Roswell Fanatics

Series: ...And I Can’t Hide
Title: A Prefatory Memo
Rating: Teen
Summary: Who knew?

Disclaimer: The rights to the characters and situations of Roswell are the property of Warner Brothers, Jason Katims Productions, Twentieth Century Fox, Fox, Regency Television, and Melinda Metz.

• 
  
  
  MEMO
  TOP SECRET
  
  From: TSJ
  To: JK
  
  Bad news to report. The bird has flown the coop. Or the alien flown the pod. Or something.
  
  I allude to the first-season scripts we ditched, the ones the network deemed “too soft.” You remember? They wanted woowoo, so we gave 'em woowoo: that new character—Bathsheba, Eustacia, whatever her name was—and a mutated story arc. Shred those old scripts! I said. You don't want the fans getting wind of them.
  
  Well, guess what? Somebody has broken that wind. We had a fan interning here (I know, it's against policy to hire them, he lied), and he crept into the crypt—um, vault—found the scripts, downloaded them, and by the time he was peached on he was gone. Now I get a report he's turned them into fan fiction, which will make more of just what we didn't want—
  
  Readers of the lost arc.

ADDED BY ISLANDGIRL 5 FOR GALEN, AS ALL PARTS WERE POSTED IN SEPARATE THREADS


Series: ...And I Can’t Hide
Episode 1.16X: When the Going Gets Tough
Rating: Teen
Summary: Michael has a run-in with his gym coach.

Disclaimer: The rights to the characters and situations of Roswell are the property of Warner Brothers, Jason Katims Productions, Twentieth Century Fox, Fox, Regency Television, and Melinda Metz.

• 
  
  
  Grounded, Liz Parker wrote in her journal (most sixteen-year-olds would have called it a diary). Grounded on top of being grounded. Hmm, wonder what the technical term for that is. Fresh-grounded? No, that sounds like coffee.
  
  She felt her mind straying, and sucked on her gel pen to help recollect her thoughts. As often, they turned to Max Evans, her boyfriend (though she hardly ever called him that; the designation seemed somehow not to fit). Her parents and his had split them up for a few days by grounding them; he had now served his sentence, while hers remained in effect until Sunday. Then they would be together for good—or so she hoped. In the past, there had been problems.
  
  The act that had gotten them grounded a second time was their having sneaked out while they were grounded already. But it had been worth the second punishment: it had led them to something wonderful—an artifact of another world. This was a black stone, or something like a stone, with a strange inlaid symbol, almost a spiral, consisting of two nearly contiguous arcs with a spot in the middle; at first it had shone icy blue, but soon the light had died out, and so far had stayed out. They had seen the same symbol twice before: once on a cave wall, and once in the form of a pendant, which Max’s sister now had in her keeping.
  
  Liz did not know how to record all this in her journal. And she did not want to record much of it: the book had been stolen once, and might be stolen again. Last time the thief had been one of her friends; next time it might be—whoever was out there watching them.
  
  Before meeting Max, and since she was old enough to choose, she had lived science—mainly biology. The worlds the microscope revealed to her fascinated her more than the one she inhabited. Their operations seemed enigmatic until they were explained—that is, those that could be explained; those that could not, she was going to make her life’s work. She had her future clearly mapped out.
  
  —or had until the previous September. Then an unlooked-for event had thrown a kink into her intended course: she had died. While waitressing at the the family business, the Crashdown Cafe, she had taken a bullet in the stomach, and the wound had been fatal. But she was not dead any more. Max Evans had given her a jump start.
  
  He was one of the loners in her class, a boy many girls wondered (and sometimes daydreamed) about. He had reached out to her, like God reaching out to Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and she had reawoken to his face gazing down on her full of worry, and more than worry. He had warned her to keep quiet, doused her with ketchup to account for the bloodstains, and then been pulled away by the others like him (as far as anyone could be like him): Isabel, his adoptive sister, and Michael Guerin, his best friend—his only friend, really, except Liz.
  
  She had kept quiet—almost—about her resurrection. When questioned by Sheriff Valenti and her parents, she had said nothing. But when her two best friends, Maria Deluca and Alex Whitman, had pressed her, the secret had begun to bite at her like a flea. By then it had expanded to include her discovery that Max, his sister, and his best friend were—as he put it—“not of this Earth.” And she had told all. The confidence had relieved her of her itch, but had stung her with regret for violating the trust he had placed in her. In any case, now they were six; those who knew.
  
  Roswell, NM was famous for aliens, but none of its other residents had ever met one, or not knowingly. A hot, dry, drowsy little city (pop. 44,975), it had stirred to life, of a kind, a hundred thirty years earlier, popping up out of the flat desert like a popcorn kernel out of a pan. From its boundaries, that desert extended enormously far in all directions, a cosmos unto itself. And out of what lay hidden beneath it, a hundred twenty years after the city itself had arisen, three children had appeared. Six years old, a doctor had written on their charts, but that had been an estimate; no one, including themselves, knew their true ages. Or their true place of origin: that was for them still to discover.
  
  At the school they attended, West Roswell High, the social order was sharply defined. Most of the student body, including Max and Isabel, occupied the higher rungs of the ladder. But the district also encompassed the trailer park where Michael lived, and a section of trailer-like houses on the outskirts beyond. So the kids from that side of the tracks rubbed shoulders with those from the other side. And Earth kids, unbeknownst to all but three, were doing the same with their extragalactic counterparts.
  
  On Wednesday, March 1, shortly before closing time at the cafe, the six were sitting around, and in, the booth nearest the door at the rear labeled “Employees Only.” Three of them were leaning over the seat back. One of these was wearing a chef’s apron; the others had antennae—artificial ones—bedecking the tiaras that crowned their servers’ uniforms. Shielded by their backs, by the shoebox that housed it, and by a row of empty Tabasco sauce bottles behind it on the tabletop, sat the artifact Max and Liz had found in the desert.
  
  Alex had been studying it for close to five minutes while the others watched. Finally he sat back. “What do you make of it?” Max asked.
  
  “Material’s like nothing I ever saw.”
  
  Isabel made a sound which was not quite a laugh. “Why would you? Have you ever been to our home planet? Have you been anywhere?”
  
  Alex threw her an aggrieved look. “Hey, game, your win, okay?”
  
  “Sorry. Guess I’m on edge this evening.”
  
  “But what is it?” Liz asked. Nobody volunteered an answer. “Then I’ll start.” She did not have to inspect the object at length; she had examined it thoroughly when they were bringing it in. “I think—it’s a guide. When you’re lost, it shows the way back.” She turned to Michael. “What’s your guess?”
  
  “Weapon.”
  
  “Just the opposite,” his girlfriend countered. “It’s a harmonizer.”
  
  “Harmonizer?” Isabel echoed. “As in music?”
  
  “Don’t know,” said Maria, “it just came to me. Alex?”
  
  “A gold mine—if it could be mass-produced. Imagine what a novelty item it’d make.”
  
  Isabel shook her head. “Alex, seriously.”
  
  “I am serious.”
  
  Max deliberated for half a minute before offering his diagnosis. “It’s a database. With information on where we came from and why we’re here.”
  
  “Which doesn’t include me,” Liz said glumly.
  
  He reached up to squeeze her hand. “Wanna bet?”
  
  The last one up was Isabel. “It’s a generator,” she said positively, but with little visible interest. “It can boost our powers to the nth degree. Max, I’m surprised you don’t feel it.”
  
  “If we only knew how to get it working,” said Michael.
  
  “I hope we never do.”
  
  Her brother looked at her in surprise. “Why?”
  
  She did not reply. “Walk me home?” she asked Alex.
  
  “My pleasure!” He slid out of the seat so quickly he bumped his knee on the table.
  
  She got up more cautiously. “By the alley,” she added, “so no one sees us.” This dimmed his glow somewhat. He padded out morosely after her.
  
  There was a shout from the front. “Yo, anybody on duty here?”
  
  The servers rotated their antennae in that direction. “I’ll take it,” Maria offered.
  
  On her departure, the group broke up. Max slipped the artifact into his jacket. “So you’re keeping it?” said Michael.
  
  Max had not expected a challenge on that front. “I was the one who found it.”
  
  “You and Liz,” Michael reminded him.
  
  “I can ask her. If it’s an issue.”
  
  “No, no.” Michael threw up his hands. “Whatever you say, Maximilian.”
  
  Max sighed. “Why do you do that?”
  
  Michael stopped on his way toward the kitchen. “Do what?”
  
  “The file extensions. Maximilian. Maxwell. The name’s Max, plain and simple.”
  
  “Didn’t realize it bothered you.” He disappeared through the employee door.
  
  “Of course he does,” Max muttered. “Otherwise he wouldn’t do it. Making it sound like I’m letting on to be more than I am. Like I think I’m better than he is. Oh, he knows what he’s doing, all right. You can bet on it.”
  
  Liz was the only one left to listen. She nodded slowly. “And the mature way to confront the problem is to work yourself into a state over it, right?” This fetched a grudging smile, which she answered with a willing one. But it evaporated when she saw her father enter. “Uh-oh. I’m not supposed to be talking to you.” That had been a condition of her grounding. She grabbed a rag from the sideboard and applied it to an imaginary spill on the tabletop. Max slumped down in the seat and retracted his head as far as it would go into his jacket.
  
  But it all came too late. Through the window Jeff had seen them talking. “Have you been hanging out with Max the whole time I was gone?” he asked as he passed.
  
  “He’s a customer too,” Liz said innocently.
  
  “And the kid who got you grounded—which you still are, in case you’ve forgotten.”
  
  “Not likely,” she muttered.
  
  “Time to start closing up.” The rear door swung to behind him. Liz knew he did not mean for her to lock the doors immediately but to begin preparations for closing, which would take almost until 8.
  
  Michael and Maria had been listening from opposite sides of the order window. “Glad he’s not my dad,” said Maria, low enough so he would not hear.
  
  “Me too,” said Michael. But he sounded a little wistful, as Maria had. He returned to scraping the grill. “’course, your mom’s practically your dad,” he added.
  
  “You think that was her choice?”
  
  “Hey, easy! I like her, remember?”
  
  Liz shuttled a tray of glasses from one sideboard to the other. Crossing behind Max, she whispered into his ear. “Don’t look now, but you’re being watched.” She flicked her eyes toward a customer at a table on the far side.
  
  Glancing over, he recognized a former regular at his own place of employment, the UFO Center, who had made trouble for both of them in the past, and now looked as if he might again. He was staring fixedly at Max through thick glasses, under a mop of unruly hair. “Thought that guy left town.”
  
  “He’s back.”
  
  “We better start hanging out at the park.” He had been of that mind for some time anyway.
  
  “Why there?”
  
  “Not as public.” Liz began to laugh, but saw by his face he was not joking. Very solemn, her unsuitably designated boyfriend was, when he was not being airy. But then so was she.
  
  He was still on her mind that evening as she sat alone on her bed, trying to finish her Spanish homework. She thought also of her best friend, who was not grounded, and would be hanging out with her boyfriend, at his place. Liz sighed in envy.
  
