Roswell Fanatics

Part 11

"Well, I realize that it's a little corny and can be difficult to set up," Maria said softly, leaning into Michael as they both sat on his couch, "but how about an outdoor ceremony?"

"Hmmm." Michael thought about it. "For December?"

"Yeah, for December, you goof! It's New Mexico, and the weather pretty much never gets that cold or that active. Even on the rare occasions when there's snow."

"Hey, I didn't say anything to criticize," Michael insisted. "Was just asking for a clarification. Yeah, an outdoor ceremony could work... if we arrange a snow surprise, that can be just at the end or something."

"Yeah," Maria agreed, smiling at the thought. "And we don't have to make it a big production like Alex and Isabel's thing. Our wedding parties, some parents of our friends and friends of my mom's, a few of your good friends from work and my acquaintances from school and what-have-you... what does that get us to, like thirty people?"

"Maybe thirty-five," Michael agreed. "Okay, a small outdoor gig sounds good. Especially since, well, you don't have a rich lawyer father or anything to help pay for it."

Maria paused, and nodded slightly. "My mom said she'd chip in as much as she can, and business has been good so far this year, but..."

"Yeah, I know," Michael agreed. "Let her give enough that she feels like she's contributing and doing her bit, but not more than she can really afford to spend."

Maria beamed a little bit. "Okay, now what do you want us to do? Come on, you can say anything."

"Ummm..." Michael hesitated. "For the wedding??"

"Yeah... I know that a lot of it is girly stuff and you don't really care one way or the other about it, but... I want there to be some detail that comes from you. Does that make sense?"

"Umm... well, actually yes."

Maria sat up so that she could more easily look into his face. "Ohmigawd, there's something that you've already thought of, isn't there?" she guessed. "Probably something that you didn't think I'd go for -- spit it out."

"It's kind of silly," he warned. "But I heard Richler saying that he'd heard about this on the internet... for the guys in the wedding party to show up at the last minute and pile out of an A-team van, something like that. It seemed kinda cool, I thought."

Maria smiled. "Yeah, I dunno if I'd have thought so when I was sixteen, but that just sounds perfect." She kissed him. "Especially considering who's likely to be on your side of the wedding party."

Michael smiled as Maria snuggled back into her previous position. "Ohh, Max said that he'd be out of here by Thursday, so you can start getting your own stuff in here."

"Yeah, sounds like a plan," she agreed a little sleepily.

"Long day??"

"Ehhh... not especially, but I think something deep down in my brain knows that I need to stock up on sleep. Either tomorrow or the next day I'll have to drive into the big A and argue with this recording studio live and in person, since making my point across over the telephone doesn't seem to be working."

"Oh." Michael frowned. "What's the disagreement about??"

Maria yawned again. "Oh... their pricing structure is completely unfair to independent artists, which are exactly the kind of clients they should be trying to cultivate good relationships with out here in a place like New Mexico that doesn't exactly have a strong presence with the major labehhhs..."

Michael laughed and pushed Maria slightly towards upright. "You know I love you very much, right??" She looked over and nodded. "Then, well, you'd probably better go over and lie down in the bedroom, because I have stuff I want to do on the computer tonight, and I won't be able to if you fall asleep on top of me."

She shook her head. "'Stuff you want to do...' just admit that you're not going to rest until you get down to level nine of that darn Lords of Moria game."

"Stipulated to," he admitted. "But it won't take me too long, and I'll join you in bed once I'm done."

"Okay, sweetie," she said, got up, and tried to blow him a kiss, which incredibly almost made her lose her balance. Michael got up and insisted that she lean on him all the way until she was lying in his bed.

----------

"Do you want to go higher??"

Isabel looked about her, took a deep breath and quickly tapped two fingers against her tummy, and breathed "Yes." Harold nodded eagerly too and Alex shrugged easygoingly.

The operator turned to the fourth passenger in the balloon's basket, Harold from Cleveland's bride, a short brunette named Miriam. "Well, what say you? If you're feeling uncomfortable with the height, then you get veto vote."

Miriam did indeed look a little uncomfortable, but she seemed none too eager to spoil her new husband's good time, and Isabel's as well. "No, no, I'll be okay, I'm sure. Higher!"

The operator, a self-described Myrtle beach 'townie' named Ralph Willson, smiled and adjusted the burner so that it spewed even hotter air into the giant balloon. They were already drifting at a remarkable height over the rolling South carolina countryside. The strip of gleaming pale yellowish beach, and deep blue ocean beyond, were below them and noticeably off to one side.

"Can we head out over the sea?" Harold asked with almost childlike wonder that Isabel thought was charming for a man of apparently more than thirty... also more than a little familiar.

"No, for two reasons," Ralph said, smiling back. "First off, we don't really have directional control on this thing, we're at the mercy of the wind and what wind there is right now is coming from the east southeast. Secondly, it can get tricky to fly one of these rigs over the ocean, because if we had to make an emergency landing there would be nowhere solid to stand while the balloon fabric was collapsing over top of us."

"Well, I think staying inland is great... no offense, Harold," Isabel said. "I've never seen anything quite so beautiful."

"Oh shucks," Alex joked, and Miriam laughed.

They enjoyed floating through the sky for longer, and then landed in a pasture next to the highway, and Ralph called in for a small van to take the passengers back to the hotel, while a larger truck would ferry the balloon once again to its launching site a little later. When they got back and said goodbye to Harold and Miriam, it was nearly noon of the last full day they had on their honeymoon. The shuttle would be there to take them to the airport at quarter to eleven local time the next morning, and Alex was starting to feel that the remaining time was increasingly precious.

"Umm, okay, how about we just wander around and look for someplace new to have lunch?" Isabel asked him with a sunny smile and a quick kiss.

"Sure, Not sure we've gone southwest yet," he pointed out, and they started to walk, hand in hand.

"Alex, where do you see us in four years??" Isabel suddenly blurted out, and Alex turned to look at her as they walked for a long moment. "I mean, I know that that's a sort of question that's hard to come up with an answer to, (and possibly one that we should have talked about BEFORE we had the big ceremony, but that's neither here nor there.) It's okay if you don't want to answer it, right now, but... well, I guess I'm just curious."

"It's okay," he assured her. "Okay, four years... late spring of 2009. Umm... well, it's very hard to predict the future, but I think I see the two of us, still living in Las Cruces, me still working with Datasoft I guess. Um, I think that we'll have left the apartment by then, got a house... one of those cozy split-levels north of Lohman Avenue. And... well, this might be a stretch, but we have two kids, probably a girl and a boy. Either that, or two little girls."

"Hmmm... okay," Isabel said with an intrigued smile. "Go on... what about me?"

"Well, um... you've just got your degree a few months before, at the end of the winter term in 2008... I know people say that it's nearly impossible to get a doctorate degree that quickly and have kids at the same time, but I really think you'll do it anyway... not sure why I think so. And, you got a job offer for... err, not a private practice. Clinical work at a hospital or something... not sure if it's a big place or a small one, but you really love it, and because you're working so much I have to fight with management to work from home more often so I can keep an eye on the little ones."

"Well, I have to admit, that sounds like a good future," Isabel agreed.

"And we head off to Roswell to see the rest of the gang as often as we can. Umm... not sure if it's safe to teleport the kids, so if not I guess that's a lot of long road trips and 'Are we there yet' from the bigger girl, but we take them anyway because they love all of their honorary aunts and uncles, especially uncle Max who's actually their real uncle."

"Perfect," Isabel agreed. "I have to admit, I don't really have an answer of my own, but I'll take yours any day." Alex shot a sidelong look at her, but before he could say anything Isabel pointed out a storefront. "Oooh, Aloha Island grille! Come on, it'll be like we got a chance to honeymoon on Kauai!!"

And she led him by the hand into the Hawaiian restaurant.

----------

Liz headed down the stairs and out into the cafe dining room. To her surprise, it was nearly empty, with only one waitress in evidence - one of the new girls, a freshman at West Roswell, who Liz didn't really know well. (It was starting to seem less and less likely that Liz and Maria had themselves started waitressing when they were THAT young, never ming younger.) And the only customer was a young blonde woman, who took a bite of her Pluto hash, smiled, and let her head rest back against the booth seat, closing her eyes.

Liz wandered near and waited until the woman was looking again before stepping too close. "Hi, Tess."

"Oh, hey Liz. What's up??"

"Not too much I guess." Liz let out a soft sigh. "Umm, do you mind if I join you?"

Tess blinked in surprise at the question briefly. "Err, no, I guess not. Go right ahead." And she smiled warmly as Liz sat down. "You look gorgeous, by the way. I'm getting jealous of the 'pregnant glow' thing."

Liz laughed shortly at that. "Well, that's good to know I guess. I'm starting to feel like a balloon that has only been blown up a quarter of the way -- so far." And she shook her head with a dark look. Tess psshawed that thought without a word, and took another bite of her meal and a swallow of lime Coke.

"So, um... how have you been lately, Tess?" Liz asked brightly. "The, umm... darnit, I really do know what it's called, the summer kids thing that you're helping out wi--"

"The summer skills? Umm, that actually doesn't start for about a month -- college kids have their end of term in late April, but younger ones are still stuck in class until sometime in June." Tess smiled as Liz blushed slightly and nodded. "So I'm taking a short and intense critical reading and thinking course to wile the time away, and trying to get myself ready for the teaching stuff." She sighed. "Also need to find someplace new to live, like SOON. The loft is only an option for about another week or so. And the only one-bedroom apartments I've seen in my price range are, umm - disappointing."

"Oh, that's too bad," Liz said, and then got an odd look on her face. "This might qualify as a strange idea, but... well, I've been thinking of moving back out of my parent's place, now that affairs in the life of Liz Parker are more or less in order. Especially now that... did you hear about that ecological research grant I was applying for?"

"Umm, yeah, I think somebody told somebody, who told me," Tess agreed. "Does that mean you nailed it??"

"Umm, pretty much, yeah," Liz agreed. "Nearly twenty-five thousand dollars to investigate if industrial effluents are endangering mammalian spacies in the Pecos watershed -- with the alliance kicking in some matching funds against the Foundation grant."

"Wow... that's quite a bit of money," Tess said, her eyes wide.

Just the thought of it made Liz groan. "Yeah... and a hell of a lot of accounting I need to learn to do. Of course I understand why they need to keep people from abusing programs like this -- and unfortunately for me, a lot of that amounts to a whole bunch of rules about what the money can and cannot be used for. One thing that not much of it can be used on is me as the grantee."

Tess took a moment to work that out in her head. "Even though you're the head of this effluent project and have to support yourself somehow, the cash can't go towards that because it wouldn't look kosher??"

"Pretty much," Liz agreed with a frustrated sigh. "They look at how I was supporting myself before the grant was accepted, which was primarily by my parents, not my work for the Alliance. So, ermm..." Liz couldn't seem to settle on a way to end that explanation.

"So as far as the grant people are concerned, they're still on the hook??" Tess finished.

"Um, yeah pretty much. Well, at least the cafe has been doing well, thanks in part to Maria's creativity. And to finish up a short story made long, my Dad persuaded Mom to agree that if I wanted to get my own place, they'd make sure the rent was covered. And it'd probably be easier on them if I went in with a roommate."

"Okay, yeah," Tess mumbled. "Are you sure about wanting that roommate to be me? I mean, you could probably find someone else, somebody you don't have such a weird history with."

"Oh, come on," Liz shot back, grinning. "Who else would want to live with a lonely, slightly weird pregnant girl? Who else could there be who wouldn't get freaked out if my hands start attaching themselves to the silverware or whatever next bit of alien weirdness hits??" Her face grew more serious. "As far as I'm concerned, Tess, all of that stuff about Max and destiny is long past us and moot. I'd like to think that we're friends now, and don't want all of that 'baggage' to ruin an interesting opportunity."

Tess considered that for a long moment, and smiled. "Okay, you got yerself a willing roommate, Parker."

Liz was grinning too. "Now, have you actually seen any amazing two-bedroom apartments that are available??"

At that point the young waitress came over to ask if Liz wanted to order something for herself.

----------

"Hi Kyle, hi Martine," Michael said as he pulled open the door. "Glad that you could make it. Happy midsummer's!"

"Happy longest-day," Martine shot back, beaming. Kyle shook his head a little, nodded a greeting at Michael and at Maria as she came up to welcome them to the party as well. Kyle could see that everyone else seemed to be there already - Max, Liz, Tess, Laurie DuPree, even Isabel and Alex. Kyle took Martine's hand in his and went off to join the people already mingling around the snacks table.

As far as Kyle had been able to work it out, there was a subtle power struggle being played out for who would become the socially pre-eminent couple among the old members of the gang... mostly Maria and Isabel participating in the power struggle of course - Michael and Alex weren't the type to care too much about the issue themselves, though their girls probably had some creative ways of motivating them. Maria had the advantage of being still based in Roswell, where the largest segment of the group still remained, but Kyle wouldn't have wanted to bet against Isabel Evans in this contest. Thankfully, he could just stay out of it and not play favorites... probably.

Isabel had been, naturally, the first one to send out invitations for a giant Fourth of July bash, and the promised festivities seemed cool enough to guarantee attendance, even considering the distance that most of the others had to travel to get to Las Cruces. (Of course. many of them could now travel via this molecular teleportation thingee, and though Kyle could probably get a lift that way if he asked and save himself the driving hours, he wouldn't be able to bring Martine along the same way without her freaking out royally -- which didn't seem to be the best way to introducing her to the alien secret, assuming that he wanted to bring her into it at all.)

Maria and Michael had countered by attempting to beat young Mister and Missus Whitman to the punch, organizing their own party for the longest day of the year, midsummer's, (also known as the solstice and somewhat inappropriately dubbed the first day of summer.) Isabel and Alex seemed to be taking the competing event in good humor though, and Kyle supposed it was as good of a pretext for a party as any other...

"Martine!" Tess was smiling widely as she headed over to join the two of them. "Long time no see, girl, where's the love?! How's your summer been so far?"

"Umm, little crazy, working long hours at the restaurant," she replied. "How about you? Has the summer school thing started yet??"

"Yes, a few days agi," Tess replied, nodding slightly.

"*And*??"

Tess smiled slightly. "It hasn't been too bad so far. Kids that age seem to to have this boundless store of energy and practical joke ideas." She sighed a little and turned to look at Kyle. "Were we ever that young??"

"Umm... well, I couldn't say for sure about you," Kyle joked softly. "Pretty sure that I was the little guy with scruffy brown hair sneaking the hoppiest frog I could find into the teacher's desk drawer, and wondering if it was actually possible to tamper with the school clocks so that everybody would be let you earlier and have more time to play ball before bedtime."

"Yeah, actually that sounds about right." Tess shook her head, a very sisterly smile on her face. "So, Kyle, what have you been up to since the spring term let you in Albuquerque? You're not taking summer classes, are you?"

"Nah," he replied, shaking his head. "Working my ass off too. Temp agency stuff."

"He's really excited about the place he's been placed at right now," Martine put in with a smile. "It's a little advertising agency."

"Oh, really?" Tess grinned at him. "Do you think maybe they might extend a permanent offer? Is that how they say it in the temping business?"

"Yeah, that's the right term, and no, they're not going to make me permanent in this position at least," Kyle sighed. "I'm just covering for somebody who's out on temporary leave while her mother is very sick. But... well, though it's kind of a long shot, I'm hoping that they might be able to offer me some kind of low-paying internship to get some more experience in the field. Heck, I could probably even manage to swing a completely UNpaid internship."

Tess smiled. "Well, I hope that works out great, somehow."

Kyle nodded, and changed the subject. "So... what's it like living with Parker?"

"Hmmm..." Her eyes twinkled slightly. "Pretty cool actually -- not nearly as awkward as I kind of expected. She's very considerate and clean, and since we've moved in I've been getting to spend a lot of time with Max, which is always a plus I think."

Kyle considered that a moment, and dropped his voice slightly. "You never did get completely over him, did you?"

Tess consiered that. "No, maybe I didn't, at least not yet. Call me ninety-five percent out of love, or something like that." She shrugged. "But it's alright. Maybe someday soon I'll meet a new guy who'll make me forget about what I used to feel for Max Evans completely."

There was a bit of an awkward silence then, and Martine shuffled her feet awkwardly, not quite sure if she should reply to this and if so how. Finally, she spoke up. "So, let's get some of that punch Kyle."

----------

"Well, I don't think that there can be any doubt that you and Isabel are brother and sister," Alex said as he nibbled on a chicken curl in Michael's kitchen. "The way both of you are working so hard on your classes during the summer... it's almost criminal."

"Oh, you're one to talk sweetie," Isabel replied, nudging her better half tenderly. "You should see him, Max. Alex is off to the office before I wake up half the time, like pulling out of the driveway at six thirty in the morning. And he checks his work email at least every hour in the evening."

"Well, that's true enough," Alex admitted with a smile. "Regarding the early mornings, though, I'd like to point out that I usually don't stay at the office until five -- flex time policy is a good thing. I get my best work done early in the morning before the place is so busy."

Max grinned. "Well, it doesn't sound too extreme... you've found a place where you enjoy going to work -- you know you're an important part of the team and it's important to stay in touch, right?" Alex nodded. "And somehow I think that the two of you haven't forgotten to find time that you can spend together without letting work or school get in the way?" Isabel and Alex shared a look and burst out laughing at exactly the same time. "Well, I guess that answers my question."

"Um, speaking of spending time together, or something like that..." Isabel lowered her voice a bit. "Have you been seeing much of Liz lately?"

Max groaned. "If this is going to turn into any kind of a prod that I should... should try to be more than friends with Liz..." he started.

"--Um, no, actually, it wasn't at all?" Isabel looked around, and surreptitiously led the way into the bedroom, with Max and Alex following. "I was just wondering how she's doing, and that stuff that you're helping her with about the baby. But, well... I'll ask. Do you *want* to be more than friends with Liz at this point?"

"Yeah, yeah I do," Max whispered so quietly she could hardly even hear him. "And I think that I've let her know that... more than a month ago, after confirming that her baby's going to be a girl, she was so excited and I... I kissed her. She made it pretty clear that she isn't ready for anything like that yet, and so I've been careful to keep things plutonic. I mean... I mean platonic. Hehehe, little slip of the tongue there I guess."

"Okay, yeah, I guess if that's what Liz wants... it's not a problem for you?" Alex clarified. "Being around her, spending time with her, and keeping a lid on everything that you feel?" He looked over at Isabel for a second, remembering long ago.

"I think I've got a handle on it," Max assured him. "If I need someone to confide in about it, I know where to go I think."

"Alright," Isabel nodded. "We'd probably better get back out there."

----------

A few hours later, the party had moved to an outdoor patio behind Michael's building, and he and Kyle were working the barbecue together. Maria and Tess had started up a game of picture charades, and Isabel was chatting with Martine about something-or-other as they admired the flowers that somebody had planted in the back yard of the property.

That was when Michael's wristwatch sounded suddenly, and he checked the time, called everyone together and made sure that everybody had a glass or beverage of some description, turned the grill down slightly, and cleared his throat.

"In just about thirty seconds, or so I am given to understand," he began, "the sun will reach the exact point where it is, so to speak, furthest north of the equator of planet earth, twenty-three point four five seven degrees or some such. I'd like to thank all of you for coming to spend this relatively special occasion with us, and to keep it brief -- happy Midsummer's!!"

"Happy midsummers!" "To the solstice", "Longest day!!" and other variants on the above were shouted out as everybody clinked cans and beverage containers with those near them and drank in celebration. Soon after that, the picture charades wound down and Kyle started serving out the fruits of the barbecue.

Laurie Dupree came up to Liz after she saw Liz had finished her first burger. "Umm, hi."

"Oh, hi Laurie." Liz smiled at the blonde girl. "How's, erm... Richard? Couldn't he make it?"

"Umm, no," Laurie blushed a little. "He had to work. Plus, well, I came via the, erm, the alien express, and he doesn't know about all of that stuff." There was a pause. "I had something that I wanted to ask you."

Liz's eyebrows raised slightly. "What's that?"

"Well, Michael told me a little about this project that you're working on. With the grant money and investigating the chemicals in the watershed?"

"Oh, right?" Liz nodded, wondering if she knew what was coming.

"I'd like to be a part of it. You can use all the help you can get, right?? I'm... I'm offering to volunteer my time for free."

Liz blinked - this was more than she'd expected. On the other hand... well, Laurie was 'as rich as hell' as Michael had put it. Her relatives had been able to siphon off huge bribes from the Charles Dupree inheritance in order to keep themselves in charge of that, but Michael and Maria had been able to send them packing when they met Laurie and make sure that she'd be able to keep everything that her grandfather had wanted her to have. It made sense that she'd be able to support herself while volunteering her time for an endeavour she thought was worth it.

"Okay, umm... I'm having an impromptu project meeting on Tuesday. There's one other volunteer, and a few people who are getting paid a little bit from the grant money. Ten in the morning, at the Crashdown. Can you make it?"

"Yeah," Laurie said, smiling. "And now, I guess I have to go tell Michael that I'm moving to town temporarily."

-----------

Isabel took a deep breath, looked over at Alex, who was sitting next to her on their living room couch with one hand supportively resting on her lower thigh. After a few seconds, she reached out to pick the telephone handset up out of its cradle and tap out a long distance number to Roswell. The tiny ringing sound emerged from the phone speaker three times, then a fourth, and...

"Hello, Roswell grave robbers. You want that shlup, we'll dig 'im up. How can I direct your call??"

"Max, you goon," Isabel was shaking her head and sighing over the line at him. "How're the classes doing??"

"Umm, crazy but not too bad. By the way, thanks again for having us all over for the fourth. Killer party!"

Isabel couldn't hide a grin. They had rented out a pool for the fourth of july festivities, and she had packed a huge picnic for everybody, and it had been a great time. "Thanks, but, um, that's not exactly what I'm calling about. Would you be able to, erm, pop over tonight??"

There was a pause. Max had to understand the significance of the thinly-veiled reference -- she was offering to him teleport him down to Las Cruces. "I... I guess so. What's it all about, I kinduv do have a lot of homework."

"I... I'd rather not say over the phone, sorry Max."

"Oh-- okay. But, erm, well, I don't think I can just whiff out from my dorm room without somebody noticing. Errr... dammit, I'm not sure how best to handle it."

"Well, you could..."

"I need to have a phone line contact to you... ground line, relatively secure... somewhere that no-one who shouldn't see might notice me disappearing, and someplace that you're familiar enough with to visualize--"

"How about Liz and Tess' new place?" Isabel asked. "They gave me the grand tour after Michael's party, so I think I can picture it well enough. It's not far from your dorm, and secure."

Max chuckled slightly. "Yeah... I guess I should've thought of that one. And yeah, at least one of them should be home by now. I'll call you once I get there?"

"Please do. Cya soon."

"Bye, Izzy. Can't wait to make it there." And they hung up.

"So, we have to wait a little bit," Alex asked. After Isabel had hung the phone back up, he gently pulled her legs out onto his lap, took off her low-heeled shoes and started to softly rub her feet. "How do you feel about it?"

"Umm, excited, a little nervous, only slightly embarrassed," she admitted. "And you??"

"I think I'm looking forward to finding out for sure," he admitted after a second. "Not that I doubt your, umm, your feminine intuition, but it'll be good to hear something, erm, a little less nebulous, you know??" He was looking over at her nervously, as if he thought he'd just said something wrong.

But Isabel laughed and reached out to ruffle his hair playfully. "Yeah, I know what you mean." Just then a soft buzzer floated through the air of the room. "You'd better go get that."

"Yeah, guess so." Alex caressed one of her toes playfully and got up, heading for the kitchen and busying himself with the oven and the contents of a roasting pan that had been put into it about twenty minutes before. When he came back, they chatted a little bit about small things like Veronica Mars reruns and a computer game that one of Alex's friends from work had let them borrow. Then the telephone rang.

"Hi, Max??" Isabel said before she had even put the mouthpiece all the way into position. "Yeah, we're, ummm..." Alex was already pulling the window open slightly. "Yeah, all set. I'm in the living room as usual; and you?"

"Yeah, I'm sitting here in their... rec lounge, or whatever they call that room with the east windows." For any alien teleportation, especially one like this with only two participants who started in different locations, it was vital that they both be able to perfectly visualize the other end of the trip... that Max should be able to perfectly see Isabel and where he was going, and Isabel to visualize where Max was coming from.

"Okay, I should be able to drop you in the armchair here. Three -- two -- one -- go." Isabel concentrated intently, waiting for the strange sensation of Max's dissociated molecules to come flying into range of her awareness. The telephone connection clicked off, and then started to beep at her -- Max would have hung up the receiver at Liz's place at the last possible moment, or maybe just held it into place where it would naturally hang itself up when his hand was no longer physically present enough to hold it -- but that didn't matter. Isabel couldn't spare the attention to deal with it - the darn thing could just keep beeping at her.

There he came, rocketing towards her from the northeast of course. There was a strange, distracting sensation, and Isabel realized that Alex had taken the phone out of her hands and was hanging it up. She ignored that and concentrated on slowing Max's molecules, guiding them towards the building. And then, all of a sudden, he was whooshing through the open window and materializing in the armchair. With a Poof and a BAMM, he was entirely solid and there.

"I think we're getting better at this trick with practice," he said with a smile. "Okay, what's the deal anyway??"

"Ummm..." Isabel suddenly blushed to a vivid red that could almost be used for painting fire engines. She tried to say it several different times, phrasing it mentally different ways, but nothing came out. When she finally managed to speak it was somewhat stiff and formal. "I would, umm, I would like to ask that you connect to me. For medical reasons."

Max's eyes widened. "Umm. is there any specific, err, medical function that you think is..."

"Pregnancy test," she filled in tersely, cutting him off.

"Oh-kay. Have you, err, have you tried one of those, emm, those over the counter piss tests?"

"No." Max blinked again, and Isabel softened her voice as much as she could. "Not, not recently. I've... well, I've taken them before, and they never seem to come out right for me."

"Ohhh." Max took a moment to digest that notion. It seemed quite possible that Isabel's hybrid heritage meant that unusual hormones were present in her 'piss' that could throw off those simple packages. A slightly disturbing thought, in that at least one other bodily secretion, one that was pretty much devoid of cells or DNA as such, could still incriminate them as being not 'normal.' But...

"Okay." For a second Isabel was wondering if Max was upset that she hadn't found some way to tell him about this before, but he didn't mention it. "How... how do you want to do this?"

"Well, we need to be pretty much facing each other, right?" Max nodded, and Isabel looked around the room. "How about at the corner where the sofa and the loveseat come together??" Max nodded, and the two of them arranged themselves on the two pieces of furniture, angled so that they were looking directly at each other even though their seats were perpendicular.

"Just look at me and relax," Max said. "There's nothing to worry about." Alex pulled up the armchair and sat down himself, watching them.

It didn't take long, maybe thirty seconds, before Max and Isabel were stretching slightly and turned back away from each other, the job apparently. done. "Well??"

"Yeah, there's little doubt about it," Max told both of them. "You'll have a little one arriving in something like thirty-six weeks, assuming everything goes well. Congratulations."

"Umm, I know that it's very early," Alex blurted out. "But did you get any sort of notion about, umm..."

"The sex of the baby?" he filled in, and Alex nodded. "Nothing at all concrete -- it's still very small. But I kind of got a very faint 'girl' vibe - make of that what you will." Max smiled, his face almost beaming with deep joy. "I guess everything that I've been doing with Liz while she was pregnant is kinduv a trial run for this, huh??"

"Never that," Isabel replied. "Umm, unless you just mean you don't think there was that much reason that Liz couldn't have gone to ordinary human doctors, while I don't have taht option?"

"Something like that," Max agreed soberly. "Still not sure what the risks might be with Liz - we'll probably never know, and that's best. But yeah, there's just about no way you could get a regular amnio or anything like that without WAY too many alarm bells going off I think."

"Hey, who knows," Alex put in. "Maybe by the time we've had ours, Maria will have Michael's bun in the oven too, hehehe." The dry look that Max shot him was eloquent beyond words. "Well, if you don't have to zap back to Roswell and get started on your intro nursing homework RIGHT away, then I think that the going fee for a healer's house call is dinner. There are three chicken breasts in the oven, roasting cacciatora-style with extra tabasco, and it's just about time to put the linguine water onto boil. What do you say?"

Max grinned. "Sounds delicious, and a great precedent to set. I'm in for dinner. Just let me call Liz, so that she doesn't worry when I haven't whooshed back in half an hour or so."

"Sure, the telephone is yours to use," Isabel agreed, as she crossed over to Alex and hugged his arm excitedly. "Looks like you've got your second opinion. We're going to have a baby of our own!!"

TO BE CONTINUED...

Part Twelve


The soft, high-pitched ringing of a cordless phone suddenly filled the simply furnished bedroom, and Tess shook herself slightly, reached out to grab the handset, and answered it. "Um, hello?"

"Hi there, darling." Tess smiled as she recognized Kyle's voice. "What's up?"

"Nothing very interesting." Tess sighed, and then confessed. "Just me, sitting here on my bed and feeling a little sorry for myself."

There was a pause as Kyle absorbed the key words from that sentence. "Awww... I'm sorry if you're feeling bummed. Teaching-related??"

"Naw, everything's been cool with my class," she told him. "This is the last week of the program, actually... they get about a week and a half off before normal school starts after labor day. No, this time it's personal." And she sighed.

"Oh, the lonely hearts thing??" Kyle asked. "I thought you were dating that guy from Maria's grunge metal band." This was a musical group that Maria was acting as an agent for, not participating in musically.

"No, Skyler's made it pretty clear that he's NOT dating me anymore," Tess replied. "Not that I'm that upset about getting dumped... I was starting to wonder myself if we were working at all as a couple. It's more the whole situation."

"Okay, why don't you say what's on your mind?" Kyle suggested. "Saying it out loud to Big Bro might help."

Tess giggled softly. "I'm not sure... Obviously Isabel has found a great catch in Alex, and Michael/Maria seem to be doing pretty well too. Max still has high hopes that things will work out for him and Liz when she's ready... maybe not too long after she has the baby. But me... I dunno, I'm getting tired of trying to make things work with human guys who don't really understand the first thing about me, and tired of sitting home alone. It's not that I have anything against humans any more... at least, I really don't think so. Just... the whole secret thing. I can't tell someone that I'm an alien just because I like him... that really doesn't seem like any kind of a smart idea. And if some guy happens to get drawn into the group by chance, what are the odds that he and I would have what it takes to make things work, you know?"

"Yeah," Kyle agreed with a sigh. "It's a tough situation, and I don't have any easy solutions for you. Do have one question for you, as much about my own curiosity as anything else I admit."

Tess smiled into the phone. "Ask, and if I can I shall anwer."

"Okay. If you could picture a dream soulmate who wasn't someone that you already know... what would he be like? Or well... don't feel the need to restrict yourself to guys on my account, but I've never got the impression that girls were your type." Tess groaned slightly. "Most specifically... what species or nature would your dream person be?"

Tess thought about that for a long while, (and told Kyle that she was doing so, when he checked to make sure that she was still on the line.) "Okay, yes you goof he'd be a guy, and as far as your big question... I think I feel like he'd be another hybrid. Not because that's what Max is, but because that way he'd be like me, you know??"

"Fair enough," Kyle assured her.

"Okay, let's see then. No particular preferences I can think of for physical appearance, other than a generic 'cute.' Maybe mid-brown hair, not too light and not too dark. Taller than me, but not very... say five foot six." Kyle laughed softly over the phone... she knew that he was quite aware of being only five seven... Isabel had two inches on him even in her bare feet.

"As far as other qualities... sweet and caring, manly bu not in a stupidly macho way. Maybe someone who hasn't grown up on Earth, but passionately curious about people and his human side, with a fondness for travel."

Kyle laughed softly. "You'd leave us to explore the world with him, then?"

"Yeah, I guess I'd like that... not leaving you and the others behind I guess, but I would like to hit the road. Like Alex said, after he came back from Sweden in junior year: there's a lot more to life than New Mexico."

"Well, I hope that you do find someone Tess, I really do," Kyle said.

"Thanks. And that is officially enough talking about me. How're you? Did you ever hear from those advertising people?"

"Yeah I did, and they're interested in having me back for this work study program," Kyle told her excitedly. "I'd be taking the winter term next year off, and then back to regular classes next summer. Oh, and get this... it'd be at their branch office in downtown Roswell."

"Wow, cool," Tess breathed. "But what about Martine? Would she be staying in Albuquerque??"

"Umm, we haven't quite figured that part out yet," Kyle admitted.

"Well, you've got a little time I guess... assuming that there aren't any problems that pop up with the work study thing," Tess said, smiling. "Are you still doing temp agency stuff?" Kyle made an affirmative sound. "So, where have you been sent most recently??"

----------

Maria breathed in and out slowly a few times, looked up into Liz's eyes, and nodded slightly. "Okay, I'm ready."

Liz smiled, cut the small pack of orange index cards in her hands, and flipped up the first one. "Alright. Name the three balance sheet account types?"

"Assets, Equity... and Liabilities," Maria replied, grinning. "Easy."

"And the other two account types?"

"Income and Expenses."

"Alright." Liz flipped over another card. "What are the two basic requirements for using cash accounting instead of accrual accounting?"

"Umm... no inventory on hand." Liz nodded in agreement. "And... annual sales not to exceed five million??"

"Almost," Liz hinted.

"Ummm... annual CORPORATE sales not to exceed five million," Maria corrected, and Liz gave a soft whoop of enthusiasm to signal the correct answer. "Okay, next one."

"What qualifies as accounts receivable?"

"Any customer invoices that have not yet been paid, and other money that my customers owe me."

"I think that you're getting worried over nothing," Liz insisted. "You *know* this stuff, at least you do now. No reason to freak out just because it was a while ago that you took accounting 1."

"Yeah, I guess so," Maria said, smiling. In a few days her fall courses would start, including Intro to accounting 2, which she had been more than a little nervous about. "All right, put those cards down, and we can gossip." Liz did so, smiling.

"Have you heard anything lately from the Whitmans??"

"Yeah, Alex sent me an email, um... I guess it was just yesterday. Nothing too new over there. His job's still pretty crazy busy. Oh, and Isabel's been spending all the time when she isn't at her classes reorganizing their apartment, shopping for new curtains and upholstery, and so on and so forth. Well, *most* of the time when she isn't at their classes... there are a few exceptions I believe."

Liz laughed softly. "Yeah, there isn't much doubt she's pregnant - it's classic nesting behaviour. I was the same way when I came back to Roswell last winter... and again when I moved into the new place with Tess."

"I remember," Maria agreed. "How are things between the two of you, anyway??"

"Me and Tess?? No big problems... all of that ugly love-triangle destiny stuff is long behind us."

"Are you sure?" Maria's eyes were searching deeply into Liz's face. "I mean... Max is still in love with you, Liz. I don't think Tess is entirely over Max."

"Maybe she isn't, entirely," Liz admitted. "But I think she's realized, for a long time, that he never did feel the same way about her. Tess and I are friends now, and whatever happens or doesn't happen with Max, I don't think that's going to change."

"Well, cool," Maria said.

"Any news on the wedding front?" Liz giggled softly.

"One little bit... I never expected that I'd have to think about this for so long, but I did and here goes. Liz, will you be my maid of honor??" Liz blinked. "I realize that it's a lot of responsibility to take on, considering that you'll have the baby to take care of soon, and your grant project is still going on, but... well, you've been my best friends since forever, so there was kinduv just no way that I wasn't gonna ask you first."

"Oh gawd," Liz breathed, and reached out to grab Maria's hand. "Umm... can I accept tentatively?? I mean, I *really* want to be there for you, but I'm just not sure..."

"Of course," Maria assured her. "If you have to step down, I don't think Tess or Isabel would mind covering for you." Liz smiled at that.

"Are you sure I shouldn't be a matron of honor?" Liz asked. "I mean, I know I'm not married yet, but I'll be a mommy by the time you guys get married."

"No," Maria insisted. "It's married or nothing, you won't be married... at least, probably not, so you'll be the maid of honor." She giggled. "Michael said that Max has already agreed to be his best man, so you'll be coming up the aisle and going back down next to each other... which is just as it should be, I think."

"Don't start," Liz said automatically, but she was smiling at the thought too. "Okay, got any other good gossip? Umm... anything about Kyle maybe??"

"Ohh, actually yeah," Maria said with a grin. "He's thinking of asking Martine to move in with him. What do you think of Martine anyway??"

"Umm, she seems really n- Uughhh." A sudden spasming section down in her huge abdomen suddenly kicked the breath out of LIz. "Umm, really nice, and... oooh, you know, I think the baby thinks it's time to come out, Maria."

Maria blinked. "Like... right now?"

Liz smiled. "No, that's not quite how it works. But.... oooh, like probably today."

"Today??" Maria almost yelped the word.

"Umm... well, why are you so surprised?" Liz asked. Maria didn't reply. "Umm... you did remember that my due date was tommorow, right?"

"It couldn't possib...wait a second, September the second, yeah, that does seem vaguely familiar." Maria looked at her. "Umm, sorry, but I guess I did forget."

Liz laughed. "And here I thought you'd invited me over today because you knew that the waiting was driving me crazy." Maria shrugged a little awkwardly. "Oh well," Liz said, and smiled. "No harm done, after all."

"So... are you SURE that this is the real thing?" Maria asked. "I mean... maybe it's that baxter higgens thing."

"Braxton-Hicks?" Liz smiled. "It *might* be, but I've learned a fair bit about recognizing those by now." She stood up from the couch, and then moaned a high pitched tone and leaned as much weight as she could on the armrest, breathing hard. "No, no, this is not... well, if it's Braxton-Hicks, then I'll eat my shirt, or something, I dunno. Either way, I'd probably better get to the hospital delivery room."

"Uh... okay, okay," Maria agreed. She had hurried up to support her friend, physically and emotionally, by this point. "Umm... I can drive you right over there, sure, chica. And... umm... here's my phone, you'll probably want to call some people... Max for sure, your parents..."

"Yeah, thanks," Liz said. "But keep your cell, I've got, err... I've got my own in my purse, where did I... ahh." She pointed to the far end of the couch, and Maria dashed forward to nab the little bag. "And I should probably call Tess... for one thing, there are some things at our apartment that I'll need, and she can probably meet us there with them."

"Alright." Maria was starting to get used to this idea a little better. "So... looks like you might become a mom *today.* Um, how do you feel? Excited, nervous??"

"Yes and yes," Liz said. "Probably more excited."

"Oh, by the way, have you got a name ready for your daughter yet?" They were starting to head towards the door, Liz's hand on Maria's arm.

"Err... I've got a few ideas. Rather not say anything yet, if that's alright."

'"Oh, sure. I can wait."

----------

"Owww," Liz cried softly from the hospital bed. "Hooh, hooh, hooh, hooh." That was the lamaze breathing that Maria had been trying to convince her to do.

"How do you feel, sweetie??"

"Umm... it hurt, but it's getting better now, for a little while." Liz's face creased into a frown. "Where the heck is Max?? He's my lamaze partner. He's the one who's supposed to be here with me."

"I... I dunno, sweetie." Max's cell phone had been off, and no-one at the dorm had known where he was. "Tess is calling all over town. She'll find him somewhere, don't worry about that. In the meantime I guess you're kind of stuck with me."

"Yeah, I guess... guess sooooohh..." Liz's face tightened as very obviously another contraction started.

"So BREATHE!!"

A little while, several more contractions passed like that. Liz's parents showed up at the hospital before long, and Michael, but for a long time there was no sign of Max. And then all of a sudden, he was there, running into Liz's room. "Sorry... so sorry I'm..."

"It's, it's okay," Maria said. "You don't have to explain. Just get up there and..." She broke off because Max was already walking towards Liz's bed, his eyes visibly overflowing with sympathetic distress for the discomfort that she was undergoing. Max leaned over, looked into Liz's eyes and took her hand, and Liz visibly relaxed. Maria started a little in surprise. "Max... Max, what's going on??"

"I... I didn't realize that I could do this, or stop to think of whether it was a good thing or not," he said in a slightly distracted voice. "It just kinduv happened, but I don't want to break the link, so maybe you and Tess and Michael can do your best to keep everyone else out of the room... even the doctors and nurses. I don't think this is going to be a very normal birth, by human standards... but it'll be easier on Liz and safer for both of them."

