The Four Faces of Rath (CC/AU,ALL,TEEN)

[Island Breeze]

The Four Faces of Rath



Ch-Ch-Changes

Chapter 20

XX



A shocked Michael stared at the two who had just entered the room.

“Zan? Is that you? …And Ava?”

Zan nodded… “Ava always believed that one day you would return, Michael. We’ve been waiting for you for… almost seventy years.”

“But this isn’t… this is……… Seventy years?” Michael asked, Zan’s statement just registering with him. “How old are you?”

“We’re ninety-three… both of us. But you don’t look a day older than when we saw you last, Michael. You must tell us your secret!”

“I just left you… seventy years in the past… Where’s Max? …and Liz… and MARIA! Oh my God! …MARIA!” Michael looked around quickly, and all the blood began to drain from his face. “Where’s Zorel… and Kryys, and Jayyd?”

Zan looked at Ava, and she shrugged.

“We don’t know those people, Michael. Are they in your time?”

“Yes. No… I mean… This is my time, Zan! This is the time that I came from. I left them all here when I went back to the past.” Michael collapsed onto a sofa and buried his face in his hands. “They’re gone! Everyone I knew… Everyone I ever loved…”

Zan and Ava sat down on each side of Michael and tried to comfort him.

“If this is the time that you came from, Michael, where was I in this time? Where was Ava? …And where was Rath?”

Michael didn’t look up from his hands at first. It was hard enough for him to say it.

“You were dead, Zan… all of you. Kivar killed you… seventy years ago. Your scientists took your DNA… and Ava’s… and Rath’s and Vilandra’s… and they combined it with DNA from humans on Eluymer. You, Rath, Ava, and Vilandra were reborn as Max, me, Tess, and Isabel. The scientists hoped that we would return and retake the throne one day… and we did.”

Zan and Ava appeared stunned.

“And this Maria and Liz of whom you spoke? I remember Rath saying that Maria was your lady.”

Michael nodded. He decided to avoid explaining Liz. It could not help for Ava to be upset right now, too.

“Zorel, Kryys, and Jayyd were… are my children, Zan. I have to find out what happened and somehow find them and Maria!”

“Was Maria reborn from someone, too?”

Michael shook his head. “She was from Eluymer. I fell in love with her and married her.”

Zan nodded. “Well, your… that is, Rath’s… ties with Vilandra were not very strong. I always knew that. I’m not surprised that you chose someone else. From what you’ve told me, Michael, I’m inclined to believe that the past may have been changed.”

Michael’s face became even paler. It wasn’t that he didn’t know this already himself, but hearing it, it seemed somehow harsher… more final.

“Where is Rath,” Michael asked, just realizing that nobody had mentioned his whereabouts in this time.

Zan’s face took on a more somber look. “I guess you wouldn’t know. Shortly after you left, Rath disappeared. We haven’t seen him since.”

Michael looked shocked. “Did you look for him… Were there any clues to what might have happened to him?”

“Yes, Michael, we looked. We searched for more than three years. Sometimes I think that we are still searching! The most likely answer is that Rath was killed. We know that Kivar had a small army that was still loyal to him even when he was locked up.”

“Was locked up?” Michael queried.

“Kivar and Nicholas escaped about ten years after you left. Nothing more was heard from them for several years… then they tried again to take the throne, but we were better prepared this time. Rath had always warned me that I should get out and find out what was going on in my kingdom. I finally took his advice… after he was gone. It saved our lives.”

Ava put her hand on Zan’s arm and patted it lovingly. “Rath saved us even after he was gone,” she said.

Zan nodded. “He was more to us than just a leader of my army, you know… more than just a warrior…”

“I know,” Michael said quietly. He found it somehow unnerving to be talking about himself as though he were dead. And he and Rath were, in a way, the same person, even if they were also different.

“That’s why we’ve been waiting so anxiously for your return, Michael,” Zan said. “We always thought that there was something about you that was like a spark of Rath. You had his spark in you. And, too, we hoped that you might be able to help us discover what happened to him.”

Michael nodded then put his face into his hands again. “I have to find Maria first… and Zorel, Kryys, and Jayyd. I have to find the people I knew and loved… still love… here!”

“Have you considered, Michael,” Zan said, “that, if the past was changed and we did not die seventy years ago, then our scientists did not sent our DNA to Eluymer either. So perhaps you never grew up on Eluymer, and your lady, Maria, may have never known you. She may have found someone else and may have a family there…”

“No!” Michael said loudly, shaking his head vigorously. “No…” He didn’t want to accept it, but he knew, in his heart, that Zan was right. Maria… and Liz… would have never known him or Max. They probably would have married, but it would not have been to them.

“Portal!” Michael said loudly.

“Ask.”

“Take me to wherever Maria is in this time. I must find Maria.”

“That may be a mistake,” Zan tried to say, but it was too late. Michael had stepped through the portal and was gone.

----------

Michael reappeared in the entrance of a small café. He sat down at a table and looked around to see where he was. Spotting a sign outside, he got up again and walked back out to take a look.

“The CrashDown! Maria never left Roswell!” Michael went back inside and sat down again, and a young waitress came running over to wait on him.

“I’m so glad you came back! I thought you had walked out. We’ve been kind of swamped today. I’m sorry if the service has been a little slow.”

“No problem,” Michael said.

“What’ll you have?”

“A Monster Alien Burger Combo and a…”

“Whoa, whoa… whoa!” the waitress said, laughing. “How long has it been since you’ve been here?”

“Maybe you’d better let me see a menu,” Michael said.

“Oh, I’m sorry! Didn’t I give you a menu? Here…” The waitress grabbed a menu and laid it in front of Michael opened.

Michael looked at the menu and gasped… not so much at the change in the food but in the prices.

“$49.50 for an eight ounce sirloin? $9.99 for a cup of coffee?”

“It’s Java au crème de lait… and you won’t find better prices around here anywhere, sir.”

“Can I afford a bottle of Tabasco?”

“No charge. What do you want to put it on?”

“Nothing.”

The waitress looked at him.

“Alright… Bring me the chicken cordon bleu… early bird… Can I get the senior…?

The waitress smiled and collected up the menu, shaking her head.

“Okay, just the early bird… Geez! $9.99 for a cup of French coffee with delayed cream, whatever that is, $26.45 for a piece of cheesy Gallic chicken…! And the French called their ancestors the Gauls,” Michael grumbled to himself. “At least the Tabasco’s still free.”

The waitress was back in a flash with the Tabasco sauce. “Did you want something to drink, sir? I don’t think you told me.”

Michael shook his head. “This’ll do.”

The waitress looked at him but didn’t say anything. She just smiled and started to walk back to the kitchen.

“Oh, Miss!”

“Change your mind?”

“No. Uh, I was wondering… Do you know a waitress named Maria… Maria DeLuca?”

The waitress laughed. “It has been a long time since you were here, hasn’t it? Yeah, I know her. But she’s not a waitress. She owns this place.” The waitress turned to walk back toward the back again, which was just as well, because at the moment, Michael couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

“Mom! Someone who remembers you from a long time ago wants to talk to you,” the waitress said, as she walked into the back of the café.

A few minutes later, Maria walked out, and the girl pointed out who had asked about her.

“Hi,” Maria said. “I hear you were asking about me. Did we know each other? I’m afraid I don’t remember you. You look like someone I would remember.”

Michael smiled and blushed slightly. “Yeah, but I’m not surprised you don’t remember me. It was a long time ago… apparently. So you own this place now, huh?”

“Yeah! My husband bought it for me…”

“Your husband?”

Maria nodded. “When the Parkers moved out to California…”

“Liz moved to California?”

“Yeah… Liz went to UCLA to study molecular biology. A year after she graduated, she got a position in the biology department at Harvard, and her family moved again. She’s head of molecular biology research at Harvard now. You knew Liz, too?”

“Yeah. You and Liz used to be the waitresses here.”

Maria laughed. “Omigod! That was eighteen years ago… almost… uh, well, maybe not quite…” Maria smiled and pushed the hair out of her face then blushed a bit, too. “I’m just so surprised that you know me and I can’t remember you. My memory is usually pretty good.”

“Did I hear the waitress call you ‘Mom’?”

“Yeah… That’s my daughter, Sydney.”

“You don’t look old enough to have a grown daughter.”

“You’re a sweetheart! No, but she is… well, actually, she’s my husband’s daughter, but since we’re married, she’s mine, too, right?”

“Sydney…” Michael’s mind began to put two and two together. “Her last name… your last name… wouldn’t be ‘Davis,’ would it?”

“Omigod, now I really am going to be wondering where I knew you! I just can’t believe you know everything about me, and I don’t remember you at all. You do look familiar, though… in some strange way… It’s odd. I feel like we knew each other in a previous lifetime or something.” Maria laughed.

“Yeah… I think that’s it,” Michael agreed with a forced smile. What he was actually thinking was, “That son-of-a-bitch! I knew I should’ve killed Brody when I had the chance!” But as he thought about it, he decided that Maria could have married anyone, after all… “Perhaps the enemy you know is better than the one you don’t. And Brody Davis wasn’t such a bad guy really… just a bit too old for Maria,” Michael thought to himself.

“Where did I know you,” Maria asked.

“Oh… I… I went to Roswell High when you and Liz were there… and I used to come into the CrashDown sometimes for the Monster Alien Burger Combo… with Tabasco sauce… and Snapples.” Michael added those last parts hoping that something in Maria might click… that she might have some kind of memories of him somewhere deep down…

Maria shook her head. “That’s so odd! I just don’t remember you at all. What’s your name?”

“Michael… Michael Guerin.”

“No… Doesn’t ring any bells at all. I’m usually so good at remembering people, too. This is going to haunt me now until I figure out who you were!”

Sydney brought the chicken cordon bleu to the table and placed it in front of Michael. Michael proceeded to pour Tabasco over it liberally.

“Ew,” Sydney said quietly, turning away with a grin.

“That’s funny,” Maria said. “I seem to remember knowing someone who did that… but I can’t remember who. Now that’s going to haunt me, too.”




tbc

[Island Breeze]

The Four Faces of Rath



The Artist / The Warrior

Chapter 21

XXI



Michael stepped out of the portal and back into the palace.

“Did you find your lady, Maria, Michael,” Zan asked.

“Yeah, I found her.”

“Was everything alright?”

“She married that UFO museum jerk, Brody Davis. How can everything be alright?”

“Is he a bad person?”

“Yeah. He married Maria…” Michael sighed… “No, not really, I guess. But he’s too old for Maria. He’s got to be at least ten years older than her.”

“Does she love him?”

“I don’t know! …I guess so… she married him. What does it matter?”

“She wasn’t unfaithful to you, you know, if she never knew you.”

“I know… But that doesn’t make it any easier.”

Zan nodded. “I understand.”

“I’d like to be alone for awhile,” Michael said. “Is there a…”

“A room for you?” Zan finished his question for him. “Of course! Just tell me which room was yours, and it will be yours again… any room you would like in the palace.”

“Thank you,” Michael said. “I wonder what happened to my own house in the country.”

Michael showed Zan and Ava the room that had been his in the palace, and they left him to his own thoughts. Michael closed the door, took off his shirt, and sat down on the bed, putting his head in his hands, but then he looked up again with determination.

“The last thing I need to be doing is sitting in my room moping.”

Michael grabbed his shirt and put it back on then walked back out to the living area.

“Back already, Michael? Have you decided what you’re going to do?”

“I’ve decided what I’m NOT going to do… I’m not going to waste my time sitting around moping about what I’ve lost. I’m going to do something. Is there somewhere around here where I can buy some new clothes and get some things I need?”

“Well, there’s Kyyks. They’ve got about everything anyone could need. You can put it on the palace account for now. I’m sure you don’t have a lot of currency on you, since you were expecting to find something different when you came here.”

Michael nodded. He had forgotten that Kyyks had actually been around before the royals were killed, so it was logical that it would still be here even if some other things might have changed.

“I’m going to see if I can find out what happened to Rath,” Michael said. “Maybe while I’m working on that, something will come to me, and I can figure out how to fix whatever has happened to time and get Maria and the kids back. Tell me what you can about Rath’s disappearance.”

“Well…” Zan said, “He disappeared about six moon cycles after you left, I guess…” Zan looked at Ava, and she nodded. Zan continued…

“Rath had been having strange visions… of places he’d never seen before…”

“And there was a dream about flying,” Ava said.

“Yes.” Zan nodded. “And he couldn’t remember ever having seen the places in his dreams before and didn’t know why he would dream of flying, since none of us remember ever having had wings.”

“I’ve had that dream,” Michael said. “I don’t remember ever having had wings, either. What places did Rath see in his dreams?”

“In one dream, he would be a child, and he would see a man hitting him. In the dream, he felt that the man was his father, but, of course, we know that it was not. He told us of another dream in which the man started to strike him with a bottle, but a being… a powerful and beautiful angel surrounded by a bright light, came in and blasted the bottle apart in the man’s hands with the power of his mind then showed the man what would happen to him if he continued to be evil by setting his feet on fire with a bolt of lightning. Rath said this so affected the man that the man didn’t strike him again for almost two years.”

Michael listened in disbelief. “I thought maybe it would stop him for a week, perhaps a month. But two years! I must have really scared the bejeebers out of Hank when I set his shoes on fire!”

“Hank!” Ava said. “That was the name Rath used for the man in his dreams!”

“Michael?” Zan looked at him questioningly.

“The boy was me,” Michael said quietly. I really don’t know why Rath would have had that dream, Zan. When Kivar killed us in the past and the new hybrids were created on Eluymer… we were placed in pods to incubate in a secret place in the desert. When we emerged from the pods, we were about six years old in Earth years, so the Earth people who found us placed us with adults who would be our parents. But we were not all treated alike. You and Vilandra were adopted by a good family and grew up as brother and sister. I was given to Hank, who became my foster father; and as you’ve heard, he was not so nice. Ava was actually found by her protector, a shape-shifter from Antar, before the Earth people found her. This shape-shifter, whom we knew as Nasedo, never harmed Ava physically, but he raised her to believe that Antarians were far superior to Earth people and should use Earth people or even kill them as necessary. When Max –that’s your hybrid, Zan- and I went back in time… the first time… to save Maria and… some others, we found that our intervention had somehow changed Ava by removing some of Nasedo’s influences.”

“And the angel Rath saw?”

“Me,” Michael said. “When I started this quest to find out who I was, I went back and found Hank about to strike me… that is, my six-year-old counterpart… with a bottle. I did what I felt would help… short of killing Hank.”

“Somehow, Rath saw this happen,” Zan said, “…in his dreams. He also saw your lady, Maria…”

“Maria?” Michael asked, perking up suddenly. “What about Maria?”

