Roswell Fanatics

'Did I have pleasant dreams?' asked Alex to himself, remembering the truly bizarre dream that he'd had.

Not the alien stuff. I mean that was kind of within the broad limits of weird things that can be in a dream that simply makes it amusing - dreams can be like that. No, he meant the bizarre part - the part where Izzy - claiming to be the real Isabel Evans - was talking about having his children. The truly bizarre part where Izzy was explaining with obvious regret that she wasn't sure that really COULD happen, but that she - Isabel Evans - would sure be willing to give it her best shot. The dream had been a short one but Alex was fairly certain she hadn't been talking about in vitro fertilization, so even now, the mere memory of that dream was pushing his mind toward thoughts that were as beautiful as they seemed improbable. Yeah, THAT was the dream he'd had. It was a visceral and instinctive thing - sort of like Isabel's bitch-slap of Phillips. Nothing you can say to a guy is more seductive than saying you want to bear his children. Even in a dream, that's potent stuff.

"I guess I did at that, a little bizarre and improbable maybe,' but certainly not unpleasant," said Alex, suddenly aware of her closeness.

Isabel guessed she could live with 'bizarre and improbable' - at least for the time being, and suddenly she found herself aware of her closeness to him as well.

Isabel had been a little puzzled this morning about just what to do to attract Alex - she wasn't really experienced at such things. Oh, Isabel attracted guys - she always had - but that was sort of a passive thing. She'd never really actively TRIED to attract a guy before. You might think that strange since she was the reigning queen of the Ice Princess Posse, but really it wasn't.

Her Ice Princess persona had really been about keeping everyone - guys and gals - at a distance. You simply overdressed and projected a haughty aloofness. The other females - particularly the other Posse members who saw you more as a competitor than friend - really didn't attempt to get close to you. Most of the normal guys - Alex would fall in that category - were scared off and the male members of the 'pretty people,' the male equivalent of the Posse, approached you more to count coup socially than they did for a serious relationship. They'd get one date then get dropped like the proverbial 'hot rock' - possibly as grateful not to be stuck with such a haughty bitch as she was not to be stuck with such a self-absorbed and arrogant lout.

With that sort of a previous social life, it was pretty obvious to Isabel that she'd have to do something very different this morning - probably making it up as she went along.

She'd decided to try to model her relationship with Alex after the human relationship that she liked best - that of her mother with her father.

She'd noticed as a young child - barely out of the pod - that humans kept a shell of privacy around them - a space where others didn't generally enter. In fact, the Ice Princess was the quintessential example of that - someone very obvious but still about as distant as you could get. That's why she'd chosen it.

Her mother's relationship with her dad - well, it wasn't like that at all. They seemed to share a common physical space, the presence of the other not really being an intrusion - but rather welcome in both a passive sort of way and - she had seen on occasion when the folks didn't know their little girl was looking - an active one as well.

No, Mom and Dad didn't paw over one another like the teenagers in lust out in the parking lot after school - or at least when they did they did it in private - but even a young Isabel had been conscious of the casual touches her parents shared without even any conscious thought, and the occasional suggestive pats they gave one another when they weren't aware she was looking. That was sort of the relationship she was trying to go for. Solid, certain, and .... comfortable.

So on this occasion she wasn't overdressed - but she wasn't under dressed either. It was Spring in Roswell, going to be warm enough that shorts and a camisole blouse would be about right for the mid afternoon, and she'd worn a sweater over the blouse as she'd driven the jeep to be able to stay warm without using her powers to do so. But the sun was overhead now, and she was inside the Crashdown. The sweater was draped around her back, it's arms around her neck and tied to hold it there - the shorts not too short and her feet in running shoes over ankle length socks. Alex was similarly dressed - a short sleeved shirt substituting for the blouse.

The plan - well, Isabel really hadn't had much of a plan really - just act as comfortable with him as her mother acted with her father - just sit close to him and pretend they really were in that sort of a relationship - it wasn't like she had any real experience trying to attract someone. It wasn't until she slid in beside him that she realized how physically attracted she was to him.

Holding Izzy in his dreams had always been wonderful. She moved with him like she could read his thoughts which - considering the girl was an imaginary construct of his own mind - she likely could. But nothing about Izzy and the dreams he had of her had been sufficient, Alex decided, to prepare himself for the actual presence of the real Isabel this close to him. The smell of her perfume - the light touch of her pinky finger barely caressing his forearm as she reached for the menu - just feeling the cushion on the bench depress from the nearness of her body on the bench beside him - all at once his heart was beating faster - and when her lower leg briefly touched against his...

Alex was amazed at the way he reacted to her. I mean, sure Isabel was drop-dead gorgeous, always had been, but she was unobtainable even for the pretty people guys. But today she seemed just stunning to him. She really wasn't dressed all that provocatively today - although the girl would undoubtedly look pretty good even dressed in a plastic trash bag - and the shorts really weren't all that short - although those were long beautiful legs.....

'How does mom do this?' Isabel found herself wondering. 'Does dad really affect her this way?'

She fought against the urge to scrunch over further - Alex was already almost pinned against the wall and window - but as her fingers sought the menu they brushed against his forearm and her heart started beating even faster. She squirmed nervously, accidentally bringing her lower leg into contact against his, stifling a sudden need to purr as she felt the skin of his leg gently caress her leg....

Neither of them were practiced at this - neither of them had really expected the feelings they found themselves having. Lord alone knows what would have happened if this had continued rather than being abruptly interrupted. But interrupted it was as someone sat down in the booth on the bench across the table from them.

"We need to discuss what happened this morning," said Jim Valenti.

Not exactly some distance away – dream-orbs don't quite work that way distance-wise, not even badly damaged ones – someone was recovering self-awareness in the abyss as her damaged and dying reticular activating cells had rested enough to bring her up to a level where at least a measure of REM sleep activity was possible.

Her body formed and her eyes opened and she looked out at the inky grayness. She knew it wasn't really her body – knew the inky grayness didn't exactly exist either. This was just another moment of awareness, trapped in the purgatory of her shattered brain - or wherever the hell she was - and as she gazed out at the emptiness of the void seemed to suck away at her soul. Times like this were the worst – the times when her damaged brain didn't even dream up any companion to keep her company. Liz
had decided that if she really was still alive, she must be insane already. I mean why else would she keep up this ridiculous running self-fabrication of an Isabel Evans who claimed to be an alien doing something called 'dreamwalking' and a Max Evans who was not only an alien but – perhaps even more bizarrely - her happily wedded husband. Well, the latter had to have something to do with it.

'If you have to go stir-crazy,' she thought to herself, '...erotic dreams of Max Evans aren't the worst way to do it.'

Apparently even insanity had its consolations, and her memories of the dreams of her friend dream-Isabel and dream-Max, lover and husband and friend, were about all that kept her going during the third of the periods of her self-awareness when she was unable to conjure either of them.
Those periods of total loneliness were mercifully brief now, though. It was as if without the dream-presence of one of her doppelganger constructs she lacked the stimulation to even keep self-aware for any sustained period.

Unfortunately the period of her awareness when they were present seemed to be getting shorter too. She wondered if sometime soon that would be it – that she'd just never have another thought. Was that what death was? Brain death anyway, assuming her body was still chugging along somewhere – most likely in a nursing home – certainly not in the batcave or podchamber or whatever of her insane delusions within the abyss.

As she waited in the darkness alone she was scared. Not for herself – she'd sort of accepted her fate now – but for her folks. It was times like this – without the distractions of dream-Max or dream-Izzy that she was most introspective. She was their only child – she knew that hadn't been by design. They'd had their troubles conceiving even her. They'd tried for years after that to give her the little brother they'd always promised her – but it hadn't happened. Her mother had said something about having immune infertility. Her mother and her father were both fertile – but just not with each other. It was pretty rare, and tended to get worse the longer two people had been trying to conceive unsuccessfully. Nothing was impossible of course, but chances were poor that they'd be able to replace her and the thought of the pain her death would cause them was heartrending. They had been wonderful parents - they deserved better, she thought.

That was the trouble with being here all by herself, bereft of even her dreams. She tended to dwell on the painful – the tragic – the morbid. She understood that – but it didn't stop it from happening. But just when it was at its worst – just when she felt the most woebegone – just when she was hoping that her self-awareness would be blotted out – she felt it. The feeling that dream-Max was near.

She had gotten so she could tell when he was in the abyss. Of course, that probably shouldn't surprise her since she was the one who dreamed him there – but she still didn't really understand why their scheduling so completely matched their cover story. Her own subconscious mind, no doubt. As she saw him come out of the swirling gray mists, she smiled. He had the same sort of determined look that the real Max Evans had in lab – when they were working together on some difficult problem. Only you could add worried to his expression too, although his face brightened visibly when he saw her.

Dream- Max flowed into her arms.

“Sorry I'm late – I had trouble getting to sleep. I was trying to get my mind around a new theory somebody at CalTech has out – about the nature of Time. It's not really a textbook – just a magazine. Izzy brought it with the load of supplies she dropped by this morning. He talks about something called the 'Arrow of Time.' He theorizes that there are multiple universes and that entropy sort of scoots us along between them and that movement itself is time. How that relates to the damn stasis chambers in the pods – that I still don't have a clue about.”

Liz had to smile. In this continuing dream, Max was always talking about time and space and unified field theory and astrophysics to her – all in an attempt to fix the imaginary pods that were part of the dream scenario of Max and Izzy being aliens – or at least part aliens. Over the course of the last few dozen awareness periods shared with dream-Max she'd learned more than she'd ever wanted to know about astrophysics and unified field theory – discussing it with him. It was advanced and bewildering stuff – even after Max shared his insights with her.

Which was kind of bizarre, now that you think of it, because since he was a construct of her mind – well, he couldn't really know anything she didn't, now could he? It was possible that what Max was discussing was just recycled information from an old Scientific American article she'd read or something – in fact it had to be something like that. The alternative – that Max Evans was really mentally present in the abyss – sharing his own research and more than a few erotic moments with her was too improbable for any serious consideration. Occam's razor, she reminded herself.

