for something more real and honest than mass-produced bubble pop," Alex said idly. "Folk is what was there before any of it came along, more or less. In some ways, they're just other ends of the same circle. Which, umm, would make them the same point I guess, since a circle doesn't have any ends."

"Alex, you haven't drunk anything in here?" Isabel asked nervously, and Alex laughed.

"Nah, just feeling half asleep or something, which is a bit weird, since I'm seldom all asleep any more, just blinked out. I think 'a circle has no end' was in the Second Foundation book. Well, anyway, I think my alternative phase was dying out even before I... died. Do you think I *should* get some sort of a beverage?"

"Hmm... that's up to you, but my vote would be no," Isabel replied, and when Alex blinked in surprise for a second, she leant over and gave him a very wet and somehow icy-cold kiss. (The kind that sent good shivers all over her.) Before that first kiss was over, Alex's shirt was off, which would have been very surprising for someone who didn't know Isabel, considering that it was a t-top. (She'd used her powers on the fabric, of course.) Alex looked down at his own sparse black chest hair, grinned a hungry grin at Isabel, and pulled the tiny buttons down her blouse open. Then they got into a wandering hands contest.

"Oooh, that's nice baby," Isabel muttered.

"Heheh." Alex chuckled. "Glad... glad you liked it. How... how about this??"

"Umm... daring, but.... *long gasp* in a good way." Pause. "Maybe it's just be easier if I just took the jeans off entirely."

"Well, umm... if you're offering, I wouldn't say no.... especially not when you can kiss my shoulder like that at the same time. Jeez... how can you keep your balance like that?"

"Umm... raaaaih nadjural talend. Now just shuddub an' enjoyy..."

"Okay, okay, I'll shuddub." And there was a short pause, followed by the almost hard to identify sound of some denim pants landing on the dance floor.

"Ohh, oh wow," Isabel moaned again. "Alex, that's really, um... wow, aren't you an eager boy, huh?? Haven't - haven't got anything to say for yourself - I mean, you're busy, but... OHH, I get it. Since I told you to shuddub, you're--- you're--- you're not going to say anything until I... I say it's okay?" Alex managed to nod his head a little, which resulted in some interesting sensations. "Okay, okay... wow, I, I have to say, you're so good at this it's... well, I guess I'll just say I appreciate it and leave it at that. Well... let's - wow, okay, umm... let's see if I can time this right. Alex... Alex... Alex! TALK TO ME!!!"

Alex laughed as he crawled up into the seat again and snuggled next to her. "What shall I say??" Isabel was beyond words for the moment. "Okay, umm, I'll just let you collect yourself for the moment." Isabel shook her head slightly, and took a drink from the bottle of fizz, which hadn't managed to get spilled during their makeout session, or what had followed that really didn't fit the usual definitions of mere 'making out.'

"Should I pay you back for that??" she asked once she'd got her breath back.

"Ehh... nah. Maybe try another time." Alex sighed. "Actually, come to think of it, I don't seem to have that much of a sex drive, as in a push to, umm, to get off myself, since I died. Guess that kinduv makes sense, since I don't have a living body pumped full of teenage hormones." He chuckled slightly. "I... I want to make you happy, Isabel, in any way I can... and that includes sexually. That's most of what I've got left, at the moment."

"Hmmm." Izzy considered that. "Well... it'd make me happy to go through the motions of being generous to you, at least. Or I think it would, at any rate. We can certainly try it out, and if neither of us get anything terribly worthwhile out of it, then we don't have to try again." She sighed. "So... um, if you don't have any other ideas for what to do now in this dream, then I do have one."

Alex looked around a bit, and when his gaze flicked back to Isabel he realized that she was, in turn, staring at the stage. "You... you want me to sing something for you again??"

"Why, how ever did you guess that??"

Alex chuckled. "I... I guess I know something about you by now." He thought about that, stood up, and repaired what damage Isabel had done to his shirt with a casual gesture. "Any requests??"

"Umm... surprise me," Isabel said, and then blurted out something else just because it occurred to her. "Something about love and following your dreams, if you can think of anything like that."

Alex considered, and smiled. He reached out, and a microphone shot from the stage to where he stood, just in front of their 'booth.' After a second, Isabel realized that he meant to start singing there, and just at the same instant, Alex made a gesture, and invisible musicians started to play an introduction... something sweet and faintly classical, not the rocking pop song that she had somehow had in mind, but she liked it anyway. Straining hard, Isabel was pretty sure that she could make out a violin or fiddle, a piano, a flute, and a guitar as the invisible instruments. Alex brought the microphone up and began to sing.

"Oh, the gardens at Chevernee were a beauteous thing
And Monet's 'cool lilies' made my heart sing
Ah, but though his impressions would try as they might
They paled to my own, on that sunday night

One sunday night in the city of light.
When our laughter was free and easy."

Alex gestured to Isabel after a slight pause, and when he started to repeat the passage, she joined in as well as she could. "...ite in the sity of light, when our laughter was free and easy." Like the music, the words weren't what she had expected, but maybe what she needed to hear. Something about something that they HADN'T done, at least not yet... going to Paris, but Isabel still held that dream and hope in her heart, and it was about the love that he felt for her, too.

"Oh, I now understand that each squiggle and square
Has a genius' reasons for why it is there
Sure, the art of Picasso has beauty all right
It couldn't match yours, on that sunday night
One sunday night in the city of light.
When our laughter was free and easy.

Yeah we saw the sunflowers that captured Van Gogh
With colors made vivid by the bright Provence glow
Their yellows were burning with stolen sunlight
Still you shone brighter, on that sunday night"

She could almost picture that moment, of the two of them together, maybe on a backpacking tour through Europe and without much time to spend there. Isabel would be hurrying them through with an itinerary... and Alex would be paying more attention to her than to any of the sights that she wanted him to appreciate. The vision of it was so real that it almost hurt her.

"One sunday night in the city of light.
When our laughter was free and easy.

Yeah, we saw Eiffel's tower light up the dark sky
We let Hausman's opera bedazzle our eye
Though we'd ageless beauty to our left and our right
It faded around us, on that sunday night."

They joined in together on the chorus two more times, and then Isabel got up, (still not wearing her pants,) and hugged him, and clapped, and whispered in his ear that it would have worked better if she had done that the other way around, and both of them laughed. All of a sudden, the scene jumped, and Isabel looked around, trying to figure out what this new dreamscape was. "Oh, um, hi Isabel?"

"Liz??" Isabel paused. "What are we doing in my room??"

"Umm..." That question seemed to stump the other girl for a moment. "You... you're here because you leave here, and sleep here, and apparently you haven't gotten out of bed yet. I... I'm here because I've got Alex's car outside, in Mrs Whitman's car, and I thought that you'd be up already so that we could bring it in."

"The hardware? You've got it!" Isabel exclaimed, practically erupting out from under her covers as things began to fall back into place. She hadn't gone from one dream to another, or another venue in the same dream - she had transited from dream to waking so suddenly that it had taken her a moment to appreciate the truth. "Wait a second... how do you have it... and Alex's mom's car??"

"Yeah, umm..." Liz sighed. "I called her up this morning, and we got to talking, I happened to mention how eager you actually were to have the rig, and she, umm, she suggested I bring it as a surprise. Didn't expect that you'd be THIS surprised."

"Alright..." Isabel checked, looking around. Alex hadn't shown up yet, and that surprised her... maybe he was stuck inside her subconscious when the dream ended... the same way that she had gotten stuck in Tess' mind? For a second, the thought sent an irrational shot of nervousness through her, but she forced that down. She had no secrets from Alex anymore, and that had worked out well so far. If he wanted to rummage directly through the closets of her subconscious mind, then she would allow him that much. A bit awkardly, Isabel smoothed down the front of the black nightgown she had changed into the night before. "Umm, and what's that?" she said, pointing to a long and flat boxlike thing in Liz's arm, trailing various cables.

"External DVD burner," she explained with a faint smile.

"Oooh, great! Okay, umm..." Isabel took several steps toward the door before reconsidering. "I... I should really change into something more, umm... just something more before we go outside and start moving computer gear, huh??"

Liz laughed. "Yeah, might help... you'd attract way too much attention in that thing." Isabel took a momentary glimpse of herself in the mirror, and partly agreed... the outfit wasn't particularly revealing for the bedroom, but the street *was* kinduv a different matter. "Alright, just give me a few minutes... know we've gotten closer and all that, but still I don't think I'm getting naked in front of you unless there's considerably more urgency about it."

"How... very odd a way to put it," Liz muttered, setting the box down firmly near the corner of Isabel's desk. "But I suppose I could have been quicker on the update and left your room as soon as you mentioned changing. I'll be with Max in the living room." And with that, she used the door.

So Max was awake and Liz had had to pass him to get to her, Isabel realized as she started to undress. How interesting. Had she moved past him quickly, or loitered for a while? Well, that didn't really matter, except as a matter of idle curiosity. Isabel cleaned her naked body off with her powers, REALLY not wanting to spare the time for even a quick shower while Alex's computer was waiting outside, and settled on mid-length denim cut-offs and a nearly sleeveless, high-neck tshirt with a pattern of broad bright red and dusty rose horizontal stripes. (She couldn't remember when she'd bought it, as she didn't usually like stripes of any direction... but she was probably thinking of Alex and being his 'lady in red' at the time.) Was it fair to call it a t-shirt when there were practically no arms to the 'T'?? What else was she supposed to call it, anyway?

Isabel left the question aside, stepped into some summery sandals, put on a very little jewelry and makeup, and considered her hair. How to wear it for the morning?? Probably with moving and hooking up computer equipment, down loose or a ponytail would not be advisable, even though she tended to favor styles like that lately based on her own impression of Alex's tastes. Hmm... what else, then? Waving a hand, she tried giving herself Princess Leia buns, and then took them away again with another gesture. Alex might kind of like it, but Max would tease her without a scrap of mercy - Michael or Kyle too, if they happened by, and even Liz or Maria might giggle. Besides, that was so seventies. On the other hand, she was starting to like the idea of having it bound up, just for a change, and in something a little bit unlike a usual french twist. After trying a few things, she ended up with most of her hair bound up in loops of itself just behind her hair. Yeah, that'd work for today.

Just as she stepped out of the bedroom, Alex appeared walking in step with her. *What took you so long?* Alex just smiled teasingly at her, and she decided not to push him any further. Liz and Max weren't the only ones in the living room when they got there - both of her parents had joined the young couple, and Isabel had no compunctions about organizing everybody to help with carrying her new stuff in - especially Max and Philip Evans. Alex gave instructions that only she could hear about how to connect the various items together, surprising Isabel's mother, who hadn't figured her daughter for this kind of computer savvy. Once the machine had booted up, and Isabel had set up a seperate Administrator-level account so that she could keep her personal files distinct from Alex's stuff, Liz and Max managed to distract the parentals, so that they wouldn't see her installing the Jaz reader drive, and, more importantly, installing the USC code sequence so that she could access the coded filesystem on Nasedo's disc. Once it was being copied over to the hard drive, (from which it would be burnt onto an optical disc or discs,) Isabel came back out. "Okay, now I'm kinduv hungry."

"Oh, baby, I'm not surprised!" Mrs Evans said. "You've been working so hard on that you didn't even take any breakfast."

Isabel smiled slightly. "I'll be graduating high school in a few days Mom. I'm not your baby anymore... in fact, I'm not sure if I'm anybody's baby." Alex winked at her, but she tried to not pay any visible attention to him.

"Oh, you'll be our babygirl for a little while yet," her dad said with a slight shake of his head. "Until you're 25 and married at least - that's just the way it is." Isabel smiled too, and gave him a hug, and her mom as well.

"Well, it's kind of late for breakfast now," Max said. "How about a brunch or something??"

"Well, maybe..." Mrs Evans looked around. "What would we have for brunch??"

"Oh, umm... nothing too traditional," Isabel decided. "We've got those small frozen pizzas, right? Sound good to me."

There was a moment of silence, and then Liz jumped in saying that she liked the idea of pizza, and that was what they ended up doing. It was a very fun and friendly meal. Just the five of them, with Alex silently watching.

----------

"Okay, so, let's see," Isabel said, considering the screen on the new computer in her room a little while later. "We've got... nine hundred and seventy four megs of data in folder 'Nasedo.'"

"That's about the limit for a Jaz disk, I think," Liz pointed out. "One gigabyte or so. He packed it pretty full of stuff."

"Some of which may be the rankest misdirection," Max pointed out. "That's another paranoid trick too obvious to be ignored. HE knew what was meaningful or not, and wouldn't have been faked out by his own balderdash."

"Yeah, but... hmm." Isabel considered that pretty well. "Anything he falsified, he probably had a particular reason for doing it, and so a little judgement will probably help us to recognize that. Also... well, Tess knew him pretty well, so she might be able to help." The unspoken tag to that, 'if we can trust what Tess says about something important,' hung in the air unsaid, but she tried not to pay attention to it. She did trust Tess some... not all the way to the ends of the earth, yet, or anything like that. But trust had to start somewhere, or start over again somewhere.

"Well, first step is making our copy, right, so that we don't need to have to go back to this Jaz drive and use the coded files thingee in case it wipes itself off Alex's hard drive," Max pointed out. "Do we get to try out the DVD burner now??"

"I... I don't think so," Isabel said. "Much as I know you can't wait. It seems very much like overkill... a single recorded DVD can hold more than four gigs. Also, we don't have any blank DVDs for it yet."

"Oh, right."

"Whoops," Liz chimed in. "There were probably a small stack of them in Alex's room, but I didn't think of taking any."

"That's all right," Isabel said. "Third - we don't have a lot of computers that even have a DVD reader, so we wouldn't be able to get at our copy from any of those machines." She smiled a bit. "Makes more sense to use two CD roms, I think."

"All right," Max said. "Well, you don't have any blanks of them here in this room, but we do have some in the house." Max and his father had had CD burners for a little while at this point. "I'll go grab you a few."

"Thanks," Isabel said absently, looking over at Alex and pulling up the CD burner program, setting it to do a file backup, and selecting all of the folders from Nasedo's jaz disk that had folder names starting with A through U. Hmm... that was only five hundred and sixty megs, which surprised her slightly. Still, that was enough... each CD would take at least six hundred and fifty, probably seven hundred. She could fit the rest on one more, easily.

"I guess you're glad that we're finally getting started on this," Alex said softly to Isabel.

"Yeah, a bit," Isabel replied absently, and then realized that Liz's face had drawn into a thoughtful frown - probably trying to guess what Alex had said from her reply. "I guess I'll be feeling better when it looks like we've actually made some real progress - on any particular front. This whole 'bring you back to life' project feels like it's been a lot of thrashing around in the water and not getting anywhere."

"Pretty much any project so big would feel like that at the start," Alex commented in an aside. "There's so much to get a grip on, even to decide on the specifics of strategy. Once you've learned more, you'll be able to act decisively." He grinned, and Isabel sighed a little. "Once the CDs are burned, are we going up to the pod chamber for another communique??"

"Um, I'm not sure," Isabel replied, and then, since Liz had shot her a freshly questioning look, she added, "Going up to the pod chamber and using the orbs today. Thoughts??"

"Hmm..." Liz thought about that. "I dunno, the computer seems like it's our best lead for today, especially since I went to so much trouble to get it into the car." Isabel laughed. "Pod chamber can wait until tomorrow I think... we don't know if something helpful might happen over on the other side of this galactic sector, if we just leave them alone for a bit."

"Something NOT so helpful might happen too," Isabel pointed out, "but I get your point. Tomorrow sounds like a good compromise to me. Oh, hey, give one of those here." Max had just come back into her room, carrying an old CD spindle with eight or nine blank disks stacked onto it, and about half a dozen empty slimline cases. Quickly Isabel loaded the disk into the burner drive's tonguelike receptacle, and started the recording process going like she'd been burning disks for years. "I... I have to admit, I'm just worried about the possibility of clicking on the wrong thing and pooching Alex's setup. I don't think Nasedo's likely to have left any cracker-jacks that could actually damage the hardware, but the software is nearly as big a worry."

"You could try it on your old computer," Max pointed out. "Oooh, except that you haven't had a chance to transfer all of your stuff over to Alex's hard drive, I guess."

"Hmm, nope." Isabel thought about that. Though not specifically relevant to her plans, it was a good notion... moving onto Alex's setup for real. If she didn't need her old machine for testing hazardous programs on a long-term basis, then she could probably find someone to give it away to once Alex had made sure she'd wiped all of her personal info from it. Michael, maybe - he'd probably appreciate getting something that he could surf the net on, and maybe even write resumes with! But... "wait a second, how would I transfer all of my stuff over? I'm not gonna be able to put it all on floppies."

"No, you plug both of them into the internet hub," Alex said, "and then set up a file transfer connection between them. It's easy with the high-speed stuff that you guys have already got set up here... except that you'd need to rig another networking line from the hub into this room, I guess." They had transferred the 'internet line' from Isabel's old computer to the new one while setting everything else up. Max started to explain the same stuff just as Alex started talking again, and Isabel waved him silent. "Or maybe it'd be easier to just use a crossover cable, but that's pretty much the same idea - networking the computers to each other instead of using storage media." He considered. "But I'm not sure that the old computer is the best way of dealing with possible trojan horses. We could set up a sandboxed virtual PC."

"Okay, what's that??" Isabel asked, and then, for Max and Liz's benefit, she repeated it. "A sandboxed virtual PC?" Max and Liz looked at each other and shrugged.

"It's something that I did for Tess a little while after coming back from Las Cruces," Alex explained. "Exactly what the point was back then is a little complicated - but basically you run a program that thinks it's an entirely seperate computer. Capable of running most basic operations by itself without affecting the true system. The idea originally came up as a way for people running UNIX or Macs wanting to execute windows software - so they wrote a program that thought it was windows. They just recently started working on a windows version, for this kind of thing... running one program without messing up other things. It hasn't been officially released, but - well, those computer researchers up at Las Cruces have access to a lot of interesting test software."

"All right, talk me through it," Isabel said, and Alex did, with Isabel struggling to explain what was going on to Max and Liz while she listened and worked. All of this stuff would have taken so much longer to work out if she hadn't been able to communicate with Alex, she wondered. Would they ever have had a chance to make progress then??

----------

"Dammit," Liz growled a few hours later. Once again, a little message box had popped up on the virtual desktop, saying 'Stay out of what doesn't concern you.' Isabel clicked off the popup, and looked around on the file viewer - sure enough, a large swath of files had been almost instantly deleted, and then after a few seconds thought the VPC software told her that its image had been too badly corrupted to continue executing. "That's the fourth time this afternoon."

"Yeah," Max agreed, reaching out to gently take Isabel's hand away from the mouse and push the computer keyboard shelf back underneath the top of the desk so that she couldn't easily get at it. "But... but we've managed to learn some interesting things anyway... about Nasedo's plans, if he hadn't managed to get killed off when he did, the kind of data that he was collecting. I've got an idea about those odd binary files that we can't seem to do anything with, too."

"Oh, say on." Max and Liz jumped. "Sorry, I just remembered that I wanted to try this. It's kind of an odd sensation and a bit tiring, but this way Isabel doesn't have to relay what I tell you."

"Oh, hey Alex," Liz said, after stopping herself from really looking around for him. "That's cool. Using Izzie's power to move the air and create sound, something like that?"

"Yeah, I think," he agreed. "So, Max??"

"Umm, yeah." Max shook his head - he seemed more badly spooked by hearing Alex's voice out of nowhere than Liz had. "Well... they don't seem to run on any kind of human operating system or processor type, as far as we can tell..."

"We've only really tried a small fraction of the possibilities, really... but okay," Alex argued.

"But they *do* seem to be program code." Max took a deep breath. "What if they're somehow instructions for the Granilith or something else up at the pod chamber?"

"Hmm... interesting," Liz decided. "Of course, that leaves open the question of how we get them transferred from human computer equipment into the correct alien device... and whether we WANT to run a program that Nasedo had written on the Granilith without knowing what it is."

"There's all kinds of questions still open," Isabel said, and stretched a bit. "Maybe... maybe it'd be an alright idea to bring Tess back into this kind of stuff too... just because she might understand how Nasedo ticked just enough to see a pattern in the booby-trap trojan horses, or make sense of some of these references in his wordpads that we can't make head or tail of."

Max and Liz exchanged a look. "Okay, we can try that," Liz said after a long moment. "But not today." She looked at the clock. "And it's too late to try the communicatory I think."

"I don't really want to do anything on the project right now, actually," Max replied. "We've put some good time in today, and there's all kinds of stuff swirling in the back of my mind that I have to veg out and let it sort itself out."

"Cool," Isabel decided, shooting a look over at Alex, and melting slightly inside when she saw his smile. "Okay, so... what do we do for fun then, and do we all stick together?"

"Oh, I think that Maria mentioned there was a carnival up at Melena," Liz said brightly. "We could go and pick her up, give her a dose of cheer since Michael is busy today."

"Sounds great," Alex said, and Isabel took a moment to realize that he'd switched back to talking only in her head.

"Yeah, I think we're up for it," she said. "Umm... oh, should we try something to get my files transferring over to the new comp?"

Max thought about that a moment. "Don't think we have the right cables for that in the house at the moment," he said. "Can drop by Oasis computers on the way and get a ten-foot crossover."

"Alright," Liz said. As they headed out, Isabel concentrated to send her thoughts to Alex.

*What would you think about me cutting my hair a bit shorter?*

"Oh, no." The look on Alex's face was stricken. "Tell me you're not even thinking of it!!"


TO BE CONTINUED....

[Chrisken]

Part Fourteen

"Hey," Maria said, running out to meet them before anybody could head out from the DeLuca driveway towards the front door of her house. "What's up? Is there a crisis brewing?"

"No, just heading out to the carnival," Liz said, meeting her friend with a hug. "Thought that you'd like to come."

"Oooh, cool," Maria agreed with a grin. "Yeah, I'm definitely in. Nice to see you, Max, Isabel... is Alex here too?"

There was a bit of a silence. "Yeah, I think that he and Isabel are still arguing about her getting a haircut," Liz said after a moment. Maria reached out and waved a hand in front of Isabel's slightly vacant eyes, and she shook her head and grumphed slightly.

"It still kinda creeps me out how you do that silent conversation thing with him, Isabel," Maria remarked as she went around and got into the back seat of the Jeep behind Liz. "Hard to tell that you haven't just hypnotized yourself or something."

"Well, it's better than people thinking that I'm crazy and talking to myself," Isabel pointed out as Max pulled back out onto the street again. "Unfortunately, I'm not quite clever enough to carry on two conversations at once - probably I never will be." And with that, she stopped paying much attention to Liz and Maria, who started chattering to each other, and focused on Alex, who was now sitting invisibly on her lap and grinning slightly. *You know, you could have taken the middle seat,* she pointed out mentally. *You're not physical now, so nobody would need to get squashed.*

"I'd be squashed," Alex countered. "And maybe you too. Being ghostly doesn't change the laws of nature that much. Maria wouldn't feel it, but I'd still be trying to fit into a limited amount of space between the two of you. And because you can feel me, you'd feel my hip digging against yours, and I'm not sure you'd be a big fan of that however much you like me." He smiled and stroked her hair with one hand. "Besides, what harm am I doing here?? It's not like it's a safety risk, or like I'm blocking Max's view particularly. Nobody even knows."

*Yeah, but... but I know,* Isabel sent, trying not to focus too intently on the way Alex's buttocks seemed to press very solidly against her legs and her lap. On the other hand - he did have a point that any other pose was likely to be annoying to her, in the limited confines - and she didn't want him to discorporate entirely and just be a voice in her head. *Can... can you change the laws of nature enough to shrink?? Enough to sit on the armrest or the window edge - or on my knee??*

"Hmm!" Alex said, sounding at first somewhat offended by the notion. Then his curiosity got the better of him. "I... I can try, but remember - I don't have that much direct control over how I manifest."

*You had enough control to de-manifest.*

"That was pretty much an accident, the first time. Almost all of the other major changes were things that *you* did. I'm in your head - and though you let me make myself at home, there are some things that I can't seem to do for myself." He sighed, closed his eyes, and made a face, screwing up his cheeks a little and shaking back and forth. "Umm... anything??"

*Open your eyes and find out, silly.* Alex did, looked around, and sighed - he was just as large as he usually was. "Okay, give it a try yourself."

*Okay.* Isabel took a deep breath, and then caught herself and remembered that most of what she'd been able to do to change Alex's appearance - alter his clothes, give him things to hold - had been things that she hadn't been trying hard to do. In fact, most of the time, she hardly had to think of it before it was happening. They'd already been talking about shrinking for a little while and nothing had happened - did that mean it was something she was unable to do to him? Somewhat uncertainly she tried to visualize it - and then, yes, Alex really was shrinking, and soon was sitting on her knee, something like - about six inches tall if he stood up, perhaps?

He looked around, taking in the driver's seat towering above him, Maria sitting next to Isabel, and she herself. "Whoa!! That's wild."

*Yeah...* Iz couldn't entirely stifle a chuckle. *But kinduv handy sometimes. Don't worry, sweetie, I won't do it to you without a very good reason, and permission.*

"Good," he insisted. "I... I actually think I could reverse it, now that you've done it once." Just to demonstrate, Alex grew himself to nearly double his small size, then shrank most of the way back down again. "Alright, now that that's settled - what's all of this nonsense about you cutting off your hair??"

*I... I really want a change, sweetie,* she implored silently, giving him what she hoped was a sincere soulful look. (And hoping that Maria wouldn't start wondering why she was aiming a look like that only a few inches above her knee.) *It - it's pretty like this, I know, but it's been long for months and months, and it's starting to become really a pain to take care of, for all that it isn't REALLY long.*

"Hmm." Alex considered that. "Well, it's your hair after all - do whatever you like with it."

*Don't - don't be like that, hun.* Isabel sighed very softly. *Yes, it's my hair, but... but I'd really like to hash this out with you and come to something that we can both live with. I... I do want to do *something*, but I'd rather that it's something that you're okay with, for all kinds of reasons, mostly obvious ones. Right?*

"Hmm..." Alex melted in front of her. "Okay, okay, I'll give this a try. What sort of thing were you thinking of? I... I have to admit that I don't really have any notions offhand - especially since I've never really had my hair longer than a few inches, so I don't really know what the downsides are."

*Well, let's see, um - how about...* Isabel was about to try putting a hand to the appropriate level, but then hesitated for a few reasons - one being that Maria and the others might wonder what she was gesturing about, and secondly that it didn't even seem like a particularly effective way of getting across what she wanted to communicate. *Umm - let's go 'inside' for a little while, huh?*

"Hmm? Oh, of course." Alex brightened slightly - probably just because he was looking forward to getting un-shrunk this way. Isabel concentrated for a second, then opened her eyes in a somewhat blank and bare room - there was a bit of furniture about - two chairs, a bench and a sofa, also several large mirrors on the walls and a closet door, but no other decoration or ornamentation in evidence. A soft glow illuminated the ceiling from no specific source. This internal mental 'space' would do very well for what she wanted. And yes, Alex was sitting in one of the chairs, definitely seeming to be at his full size - six foot two, or he would be once he stood up straight. Isabel turned to the mirror, seeing herself in the same clothes that she had gotten dressed in that morning, and with her long golden hair tied up in loops. Now in her mind she let the hair out, so that it fell well past her shoulders in a long and straight river, errant strands landing on the shoulders of her striped t-shirt.

"Okay, so this is me now," Isabel said, as Alex got up and hugged her from behind. She smiled, looking forward to what would happen. Because these were just mental images of herself and Alex, she shouldn't have to put in even the same intense mental effort that she'd need to make the same changes in the real world, adjusting molecules with exquisite care. "How about this sort of thing?" Her hair was now a shaggy, layered 'do that didn't quite reach down to shoulder level.

In the mirror, Alex grinned slightly. "Okay, okay, I have to say that that's pretty cool." He chuckled. "Suits you. But if you have any other ideas, I wouldn't mind 'seeing' them too."

Smiling, Isabel had fun for a little while putting on a coiffure fashion show for him, until Maria prodded her leg in the car hard enough to get her attention deep in the mental space as she was. So Isabel returned to reality for a bit, just to assure her friends that she was fine, but Liz and Maria managed to draw her into a discussion about her graduation ceremony and a few other things, and Alex popped in sitting on the dashboard in front of Liz, though she couldn't see him. Soon they were getting near to the carnival, and the five kids (one ghostly-invisible, though back to his regular height,) piled out of the Jeep in the parking lot, talking about what they wanted to do first.

-----------

Tess was waiting for Max and Isabel in their dining room when they finally got back from Melena, and after they'd dropped Liz and Maria at their homes. Max shot Tess a look and tossed the computer cable package he'd been carrying over to Isabel. "What's up??"

"Umm... nothing big," Tess said. "Just didn't seem to have much to do, so I thought I'd hang around and see if you guys were coming back soon. Hope you don't mind that I was here. I didn't bother your parents or anything - at least, I tried not to."

Isabel smiled slightly. "Okay. Well, we're here now, but I'm pretty tired and not up for much, sorry." Tess shrugged a 'that's okay by me.' "But we'll be heading up to the pod chamber sometime tomorrow, and also - there's some stuff from the computer disc that I was wondering if you'd be able to make sense of."

"Oh, right... because Ed was so tricky and mysterious, and I'm the person who's spent the most time with him and would be most likely to understand some of his strangeness," Tess replied. "Okay, do you want me to take a PEEK now?" She giggled softly. "I... I can't believe I remember such an old in-joke. Computers don't use PEEK commands anymore, now do they??"

Isabel, baffled, looked towards Max and Alex. Alex was laughing - Max shook his head. "Not for a long time now," he said in a soft mutter.

"Well, anyway." Isabel had used the brief delay there to rethink if there was any reason that she shouldn't let Tess get to the computer. The data was all safely saved to CD-R disks and hidden underneath her dresser, and though Tess could probably do serious damage to Alex's computer rig just by looking at it, if she felt so - there didn't seem to be any absolutely irreplaceable loss to their side if she did, (despite all the trouble that Isabel had gone through to get it,) and no good reason for Tess to endanger her own position by doing any such thing. Wondering how long she'd be walking this fine line between caution and trust, Isabel invited Tess up into her room and showed her 'The Nasedo files.'

"Wow, there's a lot here," Tess said, after a few moments. "I feel more than a bit disoriented. Is there anything in particular you're after??"

That stumped Isabel for a long moment. "Anything that relates to how we were hybridized, or more information about controlling the Granilith, or... or his dealings with other aliens. Either off-planet or here on Earth. Is that vague enough for you??"

"Actually, it might help," Tess said, and started clicking around for a moment. "Umm, okay, here we go - this is his main 'players' reference notes... anybody who was particularly involved in his operations is listed here. Most of them are here on Earth, because that's where..."

"Where he was operating," Isabel finished, looking at the odd window with text and bizarre images in the window. "Is there something wrong with the display, or is that just how Ed liked to organize things for himself??"

Tess chuckled slightly. "He was using a very old and somewhat eccentric word processor - I wasn't able to get a very good converter here in this virtual," Tess sighed. "Alex should be able to do better. Umm... as far as controlling the Granilith... did you notice these odd dot TBN files?"

"Yeah," Isabel said, smiling slightly. "Max wondered if those were granilith executables."

"I think he's right - and I have a notion how to get them transferred over, if you're interested in that."

"Maybe." Isabel sighed. "If we transfer them, do they start running immediately, or is there a way to get a listing of what the program does and who wrote it, so that we can then figure out if it's something we have any interest in doing?" Tess shrugged awkwardly. "Oh, well."

"Maybe it'd be better if I took off now, and came back tomorrow," Tess said a bit uncertainly. "We're both kinda tired."

"Yeah, I guess," Isabel agreed. "What were you up to today, anyway??"

"Ah, mostly pitching in and doing chores over at the Valenti's," Tess replied, sighing. "Mister V's on a big summer cleaning kick, so there was plenty to help out with." She sighed. "And I guess that the hard physical labour made me feel better about what a mess I've made of things lately."

"It couldn't hurt I guess," Isabel said with a smile. "Okay, well, see you in the morning."

"Right." Tess smiled and left the room.

---------

"Come on," Alex said to Isabel as she stood leaning against the bathroom counter, staring into her reflection's face. "You keep saying that you want to get this done before your graduation. And, unfortunately, there really aren't going to be any hair salons open today or tomorrow, which means that you don't really have time to get it cut there. Besides, you can probably do it better and more quickly with your powers. What's the problem?"

"Maybe I can wait until after the Commencement," Isabel said uncertainly.