“Different things… Mostly, he was confused and conflicted by the way seeing her made him feel. He found himself being more and more attracted to her and less and less to Vilandra. He fought this, because he knew that she was your lady. He didn’t know why he would have these feelings. I don’t think Vilandra was a consideration. To tell the truth, the two of them were never close… They just thought that they were supposed to be.

And it is interesting that you should mention the shape-shifter, Nasedo,” Zan continued. “I knew Nasedo. It was not common knowledge, but there were a few shape-shifters who came over to our side and abandoned Kivar. A very few of these… I believe there were five in all… were trusted enough to be assigned to protect the royals covertly. They were the perfect choice for this job, because Kivar believed that all the shape-shifters were loyal to him. And, of course, their ability to change their shapes was a factor in their assignment, too. I’m really not surprised that Nasedo or any of the other four trusted shape-shifters would have been sent to Eluymer to protect the royal hybrids. It makes sense.”

“What else can you remember about Rath from that time,” Michael asked.

“That’s about it… just the constant dreams during the last days before he disappeared. We knew that some of Kivar’s old group were remassing to try to rescue Kivar and Nyykto. But after Rath disappeared, we saw no more of them. We always figured that they had ambushed Rath somehow and were either holding him as their prisoner to demand Kivar and Nyykto’s release… or they had killed Rath and had decided to lay low for a time.”

“Yeah,” Michael said, “The hostage thing sounds right in the beginning, but after all these years, it seems unlikely. It’s possible that they took him hostage to trade him for Kivar and Nyykto, then he tried to escape and was killed but managed to kill all those holding him at the same time. I’ve seen Rath work. He’s capable of it.”

“Yes,” Zan agreed. ‘He was indeed. And your scenario sounds very plausible, Michael. The fact that something like that may have happened is what we’ve always feared. You can begin your search by talking to Garandev if you’d like. His father was one of Rath’s most trusted captains, and he also knew Rath. Perhaps he can tell you something that I can’t. He can also give you the names of others you can talk to.”

Michael nodded. “Thank you. I’d best get started right away.” Michael turned and left the palace. His first stop was Kyyks, then he headed for Garandev’s house.

----------

“Michael, I can’t tell you what you did to me when you appeared at my door,” Garandev said. “My heart literally leapt into my throat. I was sure that Rath had returned. I’m still in shock over how much you look like him. The differences are so tiny… I don’t think anyone would ever notice.” Garandev laughed. “Actually, I rather imagine that most people wouldn’t believe that you weren’t Rath even if you pointed out the differences to them. You might as well be him.”

Michael smiled but didn’t immediately reply.

“We’re coming up to Rath’s house just ahead. He’s been gone for a very long time now, but his house is still kept up as though he were there. Zan has seen to it.”

Garandev pulled his Xac-Var III into the drive at Rath’s former home and passed his hand over the handprint on the dash. The three engines purred to a halt, and the car settled to a parking altitude of .5 kydarish, about seven and a half inches. The top of the car slid back, and Garandev and Michael stepped out.

“I’m a bit surprised to find the same hovercars that were here when Max and I were here, but I guess I shouldn’t be. After all, Max and I didn’t invent them. The same people who invented them in our time invented them in this time. To them, there never was a change… Zan just never went away, and we never came. Everything else just… well… continued.”

“That must be very strange for you,” Garandev said. “What kind of car did you have… before you came back and found things… like they are?”

“A Fan-Ji IV,” Michael said.

“Fan-Ji IV! That’s the new one… Variable cruising altitude up to… what is it… fourteen Kydarish?”

“Yeah, ten feet… fourteen kydarish.”

“That’s a nice-looking car. I wouldn’t mind having one myself. But I still like my Xac-Var III better than anything else in the air. Granted, it has one cruising altitude, 2.5 kydarish, and one parking altitude, point five kydarish, but it will still out-perform the best of them.”

“Nothing wrong with a Xac-Var III,” Michael agreed. They’re sure to become classics. That third engine really kicks!”

“Yeah, it does,” Garandev said. “The thing about the Fan-Ji IV is that, yeah, it has four engines, but two of them are dedicated to the variable altitude control, so only two of them are available for speed.”

“It’s plenty fast enough,” Michael said.

Garandev nodded. “Oh, that it is! Don’t get me wrong… It’s a great car! I just wouldn’t give up my Xac-Var III… even if someone offered me two Dyygitix-Sixteens for it!”

Michael laughed. “You must really love this car! I’m afraid a Dyygitix-Sixteen would have cost me two years of my income.”

“Let’s go in,” Garandev said. “I’ve got a DNA pass.” Garandev passed the DNA card in front of the sensor on the door of Rath’s house, and the door opened for them. Michael and Garandev walked in and looked around.

“You’d never know that he wasn’t here this morning,” Michael said. “It looks so normal… lived in… kept up.”

Garandev nodded. “That’s the way Zan wants it. He still thinks Rath is coming back some day.”

Michael looked down at the floor. “I don’t think Zan’s living in denial. I think he knows the reality of the probability that Rath is dead, but he just refuses to give up hope. I guess that’s not a bad thing.”

“No,” Garandev agreed. “It’s not a bad thing. I hope he’s right.”

Michael walked through the door into one of the bedrooms and gasped. Garandev came running.

“What is it, Michael?”

Michael pointed at an easel beside the bed. On it was a sketch… a very good sketch… of Maria.

“I never knew that Rath was artistic,” Michael said. “Nobody ever told me that.”

“I guess he never told anyone, Michael. I knew it. He had a spark of genius in him. But I think this is far better than anything I ever saw him draw before. Even I didn’t know he was this good. Do you sketch, Michael?”

Michael nodded. “This looks a lot like a sketch that I once did of Maria.”

Michael stared at the picture for several minutes then turned and walked back out to the living area.

“Did Rath mention having anywhere to go, Garandev, or having anything left undone that he might have wanted to finish?”

Garandev shook his head. “I can’t think of anything. Rath lived for the realm. He was warrior… a supreme warrior… with one goal in life… to be the best at what he was and to protect the king and the realm.”

“Yeah,” Michael said. “That I knew. Well, I guess there’s nothing else to see in here. You want to go?”

Garandev nodded. Michael took one last look through the door of Rath’s bedroom at the sketch of Maria. Then he turned and walked out of the house with Garandev. As they were getting into Garandev’s car, six small children approached.

“That’s a nice car, mister.”

Garandev smiled. “Thanks.”

“Who are you,” one of the children asked Michael.

“My name is… Michael,” he answered, but something inside Michael’s head was ringing a loud and very clear warning. It wasn’t something he actually heard… more like a sixth sense. Michael did not smile but watched the children closely. Suddenly all six of the children shimmered then changed into large soldiers. Immediately, they attacked. Garandev was initially caught by surprise, as two of them grabbed him at once. The other four converged on Michael. Michael feigned a left hook then sent a lightning fast jab straight to the jaw of the first soldier, shattering his jaw and knocking him to the ground unconscious. The other three attacked together. Michael sent two of them flying through the air. He easily dispensed the last one with a roundhouse type kick to the abdomen. Michael looked at Garandev. He had disposed of his two adversaries, too. Garandev checked the two that Michael had sent flying…

“Their necks are broken, Michael.”

He checked the one Michael had kicked…

“Dead… multiple internal injuries… broken spine… from one kick to the abdomen!”

The fourth shape-shifter was still alive… barely… with a badly shattered jaw. The two who had attacked Garandev were also in serious condition, but with less extensive injuries overall.

Garandev looked at Michael. “If I didn’t know better, Michael, I’d swear that I was looking at Rath.”

Michael felt uneasy. He looked at the shape-shifters… the broken necks… the shattered jaw… the broken spine with internal injuries. Michael shook his head.

“I… I’ve got to go, Garandev… Let’s go. Can someone pick these guys up and take care of them?”

Garandev nodded. “I’ll see to it. I’ll get on the communicator now.”

Michael looked again at the shape-shifters… then he looked at his hands… “Who am I?”




tbc

[Island Breeze]

The Four Faces of Rath



I Don’t Need Wings To Fly, Dad

Chapter 22

XXII



After leaving Garandev, Michael called for the portal again…

“Portal, take me to wherever Shag and Maya are right now.”

Michael stepped into the portal and found himself on a balcony overlooking an Emerald sea. He recognized this place… the Emerald Sea… the moons visible in the day sky… It was Xarius, and he was at the palace of Shaqor and Maya. Michael heard footsteps coming; then the doors to the balcony opened, and he found himself face to face with Shaqor-Niseel Vredis Davor, Zasharn of Xarius, affectionately nicknamed “Shag” by Maya, and usually called Shag by the royal family and their friends on Antar.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“Shag! I’m Michael… You know me… Don’t you remember?”

Shaqor shook his head. “I don’t know a ‘Michael.’”

“Rath,” Michael said. “I’m called Rath. I’m from Antar!”

“Rath? …from Antar? I know that there was a warrior… a general named Rath… on Antar. He disappeared many years ago.”

“No. Not that Rath… I’m Michael, from Earth…”

“Urth?”

“Earth… you know… Eluymer…”

“The place where my wife lived when I found her?”

“Yeah! That’s it! Don’t you remember? Max and I retook the throne of Antar…”

Shaqor raised his eyebrows. “Antar is at peace. The king of Antar is Zan… has been for almost a hundred years. His father was king before him… You cannot be who you say you are.”

“Then how am I able to command the sphere of the portal,” Michael asked.

Shaqor looked suddenly interested. “My sphere? You cannot…”

“Portal!” Michael called.

A doorway that looked something like a mirror appeared. “Ask.”

Michael looked at Shaqor. Shaqor’s eyebrows had gone up considerably.

“Never mind,” Michael said. “I won’t need the portal right now.”

The portal disappeared.

“Okay,” Shag said. “Come in.” Michael walked into Shag and Maya’s bedroom behind him.

“Now start explaining… Michael… or whoever you are. How is it you are able to command my sphere? Only Maya and I can command it.”

“And Liz,” Michael added.

Shag shook his head. “I know of no Liz.”

“You did,” Michael replied. “She’s Maya’s direct descendent from Eluymer. She’s Max’s wife…”

“Who is Max?”

“Max is Zan… Geez, this is going to be hard…”

Michael sat down on a chair and began to explain everything to Shaqor. When he had finished, Shaqor shook his head and whistled lightly.

“You have a problem, Michael.”

“I think it’s bigger than me,” Michael said.

Shag nodded. “I have to agree. If what you said is accurate, we have to find some way to correct the aberration in time.”

“But how,” Michael asked. “Maria doesn’t remember me at all. She’s married… to Brody of all people!”

“You’d rather it were someone else?” Shag asked.

“Of course not! I’d rather it were no one!” Michael retorted. Then he added, sadly, “I’d rather it were me…”

Shag nodded his understanding. “I don’t know what can be done, my friend, but we will work on it together. Perhaps if we knew exactly what caused the aberration…”

“I guess I did,” Michael replied. “I kept Nyykto from finding Rath, because he found me first and thought I was Rath. So Rath was able to attack Kivar and defeat him, because Kivar thought Nyykto had taken care of Rath… but it was me.”

“Don’t be too fast to blame yourself, Michael. I know something about time. I have lived for 12,337 years after all. It hasn’t been without learning a few things along the way.”

“How can I not blame myself, Shag? The evidence is all there.”

“The evidence you see, Michael,” Shaqor said. “There is usually more than what one sees to everything… and time is not so easily changed.”

“I kept Nyykto from finding Rath, so Rath caught Kivar unaware. Result: The royal family didn’t die, I never met Maria, my children were never born. It seems simple to me,” Michael said.

“It may seem so, Michael, but time is like a river…”

“Yeah, I keep hearing that.”

“Okay, well, imagine this… Nyykto finds you, thinks he found Rath… Does that change everything in time?”

“It looks like it did,” Michael said.

“If you think of time as a river, Michael, imagine that the river is flowing along, and you dip your hand in it. Undoubtedly, you have had an effect, but have you changed the river?”

“No, of course not. It would take more than my hand…”

“Okay, imagine that those little animals that you had on Eluymer with the flat tails built one of their dams in the river… a big river like the river of time… would it totally change the river?”

“Probably not really,” Michael said. “If it was a small river or a creek, it might, but a large river would probably part and flow around the dam and rejoin somewhere downstream. The beavers might create a pond with their dam, but the river wouldn’t be stopped or its course significantly altered except at that spot.”

“Ah, so you agree that the effect to the river would not necessarily be catastrophic?”

“Yeah… I guess so.”

“Then why do you think that Nykkto finding you instead of Rath catastrophically altered the river of time?”

“Because the evidence suggests it,” Michael said.

“What if there were other evidence?”

“I would have to see it,” Michael said, still unsure.

“We shall see,” Shaqor replied. “We shall see if there are any other trails. I’m not asking you these things just to ease your conscience, Michael.”

“Don’t worry, Shag, you haven’t.”

Shaqor smiled. “In order to fix what is wrong, we have to find the true cause of the aberration… and if you are convinced that you are the one and only true cause… then you may be inclined not to look any further, and you will not see any clues that might be there. If you wish to see your Maria again…” Michael suddenly was listening with all his attention… “you must look for any clues… all clues… that would tell you what happened. Only when you know the cause will you be able to fix the problem.”

----------

Back in the palace on Antar, in his own room, Michael looked at his shaking hands again and shook his head…

“I know who I am. Why did I act like Rath today? What’s wrong with me?”

Michael thought about Maria… then about Jayyd… and Zorel… and Kryys… As he thought about them, a movement in the room got his attention, and Michael looked up suddenly.

“What? Is it possible? Kryys? Oh my God! If you’re here, where are Jayyd and Zorel?”

“Not born,” Kryys said simply.’’

“But how are you here then?”

Kryys smiled. “I don’t need wings to fly, Dad.”

“What does that mean, Kryys. I’m not a philosopher.”

“Master Drax taught me to become one with time. When everyone else disappeared, my essence remained… just as theirs does, but they’re not aware of themselves. I am here, because I am aware of myself, but I’m not really who I was, and you’re not who you were.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Your DNA was never sent to Earth… You were never born.”

“But I’m here. If I’m here, how can I not have been born?”

“Haven’t you figured that out yet, Dad?”

Michael shook his head.

Six months after you left the past, but before the time you were returning to, Rath disappeared… You ceased to exist at the same moment, because that’s when your DNA was mixed with Earth DNA and ‘Michael’s’ life began… only it didn’t happen… and you never came back from the past.”

Michael turned pale. “No! No, I’m not…” Michael thought back. “You’re saying that I’m really Rath? …that Michael no longer exists? I… I still have my own memories.”

“For now,” Kryys said. “Master Drax said that is a good thing. As long as you have your own memories, too, there is hope that the river can be corrected.”

“And if I forget… my own memories?”