“I'm just glad you are here,” she said. "I didn't think you were coming this time – thought it was going to be another time when I was just alone in the darkness. Her dream-body seemed to shiver. “You wouldn't believe how terrible that was at first – when I was all by myself – without you or Izzy. Even now – I realize that the times I can really think are becoming shorter – especially when I'm all by myself – but if you or Izzy aren't here.... it's like I'd rather just not be aware...”

“Liz, you have to hang on – at least until I've figured out the stasis units. Then I can just stop everything – stop it until technology finds a way to fix you.”

“Max, even if I believed in that – even if time could be stopped for me – what would happen then? It might take a hundred years to find a cure. My parents would be dead – my friends would be dead – it wouldn't be the same world for me. It would be like being born all over again – surrounded by strangers.”

“Yeah, well that's the story of my life. Besides – you'd have me. I'd go into the pod right next to you. I seem to recall you promising until death do us part. Besides – it won't have to be a hundred years. All they need to do is to fix you well enough that you can be conscious for just a few minutes. If they can get you that far, I can make the connection and finish healing you. It won't be a hundred years – probably no more than twenty – twenty-five tops.”


Liz smiled. Even knowing he was a dream – somehow dream-Max always managed to cheer her up. “Well, speaking of that...., you know how you said that you kidnapped me from the nursing home and took me off to the batcave...”

“Podchamber...”

She smiled again. He was so predictable when you teased him like that – even for a dream.

“Podchamber, then,” she agreed. “You took me to the podchamber so you could sleep right beside me so you could dreamwalk without Izzy's help?”

“Yes,”

“And you did that because you thought I should have twice the stimulation to keep my awareness going - stimulation from both you and Izzy - to keep me from fading out altogether...?”

“Yes...”

“Well, I think I could probably use a little …. stimulation … right now, the kind of stimulation that I only get from you - and I wasn't thinking about a stimulating conversation about unified field theory, either.”

“Liz,” he said, “... figuring out those stasis units is important.”

“So's this,” she said, dreaming away the shirt he was wearing and fumbling briefly with his belt buckle before finally just mentally dissolving it in haste and frustration. After all, she didn't get much self-awareness time, and only about a third of it was with Max.

“Time's a-wasting,” she said as she caused her own clothes to dissolve.

Max resigned himself to the inevitable.

“I guess a unified field theory can wait one more day...” he managed to say before her lips covered his.

Meanwhile, back at the Crashdown...

“May I take your orders, please?” asked the waitress, her deeley-boppers swaying to and fro as she looked down at the three people in the booth.

“I won't be staying,” said Jim Valenti, “but you can take their orders.”

Isabel looked down at the menu nervously. “A Sigourney Weaver Burger, and an abduct-tea.”

“A Will Smith and – uh – an unidentified french frying object, with a vanilla crashsite shake,” said Alex.

Jim Valenti waited until the waitress had gone and they had privacy before talking to the two teenagers.

“Look, we could do this the hard way and go to the station, but I'm not going to do that. I'm going to talk to you both upfront and off the record – tell you what the facts are and ask for your help. You give me that help and I don't care what your involvement has been, I'll do whatever I can for you. You don't give me that help, eventually I'll find out what I need to know anyway and then you're on your own. NO, worse than that. Then you are mine. Do you understand that?”

For much of the early part of Isabel's life in Roswell Jim Valenti had been the bogeyman – the local guy who would be the one to nab the three podlings if their status ever became known. Eventually she found out that he was Kyle's father, but even that didn't help all that much when she'd been in elementary school. By middle school she was a cheerleader and had pretty much gotten used to seeing him at every game that Kyle played in – which was most of them. Even so, she still had some residual fear. Without even thinking she slid sideways slightly seeking the reassuring presence of Alex.

“No, I'm afraid,” she said, “... I really don't understand what you are talking about, Sheriff.”

Jim Valenti's look was more one of exasperation than of anger. He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, then started to speak, his eyes on both of them.

“This is the way it is. The West has always had two sorts of law enforcement people – the lawmen and the peacekeepers.

You break the law – that's all that matters to the lawman. Like last night, Miss Evans, when you physically assaulted the FBI guy. Now I heard the whole story but what a lawman would do is to take you downtown and charge you with assault and battery. Then we get the DA involved, and one or both of your parents. You'd be charged with assault too, Mr. Whitman, and we'd get lawyers and prosecutors and judges involved and – in the end – Mr. Whitman would get off because officer Phillips assaulted him first, Miss Evans would get off – or at least a minimal sentence - because
Phillips was drunk and was verbally provoking both of you – as well as abusing his authority and doing something just plain dumb. We could have easily wound up charging him with assault as well – although the likely outcome for him would be he'd be sentenced to go through detox for his alcoholism.

Now a Peacekeeper – that's what I've always sort of considered myself – he'd just say that Phillips was a drunk who was harassing you, he got what was coming to him and now the FBI will make sure he gets the help he needs and fortunately nobody got hurt seriously and that's close enough for government work. No courts, no parents, no messy records. That's the difference, you follow me?”

“I guess I get your distinction, Sheriff,” said Isabel, “I'm just not sure what sort of help I can be. You apparently know everything about what happened this morning.”

“If you mean you went to see your brother, then got Mr. Whitman to cover for you when you got seen doing it, I suppose you are right, Miss Evans.”

Isabel gripped Alex's hand nervously, without conscious thought. She needed the reassurance.

“Just because a drunk claimed that doesn't make it so...” she started.

“Just because Phillips was drunk doesn't make him wrong either, Miss Evans,” said Valenti, trying to control his frustration.

“Look, I never believed that crap from the Albuquerque PD – about Max being some sort of a stalker. I'll admit that those two didn't appear to have that much of a relationship before her accident, but you could see it in their eyes – both of them were trying so damn hard to not show what they felt for each other.
Also, I can't honestly say I blame Max for being frustrated about Liz being warehoused away in that nursing home – I know how hard he fought – how hard he and your mom fought – to get her the best treatment he could. Hell, I laughed my a – butt off seeing the insurance company people get picked up by the US Marshals – and I'm sure that Alex played a part in getting the emails your mom used as well – the point is, I don't think any of you are bad people – but what you are doing is wrong.

It's hurting the Parkers emotionally with every day that goes by and it's going to get someone seriously hurt eventually. Who that someone is will be anyone's guess. Your brother, Miss Evans, if Jeff Parker catches him before we do, Jeff Parker himself if he does manage to find your brother, because even kidnapping Liz won't be justification in the eyes of the law for what the man will do, Nancy Parker who will then lose – in addition to her daughter – her husband when he goes to jail – your parents and you – because you each love Max. Look Miss Evans … this situation has every sign of causing a lot of hurt and pain all around. You can stop that before it goes any farther....”

Alex looked at Isabel. The Sheriff was making a lot of sense – but even so.... She had looked in to his eyes and told him that what she and Max were doing was for Liz's sake – that it was her best chance. He could feel her hand gripping his and he squeezed it softly – and as her eyes sought his he tried to reassure her that he was there for her – that whatever she did, he supported her.

The last thing that Isabel wanted was to get Jim Valenti involved in this. All the fears of her childhood came rushing into her mind as he stood there waiting for her reply. But then she felt the hand clasp hers gently and she looked up into Alex's eyes. Alex who didn't understand – who didn't believe what he'd been told in the dream – but who supported her anyway. Who was ready to lie – to become an accessory after the fact to kidnapping on her word alone. Somehow, with her hand in his, even Jim Valenti didn't seem all that scary.

“For your information, Sheriff, I did not see my brother.” That much, at least, was true. She'd dropped the supplies off at the prearranged spot and gotten the heck out of Dodge. “I went out driving – saw that I was being tailed by someone and really didn't want to take the chance of having some guys who for all I knew at the time were drunks or sex offenders or worse, run me off the road and stop me when I was driving an open top jeep without even any doors on it. So I took it off-road, where my vehicle could go and theirs couldn't. If that's a crime, charge me. After that I went back and picked up Alex...”

“Alex, who you have had a few coffee dates with and gone to one dance with...”

“Three quarters of a dance, actually. The Whits were on stage a quarter of the time.”

“And you expect me to believe that the whole purpose of last night was for you to sneak out and drag a guy you've barely been going with to Lookout Point? The captain of the cheerleading squad and the Vice President of the Computer club? Going to Lookout Point?”

Jim Valenti was surprised by the fire in her eyes when she gave her reply.

“And just what in hell is wrong with Alex and me going to Lookout Point? We're both seventeen.”

He remembered Jaime's description of the bitch-slap to Phillps' face that seemed to come out of nowhere – the one that had been triggered by Phillips picking on Alex - the one that had put the FBI agent on the floor. Suddenly the table didn't seem quite as wide as he would have liked.

He looked at Isabel's right hand and was relieved to find it in Alex's left hand, their fingers interleaved. As unlikely as the pair seemed it was obvious that Isabel Evans didn't have any doubts about it. He held up both hands – palm forward.

“No offense – it just seems that the two of you are taking it awfully fast.”

“Well, mostly we just stargazed,” said Alex.

“Mostly?” asked Valenti.

“Well, a gentleman doesn't kiss and tell, Sheriff.” said Alex.

Jim Valenti saw Isabel's face soften and a small smile come to her lips. “I think you just did, Alex.” She turned back toward the Sheriff and smiled again, “... and they were excellent kisses too, Sheriff, not that it's any of your business.”

Jim Valenti shook his head sadly. “Well, I'm happy for both of you, but we both know this isn't over, Miss Evans. You see, I think your brother cares too much for Liz Parker to abandon her, and with the care she requires he needs someone to get the food and supplies she needs to him because she wouldn't survive his prolonged absence. That means someone is running supplies to him, and almost two decades of law enforcement experience and intuition tells me that you are that person and – whatever you and Mr. Whitman may or may not have been doing at Lookout Point later – I think you did that first. I can't prove that – that's something we also both know – but like I told you, this whole situation is a disaster waiting to happen. When it does, some innocent people are going to get hurt. Hell, some innocent people are getting hurt right now, but it'll be even worse. I just hope you can live with yourself when that happens, Miss Evans.”