"That's not Isabel talking... I don't know who it is, but I'm not sure I like her," Alex joked, and Isabel shot him a 'don't pull this crap - I'm not awake enough for it' look. "Alright, what are you so worried about? That you're really going to get caught out in a lie if someone asks you where you got your new hairdo done?? I... I don' t think that that's..."

*It's not that at all,* Isabel sent to him, shutting him up. *For... for one thing, I LIKE going to the hair salon. I love the whole experience of it... getting my hair washed in those sinks next to the chair... sitting and thinking while the stylist moves around me, making little snips here and there. I'm even slightly fond of sitting in the waiting area and reading those really old magazines while I wait my turn... and that's weird, because I generally hate waiting for anything.*

"Oh," Alex said, a new expression coming over his face as he realized how unintentionally out of place his advice had been.

*And for another thing... I'm not sure if I can get it right by myself. Yes, I know what I want it to look like, and yes, I have good tools at my disposal. But I don't really have that much experience working with hair in this way... occasionally moving it around with my powers yeah, but not really reshaping and restyling it like this. What if I really mess things up? I... I can't just take the cut edges and join them back again all at once...*

"Well, it's your decision to make," Alex said softly. "I... I just knew that you're really excited about this, and didn't want you to have to put it off." He took a deep breath. "And personally I suspect that if you tried doing it by yourself, then it'll come out just great. But - but it's your choice in the end. If there's anything that I can do to help, you just let me know, okay?"

"Alright." Isabel took one more moment and then left the bathroom. Alex followed her, a quizzical look on his face. *I... I haven't decided yet - just felt like I wanted to get out of that space first. So... do you want to try converting that file that Tess found last night?*

"Oh, try and stop me," Alex said, sitting down at the computer and waking it up out of its black-screen mode. "So - today we're doing the communicator thing up at the pod chamber, and transferring some files back and forth between your computer and mine using the transfer cable." Isabel nodded. "Anything planned for tommorow?"

"Well, I'll probably have to do some shopping for the graduation thing," Isabel said under her breath.

"Huh?" Alex looked up. "But... but you can wear just about anything under your cap and gown, right? Do you *really* need to get something new?"

Isabel grinned a big grin. *Not that graduation thing, sweetie. The surprise after-graduation party that Michael and Maria are throwing me.*

"Not that much of a surprise, it would seem." Alex considered. "I guess that, being a ghost in your head, I can't really get upset this time about being the last one to know."

*Yeah, I guess so.* Isabel wandered over, and blinked in surprise as a screenful of information about Agent Pierce came up. *Ooooh, that looks much better! Cool.*

"Yep." Alex fiddled a few moments more, and Isabel realized that he was exporting the converted document out of the virtual PC, carefully checking it for malware macros on the way, and dropping it on the main desktop. "Do you want to get the cable connection set up now?"

"No... not right now," Isabel said. Purposefully she went back into the bathroom, picked up a big circular mirror and set it floating in the air behind her, and focused on one particular lock of her hair. The bottom third of it suddenly detached and softly floated to the floor. There - now she was pretty much committed.

-----------

"Ohmigawsh, it looks SO great Izzie," Liz gushed as she caught sight of the tall, shapely hybrid coming into the dining room of the cafe. "Very... I dunno, sexy and sophisticated all at once. Perfect for you."

Isabel smiled slightly. She had been a little nervous when finally getting to the end of her improvised haircut... that is, the point where she had to admit that doing anything else would be a bad idea. Alex had insisted that he loved it like that, but it had taken several other people repeating the sentiment for her to be sure. The overall cut was similar to the layered look that she had first shown Alex the day before in her mind, except slightly longer, and with a few touches of waviness here and there. She had also lightened her highlights just slightly. "Good to hear. Okay, are we ready to go?"

"Don't I look ready?" Liz asked with a little chuckle. "Okay... Maria couldn't make it?"

"No, apparently not," Max filled in. "Something with her mom." He shrugged and hugged Liz hello warmly. That made the group Isabel... with Alex tagging along inside her brain of course - Max, Michael and Tess, Liz - and Kyle, who'd asked if he could come on and see what all the fuss was about, which Max and Isabel had agreed with quickly. Kyle had definitely shown over the past little while that he could be relied on, and Iz had actually been a little surprised that he'd never been anywhere near the pod chamber - but there really hadn't been any reason to take him there until now.

The group sorted itself out into two sections, one to ride in the Jeep, and the other taking Kyle's car. Liz went with Max in the Jeep of course, and Michael rode with them. Isabel chose to come with Tess and Kyle. There was a slightly somber mood in that car as Kyle followed Max out onto the main road north out of town.

"It... it feels kinda weird to think of you guys coming out of artificial incubation pods, buried in a rocky mountain out here in the desert," Kyle pointed out. "Even if we don't think about the part where they're a super-powerful alien artifact in the same cave that you didn't know was there and don't know what to do with."

"It... it's a bit hard to convey the full effect just with words of explanation, Kyle," Tess said softly. "Wait until you get *inside* - then you'll get the full weird." Kyle groaned softly, and Tess chuckled a bit.

Isabel was lost fairly deep in her own thoughts, not even paying that much attention to Alex beside her - remembering the first time that Tess had shown them the pod chamber, and the time that she had come up there alone after her birthday party and found the Granilith. Yes, 'weird' seemed to be the understatement of the day. And yet... as much as she might want to pretend to be normal, to forget her troubles and all of the things that made her 'different' - that seemed to be futile at best and dangerous to the people she loved at worst. They were starting to understand what the pods, the chamber, and the Granilith really meant, and that was a good thing.

Soon they had parked out of sight of the rough trail that came nearest to the Maideckezne rocks, climbed up the path, and Michael opened up the door. "Okay, there isn't much time before the alignment begins, I think." Isabel said. "Let's see - definitely all four of us should be 'in shot' - and Alex too - just because he's already been seen before, and because he likes it that the guy on the other end can see him." She considered. "Probably better not to include you, Kyle, this time at least. Liz - how about it?"

"Umm..." Liz blinked at the thought of being included. "Max, do you want me..."

"By my side?" Max finished, and nodded, a smile plastered onto his face. "Always. "Come on, umm..." They tried to get in position - so that all four of the 'Royals' could be together in the middle, Max stood at the left end, and Isabel at the right. And then, Isabel suddenly realized that it would be both awkward and somewhat deceptive if Tess stood next to Max and herself with Michael - so she called Tess over to take the spot just inside of her. Then the boys took one orb and the girls the other, and Isabel repeated the same call that she had made last time, with a few modifications to make better use of the information that they'd gathered, mentioning that they wanted to speak with anyone from the Garvickle Wean council, particularly the vice-chair-one or chair-one, and sending a shoutout to Erin at switchboard central. After a long moment, a figure appeared with them in the chamber, only a slight glittery wave of light that occasionally passed over him marking him as a hologram.

Isabel gasped slightly. It was a tall, old person, a man, wearing a long black robe, with hugely baggy sleeves that almost completely swallowed his arms and hands, and a thickly furred cloak almost completely hiding his face, although she caught a hint of wrinkled jowls. The man was slightly stooped, leaning on a long jet-black staff. No trace of the legs or feet could be seen under the cloak. The effect was deeply spooky - in fact, this guy could probably have been used as Emporer Palpatine's body double, Isabel realized. Hopefully that resemblence was coincidental, because the first words out of his mouth were "I am the chair-one."

Isabel quailed, but Max took the lead without a trace of hesitation. "My name is Max Evans, and I am the heir of Zan Liaret, once king of Antar. My sister and my blood brother spoke with your vice-chair-one recently, asking important questions. They were told that the answers would take time to find. Are you ready to give us the information we need, or are you prepared to defy my will??"

Kyle snickered from offscreen - Isabel desperately hoped that the chair-one couldn't hear or interpret that reaction. She was a little surprised herself at Max's pompously arrogant facade, but perhaps that was the best way of dealing with a situation like this. Certainly the chair-one seemed to be phased - probably he didn't have many people talking like this, certainly not anybody that he hadn't really met before. Which could be a good thing, Isabel said - Max was trying to establish himself as a planetary power player, at least on the same level as him. "We... we have searched our records, but do not have much information on the subjects they asked of," he said, his voice a mix of annoyance, deference and defiance. "The creation of new bodies for the Royal Four - your 'rebirth' as it were, is something that was arranged as a deeply secret project among the Liaretian rebels, and no-one from here had anything to do with it." His eyes narrowed slightly. "How is it that you have chosen us to ask?"

"My reasons are my own," Max said, "though I will accept your word that you do not have the information. Is there any advice or direction you can offer in directing us to those who would know more??"

"Hmm," the chair-one muttered. "That is a great thing that you ask of me, Mac Effins. I... I am not certain - there is the rebel sanctuary, but I do not know where it is located, and the co-ordinates are secret for reasons that you can probably guess. Alinda de Liaret and her closest confidantes are still being fiercely hunted by all of Kivar's men. There... there might be some rebel sympathizers here and there who might at least have scraps more information for you... Guntares 4 and Stellynfrus 3. Even Larek's court on Rahlicx - though Larek must be careful to not show overt support to the rebels, since his Navy is no match for Kivar's." He took a deep breath. "And... and I believe that there are many sons of the stars, who may know much of the things you wish to know, still living on Earth, Max. Seek them out yourself, for I know nothing more of them than the bare fact of their existence."

Max sighed. This was proving to be more than a little disappointing. "Very well. Before we cease communication, might I inquire as to your own name?"

A pause. "That would be reasonable." He waited just long enough that Max opened his mouth to repeat the inquiry more directly and said, "I am called as Gurent Tavvalyn, descended from the noble house of Tavvalyn on the continent of Garvin, upon Antar. My family were always treated well by the dynasty of Liaret, and the winds Kivar's reign has not been so kind to my people. I apologize for the poverty of the news I am able to bring you, Mac, and if there is aught further I can do to aid your return in power, you may simply let it be known." He sighed. "An inquiry... there were four royals, and I see six of your number in total. The vice-chair-one left a note that Isabel Evans had introduced him to her human lover. Would it be appropriate to presume that..."

"Uh-oh," Michael muttered under his breath, just loud enough for Isabel to hear him. Max hesitated a second, then spoke up again. "Yes." He nodded towards Liz. "This is Liz Parker, and she is my dearest love. Michael Guerin, reborn from Rath, Tess Harding, reborn of Ava." He sighed. "But this talk of human lovers should perhaps not be for the ears of many, among your people. They - they might not understand, might feel that we are deliberately turning away from Antarian culture." He sighed. "We... we fell in love before I knew anything about where I came from."

"Oh," Gurent said, obviously trying hard to assimilate that. "Excuses, please, Mac, but a deputation has suddenly arrived. If I may terminate..." Max made a gesture of his head that probably hadn't been intended as a nod of permission, but perhaps it had been interpreted so, because Gurent's image suddenly blinked out.

"Alright, Tess," Isabel said quickly. "Reactions??"

"Umm... he seems to be - just what he seems." Tess sighed. "A competent administrator who's reluctant to openly defy the superpower of his sector. He did manage to give some good advice I think... of course, how useful it is remains to be seen... can anybody find Guntares and Stellynfrus on those star maps that we have from the book??"

"Oh, let me see," Michael said, rushing off towards the door, and then stopping. "We forgot to bring the translation up here, didn't we??"

"Yeah, I think so," Liz said, shaking her head.

"Oh well," Max said calmly. "We can worry about that much on the way back. It's probably too late today to call back for further directions, I think." He sighed. "I... I do remember seeing Rahlicx on those charts I think... and it's interesting to find out that that's Larek's planet." He sighed. "The big trouble with using the Orbs to try and communicate with him is going to be that he's so close to Antar - Kivar or any of his people could be listening in. And he can't afford to really piss Kivar off."

"We might be able to find a more distant place that has strong diplomatic ties to Rahlicx," Alex said, and Isabel could tell that he was projecting his voice and everybody could hear him. There was something echoey about the effect here within the chamber. "They could act as gobetweens - probably any Rahlixian colony has the technology to talk to their homeworld without others listening in."

"Good idea, man," Kyle said. "And what about the last part - trying to find more aliens here on Earth?"

"Nasedo's players list may help with that," Isabel suggested. "Because we don't really know about any of them from direct experience, I think."

"I noticed that you didn't correct him on your name, Max," Liz said to him quietly.

"Yeah - I wasn't quite sure HOW to without ruining my dignified effect."

"Oh. But it's going to be kind of embarassing if he keeps doing it - or if he tells other people on other alien worlds that that's your name."

"We'll worry about that when we have to, Liz," Michael said. "Do you think the bit about us having love interest here on Earth really matters?"

"Kind of depends on what people expect about us." Max put his arm around Liz's shoulders and headed towards the pod chamber door.

-----------

The sun blazed hot out of the sky that Tuesday morning, as Isabel stood awkwardly on the north lawn of the school with a bunch of kids who had been a year ahead of her during her time at West Roswell, except that she'd suddenly come up from behind and caught up with them right at the end. (Of course, it hadn't been quite like that - she'd been in senior-level classes with a number of them, but always as 'a hot junior girl taking a few senior classes this term', not 'a bookwormy little brown-noser trying to graduate a year early...')

Well, thinking like that just plain wasn't helpful. She smiled nervously at Everett, Julia - a pretty brunette several inches shorter than Isabel was, even in her heels, (of course, Isabel wasn't exactly wearing flats either.) A few more minutes passed, and then the graduating class was led around the corner of the building and into their seats on the football field for the ceremony.

Isabel zoned out most of the speeches and so on. (It didn't help that Alex was invisibly up on stage, mugging in an attempt to get her to laugh at the wrong moment, doing an imitation of the principal, and just about anything else silly that he could think of. She nearly missed it when her name was called, but got up onto stage to collect her fake diploma, and waved it in the air long enough to let her Dad take a picture, while Alex stood nearby and clapped. Then it was more dreary waiting, as Julia followed her, and then the rest of the students in alphabetical order, F through Z. Seemed like forever before she could finally get back to her friends and family, to let them hug the life out of her in celebration, and talk over each other, and all of that great stuff.

"Hey, Izzie," Michael said, drawing her aside for a moment. "Umm... remember yesterday when we were looking at Nasedo's papers at my place?"

"Yeah," she replied. Okay, this would be it - the setup for the so-called 'surprise party.' She had seen enough of a dream Max had a few nights ago to know that this was coming - she hadn't dreamwalked him on purpose, just kind of ended up there by accident while she was sleeping herself. Her powers had been a little off-balance in unusual ways like that ever since Alex died.

"You left them there."

"Yeah, I did," she said. "You asked me to."

"Umm, right," Michael muttered. "But - umm, but Liz said that Alex wanted to try scanning them into the computer and see if his - his pattern recognition program could find any hidden messages - the word in a particular position on each page, that kind of thing."

"When was Alex saying this?" Isabel said, grinning. "Was I not there??"

"Umm... I think you might not have been paying attention," he said. "This morning, just before we drove over here."

Isabel had actually been paying reasonably good attention, but she decided not to torture Michael any more. "Well, if you want me to come by and pick them up, then alright, but I do have other plans tonight. Michael shuffled his feet awkwardly and nodded.

Soon enough the group broke up, and Isabel rode back home with Max and her parents. (Alex shrunk down to mini-Alex size again for the trip.) "So, umm, about the new car thing, Isabel," Diane Evans started uncertainly.

"Oh, it doesn't have to be brand new," Isabel replied. "Just new for me... which wouldn't be hard, since I've never really had a car..."

"Yes, that's part of the point," her father said in his best 'stern Daddy' voice. "You've never had a car of your own before, and it's a lot of money and a lot of responsibility. You've chosen not to have a part-time job and save up for a car, remember."

Isabel smiled and counted to two mentally. "No, Dad, you're right, I made that choice. However, I thought that you and mom supported me in that choice, since it was partly made in order to concentrate more on my schooling. I've done well with the school part. Don't you think that that shows some responsibility and maturity on my part too?" There was a silence. "And I've saved up some of my own money that I'll be able to put towards a car too."

Her parents traded looks. "Well spoken," Mom replied after a moment. "We... we're not saying anything for definite yet - but I think that you can count on some help from us. But I think that it won't just be, 'here, give us your birthday present fund and we'll take care of the rest."

"Hmm," Isabel said, thinking that over. "Well, alright. I'm glad you were so honest with me." She sighed as her father drove past the Crashdown.

Once they were home, Isabel spent some time going over the players list, and a few other charts from Nasedo's files that hinted at other aliens active here on Earth. Alex was sitting on the desk chair as she lay back on her bed, frowning slightly. *Sounds like if I want the wheels, I'm going to have to guh guh guh, guh guh guh- get a job.*

Alex snickered. "Yeah, maybe." He laughed softly. "The crashdown is probably looking for new waitresses for the summer tourist season, and you've got some pull with the current staff." Alex sighed a little wistfully. "I never did get to see you wearing Liz's uniform. By the time somebody told me that you'd been working there, you were gone."

*Hmm.* Isabel thought about that. *Yeah, why weren't you around the Crashdown for those few days, anyway?? Was there bad blood between you and Grandma Claudia or something?" She made a face. "I'm sorry - that's definitely not funny or a cool thing to think under the circumstances.*

"No, not really," Alex said. "Actually, well - I wasn't that big of a fan of Grandma Claudia the one time I met her, which was when I was thirteen." He sighed. "She pinched my cheek, teased me about when I was going to notice that girls were different from boys - I don't really want to go into it any more." He sighed. "She was much more of a hit with Liz and Maria."

*Okay, that's fair I guess,* Isabel replied. *But that wasn't the real reason, I take it??*

"No - I had already started to squabble with Liz and Maria about the secret that they were keeping from me," Alex said with a sigh. "Max's secret - and yours I guess. I was pretty much avoiding them for nearly two weeks and hoping that things would be normal again once I came back. Which was probably a bit foolish - but I didn't know how else to deal with the situation."

"Alright." Isabel smiled. "Well, I'd be pleased to model a uniform again, though I'm not sure that I ever actually wore Liz's. Probably it would be way too small for me -- or was that the whole attraction?" She smiled a bit hungrily, looking straight at Alex.

"Umm... can I refuse to answer on the grounds that the truth would incriminate me?" he joked.

"Not sure that ghosts get to plead the fifth." Alex shrugged. "However, you might be saved by the bell, because I've got to go change for the party."

"Great - yet another surprise party that you show up at, dressed to the ninces," he teased her. "Well, at least this time you probably won't have anybody accusing you that you already knew about it... although you may get a few jokes about having a hot date that you wanted to go to instead," he said. "And Michael won't be able to blame anyone else for how bad the excuse was."

"Yeah, I guess," Isabel said, remembering her birthday party. "This time, though, I hope that Tess shows up just fine and doesn't draw much attention to herself." Alex nodded. "And that you keep all your clothes on - at least until we're alone."

"Hehehe."

Isabel was able to borrow the Jeep to 'go run an errand to Michael's place' because Max had already left, picked up in the Jetta by Maria and Liz. And she did a pretty good job of acting surprised, and just a little bit scared, when everything was dark in Michael's place and then her friends jumped out of nowhere. But as she sat down on Michael's couch sipping a punch, Liz came over and muttered, "You really did know this time, didn't you?"

"Umm... what makes you say that?"

"Oh, just something in your eyes," Liz replied, sipping the cherry fizz punch herself. "When the lights came on. Don't worry, I'll let everybody else think that they're criminal masterminds."

"Thanks, I guess." Pause. "So... anything interesting going on between you and Max lately? I know that he didn't come home until late last night, after the two of you were supposed to go to the movies."

"Well, we *did* actually make it to the movies," Liz said, smiling. "And had ice cream floats at Fred's, and then parked up on the edge of Frazier woods." She sighed softly. "Nothing... earthshattering, if you catch my drift. Just... having some fun, getting to know each other all over again. No matter what used to be, I don't intend to hop into your brother's bed any time soon... or even make the beast in the back of his Jeep." Liz blushed a little even as she said that last part. "He's an old hand at getting to second base by now, though... and he's always been a great kisser."

Isabel smiled. "Enjoy it... you've got the time... at least I hope so. None of us really know for sure how much time we have... but that's not really a great reason to rush into stuff, I'm starting to see." She sighed.

"Yeah, but then again." Liz cocked her head. "You and Alex kinduv rushed into thing at prom - and it's a REALLY good thing that you did." Isabel nodded.

There was a cake and other treats, (with plenty of tabasco to pour over them,) and tunes and dancing, but Isabel didn't really feel like dancing by herself this time, or being in Alex's arms with all of her friends around, and she started to feel very lonely, even though Alex was right there, and also all of her friends. She sat back down in front of Michael's television and started looking for a good movie to watch with Alex, and before she finished surfing up past 28, there was a clinking sound. Isabel looked up - Max was tapping a spoon against his glass of punch.

"Okay, time for the presents, or - well, for our big present," he said. "Especially because I think it'll liven up the party for the guest of honor. This is, umm... well, it's from me and Michael and Tess, and from Liz especially, because she was kinduv the one to come up with the idea." He took a deep breath. "Michael, man, the door?" Michael checked the front door and closed an extra deadbolt that Isabel wasn't sure she remembered, also fastening a chain and waving over it to 'extract' several links, so that the door couldn't even be opened a crack without the chain going taut. Whatever was all of this about??

"Okay, places people." Max, Michael, and Tess went to three of the four corners of Michael's living room, bending or stretching to... to little bits of crystal or something that were fastened into the joins of the walls. Max worked faster on his and then moved over to the fourth corner. Some sort of faint alien energy began to permeate the entire space... but Isabel couldn't tell what it was for. All of a sudden, there was a vigorous round of applause, Liz and Maria leading it, and everybody was staring at her.

"Okay, come on, what's the deal..."

"Let me show you," Liz said, crossing over to the couch. She focused not on Isabel herself - but to Alex - reached out, and offered her hand for him to take. "Congratulations, old friend."

"WHAT?" Alex asked. "You... you can see me?"

"Not just see you," Max filled in. Alex turned to stare at him - obviously he HADN'T been throwing his voice this time. Somebody else's powers were bridging the gap - and without Tess having to touch her and throw a mindwarp. "Go on." Baffled, Alex reached out towards Liz, not touching her, but Liz *grasped* his hand with hers and laughed softly.

"How... how?" For a moment, Isabel's mind was so rocked by what she'd seen that she could hardly do more than repeat the single-word question. "How- how- HOW??"

"Yeah!!" Michael exclaimed, pumping an arm underhand in celebration of the feat. "We... we couldn't really be sure that it would work without giving away the surprise to both of you."

"It - it's something that we put together based on references in the book translation, Nasedo's watch thingee - and just about everything Tess could tell us that she'd learned about how our powers work," Max said. "Roughly, the crystals define a space with a faint 'stretching' of reality - sort of an inversion of what the Skins did to all of Roswell when human people were disappearing last fall."

Isabel headed up and walked over to carefully examine one of the crystals without touching it. There were two at each corner of the room, one right down at floor level and the other nearly seven and a half feet high, so that together they mapped out a block-shaped volume, like a cube except with the height, width, and depth of unequal dimensions. "So... it's a different version of reality, where Alex can be seen and touched??"

"Sort of," Liz filled in. "It's not just him... if any of you aliens concentrate hard enough on some object, you could make it 'appear' here in the field. I figured that... well, not just me, but..."

"You were the first one to come up with the idea, really," Max reminded Liz. She blushed.

"Since Alex is inside your mind, I figured that he'd manifest himself automatically, because the way that he's haunting you automatically makes you aware of where he is, what he's doing, and so on." Liz took a breath. "Which means, in a way, this isn't a present for you so much as for Alex and for the rest of us, because outside of here you can already see and feel what we can in here. Everywhere else, you have him all to yourself, almost, and inside you have to share him with us. Not that great a deal."

"Oh, are you kidding?" Isabel said, her face lighting up with joy when she realized what this meant... joy because she could tell what it would mean to Alex to be able to interact almost-normally with the rest of his friends, without Tess' powers directly in operation, happiness on behalf of the others who were dying to get to know him again on that basis... and also because, in sharing Alex with the other people who loved him, Isabel knew that she'd have more of him that she could ever have kept to herself alone. "Okay, so what's next??"

"Hit the music, spaceboy," Maria called out. "I get first dance with the guest of honor!!"

Alex turned to Isabel as if almost expecting an objection, but Isabel just sighed in exasperation and waved him towards Miss DeLuca.

TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Author's note: I expect to be updating at least six times in April - yay! Much gazerey goodness


Part Fifteen

"So, we'll do it tonight?" Michael said. "Or tomorrow??"

"Hmm... I'm not sure," Isabel admitted. "One more night probably won't matter that much, from a viability standpoint... but then, you never know." She sighed. "On the other hand, I'm pretty tired already - we all are. It's been a big day."

"Are... are you sure that you're up for going on this little errand yourself?" he pressed. "I mean... I know that you're in general very gung-ho about all things having to do with bringing Alex back... but retrieving a DNA sample is different. He... I mean, I can only think of what it'd be like if I had to... you shouldn't have to see him like that."

"Mmrm," Isabel grunted. "Maybe... maybe you're right. If I absolutely HAD to go through that to keep the plan on track, of course I would, but - but it you and Max, and anyone else you might need, volunteered to take care of that side... maybe it'd be a relief to not be involved." She sighed, and turned around. "Need a glass of cold water - be back."

"Oh, alright." Michael waved slightly, and then did a delayed take. "No, wait, don't step through..."

His words of warning were too late. Isabel was already almost at the doorway into the bathroom, and as she started running the left-hand tap on the sink, there was suddenly a loud cry of protest from out on the other side of the living room. "Hey, what happened?" Liz called out.

"Liz - are you okay?" Max asked.

"Yeah, umm, I nearly lost my balance, but I'm okay not. What... where did he..."

"Isabel stepped outside the field boundary," Michael announced out loud. "Come back in here, Iz, your boyfriend is in too much demand for you to leave the room. If you need water, I'll fetch it."

"Wait a second, you guys can't see Alex unless I'm within the alien crystal field?" Isabel called, not stepping back through yet. "I... I thought that it was just as long as he was staying inside."

"No, it won't work without you, because you're the source of the thoughts that make him real," Liz agreed. "I... I didn't notice you stepping out, but..."

"Okay, then while I'm here, I'll take care of something that nobody else can do for me," Isabel said, closing the door, and getting herself set up to take care of business on the toilet. Maria laughed softly through the door. "Alex Whitman will be right back, after these exciting messages!"

And Kyle jumped into the silence that followed, mugging a bunch of over-the-top parodies of commercial slogans.

But somebody was tapping on the bathroom door by the time Isabel had flushed, presumably just because they wanted her to come out, (instead of wanting to go in,) so she didn't take as much time as usual making sure that her clothes were tucked in just so before exiting. Max had been the one who was tapping, and as Isabel looked around the living room, she caught sight of Alex near the end table that she'd bought for Michael as a christmas present. Every other pair of eyes followed hers. "Hey, just a second," he said, clearly noticing that Liz was about to tackle-hug him. "I... I want to try this now." And slowly, with everybody watching him, Alex reached down to the bowl of potato chips on the table, picked one up and brought it to his lips, and popped it in. There was a crunching sound.

"Hmm... can you... can you actually taste it?" Maria asked, smiling curiously at the experiment.

"Umm... yeah, although it's not quite the same as the sensation it used to be," Alex admitted. "Not... not quite sure if I can put the description into words."

"Hmm, something smells a bit weird," Michael decided, walking over next to Alex. "Yeah, man, it's you... you've got, like, zombie breath or something now!"

"I... I do?" Alex's face fell.

Liz came near herself. "Umm... I think that Michael's exaggerating," she declared, and Isabel nodded in agreement. "But... but there is a noticeable odour... something like... like ozone, and... and that stuff that they put into natural gas to make it smell." She looked around the area. "And... well, since Alex isn't really here, and yet the potato chip is nowhere to be seen, I would hypothesize that for him to 'eat' in this state involved reducing the food item into gaseous molecules. Most of them probably went unnoticed - water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane, other stuff that's odorless. But, well, a bit of it..."

"Oh." Alex sighed. "So, I probably shouldn't eat too much in here?"

"Come on," Isabel insisted. "The smell is not that bad!"

"Easy for you to say!" Michael replied. "It's not your place!!"

"Maybe a compromise," Maria suggested. "A few little things, Alex can probably try. After all, he hasn't gotten hungry so far, so he doesn't really need to eat - it's just that this is an unusual chance for him to taste again. Chowing down on a really big meal would probably be a bad idea, but..."

"Yeah, I wouldn't even need to have small things often," Alex replied. "But it's up to Michael - this IS his apartment, after all."

"Okay, maybe little things," Michael allowed.

"Can we try one more thing?" Everybody turned to see Tess over by the fridge. She was pouring a vibrant orange fizzy liquid into one of Michael's glass. "Your favorite I think."

"Hey, I thought that you only had orange soda when you were really depressed," Isabel asked Alex, and he nodded. Tess flinched.

"I guess that covers... all of the time that we spent together, back when... well, umm..."

"It - it's okay, Tess," Alex assured her. "Thanks for trying... and I do like the way it tastes anytime... or I did before I - you know." So the glass was passed over into his hand. But as he sipped, there was no new source of odor, and no pleased look on his face.

"What... what's wrong, baby?" Isabel asked.

"Um, I - I dunno. It... it feels like I'm spilling it, though... I don't have any on my face, right?" Isabel shook her head no, and Alex tried again. Certainly none of the liquid was leaving the glass but that which went into Alex's mouth, but... but something did feel wrong."

"Umm, this may sound weird, but try moving your feet, Alex," Liz said, and Alex did, turning around a quarter circle to face Kyle. "There's marks on the carpet, damn it."

"Ohhh," Isabel sighed.

"No, it's okay," Alex insisted. "Really. Liz, umm - let someone else worry about cleaning up - I still owe you half of a dance." And so Liz took Alex's arm and they went around the couch and began to boogie.

"By the way," Isabel whispered to Michael after using her alien powers to properly deal with the spill, "I've made up my mind. If you don't need me, then I'd appreciate it. Just get that sample, and... and don't tell me anything about what it was like opening up that coffin."

Michael sighed and nodded. "Alright, it will be done."

----------

Isabel slept late the next morning, and spent plenty of time sitting at Alex's computer in her nightgown and robe, reading up on Nasedo's 'players' file and a few other useful looking documents. About quarter to eleven, there was a rapping on her door - two knocks, about a second and a half between them, and repeated three times with longer pauses in between. She checked a moment to make sure that she was ready to face her friends like this and turned away from the screen. "Yeah, come in?"

Max, Michael, and Maria filed through the door into the room. Isabel smiled, having guessed that that was who was out there based on the knocking - several of them had experimented with patterns in Morse code, and two dashes in Morse was an M. Three M's... yeah, she knew who that stood for.
"Okay, what's up?"

Michael immediately tossed her something, which Isabel only just managed to catch - it looked like a smooth, green glassy marble, with a hint of brownish red at the very center. "Okay, and what's this?"

"What we got last night," Max replied softly. "A sample of Alex's DNA."

Isabel's eyes grew round as she peered into the depths. "I... I didn't expect it to look anything like this." She turned to face the guys again. "So... there weren't any problems? With... with the decay or anything?"

"Umm, didn't seem to be," Max told her with a smile. "What might have broken up in one spot might have been whole elsewhere - and there are a LOT of cells inside anybody, each with their own copy of their DNA. I might have left a few variances in place, but not many. Closer than identical twins, say."

And will that be close enough? Isabel wondered, but she couldn't bring herself to ask that out loud. "Well, umm, thanks a lot. What about this container thingee?"

"I've been working on that for days," Max said to her. "Practically slows down the flow of time inside the center, so that no further breakdown will happen. Also, they're very resilient, up to the sledgehammer-resistant level at least."

"They?"

"That isn't the only one," Maria put in, finally joining the conversation. "One for each of us... four for those of us here, plus Liz and Kyle - six in total."

"None for Tess? Ehh, okay." Isabel accepted that - with sixfold redundancy already, it wasn't really necessary to spread them out any further, and denying the girl of this was a relatively harmless was of sanctioning her, if Tess saw it that way. "Well, thanks a lot guys. I... I've been going over the Nasedo files again, and I think that I've figured out my next step." She turned the expensive flat-panel monitor carefully towards them and pointed out an entry without actually touching the surface.

"Kal Langley," Michael repeated. "Yeah, I remember noticing him before. He's... he's a shapeshifter too, and living in LA?"

"Not just a shapeshifter, I think that he was a protector on our ship, just like Nasedo," Isabel said. "It's still a bit hard to make sense of Nasedo's private code, but I think that he rejected his mission and chose to build a life of his own on Earth. The last entry was that he was making inroads into Hollywood - and I was able to find a Kal Langley listed on the internet movie database with producer credits."