  But tonight Maria wished she had not come. She was sitting in a corner, deprived of tv or radio, while Michael concentrated on the map in front of him. The gooseneck lamp beside it on the low coffee table cast the only light in the apartment. Dim as that was, she could make out the yellow gemstones forming a five-pointed V on top of the map. They were artifacts, like Max’s, and from the same place, which lay far beyond Roswell. They marked the positions of the large map symbols. She could not see the rows of small symbols between, but she remembered they had looked like text of some kind—probably descriptions of the places the larger ones represented.
  
  There were five stones, and five symbols under them: a spot enclosed in parentheses; a set of concentric circles and half circles that might describe a solar system; a pair of diagonal lines with extensions like whipcords; a row of boxes—almost—with a spot inside each; and the same spiral that appeared on the artifact. In addition, there was a sixth symbol, outside the V: a pair of crisscrossing lines with a box at each end and a half circle in each box.
  
  The map was a replica of one they had seen in a cave on the Mesaliko reservation southwest of town. They had been guided there by an old Apache called River Dog; it was he who had given them the stones. But it was Michael who had discovered the recesses in the wall and set the stones into them to radiate a luminescent glow that revealed the symbols plainly. He had himself seen in a vision that these represented not just one set of locations but two, in identical configurations—one in the sky, the other on the ground in and around Roswell. But where were those earthly sites? He had borrowed Max’s replica of the map in the hope of figuring it out.
  
  “This is tougher than I thought,” he said, half glancing at Maria. “Maybe that thing Liz and Max found can help translate.” That was one reason he had wanted to be its keeper. He pointed to the parentheses. “This symbol’s definitely the library. Thought I knew where the others were too—I felt it. But once I started looking, come to find out I didn’t. Like when you’ve had a dream and you think you remember it, but when you try to tell somebody, it’s gone.”
  
  And sometimes you should let it go, Maria thought. She walked up behind him and rested her hands on his shoulders. “There must be something unique they’ve got in common. Why else would they have been singled out?”
  
  Michael shook his head. He had no insight to offer. The identification of the library had come to him unbidden, as had most of the facts he had acquired in his life. When he tried to extrapolate the others, as he had been trying this evening, the effort hurt his head, and he soon gave it up. “Wonder if one of them’s the trailer park?” If the map only showed Roswell, and the top equated to north, the park would be situated near the row of hieroglyphics under the spiral.
  
  “Why would it be?”
  
  Michael smiled wryly. It had been a private joke, like all his jokes. “Nope, you’re right. That’s one place that wasn’t written in the stars.” He reached for her hand and pulled her toward him until she was close enough to kiss, though her lips were upside-down to his. For the next hour, her small, silky surrenders pushed away his thoughts of the place where he had grown up.
  
  After she had left, they returned, as they always did. He sat awake in the corner chair remembering his ten years of captivity in the dingy white trailer with the short thick-set man who had brought him and held him there. He had hated it about as much as it was possible for a person to hate a place. And he felt a yearning to see it again.
  
  “Old Chisholm Trail Trailer Park,” the sign read. The posts that supported it were half rotted; Michael was always surprised to find them still standing. In the early morning haze, the dust lay where it had settled the night before. A rooster crowed; a dog barked. There were no signs of higher life. The place that had been Hank’s was obviously unoccupied: no vehicles were parked in front. But it had a new coat of yellow paint.
  
  Michael tried the door and found it unlocked. The inside smelled of disinfectant. He had advanced no farther than the hall when he heard the screen door creak open. “Who’s in there?” a gruff voice demanded. So someone was stirring, after all.
  
  Michael turned to a broad, mustached face he had known since childhood. “Easy, Bory. It’s only me.”
  
  “Michael?”
  
  “Who else?”
  
  Boris Nalbandian stepped inside. He had the suspicious manner of a security guard, which he had been before buying the park. “What are you doin’ here? Your old man’s long gone.”
  
  “Had to visit the old homestead one last time. You know how it is.”
  
  “Not really. The way he treated you. I shoulda told the sheriff on him, but you said—”
  
  “Wouldn’t have changed anything. Except make him madder—and I woulda caught most of the mad.”
  
  “You’re bigger than him. He was more scared of you than the other way round. Why didn’t you let him have it?”
  
  “Only place that road leads, I never want to be again.”
  
  “Again?”
  
  “Things turned out okay for me. Once I escaped.” After a pause, he added, “No offense.”
  
  “Then why are you back? Why would anybody come back here?”
  
  Michael stared into the sanitized living room and saw through it to what it had looked like in his time. “You’ll think I’m crazy.”
  
  “Will I?” Boris leaned back against the wood paneling. “You don’t know this. I had an old man whaled on me. Hadda join the Navy to get out—and get me some cojones. After I was through training, I called him and told him when I come home, I was gonna beat the bejesus out of him. I didn’t do it on my first leave, or the second. I wanted to make the bastard sweat. But on my third leave....” He sighed. “I come, like I promised.”
  
  “And you pounded on him?”
  
  “I was gonna. But you know what? He said, go ahead, it’d be a mercy. He was dyin’. Can you believe it? The son of a bitch! I couldn’t whale on a guy who’s dyin’.” He shook his head. “I was there at the end. And I felt for him. You know, the way you would for anybody. But I didn’t forgive him. Never will. But—”
  
  “You still miss him.”
  
  It sounded like a challenge. “Yeah, so?”
  
  “It’s crazy! A guy who abused you like that. And kept abusing you. Why would you miss him? Why?”
  
  Boris looked at him with sympathy. “’cause they was all we had. Back when we needed somebody. And the punchline is, now we ain’t even got them.” He stepped up and laid a hand on his ex-tenant’s shoulder. “You don’t wanna be here, Michael. There’s nothin’ for you here. Not any more.” But Michael had known that before he came.
  
  He did not speak on the way to school the next day. But he was not silent either. As usual, he was bumming a ride in the Evans Jeep. This morning Max was driving. Isabel, in back, was offering silent thanks for the barrier of the front seats as Michael sang along with the voices on the radio:
  
  “Teen-a-gers from out-er space
  Well, we’re just teen-a-gers from out-er space
  I say, teen-a-gers from out-er space
  With this place
  On our case....”
  
  “Must you do that?” he heard from the rear. Max switched the radio off, without touching it. “At last,” said Isabel, over Michael’s protest, “peace in our time.”
  
  “I need to ask you something anyway,” Max said to Michael. “A favor.” He reached into his jacket.
  
  “Hope that’s nothing illegal you’re carrying.” Michael nodded to their left. Max glanced over into the next lane, where a beige Range Rover with an official insignia on the door was cruising alongside at the same speed.
  
  Max took his hand away from his jacket. The driver gave him a nod, which he returned nervously. Damn that Valenti, he thought. After two blocks, the sheriff turned off, but by then they had reached the school. “Have to tell you later,” said Max.
  
  Their human allies were waiting at the usual morning gathering spot, next to the big school sign near the top of the front steps. “Oh, my God,” Maria blurted out. She quickly covered her mouth.
  
  “What?” said Liz. She looked in the direction Maria had been looking.
  
  Her friend moved to block her view. “Nothing! Less than nothing. A sub-factoid in the sub-nothing universe.” But Liz had already seen. The sheriff’s son was walking past in close conversation with a girl they knew. She nodded toward them with what might have been a smirk. “Sorry,” said Maria.
  
  “You mean that Kyle’s with Pam Troy? Yeah, I’d heard that.” She kept staring after them. “But this is the first time I’ve actually seen them together.”
  
  “You are over him, correct? I mean, being with Max and all.”
  
  “Maria, there was nothing to be over! It’s just—I don’t understand what he sees in her. I mean, even Kyle has standards.”
  
  “Well,” Alex offered, “you have to admit she’s extremely—” The two girls flashed him identical hostile looks. “Okay,” he granted, “no admission. What do I know? I’m only a sophomore.”
  
  “Junior,” Liz reminded him. “We’re in our junior year now.”
  
  “Do I do that a lot?”
  
  “All last year,” said Maria, “you kept telling people we were freshmen. Very diminishing.” She was not looking at him as she said it. Michael and the Evanses had appeared on the steps below.
  
  Halfway up, Isabel asked, “Who’s that watching us?”
  
  The others followed her eye to the gym building. “Coach Clay,” Michael replied. He gave a wave. The figure at the window turned away.
  
  “Warm guy,” said Max.
  
  “He’s a coach. He’s supposed to be tough.”
  
  “On Friday he gave me ten laps. For nothing!”
  
  “Yeah, what was nothing?”
  
  “Talking during roll call.”
  
  “It’s the rule. You knew that when you did it.”
  
  “When did you suddenly become his champion? He hasn’t spared you, that I recall.”
  
  “He’s trying to make us into men.”
  
  “Which,” Isabel observed, “given your biological profile—”
  
  “If you’re too soft to take it—” Michael continued.
  
  “Who’s soft?” He gave Michael a shove.
  
  Michael was ready to return the favor, with something extra, when Isabel stepped between them. “Hombres! None of that in my saloon.”
  
  Michael saw the quarrel had gone farther than he had intended. “I’m just saying you got no call to dump on him. That’s all I’m saying.”
  
  “He’s not your dad, Michael.” Michael threw him a glare, which confirmed him in his guess, as they reached the three who were waiting at the sign.
  
  Under the school’s name writ large, Michael read its motto: “Pathway to Excellence and Integrity.” He felt neither excellent nor integrated; he felt alone, even in that company. Maria waited for a hug from him but got only a grunt. She watched unhappily as Liz locked lips with Max. Alex was gazing tentatively at Isabel, who pretended not to notice. Michael noticed a space between them and the students walking past. He was sure he was not imagining it; the others were steering clear of them. He felt he was in the wrong place—as in a larger sense he was.
  
  Maria made another bid for a hug. “Gotta go,” he said. He threw another glare at Max as he left.
  
  “No, Michael, wait!” He had not asked his favor yet.
  
  Maria sensed that somehow he had motivated the sudden departure. “What was that about?”
  
  Max did not hear her; he was wrapped up in his own immediate need. “I wanted to talk to him.”
  
  “Yeah,” she said, “me too.” She headed into campus, hugging her books disconsolately.
  
  “Nice, Max,” his sister remarked. Once more he found himself a target of blame without quite knowing why. “See you, Alex.”
  
  “Hey, Is? What do you say later on we—” She did not look back. Alex accepted this at his lot. “Another time, then. Fine.” He turned to Max. “You know, your sister is—”
  
  “Yeah, isn’t she?” The reply was automatic. After a moment he realized Alex probably had a different thought in mind. The object of his affection being gone, he had no further reason to stay, and Max and Liz were left to themselves. “Your turn,” Max said dourly. “Have at me.”
  
  “Max! Here on the steps?” The mischievousness of the answer caught him by surprise; she did that sometimes. He smiled a little.
  
  Michael’s dark mood followed him into P.E. class, but he trusted to the coach to knock him out of it. Light fell from the arching windows onto him and the other boys as they lined up along the length of the basketball gym. Clay paced down the line, clipboard in hand. “Fenton,” he called. “Franzese. Garfield. Gomez. Gottlieb. Guerin.” He glanced at Michael’s sweatshirt. “Not regulation, Guerin.” The standard issue was blue with gold lettering.
  