As Jim Valenti left the restaurant he shook his head angrily. It was too bad Isabel Evans was being that stubborn and unreasonable. But even so – he had a grudging admiration for her. He had – at first – thought she was just exploiting Alex Whitman for an alibi. He still thought Whitman was her alibi – but it wasn't the sort of exploitation that Phillips – and even Jim Valenti – had believed. Oh, the logic had suggested that. The whole story of a computer geek – and while Jim actually liked Alex Whitman, he was undeniably a computer geek – being up at Lookout Peak at 4AM with an Ice Princess he'd scarcely dated who was arguably the most desirable young lady at West Roswell High just reeked of being phoney. Of course, had Jim Valenti known that the young lady and young man involved had been a good deal closer than that – that they had been sharing dreams since junior high school – he likely would have been less surprised by what he saw in those eyes when it had looked briefly like the young lady was going to lay out another law enforcement for dissing her guy.

But while it did surprise him, Jim had almost twenty years of experience as a cop – reading people's body language and getting in to their minds. She cared for that young man – she really did – and she hadn't appreciated in the least Sheriff Jim Valenti impugning her guys lifestyle choices. No, despite the unlikeliness of Isabel Evans caring so deeply for someone who she apparently had known for such a short time and who was – in the teen-age social pecking order of West Roswell High – nowhere in her league, Jim knew that she did. The reason was called experience – sometimes defined as that facility which allows you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.

Yes, Jim had recognized the look in Isabel's eyes – the fiercely loyalty and support behind those eyes when he'd almost criticized Alex's computer nerdishness. It was the same look that he'd wanted desperately to see in Kyle's mother's eyes nineteen years ago – and never had. When he had told her parents that he wanted to go into law enforcement they had rolled their eyes skyward and tried to talk him out of it. He should have taken the hint when she didn't defend him. No, he'd never seen that look in her eyes. She'd never cared that much – not for his career – and ultimately not for Jim Valenti or even their son. The marriage had lasted less than two years.

It didn't matter to Isabel Evans that Alex was a computer nerd – if that's what the young man wanted to be. It looked like she cared enough for him that she would stick by him and defend his choices. No, however those two had come to be a couple there was no exploiting going on. Alex was doing this willingly – maybe even helping her. He was voluntarily on her team and she – she loved him. Jim was sure of that. 'In that respect at least, thought Jim,'...he's one lucky SOB, but neither one of them will be lucky long if Jeff Parker comes unglued, and I'd be willing to bet old Jeff is holding on by a thread right now.'





In this case Jim's experience overcame his not unreasonable expectations that the very desirable Ice Princess couldn't really feel that romantically inclined toward Alex Whitman. Unfortunately, Alex Whitman didn't have Jim Valenti's experience, nor had he seen that threatening look in Isabel's eye when Valenti had brought up his own doubts. In fact, Alex had damn little experience socially at all. In the real world it would have never occurred to him before Liz's accident to even try to talk to Isabel Evans – in fact he had very little experience at all when it came to dating. It was hard to get excited about lesser girls when he had his own 'dream-girl' to dance with every single night. Worse yet, while Alex did intuitively trust Isabel – the product of almost five years of familiarity with 'Izzy' in his dreams - Alex really didn't believe that 'Izzy' and Isabel Evans were actually the same person and even in his dreams he'd never really been comfortable initiating a romantic relationship with 'Izzy'.

So unfortunately, as Isabel was sitting there quietly munching on her Sigourney Weaver and sipping her abduct-tea and as Alex was chewing on his Will Smith with fries and shake, what was mostly going on in Alex's mind was that Phillips and the Sheriff were probably right – that Isabel really was out of his league. Oh, she liked him enough to tolerate the kiss he'd given her this morning – and even given him a kiss in return. But the thought of Isabel and Alex doing the wedding thing, the happily ever after, the little Whitmans …. that almost certainly just wasn't going to happen.

This isn't a form of denial peculiar to computer geeks – but it was one they'd elevated almost to an art form. Until he'd sat there with her today after having been up to Lookout Point with her this morning – until he'd felt what he felt sitting beside her, Alex hadn't actually believe he could feel about her as strongly as he had physically or even that he could feel as emotionally about her as much as he did – more even than his dream-girl Izzy.

So now what he was doing was akin to whistling past the graveyard. He was afraid to admit even to himself that he wanted Isabel Evans as badly as he did – afraid because he knew the FBI guy and the Sheriff had been right. He didn't have the class or the social skills or the personality he needed to have someone like Isabel Evans actually fall in love with him the way he would fall in love with her if given half a chance, so he couldn't really afford to let himself believe he had a chance. The disappointment would be too devastating. So in his own mind he really couldn't let himself believe that this goddess could really love him.

In fairness, Alex wasn't that much more immature than Isabel herself. You remember Isabel? Isabel - the one who made her brother and Michael make a 'sacred vow' to not reveal their origin - the one who still hadn't told her mother and father about herself and had told Alex - the one whose children she was willing to attempt to bear - only in his dream. OK, she was getting better. She actually had every intention of - after this meal - taking Alex out in the desert and slinging a few rocks around with her telekinesis - or maybe even doing a powerblast for him - before reiterating her willingness to take on that long term plan of creating mini-Whitmans. But that didn't happen. What happened first was the faux pas caused by Alex's own denial.

Jim Valenti was depressed and angry as he walked away from the table. You didn't have to be a mindreader - or even a cop with almost 20 years experience - to understand that he was going to get nowhere with Isabel Evans.

The girl had always been close to her brother - from the very first day the foundlings had been brought in from the desert by Diane and Philip Evans. Even the child protective services had said that they should only be considered for adoption as a pair - not that breaking them up was ever even a consideration. Somehow Diane and Philip had bonded to the children on the ride into town, and anyone wanting to get those two away from the Evanses would have had to overcome two of the best legal minds in the state who were willing to spend every waking hour and every dime they had to make those two pitiful kids their own.

It was disappointing but hardly surprising that Isabel would side with her brother on this. Exactly what Max thought he was doing and where he was doing it, Jim Valenti wasn't too sure. But as much as Isabel had cared for Liz while she'd been in the hospital and as tortured as Max had seemed from the time he'd heard about the accident to Liz and all he'd done and tried to do for her, Jim doubted that Max's intention was bad or that Isabel would have gone along with him if it had been.

Sometimes people just went off the deep end over serious illness to a loved one - as a cop Jim had seen that often enough. They did everything from shooting doctors and ER staff that they thought had failed their loved one to flying their loved ones off to the Philippines or Brazil for psychic surgery. If he had to guess, Jim Valenti supposed that Liz Parker was in some old deserted line shack or bunk house on one of the many old abandoned homesteader ranches in the county, with Max Evans trying God-alone-knew what sort of illegal or experimental drugs on her to try to get her to wake up.

But Jim pretty much understood and had expected Isabel's loyalty to her brother - even though it was setting her up for a possible 20 year sentence as an accessory after the fact. The latter was even more upsetting to Jim Valenti. With his record of mental stress prior to the kidnapping, chances were his parents could get Max off with a few years of psychiatric hospitalization even if he turned himself and Liz Parker in now. Isabel would be unlikely to be so lucky. There had been no injunction against her seeing Liz and Liz's parents had in fact trusted her. That wasn't going to sit well with a jury once the Evans kids actually were facing justice. It would have been so damn much better if she'd just helped him resolve this peaceably.

Alex Whitman was another complication, and that still puzzled Jim Valenti. A year ago he'd have thought just what Bob Phillips had thought - that the beautiful Ice Princess was playing Alex Whitman for a patsy - dangling her charms and having the computer geek fall all over himself just to be seen with her. The only trouble was that he'd seen Isabel caring for Liz this last year and drinking coffee with Alex more recently. She wasn't the Ice Princess she pretended to be - and probably never had been - and seeing that look on her face just now...

Adopted or not, the girl had a lot of Diane Evans in her. You poke or prod someone she cared about, you were likely as not to be pulling back a bloody stump. The fact that she probably didn't weigh 115 pounds should have mitigated that somewhat but if the look was any indication, it hadn't. So unlikely as it had at first seemed, the Ice Princess really did care for the geek and not a trivial amount either, making it almost a certainty that Alex wasn't going to tell anything he knew that would be helpful.

Unfortunately that made it equally likely that he'd go down as a co-conspirator as well when this thing eventually blew up. And under TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 55 > § 1201 paragraph (g), since Liz was under eighteen when she was kidnapped both Alex Whitman and Isabel Evans were looking at a mandatory minimum of twenty years - even as accessories. Jim Valenti had already looked it up.

'This case just absolutely sucks....', he thought as he walked around the back of the Crashdown to the door to Parker residence. He knocked three times and eventually Nancy Parker answered.

"Sheriff," she said, her eyes widening as she recognized him, "...have you heard something about Liz?"

"No ma'am, I'm afraid I haven't. What I would like though is to talk to your husband for a moment if I could...?"

"Certainly Sheriff," said Nancy. After the excitement of her brief hope, it had been like all the life had gone out of her, "...come this way, and I'll take you to see Jeff."

She lead him inside - then up the stairs - finally reaching the top floor. She lead him down the hall - past the bathroom and a storage room to the end of the hall where two doors opened - one to either side of the hallway. She knocked on the door.

"Jeff, you have a visitor," she said, and then turned around disconsolately and walked back toward the main living area.

Jim watched her go, shaking his head sadly, imagining himself if something happened to Kyle. Liz's accident was like a rock thrown in a pond - the ripples went out and affected everyone ... all because some soft-hearted judge, no doubt with a head to match, had decided to give some drunk a fourth 'another chance'...

As he heard the doorknob start to turn Jim looked forward in time to see the door open and Jeff Parker stand there. He looked like hell. Behind him on the wall were a series of pictures of Max Evans that had obviously been modified. The Department had the same program - you digitize a picture and feed it in - then the computer generates all the possible permutations and combination of hair color, hair style, facial hair, glasses, and even eye color if you wanted to invoke the colored contact module. They used it to generate pictures of how wanted people would look if they disguised themselves. Jim saw a gun safe back there too, before Jeff stepped out and closed the door behind him.

"What do you want, Sheriff?" Jeff asked him. Nothing like getting to the point.

"What I want is to talk to you, Jeff."

"Have you found that boy?"

"No, not yet..."