"Wait, wait just a second," Max insisted. "A second protector? Pierce said that they caught both of the adult aliens who survived the crash, and only one escaped. I... I know that Hal Carver described helping *two* aliens steal our pods, but maybe this was before they were caught?"

"I... I'm not sure of the count, Max," Isabel admitted. "Rath and Lonnie said that they used to have a protector, right? I admit that that *could* have been our Nasedo as well, but... I still want to follow up on this lead."

"Hmm." Michael considered that. "Alone? Nasedo was dangerous, and if this shifter has turned his back on protecting us, and values his lifestyle of the rich and famous..."

"I - I don't intend to ruin what he's worked for," Isabel admitted. "Building a life on this planet as a stranger is something I can absolutely respect, as you might imagine. But he may have useful information... and there may be some way that we still have leverage against him, even if he doesn't want us to. Look at this last note. 'Shares my conditioned liabilities, vis-a-vis the Royals.'"

"Okay, so what does that mean?" Maria asked, sitting down on the edge of Isabel's bed.

"Well... Nasedo never hurt us, but I'm not sure how much to read into that," Max said thoughtfully. "More interesting... I can think of a number of times that I told him to do something he didn't want to do, and no matter how argumentative or rebellious he seemed before then, he would always comply. I guess that might just be a sense of duty, but... but if it was possible to, umm..."

"To brainwash a bodyguard so that he had to obey orders, and couldn't hurt his charges?" Michael finished. "Maybe. Possibly that even explains why he was playing a deep game in support of our enemies... and why this Langley guy took off. I wouldn't have very much honest commitment to my job if that sort of thing had been done to me."

"What... what does Alex think of all this?" Maria asked Isabel.

"Hmm? Oh, he isn't around yet. I think that last night was pretty tiring for him, and that he wasn't able to blip out right away once we got back."

"Hmm?" Max's attention was attracted by that reference. "I... I thought that he could always blip out... well, as long as his energies were strained... or did you keep him around for longer, Iz?"

"No, it wasn't me," she insisted. "But... well, we're still learning about Alex's ghost state, and not just in ways like eating potato chips and drinking soda." She sighed. "I don't think that this is anything to worry, just the ghostly equivalent of being too tired or too hyper to go to sleep."

"Alright, I can accept that," Michael admitted. "Well, I've got one more marble delivery to make yet, but we'll meet up about this Langley stuff again. One thing, that you might have to chew on... did you ever give Nasedo an order? I... I think I tried a few, when we were breaking into the base to save Max... and he didn't seem to be particularly inclined to obey them."

"Well, Max's life was in danger then," Isabel put in. "Maybe doing what he thought was necessary to save him took precedence over your orders... like those Asimov robot things."

"On the other hand, when Michael was in jail and the Cadmium X thing had broken, there was a case to be made that all of us were in danger," Max reminded her. "But he followed my orders then."

"So maybe I just wasn't on the authorized list to order him around," Michael concluded. "What about yourself? Did you ever tell Nasedo to do something? I realize that it might take a while to sift through your memories, so I thought that I'd leave you with that question to chew on."

"Oh, thanks," Isabel said. "Well, thanks for all that you've done, and... and bye Maria, if you're leaving too." Maria nodded. "And I guess that it's probably about time that I got dressed and helped myself to a late breakfast."

"Sounds good," Max said. "I'm probably going to head down for a nap. Didn't get that much sleep last night, and Liz is coming over at three o'clock."

"Gotit."

As Isabel showered, (getting used to the reduced weight of her hair,) picked out a skimpy halter top and short red skirt in honor of the pleasant weather, and put some frozen blueberry muffins into the toaster oven, Isabel racked her memories of Ed Harding. It was hard to concentrate on details, though, because of the emotional reactions that kept hitting her. Retrieving his dead body fromthe gas station, and bringing him back to life. Assuming the face (and wardrobe) of the dreaded Agent Pierce, in the pod chamber, full of plans to use their resources to protect them all. Finding his dead body once again, in Max's bedroom, and being unable that time to revive him, and seeing him crumble into dust before her eyes. So many people had turned to dust since then...

No, this wasn't helping her out at all! (The oven dinged, and she retrieved her pancakes, started spreading them with brown sugar, butter, and just a bit of tabasco.) Okay, how about starting the first time that she'd met him... she'd gone over to Tess' house to follow up on Michael's suspicions of the new girl. Tess had looked so proud when she hugged him and said that her Daddy told the army how to run things... that was when they were all still hiding their secrets from each other, of course.

And... and Isabel hadn't said anything that could even be construed as giving an order, that day. She'd offered to help with the box, and he'd told her not to bother, but that was as close as it came. She hadn't been there when Liz and Max had come to the house, although she'd been watching some of it over the spy-camera. And for a long time after, she hadn't even seen Nasedo, (though she'd thought that TESS was Nasedo for part of that period, because of seeing her use her powers on the spycam and not understanding what that meant.)

She hadn't seen him at all, in fact, until the three of them (herself, Michael, and Tess,) had been in the middle of breaking into the Eagle Rock base to rescue Max. And even then, she'd been far too intimidated to try ordering the older alien to do anything. In fact, she was pretty sure now that she'd never had the nerve to try any such thing... until he died. Now, she was sure that she had nerve aplenty... but would that be enough? If that trick didn't work for her with Kal Langley, she could end up in a lot of trouble... even if he wasn't able to directly hurt her.

She didn't come to any better insight about the situation over breakfast, and just as she was finishing the second pancake, Alex walked into the dining room. *Hi, darling. Max, Michael, and Maria were here earlier.*

"Doesn't surprise me," Alex said. "Anything of interest?"

*Little marble in my desk drawer, keeping your DNA sample. Everybody else in the core gang has one too.* Alex nodded, climbing up onto the far side of the table and sitting cross legged on it. *And... and there's this alien movie producer in LA who I really want to visit... if it's safe. What are you doing up there?*

"Here?" Alex smiled at her. "Well, I didn't feel like pulling a chair away from the table, because it'd look a little weird with you eating breakfast by yourself. Plus, it's just kinduv fun sitting on a table sometimes. Do you have a problem with it?"

*Um, no, it was just unexpected I guess.* Isabel sighed and started going through what they'd figured out about Kal Langley in greater detail.

"Okay, wow," Alex sighed. "You're excited about this - I can tell. You talk a lot when you're excited, even if it doesn't have to be all out loud. Well, I do have one suggestion. Try with the 'giving Kal an order' thing in a safe situation, if possible, like over the phone. Now, I realize that getting the phone number of a big Hollywood producer is probably even harder than finding a way to meet him in person, but he'd probably be less likely to get offended and upset in any way that matters if you do it that way."

"Hmm... yeah, that sounds like a good suggestion," Isabel said brightly, and then shook her head at having spoken out loud. Fortunately, nobody else seemed to have noticed.

"Okay, well... anything else important to the project on-deck?" Alex asked, getting up from the table and pulling another chair out next to hers, a comforting gesture that she appreciated immensely after making her flub.

"Umm, no, not that I can think of," she admitted in an almost-silent whisper. *Maybe we can get the gang together for something else fun, since it's the beginning of summer and everything. But I do want to pursue this lead soon.*

"Sounds great," Alex admitted. "Go out camping in the woods again?" Isabel made a face. "Okay, no camping I guess."

*Well, it didn't work out THAT well last time,* she sent, and Alex nodded. *Maybe a trip up to a lodge in the mountains or something. This is the off-season for ski-ing or anything else snow-related in the Rockies, but the scenery is probably great, maybe better than in December, and we can probably rent someplace cheap.*

"Oooh, I like, I like." Alex looked around. "Well, there's one thing that I think we'd better do before we try to catch ourselves a shapeshifter."

"Oh, what's that?" Isabel asked, and then realized that she could guess. "Go and talk to the only person we know who's lived with one?"

"Got it in one try."

"Okay, well..." Isabel sighed. "Well, before I go and face Tess, I... I think I need something else, though I'm not sure what. Not more food, exactly..."

"How'll this do?" Alex asked, and then he kissed her, suddenly and as hot as a roasting oven.

-----------

"Yeah, of course!" Tess exclaimed. "The proof is in those contingency plans."

Isabel traded a look with Isabel. "The disturbing ones that we found on the watch??"

"And I think that there were a few on the Jaz disk too," Tess answered. "He wouldn't have kept anything like that in his handwritten papers, of course." She sighed. "There are some that were pure revenge fantasies, where he wasn't overly concerned with practical matters like the limits of his own powers or your ability to fight back for yourselves - those can be set aside. But whenever he was seriously planning something seditious, there are two things that pop up."

"Hmm," Kyle muttered. They were over in the Valenti's dining room once again, with four chairs pulled up to the table. "And what would those be?"

Tess sighed slightly. "He doesn't attempt to hurt any of us directly, and he doesn't leave you or Max in a situation where you could talk to him after you have any evidence of what's going on. For Michael, he didn't seem to worry about that talking bit, but..."

"Yeah, that's certainly a good hint," Isabel allowed. "Of course, it may not mean much beyond that he found us especially annoying - but it could be interpreted in the sense that the two of us - the royals by birth or whatever - had some power of command over him." She sighed. "But we still don't know if that applies to the other shapeshifter too."

"I'd have made it at least that tight," Kyle said. "The plans that they, being those who sent you, might have had aren't too clear, but if they probably couldn't be sure who was going to be able to watch over whom. And if they were seriously concerned about these guardians turning on you - then they wouldn't have left any opening for Nasedo to scheme against the Dupes and Langley to take you down, for instance."

"I... I guess that's as good reasoning as any other," Isabel said slowly, leaving the flipside open too, that there were other arguments that sounded as good as that too. "Alex had the notion of trying to communicate with Langley at long distance first... a phone call or something."

"Hmm." Tess considered that. "Yeah, although you wouldn't be able to just start giving orders as soon as he picks up. If the constraint to obedience is in his brain, then he needs to know who you are before the orders kick in."

"Oh, I see," Kyle said. "And if she says 'I'm Isabel Evans, from Roswell' then he has a window to hang up the phone before you tell him not too."

"Assuming he knows what my name means," Isabel agreed. "Trying to explain who I am in enough detail for the routine to trigger if he doesn't would get tricky. And I don't want to open with 'I am Vilandra,' because I don't really believe it's true anymore."

"I think he'll probably know who we all are," Tess said. "Just in case, he wants to know what's up in case we start doing something that might endanger his new life. I'm sure, in retrospect, that Ed knew about the Dupes, though he never said anything to me straight out."

"And I think I know what to say once you're on the phone with him," Alex told Isabel with a pleased smile. "To keep him from hanging up. It's a simple matter of logic."

"Well, Alex has got an idea for my phone tactic," Isabel told them. "And that's probably enough business for now. I had an idea for a summer getaway thing. All of us take off for the mountains, rent a nice little ski lodge or something like that, at summer discount prices. Whatcha think?"

"Oooh, I like it, and I might know just the place!" Kyle said. "Really pretty scenery, a river running past that you can swim in if you don't mind getting a little cold, and an electric generator. Erm, actually, I don't 'know' it in the sense of being able to tell you where it is... but my Dad probably does."

"Hmm... I don't like cold water," Tess said. "Can't we go to a beach instead or something?"

"Ehh, the beach is so 2001," Isabel laughed. "Well, I'll present that as an option to the others."

"But you don't get a vote," Kyle taunted Tess goodnaturedly. "I'll take the mountains over the beach, definitely."

"Okay, well, whatever," Tess grumped, and headed off to get a glass of cold water from the fridge. Isabel pushed her chair over closer to Kyle's.

"Did the three grave robbers come through here and give you your marble?" she asked in a low voice.

Kyle blinked. "Umm, yeah, pretty early this morning. Why?"

"Umm, no big reason." So probably the 'one' that they still had to deliver after visiting her was Liz... except that Max hadn't gone and she thought that he'd have jumped on any excuse to drop by and see his soulmate and love of his life. "Just wondered."

"Are... are you trying to keep these a secret from Tess?" Kyle asked, an awkward look on his face. "Because I already showed mine to her. Didn't figure there was any harm in it."

"Hmm... no, I guess there isn't," Isabel admitted. She still had mostly random surges of paranoia about Tess, but if there were any meanhearted impulses left in the girl at this point, she was pretty sure that they didn't extend to maliciously sabotaging the clone Alex project... she might want to run away and abandon it, but not to purposefully ruin Isabel's chances... or to try to hold the proceedings hostage for something that she wanted, Isabel decided.

"Okay, well it's been nice hangin' with you," she said, "but I think the two of us are going to take off again in a few. Want to spend some more time in the computer files, maybe go consult with Michael."

"Alright, thanks for bringing me up to speed," Tess said, which was a charitable way of looking at it, Isabel thought - she'd come here transparently to ask for Tess' help. "Let me know about the vacation stuff."

"Oh, you'll hear about it," Isabel promised, standing up and waving at Kyle and Tess both.

------------

"Yeah, the mountains sound good to me too," Michael announced, leaning back onto Isabel's neatly-made bed and stretching just hard enough to rumple it slightly. "At the beach, Maria would just want me to keep her company as she sunbathed, and... well, I tend to get bored just lying on the beach with nothing else to do."

Isabel sighed. "Well, that's great, but..."

"So, just to warn you, Maria's probably going to be pushing for the beach..."

"Michael!" He straightened up. "We're not talking about the vacation plans now. Could you, just maybe, pay attention to what I was saying about Kal Langley??"

"I heard every word," Michael insisted. Isabel turned her computer chair a little further away from the desk so as to shoot her darkest stare right at him. "He's got a talent scout working for him here in Roswell... who's probably also been asked to keep an eye on more than wanna-be actors for him. So, the scout probably has all of Langley's contact info, including the 'reach me anytime' cell number."

"Yeah," Isabel agreed, slightly impressed by the recap. "So... do you think that we've got a chance at getting the number away from him?"

"Hmm." Michael considered. "You know, in the right outfit, especially with that new hairdo working for you, you could probably wow any talent scout as a would-be starlet actress."

Isabel stifled a sigh. She was frankly tired of using her good looks and charm to work for the group or her own objectives... it was starting to seem, more and more, beneath her dignity. Even the facade of the girl who wanted to be a jet-setting model was seeming increasingly remote from her day-to-day life, and she hated getting reminded of that phase in her life. Still, this wasn't just some other silly alien threat of the week or anything like that - she was fighting for Alex's new life, and there wasn't much that she wouldn't do for him, even prostitute herself metaphorically. (The literal thing was still a bit too icky to contemplate.)

So... "Really, you think that the hair is especially, I dunno, glamorous or something?" She shot Michael a teasing smile and shook her head back and forth just slightly.

"As far as I can tell, which may not be far," he admitted. "But Maria says that platinum is 'in' this summer. She's been talking about talking an inch and a half off hers, dying it an almost silvery blonde, and straightening it REALLY straight."

"Hmm." Isabel tried to picture that on her friend. "Wouldn't be bad. I'm surprised to see her jumping for a light blonde, though, just because it would be 'like Tess' in a vague sense."

"Well, I think maybe that's what the straightening is for," Michael said. Isabel wasn't entirely satisfied with that response, since Tess sometimes straightened her own hair, even though curls were probably her 'trademarked' look. But she didn't argue with Michael about it, if only because Michael was a stereotypical guy and probably wouldn't appreciate those kind of nuances in hair care. "Oh, hi honey," she said, clearly signalling to Michael that Alex had entered. "What do you think about me going to Langley's agent as a star-struck small town girl, fishing for a tinseltown discovery?"

"Umm... I think that you'd better back up a little," Alex said. Isabel laughed and recapped the discovery of talent-scout guy, and Michael's suggestion.

"Hmm." Alex sat down on the bed near Michael, even though the other guy couldn't see or feel him. (He looked nervous for a moment, though, as if the mattress had shifted slightly.) "Maybe, though he probably won't give up Langley's number that easily to a pretty lady, especially if he's been warned about you guys." Isabel nodded. "Maybe, if you can get a picture, you could dreamwalk the scout."

"Hmm." Isabel considered that. "Dreamwalk the talent scout?" (That repetition was for Michael's benefit.) "Maybe, but what would it accomplish better than going in person?" Her eyes narrowed slightly.

"Not that I'm worried you'd get into a situation that you couldn't handle if you went during the day," Alex explained calmly. "Just... well, people normally let go their inhibitions in dreams. He might give you the number when he wouldn't if he thought it was real."

"Hmm, yeah, that has possibilities," Isabel admitted. Michael was making a confused face, so she repeated what Alex had said, and added a request for him to use her powers to create a voice for himself, quietly, since her parents weren't around.

"Do you think it's possible that Langley would have told the scout how you can go into people's dreams?" Michael asked.

"I... I doubt it," Isabel said. "It's much easier if he doesn't go into anything that's alien or paranormal." Alex and Michael accepted that judgement with nearly identical nods.

"That gives me a few ideas," she continued after a moment. "With the way you usually follow me in dreamwalking now, Alex, we could double-team him. If the dream is in his office, I distract him and you rifle through his desk or his organizer looking."

"Possible," Alex admitted. "Of course, things being a bit weird in his dream, there might be an alligator in his desk drawer or something a bit unexpected like that. I'm willing to take the risk of a gator bite, though."

"Umm, that's good to know," Isabel said, shaking her head. "The other is... why not cut out the middleman and dreamwalk Langley directly?"

That suggestion was followed by a stunned pause. "Can... can you dreamwalk shapeshifters??" Michael asked. "Do they dream the way humans do? Do they even sleep??"

"Tess might know," Alex said softly.

"Well, I think that it's worth a try, if she's not sure," Isabel insisted. "I've already got pictures of Langley. And it has the benefits of a phone call - I can try out the ordering thing without risking myself."

"That's... that's a bit of a leap," Alex admitted. "Both that giving him orders would work the same way as when his brain is conscious, and that there isn't any way an alien could hurt you in a dream." Isabel's face fell as those points went home. "Better to try getting the phone number through the scout I think."

"Alright, let's see what we can do to get a picture of him," Isabel said, refusing to be slowed down for long. "That way, I can get into the sucker's dreams tonight."

"Okay, what do we know about him, then?" Michael asked.

----------

"Well, that went well," Isabel whispered, smiling at Alex before opening the front door and stepping back into the living room. And then she stifled a soft yelp.

"Huh?" The yelp and that word triggered a flurry of activity on the couch, where Max and Liz were... well, Max's shirt was pulled up nearly to his shoulders, and he had one hand somewhere inside Liz's blouse and the other tangled in her hair.

Feeling awkward, Isabel spun around and faced the wall, if for no other reason than that she didn't really want to see the two of them scrambling into more decorous poses. After a second, she silently asked, *Alex, are you looking??*

"Umm, yeah actually, hope that..." And then Alex was next to her, and she could see very well that he was no longer facing the couch. "It was kinduv funny, and I may not get much of a chance to tease either of them about it, but I can laugh, right??"

Isabel didn't bother to reply, because Max cleared his throat and muttered, "You can, umm, I think that you can turn around and look at us, I mean, if you want to." So Isabel did, and gave the pair of them something like a six point five on the tidyness scale - which was adequate, if nothing great.

"Well, I guess I don't need to ask if you guys have been enjoying yourselves. Did you ever make it to the matinee?"

Liz laughed, got up, and started trying to comb her hair back into place with her fingers, peering into the oval mirror hung on the wall above the couch to guide her progress. "Umm, yeah, actually, it was great, as good as the reviews," she mumbled. 'It had bad reviews' had become a running joke throughout the whole gang, when it came to movie dates. "And then, umm, we came back here, enjoyed a cool beverage, and - umm, well, one thing led to another."

"I... I see," Isabel drawled, noticing one of her mother's hexagonal blue-slate crystal drinking glasses lying on one of its six sides on the floor underneath the coffee table, a brown spill still slightly damp next to the mouth of the container. "Well, umm..."

"What have you guys been up to this afternoon?" Liz asked brightly as Isabel picked up the glass and cleaned out the stain with her powers. It sounded as if Liz was just assuming that Alex had been with Isabel, which wasn't a bad assumption, as the only times he was far from her now were based on the blink-out cycle, which could be hard to guess in advance.

"Um, doing recon on the office of Jack Kating, talent scout."

"Hmm?" Liz muttered, puzzled by what Iz had just said.

Max chuckled softly. "So you were scouting the scout?"

Alex laughed. Isabel thought about it for a while. "Yeah, I guess that you could say that."

"Alright, so who is Jack Kating and does he have any connection to your Hollywood shapeshifter?"

Isabel grinned, although Max couldn't really see her face because she was in the kitchen, putting the glass in the sink, and then she rummaged in the cupboard for a few low-salt oat crackers to snack on. "Yeah, he..."

Just at that point, Liz interrupted her. "There - there's an alien shapeshifter in Hollywood? I wonder if he's ever used his powers to show up as bit players in lots of different movies - I mean, in show business it seems that it's all about how you look, and someone like that could always take on the perfect look for whatever's required. Plus, I guess that any alien like that would have learned some good acting chops - Nasedo definitely pulled off a great performance, when he pretended to be... oops, I kinda cut you off there, didn't I Isabel?"

"Just a bit!" she exclaimed, laughing. "And it took you long enough to realize it."

"Sorry, I guess I'd come up with most of that spiel before I started it, and..." Isabel made a friendly waving gesture, and Liz took it as a cue to trail off. "Well, go ahead and continue."

"Okay, Jack works for Kal Langley, who apparently was one of the Guardians from the 47 crash, like Nasedo, but he walked away from his obligations. Since there isn't really that much call for a scout in a small town like Roswell, we think that he's also being paid to keep an eye on certain things here for Kal... though he probably doesn't know about aliens and such."

"Okay, I see," Liz said. "Catching up. You want to find and talk to Kal, and this Jack guy is a possible link to him?"

"Yeah," Isabel agreed. "Oh, and Kal is a producer, at least right now, and we don't know that he ever acted. It's possible that he did, but then, he'd probably be more concerned with keeping his secret than making a good picture, and faces showing up on film who don't really exist - or who don't remember showing up for the shoot - could attract suspicion later on."

"Yeah, I guess so," Liz said, sounding a bit upset that Isabel had spoiled her idea. "So what's the plan for Jack?"

"This," Isabel said, producing a polaroid picture of the guy that Michael had taken. Max and Liz both nodded, knowing by now what it meant when Isabel was enigmatic about a picture. "Okay, any ideas for dinner?"

"Well, Mom and Dad left a message that they'll be out until evening," Max said, smiling. "We could fix something up ourselves, here at home... if that wouldn't be awkward for you and Alex... he is in at the moment, right?"

Isabel laughed and nodded. "He's only a few steps away from you, brother dear. Maybe he should start using my powers to go dingle dingle dingle wherever he goes, like he's got bells on... as long as it's only us around, of course." Alex turned around and gave her a sad face for that suggestion. "Okay, okay... how about just one dingle as you enter, to let my friends know that you're around?" He cracked half of a smile, and sure enough there was a faint bell sound, which set Liz off giggling.

"Okay, but if we can set aside the ringing bells and get back to dinner," Max said, rolling his eyes slightly.

"I think it's a good idea," Alex said, making a little hand gesture that Isabel guessed was meant to convey to her that he was 'throwing his voice' for Max and Liz too. "I don't mind sitting around and watching, and I don't think that Isabel will feel like a third wheel much." Isabel nods. "She likes spending time with both of you together... as long as there isn't TOO much displayed affection, heheh."

"Alright, then what shall we make?" Liz asked, grinning, and headed across into the kitchen to inspect the contents of the fridge.

"Anything good and quick?" Max asked.

"Hmm... lots of fresh veggies for a nice garden salad... and some thin chicken fillets. Your mom won't mind if we take those?"

"Nah, probably thank you," Isabel said. "They were fresh from the store yesterday I think, but still, not good to leave meat unfrozen any longer than this." She concentrated on some suitable fate for the fillets. "Chicken-burgers?"

Liz laughed softly. "The kind where you leave the meat whole and don't grind it up? Yeah, I like that idea." She extracted the package of poultry, and Isabel retrieved a large skillet for her to fry the burgers up in. Then she got out a salad bowl and started foraging in the crisper.

"Okay, we've got hamburger buns in the bread box," Max reported from near the kitchen door. "There's only going to be one left behind, but I'm not exactl crying a river of tears over that." Liz uh-huhed. "Anything else we can add? Salad is nice, but I feel like having another side dish too."

"No french fries, or anything that goes in the oven please," Isabel asked. "It's not that hot today, but we don't need to add so much to the warmth."

"Hmm, okay." So Max started searching through a cupboard instead of the freezer. "Garlic cream noodles?"

"Maybe." Liz made a noncommital sound that lined up with Isabel's spoken judgement.

"Garlic mashed potatoes?" There was an immediately more positive response. "Alright then..."

Max pulled something out of the cupboard, but suddenly Liz pushed it back in. "No... mashed potatoes do not come out of a box anywhere near me. There's a bag that I saw down in the crisper, Max Evans. Start a-peeling!" Max groaned slightly, but headed back to the fridge - and accidentally bumped into Isabel, not hard.

"Well, I always knew Liz thought you were appealing," Isabel joked. "And since it's just us, you can do the potatoes the quick way."

"Hmm?" Liz asked, and then smiled. "Oh, of course." Max rinsed the first potato under cold running water... and then its brown skin seemed to start coming loose in strips all by itself, with Max only needing to push them the rest of the way loose.


TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Banner-ey goodness! Yay...



Part Sixteen

Isabel opened the office door and strode into Jack Kating's office. Even though there was a back room, it probably wasn't occupied at the moment, and there was no receptionist or secretary out at the front desk, only the talent scout himself, lounging on two of the waiting area chairs and riffling idly through a pack of playing cards. The sun outside was covered up by a puffy white cloud, but the sky shone with such a bright blue fierceness of its own, that it seemed to cast blotchy brown shadows to the side of the windows.

"Mister Kating?" Isabel breathed, playing up all the old private-eye-movie dame appeal that she had. "My name is Kate Hopkins and you're gonna make me a star."

For a second he seemed ill-equipped to respond to that. Izzie had made sure that she was dressed to the nines before coming in, wearing a gold sleeveless gown with a low scoop-neck, and teasing her highlighted hair just slightly. "Umm, uhh, not with that name I'm not, darling," he grumped, cutting the cards twice and putting them aside. Isabel stifled a chuckle. "Way too close to Katie Holmes. Sticks out like a sore thumb. You don't want people to connect you to some brunette shrew, anyway. She's past her peak already, gonna be going downhill fast." She waited to see if he would say something that he WOULD do instead, but apparently, for Jack, this was enough of a conversational gambit, and he was content to wait and see what she'd say next.

Isabel didn't say anything for a moment, just stepped closer and considered him. Kating wasn't obviously old or homely or anything like that... she guessed that he was probably in mid-to-late forties and keeping his looks with just a snippet of grace - a head still full of dark hair cut stylishly short, a striking face with a strongly angled nose and chiseled jaw, but numerous fine lines accumulating around the eyes. "Okay then - who would you call me?"

There was a tiny flicker of suspicion in those old eyes. "I'm not sure... I'd call you breathtaking, but that probably isn't answering your question."

"No, but a girl likes to hear it." She sat down on a chair flush against the perpendicular wall so that he was facing his feet when he kept looking at her. Had to be careful of her skirt when performing the task of seating herself. "So, level with me - how often do you actually find someone with any... any star power, here in a place like Roswell?"

"Not too often, I admit," he said, bantering with her a bit more calmly now. "Still... I wouldn't say that it's foolish to spare one person to search for the rare jewels in an unlikely place."

"And how frequently do you talk to anybody with real influence and power in Hollywood?" Isabel breathed. "Like... like Mister Langley?"

There was a moment of silence. "I think that you've been scouting me, Miss... Miss Steven." Isabel raised an eyebrow. "You asked a little while ago who I'd name you. I'm trying one out. Miss Melinda Steven."

"I'm not sure I like that, I'm not sure if I don't." Isabel sighed. "And I'm not sure if I've been scouting you out or not, Jack. I did my homework before I came in, I'll admit that much. Doesn't seem very diligent to put myself in your hands without that."

"Are you in my hands yet??"

"Hmm... maybe not, but you haven't reached out to grab anything yet." A sigh. "What... what happens next? What if I said that I wanted to meet Langley?"

"Well, umm, it doesn't work quite like that, Melinda. We could shoot some headshots and a very simple screen test here in Roswell, and then maybe if you really wanted to take a trip out to LA, I know a few other people - friends of Mister Langley's, who would take good care of you. Are... are you interested in movies, or commercials? Soap opera or sitcom??"

Isabel wasn't interested in any of them, and she had lost patience with pretending that she did. Maybe she sent some sort of subconscious cue to that effect, because there was a face peering in through the small window of the front door. "Maybe... maybe soap operas, or a movie. Something... something lovely and dramatic." Hating herself, she shot Jack her smokiest stare and allowed him a look at her legs from a different angle. He never noticed Alex slipping through to the inner office.

"Oh, man, somehow that was somehow just grim," Isabel complained a bit later, emerging from Kating's dream orb into one of their private mental spaces instead of coming all the way back to the real world. "I never realized just how much effort it could take to be the femme fatale to a hard-boiled antihero." Alex chuckled. "Please tell me that you got something useful from his dream office."

"Sorry," he said. "I... I found an address book, but all of the names and numbers in it were jumbled. Is - is that something that often happens in dreams?"

Isabel groaned. "Sometimes. Dammit. And I can't try going to the real office, in person, now because it'd look way too suspicious, after this dream. Maybe we should have tried things in a different order."

"It's okay, sweetie." Isabel had been sitting on a futon when she arrived 'here', and Alex took his rightful place next to her, wrapping an arm comfortably around her shoulders - and the futon seemed to open out into bed mode all by itself. The two of them shared an amused look.

"Okay, so what do you want to do now?" she asked him.

"I... I'm not sure if I really have strong feelings - what do YOU want?" he replied. Isabel smiled. "It's pretty late - maybe you should go to sleep for real. Staying up and waiting for that guy to drift off into dreamland can't have been so relaxing for you."

"No, I guess not... though it seems like a shame to entirely waste this opportunity." Isabel kissed him and pulled him back onto the futon.

"Feel ill-equipped to argue with that - though we don't exactly have that much trouble making our own opportunities."

"No. I guess not." Isabel caressed Alex's chest and sighed. "Do you suppose it would be possible to break into his real office and get a look at the real address book? Like, when he's not there maybe?"

"I suppose you guys have pulled off much harder jobs," Alex admitted. "But talk to Max and Michael about it... *in the morning.*"

Isabel caught the hint. "Alright, you want me to get some sleep?" She couldn't help letting a very genuine yawn loose at that point. "So I'll go to sleep." And she did - not leaving the mental space, just stretching out on an imaginary futon and letting herself relax, knowing that her real body was already changed into pajamas and laying in bed. Once she got into her own dreamland, it wouldn't matter where she'd come from.

----------

"So now it's you who wants to break into somebody's office?" Michael said, raising an eyebrow. Isabel shook her head in some frustration. "Well, at least this isn't as big a deal as the Sheriff's key I think."

"Good thing too," Max said. "I'd hope that we'd stopped taking chances that were quite so foolish as that."

"If I need to, I'll break into an FBI director's office," Isabel vowed, and both of the boys blinked at her. "But only if there's no other way. So what do you think?"

"Yeah, I'll help out, but if we're being careful, then the first step is a lot of watching," Max told her. "I'll do my bit for stakeout duty - some of the others will probably be able to help out there too." Isabel nodded. "By the way, that reminds me of something else. Kyle called this morning - he said that his father had found the contact information for the mountain retreat cabin he remembered from a few years ago." Michael chuckled. "They're still in business, and can probably give us a good deal if we want to go soon. So... the question naturally comes up, are you interested in moving ahead with this, or not until all of the stuff with Langley and Kating is resolved?"

Isabel sighed, took a gut check, and looked around for Alex, just in case he'd popped in and she hadn't noticed. "Umm... yeah, if everybody else wants to leave pretty much right away, we can go for it. I... I'm doing my best bulldog on the quest just because I don't want to get used to things staying where they are, but taking a few days off with my friends, really relaxing and gearing up for whatever's going to come next - that's worth any time that's lost."

"Any idea how long we'd be able to go for?" Michael asked. "How far away is it?

"Umm, north side of the state," Max said musingly. "Near the Colorado border, just the very southern tip of the Rockies kinduv. Maybe six hours' drive away. And as far as how long... well, I'm guessing based on how much money I think people are going to be willing to chip in, but - four, five days?"