Maria blinked and hurried off, not quite sure what she would say when the doctor came.

It wasn't, in fact, possible to keep the hospital staff out of the room entirely, so when they came in, Max had Liz try to sound like she was at least in a little pain... though it seemed a little hard for him to convince her of why, she seemed like she was slightly confused. They checked to make sure that things seemed to be going alright, and didn't insist on staying long. When Max knew that the time had arrived for Liz's daughter to be delivered, he relaxed his connection with her, (though still doing what he could to reduce the pain while not letting anything seem unusual,) and Maria called the OB staff in to do their thing.

"I think I've settled on a name," Liz said softly, when it was all over, the little baby all wrapped up and cradled in her arms, and most of her loved ones gathered around. "Bethany Evon Kayce Parker."

Max blinked a little. Liz's mother smiled.

"I think I like it," Maria said. "You're not giving Bethany her father's last name??"

"No... no, we'd both have taken it if things had been different, maybe... I'm not sure if I'd decided about me," Liz admitted. "But as much as the thought still tears me up, Casey isn't a part of our family. I'm a Parker, and I'm the only parent that she's got, so she should be a Parker too. I gave her 'Kayce' for her daddy, and I think that'll be enough."

"Yeah, I do too," Maria whispered. No-one mentioned 'Evon' or asked who that name had been after... the answer seemed too obvious, and a little awkward.

And that's when the nurse came in, to take little Beth and give her the vitamin K supplements and put her in the nursery, so that Liz could get some rest. Everyone else cleared out for the hospital cafeteria, except Max, who said that he'd like to stay in the chair in the corner of Liz's room and maybe doze, if that was alright. Liz looked over at him and smiled before falling asleep herself.

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

"Ohmygawd, Liz, she is so beautiful," Isabel exclaimed just about as soon as she'd stepped through the doors of Liz and Tess' apartment. It was the day before labor day, and as soon as Liz had got herself and Bethany home from the hospital, the day before, she had invited Alex and Isabel to come to Roswell and see her as soon as they could, which was about noon on Sunday.

Liz looked briefly up from her daughter's face to nod at Isabel, and then back. "Yeah, she is, isn't she??" There had been an angelic smile plastered on Liz's face for about two days straight now.

Alex followed his wife inside, hugged her and helped take her coat off, and peered at the baby's face from a little distance away. "Bethany, right??"

"Yep, Beth for short," Maria replied softly. "So glad you guys could make it."

"Oh yeah, like we'd have ever missed this," Isabel replied with a giggle.

"Hey," Tess said as she stepped out of her room at that moment and nearly walked right into Isabel. "Umm... why don't we take this all, or as much as will fit, into the living room??" Liz and Tess' apartment wasn't terribly big for this sort of entertaining, but with a little creativity Liz and Bethany, Isabel, Alex, Max, Maria, and Tess all found places. Michael stood in the hall doorway.

"Say, what's in the bag?" Max asked Alex as they were all getting settled.

"Umm..." Alex looked down at the white paper bag, smaller than a breadbox, maybe nine inches high and six across. "Something kinda mysterious actually... we were wondering what you would make of it, Max." He passed the package over.

"Hmm..." Alex put his fingers carefully down one side of the bag, and almost immediately found a slip of paper there. He withdrew it and read the typed characters. "'I think this'll be good for the growing little ETs. K L.'"

"K L??" Maria said, a confused look on her face.

"We think it might be Kal Langley," Isabel said.

"Our mysterious, ill-tempered, ambivalent protector??" Tess asked.

"Well, it kind of makes sense," Michael muttered. "Even if Kal doesn't want to do anything to really help us out in our day-to-day lives, it kinduv makes sense that he's keeping tabs on us just a bit... if only to get some advance warning if we do something that's going to mess up his comfortable life. And if he's found out that you're pregnant, Isabel, he might just be willing to send off something that would decrease the chances of a complication, carrying a quarter-alien baby to term here on Earth. He doesn't really like us, or the people who sent him to Earth with us, but sympathy for an unborn child who obviously isn't any threat to him might be easier to dredge up."

"Okay, let's see..." Max put in. He was further unpacking the bag. "We have... a bottle containing some kind of caplets... look kinda like cold or sinus-pain pills. A big box of... dried fruit of some sort..."

"Looks a bit like a prune," Maria mentioned.

Max brought one piece up into the vicinity of his mouth. "Doesn't smell like a prune... maybe something slightly like a big raisin." He shrugged. "Another box..." This one had something big and cylindrical inside. They ended up slicing into it to have a look... a butter knife slid through it quite easily.

"Looks like a fruitcake," Isabel mentioned with a unimpressed look on her face. "Alien frutcake??"

"And... and some brown tubes that might be a relative of jerky or smoked sausage," Alex added. "The question is, what do we DO with any of it? Really??"

"Presumably the idea is to eat or swallow it," Tess pointed out. "Presumably Isabel, since she's the one who's got a growing little ET at the moment."

"But do we trust it all?" Liz asked. "We don't really know that much about Langley's motives... we don't know if sending something that's poisonous would violate his... his obligation not to hurt you."

"Don't eat it yet," Max said. "I'll try to get ahold of Kal, and if I can... well, I'm pretty sure that he has to tell me the truth if I put a direct question to him. I'll ask him about all of it, whether it's safe, what makes him think it would be a good idea for Isabel to take any of it."

"Alright, good enough," Alex said. "We kind of thought that sounded like a plan." Isabel giggled softly.

"So, erm... what else is new in Roswell??" Isabel asked, waving a hand a few feet from Beth's face and staring a the little baby girl, completely entranced.

----------

"Umm, hello Mrs Richards," Liz said a little awkardly, looking at the well-dressed woman with the short brown hair sitting across from her. She shot a look over to the couch, where Max was sitting with Beth in his lap. Max was the only other person who Bethany had gotten used to holding her other than Liz herself. Almost as if she... in a few years, would Bethany think that Max was her f--

Liz slammed the door on that thought and tried to concentrate on her visitor again. "Umm... I'm really sorry, but I just feel a little taken off guard here. I think that you can understand that."

"Yes, of course dear," Linda Richards admitted. "I mean, I fly into town without letting you know in advance, call and say that I want to meet with you today... I certainly realize that it would be surprising."

"Now that you mention it," Max said, a slightly edgy tone to his voice, "Why *didn't* you let Liz know that you'd be coming here before you left?"

"I guess... I guess in some way I was afraid?" she said in a small voice. "Afraid that you'd tell me not to come? Afraid that if I didn't take you off guard in some way, you'd refuse to see me, or to let me see my granddaughter. Now that I say it, it seems incredibly immature and petty, and I really have to apologize. I haven't been thinking that clearly myself, over the past..."

"It's okay, Missu... erm, Linda," Liz said softly. "I think I can understand you being afraid of rejection under the circumstances." There was an awkward pause. "Well, you're here. You've seen me, you've seen Bethany. Was there something else you wanted, beyond that simple fact?"

"Ehh, yes, there is, though I hardly know how to begin explaining it." Linda sighed. "First off, Liz, I also want to apologize for the, erm, the way I and Bryant handed things after... well, after the tragedy that you went through. We kind of circled our wagons, with the rest of Casey's *real* family, and... err, well, 'excluded' you is the wrong word perhaps. You didn't ask anything from us, you came back to Roswell, to the safety of your own family, and, well, I guess you had to put your own life back together." She shot a look at Liz that was sympathetic, caring, and something else that she couldn't put her finger on immediately - but not anything bad.

"Yeah, umm... I guess so," Liz allowed with a small smile.

"Liz was working with the New Mexico alliance for the preservation of endangered species this spring and summer," Max told Linda proudly. "And she got a grant to organize a field study into... um, testing for effluents in the watershed, right?"

"Yes," Liz confirmed. "But I think we're in danger of side-tracking Missus Richards from what she's trying to explain." She smiled intently at Linda.

"Okay, I guess I'll cut straight to the point... I wanted to extend an olive branch, or something like that. What happened to Casey was a horrible loss, especially to all of us who loved him dearly, but while he was still here he linked all out lives, and I want to keep that link alive. Liz, I want you to be a part of our family, and not just because you're the mother of my granddaughter. Casey would have wanted it this way... after all, if he hadn't -- I mean, you would have been my daughter-in-law, and..." Linda broke up, tears beginning to well up in her eyes.

"Linda... thank you," Liz said clearly, hoping the older woman wasn't too choked up to listen. She felt more than a little awkward about the situation... but what else could she do? "That means a lot to me, really. You're right... Casey wanted me to join his family as soon as possible, when he found out he was going to be a father. We can't exactly go through the formalities the same way without him, hheh, but there's no particular reason we should let that stop us, m--" She had had it in mind to call Mrs Richards 'mom', but the word somehow stuck in her throat and wouldn't come out. Maybe that would just take time.

"Thank you dear," Linda replied. "I have to say, I'm not sure how this will work... I'm sure that you want to stay here in Roswell, and we have ties to the community in Pennsylvania, but..."

"We'll work something out," Liz assured her. "Play it by ear, maybe." Linda nodded, well satisfied with that idea from the look on her face.

Liz and Max exchanged a look. "Would you like to try holding Beth for a moment, Mrs Richards?" Max asked. "She may make a fuss, because she doesn't know you yet."

"Yes, yes I'd like that very much."

----------

"Umm... oh, there he is," Maria said, pointing out a familiar figure in a scattering crowd. "Um, I think. "Valenti?"

"Yeah??" It wasn't quite the figure that Maria had been expecting to reply to her call, or the right voice. She blinked in surprise.

"Hey," Kyle said, and gestured with an angled nod of his head to the man who had spoken... his father. "Dad asked if he could tag along with us to lunch... that's okay, isn't it?"

"Um, of course it is," Amy DeLuca said, smiling at Jim Valenti. Maria and Amy had signed up for a multiple-day business seminar up in Albuquerque, and Michael had suggested coming up with them and meeting Kyle for lunch. He'd be exploring the city a little and maybe shopping a very little before heading home later this afternoon.

"Okay, erm... where are we going?" Maria asked. "Kyle, you said you had somewhere in mind that we should try for lunch, right?"

"Oh, erm, yeah." Kyle led the way down a street, and the rest followed, talking and looking around. Jim and Amy hadn't seen each other in nearly a month, so they were quickly whispering to each other and touching more than Maria really wanted to see... though the smile on her mom's face was a relatively decent compensation for the public display of affection. To distract herself, Maria started asking Kyle about his classes, Martine, and several other topics.

The restaurant was a small Spanish-Mexican cantina, dimly lit inside and incomparably charming. All five of the group started talking to the others while deciding what to order and waiting for it to arrive. Everything proceeded fairly smoothly until Amy DeLuca took a bite out of an enchilada and made an upset face.

"What's wrong, Miz D?" Michael asked. "Has the meat turned??"

"No, no, it's just, there was something HARD in..." As delicately as possible Amy took something back out of her mouth... and stared at it in disbelief. It seemed to be a bit glittery... "James Valenti Junior??"

"Umm, yes, I arranged for that to be put there," Jim replied with a half-smile. "I know it's vaguely silly and cliche, but I couldn't resist actually re-enacting it. As far as the ring, that's yours if you'll take it... like something else. Or maybe I should say someone else..." Maria yelped slightly and wrapped her arm around Michael's when she realized what was happening.

Amy looked back and forth between the little diamond ring and Jim several times. "Is this your latest tactic for trying to convince me to move to Albuquerque to be with you??"

"Ummm..." Jim shook himself slightly, disappointed by that reply but still hopeful. "It's not required... but I'm not denying that I'd like that. This is a great city, Amy, and a smart lady like you could find a place here like that... since I think that you still want to work for the forseeable future. I left Roswell because there wasn't a place for me there anymore. Maybe Albuquerque is the place for both of us now, or maybe it's somewhere else. I don't know."

Several faces turned back to Amy, realizing that Jim had slipped in the answer to a critical question... he didn't intend to come back to Roswell for her sake. Amy took a deep breath, let it out... and grinned. "Yes, Jim. Yes, I will!" She stood up, pulling Jim to his feet too, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, kissing him with an enthusiasm that would have made Maria wince immediately, if it weren't for the circumstances.

Once the kiss ended, Amy lightly swatted Jim on the shoulder. "Thanks a lot, buddy!!"

"Erm -- what for??"

"The timing -- did you ever think about that?" From Jim's expression, he still wasn't sure what she meant, though Maria nodded in understanding immediately. "I've got this seminar thing to go to in like fifteen minutes, and the whole damn thing, I won't be able to concentrate on a word of it, distracted by this lovely ring on my finger, engagement party plans, wedding ideas, the thought of moving to Albuquerque permanently... all of it!! Sheesh -- men!" Maria giggled slightly.

-----------

"Oh, really?" Alex asked as he stirred the hot chili on the stove. "And she said yes? Gee, seems like everybody's following our lead, well, kinda. I know that I didn't ask you to marry me after Liz had already been asked."

"Buy you made up your mind to ask me *before* you knew about that, right?" Isabel pointed out. Alex nodded. "Yeah, apparently everything's moving really fast. Missus DeLuca's trying to get all of her business in Roswell wrapped up as soon as possible, and she's got a job interview on Tuesday for, erm, the promotions and management office of, ehh, that minor league basketball team they have up in Albuqueruque. She's *really* excited about it."

"I bet," Alex said, "That's something I wouldn't have thought of for her, but it makes a lot of sense, obviously. She always did a good job with 'The Alien Takedown,' I think."

"Yeah." Isabel sighed. "Think she and Mister Valenti will be happy together... they really deserve it."

"You'll get no arguments from me there," Alex said. "So, by the way, is there any news on the..."

All of a sudden, before Alex could finish that sentence, there was a loud knocking on the apartment door. That was strange in itself, under the circumstances. The building that Alex and Isabel lived in had a buzzer lock on the ground floor, and nobody had called up on the intercom to get buzzed in. They didn't really know anyone else in the building well enough to envision them coming by unexpectedly. Of course, someone could have been meaning to buzz up and then been invited to slip in behind someone else who was going in at the time... (though the manager kept telling tenants to not let in anyone except their own guests.)

Isabel crept over to the door and peered through the peephole. A young guy was standing there, twenty-ish, tall with short light hair. He wouldn't have looked at all out of place on the college campus, but Isabel couldn't remember his face from any of her classes. "Who is it?"

"It's vitally important that I speak to Max Evans. I believe that you can put me in touch."

"That doesn't answer my question," Isabel shouted back, shuddering. This guy did not seem at all like a casual, unimportant visitor.

"Please, just let me in. I'll explain everything, but it's very awkward talking like ths, and I'm not sure you'd want your neighbors to overhear."

Isabel shot Alex a look, and he shrugged in confusion. "At least this guy doesn't seem overtly hostile," he muttered softly. "If he's capable of hurting you face to face, he'd probably be able to knock the door down one way or another."

"Why doesn't that point really make me feel any better?" Isabel complained. But she unlocked and opened the door. Blonde guy smiled faintly, but didn't actually move to step into their apartment until she waved him in. He closed the door behind himself.

"Vilandr..." he muttered, staring into Isabel's face, and then shook his head. "No, Isabel. Isabel Evans-Whitman."

"Alright," Isabel repeated sternly. "Who are you and what do you want with my brother or me?" He knew not only her human name, but her past-life alien moniker, and maybe even that she didn't want to be called that anymore.

"I've come from Antar, treated with partial human DNA so that I can survive here on earth. My message is of the utmost urgency, for all four of you: yourself, your brother, Michael Guerin and Tess Harding!"

TO BE CONTINUED...

You wanted a quick update... amazingly enough, you got it!!


Part Thirteen

Isabel's mouth dropped open, and she stepped away from the stranger slightly, moving towards the comfort of Alex's presence. "What... wha... I hardly know what question to start with!! What's the message? Can you... can you tell me anything about it before the four of us are together, because that could take a little time. And... well, do you even have a human name? I need to have something that I can call you."

The blond guy nodded slightly. "As far as names... my real name is a little hard to pronounce, I haven't been able to manage it myself since I landed. Not quite used to this mouth and so on." He made an odd face. "Here in this country, people sometimes adopt a pair of initials, letters of your alphabet sounded out, as an abbreviation of their names, yes??"

"Umm, occasionally," Alex said. "Can't say that I know anyone who goes by that recently, but it might work for you. Which letters?"

"Umm... call me JD," he decided. "As far as the message... well, it gets complicated, and I'm not really sure where to start."

"Who do you work for?" Isabel asked with a snap in her voice. Quickly she turned off the heat under the chili pot, and led Alex over to the loveseat in the living room, waving JD to follow them at least part of the way over. "Is it Kivar or one of his people? Is it the old queen or someone else in the royal faction, or Larek? Who's the message from??"

"It wouldn't be anybody you've heard from," JD told her with a sigh. "Umm... okay, I'm starting to get my bearings on this, though. You were at the Summit, right? In Moo york city?"

Alex burst out laughing, and he got Isabel going. "That's New York City," she told him in between the giggles. "Sorry. Moo is the sound a cow... a herd animal raised for its meat, makes... it was just a funny image. Umm... well, I wasn't there actually... do you know anything about the dupes??" JD shook his head. "Well, never mind. Max and Tess were there, though, and they told us most of the details."

"Nicholas tried to bully Max into essentially giving up," Alex said, shaking his head. "To tell the forces supporting him to surrender, let Kivar keep control of the government, give up the granilith, and come back to be a puppet king. That would be bad enough even if Nicholas kept his word and didn't try to kill him on the ride home. I hope you're not presenting a deal like *that*, JD."

"Um, no, nowhere near so lopsided, at least I hope," JD said. "Okay, a lot has happened, especially on Antar, since the Summit. You probably haven't heard any of it, yes?" Isabel nodded slowly. "Okay, Kivar's lost a lot of his power base. Making the grandstand play to end the rebellion, and having Max tell him off for it via proxy, didn't help him out any, especially when Max survived the assasination attempt after the Summit. Letting word out that you guys had the Granilith was bad for him too."

"Wait a second," Isabel put in. "Assasination attempt... who do you think tried to kill Max??"

"Umm... I'm not sure that there was ever a name mentioned, just that Nicholas got two of the people who came to the meeting with Max to..." JD trailed off. "You don't mean to imply that it was you... no, it couldn't have been, because you said you weren't there. Umm, okay, you really do need to tell me about these 'dupes' I think. But that doesn't have to be right now."

"Agreed," Alex said.

"The true point is that things on Antar are really bad right now." Isabel's cry of surprise was pretty clear. "Yeah, a lot of us didn't think that things could get worse with Kivar having less power, but they managed to. For one thing, several of his top lieutenants have now attracted groups of followers of their own, and some of them are even nastier than Kivar was. The... the 'royalist' movement was never terribly centralized, but there have been feuds on that side too, and the movement has fragmented into a couple of different undergrounds who won't help each other unless they stand to gain something from it."

"Oooh," Alex frowned.

"Yeah, and then there are other groups... the heirs of noble families have called on the people of their homelands to form local militias. Guilds and councils have attempted to consolidate their own power base. There are other special cases, but basically..."

"The entire planet has balkanized, and the factions are fighting amongst themselves pretty much constantly," Alex filled in. "Nobody really has enough power to dominate the global situation, though there are bigger fish and smaller fish... Kivar's probably still one of the biggest fish, yes?"

"Umm... I think so..." JD seemed confused by the metaphor, but didn't stop to ask about it. "And that's where the group that I'm working comes in."

----------

"Right," Max muttered. "Just how did this 'group' of yours get started, anyway?"

"It began at the Global university, in the city of Rendor, near the capital," JD said. It was three days since he had first shown up at Alex and Isabel's place, and practically the whole gang was crowded into and around Michael and Maria's living room... the six of them that had been the original core gang, and Tess, JD, and little Bethany too. Kyle had wanted to make it in from Albuquerque for the meeting, but hadn't been able to make the trip because he hadn't been able to get out of a shift in the store where he was working this term.

"I wasn't there for the very beginning, but the way I heard it, the group started with just a couple of political studies professors and students, treating the global unrest as a practical problem in their field and looking for a way to stabilize the situation. When they realized they were on to something that might actually work, if enough people got behind it, some of the younger students became crusaders. Students from other disciplines got involved at that point, just about anyone who wanted the killing to stop, and it spread among the ranks of the disaffected and the weary warriors from there. I don't think any faction was able to avoid us entirely.

"The idea was simple enough in theory, and complicated to negotiate and execute in real life. Nobody in any of the factions wanted to give up power to somebody else and get nothing back in exchange. Most of them were open to the idea of trading the power they had, fairly great over a limited area, but subject to the changing tides of victory and defeat in battle, for an equivalent share of power in a single global government, powerful enough to enforce its dictates."

"A confederation charter," Liz whispered, seeing it. "Like if all the countries of the world decided to make the UN the only government we had, so we'd have to find some way of making it work."

"Or the same way that the original 13 states joined to form the USA," Isabel said. "Keeping their own local governments, but with a united federation overseeing the whole, and a strict listing of what was in the power of the original states. Massachussets can't just declare war on Conneticut, after all, and if it tried, well, the feds would probably be able to send somebody in to defend conneticut and break up the fighting."

"Alright," Michael said. "United Antarian government. Makes sense to me, though I understand what you mean about it being tricky to pull off. What do we have to do with it? Why are *you* here, JD?"

"You want us to endorse the plan, maybe??" Max guessed. "The old-royal factions, there are probably some people there who are resisting the idea because they fought so hard to bring me back to the throne, or some junk like that. They wouldn't want to give up on that... except that it would be easier to convince them if I say so... if we all do."

"Yeah, that's part of it," JD agreed. "Each of the four of you have some personal or clan-based supporters, actually, so each of your endorsements will be helpful. And for all four of you to renounce any claim on the planetary throne, in favor of the confederate council. Kivar will be making a similar declaration... but he refuses to do it unless you do, and I imagine vice versa."

"Yeah, you could say that," Tess replied. "What's Kivar's take on all of this confederation stuff, anyway? I can't imagine that he's happy about it."

"No, he's not. He stonewalled the entire movement, actually... killed a few people in his own cadre who spoke up in favore of the confederation plan. That was when some of the other factions who were committed to the preliminary confederation talks suggested that a good 'preliminary cooperative enterprise' would be teaming up and kicking Kivar's ass. When Kivar realized that almost nobody else would stand and fight on his side if that happened, then he reluctantly got on board with the plan. A lot of the other people don't trust him, but as Isabel said, Kivar's still the biggest fish in the pond... it'd take a lot of fighting and struggle to overthrow him, and nobody really wants to go through with that."

"Okay," Isabel told him, smiling at all the other faces in the room that she'd known for so many years. "So, umm... declaring for the confederation plan sounds good, though we'd probably want to know more about the details. Big question... how, how do we communicate with Antar, and let them know that it's really us? And, on a related note, exactly what's your story, JD? How did you get here, and all??" Iz knew some of these details already, but was playing dumb because a lot of the people in the room hadn't even heard what she'd heard, and she still wasn't clear on the whole story there.

"To participate in the confederation conference, you'll have to learn interstellar psychic projection," JD said. "I can teach you the techniques, and you should have the projection resonators already, though you may not have realized that they could be used for that. They're ovoid metal things, about the same size as a Rikkan's egg... no, wait a sec." He shook his head in frustration. "Err, slightly longer and skinnier than a clenched fist, with tapered ends that don't quite come to a point. Made out of metal, with the whirlpool crest on each of them..."

"The orbs?" Max said. "Umm, er. We don't have them here, but I think I know what you're talking ab..."

"Are these them?" Tess said, gesturing at the table, where the familiar shapes of the two orbs could be seen. Max almost reached in disbelief before he realized that this was a small mindwarp that Tess was using for illustration purposes.

"Ummm... JD stood up to and walked over to take a closer look, and then nodded. "Yeah, that's them."

"We... we thought they were only for getting the message, the one from Max and Isabel's... well, Zan and Vilandra's mother," Michael said. That was something that they'd agreed on, to use the past life names specifically when talking about relationships from back on Antar... which sort of had the way of distancing them from those personas, as if they were different people, which really, they had been.

"Yeah, that was built in as an extension of the resonator's true function," JD said. "To reach out and make mental contact with an Antarian probe, hidden in this star system's planetoid belt, between the fourth and fifth planets. The probe then homed in on your mental signal and projected the recording that Queen Esmerria made, converting her physical appearance into an appropriate human semblance."

"But the Skins homed in on that transmission," Isabel complained. "They knew that we were around, and learning about our heritage, and one of them, at least, was able to guess that we were in Roswell. Don't you guys have something equivalent to a VCR?? It woulda been easier."

"Yeah, we do," JD said, "but if Esmerria left you a message on a conventional audio-visual recording, you wouldn't have been able to understand it, since she doesn't speak English and you don't know Antarrian. On the other hand, I agree that using a system that could be traced so easily was a blunder." He sighed. "On to the other question that was mentioned a few minutes ago, about how I got here?"

"Yeah, go ahead," Maria said. "And how you got involved with this confederation plan stuff. Were you a student at that university?"

"Yeah, I was actually... learning about, ermm... I'm not sure if I know the english word for this. Studying the land, from the contours of terrain to the plants and animals, the people and how they settle the land..."

"Geography," Max filled in. "Or, that's what it is on earth... Antarography maybe."

"Alright." JD nodded and tried to pick up his thread. "But, well, my father had been a volunteer in the rebellion. I sympathized with his cause, with the old royal family -- and I don't like Kivar or any of his pack one bit, but more than that... I wanted to help stop the fighting. So I joined up, and did my fair share and a bit extra, I guess, helping to spread the word. I'd always been good at sneaking through to places that I shouldn't be, so I was able to put that talent to good use."

"Then, once the preliminary talks were well underway, it became quickly apparent for a bunch of reasons that we might need to take a message to you guys here on Earth. Some of my friends helped acquire a small spaceship that could make the trip, and there were a bunch of biologists and quasiphysicians who got together to figure out what to do about the atmosphere issue. We could try to grow a human skin for the courier, based on the ones that Kivar had grown when he sent his mission here, but some of the big guys were worried that you wouldn't trust a Skin, because you'd associate them with the enemy."

"Yeah, they were probably right," Tess agreed.

"And there was another option, though an experimental one. Umm, er... I'm missing an Earth word again," JD sighed. "Tiny little thing, made up almost entirely of genetic material, which can infect a living creature and..."

"A virus," Liz called out.

"Right. Virus. They created a virus to order, that would infect an Antarrian, but not hurt him or her. Each Antarrian cell that was infected would be given an admixture of human DNA... enough so that the subject, which turned out to be me of course... enough so that I could breathe Earth air, and would pass for human on relatively close observation."

"But... wouldn't something like that be horrendously dangerous?" Alex asked. "I mean, while the transformation was only partially complete, you'd have two different systems working in your body... one that was fully Antarian, and one that was partly human. They'd have different requirements for blood composition and nervous signals and... you could have died from that, right??"

"Pretty much, yes," JD said softly. "It wasn't at all fun, but there actually wasn't any serious complication. By the time I had volunteered and gone through the genetic conversion, my message had been finalized and the space ship was ready. About eight months of travelling alone in that little tin can... I'm not really trying to make any of you feel sorry for me, honest! Just describing what happened." A few of the guys laughed softly. and Tess moaned quietly at the thought of being all by herself that long.

"I landed, um... somewhere in western Texas, can't remember the name of it offhand. Met up with, err... you understand how Antarrians and other aliens have been using psychic projection to travel to Earth, using the bodies of humans who don't really understand what's going on? Since that's how the Summit was handled, you have to know about that I guess, stupid question."

"Yes, we know that that's going on," Max said softly. "Can't say I think much of the practice, since I've seen how much careless damage it can do to the lives of the poor human beings who think they've been 'abducted.'"

"Hmmm." JD thought about that. "Yeah, I can understand that, I guess. But sometimes necessity is a ... well, we need to do things that can be a little morally dubious." He sighed. "I was met by an 'abductee' who provided me with some necessities as far as getting by here in the USA. An old car, some clothes, a map, some cash, and a few other things. Nothing that will be too much of a hardship on the guy, I think." Max still didn't seem well satisfied about that.

"How long ago was that?" Alex asked. "Did you come straight to Las Cruces to find us?"

"Not... not really," JD mumbled. "Stopped in... in El Paso, on the advice of my contact. That was good for acclimatizing to Earth a bit; I took an 'English as a Second Language' course, and got fired from a few jobs. After about three and a half weeks in El Paso, I got impatient and headed up the road to Las Cruces. That's pretty much the it."

"Umm... okay," Max said. "Well, I think that that's really plenty for us to try to wrap our heads around at the moment... we'll want to talk to you more JD, but for now... was nice to meet you, I think, and go away now." Michael chuckled deep down below his throat, and Liz shot Max a surprised glance. JD didn't take offense though... he still hadn't picked up a lot of the social niceties of earth culture, so being direct and saying exactly what was on your mind with him usually worked.

"See you guys later... Isabel, Alex, if we don't meet before you need to head back to LC, then have a safe trip." And with that, he headed for the door. JD had found a place to stay here in Roswell... oddly enough, it was in the same building where Michael had first lived when he got emancipated.

"Okay, first off," Tess said, breaking the silence a long moment after he had left. "First question - do we trust him."

There was an awkward silence at that. "Up... up to a point, I think I do," Maria volunteered. "He came to us, he said, 'I'm an alien, I think you guys are aliens, this is what I've come to talk to you about.' That's... well, that's considerably more forthright in manner than just about anyone else we've run into in this whole thing. It counts in his favor, I think."

"I'm not completely convinced," Michael muttered. "This notion about making him a hybrid... making him as nearly as possible our own kind... that creeps me out a little. Just how much do these 'abductees' on Earth know, anyway? And how did he know that Isabel was in Las Cruces??"

"Maybe we should ask him that last one, see what he says," Alex suggested.

"We will, I think," Max decided. "And we'll get the orbs... play around with them a bit. I think I want some more answers, and maybe some kind of concrete evidence that JD is on the level, before we let him anywhere near them, but we can bring them down from the pod chamber." He took a deep breath. "Assuming that he's good, what do we think about making the commitments he asked for? Endorsing the confederation plan, and renouncing the throne?"

"I'd want to know a little more about the details of the plan, but in general I don't have a problem with it," Isabel said. "I've decided to make my life in this world... I don't want to be the alien princess. Everyone here knows that about me, I'm pretty sure." She looked up into Alex's eyes for a moment. "They can take my crown and give it to a 'Rikkan' for all I care -- whatever the heck that is." Maria laughed nervously.

"I'm with her," Michael agreed. "Find out more, but strongly leaning in favor. This is something that we can do for Antar without giving up the lives we've built here, and without risking our lives. Unless there's a stupid mistake or a hidden catch, I'll shout from the Antarian rooftops in favor."

Max looked at Tess next. "What about you?" she asked. "Why do you get to be the last one to speak?" He just kept looking at her. "Alright... I understand the appeal, but I think I'm leaning more heavily towards caution than you guys. I still remember a lot about this Antarian politics stuff, and I think that it'd be too easy to jump and then regret it. For one thing... I think that there's important stuff that JD still isn't telling us."

"Maybe he would have, if I hadn't said it was enough for today," Max pointed out. "Thought we could use the break, and there was a LOT of explanations to get through there. Still, your point is noted." He sighed slightly. "I think I'm in the middle. I want this to be the real deal, want the 'Antar problem' to be over and settled for good, so that we can stay here in Roswell and not feel guilty about not going home. But I'm onboard about moving very carefully and cautiously, questioning everything." A sigh. "Is there anything else??"

"Not really. We do have to head back home soon, Max," Isabel said, sighing at the prospect.

"Yeah, and I think someone is hungry," Liz said, standing up and cradling Beth against her shoulder.

"Alright, umm... Max, Maria?" Michael asked. "You guys wanna grab some dinner down at the Crash?"

Max looked at Liz first, but she smiled and waved from him, to the direction of the door. "Yeah, sounds cool."

"You guys don't mind if we use your spare bedroom, right?" Liz asked.

Maria grinned. "Of course not. Um, Tess?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you wanna come with us, or..."

"No, no... I'll hang around here until the baby's done, and then drive them home."

"Thanks, Tess," Liz said.

"Not a problem."

The five of them who were leaving, left pretty quickly after that.

----------

"Umm... I can't feet anything. But then, I never really did, even when they actually did... whatever they did. You??"

Michael concentrated, holding one of the metal orbs in his hands, (Max had the other,) and frowned for a long moment. Then he looked up at his old friend. "Nada. I wonder if Tess would be able to get anything."

"Maybe," Maria said. "Or possibly we should try to get one of these over to Isabel. Reaching out psychically to somebody or something a long way away is more in line with her power specialty than anybody else's here."

"Yeah, I guess that's true," Michael said. "On the other hand... I'm not sure if she should really be experimenting with a new power. Considering... you know, that she's got a baby on the way."

"Umm... that seems a little nebulous on the worry scale," Max told Michael. "How could trying to travel psychically hurt the baby?"

"I... I don't really know," Michael admitted. "Unless she manages to travel and can't get back to herself."

"Well, I don't think there's any particular reason to stay up here, is there?" Maria asked.

"Just a second," Max told her. "We should probably go through the box, see if there's anything else here that might be useful, now that the alien weirdness meter is back up to 'medium-high.' Hmm... healing stones."

"Bring those along," Michael said. "Just in case."

"Whirlpool pendant from Atherton's?" Michael and Maria shook their heads, and Max put it back into the box. "Let's see, erm... alien book??"

"Might as well bring it down, though I don't want to show it to JD yet," Michael said. "Actually, I'm not so sure that it makes much sense keeping all this junk up here anymore, since we've got a couple of places in town that are pretty well secure."

"I dunno," Max put in. "Ordinary locks are okay against casual prying eyes, but they don't help much against other aliens, or alien hunters with some fancy equipment on their side."

It took a while to go through the box, which had accumulated more items than Max realized, though several of them had only a small connection with the alien mysteries. Then they closed up the pod chamber door and started heading back down the hill to Michael's car.

----------

Liz picked the telephone up before it had finished sounding its first ring completely. "Baby Bethany Central, hello?"

A familiar laugh emerged from the earpiece - Kyle's laugh. "Hi, Bethany's mom." Liz giggled herself. "I was actually calling for your roommate, big surprise."

"Okay, but Tess isn't in at the moment. She said she was taking a walk and would be back when she was back. I think something's bugging her a bit and she needs a little time to think, so maybe you'd better not try her cell. She might not have even taken it."

"Well, I guess I'm stuck with you then," Kyle said, sounding happy enough at the prospect. "How's the prettiest baby girl in the whole state, by the way. Is she sleeping?"

"No, not last time I checked," Liz said. "Which was four minutes ago or so. Just sitting quietly in her crib, looking around every so often like she's trying to memorize the room. She's such a little angel." Liz sighed, and then reconsidered slightly. "Most of the time."

"Well, that's all you need," Kyle chuckled. "So, how did that big meeting thing go? Sorry I couldn't make it."

"Nothing's really resolved yet, that was kinduv just the first exposition scene to explain the basics of what's going on," Liz told him. "Further details, debating, and decisions to come. Basically, this JD guy says he's a messenger from a planetary peace movement back on Antar, and they want the Royal Four to give it their endorsements. Apparently, one of the doodads they've had for years will let them jump psychically to another planet and speak through somebody's body over there."

"Hmmm..." Kyle thought about that. "What do our guys think about that, so far?"

"Cautious, but interested. Mostly because this is apparently a low-commitment deal.. They go, they speak their peace, and then don't need to worry that much about the alien planet. In fact, I get the distinct impression from JD that the less they have to do with things over there afterwards, the better, according to the people who live there. Isabel especially liked that idea."

"Yeah, I guess I can see why," Kyle put in. "Whoops, got a call on another line... talk to you again soon?"

"Sure," Liz said, and after a moment she hung up the phone, and got up to carefully look in on her daughter again.

----------

Tess knocked loudly several times, in quick succession, on the plain green door. After a moment, JD opened the door and smiled slightly at her. It was 3 am, the middle of the night after the group's first big meeting with him, but JD was wearing blue jeans and a slightly floppy white t-shirt.

"Hey?"

"Can I come in?" Tess asked, pretty much brushing past him without waiting for an answer.

"Umm... alright." JD closed the door and turned around to look at her. Tess had grabbed the first things she found in her closet when she finally decided to storm down here and knock on his door... it was nearly laundry day and she wasn't sure what it said about her social life lately that the first things she'd grabbed had been a plunging black tank top and a tight blue skirt.

She looked around, and wasn't sure whether to laugh or yell. JD's apartment was completely unfurnished... there was a little stuff here and there, but as far as she could tell, no bed, no chairs or sofa, no tables or shelves. It would be hard to believe that somebody really lived there... if you didn't know quite a bit about the person, or being, who did. Even Ed Harding had never been quite this... inhuman, in his lifestyle.

At least, not when Tess had known him. But then, by the time Tess had come out of her pod, Ed Harding had been living on earth for more than forty years. He'd refused to compromise on certain human customs, but he'd had time to learn just about anything. JD, on the other hand, was almost entirely new to the planet.

"Okay, umm..." With nowhere to sit, Tess leaned against the far wall of the room. "I'll get straight to the point, first. What is it that you didn't tell Max and the others today?"

"Well, there was a l..."

"Specifically," Tess broke in. "About these confederation talks and what you want us to do. Support the plan and renounce our claims to the throne... is that it??"

"Umm, no," JD admitted. "I was trying to find a way to mention the other things, but other topics kept popping up, and then Max said it was enough for the evening."

"Yeah, well, the evening is definitely over now," Tess pointed out. "We're long into the middle of the night. So spill it."

JD sat himself down on the floor, (just as if he did it all the time,) and bit his lower lip in a startlingly human gesture. (Were those kind of things instinctive, or genetic, or learned by observing other people doing them?) "Okay, first off... just renouncing any right to the crown isn't quite enough. We want the four of you to promise to not return to Antar, or the other four worlds that took part in the Summit, without getting council position. You're still controversial figures, famous because of the legends that sprung up around you long before you came out of the pods here on earth, and a lot of the convention delegates would be more comfortable with having a little distance between any of you and Antar. I didn't think that'd be a big thing, because you've got jobs and friends and stuff here on Earth."

"Well, in theory, yes," Tess said. "Just because I don't have any immediate plans to leave Earth, though, doesn't mean that I'd be too comfortable about making a promise like that without going very carefully over the ramifications. What if, just to pull a hypothetical out of thin air, I needed medical evacuation to Antar? Some kind of problem crops up with my ability to breathe Earth air... or with one of my kids, if I have kids."

"Hmmm..." JD thought about that. "Well, everything is negotiable in principle, especially in the details. There are colony worlds with medical facilities, and Antarian atmospheres. You could go to one of them, even if you'd agreed not to go to one of the five homeworlds." Tess nodded.

"Okay, so that's one, the no going home thing. Any others?"

"Yes, but it's one I don't want to go into much detail about without Max here, because it's mostly about him," JD said.

"Humor me... just a hint. What about Max?"

JD thought for a few seconds before he answered. "The Granilith. Max made it clear at the summit that he considers that he has a personal duty to guard over it."

"Yeah," Tess admitted. She remembered that moment very clearly... it was the first time she'd ever really appreciated the resolve, the determination that Max Evans had inside him. No matter how high the stakes, how much was hanging in the balance, he'd refused to compromise on what he felt was right by even an inch. Tess hadn't been sure for a long time if that had been admirable or foolish... if it had been her, she thought she'd have tried to be more reasonable, maybe extended a counteroffer. But then, Nicholas had clearly not been willing to deal except on his, (and Kivar's,) terms, and now she wasn't sure whether trying to look more reasonable than Kivar was, or projecting an impression of being at least as strong and resolute, had been better in the long run.

"I understand where he's coming from, really I do," JD said. "But... well, frankly, the confederation won't survive long if he doesn't compromise on that score, at least a little. Having some influence over the Granilith will give the confederate government legitimacy. And there are details about the Granilith's history and why it was sent here to Earth with the four of you, that I don't think Max understands."

"And you're going to tell him?" Tess said. "Okay... here's the bottom line, JD. You've been very helpful, and we have no particular reason to believe that anything you've told us isn't true. But we don't really have any specific basis for believing you, either. You're a completely new element, who almost literally dropped out of the sky into our laps, and all of us really need to be careful about who we trust. So...so I have to ask you something."