Kryys shook his head. “Then that life will be gone… forever.”




tbc

[Island Breeze]

The Four Faces of Rath



Wedding Itch

Chapter 23

XXIII



As Michael sat on his bed, thinking about what Kryys had said, he had another unexpected visitor… one who entered his room through the portal…

“Shag! What are you doing here?”

“I’ve been working on your problem, Michael. I’ve made some inquiries and found out a few things.”

“There’s something you didn’t know, Shag? …After 12,337 years,” Michael asked with a tiny bit of sarcasm.

“I’m still learning new things, Michael. Anyway, here’s what I found out. In the twenty-ninth galaxy, in sector 3Y, there is a small group of beings that are capable of altering the course of time. They can go backward or forward in time at will and alter time in pretty much any way they wish. Fortunately for all of us, these beings have the strictest laws regarding the use of their powers, and none of them has ever gone against their laws… until recently.”

“What do you mean, ‘until recently?’”

“Well, recently to me… not to you, I guess. …Historically recently… like in the last seventy years. Does that ring any bells for you, Michael?”

“Seventy years… right about the time I left the past and things went out of whack…”

“Right. I don’t have any proof, so far, that the Nogi-Ky’a –That’s the beings I was talking about- have actually had any part in your personal situation, but the circumstantial evidence is mounting.”

“What circumstantial evidence?”

“Six of the Nogi-Ky’a decided to go against the laws of their people seventy years ago and use their power to alter time in order to… sort of ‘uncreate’ a planet.”

“Whoa!”

“Yeah. Well, you see, the Nogi-Ky’a are rather unremarkable except for their power to alter time or travel in time. And their planet has been plagued for almost ten thousand years by this other planet…”

“The one that no longer exists?”

“Exactly. The planet was called Roshix. Anyway, the Roshixians were sort of like the Ghors were here, I guess, only worse…”

“There’s something worse that a Ghor?”

Shaqor ignored the comment and continued. “The Roshixians were larger, stronger, and considerably more inclined to violence than the Nogi-Ky’a; and for ten thousand years, they pretty much had their way with the Nogi-Ky’a, showing up whenever they wished and taking Nogi-Ky’a as slaves, killing them for no reason at all, or stealing everything they had.”

“I’d be pretty pissed, too,” Michael said.

“They were ‘pissed,’ as you say, Michael, but they knew that using their power unwisely was potentially even worse than the unbearable situation they had to tolerate.”

“How could it be worse than that?”

“On Xarius, there is a … riddle, I think you would call it. They ask someone if they could choose between a job that paid a million Unsits for a month’s work or one that paid…”

“I’ve heard this,” Michael said. “We had the same ‘riddle’ on Earth. If someone offered you a million dollars for a month’s work or one penny the first day, two pennies the second day, four pennies the third day and kept on doubling it each day for a month, which offer would you take?”

“Right. Same idea.”

“Yeah, the multiplication factor makes the penny the better deal.”

“Exactly. Well, it’s the same thing with changing time. Every action has multiple reactions, and each one of those reactions creates multiple new reactions. Eventually, it is impossible to track down all the reactions in order to contain them or change them back if you need to. So the Nogi-Ky’a can only use their power after an extensive review by the ruling board to determine every possible reaction and make allowances for it. The problem is, the board had consistently refused to allow the planet Roshix to be destroyed –uncreated, I guess, is a better description- because the reactions were determined to be too great to contain or predict. For everyone in the universe, it would be like standing in a lightning storm. Anyone might be hit by a reaction. I think that’s what happened to you, Michael. You were hit.”

“Interesting,” Michael said. “So you’re saying that I didn’t do anything to cause it myself?”

“I didn’t say that,” Shaqor said. “What you did was, lets say, you stood outside flying a Jishkee on a string in the storm… and you got hit. You didn’t create the lightning, but you made yourself a great target for it. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I get your point, Shag. So what do we do about it?”

“That’s the big question, Michael.”

“If these Nogi-Ky’a have the power to change time, couldn’t they just change everything back?”

“I’m sure they would change it all back if they could track all the reactions down, Michael.”

“Couldn’t we just go to them and tell them that this was a reaction, and ask them to change it?”

“It might not do you much good, Michael. They’d have to study your claim for about 300 years then determine all the reactions that would occur if they changed that one reaction without changing the ones that led up to it in the order in which they occurred.”

”So what you’re saying is I’m screwed.”

“I didn’t say that exactly.”

“Okay, 99.99 percent screwed.”

“Something like that.”

“That’s what I thought. Kryys told me that as long as I still have my own memories, there’s still hope of changing the aberration in time.”

“Kryys?”

“Yeah, my son, Kryys.”

“When did he tell you this?”

“Today… a little while ago… He was just here.”

“How?”

“Oh, yeah, you don’t remember him. Well Kryys is… sort of unique. He can change his physical body into streams of billions of molecules and join the river of time. He said that’s the reason he’s still around… because he’s aware of himself and the others aren’t.”

“Makes sense,” Shaqor said.

“I’m glad it does to you, Shag. It took me a really long time to understand all this time stuff.”

“So you still have all your memories, therefore there’s still hope…”

“Right… according to Kryys… and the Drax-ta-Kiya.”

“I’ve heard of him… from Jeroglasst.”

“Right.”

“Tell me again, what were the names of the people you were looking for, Michael?”

“My wife, Maria… and my children, Zorel, Kryys, and Jayyd.”

Shaqor wrote it down. “Who else?”

Max… and his wife, Elis- uh… Elisha, and his children………… I… I can’t think of their names.”

“How many children did he have?”

“Three… No, four… I think… or maybe five…”

Shaqor looked at Michael. “Michael, you told me before that Max’s wife’s name was Liz.”

“Liz! That’s right… Elizabeth! That’s what I was thinking of.”

“You’re forgetting, Michael.”

Michael shook his head at first but then nodded and winced slightly. “Shag… I think I need to refresh my memory… I can’t let myself forget them.”

“Do you remember their faces?”

Michael thought about it. “Maria’s, yeah… and Kryys’… He was just here… and Jayyd’s… I think.”

“You must try to remember, Michael.”

“Shag, I’ve gotta go.”

“Where?”

“To find Li- Liz. I can create new pictures in my mind… in case the old ones fail me. I have to have something I can hold on to and remember them by.”

Michael called for the portal then stepped through.

“Good luck, Michael,” Shaqor said.

**********

As he stepped out of the portal, Michael found himself in a garden where a wedding was about to start.

“Great,” he thought to himself, as he looked around then took a seat. Leaning over to a young lady beside him, Michael asked, hoping to find out who was getting married…

“Are you a friend of the bride or the groom?”

“Both,” the lady replied. “James Quigley was my professor of Physical Sciences, and Elizabeth Parker was my professor of Molecular Biology several years ago. I promised her if she ever got married, I would come, and she sent me an invitation.” The young lady smiled. “She really is a great professor. Now she’s head of molecular biology research.”

“So I heard,” Michael said, a bit stunned. “Why’d she decide to get married now?”

The young lady smiled. “Who knows? Maybe she loves him.”

“Maybe?” Michael asked.

“That’s him coming out now with his best man,” the young lady said.

“Which one is Quigley?”

“The shorter one. Haven’t you ever met Quigley?”

“No. I’m a friend of Liz’s.”

“Liz? You know Elizabeth pretty well, huh?”

“Yeah,” Michael said. “What does she see in Quigley?”

“He’s just one of the biggest molecular biologists ever. He won a Nobel last year for something he was working on with Elizabeth.”

“Didn’t she win it, too, then?”

The young lady shrugged. “I guess not. He published it in his name. Her name wasn’t on it.”

“Well, that sucks,” Michael said.

“Shhh!” several people from the row in front of him said at once. Michael noticed that an usher had just finished seating the mother of the bride, Nancy Parker, in the front, and the groomsmen were taking their places next to the groom and his best man.

In a few moments, the bridesmaids appeared, followed by the maid of honor, a ring bearer, and a flower girl. These last two appeared to be about five years old. As “Here Comes the Bride” began to play, Liz appeared on her father’s arm. She was beautiful. She walked slowly down the aisle, wearing a traditional long white wedding gown, as the flower girl threw rose petals in front of her. Liz was radiant.

The bridesmaids, flower girl, and bride took their places on the right side of the preacher, which was to the left of the audience. The groom, his best man, and the ring bearer stood on the preacher’s left.

Michael couldn’t stop staring at Quigley. He appeared to be perhaps a few years older than Liz. His exact age was hard to determine. But what bothered Michael was that Quigley kept looking at his watch, he never once smiled, and most disturbing of all, he never looked at Liz. Michael wondered what in this man’s life could be so important to him that he couldn’t wait to get back to it… on his wedding day.

We’ve come here today… the preacher was saying.

“Quigley doesn’t look like he’s happy to be here,” Michael whispered to the young lady beside him.

“Well, it’s not like it’s his first time. I imagine he’s happy, though. He begged Elizabeth to marry him forever before she accepted.”

“Not the first…? He was married before?”

“Three times,” the young lady said quietly, holding up three fingers. “This’ll be number four. It’s the first for Elizabeth, though.”

Do you take this woman to be…

“Something’s not right here,” Michael said. “I don’t know what it is, but something’s just wrong with this.”

in sickness and in health, in joy and in sadness…

“Elizabeth has been working on something that’ll probably get her her own Nobel,” the young lady said.

Michael looked at the young woman. “Not if Quigley takes all the credit.”

“I hear she hasn’t let anyone see her research on this one… even him. It’s supposed to be big.”

A chill of foreboding ran up Michael’s spine.

If anyone knows any reason why this…

“What kind of research?”

“Well, the rumor has it that she’s working on proof that alien life exists. But she’s keeping her research tightly guarded.”

let them speak now…

“So Quigley would really love to see that research.”

The young lady nodded. “I’d say he’d give up ten years of his life to see it.”

…or forever hold their peace.

“THEY CAN’T GET MARRIED,” someone shouted from the back of the audience.

Every face turned to look at Michael. The preacher stood in stunned silence, his mouth open as though time had just caught him in mid sentence. Liz looked like she might faint, and Quigley looked like he’d like to commit a murder. For a moment no one spoke, then Michael said,

“James Quigley is already married… to my… sister.”

There was a collective gasp in the audience, and the preacher looked as though he might also faint. Liz put her hands over her face and started to sob then ran down the aisle and out of the garden.

“I’m sorry, Liz,” Michael whispered under his breath. Then he turned and walked briskly from the garden in the direction Liz had gone. He hadn’t gone far before Jeff Parker caught up with him.

“You’d better start explaining yourself right now,” he said to Michael. “And if I find out what you just said back there isn’t true, there’s not going to be any hole anywhere deep enough for you to hide in!”

“Liz was making a mistake,” Michael said quietly to Jeff Parker.

“Then it was her mistake to make!” Jeff said. “For God’s sake, I know Quigley’s not a shining trophy, but my daughter is thirty-five, and she’s never looked at another man before. The only thing that’s ever interested her was her work. Let her get married!”

“She was supposed to fall in love and marry for true love… not marry some guy that just wants to use her… steal her life’s work.”

Jeff seemed slightly taken aback. “I… I don’t know that he has the wrong motives. He says he loves her.”

“She’s not supposed to love him. She’s supposed to love… someone else.”

“Oh,” Jeff said, nodding. “And that, I suppose, would just happen to be you, right?”

“No! No! …No way! Not me! …Max!”

“Max? Who’s Max?”

Michael sighed and looked around. So far no one else had found them.

“Max is someone she met in high school. He’s, uh… an alien.”

“An illegal Mexican?”

“No. Further away.” Michael pointed up at the sky. Jeff huffed. “Is that what this is all about? You’re one of those UFO freaks? Can’t you leave us alone? I thought we got away from you guys when we left Roswell.”

“When you sold Brody Davis the CrashDown?” Michael asked.

“How’d you know about that?”

“I lived there, too. You see, I’m also… one of them.”

“You’re going to tell me you’re an alien?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, sweet mother of God! What did I ever do wrong in my life to deserve this,” Jeff said with resigned desperation, throwing his hands in the air. Michael reached over and passed his hand over Jeff’s tuxedo top, turning it into chain mail. The extra weight of the metal almost dragged Jeff down, but he managed to regain his balance.

“How the heck did you just do that?”

“Like this,” Michael said, touching Jeff’s pants and turning them into chain mail, too.

Jeff looked at his metal tuxedo, and his eyes grew noticeably larger. “You… you’d better change this back before someone finds us and sees this… Besides, I can’t move my legs or arms!”

“You’re not going to hit me are you?”

“I’m thinking about it! I’m really thinking about it!” Jeff looked at his tux again and tried to move one leg. “Alright, I won’t hit you. Change it back.”

Michael passed his hand swiftly over Jeff’s tux, changing the top and the pants back to their original fabric.

“Mister Parker, I know you don’t understand why I just did what I did, stopping this wedding back there and all, but there really was a good reason. It’s just… very hard to explain.”

“Try.”

Michael nodded. “Time got screwed up somehow. I’m not sure myself exactly how it happened… I may have been partly to blame. All I know is, in the correct time, Liz married Max, and they were very, very, very happy together and had four children, and if I am to ever have any chance at all of getting Max and Maria and my children back, somehow I’ve got to make everything right again.” As Michael pleaded, he realized that he was remembering things that he had forgotten. It was all coming back to him.

Jeff looked at Michael’s face, and he saw real desperation.

“They were really, really really in love, huh?”

“More than you could ever imagine. In our time, Liz and Max practically lived for each other. I’ve never seen a greater love! …Except mine and Maria’s.

“Did Liz continue to study and make something out of herself?”

Michael nodded.

“Was she head of molecular biology research at Harvard?”

Michael shook his head. Jeff nodded.

“You don’t seem upset,” Michael said.

“Not really. I’m very proud of Liz. Don’t get me wrong. What she’s accomplished has been a miracle. But what she’s given up for it… her life, her family, marriage, children…”

“I remember in Roswell you used to run Max off when he’d come to see Liz sometimes.”

“A man always wants the best for his daughter,” Jeff said… “And there is one inalienable fact in life: No guy is ever good enough for another man’s daughter.”

“You seemed all too ready to accept Quigley.”

Jeff cringed slightly. “Just between you and me, whoever you are…”

“Michael.”

“Well, just between you and me, Michael, I never really liked Quigley. He’s a pompous ass, and he doesn’t know how to treat a woman.”

“Why’d you let him marry Liz, then?”

“She’s thirty-five, Michael! She doesn’t need my permission anymore. Don’t think I haven’t let my feelings be known. Look, we need to find Liz. She’s upset. She’s gonna need me. I hope Nancy’s with her.”