"Hmm... wouldn't suck. Do we need to be worried about a possible beach lobby?"

"Heh?" Max blinked at Michael's question.

"As in, people who want to blow off the mountains and take off to the ocean," Isabel clarified. Max smiled as he saw the point. "Well, if the four of us and Kyle are all behind the mountains, then we've got a majority vote, but might still need to worry about secessions. Any idea which way Liz is more likely to lean, brother of mine?"

Max grinned as he thought about his girlfriend's likely reactions. (Just being able to think of her as 'his girlfriend' probably accounted for a lot of the grin.) "Well... she does like the beach and the sand and all that, but I think that she got plenty of that last summer in Florida, so she'll probably be open to this."

"Okay. Maria probably won't kick up a fuss if she thinks that she wouldn't have any moral support," Michael decided. "And, deep down, I'm sure that she'll have fun in the mountains if I can only get her there."

"Cool," Isabel said. "Would Tess count as moral support?" Michael made an odd and slightly distasted face. "Okay, fair enough."

"By the way, Isabel," Max said, relaxing into his chair slightly as more summer sunshine started to stream into Michael's living room through the windows, "did you ever finish that stuff with helping Mrs Whitman sort through Alex's stuff, or did that just kinduv get dropped once you had your hands on Alex's computer gear?"

Isabel's face fell. "Ooh... I've helped her out maybe two more times, but there's still some stuff to do, and I wouldn't want her to feel like I was blowing the project off." Sigh. "Maybe I should call her and ask about that, while you guys do surveillance."

"Sounds like a plan!" Isabel looked up and saw Alex near the door. Max turned to see what she was staring at, and a belated ringing sound filled the air, confusing Michael, who hadn't been told about the 'Alex rings to signal that he's around' idea. It took a little while to get things sorted out, and then everybody was pretty much ready to leave.

----------

"Wow - cheer, cheer, the gang's all here," Isabel exclaimed when she showed up at the Valenti's that evening. There was certainly a lot of people filling the small bungalow - pretty much the entire group that new about her secrets, excepting Michael's sister Laurie and certain aliens who weren't in town that she knew of. "Okay, I've got things to deliver. Parker??" A pause. "Hey, Parker??"

"Umm, yeah, over here." Isabel looked and saw that Max and Liz were nestled quite close together on the couch, so much so that she had little doubt why Liz hadn't answered immediately - there'd been something covering up her lips, or somethings. Liz went over into the living room and dropped her heaviest piece of loot onto Liz's lap - a sort of a book with fancy patterned covers. Liz opened it up and gasped at all of the photgraphs organized inside. "Ohh, wow."

"Yeah, he wanted you to keep it," Isabel said with a smile. "His parents have others, but..."

"Cool." Liz giggled as she spotted one of the pictures that was only half left... they'd raided this photo album to make the yearbook collage, and Maria had cut that picture up before realizing that Michael or Isabel could have duplicated it. Liz had insisted that they only put the half that they weren't using back, instead of making an effort to reconstruct the entire picture, so that they'd remember that day.

Isabel had other mementos of Alex to give out to Maria and Liz, and one each for Kyle and Max and Michael and Mister Valenti, and then Michael passed her a slip of paper with some hurriedly marked letters and numbers. She suspected that he'd done them by using his powers directly on the paper, instead of using a pen or similar writing instrument. "What does it mean?"

"Umm... I'm not sure," he admitted in a low voice. "I... I only had a moment with the address book, because Kating was coming back in. But... but I got everything that I could. Thought that he was being a bit tricky with some of the entries."

"OHH!" Isabel rescanned the sheet again, and with the new context some things assembled themselves. There was a 'LANGLEY' entry, (she hadn't noticed it before because Michael's printing had been quite rough,) but the only numbers were listed were an office landline with a long extension number, and a fax. That wasn't what she wanted. The other headers were more obscure, even cryptic - apparently they'd have to guess under what kind of spot Kating would camoflage the all-important secret cell number... assuming that he had written it down in the address book at all. "Thanks, good work spaceboy." Michael's face showed worry instead of relief for a second - fear that she was going to start using Maria's pet name for him.

"Okay, what's everybody hanging around here for?" Alex asked 'out loud', though not too loud. Jim Valenti turned around as if expecting to see the dead boy, and then laughed at his own automatic reaction.

"I thought that I'd invite all of you kids over," Jim said, mostly for Alex and Isabel's benefit, "for two main reasons... one being to sort out the details of your little 'finally it's summer' trip, subject to parental approval in most of your cases... and because I thought it'd be nice for all of you to get together and meet in the same place, since everybody's been running around..."

"Hey, we were all in the same place just - well, two nights ago, for my graduation party," Isabel pointed out. Jim just shrugged.

"Well, let's get to it," Max said. He went into more details about the hunting cabin than had been given to Isabel and Alex earlier, and laid out a possible timetable, which would involve them leaving three days later, and staying in the cabin for five nights. (Which only really came out to four days, since they'd be arriving late in the evening, and leaving early in the morning, so as to better deal with the long travel time involved. Budgets were discussed, involving the rental on the cabin plus various supplies and provision money, as well as who might be able to cover more than an even share and who would have to be light this time.

"Okay, okay, sounds great and I am convinced," Maria said. "Can we just talk about dinner tonight?"

"You needed to be convinced?" Michael said, feigning innocent astonishment. She swatted him lightly.

"How about we order pizza in here?" Isabel suggested. "Not everybody can eat at the table, but it's not that kind of night."

"Sounds alright by me," Kyle said. "How about Papa John's?" And then a new discussion broke out on the relative merits of different pizza delivery houses.

Eventually the compromise was struck, and by the time the food arrived, Isabel was sitting on one end of the couch, watching a DVD that Michael had put in, something about fishing ships and guys bonding by going through storms, and so on. Actually, Isabel was concentrating more on the stuff that Alex was telling her - he'd gotten started on a big nostalgia kick by the day spent with his mom and going through his old things.

As she was just finishing what was absolutely, positively going to be her last slice of the evening two hours later, a pineapple and sausage kind of thing, Isabel didn't realize just how certain it was that she wouldn't be having more pizza. All of a sudden, the world around her seemed to ripple slightly, and she was yanked backwards through the couch and found herself standing in a bare room with curved walls, lit by creepy blue-purple lights. In a dim way, Isabel realized that this wasn't happening to her physically, that it couldn't be, but that something had drawn her into another mental space. This time, though, she was sure that it hadn't been her own powers working, or even malfunctioning, to get her here - she had been targeted, forced into it, by the actions of another. And the most obvious suspect for who had brought her here - was there in the room with her, just across from her, looking right at her face. It was a bit hard to be sure with the strange lighting, but the build and the face seemed to match the few rough images that she'd managed to get of... "Kal Langley?"

Kal laughed softly, and the lights brightened slightly and assumed a more nearly white tone, though the periwinkle tone was still very evident - like unusually tinted flourescent lamps. "It wasn't hard to guess who was 'harassing' my man Jack. Figured that we might as well sort this out now as later on." His tone didn't seem either especially confrontational or particularly friendly... he might have been treating her like she was the other side in some tough business negotiation.

Isabel took a deep breath and played what she hoped was her trump card. "Good, now tell me your real name."

Kal made a face. "I... I have none, at least not in any official sense. People like me don't have birth certificates, papers... or even parents, and I'm not sure what makes a name 'real' in the absence of all the above. Back... back before I came here I was usually known as - well, even I can't say it with a human mouth."

Isabel's right eyebrow lifted. "Not even in... in a dream or a mind-space or wherever this is?"

"Touche, perhaps - Gigshxehhuh... well, that's not perfectly accented, but maybe it'll do?" Isabel nodded an acceptance of that. "And I guess that this means you've already figured out your leverage on me, which I admit that I hadn't expected." He sighed. "But, again, I wouldn't have been able to keep you away forever, and it'd have come to this as soon as we did meet."

"So you're resigned to whatever I order you to do?" Isabel asked.

"No." The word was firm. "Firstly, I just plain don't like being ordered around - it goes against my dignity, much as it'd go against yours if you were in my place, I think, Isabel."

"I can accept that."

"And there are things that I've worked for, that I don't want to have to give up. You can order me to give them up, if you figure out how to make your commands tight, but that would just piss me off." Kal smiled in a slightly threatening way. "And even if you can order me to your whim, even if I can't hurt you or the other Royals, you do NOT want to piss me off, Isabel Evans. I'm like a genie that way - bound to your word, but liable to twist those words around so that they mean something that you didn't want."

"Hmm... fair enough," Isabel said again, realizing that she could empathize with this alien's condition. "All that I really want is information - so I'll try to ask in ways that don't irritate your dignity, and I won't ask anything of you that'll require great sacrifice of you. That's not my style." She sighed. "But - well, now that we've established contact, my friends are probably worried about me, and..."

"Nobody's had time to worry yet," Kal insisted. "You just fell asleep in front of the television. That's not very suspicious..."

Just at that second, however, Alex popped into the room. "Isabel, are you okay? Max and I were worried... it seems a bit suspicious that you'd apparently fall asleep in front of the television, today of all d..." He spotted the other guy and blanched slightly. "Mister Langley I presume?"

Isabel just smirked slightly, and Langley rolled his eyes. "Fine, okay, you can go if you wa... wait a second." He focused more intently on Alex. "Who are you, and HOW did you get in here?? You're not one of the Royals, and they wouldn't have had the mental expertise to follow Isabel..."

"He's with me," Isabel said. "Where I go, Alex usually ends up following." She took a deep breath. "I guess that you didn't expect that, huh?"

"I... I know your face from somewhere," Kal said, his stare never moving from Alex's eyes as if he could jog the recognition into place by sheer willpower. "From... from the memorial in the Roswell newspaper. You're dead."

"Oh, frebzel," Langley muttered, and somehow Isabel knew that that was a very rude Antarian swear word transliterated out. "Do... do you have any idea how dangerous this 'arrangement' can be for you, Isabel?"

She jumped slightly. "Tess has told me that I can't provide refuge for Alex's soul indefinitely without it killing me too... but we've got nearly a year, right??"

"Hmm... I don't know the exact tolerances, just that it's dangerous," Langley muttered. "But, well, if your brother IS worried, then maybe we'd better make it later. Your cell number is five oh five, five five five one five eight three, yeah??"

"Guess I shouldn't be surprised that you know so much about us, huh??" Isabel sighed.

"No, you should NOT," he agreed. "I'll give you a ring tomorrow, fairly close to ten AM mountain time. Sound good?"

"Yeah." For a moment, Isabel was wondering if she should ask how to get out of this mental space, but that seemed like a bad idea... she wanted Langley to respect her for her intelligence and how well she could use her powers. So she tried climbing up into consciousness as if this was a convenient mental space she had gone to on her own, and it seemed to work. Her real eyes were closed, but when she opened them again, she was sort of slumped against the side of the couch. Her half slice of pizza had fallen onto the floor.

"Iz?" Michael's voice was insistent and just a tiny bit scared. "Are - are you okay??"

"Umm, yeah," she muttered. "I... it turns out that I underestimated how well informed Langley is, but... but that wasn't a very dangerous mistake I guess. He - he's willing to help, or at least to talk."

"Kal Langley?" Liz repeated. "How... how did you - did he... did he dreamwalk you or something??"

"Something that didn't just wait for you to fall asleep, but knocked you out?" Max said, sounding nervous himself.

"A variant... one that I'd like to learn, though I'm not sure how often I'd have the nerve to use it." Isabel stood up and started pacing back and forth a little to stretch her muscles out. "He... he yanked me into a mental space, like the ones that I've been using to let you guys talk to Alex, or... or stuff like that." Michael and Liz nodded, while Max blushed faintly because he knew some of the 'stuff' that Isabel had been doing in mental spaces. "And Kal was there - he tried to freak me out a bit, but the... the ordering thing worked. At least, I could ask him questions that he didn't want to answer, but he did... and he seemed to admit that if I gave him an order he'd have to follow it."

"Be very careful about that," Kyle suggested. "He just might be trying to make you overconfident."

"Well, I'm not going to be relying too much on the orders thing," Isabel agreed. "He wanted to negotiate on this and work things out co-operatively rather than let me push him around, and I'm good with that. What's going on with Alex is very important to me, but I don't expect Langley to give up everything that matters in his own life just because I can constrain him to help out with this quest."

"Alright, so how did you leave things with him?" Maria asked.

"He'll be calling me on my cell phone, tomorrow morning." Isabel sighed. "I... I need to get out and breathe some fresher air." Though it was fairly late, the twilight had not entirely faded outside. "Anyone else with me?"

After a moment of confusion, Michael and Maria agreed to head out to the nearest park with Isabel, and Alex of course, while the rest of the crew stayed at Valenti's for a little longer.

Isabel didn't talk much more about her experience with Langley as they walked, and after a few tries Maria stopped giving her conversational draw lines about what would happen next with Alex. So she and Michael chatted on about what Amy had said about the mountain trip, (she had given Maria permission without too much of a hard time, but had also hinted around to see if she could join Jim Valenti as one of the chaperones, perhaps wanting to jump-start her love affair with him again. Much as he hated sending her yellow-light signals, Jim hadn't taken her up on the implications, just because he wasn't sure about telling Amy the alien secret yet, and wanted all of the kids to be freely able to talk about anything that they needed to, without worrying about anyone who wasn't 'in on it...')

So there was much talk of that, and about what sort of arrangements Liz's parents might need to make at the Crashdown for two of his waitresses and one cook to be on vacation all at the same time, and Isabel mostly just walked along, enjoying the chatter of her friends. (Alex was doing his 'ghostly voice in the wind' trick, talking to the others without really worrying that anybody else might notice something wrong.) Isabel was also thinking some private thoughts. She hadn't done anything about job hunting for herself, partly because following up on all of these little leads about Alex already seemed like a full-time job, and she didn't want to have to blow off a 'real' job with an employer who was counting on her to rush off to Los Angeles, or Philadelphia or Rome for that matter, to find some alien or a lost bit of alien technology. On the other hand, she felt as if her parents were expecting her to look for a job after all of the post-graduation car talk, and waiting for her to tell them that she'd gotten one before they gave her her graduation present money.

"By the way, speaking of the Crashdown, do you think that they'll be needing any extra help for the summer?" she suddenly blurted out, and realized that Michael and Maria *hadn't* been talking about the Cafe anymore. Oh well. "I mean, after we all come back from the mountains."

"Umm... I suppose so. Summer is always a busy time." Maria chuckled, perhaps remembering the time she'd had to beg and please Isabel to help her cover for Liz. "Are you asking for a reccomendation?"

"Umm, maybe," Isabel admitted. "I... I'm not wanting to dive into a really heavy schedule, but... but it wouldn't seem to suck as a summer job. Of course, if you don't really WANT me working with you, then just say so, and I'll look..."

"No, no, if you're up for it, I think that we can work something out," Maria assured her. "And if you don't tell off customers for calling you 'ma'am' or whatever, then I won't ask you to reheat coffee. Sound like a deal??"

"Ehh, I don't mind using my powers to help out every once in a while," Isabel agreed. "But yeah, that sounds good otherwise." And she sighed. "Of course, you might have to help cover for me, in the case of sudden trips out of town and what have you."

Michael laughed. "That's part of the 'I know an alien' club code."

"Yeah, I guess that it is."

-----------

Isabel dreamed of rose fragrances and soft music that night, of a huge four-poster bed with the curtains drawn and Alex next to her in the darkness. Of her skin and Alex's, next to each other, without anything between them. It was a good dream.

The dream itself started, as far as she could tell, with the two of them already somewhere between making out and foreplay - his fingers and his lips crawling lazily across the curves of her body, and Isabel's own hands grasping at Alex's flesh, with results that varied from faintly funny to very serious. And then Isabel upped the stakes, rolling over so that she was straddling her dear lover, rubbing the length of her body against his, dragging her tongue against his chest, and then quickly repeating and affirming the act that had confirmed their love, and unexpectedly let her keep him buried deep down inside her life like this.

Once their passion had been fully and inventively exercised, and Isabel lay next to Alex in the dream, breathlessly recharging herself, (though she wasn't sure if their selves would get a chance to spend that second charge tonight, or what they'd try if they did,) she reached out and ran her hand down the length of his arm. "Talk... talk to me. Tell me something that I don't know about you yet."

"I... I'm not sure how much you know about me already," Alex teased back. "It's definitely quite a lot. More... more than I've ever been known by anybody else, and I'm so glad of that."

Isabel giggled. "Well, I didn't know THAT, so it counts." He chuckled as he saw the point.

"You're... you're still fine with the various unexpected routines of... of being dead, right?" Isabel asked, and without words Alex assured her that he was doing okay. "I... I guess that it was a shock to have Langley put so much together about you, based on your appearance here inside my mind... and having seen a photo of you in the paper after you died." She sighed. "Guess that it's a good thing that more people can't see what I'm thinking, or things would get - umm, weirder than usual here in Roswell."

"Yeah, well, everybody's used to keeping their thoughts private," Alex admitted. "Just about any town would degenerate into chaos if that broke down, I suppose." He sighed. "So... any idea what you're going to tell Langley, or ask him, when he calls tomorrow? It looks like the mountain trip is pretty much a settled things, so you couldn't take off to Los Angeles before that I expect."

"Yeah," Isabel agreed. "But... but I don't think he'd have a big problem with me staying out of his hair for a while... will give him time to sort things out and prepare. I mean, yeah, I know he was interested in 'having everything out right now', but that was when he thought that I'd probably keep harassing Kating and trying to see him, even if he was trying to avoid me. Things are different now that contact's been made."

Alex sighed and squoze closer to her, reaching out and fondling her bosom as if he'd been touching her like that for years and years. "Yeah, well, just be careful in case he makes the wrong kind of preparations. The kind that involve arranging to have someone else hurt you, when he isn't around and can't be ordered to help you out."

"Yeah, I'll watch my back," Isabel agreed, trying hard to focus on the topic and not the sensations that his clever fingers were re-awakening in her body. "Continuing to treat Langley with respect is probably the best way to ward off that kind of thing, instead of being obviously paranoid. Non-zero sum, right? Both of us can win - or at least, I can win without him losing." She considered. "I... I should ask about him winning, too, I guess - if there's anything that we can do to pay him back for his help, or at least show my appreciation. There may not be anything, but at least asking might be nice." She sighed and wriggled on the comfortable cotton sheets, (probably a really high thread count.)

"Hmm, yeah, worth it," Alex admitted. "Also you might want to try giving him 'override instructions' to establish beforehand that if you ask him about something he'd rather not talk about, or tell him to do something that he doesn't want to do, he's allowed to express his reluctance to you before proceeding. He'd probably appreciate something like that if it works, though I'm not sure if it'll be entirely effective. How - how do you think that the ordering works, some kind of brainwashing or mental controls, along the same lines as... well, as what Tess was doing with me to cover her tracks??"

"I - I'm not sure," Isabel admitted. "He... he said that he didn't have a real name, before you got there. No - no parents, no birth certificate or paperwork. Seemed a little bit upset. I... I was wondering if he was engineered to be a bodyguard and slave, back home. Designed in a lab, kinduv like we think that we were, but even worse. If... if that's the case, is it possible that they were able to build constraints like these into his brain from the very start, so that he was always subject to the will of his masters, whoever they happened to be?"

"Yikes, that seems especially creepy," Alex admitted. His hand was still on one of her breasts, but not really moving any more. "Wonder how they transferred the command authorization, if that's it. And... and maybe we shouldn't talk about this anymore until you get that phone call in the morning. Not much sense in worrying over stuff that's just wild-ass guessing, ehh?"

"That sounds okay to me," Isabel admitted. "So what else should we do instead?" Alex paused, then smiled, and whoofed a little as Isabel suddenly pulled him over so that his body was lying on top of her. Once again, they stroked and stoked each other and began to make love... and the dream faded out, much to her frustration, right in the middle of it, leaving her sleep restless and unfufilled.

----------

Isabel woke early in the morning, and once again Alex wasn't around... a pattern that was starting to become wearying to her in terms of sheer familiarity, but she could see how it was arising. Alex tended to pop back in in the late morning or just before noon, and feel so disappointed about having missed her morning that he would hang around for the rest of the day, keeping her company into her dreams... and then pop out only when he absolutely had to, in the middle of the night. Ah well, it wasn't the worst of Alex schedules to be on, she supposed.

So Isabel waited for Max to get out of the bathroom, took a long, relaxing bubble bath instead of a shower until the water remaining in the bath was beginning to cool down and all attempts to warm it up from the tap were failing because the hot water tank must have run out. Back in her own room, she put her hair back into about as much of a ponytail as she could make of it, played around with the Nasedo files for longer, trying to sort out what the most important questions to ask Langley were, and then got dressed in a not-too-short red miniskirt and a white cotton halter top. Neither of her parents were around when she got to the kitchen, but the electric griddle was running hot and a bowl was full of blueberry pancake batter, so she made several for herself and a few more to be ready for whenever Mom, Dad, or Max showed up.

It was her parents who arrived, and after a few minutes' worth of pleasantries they apparently couldn't hold a question in any longer. "The... the pictures from graduation were ready this morning, Dear," Mom said. "And... and there's something in there that I just can't explain, unless it was a very elaborate prank by, umm, well, by you, your brother, or one of your friends."

"And - and if it was a joke, I have to say that I find it in rather poor taste," her father added.

"Umm... come on, guys, what's wrong?" Isabel asked. "What's in the photo. Is it..." She almost blurted out what she was most worried about, and then realized that guessing it might give her parents the idea that she, or someone she knew, HAD set it up as a prank. "Just show me the picture!"

"Okay, honey... though I apologize in advance if this upsets you." Diane opened up the little folder that she'd been holding in both hands, slipped the top sheet out, and put the developed picture in front of Isabel, next to her finished plate. It was a picture of the moment that Isabel was actually accepting her diploma from the principal, looking very impressive in her cap and gown... and just at the edge of the frame, Alex was... it looked like he was miming doing a 'wave' all by himself, for her. Just the sort of joking that he had engaged in that day, although she hadn't been able to look at him right at that moment. And Alex had assumed, must have been sure - that nobody else would ever know about his antics in that moment, that he was invisible to all.

"I... I don't know how this happened," she muttered. Did Alex show up on ALL forms of mechanical or electronic observation, and only remain invisible to people looking at him directly with their own eyes? Did that explain why he could be seen over the alien communicator? "And... and none of my friends would ever do this sort of thing as a joke." She retained a slight big of uncertainty about one girl who wasn't really a full friend at the moment... could someone who had alien powers, and who knew more than Isabel did about Alex's ghostly status -- could Tess have arranged for this? And why??

"That... that's something, and thanks," Philip Evans said, a softly stern tone evident in his voice. "But... but do you know anything that you aren't telling us that relates to this?? I... I'll be honest and admit that something has been worrying me lately about you, darling. After... after taking the news about Alex so badly, you seem to be... to be almost in denial about how much he meant to you, or that you won't ever see him again. You... you seem to be sleeping a lot, and we hardly ever see you, and..."

"Are - are you worried that I'm going crazy, Dad?" Isabel pressed. "I... I don't think that I've ever felt more sane. Yes, it was a terrible tragedy what happened to Alex, but it wouldn't be fair to me, or to him, to shut down my life for his sake. I'm... I'm..."

"I want you to look me in the eye and tell me that you're not hiding anything from me," Isabel's father said suddenly. Isabel nearly fell off her chair in shock. She had never guessed that he would ask something like that of her, and was pretty sure that she couldn't do it convincingly.

"I... I couldn't," Isabel admitted, and her mom gasped. "I... I am keeping things back, not - not out of any malice or deceptive wish, but... but because there are things that have to stay my secret, and things that I'm going through that I couldn't ever burden you with. Yeah, some of those involve Alex, but... but I'm dealing with them myself, and my friends are helping out, and that'll have to be good enough." There was awkward silence for a few seconds. "Can - can I see the rest of the pictures?" Isabel really did want to see the pictures for her own sake, but she was also curious about one thing. Sorting through the prints that her mother passed over established one thing - there were other pictures where she was sure that Alex would have been in shot, and he didn't appear. So maybe that one was some weird cosmic fluke.

"I... I understand that you have to hold some things back," Mrs Evans said. "But... but never worry about burdening us, dear. We're strong - we can take it, and we're here for you. Nothing matters more to either of us than you and Max."

"Umm, thanks Mom, and I'll bear that in mind," Isabel said. Just at that point, she realized that it was getting close to ten. "I, umm, I have to go through."

She hurried out of the house on foot and walked down two street, found a bench, and collapsed into it, panting. All of the questions that she wanted to ask Langley had gone clean out of her head. Would Alex show up before the conversation was over??

The telephone rang, and she picked it up. "Hello??"

"Yeah, um hi, it Sean DeLuca. This, umm, this might sound out of the blue, but I was thinking that..."

Isabel could barely restrain herself from SCREAMING!! Had Sean made it his goal for the summer to sweep her off her feet while she was (presumably) heartbroken and vulnerable?? (It wouldn't sound terribly out of character for him.) "Sean, it's so far out of the blue, it's into the black, got it?"

"Umm, not really."

"Okay, then, I'll be plain. Stop thinking whatever you were thinking. I have no interest in just about anything that you might want to suggest, and I'm expecting a very important call, so... so *don't call me again!*" On that line, she hung up, and noticed on the screen that it was two minutes to. Langley hadn't said that he would be right on the nose at ten o'clock... what if he'd gotten her voice mail? They hadn't agreed anything about leaving messages, and maybe... well, she hadn't *ordered* Langley even to call. He'd volunteered, because he wanted her to stop stalking Kating, and if she didn't hear from him, Isabel would - well, she'd try some of the numbers from the address book that Michael had gotten, just to send a message that she wasn't giving up.

And then the phone rang again. Suddenly nervous, Isabel pressed the 'talk' button without saying anything. "Alright, Isabel, I assume that this is you."

"Umm, yeah." Big breath. "I... I think that we need to meet in person, but... but we're all going on this summer trip thing. Should be back in... umm, a little over a week. Say ten days, actually, allowing a bit of time to do my laundry and pack up again...."

"Actually, why don't you just unpack and settle back in when you get home," Langley said with a soft chuckle in his voice.

"What... what do you mean??"

"The timing works out fairly well for me, I'll be able to take a bit of time away from Cali, and frankly it'd be better if nobody who knows me around here sees me hanging around with a tall, voluptuous young blonde," he said. "We might get into the back pages of the tabloids."

"Okay, then," Isabel said, trying to phrase a few commands so that Langley would have to follow up. "Come out here on the... umm, june the nineteenth, I guess, and call me on this number when you're here. That works?" He grunted a guarded acknowledgement, not sounding that happy about the imperative case, but Isabel wasn't going to go without it this time. "Sounds great."

"Okay. Are... is there anything that you want to ask me just now?"

Isabel caught her breath and tried to put her thoughts in order.

TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Part Seventeen

"What... I'm not really sure what I should be asking you," Isabel said into her cell phone, a bit freaked out of the idea that she was talking to an alien shapeshifter bodyguard turned big Hollywood producer. After a moment she blurted out, "how much, generally, do you know about... about how we were made? The... the cloning and the hybridization stuff, and whatver was done to our energy, and... and all."

"Huh." Langley sighed. "Not... not what I expected to be talking about over an open phone line, but... what the heck, I suppose it can't really hurt much. I - umm, I don't have long that I can be talking about this sort of thing, though."

"That - that's okay," Isabel assured him. "As - as long as you get to Roswell on time."

"Well - we did most of the real work," Langley said. "Not really the specialty of any of the four of us grunts, but - y'know, none of the scientists wanted to come to Earth, so we were working off of their notes. Because - because the work couldn't really begin until we got human DNA samples, and the only place to find a wide enough range was here."

"Right, I see," Isabel said. "Gimme the cliff notes version."

"Human cell specimen, Antarian cell specimen that we brought with us. Put both into a tiny little sphere full of amino acids along with a single Gandarium element. The amino acid bath included precise instructions encoded in a way that the Gandarium would understand what genetic elements it would take from each part, and it gets to eat the leftovers. So we have a single hybrid cell, that gets moved over into the first-stage Nurturation pods. We did that a total of three times for each of you, just in case of early losses. You Grew really quickly, and after about five days we used the psi-mechanic gear to implant the psychic residue and essential energy into the most promising pods - just before simulating Ovaric implantation. We were just beginning to start the memory transfer stuff - nearly four weeks later, when that damn whatever hit us and forced an emergency landing."

Now this was something else that Isabel had always been really curious about. "You... we were shot at? With what? For crying out loud, that was 'forty-seven. Nobody had ballistic missiles or anything yet!"

"I... I wouldn't be entirely sure about that," Langley said darkly, "but I never said it was anything that had been shot from Earth."

"Another alien ship in orbit then??"

"Not outside the realm of possibility either - but Occam's razor has mostly convinced me that it was a meteoroid." Oh, right. Isabel felt foolish for forgetting that - the simplest explanation, that requires the fewest unobserved entities, is usually the correct one. "The point was, it compromised hull integrity, damaged the life support system - and we needed to come in for a landing, quick. No time for niceties like coming down quietly and unseen... and so Roswell entered the history books."

"The other two shapeshifters were killed," Isabel said, far too familiar with this part to have it told her yet again. "You and... and the being we knew as Ed Harding saved our embryos, wrapping them up in sacks or something like that to protect them... and an Air Force guy covered for your retreat."

"Well, now how did you know that part? Ohh... tracked him down?"

"Michael met him, almost purely by chance," Isabel admitted. "But Pierce said that he caught both of you... and that one of them died in Special Unit custody."

"Yeah, well, he didn't understand how well we can play possum," Langley said, and Isabel grinned at the unexpected answer to the discrepancy. "I was the one who broke out first, and - and Ed took the next opportunity to let them think that they'd killed him. He knew that I'd make sure to find where they dumped his body, and use the Ashtari to restore him."

"Right." Isabel laughed softly. "I did that once too, I think."

"And we set you guys up with Nurturation pods as well as we could - but the stored memories from Antar were ruined in the crash. Oh, dammit, I gotta go. See you in ten days!!"

"Good--goodbye," Isabel breathed, but got no response back. All of a sudden she was blinking back tears. Langley had been very matter-of-fact about it, but she was absolutely stunned, looking back, at how much he'd told her about her origins... and how many nagging little questions had been answered. Max... Max and Michael needed to hear this stuff right away, as soon as she could possibly track them down.

But how? She didn't want to go back towards the house, and even less to ask if she could borrow car keys. Neither her skirt nor her top had any pockets, and she hadn't stopped to grab a purse on her way out of the house. Did she want to walk all the way... somewhere? If she knew where people were likely to be, she just might try it, even though the morning was already warm and she didn't want to sweat too much in these clothes. But the idea of checking out various places - Michael's, Valenti's, DeLuca's, and the Crashdown, say - by walking to each one in turn seemed like far too much.

So, after a moment, Isabel decided to use the one thing that she HAD taken out of the house with her - her phone. A moment's effort to hit a redial, and... "Y'ello?"

She smiled at her brother's voice. "Hey, Max. We need to talk, and I kinduv need a ride - or, to be specific, a pickup. Where are you - with Liz??"

"No, surprisingly enough I'm actually working this morning." Isabel actually laughed - she really hadn't been expecting this. "So, umm, no go on the ride until noon at least. Maybe someone else can borrow the Jeep though."

"Okay, umm... any idea if some of the usual suspects are across the street? And, just maybe, off the clock?"

"Umm... I think that Liz and Maria are still working, yeah. Michael was around, and he hadn't gone back into the kitchen yet when I got breakfast from my favorite waitress. Kyle and Tess weren't to be seen - I think that he might have taken her shopping for camping stuff."

"We're... we're not camping," Isabel insisted. "We're going on vacation in a nice mountain cabin. There's a difference." Max just made his 'shrug sounds' at her. "Okay, guess I'll give Michael a try."

"Okay, tell him hi from me. Brody's calling for help, so seeya."

"Yeah, bye," Isabel managed to sneak in just before Max hung up. Next Isabel tried Michael's cheap cell phone - but got a message that it wasn't available or in service. Damn, he probably talked too long and ran out of minutes on his card. Isabel considered just a moment, crossed her fingers, and picked Maria's name on the speed-dial list.

"Hey, Isabel, is this an emergency?" Maria asked when she picked up.

"Not really... but could you pass the phone to Michael when you get a chance? His is dead."

"Sure." And with that, Maria hung up suddenly. Isabel blinked, considering the situation, and decided to wait a few minutes. If Maria was too busy to make the hand-off quickly, she might not have wanted to use up a few of HER miutes. Sure enough, after about four minutes, the phone rang again, Maria's number, and when she picked up it was Michael's voice. "Yeah, what's the what?"