"Well then maybe you ought to be doing that. Until then I'm not too sure you and I have anything to talk about."

"I disagree. Jeff, I'm asking as a friend to have a few moments of your time."

Jeff Parker sighed deeply and motioned to the other door. As Jim moved toward it Jeff reached past him and opened it. Jim looked in to find a teenagers room - considerably neater than most - with a West Roswell High 'Fighting Coyote' pennant on one wall and a series of science fair trophies underneath. He was reasonably sure it had never been this orderly when it had actually been occupied by Liz Parker. Out the window - on the rooftop of the wider second floor of what had been the Purvis House - was a patio furniture lounge, chair, and table that didn't look like it had been used by anyone but passing pigeons for a year or so. Jeff Parker apparently noticed him looking.

"Liz and Maria used to sunbathe out there - and paint fingernails and toenails and do all the things teenage girls do. I guess teenage girls climb through windows easier too. Nancy keeps this place neat as a pin - like a shrine to Lizzy. I think she hopes that if she can just keep it ready long enough, somehow it'll all be like it was - that she'll have her baby back again. I was going to get the furniture off the roof, but she wouldn't even let me do that. She says Lizzy might still want it there..."

"Jeff, I'm so sorry - sorry about all of this."

"Yeah, well that makes you and a whole lot of other people. I wish it helped ... but I'm not sure it does. So you wanted to talk, Jim. What do you want to talk about?"

"Well, let's start with the obvious. This wasn't your fault. You and Nancy didn't raise some out of control teenager who was off joyriding - drunk on some Friday night - who got in an accident because nobody gave a damn about her. Liz was a good kid and all she was doing was giving a friend a lift home."

"She didn't have that much experience - driving at night."

"That's bullshit. To begin with, the only way people get experience driving at night is to drive at night. What's more, experience wasn't a factor. Liz was in her own lane - doing what little she could do to dodge - when the accident happened. If it had been you or me with all out night time driving experience, it wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference."

"I wish to hell it had been me. Then she'd be here," said Jeff.

"Then she'd be here - and you wouldn't - and she'd be sad. She'd be sad but she'd be alive. I have a kid too, Jeff, and if the situation were reversed I know I'd rather it were me too, but it isn't and, much as you might like to, there isn't a damn thing you can do about it. Now I never knew Liz as well as you or Nancy do, but I know she wouldn't want you two to be beating up on yourselves about this. Shit happens sometimes - even to good kids - and it splatters on the people that love them. But Liz wouldn't want you to make it worse by destroying your own life - or anyone else's life either."

"Now we get to the point - this is about Max Evans, isn't it?"

"Yes, it's about Max Evans. Max didn't put that drunk on the road either, Jeff. You want to blame someone, blame the judge for putting that guy back on the road or blame the legislature for writing laws that let soft-headed judges coddle drunks, or the governor for not demanding better laws from them. Hell, blame me for not putting a patrol car where it would have seen that guy weaving all over the road before he ever got to where Liz was driving. There isn't a damn thing that Max Evans did - or didn't do - that caused that accident, and you know it."

"Jim, do NOT tell me you are condoning what that kid did..."

"Of course I'm not condoning it. What I'm trying to point out is that Max is also a victim of this."

"Like that damn drunk was the 'victim' of his alcoholism, is that what you are trying to sell? I'm not buying, Jim."

"Look at those trophies sitting there, Jeff. Half of them have Max Evans name engraved on them too. Liz never considered him the enemy..."

"Liz never considered him at all..."

"That's just not true. Ask Kyle - hell, ask Maria. OK, maybe neither one had gotten around to making the first move, but everyone that knew them figured it was only a matter of time. But then the accident happened and - well maybe Max did go off the rails - I'm not justifying that. But never in all the years those two knew each other did that boy treat her in any way but with friendship and respect."

"Don't you dare, Jim, don't even try to make that bastard a victim. Hell, I don't know what was in the boy's heart all those years... Maybe he was just stalking her the whole damn time and just too afraid of what would happen if he tried to act upon his feelings when she was actually able to do something about it. Hell, maybe he would have grabbed her even if she hadn't been in that accident. You don't know, I don't know, maybe nobody can understand what goes on in the mind of a monster like that. But I know what DID happen. After she was hurt - vulnerable - more defenseless than a newborn baby - then he takes an interest in her. Then his stalking becomes an obsession. Don't try to tell me that I ought to feel sorry for that monster."

"What I'm telling you is that the boy is hurting too, Jeff. Sometimes when you are hurting real bad, you do things that are irrational - like trying to take the law into your own hands."

"And Evans didn't take the law into his own hands when he kidnapped my daughter?"

"No, that's exactly what he did. That's the damnable thing about this whole deal, Jeff. Max cares for someone so much that he becomes irrational and breaks the law - risking a life sentence, and you caring for the same person so much that you are becoming irrational - going after Max Evans and - I'm afraid - risking your own life sentence for what you intend to do to him. How would Liz feel about this? Two people she cares for - both destroying themselves because of something that happened to her - something that neither of them caused?"

Jeff walked over to the science fair trophies and picked up two of them - pitching them against the brick wall above Liz's bed and shattering them.

"Liz doesn't care about Max - or rather she didn't care about him, since I doubt that she's still alive. If she is - well it's just as fortunate then that she's in a coma I guess - so she doesn't know what that bastard has been doing to her.

Maybe you're right, Sheriff, maybe it wasn't my fault that drunk was on the road, maybe it was one of those things and there was no way I could have protected Liz and there's certainly nothing I can do about the drunk. He's dead and I guess that debts been paid as much as it can be paid. Maybe when Max is dead I'll be able to forgive him for what he's no doubt done to Lizzy. I doubt it - but maybe. I think we've said all we have to say to each other about this now, Sheriff. I think maybe you ought to get back to work now. I've got work to do too...."

"Jeff..." Jim looked at Jeff Parker's face and knew that nothing he could say would change a damn thing. But still he had to try.

"OK, I'll go, but I ask you to think for a moment about what it'll do to Nancy if you go doing something that'll separate the two of you. She's already lost one of the people she loves - don't do something that's going to cost her yet another."

As Jim turned and walked back toward the stairwell to leave, Jeff looked at Liz's bed and the broken trophies scattered upon it.

'If I could only have her safe and sound back here again.... God alone knows what that monster is doing to her right now, if she's still alive at all.'


Meanwhile, back in the abyss:

She lay spooned up against him, his arm draped across her waist and the warmth of his breath against her neck. Although neither of them technically had a physical presence in the abyss – heck, she was certain dream-Max was just a figment of her imagination – they nonetheless managed to wind up sort of physically spent.

Liz had once read a woman's magazine in the beauty shop where she got her hair cut that said that sex was 80% mental. The sex she'd just had was – by definition – 100% mental. She found it difficult to even conceive of there actually being another missing 20% to it. It had been – awesome.

Of course, it hadn't been real – but apparently no one had told her brain that and she was laying there in that post multi-coital endorphin flush that makes you seem incredibly alive even - apparently - when you were comatose. Since both she and dream-Max were completely out of breath and neither seemed currently capable of talking, she was thinking about philosophy.

So maybe it wasn't purgatory. Purgatory was supposed to be a sort of junior grade Hell and right now it felt pretty heavenly to Liz Parker – or in this realm, Liz Evans. Dante had a term – Limbo – a place beyond the river Acheron and before Hell itself. Maybe that was what this time in the abyss was.


There was little doubt that her times in the abyss were getting shorter. Both dream-Max and dream-Isabel also had said they were getting less frequent, although Liz honestly couldn't tell. She was only self-aware when she was self-aware , and only in the abyss at that.

Heck, years might have already passed in the real world for all she knew. But she was pretty sure that it wouldn't be long before the periods of her awareness would be vanishingly brief. Then she had a hunch they were going to stop altogether. If she was still in a coma – and not already dead – her body might live on, but no one would be home upstairs – not ever again. So why was she in limbo? What was the cosmic purpose - the metaphysical reason that this she was experiencing this?

Perhaps it was just one of those things – just the hallucination of an injured brain – or perhaps there really was something metaphysical to it. Maybe she WAS being punished – although in fairness the last twenty minutes or so of subjective time had definitely NOT seemed like a punishment– but maybe it had been.

If so, Liz figured her problem – and the reason she was in limbo - wasn't so much what she had done as what she had left undone.

'How many times did you look at the real Max and almost make the first move – the move that would have maybe made him something closer than a lab partner? How many times did you see him look at you and know – deep in your heart – that he wanted something closer too, but then he didn't - and you wouldn't - reach out?

Is this your punishment for never taking that opportunity – for being too proud and too insistent that he make the first move? Is this your punishment before moving on – to experience what you missed because you were the perfect Miss Parker and wanted him to come to you - too concerned about appearances to be the first to reach out to someone who was perfect for you - just a little shy? Is this some sort of Dantesque punishment, to have to experience the joy that you could have had in order that you can feel the pain of knowing that you'll lose it forever?'

Liz wasn't sure if she believed in a hereafter - currently she was having problems just believing in a here - but if there was one, would she spend all eternity remembering dream-Max and the short time she had imagining herself as happily married to Max Evans? That would be diabolical alright - condemned to eternity alone, with memories of times like this merely to torment her. It was sort of like the greek legend of Tantalus who had offended the gods. Tantalus's punishment for his act, was to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches. Whenever he reached for the fruit, the branches raised his intended meal from his grasp. Whenever he bent down to get a drink, the water receded before he could get any.

'Maybe that's going to be your fate,' thought Liz. 'Maybe your eternal punishment is going to be to know that it would have been like this with Max...and then not get any....'

She heard a noise somewhat like a purr come from behind her and felt his lips gently kiss her neck, felt his hand gently move from her waist upward to cup her breast. Liz took a deep breath and smiled. 'Guess you better get it while you can....' she told herself.

"Well, husband of mine - you feeling up for an instant replay?" she asked, the triple-entendre intentional.

As they finished their lunch, Alex realized that there hadn't been a single moment that he hadn't been aware of Isabel's presence. His Will Smith had probably been delicious – they usually were – but the fact was that the cook could probably have shoved a burnt sponge in that bun rather than a burger and Alex doubted that he would have noticed. But that – he was very much afraid – was a problem.