  “Sorry, I tore the other one.”
  
  “No excuses!” With the ballpoint chained to the clipboard, he made a check by Michael’s name. “Grey mark for today.”
  
  “But, Coach—”
  
  “No back talk! Or you’ll get another one.” He continued down the line.
  
  Michael did not mind the grey mark; he had earned it. He had given the excuse mainly from a regard for form. But the coach had spoken to him coldly. As if he had never shown an interest in Michael’s well-being, as if he had never offered advice on how to handle his foster father.... But it seemed that was all in the past. A few minutes into the period, after the boys had chosen up sides, Michael noticed a shoelace dangling and stepped to the sidelines to repair it. Clay descended on him again. “What do you think you’re doing, Guerin?”
  
  The other boys postponed play to listen as Michael stood to face him. “Tying my—”
  
  “You’re slacking! I don’t allow slackers on my court.” He lifted his ballpoint. “Another grey mark.”
  
  “I was tying my shoes!” He pointed down. “See? Left, right. Like Mister Rogers.”
  
  “You being a smart-ass with me, Guerin?”
  
  Michael resorted to the age-old defense of young people unjustly accused. “I didn’t do anything!”
  
  “Yeah, you did. Know what it was? You got born—if that’s the right word.” Michael flinched. What had Clay meant? “Don’t like you, Guerin. Never have. Don’t like your mouth—don’t like your attitude—don’t like your face. What do you say to that?”
  
  Michael did not know what to say. Clay always imposed a strict discipline on the boys, but always fairly. And he never insulted them. “I thought—”
  
  “You thought what?”
  
  “Forget it.” He started out onto the court.
  
  “Don’t walk away when I’m talking to you!”
  
  Michael stopped. “Still here. So?”
  
  Clay took a step closer to him. “Got no father, have you?”
  
  “You know I don’t.”
  
  He stepped closer still. “Boy with no father’s got nobody to show him how to be a man. Never be anything but a girl. That’s what you are, Guerin, aren’t you? A pretty little girl. Aren’t you? Aren’t you?” Michael felt like smacking him but swallowed the impulse. Then Clay smacked him—on the shoulder, hard. “Don’t touch me!”
  
  “What’s the matter? Little Miss Guerin doesn’t like big bad man touching her?” He gave him another smack.
  
  “Once more, and I’ll—”
  
  “You’ll what?”
  
  “Report you,” Michael said weakly.
  
  “Report me. Just like a girl.” He drew his hands back. “Okay. No touchy.” He picked up a basketball from the court. “Report this, maggot.”
  
  He hurled the ball at Michael, who batted it away with his forearm. Clay retrieved it and hurled it again. This time Michael caught it and flung it high into the bleachers. “Stop it!”
  
  “Stop it!” Clay mimicked.
  
  “I mean it!”
  
  “I mean it!” The ball had rolled back to him somehow. He took it up and began dribbling in a circle around Michael. “The other guys know, don’t they? Know you’re not like them. That’s why they stare at you—talk about you behind your back. It’s why your girlfriend won’t give you squat.”
  
  He hurled the ball again, this time straight at Michael’s head, so fast he had no time to dodge, or think how to defend himself. So he did it the only way he knew how. A foot away from his face, the ball exploded with a pop. A second earlier, it had turned into a red balloon. Now a limp wad of plastic, it dropped to the floor, and there regained its original leather shell.
  
  Clay alone had been close enough to see, and he did not seem surprised. “Destroying school property. Another grey mark. Three strikes, Guerin. Know the penalty for that? Life, without possibility of parole.” Michael could not help thinking that would describe his entire experience of Earth; this bullying by Clay was just one example. Not knowing how else to handle it, he ran for the locker room. The others saw the coach smile after him.
  
  He was still trying to make sense of the incident at break time, when he returned to his locker to find Maria waiting. She moved to kiss him; he shook her off, as he had earlier. “Not in the mood.” She tried again. “I said no, I meant it.” When Max and Liz arrived a few seconds later, the two were facing away from each other, with scowls on both faces.
  
  “You okay?” Liz asked.
  
  Of course, it was Maria she was asking. “Ask Doctor No there.”
  
  “Something wrong, Michael?” said Max—then again, “Michael?”
  
  “The coach. He was a real sadist this morning.”
  
  “Which comes as a shock.”
  
  “Okay, you were right about him. But this was weird. He kept throwing the ball at me. He just wouldn’t stop.”
  
  Maria recognized it when his feelings were hurt more than he wanted to say. “Sorry, I didn’t realize.” She gave his side a squeeze, which he permitted. She looked at Max. “Shouldn’t you or your sister have sensed the problem? I thought, if one of you gets hurt—”
  
  “Only in extreme cases. And with Michael, there’s not a lot to sense. He likes to bite the bullet. True grit, that one.”
  
  “Yeah, tell me about it.”
  
  Michael was not amused by this. “What’d you do?” Max asked him. “When Clay went after you like that?”
  
  “What I had to.” They waited. “Rang the changes. He didn’t give me any other choice!”
  
  “Did he see you?”
  
  “I don’t know—yeah, I think so. But he didn’t say anything about it. Like I said, it was weird.”
  
  “Sounds like he baited you on purpose.”
  
  “Yes, Max, we get that,” said Liz. “The question is why.”
  
  “Is there any doubt?” said Maria. The others turned to her. “He tricked you into exposing yourself—and not in the way the rest of you are thinking. Remind you of anybody?” They looked blank. “Ms. Topolsky? Careers day?”
  
  “FBI?” said Liz.
  
  “Yes, Liz, we get that,” Max said pointedly, earning a scowl. “That’s why he was posing as your mentor, Michael. It wasn’t that he liked you.”
  
  “No, of course not. Because that would be outside the realm of possibility, right?”
  
  “I didn’t mean that.”
  
  “Yeah, you did. But it’s okay.” He spoke very quietly. “I know better now.”
  
  “What’ll you do if he goes for you again?” asked Max.
  
  “Eat it, what else? Assassinate him?”
  
  Max appeared to be considering the idea, but finally shook his head. “Draw too much attention to us.”
  
  “Which disposes of the ethical dilemma,” said Liz. He shrugged. She started away. “English is in the library today. Coming?”
  
  “Have to talk to Michael first.” When she had left, he pointed toward the rest room. “In there.”
  
  Maria stared at them. “And that isn’t weird.”
  
  “You stand watch,” he ordered. “Don’t let anybody in.”
  
  “How do I stop somebody from taking a leak?”
  
  “Use your imagination.”
  
  “This is one area I’d rather not focus my imagination on, thanks just the same. And may I point out that legally—” They went in without paying her any attention. With great reluctance she took up her post outside the door.
  
  The first two girls who passed looked at her funny. “My boyfriend’s in there,” she explained. “I’m standing close, so I don’t miss him coming out.” She realized this was not helping. Subsequent funny looks, she ignored without saying anything.
  
  Inside, Max checked the stalls to make sure the two of them were alone. “Okay, what?” said Michael.
  
  Max reached into his jacket and pulled out the artifact. “My mom nearly found this when she made my bed.”
  
  “Your mom makes your bed?”
  
  “Yeah, it’s a thing moms do.” He offered it to Michael. “You keep it.”
  
  “Now you say that.”
  
  “You live on your own, it’s safer with you.” He had an afterthought. “As long as you don’t mention it to Maria.”
  
  “Why?”
  
  “Because—Maria.” Michael needed no further explanation. He took the object. “Handle it gently,” said Max. “It might be a nuclear detonator, for all we know.” Michael looked at it with new eyes. “Probably not. But it doesn’t come with a manual. We should be careful. Till we find out more about it.”
  
  Michael was turning it, carefully, to study it on all sides. “That’s a plan.”
  
  “What is?” Max asked, puzzled.
  
  “What you said.”
  
  At the door, a boy whose name Maria could not quite remember tried to get around her, but without success. “You can’t go in there,” she told him. “—Roy, isn’t it?”
  
  “Ray. But it’s urgent!”
  
  “Roy—”
  
  “Ray.”
  
  “—I know how you feel, believe me. When you’re sitting waiting for the bell to ring, and your whole being is consumed with the strain of holding in a tankload—” Roy—Ray—was showing more interest in the description than she thought healthy. “That’s enough sharing. You’ll have to wait.”
  
  “Why?”
  
  “Because—it’s flooded. Water an inch deep. Whew.” I have never heard anybody use that word, she reflected, and I will probably never use it again.
  
  “Then how come there’s no sign?”
  
  “They ran out of signs. So they put me here.”
  
  Ray looked crookedly at her. “That doesn’t sound very believable.”
  
  “No, you know, it doesn’t. And that’s because—it’s a lie. The fact is, there’s a—transaction going on in there.”
  
  “Transaction? What kind of transaction?”
  
  “Highly personal..”
  
  “I want to see!” At that moment Max and Michael came out together. “On second thought....” said Ray. He hurried in between them.
  
  “What all were you doing in there?” said Maria, and then, “I can’t believe I asked that.” With a see-you to both of them, Max left. “So what’s up?” she asked Michael.
  
  He shook his head. “Max—said not to tell you.”
  
  “Uh-huh, and so?”
  
  He sighed. He had known he could not hold out against her. “Gave me this to hang onto for him.” He took the artifact from his jacket. Ray came out behind him just in time to glimpse it. Michael quickly returned it to his pocket. Ray’s eyes had gone wide, but he dropped them and hurried off. “Suave,” said Maria, in two syllables. “Now he’ll think it’s a gun.”
  
  “So let him.”
  
  “What if he reports it to Wiley?”
  
  “I’ll show Wiley it isn’t.”
  
  “What will you say it is?”
  
  Michael slid the object out an inch or two for another look. “Nerf football?”
  
  “Right, like he’s gonna believe—” Then she looked too. “Oh-h, yeah.”
  
  They arranged to meet in the stadium at lunchtime. Two minutes later, he was leading her down to the chain link fence behind it, which divided the campus from the hills to the north. “Then don’t come,” he said, in answer to the objections she had raised. “Makes the same difference to me.”
  
  “It can’t wait till after school?”
  
  “It can. I can’t.” He lifted his hand, palm up, in front of the fence. The section in front of him faded from steel grey to white. As he passed through, it crumbled to powder around him. On a hunch, Maria swiped the edge of the aperture with her fingertip and put it to her tongue. The white powder was what it looked like: sugar. She stared at it wonderingly. Michael was now several yards ahead on the other side. She ran through after him.
  
  They climbed two hills and stopped after the second. They were just within hearing of the loudest sounds from the campus, if they listened for them. But these did not interfere with Michael’s concentration. While the artifact was in his possession, he wanted to try every test on it he could think of. The most obvious one was to try and use it. His intuition as well as his common sense told him it was to be used. But by what means, and to what end, they did not disclose.
  
  The two of them were on a flat stretch rising to hills fore and aft. He walked to the far end and swung around like a movie gunslinger, the artifact at his hip. Maria, sitting cross-legged at one side, watched with amusement, cheering, “¡Oye, vaquero!” as he drew it from its imaginary holster and aimed it at the hill behind them, willing it to bore a hole through to the other side. He did not know if that was the kind of thing it could do; it seemed as likely as any. But no matter how hard he tried, it made no difference; the hill remained intact. Maria, resting her chin on her fists, called out to him. “What are you trying to do exactly?”
  