"Ask it, then."

"Would you be willing to open up your mind to me in a connection?? If I can verify your sincerity about all of this stuff, and at least make an attempt to examine you mentally, for any traces of your memory being altered as part of an elaborate plot... it could really help smooth out a few things that would otherwise be very problematic."

JD gulped slightly, and stood up. "One-sided? You're not going to let me past your defenses, but you expect to let you in through mine??"

"That's the deal. I realize it sounds a little one-sided, but..."

"No, I think I understand. I'm already asking too much of you, I can't defend or demand reciprocity on a thing like this." He took a deep breath. "All right. If you touch me, I won't block you off."

Tess considered. Normally she'd want to do this sitting down on a couch or something... but no luck. "Come over here," she said, and JD walked over and leaned next to her on the wall. Tess stared deeply into his eyes, which were a haunting shade somewhere between blue and green, and reached out to touch his neck and the side of his jaw. As he had promised, there was no resistance around his mind, and no attempt to move past the privacy shield that Tess usually kept set up in her own mind, though he did examine the surface thoughts that she allowed him to, first nervously, and then, after realizing that she was aware of his actions and not offended by them, JD hungrily searched out everything that Tess allowed him access to, especially everything that had to do with growing up, with Earth as a whole, with what her daily life was like, or had been like since coming to Roswell.

Tess nerved herself and plunged more deeply into JD's psyche, reviewing his earliest childhood memories, his schooling, his introduction to the Confederate movement. The month or so... (an Antarian lunar cycle seemed to be structurally different than an earth month, but there was a period of time, maybe seventeen or eighteen Antarian days, which was close enough to seem equivalent,) over which he had debated volunteering for the Earth courier mission. Tess paid particular attention to the memories he had between accepting the job, and launching in his ship, a time during which he had been in the counsel of those running the entire confederate movement, in which they had told him and explained to him as much as they could about the globopolitical situation and their plans, so that he could explain it to the people he was looking for on Earth.

Of course, if those people had been lying to JD, or told him something that they believed that was less than factually true, Tess wouldn't be able to detect that immediately. They'd still have to be careful for subtle deceptions like that. But as far as she could tell, his memories hadn't been directly tampered with... what JD had seen and heard, allowing for very small automatic subconscious distortions, had happened. Including the pain that Tess could feel, the pain of the virogenetic treatments he had gone through.

Then the spaceship launch, and the loneliness and tedium of such a long trip in incredibly cramped quarters. Reviewing the arguments and explanations he was going to give to Max and the others along the way. Looking at pictures of his family and friends left behind, that he might not ever get to see again. Landing, meeting his contact in an 'abducted' body, and getting an update then about recent developments and the timetable for the big Confederate convention. Driving off to El Paso in a battered 1973 Chrysler sedan.

Tess absorbed some more memories to go through in more detail later, and then withdrew from JD's mind. "Okay, thank you," she muttered. "Umm... I'd probably better get back home and go to sleep. Ohh, and we'd better find you some furniture soon... you're going to be in Roswell a while, I think, and somebody may come by who doesn't know about the alien thing."

"Yeah," JD said. looking around his empty space and blushing. Presumably, now that he had seen what the places Tess had lived in looked like, he was feeling foolish about not getting anything before this.

"Okay, um... bye." Tess hurried back out the door, trying not to get overwhelmed by a foolish feeling herself. Because... because one thing, at least, that she'd seen inside JD had been VERY different from anything that she'd been expecting.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Part Fourteen

"Okay," Max said. "JD, Tess has told that you need to tell me something about the Granilith, and that I should trust what you say. I'm willing to listen. Say on."

Tess had *not* told him where her newfound faith in their visitor from afar had come from, had been surprisingly uncommunicative when Max tried to press for details, in fact. However, he was trying to let that one slide and just take what she had said at face value. He, JD, and Michael were walking together through the park, fairly early in the morning. Max had wanted to bring along one person, someone he could usually trust to be cynical and keep him from committing too much of tactical or strategic value... it seemed like a reasonable compromise between not wanting to cut the group out, and trying to limit info about the Granilith as much as was feasible.

"Okay, let's see..." JD seemed to be thinking a while. "Is it okay if I start way back at the beginning??"

Max frowned slightly. He guessed that there would be some kind of a sales pitch here, and in general he preferred to know what he was being asked for up front. But he decided not to make a big deal out of that. "Okay, I guess. What's the beginning?"

JD considered his words carefully again. "About eight hundred years ago, the people of a small Antarian colony... call it, umm..."

"Zirgon," Max filled in, not wanting to get hung up for too long on that detail. JD smiled in thanks.

"That actually fits pretty well," he said. "Zirgon. They detected a faint energy signature in what appeared to be a small asteroid drifting towards their solar system... turned out it was several times as far away as the farthest planet. The Zirgon colonists didn't have much in the way of usable space vehicles at that point, but they managed to launch a remote-controlled rocket and use its thruster to rendezvous with the asteroid and keep it from swinging past the Zirgon star entirely. It turned out that this thing was the product of a species that has never been identified, a piece of remarkable technology."

"The Granilith," Michael interpreted.

"That's what we started referring to it as, yes," JD continued. "It was towed over to Antar over the course of nearly a hundred years, behind a sub-light-speed interstellar ship. Studied by scientists and experts there... although they were able to figure out some of its simpler principles, generally the operation of the Granilith remains a mystery to this day. We don't know much about how to build something else to draw on the energies the Granilith can use, but we've learned a fair bit about how to do some impressive things with the genuine article."

"Because of that, the Granilith got sold by the researchers, and it passed from one rich mogul to another, to powerful consortiums and cartels. Then different groups started trying to steal it from each other. That was another turbulent time on Antar... the original Liaret dynasty... those are your distant ancestors, Max, or Zan's... well, I'm sorry to have to put it this way, but they were decadent and selfish monarchs, and were overthrown in a revolution about a hundred years before the Granilith was discovered, so 1000 AD on the earth calendar, call it."

"All... right," Max mumbled, trying to keep all of this straight. Figuring out how he felt about it could wait for later.

"After the fall of the first house of Liaret, there was a planetary ruling council for maybe seventy years, until that fell also, and a system of regional assemblies was set up. Each region was sovereign unto itself, and for a while that worked well, incredibly well even. But around AD 1650 the silver age of the Assemblies began to decline... the regions began to squabble and battle with each other, and various groups of bandits and other outlaws started to thrive, with none of the regions having the strength or the will to catch them."

"There was a suviving branch of the Liaret bloodline that had survived... several of its members had made attempts to claim that they were still entitled to rule over the planet, with varying degrees of seriousness and credit. About a hundred and seventy years ago, representatives of grass-roots peace organizations from five of the eight regions went to Granas Liaret, who had a reputation for being a moderate, wise person who'd made efforts for using what little was left of the royal prestige to stablize the global situation and help people in need."

"So they told him that they wanted him to be king?" Michael asked.

"Umm... pretty much, yes. It wasn't a particularly easy transition, but public support for Granas the first, as he's now called, spread quickly. He worked to establish peace between the regions, captured the bandits, and established a royal Senate to allow public input into the government. He also sent out a fleet to chase down the last group of pirates who had ended up with the Granilith, and declared that the relic was now under protection of the monarchy, for the good of all Antar. Granas' son, King Devinor, established a system of granting free access to the Granilith for any worthy endeavour, as long as there wasn't a detectable risk of the operation going awry and hurting people. He even extended that to the people of other planets, especially the four daughter worlds... planets that had been settled by Antarian pioneers on sub-light slow boats thousands of years ago."

"The ones who sat in conference with me at the summit?" Max asked, and JD nodded. "So that's why they took it so personally that the Granilith wasn't where they'd expected it to be. So wait a second... how many generations back were Granas and Devilin from Zan?"

"Umm... five and four, and the name is Dev-i-nor, pretty much. Let's see." JD started counting off on his fingers. "Zan's father was Sanren. Sanren's father was Granas the second, Zan's grandfather. Zan's great-grandfather was Devinor, and Granas the first was his great-great-grandfather. That help?"

"Some, sure," Max agreed. "Speaking of which, what's the average life expectancy like for Antarians, or the generational length - the usual amount of time before they have children."

"It varies. Lifespand average is maybe ninety-five, with people getting up to their one-forties in human years not being too surprising... and then there are people who use special medical techniques to halt the aging process. They say Kivar has done some of that. Usual age for having kids the first time might be thirty-five or forty." Max nodded and filed that tidbit away."

"Alright, so I think I see where you're getting to about the Granilith," Max told JD unhappily. "Zan's father and his father were guardians of it because they were king. If I'm renouncing claim to the throne but declaring that I'm keeping the Granilith, then in the eyes of the people, I'm not much better than those pirates and outlaws who stole it hundreds of years ago." JD nodded unhappily.

"How did it get to Earth, and why?" Michael asked. "To keep Kivar from doing something stupid with it??"

"That's one reason, as I understand it," JD told them. They had lapped the park once by this point and started around again. "Also, it was rigged up to serve as a power source for the ship that took you guys, or your protected hybridized embryos, to Earth, and it was used along with the Gandarium to engineer your hybrid bodies. And the royal supporters figured that you might be able to use it to help protect yourselves."

"I don't think we've ever figured out much useful that we can do with the thing," Max admitted, a display of candor that surprised him. "Aside from using it as an emergency express line back to another planet, and none of us wanted to do that." He sighed. "So are you asking me to send it back, to the Confederate council, and trust that they'll be able to keep Kivar from getting sole control over it?"

"Not at the moment," JD said. "Nor at any definite time, actually. What you'll be asked, as far as I know, is to continue guardianship of the Granilith, here in Roswell, but as a representative of the Confederation. You'll have to promise to yield it to an authorized envoy if the ENTIRE council, votes unanimously, for such authorization. As you might guess, it could be a long while before such unanimous approval is given, if ever."

"So, 98 percent of it is a formality, or thereabouts?" Michael asked. "Like... um, have you ever heard of Fort Knox, JD??" He shook his head. "Well, it's a treasure depository here in America, mostly holding gold bars, which is still considered the ultimate in precious metals. What I was thinking of, though, is that sometimes in financial deals with other countries, they transfer over title to some of the gold in Fort Knox, but it never leaves the vault. The other country gets ownership, they could move it out if they ever needed to, but they never bother to because it's not worth the hassle."

JD smiled. "Yeah, that sounds about right. Just like the four of you are too controversial to come back to Antar, so too is the Granilith. The confederation wants title and authority over it, without having to mess with the actual physical item. It's been safe here for years -- here it can stay."

"I see," Max said. "Well, I'll have to think about it before I give anybody a formal commitment, but I think that something along those lines could be arranged."

"Good," Michael said. "Now, let's get back to my place and have some breakfast."

Max and JD smiled and muttered their agreement to that idea.

-----------

"Hello??" Alex looked up from the table in time to see Isabel push the door open and step into the apartment, carrying her bookbag and two plastic sacks carrying the logo of a nearby grocery store. He got up, leaving his laptop, and hurried over to help her, but she had the food on the kitchen counter and her school stuff hanging up on its regular hook before he got there. So she threw her arms around him for a big kiss instead.

"Hehe. Message from Max," he told her a long moment afterwards, keeping his wife in his embrace.

"Oh. What's the deal??"

"Nothing much. He wants your opinion on some Granilith stuff that he didn't go into detail on, and said that he, Michael, and Tess have started training with the orbs. Wants to know how soon you can get back to Roswell. How soon we can get back to Roswell, I mean." He sighed, let go of her, and dropped himself down into a chair.

"How was work today?" Izzie looked at Alex with a slightly concerned expression of her own.

"Oh, good, but busy. Deadline for alpha trials on the pocket information engine are looming. May have to start putting in a little extra time at the office." He looked up at her. "You're going to have to be in Roswell more and more, up until these confederation talks, right??"

"Probably." Isabel had gone into the kitchen and started to put away her groceries. Alex moved his chair so he could see her through the window space, above the counter that seperated the kitchen from the living room/dining room. "Which is apparently going to be in mid-to-late April, not long after my due date. What the heck we're expected to do if little Evie decides to stay in a little late, and I'm in labor when we're all supposed to be in a negotiating session on another planet, I do not know..."

"Evie??" Alex blinked. "When, umm, when did we start, uhhh..."

"Relax sweetie, that wasn't a real name suggestion, just a pop culture joke," she assured him. "Ever see the sitcom 'out of this world'??" Alex's face scrunched slightly in thought. "Teenage girl finds out her father was an alien and she has the power to freeze time. Wacky hijinks ensue."

"Oh, right... Alex muttered. "Think I caught late night reruns a few times. The girl was cute... and a little oddly familiar, come to think of it."

"Hehe. Yeah, I found that show in reruns too... just about the time Max and I had figured out that we were different. I watched it and wondered if my life would be anything like that, when I grew up a little." Isabel checked in the grocery bags to make sure that they were empty, and squeezed them into the little box she kept in case they needed a bag quickly for any reason.

"You know, you don't have to participate in the confederation talks, if you're so worried about it all," Alex admitted. "It's completely fair that you might want to put yourself and the baby first... and not want to spend every weekend driving out to Roswell to train with foolish alien orbs. Max and JD and the others would understand. You can give one of them a message to convey, on 'Princess Vilandra's behalf, and not attend in person."

She smiled at him, a little sadly. "Thanks for saying so. The thing is... I really *want* to attend in person, to really contribute to this mission, if I possibly can." She sighed. "I'm just a little scared of it. And yes, driving back and forth is starting to get tiring."

Alex took a deep breath. "Then... then maybe we'll have to think a bit outside the box to make it happen."

Isabel stared at him. "What are you talking about??"

"It... this is something that I thought of a few days ago. Don't get freaked out about it too soon. But... if you took your exams a little early, and moved back to Roswell temporarily, just before Maria's wedding, then you could concentrate on the baby and the Confederation talks until May, by which time they'll both... well, by which time the talks should be over, and the baby will be born... and you can both come back here and she'll turn our lives upside down for a while." Isabel giggled, but very softly, as if she was still holding her breath when it happened.

"What... what about my classes? Just take the semester off?" Isabel asked that question because the other one, the question that was more on her mind, she could hardly even acknowledge.

"You wouldn't have to... there are a bunch of courses that the psychology department offers by internet correspondence - you've told me so yourself. As long as there's an online computer wherever you move back in, you can take a few of those."

She nodded. "And what about... about you and me, Alex?? How... how could I stand to be away from you so much... while I'm carrying our baby?"

"Well, that's up to you to figure out, if you can do it." He hurried into the kitchen and kissed her again. "It's not like I'll go for too long at any one time without seeing you though, babe - you know that. Remember, thanks to our dear alien friends, I can make the trip between here and Roswell much more quickly and easily than you can.... just call Max or Tess and get beamed up."

"You need to get two of us in the same room first," she reminded him. "But a good point." The alien teleportation routine had been deemed to be not yet safe for pregnant girls or children under four. "How often do you think you could come visit me?"

"Umm... one or two days every weekend," he promised, "and at least one weeknight evening a week. How's that sound?"

"Not too bad." Another big kiss. "Okay. umm... I'll think about it, maybe talk to some people while I'm there for the weekend. No commitment yet."

"Sure." Alex looked a little wistful, and she wondered if he was hoping that she'd decide against the idea... if he'd only proposed it out of some kind of nobility. For certain, he would hate her being away as much as she would hate to be seperated from him, even only a few days at a time, for more than four months. But the thing was, it really would make the rest of her life so much easier... "So, get anything good for dinner, when you were at the store?" he asked.

"Umm... nothing I feel like right now," she admitted. "Are all of those leftovers from the last time you made pizzas still in the freezer?"

"Should be... I'm not the one who wakes up in the middle of the night and slopes over to the kitchen to satisfy my cravings," he teased her. Izzie shot him a stern look, couldn't keep it stern and let it explode into a few giggles, and opened up the freezer. The plastic bags with home-baked pizza were easy to spot and take out, still on top of a stack. "We've got... six slices of green pepper-salami-onion, and four of mushroom and bacon, mister mushroom."

"Guess that'll work, at least for me." Isabel got out a plate and put several slices of her combination-topped pizza into the microwave. Alex got some glasses and started pouring out juice from the fridge.

"If... in case I do that," Isabel asked her husband... "how much time will you get off work for christmas? This is going to be our first holidays as husband and wife, and I kinduv wanted to set everything up perfect, right here."

"Oh, really?" Alex blinked so hard he nearly spilled a little of Isabel's drink. "I guess I assumed we were going to be going back to Roswell for the holidays anyway. And to answer your question... I think it's christmas eve and christmas day, new year's eve and new year's day. Plus the weekends, of course."

"Hmm... could be workable," Isabel muttered. He didn't ask if she was talking about the days off specifically, spending Christmas together back in Roswell, or what. "Can you believe it's only about two weeks until Michael and Maria's wedding? Where did the time go?"

"Where all days go, I guess." Alex said. "Oh, Michael is apparently thinking of asking JD to stand in as a groomsman with me, since it looks like Ryan from his work will have to be in West Virginia that weekend."

Isabel thought about that. "So that would be you and Sharri, JD and Tess, Max and Liz, Michael and Maria in the processional?" Isabel asked. She'd asked to not serve as a bridesmaid for Maria's festivities, on account of how much standing and waiting it was.

"Um, I guess... he didn't say anything about who would be with who... but I'm guessing there's a reason you put it that way!" Isabel tried to look nonchalant and innocent as she took the first plate of pizza out of the nuke and put in a second, an act that fooled Alex not for a tenth of a second. She made a big deal out of putting one slice of mushroom pizza onto a third plate for Alex. "Come on, my darling love! Tess and JD -- what do you know?"

She bit the point off of one of her slices, swallowed it, looked at Alex... and her facade cracked. "Okay, but this has to stay between the two of us for now, okay? Well, maybe three, but be careful about how you let Tess know that I told you. I think she already suspects the 'maarried couples can't keep secrets from each other' bit, but I don't want her to react to this the wrong way... to stop trusting me."

Alex nodded his agreement, and without a word started munching on his pizza, watching her and waiting for the details. "Okay, Tess and I have been trying to send emails back and forth every few days to keep in touch, and in her last message, she let slip that she's already grown... quite fond of our latest and favorite-est visitor from another planet. She thinks that he might feel the same way, a little, but he's still kind of overwhelmed with Earth, and not sure what to do even if he does like her."

"Hmm... okay," Alex said, smiling a little. "Did she say anything else? Have the two of them been spending any time together?"

Isabel smiled to herself for a moment. Alex had always been a romantic to the deepest part of his great big heart, and it had been a little while since there'd been an opportunity for him to get vicariously involved in a romance unfolding among his close circle of friends. He'd mentioned Kyle and Martine's early courtship in several dozen emails to her, back when he'd been Kyle's roommate in Albuquerque, and Isabel had still been living at Upsilon Phi Omega house with Maria and Tess. Probably each of these encounters reminded him dimly of their own start, rocky when they were living it, but achingly, sensuously bittersweet in retrospect.

"Yeah, a few times. She makes sure never to miss an official group meeting about JD's mission of course, but that isn't really too surprising, and they don't get to spend much quality time like that. I think that she's been dropping by his apartment too... she mentioned telling him about growing up on Earth and asking him what other planets were really like. Oh, and she's been taking him shopping, furnishing his apartment so that it doesn't seem strange if somebody who doesn't know about the boogety-boogety bit gets a look inside. Apparently he'd been sleeping on the floor and keeping his clothes in the suitcase he brought from El Paso."

"For a poor twentysomething guy, that doesn't seem exacly bizarre," Alex quipped. Isabel laughed softly.

----------

"JD, this is Kyle," Tess said with a slightly flamboyant waving gesture. "JD, Kyle."

"Nice to meet you," Kyle said, shaking the young alien man's hand without hesitation.

"Likewise, I'm sure," JD replied. "Tess has told me a lot about you. In fact, sometimes I think it'd be very hard to get her to stop."

Maria stifled a burst of laughter. Kyle raised an eyebrow at Tess, who did her best to look suddenly consumed with interest in the wallpaper of JD's apartment... without convincing anybody of the sincerity of her absorption, really.

"Okay, um, well, let's get started," JD said after a moment of awkward silence. "Tess, Max, Michael, you've all had plenty of practice now, using the orbs to seperate an energy consciousness from your physical bodies... looking around using that 'astral self', and a little bit of using your powers to affect the environment or make contact with people. You've all 'drifted' a fairly long way while in astral... Tess, you've been as far as Maryland, Max kinda shuffled up to Santa Fe and back..." Max shot a look at JD, who grinned, and Kyle realized that he was actually being funny. "And Michael, you've even been up into orbit and observed satellites directly."

"Yeah, that was pretty cool," Michael admitted.

"But drifting... well, you can actually get pretty far by drifting your astral self, but it won't be anywhere near far enough. I'm not quite sure what the highest speed that anybody has managed astral-drifting, but it's only a fraction of the speed of light." He thought about it. "Any idea how far it would take for light to get from earth to the nearest planet in your system??"

"A little over two minutes," Max filled in. "If it's as close to us as it possibly could be." He paused. "Don't look at me like that, Michael... it's just coinicidence that I happened to know that off the top of my head."

"Well, astral-drifting there might take over half an hour," JD filled in. "Which would make it something like one fifteenth lightspeed in vacuum, I guess. Not teriffically efficient for other planets, completely useless for other star systems."

"You keep emphasizing that that's the limit of drifting," Maria put in. "Does that mean that there's another way for them to travel when they're astral? Some way with a bit more oomph to it than just drifting??"

"Well, something like that," JD qualified. "The terminology is a little decieving... cruising to venus at over point zero six C is really more ooomph-atic than drifting, you might agree. But it's all travelling astrally in the same sort of way you might travel if you had a physical body. The next step is letting go of that - is just going from one location, to another, which might not be anywhere near it, in less than the time it takes to blink."

There was a short silence, then Michael let out a long whistle. "Yeah, that'd be good," he muttered. "Even faster than the teleportation trick we're using now, because that requires a minute, or more, for the physical molecules to stream through the air. But when we don't have physical bodies, that's not necesary. Is it hard to learn how to 'blink'??

JD smiled. "A little, but you guys are so good that I don't think it'll be long before you've got the trick of it. Ready for today's drills?" The three of them nodded.

Kyle watched what happened next intently. Tess and JD went first, taking the two orbs in each of their hands, so that one was in his left and her right, and the other vice versa, as they sat facing each other. They held that pose for only a moment or so before apparently drifting off to sleep as Kyle watched... (and Tess never liked going to sleep with anyone watching her, Kyle remembered irrelevantly. Not since she'd first moved into his dad's house, at least. But this wasn't like ordinary sleep.) Once the two of them had entirely slumped over, Max and Michael did what they could to make sure that the bodies of their friends were resting comfortably, then took the orbs and did much the same thing themselves. Soon the only people awake in the room were Kyle and Maria. She hurried over to fuss over her sleeping fiance, and Kyle uncertainly shoved Max so that he was laying on his side.

"Not so far away," Maria told him helpfully, and when she was greeted by a look of confusion on Kyle's face, Maria herself moved Max so that he was considerably closer to Michael's unconscious body. Then Maria picked up the orbs, moved Tess and JD's arms so that their hands both touched one orb, and the same for Michael and Max with the other.

"What's that bit for" Kyle asked. He'd followed the bit with them using the orbs to seperate energy consciousness from the body, but that part had been completed. Obviously, Tess didn't need one of the orbs to STAY Astral, or Michael and Max wouldn't have been able to take them both away from her like that and make their own transition.

"It's something that JD told us about in an earlier session," Maria explained. "Being without essence, or as much of it as usual anyway, can be hard on a living body. Maintaining contact with the Orbs as much as possible helps offset the effect."

"Oh, okay," Kyle replied, a little sheepishly.

"So, umm..." Maria walked back over to the old couch that she'd been sitting on before. "How are things, Kyle?? We might as well chat a little and catch up... I think class is going to be in session for a little while." She made a slightly disappointed face, as if regretting that she couldn't share this with Michael, but wasn't letting it worry her too much.

"Um, doing alright," Kyle admitted. "Classes are okay, Martine's great." He thought a moment. "Why did you snicker like that when JD said that he couldn't get Tess to shut up about me?? I mean, it was a bit weird, but what made it funny??"

Maria thought for a second. "Well, not really ha-ha funny, but it was cute, and I guess I giggled in an 'I-should-have-expected-that' kind of way." Kyle was still looking at her with an expression of confusion. "Okay, Kyle... do you realize that you're the person Tess thinks of as her closest family??"

From Kyle's first facial reaction, it was quite clear that he didn't, or at least, that he had never thought about the question. "Me? But, well... Michael and... and Isabel are closer to being her brother and sister than I am, and Dad..."

"They're family to her too, but in a kind of different way," Maria told him. "Your dad might have taken her into his home, and she might share a lot with the other pod people, but you were the one she trusted most, during a time of dramatic change in her life. That's created a bond that spending several years of less contact with you hasn't diminished much."

Kyle smiled. "Well, I guess I'm glad. I still think of Tess as the only sister I've ever had, so it's good if I still have a special place in her heart too." Then he did a double-take. "Wait, is there something going on between her and JD? Something like, umm... well--"

"I'm not really sure," Maria admitted. "They've been hanging out quite a lot together... maybe Tess is just appointing herself chairwoman of the sunshine committee for the new kid."

Kyle weighed that. "You know, come to think of it, Tess was, erm." He clamped his mouth shut suddenly.

Maria shook her head, hair flying everywhere. "Nuh-uh, you don't get away with that. Spill."

"It... it's something that maybe I shouldn't have said anything about in the first place," he protected. "Private conversation."

"Hmmm..." Maria ponderred that. "It was a private conversation - no one heard her say. That the man that she was looking for was..." She trailed off and looked at JD's quiet still body for a long moment.

"Okay, how did you guess that from what I said??" Kyle exclaimed.

Maria gave him a long look. "Those are the words to a song, cretin! If they're on the nose, then it's your fault for mentioning the title. 'Private conversation.' By that guy with the funny hair who was married to Julia Roberts, whats-his-name."

Kyle smiled ruefully. "Huh. Okay, maybe it was a musical freudian slip at that." He sighed and decided to tell Maria the full story. "It was two, two-and-a-half months ago, and I'd called Tess to check in. She started complaining a bit about her lack of a love life, and I asked her to describe her ideal guy." Pause. "From what I've heard of JD so far, he fits pretty well actually. Well, except for the hair... that's lighter than she mentioned." Chuckle. "But she said a hybrid, who was new to Earth, and passionately curious about humanity. Wouldn't be surprised if they take off once this Confederation stuff is done, so that she can show him America."

Maria blinked. "Wouldn't that mean leaving her teaching stuff behind?" Kyle shrugged. "And JD isn't exactly a hybrid."

"He's kind of close, now, isn't he?" Kyle asked. Maria thought about it, and nodded, conceding the point.

"I didn't know that you remembered that conversation," a thin, whispery voice sounded in Kyle's left ear, startling him so that he looked around, spinning through a full circle.

Maria looked at him as if he were crazy for just a second. "Didn't you hear that?" Kyle asked, though he pretty much knew that the question was pointless.

"Hear wha... oh, boy." Maria groaned. "Guess what. Tess' astral body is still here, or back here... nearby at any rate. She mindwarped to tell you something, right??" Amazed, and a little worried, Kyle nodded. The voice could definitely have been... well, Tess could probably sound like just about anybody in a mindwarp, because it was just a sensory illusion, not limited to her own vocal cords, just to how well she could imagine the effect she wanted to create. But the whisper Kyle had heard might have been Tess' own, right next to him.

He waited to see if she would say something else, and she didn't immediately - well, not to him at least. Maria jumped and giggled, and then tried to look a bit as if there was nothing she had to look particularly innocent about. Then there was a rattling sound behind him... Michael's old jacket, which had a chain attached to one sleeve and the hem. Tess was doing a ghost impersonation, Kyle decided. Literally rattling on a chain.

It wasn't long after that before the four aliens started to stir, and then stretch and get up. Michael started telling Maria about having 'blinked' over to her mother's new place in Albuquerque, the apartment that she was sharing with Jim Valenti. Kyle went to crouch next to Tess and JD.

"I think I need to get to know you a little better, JD, and Tess might as well tag along." She swatted Kyle lightly for that one. "How about we go out to dinner? I'll even buy."

"Food sounds great, but we can split it three ways," Tess insisted. "How about burgers at the Crashdown??"

"Fine by me." JD said. As they got ready to go, Maria was trying to persuade Max to go back to her and Michael's place with the two of them, order pizza and watch some sci-fi movies.

----------

"And then, when she... well, sorry. I told myself that I wasn't going to spend this evening nattering on and on about Beth," Liz admitted, blushing.

"Hey, it's not like either of us mind I think," Isabel pointed out, taking a forkful of grilled chicken and linguine noodles to her mouth. "Helps me get in the mood for my own little girl. And plus, this is like the first time you've been so far away from her since... well, EVER, right?" Liz nodded. "So you miss her, and talk about her. Seems perfectly natural to me."

Liz smiled back and ate a bit of her own food. "So, um, why doesn't someone else natter on incessantly about a different subject, just for a little change of subject. Umm... Alex, how's work going?"

Alex and Isabel both chuckled at the insinuation that Alex could ramble just about as endlessly as anyone else when set on his hobbyhorse of... well, it wasn't really a hobbyhorse considering that it was now his job -- his mania about computers.

"They've got me very busy, but it's going pretty well," Alex admitted. "Developing an alternative small-enterprise system for writing palmpilot software. There's a few out there already, competing products, but they're far from perfect -- it's a new field and plenty of opportunity to build a better mousetrap and let the world beat a path to your door." He smiled.

"Nice sales pitch," Liz pointed out. "What's the real dirt? What are you working on at the moment??"

"Pretty dry stuff," Alex admitted. "Mostly generalized data storage and retrieval routines... trying to figure out what our client programmers will want to do with information and making sure that they can do that without any problems... sorting and filtering, adding, removing, and changing data..."

He was on a roll by that point, and rambled until the entree plates were all cleaned off, to Liz's quiet delight and Isabel's muted adoration. Alex and Isabel would be going back to Las Cruces, yet again, in the morning, and Max, Tess, and Maria had insisted that Liz take this opportunity to catch up with her old friends. The same threesome, Max-Maria-Tess, were spending the evening at Liz and Tess' apartment, watching Liz's daughter, and the fact that it took all three of them secretly amused her. She knew that Bethany couldn't be in the care of better babysitters, though.

"Okay, I'm going to turn this back on you, Liz," Alex said as Isabel perused the dessert menu with a startling intentness, trying to decide which treat would best suit her tastes tonight. "What about that grant project? I haven't heard anythin about it in a little while... realize you probably haven't been nearly so hands-on with the team lately, but you have to have been staying in touch, right??"

"Yeah, and the news is... good and bad," Liz admitted. "Good in that we're seeing results, getting some good data - bad in that the problem is nearly as bad as I'd feared." All three of them frowned after Liz said that.

"But now that you have the facts, is there any chance that data will help to keep, um, whoever it is from dumping the stuff?" Isabel winced at how confused her own words had come out.

Liz smiled reassuringly. "Maybe... I still hope so. We're still not sure who's releasing what, but the number one suspect is Metachem... and they have a bunch of expensive lawyers and slick lobbyists. Not to mention that your average joe on the street is more worried about making sure that the plant is providing as many jobs to the area as possible... not the plight of the prairie chicken and other endanered desert animals."

"Oooh, yeah... that's tough," Alex admitted. "Well dangit, *I* care about the poor prairie chickens. Maybe you could get someone to start a cartoon series about prairie chickens in the ENMU school paper, to raise awareness of the issue or something." Liz smiled at the thought and nodded.

"Did you guys know that when Grant first showed up around here, he was a free agent on Metachem's payroll?" Isabel asked. Alex looked at her in some surprise, and Liz blinked for about three seconds straight. "He never told me the company's name, but that next summer when there was all the hoopla and fuss about the plant being built and opening, I asked Valenti and he still had his notes on Grant from investigating Laurie's kidnapping, and they confirmed it."

There was a pause. Suddenly Isabel realized that mentioning someone who probably qualified as an old flame to her husband was not one of the usual textbook 'good ideas,' but Alex was long past jealousy over something that had happened so long ago. She was SURE of that much.

"No, I didn't realize that, though it kinduv makes sense," Liz agreed. "Oh, hi." The waiter had arrived to clear away their plates. "Izzie, have you decided what you want yet?"

Isabel grinned. "The chocolate eclair explosion... and a scoop of raspberry ripple ice cream on top." The waiter's mouth dropped a little. "What about you guys?"

Liz settled on a piece of a chocolate mousse cake, and Alex had some vanilla gelato.

"By the way, I've been meaning to ask about Laurie," Isabel said, a few bites after their desserts had arrived. "I know that she was here in Roswell, working on your project. I expected to see her, when we first brought JD to talk with Max and the others. Is she still around here."

"Hmm..." Alex said. "You know, I guess I just assumed that Michael had been able to keep her well away from the resumed alien stuff... preparation for important planetary conference talks and what-have-you. Didn't think any more about it, I admit."

"She's been here in Roswell, maybe half the time for the past month," Liz explained. "Alex, you might have a point about Michael and the JD thing. But, well... her aunt and uncle have emerged out of the woodwork and sued to invalidate Grandpa's will. From what I've heard, they don't have much chance of actually winning the case, but they hate her enough for throwing them out that it's just a kind of payback harassment."

"Maybe they're hoping she'll give them something just to drop the case," Isabel suggested.

"Maybe. Laurie's absolutely determined not to do that, to keep fighting them... partly because she's worried that if she gives them a little money, they might find some other way to use it to try to take everything from her."

There was a silence after that. "Well if you get a chance, tell her good luck from me," Alex asked.

"Will do!"

"From *both* of us," Isabel insisted, catching Alex's arm in both of hers.

-----------

"Max!!" Mister Evans blinked as he stepped through the door into the dark inside. "Umm, what are you... well, I guess you'd be..."

"Waiting on egg rolls, I think." Max gestured to the takeout counter of Senor Chao's. "My turn to pick up enough food to feed half the floor, all trying to get ready for finals." There was a short pause. "Did you and Mom order those honey-orange grilled chicken wings??"

"Among a few other things," Philip said, in a low voice. "Max..."

"I'm sorry." Max blurted out. His father raised an eyebrow. "Ab- about not calling mom back - I know that I have at least two messages from her on my call answer."

"Well, I wasn't going to prod you about it. Although... you could drop by sometime. It... well, the place feels a little empty sometimes, with you spending so much time on campus, and your sister..." He trailed off, a trace of sadness in her eyes. "With Isabel down in Las Cruces with Alex, you know."

"Okay, maybe I will," Max said, smiling. "May not be until my exams are over, but..."

"That's alright. So... how's everything that's not school doing? Are you still spending a lot of time with Liz Parker? And, ermm..."

"And Bethany Parker?" Max filled in. "Yeah... I babysat for her a couple of nights this week, actually... along with a friend or too."

"That's great." Philip drew in a breath. "And, umm... well, speaking of friends, Nancy Parker mentioned that she saw you and the old gang around at the Crashdown a few days ago, along with someone new. A young man around your age, not terribly tall, with light hair??"

Max smiled and nodded, stepping forward slightly because his order was getting gathered together on the counter. "That would be JD. Yeah, um, he's new in town, but he's, well, he kinduv has become one of the usual suspects very quickly."

"One might wonder how he managed to fall in so quickly with such exclusive company." Max looked up in surprise. "Well... maybe that's stretching it, but the eight of you have been something of a clique since early in junior year, as far as I can tell... quite a long time, as such things go. Sure, you've all made different friends, and not all of you have been around for the whole time... Liz going off to Chicago and then coming back, especially, but it seems to me like that group is still very much a going concern. Possibly Michael's sister qualifies as a partial member, but otherwise you haven't really let anyone else into the circle. I don't know if you let this JD person in either, come to think of it, but... that would certainly be interesting, if you had."

Max shook his head, not in a negation but an expression of his utter stupefaction and inability to find a reply to that speech. Finally he paid the guy behind the counter, not collecting any of the nearly ten dollars in change, and picked up several bags of food. "Dad, I... sorry, I just gotta go. Tell Mom that I'll call her as soon as I can, alright??" And with that, he beat a hasty retreat.

Mister Evans shrugged, wondering exactly what in his armchair psychology had touched off such a nerve. "Mistah Ivvins? Five minute."

"Umm, thanks Terry," he replied, and went to sit down in one of the empty chairs against the wall.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Part Fifteen

"Have to admit, I don't really see why you have any doubts at all," Liz said as Maria turned slightly, casting a critical eye towards the mirror. "That dress is incredibly gor-- no, actually, that's not right. The dress is pretty." At that point, Maria turned around to look at her best friend, wondering what the reason for the apparently serious backpedalling had been. "Just pretty," Liz repeated. "But wearing it, *you* are incredibly beautiful, and that's kind of the point, isn't it?"

Maria laughed, looking directly into Liz's grin. "Yeah, that's the deal. Tess, do you agree with Liz's judgement?"

Tess looked up from where she'd been apparently typing a text message into her phone. "Huh? Oh, yeah, Liz is always right."

Maria sighed. "I'm not sure you get to be a bridesmaid if you can't even pay attention to a simple conversation about the dr..."

While she'd been getting through that rant though, Tess had walked up to her and put both her hands on Maria's shoulders. "Kidding! I was listening to every word, honest. And you, in that dress, are so unspeakably lovely that I'm jealous. Get married in it already! Any questions??" Liz snickered happily.

"Yeah, Michael's going to flip when he sees you in it for the first time," Laurie added. The four of them, Maria's half of the wedding party, were gathered in Tess' room of the apartment she shared with Liz. The full-length mirror on the back of Tess' closet door was not an especially FULL mirror, and so it only just barely managed to reach above the top of Maria's head, but that was enough to do the job.

"Actually, umm..." Maria turned away from the mirror to face her friends. "I, um, I kinduv already showed it to Michael. He liked it - a lot actually, but I've been having seconds thoughts as to if I should have done it. Lord knows I'm breaking a lot of traditions already with this wedding, but the one thing that we don't really need is bad luck."

"Trust me, Maria," Liz said softly. "Your luck doesn't have anything to do with whether the guy you're about to marry sees you in your dress before the ceremony. I can understand holding back so that the two of you will always remember that moment when he first spots you in the ceremony... but as you pointed out, you generally do things a little bit differently, and that's okay. Same with this dress."

In point of fact, at something like three days and some-odd hours until the ceremony, it was a little late to be reconsidering the dress, and all four of them knew that without saying so. And the gown was beautiful, if slightly unorthodox, full length, sweetheart neckline, in an icy, piney green that complemented Maria's eyes and set off the reddish tones that she had been wearing in her hair since the summer. "Okay, you've convinced me... and I'm getting back out of it now." With a few giggles, the other girls went over to Liz's room to give her a little privacy while changing back into a t-shirt and jeans.

"So... what are we talking about now?" Maria asked when she poked her head through Liz's door, a few minutes later.

"What else -- JD." Laurie giggled, and Tess glared at her briefly.

Maria nodded slightly as she went over to take a seat on Liz's bed, leaving about a foot of space between herself and Liz, who was already perched there. "Have you... have you said anything to him yet, about how you feel Tess??"

Tess opened her mouth to say something... and sighed again. She hadn't said anything about her attraction to any of these girls, only in that one email to Isabel, and she didn't think the word had spread between Isabel and... and Maria, say, even indirectly. But somehow the situation had become commonly acknowledged among the entire group, and she didn't really have a leg to stand on for denial. So... "No, not really. I, I don't... well, for one thing, I'm trying to figure out how to broach it, given the culture gap between us. He's been learning a lot about Earth, and american culture in particular, but I don't really know what he's learned about our, umm... our relationship customs or what he thinks of them. And... well, even though I've asked him what dating on Antar is like, I still don't really feel like I understand much of his answers."

"That... that's tough," Maria had to admit. As alien as Michael occasionally seemed to her, he had been brought up on Earth from a young age. He had used his 'I'm just not like other guys' line on her a lot when they were first starting, but the truth was that what they had in common was huge compared with the ways that they were different... when it came to social fundamentals. JD seemed nice enough, and he was acclimating pretty well, but who knew what kind of pitfalls Tess might be setting herself up for if she rushed into a declaration of her feelings without learning a lot more about him.