"Um Michael are you working just now?" Isabel asked, all in one breath without pauses longer than those between words.

"Uh-uh." Somehow he was able to put a faintly questioning tone on the negative sounds.

"Okay - come and pick me up then??"

"I suppose I could - if Maria doesn't mind me taking the J-"

"Max already offered the Jeep," Isabel said.

"Okay, well, I guess that means I'll be over one way or another. Umm... just where am I picking you up from?" Isabel could hear sounds, probably the Cafe dining room sounding fairly busy, on the other end of the line.

"Well - I'm two blocks away from my house, the bench next to Tome street."

"And you couldn't just borrow... oh, never mind," Michael said. I'll - I'll be there in a few minutes, alright?"

"Yeah, thanks," she told him. "Can't wait."

---------

"Well, that's wild," Michael decided. It had taken most of the trip back downtown for Isabel to tell him even the main bullet points of her conversation with Langley. "Do... do you believe him?"

"Uhrm, yeah, I really do, I'm not sure if he can lie to me." Isabel took in a deep breath. "Why - do you?"

"Well, there's one bit of the story that seems suspicious," he said in a low tone. "Langley busted out of Eagle Rock, with Ed probably covering for him."

"He didn't say anything about that last part, but yeah." Isabel watched as Michael turned onto main, with the UFO center and Crashdown becoming visible.

"And then Ed tried to play dead, so that he could get out and Langley could revive him." Isabel nodded. "Well, what made them think that Ed would get taken out in one piece? With UFO freaks like Pierce... I realize that he wasn't even born yet, but the ones who were around back then seemed to have the same kind of mindset. They could have taken him apart piece by pieces, to see what made him tick. Why wouldn't they?"

"Hmm." Isabel had to admit that she couldn't think of an answer to that. "Well, they didn't do it to Ed, the time that we went to save Max. He was captured or shot inside Eagle base - they thought he was dead. And they took him out and sat on the body at that Hobson airstrip. Maybe... maybe there was somewhere else that they meant to do the actual alien autopsy."

"Well, that seems quite convenient," Michael admitted. "But maybe it fits. They could have heard the guards saying that their dead friends had been taken somewhere else to get examined. Well, come on." He'd parked the Jeep in the Crashdown parking lot, and the two friends got out, but didn't head inside right away. "So - what changes does this make to our plans??"

"I - I need to have a much better idea of what to talk about with Langley by the time he shows up here," Isabel decided, speaking in a very low voice, "but that's for a while, so I guess I've got no big hurry." She sighed. "What he told me about helping to create us - that gives me an idea of what we'll need. First, building one of these nurturation pods, or maybe even more than one as Alex's clone body grows. Other equipment to transfer his soul back into the new body, and maybe to imprint memories into the clone's brain. That didn't work with us - they lost the recorded memories in the crash, which is why we didn't..."

"... remember anything, yeah," Michael agreed. "And we can do this without the Gandarium??"

"I... I'm pretty sure, yeah," Isabel insisted. "That was because they WANTED to make us hybrids - part alien, so that we'd keep the heritage of the Royal Four alive, but part human, so that we could blend in here. For Alex... well, he just needs to be human, so I'm not sure what that means, but there has to be some way that we can do it, and not need those stupid little blue things."

"Fair enough," Michael said. "Ohh... that sortof reminds me, do you want to try using the pod chamber and the communicator orbs to contact Kaalto outpost?"

"How did that remind you," Isabel said, puzzled, "and where the heck is Kaalto?"

"Oh, umm, because they're both connected to Larek," he filled in. "Larek was the one who warned us about the Gandarium being loose on Earth, or at least told us about what we're up against. And Kaalto is a Rahlicx colony - not nearly as far from Earth as Rahlicx, Antar, and the other three big worlds, but Larek's the big boss of them too, so that they can send him a message if we ask."

"Hmm... has potential," Isabel admitted. "We'd probably better let him know some of what happened with Brody - I don't imagine that Larek can go and 'abduct' him again now that Max has healed him."

"You may be right," Michael admitted. "Well, at least Amy doesn't seem to have shown any sign of Tess' mindwarp wearing off like what happened to Alex... maybe her brain wasn't strained as much..."

"Somebody mention my name?"

Isabel turned around and smiled as she saw Alex standing there on the sidewalk just behind her. He grinned and made a little ringing bell noise again, which wiped the confused look of Michael's face, and the other boy laughed softly.

"Okay... you know, I don't really feel like hanging around in the Cafe, if they're busy," Isabel decided after a moment. "How about heading back to your place, Michael? We could turn on the crystal thingees - I mean, if you want to see Alex, and hear him without him using my powers directly."

"That wouldn't suck I guess," Michael admitted. "But we don't really have any wheels of our own to get there."

"Oh, I can walk, as far as your place," Isabel decided. "With two good friends to keep me company."

"Oh, so now I'm just friends again?" Alex teased her. "Break my heart. By the way, I love that skirt... really like the whole look, actually.

*Good.* And they turned around south to start heading for Michael's place.

----------

"Okay, let's think about that," Alex said a while later. The three of them had been in Michael's living room for a while - he'd scrounged up some leftovers for lunch that Isabel had actually found not that bad... a kind of a bachelor's casserole with beef stew meat, canned chicken gravy, chunky vegetable spaghetti sauce, dry macaroni noodles, frozen corn, and plenty of tabasco drizzled on top. "We have the Granilith, we have the key, and we have instructions for using the G as a sort of spaceship... a really fast spaceship, that can outrun pretty much everything else that the Antarians know about."

"Yeah," Michael agreed, taking another spoonful from the maybe five left on his third plate of casserole. "However, our biggest enemy, the new dictator of Antar, wants to take the Granilith back and cement his power using it. So we can't afford to take it anywhere that he'd be capable of using superior force."

"And, even if he can't take it away while it's landed on a planet, and can't outrun it when it's moving... might he be able to trap it, and anyone inside, if he knows when we're going to use it and where we're going to go?" Isabel mused. "Like - like setting up a road-block in space, something like that?"

"Feetle net," Alex mused. Isabel shot him a look. "It's a sci-fi thing... something that can wrench a starship out of warp flight, or whatever they call it, so it can be captured."

"Yeah, it's tricky, and we should maybe only ever use the Granilith for transport once," Michael suggested. "From here to somewhere else and back. That means that we might catch Kivar unawares... after he knows that we've figured out how to use it, he can set up all the traps and garrisons he wants to, but unless he can take it away from us here on Earth he'll be out of luck."

"That's a kind of worrying unless," Isabel pointed out, and Michael nodded somberly.

"Do you suppose that there's any way Langley can help us get to the original ship?" Michael asked. "And fix it up so that it'll work, if necessary."

"I dunno, I guess Isabel can ask him," Alex said uncertainly. "But we don't even know when anyone will need to go off-world, or where, or what they'll need to get. Kinduv putting the cart before the horse."

"Actually, as odd as it sounds, that's the way we need to do it," Isabel pointed out. Alex blinked. "Conceptually, at least. Methods of transport would be the horse... payloads would be the cart. We need to come up with a payload before we worry about a transport... we need to have a cart first before worrying about horses. Once you have them both, you put the horse first in line... physically, but that's just the way horses happen to work best - other power supplies do better behind."

Michael shook his head. "Getting way off topic."

"That one I'll cop to," she admitted.

"So - what else do we need to discuss?" Alex said, looking a bit longingly at the food left on Isabel's plate, (her seconds.) Obviously he was really tempted to try eating again, but didn't want to get Michael upset at him for 'dead boy breath' again.

"Maybe let's not worry about alien or cloning stuff, and just talk about the trip?" Michael replied, and the other two smiled. "Guess you don't need to worry about packing anything, Whitman."

"No - but I'll probably be helping Isabel to get everything straight," he said with a big smile. "I've heard some stories about how much stuff she tends to travel with." Whump. "Hey, oww! I may not have my own skin, but that still hurt!!"

"Not that much it didn't," Isabel told him fondly. "I'm actually going to *try* to travel light this time, though not as light as you usually do." She sighed. "I wonder how Kyle and Tess did with the shopping, and on a completely different note does it seem weird to anybody that he's still spending time with her?"

Michael stared in awe of that segue for a long moment. "Umm... well, he kind of has to still spend time with her - we agreed on that. Anything significant changing in Tess' life might make people a bit suspicious of what she did, and... and so she has to stay at Valenti's..."

"But not necessarily to spend so much time with Kyle when they're NOT at home," Alex filled in. "Yeah, I admit I was wondering about some of the body language I saw between them yesterday. Nothing... nothing at all obvious, but... well, I don't suppose it's really any of our business."

"No, but that's never stopped me from speculating before," Isabel pointed out. "Very complicated situation. I think that we all remember hearing about the 'you're like a sister to me' thing he told her at prom... but if the Alex revelation startled Kyle into feeling some distance from her, and then he forgave her for what she's done, like I have... maybe the exact nature of what he feels for her would be different this time. Does that make any sense at all??"

"A bit," Alex said. "Of coruse, I do think that it's worth asking if the 'sister thing' was something that Kyle was honestly feeling himself, or... or something that Tess *wanted* him to feel?" Michael gasped softly as the implications hit him. "Not that it's really that big of a deal in context... but she might well have wanted to get rid of Kyle so that she could make a move on Max... and better to make Kyle leave her than to blow HIM off - if she could manage that much, which I think that she could."

"Hmm... that's really spooky, but something that's worth looking into," Michael said. "If that was it, I think that Kyle deserves to know."

"Maybe he doesn't even want to know, would that be so bad?" Isabel replied.

Just then the door knocked. "Umm... Maria?" Michael called out.

"No, it's me." Isabel almost called back 'me who?' but she had recognized the voice quickly enough.

"Come on in, it's open," Michael told Max. "Want some casserole?"

"Nah, I had a nice big lunch at the Cafe," he said. "Hi Alex. Guess it shouldn't be a big surprise that you're hanging out here..."

"But we probably shouldn't have left the door open while the crystals were turned on," Isabel pointed out. "What if somebody who shouldn't have seen him barged in unexpectedly??"

"Oh, come on, it's not like I have Cosmo Kramer living next door," Michael shot back at her. "And if we wanted to be really careful, what about the windows? Somebody might look in and see him."

"Nobody can see in your windows unless they're... well, there's that house across the way, yeah," Isabel admitted grudgingly. She got up and pulled a few blinds down. Michael let out a frustrated breath. "How are our two favorite waitresses, Max?"

"Umm... pretty well I think, looking forward to the big trip," Max said. "And you guys??"

"Much the same," Michael replied. "But also, abuzz with questions about Kal Langley... you should probably let Isabel tell you about the phone call."

"Oh, right." Max sat down on the couch next to Alex and turned to face his sister. "What's the deal??"

----------

"Okay," Max sighed. "So - if we DO send a message through this Kaalto place to Larek - what do we say to him? Kivar might not be able to overhear directly... but since the message will be secondhand there'll be people who get the gist of the missive."

A lot of time had passed since Max had come to Michael's apartment. Liz, Maria, and Tess had come by later in the afternoon, and Isabel had worked with Maria to whip up some very simple dinner. It was now late, and the three of them, (plus Alex,) were gathered in Max's room, talking about various things to do with talking to other aliens. "Hmm, I see what you mean," Isabel admitted. "Don't really want to go into the dead Alex stuff with him right away, or even telling him that we have the instructions for getting somewhere in the Granilith. Maybe just... just send him a formal greeting and let him know that we'd appreciate hearing a message back from him?"

"You mean, just a bit of random protocol to formally open the lines of communication?" Michael asked. He generally didn't like formal protocol, but apparently couldn't argue against it in these circumstances.

"That, and let him know that we have a working communications device," Isabel said.

"I think that that's part of opening the lines of communication," Max said. "Like picking up a telephone and both people saying hello, or writing an email to introduce yourself to somebody. You establish who the two of you are, if necessary, and that either one can send content to the other by a certain mechanism. That's what the lines are." Isabel scoffed good-naturedly at this detailed analysis.

"Okay, so if we want to talk to Kaalto, it'll have to be - really in the middle of the night," Michael pointed out, and Max groaned softly. "At least at this time of year, since it all has to do with how the planet rotates. Are you up for it?"

"Yes, but not in the middle of THIS night," Max insisted. "We can try in a day. Hmm?" He cocked his head slightly, and Isabel heard noises from the front of the house - a car pulling into the drive, and the garage door opening.

"Ohh, man, I completely forgot to tell you guys about this!" she hissed softly. "Mom and Dad... well, one of the pictures that they took at graduation - Alex is in them. As in, you can actually see him in the picture, about as real-looking as life. They're really suspicious about that... it's kinduv why I wanted you to pick me up this morning instead of borrowing Mom's car, Michael."

"Oh, boy," Max muttered, turning pale for a moment. "Well, let's try to play it cool and see what they say and do, if anything out of the usual." He sighed. "Maybe... just on a flying and unpredictable maybe, the time to tell them is nearly here. But... but not now."

"Yeah," Isabel said, trying to feel which in which direction her heart was moving when he talked about telling Mom and Dad. But they filed out of Max's room, said hi, and then engaged in a discussion out in the living room about who should drive Michael home. Isabel wanted it more, and made an escape, leaving Max to deal with the fallout of the morning, if there was any. By the time she'd finished the drive and got back, her parents were in their bedroom.


They send the message to Larek off through Kaalto outpost the next day, and nothing seemed to be terribly momentous about the experience. Nearly everyone was frustrated at having to be there at 3:02 am, chilly, (it's surprising how cold the desert gets at night, even in the summer,) and in general somewhat cranky. The Kaalto switchboard guy, also, seemed to be having a bad day or night - something didn't seem to be working properly in the translation circuit with him, so that they both had to repeat things several times, and he wasn't wild about having to route a transmission through from some place that he'd never heard of. Max asked for the Lahrexcian embassy first, which apparently was a miscue - because the entire colony was Lahrexcian sovereign ground, they had no consul or embassy, and the representative of the Autarch, (Larek,) was also the colony governor. Finally the circuit was routed through and the governor seemed to understand what they were saying much better, and was kind and polite to them, though the purpose of the entire proceedings seemed to go a bit over his head. (Max didn't want to say out loud that they had just gotten their first communicator working, knowing that Larek would figure that much out, and it might be better if the governor didn't clue in himself.)

----------

"Okay, so what's our route looking like?" Liz called as they headed out onto the highway north of Roswell. "I know you told me about it yesterday, Max, but I'm so excited that I can't remember. Something like... do we go through Santa Fe?"

"Yes indeed," Isabel filled in a moment before Max was about to say the same thing. "In fact, it's pretty much straight north by northwest the whole way - well, as straight as highways around here ever get, at least, right until we get to the mountains."

"Hmm." Curious, Liz opened up a highway map, found Roswell, and considered what 'straight north by northwest' would mean. "So... Vaughn, Clines' corners, and Santa Fe..."

"That's the usual way, yeah," Max agreed. "Come to think of it, one of these months I'm going to have to actually *get* you to come with me to a concert in Santa Fe. Our soulmate mythology, our reconciliation, seems slightly incomplete without that." He turned to look nervously at Liz, who was up in the shotgun seat, with Isabel in back. The fourth seat was mostly filled with luggage, so Alex would probably have to get creative when he popped in - once again Isabel decided that she wanted to get him off of the 'mornings out' routine while they were at the cabin, if at all possible. "Umm, well, I didn't mean to imply that I was dwelling on that Gomez stuff, just - well, I still feel like something is missing because, umm..."

"Max, it's okay," Liz insisted. "I - umm, I think I know how you feel about that." He sighed and relaxed. "Except, of course, that it's going to have to be a GREAT concert, somebody that we both really like, somebody who's special to us. And it doesn't have to be Santa Fe I think - just somewhere out of town. But if the act isn't good enough, then it would just feel like we'd made a big deal out of second best."

"Okay, fair enough," he said. "So where's next after Santa Fe, can you tell??"

"Umm..." Liz considered the map again. "Espanola and Canjilon I guess. After that, we're pretty close to the Colorado border - this map doesn't really mark the mountains, but..."

"Yeah, that should do us," Isabel insisted, yawning. "It's not like we're even going to get to Santa Fe for hours." And she considered. "So, who would be another mythical music act for the two of you? Umm... Sheryl Crow?"

"Umm, okay I guess," Max said.

"Did - did you know about that?" Liz asked her. Isabel blinked.

"Umm, know what? I... I came across you playing 'I shall believe' a few times when you were obviously depressed over Max... I figured that it was a special song of yours. Okay, only once were you actually playing it - the second time I kind of dreamwalked you and it was in the dream soundtrack."

"I... I don't think that if there's a reason that song is meaningful to Liz, I know about it," Max said slowly, keeping his eyes a bit TOO hard on the road. "I, umm, I remember that 'Fear' sort of played in the connection, when I healed Liz, and then when I showed her those flashes of me for the first time."

"What does 'Fear' have to do with Sheryl Crow, Max?" Liz asked him.

"Umm, didn't she..."

"No, 'Fear' was Sarah Maclachlan."

"Oh."

"Well, I think we can tell whose head the song came from in the first place," Isabel told them both lightly. "But what's the deal with 'I shall believe' then, Liz??"

For a long moment she was quiet, and then shot a look over at Max. "Supposedly... it was our wedding song."

"OHH." Max's shoulder twitched slightly. "I... I still have a hard time getting used to stuff like that."

"Yeah, me too, and I realize that it's harder for you because I kept it secret for so long," Liz allowed. "And if you don't want that to be an 'us' song because our lives didn't take that track, then I can totally understand. Just... well, I do think of you, and future-you, when I hear it." She sighed. "I liked it even before he told me about that, and he said that... well, that he liked it even before we got married. I... I danced with him on the balcony, after you and Kyle had left that night, to that music, and he... he disappeared in my arms. God, I must sound like such a mess, telling you guys this stuff."

"No, you don't," Isabel told her firmly. "What - what else did Future Max tell you about the wedding? I... I'm curious, though of course if you don't want to hear, Max, we can leave it." Until later, at least.

"No, I don't think that I mind."

"Okay, well, let's see..." Liz took a long time to get her thoughts in order, and the desert scenery raced past them. Up many car lengths on the road, Isabel could just see Tess' blue SUV, which Kyle and Jim would be riding in. She couldn't spot the Jetta right now. "We ran off to Vegas when we were nineteen and got married in the Elvis chapel. But the nice bit of the story, I think, was the reception... somewhere outside Phoenix, he said... you and Alex were there, Michael and Maria. Maybe that was it, not sure. Singing and dancing, probably a lot of other fun, late into the night."

"Sounds like he didn't give you many details," Max said in a low voice.

"No, he... he didn't," Liz agreed. "Big windbag... no offense to 'present' company, I mean." Max laughed a bit harshly. "But he talked a lot about preserving the future, which didn't make sense considering that he was trying to destroy the one he knew. Ah well. We'll just have to build our own destiny. That was the plan all along, right??"

"Maybe... maybe that was the point, actually," Max said. "Not... not that he didn't want to warn you about what might happen, but that he and Future Liz had agreed not to give too many details, so that you - that none of us felt like we were walking in the shadow of their lives."

"Hmm... you may have a teeny little valid point there," Liz agreed uncertainly. "Okay, enough Future Max stuff. I so decree - it ends here!"

"Okay." Isabel sighed. "Will it be too cold up in the mountains to get any swimming in?"

Max laughed softly. "From what I've heard, the river is mountain runoff. If you want to dive in -- well, I won't stop you from trying, but better you than me."

"Hmm..." Liz considered. "We know that high heat and humidity is really bad for aliens... but can you guys get hypothermia??"

"Don't know, I admit," Isabel grumped, upset at the thought of her swimsuit going to waste. (Well, she could sit by the riverside and get some sun, she supposed - that wouldn't suck.) "Maybe I could send a text message to Tess."

"Nah, she shouldn't be texting while behind the wheel," Max pointed out. "The question will keep."

"Yeah, I guess that's true," Tess admitted. "Well, Liz, what are you looking forward to on this trip?"

Liz paused a moment, and suddenly Isabel wished that she could actually see the other girl's face. (Well, part of her wished that, and part of her was just as glad not to.) "I, umm, I'm not answering because the answer would tend to incriminate me... and not be something that you want to hear about anyway."

"Oh, sheesh," Isabel summed up. That sounded very drama-queen for Liz. Couldn't she have just said 'spending a lot of quiet time with my boyfriend' or something like that? Well, maybe she didn't think that they'd be that quiet...

----------

"Oh, boy." Ever since they'd arrived at the cabin, most of the other kids had been running around, finding bedrooms, rushing around to see which ones were the best, and 'calling' picks. Now Tess and Isabel stood together in what was apparently the last available quarters - not too bad, and pretty spacious, even if the beds were bunk-style and a bit narrower than twin-size. "Well, this could be worse."

"I guess so, yeah," Tess agreed. "I'd rather be in here with you than Liz... not that I have anything against her, just..."

"It'd be awkward," Isabel filled in. "Well, umm, I think I'd rather have the bottom bunk, if that's okay."

"Sure, I don't mind climbing up," Tess agreed. "Any idea which side of the dresser you want?"

"No, not really, that can be your pick - they're pretty much identical after all." So, after unpacking a few important things, the two girls headed back out into the hallway. Isabel wondered if everybody would be fetching bags in from the cars, but apparently the boys had volunteered to take care of all that. Liz and Maria were sitting out on the front porch, (or was it a balcony? The structure led out of what was the only floor of the cabin, which was ground-level back where they'd entered, but the edge of the balcony was nearly seven feet off the uneven ground.)

"Nice view," Tess remarked.

Maria turned around and made a vaguely toasting gesture with a glass of water. "Indeed."

"I wonder if Jim is actually going to turn a blind eye and let you switch rooms... well, either Maria and Max, or Liz and Michael," Isabel said. Liz raised one eyebrow at her. "Well, it didn't seem that unlikely a thing that you'd try... when it became clear that you and Maria were determined to room together, Max and Michael..."

"And that you each snapped up a room with a good wide bed, even if the rest of the accomodations weren't so great," Tess added, her voice teasing and friendly.

"Yeah, I guess that we wanted to keep our options open," Liz admitted. "See if it comes to anything."

"Maybe we can help cover for you... if there's an opportunity," Tess admitted. "I'm not sure what can be done in a situation like this, but..."

"Inviting the chaperone out on a nature walk?" Isabel suggested, tongue almost literally in her cheek.

"Well, we'll see about that," Maria admitted. "We can have a PG-13 party tonight to celebrate our early arrival - or at least PG-13 to start with. We've got tunes and something to play them on... what else do we need?"

"Party food," Isabel chimed in. "There's some stuff that we got in Canjilon that doesn't need cooking, right?" Liz nodded agreement.

"Maybe something else for party entertainment," Tess said a bit uncertainly. "Besides the tunes. No TV or anything here, as far as I saw..."

"No, I like it without television or movies," Maria said. "Maybe games or something though... I think that Mister Valenti brought some cards."

"Hmm... Poker? Or hearts?" Liz suggested.

"Maybe one game of each," Tess said.

"Uh-oh, Michael's got the bag with all of my delicate fabrics in it," Isabel said, her stomach getting slightly heavy with worry. "He'll probably put something heavier on top of it."

"Oooh, I'd better go and check on some of the goody bags too," Maria agreed, and they got up together to head back into the front hall and living room, where the luggage was getting arranged. Isabel's pink bag was safely on top of a heavier case, and the food items that Maria was worried about were also safe, but they both started putting bags and boxes in their proper places anyway.

"Oh, hey, how does Alex like the place?" Maria asked suddenly.

"Umm, he hasn't seen it yet," Isabel told the other girl. "Blinked out."

"*Again*? I thought that he was out this morning when we left..."

"Yeah, he was," Isabel agreed. "But I was getting a bit bummed about him being on that schedule - never seeing him first thing in the morning, so I tired him out on the way over and convinced him to blink out for a bit... around half an hour ago. He'll be back in before we turn in for the night I think."

"Hmmm..." Maria considered that as they hefted up some luggge to take into Liz and Maria's room. "Just how did you tire him out??"

Isabel shook her head at Maria's teasing laugh. "Nothing like that, really -- well, almost nothing. Just kept him talkng to me and interacting with Max and Liz... we shared a bit of an interactive dream in my sub-space. That's pretty much it."

"Alright. Oh, hey, is that all of it?" Returning to the cabin door, it was hard not to notice that all four guys were in the vicinity, none of them in any seeming hurry to head out for another load. Michael stepped up towards Maria and stole a kiss, or maybe just surprised her into sharing it.

"Liz suggested - well, someone anyway, suggested having a kind of party tonight," Isabel said, feeling lame about her ability to choose the right word.

"Sounds great," Max said, looking around for Liz. Isabel pointed him over towards the balcony, but he didn't actually leave the group. "We've got tunes, we've got munchies, and we've got some games to play..."

"Yeah," Kyle chimed in. "Plenty of cards, poker chips and other counters... we could play auction poker or something... need something that everybody can get in on."

"I won't argue with that," Liz said, slipping herself through the living room door and her arm around Max's waist. Ahh - so THAT was why Max hadn't rushed off to find Liz - he must have been able to see, from where he was, that she was coming to join them. Tess appeared a moment later, not quite stepping across the threshold into the room.

"Well, don't everybody just stand here!" Jim said. "We've got plenty of gear just sitting here and it isn't going to just put itself away! Hop to, double time, people!!"

After a moment's pause, the kids stumbled into action, pitching into the work available. By the time 'Corporal Valenti' let them stop and relax, the cabin was indeed looking much more homey. Isabel indulged in a cold lemon soda and sat down in the living room. Michael was still on the job, it seemed, futzing with something in the corner. Isabel started to tell him to take a break already, but just then it occured to her what he was doing. "The Alex projection system? You brought it here?"

"Well, of course, why ever not?" he said, stepping back and showing off his handiwork. "We'll be spending a bunch of time around here, and don't expect anybody else dropping in - certainly not anyone who knows that Alex is dead."

"Will it work okay in here?" Maria asked from a comfy chair. "I thought that the crystals had to work on a rectangular space... well, rectangu-cuboid or whatever. This place is more like L-shaped."

"Yeah, but if I ignore that bit around the corner, we're left with a great rectangu-cuboid," Michael pointed out. "Since all of the other borders are walled off, it shouldn't throw the energy off that there's a really big door over there... or at least, that's what I'm hoping. If the field doesn't stay stable... we try something else." He chuckled and moved to another corner. "Is himself around now?"

"Nah, Izzie made him blink out again," Maria remarked a little sadly. "Something about schedules. Back before bedtime." She bit down a little sweet treat, Isabel couldn't tell exactly what before it was gone, and asked another question of her own. "Just where did you guys *find* those crystals, anyway? I never saw them before Isabel's grad party, and... well, I guess you could have made them out of non-crystaly stuff with your powers, but..." Maria shrugged and trailed off.

"Actually, we boosted them out of the UFO center," Michael said. "Hope that Brody doesn't see through the fakes that we left. Max recognized them from one of Nasedo's computer files."

"Okay, enough about the alien crystals," Kyle insisted from behind Isabel, startling her. "They look too much like Gandarium - don't like that. How about getting the party started?"

"Sure, why don't you get the tunes on?" Maria said, as Michael crossed near her on the way to the far corner of the room. Reaching out, she pulled her spaceboy near with an arm and a foot - Michael caught the hint and came close, their lips meeting.

TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Part Eighteen

(The song is off Amanda Stott's self-titled album. I don't own or have any right to the lyrics.)

"Okay, we've got tunes," Liz pointed out a few minutes later. Kyle's big boom box with the two-CD changer had been plugged into a corner of the room, and was playing something pop-rocky off of a mix disc. "We've got munchies. How about a game?"

"We could just play poker," Michael suggested.

"Pictionary," Maria countered.

"Truth or dare," Alex said, a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

"Hmrm," Isabel said. She wasn't at all sure that she was comfortable playing truth or dare with all of these people... (even if their chaperone had the grace to make an exit.) "Pictionary is a maybe."

"I, umm, I know a game that could be fun," Tess suggested. "It's called living space. But, umm, we'd need something we can draw a really big game board on - each of us will be making moves by picking squares on the board and then some of them get cleared away again."

"I, umm, I guess that I'm up for learning something new," Max said quietly, and the rest of the group agrees. Michael found a sheet of white plastic that Jim had packed for some reason, and Isabel and Max used their powers to fashion a lot of little counters in nine different colors from a few logs of firewood. (They could be joined back together for burning afterward.) "Alright, umm, let's make it a square grid playing field - umm, sixteen by sixteen should be big enough for a good game without getting too crazy."

"Wait a second," Alex said before Michael could make the appropriate marks on the plastic. "Does it HAVE to be a square grid??"

Tess shook her head. "Well, it could be a rectangle twelve by twenty I guess..."

"No, I wasn't talking about the edges of the boards. Is there any reason that the individual cells have to be square shape? Are there places in the rules wehre that's important, like in chess?"

Tess nodded a little uncertainly. "Um, I think I see what you mean. No, the only important thing about play is which cells directly connect to each other. If you made another pattern that covered the entire field of play, it would change the details of strategy, but the basic laws would still apply."

"Okay," Isabel said, thinking about Alex's idea. "Well, there are three basic patterns that can cover a flat space I think - squares, triangles, and six-sided shapes."

"The last two being related, since six equilateral triangles will form a hexagon," Liz pointed out boredly. "Can we just pick something and get on with it?"

So they settles on a pattern of circles in six-way arrangement, with ten units on each side of the large hexagon. Under Tess' direction, they shuffled a small pack of cards, ace through nine of hearts, to establish the playing order - ace plays first, getting to go later was generally considered better. "Okay, before I make my play," Maria said, "Go over all of the rules, at least once."

"Fair enough," Tess agreed. "Well, we each pick someplace to start on the board, fairly central but not somewhere that the others are likely to crowd us out. And then, with each following move you have to expand into an unoccupied space that's next to one of your spots. If you have nowhere left to move, you get eliminated from the game, and all of your counters are cleared from the board."

"Where those newly free spaces represent more space for your neighbors to fight over," Liz said.

"Hmm." Isabel considered the board and tried to think of the implications to what Tess had said. Other people would be trying to expand into her territory, and she'd be trying to wall it off with an unbroken row of red markers, that they couldn't breach - not until she died. But it'd probably take two rows to seal off a good wedge of territory, and she wouldn't be able to grow them both fast enough to beat raiders on each side - not unless... "Can we work together with other players?"

"Temporary co-operation by mutual consent is common, and completely unenforceable," Tess replied with a small smile. "If the game gets far enough, teammates will eventually be forced to turn on each other once all others have been eliminated."

"But at least then they know that one of them will be the winner," Maria pointed out, giving Michael a soulful stare. Isabel wondered if Michael could tell that she'd also shot a very quick glance at Liz. "Alright, umm... unless anybody else has questions, then I'm gonna start."

"Go ahead," Mister Valenti said.

For all of the effort that went into preparing and explaining it, hex-Living Space was not a huge hit, although they played a few times and Isabel sort of liked it. It seemed to be a contest of nonlinear strategies, with alliances of convenience determined more by the order of play and the layout of the board than by personal affinities between the players, and the tactical reconfigurations triggered by one player dying normally deciding the final result one way or another. Alex won the first game, and Liz managed to claim victory in the second over Mister Valenti. (Mostly because Liz had ended up in an partnership with Maria, but had also arranged her own cordon behind most of Maria's front line, allowing her to seize the territory quickly when Maria's blue empire fell.)

After people got tired of that, there was picture charades, which was quite a lot of fun, and occasionally insightful. Maria and Michael managed to do surprisingly well, which hopefully meant that their mythical problems of miscommunication were starting to get resolved on a deep level. Alex loved being able to pick up the pen and draw, because the crystals were active in the area where they were playing, and Isabel managed to guess a rebus that he made out of 'The orchid thief.' (Since he wasn't sure how to draw an orchid in a way that it could easily be told apart from other flowers, he had split it up into oar and chit. Of course, drawing a 'chit' was difficult too, but based on 'starts with oar' and the flower, she'd been able to put that together.)

Eventually all of the gaming was done, though, and the group ended up sitting around the living room, watching the fire die down ever so slowly. "Hey," Isabel said suddenly. "Now that you're in the warp field, Alex... if I wish you up a musical instrument, would everybody be able to see and hear it?"

"Can't think why it wouldn't work that way," Liz said, smiling at the thought. "Or - did you bring a real guitar that he can try to play, Maria?"