  “Drill a hole in the hill.”
  
  “Uh, excuse me, why?”
  
  “Some other program you’d rather watch instead?”
  
  She realized she had not made herself clear. “That isn’t what you do, is it? Your thing’s more like—chemical engineering.”
  
  “Not at all,” he said, patronizing her. “What we do is transform the molecular struc—” He stopped. “Chemical engineering. Right.”
  
  “The Nerf ball’s probably a tool to help with it.” He looked at her in surprise. “I do make sense occasionally. Hard to believe, I know.”
  
  Not bothering to answer, he performed the experiment again, this time setting himself a new object: changing the hill to salt. Again he concentrated with all his might—and again he failed. He wiped the sweat from his forehead; ringing the changes took a lot out of you, especially under the noonday sun in southern New Mexico.
  
  Then he had a new idea. This one took them back to the school, to the metal shop, which together with the wood and auto shops was housed at one end of the physical sciences building. The room was locked. Michael passed his hand over the lock, and the door popped open. “You realize this constitutes breaking and entering?” said his companion.
  
  “What’d I break?”
  
  “Okay, entering.” No one was close by, and no one she saw appeared to be watching them, but she was sure a teacher would come around a corner at any minute. She scurried in after him and shut the door. The shop was a big high-windowed room containing a mass of machinery for drilling, soldering, brazing, arc welding—every basic metal-working job that could conceivably be caught. To her it summed up every unattractive characteristic of the male sex. But to Michael, today, it was a gold mine.
  
  He tried the drill first. He plugged it into an outlet over the work tables, laid the artifact down, and went at it. Maria covered her ears to shut out the shrill whir. She had not guessed this was what he had had in mind. It seemed imprudent even for him. “Is this really such a good idea?” she shouted.
  
  He shut the drill off and examined the artifact, which was unblemished. “Must be so dense, nothing penetrates it.”
  
  “What am I reminded of?”
  
  “Ha ha.” He took down a welding torch.
  
  “And I ask again....”
  
  But again her worries were unnecessary. The torch had no more effect than the drill. Michael then stuck it under a vertical press, again over her objection, and with the same result, or lack of result: the thing could not be punctured, burned, flattened, dented, scratched, or otherwise marred. Even more strangely, it did not react to the attacks by beeping or glowing, as Max and Liz had seen and heard it do. For Michael it would not perform. “Now what?” Maria asked.
  
  Before he could decide, another figure appeared, stepping out from the shadow of a wall, although no one had entered after them. “Coach!” Michael exclaimed.
  
  “What are you kids doing here?” He did not wait for an answer, and they did not have one anyway. “Guerin? What’s that behind your back?”
  
  “Nothing.”
  
  “Show me.” Michael tried to think of a way out. “Show me, I said!” Michael showed him. Clay appeared to recognize the object. “Give it here.”
  
  “It’s not mine to give.”
  
  Thinking fast, Maria grabbed it. “It’s mine. It’s a—beeper. Reminding me to take my medication.”
  
  Clay looked skeptical. “Medication for what?”
  
  “Stress. In situations like this.” The bell rang. “Proverbial. Michael—walkies!” She pushed him to the door and out.
  
  Scarcely had they turned into the big central hall when two boys stepped into their path, as if they had been waiting, watching for them. Michael knew them from P.E. class but did not remember having ever spoken to them. He remembered their names as Rick and Scott. “Hey, you,” said Rick, and added, before Michael could return the greeting, “—freak.”
  
  “Ignore him,” said Maria. She began to guide Michael around them, but they blocked the move.
  
  “So much for plan A,” said Michael. He turned to face Rick head on. “You want something, jerk?”
  
  “Not from you.” He smirked at Maria. “Hey, mamacita. What you doing hanging out with this loser?”
  
  “You can do better than him,” said Scott. “You’re not a total dog.” He and Rick began to close in on her.
  
  “Touch me and you’re dead men.”
  
  “Come on, chica,” said Rick. “Give us a sample of what he’s getting.” He reached for her.
  
  Michael grabbed his arm. “You are worse than dead.” He turned his eyes on it. Frost began to appear on the surface. Rick yelped. “You like that? Do you, huh—chica?”
  
  “Let me go!”
  
  Maria clutched at him. “Michael, don’t!”
  
  Scott panicked. “It wasn’t our idea! It was coach!”
  
  “Coach?”
  
  “Coach Clay. He told us to pick a fight with you, to get you in trouble. It’s the truth, I swear!”
  
  Michael bent down to Rick. “What about it?”
  
  “Coach,” Rick gasped. Michael thought about it for a moment and then let go. Rick patted his arm. “I don’t feel anything!”
  
  “It’ll pass.”
  
  “What’d you do to him?” Scott asked. The two of them were shrinking from Michael in fear.
  
  To Maria, gratifying as this was to see, it also boded future trouble. “Tai chi,” she said, thinking fast again. “With a little feng shui and gong li. He’s studied with masters.”
  
  Out bellowed a voice they all recognized. “What’s going on here?” The principal was standing at his office door. He pointed to Michael. “You, in here. Now.”
  
  “Mr. Wiley,” Maria began, “you can’t—”
  
  “You too. Since you’re so eager to talk.”
  
  Almost from the moment of her sitting down, she found herself playing paralegal, taking Wiley’s questions since Michael would not, for which she was angry at both of them. “Why did you start that fight?” Wiley asked, for the third time.
  
  “I told you,” said Maria, “it wasn’t him—”
  
  “And I told you to keep your nose out of it.”
  
  “How come you didn’t call them in here? Why only Michael?”
  
  “Because their files”—he tapped a folder on the desk—“don’t show a record of infractions dating back to freshman year.” He shook a finger at him. “You realize this incident is all the justification I need to have you suspended permanently?”
  
  “That’s not fair!” It was still Maria answering..
  
  “However,” Wiley continued, “as a believer in equal opportunity, I’m offering you one last chance to mount a defense. Starting now.”
  
  At last Michael spoke. But his answer was not like anything Wiley had expected. “Demand me nothing. What you know, you know. From this time forth, I never will speak word.”
  
  “What am I supposed to make of that?”
  
  “It’s Shakespeare.”
  
  “Shakespeare! You’re a great proponent of the Bard, are you?” Michael sighed. He had been right to start with: there was no point in letting himself be drawn. He had been drawn by those guys in the hall, and see where it had gotten him. “Oh, yes, I can see from your academic performance how much of a reader you are.”
  
  “Actually he reads a lot,” said Maria, “off the syllabus. And the things he likes, he can quote back word for word.”
  
  “Can he?” The tone was skeptical.
  
  Michael demonstrated, but only at Maria’s nudging. “Thou told me thou didst hold him in thy hate. Despise me if I do not—”
  
  “Aw, that’s a load of crap.”
  
  “Now Othello’s crap.”
  
  “Tell me something in words I can understand.” Michael could not help chuckling. “Well?” He thought immediately of several expressions that met the requirement, but their use would only make his position worse. “Why do I make the effort? Your kind always dig your own graves. Strictly trailer-made.”
  
  Michael stiffened in his chair. “What was that?”
  
  “Easy, babe.” Maria laid a hand on his arm. Wiley had taken out a form and begun writing on it. “You’re not kicking him out of school?”
  
  “It’s either that or wait for the next session of the fight club.”
  
  “He was defending m!” She then felt obliged to add, for both their benefits, “Not that I required defending.”
  
  “Think you could have handled them yourself?” said Michael. “Fine, next time I’ll let ’em lay on, Macduff.” He glanced at Wiley. “Which is also Shakespeare, by the way.”
  
  Wiley stopped writing and looked up with a changed expression. “Hold on. Are you saying those boys were making unwelcome advances?”
  
  Duh, thought Maria. “Michael stopped it before it got started. Which, at the time, I admit I appreciated. They weren’t mounting a—well, weren’t mounting anybody.” Wiley pursed his lips. “They were just trying to piss Michael off. And succeeded, obviously.”
  
  “Why would they want to do that?”
  
  “It wasn’t their idea. They—” Michael gave a split-second shake of the head, seen only by Maria.
  
  Wiley waited. “Yes?”
  
  “The devil made them do it,” she finished weakly.
  
  “The devil. Okay.” He let it pass. “But there’s still the matter of sneaking off campus. And not for the first time.” He indicated the folder on the desk.
  
  “I did the same thing! I’m as guilty as he is.”
  
  “It’s obvious to me you were induced to join him—if not by force, then verbal persuasion.”
  
  “Oh, yeah, his silver-tongued charm. A quality he’s known widely for.” Michael shot her a dirty look.
  
  Wiley ignored the sarcasm as he scrutinized first one and then the other. “What need drove you, I wonder? A craving for some controlled substance?” His look lingered on Maria. “One of those herbal remedies of yours, perhaps. I know about them from the sheriff.”
  
  Her jaw dropped. “Mr. Wiley, I swear to you—”
  
  “Enough. This is Mr. Guerin’s hour of judgment, not yours. But remember, I have my eye on you too.”
  
  “Eye,” she repeated, “noted.”
  
  “Well,” he said with a sigh, “in view of what appear to have been extenuating circumstances, I’ll ignore today’s roughhouse.” He tore the suspension form in half and dropped it into his wastebasket. “But as for your playing hooky”—Maria and Michael mouthed the last word at each other; they had not heard it since grade school—“you’ve earned yourself a detention this Saturday.”
  
  “Impossible,” said Michael. “I’ve got work.”
  
  “Not this Saturday you don’t. Report to the gym at 8 sharp.”
  
  “The gym?”
  
  “Yes. By a strange fluke of poetic justice, the teacher assigned is the same one who reported you as AWOL this afternoon. And called my attention to that fight in the hall.”
  
  “And what teacher would that be?” asked Maria.
  
  “Coach. Coach Clay.”
  
  The look she saw on Michael’s face at hearing this was the same one she felt on her own. She was antsy to talk to him, but restrained herself until they were out of the office, and out of earshot of it. “Now we know his plan. To have you to himself, without any witnesses.”
  
  “Don’t blow it out of proportion,” he said. But she could see he shared her uneasiness.
  
  “Why didn’t you tell Wiley those guys were playing on Clay’s team?”
  
  “Think he’d believe me over a teacher?”
  
  “They’d back you up.”
  
  “Oh, and come down on Clay’s wrong side? I don’t think so. One thing I’ve learned about humans—give you some excuse to wiggle out of dong the right thing, you’ll take it every time.”
  
  “Thanks for the compliment.”
  
  “Nah, I don’t mean you especially.” She felt better—for a moment. “You’re not as bad as some.”
  
  “Oh? How bad am I?” He answered with a back-and-forth tilt of the hand, signifying so-so. This brought on in Maria the type of open-mouthed recoil unique, in his observation, to teenaged girls—an expression conveying that what they were undergoing so far exceeded anything anyone else had ever undergone, language did not serve to express their disbelief.
  