It was frightening to him that he was so obsessed with Isabel and it surprised him that he had taken so long to realize it. It wasn't just the fact that he could barely take his eyes off her during lunch, either. It was that it had suddenly occurred to him that he had been obsessed with her since junior high school.

He'd thought that his dream-girl – Izzy – was simply physically patterned after Isabel Evans – which would have been understandable enough maybe, she was the most beautiful girl in his class - but it was more than that. The closer he'd gotten to her the more he'd realized it. Even when he'd thought of her as an unapproachable Ice Princess, he must have been obsessed with her all along, because 'Izzy' had every quirk and all the mannerisms that the real Isabel Evans had – now that he'd actually gotten to know the young lady. Somehow he must have been sort of - stalking - her all along. But that was only the smaller problem.

The larger problem was that Isabel Evans wasn't 'Izzy' and he was reacting to her as if she was. He'd danced with 'Izzy in a thousand dreams and even dreamed about one day marrying 'Izzy' and having kids. It had been a safe and comfortable situation - a sweet fantasy that had enlivened his otherwise dreary social life. If he were being perfectly fair he'd even admit that 'Izzy' had kept him satisfied in lieu of a social life. He had never been all that comfortable with the opposite sex. Sure, Liz and Maria were his gal-pals, but it had never really been about romance. He'd never really been comfortable enough to honestly consider romance - not with anyone - except his dream-girl 'Izzy.'

But Isabel Evans wasn't 'Izzy', he told himself again . That was reality. 'Izzy' was a dream fashioned after this obsession with the real Isabel Evans. 'Izzy' wasn't Isabel, wasn't an alien, wasn't real at all, and he had no reason to expect THIS Isabel Evans to actually be as happy with his company as he had dreamed 'Izzy' to be. Just because he'd been fantasizing about Isabel through an imaginary alter-ego for a half-decade didn't mean that she'd been doing that with him.

Alex was now very aware just how attracted he felt with Isabel but it had taken this lunch for him to realize that he shouldn't have been THAT attracted to her at all. He wasn't just in lust with her - most of the guys at West Roswell were in lust with her. That would have been hopeless enough. But he actually wanted the whole thing - the happily ever after, the modest four bedroom rancher out in the suburbs with Isabel - no doubt acting just like 'Izzy' - at his side and the national average 2.1 little Whitmans give or take a kid.

'Damn,' he thought to himself, '...how can you actually think that the real Isabel Evans would want to bear your children? That's even more stupid than imagining her as an alien.'

The question was rhetorical - or at least the talking-to-yourself equivalent of rhetorical. He knew the reason of course. Five years of dreaming about 'Izzy' and the short time he'd really known Isabel - and found the personality of the Ice Princess to be not all that different from the personality of his very own 'Izzy,' had led him down the primrose path.

Instead of being shaking in his boots at the thought of having a lunch date with Isabel Evans he had simply thought of her as 'Izzy,' his very own hot date. It probably didn't help that she'd kept scooching over toward him either. He understood - in retrospect - why she'd done that. They had to keep appearances up for Jim Valenti and any feds that might be around - appearances that they actually were a couple.

Just briefly Alex found himself wondering, 'Did I go along with Isabel - help her with a kidnapping - because I was so comfortable with 'Izzy'?' Perhaps in part he had, he decided. It was the sort of decision that - had he not obviously been obsessed with Isabel Evans all these years - he would have considered a whole lot more carefully. But even now, after the fact, considering it in the clear light of day, he decided he would have trusted her anyway. He'd seen the kind of person she was when she'd been helping Maria care for Liz. No, Isabel Evans might not be 'Izzy', and certainly wasn't some alien life form, but she wasn't the Ice Princess she had pretended to be for all those years either. Isabel cared about Liz, and Alex had always believed that Max had cared about Liz as well, even if he was just as shy as a certain tall angular computer geek/musician. Max wouldn't be doing something to hurt Liz and Isabel wouldn't be helping him if he was. That much was sure.

'Which still leaves you with a problem,' he told himself. [i}'Do you have any idea how close you came to putting your arm around her waist and pulling her into an embrace in there? Or of rubbing your leg against hers underneath the table? Maybe 'Izzy' would have let you get away with it. Isabel would have more likely flattened you - like she did that FBI guy - and you would have had it coming.'[/i]

Clearly, his awareness that he had somehow fallen hopelessly in love with Isabel Evans was causing Alex quite a bit of discomfiture. Isabel, on the other hand, was happy as a lark. After an eternity of wanting Alex in the dream-orb she'd finally found her courage to confess to him what she was and how she felt about him - certain that he felt the same way. Well, ignorance, as they say, is bliss - at least it was for a few minutes.

As they left the Crashdown together Isabel was excited and happy. Her plan of just getting close to Alex - just mentally erasing the 'my space' sort of distance that everyone kept between themselves and everyone else except for those they love had seemed to have been a complete success - at least it had to her. Things were a little less comfortable with Alex.

It wasn't that he wasn't attracted to her by the closeness - he certainly was. The problem was that he knew it was all an act - just something to bolster the alibi. The difference was very basic. Isabel had been becoming closer and closer to Alex for five or six years. She'd been in his arms - ok, just dancing, but in his arms anyway - for thousands of dances. She was ready to get serious. Alex had been living in a dream-world fantasy those first five years - but only thought he'd gotten to know Isabel since Liz's accident. Physically he was feeling what she felt. Mentally it was starting to scare the hell out of him. What occurred was almost predictable.

As they walked out of the restaurant Isabel took his hand in hers - their fingers intertwined.

"Alex, would you go for a ride in the desert with me? I'd like to show you something," she said as she moved closer to him - transferring his hand behind her back to her other hand - then settling it down comfortably on her hip as the original hand went back to Alex's waist to pull him closer and putting her head on his shoulder, maximizing the body contact.

What Alex actually wanted to do - well let's just say the primordial urge was certainly there. What his intelligence told him, however, was something different. But intelligence is NOT the be all and end all of evolution. Many species that survive and reproduce perfectly well are dumb as a box of rocks. Some species of shellfish are damn near indistinguishable from a box of rocks and have no measurable intelligence, but they survive real well as filter feeders and - like sea urchins - never even see their mates, instead sending out millions of eggs and sperm that get carried on the currents and meet and start new progeny - billions of them, and if only 2.1 of those billions actually get to breeding size themselves - well, the system is working - overcoming entropy by bringing new structure to the universe.

Yes, intelligence in fact was a side-effect of evolution, not a very popular one among the species, and it had many faults. It required a lot of nurturing - which meant not many offspring in one breeding, and they had to be carried internally by the female for a damn long time. During that time they were at risk for any little thing that threatened the female - in addition to their own developmental risks. Eventually the large braincase became so damn large the offspring had to be expelled if it was going to fit through the birth canal at all - and this happened before the offspring was even mature enough to take care of itself. This required a prolonged period of care by one or both parents that was taxing to the extreme - not to mention them having to endure something called 'the teenage' years of their offspring when they transitioned from juveniles to adults with more angst than anyone would have believed possible. Clearly, intelligence carried with it an awful lot of risk to the 'survive and reproduce' mission necessary to defeat entropy.

Oh sure, intelligence had some minor advantages. Genetic exchange is the whole purpose of sex - variety is good evolutionarily because it allows the development of pro-survival traits - and that small part of Isabel that originated on Antar and would have made a worthwhile contribution to the Whitman genome would have never been on Earth but for the extraterrestrial intelligence that sent it there. But a lot of times intelligence was simply a pain in the butt because it over analyzed things and gave you sort of analysis paralysis. That was happening to Alex right now.

'I'd like to show you something,' his mind echoed, as his nostrils filled themselves with the honeysuckle scent of her shampoo and his hand on her hip seemed to have of mind of its own - wanting desperately to pull Isabel even closer and perhaps gently massage that hip just a little. He was also acutely aware of her hand on his waist - her body pressing softly against hers - and how very good that felt to. He tried to make eye contact to talk with her - to put this back on an intellectual level - and succeeded mainly in learning that with her leaning in to rest her head against his shoulder like she was and wearing that camisole blouse, and him being taller than her .... well, he wasn't so much making eye contact as he was getting an excellent view of some truly awesome cleavage. It was the final straw.

Alex's brain was working overtime. He trusted Isabel - but wasn't at all sure she should trust him. He had obviously been secretly stalking her for years - subconsciously stalking her, not even knowing he was doing it - as well as obsessing about her to the point where he was unable to have a dream that didn't involve her. And now that he had gotten to know him and she needed to pretend that she was romantically involved with him - well, he was having difficulty sorting out fantasy from reality. He tried once more to talk to her - and wound up getting an even better view of that cleavage - and now he was starting to lose control of not just his thoughts but of his body as well as he felt a bulge begin to form in his shorts that if he didn't look away from her chest promptly was going to be noticeable to passersby and Isabel herself shortly.

'This isn't a fantasy and the girl does NOT lust after becoming the mother if your children,' his mind told him insistently.

It was dead wrong of course - I mentioned that intelligence was over-rated - but that's what it told him.

'If you can't put some distance between the two of you you are going to wind up insulting her and embarrassing yourself - or worse.'

Once again, the intelligence couldn't have been more wrong. If he'd just said 'uh-huh' or even just nodding his head while continuing to ogle the view down the scoop front of the camisole blouse, in fifteen or twenty minutes Alex would have been out in the desert, seeing a few extraterrestrial powers, learning the truth, and finding his true love.

That would have been followed up by going somewhere to do some serious cuddling - where actually getting to second base would have certainly been in play - at least from Isabel's perspective. That wasn't what happened though. Intelligence screwed it all up.

"Isabel...."

"Yes, Alex?"

"I don't think that would be a good idea. Right now being around you makes me sort of ... uncomfortable."

Isabel's first thought was that only a few hours ago - in his dream-orb - she'd told him she was an alien. Alex was afraid of her because he knew she was an alien.

Obviously her intelligence was just as over-rated as his, decided her primal urge, totally exasperated now. Dutifully, it set about picking up the pieces of what it had planned as being a significant movement forward in their relationship. It would sort this out. It had been doing this sort of thing for a long time. It would just slow things down a little bit.