"Well, I *wanted* to, but somebody said that I'd already packed too much," Maria said, looking meaningfully at Michael, who was next to her, his arm around her shoulders. So Isabel wished up an accoustic guitar into Alex's lap, and so it appeared. Unfortunately, she couldn't really stay sitting quite so close to Alex herself as he got ready to play it, but backed away only just enough, her legs stretched out, one of her knees still touching his. Max and Liz were also very close together, his arms around her from behind.

"Okay, any requests?" Alex said as he checked to make sure that the instrument was in tune.

"Ohh - how about that one that we rehearsed together in late March?" Maria asked. "You always did want to play it for Isabel." Isabel cocked her head, and Alex made a bit of a funny face at his old friend.

"Alright, but only if you join in and sing harmony," he said. Maria shot a look at Michael, and nodded. Alex started to riff around, then settled on a fairly plain but sweet chord line on the guitar. After a few measures of that, his subtly nuanced baritone voice began in song.

"When my hopes are fading, when I'm in way too deep;
If my faith is shaken, you can always reach me.
In the heart of a dark night, when all reason leaves me.
When the walls get too high, you can always reach me."

As he moved into the chorus, Maria's own soprano joined in, just quietly to start.

"So if you're sinking- if you're ever stuck,
And you can use a helping hand. to lift you up
Any time you need me, you can always reach me...
My love -- you can always reach me...

If you're on a lost road, or a sea that's stormy
Anywhere that you go, you can always reach me
It doesn't *take a telegram* or a train: believe me
When your heart is where I am *you can always reach me*."

As Alex finished singing the second verse, Maria only joining in to emphasize key phrases, Isabel was thinking hard about what the words meant to them. The idea of communication as a symbol for the bond and strength in their relationship seemed apt - even before they had come back together for prom, Isabel would have stopped at nothing to find and help Alex if she had realized that he was in trouble, and her power of dreamwalking meant that there was indeed few places where she wouldn't have been able to contact him. Now, though, after he died, she sensed that the shoe was very much on the other foot, that it was Alex who would always be able to come to her, (since he rarely left,) and it was she who would be relying on his quiet strength, instead of the other way around.

"So if your dreams are scattered in the wind,
Or if you feel the lonely shadows closing in,
Any time you need me, you can always reach me...
My love..."

And Isabel's heart leaped as Alex raised his voice louder, singing directly to her and to the entire cosmos.

"Oh there is nothing stronger than my love
No matter what the world around us does
We're *always in touch.*

When my hopes are fading, when I'm in way too deep;
If my faith is shaken, you can always reach me.
In the *heart of a dark night*, when all reason leaves me.
When the walls get too high, you can always reach me."

By this point, Maria wasn't the only one who was singing along - Liz had begun to add her own voice, a thin alto, to the mix, and Michael's deep rumble.

"So if you're sinking- if you're ever stuck,
And you can use a helping hand. to lift you up
Any time you need me, you can always reach me...
My love -- you can always reach me..."

And, as Alex continued on repeating the prominent lyrics of the song, Maria began a sort of a counterpoint...

"My love, (you can always trust me, you can always teach me,)
My love, (you can always trust me, you can always reach me,)
Oh, there is nothing stronger than my love, (anytime you hold me...
Anytime you need me, anytime you time you want me, you can always reach me.)
You can always reach me..."

As if on cue, the fire seemed to damp itself down further once the guitar music had stopped, as if someone had turned a dimmer switch. "Probably better get to our beds now," Jim said softly.

"Yeah," Max agreed. "Big day tomorrow."

Nobody mentioned the faint stress that Jim had put on 'our' - as in, nobody should be going to anybody else's bed this time around.

Isabel was holding Alex so tightly that she didn't even notice stepping across the threshold until she had almot reached the door at the end of the short arm of the living room, well away from the crystal cuboid. Michael was staring at her. "That... that was weird. Why don't you, umm, fall through him, when he's not real??"

Isabel shrugged slightly. "He's always real to me." It was true enough - Isabel had been able to touch Alex ever since he had first come to her in ghost form, though she suspected that she wasn't putting as much weight on thin air as it seemed. "See you."

"Anybody up for a polar bear dip in the morning?" Kyle asked.

"In that river?" Maria said. "Are you freakin' nuts??"

----------

Rather surprisingly, even surrounded by the wonder of the mountainous scenery, Isabel didn't dream of beauty that night, but of a fairly ugly and dust-covered plain. She had to get somewhere, get to shelter maybe, but the Special Unit was chasing her, and she had to wear this awkward one-piece suit thing, with special filters to allow her lungs and her skin to breathe without letting micro-fine dust inside. Alex was there, not wearing a suit, so she knew that he was in ghost-mode, where the trials of harsh environment couldn't bother him. And - and she tripped, within sight of an inhabited dome building, and someone was looming up behind her...

Isabel woke, frustrated by the uncomfortable imagery, and splashed some cool water on her face from the bathroom sink. Then she crept out onto the balcony so as to avoid waking Tess or anyone else up. After a few minutes, Alex followed her out. "So, what did you think of that dream??"

"Umm, I don't remember a dream. You had a dream?" Alex looked disappointed. "And... and I thought I remembered all of your dreams, ever since."

"Yeah, and you were *there* in this one," Isabel said. Quickly she recapped what she could remember of the experience.

"Hmm," Alex went, and reached out to hold her hand in his. Isabel gripped his fingers tightly, and then, wanting to be closer to him, crawled onto his lap. "Well, maybe I would have known about this dream, EXCEPT for the fact that I was in it. That your subconscious put in another dream figure of Alex, and that meant that the real me couldn't get in."

"If I could go into your dream of me and see you dreaming me, why couldn't you join in my dream that has you?" Isabel asked.

Alex laughed. "Maybe because I'm not the talented dream walker."

"And why couldn't you just play the role that the dream figure was taking up?" Isabel asked, surprised to feel tears coming to her eyes. "I... I just want you with me all the time, including my dreams. You're the man of my dream, and a dream boy who just looks like you isn't any substitute."

Alex shrugged a bit awkwardly. "I don't know. But... but do you think that there might be something... special about that dream? Like it's a presentiment of things to come?"

"I... I hope not," Isabel admitted. "But... well, since you say so, then just maybe. That dusty plain, and the breathing suit... could be atmospheric conditions on another world, maybe?"

"I suppose so. Doesn't seem too strange for an alien planet."

"And the people chasing me... probably wouldn't have been special unit, not in outer space at least," she said. "But they could have been natives I guess. And... well, if I was there alone with you, none of the rest of the gang around, then... then maybe I'd come to get something that would help bring you to life."

"Wouldn't put it past you," Alex agreed, and then chuckled softly. "Sorry, this is just a very weird sensation for me."

"What is?" Isabel asked, and he pointed down at the wooden deck chair. Peering down closely, Isabel realized that though she was still sitting on top of Alex's crotch, his butt and thighs had somehow managed to sink INTO the seat, so that she was really not that far above the seat herself. "Hmm... probably best not to think of that kind of thing for too long," she admitted, getting up. Alex rose to his feet too, hugged her and kissed her.

"That's nice," she admitted. "But I'd probably better get back to bed. Wonder what the morning will bring."

-----------

First, actually, came a very pleasant homestyle breakfast, mostly whipped up by Michael and Liz, who were up with the dawn and headed into the kitchen not long after. Kyle was the last one to actually rise and face the world, and some of the girls teased him about not being brave enough to face the cold water after all. His pride nettled to the breaking point, Kyle left his third plateful of pancakes to change into swimming trunks and head over to the shore, but even there, he hemmed and hawed, refusing to actually go ahead and jump in, but also unwilling to admit that he was giving up on the idea entirely or walk back into the cabin.

Finally, it seemed that Tess had reached her limit on the hemming and hawing. With a single impulsive gesture from her, Kyle was caught up in an invisible tide of forces, that quickly swept him out over the surface of the stream, then allowed his body to drop inside. A sharp cry of shock issued forth once Kyle's face broke the surface again, but quickly he assured the others that it wasn't as bad as it seemed once you got over the shock of immersion, that he was having fun and being well invigorated, and that everybody else should join him. In point of fact, even after all the other kids declined to take him up on the offer, Kyle did seem to be having fun, and stayed in for longer than face or guile would reasonably have demanded, stroking a front crawl out to the far shore of the river and then back, which was perhaps seventy-five feet.

Once the polar bear boy was well towelled off, (having refused any offers of alien power to dry and warm him more thoroughly,) the question naturally emerged of what to do with the day once breakfast was wrapped up. Jim suggested hiking along a 'Rocky mountain trail' that happened to pass close by and could be reached from the road that they had driven up on, but none of the kids seemed to be wildly impressed with that idea at first. Kyle, Michael and Maria wanted to just hang around the cabin, while Max and Liz wanted to take the jeep and go exploring a little, stop for supplies at the nearby village, and see if there was anybody interesting worth meeting in the nearby campgrounds and cabins.

Alex suggested exploring the surrounding area on foot, not hiking on a trail, just wandering wherever they could. Isabel immediately decided to do that, and Tess asked if she could come along, which kind of changed the feeling of the expedition for Isabel, but she decided not to tell Tess that she could bug violently off and find something else to occupy herself. Michael insisted on altering a compass with his powers so that it would always point straight back to the cabin instead of pointing north, so that they wouldn't get lost. (Isabel suspected that it would actually point straight to Michael himself, since he was a more likely source for alien energies than the building, but since he and Maria expected to be there all day it didn't matter very much. The idea amused her as an example of Michael being self-centered, though.)

Mister Valenti apparently decided to stay with Michael and Maria instead of hiking by himself, maybe wanting to save that for another day that he could persuade some of the kids to come along. (Or perhaps he just didn't want to leave Maria and Michael home alone, since he'd have to answer for Maria's behaviour to her mother eventually.) Once his dad had made that clear, Kyle changed his mind and asked Liz if he could tag along on the road trip. Once they had driven off, the three explorers left the cabin, following a rough footpath around the small, grassy hilltop and down a gentle slope.

"Okay," Isabel blurted out when the building was on the smallish side behind and above them. "Question out of the blue maybe..."

"Fire away," Tess said. "If I don't like the look of it, I can dodge or shield."

Isabel chuckled slightly. "Alright then - do you, umm, do you have feelings for Kyle?"

The startled look that Tess shot her was eloquent in its silence. Alex was keeping a straight face, probably not wanting to interfere or speak up much while Tess couldn't see him. Even to her, he was considerate that way, very aware that being asked personal questions by a strange and disembodied voice could be very unnerving. "Umm, I, I guess so," Tess said. "I - I certainly feel things *about* him - given what went on, how could I not??"

"Alright," Isabel said, concentrating on her footing for a moment, which didn't give her much time to think of possible replies. "Do - do you wish that the two of you could be... together? A couple? I... I know that you never really were, except for the prom date, but..."

"Does - does it really matter what I want?" Tess asked bleakly. Her usually lively and cheerful face seemed particularly pain-etched now, as she looked up towards the taller hybrid girl and her invisible boyfriend.

"It matters to me, yes," Isabel answered quickly. "For one thing, it matters to me what you want because what you want is a good indicator of what you'll do, and I want to be able to anticipate what you'll do because of the off chance that it might be something that hurts somebody I love - again." Tess made a face, and nodded in acceptance of that point. "Yeah, I don't mean to harp on it, but that is one of the realities of the situation."

"As far as the rest of it," Isabel continued after a moment, "I... I don't think that you can have Kyle for the asking anymore - just by batting your eyes and wiggling your... hips, or whatever." Alex couldn't help chuckling at that, unheard by Tess. "But... but I'm not sure that the door is entirely closed, either. Kyle - he was hurt by what you did - to Alex, and what you made him do without him realizing it. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure he's noticed how much you've been trying to behave recently, and how much you do *want* to change. Those mean a lot to him - and they're a foundation that you could build a new relationship on."

"I... I've been thinking about that," Tess admitted. "Bottom line though, I think the best that I can hope for with Kyle was - was what we had before he knew. Being a sister to him. Which - which isn't anything bad, and worth fighting for, even - but no, it's not what I'm wishing in my heart."

"I - I have to ask, Tess," Alex asked, startling her slightly. They had gotten to the bottom of that gentle slope, though there was a much steeper mountain slide nearby that nobody was getting at all near. "Did - did you nudge Kyle into thinking that, at the dance? Because you thought you had an opportunity to go for more with Max, after he and Liz started fighting, and didn't want to have the boy you came with weighing you down?"

"You - you spotted that?" Tess asked, looking around for Alex.

"In retrospect, yeah, the signs seemed familiar," he admitted. "Met Kyle inside the dance, after you guys had said whatever and before Isabel and I took off." He sighed. "After I died, it started to fit together."

"Well, yeah, I guess you're right," Tess admitted. "Nothing as direct or harsh as I did with you - for whatever that's worth. Actually, I was able to *nudge* Liz just a bit into saying those kind of things to Max out on the dance floor... at least, I was trying, and she did."

"Well, umm, anyway," Isabel said. She didn't really want to hear about minor uses of Tess' powers against her friends, (or Kyle,) but didn't really want to not want to hear them either. "I... I'm not sure, but I think that since the brotherly feelings that Kyle felt for you got jostled and disrupted lately, that means that if the two of you mend your fences things might go differently this time. In any event... I'd like to see you try, I admit."

"Because, if I'm Kyle's girlfriend, that gives me one more reason to stay nice, be a good contributing member of the club, and help you out with Alex?" Tess said. Isabel laughed slightly. "I don't mind if you admit that."

"Well, every little bit helps I suppose," Isabel admitted softly.

"Alright." Tess sighed. "Where do we want to go from here?"

It took Isabel a moment to realize that she was talking about the exploration walk.

"Umm, maybe loop back around, but head off bearing a little to the left," Alex said after a moment. Tess turned around and looked in that direction, so she presumably had been able to hear him.

They didn't talk much about Tess' relationship issues for the rest of the expedition - Tess asked some more questions about what it was like for Alex being dead, and Isabel being 'haunted' by her friendly ghost, seeming to be just curious about the unusual circumstances that had been triggered by her misdeeds. She also asked Isabel much more about her hopes and plans for bringing Alex back, trying to find out more about her expectations and attempting to contribute her own information about alien-related matters whenever it seemed to be useful. The three of them sat and chatted for a while looking at a nicely scenic overlook, and then Isabel started to head them back in the direction that she thought the cabin would be around quarter to two in the afternoon. She was getting worried about losing track of direction enough that she'd actually need to use Michael's compass, which then she'd have to admit to him if he asked, and it was just better not to go there.

In fact, she didn't have to take the compass out until the cabin area was definitely quite familiar, and the building itself was in view. Then, she paradoxically couldn't help herself - because it was also very evident that nobody was inside - Michael, Maria, and mister Valenti were all outside, in the open field next to the road, tossing a small foam football around. Because of the way they had come back, there was a good eighty degrees of arc between Michael and the cabin when Isabel was around fifty feet away from either, and she was unable to resist checking out her earlier doubts about what exactly the compass needle would point towards. The cabin, or Michael's own person??

Frustratingly enough, it seemed to split the difference. Were both attracting it somewhat, or was there some kind of invisible energy link between them for the day, and the compass was pointing to the midpoint of that unseen cord? She decided not to bother making a fuss over the enigma. Maria spotted Isabel and Tess just around then, and so all of them headed back inside for hot frothy cocoa, and grilled cheese sandwiches with bacon for lunch. Another kind of game started to develop after everybody was finished eating, with a game board spread over most of the living room, and each player controlling a small tactical force attemtping to capture or hold a particular strategic objective.

That ate up most of the afternoon.

----------

Isabel pushed her finished dinner plate away. "That was great." Valenti had made chilli while the tactics game had been going on, and Liz had brought back other supplies when she and the guys returned in the Jeep, so there were biscuits and corn and homestyle bread and a salad. "I, umm, I think that I'm going to go lie down. Been a really exciting day and all."

"Right," Michael drawled. "Have fun... lying down and everything." Isabel sighed. It could hardly have escaped anybody's notice that she wanted to spend some alone time with Alex, but it wasn't like Michael had to specifically call attention to it like that, or imply... well, it was just Michael being Michael, she supposed, and maybe she was being a bit over-sensitive. Isabel went to the bathroom first, scrubbing her face and brushing her hair, and by the time she was done with that it seemed that Max and Michael had decided to try putting on a 'holographic' show for the entertainment of those in attendance, using their powers.

She lay down on her bunk, checked to make sure that her clothes would be comfortable enough, (she had worn another shorts and t shirt combo, something that seemed to be much more popular lately in her wardrobe than the fancier outfits she preferred up until everything else changed,) and slipped into a subconscious mental space. This one was very nondescript, to start with, lacking even a clear standing surface and scenery - possibly because Isabel hadn't made clear what she wanted. She made the ground into a comfortable mown lawn that streteched out, with very gentle rises and dips, to a distant horizon... and started to wonder what was taking Alex.

After counting to thirty, her patience was exhausted. "Alex??" she called, hoping that her voice could at least reach out of Grassland to him. There was no obvious response. Frustrated, she blinked back to reality, opened her mouth, and then realized that she should probably send to him mentally this time, instead of calling out loud. Just then, though, Alex walked through the wall.

"Umm, sorry honey - I guess I got too absorbed in what they were doing. Some really cool stuff... you'll have to make Max show you another time."

"Hmm." Isabel filed the holographic whatever under 'things to worry about later.' "Uhh, did you hear me calling for you?" she asked quietly.

"Well sure." Hmm. Maybe he hadn't even realized that she was sending from her subconscious... which would probably explain why he hadn't answered her directly, or attempted to blink directly to her instead of walking.

"Okay, come on then!" Isabel hadn't really gotten up, just managed to sit propped up on her elbows slightly in her bunk. With a goofy smile, Alex bent down next to the wooden bedframe, leaned over to kiss her, and wrapped his arms around her shoulders a little awkwardly. She took that as a great moment to whisk him away into the depths of her mind.

"Hmm." Alex considered the green rolling fields a bit critically when he noticed that they had arrived, standing beside her with one hand resting teasingly on her bottom. "I dunno, think that we had enough nature this morning on the exploration walk."

"You think that it's too much?" Isabel asked. "I admit... I was kinduv thinking that it would be nice to spend some time along with you on the mountaintop, without having to worry about the Tess-eract."

"Well, if you really want to leave things like this, then I don't mind," Alex assured her.

"No, umm... we can do this one sometime later," Isabel insisted in return. "Why don't you make a different setting??"

Alex smiled. "Okay, sure... you just want to see what I can come up with if you let me into the drivers' seat, huh?" Isabel shrugged agreeably at him. "Okay, how about this??"

The grass and the horizon disappeared, and Isabel gasped. She was standing with Alex in... in the bedroom of a penthous condominium, or something like that. The furnishings were somehow austere and opulent at the same time, including the more-than-King-size waterbed, which had no blankets or comforter on it, just dark navy blue sheets stretched over the matress cover. There was a very pretty and old-looking dresser and vanity, and a few clothes hung up here and there - expensive clothes, both a guy's and girl's. "Whose... whose place is this supposed to be?" she asked, guessing the answer.

"Ours, when we're a little older and wiser," Alex joked. Isabel stepped a bit closer to one of the windows, which nearly covered all of two walls, (corner room!) and had thick black drapes that were pulled back all the way. She was expecting to see nothing but city and city, but there was less of that than she'd expected... possibly that was an illusion based on how high they were. She could see some of a downtown core with smaller towers and plazas, and then a patch of suburbia, and then countryside that was definitely not New Mexico... green pastures, forested ravines, and farmland.

"I have to admit, I like it when you dream big," she said, turning back to Alex, and not realizing just how close he was behind her. Hard to tell who started it, but in an instant they were kissing passionately, and pulling off each other's clothes. Similarly, Isabel wasn't sure even when it was happening if she was pulling him back to the bed, or he was driving her on ahead of him, or a little of both, just that she was the first to land on the unfamiliar bed. The dark sheet was soft and deliciously comfortable against her bare skin, and the water mattress was a very new experience, but it seemed to support her body and caress it just ever so slightly, which was a sensation that she didn't really mind under the circumstances. "Umm, maybe we should be careful not to be that... energetic on here," she mumbled when her mouth was free for a moment.

"Why?" Alex teased her. "The waterbed is in our minds. If you don't want it to pop, and I don't want it to pop, then it won't pop no matter what we do." And Alex pounced them both up and down, kissed her fiercely, which made her head swimmy with fevered wanting, and rubbed their bodies together suggestively.

Isabel didn't really need any hints at that point. "If you want me like this, then take me," she whispered. "I'm ready already. Give me what you've got."

But Alex chuckled in a way that made her realize that he was going to make her wait ANYWAY. (He seemed to have a tendency to do that in their lovemaking, especially when she spoke up for an end to the foreplay.) Taking a moment to caress the side of her neck, Alex then backed off, using his lips to stimulate her nipples and licking the skin just above her navel, while his hands ran over her naked hips and thighs. He stroked and squeezed the tenderest spots of her earlobes and kissed her forehead, exploring her reactions, before climbing on top of her in the old and traditional pose once again. Just in case he was planning to tease one more time, Isabel wrapped her hands around Alex's butt, pulling him deep inside her. He let out a passionate moan, pulled back, but only a little, so that he could drill into her depths even harder. Isabel cried out too.

In the middle of coitus, Isabel had a very strong and vivid flash - the pod chamber, but with a new pod arranged there, larger than the ones that she and the other tree had emerged from as children. It was long and rounded-off, a bit reminiscent of a coffin in general size, but Isabel knew that the emotional connotation was very different, even the reverse. A coffin represented death, and one of them held the remnants of Alex's old body, but this new pod was holding a replacement body, a chance for new life.

In the flash, Isabel was sitting on the chamber floor, next to the pod, as if waiting in vigil for his return. She was wearing drab and loose gray clothing, and her face was a mix of tired impatience and expectant hope. Suddenly it struck the Isabel who was watching the flash, how lonely she must be by this point... that Alex's soul would have been transferred into his growing clone body months or years before, and that she hadn't had his company for so long. That would be the price for trying to get him his new life, and there was nothing that she could do about it - except to make the most of the time that she had with him now.

She said as much to him, a bit later, after they had each partially dressed again and were lying together on the waterbed. "Yeah, definitely making the most of now sounds good to me," Alex admitted. "For a bunch of reasons."

Isabel caught a trace of something that she didn't like in the way he had replied. "Are... are you still worried that something might go wrong with the cloning? That... that you won't be *you* when we're done with it?"

"I, umm, I guess a little, though I'm also excited about the prospect and possibilities," Alex admitted. "There's probably going to be some side effects I imagine, especially when it comes to my memories. Even if everything works about as well as can be expected, memory is a tricky thing, and I feel like mine aren't all there lately since I've been ghosted."

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that," Isabel said. "I... I thought that things were getting better, since we worked out the Tess thing. Are you having other mental blocks??"

"Well, yeah," he admitted. "Most of the last two years or so is pretty clear, or almost that much - since you came into my life. But - but before that, I can remember some little things, but also keep noticing that things seem to be missing. Birthday parties, teachers and childhood friends, what have you. Even the summer trip I took to Aunt Louise's when I was nine is a bit on the blurry side."

"Ohh," Isabel sighed sympathetically. "Tell me about your Aunt Louise. Is she on your mother's side or your father's?"

Alex laughed softly. "Umm... mother's side, and technically she'd not really an aunt. She's a first cousin, but she's, um, fifteen years older than me, but when I was younger we just sort of decided that she was 'my favorite aunt.' She lives out in California, she's a commercial artist for some kind of big multinational corporation. Let's see: she's a bit on the tall side, but not really, with blonde hair and hazel eyes. Told me a bunch of stuff about girls when I was twelve, which never seemed to help me much with you."

"Aww, that's too bad," Isabel admitted. "Is she married?"

Alex paused for a brief moment before answering. "No, she's got a girlfriend, Shawna - they've been together for about three and a half years now. Hmm... or at least, when I last heard from them, a few days before the crash. I... I guess I'm a bit out of the loop lately on the family grapevine - I only get to see my parents when you come to visit them, really, and so I guess that they wouldn't tell you about that kind of stuff."

"Hmm." Isabel considered that. "Was Louise at the funeral?"

"Umm - you'd be better to tell that than me, I wasn't 'in' for it," he reminded her. "That was before my schedule got stabilized I guess. While your brain was still coming to terms with my soul and not letting it manifest often."

"Alright, let's see." Isabel concentrated on her experiences of the day of Alex's burial. It was hard to pick out many specifics, since at the time she had mostly been aware of emotional impressions, her mind spinning with the notion of Alex's untimely passage. (Though she hadn't realized at that point that he hadn't passed too far.) "Yeah, umm, I remember a blonde girl like that who was with your mom and dad." Alex smiled. "And - and a shorter girl, she had short auburn hair in a bob cut, and... very curvy, Rubinesque figure."

"Yeah, that'd be Shawna," Alex admitted. "Really sweet girl, and they're good together." He sighed. "I guess I'm glad that they were able to make it out from Cali to be with my parents for that day, even if I couldn't get to see them say goodbye."

"Hmm," Isabel muttered. "Wait a second. If they'd come from out of state from the funeral, I'd have expected that they'd stay in here overnight - well, in Roswell I mean, since we're not there in any sense at the moment. And that they'd pay a call on the family the next day. But - but when Liz and I went to see your parents then, we - well, I didn't get any impression that they were expecting anyone."

"Hmm." Alex thought about that too. "Yeah, that's a bit weird. But maybe Louise had to catch a very early flight back. It's hard to say." He sighed. "I kinduv get the impression that not much of the California branch of the family was able to make it out, though don't tell me why."

"Alright." Isabel nodded. "So are your father's relatives in New Mexico? How did your parents meet?"

Alex smiled. "He went off to the coast for college - honor roll biology and zoology at Berkeley. Met mom there in San Fran, and after he'd got his doctorate they got married and moved down to Los Angeles, because he got a research position at the University of South California. Then - a corporate job offer back home, when I was young, and so the Whitmans came to Roswell." He sighed. "Actually, maybe they married before my dad was Ph. D - that's another of the things that I'm fuzzy on."

"Okay," Isabel said, leaning over and kissing him. "Goodnight, see you in the morning - umm, unless you're popped back out again. Darnit, we went to all of that trouble yesterday, and then kinduv messed it up tonight."

"I think it's still early, back out in reality," he said. "You could get up and spend some time with Max and Liz, and the others."

"No," she said. "I... I don't care what any clocks, anywhere, might say. Just want to lie here next to you and drift off to sleep."

"Never lie next to me," Alex said softly, and Isabel stiffened in shock at what seemed like an out of the blue rejection. "Honesty is too important - only truth in our bed. Sound good??"

"Ohh, I... I see," Isabel couldn't help groaning at the unfair pun over 'lie'. "Alright, how about snuggling next to you?"

"Got no problem with that."

----------

"Oh, man, I feel like absolute crap."

The words seemed to ring slightly through the cabin in the early morning stillness, and Isabel woke up instantly. Apparently she wasn't the only one who was awake, because there were soon footsteps moving through the hall, passing into one of the bedrooms, and then a muffled "What the he-eh..." could be heard. Jim Valenti.

Isabel sat up, and got to her own feet, brushing down her wrinkled clothes from yesterday, and headed out into the corridor herself. Jim was coming out of the other girls' room with a vexed expression on his face, and Isabel tried to put together why. The person who had announced that she was feeling poorly was - was Maria, but - but Isabel didn't think that the voice HAD come from Maria's room. Thus - Isabel hurried to catch up as Jim stormed into Michael's room.

Both of the boys seemed to be asleep, Michael on the big double bed, (that she had thought Max had been using before,) and Max sprawled over the little cot. Maria was sitting on the edge of the double bed wearing a long nightshirt. "Umm, hi Mister V," Maria muttered, sneezed a very vehement and loud sneeze, and reached for a little box of tissue paper on the end table to dab at her nose with. "I, umm, I came in here to see if Max would be able to, umm, to help me, and - and I fell onto the bed??"

"Yeah, tell me another one," Jim muttered, sounding incredibly dubious. However, just at that point, there was another sneeze coming from further down the hall, and Mister Valenti got an odd look on his face, and a few seconds later a strangely whiny sound emerged from his nose as he breathed, signalling considerable congestion narrowing the air passages there. "Oh, oh great."

As Valenti hurried back out of the room and off to check on Kyle, (whose room had been in the direction that the second sneeze had been coming from,) Isabel hurried over to shake Max awake on the cot. "Come on, doctor Max. Think we might need you - there's a bug going around."

"Huh??" Max groaned. "If you can't step on the bug, then use your own powers on the damn thing."

Isabel almost laughed on the misunderstanding. "No, a bug as in a virus or something." Just then, something clicked in, and she decided that it might be the only thing that would rouse her brother very quickly. "Liz, Liz might be sick too if all of the others are." It was a bit of a stretch, but if Maria, Kyle, and Jim were all showing symptoms, then who knew.

Sure enough, Max's eyes popped straight open. "Liz?"

By this time, Maria had managed to shake Michael to some level of alertness too. "No, check on Maria first," he said without too much hope. "We *know* that she's one unhappy camper."

It took a few minutes more before Max was coherent enough to stay awake and understand what the true issue was. He agreed to connect to Maria, as long as Isabel would check on Liz and see how she was doing. "I, umm, I'm not sure if I ever really tried to cure someone from a virus before," he was saying apologetically as she left the room.

Liz was sleeping quite soundly as Isabel entered the room, lying on the larger bed. Isabel couldn't help but wonder what had actually happened in these two rooms late during the night, but that wasn't the big issue. And she was reluctant to wake Liz just to ask if she was okay, so settled for listening to her breathing, which seemed to be strong and regular, with nothing obstructing it. Until the other girl showed any sign of distress, Isabel decided to leave her alone.

"What, what do you mean, it seems to be resistant to your powers??" Michael muttered out loud, one room over.

Isabel groaned to herself.

TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Part Nineteen

"Okay, what's going on?" Maria asked. "Max, is... is something really weird and bad going to happen to me?"

"Umm, no Mari..." Max broke off as Isabel came back into his room. "What about Liz?" Maria got an even more pissed expression on her face, though she should have expected that Max would be concerned about her soulmate.

"She's sleeping comfortably, as far as I can tell," Isabel told him. "No trouble breathing, no sneezing or anything. I didn't think it was worth waking her up to check further." Max nodded, taking this in.

"Maria," he said, taking her shoulders, "the bottom line is that you have a nasty head cold. Nothing more, as far as I could tell - and I *did* look hard. But - well, I've never been that good using my powers against viral infections."

"Come on, Maxwell," Michael muttered, apparently cranky enough to express disbelief. "You've saved people from gunshots at the point of death, you've cured cancer, and..."

"And with the tools I've got at my disposal, THIS is harder," Max insisted, whirling at him. "Do you know what a viral infection is? It means that..."

"It means," Maria broke in with a sigh. "that little dealies that are hardly more than a bit of DNA wrapped in protein are infesting my body, especially my breathing track, right?? Hard to tell apart from the DNA and protein that belong there, and maybe especially hard to distinguish from any other viruses that have, excuse me dammit, any other viri that have more beneficial effects if any. Also too many to ever deal with one by one, and not really vulnerable to any kind of massive change you can enact in one moment." She let out a long stream of breath. "I, I understand the problems, Max - but it sucks anyway."

"Yeah," Kyle agreed - he, Tess, and his father were all gathered near the door by this point. "So we just have to get over it while we're here?"

"Seems like a plan," Isabel agreed. "Probably better than heading somewhere else and maybe spreading this particular strain of the cold, not that that's probably a big issue. It wasn't what any of us were expecting for our getaway, but life happens."

"Wait a second, Max," Michael said, suddenly. "Maybe this won't cure anybody immediately, but..." Everybody turned to him, and Michael made a very frustrated face. "Dammit, I don't remember enough from bio class to be quite sure what I'm getting at here. The human immune system. Once it's got a virus' number and can start producing antibodies, it's pretty much all over but the cheering, right? That's the point of vaccines, yeah?"

"I... I'm not sure," Valenti agreed. "Vaccines are most effective if the antibodies are all in place BEFORE someone gets exposed - before a virus is well established in the system. Still, in general it doesn't hurt to have antibodies flooding the system at any point during infection."

"So, you want me to try to get Maria's immune system working smarter against this thing?" Max asked. Several people nodded. "Just how does antibody production work, again? I... I keep trying to remember, but..."

There was no immediate response to that question. "Wouldn't a question like this just have to come up when we're cut off from Google," Tess muttered in a low voice.

"Liz will probably know," Michael pointed out. "Or Alex, when he pops in."