"I dunno," Liz put in, maybe just trying to be contrary. "He may have lived a lot of years somewhere else, but to hear JD talk about it, Antar isn't really that different from here. People are people, and when it comes down to it, I suspect that some things are universal."

"Ehh," Tess sighed, refusing to give the topic additional momentum by replying. "Liz -- any progress between you and Max??" That was certainly something that Maria and Liz had never expected her to ask about in such a casual way.

"Uhh... not so much," Liz sighed. "I... not that I wouldn't like to get back together with him, at some point, in some general way, but..." She sighed. "There's *so* much baggage between the two of us now. It's like we've well and truly Ross-and-Rachel-ed ourselves."

"Okay," Laurie pointed out. "But remember... even Ross and Rachel got their happily ever after at the very end."

"On the other hand, nobody really cared by that point," Tess pointed out. "The entire *country* was sick of them." Liz giggled slightly.

"Well, you'll be the honor couple on Friday," Maria reminded Liz. "Max is Michael's best man, and you're my lady of honor." Tess and Laurie chimed in with the last phrase... Maria had been insisting on it lately, deciding that neither 'maid of honor' or 'matron of honor' was quite appropriate for Liz, being stuck just a little bit between the usual roles, as a single mother. "I'm not sure if that'll lead to anything else, or maybe just be awkward for the two of you."

"Probably end up somewhere in between..." Liz decided. "A nice, nostalgic reminder of the way things used to be, but not really lead to anything else." She sighed, and tried to deflect the brunt of questioning to someone else. "What about your love life, Laurie?? Is that guy who you brought to Alex and Isabel's wedding still in the picture? Umm... oh, I really should remember the name, but..."

"Richard," Maria filled in. She could have answered the question herself, but left it to Laurie.

"Um... yeah, very much so," Laurie admitted. "He's been great about the whole deal with my aunt and uncle... not really getting involved in a legal sense himself, because that would be kind of weird with professional ethics and us already seeing each other."

"Plus, well, he hasn't passed the bar yet or anything, has he?" Tess asked, and Laurie nodded.

"No. But it's been great just to have someone I know and trust helping me understand what's going on... so that I know what questions to ask my lawyer and to help interpret what she says when she talks to me with too many big words."

"Any chance that you'll be getting married anytime soon?" Liz asked.

"Well, I'm not sure... I guess that's up to him -- I'm not about to ask anytime soon," Laurie replied. "Just kind of enjoying where we are now."

"And the trucky question," Maria chimed in, "is that if he asks -- are you going to ask him to sign a prenup?" Laurie blinked in surprise, and Tess laughed softly, seeing the slight irony of asking a lawyer, or lawyer-in-training, for such a legal formality.

"I don't know... definitely hadn't thought about that," Laurie replied after a moment. "I don't think that he's just after my money or that we'd be especially likely to have our marriage fail if we DID tie the knot. But I suppose it's probably a good precaution to take." She made a dramatic sigh. "Oh, the many pains of being a wealthy heiress." And she giggled herself.

"Okay, no more talking about failing marriages," Liz insisted. "Not... well, you know."

"How about going out, doing something fun?" Tess asked.

"Something baby-friendly?" Liz asked. "Actually, it'll be time for a feeding in about ten minutes... and probably a changing too." Sure enough, right then a fairly loud squeal rang out from the direction of Bethany's cradle.

"We can go walk around town," Laurie suggested. "Take turns having your little one in the snuggly - that is, if she'd be happy getting carried by anyone other than you, Liz."

"It... it depends on her mood," Liz admitted, getting up to look at her daughter and attempt to gauge her disposition. "Sometimes she's okay with Maria or Tess... or with Max. I don't think she really knows you that well, Laurie."

"Maybe we should take the stroller too, just in case," Tess suggested. "I know she's not quite as happy in it, but if she's only happy getting carried by you, Liz, and your back starts to get tired or something..."

"Yeah, probably a good idea," Liz said, picking Bethany up and starting to carry her back and forth in her arms. The little baby girl quieted down and started to coo sporadically, as she often did when lulled by Liz's walking gait.

"Come on, let's go out to the living room," Tess suggested, and they did, letting the Parkers have a little privacy this time.

----------

Knock-knock.

"Come in!"

Tess tried the doorknob of JD's apartment, and it turned and let her in. She smiled, looking around, contrasting the living room and kitchen space in her mind with what it had been like the first time she'd come over here. She had helped JD decorate, finding furniture, a few posters that he thought were interesting or funny, and other decorations. It *looked* like a young man's apartment now... in pretty much a good way.

"Hi!" JD must have come in from his bedroom while she was looking the other way, and she re-oriented on him as he walked right up to her. "You have pretty hair too."

For a second, the comment stunned and confused her too, and then she remembered the text message that she had sent to JD's new phone while Maria was modelling her dress. Somewhat impulsively, she'd put in a bit about how cool his hair looked and how she'd like to touch it sometime... a passage that would generally have been considered 'flirty', though she wasn't sure if JD would interpret that sense from it. (Not that she minded him realizing that she was trying to flirt with him, of course... quite the opposite.) But she hadn't really anticipated this eventuality - that he would simply reply to her statement with a similar one, and now she wasn uncertain about whether to treat it as a simple statement of fact, a relatively uncomplicated compliment, a flirt-response, or what.

Suddenly, possibly helped along by what the other girls had had to say about her situation, Tess tossed most of her caution to the winds... or at least onto the chair on the far side of the room, since there wasn't much wind here. "Would you like to run your fingers through it?" she asked him with a smile.

JD pondered that question with an odd expression on his face, then nodded, his eyes twinkling, and stepped even closer to her. "Go ahead," she whispered, and he did. His fingers felt... felt incredible - the skin soft and smooth, his fingernails short and firm - trim, but slightly uneven as if he hadn't been quite sure how to best accomplish that task. His fingertips brushed against Tess' blonde curls, putting a slight pressure on her scalp through the strands in between. Tess felt a... a thrill of some kind of excitement run from the top of her head all the way down to her... well, at first she would have said down to her knees, possibly just because they were shaking. But then she realized that some of that pulse had gone down further, all the way to the tips of her toes.

"What... what's that like for you?" she breathed.

"It... it's not quite like anything I know how to describe," he admitted. "Pleasant... intriguing somehow. It's not really like Antarian hair somehow. More... more *ggurvin*... oh, darn, I did it again." Tess had told him off a few times for slipping out of English and into Antarian in the middle of sentences. "I... I don't really know the right translation."

"That... that's okay," she breathed. Language skills were the least important thing on her mind at the moment. They were still standing so close to each other. "JD, I'd like to... to kiss you right now. Do you, umm, do you know..." She wasn't quite sure of any way to finish that sentence without sounding incredibly lame, and maybe patronzing, so she left it unfinished to see if JD would respond.

He chuckled softly. "If you were going to ask if I knew what a kiss was, what it meant... hehe, then, yes, I think I've picked up the basis. Watching a little television, reading a few books has been very enlightening on that subject." Tess smiled and blushed fiercely at the same time. "And if you were asking if I knew whether I wanted you to kiss me, or for the two of us to kiss..." he bent down, "then yes I would. Very much."

Tess giggled for just about two seconds, then swung into action, moving one hand to the back of JD's neck, and using it to bring his head down, not far, just enough for her to meet his face with his own. (THAT was why a guy being not that much taller than she was herself was a good thing.) She tilted her own head slightly to the side, and brought their lips together. At first, JD's lips were mushy, like he was a preteen boy who really had no idea what kissing was all about. Tess was terribly worried that the first attempt would be completely ruined, and that she'd have to withdraw and explain the mechanics in great and gory detail, which seemed like it would inevitably kill the mood.

But all of a sudden, he seemed to get the hint, or to realize that there was a significant difference between what he was doing, or not doing, and what Tess was doing, and that he needed to follow her lead better. JD pursed his own lips and kissed back, still inexpertly, but with a kind of beginner's luck and natural flair that made the skin at the back of her neck, and in a few other sensitive places, tingle in anticipation. One of his arms swung around Tess' back, which had the effect of helping her stay upright and bringing her body closer to him... both of which were very good things.

Tess conceived of a desire to move their encounter to the couch, and considered trying to cross the distance without letting their lips seperate, but reluctantly decided against it, and pulled back from the kiss. "Sit down?" she suggested, nodding towards the couch, and reaching up with her free hand to brush at JD's short, deeply golden hair, running her own fingertips along the curve and lobe of his left ear.

"Alright," he agreed. Her left hand was still at the back of his neck, and his supporting her back, but neither of those facts seemed to slow them down from a scramble towards the blue and grey plaid sofa. Rather than be eager to kiss her back, JD seemed to have something that he wanted to say, and Tess found that she wasn't disappointed by that fact. She waited for him to get the words sorted out, which did take a little time sometimes, still, especially when he was excited. "I... I didn't expect anything like this, that I would... that I would have feelings for one of you when I got here. The way the royalists talk about it... well, you're Queen Ava reborn. Shouldn't you be with Zan - with Max??"

The question was nearly enough to take the wind out of Tess' chest. But... "The Royalists can go stuff a small, rodentlike animal up their digestive tracks the back way if they think they have any right to dictate our personal lives," she muttered, and realized that it really was her own feelings. At one time, her own desires had nicely dovetailed with the sentiment JD had expressed... but that didn't really mean that anybody had a say in who they wanted to love, or that anything was 'destined.' The notion of Destiny had just been something that she'd believed in because it was convenient.

"Okay..." JD muttered, his eyes widening slightly at the mental image that she had conjured up. "I have to admit... I never met anyone in my whole life who made me feel the way that you do, Tess."

"Me neither," Tess admitted. She thought that she had loved Max, but what he told her that night, outside the dance, had been true all along, though she only realized it now. She'd been in love with the idea of being with Max... with the love story that she remembered of Zan and Ava, and all of her expectations for how great it would be if they were together. What she felt hadn't really had anything to do with Max Evans - with who he was here and now, with his hopes and dreams and fears, which meant that it wasn't really love, no matter how intense her feelings had been.

And she might have been in love with Kyle at one point... she still loved him, but that had become something different, a relationship that could never be romantic. Looking at Kyle didn't give her anything like the same feeling she got from staring into JD's eyes.

She kissed him again, softly, slowly... and with excruciating thoroughness that made her pulse race, and from the feel of the skin on his arms, beneath her fingers - gave JD goose bumps.

"So... do we do anything else after kissing?" JD asked her several minutes later, with a naivete that couldn't quite be genuine.

----------

"Umm... no, I guess I don't mind, Isabel," Liz said. She, Isabel, Alex, and Max were all in the living room of her apartment. And Bethany of course, who Max was fussing over - and that made her smile for a second. "Are... are you sure you want to be spending this much time in Baby centr..." she trailed off, suddenly realizing just how stupid that question might seem.

"Of course I do, Liz," Isabel insisted. "In fact, that would be a great extra bonus, getting to spend as much time with Bethany as possible before, umm, before Karen arrives -- final name approval pending." She shot a look over at Alex while mumbling the approval phrase like a quick sales-pitch-disclaimer from the TV, and Liz giggled at that.

"Karen?? Is that a front runner?"

"Yeah, we're both trying it on to see how it seems to fit," Alex said.

"Anyway, yes, I want to get to know your baby, get used to being around a baby girl," Isabel repeated. "As long as you don't mind."

"No, of course not," Liz smiled. "I'd be grateful for the company, I think... though we'll still have to ask Tess about you moving in, of course."

"That shouldn't be a problem I think," Max said, leaning over to set Bethany down on the carpet on your tommy.

"What... what's that about?" Alex asked.

"Max has been trying to get Beth to crawl already," Liz said, and did a very good job of not rolling her eyes, even a little bit, as she spoke - however much she internally wanted to. "He read a bunch of stuff online about how it's good for a baby's development and motor skills and such, to start as early as three months."

"Oh, okay," Isabel replied "I know that you guys don't exactly have bunches of extra space here..."

"Yeah, but that's okay," Liz said. "You could take over the living room, and sleep on the couch. Or... oh, oh, ohmigawd... we need to check with the manager like RIGHT away."

"What?" Max asked.

After about a second, Alex had guessed. "Is there a one-bedroom next door to here that's available??"

"No, but there's a really big place across the hall - big enough for all three of us, with no problem."

"Umm... are you sure that's a good idea, Liz?" Isabel asked, the nervousness readable in her tone of voice. "I mean... that'd be a lot of fuss and bother, to move all your stuff to a new place, even if it's really close - and then what are you going to do, when I go back to Las Cruces in May?"

"I don't know, maybe Laurie will want to move in with us then," Liz said. "Or something - I don't know. Maybe it won't work out. But I think that, given the chance, we should at least see if there's anybody who's applied for it, see if we can get them to hold it long enough to figure something out."

"Okay," Max said. "How about I go with you downstairs, and Alex and Isabel can keep an eye on Beth for a few minutes??"

"Yeah, that'll work," she agreed. "If you guys think you're up for it." And a wink.

"She might be a handful, but I think we... Ohmigawd," Alex jumped about four inches out of his chair, and waved. "Look at her!!"

Liz looked. Max had already seen what Alex was reacting too, at about the same time, Beth was slowly pulling herself along the floor with her arms and one leg, in a kind of lopsided scrabble. "Lord above, she's actually doing it! She's crawling!!" A smile so broad that it nearly reached her ears had transformed her face. "Max, you... lord above!!" That expression wasn't quite typical for Liz, but she didn't seem to be able to think of anything else. Impulsively, she hurried over towards Max and threw an arm around his side, almost as if he really were Beth's father. (Now, what made her think of it in those terms??) "Did you think she'd do it today?"

"I... I wasn't sure, but I thought there was a good chance." Max whispered. "She's an incredible little person -- bright, inquisitive, energetic. Reminds me of someone else who's like that... gee, who could that be? Her name was on the tip of my tongue just a minute ago."

"Yeah, right." She nudged him slightly in the side. "Compliment accepted... on my behalf and hers. Come on." She got up, checked to make sure that Alex and Isabel were watching and would pay attention while they were gone, and hurried to the door, to go and see the building manager down in apartment 3.

----------

"Alright Michael, it's your bachelor party, it was your idea, so MOVE YER BACHELOR ASS!!" Max called out. "If we don't get there on time, the plane is gonna leave without us."

"I'm coming man, I'm coming," Michael insisted. "Sheesh." Sure enough, he came out of his room about ten seconds later. "Is this okay? I'm not sure what to wear for skydiving."

Max took a look at what Michael was wearing... jeans that were more white than blue, and a black t-shirt with the logo of a 1999 metal rock band on it. "Yeah, that should be fine. Come on." They headed down, and found JD and Alex waiting at the car.

"Where's Kyle?"

"Probably on his way by now," Max pointed out. "He was going to pick up Tom and Willis and meet us there. He's got a rental car."

"Oh, okay," Michael muttered. "Except, wait, who's Tom?"

Max rolled his eyes as Michael pulled out. "A friend of mine from biochem class and cellular bio. You said it would be okay if I wanted to..."

"Oh, oh right, okay."

They drove out towards the airport, chatting about a bunch of stuff, lots of it about Michael's upcoming wedding day, and the preparations for Isabel to move temporarily back to Roswell. Liz and Tess had agreed to move from their apartment into the one across the hall, the one that was available and had enough room for all three of them. Laurie DuPree had expressed some interest in taking Isabel's room when she left to go back to Las Cruces, but had been unable to offer a firm guarantee... they were just going to have to hope that things sorted themselves out for the best one way or another when that time came.

Pretty soon, Michael was pulling into the airport parking lot, and they went off towards the little charter station, found Alex and the others, and then it was just a few minutes later that the instructor started taking them through the basics that they'd need to know. She was blonde and fairly pretty, and made a big deal out of the fact that they had a bachelor party along for this ride, and asked who the bridegroom was.

Feeling just a little embarassed, Michael waved a hand. "Yo, right here."

"Skydiving bachelor party... we actually don't see many of those around here. Did your best man come up with the idea?"

"Actually, that was me," he said. "Just figured that... after throwing myself out of a plane at ten thousand feet up -- getting married wouldn't look so scary anymore." There was a brief laugh at the joke.

Soon the instruction was complete, and the group headed out to their runway to board the plane.

"I wonder how the girls are making out," Michael muttered to Alex as they waited for takeoff.

----------

"I'm gonna get you," Maria managed to choke out over her embarassed laughter and her groans of mortification. "Hear me, Liz Anita Parker. Do you think you're never going to get married yourself? Someday you will, and on that day, if not sooner, I shall have my vengeance for this!!"

The close friends, being the bridal party, plus Isabel, Martine, and Violet Moore, who was one of Maria's favorite clients in her music management business, and a classmate from ENMU, had gone to an elegant bachelorette dinner in a private room at Eiffel. Someone, however, had been unable to resist injecting a note of less sophisticated bachelorette hijinks into the affair, and Maria's guess that her lady of honor had been in the thick of the scheme was quite likely on target. Here's what had happened.

Once the girls had arrived, and been recognized as a special party by the maitre D, he had shown them to the little room in the back of the restaurant, where they'd been greated by a handome waiter in uniform, who said simply that his name was Adam and he'd be taking care of them that evening. Maria hadn't been terribly suspicious of him to start with, and that residual caution had slipped down to nothing after he'd taken their orders, delivered appetizers and food, provided extra utensils and hot water bowls for cleaning off fingers, all with perfect professional aplomb.

However, once the main dishes had been finished and Adam made his way smoothly into the room again, he didn't make any immediate move to clear the plates away. Instead, he'd closed the door firmly and done something to the doorknob, and pressed a hidden control on the wall that resulted in seductive, sensual jazz music emerging from hidden speakers. With that, he began to slowly dance in place and strip off his uniform, to the amazement or embarassment of almost everyone there. (It was pretty fair to say that even the ones who had arranged for this show were slightly embarassed by it.) Underneath the clothes, a surprisingly fit and well toned male figure was emerging.

It wasn't too long after Maria made her vow of payback, however, that Adam was down to his tightly filled black bikini briefs. He danced about a little more, taking a bit of exhibitionistic glee in showing his crotch package to the bride-to-be, and bending over to reveal well-toned butt cheeks while picking up his own clothes. Then sauntered back to the music switch, shut it off again, and said with considerable grace and dignity, under the circumstances, that someone would be arriving to clear the dinner dishes and take dessert orders in just a minute. As the waiter slipped out the door, he was holding clothes strategically around his midsection, and presumably making as quickly as possible for an employee washroom or some other place he could discretely get dressed again.

"Okay, umm..." Isabel shook her head and tried to think of a new topic that would enable them to pretend that that incident had never happened. "Tess, umm... have you, uhh..."

Laurie filled in, speaking a little bit louder than she had to . "Didja kiss JD yet??" There was a slightly awkward silence as the rest of the people in attendance looked at Tess, or first at Laurie and then to Tess.

Tess blushed fiercely herself, and then decided that, in the spirit of girls' night out confessionals, and moving on from the male stripper show -- she'd come clean. "Yeah, yeah I did, last night when I went over to visit his place." Quickly she told the story about the text message, mutual hair appreciation, and the stupid question she'd asked him about kissing. Most of the table was smiling at her when she finished, either just appreciating the story for what it was or lost in nostalgic thoughts of some precious first kiss with someone special.

"It was kinduv incredible," she continued. "We, um, we stayed up practically all night and talked." Suddenly, Tess impulsively wished that Martine and Violet weren't there, because there were parts about the story that she couldn't tell to people who weren't in on the secret - how JD had told her a lot more about growing up on his home planet, and been passionately curious to hear even the most mundane-seeming details about her own life on earth. How they'd connected again, this time for a more even exchange of memories and impressions than the last time, when Tess had asked to be let into JD's mind on business, not realizing that what she'd find by looking behind his eyes would be enough to start her falling in love with him.

"I remember having the stay-up-all-night talk with Ryan," Violet said. "Were you able to get any sleep this morning, Tess??"

"A little though I do kinda feel like I'm dragging," she admitted. "Okay, umm, somebody has to have something else to talk about. Umm... Martine?? Anything to share from the big city??"

That was when an older waiter, a woman maybe in her late fifties, came in and directed their attention to dessert menus while clearing away dishes.

----------

As it happened, that night Michael and Maria arrived home at their apartment building so close together that they Maria turned around and saw Michael's car pulling up when she was halfway up the front walk, between the sidewalk on the street out in front, and the actual door of the building. She leaned against the doorframe, waited for him to get out, and met him with a warm kiss, made with an equal mix of affection and passion.

"Hey babe." He brushed a little strand of hair away from her eyes, a familiar gesture that always made her heart melt a little. "Tess drop you off?"

"Yeah... you probably saw her running lights at the far end of the block when you turned the corner, without realizing it was her," she suggedted.

"Could be," Michael admitted. "How was dinner?"

"Nice, except for... well, you can't get mad at me for this, because I had nothing to do with it," Maria disclaimed, as Michael led her into the lobby and checked the little mailbox. "If you're upset or anything, go talk to Liz and Tess, because I think that they managed to hatch the plot. Possibly with the collusion of your dear darling sister, though I'm not so sure about that part."

Michael raised his eyebrows. "I... what can possibly have happened that you think I'd get mad about??" Michael asked softly, more to himself than an actual question to Maria. Then... the most rational possible answer hit him. "They sent for a male stripper?"

"Actually, the male stripper was the waiter... the first waiter, anyway. I guess he didn't think it would be a good idea to continue waiting on the table after he'd done his act." Maria explained what had happened, in fairly great and particular detail.

"Sounds like a funny joke," he said. "I know we agreed on no strippers for either party, between us, but I'm not mad, really. Pretty clear that they only did it to embarass you, not, er, well... not because they thought you'd actually like it, if that makes any sense. So I'm not threatened or anything." They were inside the apartment now, and he collapsed onto the loveseat. "You didn't... didn't like it, did you?? I mean, you're talking like you didn't, but..."

"Ummm..." Maria paused, trying to figure out how much honesty she could get away with here. "Overall, I was too embarassed, surprised, worried that you'd be a little upset when you found out, and upset with Liz to enjoy it. There was a part of me that was liking a slightly new and different view, erm, but..."

"I think that answers my question," Michael agreed. He'd probably have felt the same way if Max or Kyle had arranged a similar surprise for him... that didn't mean that it was something that either of them needed to dwell on or turn into an issue.

"Okay, how about you?" Maria asked, quickly turning the conversation to a new tack. "What was the skydiving like??"

"Pretty frickin' cool, just a little bit scary at the start," he said, grinning.

"Did everybody go through with it?" Maria asked, sitting down beside him.

"Umm... from our party, yeah, everybody. Max's friend hesitated a little, but only like twenty seconds I think. As far as everybody else who was on the same plane... I think there was one guy who just refused, and another who had to take maybe a second pass over the landing area, maybe fifteen minutes after the rest of us jumped." He sighed. "It's the most incredible feeling, first falling through the air, it kind of felt as if I was weightless, just drifting there, except for the fact that there was more and more breeze blowing up from below me. And then WHOOSH out comes the parachute, and it was cradling me a little bit like a hangglider, with being able to pull on either side and try to steer. I tried to use my powers to push against the air as well, but that didn't work too well, mostly because it's hard to get a good grip on air, and there's nothing else within range to push against when you're so high up. Then the ground coming up at you, just fast enough to take it at a running landing, and the parachute starting to collapse once you're in for a landing."

"Well, I'm glad you enjoyed yourself, sweetie," Maria said, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek.

"Yep. So, what's on for tomorrow in terms of the festivities, again??"

He sounded a little bit tired, Maria decided. "Nothing much. There's the Jack and Jill wedding shower around noon, which should be maybe an hour and a half or two hours... just a little time to hang out with our closest friends, have some snacks, and for them to give us some presents." She laughed softly. "Then the wedding rehearsal, just a quick one, and rehearsal dinner with the principals is at the Crashdown."

"And then that's the night before our wedding," Michael summarized. "And we do the staying 'not seeing each other the night before, or morning of' thing."

Maria looked over at him. "Well... that's up to you I guess. A very good friend reminded me that good luck or bad luck really has nothing to do with wedding traditions. If you want me to stay here with you, tomorrow night, to wake up together the night before our wedding... then I will definitely be here."

"Hmm," Michael muttered. Apparently he hadn't been expecting her to say that. "And if I were to say that it didn't really matter to me one way or the other?"

"Well, then I suppose it would be up to me, and if it's up to me... then I say that this is a tradition I want to go ahead with. It'll make seeing you for the first time in the middle of the ceremony that much more exciting and special." She nuzzled Michael's shoulder briefly with her nose. "It was nice of the Parkers to offer me Liz's old room for the night."

"Okay, okay," Michael sighed. "I'll go along with that, I guess. Tomorrow night, after the rehearsal dinner, we seperate unti the ceremony." He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "But tonight, we're together."

"Oh, definitely we are, my spaceboy my love."

She let him kiss her on the lips, then got up and led the way to their bed.

----------

"Hey, Evans," Kyle said as they headed out the front door of Michael's building. "Need a ride anywhere??" The Jack and Jill shower had just ended.

"Sure, I guess," Max replied. "I was thinking of heading back to the dorm. Or maybe swinging by my parent's place - I hadn't decided."

"Actually, don't take this the wrong way, but I wouldn't mind going by and visiting your folks," Kyle mentioned. "Been too long since I've seen them... probably the christmas dinner at the Crashdown LAST December. They doing alright?"

"Pretty much," Max mentioned. "I think they've got a bit of empty nest syndrome... with Isabel having been so far away since she got married, and me being so busy with school and helping Liz with Beth."

Kyle got behind the wheel of his car and gestured permission for Max to take the shotgun seat. "Well, now that Isabel is going to be staying here in Roswell for a while, maybe your folks will get a chance to spend a little more time around her... and you as well, maybe, if they're going down to the girls' place and you're hanging around there too."

"I guess you're right about that," Max admitted. "So, umm... how are things doing about, umm..." He tried to cast his mind back far enough to remember the details he needed. "Umm... that advertising place that might be interested in giving you a job. Little bird happened to mention to me that you might be moving back to Roswell this winter... and asking Martine to move in with you."

"Little bird have big mouths," Kyle quipped. "But yeah... the job placement here in Roswell with Silverwinds is there if I want to take it, and I'm probably going to, which means finding some kind of a place to live here in Roswell for the four-month placement period at least. And I've talked with Martine about moving in together, here... but things get more complicated there in terms of actually putting the notion into practice. We'd be taking a risk that I can get an extension on the placement, turn it into a full-time job, AND stay in Roswell instead of them wanting me to go back to Albuquerque or somewhere else. And... well, Martine can finish off her school here at the local college, but she isn't sure if she wants to be looking for a job in Roswell."

"Yeah. Real life can get complex quick like that," Max agreed somewhat awkwardly. "Well, I hope that things work out pretty well somehow." There was a long-ish pause. "Any idea what kind of job she wants to be getting?"

"She says she's not too picky... her major is communications, so that could be a job in media, or something more on the regular business end." He smirked slightly. "I have to admit, one of the reasons I wanted to come with you to see your parents was to see if there was a job opening at your dad's firm. Something really entry-level that doesn't require any specific legal training."

"Hmm." Max raised an eyebrow. "Well, I guess we can ask him."

Kyle caught the 'we' and nodded a silent thank you for it. "Oooh, I need to remember to swing by Bethany's place myself. She's starting to grow up already and I haven't spent enough quality time with her. Tess mentioned that you've got her crawling already."

"Not sure that I had that much to do with it, aside from putting her down on her tummy," Max said, smiling modestly. "She's bright and curious and energetic... like her mom is, though in a slightly different way."

"Yeah, I guess so," Kyle agreed. "Ooooh... here we are, right?"

"Yeah." Max nodded as Kyle turned onto the small side street. "Yeah, you can just park there right in front of the house."

----------

Michael groaned and woke up, realized that he had his arm draped right over the place where Maria would have normally been, and sighed. He got up, grabbed the telephone, and hit a speed dial. "Hey, Maxwell."

"Um... Michael? Do you know what time it is?"

"No, actually." Michael looked around for a watch, bent back to get a look at the face of his clock radio, which he had passed without a glance - bent too far back for that early in the morning, lost his balance, and fell down awkwardly on one arm and his left side.

"Michael?? You okay??"

"Yeah, I'm fine, and now I know that it's six thirty AM, and that I shouldn't have looked at the clock that way," Michael mumbled. "Sorry to call so early, man, I just... I woke up without Maria next to me and I'm feeling bummed about it. And about the fact that I can't just go over and say hi to her at the Parker's place."

"Yeah, that's tough," Max admitted. "It's going to be a kinduv long day, considering that everything's scheduled for a sunset ceremony, and things are very casual, so there isn't really much getting ready for you to do." A pause. "How about we do something to try to keep your mind off of it?"

"Already got that far," Michael cracked. "Any bright ideas on what??"

"Umm..." Max thought. "Maybe a road trip?? Up to Santa Fe, have dinner there, and back??"

Michael grinned. "Sounds like a plan, actually. Bring the guys along? Alex, Kyle, JD?? There's a few things we can talk about, and practice, on the way."

"Hmmm." Max thought about that. "Okay... but we probably shouldn't try calling them for another half an hour at least. I'll probably call Liz, just so that Maria won't panic when she finds out that you've skipped town. Last thing any of us want is for her to think that you've got cold feet."

"Nope, not cold feet. I got a hotfoot," Michael joked.

"Alright. You want I should swing down there? We can have breakfast together," Max suggested.

"Great grammar college boy," Michael joked. "'You want I should??' You sound like a New Jersey gangster."

"It's six thirty, Michael. You're lucky that I'm talking at all."

"Alright, okay," Michael said, deciding not to give his best friend ever any more of a hard time. "Sure, come on down."

"I'll be there in fifteen I guess."

TO BE CONTINUED...

Part sixteen
Disclaimer: The song lyrics are off Bruce Guthro's album "Of your son," written by Bruce, and the guest singer was Amy Sky.


"Hey, there." Liz stepped carefully into her room, carrying Bethany in her arms. "Whatcha thinking about?" Maria was lying on her stomach on Liz's bed, gazing out the window.

Maria answered the question without looking up at first. "Can't you guess? Michael??"

Liz laughed at that, and sat down close to the bed on her desk chair. It was about twenty-five minutes to noon, and since the ceremony would be starting at six-thirty that evening, and was a fairly simple, small affair, there wasn't anything much for the girls to be doing yet except hanging out at the new apartment and killing a little time. "Are you nervous about the actual wedding??"

Maria turned at that point, to look at her dearest longtime friend. "No, not really. I know that we're ready... well, as ready as we'll ever be. We've got great friends, like you and Max... and Isabel and Alex to show us the way, kind of. That may not seem like much... but I think that we'll be okay."

"Actually, it does sound like a lot," Liz admitted. Maria got up and hugged Liz, then started to pace the room a little restlessly.

"Alright, come on, enough of this," she decided after about three laps. "The guys have the right idea of it. Liz, we need to gather our side of the wedding party and do something of our own before we go crazy."

Liz giggled. "Any idea what? Truth or dare? Play some computer games?? Scavenger hunt?"

Maria thought about it. "Computer games might not be bad. I know that Tess had some cool old-fashioned ones while we were living in the loft together. Do you know if she still has them? Will they play on your brand-new alienware??"

Liz groaned slightly. She *didn't* own an alienware, but Maria had picked up the brand name at some point and refused to stop teasing her about it. "Yeah, actually, I think we've tried some of them. Need to go into a pretty complicated compatibility mode, especially to get the action to slow down, but I've got a shortcut for that somewhere around here."

So they got the old-fashioned floppy diskettes out, and the party started to gather around. In addition to the wedding party proper, (Maria, Liz, Tess, and Laurie,) Isabel was there of course, and Martine had dropped by since Kyle was off with Michael and the rest of the guys. After a bit of discussion, Tess and Maria took the controls, and started to play a funny little cartoonish action game, with a little boy bouncing around the board, hopping on top of alien characters and dodging around dangers, (sometimes using a pogo stick for this,) scoring points for finding candy, and so on.

"So?" Martine asked softly while waiting her turn. "Isabel, umm, do you have any advice for Maria on her wedding day? Since you're the only one here who's been through it, you know?"

"Hmm." Isabel thought about it. "Not really. The wedding part is easy. As far as marriage... not sure, all that's coming to mind is -- always try to compromise twice as much as you think Michael does. I... I know this sounds silly, but seriously... we're all a little self-deluded about that -- it's, erm, human nature. Michael will probably think that the balance goes the same way in his favor, hmm, I should make sure that someone tells him about it too, and in practice it'll pretty much even out." Isabel considered that a moment. "Actually, Michael would probably think that he's compromising THREE times as much as you do, just because he's more self-deluded than most of us." There was some general laughter about that. "Oh, and communication - I know that you're pretty good about talking, Maria, but there's usually more to it than that. Listening... not just hearing what you think you already know, but listening to what he's trying to say, and trying to figure out what he wants to tell you even if he's not saying much."

Maria nodded, part of her attention still on the screen. "Yeah, listen to him. Got it."

"Actually, there's something that I want to play you, when you're not glued to the battle of the diarrhetic poison snails," Isabel said. "It's a song from one of the CDs in Alex's collection - kind of sticks out in my mind as far as the topic of making a marriage work."

"Okay, umm... just wait until we pass this level," Tess said.

"Do you actually have a copy here?" Laurie asked.

"Umm... yeah, it's on the Ipod mini," Isabel said, getting up from her chair. "Just a minute," and she hurried out of the room before Liz could volunteer to go get it for her, which would have made Isabel feel heavier than she actually was.

It took so many lives to find the exit of snail village that Tess almost put the game on pause to listen to Isabel's song first, but Maria insisted on victory first, and managed to claim it, excitedly jumping across the series of slippery-slick floating platforms above hot roasting flames in order to win free. Liz helped disconnect the computer speakers from the sound card in order to plug them into Isabel's ipod, (while Tess watched over little Bethany,) and she started the song playing - a bittersweet and beautiful duet:

-----

HIM: I have just worked a twelve hour day.
What do you want me to do?
HER: Help get the kids ready for bed.
You know I worked twelve hours too!

And they need to see you -you're never around.
HIM: It's not like I'm out on the town.

I'd love to relax, but I can't find the time.
It feels like I'm climbing a hill
HER: At least you get out of this house sometimes!
I feel like I'm all by myself.

I wish you'd come home, show me that you care.
HIM: Why do you think I go out there??

CHORUS
BOTH: We're living in a two-story house
On last chance Avenue
And the windows only look out
Why can't we change the view?
HER: Two story house...

HER: Where did they go, the dreams that we shared?
This is not the life we had planned.
HIM: You can't live on dreams,
Look, this just isn't fair!
I'm doing the best that I can.

Nothing comes easy, you have to work hard.
HER: What good is it all
If I don't know who you are?

REPEAT CHORUS

HIM: Alice lives in wonderland.
HER: Jack won't come down from his hill!
BOTH: Pages keep turning,
The bridges keep burning.
No listening, no learning,
HIM: Until...

HER: I'm taking the kids, I'm moving back home.
Can't go on living this way.
HIM: If you're gonna leave, then you go alone.
You take what you want - they stay.

HER: How could you be so cruel?
HIM: How could you be so blind?!
BOTH: Some day you'll look back--
HIM: ... And you'll know I was right.
HER: (semi-overlapping.) You'll see that I'm right.

HER: Ohh... two story house.
HIM: It's our last chance avenue.
HER: Can we, can we please work it out?
HIM: I remember when you loved me...
HER: ...And I still do.

-----

"Oh my gawd, that's so tragic," Maria said once the song was done. And I see what you meant. The more they talk, the more they don't hear what the other person is saying." She sighed. "Yeah, I do think that Michael and I get that way sometimes."

"It's not so much that they don't hear," Martine said, "but the don't understand what really matters to the other person. He says that he's working night and day to support her and the kids, but all that really matters to her is that she feels abandoned when he's at his job."

"Yeah," Isabel agreed, and sighed. "One other thing that sticks in my mind about this song was that I looked it up on the web after I heard it... I was trying to find out who the guest vocalist was, the woman, since it was on a guy's album. But there was this one reviewer who described the song as a cautionary tale of what can happen to a marriage when the family is cramped into too small a space. I kinda think that he entirely missed the point."

"Totally," Liz put in. "Maybe he took the title of the song too literally. Two story house... I guess I took it to mean the stories that they were telling. He said, she said. Not two stories physically, except as a pun."

"Yeah, I agree," Tess said, a moody look on her face.

"Okay, well, I think that's enough, I just wanted to play the song, not analyze it to death," Isabel said. "How about somebody new takes a turn at the game now??"

----------

"I... I have dreams about her sometimes," Max said. Michael's rental van was parked out in the desert, not far from route 285 north, between Encino and interstate 40 east-west, It didn't look as if they were actually going to make it to Santa Fe. "Nothing... nothing sexual in the dreams, though I sometimes wish that there were. In one of them..." he broke off for a second, looking around, to see if there was some cue that he shouldn't continue, but the other guys in the car were all paying curious attention. "We're... it happens out in the middle of nowhere... kind of like here, except the countryside is a little greener. I'm running, running for about a minute, and gradually see that I'm running after Liz. She slows down, nearly stops, and I catch up to her, try to talk to her. I... I can never remember what I say, but I know that the sun is nearly setting, and there's a light up in the sky. Not as bright a light as the sun, but bright enough to be seen clearly. Brighter than the moon ever gets, I guess, though not as big as the moon, a small spot shining with an orange-white radiance. Liz hugs me, and even though there's not a cloud in the sky, it starts to rain... like a serious downpour, drenching both of us and the entire area. There's something very... very satisfying about the rain, to both of us, in the dream... it's almost like a rebirth. And that's about when I wake up."

"That's... well, it's definitely a bit odd," Alex said softly. "But a cool dream nonetheless. Do you have it often?"

"Are there any other ones you can remember?" JD put in, and Max smiled.

"Umm... I don't remember having it really often... but, erm, maybe once or twice a month since July. As far as others... hmm, yeah, one or two that stick by me. One actually is a bit odd, and some of you are in it too, on the fringes." He laughed oddly as Michael looked over. "My subconscious must be having a field day with this stuff, I think. In this dream... well, everything was backwards. Michael, and Isabel and I were the ones who were natives... we had grown up on another world. Maybe Tess too, I'm not quite sure if she's in the dream or not. I don't think it really fits what I've heard about Antar, but never mind that. And... and you, Alex, and Kyle, and Maria and Liz... were humans living on this other world, trying to stay hidden, to keep the authorities from finding out that they didn't belong there because they were scared. In fact... I think that there was a slight difference, because it wasn't just you guys as kids... there were some adult humans too, a secret underground community, the descendents of an exploration ship that crashlanded and got marooned or something like that." Max took a deep breath.

"And I was working in a cantina or something, and a duel got out of control, and I was hurt. Michael tried to help me with alien powers, but it wasn't working, and Liz ran up... and gave me mouth-to-mouth and CPR, which was something that the aliens didn't know about. Saved *my* life." He laughed wryly. "Doesn't make that much sense, maybe, but it was a pretty cool dream."

"Yeah," Michael agreed. "So, umm... JD! We've all heard some stuff about you and Tess... but, um... well, never directly from you. C'mon bud, don't be so shy... how are things going there?"

"Umm... I dunno, a little confusing but good," he admitted. "I... she's been dropping by often, and, well... we've kissed a few times now. I--" The interstellar traveller sighed a little. "I'm still not even sure how to talk about this kind of thing, or what the rules are. You guys have all had years to get used to the rules of human interpersonal relationships... I'm still new around here!!"

Max laughed, very reassuringly. "Don't worry about it too much, man. Tess has always been one to make her own rules, so I don't think she'll get too hung up on the details. I kind of get the impression that she REALLY likes you, so it won't be easy to scare her away. You can trust me on that part."

"As far as the rest of us," Kyle chimed in, "we're pretty relaxed about the rules too, and we understand about you learning as you go. If you start to say something that's TMI - too much information, then I'll probably just start shouting overtop of what you're saying, and plug my fingertips into my ears, and that'll be your signal to stop, okay??"

JD looked a bit confused. "Kyle's being a bit overdramatic," Alex said in a low whisper. "But he also thinks of Tess as his sister, and there are some things that... well, when a guy has a sister, or so I've heard, there are certain details he doesn't want to hear about from the guy who's in a relationship with his sister. Take Max and me, for example, things got a little awkward with Max during my bachelor party, because he's Isabel's brother."