Jeff turned and walked toward a nearby building, and Michael followed. Jeff found Liz in the church’s social hall and hugged her tightly, trying to comfort her. Michael felt terrible as he watched Liz sob with her face buried against Jeff’s chest. Then Liz noticed Michael.

“What are you doing here? Did you come to rub it in?”

“Rub it in? No! I didn’t want to hurt you… Believe me! Please!”

Liz turned her face back against Jeff’s chest and sobbed again.

“He wasn’t good for you, Lizzie,” Jeff said. “You know that as well as I do.”

“Dad!” Liz exclaimed. Then she settled down unexpectedly. “Maybe you’re right, but I’ve never met anyone I was interested in before. And James was special… He knows more than I do about molecular biology.”

“You know, somehow I doubt that, Lizzie,” Jeff said.

Liz smiled slightly. “Aw, Dad… You know… I… I don’t think I ever really loved James. All my life, I’ve never loved any man… well, except you, of course! That’s the problem, Dad. I’ve always felt like the right guy was out there somewhere… just waiting to find me. But he never showed up. I knew that I’d know him when I saw him… But I never saw him. I’m thirty-five, and I’ve never even looked at another guy… well, except for Kyle when we were in high school, but Kyle was just a fun guy to be with. I didn’t ‘love’ him. You know what I mean?”

Jeff nodded. “I think I do.”

“Is it wrong to feel like that special someone you’ve waited for all your life is just lost somewhere, and you really want him to find you, but he’s just lost in some other dimension or something?”

Jeff looked at Michael, and Michael nodded.

At that moment, Quigley walked in, but he did not seem inclined to talk. He grabbed Michael and pummeled him in the jaw. Michael barely moved.

“Well… Rath you’re not,” Michael said sarcastically. “But you’ve got my attention.”

“How dare you stop my wedding,” Quigley raged. “I have a very busy day ahead, and my morning’s just been wasted!”

“What’s so important that you can’t wait to get back to it on your wedding day,” Michael asked.

“That’s none of your business! Elizabeth, are we doing this or not? I don’t have all day. Either let’s get out there, and you tell them this guy was some lunatic and we get married, or I’m out of here.”

“Bye,” Liz said simply.

“Oh, no… No! No! No! You are not getting out of this that easy!” Quigley raged on… “You agreed to get married. You can’t just back out just like that.”

Jeff stepped in front of Liz. “She can back out any time she wishes. You heard her. Leave her alone.” Without warning or reason, Quigley swung, catching Jeff in the jaw. Jeff went down. Michael ran to his side to help him, and Liz cracked a vase over Quigley’s head.

“Is that answer good enough for you, James? Get out!” Liz bent down to check her Dad. He seemed to be alright and was already getting back up.

Quigley pointed at Michael. “I promise you this! I’m getting someone here arrested before this day is out! Count on it!”

“Quigley,” Michael said, walking up to him from the side and brushing his arm with both hands, “You’ve got some lint on you.” After brushing Quigley’s arm quickly, Michael let his hands drop, “accidentally” letting one hand brush lightly across the front of Quigley’s pants and the other across the back of his pants. Quigley’s eyes opened wide.

“Perv! Geez, Elizabeth, is this who you listen to? When you get your senses back, look me up. Maybe I’ll forgive you and we can set a new date. Don’t expect a fancy wedding this time, though.”

“Out!” Jeff yelled, pointing at the door. Quigley turned and left.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” Liz said.

“You don’t have anything to be sorry about, Lizzie,” Jeff said. “Nothing at all.”

Hearing a commotion outside, Jeff and Liz walked to the door and looked out. Quigley was running around outside with both hands down inside the front of his pants, scratching vigorously. People were starting to gather to watch, and many of them were laughing. After a few moments, a police car drove up, and two officers got out.

“Come on, buddy… Get your hands out of your pants! You can’t act like that in public!”

“It itches!” Quigley exclaimed, removing one of his hands and sticking it down the back of his pants while the other hand stayed down the front.

“I don’t care if it itches! Get your hands out! People are watching. Kids are watching!”

Quigley pulled his pants off, dropped down to the ground, and started to scootch across the grass on his butt. A good number of the guests were laughing now. Others were just standing with their mouths open.

“Mommy,” a little boy asked… “Why is that man acting like a dog?”

“Don’t look, Billy. He’s a pervert,” she said, turning the boy away from the scene.

“Alright, guy, we gave you a warning,” the first officer said. He motioned to the other officer, and they picked Quigley up by each arm and stuck him in the squad car, still scratching vigorously.

Michael noticed that Liz was smiling now. He smiled, too. “Well, Quigley was truthful about one thing,” Michael said. “He did get someone arrested today.”




tbc

[Island Breeze]

The Four Faces of Rath



Ripples in Time

Chapter 24

XXIV



Jeff Parker watched as Michael tried to explain to Liz what he had already told Jeff about Liz being married to Max in the “correct” timeline, having four children –including the triplets- and, as if all that were not enough, living on another planet, because Max is an alien… and the king on his planet.

Liz was trying to keep a straight face so that she could still appear angry… or at least hurt… by her wedding day disaster; but as Michael talked on, she kept giggling despite all her efforts not to.

“Dad, did you put him up to this? You did, didn’t you! You hired him to get me out of marrying James and then told him to say all these things to make me laugh.”

“No! I swear!” Jeff said, holding his right hand up. “Show her, Michael.”

Michael reached over and ran his hand over Jeff’s tux, changing it into chain mail. Liz and her mother both watched with their mouths open.

“How did you do that,” Liz asked. “Is that a magic trick?”

“No more than this…” Michael said, taking the handkerchief from Liz’s hand and turning it into a bouquet of white roses. He handed her the roses, and Liz smelled them…

“They’re real!”

“Yeah.”

“Did you know that white roses were my favorites?”

“Max told me. They’re what he threw up to you on your balcony once.”

“Where’d these come from?”

Michael grinned. “I don’t know the physics involved. I just do it.”

Liz looked momentarily dazed. “You know… if you’d allow me to study you… Omigod! I could describe the mechanism that allows you to do this! Do you know what this could mean to the world?”

“Yeah,” Michael said. “I think I do. Sorry, Liz. I came to try to get you and Max back together not to be the subject of a scientific review.”

Liz blushed. “I’m… I’m sorry! I didn’t mean… you know… Oh geez! You must think I’m terrible.”

“Naw! No more than any other molecular biology genius head of research at Harvard who needs a life,” Michael said with a smile.

“You think I don’t have a life?” Liz half asked, half stated.

“Not like what you had with Max. You said yourself that you felt like the right guy was out there somewhere… just lost in another dimension or something. You said that you always wanted him to come.”

Liz looked at the roses Michael had handed her. For a moment, she appeared to be lost in her thoughts.

“I always did dream that my handsome prince would come one day and whisk me away… but New York or Europe was more what I expected. I never thought that it might be… you know, up there.” Liz pointed at the sky.

“Well… just don’t marry James Quigley,” Michael said.

Liz half giggled, half sobbed. “I don’t know what I was thinking. James was always there… and he kept asking. And he’s so brilliant… so good at what he does…”

“I wonder if he would be nearly as ‘brilliant’ without your help,” Michael said dryly.

Jeff nodded his agreement enthusiastically. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell her. Quigley needed her to further himself. He can’t hold a candle to you, Lizzie! You should have been the one who got that Nobel. You did all the work. It was your research!”

“I know, Dad. I’ve been a real jerk.”

Jeff shook his head. “No. You could never be that, Liz. Quigley’s got the market on that.”

Liz laughed.

“Well,” Michael said, “I think Quigley’s gonna have a few days, at least, to cool his heels and do some thinking. Maybe he’ll realize what he lost.”

Michael called for the portal, and a silvery doorway appeared. Liz walked over to it and touched it. The surface rippled like tiny waves spreading out from a pebble that had been thrown into a calm lake.

“Where does this go,” Liz asked, astonished.

“Wherever I ask it to take me,” Michael said.

Liz touched it again and watched the ripples.

“It’s your portal, Liz,” Michael said. “Before time got screwed up, you authorized it to respond to my commands. But it’s yours.”

Michael temporarily dismissed the portal, and it disappeared again.

Liz appeared enthralled. “Could it take me to see… Max?”

Michael thought a moment. “Well, I guess you could see him in the past… before time got screwed up.”

Liz was radiant. “I had a better idea in mind.”

Michael looked at her questioningly.

“I was thinking of the future. You do think you’re going to succeed, don’t you?”

Michael paled slightly… “I hope so… I mean… I have to, you know… somehow… I don’t know…”

“Portal,” Liz called. The portal appeared.

“It responded to you,” Michael gasped…

“You said it was mine,” Liz replied.

“Yeah, it is… well, in the other timeline.”

“Does that matter?”

“Apparently not,” Michael said.

Liz walked into the portal then turned and smiled. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere anyone.”

Michael looked at Jeff and Nancy. Jeff looked totally amazed and a bit pale. Nancy just looked as though she thought she might be having some kind of weird dream and might wake up any minute.

Suddenly the portal reappeared, and Liz stepped out. Michael noticed immediately that her hair had been let down, and she was wearing new clothes…

“Did you find Max?”

Liz looked at Michael as though trying to decide what to tell him.

“I was warned that I shouldn’t say too much about the future, Michael. And I was told to ask you not to go there looking for the ones you’re trying to bring back… It could cause the rift in time to increase. But I do have a message for you.”

“A message?” Michael asked.

“Find Alex, Kyle, Jim, Kathleen… and Tess.”

“And what else,” Michael asked.”

“Just that. You must find those people, and they must want to return.”

Michael stepped into the portal then looked back at Liz. Liz’s face was blank, displaying no emotion at all; but as he turned to leave, he thought he saw just a flicker of a smile cross her face.



tbc

[Island Breeze]

The Four Faces of Rath



Baby, I’m the Guitar Man

Chapter 25

XXV



“Alex, Kyle, Jim, and Kathleen should all be here on Earth somewhere in this time,” Michael thought to himself, as he walked down a quaint little tree-lined road aptly named, “Country Lane,” outside of Nashville, Tennessee. “But Tess… How am I going to find Tess? She was one of us. The four of us were never created on Earth in this time, so she won’t exist. I already saw Ava on Antar, so Liz couldn’t mean for me to find Ava. She said Tess.” Michael shook his head and looked at the name over the entrance of the ranch he had come to: ~Sweet Guitar Man-sion~

“This must be it,” he thought, as he attempted to open the large iron gates. The gates appeared to be locked. Michael thought about using his powers, but he saw someone about a hundred yards away, inside the fence, getting off of a horse. The man patted the horse on the side then rubbed his hand up and down its nose for a moment… then he took out a couple of sugar cubes and held them in his hand, and the horse took them.

Michael yelled at the man, but he got no response, though he was pretty sure that the man had seen him. Deciding that he would need to be more direct, Michael called the portal.

“I should have told it to take me directly to Alex in the first place instead of saying take me to where Alex lives. That could mean his house, his town, or even his planet. I have to be more precise with my instructions. It would have saved me a walk.”

Michael stepped into the portal and stepped back out right beside the man who had just got off the horse. The man looked at him. He was obviously surprised, but he hid it pretty well…

“Whatever that thing is, I hope you don’t market it to the other fans, guy. I’ll never get any peace and quiet.”

“I needed to talk to you,” Michael said.

“Yeah, they all do,” the man replied. “Whatcha want… an autograph? You got a pen?”

“No,” Michael said… “not an autograph. I want to talk to you, Alex Whitman.”

Alex stopped what he was doing and looked at Michael. “I haven’t heard that name in a long time, stranger. Kinda sounds good, though! I’m Joshua Sweet now; you know, ‘The Guitar Man.’”

“Yeah, I figured it out,” Michael said… “Sweet Guitar Man-sion.”

Alex chuckled.

“So you’re some kind of heavy-duty fan. I reckon not one in a hundred fans knows that Joshua Sweet’s not my real name… even since the Country Music Awards last month.”

“I take it you did okay?”

Alex smiled and looked at Michael. “Okay, so you’re not a fan, I guess… Who are you?”

“My name’s Michael… Michael Guerin.”

“Did we ever meet, Michael?”

“Yeah, but it was sort of in another lifetime… You know what I mean?”

Alex chuckled again. “Yeah, I think I do.”

“I don’t think so,” Michael said. “But that’s understandable. I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around it, too. Do you remember Liz Parker and Maria DeLuca… from Roswell High?”

Alex looked at him. “Liz and Maria? Yeah, sure I remember them! I haven’t forgotten my friends just ‘cause I got famous. Okay, maybe I don’t ever see them anymore… we all moved on in different circles, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“I read something in the papers about Liz attending some big conferences in Norway a few months back… something to do with some research she’s working on. She’s at Harvard now, I think.”

“Head of Molecular Biology Research at Harvard,” Michael said.

Alex seemed impressed. “Well, I always knew she’d go far. I guess Liz and I were the only ones who had a clear idea of where we wanted to go in life… only I chose guitar, and she chose the stars… to study, I mean. Hey, that would make a good song! ‘I chose guitar… but you chose the stars,” Alex started singing. “I need to work on it a bit. That could be something though, pardner! Thanks!”

“Don’t mention it,” Michael said. “…and I mean that,” he thought to himself.

“So is that where you got that fancy gadget of yours? Liz made it for you?” Alex asked.

“No, not her branch of science.”

“Oh, well, it looks like a pretty handy gadget anyway.”

“It has its uses,” Michael said. “Like going back and forth to my planet.”

Alex slowed down then stopped and looked at Michael for a moment…

“That’s not very nice, pardner, making a musician think his ears are going bad on him. I’m pretty sure you said ‘your planet???’”

“Yeah, you heard right,” Michael said.

Alex started to chuckle then began to laugh. “Oh, I get it! Those Candid Camera people put you up to this! I should’ve known. We pulled a good one on old Dwight Yoakum for them a couple months back. Alright Dwight! You got me back!” Alex laughed.

Michael reached up and snapped a twig off the tree they were passing under and passed his hand over it. It turned into a classic-style, rosewood electric guitar. He handed it to Alex. Alex turned it over and examined it from every angle… then he strummed it…

“Damn, man! This is good! You couldn’t maybe put the name ‘Gibson’ on it… right here… could you?”

Michael passed his hand over the tuning head, and the name ‘Gibson’ appeared on it. Alex looked at the guitar… then at Michael… then at the guitar… then at Michael…

“Listen, you wouldn’t be needin’ a job with a lot of travel wouldja?”

“I’ve already got that,” Michael said.

“Oh, yeah… your planet… Long commute?”

Michael nodded. “Seven galaxies.”

“Well, listen, I’ve got a concert at eight o’clock tonight. Why don’t you come? I’ll get you in free. We can talk more in my dressing room. I’ve really gotta go and get ready right now, but I do want to find out why you came here lookin’ for me.”