"Okay, guess I'll go in and wake her up," Max said. "Though I'll probably start with the explanations pretty slow, so as not to overwhelm her."

"Makes sense," Kyle agreed.

"One thing, first," Isabel suggested. "Can you - can you test the four of us, Max, and see if we're carrying any of the same virus in noticeable quantities?" He turned to look at her. "Just curious mostly... that can happen right, even though we may not show symptoms we could be carriers and infecting other people, right??"

"I guess." Sighing, Max closed his eyes and concentrated for a long moment, and then went over to touch his sister on the shoulder and connect to her. It was nearly ten minutes before all of this was accomplished. "I... I'm not quite sure what to think," he said. "We - we all do have the virus on our skin and in our airway, in very small quantities. Not sure how much it would take to 'pass it on.'"

"Okay, well, it was an idea," Isabel said, disappointed. "Go talk to Liz." She sighed. "I'll help get some breakfast ready. You need food to fight off infection."

"Isn't it starve a cold, feed a fever?" Kyle asked. And then he blanched slightly. "No, never mind, I don't know what I'm talking about."

"Actually, from what I remember, the rule is, if you think you can keep anything down, you eat when you're sick," Tess said. "Anybody think that'd be a problem?"

"Not really," Jim muttered, and the two kids nodded. "My stomach seems to be doing alright so far."

And they tromped out of the boys' room.

----------

"Boy, of all the times to have trouble remembering this stuff, yeah," Liz agreed, later in the middle of breakfast. She had said that she felt 'okay, I think', when Max asked her, but couldn't be certain whether the cold might just be taking longer to develop in her, and Max also reported that she had higher counts of the virus than any of the born hybrids did, and seemed to have some cells that were getting infected, though they weren't mostly cells directly in the breathing tract like with everybody else. "I, umm, I know that it's the B cells of the immune system that create the antibodies, they have to catch and swallow a virus first, or something like that, and then they can break down its antigens and customize antibodies to attack it."

"Alright," Max agreed, taking a bite out of an english muffin smeared with margarine and tabasco. "So help B cells eat viri. I think I may be able to arrange that. What else?"

"Umm... there's the killer T cells," Liz said slowly.

"They can take viri on directly?" Michael said hopefully.

"Not quite." Liz made a face. "If a cell in the body has been infected and is generating more of the virus - then the killer Ts destroy that cell, since it's probably past saving anyway." Michael scowled and shook his head, not seeming to like the idea of anybody destroying Maria's cells. "Yeah, I know, but it's important."

"And then there are the helper Ts," Isabel put in. "Those are the ones that HIV targets, right? What do they do?"

"Help?" Maria suggested.

"I'm not sure... I think maybe, actually, they co-ordinate," Liz said doubtfully. "Telling the Bs and killer Ts when they have to step up and do their job. Can't think of anything else. When's Alex due in, Isabel?"

"Umm... maybe not for a few hours, I'm not sure," she admitted. "He was out all day yesterday, pretty much, and... and I drifted off to sleep without agreeing on a schedule with him."

"Okay, well, I can try fine-tuning somebody's immune system based on what I know so far... it might not do much good, but I'm really sure I won't do anything to make things worse," Max volunteered. "Anyone up for it??"

There was a long, somewhat awkward moment. Then Kyle sneezed a very loud sneeze into his scrambled eggs and raised his hand. "Yeah, okay, I'm desperate, I'll try anything," he admitted. "As soon as we're done eating, okay?"

"Sure," Max agreed.

So they finished eating, and Max and Kyle went into Kyle's room so that Kyle could lie down while Max tried to do his work. Maria went back to bed as well, with Michael promising to check in on her and get her anything that she needed, and Mister Valenti and Tess started tackling the breakfast dishes.

"Hey, Isabel," Liz said. "How about the two of us head down into the village? There's a country drug store and soda shop on the main street, and we can probably find some useful stuff to relieve symptoms at least."

Isabel looked out the window at the sunshine and the pretty day. "Alright, fine, umm, but I'd probably better get a shower and a change of clothes."

"Oh, right." Liz blushed slightly. There had been other things to worry about that morning than the usual grooming niceties. "Sure, and me too. No big hurry."

It was over an hour when the two girls finally did leave the cabin and head over to where the Jetta was parked. The weather was a bit cooler than it had been the day before, and Isabel had dressed in jeans and a snug sweater, while Liz had put on a long skirt and an open black jacket over a white blouse. "Oh, hey, nice earrings," Isabel said as they got into the car. "Are they new??"

"These?" Liz reached up to not-quite-touch the gold and sparkly-blue jewels. "Not really, well - Max bought them for me nearly two weeks ago. And I wear them like all the time, since." She giggled softly. "You haven't noticed them before this?"

"Hmm... maybe it's because you've got your hair in a ponytail today and I can actually *see* your ears," Isabel pointed out with a smile and a soft chuckle of her own. Keys. Ignition. Off down the road they went.

"Yeah." Liz sighed. "Ever since you did yours for your graduation, actually, I've been wanting to do something different with my own hair, actually, but I'm not sure what. Max really likes it long..."

"Yeah, all guys do I think," Isabel agreed. "Of course, they don't really have any experience with how much of a pain really long hair can be."

"Especially for someone who can't wave a hand and make it do - well, *almost* anything she wants," Liz chimed in. Isabel felt her skin grow warm at the friendly teasing, but it was a pleasant sensation somehow. "Hmm... maybe a color change? Do you think I could pull off the redhead look??"

"Like, how red??" Isabel asked, trying to picture the results.

"Umm, I'm not sure," Liz admitted. "Maybe around the same shade as Alisha Morris??" Isabel frowned as she tried to match a face to the name - she'd hoped that she'd never have to worry about the girls with whom she'd walked the halls of West Roswell High again - with a few notable exceptions.

"Hmm... yeah, actually, that might be pretty good on you," Isabel admitted. "Do you suppose that there's a color products aisle in this country drug store?"

"Probably not a whole aisle, just a single nine-foot-long display section," Liz said, sighing. "But maybe there'll be something decent - if you don't want to try doing it entirely with your powers."

"Nah, that doesn't work. We've learned that the hard way... though maybe you were in Florida at the time."

"Oh, another tale of Maria's hair from last summer?" Liz giggled. "You have to tell me all about it."

Isabel hesitated only a second. "Well, I guess it started after one hot day at the public pool down on Emerson street..."

The story took a long time to tell, and had to get interrupted when the girls arrived in town, found the drug store, and started to shop. There were stay-awake cold medications, easy-sleep medicine variants, and cough suppressant pills, (which Isabel wasn't sure of, since nobody affected seemed to be coughing so much as sneezing, but Liz convinced her that a coughing stage could come later, and it was better to be prepared,) as well as other things. Isabel also found a tube of 'Dark Auburn-Red' hair cream which she said was just the thing for Liz's new look, and grabbed some chocolate caramels to put tabasco sauce on later.

"So, umm, what now?" she asked as they left the store with their new purchases, having weathered a few not-just-friendly comments from twentyish guys at the soda counter. "Do we head right back at this point??"

"I dunno," Liz muttered. "Maybe something to help Max out with that immune system stuff - only I can't think what. If they have a little independent bookstore here, it's still not very likely to have a book about how the human immune system works that's technical enough to be of any help, but not TOO technical for any of us to understand it."

"Hmm." Isabel considered. "On the other hand, even a place this small just might have an establishment that will put us in touch with much more of the human fund of knowledge than even the biggest bookstore in Albuquerque."

Liz shot her a look. "And just what might that be?"

"An internet cafe."

"Right."

As Isabel drove slowly further up the main street, Liz was the one who spotted the 'cyber laundromat' which wasn't what either of the girls had expected, but it seemed to work well enough. The rates for renting a compuer station and surfing seemed to be decent, but the dollar-a-page printing fee was absolutely exorbitant in Isabel's opinion - and they'd NEED printed pages to bring info back to Max, since nobody had packed a laptop computer or the like. So, hating herself, Isabel tried to flirt a better price out of the grungy parnter/manager, (who was a man of his late twenties, as far as she could guess, with a few badly done tattoos, long hair braided almost to his waist, and an absolutely ridiculous mustache.) She had managed to get down to forty cents a page and had been hopeful to get a few cents closer to thirty-five when Alex suddenly popped in, and the expression on his face when he realized that he was seeing Isabel submitting herself to the comeons of a guy like that just broke her heart enough that she couldn't manage to flirt any more. She went back to Liz, who had found plenty of interesting info, and managed to cram quite a lot onto twenty pages by copying it from the web browser into a word processor, shrinking the margins and reducing the font size. They were charged nine ninety-five for those printouts, and nobody made a big deal about the price. Liz also managed to check on her email, but there wasn't much there, because most of the people who might be sending things to her knew that she was off the net for these six days.

"I, umm, I didn't mean to inhibit you or anything," Alex mentioned as they left for the car once again. "I mean - a guy like that, I should have known that you weren't really interested in him, and it's not up to me if you want to use your feminine charm to try and save a few bucks. I'm not in a very good position to suggest alternative tactics, after all."

*Oh, that's okay, it's more like I inhibited myself,* she assured him. *When you arrived, I saw the situation through your eyes and realized that I didn't really want to do it that much after all. Understand?*

"Yeah, quite a lot, and I love you." She smiled slightly. At that point, Alex remembered to softly ding-a-ling for Liz so that she'd know he was there.

"So, did Isabel tell you about how Maria, Kyle, and Mister Valenti are sick??" Liz asked, once they had left the village.

"Um, no actually. Was that what you were looking stuff up for?"

"Pretty much." And Liz recounted the whole thing for him, finding pleasure in talking to Alex even if she couldn't see him.

"Oh." He sighed. "I - I have an odd idea, though it probably doesn't matter that much even if it's true."

"And what's that?"

"If Maria might have caught this bug, and Max and Michael might have helped pass it along to Kyle and the others... that night that they got my DNA samples?" Liz took in a sharp breath. "I mean, when you think of it, a dead body, can't be that unsanitary, have to be a lot of bugs starting to grow in my, umm. you know..."

"Yeah, I do know what you mean," Liz said, giving a little shudder, "but I don't think that that makes sense. For one thing, out of everything that starts to grow in a dead body - viri or viroids are probably last on the list. They need host cells to be in good working order to infect them and allow them to multiply, after all. I think it'd be slightly bigger beasties that you need to worry about with bodies - things actually capable of munching on the nutrients in decomposing cells. Bacteria, protozoa, amoebas, fungi, even simple worms..."

"For god's sake, enough with the list!" Isabel blurted out, a little louder than she intended. Liz made an 'oops, sorry' face silently. "I mean, I just... didn't want to picture ANY of those things starting to grow in..."

"I totally understand," Liz immediately assured her. "And, on a better note, it's been nearly a week since they went grave robbing, huh?"

"Only five days I think," Alex said.

"Really? I thought it was six." Liz hesitated. "Well, five days isn't completely impossible as a length of time for a viral infection to develop to the point of showing symptoms, but it also doesn't seem too likely. Probably something that they just caught from other people back in Roswell."

"Fair enough," Isabel said. "Well, we're nearly there. Let's see if anybody appreciates some pills."

----------

The rest of the day seemed to pass fairly slowly. The pills, and the info about immune system stuff, were both taken gladly, and Alex was able to contribute a few points that Liz hadn't remembered and that weren't completely clear from her web research. Max seemed quite certain that the infections were clearing in all three of his patients, but neither Maria nor Kyle admitted that they were feeling any better by dinner time. Liz was also starting to complain a little bit by mid-afternoon, not of sneezes or a runny nose, (or even coughing,) but a headache, feeling hot, and general aches all over. Max tried the immune system booster on her around five o'clock.

"Maybe you'll feel better after getting a good night's sleep," Tess said softly as she passed a bowl of instant mashed potatoes across the dining table. "I actually feel as if I'd like to go hiking, as long as somebody's better enough to come along with."

"I've slept all day and it doesn't seem to help," Kyle grumped, his sickness apparently giving him full immunity to the somewhat plaintive looks that Tess was sending in his direction. "Not sure if I'll be able to get to dreamland tonight."

"Well, you can lie down, and take the nyquil if you think it'll help," his father answered. "I realize that you might not feel like sleeping today helped any, but sickness can be like that. It can be hard to tell that the tide of battle is turning until it goes."

"Why does everybody talk about sickness like it's a war?" Maria asked. "It doesn't make me feel any better to think of my body as a battle ground."

"Well - kind of because it is, Mar," Liz said softly. "When you really get down to it. We can try and dance around the subject if that makes you much more comfortable, but... really, our bodies are fighting to keep us alive and safe in a hundred little ways every moment, though not quite as literally as in the case of an infection or infestation. But..."

"Oh, just shut up about me being sick and pass the chicken," Maria said, and that pretty much set the tone for the rest of the meal.

Nobody wanted to make a big fancy dessert, so Isabel suggested Max get the candies that she'd gotten in the village, and had forgotten about when Alex returned. He came back to the table carrying the box of chocolate caramels - and another box as well - the hair color cream. "Somebody thinking of making a change??"

"Uh-oh," Isabel breathed softly.

"Um, yeah, I didn't mean to bring the subject up in front of everybody like this," Liz said, as Max opened up the chocolate box and put it in the middle of the table. "But yeah - I was wondering about trying to get a red tone, and Isabel suggested that I get the cream just in case, while we were there."

"Hmm," Michael said, grabbing a candy, taking the tabasco bottle to sprinkle some hot sauce on the sweet treat, and sitting back to see if there'd be any fireworks.

"Okay. Were... were you going to ask my opinion, or just do it as a surprise and see what I thought?" Max asked in a low tone. "I mean - I know that it's your hair and your final decision, but I did think that we were at that point where we'd talk to each other about stuff like this."

"Of - of course I was going to ask you what you thought, Max," Liz insisted. "If not, I'd probably have done it already. You've been busy all afternoon, and - well, there wasn't really a great time to bring it up..."

"Wait a second," Kyle broke in. "Why do you need to have cream anyway? Can't Isabel or one of the other aliens just wave presto-changeo and change the hair color magically?"

"For the last time, our powers are not magic, Valenti," Michael muttered angrily. "We can't just do anything that we want, whenever we like. We can change things in particular ways, but..."

"And this is a good example," Isabel put in. "We can't create dye molecules out of nothing, and if we try to create them out of the molecules that are already present in hair, we might affect the texture and quality of that person's do. Or create a shade that's perfect at first, but changes in an unfortunate way after being exposed to shampoo and fresh air." Both of those situations had come up when she'd been trying to work with Maria's hair the last summer. "On the other hand, if there are dyes onhand that have been tested and designed to do their job well, then our powers can help make sure that they bind to the hair surface evenly and well..."

"Okay, okay, I get the stupid idea," Kyle grumped, still irritable. "You don't have to go on and on about it."

"So, umm, what do you think Max?" Liz said with a shy smile.

"Hmm..." Max scrutinized the tube of cream, still in his hands, and squinted as if trying to picture that shade on his Lizzy-wizzy. "Well, at least you did go for something pretty dark - that's good at least." He smiled at her. "Sure, we'll give it a try tonight, huh?"

"Um, okay... wait a second." Liz shook her head. "What do you mean, WE?"

"Umm, not that I was planning to use the dye myself," Max blurted out, chuckling nervously. "But I thought that maybe I could help you out with it."

"Umm, I think that I'd like that," Liz said, beaming faintly. "But, umm, but probably not tonight. I think..."

"For hair color, better to put it on in the morning," Maria said with the voice of experience. "More time for it to set before she has to lay down on it. I guess that you guys might be able to speed that up too, but..."

"No, I'm okay with that," Max said. "First thing tomorrow - or after breakfast??"

"And remember, Maxwell," Michael put in with far too big a grin. "If you guys mess around right after, Liz is on top." Max shot him an unimpressed look, then managed a chuckle.

"Maybe I should do something new with MY hair, too," Tess declared, rumpling her mane disaffectedly. Just about everyone at the table turned to look at her. "Umm, not that I'm trying to copy you or anything, Liz..."

"Should hope not," Maria muttered, mostly under her breath.

"Umm, but I've already been thinking that I want to make a change, and this is one that makes sense." She stood up from the table and stalked over to the balcony door, staring at herself in the glass reflection. "These blonde curly-curls were always about trying to look like someone I never felt - as cute, innocent, and teenybopper a look as I could possibly manage to come up with."

"Is the blonde your natural color, Tess?" Max asked curiously.

"Actually yeah, but it never FELT natural," she admitted. "Which doesn't necessarily mean that I'll feel better to cover them up with a darker color I know."

"Maybe just go straight and leave it at that," Kyle suggested earnestly. "I know that you've done that from time to time since coming to Roswell, but it looks good and not excessively cutesy." Isabel tried not to turn and stare at Kyle - she was wondering just how much it mattered to him what Tess looked like at this point.

Tess herself *did* make eye contact, which was only polite since Kyle had been speaking to her, and the corners of her face turned up in something like a quarter-smile. "Hmm... maybe. Or cut it shorter... that seems a slightly appropriate look for a penitent, hmm?"

"Is that how you see yourself now, Tess?" Jim asked, and she shrugged.

"Just how short?" Isabel asked.

"Um... nothing too radical, I admit," Tess said, blushing slightly. "Self-sacrifice in principle is one thing, but I guess I don't have the guts to take it too far. Maybe, umm, a bit layered like yours but an inch or an inch and a half shorter overall, with the longest getting to, umm..." She frowned into the mirror and set her hand flat about halfway down her neck, midway beteen chin and collar.

"Could work, though I agree that it might not come off as a very, umm... what's the word I'm looking for?"

"Dunno," Max told her. "What's it like?"

Liz pushed him away playfully. "It's not a very shamefaced look, I guess... but then, walking around letting the whole town know that you have something you're ashamed of isn't a great idea for any of us, I admit." She sighed. "Bottom line, do whatever you want. It's your hair, and though the rest of us may be looking over your shoulder when it comes to really important decisions, I don't think the 'do is important in the same way." Maria and Michael laughed at that.

So dessert was finished, and Maria, Liz, and Jim all went early to bed not long after. Tess went outside for some fresh air, and Isabel managed to grab Kyle before he changed for the night and suggest softly that he might want to go outside and talk to her. Max, Michael, and Alex waited with Isabel in the living room for a while after that, having quickly given up on pretending that they were just chatting and not wondering what the two of them might be discussing.

"You *could* go out there, Alex," Michael muttered. "Just for a moment, see what you can hear, and report back. Neither of them would know."

"Ehh, I'm not so sure about that," Alex muttered. "Tess might be getting attuned enough to me to sense me, even without Isabel around."

Isabel gasped. "Do you really think so?"

"Um, not really that it's very likely, no," he admitted. "Just wanted to see what you guys thought of the idea."

"Hmph," Max muttered about the idea. "Seriously, man - go if you want, stay otherwise. I... I admit that my own ethics aren't entirely strong enough to fight off the pull of curiosity."

"Hmm." Alex turned to his girl. "What do you say??"

Isabel was torn for a second. She didn't care that much what Tess was discussing with Kyle, and did want in principle to respect the other girl's privacy when there wasn't an important need to break it. But another kind of curious impulse had hit her, a strong desire to see just how good Alex was at this sort of thing, at invisibly spying in places where she couldn't go and reporting back to her. Even in the investigation into his own death, they hadn't had an opportunity for this sort of thing, really, and it might be important. For whatever she might have to do to bring him back.

"Go and good luck," she whispered, and sent a small burst of love and affection over the same mental link that she sometimes used to talk to him silently. He grinned and headed off, walking through the threshold where the effect of the alien crystals ended, so that neither Max nor Michael would be able to see him. Isabel moved into that L-shaped part of the living room as he walked away, wanting to make sure that Tess and Kyle would be within Alex's seventy-foot limit. When she looked up, Max was staring at her and had that look on his face when he was trying with overall success to supress an all-out grin. "What?" she asked.

"You just can't wait to try him out, huh?" Michael put in before Max could reply. Isabel started up a good glare. (It took her longer than it used to to get from zero to glare.) "Kind of like a toy I mean... you wind your Alex up and off he goes..."

"Ignore him," Max said. "But, well - I'm never sure what's going to happen to us next, but having a friendly ghost watching out for us all just might help. I mean, if he was around..." Max trailed off, maybe because he wasn't sure what example to use.

Isabel had been mentally reviewing some of the danger that they'd come through herself, and gasped as a sudden possibiity hit her. Alex's soul had been contained in her mind because her alien powers could support it - or at least, that's how she understood what had happened. Good enough as far as it went.

But there were things that could interfere with their alien powers. Special Agent Pierce had injected Max with something to take his powers away when he was in the White Room, something that interfered with his brain chemistry just a little. Max and Tess had both lost their powers in the UFO Center when Brody got his own brains scrambled slightly and triggered the Skin pentagon device. And at Christmas, Max had been getting haunted by a ghost of his own - a less friendly haunting, a man who he could have saved, maybe, but had been too scared to try. That ghost hadn't gone away until Max broke into a Phoenix hospital and saved a bunch of little kids from cancer - and strained his powers really badly in the process, so that he couldn't use them at all for a day.

Was it possible that if anything that serious happened to Isabel's own powers, she'd lose her link to Alex and not be able to get it back??

"Izzie?" Michael said. "You're looking really pale - what went wrong??"

"Umm, nothing yet," she said, truthfully enough. "I... I'll tell you later. Sweetie?"

She had heard the footsteps before seeing Alex, and hadn't been sure for a moment if a ghost would even MAKE footsteps, but Alex did always seem to make the appropriate noises that anyone alive would - to her. Then he rushed into view, smiling and breathing hard with exertion. "Came back once I realized that they'd be heading inside in a minute or so. Not much time to tell you..."

Isabel suddenly wondered if she should wave him over to the crystal cuboid or not. Michael and Max had been the ones who had been most interested in what Alex might overhear - but if Kyle and Tess were going to be re-entering the cabin soon, then she didn't want to risk either of them figuring out what had happened - or not right away at least. Telling Max and Michael the dirt, if any dirt there was, could wait for another time.

So she just smiled and nodded, wondering if Alex would take that as a hint to start talking. "Well, they didn't kiss while I was watching," he disclaimed, "but were talking about some very emotional stuff. I wouldn't be surprised if they hook back up in two weeks or so... not that you can tell that much from my intuition about relationships..."

Hmm. *That seems an oddly specific guess from a guy without that much intuition about relationships. We'll see.*

"Oh, I HAVE intuition," Alex clarified to her. "It's just not that accurate." She had to partially stifle her giggle about that, because Tess was heading through the cabin towards the living room herself.

"So, Kyle decided he was going to try bed now. What are the five of us gonna do?" Tess looked around the room. "We *are* five, right Alex?"

"Hmm? Oh, yeah." Alex mugged for Tess and the guys, pokiing first an arm and then his head into the space where he was visible. Isabel wished that she could see what they did, that once, because seeing all of him wasn't that funny. "Since it's a more manageable number tonight, how about stud poker?"

"Sounds good to me," Michael agreed.

"Hmm, but what should we play for?" Isabel asked. "Playing for matches, or for chocolates if there's any left, is going to get boring."

"Well, we could make it strip poker," Michael put in, as if he couldn't wait to say it. This time, Isabel managed to get a scorching glare going in less than two seconds.

"No, come on," Max pointed out reasonably. "Maria and Liz *would* find out... and do you really want to find out what Maria would do when she found out you were playing strip poker when she couldn't even be there for it?"

"Ehh, good point," Michael allowed grumpily. "Consequences, then. You lose so many chips, you have to answer an embarassing question, or do something stupid..."

"No truths, and no dares, not even in poker," Isabel pointed out. "Especially without the entire gang being around to share in the humiliation." Tess smirked a bit. "Maybe we should just play some other kind of cards, for the fun of playing, instead of worrying about making poker work."

"Well, there aren't that many other games that work with five," Michael said. "Hearts maybe."

"I could sit out and watch you guys play euchre," Alex suggested, but Isabel shook her head.

"You have to sit out and watch too much. Here in this room you can participate, and you're GOING to."

"Let's make it simple," Max suggested, starting to shuffle the cards overhand. "Oh hell. It's fun for a group, and I haven't played it in a while."

"What's that?" Tess asked, and Isabel was about to say 'Not that silly old game' herself. But she caught a light sparkling in Alex's eyes.

"Oh hell - why didn't I think of that??"

"What the hell is it?" Tess joked. "Michael, do you know??"

"Yeah, I played it with the Evanses a few times when they had me over for dinner," Michael said, sighing but not seeming too upset. "Trick taking, like euchre or hearts, except the point is not so much to take tricks - or to not take points, like in Hearts - but to get exactly as many tricks as you predicted."

"Hmm." Tess considered that. "Okay, let's give it a try." Max looked at Isabel as if expecting her to object, but above all else she couldn't go against Alex's eager anticipation. The five of them sat around the table, and a dealer was quickly picked. Isabel handed around bidding aids, and Max explained some of the basics.

"Okay, deal one out to each player, this first time, and turn the next card up for trumps. Now, each player has to guess whether they'll win the trick - in which case they bid one, or bid nothing. Isabel, we're using however many matches to signal a number bid or a chocolate for the big zippo?" She nodded.

"Just one trick in the hand?" Michael asked.

"It goes up by one each time, then a no-trump hand, and back down if we keep playing," Alex explained. "So, for winning a trick you get one point, and for making your prediction, ten?"

"Yeah, unless you bid zero, in which case it might be less than ten, depending on how many cards were dealt," Isabel repeated without that much enthusiasm. "Oh, um, I bid zero I guess." She put out a chocolate caramel prominently in front of her place.

"And the dealer has to bid so that the contracts don't add up," Max added. "Sorry, that's you this time Michael - since Tess bid one, you can't go zero - you'll have to fight her for it." They tossed out cards, and Tess was surprised to find her ten of trumps beaten by Michael's queen.

"And now it's my turn, to deal for two," Max said, gathering up the cards.

They played all the way up to ten-card hands and back down to two, and Max ended up winning, with Alex lagging about thirty points behind him. Isabel started paying more attention to her dead boyfriend's play by the end than her own. He was still unquestionably brilliant, at his finest moments, but there were times when his judgements seemed a little bit off too. Or was that just in her imagination??

And then she'd need to stop concentrating on Alex so intently, because she'd get a mental flash of what his cards were, which was an unfair interference in the game, even if unintentional.

------------

Isabel had a big dream of Alex in the middle of that night - the two of them dressed in fabulous clothes, flying hither and yon to glamorous cities... and trying to stop Nicholas from assembling a blizzard machine that could bring the whole world to its knees. When she finally woke up and actually felt ready to rise, her watch said that it was after eleven in the morning.

There was no sign of anyone else in the cabin - not in any of the bedrooms, the two bathrooms, the kitchen or the living room. Finally Isabel poked her head out the back door, and heard familiar voices. She followed the sound to a hot tub around the corner of the building, that she'd vaguely noticed a couple times already.

"Well, isn't this cozy?" she couldn't help but ask. The heater and the bubble jets were evidently working well and going at full blast, and the tub itself was quite full, with Michael, Maria, Tess, and Kyle inside. The girls were definitely wearing swimsuits, or at least tops - Isabel sort of hoped that everybody was wearing some sort of bottoms, but couldn't be sure through all the foam. "And where's everybody else?"

"Max, Liz, and Dad went to the next town over to pick something up, or so they said," Kyle told them, sighing slightly. "As for Whitman, you're his keeper right now, huh?"

"Yeah," Isabel said, without commenting on Alex any more.

"We thought that the hot water might be good for those of us still fighting off our viruses," Maria explained, and she did seem to still be a little congested from her voice. "And - well, Michael and Tess just wanted to come in and keep us company."

"Right," Isabel agreed. Suddenly it occured to her that she had forgotten to find out from Alex exaclty what he had observed the night before, with Tess and Kyle out around here in the moonlight. So she opted for the direct approach. "What's the deal with the two of you now, anyway? Tess, Kyle??"

Neither of them seemed very happy with being put on the spot, as Isabel could well imagine. "Umm, well, I've pretty much told Kyle that I do like him - and apologized a lot for how I treated him with - well, with everything," Tess volunteered. She shot a look over at Kyle. "And, umm, and he said that he likes me, but... but he isn't sure whether we should start anything just yet."

"Hmm." Isabel looked directly at Kyle, who caught her gaze, made a little shrug, and then half a nod. "But somehow I don't see you complaining that she put on a bikini for your viewing pleasure, Valenti."

Kyle made as game a grin as he could. "What can I say? The girl knows how to work it - always has, for as long as any of us have really known her." Yes, Isabel had to admit that, remembering Tess' self-introduction in the West Roswell High courtyard. '...Guys who say they understand you and really just want to be your friend, but all they really want is 15 minutes alone with you in the janitor's closet.' "I can appreciate that," Kyle continued, "but it doesn't blind my rational brain... quite."

"Hmm," Isabel muttered. Something told her that if Tess really wanted to use sex appeal to manipulate Kyle, he'd be unlikely to either see it coming or resist her charms. But then, one of the rest of them probably WOULD see what was going on and Tess was probably more concerned about not upsetting the original group of six, (who could still take it upon themselves to revoke her current 'parole' status,) than with hooking Kyle. Besides, it didn't really take that much subtlety. So she was playing it obvious, flirting and showing off a little, and hoping that Kyle would forgive and move on without undue interference. That was good.

"Hmm, well, nice to see you guys, and five definitely seems to be a crowd around here," Isabel put in. "See you back inside for lunch at some point?"

"Umm, sure," Michael agreed. "I don't think that any of us were really wanting to stay in too much longer anyway." He sighed and stretched a little. "You should try it later."

"Hmm, maybe," Isabel admitted, wondering if a ghost boy could displace water. Also, Max and Liz would probably want to join in the hot-tubbing fun, and unless they were playing things very strictly PG, Isabel didn't think she wanted to be around at the time. "Well, until lunch. I feel a strong urge to be productive and helpful, actually. Any requests??"

"Oooh," Maria sighed nasally. "We've got meat in the fridge that wants cooking up, and fresh tomatoes and other veggies, and dry noodles. How about a spaghetti sauce kind of deall?"

"Um, wow." Isabel blinked. "Have to admit, I was thinking of something a bit more along the lines of grilled cheese sandwiches." Kyle chuckled a bit too loudly. "Quiet, you."

"It's okay, Isabel," Michael said reassuringly. "If you get things started, everybody will help. First things first, toss the lean hamburger into the biggest skillet that we've got, grill it over a medium-low flame stirring and turning constantly, until it's all a grayish-brown color instead of red or pink. Then, drain off some of the fat, leaving the clear juice."

"Umm, okay," Isabel said. "What if I get that far and none of you are in yet?"

"Start a-chopping," Maria said with a smile. "Tomatoes, to start with."

"What parts do I throw in with the meat and what parts do I throw away??"

It was a while before Isabel was feeling certain of her instructions, even though the fact that she could always come back out for future clarification was hard to deny. Just about the point where she started 'browning' the meat, Alex popped back in, and so she told him about the hot tub stuff, (despite having witnessed no true hot tub hijinks,) and he started telling her about the Kyle/Tess scene from the night before...

TO BE CONTINUED!

[Chrisken]

Part Twenty

Alex had to force himself not to tip-toe, or at least he did force himself, because he felt that it was ridiculous to be acting so worried about somebody hearing him when he wasn't there and couldn't make a sound unless he exerted himself. Through the back door of the cabin, and he was actually closer to the two of them than he'd expected. "--ink about you," Tess was saying. "All of the time, lately."

"That - well, it's a little hard for me to believe."

"It's the truth!" Tess seemed surprisingly indignant at his doubt.

"That's as may be," Kyle admitted. "My difficulty isn't so much about what's true in the hear and now, I'll admit that much."

"Oh." Tess sighed as she caught on. "It's about the past??"

"Yeah," he admitted. "Because I've seen how good you are at making people think that you're feeling - what you want them to feel."

"It wasn't really acting - not, not so much of it as you'd think, anyway," Tess said, reaching out for Kyle's arm, but stopping herself before she actually took it. "I... I guess I learned to compartmentalize pretty well when I was with Ed. When - when I fell in love with you, and was struck by wonder at my first christmas, and worked side by side with the others as friends and partners - that was all real. The - the fact that I was playing a deeper game, and convinced that I had to be with Max, and trying to keep Alex 'under control' - it was all on a deeper level, and it doesn't make the stuff I want to hold onto now any less true."

"Okay. Any more than the reverse," Kyle said, and Tess cried out softly. "Just facing the facts. That other stuff you did - it's real too."

"But I've knocked down all the compartments," Tess admitted. "I..."