Alex saw the flash of fear and pain that went through Isabel's eyes for only the fewest milliseconds - but the emotions there seemed as clear as if he'd been looking in to her soul. The problem wasn't that he misinterpreted her feelings - he just had no idea whatsoever why THOSE feelings had been in her eyes. That posed an immediate dilemma.

OK, he was a geek and music freak. All those hours spent learning how to play three instruments - practicing by himself - and all the time he'd been learning computer programming and hacking stuff on the internet had taken a real chunk out of what would have been his social life. He'd substituted for the latter by dreaming about his 'Izzy.'

But even a socially inept geek musician recognized he had screwed up somehow - even though he had no idea of just which particular 'how' he'd somehow managed to screw up. Did Isabel think he didn't trust her about the Liz kidnapping thing? Did she fear he was going to rat her out to Valenti? Had she noticed that his shorts seemed somehow fuller than they had been at the start of the meal and thought that was what he meant? Alex had no idea. The possibilities of how he'd fouled up seemed almost endless.

The thought that she might be herself infatuated with him and had felt rejected by his comment, sadly, was not anywhere in consideration - another strike against the idea that intelligence was all it was cracked up to be.

But as socially inept as Alex was he did know the two basic truisms of boy-girl relations. 1. When you know how you've screwed up, apologize and beg forgiveness. 2. If you have no idea how you've screwed up (not uncommonly the case for geeks) for Pete's sake don't apologize for the wrong thing. You'll only get in deeper. The correct procedure in the latter case is to start a babbling self-effacing verbal tap dance over why you said what you just said. If you have any chance at all of salvaging the situation, the girl will take pity on you and either identify your transgression, understand that you didn't mean whatever she thought you said - that you had merely worded what you meant to say poorly - that you were a harmless imbecile who was so socially inept that you were more to be pitied then censured, or if you babbled sufficiently long she'd sometimes just forget the whole thing.

Geeks actually get a fair amount of mileage out of the latter two options of procedure two, actually, although that's partly because they tend to associate with girls almost as absent-minded as they are themselves - not really the case here. Nonetheless, as he realized he didn't have a clue how he had fouled up, Alex went down the decision-tree flowchart in his brain and came up with option two.

"What I meant to say, Isabel, is that I'm not the most ... well, I guess you'd say experienced at this boy-girl stuff. I'm not exactly a social butterfly - more like a caterpillar - and before you say that's OK, you'll show me, I have to tell you the whole truth. I've sort of dreamed about you for years .... I mean, I didn't mean to or anything .... it just happened. I sort of built this big unrealistic fantasy about you and when you asked me to help you - well, I started having trouble telling fantasy from reality. That's kind of why I got carried away last night with that kiss..."

"I told you not to be sorry about that, Alex. That I wasn't - and I'm not."

"Which shows that you are a real good sport - or more desperate for an alibi than you should be. I told you, I trust you about Liz. I saw how you took care of her with Maria and - well I have to apologize."

"Apologize? For what?"

"Well, for all those years I dreamed about you - kind of lusting after your body I guess - thinking that you really were an Ice Princess. Not realizing that you are probably the most human person I know..."

Isabel smiled, appreciating the thought - even if the facts were totally mixed up. From the perspective of someone who had dreamwalked almost every kid in her junior high, they had damn near all lusted after her except for a select few that had lusted after each other. Adolescent boys were like that.

The difference with Alex was that the dream manifestation of his lusting had never gone farther than dancing with her. Not so much as a single kiss - unlike the graphic dreams of what most of his fellows aspired to do - more to her than with her. He had not so much as tried a single kiss in any of their dreams. Exactly how he'd gone from that to picturing her having his children - and twins at that -she wasn't just sure, although even that had happened only after years of romantic dreamwalks. No other guy had ever dreamed of her actually having their children - or being married to her either, for that matter, although in fairness she hadn't dreamwalked any other guy for all of five years and then some.

But it is at this point that that 'intelligence' thing started to again cause problems. You see, she too could suffer from analysis paralysis. in fact she'd been suffering from that for years.

A couple of foundling puppies wouldn't have given a damn that the couple that picked them up alongside the room and gave them food, water, and a nice home - and most especially love - were a different species, even if in that case they really were. Isabel's superior intelligence had been keeping her away from happiness pretty much her entire time in Roswell, and it was going to do it again.


What Isabel decided was that what was going on was profoundly unfair to Alex. When she'd first dreamwalked him - all those years ago - he had seemed like the alien to her - but she had been in control since she could leave the orb whenever she wanted to. The situation now was sort of the reverse. She'd learned over all those years what sort of a person Alex Whitman was. That was why she had trusted him - why she had been ready to tell him and show him the truth.

'But he hasn't known it was me. It was just 'Izzy,' his dream dance partner. He still doesn't believe it's me.'

It was starting to dawn on Isabel Evans that as much as she had enjoyed the closeness - like the physical casualness that her mother had with her father - it had still almost been overpowering. And that was how she'd reacted, '...and you had over five years to get ready for it. This is happening way too fast for Alex. What's more, is this really fair to Alex?'

Now 'fairness' is another concept of intelligence. It was, perhaps, one of its greatest failings in the opinion of the primal urge. What the hell was this fairness idea? Homo sapiens existed because they'd stolen the food of the Neanderthals - that's what happens when you occupy their niche. Quite possibly a few of them had actually eaten Neanderthals themselves. Evolution recognized no fairness - it was a mad dash to reverse entropy and whoever was best at it won and whoever wasn't - well, entropy got them and they eventually became reduced to randomness. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, that's how it worked. Evolution didn't believe in 'fairness' - didn't believe that endangered species ought to be protected - didn't believe in anything except for the struggle against entropy - coincidentally, just what Max was trying to do and just the battle Liz was now losing as entropy caused her fatally damaged neurons to gradually quit.

What Isabel was now wondering about is if her years of dream-walking Alex had somehow un'fairly' affected him - imprinted him sort of - made him predisposed to go along with her on the kidnapping cover-up? The reality was - of course it had[/url]. The whole purpose of her dreamwalking, evolutionarily speaking, was so the female could safely determine the most appropriate mate and safely and effectively get him interested - get him BONDED to her BEFORE anyone else recognized how good he was. That was the evolutionary advantage that dreamwalking gave - the very reason it had evolved. Fairness didn't have anything to do with it. The primal urge in Isabel had detected the best available mate for her and it had done everything it could in the dreamwalks to make Isabel attractive to him. That's what evolution is all about. Alex had the best DNA for Isabel and her primal urge wanted it. 'Fair' really didn't come in to it.

But even so, the scales balanced. Not only did it mean that Alex was going to get the best DNA for his kids - and a mother that would be able to defend them enormously well - but even the ethical stuff really worked both ways, which if Isabel would have known the truth might have calmed her down a little. Because while it was true that her personality was working on his for all of those dreamwalks - predisposing him to want her by imprinting her avatar on his psyche - his was doing the exact same thing to her. Fair or not, these two were now meant for each other - in fact would not truly be happy with anyone else. Or at least they will be happy, if their 'intelligence' can just keep out of the way. Fat chance of that happening though.

"...and well, you still deserve someone who can separate fiction from reality and not get carried away like I did....," said Alex.

"Alex!" Isabel said, "... we both got carried away - not just you. I'm the one that got carried away and slapped that FBI guy,"

"You sure did..."

"...and then you got carried away and grabbed his gun. Alex, I came to you because I knew the kind of person you were - not just because I trusted you, but because I needed you. I can't do this alone - not because I need the alibi - I probably could have got by without tat - but because I need someone I can be honest with. I can't trust my mother or my father - they are both 'officers of the court' and would think they had to turn Max in because they wouldn't believe how important this is. They wouldn't believe it when I say that Max really has a chance to cure Liz. You did. But it's more than that, Alex. I really do need you - emotionally. I need to feel the way I feel when I look up at the sky and you show me the constellations and we watch meteorites together. I know you don't believe that - I don't blame you. I've acted like a stone-cold bitch for so long that I almost came to believe it myself. So now I'm going to ask you another favor. Don't worry about your dreams - or your lusting after my body. Let's just sort of do a restart - without any preconditions. I want first of all just to be your friend. We'll take it slow and see where it goes - OK?"

Alex looked at her skeptically. 'See where it goes...?' No way could it go anywhere - not with a goddess like Isabel. But even being her friend was something. Besides, the girl could take care of herself.

"I guess if I get too pushy you can always lay me out like you did Phillips, huh?"
said a sheepishly grinning Alex.

"I guess I could if I had to," nodded Isabel. Of course, that wasn't really the way she wanted to lay him out, but to be 'fair' she thought she'd go slowly and tell him the truth later - many months later - when he was more ready for it. Then she could find the spot and explain the whole truth. Then - if he was still speaking to her - she could apologize and see if there was any hope for the two of them.

"How about we go to the dance tonight?" she asked.

Alex thought about it. There would be plenty of people there so he was unlikely to get too carried away - besides, he loved the idea of dancing with Izzy - or Isabel rather.

"That would be wonderful. What time should I pick you up?"

So instead of a scared spitless Isabel actually coming clean - and forcing Alex to deal with the fact that it had ALWAYS been Isabel he'd fallen in love with, and she did indeed look favorably upon the prospect of producing mini-Whitmans and the whole happily ever after thing, it all got put on indefinite hold where both parties would no doubt churn and rechurn their doubts and fears and guilt. Ain't intelligence wonderful?

Meanwhile, back in the abyss....

It had been totally wonderful. Just a dream of course, but a totally wonderful one. Of course it couldn't last forever, and as a small cluster of badly damaged neurons in the reticular activating system - in fact, all of what was left of Liz's reticular activating system, fatigued to the point that they could no longer carry impulses between her midbrain reticular formation and the internal capsule of the brain of her brain. Stripped of all the neurophysiology, that meant that Liz's self-awareness was going to go off line until those damaged and dying neurons were rested up again. Liz had experienced this often enough that she could sense it coming.

"Uh-oh," she said, "...the lights are going to go out again. It was lovely though, even if none of it was real...."