"Yeah, well, you've got it easy, mister 'only child,' Max replied. "You never have to worry about it. And Michael's been smart enough to stay at a distance from the guy who's dating Laurie, though things might get a little interesting if he actually pops the question, and asks Michael to be in the wedding party." Michael groaned, and Max smiled teasingly at him.

"So... erm, I can't believe I'm asking this, but the part of me that's a semi-voyueristic horndog is struggling against the part of me that's an overprotective big brother," Kyle said. "Have you... have you gone beyond kissing with Tess, JD?"

"Beyond kissing? What's... umm, I mean, I know that there's, well, um... 'it', but we're not nearly through the long courtship process required to get to 'it'," JD muttered with a long puzzled frown. "Are there..."

"Umm... okay, well, we won't go into involved details with Kyle here," Alex put in. "But, well, there are all kinds of ways to express your feelings physically through touching, at each stage of 'the courtship process,'" Alex explained. "Kissing is pretty close to the start. We'll fill you in on a few of the next ones."

"And, well... speaking of human courting rituals, have you thought about taking Tess out on a real date?" Max asked. "Picking her up, going to dinner and a movie or something like that. It's not really required under the circumstances, but I think she'd really appreciate it, since she didn't have many chances to date when she was in school... well, I guess technically she's still in school, but -- do you know what I mean at all?"

"Only in the vaguest of terms," JD shot back with a laugh. "I... I know about 'going out on dates' from TV and movies, but... well, somehow I guess I'd got the impression that it wasn't something that real people did anymore."

"Not as often as on TV and in the movies," Michael laughed, "but still occasionally."

"Alright." JD seemed to sink deep into thought about that.

"Oh, no, we got JD locked into brood mode," Alex joked. "Come on, someone else say something."

"I say... that it's starting to get a little cold out here and we should hit the road again," Michael said, turning the ignition. "There's a great greasy spoon place back near Encino. We can grab a little bite to eat and then boot it back to Roswell... it'll be nearly time to show up for the ceremony by then."

"Let's roll, then," Max agreed. He smiled a little to himself as Michael turned the van around into the lanes of the highway heading back the way that they had come. He suspected that one reason Michael had wanted to do this little road trip was that he'd rented this van, the 'A-team van' for his wedding party that Maria had agreed to when they were planning the ceremony, and there'd been a certain amount of mileage that effectively 'came with' the minimum rental. To a guy like Michael, thus, it'd seem like he wasn't getting his full money's worth if he didn't use up all of those miles.

----------

"All right." Roger Lewis said softly from behind his little lectern. Max smiled to himself, not for the first time, at the fact that the same man who had presided as judge in Michael's emancipation was now justice of the peace at his wedding. "The two of you have written some vows of your own for today I believe, yes?? Alright, well now would be the time. Umm... Michael?"

"Actually, I'd like to go first, if that's alright," Maria said softly. "We agreed to that." Lewis shrugged and nodded to her. "It... it hasn't always been a smooth or straight road that we've walked together, Michael. And as much as we've tried, and no matter what the romantic songs say, we haven't always been able to keep perfectly in step, next to each other. But we always manage to end up together again. Maybe one of us waits for the other sometimes... or maybe sometimes I have to hurry to catch up." She laughed slightly. "But I know that we'll never be too far away from each other."

"And so... I take you this night as my husband. I will love you, whether either of us are sick or healthy, through good luck and bad, lean times and days of plenty. When you're happy, I will be happy for you and share that joy in my heart, and when you are sad or downhearted, I will try to carry the burden that weighs you down or reassure you. I promise to reject all others and be true to you only, for together we will be greater than the sum of our seperate worth. I want to share life with you, for all the years that we might be lucky enough to live. This is my vow."

"Thank you. Michael??"

Michael paused a moment, looking into Maria's face, which had somehow never been quite so radiant before. "A very wise girl once told me that the most important part of getting any relationship to work is learning how to extend trust." Maria cocked her head slightly, and then smiled as she recognized her own words -- prettied up a little. "Sometimes I think that the last six years have been a process of learning that trust, with you. Maria, you have always been my teacher in affairs of the heart, the destination of my deepest passion, and day by day you have become the dear and cherished friend that I hadn't realized I needed to find."

"On this night, I take you as my partner for life, if you will have me." A pause. "Well, since we went to all this trouble, I was kind of assuming you'll have me, but still." Most of the wedding party laughed softly at that point. "I promise to cherish and respect you for the incredible woman that you are, and to value everything that you will become over the time we spend together. And, like we promised all those years ago, I promise to reserve my special attention and affection for you only, so that we never let anyone else come between us." A deep breath. "This time we're ready for it, no question about that."

There was a bit of an awkward pause as Michael fell silent, and Lewis let a moment pass before resuming the agenda. "Who has the rings?"

Isabel, sitting not far from the wedding party, patted the back of the little girl next to her... her name was Cathryn, and she was the five-year old daughter of the drummer in Maria's band... who had persuaded the bride and groom to give her little girl a part in the wedding. Cathryn was the designated Ring Girl, and she hurried up between Michael and Maria, letting them pick up each other's plain golden bands.

----------

"Congratulations." Rebecca Gilroy hugged Maria briefly. "I know that you'll be very happy together, for a long time."

"From your lips." Maria giggled happily. "So, I haven't seen you since we all moved out of the loft I think... how's Alamagordo treating you?"

"Ehh... I dunno, it's a bit of a decrepit hole out in the desert," Rebecca answered. "But don't let me get started on that tack, or I could be keeping you here all night, heheh. School's doing all right, and I might have a job offer starting in the summer, up in Fanta Se."

"Cool," Maria agreed. "Oh, sorry to cut this short, but I think they're trying to get started." She waved at her one-time loftmate, and hurried up to join Michael, who had been waving at her without trying to make it too obvious.

The Crashdown dining room looked a little different from usual - partly because it was crammed pretty full of mingling reception guests. Also, a 'head table' had been set up near the bar counter for the wedding party and other special guests. Soon there was a flurry of motion as everyone took their seats. Max stood up, glass of water in his hand, and looked over at Liz, then Michael and Maria. All of them, he guessed, were reminded of the analogous moment at Alex and Isabel's wedding reception, when Tess had pre-empted Kyle's traditional perogatives and delivered the "best man's speech" herself.

"Hi... I'd like to thank you all for coming, to celebrate Michael and Maria finally tying the knot, with us." he started. There was a bit of soft laughter. "Maybe it hasn't been as long as it seems that marriage was actually something that was an option for them... but by my count, it's been something like six years since the sparks started to fly between them... and as Michael's best friend, I've been around, or at least hearing the play-by-play for most of it."

"Michael Guerin and Maria DeLuca may not have been an obviously perfect match. But somehow, their... well, their more unique traits have combined to make them better and stronger together than they were seperately. That's the beauty of love -- and of marriage. Two quarters coming together to make a whole." He paused for just a moment at this, and a few of the guests mumbled appreciatively when they caught the point.

"So... well, I've gone on and rambled for long enough at this point, so I'd like to ask everyone here to join me in raising a glass to Michael and Maria, to wish them every joy and happiness as they begin married life together. I know that there are a lot of people who were here several months ago to toast my sister and Alex Whitman when they tied the knot, and..."

"Max, you're rambling again," Michael put in, and a laugh rose up.

"To Michael and Maria," Alex called out, raising his glass and clinking with the person next to him, who happened to be Kyle. Max sighed and joined in the toast with good grace... he had managed to avoid being pre-empted for the speech, but had still lost out on leading the toast. It looked, just possibly, as if a new tradition was starting for the gang.

"Kiss!" Laurie called out once the toast was done, and the word was quickly repeated by Liz and Tess, and further, until it started to assume the status of a rhythmic chant. After maybe fifteen seconds of the chant, Michael turned in his chair and kissed Maria enthusiastically on the lips. A round of applause broke out.

And that was when the waiters started bringing out food.

----------

"So, what did you think of the day's festivities?" Tess asked JD as she came up to him. He'd been standing up against the edge of the room watching the crowd mingle, dance, eat desserts and snack food. Isn't that where they got the term wallflower from, she thought to herself. Someone who just stood up next to the wall the whole time at a dance or party, alone and watching?

"Umm... I'm not quite sure what to think," JD admitted, smiling at her. "Not much like a marriage ritual and celebration where I come from, of course." Tess made a mental note to ask him about Antarian weddings, when there was an opportunity in a situation a little more discreet and less crowded than this one.

"Well, at least you're not bored I guess," she replied, and JD nodded in agreement. She stood next to him for a little bit, watching the reception. For so long, she had felt like an outsider, just like him... not quite as obvious a wallflower maybe, because of all that Ed had taught her about protective camoflage, but not really in on the party either. "Umm, would you... um, do you want to try dancing? I don't know if it looks hard, but it isn't too bad, really."

JD smiled. "Yeah, I'd like that, I think. I've been watching enough to pick up some of the basics, I hope."

She smiled, led him out towards the edge of the dance floor, and turned to him. "Okay, umm, let's see." Quickly she decided on the position she wanted to try. (Other couples were dancing in several different styles: ballroom, traditional slow-dancing, several variants in between, and beyond, including some kind of three-and-a-half-step waltz, (which was Alex's parents.) "Put your left hand around me and on the small of my back... erm, the bottom middle of my back, right above..." JD found the spot, more by her nonvocal cues than anything, and she smiled. "And the other on my left shoulder." He did, and Tess put one arm around JD's shoulder and let the other one rest at his waist. "Okay, now just try to step with your left foot when I step with my right, vice versa, and in approximately the same absolute direction. Then we should be okay."

Certainly it seemed to work well enough for a verse and a chorus of whatever music was playing... maybe a tape from one of Maria's clients who couldn't make it. "This... this is nice," JD said softly, whispering into her ear as if he'd been doing it all his life. (Was that a mannerism that was common among his people too? There was so much about him that Tess didn't understand... about her own heritage, her history on her Antarian side.) "Are you going to be able to take me to the school tomorrow?"

For a second, Tess couldn't place the reference, and then she almost laughed, realizing that she should have expected it. As curious as she was about Antar, JD was many times more eager to learn about Earth, its customs, its people, its traditions and history, and Tess had been happy to step into the role of being his tutor, if only because that let the two of them spend a lot of time together. One outing that they had discussed was taking JD to see the East New Mexico University campus there in Roswell... where Tess would be getting her teacher's certificate in just about a week, but she hadn't been actually on campus much lately because of all the on-site learning she'd been doing at local schools. When JD had asked about going, she'd said that it would have to wait until after Maria's wedding... and so he was now asking her again, about the day after the wedding ceremony. It was a little naive... no, not quite naive, just charmingly direct.

"Umm, I hadn't thought about it," she admitted. "It's a sunday, and so there probably won't be that much to see." By the same token, there would be fewer other students around to notice anything odd about JD, but then the two of them would probably stand out more when the premises were emptier than if they were crowded. But all of those considerations were just reflexive paranoia... the truth was, JD was very good already at acting inconspicuous in public, and Tess didn't really need to worry about him giving them away on that score. They should do the campus visit thing when he'd be able to learn the most.

"Alright, then... then the day after - Monday?" he pressed, seeming eager in a faintly childish way... but then, that was something that Tess liked about him. He wasn't immature in general, but he still saw all of Planet Earth with fresh eyes, from not being here more than three months, and that let her share in the wonder of ordinary things, things that she had grown up and didn't remember as being special.

"Yes. Monday morning... but not too early in the morning. I'll drop by your place?"

"Yeah. Call me tomorrow and we'll iron out the details?" JD grinned after reeling off that little phrase from memory. And then, before Tess could reply, he dipped her deeply down.

"W--wow." She looked around, (which was a little hard because her head was tilted at maybe a one-twenty angle,) to see if anybody else was doing dips. No-one else seemed to be. So where had he picked up that little trick??

----------

"Mrs. Guerin!" Jeff Parker called, and Maria actually didn't turn around until Michael had tapped her on the shoulder. He waved them both over, and the bride and groom found themselves talking to both of Liz's parents, and also Mister Valenti, and Alex's aunt Louise who had been able to come down for the party. "Hi. We, um, I know you're planning to throw the bouquet and vamoose any minute now, but we wanted to talk to you about a wedding present idea that we went on, since it wasn't something we could really just wrap up into a box."

"Oh... really?" Michael asked, an interested smile growing on his face.

"Yes," Mrs Parker said with a nod. "Umm... well, Jeff and I were talking a few weeks ago, about how his parents were able to make a dream come true for us with their wedding gift... they helped us buy the business, the cafe. And... well, Maria, you've been like a daughter to us for twenty years now, and..."

"Oh, no," Maria breathed. "You're not giving me the Crashdown, are you?" She didn't think so... why would the others be there if that was it?

"No," Jeff assured her. "I know you like working here, but that's not your dream... and, well... we want to keep it in the family, though Liz will probably be too busy saving the planet, and taking care of Beth, to ever run it full-time. But I think we have an idea what your dream come true would be, and brought in a few unusual suspects to help us swing it."

"By the way," Valenti said in an undertone to Michael, "you probably wouldn't complain about the four of us coming together to give a big wedding present that's only for Maria, but I think that your big sister has something planned that's mainly for you, so that sort of evens it out." Michael shrugged that off, though he looked intriuged by the possibility of Laurie's special present.

"Alright... so what do you think my dream is?" Maria asked them, smiling.

"Making your own CD," Louise put in, and Maria's breath caught. "I know how expensive it can be to get one made decently, and we've tried to sort out all the expenses... working time at the best recording studio in the state, physical supplies, paying a producer, sound engineer, musicians... it might not be quite enough yet to cover EVERYTHING, but what we've raised so far is yours with no strings attached."

Maria couldn't even reply for a moment. "Well... thank you so much, and... and yes, that'd be my dream come true!" She rushed forward to hug each of them in turn.

"Okay," Jeff Parker said after a moment. "Well, I think that the two of you will have other things to think about for the next few days, but we can talk about the details when you're ready." Michael and Maria would be leaving after the reception, and driving through the night to get to their honeymoon, three days at a spa in Santa Fe."

Michael and Maria had to say goodbye to their benefactors at that point, because another chant was starting... "Bouquet! Bouquet! Bouquet! Bouqet!..." and so on. Maria headed out the front door of the cafe, walked about ten feet down the sidewalk to the south, and checked to make sure that the crowd of usual suspects had gathered to try their luck at the catch. (The bouquet had worked as advertised for Maria herself, after all.)

She tried to wing it towards her mom, who had a fiancee at least, but for whatever it was worth, that didn't work, and somewhat to her surprise, Martine got the flowers, and paled a little bit when she looked at Kyle and wiggled them slightly. Kyle smiled calmly.

----------

Liz rushed through the door to her apartment. "Shelley?"

"We're in here," a reply came from Liz's room. Liz hurried over and sighed in relief when she saw Bethany sleeping peacefully in her crib, and Shelley Valentine, an old friend of Isabel's from ENMU, sitting in the desk chair with a magazine opened out on her lap, just watching the baby as she lay there. Shelley had agreed to babysit during the wedding ceremony and reception, when Liz hadn't felt comfortable asking all of the usual babysitters in her friends anf family, because they would want to be there for Michael and Maria's special day too. Shelley knew Maria a little, (from the sorority loft days,) but hadn't gotten an invite and didn't really care to come anyway.

"Hi, baby." Liz waved, but Bethany didn't stir in response to her gesture, or for that matter, her voice. That was okay. If baby didn't wake up when Mommy came home, then baby probably needed her sleep. Liz sat down, still smiling, on her own bed. "How was she?"

"Oh, fantastic," Shelley insisted. She was a vivacious girl a little taller than Liz herself, with straight coppery-brown hair that fell to her shoulders, and was just finishing up her childcare program this spring. "We had a rousing game of extreme peek-a-boo, and played a little crawling tag after she had her dinner. She just went down for bed about an hour ago."

Liz smiled. "Were you crawling too, during the game of tag?"

"Well... some of the time," Shelley admitted. "When I wasn't crawling I was, well, you know. crouching. How was the wedding??"

"Great, very beautiful," Liz admitted. "Maria got her fantasy night. I'm really happy for her and Michael." But the sigh that escaped her throat was more than a little melancholy, and Shelley noticed. "I am... I really am, but it's just..."

"You're... maybe you're wondering if you'll ever have your wedding night?" Shelley asked, and Liz nodded slowly. "I mean... well, it's not going to be with your fiancee, with Bethany's father, because he... I heard some of the story from Isabel, and it's so tragic." Liz could hardly argue with that, though she doubted that Shelley had heard the whole story. "And if I were in your place... well, there aren't a lot of guys who'd be eager to get into a relationship with a single mother."

"No," Liz admitted. "But there are a lot of us, and a lot of single mothers do manage to find someone." She sighed soulfully. "I guess, more than worrying if I'll ever have a chance to get married, what's bumming me out is wondering if I'll have a chance to marry the RIGHT guy. Rather than... I mean, don't get me wrong, if I just end up with someone who I like and likes me, who cares about Bethany and helps provide for her, I'd still be grateful for that much and count my blessings, but..."

"You're still holding out for the big love?" Shelley asked.

"Yep, that I am... at least, I'm still hoping for it."

"And does the big love have a face? Aside from, erm..."

"Aside from Casey?" Liz filled in, feeling an odd bittersweet thrill go through her as she said his name. "Um, I'm... I'm not sure." She couldn't shake off the thought of Max right at this moment, for a whole bunch of reasons, but still didn't feel sure that he was still her Mister Right. Wedding blues aside, she still wasn't looking for a Mister Right. The anniversary of Casey's death would... it would be a week from that night. Liz took in a deep breath when she thought of that. But maybe it was an opportunity to start moving on - once that day on the calendar had clicked around again, she might feel differently about falling in love with someone else. Just a little.

And if she did... well, Liz knew that she could hardly do any better than falling back into love with Max Evans.

"Umm... well, er, getting my emotional issues unloaded onto you isn't really in the job description," Liz told Shelley with a forced smile. "I think I want to spend a little time alone with my girl... Tess and Isabel won't be back for a little while I expect, so I'll have the place all to myself." She pulled out her wallet and made a few quick calculations.

"Hey, you don't need to settle up," Shelley said with a smile. "Isabel paid me in advance." Liz's eyebrows shot up. "She didn't say why."

Liz could guess... but the reasons why weren't really any of Shelley's business. "Well, thanks for being honest enough to admit it. You could have picked up double pay, and Isabel and I might not ever have figured it out."

"Hey, if I don't have enough honor to set you straight about money, then I don't even deserve to be a babysitter in the first place," Shelley said with a slightly joking tone. "Being trustworthy is a job requirement."

"I guess I can't argue with that. Goodnight!" Shelley smiled at her, peeked over at Beth one last time, and headed out into the hallway to let herself out.

"Hey babygirl," Liz said in a soft whisper. "Quite a big day today. Your auntie Maria and uncle Michael got married. Isabel and Kyle took some pictures - they'll wait for a while, until you're bigger and can appreciate them a little better. But it was a gorgeous ceremony, out in the park, as the sun was setting..."

----------

"So... do you think the bouquet will work again?" Max asked as he pulled into the driveway, behind the large sedan that still hadn't turned its running lights off.

"I... I'm not sure." Alex shrugged and got out of the car. "Probably all up to Maria's mom... I know that she and Mister Valenti haven't quite nailed down their wedding timetable yet. As far as Martine and Kyle... I'd say that now that she's caught the flowers he'll propose in a little while, and they'll get married, but maybe not next year."

"Hmmm." Max said to himself, because Alex had rushed off to the other car, which was Mister Evans', and kissed Isabel as she got out of the passenger seat. The Evans' had invited their decamped children, along with Alex, back to their house for coffee and snacks once the reception had finally wound down. It was a few minutes before everyone was arranged in the living room, with Alex, Isabel sitting in the loveseat, Philip and Diane next to each other on the couch, and Max taking the armchair.

"So, umm, how have things been down in Las Cruces, Alex??" Mister Evans asked him.

"Going pretty well... though I've been feeling lonely already, and Izzie's hardly gone," Alex admitted. "The boys in the office have been good about trying to keep me occupied with other things."

"I bet," Diane admitted. "Not... not that I'm second guessing your decisions, darling, or that I don't appreciate you being around a little more... but I just couldn't conceive of moving so far away from Philip when we hadn't even been married a year. And... well, the fact that you're pregnant seems like that would, umm..."

"Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean," Isabel said, trying to stop her mother from rambling further and starting to depress her about her choice. "But... well, in another sense it's reassuring. Alex may not be able to spend as much time back here in Roswell as I'd like, but... but I have a very real part of him about as close to my heart as practical, when our child together is growing inside me." She cast a fond look at Alex, and rubbed her tummy just slightly. "It helps to know that."

The subject was an awkward one... Isabel couldn't have hidden the fact that she was staying in Roswell from her parents, of course - she was counting on their support, as well as that of her friends, to help her through this period. However, a lot of the reasons that the move made sense -- the parts about Isabel's baby being part alien, wanting to be close to Max's healing touch... about alien peace talks and the possibilities and dangers of psychic teleportation -- were things that they couldn't explain.

"When are you heading back, Alex??" Philip asked.

"Umm... er, I'll drive down tomorrow afternoon I guess. Need to be ready for a big code review meeting Monday morning." Actually, the true plan was that Alex would be staying in Roswell until early on Monday morning and getting teleported back... so as to savor every moment he could with Isabel before having to return.

The conversation turned to other things then, to Max's final exams in his nursing program, and talking about some old friends who had managed to make it down for the wedding. Isabel managed to get her father onto a ramble about some court case that he'd been involved in many years ago, and then all of a sudden half of the group seemed to realize at once how late it was getting.

"Okay, umm... thanks for the coffee mom, we'll have to do it again soon," Max promised, hugging each of his parents goodbye in turn.

"I'll... I'll probably call you tomorrow around noon, and we'll set up a time for going down to the library to look for those books about pregnant yoga," Izzie promised her mom, also doing the hugging thing. Alex settled for shaking hands with Mister Evans, but Isabel's mom wouldn't let him get away with any such thing with her and hugged him nearly as hard as she had her own children. Soon Alex and Isabel were in Max's car and driving back to the big apartment, (which no-one had yet thought of a clever name for, though Liz and Isabel had started trying.)

"I hope Michael and Maria are okay, on the long highway, after such a busy day," Isabel said softly. "Maybe we should have arranged to get together and blip them up there."

"No, I think that would have been a bad move, considering that as newlyweds they'll attract some attention," Alex replied after a moment. "They're smart, they'll pull off to the side or get a motel if they really need to. Plus... their relationship started in a car out on the lonely desert highway. Fitting that they should drive to their honeymoon." Isabel nodded an agreement to that.

"So..." Max broke in. "Anyone interested in making bets on when I have another unborn hybrid baby to start looking after?" Isabel and Alex traded a look, and started to laugh.

"I'm not touching that action," Alex disclaimed.

"Hmm... I'm not sure," Isabel said. "Not for a little while... they may be impulsive, but heck... it isn't as if they haven't shown that they're capable of understanding protection, and I don't think either of them wants to jump RIGHT into the having kids thing now that they've tied the knot." She considered. "But maybe around the late summertime."

"That'd mean that their baby would be... would be about a year younger than our girl," Alex thought out loud. "Because WE found out late summertime of last year."

"Yeah, I guess it would," she agreed. "Close enough that they could probably all be friends... Michael and Maria's, ours... and Bethany too."

Whatever Alex had been about to say got forgotten when Max pulled into a parking spot. "Okay, here you are."

"Do... do you want to come up and hang out a little, Max?" Isabel asked. "I... this is weird actually. Somehow I know that Tess and JD, Kyle, Martine and Liz are all up there already." Max raised a curious eyebrow at this declaration.

"New power??"

"I... I'm not sure. I've had little moments like this for a while now, and they always seem to be right. Maybe the baby's having an effect on my abilities."

"Well, I guess I should come along," Max said with a grin. "Just to check and see if your streak continues. I'll enjoy spending some time with the usual suspects too."

Sure enough, the five people that Isabel had named were all in the apartment living room - along with Beth as well, who Isabel hadn't mentioned -- possibly because it was just about a certainty that she would be there.

"So... what are we talking about?" Alex asked, sitting down on the floor between JD and Liz.


TO BE CONTINUED...

Part Seventeen

Maria woke up alone in bed, and after a few seconds for her mind to shake off the worst fog of sleep, she found that incredibly disappointing and wrong. Ever since... well, not exactly the first time that she woke up with Michael next to her in bed, because that had been when they 'just slept' together, two days before he got emancipated. But, well, ever since the first time they'd made love, the end of summer after senior year, Maria had always been disappointed to find herself waking up alone. Since she'd moved in with him, it was a letdown that she hadn't had to deal with that often.

But this went beyond even that, for crap's sake! If there was one night in her life when Maria felt completely justified in expecting Michael by her side, surely it would be her bridal night, and the first night of their honeymoon at the same time. Sitting up in the dim streetlight that filtered through the heavy window curtains, Maria found the thick dressing gown that she'd left draped over a chair on her side of the bed, when she'd theatrically taken it off for Michael's benefit, and wrapped the fluffy material all around her body. "Michael?" After switching on a bedside lamp, she headed over to the bathroom door, just in case. "Spaceboy, honey, are you in there?"

No response, not a single sound of movement or running water from the bathroom. (Well, at least the toilet doesn't run all night, Maria thought, remebering how that had kept her on edge in the Sultan's hideaway.) She opened the door just to make sure. No light on inside, no Michael, not even in the tub, or the cupboard under the sink that was just big enough for someone to crawl into.)

Well, now she definitely had some reasons to feel huffy, and Maria huffed off to comfy armchair and used the remote control to turn the fireplace up just a bit. Where the heck had HE snuck off to, in the middle of their special night? Found a poker game with a bunch of other guys who'd been 'dragged here by their girlfriends?' Hanging out in some seedy bar, or lord help him a strip joint?? He'd just agreed, today, well, yesterday by now, but only technically... to love and respect her, to be a good husband, as she'd vowed to be his wife. Was that too much for him to handle?

Oh, no... an icy hand clenched Maria's heart as a new horrible thought struck her. What if Michael wasn't off having some inconsiderate fun, but had decided in the middle of the night that getting married had been a horrible idea, and had really *left* her? Headed back to Roswell, or out onto the open road, heading somewhere he didn't know where none of the gang would be likely to track him down.

What on earth would she do if he didn't come back by morning? Well... probably check out early and go back home, that seemed like the thing to do. If he'd taken the car, she'd probably have to bus it... did a bus go straight from Santa Fe to Roswell or would she have to go through Albuquerque? She wouldn't be able to handle all their luggage, but why would she want to take his stuff anyway? Or maybe it would be easier to just 'call for a pickup'... that is, if she could tell Isabel and Tess that they didn't need to bring Michael home too, without bursting into tears...

That was when the door opened, and a voice called out with a little surprise... "Maria? You're awake??"

"Michael!" Maria's thoughts were awash in confusion for a second as she leapt up. "Yeah you bonehead I'm awake. How could you leave me like that?"

Michael's face creased into a wounded frown. "I... I just wanted to, and you were --" He sighed, stepping into the room, and Maria realized that he was holding a little box in both his hands. (He couldn't have unlocked the door like that, but...) "I... I thought I'd be back before you woke."

Maria shook her head and took mental stock. Up until he'd said that, Maria had been proceeding under the theory that he'd had an attack of post-wedding cold feet and hit the highway before coming back, just because that worry had been uppermost in hermind. But even she had to admit that none of the facts really pointed in the direction. So she moved her mental alarm needle cautiosly down to 'strip club' level. "Where did you go?"

"Umm... I wanted to get you something," he said nervously. "Maybe would have done better to give up once I realized it was going to take a few minutes to find, but..." Unable to find any more words, he stepped forward to hand her the plain white box. It was maybe seven inches wide, six and a half deep and four and a half high, made out of stiff but thin white cardboard, or something very like that. There were no decorations or designs on it, just four plain white sides, a bottom that felt like it was made from several interlocking pieces, and a folding top with a little flap tucked in. A little twist of Maria's pinky finger was all that was necessary to pop the lid open... and she gasped in surprise.

What sat inside was a small cake, frosted in white and rose-red colors. Black icing letters spelled out the simple message 'I LOVE YOU,' and a small pink heart held their initials, almost too tiny to be made out - MG + MD. She looked up at Michael. "What... what made you think of this?"

"I... I'm not sure," he admitted. "It's something I had planned for a little while though. You always thought I was bad with remembering important dates when we were dating, I think... and maybe even after we were engaged. So I wanted to start being married off right... and get you something nice for our twelve-hour anniversary."

Maria laughed out loud. It was true that she'd gotten upset at Michael several times for not honoring occasions that she felt were significant milestones... or not until she made 'a big hairy deal' about them in some cases. But he was also surprisingly thoughtful sometimes, in unique and unpredictable ways... and this fit that pattern so well it almost made her heart ache with joy. Who else but Michael would ever have had a cake custom-baked (or frosted with a personalized message at least,) for a twelve-HOUR wedding anniversary? The idea was more than a little silly, granted, but somehow that just made it win her over all the more.

"Oh, thank you swEEEK!!" Michael shot a curious look over at her, wondering how his thank-you had turned into such a high-pitched exclamation of distress. "Umm, sorry, it's just... you were off, doing this incredibly weird and wonderful thing for me, and I... well, I was expecting all kinds of badness. Like really, seriously..." Her chest heaving, Maria couldn't bring herself to continue.

Michael picked the cake box up out of her hands and put it down on the coffee table, then pulled her up with a strong yet tender motion. Once she was on her feet, supported by Michael's arms as a few tears of mixed love and chagrin began to fall from her cheeks. Michael hesitated a moment, considering the loveseat, and then walked her back to the bed. "Sshh," he whispered as they settled down on the sheets, brushing the tears from her eyes gently, his fingers sending a thrill of pleasure through her even though she was so distressed. "You were upset when you woke up and I wasn't there... and that's no big surprise. I might have freaked out a little too." Maria tried to laugh, but as they so often did when she was upset, each one came out as half a sob. "And you didn't know where I was, and it wasn't something that you'd been expecting, and so you started imagining the worst." Michael hugged her tightly. "I... I didn't think of how it would seem to you beforehand, because I didn't guess that you'd wake up. Like so much that I try... good intentions, but the implementation is a major screwup."

"But the final result more than... than makes up for, f-- for everything else," Maria managed to get out. "So sweet, the gesture, and... and I bet it'll be delicious too. Want to join me in having a nice big slice?"

"Hmm..." Michael considered, and then slipped his hand under the edge of her gown. Maria chuckled, torn between about three different emotional reactions as those strong fingers slipped over her shoulder, and brushed against the black straps of her slipdress. "I may sound foolish here, but I think the cake will keep for about half an hour or so... and surely there's a way that both of us can work up an appetite first before we eat."

"Half an hour?" Maria repeated, looking up into Michael's eyes, and he wiggled both of his eyebrows up at the same time. "Okay, darling husband, I think you've convinced me."

"Good." And he kissed her as thoroughly as he knew how, slipping the fuzzy fabric of her housecoat off of her upper body as he did so.

----------

"I... I have to ask," Martine asked Tess and JD. Kyle was sitting next to her, the four of them just hanging out around dinnertime at the Crash. "The two of you... are you a couple now or dating or something?"

JD laughed softly, and Tess looked around a bit before sighing. "Umm... let's see." Looking over at JD was no help, except for the slightly reassuring twinkle in his eye that seemed to say he was alright with just about whatever she wanted to say or not say. "We're not a couple, quite yet, and I'm not sure if we're exactly dating... but we're definitely *something.*"

Martine considered that reply, and then smiled. "Cool. Come to think of it, I guess Kyle and I were 'something' when we started, too."

"So... well, I've heard a lot from Tess and Kyle and their friends about their high school days," JD said to Martine. "What were yours like?"

"Umm... oh, nothing special I guess," Martine replied, taking a Saturn ring from the basket on the table and biting into it while she composed her thoughts. "Well, I was living in Albuquerque with my parents... the Glenwood neighborhood, which is pretty nice but not really rich and fancy. The school was... well, I dunno, high school always seemed a little boring. For my freshman and sophomore year, our school had this experimental program that allowed students more control over which courses we took than usual, but then there was some reason or another that the whole system got cancelled, and most of the kids in my grade actually had to go back in junior year and pick up some required sophomore classes that we'd been allowed to opt out of."

"Ehh, I'm not sure that any of us really care about the academic stuff," Tess put in. "How about the social part of high school? Were did you fit in with the traditional list of cliques, if any??" She considered Martine carefully, weighing her appearance and the other things she knew about her... pretty but not strikingly beautiful, blonde... well-spoken, a little shy. "Let's see... you might have been on the edge of the in-crowd... or a bit of an art geek, theater or painting... or maybe a sporty tomboy. Am I anywhere close??"

Martine laughed. "Umm... a bit of a girl jock, yeah, that kind of fits. I was on the softball team and girl's basketball all through my years at Glencreek. Tried hockey for a little while, as a defensewoman, but I wasn't a big fan of all the ice." She sighed. "Aside from that... I guess I was a bit of a drifting loner, you know? Didn't have that many friends, always looking for a place that I fit better than sitting with my teammates... something really cool to do with my life." She sighed. "So, JD, how about you, what was your high school like? Where did you go, anyway??"

JD froze, and Tess mentally kicked herself for not having thought of this. She felt such a sympathy for JD wanting to know more about Earth, asking questions, but for a girl like Martine, who still didn't know about the aliens stuff, to turn around even a simple question could create a huge problem. "Umm... yeah, err, I live in, umm... in Maine before I set off exploring," he blurted out. Tess thought she knew why he had mentioned Maine... he'd been making a point of learning a little basic US geography, and it would probably have stuck in his head that that was as far as you could get from Roswell while staying in the lower 48. "Ver- very small town, small school... only around thirty-five students and three teachers. I guess there wasn't much room for all of that complicated stuff with social groupings and what have you... some of us were friends, some of us didn't really like each other and didn't spend time together... a few of us had a rival or enemy -- but, well, aside from that everybody pretty much socialized with the people who were in their same grade."

"Wow, I didn't realize there were schools that small," Martine replied. "And... um, well, that's weird, because you don't sound like you have a northeastern accent."

JD shot a panicked look at Tess again. He probably hadn't even realized that there were regional speech pattern variations that could be picked up so easily, spending so much of his time in west Texas and southeastern New Mexico. Tess sent a few prompting words into his mind alone. "Umm, yeah, my -- my parents' didn't have a strong accent either. They came from, erm, from..."

That was where Tess' mindwarping cue had let out, and somehow she couldn't seem to find the mental focus to reestablish the link again. So instead, she blurted out loud "From Indianapolis," interrupting JD. Martine shot her an odd look. "Sorry, I just... I remember him telling me that."

Martine seemed to still be... well, not suspicious, but feeling as if something wasn't quite adding up, not yet able to put her finger on it. "Okay, I suppose. So, ummm..."

"Enough about ancient history," Tess said quickly, just wanting to change the subject away from JD's nonexistent background. "Kyle... umm, er, have you decided what you're going to do about the bouquet issue??"

"Hey!" Kyle exclaimed, his first reaction being somewhat outraged, but then he realized what Tess' situation had been and elected to roll with it. "Umm, not really... may wait to see what my Dad does, well, he and Mrs DeLuca, in terms of setting a date. If they don't, for a month and a half, then they're probably waiting to give us whatever time we need without violating the tradition, and we'll probably forget about it for a while then. If they *do* set a date, then I'll probably ask, and we'll set a date well AFTER theirs, putting the ball back in their court."

"Umm, okay," Tess replied. She wasn't sure why Kyle and Martine were willing to entertain the possibility of marriage and yet still so worried about it as an immediate prospect, but it wasn't her relationship and she didn't plan to meddle at the moment. She could try to catch Kyle alone later and ask him about it.

"Hey, do you guys need anything?" a waiter asked, stepping up towards the booth.

"Refills!" JD said, holding up his glass. Most of them were fairly low on their drinks by this point.

"And another plate of those tasty Martian probes," Martine suggested with a laugh. They'd shared one platter earlier, and finished it off within only a few minutes.

----------

"Hi, Isabel," Max called from the living room as he saw his sister enter the far side of the kitchen. "How's it going?"

"Ehh... not so great - counting the days before my guy comes home for Christmas," she admitted. "What are you... oh, hi Beth." Isabel smiled a little as she saw Liz's baby daughter. "Where's Liz? I thought she was around... I know that Tess left early to show JD the campus."

"Mommy's getting some pampering herself time," Max explained. "Washroom - hot bubble bath I think." He smiled slightly.

"And did you just come over to babysit?" Isabel asked.

"Umm... no, not specifically." He swept the little girl up in his arms and sat down in a chair where he would be a little closer to Isabel as she puttered around, apparently making herself a glass of hot chocolate with tabasco. "Just wanted to hang out... I knew that Liz had some errands she wants to do this afternoon so I figured she'd probably appreciate the babysitting then. And I've brought some studying for my two remaining finals that hopefully I'll have a chance to get to."

"Cool," Izzie replied, and for about two minutes there was relative quiet. Once Isabel's drink was mixed, and two slices of frozen cinnamon french toast were thawing in the toaster oven, Isabel put her drink down on the coffee table and looked into Bethany's face. "Her eyes aren't that much like Liz's eyes - they're such a pale blue. Do... do you know what Casey's eye color was?"

To give him credit, Max didn't flinch much at the name of Liz's dead ex-fiancee. "Umm... no, actually. Anyway, all little babies have blue eyes I think."

"Really??"

"Pretty much." He chuckled at the surprised look on Isabel's face. "You've never heard that before? The genes that produce melanin in iris cells don't start to kick into production until, erm, five or six months I think. Assuming that they're present, which they are in everybody but people who are naturally blue-eyed."

"Huh... learn something new every day I guess," Isabel replied. Her toaster oven went ding, and she went up to get the french toast and sprinkle confectioner's sugar on it. "Well, I don't have much to do today, aside from practicing some of those power concentration exercises that JD gave me, so I can keep an eye on Beth while you crack the books, if you want. All of Isabel's own finals were over... she'd made arrangements to take some of them early in Las Cruces, so that she wouldn't have to go back for just a few days after the wedding. It had seemed like a good idea at the time - and probably still was, even though it didn't feel so good.

"Have you tried astrally seperating, except for that one time?" Max asked. "JD said that it would be completely safe for you, even, umm, in your condition, and I think by this point I trust him."

"Actually, no," Isabel replied, having a bit of toast and drinking a sip of chocolate. "Why do you ask?"

"Umm... actually, well... I was thinking that you could go and pay a quick visit to Alex that way," he pointed out. "Not quite as much fun as being there, actually able to touch him and talk with him... but better than nothing."

"Hmm..." Isabel considered that for a long time, and slowly a half smile started to spread across her face. "Not a bad plan actually, brother mine."

Max smiled. "I do my best."

"Of course, I'll need the orbs for that," Isabel pointed out. "Do you happen to know where they are?"

"Er, last I knew, Tess had them," Max said. "Doubt she'd have taken them with her... and I think she wouldn't mind horribly if you took a quick look in her room for them."

"Hmm." Isabel chewed on that, metaphorically. (She chewed on breakfast more literally at the same time, of course.) Going into a roommate's personal space for something that wasn't an emergency was a line that she generally hesitated to cross... and Tess was generally a very private girl. Sure, she didn't mean to intrude on her privacy... but there was always the chance of seeing something that she didn't intend to. And she could astral out to visit Alex later, after Tess came back. Hmm...

She hadn't finished deciding when a door opened and shut down the hallway, and then Isabel could hear, very softly, bare feet walking down the hallway. "Okay, Max, Bethany, you guys doing okay together? I'll be back in my room for maybe fifteen min... oh, Isabel, hi!! I, um... I guess I didn't realize that you were up, or that you were around... errr... Hey!"

Isabel smiled at her roommate, who wasn't wearing anything beyond a big fluffy towel. "I guess I probably *wasn't* up when you went into the bathroom. Enjoy yourself??"