"That you have not," Kyle said, even more sharply. "I... I'm sorry, but it's just - I know that you *can't* do that. Because you still need to keep your secret from anyone who's not in on it, so that's two compartments at least. You can let me, let all of us in the club see both, but you've got to keep up that ability."

"Well, I guess so, yeah," Tess admitted. "And as long as I do, will you always be wondering if I have something that I'm hiding from you?"

"Maybe not," Kyle said. "Not if we can manage to build a new foundation for trust. You've been doing okay at that so far. You learn to trust somebody by their actions, not their thoughts, and you've been acting straight-up to all of us for a while now." He sighed.

"And - and where do we go from here?" Tess asked.

"Stop talking in song titles," he grumbled, in a friendly, teasing way. "Umm... well, we stay friends, we hang out, try to keep putting whatever has happened in the past behind us. And... and once we're back in Roswell, maybe I'll give you a signal or something." He sighed. "I... I can't promise anything, but... but it's really hard to say no, with how pretty you look tonight."

"Hmm..." Tess smiled at him. "Can I kiss you, then?"

"Errgh," Kyle grunted. "Probably... umm, better not. You know, as much as there's a part of me that wants to... I won't be able to stay as strong after we..."

"Okay, I understand," Tess said. But she did reach out and brush Kyle's thumb and wrist with her fingers, and he got an odd look on his face as if he saw something in that moment, or felt something more than the brief contact. Alex recognized the signs that the meeting was breaking up and high-tailed it back into the cabin at that point.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Alex was very helpful with the sauce - he couldn't do much fine detail work directly, but the basics of cooking were no secret to him and he was able to give Isabel good advice and instructions. Quite soon, a bunch of swimsuit-clad friends were invading the kitchen and finding things that needed doing - rounding up a little thick tomato juice to add to the base of the dish, chopping up other kinds of vegetables to add to it, or adding in spices and seasonings. "Do we just throw everything in, umm, chopped up like that?" Isabel asked uncertainly. "Shouldn't some of it be, err, blended or something?" She was a little disconcerted and distracted by Michael and Kyle still being bare-chested - she wasn't interested in either of them in a romantic and personal way, but that didn't make them any less buffed.

"Actually, that'd be a good idea if we didn't have alien powers to draw on," Michael admitted. "Or like six hours to let the sauce cook and have most of the chopped chunks disintegrate on their own. But - well, this was a trick that I learned early. When the sauce is nearly ready to serve, you can wave your hand over it, puree some of the big lumps of veggies, without affecting the meat. But you have to be *good*." Isabel and Tess both rolled their eyes.

"Okay, so is there anything else we need to worry about for the next half hour or so, besides checking the sauce now and then to make sure it's not sticking at the bottom or anything?" Maria asked.

Michael looked at the clock. "No, I guess not. We can do something fancy with garlicky cheesy bread or something once the pasta is in, but there's no point in worrying about that now.

"Okay, then I'm going to get dressed again." Michael groaned slightly in disappointment, and Kyle joined him more than half mockingly. Maria was wearing a fairly racy blue tank suit that set off her figure and her richly tanned skin quite well. Isabel wondered if she had brought it up expecting to actually go swimming in the stream, or if she had anticipated the jacuzzi sessions. "Sorry, no arguments. And then maybe we can put the stereo on or something."

"Alright," Isabel said. "Hey, Maria, your voice sounds better - like you're not stuffed up any more."

"It does?" she said, sounding surprised. "Hey, whatdya know, I think it is easier to breathe through the ol' sniffer. That's cool."

"Any chance you need some help drying yourself off, after taking that suit off?" Michael asked, following Maria out of the kitchen. Somewhat to Isabel's surprise, she didn't immediately make a sharp remark or shoo him back out of the hallway. When she turned back to the others, Kyle raised one eyebrow like Mister Spock.

"Hmm... maybe I should cover up too," Tess said, striking a bit of a pose to emphasize how much skin her pink bikini showed off. Isabel made an uh-huh noise of agreement, which Kyle groaned in response to.

Before Michael and Maria emerged, more fully dressed, Max, Liz, and Mister Valenti had all come back from their trip, along with their retrieved prize - a barbecue that had seen a few better days, borrowed for a special dinner that night and lunch tomorrow - which would be their last full day up here at the cabin. Max jumped in surprise when he got his first look at Tess - her 'cover-up' was more than a little bit see-through, but Liz laughed and made a big show out of rolling her eyes. As the pasta was cooking, (plenty of it, so that there would be enough of lunch to feed nine,) Tess and Kyle told Max and Liz how much fun the hot tub had been, and Isabel could swear that she saw little gears turning in her brother's head.

The rest of that day, and indeed, the rest of the entire mountain trip, seemed to go by at triple speed to Isabel. There was a hike through the hilly trails that afternoon, which was fun in a relatively exhausting way, and Max, Liz, Isabel, and Alex agreed to share the hot tub afterwards just as a way to relax and soothe some muscles that weren't used to such a demanding trek. (Even Alex mentioned that he seemed to have mortal aches and strains after keeping up with them the whole time.) The water and the bubble jets were indeed helpful, and it was as hard as ever for Isabel to tell that Alex wasn't really in the jacuzzi next to her. He kept trying to sneak a kiss of a fondle of her wet body, which Isabel did her best to fend off - just because Max and Liz were being so considerate about not indulging their own affection, and she knew that it would make them even more uncomfortable if she and ghost Alex started making out right in front of them, where they couldn't even see him.

------------

There were more games and much celebrating and good food, but to Isabel it seemed like the entire trip might almost have been an extended dream, as she rode back on the road that would lead them into Roswell. At least everybody was well over the virus by this point. "Oh, hey... I know that everybody's eager to get back home and everything - but how about stopping into the Pod chamber while we're here," she asked Michael and Maria. They were in the Jetta, and the turning for the rocks would be coming up in a few minutes. (It was weird coming up on that spot from the north - usually without fail they came from town, went to the pod chamber and the granilith, and then went back.)

"Umm, I don't have much of a problem with that," Michael said, shooting a look at Maria, who looked a bit less impressed with the idea. "Do we have a reason for going, or is it just a whim to admire the Granilith and so on?"

Isabel chuckled slightly. "Well, it's about time to check in on our favorite mysterious artifact to make sure that nobody's managed to figure out a way to bust in and steal it, yeah," Isabel admitted. She did like to check in on the pod chamber every week or so, since she'd realized just how important the granilith was, and having been so far away from Roswell for the interval made her even more antsy about that. "But it's more. Before we left, we worked out a way to leave the Orbs in the chamber, so that it would receive any interstellar communique that anybody tried to beam at us and leave it on a sort of answering machine link. And Kaalto colony was going to take our message to Larek and invite him to reply to us. I... I'm curious to see if there's been anything coming in while we were gone."

Michael shot one more look to Maria, as the turnoff was approaching, and she shrugged. So he pulled off of the main highway, and they drove along the rougher desert track to the usual place to park and climb up the rock. Isabel was wondering if Kyle would take the turn too, since he'd been behind them, but there was no sign of anybody else. Isabel excitedly worked the door control, hurried into the pod room, and gasped softly when she realized that there was indeed a little spot illuminating the ground just next to where they'd left the orbs - that was the signal for a single received message.

"Okay, umm, so, do we do this just like we were transmitting?" Michael asked, stepping up to take one of the orbs.

"Yeah, umm, I think so," Isabel agreed, though there was a puzzled look on her face. What was this reminding her of? Oh - the original vision that they'd all had of the alien queen. Was it possible that that was a tape that had been stored in the pod chamber's 'answering machine' for fifty years?? But - but then why had it led the Skins to them? (Well, there was no real reason to build a system for that message that would transmit a signal anywhere - it was just beyond any of their understanding.) "Be - be attentive - we might not be able to replay this thing, once it's been shown."

"Alright." Michael took a deep breath. "I wonder if Larek will show up looking like Brody, because we already know him like that?"

"Hard to say," Isabel admitted. But when they activated the orbs, the picture that appeared before them definitely did not resemble Brody - in fact, unless there was something that she was missing about him or about the transmitter's image conversion routines, it probably wasn't Larek. At first, they saw a girl of about their own age, with deeply tanned skin and strawberry blonde hair, wearing a fairly thin top of an unfamiliar design and cutoff shorts. She smiled straight at them.

"Hello - Max, Isabel?? Is this thing on?" Michael chuckled. "Okay, you don't know me, but my name is Karia Ventarras, and I'm the leader of the Seti 3 community. We have some channels of communication with contacts on Kaalto and Garvickle Wean, and so I've heard some of your story secondhand. Basically, we want you to come here, and I'm willing to help you out with your mission to restore somebody to life, in order to recruit you and your friends as new arrivals."

"Let's see... a little background will probably help you understand what's going on," the girl said. All three Roswellians watching her were pretty much stunned speechless by this point. "Seti 3 was a mostly barren world - nitrogen atmosphere with a small amount of carbon dioxide, some simple life forms, mostly in the ocean. And there was a space-ship - a Breeolyn slave barge, on its way back from Earth, around a hundred and seventy years ago. They had a problem with their warpspace drive and managed to accidentally crashland here, which is as unlikely a coincidence as anything I know, but that's what happened - or at least, what the survivors told their children, who became our great-grandparents."

"Most of the slavers and some of the crew were killed in the crash. So were a bunch of the slaves, but not enough that the slavers could still maintain their discipline. The slave survivors used atmosphere suits to explore the place where they'd crashed, and found a kind of abandoned alien base. More and more people travelled over to it, started to repair the systems as well as they could, and eventually dragged the wreck over the land so that everybody could come in."

"The crash, and that base, were the seeds of our community - our world, really. The slaves were of all different races - human, Antarian, Rahlicx, and many others. We've all done pretty well of building a culture that doesn't discriminate based on DNA, and our numbers have grown. A few people immigrate from the Antarian worlds, but not too many - we're concerned about would-be joiners who really just want to get their hands on the ancient tech here on Seti, and that same equipment allows us to effectively keep out anybody who we don't want here. We stay put and don't bother anybody."

"From what we've been able to figure out, Max, you and your friends - the ones who know all about your alien side and are very close to you - maybe you've started to feel like you don't fit in on Earth. And I'm not sure that things would be any easier for you in the Antarian sphere, even if you could be safe from Kivar - with the people who only see the Royal Four, and not the other side of your heritage. Seti 3 is a place built on the mixing of alienated heritages. I think that maybe it's where you all belong."

"Our co-ordinates are at seveny-five T, thirty K, and eleven point five W by the Antarian mapping scheme - I hope that you've learned that, because I don't know any earth stellar cartography system well enough to give you directions that way. If - if you don't reply, I'll try again in about a thirt-night. Thanks for listening to me, and I hope to speak with you soon."

And the image disappeared with that, and Maria rushed over to Michael. "Whoa, what?? This chick just calls up out of the blue and wants you to go to this alien shangri-la place??"

"Nobody's going anywhere, yet," Isabel insisted. She couldn't put what Karia had said out of her mind though - especially not the part about helping in her mission. "Do - do you suppose that she's really as young as she looks, Michael? To be the leader of a world, even one that doesn't have many people on it yet..."

"Hard to tell," Michael admitted. "So far, I don't think we know enough about any of the people we've been speaking to to tell if the communicator has been getting their vital stats more or less right, in human terms." Isabel nodded in reply.

"Oh, man, the co-ordinates!" Isabel said, and quickly dug a pencil and piece of paper out of her jeans pockets to scribble them down. "You guys should be able to use these with the maps from the translated book, right?"

"Yeah, sounds okay," Michael admitted. "I wonder if this Seti place is on the maps, or if they left it out because it's so small and they don't let anybody come without an invite." He sighed. "Max is going to have to know, right away. He'll probably be pissed if he can't replay the message for himself."

"Yeah, well." Isabel sighed. "I'll take the heat for that... it made sense to come here as soon as we could."

"Anything else?" Maria asked. "I do wanna get home and see mom."

"Oh, sure," Isabel said. "Just a quick peep into the G room and then we're good." She peeped. Everything was just like it always was in there. They left the alien complex.

-----------

"Umm, okay, so that's containment grid waffles, Saturn kitty chuck, and... and a double-cream coffee?" Isabel repeated, mentally cursing whoever had designed the Crashdown's latest menu. "Okay, I'll get right on that." She hurried back to the window, slapped the order down for Michael without a word, and picked up a tray with a plate of probe-like sausages, saturn rings, and some-alien-nicknamed grapefruit juice on it.

"I... I feel like I could scream," she muttered two minutes later in the back room.

"Relax, you're doing fine for your first day," Liz assured her, and Isabel jumped slightly - she hadn't actually realized that the girl who gave her the job was back here too. "Well, your first day in about a year and a half." Isabel chuckled dryly at that. "Getting the hang of waiting tables is always a kind of trial by ordeal. You hang in there, and it gets a lot better." Isabel smiled a thanks for the reassurement. "Or it gets a little bit worse and the manager decides that you really aren't cut out for this kind of work."

"Oh, gee, thanks, that takes the pressure *right* off," Isabel said, sarcastically over-enunciating each syllable.

"But you're getting better already," Liz assured her. "It's a busy morning, and we'd be in a lot of trouble without you. Thanks." And with that, Liz led the way back out into the dining room, and Isabel did her best to keep the other girl's words in mind. They kind of helped.

By the time Ancee showed up and Isabel was able to punch out, she felt like she didn't have enough energy to change out of the waitress' uniform. She didn't care if anybody would get upset at her apparently taking a long break, so she just headed over to a table with some familiar faces sitting at it. "Waiting tables is hard! I... I could handle the actualy 'waiting' part, but the part where you have to hurry and rush around was not in the brochure."

Max chuckled very softly at her. "They also serve, who only stand and wait."

Isabel shot him a glare, and then chuckled softly. "Not too out of place, I guess. Is that a quote from somewhere?"

"John Milton, his most famous sonnet," Max explained. "Guess that wasn't on your senior English final, that you passed with flying colours."

"Nope," she admitted. "So, what's going on here??"

"Ehh, not too much," Michael told her. Isabel looked at them and wondered if they'd been trying to talk about the message from Seti without letting people at other tables overhear anything too suspicious. The name had a pun in it, she suddenly realized - at least if she spelled it out the way she thought of it. SETI was the acronym for the Search for Extra- Terrestrial Intelligence project... and now somebody from a planet she called SETI, definitely extra-terrestrial and intelligent, was trying to seek them out there. "Any word from Langley yet?"

"Hmm?" Isabel jumped slightly. "No, but... oh, crap." She'd lost track of time amid all the flurrious activity involved in returning to Roswell, but the Los Angelino shapeshifter could probably show up at just about any time. They hadn't agreed anything specific to do with times of arrival or place of meeting, as Isabel remembered, just that he'd come and call her when he was in town, or let her know somehow. (That was if she could trust what he'd said, but it sounded like a pretty safe bet.) "Well, no, nothing yet. Shouldn't be too long I guess."

"No," Max said, reaching out a hand to her. "Well, it'll be fine. There's nothing that Langley can tell you about, no surprise he can pull out of his hat that'd take you off your guard, you know. Just in case you were feeling a bit nervous."

"Umm, thanks." She sighed. "Except I don't think that he wears a hat. All the pictures I've managed to find of him - no hat, no hair."

Michael snickered slightly. "He can look however he wants, and the guy chooses to be bald? Are we talking Captain Picard here, or..."

"Never mind about that," Max insisted. Isabel wondered if he was reading something in her face that said she didn't really want to answer Michael's question. "How about I offer to buy you some lunch??"

"Uhh - it'd be appreciated," Isabel admitted. She ordered an Amelia Earhart burger, and plenty of alien eggs, (little chicken nuggets,) and before she was half finished Maria joined them, grabbing a quick snack before she went on shift herself.

A little later, Isabel decided that she was going to change and leave, and Max decided to come with her. She looked around in every direction after exiting the cafe, and pulled out her cell phone to stare moodily at the display.

"Still a bit jumpy about the notion of Langley showing up when you least expect him?" Max said.

"Yeah, I can't help it. It'll probably take me a while before I feel comfortable around an alien like that. It never did happen with Nasedo."

"Probably there were good reasons for that," Max pointed out, and Isabel nodded. "Does this mean that you don't want to entertain any notions of going to Seti?"

"Um - I'm not sure," she admitted, caught by surprise at his leveling her the question. "I - I guess that there's some part of me that would like to, and that does seem strange, because I always thought that I'd never be happy leaving Earth, that this planet is my home." She sighed. "But - but there are ways that it hasn't been a very welcoming home, and I do sort of wish that there was somewhere out there that we fit - someplace that wouldn't expect things of us that I'm worried I can't deliver." Max nodded sympathetically. "On the other hand, we don't know much about Seti yet, and so it's way too early to be talking about jumping at their offer. Maybe... maybe there's a good reason that we shouldn't trust them."

"Yeah, I've been wondering about that too," Max admitted. "Especially when it comes to the Granilith - it wouldn't be too much of a guess that we'd arrive with it. The thing is the only potential form of space travel that we have at the moment, after all. Maybe they really want that, and are just inviting us in as a cynical package deal thing." He sighed softly.

"Maybe we should talk to them soon."

"Well, they're not going anywhere," Max pointed out. "In fact, according to the charts, it's going to get easier to reach them throughout the summer - or more convenient at least - not having to wait up so late at night." There was a soft ringing noise. "Alex? Is he just showing up? I - I thought that you were finally on an evenings out schedule with..."

"Yeah, we are," Isabel admitted, though she was starting to find that just as frustrating as waking up to find Alex gone, or dreaming her dreams without him and waking up in the middle of the night to find him gone. When it really came down to it, she wanted Alex near her ALL the time, and the fact that this was impossible mostly just made her want it more. "Then again, I didn't see him since the first twenty minutes or so of my shift. Which possibly accounts for why I was getting so upset as things progressed." She looked up at Alex. "What's the deal? Did you have to blink out again, or were you just sitting inside my mind and watching me that way??"

"Umm, not quite either," he said. "I was with my family."

"WHAT?" Max exclaimed, his voice raised in shock. "But... but I thought that you couldn't be more than... than seventy feet..."

"Yeah, I know we all thought that," Alex admitted. "But aside from those very simple tests that Isabel and Liz did the day after my funeral, none of us have ever gone back to challenge those limits. So - so I tried to 'jump' away from her immediate vicinity, and it worked. I was at my house, and was able to watch my mom and see my dad when he came home for an early lunch." He smiled slightly. "Had to restrain myself from vocalizing, since they definitely wouldn't understand me being able to talk to them without appearing to them. And - and I think that it took a lot out of me to be that far away - I sort of lost consciousness and was probably 'blinked out' for a bit before showing up here. Have you got the time?"

Isabel waited for Max to offer his watch, but he didn't, and shot a look back at her as if he wasn't sure what Alex had been saying. So Isabel asked him about the time thing, since she didn't have a watch on her own wrist today, and repeated Alex's experience. When she was done, she turned back to Alex. "I... I'm very glad that it worked, and that you're okay, but - but you shouldn't take chances like that with yourself. What if - if you'd managed to pull your soul loose from my mind, and couldn't get back to me? I..."

"I, I somehow don't think that I'd EVER be able to do that without realizing it," Alex assured her, stepping close and stretching one arm around her body. "You're stuck with me for a good long time, right??" Isabel made a sniffling sound, surprised that she'd let herself get so upset. "And I only wanted to do it because I thought you'd want to know for sure..."

Right then, Isabel's cell phone rang in her pocket. She picked it up and looked at the name, which wasn't a person's name, but the fanciest hotel in Roswell. "Oh, boy." She didn't need three guesses as to who might be calling her from there. "Hello, Isabel Evans speaking."

"Hi, Isabel, call me Kal."

"Kal, hi. I'm here with a few friends - umm, Main street and third, just about a block north of the Crashdown cafe."

"Right, I've heard a lot about that place. Shall we meet back there?"

"Umm... no, I'd rather not, actually." Kal made a surprised sound. "Another time, maybe. I've seen just about all I want to of the Crashdown for a while, though."

"You'll have to tell me about that," he replied in a friendly tone. "Umm... okay, well, what do you suggest?"

"Do you need to eat?" Isabel asked. Ed Harding had eaten dinner with Tess and Liz that one time, but she couldn't remember whether he'd actually taken much, and she didn't remember him having food any other time.

"Umm... frequently, yes, and soon would be good." Isabel laughed to herself.

"Okay, well, the restaurant downstairs in the hotel is good, and you can place an order and get started while I organize myself. I just had lunch, but I can grab a soda pop and maybe a little snack while we chat." She paused. "From what I remember, it's also a good place to chat without needing to worry about the people at the next table overhearing - especially if you get a booth on the far wall. Natural sound baffling, it works out to."

"Well... that's very helpful, thanks. See you in a bit."

"Okay, bye," Isabel said, hanging up the phone. "Alright, let's see..."

"I - I don't like the idea of you going to meet a guy like that all by yourself, Iz," Max said nervously.

"Do you want to come along with?" Isabel shot back. If he had said yes, she might have considered it, but her eye contact and facial cues were strongly challenging. This was her mission, her idea, and for King Max to be coming along might send a signal to Kal that HE was the man to be worried about.

"Um - no, probably better if I make myself scarce unless he says that he wants to meet me," Max allowed. "Um - see if Michael can come? I'll feel better with him taking care of you."

"And - and you want at least one guy," Isabel interpreted, "so that it doesn't look like an old john or sugar daddy is meeting a sweet young thing for you-know-what... or giving her a fancy meal out as payment for something."

"Or more than one sweet young thing," Alex pointed out. Isabel shot him and unimpressed look, and he had the decency to look flustered.

"Yeah," Max admitted. "That would help. I'd hate for the word to come back to our parents that you were spotted in a hard-to-explain situation like that."

"Okay, all right," Isabel admitted. "Well, along with Michael, do you have a problem with my asking Liz?" Max got a touchy look on his face. "I understand if you feel protective of her - but her brains could really help, figuring out whatever Langley might have to talk to us about. Wouldn't be the first time she could understand something alien better than any of the rest of us, and saved our butts thusly."

"Yeah, I guess that that much is true."

"And I want to see how Langley interacts with someone more human than we are - see if he patronizes and talks down to her, or accepts her. He's going to HAVE to work with Liz and Maria I think, at some point, and better to establish from the start."

"Alright," Max said, sighing. "Best of luck with that." He sighed. "And on that note, I'd better get my ass over to see what Brody wants done today."

Isabel nodded. "Wait a second - you were going to blow off work at the UFO center, to tag along with me to see Langley, if I hadn't told you not to bother?" Max just sort of shrugged. "Okay, goodbye brother mine. Don't get in too much trouble."

"Hey, I thought I should be telling you that," Max joked, and headed out into the crosswalk just a few seconds before the lighted indicator went from 'WALK' to the gently flashing 'DON'T WALK' that meant you could continue briskly if you were already on the go, but shouldn't start at this point.

----------

"Thanks for coming, guys," Isabel said as they approached the hotel in the Jetta. "How's confidence??"

"Condifence is pretty high," Michael muttered. "Conference, I mean. Dammit. Conn - fih - dunce."

Liz snickered slightly. "As long as we don't have to be confident about speaking correctly." Michael shot her a nasty look. "Well, I'm... I dunno. Not sure what to expect out of everything - but I'm hopeful that we'll be able to handle it all okay."

"Gotit." Isabel took a parking space about a block away from the building, since she wasn't sure if they'd find a metered spot any closer. "So, what are we asking him about??"

"Detailed instructions on cloning... specifically, making a pure human clone from a pure human DNA sample," Liz said. "I'd like to get a grocery list or something similar, as soon as possible, so that we know how much we still need, and can figure out what we'll need to do to get it all."

"Okay," Michael agreed. "Do we ask about anything else? Isabel got some facts about the crash and immediate aftermath last time she talked to him - do we ask about possible dangers here on Earth, or if he has any info about these alien planets we've been contacting?"

"Hmm... probably yeah, but carefully," Isabel decided. "There are things that we need to know, and things that I don't want to get told about. Anything about who the original Royal Four were, for one - we've gotten way too much information on that already."

"Or mis-information," Liz put in. "Most of what you've heard about the alien planets have been from Skins, and - well, the dupes were in tight with Nicholas - or Lonnie and Rath were, at least. Maybe - maybe Langley has some information that's more reliable than all that."

"And maybe he doesn't," Michael put in. "He might have his own agenda with something like that - say, wanting to say stuff that's bad enough that we'll stay right put here on Earth, if he thinks that's the least likely thing to disrupt his Hollywood lifestyle. I'm game with leaving that off the table, for now at least."

"Okay," Isabel said, and she looked over at Liz, who nodded. By this time they were approaching the hotel entrance, and conversation petered out. When they got to the lobby restaurant, and the hostess' greeting station, Isabel spent a moment trying to figure out what to say. Michael, however, led the way, shooting the twenty-something woman with a tight smile and a fairly brusque "We're meeting someone." And she nodded faintly, so Isabel and Liz followed Michael as he just swept past.

It didn't take much effort to spot the well dressed bald guy sitting in one of the fancy booths against the far wall of the restaurant. He was balder than Captain Picard, though his face didn't really look anything like Patrick Stewart's. "Hello, Kal?"

"Well, you *must* be Isabel," he said in a friendly voice that was somehow so completely casual it didn't even seem odd that they were meeting him here without pretending that they already knew each other. "And you've bought some friends - umm, take a seat each first, and then let me try my luck." Isabel took the inside seat opposite Langley, while Michael sat next to him and Liz next to Isabel, so that Michael and Liz were closer to the door and further from the wall. "Michael Guerin," Langley said to Michael after a moment. "That one isn't too hard. And you..." He considered Liz for a moment. "You're definitely too dark to be Tess."

"Darn right!" Liz muttered under her breath, smiling slightly.

"Umm... Liz Parker, then?"

"Alright." Langley took another big forkful of his lunch, which seemed to be mostly a rice dish with little chunks of chicken and various vegetables stirred into it. "I didn't think that your hair was quite this shade, Liz."

She jumped slightly. "I, umm, I've put in the auburn tints just recently, actually."

"Well, that would explain it." Langley sighed. "Hope you kids don't mind me eating as we talk - you can order something if you want, of course. All on me."

"Thanks, Mister L, that's very generous," Michael said after a moment. "Let's keep an eye out for the waiter or whoever. I could do with a peach snapple, if they have them here."

"Think that they'll be able to arrange that, yeah Michael," Isabel told him.

"Okay, first things first," Liz said. "How much have you figured out about what we want from you?"

"Isabel dropped a few bowling balls, last week," Langley remarked between bites. As he chewed, Isabel frowned until she realized what the reference was - a metaphor about how heavy and obvious the hints that she had dropped were, to him. "Alex Whitman is dead, and his spirit is in her mind, and she asked me about cloning and soul implantation procedures. So I'm guessing that you want clone the big ear kid, and restore his soul, right?" Isabel nodded immedaitely. "It won't be easy. And - has Isabel told you about the kinds of terms that I insist on for voluntary co-operation?"

"Just that you want your dignity and your free will kept intact," Michael said. "That you'll do what we want and tell us what we want, staying friendly about the whole deal, if we just hint at what's involved and let you choose freely, instead of giving orders and making the mind control stuff in your head kick in."

"And I thought I was prepared for tactlessness," Langley said dryly. "Yeah, that's a lot of it. Also, there are a few hard and fast limits that I am not prepared to cross with anything like happiness, friendly affection, or civility left for any of you if I end up on the other side." Isabel made a go-on gesture. "Briefly enough, I won't change shape, I won't leave the planet, and I won't estrange an important business contact for your sake. That's pretty much it, as far as I can think of at the moment."

"All right," Isabel replied. "First off, I'd like to try clarifying a few things. One, if any of us say something that could be taken as a suggestion or as a command, you should probably interpret it as a suggestion as long as there's any reasonable doubt." Langley's eyes widened. "And if we've given you an order that you have some good reason for not complying with, that we wouldn't know - you are to clarify your protest before complying with the directive. Is that understood?"

Langley nodded several times in a row. "Thank you, yes. That will be... um, it'll be quite a relief to--" He shook himself, looking as if some deep tension that had been afflicting him for a long time, before Isabel had even tried contacting him, had been lifted. "You - you realize that those 'clarifications' could get you in some trouble, right? If there's a crisis, and I chose to interpret a hurried shout as a suggestion, or started telling you about my reasons for non-compliance when you're in danger??"

Isabel shrugged slightly. "It's worth it," Liz decided out loud. "You shouldn't have to be our bodyguard - we've managed to pretty much take care of ourselves okay. And - and if you're grateful for this, then maybe you'll chose to do your best and work smoothly with the team in a crisis because you truly wish to, and not because you have to."

"Well, thank you very much. Umm, okay, let's see. You want the list of to-dos and requirements for the cloning procedure?"

"With all of my heart," Michael said. Langley ate a bit more, (his plate was less than a quarter full at this point,) and pulled something out of his pants pocket - a sheet of typing paper, folded into quarters. Unfolding it, he considered the list for a long moment, picked up a pen that had been sitting on the table near the wall, and made a few notations while holding the paper up in the air with the other hand - a trick that Isabel thought was impossible without one of those fancy space pens - well, Langley just might have one at that.

He crossed a few things out and added in a few words, then slid the paper in front of Isabel. Right then Michael managed to call the waiter over, and all three of them ordered soda or juice - Michael asked for french fries, and Liz got some bruschetta. Isabel decided that she really didn't need a snack cluttering up her part of the table.

The 'grocery list' read:

cloning notes - FSU, maybe now with a provate 'collector'

About forty pounds of tungsten, for contruction of nurturation chamber walls.

An artifical enzyme catalyst capable of stimulating rapid meiotic cell division in any kind of immature human cells.

Plenty of sustaining 'nutritive fluid' - a mix of simple sugars, a little starch, amino acids, little bit of ethanol, fatty acids, glycerol, vitamins, minerals, trace electrolytes, nucleic acid building blocks, and water.

Perfect DNA sample from Whitman.

One healthy and vigorous human egg cell.

Neural memory transfer gear - destroyed in the crash. will need to find replacements.

Soul implantation equipment - taken by FSU

Isabel looked up at Langley. "What's FSU?" she whispered, worried that she might have already guessed the answer.

"FBI Special Unit."

"Right." Isabel sighed, passing the list over to Liz. "Why - why do we need a human egg cell? I thought that with Alex's DNA..."

"The DNA is useless without a viable basis cell to implant it into," Langley replied softly. "Like - like a complete set of assembly line blueprints, without a factory to set up shop in."

"Well, I realized that we'd need to donate a living cell to start the clone off with," Liz agreed. "But why an egg?"

"Maybe it doesn't have to be that," Langley admitted. "But for any mammal, the female's egg is designed to be the perfect proto-cell from which a complete individual can eventually grow. Even a stomach cell, which is relatively non-specialized, isn't as good. All that the egg needs is a full set of DNA - usually it provides a half set and the fertilizing sperm cell provides the other half. Human scientists have already managed to complete clones by excising the half DNA from an egg and inserting a complete new sample, along with a few other tricks to stimulate embryo division. Not in human cells, of course..."

"Okay, um, well..." Liz sighed. "It should be someone in on this who has to 'donate', if that's the price... someone who knows Alex and understands what we're doing for his sake, instead of trying to steal some stranger's egg from a fertility bank or anything." She looked over at Langley. "Would I be suitable??"

"I - I'm not certain," he admitted uncertainly. "It's hard to say if what Max did when he healed you would have had any effect on your... on your cells. A DNA change isn't so bad, since we'll be excising egg DNA, but if your cells have any structural changes to make them more similar to Antarian cells, or if the mitochondrial DNA was altered - it might become incompatible with Alex's DNA at some point."

"I think I'm actually disappointed," Liz muttered. "That means that the best candidate would be Maria - and as much as she loves Alex, I'm not sure if she'll be able to come to terms with this right away."

"You - you're not?" Michael muttered, sounding upset at the prospect of being caught in the middle of a difference of opinion between Liz and Maria.

"Well, no - her mix of catholic and feminist sensibilities pop up at the oddest times - and if this clone develops from one of her eggs, she won't be able to dissociate herself from that as effectively as I might be able to." She sighed. "Maybe she'd like the idea of being the mother, in an odd sense, of Alex the second. I'm not sure. We'd better ask." She turned to Langley. "Doesn't egg donation hurt a lot?"

"Don't worry about that point, or let Miss DeLuca fret," he said softly. "Isabel's brother will be able to take care of it entirely painlessly, I'm sure."

"Okay, well, that's something at least," Isabel muttered as their drinks and snacks showed up.

TO BE CONTINUED...