But before those lights actually did go out, she saw the look on dream-Max's face - the hurt in those eyes - and realized that - imaginary though it was - she'd diminished a beautiful dream. She knew that Max was a dream - but she also knew that every time she indicated that she didn't believe the fantasy about dream-Max actually being Max Evans - and an alien-hybrid Max Evans at that, dream-Max looked at her with such pain in his eyes. He never said anything - in fact would try to laugh it off - but the brief unguarded expressions she got were the looks of someone who was in pain. It really ruined the ambience.

'Don't ever do that again,' she told herself. 'It doesn't matter - reality doesn't change if you go along with the story line. Why ruin a good fantasy - especially since they seem to be getting shorter and shorter - over something that makes no difference whatsoever?'

As the abyss dissolved around him, Max fought to wake up. Suddenly he was back - his hand gently grasping hers. He got up off the airbed, and checked her feeding line - checked her Depends and quickly and expertly changed them. Then he reached for yet another textbook on physics and astrophysics and how you might theoretically stop time - reverse the entropy that drove the arrow of time according to that journal article. It was tough slogging. Besides, his mind kept coming back to the fade to black in the abyss.

'You let her see that it bothered you that she didn't believe you again - and it upset her,' he chided himself - again. It really didn't matter. he knew, if Liz actually believed that he was real or not, as long as she helped him sort through all this theoretical physics, and she was doing that. In fact, Liz had resigned herself to all this being a fantasy - one that would lead inexorably to her ceasing to ever be aware. What if all he would do if he somehow could get her to belief would be to give her false hope? What if he could never solve the riddle of the stasis chambers?

Liz's status was continuing to deteriorate. Max had hoped - prayed - that she would have just a few moments of consciousness - that he could have made a connection that would have at least kept her self-aware in the abyss, because despite all the physical therapy he was doing she clearly was continuing to deteriorate. You can't build muscle with passive exercises - physically Liz was wasting away. Her muscles atrophied from disuse, she seemed more fragile than ever.

Max had entered in to this whole kidnapping thing with such high hopes - that somehow he'd find a way to awaken her - that she would wake up in the podchamber and know that he and Izzy had been telling the truth in the abyss. He had wanted so much to look in to her eyes - show her the ring he wore on his hand - the same design as the ring he'd crafted for her hand - and tell her he meant every word of those vows. Tell her that if she had any doubts she could take her ring off - that the marriage would be forever unconsummated in the real world and she could forget it had ever happened - even though he knew he never would. What he been hoping, however, was that once she was back conscious - once she really believed - she could accept him as her husband. Sure, he'd gotten her to take the same vows that he had, the vows that - in his mind at least - gave him as her husband the right to take her away from that nursing home - take her to somewhere that she had a chance at least. Without her informed consent it wasn't really consent at all, and he wouldn't hold her to the marriage.

But the fact was, the hope was starting to fade. He was making damn near no progress at all - even with Liz's best help - and with each passing week, the time Liz was able to be self-aware was growing shorter. Nothing he could seem to do was changing that.

'Well, you can at least stop letting her see that her denial hurts your feelings. It isn't like it makes a damn bit of difference to the outcome. If she ever comes back to consciousness, she'll know soon enough that you are real. If she doesn't, maybe her thinking it's all a fantasy will be kinder.'

Max had found out the truth - that when you open your heart to someone you become vulnerable - not only to the things that they do that might hurt you, but to the things that their destiny might do to them as well. At least, that's what his intelligence told him.

Of course, had he been listening to his own primal self instead of reading those books, he would have no doubt heard that destiny is just another way of saying entropy, and entropy was the enemy - an enemy that evolution and his own primal self had been fighting since the first complex molecule was formed hundreds of millions of years ago. Yeah, in all those millions of years, it was only evolution that had been at all successful - and the fight was still going on. But right now, the score was still evolution one, entropy nil, and evolution planned on keeping it that way.

Of course, Max wasn't listening to his primal self - he was listening to his intelligence.

Yep, intelligence is really over-rated.

It was 2:30 AM twenty days later when Isabel quietly opened her window and slipped out of the house. She had thought that another resupply of Max wouldn't be needed for over another week – and technically she was right. Max had the supplies – it was a couple of journals he wanted that she had gotten from the New Mexico State University library at Las Cruces. Isabel had read them – well, she'd tried to anyway – and they meant nothing to her whatsoever. One had something to do with 'Time's Arrow and Boltzmann's entropy which meant nothing whatsoever to Isabel. The other was a theoretical discusson of something called Maxwell's demon the very name of which had scared the hell out of her – at least until she'd perused the article and found out it was a theoretical discussion of entropy.

It was understandable enough that she was worried about Max though, things were not going well with Liz. It had been ten days since the first time neither of them had been able to dreamwalk her for an entire day. Initially they'd thought they'd just missed her – that Liz had been in the abyss one or more times that day but that neither of them had been asleep at the time. When she had been able to dreamwalk her the next day, serious deterioration in the abyss was readily apparent. What was worse was that Liz had no memory of being in the abyss at all since the last time Max had dreamwalked her. They hadn't 'missed' a session with her in the abyss, there hadn't been one. That was the first time Liz's brain hadn't been able to sustain a level of awareness enough for a dream-orb, even a primitive and incomplete dream-orb like the abyss, since her accident. Isabel had changed her sleep schedule to dreamwalk Max and tell him and he had not taken the news well.

Isabel had gotten the distinct impression that the search for a way to stop time was not going well in the podchamber, despite the presence of machines that had – Izzy knew from personal experience – done precisely that.

But worse than that, Max had taken the news poorly. He'd been almost frantic to get hold of the journal articles – to try to get some handle on stopping time before any further degeneration occurred in Liz's capability for self-awareness. His dream-orb had been a little shaky itself – like he wasn't getting much sleep himself, his orb acting like it was trying to push him in to deep non-REM sleep from sheer exhaustion. That was sort of understandable really. Max was putting in long hours just looking after Liz – just the basic nursing functions – while also trying to solve a problem that had stumped the greatest scientific minds on Earth. Add to that the time he had to try to force himself to sleep so he could dreamwalk Liz – and how guilty he felt if he left her unaccompanied in the abyss – and Max's state of mind wasn't the best. He was starting, she believed, to doubt that he could figure out how to get the stasis chambers back on line, not just before Liz lost self-awareness, but before her body – cut off from the brain by her coma – started getting all the complications of coma.

Her brother, Isabel believed, was in a race to save the life of his wife and her friend, and right now he was losing. That's why the delivery was going to be made a little over a week early. Maybe the journal articles wouldn't help but if there was any chance they would ...well, she wasn't going to let her brother - or her sister-in-law down.

As the jeep slowly pulled out of the driveway and turned down the street, the parked car fired up and started slowly after it – it's lights still dim. While the driver kept careful watch of the tail lights of the jeep, Deputy Federal Marshal Posner dialed a number.

As the cellphone rang, Jim Valenti fought his way back to consciousness. He had only gotten to bed an hour ago himself. It had been a Friday night and he'd taken Amy to a movie. She'd invited him in for coffee and – well if Michael Guerin hadn't gotten back about that time from his date with Maria it might have gone farther. As it was it was just as well that they'd heard Michael's motorcycle in time to both get some buttons buttoned.

“Sheriff, this is Deputy Posner – Miss Evans appears to be going for another late night ride.”

“Which direction?”

“Currently north.”

“Just shadow her and direct me to her. I checked a jeep out from the county search and rescue people. It should be able to go anywhere that hers does. You vector me to her and then let me take the lead... I don't want to lose her.”

“OK, Sheriff. How about Agent Sanchez?”

“If you can give him a call, I'll pick him up as I swing by his room. Tell him to hurry though. I'll be there in five minutes or less.”

Jim grabbed his jacket and ran for the jeep parked in the carport alongside the garage.

'beep'

Jeff quickly grabbed for the pager on the bed table beside his pillow and pushed the off button. He looked at his wife in the scant light that filtered around the drapes from the streetlight outside and was glad to see Nancy was asleep. She had difficulty going to sleep these days, and oftentimes would awaken sobbing - yet another thing the Evans boy had to answer for. But answer he would, Jeff knew as he quietly got out of the bed and headed for the stairs to the upper floor. Within seconds he was in what he thought of as his 'war room', across the hall from Liz's room, and was booting up the computer. Within a minute it had logged on to the tracker site. Isabel Evans was headed north out of town.

The tracker program allowed you to set up geographical boundaries electronically. When the tracking device moved past that boundary - in this case the city limits of Roswell itself - the beeper went off. Then you could watch the unit being tracked every two minutes in near-real time - at least until it went out of cell phone tower range here in the wide open spaces of eastern New Mexico.

In one sense, it was unnecessary to get up at all this morning. Obviously she was again going out of cellphone range and it was only after she returned that her unit would download the data on the points where she'd been. He would then overly the map of her first early morning trip with the map of this morning's trip and determine where the routes converged. It might not be enough to tell him where the boy was now, but eventually - and inevitably - as he got more information, he would find Max Evans' hiding place.

What was going on - however much it might look like a vendetta - was not really that. What was going on was pain - finding an escape in some sort of purposeful action. Jeff Parker was trapped no less than Liz in the abyss. Trapped in a world of pain and inadequacy where he'd found himself helpless in the face of overwhelming tragedy. Human beings - perhaps even all intelligent beings - have a very long developmental period and remain immature for years even after birth. More than other species, parenting is important to them.

Years previously, the United States government had initiated a great social experiment in which an attempt had been made to assist children by providing economically for those children whose fathers could not or would not do so - the theory being that fathers were primarily providers of economic resources while mothers in fact did most of the parenting. Initially for mothers to get these funds it was legally necessary that there be no father in the home. The program had gone disastrously badly.

Children, it turned out, needed fathers - nearly as badly as they needed mothers. Oh sure, individually it sometimes worked. There were mothers who raised children well despite the absence of male parenting, but that's not how evolution works. Evolution works on the herd - not on the individual. As a group, the children who had both parents fared much better than those with only one. Evolutionarily, fathers who - like Jeff Parker - loved and cared for their children were more effective at contributing their DNA to the gene pool than those who did not. That innate drive to protect and defend was an important survival factor for the DNA carried by Liz Parker. But such a drive has its problems. Frustrated by a situation it couldn't control - the damage to his daughter's brain - it had been relentlessly frustrated.