“Alright,” Michael said. “How do I get there?”

Alex thought about it. “Never mind. Come with me. You can wait for me in the house and we’ll go together in the limo.”

**********

Michael sat in the front row watching the Dixie Hens and other warm up groups. Everyone seemed pretty quiet and well-behaved for a concert audience. But occasionally someone would scream out, “Where’s the Guitar Man? We want Josh!” and the audience would applaud or appear to get anxious. It was starting to get downright noisy, in fact.

Michael was just about to stick some paper wads in his ears when, suddenly, the noise level increased by about a hundred fold without warning. Instinctively, Michael dropped the paper wads and ducked, looking around for what had brought on all the screams. Then he realized that it was Alex walking out onto the stage. He had on a cowboy hat and boots, tight jeans, and a fancy shirt. Michael had to admit to himself that he was actually a bit impressed by Alex’s gallant look and confidant stride. As Alex walked up to the microphone, he and his backup band launched straight into his big crossover hit, “Sweet Guitar Man,” and the crowd went absolutely wild. Michael looked at the roof. He was sure that all this noise would surely bring it crashing down at any moment. Fortunately –or perhaps not- the music was loud enough to be heard over the roar.

Soon, the crowd had quieted to only about a category 7 hurricane, as more people began to listen to the song. Michael noticed that, all through the audience, there were girls holding up signs saying, “Marry me, Josh!” “Sweet Josh, Be Mine!” and “Josh, you can play my guitar all night long!” Michael shook his head and finished putting the paper wads in his ears. He could still hear the song… and the screams.

As Alex wound up the song, the screams increased in pitch again to a feverish crescendo. Alex smiled and thanked the fans for coming out for him. Once it had quieted down a little, he continued…

“I have a new song for you. It hasn’t been recorded yet, and the guys and I haven’t had much time to practice it, but I’d like to try it out on you all tonight.”

Apparently, the crowd liked the idea. They went wild again with applause. Alex smiled and nodded at his band, and the guys struck up an intro. Alex picked up the microphone and seemed to look straight into the eyes of every fan there, melting their hearts, as he began to sing…


I don’t know your name… Don’t know who you are
You came in a dream from some place very far.
I still see your face, I still feel your hands,
I remember your grace,
As in the summer night we danced.
Our passions were aflame… We gazed together at the stars
And though I don’t know your name, Darling…
You belong in my heart…

But if you were from Venus, then I was from Mars…
It seems that between us we were a universe apart
It’s not what I wanted… I know you felt it, too…
Our hearts were haunted…
We were both left feelin’ blue.
But it’ll always be us… living here in my heart
Though I hold this guitar, Darling…
And you hold the stars.

Oh, it was sta-a-a-r-gazing with you I fell in love
You must have been an angel sent from Heaven up above!
I don’t know where you are or even if you’re real…
But when you walked into my dream, I knew,
My heart you came to steal.

You were far more than a vision… Something pulled out of the air
Our hearts were in collision… You were the answer to my prayers
If this guitar that I hold… could even start to take your place
I’d never let it go,
And my blues I’d all erase
But like every good dream… fairies n’ unicorns so rare…
The sun a new day brings, and you just disappear…
For my life’s in this guitar, Darling,
And yours is in the stars.

I could never love another… since you brightened up my sky
My aching heart just flutters… like the stars twinkling on high
And I stare up at the heavens… where I’m certain you must live
I know I must have rolled all sevens…
To win a dream that felt like this
You’re my star lover… You’re my angel in the sky
You make me st-st-stutter… You make me want to sigh
So why am I holdin’ this guitar, Darling,
When you’re sittin’ on a star?

Oh, it was sta-a-a-r-gazing with you I fell in love
You must have been an angel sent from Heaven up above!
I don’t know where you are or even if you’re real…
But when you walked into my dream, I knew,
My heart you came to steal.

Sta-a-a-r-gazing with you I fell in love
When you walked into my dream, I knew,
My heart you came to steal.



“Thank you! Thank you!” Alex said, smiling, as the crowd went wild with applause. “That was called ‘Stargazing.’ I guess you can look for it on our next CD. What do you think? Should we record it?”

The audience let out such a round of applause, whistles, and screams that Michael had to cover his ears with his hands on top of the wads of paper he had already put in his ears. Alex went on to play fifteen other songs from his various hit CD’s, and the crowd kept screaming and applauding from the beginning to the end. After ending the concert, Alex sang three encores for the crowd, who just wouldn’t stop applauding; but finally, he had to call an end to it and return to his dressing room. Michael was waiting there. He could still hear the screams and applause all the way from back here in the back of the building.

“So what’d you think,” Alex asked Michael. “Did it go alright?”

Michael cupped his hand beside his ear… “Huh?”

“I said, ‘how’d you like it?”

“Huh?”

Alex grinned and pushed Michael’s hand away from his ear. “Yeah, they can be a little loud, can’t they? But it’s good to feel appreciated.”

Michael smiled and nodded. “So you’ve really made it, huh, Alex? They loved you out there! What would you rather have really… this… or what you were singing about in that new song?”

“In Stargazing?”

“Yeah.”

Alex smiled. “I’ve had the fame. It’s great, but it doesn’t keep me warm at night… well, not the same way…”

“Why do I get the idea, Alex, that that was more than just a song? What if I told you I knew who that girl was… the one who walked into your dream?”

Alex looked at Michael. At first, it appeared that he was going to make a joke, but something seemed to be telling him that Michael wasn’t joking.

“Alright… Anyone else, I’d say they were just guessing… but someone who can just pop out of thin air like you did back on my ranch… well, I’m listenin’.”

“Her name’s Isabel.”

Alex’s eyes grew larger, and his face softened. “So you really do know her?”

“Yeah.”

“Who is she? Why did she come into my dream like that? Why have I never seen her again? How can I find her?”

“Whoa! One question at a time, Alex!” Michael laughed. “She’s Isabel Evans.”

“I don’t know an Isabel Evans. She told me her name was Isabel in the dream, though.”

“She has… had… the ability to enter people’s dreams,” Michael said.

“What do you mean, ‘had,’” Alex asked. “She doesn’t anymore?”

“She doesn’t exist anymore… not in time as we know it. I think somehow she reached out to you from wherever she is in time. She may not be aware of her own existence, but somehow she seems to still have some awareness of you. Don’t ask me to explain that. I have absolutely no clue how it can be. I only know that Kryys –That’s my son- told me that he can be here in some kind of way because he’s aware of himself while the others are not aware of themselves, so they don’t exist.”

“How can I find her?”

“That’s why I’m here, really, Alex… to help you find her, and help her find you…”

Michael explained to Alex, as best he could, what had happened and told him about the life that he and Isabel had had together in their own time… on Antar.

“So, what you’re sayin’ is, this time I’m in here is some kind of unreal time or something,” Alex asked.

“Oh, it’s real enough, Alex,” Michael said. “It’s just not what was meant to be. It’s like digging a canal from a river to somewhere else. The new waterway is real enough. It just isn’t the way it was originally meant to be. You could go on living in this time.”

“I don’t want to,” Alex said. “If I had the life you told me about with Isabel… I don’t want this. I want that life. How can I get it back?”

“I’m not sure. What I do know is that I have to make everyone aware of their other life, and they have to want it to make it happen again… and I have to keep my memories of everyone alive… or that other life will disappear forever, and this one will be the only one.”

“Wait a minute,” Alex exclaimed. “I’ve got lots of pictures of me around here! I’m giving them out all the time! I’ll give you one. You keep looking at it! Promise me! Don’t forget my face!”

Michael laughed. “I’m starting to remember a lot of things again that I had nearly forgotten. I guess that’s why Liz told me I had to find you. Now I’ve gotta go find Kyle.”

“Kyle… Valenti? The sheriff’s son… from Roswell?”

“One and the same.”

“Was he up there, too?”

“Yeah.”

“Did he marry that new girl… what was her name… Tess? They seemed to be getting pretty hot there for awhile?”

“No. How do you know about Tess? She was one of the four royals. Her DNA wouldn’t have been brought to Earth, since Ava was never killed. So she shouldn’t have existed in this time.”

“Well, there was somebody named Tess at Roswell High. A blonde… sort of a bombshell… you know? Good-looker.”

“Sounds like Tess,” Michael said. “She didn’t have any powers?”

“What kind of powers?”

“You know, like warping minds or putting broken pottery back together?”

Alex looked at Michael strangely. “Tess? No way!” Alex laughed.

“How can it be the same Tess,” Michael wondered. “But it must be… Who else could it be?”

“Will I see you again,” Alex asked.

“Well, let’s hope so,” Michael said, “…either in this time or in the original one.”

Michael called for the portal… As it appeared, he stepped in then was gone. Alex waved. Then he sat down and picked up his guitar, with thoughts of Isabel running through his mind…


I could never love another… since you brightened up my sky
My aching heart just flutters… like the stars twinkling on high
And I stare up at the heavens… where I’m certain you must live
I know I must have rolled all sevens…
To win a dream that felt like this
You’re my star lover… You’re my angel in the sky
You make me st-st-stutter… You make me want to sigh
So why am I holdin’ this guitar, Darling,
When you’re sittin’ on a star?

Oh, it was sta-a-a-r-gazing with you I fell in love
You must have been an angel sent from Heaven up above!
I don’t know where you are or even if you’re real…
But when you walked into my dream, I knew,
My heart you came to steal.

Sta-a-a-r-gazing with you I fell in love
When you walked into my dream, I knew,
My heart you came to steal.





tbc

[Island Breeze]

The Four Faces of Rath



Be Careful What You Ask For

Chapter 26

XXVI



Michael had asked the portal to take him to where Alex was, and the portal had taken him to Nashville. Michael had wound up walking down a country road for about a half a mile before he found Alex’s ranch. Determined to be the master of the portal and not let it get the best of him, he made his command much more specific this time…

“Take me face to face with Kyle Valenti.”

Michael stepped out of the portal and was immediately lifted off the ground by a force that felt like a charging rhinoceros. When he had got his breath back, he looked up and saw that someone was leaning over him.

“Where did you come from,” the still-hazy figure asked. “I didn’t see you. I was aiming for the quarterback.”

“Ooooooh,” Michael moaned. “Now I remember why I really needed Max back! He can heal broken bones!”

The hazy figure laughed. “You don’t have any broken bones. I checked. Just got the wind knocked out of you. You should be okay in a few minutes. Where did you come from? I just looked up, and there you were between me and the quarterback.

“Kyle?” Michael managed to ask, as his vision began to clear.

“Okay, you know me, so who are you?”

“Michael Guerin.”

“Don’t remember you,” Kyle said. “Should I?”

“Probably not. Aren’t you a little old to be playing professional football, Kyle?”

Kyle laughed. “I gave up professional football twelve years ago. Got a serious knee injury. It healed, but my game never did after that. Now I’m a trainer. Maybe I can’t hit as hard as I used to, but…”

“Yeah,” Michael said, “I was asking myself if that was the best you could do.”

“Yeah, sure you were,” Kyle grinned. “Looked more like you were asking yourself if you were going to live!”

Michael grinned, too. “Okay, I admit… you still hit pretty hard, Kyle.”

“So tell me again… where did we meet?”

“Roswell High… but you won’t remember me,” Michael replied.

“You’re right about that. I don’t. Were you in my class?”

“Yeah. So were Alex Whitman, Liz Parker, and Maria DeLuca.”

“That’s funny. I remember all of them, but I still don’t remember you.”

“You know, Kyle, as much as I enjoy just lying here on the ground looking up at you like this,” Michael said with a touch of sarcasm, “could we just go somewhere and talk after you’re finished here?”

Kyle thought about it a moment. He didn’t remember Michael, but he did remember Alex, Liz, and Maria… and this guy did say he knew them…

“Yeah, okay, I guess we could. Just give me a few minutes to wrap things up here. The practice is over really.”

Kyle helped Michael up and over to the benches. A few minutes later, he headed to the lockers to shower and change then met Michael back at the benches.

“There’s a great Chinese restaurant over here on Second Street and Elm. You like Chinese?”

“Sounds fine,” Michael said.

“You want to go with me or do you have transportation,” Kyle asked.

“We better go in your car, I guess,” Michael said. Then he stopped and thought a moment.

“On second thought, Kyle, I’ll take my transportation. And you can go with me.”

“Oh, well, I don’t know about leaving my car here…”

“What’s this place called?”

“The Dragon Empress.”

Michael grinned slightly and called for the portal. Suddenly, Kyle was faced with something that looked eerily like a wall of smooth water or perhaps a liquid mirror standing upright in front of him.

“What the… What the hell is that?”

“That’s my transportation,” Michael said. “Portal, take my friend and me to the front door of the Dragon Empress Chinese Restaurant on Second Street and Elm.” Michael gave Kyle a gentle push into the portal and followed him through. They stepped out at the front door of the restaurant. Kyle watched the portal disappear with his mouth still hanging open.

“Okay, I want to know how that just happened,” he said when he got his voice back. “What was that thing? How does it work?”

“All in good time, Kyle,” Michael said with a smile. “I figured this would help me establish credibility for what I have to tell you. You might not believe me.”

“What? You think I’m not a trusting guy?”

“You said it, Kyle, not me.”

Kyle nodded. “I can be hard to convince. If you’d told me about that… that… whatever it was, I wouldn’t have believed you.”

“Well, there you are. Credibility, see? Now that that’s established, we can proceed to the really important stuff.”

“What’s that,” Kyle asked.

“Dinner,” Michael said, opening the door and showing Kyle in. “I just realized that I’m hungry and haven’t eaten all day.”

**********

“So you knew Liz and Maria… and Alex,” Kyle said to Michael, as they both returned from the buffet with egg rolls, snow peas, and other traditional Chinese favorites on their plates.

“Yeah.”

“Pretty well?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s odd that I can’t remember you. How well did you know me?”

“Very well,” Michael said.

Michael told Kyle a few of the things he remembered about him from high school. “That does bring up an issue, though,” he said “that I’m not clear on.”

“What’s that,” Kyle asked.

“Tess. I heard you two were going together.”

“Yeah… everyone knew that. If you knew me in high school, you should’ve known it, too.”

“Yeah, I did know it. The trouble is, I don’t understand it.”

“Oh, common, guy! What’s to understand? Good lookin’ girl… football jock. What? You think she wouldn’t be interested in me?”

“No, no! It’s not that! I think I’d better explain a few things to you. Let me just finish this Egg Drop soup.” Michael took a bottle of Tabasco out of his pocket and poured half of it into his soup. Then he finished off the soup and proceeded to tell Kyle about the time screw-up and his former life on Antar. Kyle sat looking at Michael with a bemused sort of look.

“Okay, Michael, when I think of time changing, I think of, like, Daylight Savings Time, you know, not rivers going wrong and stuff. How does one screw up time, anyway? I didn’t even know you could do that!”