  He did not get what the big deal was. “You wanted the truth, didn’t you?” That did it: Maria, much offended, turned and marched out of the building. He did not have time to go after her then. She had the day off, but he was already late for his shift.
  
  Over the grill, he reviewed all he had said, and found no fault in it. He looked across at Liz, who was waiting on the other side of the order window. It had taken him a while to appreciate her merits, and he was discovering new ones all the time. “You know, I never thanked you for getting me this job.”
  
  “You got it yourself.”
  
  “Okay, I take it back.” She laughed. “You laugh. Maria’d get mad. She’s weird like that.” Liz said nothing; she had a feeling there was more to the story. “I think it should have been me and you together. Make more sense.”
  
  She was unexpectedly touched. “That’s flattering of you, Michael, but I’m not sure—”
  
  “You, I understand. You’re like books—you explain things. But Maria—”
  
  “Nobody understands Maria. Or Max,” she added, after a moment. “It’s the way they are.”
  
  “So why are we with them? Instead of each other?”
  
  “Because, in the first place, we’d have to be in love. Which we’re not. And if we were, we’d be in the same boat as we are now.” Michael nodded resignedly. “You know what they say. Love’s—the b-word.”
  
  “Bullsh—”
  
  “Not that b-word.” She smiled. “And you know it’s not.”
  
  “No,” he agreed, “that’d be too easy.”
  
  Max would have been the first—or at least the third—to admit they were right. He was unfathomable even to himself, and often took long walks trying to work out why he did as he did. The town’s sidewalks were pleasant to wander, with their brick paving and their border of trees, each in its own neat iron fence. This evening he was taking the long way to Summerhaven Park, where he and the other not-ofs had arranged to meet. For him it was also the way home—that is, to the Evans house, which stood opposite the park.
  
  He seemed not to notice the man who was following him—a man with a mop of hair, and glasses, who was followed in turn by a woman with shorter hair and dark lipstick. “Larry, please!” she was saying.
  
  “I just want to talk to him, Jen. Just talk, that’s all.” He shouted after Max. “Hey, man, wait up!” Max had noticed him, or sensed him, but was pretending he had not. Larry accelerated to a trot, and trotted around in front of him. “Wait! I want to talk to you.”
  
  “Sorry. In a hurry.” Max tried to get past him.
  
  “Larry,” said Jen, tugging at his shirt, “let’s go.”
  
  Larry put an arm around her. “This is Jen, my wife. Just got back from our honeymoon. In Las Vegas.”
  
  “Congratulations,” said Max.
  
  “Didn’t do a lot of gambling. Mainly—well, mainly, we were on our honeymoon.” He snickered.
  
  “Larry, he doesn’t care.”
  
  “Oh, right, listen, I hate to be a nudge, last thing in the world I want to do is annoy anybody, but I had to tell you I was wrong about you.”
  
  “Were you?” Max said uncertainly.
  
  “Of course you know I was. I mean, you know you’re not—what I thought you were. But now I know too.”
  
  “Glad to hear that. Listen, I—”
  
  “What it was was, I had this thing about aliens. I saw them everywhere—at work, at the market—”
  
  “On tv?” Max suggested.
  
  “That too. And I was sure you were one. Wasn’t I, Jen?”
  
  “Larry—”
  
  “But it was Jen who set me straight. There are no aliens. It was all in my head. You’re a normal, red-blooded guy, like me. The two of us are just alike.”
  
  Max smiled wanly. “Thanks, that’s reassuring.”
  
  “Just wanted to tell you.”
  
  “Now you have. See you around.” He walked on.
  
  “You got nothing to fear from me!” Max kept walking. The couple started away. Then Larry stopped. “Oh, shoot. Something I forgot.”
  
  “You’ve said enough.”
  
  “No, this is the most vital thing!” He turned and headed after Max again.
  
  Michael was also on his way to the park, a block ahead of them. His upcoming detention so preoccupied him, he was paying no attention to what was happening around him. This included the small boy farther along in the block, following the ball he was bouncing. The boy’s older sister was walking beside and a little ahead of him, but was paying no attention to him either. His ball bounced into the street, and he darted out after it. She turned to see a Ford pick-up bearing down on him.
  
  Her scream brought Michael out of his funk. He saw there was no time to pull the boy out, no time to weigh other options; he would have to ring a change. So he did the first one that came to him: he changed the tire rubber to chewing gum. The tires locked, and the truck skidded around, missing the boy. His sister ran out and swept him up onto the sidewalk. But now the truck was sliding sideways toward one of the fenced trees. Michael panicked, and his mind stalled.
  
  Luckily, Max was at hand. He had arrived just in time to see, and knew what to do: he changed the tree and the fence to hard rubber. When the truck hit them, they bent back harmlessly. It veered off and grated to a halt, the driver rattled but unhurt. He climbed out to inspect the tires, and then the tree, but saw nothing out of the ordinary; Max had changed it all back. Except that now the tree was bowed in half.
  
  —and the boy was staring at him pop-eyed. His sister had not seen, but he had. Max raised a finger to his lips, and the boy nodded solemnly. Max knew his secret was safe.
  
  But there had been a second witness, halfway back up the block. “Did you see that?” he pressed his wife. “Did you?”
  
  “The accident?” said Jen.
  
  “The alien! He changed things around! I was right about him, after all!”
  
  “Larry, we’ve been through this before—”
  
  “I know what I saw!”
  
  “What you think you saw.”
  
  “You’re in it too! You’re part of the conspiracy!” He gazed in horror at her. “And I’m married to you!”
  
  “My error. I thought you were someone I knew.”
  
  “Jen, wait!” He tore himself away from the scene, very reluctantly, to regain her. By then others had begun to collect; Michael was wishing his powers included invisibility. He heard a cat-like wail, and a familiar beige Rover pulled in. As the sheriff stepped out, he made a mental note of the tall kid hurrying down the block. Max, farther back in the crowd, was able to slip away unobserved while Valenti interviewed the driver.
  
  The two of them and Isabel held their meeting, later than planned, on one of the concrete benches at the rear of the park. From there they were able to survey the whole lawn, by the clusters of spotlights that hung from steel poles every few yards along the gravel paths. Apart from themselves, the park was almost empty. “That was careless,” Max said to Michael, “not to mention stupid.”
  
  “I choked. Everything happened so fast.”
  
  “And what about our pact never to reveal ourselves?”
  
  “That pact ended when you brought Liz back. We’re still dealing with the fallout from that—all of us.”
  
  “I should have let her die?”
  
  Michael shrugged. “People die.”
  
  “You’re in no position to sound so high and mighty,” Isabel said, “either one of you. You’ve both powered up in public before. I’ve seen you myself. And if I did, then how many others?”
  
  “I suppose you never cheated?” said Michael.
  
  “Of course. It was an impossible promise to keep. But I stopped—except for little things.”
  
  Max ticked them off. “Lipstick, nail polish, perfume....”
  
  “Those don’t count. I stopped because I didn’t like how it made me feel. I was never sure what I was doing was right, or necessary, or that no one had seen me. And mind-binding with humans just seemed—distasteful.”
  
  “When did you ever do that?” Max challenged her. “Except in a dream?”
  
  “That’s different.”
  
  “Oh, so it doesn’t count either?”
  
  “I stopped that too. Stopped everything. Cold turkey.” She turned to Michael. “So did you. I know you did, or I’d have seen you.”
  
  “Yeah. Till tonight.” He glanced at Max sheepishly. “You see why. I try to help, but I only make things worse. Then I don’t know how to fix it.”
  
  “Because you don’t work at it,” said Isabel. Michael began to object. “You don’t, Michael. It’s your whole approach to life. You only do what makes you happy.”
  
  He answered her quietly. “You think I’m happy?”
  
  “He did heal River Dog that time,” Max noted.
  
  “Thanks, but I’m not sure that was me.”
  
  “Who else could it have been?”
  
  “River Dog himself maybe. I don’t know. It felt like when you healed me. Like something was passing through me into him.” Isabel silently took this in. “Weird, huh?”
  
  “Everything’s weird with us,” said Max. “Maybe some day it’ll all make sense.”
  
  “You’ve stopped too, Max,” said Isabel. “Since Liz. What was your reason?”
  
  “Too much responsibility. Take Liz. Sure, I brought her back—but what about all the others who need help? I can’t fix things for all of them. Who am I to decide who deserves it and who doesn’t?”
  
  “So what do we do about it? Go away? Hide?”
  
  “I won’t go—and I can’t hide.”
  
  “Then what?” Michael asked sullenly. “Tell us, if you know so much.”
  
  Max felt sad. It was as if Michael never heard a word he said. “As far as I can see, the only thing we can do is accept who we are, and figure out how best to use our”—the word stalled on his tongue—“superpowers.” The others looked troubled. “You can’t. Can you?”
  
  “Some day,” said Michael. “Somewhere else.”
  
  “Like our home planet?”
  
  He had not meant the question seriously, but Michael took it that way. “Maybe. Anyway, not here. Not where it’s just the three of us.”
  
  “If we come out,” said Isabel, “even to that extent, it’ll mean giving up our whole life.”
  
  “And if our life’s a lie?” Max asked.
  
  “Are our parents a lie? Is Liz?”
  
  He lowered his eyes. “Then we’re not ready. Not yet.”
  
  Michael pulled out the artifact. “Think this’ll help?”
  
  Isabel gave a huff. “Put it back! We can’t control the powers we have.”
  
  Max replied as if she had not spoken. “If we can figure out how it works.”
  
  Michael was looking at it in some disgust. “I couldn’t get it to do anything. Tried the drill, blowtorch, vertical press—”
  
  “You did what?”
  
  “Don’t worry, none of them fazed it.”
  
  Max was aghast. “You’re irresponsible! Who knows what harm you might have done? Give it back!” He made a grab for it.
  
  “Not done yet.”
  
  “What next, dynamite?”
  
  “Coach Clay. I want to show it to him again.”
  
  “‘Again’?” It kept getting worse.
  
  “He’s FBI!” Isabel protested.
  
  “He knows what it is. I could see that. Maybe I can trick him into telling me.” Even to himself this sounded a little harebrained, now that he had spoken it aloud.
  
  “They’re the last people we want laying hands on it,” said Max. “Give it here!” He made another grab. This time he got hold of one end while Michael hung onto the other, and the two struggled for ownership. They did not notice it when the thing started to beep, as it had in the desert. Then it emitted a crackling burst of light, and an electric shock peppered their insides. Both let go at the same time. Max looked at Michael questioningly.
  
  “It never did that,” said Michael. “Even when I used the tools on it. Or when some guys were picking a fight.”
  
  This was a new worry. “What guys?”
  
  “Oh, Clay put them up to it.”
  
  “Then they weren’t really angry. Neither were you when you—did your tests. I was. It picked up on that. What else can it do, I wonder?” He lifted it gingerly.
  
  “Max!” cried Isabel. “The coach!”
  
  “Where?” said Michael. She pointed to a man who had been standing by a thick pine—the oldest in the park—and was now retreating up one of the paths. He glanced back long enough to show his face.
  
  “That’s not him,” said Michael.
  