"Umm... actually yes, quite a lot." Liz brushed a lock of wet dark hair behind her ear, and giggled nervously. Liz shot a look over at Max, and then back to Liz. The thought suddenly popped into her head that she'd be very glad if she 'had her figure back' a few months after giving birth as well as Liz did... actually, in point of fact, Liz's body, as far as could be told through the towel, was probably better than it had been before... with noticeably more substantial curves in the hips and chest than before. Of course, Isabel didn't feel like she needed any help in that department... she was more worried about not being able to get rid of a bad case of 'baby gut'...

"Well, Beth's doing fine," Max put in. "See you in fifteen, or twenty, or whever you feel like coming out. Is no big." Liz laughed slightly and disappeared back into the hallway. Isabel couldn't be entirely sure, but she thought she saw her brother's eyes glaze over for an instant - just when he would probably have gotten a good look at Liz's rear end through the towel as she slunk away.

Isabel laughed slightly and couldn't resist the urge to tease Max just slightly. "Do you by any chance wonder just what she's going to be doing to her naked body in there??"

Max stiffened and shuddered slightly. "Erm, I... that is, well, maybe a l... uhh... just what..." he trailed off there, not really forming a complete and coherent thought. Isabel took pity.

"Relax, brother." She drank a fairly large gulp of her chocolate drink, which had cooled down noticeably by this point, and blurted something out. "In July you said that you had feelings for Liz. Is that... um, do you still?"

Max took a moment to reply. "Umm... I'd say yes. Even more so than then, actually. Why?"

"Well... looking at that little scene from a woman's eye, especially considering the fact that I think she really DIDN'T expect to find me here... I think that Liz might have come out to flirt with you casually, Max. I mean, yes, she dotes on Beth, but there wasn't really a very good reason to pop out here just to check that she was okay before going into her room. I think she was dropping a signal - not a big signal, mind you... but maybe she's warming up to the idea of a... of getting back together with you."

"Hmm..." Max seemed to weigh that. "I'm not sure... though there's definitely a part of me that wants to believe it. I know that... that she's very aware of the fact that the anniversary of Casey's death is coming up, and then it'll be the Christmas holidays, which will also remind her of him, because the last time she was going through them, she'd only just lost him." He sighed unhappily. "Not sure she'll be warming up to much until all of that is past."

"Probably true, if you're talking about something really overt and noticeable," she agreed, sighing. "I mean... I can't imagine going through something like that, of having so much time with the... a guy that I loved so much, of just being at the point of planning a marriage together, and then losing him."

Max nodded. "And then... well, Beth..."

"I actually think that she makes the whole situation better in some ways, though a little worse in others," Isabel sighed. "Bottom-line, you can't rush her, or rush in assuming that a single sign means more than it does." She sighed. "Umm... so, unless you want me to take over Bethany-watching at this point, I think I'm going to go back to my room and see if any of the course handouts for my web-enabled courses are posted yet."

Max smiled slightly. "That's just a little bit obsessive, dear sister - I mean, the actual courses don't start for what... two and a half weeks or more?"

"Yeah, but they said that some stuff would be posted over two weeks in advance," she replied. "If there's nothing... well, it won't take me that long to check, Maybe I'll do relaxation and power precision exercises."

Max thought about it. "Actually, I think I could really get some good stuff done in terms of studying right now, so the munchkin... " he tickled Beth and gently put her down on the floor in a crawling position, pointed towards Isabel, and the brown-haired child scurried quite quickly towards her, "is in your charge for now. Umm... I, err... do you have any idea what would be a good space for me to get a bit of peace and quiet?"

Isabel smiled back. "Okay, take my room. I'll stay out here, since Beth is familiar with the space, and it'll be the first place Liz checks for her." Max grabbed his bookbag, ruffled her hair slightly on his way past, and disappeared into the hallway. Bethany reached up and tapped softly on her shin, a bright, curious look in her eyes, and Isabel looked down at her, lost in wonder.

It was ten minuted later when Liz came out, dressed in stretchy black spandex pants and a sheer white blouse over a tube top. She got a slightly disappointed look on her face when she saw Isabel playing peek-a-boo with her daughter. "What... what happened to Max?"

"In my room, studying for his last two finals," Isabel explained. "Was there a particular reason you were hoping to see him here? And for him to see YOU in that outfit?" It seemed to be her day for probing into the details of Max and Liz's ambiguous relationship, Isabel decided.

"Well, just maybee..." Liz replied in a little hint of a singsong. "Not... not meaning anything very significant - just kinda felt like dressing up a little more daringly than usual. Dontcha like it?" Liz made a big show of spinning around in front of Isabel.

"You're foxy-hot," Isabel assured her with a smile. "Doesn't your mommy look hot, Bethany??"

"Um, okay. So, what are your plans for today, Isabel?" Liz asked, sitting down in the armchair. Beth immediately crawled across the couch, trying to get close to her, and Isabel carried her over the last little bit of the way.

"Umm... not really, a little school stuff, a little alien power training." Isabel sighed. "Any notion when Tess will be back? Max had the idea that I should try using the Orbs to go astral down to Las Cruces and peek in on Alex, but if they're in Tess' room I'd rather not go in there looking for them while she's out."

"Well.. I think she said she wasn't sure how much of the afternoon they'd be at campus," Liz decided, "and they might decide to go by JD's apartment afterwards instead of coming back here."

"Yeah, I suppo... Ohh!!" Isabel blinked, realizing the sort of things that might be attractive activities for the two of them where JD's little one-bedroom apartment might be preferable to coming back here. "Yeah, well... I'm in no big hurry I think. Just wondered."

"Cool," Liz said. "Well, I've got to go down to the Alliance office, check in with Laurie and the rest of the team about some project business that I've left too long, considering everything else that's going on."

"Alright," Isabel agreed. "Taking the little tyke with you??"

"Oh, *definitely*," Liz insisted, reaching out and tweaking her daughter's nose gently.

----------

Michael tried to breathe, realized that he couldn't, and tried not to get anxious about the fact that he couldn't breathe. Dealing with the notion of not having a physical body... no, that wasn't quite the notion... of not being NEAR his physical body was still pretty hard to adjust to. Trying to follow somebody else who didn't have a physical body wasn't really turning out to be a picnic either.

He couldn't see Tess or JD... any more than someone who happened to be bodily present would be able to see HIM. And he couldn't hear *anything* at all... (in deep space, no-one can hear you complain,) or smell or feel. But he wasn't entirely limited to those traditional senses, and he could... he could register the two of them, as a... well, he wasn't sure how to explain it, or even if he should try. He followed.

Tess was the one who was leading the way, who he was following... JD was closer to him, pretty much 'beside' in comparison to the way that they were going. All around them, the dark of space stretched, peppered with a swath of stars, distinct but unimaginably far away, and a few nearer objects - the sun, tiny little dots that he was pretty sure were Earth, Mars, and Jupiter... and a stream of even closer things of varying sizes.

It was into the stream itself that Tess led them now, diving and twisting to avoid any direct collisions, just because those were confusing when you were astral. He knew what the stream was, and a part of his mind could hardly contain the wonder of it. The asteroid belt... a mysterious zone not so far away in solar-system terms, but where no human being had gone, and where even the robot probes that NASA had sent out didn't really dare go, because of the danger of an uncharted piece of rock smashing their expensive electronics to bits. But *they* could explore here, and Tess said that she had found something she wanted to show them.

Apparently, it wasn't far, which made sense, because Tess would have 'blinked' them as closely to the spot as she could. Well, to be more precise, they had each blinked themselves, since it was impossible for one astral spirit to take another through blink, or to follow another through blink. She had given them destination co-ordinates to blink to as completely and accurately as she could, and they'd spent several minutes finding each other after arriving, since they'd arrived a few hundred miles away from each other.

Now Tess was definitely zeroing in on a particular asteroid, a nearly spherical chunk of rock, maybe ten miles across... not big, but not tiny either, in terms of the asteroids. She explored the surface carefully, looking for something, a crevice in the surface. Then she plunged through the rock, and JD followed. Michael panicked.

What the heck was she doing? That crack didn't lead far into the asteroid's interior, it was a surface crack only. They were heading through solid rock... okay, it wouldn't really hurt them, but it wouldn't be comfy either. Still, there was no real point in having come all this way just to wait outside, so Michael plunged his awareness into the rock too...

And came out into a finished, metal-lined tunnel... or a corridor. There were some kind of doorways leading off, here and there, though they were sealed and Michael didn't see any immediately obvious way of opening them. Still, they wouldn't really need to open the doors, they could just drift through, and the closed doorways would serve as markers of where there might be something interestiing. What the heck was a... a space station doing inside this tiny little asteroid, though. Who had... had built it here? It couldn't have been human beings, which left, by elimination...

~Fascinating.~ The word seemed to resonate almost uncomfortably through Michael's spirit. He hadn't realized that they could talk in Astral mode, and wondered if he could do it himself. He was pretty sure that the communication had come from JD, and wondered if he realized that he was borrowing Mister Spock's catchphrase.

~Who... do you have any idea which aliens built this??~ Michael had broadcast the thought before he knew he was doing it, and found the activity unexpectedly straining.

~Not... not really. Might have been Breeolyn trading scouts, though I didn't realize that they'd been this far. Station style doesn't quite look Antarian, though I know that we were here exploring, because otherwise nobody would have known to send you...~ He broke off in mid-sentence, and Michael wondered if JD was trying to conserve energy, leaving the other explanations for later.

They explored the converted asteroid for a little while longer, but didn't really find anything of much interest, and by unspoken agreement blinked right back to Michael's apartment, and their own bodies. "We're... You're doing well," JD said as he roused from the sleep of astral seperation. "Should -- should be able to try an actually interstellar blink soon."

"Oooh." Still a little woozy from the transition back to his own form, Michael was blown away be the thought of that. Actually travelling to the vicinity of another star?? Could something go wrong? Was it possible to get lost? Actually, Michael was starting to suspect that he was past that... he might not be able to transit to the neighborhood of another star correctly, and miss by as much as light-months, but that wouldn't stop him from being able to blink back home, as long as he was familiar enough with those co-ordinates.

By this time Maria had knelt down and hugged him, as she usually did when she'd been waiting for me to come back out of Astral... which he appreciated actually. For one thing, having flesh and bones to deal with often felt a little bit awkward at first, and having Maria touching his skin reminded him in an instant of some of the advantages of being physical matter. Maybe he should talk with her about the astral thing at some point, though... was she really worried about him when he was gone??

"Okay, how about Michael and I fix some lunch," Tess suggested, "and we can all talk about things while it's cooking, and while eating?"

"Sounds good to me," JD said with a grin.

Lunch turned out to be hot dogs, and macaroni cacciatore, (the cacciatore sauce coming out of a can in the pantry cupboard.) and the conversation quickly turned to holiday plans. JD had seen some Christmas decorations around town already and asked about them, but he hadn't seemed to grasp how big a deal it was, and Maria seemed to delight in telling him all the things he should be doing for his first holiday season in Roswell... getting gifts, putting up a tree and christmas lights in his apartment, and coming out to her turkey party at the Crashdown of course.

"Hey, that reminds me," Michael said, trying to take his fellow hybrid guy off the hot seat for a moment. "Tess, are you and Isabel doing a big Christmas morning breakfast thing again at the new place? And Liz, of course, but... well, it wasn't her place last time, and, ummm... you know what I mean, right?"

"Yeah, I do... and, actually, I don't think it's come up," Tess said. "I think everyone will be up for doing it, though, and I'll volunteer to spearhead the whole operation. It was fun last year... and the year before that, and so on."

"Will... will you have enough room for everybody in the apartment living room?" JD asked.

Maria laughed. "It's bigger than the loft lounge was, and we managed there. In the new place... festivities will probably spill over into the kitchen at least."

"What with one thing and another," Michael realized out loud, "we may not get to Alpha Centauri until after the new year." He considered. "If it's Alpha Centauri you think we should be heading for, teach. It's the nearest star to Earth besides the sun, but..."

"Umm... may need to go do a little research in the astronomy library, if ENMU has one," JD replied casually. "Alpha Centauri... is that visible from Roswell at night, this time of year/"

"No, in fact, I think it might not ever be clearly visible from the states," Tess replied after a moment. "It's far towards the south celestial pole - a lot of the bright and interesting stars are. Is that a problem?"

"I... I'm not sure," JD admitted. "Might help to visualize it... but then, visualizing truly interstellar distances is probably going to be a stumbling block for you guys no matter how familiar you are with the star as a dot in the sky. Your brains haven't been trained to think in that kind of scale."

"Heck, even visualizing the asteroid belt was a jolt," Michael admitted. "But we'll work it out somehow. By this point, we can't really get lost while astral, can we? No matter how badly I might screw up a blink, I can always visualize home clearly enough to get back there."

"Umm... I don't think it's quite that simple," JD replied. "Visualizing the destination clearly is not the only requirement. Generally, you also have to have a pretty clear notion where your astral self currently is, in relation to that destination. However, there are retracer techniques that can be very effective in this situation... basically, the involve taking advantage of the fact that your astral self will always feel a 'tug' towards its physical home, and jumping closer and closer back towards Earth. Soon you always blink close enough that you can find your way."

"Hmm..." Tess considered that. "Okay, how can we practice techniques like that?"

"That's the dangerous part," JD told her, reaching up to pat her shoulder tenderly. "You have to get lost on purpose, like by saying 'okay go to Pluto now' and blinking without visualizing Pluto properly."

"You're not doing that today," Maria insisted.

"No," Michael agreed, and JD nodded too. "In fact, is there anything we *do* have to do today?"

"Nah, not that I can think of," Tess put in.

"Perfect," he replied, laying back in his chair and taking another bite of a hot dog well drenched with tabasco.

----------

Alex slumped into his armchair, sighed, and picked up the phone. He took a moment first to plug the number he wanted to call into the speed dial, and then tried that out. After a split second, it began to ring. Four times before it picked up, and a lovely feminine voice said "Hello?"

Wrong lovely voice. "Um, hey Liz -- is my wife around there by any chance? She doesn't seem to be here at my place."

"Alex!!" Liz exclaimed, a little more emphatically than he expected. "Umm... actually, no, she... err... I think she just left her parent's place around fifteen minutes ago, which means that she should be here any moment. Come on, though, what's up with you, boy?? How's Las Cruces when you're by yourself??"

"Pretty dire and depressing," he replied. "I dunno, all I seem to be able to think about is Isabel."

"Gee, imagine my surprise."

"Yeah, well..." Alex sighed. "It's good that she's getting a chance to spend more time with her parents, though... how's everything else going around there?"

"Not too bad," Liz replied in her turn. "A bit of an unusual discovery was made that we should probably wait to tell you until you get here... Isabel got you interested in astronomy, right? Well, you should appreciate this tidbit then. Aside from that, everybody's pretty much just gearing up for Christmas. Speaking of which, when are you coming home for the holidays?"

Alex laughed... he'd been wondering how long it would take for Liz to ask that question. "About two days... friday as soon as I get home from work and check to make sure that everything will be okay here at the apartment... then I call for the Czechoslovakian shuttle service, to whisk me off to Roswell."

He could almost hear Liz smiling at that... okay, what he heard was probably a very quiet and satisfied sigh, but it was a sound that somehow conjured up a very clear image of her smiling. "Okay, well, I can't wait to see you. Actually, it'd have been great if you'd be here tomorrow, but ehh... what will be, will be. I'll appreciate your good vibes, though, so make sure to send them along."

"Why tommorr..." Alex trailed off, making a wild guess. "It's the big loomy day, isn't it? One year ago that... um, that you came back to Roswell to stay."

"Oooh, and the prize for best dancing around the point goes to..." Liz wisecracked. "Actually, that's a good enough euphemism that I might use it myself." A wry laugh followed. "Yeah, I came back to Roswell to stay... after getting kidnapped, held hostage, and seeing my fiancee killed in front of me." She sighed.

"Is... how are you feeling today?" Alex asked, feeling stupid himself for even asking the question. "Any idea how bad it's gonna be?"

"Umm... probably not incredibly traumatic, just as an anniversary," Liz replied with a sigh. "One year on the calendar is fundamentally arbitrary, after all... and I've pretty much done my major grieving and made peace with the fundamental unfairness of the universe that way. Because I'm aware of it, I'll probably be lost in sad memories a little more than usual... not that I could have forced myself to not clue in to the significance of the day by trying hard enough, I know."

"Yeah, I can see how that wouldn't have worked," Alex agreed. "Okay... do you want me to call sometime tomorrow, or send you an email? I wish I could be there in person to support you... not that you don't have enough friends and family for that, but..."

"Yeah, actually... both of those would be appreciated," Liz said, cutting off however he had been about to end the sentence. (Alex hadn't been sure himself. ) "Email is always good, maybe sometime I wouldn't expect it... and as far for the phone call, sometime between midmorning and midafternoon, if you can pull that off. I realize that they might not be wild about making long distance calls from work, but that's probably when I'd most need to hear a friendly voice."

"Okay, I'll find a way somehow," Alex promised. "Count..."

"A way to what?" another voice asked over the line. Alex blinked in surprise, and then realized what must have happened... Isabel had entered the apartment, and Liz had passed over the phone immediately, without saying goodbye or even giving him warning... possibly without even letting Izzy know who she was about to talk to.

"Isabel!" he exclaimed. "Umm... you'll have to ask Liz about that part, I guess. How were your folks doing?"

"Ummm..." Sure enough, she seemed more than a little pleasantly off-speed at suddenly talking to him. "Pretty great, actually... I had a lot of fun, and my mom... I dunno, we bonded, though I kind of get the notion that this is hard for her, you know. Being there for me during my pregnancy, while... um, well..."

Alex tried to figure out what she was talking about -- and then suddenly he thought he had it. "You mean that it reminds her that she's never been through pregancy and giving birth herself... that no matter how much she loves you and Max, this situation drives home that she isn't your birth mother?"

"Yeah... yeah, something like that."

"Do... do you know if they tried to have kids of their own, or just never thought about it until they ran into you?" Alex asked. "I... I've been curious about that sometimes, but I guess I never got up the nerve to ask. There's something vaguely superman-ish about the story of how you guys found your parents, you know... childless couple finds alien kids while out on a drive, or something like that. And in at least one version of the superman mythos, Mrs Kent had been told she couldn't have kids of her own."

"Hmm... I'm not sure I've ever found out that much about their lives before we came into the picture," Isabel admitted. "Which sounds a little self-centered of me, come to think of it... acting like they didn't have any history before I arrived."

"If that's self-centeredness, it's a pretty common form of it," Alex reassured her. "I'm kind of the same way with my parents. I ask them about what their life was like occasionally, before they even got married... but I have a hard time believing that the stories are real, actually." He laughed. "Or maybe just that the young people in the stories, and my parents, are actually the same people."

"Okay, well, I'll remember to ask," Isabel said softly. "Was there anything else you called to say?"

"Not... not really," Alex admitted. "More than anything, I guess I wanted to hear your voice."

"Alright, well, you're listening to me talk," Isabel said, and then was silent a moment. "What are you wearing?" she blurted out.

"Izzie!!"

"Come on, let a girl have a *little* fun," she insisted.

"Umm... well, nothing special," Alex sighed. "Just work clothes... my purple collar shirt and the navy blue pants, and no shoes - I was wearing the black ones, and couldn't wait to get rid of them once I got home." Alex laughed softly. "And I have two buttons undone at the top of the shirt. What about you?"

"Umm... my red Victoria's secret v-neck tshirt," Isabel said, "and a blue linen skirt that I just bought two days ago, down at the mall. The skirt's kinda long; it goes maybe four or five inches past my knees."

"Sounds pretty," Alex said. "What about your hair?"

"Up in a ponytail, just the way you love it," Isabel said, exhaling with pleasure.


TO BE CONTINUED...

Part Eighteen

Max heard the knock on the door, but he was deeply enough into his biochemistry cramming that he didn't pay any attention. However, when Jimmy Tompson, who lived across the hall, called out, "Hey, Evans, are you in there? Your visitor is blocking the hall!" he shook himself and got up from the desk.

He wasn't really sure who to expect when he opened the door of his residence room... but Kyle Valenti would definitely have been a long-shot if he'd been taking bets. "Um, hi Kyle... to what do I owe the unexpected?" After a split-second, he aslo asked, "Do you wanna come in for a moment?"

"Yeah, umm, yeah, that'd be good," Kyle agreed, and soon he had taken the desk chair and Max was sitting in the lotus position on his bedspread. "As far as the unexpected, I guess I'll get right down to the point. Do you want to leave residence and move into an apartment with me, something close to campus on the south side of town?" Max blinked. "Yeah, I thought that part would be unexpected too, but hear me out: I'm taking the placement here in Roswell with Silverwinds. Martine is *not* coming to Roswell... not until I figure out what I'm doing at the end of the four-month contract, or until we decide what to do about getting engaged or not. Therefore I need a place to live, and was wondering about going in with someone else to get a cheaper rent. The unattached girls are all happily nesting together, Michael and Maria too, and so that kind of just leaves you and me in the circle."

"And JD, too," Max pointed out, and noticed Kyle's face quirk slightly. "Do you have a problem with him, Kyle??"

"Umm... no, not really a problem, it's just a slightly weird situation," Kyle explained. "Both the fact that he and Tess are so obviously in love, and the fact that he's..." Kyle dropped his voice. "Well, he's even more *alien* than you guys are, because so much of the stuff that even you take for granted is completely new to him."

"Well... I actually wouldn't mind the chance to get out of here for a while," Max said. "I may have only been in residence for about eight months, and there are certain convenient advantages to being right on campus, but also enough downsides have come up in that time... plus the notion of being closer to the girls, and to Michael, sounds like a good one." He considered for a moment longer. "I even know of a place that might be good... nice roomy apartment, not too expensive, pretty close to campus, and to Silverwinds if it's where I think it is." Pause. "The downside is that it's a three bedroom, and so I'm going to ask what you'd think of moving in with me and JD at the same time."

It was Kyle's turn to be a bit surprised. "If... if the place is as good as you say, and if JD wants to move, then I'm open to the idea I guess. Having you around would at least, on some level be less weird than just JD and me."

"Maybe," Max agreed. "On the other hand, well, if Tess is part of the strangeness, then all it really means is that all three of the guys she loves most will all be at the same place." He laughed slightly. "Or so I'd like to think I guess."

"You might have a point there," Kyle admitted. "Okay, well, umm... can you try to get in touch with JD, or do you want me to?"

"I should be seeing him and the rest of the hybrid patrol this evening anyway," Max said. "Astral drill, again. So..." He paused, and the silence between them was suddenly a bit awkward. "How are things between you and Martine, otherwise?? I'd hate to think that you're having problems."

"No... no, I think we're okay," Kyle said. "Though neither of us is really happy about the idea of going it long-distance for four months, but heck, Alex and Isabel survived for more." Max nodded slowly. "We both love each other very much... just the notion of making the transition from being college sweethearts to something more is a little daunting... and we have slightly differing ideas about how we want to go about it. Everything will sort out with time."

"Glad to hear it," Max said. "I'm mostly concerned with finals right now, and then the holidays... and I suppose after that I'm going to need to devote a lot more of my attention to this Confederation Conference stuff." He sighed. "I've cut down my course schedule next term to the absolute basics... and I hope that even that much won't get in the way."

"Alright," Kyle agreed. "I haven't heard much about that stuff lately, other than the training. Any new developments??"

"Not much," Max said. "JD has some way of getting news from the homeworld... I've been meaning to ask him more about the details of how it works, but hadn't gotten to it yet. There are some tensions building there... one local faction has been threatening to pull out of the conference, and several neighbors and enemies have been counter-threatening to attack there if they do. Kivar's been pretty quiet, just watching and seeing what happens, maybe. He's formally committed to attending the conference, but nobody knows what tricks he might pull between now and then."

"Great," Kyle drawled. "Well, at least this doesn't sound as bad as that Summit that you and Tess went to in New York."

Max blinked a bit in surprise. "How... how much did Tess tell you about that? Is she the one you heard about it from?"

"Mostly," Kyle confirmed. "A little third-hand from Liz, presumably digested from what you told her. Creepy meeting in the abandoned Manhattan warehouse with Brody Davis slash Larek, three other bodysnatching alien leaders, and that creepy skin Nicholas speaking on behalf of Kivar. Tried to guilt you and bribe you into completely bailing on your 'supporters' over there, in exchange for pie-in-the-sky promises of peace and a trip home... oh, and a comfy but completely powerless throne that he might have actually let you live long enough to sit on."

"That was pretty much the deal," Max agreed on. "I know in retrospect it seems like a no-brainer to pass on that offer... but it wasn't so easy to see things clearly in the moment like that. Especially with that one red-headed lady glaring at me. The one thing I wish... is that I knew why she and the other leaders seemed to put so much faith in Kivar's offer of peace, and why they were counting on it. If Kivar was strong enough to declare peace by fiat, then why weren't they angry that he hadn't done it already? Was he clearly the aggressor, or just strong enough to keep the peace between them if he exerted himself enough?"

"Well, I don't really know, but maybe it's a little unfair to look at it all from that point of view," Kyle put in. "I mean... the one factor you're leaving out is the fighting witht the rebels... 'your' people, though I use that term with reservations. Among world leaders, it's a little naive to expect them to undertake huge sacrifices simply for the greater good. If the rebels were his biggest problem, I can sort of see the faint logic of a quid pro quo... he'll stop the fighting with the other planets once he can get his own house in order."

Max grinned slightly. "Well, there's about to be a foreclosure, because the building's going co-op. Antar isn't 'his' any longer, and almost none of it will be his alone after the confederation."

"Alright." Kyle got up. "Umm... you wanna go grab something to eat at the student union?"

Max considered. "Yeah, cool. Fuel up before studying any more." He unfolded his legs and stood up, then leaned over Kyle to close his textbook. "Feel like chicken?"

"Nah, I'm relatively brave today," Kyle joked. "Maybe chicken tomorrow."

Max shook his head slightly... but then he laughed.

----------

"Okay," Maria said, looking at her list. "What about for Max?? Any idea if there's something special that he'd like?"

Michael looked up from the computer screen a moment, tried several times before he got the pause key, and swivelled his chair around to face her. Obviously he wasn't going to get much further on his quest to uncover the lost scroll of Mizeedles right now, so probably better to quit trying and give christmas present planning his mostly-undivided attention, rather than both flubbing the adventure and getting his new wife pissed at him. "Umm... uh, Max."

"Yes, Your best friend forever," Maria prompted, but not meanly.

"Uhh... oh, he said yesterday that he's probably going to be leaving the residence and getting an apartment with Kyle and JD, so maybe something for the new pad." Thought about that. "A... a desk lamp or something, maybe, to help him study."

"Hmm..." Maria considered that. "Alright, maybe... but we don't want to step on the 'housewarming present' thing. Remember, he gave you that CD stand thingee as a housewarming present, and... um, and something else for me when I moved in here, though I have to confess I can't remember what at the moment."

"We can get a housewarming present too," Michael agreed. "Maybe a toaster oven."

"Alright." Maria scribbled a few notes on her sheet of paper. "Any ideas at all for Isabel??"

"Yeah, actually..." Michael smiled. "It's something that I saw down at the circuit city... kind of a voice sound player, dictaphone thing... but one thing I noticed is that they have ones with 'internet sync' now. So you hook it up, and it automatically downloads messages that someone else has left for you on a website or email account or something... and then you can make your own messages and send it back off. I thought... I thought it was something she might appreciate for keeping in touch with Alex when she can't talk to him on the phone directly."

"Awww..." Maria sighed, and quickly noted it down. "You're right - we HAVE to get that for her." She considered for a moment, and then put the pad aside. "Do you... have you thought about what's happening with them, living in different cities for a while, and wondered if the same sort of thing would ever make sense for us?"

"Umm... a little," Michael admitted, "but I've got to say... I don't really think that's much like us. Kyle mentioned that he's going to be moving back here while Martine's staying in Albuquerque, too." He sighed. "But..." He suddenly got up and sat next to his beloved on the bed. "You realize that nothing, in the long view, is nearly as important to me as you, right?? If participating in this Conference thing meant that I'd have to be apart from you for long, I would seriously say the hell with it! If you ever needed to go anywhere, I would drop whatever job I had, whatever I was in the middle of doing, and follow you. And barring that... I don't feel like going anyplace." Maria laughed. "So I don't see anything splitting us up, ever."

Except... us. The thought struck into Michael's brain almost like a gunshot, but he had enough sense to keep from voicing any part of it out loud. If something ever happened to them, though, that's where it would start, he realized. It wouldn't be other priorities and other parts of their live pulling them apart for a while, like was happening to Alex and Isabel. In comparison, though, that wasn't so bad. But as much as he loved Maria, and as much as he knew Maria still loved him... Michael was worried that their relationship could still self-destruct. That being together could eventually, one day, be enough to push them apart.

But Maria seemed to have no inkling of the dire thoughts that troubled him, and Michael did his best to relax and force them away as she started chattering. "So, umm... do you want to try staying over at the girls' place on Christmas Eve, or just drive over there first thing in the morning?"

"Hmm..." Michael blinked, he hadn't thought of that. He'd been staying over the last time... but then, Maria had been living in the loft then, and him sleeping over had been far from unheard of. (They hadn't actually made love that night... Maria had had a few odd quirks about 'living in sin' with him at particularly holy times.) But now... "Where would we sleep? Is anyone else, umm, err..."

"Well, Alex is going to be over there, with Isabel, of course," Maria explained. "The guys in general are not... well, at least Max and Kyle won't - I'm not sure if I've heard anything firm about JD. As far as sleeping... hmm." Maria's face curled slightly in a frown. "I admit I hadn't really thought about that. Maybe a mattress in the living room?"

"I... no offense to the hospitality of the girls," Michael laughed. "But I think I'd rather not."

Maria thought about it. "Fair enough... I guess I wasn't wild about it myself, but didn't feel great about breaking with tradition." She sighed. "I'll tell Liz and Tess."

"Okay," Michael agreed. "Any idea what you're going to get Liz??"

"Umm... well, there's this place at the mall that makes custom embroidered sweaters," Maria mumbled, sounding a bit embarassed. "I was wondering about getting one made up that read 'EARTH'S GREATEST MOM' in red, green, and white."

Michael smiled. "Wouldn't suck."

And he hugged Maria tight.

----------

WHOOMPH! With a soft wave of noise and an odd twinkle in the air, Alex arrived in the apartment living room. "Hmm... that sounded louder than usual," Tess muttered as Isabel let go her hand and rushed forward to hug her husband. "Might want to see if we can damp down the air displacement wave if we're gonna be doing this all the time. Wouldn't pay off at all for the neighbors to get curious."

"Yeah," Liz whispered back. "But he won't be going anywhere for a while. We've got time to discuss that later." And by the time Isabel's embrace was no longer desperate, Liz was near enough that Alex could pull her close and convert it into a three-way group hug.

"Okay, umm... welcome to Hotel Roswell-Venus," Isabel quipped a minute later, picking up the biggest bag from Alex's luggage, which had been teleported in before him. "Shall I show you to the room, sir?"

"I... I think I remember the way," he joked, but followed behind her anyway, taking his laptop case and a little cloth sack.

"I know the bed isn't as big as ours at home," Izzie continued regretfully as he walked into her room, "but..."

"It's a full double, right?" Alex replied with a grin. "Don't think there'll be any problem with sharing... especially seeing as how we both like the company so much." Isabel smiled. "So, how've you been doing at settling in? Everything great with the baby?"

"Yep, Max checked us out just this morning," Isabel said, smiling slightly as Liz dropped Alex's last piece of luggage just inside the door and then closed herself out to give the two of them some privacy. "Everything's great. He says that she's even cuter than Bethany was at her age, and he didn't think that was possible." Alex laughed heartily at that.

"How about work?? Did you get everything sorted out before having to leave on holiday?" Isabel asked.

"Well... almost." Alex sighed slightly, and Isabel cocked her head. "I may need to put in a little telecom time, sometime between christmas and new year's, because they want to make sure that we're ready for the benchmarks first week of January." He put his hands gently over Isabel's waist and hips, and drew her close for a long kiss. "Aside from that, I'm all yours."

"Well... it's about damn time!!"

They chatted much longer, managing to make about a week since they'd been together last for well over half an hour's worth of highlights. "Ohh," Alex exclaimed suddenly. "How's Liz been doing?"

"Umm... okay I guess, why?"

"Wednesday was the one-year mark... one year since Casey died, and Nicholas held her hostage."

"Oh, oh right!" Isabel looked at him. "I didn't forget the day of... well, actually, I think Tess reminded me, but anyway. But it didn't seem too bad, and actually, looking back, it seems like she's been doing *better* overall since Wednesday than she was before. Like... like the shadow of that grief and pain has been nearly lifted away, like there was a time limit and she's served out her sentence. I know that that probably seems like a weird way of putting things, but.."

"No, I think I get it," Alex assured her. "And if that's so... I think I'm glad for her. Liz has been through too much pain in her life already."

"Definitely," Isabel agreed.

All of a sudden there was a knock on Isabel's door. "Hey, are you guys doing something I don't want to see?"

"No, Tess, at least I don't think so," Isabel replied, and the door opened a crack.

"Liz and I thought that we'd order pizza and try out the Video-demand box," Tess informed them. "Will you be joining us?"

Alex looked into Isabel's face and smiled. "Definitely. Can we get the new Batman movie on that thing?"

"I call a pregnant girl's perogative," Isabel insisted. "At least half of a pizza with anchovies and black olives."

"Fine, fine," Tess agreed. "You and your olives."

"Is that all you want on it, Isabel?" Liz called from further down the hall.

"Nah. Put some grilled chicken on it too."

----------

"Darling!!" Mrs. Parker threw open the back door of the Crashdown as soon as Liz had finished pulling into the parking lot. She got out of the car, hugged her mom, and her dad, and then turned to get Bethany's car seat out of the back and let her grandparents make a huge fuss over her. Maria came around from the passenger's seat and said her hellos as well, and the five of them headed into the building and up the stairs.

"How was your christmas morning, Jeff?" Maria asked while climbing the last few stairs. "Any happy surprises?"

"Actually, yes," Jeff replied, picking something up from the coffee table. "Five megapixel digital. Isn't it a gorgeous camera?"

Maria looked a bit vaguely at the shiny block-shaped object festooned with little buttons and lenses and other attachments. "Looks really great mister P."

The three of them, Liz, her father, and her oldest friend, talked about christmas presents and festivities for a while, as Nancy doted on her little granddaughter, and the two of them got into a spirited game of peek-a-boo. Then Mrs Parker decided to cede Beth back to Liz and her husband, and invited Maria into the kitchen to help her check on Christmas dinner.

"Thanks for inviting us over today, um, Nancy," Maria said as her hostess basted the turkey breast. Even after being told to for years, she still felt weird about calling Liz's parents by their first names. "It's a really great, ehh, great idea... we should have tried it last year, maybe, but everything was so busy..."

"I can tell that you're fishing, Maria," Nancy interrupted gently. Maria blinked. "It's pretty easy to recognize the signs after a while. Yes, there's a reason that Jeff and I invited you girls over today aside from just enjoying your company and wanting to spend time with you... and you're NOT going to get any more details out of me right now. We shall not speak of it until dessert."

"Aww, come on, now I can't possibly wait that long," Maria whined, and Nancy stuck out the tip of her tongue.

"We'll need plenty of mashed potatoes I think. Want to help me peel??"

"Sure, I guess," Maria agreed. "What about yams? Oooh... and corn. Umm... do you have frozen corn??"

"Plenty," Nancy agreed. They ran around for a while getting yummy stuff ready for the feast, and then Maria switched with Liz for a little while, Maria going out to play with the baby and Liz helping her mom mix up Asteroid pie filling. Soon the meat thermometer buried in the thickest part of the turkey had slowly completed its rise to the designated level, and all of the trimmings were ready to serve, and the five of them fell to delightedly.

"So, um, what's everybody else in 'the gang' doing for Christmas dinner?" Jeff asked as he passed the turkey. "We thought about trying to throw a slightly larger shindig, but..."

"Nah, it's okay," Liz assured him. "Max, Isabel, Alex, and Michael are over at the Evanses. Kyle and Martine are on their way back up to Albuquerque to have a late supper at Jim and Amy's place, and I think Tess and JD will be waiting to have their plates of turkey downstairs in another few hours."

"So everybody's pretty much split up," Nancy observed. "Well, at least you all had christmas morning together. I hope it was fun."

"Oh, it was a blast," Maria said. "Better than LAST year, even though the premises weren't quite so crazy-crowded back then." And she launched into some slightly-censored ramblings about who had given whom what, and the chaos of cooking Christmas breakfast for ten people (not counting Beth,) in a kitchen that had been designed to feed three.

Soon enough those stories and many more had been told, (several of them old stories that had been told and heard dozens of times over before that day,) and when the pie was brought out, along with creams of the whipped and ice varieties, Maria announced, "Okay, the dessert's here. What was it that you wanted to tell us?"

Jeff and Nancy traded slightly frustrated looks. Liz seemed a little bit surprised, but the held her tongue to see what her parents would say first. At first they didn't say anything, just served out the pie... Nancy cutting wedges and lifting them out of the pan, and Jeff adding toppings... vanilla ice cream for himself, chocolate for maria, whipped for Liz, and a mix of whipped and chocolate for Nancy. It didn't really surprise anybody that he knew their 'usuals' by heart now.

"Alright," Nancy said after taking one forkful of her pie, "I'll tell you. Jeff and I have decided... that this will be our last full year running the Crashdown hands-on... we want to pass it on, and relatively soon." Maria almost let pie and melted chocolate drip out of her mouth, but Liz remained calm... somehow she had guessed that this would be coming.

"We want to take off for a little while," Jeff continued, "maybe have a second-honeymoon cruise. So... we've been putting some thought into what should happen to the business."

Maria started to get the point now. "I've been the manager for a while now, and you pretty much know me and trust me. Liz is... obviously, your daughter, your only child." She took a deep breath. "Do you want us to take over running it together?"

"Umm... something like that," Nancy agreed. "Maria, you would stay on as manager, and take on added responsibilities when we leave. We're also prepared to give you a share in owning the business... you've certainly worked hard enough for it, and it stands to reason that you'll work even harder to keep the cafe a success if you have a true stake in the bottom line."

"And we were also thinking of giving a, erm, noticeably larger share to Liz," Jeff continued. "How much she's involved in day-to-day operations would be up to the two of you... she has her own projects that she's committed to... and she has Beth to think about of course, and I get the impression she'll be helping Isabel out while she's here in Roswell." He smiled slightly. "But this place is in your blood, Liz, it's in your history and I know you haven't forgotten it. If you decide to help out in a hands-on way, we'd all really appreciate it."

"Umm... yeah, we'll have to work out the details, but..." Liz shook her head. "Wow, sorry, I'm just not quite able to grasp all of this just yet." She breathed in and out deeply, and then laughed to herself slightly. "Mind laying out the numbers in the open, just for the record? I admit that I'm curious."

"Umm..." Jeff got up and scrabbled for a piece of paper on the counter behind the table. "Just want to be very sure I have it right," he mumbled under his breath. "Ah, right." He found the paper, a very small slip, and handed it to his wife with a small question in his eyes. She scanned over the names and figured listed, nodded to him, and Jeff made a gesture of 'go ahead.' She very nearly stuck her tongue out at him, but settled for making a slightly less rude face than that.

"Okay," Nancy replied. "Fifteen percent share to Maria... forty percent for Liz. I'll be keeping twenty, and Jeff will keep the rest, one quarter share."

"Wow," Maria breathed.

"I hope you don't feel disappointed that you didn't get more," Nancy said hurriedly. "We went back and forth over it, and it seemed..."

"No, no," Maria insisted. "Fifteen percent is REALLY generous. I was actually just thinking... between the two of us, we have a majority share. We could... well, this is extreme, but we could force a sellout if we wanted to, couldn't we?"

"Yes," Jeff agreed softly. "That's the way we wanted it. No arguing."

"Actually, Liz has the key share in a lot of ways," Nancy remarked. "Not a majority share of her own, but enough to give her a majority with any of the rest of us."

"Well obviously," Maria replied with a smile, "if she has a majority with me, and I have the least."

"Wait a second," Liz blurted out. "What... what about the apartment up here?"

"Well, that's up to you," Jeff said evenly. "The entire building is owned by the cafe, but we won't be needing it... at least, not for a while at least. One or both of you can move in, or you can rent it out."

Liz looked over at Maria, her head whirling. "Umm... you should take it... you and Michael."