“Well, it’s not easy,” Michael said “but it can happen. I could be here all day trying to explain how, because I don’t understand it so well myself. Let’s save that talk for another time, okay? What I need to know is… how happy are you with your life, Kyle?”

“Very,” Kyle answered.

“But if you could be married to Jeliya and have a great life on Antar… with your children and friends… wouldn’t that be better?”

“I don’t remember any of that. I’m not really sure I even believe it, if you really want to know the truth. You’ve got that fancy gizmo that can transport you across town in a flash, and I’m impressed… and I don’t know who but an alien would pour half a bottle of Tabasco in Egg Drop soup, but you’re asking me to believe that my whole life –as I remember it- has all been just a dream or something.”

“No, not a dream,” Michael said. “It’s real… not a dream at all. You could go on living this life the way it is if you choose to, and it will be real… but there is another life out there that you could return to… I hope we all can… one that you’ve forgotten. Well, maybe forgotten isn’t exactly accurate. Technically, it’s more like it never existed for you. But it did exist in time, and you may be able to return to it. But you have to want to.”

“No offense, Michael, but why would I want to do that… I mean… even if I believed that I could… or that that life really did once exist? I’ve got everything I ever wanted here. I got to play in the pros for three years before my knee got hurt. Now I make some pretty serious money as a trainer. People know me… They respect me… Okay, maybe my one marriage didn’t work out, but we were young. It just wasn’t meant to be. And it’s not like I don’t have girls interested in me. I date… all the time! I have a great life, Michael. Tell me why I should give it up!”

“Maybe because you could do better,” a voice behind Kyle said. Kyle jumped and turned around to see who it was. A young lady standing behind him smiled and winked at Michael.

“Liz? Liz Parker?” Kyle exclaimed, “Where did you come from? I haven’t seen you since… since Roswell! You look great!”

“Thanks, Kyle… Michael!” Michael seemed to be almost as stunned as Kyle by Liz’s unexpected appearance.

“I thought you might need a little help,” Liz said to Michael. “Kyle can be pretty bullheaded.”

“Oh thanks, Liz,” Kyle said. “Does the whole world know it?”

Liz smiled and ran a hand over Kyle’s head, mussing his hair up. “I know it. I went out with you a few times.”

Kyle grinned. “Okay, yeah, I can be, sometimes, a bit bullheaded, I guess. But that’s just because I know what I want… and I was a jock. It was part of our contract: section 1b, part 7 of the jock agreement… ‘All jocks are entitled to whatever they want.’”

Liz gave Kyle a little whack on the back of the head.

“Obviously you never read my contract, Liz,” Kyle said, straightening his hair with his fingers.

“Obviously you never read mine, Kyle.”

“What contract do science preppies get, Liz?”

“Science preppie contract, section 3a, part 1c and amendments… ‘Girls aspiring to be head of molecular biology research at Harvard are specifically exempt from section 1b, part 7 of the jock clause.’”

“I never heard of that,” Kyle said.

“Neither did I,” Michael said. “I never knew these contracts existed.”

Kyle and Liz both laughed. “I was joking, Michael,” Liz said with a smile.

“I wasn’t,” Kyle said. Liz whacked him again on the back of the head.

“You always were the rebel, Liz,” Kyle said, straightening his hair again.

“Yeah, it kept me out of trouble, Kyle… with jocks like you. That and the Pater Nostrum contract.”

“Okay, what’s the Pater Nostrum contract?”

“It says that at any time on any date any daughter can consider the entire jock contract null and void and use her power of adjudication to return home forthwith.”

“Power of adjudication?”

Liz showed Kyle a quarter.

“Oh! That’s a tough contract!”

“Talk to my Dad about it.”

Kyle laughed and nodded. “How did you get here, Liz? I didn’t know you were in town.”

“I wasn’t. Michael told me that the portal had been mine in the other time, and I decided to try it and found out that I can still use it here, too.”

“I’ve created a portal monster,” Michael said. “Have you eaten, Liz?”

“Yeah, thanks. I’m not hungry. I just came to give you a little support.”

“Well, I seem to need it. Kyle doesn’t want any other life but the one he knows.”

“Hey. It’s a great life,” Kyle said. “Why fix it if it ain’t broken? You know what I mean? I like my life!”

“What would convince you, Kyle,” Liz asked.

“Nothing, Liz. I really, really like my life just as it is right now, right here. I don’t see any reason to risk all of this searching for some unseen idyllic Eden.”

“Then there’s nothing we can do to convince you?”

Kyle shook his head. “Sorry, Liz. I like my life.”

“What does that mean,” Michael asked Liz. “You’re the one who went to the future, Liz. If Kyle doesn’t want to return, what’s gonna happen?”

“There’ll be no Kyle in your world. But all that is assuming, of course, that any of us will be there,” Liz said. “We don’t know that for a certainty, you know. You still have to change what happened. If you’re successful in that and Kyle doesn’t wish to return, he’ll remain where he is. He won’t exist in your branch of time.”

“And Jeliya?”

“She’ll marry someone else, I imagine.”

“You’d give up your children, Kyle?” Michael asked.

“No, of course not! But you said, yourself, they don’t exist. What you’re talking about is some pie in the sky… It’s not real. It’s something you want to create. And I’m happy here where I am.”

“Okay, Kyle,” Liz said. “We wish you were going to be there, but if this is what you really want, I understand.”

“Thanks,” Kyle said. “If I ever change my mind, I’ll look you up, Michael.”

“It doesn’t work that way, Kyle,” Michael said. “I guess this is good bye.”

Kyle nodded.

Michael placed a couple of bills on the table in front of Kyle to pay his part of the check. Then he shook Kyle’s hand and walked out with Liz. Once outside, he called the portal, and they both stepped through together.

“Well, you’re back home, Liz. I’ll leave you and go see what I can do with Jim. But I doubt Jim’s gonna want to go if Kyle’s not going to be there.”

Liz nodded. “I’m afraid you’re right, Michael… But try anyway. Maybe if Jim would go, Kyle might change his mind.”

Both of them knew that the likelihood of convincing Jim Valenti, under the circumstances, was not good. But Michael called the portal again. Then he waved at Liz and stepped through.



tbc

[Island Breeze]

The Four Faces of Rath



The Sheriff

Chapter 27

XXVII



Stepping out of the portal, Michael found himself in a vacant quarry. He looked around but saw no one. In fact, the place virtually exuded an eerie, almost surreal emptiness of sound or life of any kind. Not even a bird or a cricket seemed to be around to break the silence.

“That’s odd. I distinctly asked the portal to take me to Jim Valenti.”

Suddenly, the silence was broken by a gunshot… then a sound like something hitting the ground. Michael hurried to where the sound had come from and saw something… apparently a body… in the quarry. Half climbing, half sliding down the rocky slope, he made his way to the unmoving man below. As he turned him over, he gasped…

“Jim!”

Michael lifted his hand and saw blood on it. He tore at Jim’s shirt and saw that Jim had been shot. Pressing two fingers to the carotid artery on Jim’s neck, Michael felt for a heartbeat. Feeling none, he began to give CPR, alternately pounding on Jim’s chest and breathing into his mouth. But after a couple of minutes, he knew that Jim was beyond his help. He was dead.

In the eerie quietness that seemed to come over everything again, Michael heard a gun click behind his head. He spun around and blasted the bullet out of the air at the very moment that the shooter pulled the trigger. But if the shooter was astonished, Michael was equally at a loss for words. He stood there for several moments, his hand still in the air and his mouth open in shock…

“You?”

“Shut up and put your hands up over your head where I can see them, alien!”

“What the hell! No! No way! In case you didn’t notice, your bullet just got blasted out of the frikkin’ air. You’re not the one in control here,” Michael said displaying the palm of his hand menacingly. “You even move again and you’ll be vaporized before you know what happened!”

“Just shut up,” Kathleen said, edging down the quarry toward Michael. “I’m the one with the gun here.”

“It might as well be a pea-shooter,” Michael reminded her.

Kathleen frowned. “Alright, so you’ve got powers… but can you stop a barrage of bullets? This pistol’s automatic. It’s the equivalent of an UZI. Do you know what that is? If I wanted you dead, you would have been.”

Kathleen pulled out a walky-talky and balanced it against one ear as she held her gun trained on Michael with the other hand. “I’m calling for backup.”

Faster than Kathleen saw it coming, Michael blasted the gun out of her hand and the walky-talky out of her other hand. Kathleen let out a small scream. Michael was unsure if it was from the surprise or from the heat of his blasts, one of which had clearly burned her gun hand.

“Sorry, but I can’t let you do that.”

“That was government equipment,” Kathleen exclaimed threateningly. Then taking stock of her situation, she asked, “Are you going to kill me, too?” She wasn’t sure why she bothered to ask. Of course, he was going to kill her. She knew that. She was at his mercy; and if there was one thing she had been taught in the unit, it was that these aliens did not know the meaning of the word mercy.

“What do you mean, ‘too?’” Michael asked. “You’re the freak that shot Valenti! Not me!”

“I didn’t shoot him,” Kathleen said. “I heard a gunshot, and when I got over here, you were standing over him.”

“But I don’t have a gun,” Michael said. “You do.”

Kathleen looked at her burned hand.

“Okay, you did,” Michael corrected.

“So did he,” Kathleen said, pointing at Jim. “But I doubt he killed himself. Somebody killed him.”

Michael nodded. “Yeah… so if it wasn’t me… and it wasn’t you… Who was it?”

“The aliens,” Kathleen said, still looking at Michael with suspicion. “You… or one of your buddies.”

“Who taught you to be so afraid of things you don’t understand,” Michael asked. “Was it the secret alien unit that you work for?”

“You seem to know a lot about me. Too bad I don’t know as much about your kind,” Kathleen replied sullenly. I didn’t get into this unit to kill e.t.’s, but I’ve been shown what your kind has done. I’ve seen pictures of the handprints on mutilated bodies. I’ve heard about your ruthlessness… I’ve seen it. Why shouldn’t I be… cautious?” Kathleen reached down at her feet and picked up a piece of something that looked like skin. It vanished in her hand. Michael’s jaw dropped a couple of inches…

“Skins? Here? But if the royal four were never here in this time… why skins? What did they come here for?”

“Don’t play the innocent,” Kathleen said. “An Earthling wouldn’t be able to put that ‘I’m so innocent’ crap over on me, and neither can you.”

“You weren’t afraid of me in a different place and time,” Michael said.

Kathleen scowled and tried to smile to show that she wasn’t afraid, but her fear was palpable in spite of her masterful attempt to hide it.

“What different place and time?”

“I’m going to show you,” Michael said. “Portal!”

Kathleen gasped, momentarily distracted by the unexpected apparition in front of her, and Michael shoved her into the portal. “The palace on Antar,” he said simply.

**********

As the portal disappeared, Kathleen looked around her at the now alien landscape. In some ways, it was not too unlike what she was familiar with on Earth, but there were differences. For one thing, in the distance, she could see an ocean… a golden colored ocean. And in the sky, she thought she saw more than one moon. And in both directions, extending outward like the sides of a large “V” from the planet she was on, she saw several other planets lined up, faintly but clearly visible even in the daylight.

“What did you do to me? Where am I? Why did you kidnap me?”

“I think it’s called ‘abduction’ when we do it, isn’t it,” Michael asked with a touch of sarcasm.

Kathleen nodded. “So why did you abduct me? Are you going to tie me up and torture me?”

“Don’t tempt me,” Michael said. “Actually, I needed to bring you here to show you that we’re not monsters. We’re just like you. We’re not on Earth to hurt anyone.”

“You could’ve fooled me,” Kathleen said with a bit of forced bravado. “What about the mutilated bodies? The handprints?”

Michael shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe the skins… I don’t know…”

“What’s a skin? You keep saying that.”

“That piece of skin you found… It was from an… alien, I guess… but not like me. They shed their skin, because it was grown for them. They can’t live in Earth’s atmosphere without a specially-grown ‘husk.’”

“You’re freaking me out,” Kathleen said. “And I didn’t think anyone could do that! So what you’re saying is that there are bad aliens and good aliens? You expect me to believe that?”

“Aren’t there bad Earthlings and good Earthlings?”

Kathleen thought about it a moment. “I guess so.”

“Of course there are! You know there are! Why wouldn’t aliens be the same?”

“Because they’re aliens,” Kathleen said. “Because they’re all here to infiltrate us and take over our planet…”

“Here? Your planet?”

Kathleen looked around and paled slightly. “Well, not here, I guess… Earth, I mean. Where are we?”

“Antar,” Michael said. “My planet. You like it?”

“How did we get here? How do I get back?”

“I thought you didn’t believe in alien mercy. You think I’m going to send you back?”

Kathleen shook her head, and Michael suddenly realized that she really did not expect to survive this, much less ever return home. Suddenly, he felt an uncomfortable streak of compassion for this person who had threatened to shoot him just minutes before.

“Listen,” Michael said, opening the door of the palace that led to the terrace on which they had appeared, “You must be thirsty. Let’s go inside.”

Kathleen still did not trust Michael, but she was pragmatically resigned to her fate, whatever that might be. She followed Michael into the palace. Michael led her to the foyer where Zan and Ava were sitting together on a sofa reading the daily CoruzAntar newspaper.

“Zan… Ava…” Michael said in Antarian. “We have a visitor… from Earth.”

“Urth?” Zan repeated, looking up at Kathleen.

“Eluymer,” Michael corrected.

“Sit down! Sit down!” Zan said to Kathleen in Antarian. She didn’t understand, but Ava rushed to get Kathleen a pillow to lean on, and Kathleen sat down and nodded gratefully.

“This is Kathleen Topolsky of Eluymer,” Michael said. Then to Kathleen, he said, in English, “Kathleen, this is Zan, the King of Antar, and Ava, the Queen of Antar.”

Kathleen was initially stunned but then found her voice… “Oh, uh, thank you… It’s a pleasure… I think… your majesties.”

Zan smiled. “Did she come willingly, Michael? She looks scared… and her hand appears to be burned.”

Michael shrugged. “I had some things to prove to her. It was the only way I knew how. Maybe you could look at her hand?”

Zan reached out and took Kathleen’s hand in his own left hand. She reflexively pulled back, but he calmly took it again and placed his right hand over the top of it. As he did, her hand began to glow with a greenish light, and the pain of the burn –and all the redness- disappeared as she watched.

“Thank you,” Kathleen managed to say with quiet shock in her voice, as she looked at her hand and saw that it no longer had a trace of a burn on it.

“Kathleen and I have been a bit parched by the afternoon sun on Eluymer, and we’re both very thirsty. If you’ll forgive me, Zan, I’ll go get us something to drink.”