  “That’s not the man I saw,” said Isabel. She looked around. “But there’s no one else.” She felt a sudden chill, which she blamed on the artifact. “Put that away,” she said again. Max obediently tucked it into his jacket, and this time Michael did not object.

ADDED BY ISLANDGIRL 5 FOR GALEN, AS ALL PARTS WERE POSTED IN SEPARATE THREADS

Series: ...And I Can’t Hide
Episode 1.16X: When the Going Gets Tough
Rating: Teen
Summary: Michael has a run-in with his gym coach.

Disclaimer: The rights to the characters and situations of Roswell are the property of Warner Brothers, Jason Katims Productions, Twentieth Century Fox, Fox, Regency Television, and Melinda Metz.

• Valenti was still musing over the events near the park when he got home a half hour later. Music and voices directed his attention to the living room tv, in front of which Kyle was stretched on the brown leather sofa. “You’ll melt into that sofa some day, you don’t watch it.”
  
  “Yeah, how you doin’ yourself, Dad?”
  
  Jim stopped in back of him to assess what was playing. “Movie,” Kyle volunteered. “Stranger on My Pillow.”
  
  “Women’s channel?”
  
  “What else?”
  
  “Any good?”
  
  “Nah, but the wife in it takes a lot of showers.”
  
  Jim watched with somewhat greater interest. “Kyle, how well do you know this kid Guerin? Friend of Max Evans?”
  
  “Michael Guerin? Don’t know him at all. Why?”
  
  “Thought you might invite him over some time, so me and him could have a chat.”
  
  “One of your chats. Don’t tell me it’s him you’re shadowing these days?”
  
  “Not shadowing anybody. I just asked.”
  
  “And if I was to ask why you’re asking?”
  
  “No reason.”
  
  “Uh, yeah, Dad, reason.” He stood. “Make you a deal. Day you start sharing with me, I’ll start sharing with you.” He nodded at the tv. “Leave it on?”
  
  “Nah, going out again.”
  
  Kyle clicked it off. “You just got in!”
  
  “Going for a drink with Amy at the Riata.”
  
  “Amy? Maria Deluca’s mom?” He rolled his eyes. “Jeez, Dad.”
  
  Valenti looked down at the hat he was holding. “And you wonder why I don’t share more.” He went to change. His son now wished he had not made the comment; I should talk, he thought. But it was too late to do anything about it, except apologize—and what was the point in that?
  
  When his father drove Amy home, much later, a figure that had been standing in her drive moved behind the shrubs in the side yard before the headlights showed him up. Earlier he had made it up with Maria, mainly so he could beg a ride to detention the following morning, but he had ended the evening early, resolved on studying the map some more. He had tired of it in a little, as always, and decided he wanted to be with her, after all. But he had arrived to find her room and the rest of the house dark. That had been just before he heard the car approaching.
  
  He waited for it to pull into the drive, but it never did. He peered around the wall. A vintage black Mustang with a “Support Your Local Sheriff” decal on the rear window—his breath caught in his throat as he recognized whose it was. It was parked at the curb in front of the yard. He quickly pulled back into the bushes as Amy stepped out. She closed the car door gently, as if not to wake her daughter, and walked up the drive, a few feet from where Michael was hiding.
  
  Hers was not the only late-night meeting that Friday. But Liz’s was not planned, at least not by her. She was standing at her floor mirror in an almost-new negligee, assessing the figure it draped so flatteringly—she had to admit—when she happened to look toward the window and was startled to see a face there. “Max!” He ran his eye along her revealed lines in blatant admiration. She was more pleased than embarrassed, but tried not to show it. Immediately—but not all that quickly—she took a robe from the closet and covered herself.
  
  “May I come in?” he asked. She weighed the risk against the reward and beckoned him to enter. As he did so, she became conscious of her heart thumping. Once he had gained the floor, he took something out of his jacket. “Can you keep this for a while? And hide it where no one will find it?”
  
  Liz felt obscurely disappointed. “Why me?”
  
  “It’s not safe with me. And even less safe with Michael.” She looked at it without enthusiasm. “Please?”
  
  “Well—since you said ‘please.’”
  
  He handed it over. “One word of advice. Try to avoid having any—intense feelings in its vicinity.”
  
  “Oh?” Her antennae went up—not those on her Crashdown uniform, but her personal, invisible ones. “Why is that, exactly?”
  
  “They might induce a sort of—energy burst.”
  
  “Is that another way of saying ‘explosion’?”
  
  “Tiny one. Nothing to worry about. As long as you don’t make any sudden movements toward it.”
  
  “Like a pit bull? I don’t want this in my room!” She thrust it back at him. He dodged it.
  
  “Then the cafe.” He thought again. “But not the kitchen. On account of the heat.”
  
  “Max, I really don’t—”
  
  “Have to be getting home. Thanks, Liz.” He darted out the window and across the deck to the fire ladder.
  
  “Yeah,” she muttered, “thank you too—Maximilian.” For once Michael’s nickname seemed to suit. She looked at the thing with distaste, then carried it to her hiding place in the wall, and laid it—very carefully—alongside her journal. She was going to make an entry about it but changed her mind; for now, it had better be their secret.
  
  Though the artifact was no longer with Michael, he had not given up the idea of finding out something about it, somehow, from the coach. He arrived on campus early the next morning in Amy’s red Jetta, which Maria wheeled onto an access road ending near the gym. As he swung the door open, she clutched his arm. “Sure you want to go through with this?”
  
  “No choice in the matter. You heard Wiley.”
  
  “Did you tell Max and Isabel?”
  
  “No need to. I can take care of myself.”
  
  “Yeah, taking care of yourself was what got you into this.”
  
  “Clay got me into this. Might as well find out what else he’s got up his sleeve.” He could see her misgivings, and he shared them—but what was the alternative? “You go on to work. I’ll walk back.” She watched unhappily as he disappeared around a corner of the building. How would she ever be able to work with this gnawing in her stomach?
  
  The side door was open. He stepped in to survey the room and, seeing no one, entered farther. He heard a ball bouncing, and turned to the sound. The coach was standing behind him, in the corner by the door. He had a basketball and was dribbling to a slow beat, like the beat of a tom-tom: Donk. Donk. Donk. Leaving the corner, he began pacing deliberately toward Michael. Donk. Donk. The rhythm seemed to have taken over his heartbeat. Donk. “Where is it?” said Clay.
  
  “Where’s what?”
  
  “You know.”
  
  “Haven’t got it. See?” He opened his arms.
  
  “Foolhardy to cross me, stripling. As you’ll learn before we’re done.”
  
  He talks weird for a coach, Michael thought. “Why, do I lose my free throw?”
  
  “You trying to be funny?” That sounded more like Clay. Now he was holding the ball. Suddenly he hurled it at Michael’s head—faster than last time, faster than seemed humanly possible. It caught Michael off guard, but his own quick reflex elbowed it aside. “What,” said Clay, “no balloon this time?” The ball came back to him somehow, as before, and he continued his advance.
  
  Michael retreated. “You really don’t want to do this.”
  
  “Oh, yes. I do.”
  
  Michael tried to show he was not scared of him—or not all that scared. “I know who you are now. I didn’t before.”
  
  “Bully for you.”
  
  “You shouldn’t have showed your hand so soon. Topolsky was smarter.”
  
  “Who’s Topolsky?”
  
  “Don’t b.s. me.”
  
  “Why should I bother? I don’t know and don’t give a damn about this Topolsky, whoever he is.”
  
  Strangely, Michael believed him. “Your section chief should have briefed you better.”
  
  “Section chief! You think I’m—one of them?” His laughter rang to the arched ceiling. “Those fools couldn’t recover a missing dog. Their only achievement is to run in circles—and the circles grow ever wider.”
  
  “Sounds like you know a lot about them.”
  
  “I should. They’ve been tracking me since 1959.”
  
  This, Michael had not foreseen. He stood staring in amazement. Clay (to give him the name he had taken) led his gaze to the floor. A spot appeared there, and lengthened into a curving line, an inch deep, the edges of it rough, as if it were being etched into the varnished wood by an unseen finger of fire. It expanded into a circle and was joined by two more lines, one on each side, like parentheses: Michael recognized the symbol from the map. It was the same one he had burned into the library lawn, to attract the attention of the person—being—he had been waiting for: the only known emigré from their home planet. He stared up at Clay again. “That’s right, Michael. You summoned me.” He stepped into the figure he had etched. “Now deal with me.”
  
  Unknown to either of them, Maria was listening from the hall. She had changed her mind about leaving, and now was glad of it. A door near her was half-open; a sign on it identified the office as Clay’s. She could phone Liz from there. But Liz would be at work, and powerless to help anyway; Max—but no, he would be working too, and if he came, would have to reveal himself to someone who, it seemed, was not the ally Michael had expected, but an enemy.
  
  Under the sheet of glass that covered the desktop, she saw a phone list which included Wiley’s name. He seemed her best bet, strange as that felt. On punching in his number, she got an instruction to leave a message at the tone. “Mr. Wiley? Pick up if you’re home.” He did not. “Come to the basketball gym right away. There’s going to be trouble between Michael and the coach. Please, get here soon.” When she said the “please” part, she had already hung up.
  
  On the desk sat a stack of mail, unopened, and a stack of papers, untouched, both going back two weeks. She began searching the drawers for a weapon, or some object that might distract Clay, and also out of general curiosity. In the upper right one, she found a bottle of pills.
  
  Michael was facing Clay, waiting for his next move, when he heard a loud pop overhead. Then another, and another—many others, in quick succession, like popcorn popping. He raised his eyes to the ceiling. It was, or had been, festooned with baby spotlights; now they were changing, one by one, to basketballs. But not quite basketballs: bigger and heavier—too heavy, in fact, for their mounts. One of them snapped loose and crashed to the floor, where it made a small crater. Others began raining down, to make more craters. As the popping spread across the ceiling, it was drowned out by the thunder of the landings.
  
  He shifted this way and that to dodge the balls as they fell. At last came one he could not dodge: it was plummeting straight toward him. With hardly a moment’s thought, he changed it to a soap bubble, which broke harmlessly over him. Now that he had found the trick, he used it on the others, one by one, and made a whole sea of bubbles, but hardly had it appeared when it dissolved.
  
  “That’s all you can do?” Clay mocked. “And you claim you’re one of us?” The basketball still in his hands changed to a meteorite, which gained color until it was glowing red-hot. He raised his arms to throw, and Michael fled up into the bleachers. “Best run, cub,” he heard behind him, “or I’ll finish you!” The projectile whizzed past his ears into the rows above, where it exploded in a tussock of flame.
  
  All at once the steel he was standing on changed to thin glass, which cracked to bits under his weight. He plunged from the third-tier level to the floor, which he met with a hard thump. “Why are you doing this?” he cried.
  
  “Because you’re weak, like the humans you dwell with. And the weak must be crushed.”
  
  “Hey, you!” a girl’s voice called. “Mork from Ork!” Maria was back at the door. She strolled out to the center of the court, her hands behind her.
  
  Michael, just picking himself up, waved her off. “What are you, crazy? Get out of here!”
  
  She ignored him, as she was accustomed to doing. “If you’re so all-powerful,” she asked innocently, “what are these?” She held up the pill bottle. It might have belonged to the original, but she had a hunch it was the impostor’s.
  