"No, I couldn't," her old friend insisted. "You and Tess can move in here... though you may need to wait until Isabel goes back to Las Cruces in the spring... after her little one is born."

"You don't need to sort that out today," Nancy told them. "Come on, eat!! Everybody's pie is getting soggy!"

They ate pie before it got any soggier.

"Oh, shoot!" Maria exclaimed as somebody's wristwatch beeped the hour. "I'd better get downstairs. There's so much to be done for the gathering tonight, downstairs."

"Not until you clean your plate, young lady," Nancy mock-scolded. There was one small forkful of pie left in front of Maria, and she scooped it up and ate it in about an instant.

"Come on, Mom," Liz said, getting up. "Let dad clear away the dishes, and then I'll help him with the washing. If you guys are going to be leaving Roswell, then Beth needs to spend all the time with her gramma that she can now."

----------

"Hey, mom," Max said as she opened the door of the house.

"Wow, all three of you - again," Mister Evans remarked, looking up from the front hall, where he was searching through the pockets of a jacket on the coat tree. "To what do we owe the honor of this visit?"

"Ehh, nothing in particular I guess," Isabel said, hugging her mother and her father in quick succession. "Just felt like dropping by for a visit again." It was the day after christmas: Alex and Maria were each spending some time with their parents, though Maria's was taking the form of an extended telephone call up to Albuquerque. And Liz's ex's parents had come back to Roswell for another visit with her and Beth, and Liz had gently hinted to Max that she'd rather it be just the four of them, this time. It had been four the last time, but a different four, since Mister Richards hadn't made it, and Max had been there to give Liz moral support.

"Okay, well, come in, I'll whip up some coffee and snacks or something, and surely we will find plenty to chat about," Diane insisted.

"Oh, come on, you don't have to do all the work of hostessing all the time," Michael commented. "I mean, I do okay with making coffee."

"I'm not quite sure if you hit 'okay'," Max teased his best friend.

"Besides, it makes Mom happy to fuss over us like that, once in a while," Isabel said, smiling at her. "Right?"

"Umm... usually -- but that isn't to say I really mind the idea of other people making a fuss over me," Diane replied after a moment. "How about you and your father handle the coffee, Isabel, since I think you both have plenty of practice... and the boys can go foraging for snacks." She grinned and dropped herself into the armchair at the head of the dining room table, spreading out slightly. Max and Isabel stared at her in surprise for a moment... and then started to laugh.

Soon they were set up with coffee, (except for Izzie, who decided to have some grapefruit juice instead,) and leftover cake, and christmas-themed sugar cookies, and jello milk-puddings were setting in the fridge. Max asked about how his father's recent cases were going, and they let Diane ramble on for quite a while about a beginner's sculpting class she was taking in the evenings at Roswell High. (That was the midtown school, not West Roswell High where all the kids had gone.) And then Philip asked Max how his nursing classes were going, and if Isabel had got her correspondence course materials yet for the winter-term, and Diane tried to draw Michael out a bit with questions about his security guarding work, and how he liked being married so far.

"Hmm..." Max muttered a little bit later, after all the drinks had been finished and nobody seemed to be reaching for more snacks particularly. "We should do something a little more involving than just talking... play a game or something maybe."

"Well," Isabel said, shooting a mischievous look over at Michael, "we could always break the Monopoly board out... as long as nobody has a problem with paying rent on arrival."

For a second, Michael bristled, remembering the game of Monopoly that he'd stormed out on, just two days or so before he'd been emancipated... he'd been in a bad mood already, and when the game started to turn against him... the symbolism of being broke and without any tangible assets to his credit had struck a good deal too close to home at the time. "Umm... yeah, I think I'll be okay with that this time," he said, relaxing and putting up a pleasant smile. It was just a game, and if he happened to lose, he would at least do his best to lose cheerfully and go bankrupt according to the rule book, instead of storming off as soon as things were going badly.

On the other hand... it would be fun if everything happened to break in his favor, and he ended up owning the whole town. THAT would kick ass.

It took a little while for the Evanses to find the board, (all four of them pitched in to look, and Michael offered to help but he didn't really know the house as well as they did...) get the houses, hotels, and various dollar bills sorted out, figure out who would be playing with each piece, and negotiate whether they'd be playing with the color deal-out variant, the property auction rule, and/or the free parking jackpot. Finally, the play started, and for several tours of the board nothing much was discussed except the minutia of real estate tycoonship.

Then, at one moment, Isabel meaningfully caught Max's eye, and he nodded in reply to the unspoken question. She tried to signal Michael too, but he wasn't paying attention.

"Mom, do you remember the time that Max put out the grease fire," Isabel said, trying to make her voice casual and chatty. "And you were freaking out about it because he shouldn't have been able to put out grease with a pot of water?"

Diane Evans nearly jumped out of her chair, as if the memory had literally carried a stinger that she was still sensitive to. "Y-yeah, honey, I definitely do. Why do you mention that?"

"Oh, umm... there was just something weird that happened a few days ago that reminded me of it," Isabel replied. "Sheesh, what WAS that?" She screwed up her face in a pretty good 'trying to remember' look. "Umm, yeah... I'd locked myself out of the apartment when heading out for a little Christmas shopping, and, like... after trying the door two of three times, I banged next to the keyhole and all of a sudden it opened! I can't really explain it beyond that..." well, she *could*, but she wasn't going to at the moment, "but I'm really glad it happened."

"Well... wow, honey," Mister Evans said, and tried to wipe the intensely curious expression of his face and concentrate on rolling the dice. Isabel was spending all of her emotional effort on hiding a smile. Her mother seemed to be reacting to that little tidbit about as well as could be expected, too. Maybe sometime around ney Year's they could actually come a little bit closer to telling them the truth.

"Do you have any of those little red mint candies, Mrs Evans?" Michael asked.

"Sure... I stocked up when Isabel said that she'd be coming by for the holidays."
'
----------

"Hello?" Alex poked his head out of Isabel's bedroom, and tried not to make the disappointed look on his face too clear. "Oh, hi Tess. How's it going?" He nodded silently as JD followed Tess through the apartment door.

"Umm... pretty good. I guess Isabel isn't back from her folks' house?" Tess guessed, and Alex nodded. "Liz?"

"Still over at the hotel with Bethany's paternal grandparents, I guess. I just got back from *my* parent's house maybe twenty minutes ago." He started to turn away slightly, when Tess's voice stopped him.

"Well, you don't have to disappear or anything," she pointed out. "We can all hang out in the living room."

"Okay I guess." Alex smiled, following the two of them in, and took a mental guess at just how much of a third wheel he'd feel like, since his own matching wheel, Isabel, wasn't around.

But Tess and JD didn't act couple-y enough to trigger any kind of awkwardness, really. Tess played hostess, rustling up some beverages and snacks for all of them. "So what's up with you?" Alex asked JD.

"Well, it looks like I'm going to be moving," the Antarian boy replied. "Max and Kyle asked me to go in with them on a three-person place, kinduv like this one, and it seemed like a good idea, at least for the spring. Of course, thanks to Tess, I have a lot more stuff to move than when I first came to Roswell."

"It'd have been hard to have much less, sweetie," Tess pointed out from the kitchen.

"Looking forward to having roommates?" Alex asked.

"Yeah, yeah I think so. Being in my own place has been a little isolating... it'll be interesting to really get to know them a little more closely. The downside is that I'm terrified all of my little habits, whether alien in origin or just stuff I've happened into from being mostly by myself on Earth, is gonna seem really weird to them."

"Don't worry about it," Alex suggested. "Everybody has some habits that seem really weird to roommates - it's a normal part of the human condition." He smiled as Tess put a few mugs down on the coffee table. "To change the subject slightly, just because it popped into my head... do you have any light to shed on the alcohol thing, JD?"

"Umm... what alcohol thing?"

Alex paused a moment, not quite sure how to start explaining, and Tess jumped in... obviously she had a lot more practice with this. "Fermented drinks, with ethyl alcohol in them, are a pretty common... recreational intoxicant on Earth."

"Yeah," Alex agreed. "I like a beer or two now and then myself, or a glass of a nice red wine. But the first time Max tried a bit... well, it seemed to have an extremely uninhibiting effect on him, which is particularly bad news since if he happened to use his powers at the wrong time, or talk about being alien to the wrong person, it could create enormous problems for all of us." He sighed."

"We think that all four of us... all eight hybrids, even, are dangerously sensitive to alcohol," Tess replied, "but we're not sure if it's because of our Antarian genes, or something specific to being hybrids or what. I guess I'm curious if you know anything about ethyl alcohol on Antar or the other worlds."

"Oh," JD replied, and thought a moment. "I'm not sure of the exact significance of the word alcohol, but the term ethyl... does that indicate a chemical variant on the hydrocarbon ethane?"

"Oh, right," Alex laughed. "Yeah, one of the simplest variants actually. The alcohol grouping is replacing an oxygen-hydrogen pair for a simple hydrogen atom. Ethyl alcohol would be ethane with one alcohol grouping... on either of the two carbon atoms."

"Riight..." JD muttered. "And fermentation... that's a kind of sugar breakdown through small single-celled lifeforms... similar to letting bread rise, but managed a little differently?" Tess nodded. "Okay, I think your ethyl alcohol is probably our 'tzyygahcneh'... a compound that is definitely not used recreationally by... well, you'll probably find a few people who really don't care about poisoning their bodies for the sake of a new experience, but..."

"Yep, here too." Alex sighed. "They'll sniff glue or whatever... um, never mind, I'll explain that part later."

"Since it's not that difficult to make, and something that can be slipped into somebody's drink without the taste or smell being too noticeable," JD continued, "it's been used as an underhanded way to rob someone of his best faculties, or just to cause some embarassment and misery. Nasty trick."

"Yeah," Tess sighed. "Well, you'll have to be especially careful I guess... you'll probably be even more suceptible to it than we are. It's not too hard to steer clear, though. I've had a lot of practice."

"Alright," JD agreed, and then spent a moment casting around for yet another new subject. "Alex, someone mentioned that you'd be doing work this week directly from Roswell to your office in Las Cruces."

Alex jumped slightly. "Yeah, over the net." He paused. "You have seen the internet, right?"

"Who has seen the internet?" JD quipped, and Alex laughed, seeing his point. "I've seen some websites and email, but most of that was, emmm, just stuff for fun. I'd be interested in seeing the kind of serious stuff you're doing with it, if that's okay."

"Yeah, sure I guess," Alex agreed. "Don't think that it would be against company regulations or anything. I'll let you..." He thought about it. "Could probably log on to Tess' computer now, to show you a few things, if that's okay with her, but I don't know how much of the specialized software she's got. I was going to be borrowing Liz's rig."

"Well, go ahead - I don't think that she'd mind," Tess said. "Really?"

"Umm... are you sure?" JD asked. "Wouldn't she mind??"

"It's okay," Alex said. "We can do it later... in fact I think I'd rather." He leaned back a little, and sighed. "JD, there's one other alien-related question that I've been meaning to ask you... but I don't have to, especially now, if it would be bugging you."

JD considered this for a moment, seeming slightly surprised. "No, that's quite alright. Ask away."

"Well... you said that you'd been given human DNA through a virus treatment," Alex said. "Do you know how MUCH human DNA? I was just starting to wonder about that because... Isabel said that you weren't as human as, well, as the 'born hybrids' here in Roswell are, but you definitely seem to have a lot of human traits. I'm not quite sure what Antarians look like, but I imagine that you have genes for human hair, human eyes, human skin, possibly human muscles and other details that are pretty obvious 'underneath' the skin. Plus however many human genes are required to breathe Earth air, and each of these changes would seem to require other changes 'behind the scenes' to make sure that the blood system and nerves and so on are compatible. On the other hand... well, we know that viri can substitute genes into the chromosomes of the cells that they infect, but they're also small enough that they normally only have a limited genetic payload. Does..." He sighed. "Does any of that ramble make sense, and if so... do you see where the flaw is in the conclusion that making you so human by this technique seems unlikely?"

JD laughed. "Very well thought out, actually. I'm not sure of... well, to get right to the point, the major flaw that I can see is that you're assuming only one virus was used." Alex went 'ohhhh' silently. "Yeah. Each virus might not have a very great payload, but... well, I might have left this part out when I was explaining it beforehand because I didn't want to bog down in the tiny details, but there was a sequence of different viri so long that it seemed like it would never end. Some of them were introduced while I was back on Antar, others while I was in the ship, travelling... waiting until each virus had finished its work and cleared out of my system, then getting a new one injected into the bloodstream. But not waiting too long, either... because some of the 'payloads' introduced changes that needed to match up with changes in the next payload, by a certain time, or there'd be allergic reactions developing or other... incompatibilities in my biology." He shuddered. "As far as the overall proportion of human DNA I have now... um, maybe somewhere between one-quarter and three-tenths."

"Okay," Alex said. "Sorry if I brought up any unpleasant memories there."

"It... it wasn't that fun to go through at the time," JD admitted, then looked over at Tess. "But I'd have gone through it a dozen times over, if I had to, to get me here to Earth... even if it weren't for my mission, actually. Though without the mission, nobody would have created the genetic therapies for me or given me a spaceship." He sighed. "It's just... this is such an incredible and unique experience, to get to explore and learn about an entirely new world. It's not a chance that many people have gotten, in quite this way."

"Hmm... I guess that's right," Alex admitted. For Max, Tess, Isabel, and the others, Earth wasn't a 'new world'... it was their home planet in terms of experiences and nurture... okay, sure, Tess and Max might have faint memories, echoes of somebody else's lives back on Antar, but that didn't really count for much. Nasedo might have grown up somewhere else and come to earth as an adult... but he didn't seem to be capable of the kind of curioisity and exploration that JD was experiencing... he had been focused on his own mission, to the exclusion of everything else. Except... "Wait a minute. There are different inhabited planets in the Antar area, right?? Larek's, and the others that went to the Summit. Don't people go off exploring other planets all the time, back home??"

"Well, yeah, but I wasn't quite counting that sort of thing," JD admitted with a trace of pink color in his cheeks. "Going to Rahlicx or Gevina is... culturally it's the same sort of thing as American kids going backpacking in Europe or on holiday in Brazil - it's broadening, it's incredible, but it's still within our sphere of experience. There's people who know the languages in common, and everyone you meet has heard something about the place you came from... the stories they've heard might not match up with what living back home is really like, but..."

"But the thing that makes Earth so incredibly different is that you're one of the first people to make the trip," Tess put in, her voice seeming slightly surprised at the revelation. "It'd probably be some of the same sort of thing for us, if we could go back to Antar... if the political landscape permitted that. But if there were people going back and forth all the time, and Earthpeople in general knew about Antar... then slowly the cultures might start to mix and there'd be nothing so special about us."

"Except that both planets would start to absorb some of the best of the other," Alex said dreamily. "Or at least, I hope that's the way it would go."

JD smiled too. "I think it will... when the time comes." And then he burped, rather ruining the effect of those calm words. "Oh, excuse me."

Tess snickered affectionately.


TO BE CONTINUED...

Part Nineteen

"Okay, so I guess we're ready. Now, just wait until people start arriving?" JD asked.

Max grinned at the blond alien. "Pretty much. And try to relax a little bit - it's a party."

"Yeah, but there's still so much I don't understand," JD said. "Just who is Dick Clark and why do so many people seem to care if he'll be rocking the New Eve? Why do we stay up until midnight, and what happens if Tess doesn't want to kiss me then? Why should our friends give us presents just because we've moved into a new apartment? And what does 'Auld Lang Syne' mean?"

Kyle chuckled - he had been standing in the doorway watching JD freak slightly out. "Okay, Dick Clark, New Year's Rockin' eve, and Auld Lang Syne might be beyond our power to explain quickly, but to cover the rest of it briefly... staying up til midnight to witness the last moment of the old year and the first moment of the new one is just, well, kind of one of those traditions that doesn't have much of a meaning behind it... it's a vaguely cool sensation, and that's all there is to it. The same applies to housewarming presents I guess... it started in situations when kids were moving into their first apartment out of their parent's house, or someone getting set up on his own after leaving a failed marriage, maybe. But, well, it kind of evens out, even in terms of who moves into how many new places over the course of their lives, and there are always new things you find you need so that the gifts often come in handy that way."

"And lastly, when it comes to Tess," Max said, "You have absolutely NOTHING to worry about. She likes you, and she'll probably practically jump on you when midnight rolls around. Actually... she might have kissed you even if she didn't like you so much, just because she's been through a few New Year's eve parties in a row without *having* anybody to kiss at mightnight."

"Oh," JD muttered. "It... it's been a little lonely for her ever since she came to Roswell, huh? If not for even longer."

Max and Kyle shared an incredibly awkward glance. "Yeah... yeah I guess it has," Max admitted. "I've... I've tried to be as good a friend for her as I could, but the fact that she wanted more from me than I was able to give put a strain on things." He sighed. "Slightly similar thing for Kyle... he's like a part of the family for her, but that isn't always enough."

"To be quite devastatingly honest," Kyle spoke up, "I'm... I'm really glad that you and she have figured out how much you like each other, and kinduv wish that you could have made it to Earth a few years ago."

"Yeah, actually, that would have been nice, but I'm not quite sure how it could have happened," JD admitted. "Maybe if the Confederation process had gotten started a bit earlier - but then maybe I wouldn't have been the one picked as a courier."

"Let's not try to re-engineer the time-space continuum," Max suggested, "even as armchair quarterbacks or whatever. Sheesh, how badly mismatched a metaphor is that? Quarterbacks re-engineering time and space?"

"As... as a football player, I think I resent that remark," Kyle put in. "Quarterbacks can be brilliant scientists too!"

"But that's not the same role," Max pointed out. "Oh, never mind. The point is, JD is here now and things are working out pretty well at that." He smiled. "Are... are you nervous about the fact that some of the people on the guest don't understand about your alien status JD?"

"Well... yeah, a little," he admitted. "I... I think that I've already managed to say some completely stupid things to Martine, and your parents are going to be dropping by, right Max??"

"Yeah, also Maria's mom and some of Tess' friends from school," Kyle said. JD drew in an unhappy breath. "Don't worry too much. Be yourself, be careful, and watch us for cues. You'll be... you'll be fine."

"Th- thanks." There was a slightly odd silence for a few minutes.

"Oh, by the way, I think this is a legitimate FYI and not gossip," Max said. "Guess who else is already expecting a little baby sometime in the early fall?"

"Umm... it better not be Tess," JD joked. Max shook his head slightly.

"You know, Max, I'm not sure you can use the 'guess who' format without making it gossip," Kyle pointed out. "But since you did... the smart money is on Maria." Max nodded. "Sheesh... honeymoon kid?"

"I... I'm not quite sure on the timing," Max replied. "Probably near the end of the honeymoon or just after they got home. Possibly even on the way home, though that'd be speculation."

"Well, good for them, I guess," JD said. "I hope he or she brings them a lot of happiness and joy."

"Well, if genetics is any guide, that baby is going to be a handful," Kyle pointed out. "Stubborn, irrepressible, with a moody heart and an artist's soul." He thought about that. "I can't wait to watch them get started."

"And what about you, Kyle?" Max couldn't help needling his new roommate. "I mean, I know that Martine isn't so sure about getting married yet, which would presumably indicate no kids. But what do you think? Would you want to be a father?"

"I... I'm not sure if I'm ready," Kyle admitted softly. "But when I look at Liz with Bethany... I know that she wasn't really prepared for having a baby, especially by herself, but she's grown into the role of being a mother, and somehow become an even more incredible person than she used to be." He sighed. "I... I want to grow like that too."

"Maybe you should tell Martine that, if you haven't already," JD said softly. "See what she thinks about getting married then."

Kyle turned to look at him, surprised at the notion. And right then the doorbell rang.

"Something tells me that that's the girls arriving... with Alex in tow," Max laughed. "Come on - let's get the party started!"

"Yeah," Kyle quipped. "It isn't really a party until the first girls show up."

----------

"I... I can't believe that you have to leave already," Isabel said, holding Alex close. "The holidays went by too fast."

"Yeah, I know," Alex said. "But come on... the time until we're reunited again won't crawl too slowly either. It'll just be two or three days before I'm back for a visit."

"Make it two, if you can," she quipped, and kissed him hard, holding his head in her hands and trying to inject as much passion and longing into his soul as she could.

"Tuesday evening," he agreed with a smile. "I'll call for pickup... actually, I'll probably call when I'm leaving work, just to make sure that you can pick me up as soon as I get home."

"Oooh, talk about whipped," a joking voice announced from the door of the room. Alex turned around and nearly stuck his tongue out at Liz.

"Elizabeth Sara Parker, I am surprised at you," he said instead. "'Whipped' is a completely revolting concept... the very idea that just because I am eager to do something that would make my darling wife happy... and that, not incidentally, would make ME happy as well -- that it could be perverted into an insinuation that I'm under her thumb and being eager to make her happy somehow makes me less of a man... well, I'm afraid I have nothing more to say to you at this point than 'for shame.'"

Liz snerked. "Isabel, make your husband forgive me and give me a proper hug goodbye." Alex shot her an incredulous stare.

"Alex, you hear the lady," Isabel said, playing along. Alex considered his options, and decided that the best possible course lay in laughing off the whole thing.

"Okay, okay, I'm the big butt of the joke, whatever." He embraces Liz, even picking her up in his arms and swinging her. "That swing, along with these extra hugs, are for Beth. Dispense them to her as you see fit." And he squeezed her several times in a row.

Liz laughed. "Do you want to say goodbye to her in person, too, before you leave?"

"Sure!" Liz nearly pulled him into her room, and Isabel followed along. Bethany was growing so much every day now, it was a little hard for Alex to believe, and he carefully took her from Liz and cuddled her goodbye. Then it was out into the living room, where nearly the whole gang had shown up for his farewell... Alex hugged Maria and wished her congratulations on the happy news of her own baby once again, clapped Kyle and JD on the back, and in general went through so many personal goodbyes that it started to drag out. All five of the hybrids, JD included, worked together to send Alex and his luggage off to Las Cruces at the same time.

Arriving from that warm goodbye into the apartment that he had shared with Isabel was incredibly lonely and depressing for Alex. Sighing, he went to check the answering machine - 7 messages - and dropped into the sofa. Soon he'd have to log onto the computer and make sure that everything he needed for work tomorrow was on his flash drive. In the meantime, maybe a little pointlessly melodramatic TV would distract him.

----------

"Alright," Michael said, stepping a few paces further out, reaching out and pulling an odd-looking stone ninety feet towards him. For a second he lost his balance and nearly slipped into a disastrous tumble -- the stone had still been fastened to a larger rocky outcropping, and pulling so hard on it had had the effect of pulling Michael himself towards the rock. But he didn't tumble, and focused his power on the connection between the stone and the rock, breaking it. A few seconds later the stone was in his hand, and he decided he liked the shape it took - nearly a triangular prism... and who'd have thought he'd even remember one of those from Mister Vito's three-d geometry classes?

"We get to Antar, and people from your old family's faction want to talk to you. The house of Alazna or whatever. Full of questions about you and Max... did you and the King divorce? Does that mean that their alliance with the Royals is absolutely kabut? Why did you come here with the other Royals then?"

Tess paced back and forth, squeezing alongside him to get past, and whimsically conjured up an image in mid-air... a small crowd of three alien beings -- (well, three's a crowd, isn't it?) wearing oddly styled drapings of fabric, greenish-white skin, violet-red eyes, and all manner of hair colors. "Well, first off, I try to remind them that their existing alliances aren't really the point now. We're working to create a planetary confederation, which means that ALL of the factions have to learn to work together, the ones with long-standing friendships and the ones with histories of rivalry or worse."

"Alaznee stood by the old status quo, the Sanrens and other factions who stood for the true royals, for a long time when Kivar and others rose against them, and that gives them a head start towards working with those other groups in the confederation. If all of that suddenly dissolves in their minds because Max and I aren't married, then that's tough tootie... I'm still friends with Max, and Isabel and you, and make no secret of where my own allegiance lies. But the most important thing I'm there for is to convince them that becoming part of the confederation is the right thing to do."

Michael smiled. "Well said."

Tess turned around and made another image - a tall, graceful alien warrior in a dark uniform, arm stretched out threateningly. "Okay, your turn now, General. What happens if there's a disruption at the confederation talks... someone tries to assasinate one of the delegates - the president of the Blueline cartel, a major player in the eastern hemisphere economy, generally neutral, with some history of loyalty to the Sanrenist rebels. What do you do?"

"Protect him, get to the bottom of the assasination attempt," Michael said automatically. "And help whoever's working to keep the violence from entirely disrupting the convention." He sighed. "There's going to be nutjobs trying to pull all kinds of crazy stunts at a gig like this... I mean, just imagine if Earth was trying to do the same thing - convene a true UN convention that had the power to sweep away all previous sovereigneties. No matter what happens, we can't lose sight of the mission."

Tess nodded. "Yeah." And she let out a loud sigh. "But we aren't going for a while yet." She looked around a little... the two of them were standing perhaps thirty feet off the desert floor, having stepped off a small rocky cliff. "Oh, hi Maria. Come on out!"

Maria looked at the thin air that they were standing on dubiously. "For real?"

"Only if you want to, babe," Michael told her affectionately. "The air's pretty well solidified here... like that thing that they built leading out into the Grand Canyon. Actually, just a second..." Michael concentrated fiercely, feeling some power flow out of his system. That was part of the point of today's exercise - training their alien glands like an athlete trains his muscles, so as to slowly increase the capacity of their energy balance and learn to conserve it to greater effect. "Alright, stretch both hands out in front of you, a little above waist height." Maria did, waved her arms a little, and gasped as her fingers brushed against something invisible.

"Handrails??" she hazarded.

"Yep, and guardrails," Michael agreed. "Just in case... can't be too careful now." Maria rolled her eyes a little, but didn't object out loud. There was indeed another fragile little life that she was responsible for now, and though she didn't intend to go overboard with the 'poor pregnant girl can't do anything active' bit, avoiding any situtations where she might conceivably fall from a height CERTAINLY seemed like a good idea.

Using the handrails, it wasn't long before Maria met up with Michael and Tess, standing around seventy feet out. "Are you sure that nobody might see us all standing apparently in midair here?"

"Well, there's no cast iron guarantees I guess," Tess admitted. "But everything that we can see from here looks pretty deserted, so I feel pretty safe. If somebody yells 'hey, what the hell is that?' I can cloak all of us with a mindwarp of not being here."

"Hmm, as far as that goes," Michael said, "couldn't you use your mindwarp awareness to tell if somebody sees us before they yell? You have to be aware of what other people are perceiving to manipulate it, and I think you've used prior restraing like that before."

Tess smiled awkwardly. "Yeah, I have, but not at these kind of ranges... there's an awful lot of territory that I'd need to continuously scan." She thought about it. "Maybe working together, the two of us could put up a perimeter fence ward though."

"What the heck is that?" Maria asked. Michael looked nearly as bemused.

"Something that JD told me about," Tess replied, predictably. "It's a kind of low-level energy field used to sense things at great distances. You specify where you want to erect the 'fence' field, and then can tell if something organic and greater than seventy pounds, say, moves through it. JD didn't really call it a ward - that's something I thought of, because it sounded like the wards that a wizard might put up around his tower, or wherever he's sleeping, in a fantasy book." She smiled shyly.

"Cool," Michael decided. "Walk me through it." The series of instructions were fairly intricate, and Maria tuned out and stood leaning slightly against the invisible rail, gandering and gawking at the very visible scenery below.

"Okay, good," Tess said. "The fence is up, and going strong."

"Yeah, it might be, but I'm not," Michael complained. "I'm pretty sure that my energy reserves are starting to get low... we'd better get back onto the cliff, after all that."

"Hmm..." Tess seemed to take a while at evaluating Michael's statement. "Okay, all right." Michael put his hands on Maria's hips as she walked ahead of them.

"Why did you wait before agreeing?" Michael asked after about half a minute.

"Oh, nothing special. Just... well, I was wondering how seriously to take what you were saying about running out of juice. I think that all of us probably have a lot more power than we tend to think... but you're right that this isn't a good situation to put it to the ultimate test."

"Hmm..." Michael continued to weigh this as they got back onto the cliff top, which was a fairly wide and flat plain. "If you think that, then how about some ten pound push-o-war?"

"What the heck is that?" Maria asked.

"Pretty simple," Tess said. "Find a big, heavy rock like that one..." she pointed to a huge chunk of stone laying nearby that was probably more like fifteen pounds in weight than ten. "Each of us try to shove or roll it in opposite directions."

"Okay," Maria sighed. "Have fun - I'm going back to the car."

"Did you finish all your studying already?" Michael asked her.

"Yeah... but I brought some of those Diskworld narrated CDs to play in the stereo," she said and headed off down the path.

"Come on," Tess insisted, and she and Michael set up their positions on either side of the rock. "One, two, three, PUSH." Mighty mental forces began to exert themselves against the rock, but the two young hybrids were so well matched that for a long time it didn't even shudder.

----------

"Hmm... I'm not sure," JD said to Max. "I think that you guys are going to be ready for your first interstellar astral trip soon, but exactly how to arrange it, where to go and such... I'm slightly at a loss for how to arrange it."

"Great," Isabel added. "Nice to see they sent us someone qualified."

JD looked at her with a very embarassed and wounded expression on his face... and then he realized somehow that Isabel had been teasing him. He was doing a lot better at recognizing earth humor, Max decided. "Well, the whole operation was arranged on a shoestring... it's a wonder we've managed to keep things working SO far." The three of them were relaxing in the living room of the girls' apartment, after a training session. "I think, actually, this might be the right time to open up about something that I've been keeping mostly secret since I came to New Mexico."

"You mean the interstellar communicator hidden in your room?" Max asked. JD blinked. "Not that secret."

"How did you... ohh. Did Tess find out when she, umm, when I let her into my mind?"

"You WHAT??" Isabel blurted out. Both guys shot her a look. "Sorry was just a little surprised - didn't mean to get so loud. Pretty impressive display of intimacy, considering that you haven't really been a couple for long."

Max thought about saying something, but didn't. JD decided to explain further. "Actually, this was well before we were a couple... it might have gone the other way, in fact, that what she saw in me, and what she let me see of herself in the process, was the first step that eventually led to falling in love." He sighed. "It was the night after your first council with me as a whole group... she came to my apartment and confronted me, said that she wanted to trust me, but that I had to demonstrate that I was willing to work with you guys and that I wasn't holding anything back." He smiled awkwardly. "Was nervous as hell letting her in, but in retrospect I definitely don't regret the choice."

"Okay, so back to the communicator?" Max asked. "That was what you were going to open up about, right?? Because I didn't really mean to confront you about it until you were ready to let us know."

"Yeah, that's the one," JD agreed. "Okay, well... first off, you should know it's not a very powerful or versatile one. Won't even handle a voice signal... more like, umm, what are those old human communication devices that used morse code??"

"Wireless??" Isabel suggested. "Like what Marconi used to signal across the atlantic?"

"Actually, that might be a better analogy," JD admitted. "I was thinking of the one that did come with wires."

"Telegraph," Max answered.

"Thank you," JD shot back. "So, it's mostly the same deal... slightly more flexible than an ultra-basic telegraph, because it's capable of sending or receiving a tone at about four different frequencies, which allows a more complicated code system that can convey words a bit more quickly than morse. But still not terribly easy to conduct a long conversation over." He sighed. "What it was mostly intended for, in point of fact, was for me to let someone in the Confederation movement know that the time is right for one of them to astral project here - to Roswell."

"Ahh..." Isabel said. So they'd arrive and take over the body of... of someone already here, or at least in the area?"

"Pretty much, yeah." JD looked back and forth to see their reactions.

"I... I'm not wild about this kind of thing, but maybe we don't have much of a choice." Max sighed. "Of course, all due precautions would be taken to ensure the safety of the astral host, and to minimize the negative effect on his or her normal life."

JD thought about that. "I'll do whatever I can to help in that respect... and I think that the envoy himself, or herself, will be quite willing to co-operate with your demands as well. The problem is... it might be hard to convey that request over the signalling code, though I'll do my best."

"Try hard," Max muttered. "It's important. Think what it might be like if you were on the receiving end... losing control of your body and your life because somebody else decided they had better uses to put it to."

"Think about it," JD quipped. "I went off to another planet because somebody decided that they needed an errand boy."

"No, it's not quite the same," Isabel told him. "You were told of the need, and you volunteered. Of your own free will."

"Yeah, I guess I see your point," JD commented. "Should we wait and tell the others before I put the call through?"

"Makes sense, I guess. We aren't in a huge hurry, right?" Max said. JD nodded... and all of a sudden the telephone on the end table rang. Isabel stretched out so that the handset was within her reach, snatched it up, and hit the button.

"Hello?" A huge smile broke over her face. "Yeah, just second... un-huh." She looked up, and Max interrupted her before she could speak.

"It's Alex, ready for his pickup?" Izzy nodded. "Umm... I know that there's three of us, but are we up to it at the moment?" Max growled slightly at not having anticipated this. "I pushed myself pretty hard in that molecular reconfiguration session."

Isabel sighed herself. "Okay, well, don't strain your brain, but join in for moral support, huh? I've got reserves left... how about you JD?" He nodded after a second. "Alright, and... link."

Max smiled as their powers came together, realizing that even this had become easier since JD had started to teach them... they didn't even need to touch to form the connection, in close quarters like this. Conscious of his limits at the moment, Max didn't stretch his own awareness off to Las Cruces to 'pick up' Alex, choosing instead to focus what attention he could right here at the receiving end. Soon his molecules were streaming in through the window, and then with a whoosh and a pop, he was standing in front of the TV.

"Honey!" Isabel exclaimed, standing up just in time for her husband to fling his arms around her. "Max, JD, see you guys a little later." Max grinned as the forlorn lovebirds hurried off to Isabel's room to spend some private time. "Oh, hi Liz, hi Bethany."

Max's head cocked at the sound of a door opening... had Liz been in her room this whole time? He hadn't thought she'd be around this afternoon... no, it was the apartment front door that she was stepping through, carrying her daughter. Max hurried up to say hi to his favorite little girl in the whole wide galaxy.

Liz and Beth came into the living room, and chatted for a while - Liz asked JD how the training was going, and he told her about her communicator and the possibility that some new alien might be coming to Roswell in the body of a human. After a little more small talk, JD announced that he was going out, and did just that. Liz smiled over at Max once the front door closed... she seemed to be fundamentally comfortable in a silence that Max wasn't.

But, maybe that was because Max had something on his mind that he wasn't quite sure how to say. "Liz, I know that nothing like this has ever been mentioned before... at least, if it were, I don't think I was there. But when I saw you and Beth arriving today, an odd word popped into my head... well, 'odd' because I wasn't expecting it, not because it's fundamentally weird. In fact, now I kinduv like the sound of it, except I'm not sure if I should use it."

Liz was now rather confused, for which Max supposed he couldn't blame her. "Umm... just which word is this? Speak it to me!"

Max nerved himself and said it out loud. "Godchild."

"Ohhh..." Liz nodded. "You're right, it hasn't been settled officially... I guess I never had godparents that I was close to... if I had any at all. Huh - one thing to ask Mom and Dad before they leave for their cruise... but that isn't really the point." She sighed and took a deep breath."

"Now, let's see. The point of designating godparents would be to formalize the role of people who invaluable in helping to raise Beth... people who I would trust to take care of her if, God forbid, something happens to me, yes?" Max nodded. "Considering that she doesn't have her daddy to help out, it's probably going to be more of a hands-on role than otherwise, yes?" Max nodded eagerly.

"Okay, then there's no doubt. Yes, Max, I'd like you to be Beth's godfather... and I'll ask -- hmm..." Liz looked up at Max with an odd look on her face. "I was going to say Maria... she's certainly done her part. But she'd going to be really busy now, juggling the cafe, her management company, trying to find time to do her own album... AND getting ready for her own baby." She sighed.

"Yeah," Max said softly. "I can see both the pros and the cons... it's not an easy choice."

"And then there's Tess," Liz continued, "who's been great with Beth too, and a really good friend over these past seven months or so too. But... but from the way she and JD talk sometimes, I'm not sure either of them are going to be sticking around Roswell long once the confederation conference is over with. JD's mentioned several times how he'd love to see more of america - actually, more of planet Earth - and Tess is really excited to go along with him."

"Just asking," Max said, "but do you have to pick a godmother?"

Liz looked at him a bit oddly. "Well, no, I guess I don't HAVE to. But Beth deserves one, doesn't she??" Max nodded and shrugged.

"Okay, well, we can both sleep on that and see if anything strikes in the morning," Liz decided as a way of closing the subject. "Meanwhile, there's news on the prairie chicken front."

"Oh, really??" Max asked. "What's that? By the way, is the research project finished at this point, or still ongoing?"

"Pretty much closed off," Liz reported. "We didn't have the funds for an extended survey, unfortunately. All of the data's been gathered and reports filed." She sighed. "There doesn't seem to be any doubt that Metachem's dumping stuff into the canyon streams. Nothing that's specifically covered by the ground and watertable pollution laws on the books, but..." She sighed.

"Then we should do something about it," Max decided. "Get the laws changed."

"Yeah, just like that," Liz laughed. Beth crawled up to her mommy's feet, and Liz picked her up and set her down on the couch next to herself. "Plus, I think you have enough on your plate, trying to bring peace to a whole planet."

"I'm just doing my bit," Max sighed. More and more it was starting to seem like all of this confederation business was tearing them away from their human friends... Isabel was spending the spring in Roswell, instead of in Las Cruces with Alex. Maybe Liz would be trying to save the prairie chickens himself while he played peace delegate. Were Michael and Maria feeling the strain of it too?

"You hungry?" he asked.

"Yeah, I could eat a... I dunno, something really big but not huge," Liz said. "And I think we're well stocked... how about cookin' something up with me?"

Max grinned. "Whatever you say, good lookin'!"

----------

Kyle picked up the phone and dialed. "Hey darling," a familiar voice answered, almost before the phone had had a chance to ring.

"Hi baby," Kyle said, grinning. "That was quick. Were you about to make a call of your own or something?"

"No, actually, I'd just finished talking with someone from class," Martine replied. "How's things down in Roswell? How's work doing?"

"Well, they're running me ragged, but otherwise okay. You?? Classes going okay?"

"Pretty much, yeah. I got into that math elective that I wanted to take... the linguistics is a bitch, but I'm doing okay there, and enjoying the english lit." As a communications major, Martine regularly took an interesting variety of courses from related majors. "It's kinda lonely up here in Albuquerque without you, though, babe - you're heading up for the weekend?"

"Yeah, definitely," Kyle agreed.

"So, meet you at the student union, like 11 pm on friday??"

Kyle hesistated, then decided to step out onto a limb. "Actually, I think I'll be able to make it sooner... like six?"

Martine blinked at that. "Umm... how? Are you going to be taking the afternoon off?"

"Actually, no."

Kyle could tell that his girlfriend was starting to get confused. "Some kind of convention here in the big city that you'll be attending all day?"

"No, I imagine I'll be in at the same office, here in Roswell, up until at least four thirty. Nobody stays til five the last day before a weekend."

"Still, then... how could you - don't tell me you've got a private jet on call or a transporter booth. I don't think even the regular shuttle plane would get you here that fast, all things considered."

"Don't... don't worry about it too much," Kyle whispered, knowing that even if he said this, Marti wouldn't be able to avoid mulling over the riddle. "I... I'll have something to tell you about when I get there... a bit of a secret, about my friends. Something that I've been trying to find a way to tell you about for... well, for a little while now."

"Oo-- okay I guess, special K." She only really used that name when she wanted to bug him subtly. "Well, speaking of your friends, how're the new roommates going?"

"Ehh, not that bad." Kyle laughed at himself. "Back in high school, I'd never have guessed that I'd be living with Max and liking it... we were kind of rivals back in sophomore year, yeah?"

"You told me a little about that," Martine confirmed. "How you thought he had snaked Liz away from you and the whole bit."

Kyle chuckled, knowing that he definitely HADN'T told her 'the whole bit.' "Yeah. But I guess a lot has changed since then." Especially since Liz had gone off and gotten knocked up by some preppy save-the-planet nut in Chicago. "And JD... well, he's a bit unusual, but a sweet guy, and always tries his best to get along. Not doing badly here."

"Great... but I'm afraid that now, I've pretty much gotta run. Linguistics study group."