Ava was up in a flash. “I’ll do that, Michael. You relax with your guest.” Ava rushed off toward the dining area and returned in no time with two large glasses of yellow water.

“What’s this?” Kathleen asked, looking at it suspiciously; but her thirst got the better of her, and she sipped it without waiting for an answer. Michael translated Kathleen’s question.

“It’s water,” Ava said. “It’s directly from the Golden Sea… but don’t worry… It’s been desalinated. The Golden Sea water is the purest and best that exists.”

Michael translated Ava’s remarks for Kathleen, but she had already finished the water and was asking for more.

“I guess you’ve never seen yellow water before,” Michael said with a smile.

“Sure I have,” Kathleen said between gulps, “but I wouldn’t have drank it!”

Michael chuckled. “Well, where I came from, I would have offered you a glass of iced tea, but since I never grew up on Earth in this time, Antarians have never seen tea and haven’t developed a taste for it or synthesized it here. So you get yellow water.”

“It’s great!” Kathleen exclaimed. “Yellow or not, it’s the best water I’ve ever had!”

“You’re not afraid we’ll poison you?” Michael asked.

“Well… if you’re going to then you’re going to… and I’m thirsty. I might as well enjoy it. It tastes divine! At least I won’t die thirsty.”

“It is good,” Michael agreed. “I’ve got to get the process for desalinizing it when I return. We drank spring water where I came from. It’s clear… like Earth water. But this is really good!”

Kathleen finished her second glass of water and leaned back thankfully on the pillow. Then she looked at Zan and Ava… and at Michael.

“Why did you bring me here,” she asked Michael. “If you’re not going to torture me or kill me or study me… what do you want with me? I’m being treated like a guest… I don’t understand.”

Michael translated Kathleen’s remarks for Zan and Ava, and Ava replied in Antarian.

“She said that you are a guest,” Michael translated for Kathleen. “As long as you’re here, you’ll be treated well… as a guest.”

“Why,” Kathleen asked again.

“You wanted to shoot me back there,” Michael said, “and I couldn’t let you do that.”

“Well, I know that, but you could have just killed me.”

“Yeah… I could have.” Michael nodded. “But that would have just messed up my plans something terrible.”

Kathleen looked at Michael quizzically. “What plans? You have plans for me?”

“Yeah. It’s probably a good thing that you’re sitting down and have a pillow behind you, Kathleen, because what I’m going to tell you could be hard to believe… for you.”

“What?” Kathleen looked at him suspiciously.

“In a different… branch of time, I guess you’d call it… I grew up on Earth. So did Zan and Ava here. We were teenagers going to Roswell High School, and you were… well, doing what you’re doing now… working for the FBI trying to catch aliens… us. But in that branch of time, you found out what the Unit was really doing to us, and you tried to help us. This got you locked up in an insane asylum where no one could ever find you again but your ex-associates. And they did torture you. Ava rescued you. She was a teenager then… Now, in this timeline, she and Zan are in their nineties. That’s a whole story in itself, though.”

Kathleen gasped. “You mean I let you run to get me a glass of water and you’re ninety-something? How old do you live to be?”

Michael translated, and Ava smiled. “We’re quite fit, thank you. And we could live to a maximum of two hundred fifty or so… if we’re lucky. The average is closer to two hundred. We’re almost in the middle.”

“Not quite yet,” Zan corrected her.

Ava smiled again. “Zan will never admit that he is getting older. He still rides his yoriths and goes fishing in the Stareen River at least a few days each month. We both stay active.”

Michael translated again for Kathleen, and she shook her head incredulously.

“If Ava rescued me in this other time your talking about… what became of me? I know the people I work with. I wouldn’t have been able to just reappear in society.”

“No, you couldn’t. That’s why Ava… We called her Tess there… brought you here to Antar. You married Jim Valenti and you made your lives here.”

“Wait… Wait a minute! I married Jim Valenti? Sheriff Valenti?”

“Yeah.”

Kathleen laughed.

“What’s so funny,” Michael asked.

“Me marrying Valenti! Well, I guess he is kind of good looking… and I have been trying to get closer to him. But it was to get information… you know?”

“Was it?” Michael asked.

“Yeah,” Kathleen said. But as she thought about it, she knew that that wasn’t entirely true. She did like Jim. But it was too late now…

“Jim’s dead,” Kathleen said.

“Maybe,” Michael agreed.

“No maybes,” Kathleen said. “I saw him… I know dead when I see it. Jim was dead. Unless… you can bring him back like you healed my hand…” She looked at Zan.

“No.” Michael shook his head. “He’s dead. In this time, he’s not coming back. We can’t do that. We don’t have that power. Kryys could have done it… if he’d been there… in this time… but he wasn’t. He isn’t.”

“If I’m right about where you’re going with this,” Kathleen said, “you’re about to ask me to go with you to some other time or something… ?”

“Sort of,” Michael agreed, “but not exactly. I’m going to return you to Earth in your own time… exactly where you came from.”

Kathleen’s heart jumped for a moment, but then she was surprised to realize that she actually felt a twinge of regret and sadness that she would be returning to what she had left… Jim was dead. The idea of going somewhere where he might be alive again was oddly enticing even if it did sound totally crazy.

“The only thing I need from you,” Michael said, “is for you to want the life you had on Antar in my time. You have to want to return.”

Kathleen was silent for a long time. Then she asked…

“Was I happy in your time… with Jim?”

Michael smiled. He told her about her son, Danyy, and his pawgor and about Jim’s adventures on Antar and how she and Jim had helped save the children from the Ghors. After Michael had finished telling her everything he could think of that might make her want to return, he sat back and watched her face.

“What would I have to do to return… you know… to that life,” Kathleen asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Michael said honestly. “I just know that you have to be willing to return or you won’t. And Jim has to be willing to return.”

“Well, I think that’s probably preferable for him, don’t you?”

Michael nodded his agreement. “But no one can predict human behavior. He could prefer to be dead rather than go to another planet that he doesn’t even remember or know.”

“Not if I’m there,” Kathleen said with a grin. “I think I can say that with some certainty.”

Michael just smiled.

“You ready to go back?”

Kathleen nodded. Michael called the portal. Kathleen looked around her and touched Zan and Ava on the hand with a smile. They understood and smiled back at her. Then Kathleen kissed Michael on the cheek quickly and stepped into the portal.



tbc

[Island Breeze]

The Four Faces of Rath



Tracking Down A Killer

Chapter 28

XXVIII



Kathleen Topolsky stepped out of the portal where she had entered it… at the quarry. She bent over Jim and rolled his face over carefully. She looked at him for a moment… then she kissed him lightly on the forehead.

“I really hope you get that second chance, Jim… for both of us,” she whispered. She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes and then looked at it, surprised to see that it was moist… that there were actually tears in her eyes. She hadn’t realized that Jim’s death had affected her this much. Maybe it was because now she knew what they might have had together… in another life. Kathleen gently laid his head back as it had been and stood up. As she turned, she was surprised to see someone pointing a gun at her. And it wasn’t an alien.

“You going to shoot me, Zwolinski?”

“I might… if I find out you’re an alien sympathizer… like the sheriff there.”

“You shot Jim?”

“Jim is it? We’re getting mighty cozy, aren’t we, Topolsky? First name basis and all… What did you and Jim boy have going on?”

“Nothing, Zwolinski… nothing you’d understand… If you’re going to shoot me, do it. I’m unarmed, as you can see. Shouldn’t be a problem for you.”

Zwolinski scowled. “I didn’t come to shoot you, Topolsky. And sorry to have to admit it, but I didn’t knock Jim boy there off either.”

“Who did then?”

“I don’t know. Maybe one of his alien pals.”

“Jim didn’t know any aliens, Zwolinski.”

“Shows what you know, Topolsky. You don’t have the nose for this that I do.”

“What aliens?”

“That girl over at the high school, for one… the one who was going with a football jock… Her stepfather, for another. And then there was another girl… Courtney or something…”

“I don’t know anything about them,” Kathleen said.

“Well, it was a few years back, Topolsky… maybe fifteen years ago.”

“And you’re still holding that against Jim?”

“He helped aliens.”

“Jim Valenti was the sheriff. It was his job to help people.”

“He knew they were aliens.”

“Why didn’t I know any of this,” Kathleen asked.

“You’re not as good as me… not as thorough. It’s that simple. I make it my job to know things.” Zwolinski replaced his gun in its holder and climbed back up the side of the quarry.

“Well, whatcha waitin’ for, Topolsky? You didn’t think I was going to carry you out, did you?”

“You? Not a chance,” Kathleen replied, climbing the side of the quarry with more agility and speed than the aging, but still kicking, Zwolinski had.

“We’ll need to notify the sheriff’s office so they can come and get Jim’s… I mean the sheriff’s body.”

“Why?” Zwolinski asked.

Kathleen just glared at him without replying.

“I know you don’t care who killed the sheriff, Zwolinski, but if it’s all the same to you, I do. I’m going to look around here and see if there might be any clues. You can slither on back to your den. I guess there’s nothing more for you to do here.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Topolsky. See, you’re jumping to conclusions again. Matter of fact, I do care who killed the sheriff. Just ‘cause he was a no-good traitor doesn’t mean any alien scum can just come along and take him out. We’ll look for clues together.”

Kathleen frowned. “And what if it wasn’t an alien?”

“Still no good. We gotta uphold the law, you know.”

Kathleen raised her eyebrows a bit but held her tongue.

“You look over that way,” Zwolinski said. “I’ll go the other direction. We can cover more ground that way.”

Kathleen nodded and headed off in the direction Zwolinski had indicated to her. She was just glad to be away from Zwolinski. He may have been a supervisor in the department, but he was a total jackass to work with, and Kathleen wasn’t reluctant to let him know so whenever she felt like it.

For the first ten to fifteen minutes, Kathleen saw nothing. Slowly, she began to realize that she also heard nothing. It was eerie. There was no sound at all… not a cricket… not a bird… not even a breeze or a leaf rustling. It just didn’t seem natural. A slight shiver ran up Kathleen’s spine, and she looked around to make sure that no one was following her. She had a feeling… one that she wouldn’t have been able to explain… that she was being watched from somewhere. She looked behind her. Then, as she turned back again, she was hit from behind and knocked to her knees.

Looking up, her head still spinning, Kathleen saw that a young woman was now standing there. She had wavy blonde hair and greenish eyes… and in her right hand, there was a length of pipe.

“Where did you come from? I just looked, and there was no one behind me. Who are you?”

The girl looked at Kathleen for a few moments without answering. Then she laid the other end of the pipe across her open left hand and stared dispassionately at the young woman she had just knocked down…

“Tess,” she said at last. “It’s Tess. I guess it’s not going to matter if you know. You won’t be leaving here with the information.”

“Why would you want to kill me,” Kathleen asked, trying to make conversation with the girl and perhaps give herself time to think of a way to get out of this mess. Unfortunately, it didn’t look like there was much she could do. She could rush the girl, but it didn’t look like this girl would be easily caught off guard. She could try reasoning… No, she could tell that that wasn’t going to work. Maybe a distraction… if she had one.

Kathleen stared past the young woman standing in front of her.

“Whatcha lookin’ at?”

“Nothing.”

The girl smiled. “I know. You thought I’d think there was someone behind me and look back. It’s an old trick… even for a stupid Earthling.”

“Suit yourself,” Kathleen said.

The girl looked uneasy for a moment but decided to stand her ground and take the chance that Kathleen was bluffing.

“Yeah… I will suit myself,” she said, taking the length of pipe on one end with both hands. Kathleen saw it coming and tried to put her hands over her head to protect herself. There was a sickening thud. Kathleen heard it but didn’t immediately feel anything. Then she felt someone shaking her. Slowly, she opened her eyes.

“Come on, Topolsky! Get up,” Zwolinski said, tossing a ten-pound rock down beside her. Kathleen looked at the unmoving girl on the ground.

“Is she dead?”

Zwolinski felt for a pulse and checked the wound on her head.

“Naw… too bad. But then again maybe it’s better this way. I’ll be able to dissect her while she’s still alive.”

Kathleen looked at Zwolinski and cringed. “Alive?”

“Yeah. Don’t sweat it. Aliens aren’t like us. They don’t feel pain or love or anything like that.”

“I wonder,” Kathleen said under her breath.

“What? You wonder if they do?”

“No. I wonder if you do… if you ever did.”

“Not that it’s any of your damn business, Topolsky, but… yeah, I did… once.”

“That’s a tale I’d like to hear,” Kathleen said sarcastically. Zwolinski looked at her for a moment. Then to her surprise, he sat down on the rocks beside her.

“You see, Topolsky, I had a mother once… A lot of people don’t believe that, but it’s true… and a father… and two sisters and an older brother. I was the youngest in my family. When I was seven, I came home from school one day –I was in second grade. It was February 7, a Tuesday… and I found them all –my whole family- murdered.”

Kathleen gasped and looked at Zwolinski with obvious shock and new compassion in her eyes.

“I never knew. I’m so sorry, Zwolinski. That must have been so hard on you… seven years old!”

Zwolinski shrugged. “It made me tough. It made me what I am today… driven… to find their murderers… and to avenge my family somehow.”

“You think aliens murdered your family?”

“I know aliens murdered my family. I saw two of them. They killed my mother while I watched… and I couldn’t help her. One of them placed his hand on her chest. The air began to glow red around his hand. Then she fell over, and the alien fled out the back door with his companion. I ran to my mother and tried to wake her up, but she wouldn’t…”

“I’m sorry,” Kathleen repeated quietly.”

“She had a handprint on her chest,” Zwolinski continued, “a silver handprint. It was burned right through her dress. The others all had handprints, too. I found them in different parts of the house… all dead.”

Kathleen touched Zwolinski on the shoulder, but he moved her hand away.

“Don’t get mushy on me, Topolsky. I’ve learned to deal with it… and it was a long time ago. Cutting these aliens up is all the therapy I need.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Kathleen said.

“Listen, help me get this girl up to the top, will ya? We need to get back to the lab.”

Kathleen looked at the blonde girl and at Zwolinski. She couldn’t decide which one to help. She wound up taking the girl by one arm, as Zwolinski took her by the other one. Then the two of them climbed out of the quarry with the unconscious girl between them.

**********

“This is wrong, Zwolinski,” Kathleen said, removing the surgical mask Zwolinski had given her to put over her face. “You just can’t dissect people…”

“Aliens,” Zwolinski corrected.

“Okay, aliens, then. You can’t dissect living aliens… beings.”

“Didn’t you dissect a live frog in high school biology class ever, Topolsky?”

Kathleen looked at him. “I felt bad about it. I don’t… It’s not the same, Zwolinski! This isn’t a frog!”

“Might as well be, Topolsky. Got about as much feelings or right to live as one.”