  Her hunches frequently paid off. Clay bared his teeth at her. “Give those to me!”
  
  “These? Mmm, no, I don’t think so.” She upturned the bottle, shook it empty, and then called into play her best dance step to grind the spillage into the now lumpy floor.
  
  “Stop her!” Clay ordered Michael, who was ten yards from her to his thirty. Then he swiveled toward her. The top and jeans she was wearing began to sizzle. Wisps of smoke drifted up from them.
  
  She could feel them scorching her. “Stop him!” she ordered Michael.
  
  “What do you owe these humans?” asked Clay. “Except a lifetime of grief.”
  
  “Says the guy who just tried to kill you.”
  
  “Only to bring you to life.” Michael did feel alive—more alive than ever. In fighting for his survival, he had shown what he was made of (as Clay—the real one—would have put it). He had been like a superhero, almost like a god. So this was what it was like to be one of them, unrestrained by humans; this was what it felt like to be him. “Decide, Michael,” he said. “Her kind or your own.”
  
  “And preferably sooner rather than later,” Maria added, “or her kind will be no kind.” After what seemed like an eternity, Michael turned—and he turned toward her. Her clothes began to sweat water. In a few seconds, they were hanging cold and clammy.
  
  Then her feet gave way, and she fell. An oil slick was gushing over the floor, and she found herself sliding in a beeline toward Clay. She tried uselessly to brake herself. In his hand, another basketball had appeared. He began to twirl it. As he twirled, it changed to a ball of lightning, sparking and crackling, and kept spinning, faster and faster, growing bigger and bigger, until it was almost her size. Her slide brought her almost to his feet. He drew his arm back to hurl the lightning down on her, like Zeus—and then he halted, rocking a little, as if the strength were suddenly drained from him.
  
  In the lull, she heard a voice: “Let those kids be!” The voice was Wiley’s.
  
  Clay seemed to revive, and in an instant all was back to normal. The object he was holding was a plain basketball; the ceiling had sprouted new lights; the bleachers were steel again, and whole. The only remaining marvel was the symbol gouged into the floor, but in a moment the wood had healed over, and that was gone too. Maria had never seen the changes rung on such a scale, at such a tempo; she felt as if she were dreaming. Wiley was clutching his head to keep his brains from falling out, which seemed a distinct possibility. He had confidence a sensible explanation of what he had just observed did exist but was simply opaque to him at present. Clay was running away from him, out the front doors. “Get back here, mister!” he ordered. It did not stop him.
  
  Maria picked herself up with a small moan. She was still sore where she had fallen; Clay had not changed that. Michael came to her. “You all right?” She shook her head, but not in answer to the question; her denial was more complicated. She was looking at him in a way she had not before—perhaps as if he had left her stranded on some street corner in the dead of night.
  
  Wiley joined them, having by now partly recovered his composure. “Tell me what happened here.”
  
  Maria sidestepped that task. “You must have gotten my message. You came so fast.”
  
  “I don’t know anything about any message. I just felt a—need to look in. I met Pete—the new man—outside.” He looked toward the doorway. A tall figure in a janitor’s uniform was standing there; neither of the students could recall having seen him around. “Under control, Pete,” said Wiley, “thanks.” The man disappeared. “Never saw the coach behave like this,” said Wiley. “I can’t figure it.” He looked around the room again. “Just can’t figure it.”
  
  Michael shrugged. “Coach hasn’t been himself lately.”
  
  That evening at the park, he described all that had happened to the others, as far as he could. Maria was not with him; she had gone home alone, and called in sick to work, and he had not seen her since. Liz was with Max: she had escaped house arrest for these few minutes by inventing a task that would keep her in the kitchen long after the shades had been pulled and her parents had gone upstairs. But she knew the ploy would not work for long.
  
  “You’re sure he’s Nasedo?” Max asked.
  
  “How many times do I have to answer that?”
  
  “It’s not like he told you his name.”
  
  “He didn’t have to—”
  
  “Excuse me,” Liz interrupted, “but Nasedo isn’t really a name. It’s more of a title—it means ‘visitor.’ And, technically speaking, you’re all visitors in that sense, so—”
  
  The others were staring at her. “Liz,” said Max, “it’s not that important. In the circumstances.”
  
  “I suppose.” Max began to ask Michael another question. “I mean, if precision isn’t important. But then you might as well—”
  
  “Aren’t you supposed to be at home?” Isabel asked pointedly.
  
  “I asked her to come,” said Max, “so she could help.”
  
  “Then help.”
  
  “Sorry,” said Liz, in a meeker voice than before.
  
  “It is like he told me his name. He said I summoned him. He knew the symbol.”
  
  “Then why would he try to kill you?” asked Isabel.
  
  “Well, that’s what he does, right? Isn’t that what you all have been trying to tell me this whole time? Only I was too stupid to get it.”
  
  “Not his own kind,” said Max.
  
  “That we know of.” The qualification came from Liz. “He might have disposed of the bodies.”
  
  Max reflected. “He hasn’t with the humans he’s killed.”
  
  “Except the coach,” said Michael.
  
  “Do we know that?” Max asked.
  
  “Nobody’s seen him—the real one, I mean.”
  
  “Of course,” said Liz. “To impersonate him successfully, he’d have to obliterate the original, so no one would ever find it. If it was me, I’d use a lye bath. And for the bones, a surgical saw....” The others were staring at her again, and she buttoned up.
  
  “You’re scary sometimes,” said Max. He turned back to the others. “Usually he leaves a trail. Which I think is deliberate. He wants people to know he’s out there. Wants them to be intimidated by him—by us.”
  
  “You’re assuming he’s sane,” said Liz. As they were considering this, she gave Max a peck on the cheek. “Better get back before someone comes down to check up on me.”
  
  “Thanks,” he said.
  
  “Yeah, thanks,” Isabel said, grudgingly. Liz at her smiled as she hurried off.
  
  Michael was not smiling. “So this is the great Nasedo. This is the whole deal.”
  
  “Sorry,” said Max. “I know you were hoping—”
  
  “Yeah, hope’s fine. But other people have a way of screwing it up.”
  
  “Better stay out of his way for the time being. Until....”
  
  “Until when?”
  
  “I don’t know,” Max confessed.
  
  “Ditch gym for the rest of the semester? Then I will be suspended. Guarantee you.”
  
  “He may not come back,” Isabel suggested. “Now that Wiley’s seen him in action. He didn’t see you, did he?”
  
  “Wiley doesn’t know what he saw. By the time he locked up he’d half convinced himself he never saw anything.”
  
  “Typically human.”
  
  “If he does come back,” said Max, not referring to Wiley, “we’ll face him together. The three of us.”
  
  “And do what?” asked Isabel.
  
  “What we have to. What we’re able to. Since he’s—not local, there’ll be no complications.”
  
  “Complications?”
  
  “People to raise a fuss.” He was reluctant to use the word. “Survivors.”
  
  Michael had not quite understood until now. His whole being—or the part he knew about—rebelled against this. “No!” he cried.
  
  His reaction surprised them. “He would have done the same to you,” said Isabel.
  
  “I can’t,” was all he could say.
  
  “Why not?” asked Max. “You don’t still think he’s—” Michael’s eyes widened; for that moment his face lay as open as a baby’s. “You do. Oh, Michael....” Exposed, confused, unable to cope with so much trauma at once, Michael did the only thing he could: he ran away. “Come back!” Max shouted, but to no avail. He turned to his sister. “What do we do?”
  
  “Wait for him to see sense, and hope he doesn’t get himself killed in the meantime.” Max saw she was right. “The usual,” she added.
  
  When Michael got back to his building, he found Maria waiting at the side door. He felt for his keys. “You coulda gone in,” he said. “Why didn’t you?” He had made her a key himself, manually, and knew she always carried it with her on a separate chain—one of her mother’s, with a flying-saucer fob.
  
  “Wasn’t sure I was welcome.” Michael did not know what to say. For her, this was enough answer. But she went on anyhow. “Never thanked you today. For saving my life and that.”
  
  “We’re even.” Despite the key in his hand, he made no move to open the door. And she made no move to leave. “You know”—he hated himself for what he was going to say—“it’s late—”
  
  “Why’d you hesitate?” She asked it quietly, but hurt throbbed through every word; he could not pretend he did not understand. “When you had to choose sides, you hesitated. Why?”
  
  He hesitated again. “Maybe he was right.”
  
  “Right in what way?”
  
  “If it comes to a showdown—may as well say it, a war—I won’t have a choice.”
  
  “And what about us?”
  
  “Which ‘us’ are you talking about?” She seemed to take that as an insult; he made a last effort to explain. “If your people find out what I am, and what I can do, you think they’ll let me keep wandering around loose? I’ll end up in a cage—or on a slab. Max and Isabel too.”
  
  Between him and herself Maria saw a gulf which until then she had imagined to be not much more than a pothole, easily steered around. “So no matter how much any of us put out for you—I’m speaking metaphorically—in your mind we’re still the enemy. All of us are.” She waited. “Michael, tell me I’m wrong.”
  
  He looked more severe than she had known he was capable of. “I don’t think I can,” he said finally. “Because I don’t think you are.” He let himself in and pushed the door shut, without a goodbye. Maria felt as if she had been punched in the stomach. She stood for another minute or two—or five, she could not tell—until she had recovered enough to be sure of guiding the Jetta safely out of the carport. Michael heard it from his window: the sound of it was like breathing, and dwindled as it grew more distant from him. Soon he could not hear it at all.
  
  Maria, if she had been asked, would have sworn nothing could have made her feel any lousier than she had back there. But that was before she reached home, and found the beige Range Rover filling the drive. Bumped to the street for a parking space, she was still feeling resentful on this score alone when she entered the house and was met with the sight of the vehicle’s authorized keyholder reclining in their lounge chair, and looking much more at home there than she liked. He promptly sat up, as if caught at something illicit. “Sheriff,” she said, trying to strike a balance between sounding surprised and not at all surprised.
  
  For his part, he tried to sound comfortable with her, which he was not. “Maria. Hi there. Your mom’s just getting ready.”
  
  It took her a moment to absorb the implication. “Mo-om!” she shouted.
  
  Amy was at her bedside mirror, threading the first of a pair of hoop earrings, when her daughter walked in. “Okay, what’s going on?”
  
  “Going on?” Amy echoed, in as innocuous a tone as she could manage on short notice. “What could be going on?”
  
  “What’s he doing out there?”
  
  “Jim? The two of us have a dinner date, if that meets with your approval.” She thought about it. “You know, actually it doesn’t matter if it does or not, because I’m the parent here.” She grabbed her coat from a chair.
  
  “You told me you’d stopped seeing him.”
  
  “Did I? I suppose I did. Well, I’ve started again. We’ve been out for drinks. Twice.”
  
  “You didn’t tell me.”
  
  “No.” She left the room. Her daughter followed her to the front, where Valenti rose to meet her. “All ready, steady?” she said with a wink. “Let’s go.”
  
  He grinned. “You look very apprehendable.”
  
  “Bet you say that to all the felons.”
  
  “Eeew,” said Maria, seriously offended.
  