Jeff Parker wasn't a stupid man. If he'd been able to stand off and look dispassionately at what was going on, he would have been the first to admit that Max Evans had not caused his daughter's dilemma. He might even have been capable of admitting that Max - at least through the agency of Diane Evans - had been more capable than himself at assisting his daughter in getting the care from the insurance company and he might even have admitted that it had been Max who had done the research to find the medical facility most capable of treating her and managed the negotiation with the insurance company to give her her best chance with current technology. And the fact was, if Jeff Parker knew how much Max cared for his daughter - knew that he was working himself incessantly to provide her body with the care it required while simultaneously trying to understand astrophysical theories that had eluded Albert Einstein, he might even have given Max a break about the kidnapping. Unfortunately, he knew none of that.

What he did know was that the Albuquerque Police Department had told him that Max Evans was a seriously disturbed young man who was a stalker and obsessed by his daughter - who might do terrible things to her - and that Liz Parker's father had let that boy walk off with his helpless daughter bringing pain to his wife Nancy and doing God only knew what to their daughter. He loved Liz so much but there was no way he could have failed her more completely. He couldn't bring his daughter back - couldn't undo the damage that had been done to her - but he could at least punish Max Evans for what he'd done to her. He hated Max Evans - almost as badly as he hated himself right now.


Philip Evans loved his daughter too. Which is why she was in an ancient Jeep CJ-7 rather than the high powered little red convertible she and Max had wanted. In New Mexico you can get your driving permit at 15 and you may get your license as young as 15 and a half years of age. The speed limit on the freeway is seventy-five mph, and most everybody goes even faster than that. There are a lot of wide open spaces in New Mexico. Which was why Philip Evans did NOT want his kids to have a powerful car.

What he would have liked to have given them was an ancient International Scout which was built like a tank. Neither of the kids had thought that was a good idea. So they'd gotten their 'sporty convertible' - a late-1970s black jeep with the rip-snorting 151 cubic inch straight four engine that had put out 82 horsepower when new and was probably putting out about seventy-five horsepower now. The CJ-7 had a longer wheelbase than the CJ-5 and an aftermarket roll bar that made it almost the equivalent structurally of that Scout. Except it looked like a kids car - which made all the difference. Of course, that little four cylinder engine wasn't going to compare with a real sports car, but then it wouldn't get the kids in much trouble going over that seventy-five mile an our speed limit either. Of course, it wasn't the very best thing for outrunning the law with either.

She was almost seven miles north of town - halfway to the pod chamber - when she cut over to the east. The stash of supplies was just off a paved road - the DeLuca Jetta wasn't up to any off-road travel. This was - she realized - the most tricky part. She knew that her excuse that she was out to meet Alex Whitman wouldn't be enough to explain the Ensure, the Depends, and the other supplies if she were caught with them. It would be obvious to everyone - and undeniable to her folks - that she was taking supplies to Max and to Liz.

Once again she'd seen the police car following her but she wasn't too worried. She had time to pick up the supplies before it got to her - then to continue down the unpaved road to the open desert beyond. In that rough country, no police car would be able to follow her. Quickly she loaded the supplies - her eyes on the police car that had been shadowing her - and got back in the jeep. She accelerated down the road - the rear wheels briefly throwing gravel to the back as she accelerated. With luck she could lose them quickly in the desert and head northbound. As she looked backwards in rear-view mirror she was taken by surprise by the headlights of a second vehicle.

As Jim Valenti passed the police car with Posner in it, he had every reason to feel confident. The jeep he was driving was not the same underpowered vehicle that Isabel Evans was driving. Search and Rescue personnel were - in their own way - not that much different from teenagers. This jeep had the big engine - a fuel injected six cylinder 3.8 liter - that lifted it's horsepower to 215 - and ran on oversize tires. It sported a large winch on its front bumper for pulling itself up slopes and an array of antennas for its multitude of radios. Its greater width - the result of the wide tires - made it more stable and its raised suspension gave it greater ground clearance.

"There she is..." said Jaime Sanchez.

"I see her," said Jim, "Let's just follow her awhile. Maybe we'll get lucky and she'll lead us to him. If not, well, we can stop her and maybe find something incriminating in her possession. Watch her closely - if she tries to throw anything away we'll need to pick it up for evidence. "

"You think she'll really tell us where he is if we catch her with something?"

"I doubt it - blood is thicker than water - but if we can get her parents on our side maybe they can put pressure on her. She is actually at greater risk that Max. With his history, the shrinks will probably get him a reduced sentence - maybe just a few years treatment. Isabel doesn't have that excuse."

"Damn, I think she's seen us. There she goes out on the desert," said Jaime.

"Two can play that game," said Jim Valenti as he shifted the powerful jeep into four wheel drive.

The Pecos River, one of the major tributaries of the Rio Grande, rises on the western slope of the Santa Fe mountain range in Mora County, New Mexico (at 35°59' N, 105°33' W), and runs south through San Miguel, Guadalupe, De Baca, Chaves, and Eddy counties in New Mexico before it enters Texas just east of the 104th meridian. The topography of the river valley ranges from mountain pastures in the north, with an elevation of more than 13,000 feet above sea level, to grasslands, semiarid irrigated farmlands, desert with sparse vegetation, and, in the lowermost reaches of the river, deep canyons. The principal cities along the river in New Mexico are Las Vegas, Santa Rosa, Fort Sumner, Roswell, Artesia, and Carlsbad .Through most of its more than 900-mile-long course, the Pecos River parallels the Rio Grande. The total drainage area of the Pecos in New Mexico and Texas is about 44,000 square miles.

Northeast of Roswell along the old Clovis highway – where Isabel had picked up the supplies – the land was flat – or at least nearly so. It was technically part of the Pecos River watershed – although there was seldom much warer to shed into the river there. Annual rainfall there was only about thirteen inches a year – strangely enough most of that came in August in brief drenching thunderstorms. The desert was generally baked hard, and when the thunderstorms occurred little of it would soak in to the desert. Most would be channeled by the hard baked ground toward the arroyos that had – over the ages – been carved in to the flat ground. Here the water would rise rapidly – flash floods were not uncommon – as the thunderstorms sometimes emptied an inch or two of water onto a vast plain in less than 45 minutes. The water would flow into shallow channels, coalesce, and thunder down these small canyons into the Pecos river.

It wasn't raining this morning, but Isabel was certainly using those arroyos. Each had a long and relatively deep central channel - sheer cliffs rising anywhere from four to fifteen feet from the dry bed to the adjacent desert bed. But each one also had more superficial drainage plains that collected water and brought it to that central channel. These she could roar down to travel along the bottom of the arroyo - where the many boulders made it impossible for the patrol car to follow her - and then power up the nearest adjacent channel on the other side. That was how she'd gotten away from her followers the first time. This time, unfortunately, she lacked the advantage she'd enjoyed then.

"We are headed north," shouted Jim Valenti over the noise of the engine and the rattling of rocks under the wheels, "... roughly paralleling the Pecos river. She can't turn east because the river is too high right now. There are places it can normally be forded, but with the recent rains up in the mountains, none of the fords near here will be passable. The old Clovis Highway runs northeast to southwest. We have Posner and his partner up on the road on her flank while we are driving her further north. She'll be trapped between the road and the river eventually - assuming we don't catch her first."

Isabel raced down one feeder branch of the arroyo and up the one on the north side. The ground was - for a while at least - flat there, and she took the opportunity to look to her left back along the roadway. The car up there - almost certainly a police car despite the lack of strobe lights - was roughly pacing her. She had headed north without any real conscious thought - that was the direction of the podchamber - but it had been a mistake. Even if there were only the police car it might have been able to cut her off this way - trapping her against the river - but it wasn't just the police car - it was far worse than that.

She had a slim advantage on the car behind her - almost certainly a 4 wheel drive one - behind her. When she went down into an arroyo it couldn't see her. It didn't know if she ran uphill - to the left - or downhill toward the river until she re-emerged back on the desert floor. It gave her a few seconds more lead each arroyo she went through, but of course it wouldn't last. The vehicle behind was closing fast and when it finally got close enough to not lose sight when she went into an arroyo the driver would have no such uncertainty. She was going to be caught within minutes.

She looked down at the bag of supplies - Max needed them within a few weeks, but except for that journal in the glove compartment there was nothing he needed immediately. The journal at least would not be incriminating. She could toss the supplies from the vehicle into the darkness- she'd be out something less that $300 - and just keep going until she was pulled over. In the darkness of the desert they'd never find the stuff and even if they did they couldn't prove it was hers. It was the only thing to do. She bent down to try to grab the supplies so she could fling them out at the next area of bushes - but before she could the desert lit up like the noonday sun.

"Damn!" said Jim Valenti, as he turned on the six halogen off-road lights mounted on the roll bar. "Search and Rescue guys are just plain crazy. That must be about a zillion candlepower."

"It does seem a little like overkill," conceded Jaime Sanchez, "Can't fault the results though. If she tries to get rid of any evidence, we are going to know it and see where it goes for retrieval once we corner her."

"Dammit," said Isabel to herself. She wondered briefly if she could toss the bag the next time she went down into an arroyo - she'd be in the shadows then. The problem was that the car behind her would follow her - and with those lights they'd see the stuff. All they'd need to do would be to mark the place and return once they caught her - surely withing the next few miles - and they would have more than enough in the way of what her mother called 'probable cause' to interrogate her - maybe even get her parents to restrict her use of the jeep.

'.....and Max and Liz are depending on you...' she told herself.

She looked again in the rearview mirror - wincing at the brightness. She needed to make a move. Her present course of action was a losing proposition. She couldn't head south - that would be right in to those headlights. She could continue north until she was trapped as she ran out of terrain, turn east and drive into the Pecos River, or head west and probably be trapped by the other vehicle.

'Well doing what you are doing is a certain disaster...,' she told herself. Being 'probably' trapped had to be an improvement. As soon as she was down into the middle of the next arroyo she turned the wheel sharply to the left and headed west - toward the old Clovis road.