"Good luck," Kyle wished her. "I love you."

"Ehh... I don't have to run out the door quite yet," she corrected him. "But best of luck to you too, with the office thing. Think it'll get better as far as being overtiring?"

"Probably," Kyle decided. "Not that they're going to give me any less work, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of dealing. Of course, spending the weekend with you should do a lot to recharge my batteries."

"Flatterer."

"Oh, did whatsername stop stealing your grub from the fridge??"

"Umm... I haven't noticed anything going missing in the past few days, but I'm still holding my breath. Okay, now I really do need to head off I think."

"Alright," Kyle replied. "See you."

"Bye." She hung up, and Kyle put down the phone and picked up a clipboard with a sheet of paper. At the top was written, 'I guess the best place to start is that one spring, a bunch of FBI guys came to Roswell. My dad didn't come home one night, I got worried and ran off with one of his guns, got mixed up in a situation that I didn't understand, and got shot through the heart...'

He considered that much, briefly flirted with the idea of crossing it all out and starting again, but didn't. It was a long time before he could think of anything else to say after that though.

----------

"Hey, Maria," Alex said, stepping towards the booth she was sitting in, frowning at a bunch of papers with numbers at them. "Is that music biz stuff again?"

Maria looked up at him. "Actually no, cafe business. Liz's folks are leaving in six days and I'm trying to put together anything that I still don't understand about the accounting to ask Nancy about before she leaves."

"Wow, you're really taking this thing seriously," Alex decided, and waved at the seat opposite his old friend. She was still absorbed enough in the spreadsheet or whatever as to not notice until he repeated the gesture closer to her face, and then distractedly she nodded permission.

"Serious? How... how can I not be serious, Alex? This... this place was their dream, they spent their life building the business, turning the Crashdown into a minor Roswell instittution. And... and not only are they leaving it mostly in my lap, but they GAVE me a chunk of the cafe in partnership! Between Liz and I, we're a majority!! That... that's a huge responsibility, really, and I'm just trying to make sure that I'm up to it."

"You'll do great, Maria," Alex assured her with a smile. "Trust me." And then he pulled a little card out of his pocket. "I hope that you might have enough time to take on another musical client, though. These guys are really good, and I already gave them your number, too. They'll probably be calling tomorrow."

Maria roused out of the Crashdown numbers finally and considered the card that Alex had held out to her. "The Furious Suburbanites?" She locked eyes with Alex. "*REALLY* good??"

"Umm... I think so, yeah," Alex insisted, with only a trace of doubt at the edge of his voice.

"Okay, well, I'll think about it." Maria smiled as she tucked the card away.

"And how's the deal going between you and Michael?" Alex asked. "Heheh, I guess this is the first time we've got a chance to talk newlywed to newlywed... assuming that Isabel and I still count as newlyweds."

"Yeah, actually, I think you can get away with it for a year," Maria informed him. "Two, if you are or are married to Jessica Simpson, but that doesn't apply in either of our cases." She sighed happily. "And yeah, things are pretty great between Michael and I... it was kind of a weird first month, coming out of the wedding and the honeymoon and going straight into the christmas season... downside of planning a December wedding I guess. Things are calming down now, in the best way."

"Cool."

"How about you and Isabel, doing the long distance thing?" She cocked her head. "Come to think of it, I'm almost surprised to see you here in Roswell without her... but I guess you had to let me know that these suburbanite guys would be calling. What's Isabel up... ahh. Astral projection training again??"

"Yeah... I guess Michael's there too?" Alex asked. Maria nodded. "Have you heard that there's going to be someone else coming to Roswell?" His voice had quieted to a whisper. "An alien taking over a human body, like Larek did?"

"Umm, no, Michael didn't say anything to me about that," Maria said with a sigh. She still missed Brody Davis coming in for his pepperjack subs... he had left Roswell early in the spring last year; last she had heard he'd reunited with Sidney's mother, and the three of them were living in a small town out in the Australian outback. Brody had always been fun to talk to.

"I don't really know much about it myself," Alex admitted. "But the very idea has got me twitchy... like just about anybody, even someone we know, might walk up and turn out to be an alien." He thought about that for a moment, and added. "Oh, and in case it wasn't clear, the main reason he'd be coming would be to give our guys more instructions about the Conference - where they have to go astrally and when, that kind of thing. Maybe to arrange a 'test flight' out of the solar system or something like that.

"It's so weird to think about that," Maria added softly. "That Michael would be lying here, worse than asleep - in some kind of coma maybe, while his essence, his soul - whatever it is that makes him MICHAEL is off in another star system, so far away that I can't even think about the distances involved, 'wearing' another body and talking to other aliens about important stuff." She sighed. "And... and no matter how hard we try, you or I could never follow him there."

It wasn't hard for Alex to realize that the subject was desperately in need of changing. "Say, I've got new gossip on the Max/Liz front."

"Ohh?" Sure enough, Maria perked right up. "Say on, friend!"

"Well, yesterday, right after I whuushed in, Izzie and I went into her room to spend some alone time... no, we didn't end up doing it right then, just kind of lay in each other's arms and talked about all kinds of stuff. Anyway, about three quarters of an hour later we came out, and Max and Liz had made fettucine, and were eating together on the couch. I... I'm not sure why, but they looked really, um, really intimate in that moment. Just kind of made me wonder if Liz has stopped keeping her walls up so much, now that... now that it's been more than a year since Casey, and now that the holidays are over again."

"Hmm... well, it'd be nice if they found some way to be happy together," Maria decided. "Of course, I don't really want them to hook up if it leads to more confusion and angst and all... but hopefully they've grown and learned enough since high school that that wouldn't be a problem." Alex nodded. "And, to ask another question somewhat out of the blue... do you have sex with Isabel often now that she's... um, quite visibly pregnant??"

"Huh??" Alex jumped slightly at the question. "Umm... hmm. Probably not as often as before, but yeah, I guess we do it once or twice a week. Part of that is the crazy schedule, but I guess I'm not quite as eager as when she... wasn't showing." He sighed. "Sounds silly and superficial, doesn't it?"

"No, not really..." Maria admitted. "I've heard that a lot of guys react like that... and not always because they think that a pregnant woman is 'too fat' or not attractive or stuff like that. Sometimes it's because they're afraid of hurting her, or hurting the baby... or because of deeper psychological issues about their own mother, as far as that goes, though that's more common for guys with a lot of younger siblings, which doesn't apply to you. Guys who would have seen their mother pregnant quite a bit while they were growing up. The point is, though... that Isabel probably needs the reassurance and pleasure of making love more often than that, but she might not be able to know how to bring it up. Just something to think about."

Alex smiled. "Is... is that something you're worrying yourself over? That Michael might pay less attention to you once your belly gets bigger."

"Well, yes," Maria admitted. "Along with... well, if I got started about all the stuff that worries me about being pregnant, we'd probably be talking about it all afternoon, so I won't." She stretched her arms. "Wanna go back to Isabel's place? Are Liz and Beth there??"

"Yeah, I think so," Alex agreed. The aliens were training over at Max and JD's apartment. "And yes, I'd love to come."

Maria packed up the papers into a little fake-leather carrying case and swung a jacket over her shoulder as she stood up. "Great."


TO BE CONTINUED...

Part Twenty

"Umm, hey Whit?? You're on shift up here, or at least you should be."

Alex Whit groaned, rubbed the arm of his sleeping wife, and hit the intercom reply button. "Yeah, I'll... *yawn.* I'll be right there."

"Gotcha. Don't bump your head or anything, I'm doing alright with this steering wheeley thing, I think."

Whit dressed in a hurry and left his quarters, climbing up a ladder to the foredeck hall of the Bumblebee-type starship, and from there, quickly covering the small distance to the cockpit. There Maree, the cute spunky mechanic, quickly took her feet off the flight control console where she had been resting them. A few seconds later she got up and let Whit take his seat. "Everything's fine Whit, we're not moving. The navitronic computer's been whirring for a while - think it's nearly ready to take us on the next hyperspace hop."

"Alright," Whit replied, stretching his hands out over the console as if reacquainting himself with an old friend, but not actually touching anything. For a second his gaze passed over his cherished toy dinosaurs, peacefully trekking (for the moment,) across the far side of the control board. It was only a matter of time before Rex got up to his treacherous tricks again, though. Hmmm...

"Everyone else still asleep?" Maree asked softly.

"As far as I saw on my way through. Zzie definitely is." Whit sighed softly, thinking about his beautiful, fierce and loyal mate. "Come to think of it, the door to Lisara's shuttle was open as I passed through. You could go bug her... err, I mean, see if she's up for some company."

"Ehh, yeah, I could..." Maree said, but the deliberate way in which she pulled back the seldom-used copilot's chair, (well, seldom used for actual copiloting that was,) and sat down facing him told Whit that she wasn't going anywhere particularly soon. "You haven't heard the latest."

Oh, lords above, not the latest gossip, Whit prayed to himself silently. But he knew that the prayer was in vein. There wasn't a power in the 'verse, after all, that could stop Maree from being gossipy.

"Okay, okay, so what happened??"

"Well, Captain Mac barged into Lisara's shuttle to heckle at her, just like nothing's ever changed, and she must have been tired of it, because she started to yell at him and soon they were all of a screaming match-off. And, well, I was just going to poke my head and try to get them off to seperate corners for a moment, cooling off, but I was just in time to see it. Right as their voices were carrying louder than you ever did hear, what does Mac do but sweep her into his arms and kiss her!"

"Wow!" Whit considered, nodding his head slightly. This was actually interesting stuff. "About gorram time, I should say. What next?"

"Well, she kissed him back, just for a moment, the spread of a few breaths, but I'm convinced that she did. And then she caught herself and realized that I was a-watching... and strode out of the shuttle with not a word. I kind of couldn't help but let Mac catch my eye for a moment, and he looked mighty confused, as if realizing that it was her shuttle, and he had no place in there if she weren't in it."

"She usually says that he has no place there even if she's present," Whit pointed out with a smile... they both knew better than that though. "Did she come back once he'd left?"

"Not so far's as I know," Maree reported. "I tried to ask... well, I didn't ask her, really, I went and hung around her to see if she'd tell me anything, but... well, it weren't long after that I had to actually get to work."

"Ahh, I see," Whit agreed, and looked at some of the instruments on his board. Just at that moment, as if it was waiting for someone to pay attention to it, the navitronic computer let out a soft chime. "Alright, here we go. Here to Deep space reference buoy in three seconds. You ready??"

"No." Even after two years working on a starship, Maree was still self-conscious about the feelings of dizzyness and disorientation that the hyperspace hop triggered in nearly everybody. "But go ahead and push the button."

Whit shrugged and engaged the hop mechanism. It wasn't actually a button control, though maybe they should rig one up because it'd be very satisfying... there was something innately cool about pressing buttons. At the moment, though, the hyperspace shunt was rigged up to a large lever gate, the kind that only completed an electrical circuit when pushed all the way to one side. Once the loop was closed, everything went swimmy and Whit's spacial universe burbled to itself quietly for a moment.

When the world reassembled itself, he could see something big and white just hanging there in space in front of them, and immediately hit the controls. Maree yelped and was thrown out of her chair as the TRANQULITY spun a hundred and ten degrees to starboard and then blasted off on full rocket thrusters. A few other shouts of surprise were heard from further back - you couldn't put a little ship through maneuvers like that without everybody feeling the inertial effects. The first to get to the cockpit door was Maud, the muscular, disreputable mercenery and tracker. He already had a gun in his hands, and seemed to be stroking it tenderly. "What's the sitch??"

"Umm... somebody was waiting at the reference buoy," Whit muttered. "Didn't... didn't really get to see who, was too busy getting us outta there."

"May- maybe it was just someone else travelling somewhere, calculating their next hop out next to the buoy?" Maree said, picking herself up.

"Yeah, but then they wouldn't be chasing us," Maud grunted, looking over Whit's shoulder at the instrument board. "And they definitely wouldn't be shootin' no *magnetic grapple!!*" Whit had seen the EM field levels starting to rise around the same time Maud had gotten to 'wouldn't', and was already skewing the ship back to port - and unintentionally knocking Maree down again.

"Who's a-chasin' us?" Mac asked, getting to the hatchway at about that point - in fact, he kind of banged into the hatch because of Whit's maneuvering, but nobody pointed that out.

"Don't rightly know," Maud growled. "We could stop to ask, but that usually means lettin' 'em catch us!"

"Well... could I get a visual or something??" Mac pressed.

"I'm kinda busy here," Whit pointed out. "If you wanna go and take a snapshot through the window in the cargo bay doors, go right ahead!!" Suddenly, he pushed the ship into a hard dive, so hard that Maree and Mac nearly flew right off the floor. (Maud had gotten himself well propped into the co-pilot's chair by this point.)

"Not with you jinking around like this," Mac growled. "Unless you'd be alright with me turning the intertial dampers on."

"Yeah, if you're alright with getting grappled the next time," Whit countered. "I can't outmaneuver this guy with the inertials on... they take all the punch out of the maneuvering jets somehow. Frankly, I'd love everybody to get strapped down so that we can turn the arty G off... ahh, no, that'd take too long," he grumbled, remembering Zzie and the others who were still sleeping. Couldn't turn gravity off without waking them up and warning them first, and that'd be quite a major operation under the circumstances.

"It don't look like you're outmaneuvering him as things stand," Mac pointed out frostily.

"No," Whit agreed. He hated to admit that... he was proud of his piloting skills, and of Tranquility's maneuverability, but sometimes you were just outclassed. Suddenly a speaker next to Whit's head crackled to life of its own accord - whoever these guys were, they were starting to hack into the computer control system.

"BUMBLEBEE TYPE SPACE VESSEL... CEASE MANEUVERS AND PREPARE TO BE BOARDED. WE ARE AUTHORIZED TO USE FORCE IN THE PURSUIT OF DANGEROUS FUGITIVES FROM CONFEDERATION LAW..."

"Yeah, that'll be the day," Whit growled. His eye caught on a colored indicator on the pilot's board, and suddenly realized that it represented their only chance. One more time he reached out to close the circuit gate once more. Maree yelped and tried to rush forward and stop him. Even Mac was nonplussed by the idea of hopping through hyperspace again - with no time at all spent plotting a course. Maud just smiled slightly as he watched Whit finish his gesture.

Once again swimminess, and burbling... and even more - this time the ship and everything in it seemed to be shaking apart at the seams for two long moments. Then things quieted down, but only so much, and with a start Whit realized that this was because they were flying through the upper atmosphere of a planet, and far too quickly!! Everyone knew that doing an uncalculated hyperspace hop might land you anywhere at all, but actually inside a planet's atmosphere?? That seemed quite unlikely even so. He hit full retrothrusters, praying that they could slow down enough before the ship shook itself into pieces.

"What did you just do to my ship, Whit?" Mac growled.

"I'm sorry - did you want me to pull over and let those gorram confeds board us??" Mac was silent - he knew that the confeds probably had evidence and desire enough to throw them all into a penal colony - or worse. "This was our best shot... and it's going to be okay..." All of a sudden, there was a whizzing sound.

"Okay, what was it that just fell off the ship, and do we need it?" Maud deadpanned.

"Umm..." Whit checked his instrument board. "Yeah. That was the tibian strut, with the lower port angular maneuvering jet... and part of our landing gear on it." He growled deep in his throat. "This is gonna get interesting."

And just then a wave of turbulent air shook the entire ship in its mighty grip.

More voices started to sound from the vicinity of the cockpit door - Lisara's, and Kenneth grumbling about being woken up by having his head bumped into the wall... but no sign of Zzie. All of Whit's attention was on fighting the pull of gravity of this windy world, whatever it was... and all the strength of the engines wasn't quite enough. Bit by bit, they were being pulled down...

The end of the dive came with a loud crash and an almighty clatter. Tranqulity dragged herself for about two miles over icy, rocky terrain before finally coasting to an awkward stop. A few seconds later, main power, (including all the normal lighting and the internal gravity,) failed. Maree almost fell again, but Mac caught her. Whit struggled out of the pilot's chair, since being there wasn't likely to do him any good. "What... what's our next move?" Kenneth asked nervously, fidgeting. "Is everyone alright?"

"Yeah, don't seem to be any work in your specialty at the moment, doctor," Maud growled.

"Get everyone together, make sure that we're alright," Mac suggested. "Then... we'll probably have to go out explorin' this piece of chilly stone, see if there's anybody out there as can help us. Can't get some help with makin' repairs, and I suspect that taking off again would be nearly impossible in that case."

Unfortunately, Whit would tend to agree with that. Awkwardly, he climbed out of the cockpit hatch, the odd angle the ship was leaning at making the floor sloped. He lost no time in scrambling back down the ladder to his bunk - but there was no sign of his wife. Whit fought down a rising sense of panic - where else could she be? If she'd woken up in the confusion, she'd have come up to the cockpit, wouldn't she?? After checking around once more, just in case she'd rolled underneath the bed or into the cranny behind the dresser, he climbed back up. "Zzie isn't down there!"

"Maybe she crawled into somebody else's bunk by mistake," Maud said, chortling far too loud. "We better check 'em all." Mac swatted him, but after a moment, grabbed a handheld emergency light and scrambled down into his own bunk to take a quick look. Maree and Maud followed suit.

"Two by two, hands of blue," an eerie voice whispered. Whit looked up, and saw the doctor's crazy sister, Thistle, walking up the corridor from the mess hall, a balletic grace in the movement of her slender legs, her blonde curls bouncing softly as she navigated the odd slope of the floor.

"Didn't you blow up all of those 'hands of blue' boys?" Lisara said in a disquieted mutter.

"Well, yeah." Thistle giggled. "And if we could do that, then we'll get out of here, no problem!" Whit shot a look at Kenneth, who shrugged.

The other three crewmembers were coming up from their bunks - no sign of Zzie. "Maybe she went aft," Mac muttered, but he was worried now too.

"What about Father Jim?" Maree asked. "Was... was he in his quarters when you came up, Kenneth?"

"I... I don't remember noticing."

"Wait... wait half a second," Whit said. "The shuttles. They're probably still airworthy - and better than going out exploring on foot."

"Still not going to find your wife by flying around in a shuttle," Maud wisecracked.

"Heck, maybe she's already in one a them," Maree pointed out. "Just waitin' for us."

The group made an unsteady procession down the winding metal staircase to the catwalk over the cargo bay, which connected the two small shuttle's docking hatches. Whit and Maree quickly headed over to the starboard shuttle, the one that Lisara didn't rent out. The hatchway led them in, and the small vehicle seemed to be in decent shape - but no sign of Zzie. Whit stalked back out and immediately headed down to the cargo bay floor. Even though the ship was starting to look very ominous, he was determined to find her. There were voices calling after him as he hurried astern to the guest's quarters, but he paid no attention.

There was somebody in the med bay. Whit opened up the door, and gasped - it was Zzie, but she was wearing... well, some kind of bedclothes, but very unfamiliar ones. And she was visibly pregnant. "Why are you pregnant?" he blurted out.

Zzie looked at him just exactly as if he was missing the point of something very obvious. "Well... because you're my husband."

"Umm... that's very true, but... you weren't pregnant when we went to sleep last night, were you?"

"Ehh - Alex, first of all, we didn't... ohhh." She cocked her head. "This is a dream. You're Alex Whitman. I'm Isabel Evans Whitman. Any of these names ringing a bell??"

For a second, they seemed like only faint similarities to Whit's reality. And then, all of a sudden, he remembered, he made the transition from living in the dream to being aware of it for what it was... and broke out laughing at some of his casting choices. Isabel shot him another frosty look. "Sorry, it's just... you should see what I dreamed up for Michael."

"Ohh... maybe, but that's not why I've come here." Isabel wrapped her arms around Alex and kissed him. "I popped into this dream a few minutes ago, in some cramped sweaty engine room... and whatever's been going on, I'd be worried about the baby getting hurt if it were real." She cocked her head. "Maybe I should be a bit worried... I mean, I'm in bed asleep, but whatever's going on..."

"I wouldn't," Alex advised. "The only effects are psychological, and if you get worried that's just giving the dream MORE of a psychological effect." Isabel nodded, accepting that. "I wonder if maybe your dream-self alternate popped out as soon as you entered the dream. We've been looking for her."

"Hmm." Isabel considered that. "Doesn't usually work like that I think, but who knows. Just where did you come up with all of this stuff?"

"Umm... an old favorite TV show," Alex explained, "with a few differences. So... how's things down in Roswell??"

"Pretty much the same as ever," she said, sitting down in a small chair near one wall of the infirmary. Alex hopped up on the examining table, keeping his eyes trained on her face. "Liz says that things are starting to get rolling on the prairie chicken protest front. JD sent out an interstellar message the other day."

"Oh, really?" Alex asked, surprised at how casually she had thrown that last tidbit in. "This was with that morse code doohickey he showed us?"

"Yah." Isabel sighed. "Not quite sure how they're going to actually get any preparations made that way, but it's better than being completely in the dark I suppose." She looked around. "This dream sequence seems like a pretty fun one, but obviously from your reaction I'm not exactly going to fit in as I am. How about a reboot??"

Alex blinked at her. "Reboot?"

"Yeah... transform me into the Isabel-inspired character in the dream setting."

"Whahh... just like that?"

"Yep." She giggled at him slightly. "You're lucid now, so that gives you the power. I can't change your dream that much, and I don't know what to become anyway. Come on!!" So Alex concentrated, and there was a flash of soft light that surrounded Isabel. In a fraction of a second that faded, and she was wearing a new outfit - a simple blouse of homespun-looking brown fabric and black leather pants. Her golden hair was bound up behind her head and fell straight down her back, and there was a silver chain with a slightly odd design to it stretching around her neck.

"Oooh - you just had to put me in leather pants, huh??"

"Umm... pretty much, yeah," Alex replied with a small smile.

"Feels a little weird to lose my baby-girl," Isabel continued, running a hand over her now-noticeably-flatter stomach through the shirt.

"Actually... I don't think you did, quite." She looked up at that, and found that Alex was grinning even more widely. "The baby's quite a few months younger, but she's still in there."

"Oh." Isabel frowned at the implications of that. "But since you were surprised to see my pregnant, I guess that 'Whit' and 'Zzie' don't realize that she's in the family way."

"Yeah," Alex agreed. "Okay, you should be ready now. Remember to pull your gun if something threatening shows up." Isabel looked down and realized that she had a fairly large and threatening holster at her hip.

"Ehh."

"Come on - it's in character at least. You don't have to shoot." And they headed back out of the infirmary. Alex looked around, wondering where the other characters in his dream had gotten to. The inner airlock door in the cargo bay was sealed, but when Alex opened it up, there was a fair bit of cold dirty water and unmelted snow inside, so somebody had opened up the outer door, and presumably left. (Useful to have an airlock in this situation, to insulate the inside against the cold weather outside, though that wasn't really what it was meant for.) They got a few coats before heading out, though the jackets that were available might not be much help against the cold weather outside.

"At least they didn't hurry away on that tractor," Isabel commented, waving at the mule, sitting near one edge of the bay. "And leave us behind."

"Scouting out the immediate area before going further afield, I guess," Alex suggested. "Good idea." Side by side they walked into the lock, and Isabel worked it - she seemed to be picking up some of her character's knowledge now that Alex had 'rebooted' her, though she wasn't exactly acting in character all the way.

As soon as the outer door opened, a cry of fear rang out very clearly on the chilly air, followed soon by another as the two of them hurried out. By the time Isabel had oriented and they rushed through the flurrying snow to the source of the disturbance, a loud shot had rang out, and the danger was all over. A large creature like an eighty-pound grey timber wolf lay dead with a hole in its side... and Maree was in Maud's arms, sharing a passionate kiss. "Not... not to imply anything about Michael and Maria's relationship in real life, but here in this setting, there's something completely freaky about that pairing," Alex muttered. Isabel shot him a very confused glance.

Just about that point, though, Maree realized they were there, and started to launch into a hyperactive and longwinded description of how the wolf had snuck up behind her, and Maud's heroism, and so on and so forth. After she had been at if for most of a minute, Isabel held up her hand, though that didn't really do much to stem the relentless tide of words. "Where... where are the others?"

Just in case that wasn't clear enough, and suspecting that Isabel might not still know the other characters, Alex joined in. "The captain? The doctor? Thistle??"

"Umm... I think they went back in," Maree said, after a moment's thought.

"Lisara wanted to see if she could get her shuttle airborne," Maud added, and spat off into the snow. "You could probably make yourself useful there, Whit, if she doesn't take off without you."

"Umm, okay," Alex agreed. He didn't see that much point in staying outside in the freezing weather. With a shrug, Isabel led the way back to the airlock door and opened it, and then stuck out a tanned arm, preventing Alex from getting inside. "What's the deal?"

"That... that wasn't there when we came out," Isabel muttered softly, pointing into the airlock at a... erm, it was a very blurred mud bootprint.

"Umm... okay, so?"

"Not sure." Isabel's face was slowly drawing down into a frown. "Might be nothing. The captain's boots *might* make a print like that... though his stance is generally more towards the toes, and he leads into uncertainty with his left foot, so his left boot would be more likely to get muddy than the right..."

"Oooh, I just got a shiver goin' up my spine," Maree declared, next to Alex, who had a similar sensation himself. "But - but if it weren't the captain, and you seem to be suspectin' that it's not... then it's somebody else? Not - not one of our company, I mean?"

"None of them else as were going back *into* the ship would be wearing boots anything like that thick," Maud agreed, after peering into the airlock to get a look of his own. "Crazy girl insists on walking around barefoot, even in the snow and ice. Doctor has fancy little black civilized shows, and Lisara wears her elegant courtly slippers."

"What about the Preacher?" Maree asked.

"We don't even know that he came outside?" Isabel muttered. "Can't remember what kind of things he wears on his feet, though."

"He's got boots," Maud put in, "Don't think they have a tread to make a print anything like that though."

"Well, we'd better get inside," Isabel said. "Everybody stick close, though - just in case." She pulled her gun. Maud reached behind his back and produced a much bigger weapon. The four of them crammed into the tiny airlock and Maree worked the controls.

There were no noticeable sounds in the cargo bay once the four of them got inside. Trading a look with Maud, Isabel led the way up the rear stairs, and then looked up and down the corridor there. To fore was the galley/dining room, to aft, the engine compartment. While she was frowning in concentration, Maud passed her, his gun still at the ready, and turned aft. Isabel, Alex, and Maree hurried along, as he charged into the engine room, and were surprised to find an unfamiliar figure there - a tall, powerful man with mid-brown skin. "What are you doing here?" Alex asked.

"Looking for you," the stranger said in a cultured accent. "But I'd rather not deal with the dream figments at the moment. He pulled something out of the pocket of his thick vest, pointed it towards Maud and Maree - and suddenly they were collapsing, stunned unconscious or worse. Isabel pointed her gun and cocked it in a single gesture, but the enemy - if that was what he really was - seemed unconcerned. "I suggest that you consider carefully before firing. You cannot kill me, here in his dream - any more than I can hurt you. But I went to considerable trouble to get here, and I'd be surprised if you want me ejected from the dreamscape before hearing what I have to say.

Something finally penetrated Alex's awareness. "You're - you're another dreamwalker - another alien? Trying to send a message to Isabel and her friends this way?"

Isabel frowned. "Explain more. And don't get side-tracked - I'm not feeling especially patient at the moment."

"Certainly. I'm with the confederation project - JarthexvDkilsq sent me a message, but I wanted very much to arrange a followup conversation through dream speech. It... it has not been easy attempting to establish a mental contact, over such distances, and find one of you among so many billions of closed human minds. I... I've been at it for days, and spent most of my currently available strength." He sighed. "Finally, I managed to sense your own 'dream walking' - your power to project yourself here, my lady. I homed in on that signal and imitated what you had done as best I could."

"So that's what JD's real name sounds like?" Isabel muttered. "He wasn't kidding - we couldn't have pronounced it."

"Let's - let's not keep talking here," Alex suggested. "We can go into the dining room - or our bedroom, if you want somewhere more private from the dream figments."

"What about them?" Isabel asked, pointing at the figures of Michael and Maria in Bumblebee costume, still lying on the engine room floor.

Alex chuckled softly. "Leave them for Captain Mac and the others to find - it'll be very creepy, and probably make a good moment to cut to commercial." Even Isabel had to crack a smile at that, though the newcomer seemed very puzzled. "By the way, what should we call you? I'm Alex, and this is my wife, Isabel." Alex still loved introducing her that way - though letting her do the introductions was also fun. Still, somehow he'd rather she not say anything to an Antarian that would suggest that he was just an appendage, a pleasant consort, as opposed to an equal partner.

"Umm... call me Impact," he said mysteriously. "And yes, let's go to the private quarters if possible. We have much to discuss, Isabel, and I don't appreciate being interrupted."

Alex sighed. Would any alien ever take him seriously??

-----------

"Okay," Isabel said, sitting on the edge of the bed and flexing her legs as if she was getting tired of the leather that was stretched over them. "So... I repeat those numbers to JD, which will tell him how to figure out the correct time, in human terms, to begin the operation. The five of us will astrally seperate and travel, in a series of several-light-year jumps, out to the star known in earth astronomy as H dee two eleven, four fifteen. There is a habitable planet orbiting it, and a small Rahlixian colony there. We approach the colony there, and attempt to take temporary posession of Ralixian hosts that will be provided there."

"Yes," Impact agreed. "There will be natives waiting there for you in astral form, in case they can help you with the process of taking posession. Then, you'll be able to talk with Antarian emissaries, and plan your attendance at the actual conference."

"Okay, sounds straightforward enough," Isabel said, a slight frown on her face. "Alex, have you memorized that star's catalog number, and the timestamp?"

"Yeah, I think so," Alex agreed. "It's a little chancey, though, depending on memorizing something in a dream." He thought about that. "Is... is there any way that you can actually use your powers while still in the dream, to affect the real world close to your real body? You could mark those figures into a piece of paper or something like that, and then, they'd be written down when you wake up."

"Hmm!" Isabel considered that. Actually, she was distracted at first just considering the way that Alex always seemed to find a way to challenge her boundaries. She looked over at Impact. "Is... is there any reason that that should be impossible? I've never tried using my powers in this way before."

"Umm... if your dream talk power works in a similar way to mine, it should be possible, but it's difficult. You can't focus your powers where you can't see or sense, so the first step would be establishing a way to sense the vicinity of your real body when you're still in, umm, in Alex's dream. I... I'm not certain that we have enough time to instruct you sufficiently in the needed techniques at this time."

"Oh." Isabel's face fell. "Okay, well, I'll write them down here..." She took a little slip of paper and an odd self-sharpening pencil and did just that, "and I'll repeat them several times before I leave the dream. I don't have to actually go to sleep after the dream ends, like you probably will, Alex, so I have the better chance of remembering."

"Makes sense," he agreed. "Umm, Impact - is there anything else of interest that you can pass on? How are the political preparations for the conference going? Do you know any of JD's friends or family that you might be able to pass messages on from??"

Impact blinked in quite a lot of surprise. (Alex wondered if he was surprised at the fact that his human dream figure blinked, in addition to everything else.) "Umm, sorry, no, I don't really know any of his personal friends, though I'll see if maybe he can get some messages from them at the meeting." Isabel smiled at that idea. "As far as the conference... there's been challenges."

"Kivar getting cranky again?" Isabel asked.

"No... or at least, he wasn't the one who started things this time. One of the major regional factions on the southeast continent threatened to boycott, which got the neighboring nobles and councils upset, and so on. Don't worry - we'll work it all out in time." He smiled slightly.

"Good," Alex agreed. "Well, I think it's probably about time I slip deeper into sleep, so you guys had better bail out. Impact waved tentatively, then his dream figure popped out very theatrically.

"I was hoping he'd take the hint and go first," Isabel whispered. "Goodbye darling. I didn't expect things to go like this... but I think I'm glad he found me." She kissed him. "Call me tonight?"

"Yeah... or maybe when I wake up in the morning if there's time?" Isabel grinned and nodded. She touched the side of his face in one last gentle caress, and then slowly began to fade out of the dream. Once she was entirely gone, Alex heard someone climbing down the ladder into the room... and no more. That was the end of the dream.

----------

"So, we've got a place and time for our training flight?" Michael said. He'd come over to the girls' apartment for another training/strategy session. Isabel and Tess were in the lounge, but Max and JD hadn't shown up yet.

"Looks like," Isabel said. "I've confirmed everything with Alex - our information matches, and he's found the star catalog number in some web database. Not only was it there, but it's actually not terribly far away, though not in our immediate neighborhood either. And it was on a list that somebody drew up of places that are likely for planets that can support life."

"Sounds good," Tess repeated. "What about the timing info?"

"Well, that's not something that any of us can research," Isabel put in. "The only person on earth who can decipher it would be your boy." Tess blushed slightly. "Speaking of which... any new updates about you and JD? I haven't heard anything much since, umm..." She popped some spicy popcorn into her mouth and crunched it for a little while. "Maybe since you were dancing together at Michael's wedding. I mean, well, I've seen you together a lot since then..." pause, "and JD mentioned to Max and I that he thought I was in love with you, but..."

"He - he did?" Tess interrupted, grinning, and Isabel smiled too - that had been pretty much the reaction she'd been hoping for when she decided to drop that little tidbit of information.

"Yeah... when JD was first telling us about the communicator disc he's got. Somehow things got from there to the fact that he let you into his mind, the first night he was here in Roswell, and he said that that was the first step to falling in love." She sighed. "But you didn't really answer my question."

"Umm... things are great," Tess admitted. "I think we were both a little cautious and nervous for a while, but --" Her pale cheeks started to redden with a fierce blush. "Things kind of broke at Max's new year's eve party, when we kissed at midnight." She sighed, lost in the memory. "Some kind of deep craving just reached out and grabbed both of that with his kiss. Umm, I'm not sure if you guys didn't notice that I didn't leave around the same time that everybody else cleared out -- we managed to disappear back into his room, and kissed long and late into the wee hours of the morning. Oh, and there was some imaginative groping, too."

"Attack of the lust bunnies - sounds nice," Isabel said fondly. "Is... not to sound judgemental or anything, but is that all there is?"

Tess paused only a second before - "No. No... I'm his girlfriend now, I'm quite sure." She smiled at the thought. "Never really managed to be one before, so I'm not sure about the rules, even if I was one to stick by someone else's guidelines. All I know... is that my heart is his, for as long as he wants it, and I hope that's a long time." A brief sigh. "The rest, I hope we'll figure out in time."

"Sounds like enough to me," Michael admitted. "Heck, I kind of wish that Maria and I had figured our stuff out nearly so well after knowing each other... what, for all of a few months?"

"Yeah, really," Isabel agreed, an odd look on her face. "Come to think of it... you and JD, Tess -- it's almost like kismet. Meant to be. The reason that things never worked out between you and Max - or Kyle or anyone else... is that the cosmos knew that JD was coming here as fast as he could, and that you had to be ready when he got here."

"Huh." That was all that Tess had to say for a long time. "I - I guess I never really thought about it in those terms. But I *really* like the idea." And her face broke out into that big wide grin again.

Which turned out to be a really good thing, because she was able to use it on JD when he and Max came through the door a few seconds later. (Of course, she'd have probably grinned to see him no matter what - but this was it was kind of like Isabel had saved her the trouble.)

---------

"Okay, we might as well get started," Liz said, reaching out to gently stroke Beth's toes as she squirmed in her baby chair, hoping to calm her little gem down a bit further. "What's first on the agenda?"

Maria shuffled through her papers. "Okay, let's see... the transition is going pretty well, all things considered." Liz's parents were probably in Los Angeles now, enjoying a few whirlwind days in the big city before their cruise ship to Hawaii and the mid-pacific islands boarded. "Biggest ripple is probably that the Jackson brothers are threatening to raise our prices."

"What?" Liz exclaimed. That wasn't the restaurant's biggest ingredient supplier, but it was big enough to cause a problem. "Why the hell?"

"What Frank Jackson told me..." Maria sighed, "was that the pre-existing business relationship was not with 'Crashdown cafe', but with your father. New management, new customer."

"Why, the curdled little spot of gunk!!" Liz exclaimed. "It's just because they've never gotten along great with women. Threatened that a girl is taking over daily operations."

"Two girls," Maria corrected softly, and Liz smiled, though it was arguable just how true that was. This meeting was the first time that Liz had really gotten involved in cafe business since her parents had left town - she'd meant to help out on Maria's big first day, maybe put on a waitress uniform for old times' sake, (though her old one wouldn't exactly fit right now...) but a prairie chicken thing had come up at the last minute, and a lot of her usual babysitters were busy with their own stuff at the moment.

"Well, anyway, no need to sound the red alert yet," Maria said. "I'm going to be sending Ronald over with the suggestion that he can be our main liason with the Jacksons... and a reminder of all the things that won't be changing around here anytime soon. We've been a good customer and they need us nearly as much as we need them. Ron should be able to haggle them down to only a few token increases."

"Sounds good," Liz said with a smile. "How are we doing on staffing?"

"A little tight... of course, with Ron and me moving into the roles left by your folks... we'll need to start training someone new as an assistant manager I think, and probably hire a new waiter or waitress. Oh, and Jim Taylor the busboy gave two week's notice - we really need to replace him by then, too."

"Shouldn't be too hard finding a new part-time busboy and a waitress," Liz said with a nostalgic smile. "Lot of high school kids probably just realizing that they want to save up some extra cash for a prom limo, or for the summer or whatever."

"Yeah," Maria agreed. "Sales are five to six percent down from previous weeks, so we've got to bounce back fast. I've come up with a short list of items that maybe we should take off the menu - none of them have been selling well anyway." She pushed the slip of paper over to Liz.

"Hmm..." Liz thought about that. "I think it makes sense to be careful about moves like that rather than jumping too fast. Is it costing us much money to keep a few of these on hand and ready to go, just in case?" Maria thought about that a moment, and nodded, conceding the point. "Also, at least one of them is probably the occasional favorite of a dependable regular - someone who we don't really want to alienate, as it were." Liz chuckled softly at her own unintentional pun.

"Alright, I'll see what I can figure out." Liz thought about that, wondering if she could make some time to look into those objections herself. "Benny and Ron have a few ideas for new specials, including one that I think is worth moving ahead with quickly... a UFO-burger. I mean, seriously, how did we miss that?"

Liz giggled. "I think my folks had one on the menu a long time ago... before you started working here. But you're right, it's long past time for a revival."

Maria smiled. "Okay, umm, anything else you'd like to bring up, partner?"

Liz looked something up on her pocket pc. "Yeah. first off, though I know we don't want to tweak the menu too much, I think there are a few specials that are candidates to make the main menu. Here's what I've come up with so far." She showed Maria the screen.

"Hmm." Maria quickly scribbled a note onto one of her papers. Maybe. This one in particular..." she tapped one of the names. "I know that it's really popular, but it's also a low margin item. That's why your mom wanted to make it a special instead of a regular."

"Oh." Liz's face fell. "And raising the price even a little bit might backfire huh?"

"Yeah, it might," Maria agreed, thinking, "but it might also work out. Let me mull it over." She sighed.

"Okay. And the other thing I wanted to mention... maybe Ron should be coming to these meetings too? I know he isn't a partner like we are, but..."

"No, I don't think that's a good idea," Maria said, so quickly that Liz blinked.

"Umm... why?"

"Well, because he's watching the early breakfast shift while I'm in here jawing with you, silly," Maria replied, and Liz giggled sheepishly.

"Oh, right. Good reason."

They chatted a little bit longer, and then Maria hurried downstairs, eager to see how things were going. Liz watched her go with a slight trace of melancholy on her face. Between the long hours that Maria had been putting in here at the cafe, and Michael's participation in the training, Liz would be surprised if they'd spent more than a few conscious hours together all week. Oooh! That reminded her of something else she'd meant to mention... the apartment itself. Liz looked around her parent's kitchen, looking a lot barer than it had for years... they'd packed a lot of things up into storage before they left. Someone else would be living here above the cafe until they got back, maybe even longer, and deep down Liz thought it should be Maria and Michael. The location was close enough to Michael's own job, (well, a bit longer drive but not much,) and would be really convenient for Maria herself. But what would they think of that arrangement?

Then Beth cooed and kicked her legs a little, and Liz stood up and took her out of the chair. A few seconds later Beth was crawling around the living room floor, while Liz watched, idly wondering when she would start walking.

TO BE CONTINUED...