“Frogs have a right to live, Zwolinski.”

“Frogs I don’t have a problem with. I don’t dissect frogs, Topolsky.”

Kathleen let out a frustrated sigh. This was getting her nowhere, and Zwolinski was ready to start the dissection.

“Take that little suction device over there, Topolsky, and suction out the blood so I can see what I’m doing as I cut.”

Suddenly, the girl stirred and opened her eyes. She was well restrained, hands and legs securely held by straps attached to the gurney.

“Ah, you’re awake,” Zwolinski said. “Good! You can watch!”

Suddenly, as Zwolinski walked toward the gurney, the girl began to change. A strong light filled the room for a moment, and when Zwolinski and Kathleen could see again, the girl was gone. The straps dangled freely at the sides of the bed. Kathleen looked up in time to see a crow squeeze through a narrow opening at the top of a high window in the room then fly away. Zwolinski appeared too shocked to speak. He looked for all the world like a child who had just lost his lollipop.



tbc

[Island Breeze]

The Four Faces of Rath



Down Came A Blackbird

Chapter 29

XXIX



The girl had escaped, and Kathleen felt somehow oddly relieved. Even though this girl had wanted to kill her, Kathleen was sure that she would not have been able to sleep at nights if Zwolinski had dissected her alive and she had helped. Zwolinski had left the lab in a huff, leaving Kathleen to herself. Kathleen looked around at the instruments… “Zwolinski’s toys,” she said to herself. She looked at the restraint straps that had held the girl but which now dangled freely beside the gurney. She looked up at the high ventilation window at the top of the room where the girl –or the blackbird she had turned into- had escaped. Even though she was relieved that the girl had escaped, Kathleen felt an uneasy sense of curiosity… What would she have seen if Zwolinski had dissected the girl? What does something that can change from a human into a blackbird look like inside? If the girl had been dead, she might have gone along with Zwolinski willingly… out of sheer curiosity. But she wasn’t, and that was the difference. It wasn’t an impediment for Zwolinski. For him, the fact that an alien he intended to dissect was still alive was merely icing on the cake.

Kathleen took one last look around and walked toward the door. As she did, she heard a sound behind her… the sound of wings flapping. She turned around quickly, in time to see a raven or blackbird swoop down from the ventilation window at the top of the room. It landed on the floor in front of her and immediately morphed into a man.

“Who… who are you,” Kathleen managed to ask.

“My name is unimportant. But since you asked, it is Yali.”

“Yali?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you were the girl… Tess… returning,” Kathleen said.

The man looked around the room then looked back at Kathleen with a strange look in his eyes. Suddenly, he began to morph into a girl with blonde hair and greenish eyes.

“Me?”

Kathleen nodded. She wanted to speak, but it just didn’t come out.

“I am the one you saw before.”

“You’re Tess?”

“No… not Tess. I merely gave you the name of the person whose appearance I had used.”

Yali returned to his former appearance.

“Are you going to try to kill me again…” Kathleen asked, “because if you are, I think you should know, I can defend myself better here. And you don’t have a piece of pipe to hit me with.”

“No. I’m not going to hurt you. That was a mistake. You are not who I thought you were. I waited until the man with you left. I came back, because I heard you talking to him when I was on the table.”

“You heard?”

Yali nodded. “I pretended to be unconscious while I decided what to do. You didn’t want him to kill me… Why?”

“You were alive.”

“I thought that’s what killing was… someone has to be alive first.”

“Well, yes… it is… of course.”

Yali… or the girl who had called herself Tess… or was she a blackbird… Kathleen wasn’t sure anymore… reached up and touched Kathleen’s forehead. Kathleen started to recoil but then decided not to. She wasn’t sure why. After a moment, Yali removed his hand.

“Yes, I can trust you. Very interesting.”

“What’s interesting?”

“You’ve met Rath… and you’ve been to our planet.”

“Your planet?”

“Well, it’s not our birth planet. Dars, Vorzelis, and I are from Lauris-Kel. But we made our home on Antar for many years. We defended the royals… mostly from others of our kind.”

“Michael mentioned something about that.”

“Michael?”

“Michael. The one who took me to Antar.”

“You mean Rath.”

“His name is Michael.”

The shape-shifter thought for a moment. “Whatever name he was using, I assure you, you were with Rath. I saw him in your mind. I felt his presence there. There is no other like him. There is only one Rath.”

“Who is Rath?”

“Rath is Zan’s right hand man. He’s the leader of Zan’s armies… and he is much feared, at least as much as he is respected, on Antar.”

“Michael is feared on Antar?”

“Rath is feared… very much so. But he is also respected… and loved by many. The king loves him as a brother. But this is quite perplexing.”

“What is?”

“Rath disappeared many years ago and has not been seen since. Now I see him in your mind, and he is no older than he was when he disappeared. Do you not find that strange?”

“Strange? I don’t even understand what’s going on.”

The shape-shifter nodded. “I should have realized that. I saw the confusion in your mind.”

“If your job was to protect the royal family, what are you doing on Earth,” Kathleen asked. “Zan is on Antar. So is Ava.”

“But two of our wards disappeared that day many years ago. Rath… and Vilandra. It was always believed that Rath was killed by Kivar or by Nyykto lying in ambush and that Vilandra was taken… kidnapped… by Kivar. Neither has been heard from since.”

“So why are you on Earth,” Kathleen repeated.

“Because… our sources led us to believe that others of our kind brought Vilandra here for Kivar. We still believe that she is here… with Kivar.”

“How long have you been here?”

“About sixty of your Earth years.”

Kathleen looked shocked.

“Sixty? Years?”

“Is that strange?”

“Well, if you were an Earthling it would be. I have no idea how old you can live to be… assuming that Zwolinski doesn’t catch you.”

The shape-shifter nodded. “And I thank you for trying to argue with him on our behalf. But we know this man. He is not one who can be dissuaded.”

Kathleen gasped, as a terrible thought suddenly came into her mind.

“Were you the ones who killed Zwolinski’s family? It would have been about the time you came here.”

The shape-shifter looked at her for a moment, and Kathleen felt a tremor run up her spine.

“No,” the shape-shifter said at last. “It wasn’t me. Nor was it Dars or Vorzelis. I was not aware of this fact.”

The shape-shifter reached out again with one hand and touched Kathleen’s forehead. It was easier for her… him… it… whatever it was… to obtain detailed information this way. It told Yali so much more than words ever could. He removed his hand after a few moments.

“I see. Zwolinski told you that his family was killed by aliens who left silver handprints on the ones they killed.”

“Yes. Do you have any idea who could have done that?”

“An idea… yes. But I would know so much more if I could connect with Zwolinski’s mind.”

Kathleen laughed. She didn’t know where it came from. It was a spontaneous reaction. It was just the idea of Zwolinski submitting to an alien mind probe. It somehow struck her as supremely ludicrous… and funny.

“I don’t think Zwolinski would sit still for that.”

“Perhaps not for me,” the shape-shifter said. “But I’ll bet he would allow you to touch his head.”

“Only if I was giving him a massage,” Kathleen laughed.

**********

“Ah, that feels good, Topolsky! Who would have known you were so talented,” Zwolinski sighed, sinking back into his chair while “Kathleen,” behind him, massaged his temples and forehead. “Almost makes me forget about aliens. I don’t suppose you’d want to get married?”

“Is that a proposal,” ‘Kathleen’ asked.

“Naw… well, almost. If I wasn’t married to my work, I’d be all over you,” Zwolinski sighed.

The real Kathleen, who was in the other room listening, shivered. “Ewwww! Who would’ve guessed there’d be a silver lining to Zwolinski’s obsession,” she thought to herself. “His obsession with aliens was my salvation!”

The shape-shifter, who looked exactly like Kathleen, right down to the smallest freckle, continued to massage Zwolinski’s temples, neck, and forehead, as he probed deeper into his mind…

The bell rang, and Dumas collected up his second grade books quickly. He had to walk about a mile and a half to get home, but it was a pleasant walk. It was a bit chilly outside being February. But for February, it was actually not so bad. Dumas was in a hurry to get home. His older brother had promised to take him to the five and dime to spend the dollar his father had given him the day before for getting good grades the previous quarter. Jonathan was sixteen. He had just learned to drive recently and enjoyed shuttling Dumas –or anybody else- around in the family’s Packard.

Normally, Dumas would stray from the route home to walk by the lake. It was a big lake, and Dumas always wondered what was on the other side. It was a mystery… the other side of the lake… It might as well have been the other side of the world. But today Dumas headed straight home. There were things that interested him even more than the mystery of the other side of the lake. Jonathan was taking him to the five and dime. Dumas loved the five and dime… especially the little rubber tractors. They had bins and bins of them in different sizes, nickel-sized and dime-sized. And they had lots of other kinds of toys… and candy… so much candy! Dumas could get a lot of candy with a dollar. He’d get some for Jonathan, too.

Dumas walked up the street to his yard and opened the little white swinging gate. He put his books on the ground and closed the gate back then picked the books back up and walked briskly toward the house. As he got closer, he heard something going on inside. It wasn’t the normal sounds he would hear… it was more chaotic… like people running… things being overturned or thrown. Dumas dropped his books and ran up onto the porch. As quickly as he could, he let himself in.

“Mom? Are you here? Sally? Francis? Johnny?”

Dumas ran to Jonathan’s room. Jonathan was lying beside his bed on the floor. Dumas looked at him and saw that his T-shirt was torn. He reached down and carefully lifted the tattered, burned edges of the T-shirt. Jonathan had a silver handprint on his chest over his heart. The handprint seemed to have been burned through his T-shirt. Jonathan was dead. Dumas wasn’t sure how he knew that. Maybe it was because he had never seen Jonathan quite so still. But he knew. He ran to his sister’s room.

“Sally? Are you in here?”

Dumas opened the door carefully and peeked inside. Then he opened the door. Nine-year old Sally lay on the bed. Thirteen-year-old Francis lay across her as though she had been trying to protect her younger sister. Dumas didn’t have to touch them. He could see the silver handprints and the vacant stares in their eyes.

Dumas rushed through the house looking for anyone. As he rushed into the living room again, a shadow on the wall moved then turned into a man. Dumas stood looking at the man, his eyes wide. Then, as the man took a step toward Dumas, the closet door opened.

“Leave him alone! Dumas, run!”

Mrs. Zwolinski ran from the closet where she had been hiding.

Dumas was too shocked to run. He stood there as the man turned on his mother, pressing one hand to her chest. A red aura grew quickly around his hand, and Mrs. Zwolinski collapsed to the floor. The strange shadow-man turned and took a step toward the boy, but at that moment, another man that looked just like the first shadow-man appeared suddenly from outside and said something that was unintelligible to Dumas. The shadow-man in front of Dumas looked at the boy again then inexplicably turned and fled out the back door with his companion.

Shocked at what he had seen, Yali broke the connection with Zwolinski momentarily.

“Don’t stop, Topolsky! You’re massage is the best thing that’s happened to me in a while,” Zwolinski said. Yali began to massage Zwolinski’s shoulders and temples again. But he had seen what he needed to see.

“I think that’s enough for now, Zwolinski,” “Kathleen” said. “You should be pretty relaxed.”

“Oh, I am, I am,” Zwolinski said, looking up at “Kathleen.” “You’ll have to do this again sometime. I never knew what I was missing.”

“Kathleen” smiled. “We’ll see.”

Zwolinski stood up, and before Yali knew what was happening, Zwolinski had given him a kiss right on the lips. Yali just smiled back at him.

**********

“I heard your conversation,” Kathleen said later when she and Yali were again alone. “I wish I could have seen it. Zwolinski seemed to enjoy your massage.”

“Yes. He showed his appreciation.”

“Oh? I didn’t hear him say thank you.”

“He gave me… you call it a ‘kiss’ on my lips.”

Kathleen looked at Yali, and her eyes grew wide. “I am so glad that was you and not me! Oh God, but he kissed you? Didn’t that seem kind of… well, gay?”

“What’s ‘gay’?”

“A guy… well, two people who are alike… I don’t know! You know… don’t you?”

Yali looked confused.

“Oh God, this is hard… Well, look, Yali, it doesn’t matter really.”

Yali smiled. “You have two different ‘sexes’ on Earth, just as they do on Antar. The two sexes must combine to create a continuing line. I understand that.”

“That’s what I meant to say,” Kathleen said, turning red-faced.

“We do not have sexes on Lauris-Kel. Everyone is the same. I can be whatever I would like to be at any particular time.”

“Sounds like fun,” Kathleen said. “A little kinky… but it definitely could be fun.”

“It’s the natural way,” Yali said.

“For you, I guess it is, Yali. I didn’t mean to imply anything. How do you… you know, continue your line?”

Yali smiled.

“Never mind! Omigod, I shouldn’t have asked that, should I?”

“Why not? I don’t mind. We become pregnant much as you do. We carry our babies three of your Earth months.”

“Lucky you,” Kathleen said. “Who gets to carry the baby?”

“We agree beforehand. We choose life mates for compatibility… and because we care about each other. When it is time to continue our line, we agree who will carry the baby.”

“That would never work here, Yali. We might become extinct. Do you have a life mate?”

“Yes.”

“Who’s going to carry your baby?”

“My mate will carry the next one.”

“The next one?”

“I’m carrying this one.”

“Thi… this one? Now? You mean you’re… pregnant?”

“Well, it’s not exactly the same, but yes, basically that is accurate. In two months, our line will be continued.”

“Congratulations… I think. Do you say that?”

“I understand. Thank you.”

“I would really love to continue this conversation, Yali, but I’m afraid I’m going to stick my foot in my mouth and embarrass myself beyond any hope of recovering.”

Yali smiled again. He did seem to understand Earth emotions pretty well. Perhaps it was because he had spent sixty years on Earth and… Kathleen had no idea how many on Antar before that.

“Did you find out anything from Zwolinski,” Kathleen asked.

“Yes. I saw what happened. And I recognized the ones responsible. They are a separate race of shape-shifters.”

“There’s more than one kind?”

“Oh, yes! Kivar used shape-shifters from several planets. The ones I saw in Zwolinski’s mind were from Copro.”

“Is that a planet?”

“Yes. It’s in the same system as Lauris-Kel. The Coprosians are known as the ‘shadow-dwellers.’ Their natural form resembles a shadow, but they can take any shape. As a shadow, they are flat, and the Coprosians will often stand against a building or wall and not be noticed.”

“Why would they kill Zwolinski’s family?”

“That is the real question,” Yali said thoughtfully. “The Coprosians are ruthless as a race, but they’re not known for killing randomly for no reason. There had to be something they were looking for or something that they wanted in that house or from someone in that house.”

“What could the Zwolinski family have possibly had that would interest the shadow-dwellers,” Kathleen asked.

“That’s what we must find out,” Yali said.



tbc