  Valenti turned his grin on her. “Some day soon, you and I’ll sit down and have us a chat.”
  
  “Already preparing my alibi.”
  
  “’night, honey,” said Amy. “Don’t wait up.”
  
  When did I ever? Maria thought. The couple left. She moved to a window and watched as Valenti opened the door for his date with the air of a Southern gentleman. Amy was making little flirting gestures with her fingers, and dangled them for him to kiss, which he did with the same genteel air while she giggled and simpered. Maria watched in disgust. How did people become grown-ups? she wondered. Was it a virus of some kind?
  
  Michael had gone out for a walk, which he hoped would shake her from his mind. But he had a larger purpose in it, and had planned it beforehand with this in mind. His first destination was the public library. He stopped in front and crouched on the lawn. With a wave of the hand, he changed a section of the grass to plain dirt, and with another wave, made it level. From his jacket he took out the replica map and unfolded it on the grass. Then he took out a small canvas sack, and into his hand poured the contents: the yellow stones.
  
  —except at that moment they were glowing blue. Am I doing that? he asked himself. But he knew better instantly. “It’s the place. You guys are picking up something from it.” (Having come to regard them as companions, he sometimes talked to them, though the conversations were inevitably one-sided.) “I feel it too. Something that plugs into the Balance—or is the Balance. That must be what all these places have in common.” Maria had said there was something. He looked forward to sharing the discovery with her, and then remembered.
  
  Above him hung the shining V which he had earlier identified, by an intuitive flash, as the constellation of Aries. He kept meaning to confirm the identification with Liz, who was taking astronomy, but so far he had not gotten around to it. He oriented the map, and placed the stones on top of it, to align with the celestial original. But what concerned him more was its terrestrial twin: the array of sites in and around Roswell—all of which, it now appeared, had to do with the Balance. The library was the only one of these whose location he knew; tonight he was going hunting for the others.
  
  He reviewed the map. The symbol with the parentheses marked where he was, and the one nearest it was the miniature solar system, which lay south southwest. If I walk far enough in that direction, he thought, I’ll hit it, whatever it is. But how far’s that? He had no way of guessing the scale of the map. “Well,” he said aloud, “Roswell ain’t that big.” As it was not—by the measure of Albuquerque or Santa Fe.
  
  A sudden flicker, glimpsed out of the corner of his eye, prompted him to look at the big library sign. “BASIC BINARY,” he read. That’s wrong, he thought. Then he read again: “PUBLIC LIBRARY”—totally normal; he must have been seeing things. And no wonder. He pocketed the map and the stones, and began walking as the crow flies, or almost. As he passed under a row of twin-headed street lamps in their curlicued holders, each pair in turn flared up and dimmed again—probably the work of the stones, still charged—but he did not notice.
  
  Two blocks on, he struck a row of houses lying square in his path. Such a possibility had never occurred to him. He considered blazing a trail through—literally—but decided against it. Instead he circled round and took up the track on the far side. Presently another row blocked him, and beyond it, the streets turned in all directions, except the one he wanted. He realized this was how it was in a city, even ain’t-that-big Roswell. He pressed on anyhow, trying to keep to south southwest, using the figure in the sky as a compass, but unable to tell how far he had deviated to one side or the other; for all he knew, he might have strayed outside the map’s borders altogether.
  
  So he was happily surprised to heave into sight of a likely landing: the soap factory, which had been the site of a notorious police raid earlier that year, and a city landmark from the turn of the century. He reached confidently for the stones. They were not glowing; not even a little. This was not the right place, after all.
  
  In front of him stood a bronze marker on a concrete stand with a facade of cracked stone. “Roswell Soap Factory,” the inscription read. “Opened 1899. Closed 1948.” It had later reopened as a different kind of factory, and closed again—at least a generation ago—but for various reasons had never been torn down. He was about to leave, to continue on his quest, when something about the stand caught his attention. It had begun to quiver. From quivering, it went to quaking. He took a step back, and another.
  
  What he saw next he would not have believed, had he been human. The stand began swelling, as if air were being pumped into it; enlarging in every direction, but the most from side to side, until it reached a width of twelve feet. And as it enlarged, it changed shape to become—there was no mistaking it—a giant bar of soap. He could almost have laughed, if it had felt like anything to laugh at. Then it began bubbling, but as soap never had—furiously, obscenely. Lather drooled down its sides and streamed away over the ground. And he knew who was doing it. “Where are you?” he muttered.
  
  “Michael?” The voice came from a few yards back. It was not Clay’s. But then, Clay—that is, he—could be anybody. Michael swung round with his fists upraised.
  
  The new arrival was unarmed, and alone. He unclenched his hands. Of course it was possible she was him, in another form, but somehow he knew she was not; he knew her as herself, or one of her selves. “Topolsky.” He corrected himself: “Excuse me, Ms. Topolsky.” She was not someone he had expected to see there, but that was only because he had not seen her lately; if she was back in circulation, she was as likely to pop up there as anywhere else, or vice versa. The black Impala that had brought her, which he had failed to hear, was standing athwart the parking lot entrance.
  
  The former teacher (and undercover agent) regarded her former student (and surveillance target) in an oddly provocative manner, which he remembered as typical of her. “You realize it’s past curfew?”
  
  “I’ll go home.”
  
  She touched his sleeve lightly. “Not yet.” She turned to the marker. It had returned to its original shape, but a coat of froth, white like snow, still covered the stand and the ground around it. “Did you do this?” She answered herself immediately. “No, I don’t believe you did. What do you know about it?”
  
  He smiled. “You first.”
  
  “What could I know? Since I was relieved of my assignment at your school, the Bureau’s been keeping me in the dark.”
  
  “I thought you liked the dark. Isn’t that why you took the job?”
  
  “I took the job—” She halted. “Story for another day. And anyway, you wouldn’t believe me.”
  
  “Do I have reason to?”
  
  “I suppose not.” She faced him head-on. “It was never you and your friends we were after. Oh, for a while the sheriff had a cockeyed idea Max might be the serial killer we were tracking—”
  
  “Nasedo,” he filled in, automatically. He realized his slip a second too late.
  
  “Nasedo? What kind of name is that?”
  
  He remembered what Liz had said. “It’s more of a title. Means ‘visitor.’”
  
  “‘Visitor.’ Appropriate.” Topolsky glanced at him. “Isn’t it?”
  
  “So if there are other—visitors around, they must be like him, right?” His accumulated resentments were beginning to show.
  
  “One killer doesn’t make a race of killers. Or where would humans be?” She ran her eye along the trail of foam, as if seeking a pattern in it. “I’ve had a couple of—setbacks lately. One of them caused by your friends—not that I blame them. You can help me recover my credibility.”
  
  “With your FBI buddies, you mean?”
  
  “Not only that.” She said it almost in a whisper. “And to do it, I’ll need information. Information you have, or can get.”
  
  Was she recruiting him to be her snitch? This was almost more fantastic than what he had seen earlier. “Ms. Topolsky, right now I’m not even sure what I know. Let alone who I can trust.”
  
  The response was what she had expected; she knew the feeling herself. “All right, for now. Come on, I’ll take you home.”
  
  “I’ll walk.”
  
  “Can’t.” She tapped her wrist meaningly. “Curfew.”
  
  The ordinance that compelled Michael to accept her offer allowed the sheriff to move in on the area he had taken nearly an hour to get to: a circular plateau that lay off 285 south and was named Angels’ Ground, for no reason known to anybody now living. It was the favored parking spot of the town’s high school students. Curfew or no, a small fleet of cars and pick-ups was to be seen there late any weekend night, including this one. However, at the Rover’s appearance, engines started growling, headlights blinked on, and within a few minutes the only couple to have both attained majority had the place all to themselves. “So this is why you brought the squad car,” said Amy.
  
  Valenti was looking pleased with himself. “Could be.”
  
  “You enjoy having this kind of power. Admit it!”
  
  “Kinda. Don’t you?”
  
  She nodded, giggling. He pulled up to the rim that overlooked the town and shut off the engine. After the last of the exiles passed out of their hearing, they sat taking in the quiet and the starry dome above. “Haven’t been up here since I was a teenager,” said Amy.
  
  “And they still come. A Roswell tradition. You know whether Maria and her boyfriend...?”
  
  “Jim! Would she tell me? And if she did, would I tell you?”
  
  “How much do you know about him?” He tried to make the question sound casual.
  
  “Michael? I had my doubts, I must say. But he’s a good kid, Jim. Hard-working—supporting himself and going to school. And he cares a great deal for Maria.” It was lucky for Michael she had not heard their conversation earlier.
  
  “Don’t you think he’s a little—secretive?”
  
  “Aren’t they all? Isn’t yours?”
  
  “That one’s my fault. He sees me getting like his granddad, so he’s started writing me off—same as I wrote Senior off after he got to be such a sorehead, fighting with everybody. And now I’m like him—I want to know, like he did. Want it too much sometimes.”
  
  “To know what?”
  
  Jim realized he was saying more than he should be. “Know where to find the best-looking gal in town, is what. Hey, wait! She’s right here.” He reached over and touched her cheek.
  
  She liked that, and put her hand on his. But she was not so easily sidetracked. “Is that why were you asking about Michael before?”
  
  “Was I?”
  
  “You know—the one who’s so secretive.”
  
  He made an extra effort to keep his face composed. “Don’t recall it.”
  
  Amy grew quiet. “You know, I put up with a lot in my first—” She reddened. “In my marriage,” she amended. “For Maria’s sake. But one thing I won’t accept is being a—device.” Jim looked quizzical. “A means to get information—especially information about my daughter and her friends. If I thought you were using me that way, I’d consider it a betrayal of us both.” She looked at him hopefully. “You’re not, are you?”
  
  He was not—or not in a way that mattered. But her guess was accurate enough to inspire discomfort, and a resolution to be more careful in future, both of which he masked with a laugh. “Come here, best-looking gal, ya.” He pulled her to him.
  
  “You didn’t answer me.” But she let him kiss her. For the rest of the evening—and it was a long one—Michael Guerin did not figure in their thoughts again.
  
  Back home, he lay trying to sleep, but memories prevented him. A swarm of them—they always attacked in swarms—too many to fend off at once.
  
  ...He was walking on the desert, under a moon and stars he was seeing for the first time. He was naked and cold, and knew nothing except what he was felt and saw. Two others (who were not yet Max and Isabel), also naked, were exploring more bravely, right out onto the black strip that cut through the plain. On this, a monster was approaching. He heard the roar, saw the shining yellow eyes and the beam they cast onto the others. They cried to him, wordlessly, but he hid behind a rock and stopped his ears. He would not come out until the monster had left. But it had taken them with it....
  
  “Come back!” he cried now, as he could not then. “Don’t leave me! I don’t want to be alone!” The old man in the next apartment thumped on the wall for him to be quiet.
  
  ...He was standing in the dead middle of the strip, waiting for another monster to come. Waiting in hope, without understanding what that was; waiting longer than he would ever be willing to wait again. At last he saw it in the distance, saw its yellow eyes, and raised his arms in welcome. The eyes grew bigger and bigger, brighter and brighter, until they blinded him.
  
  ...He was sitting on a cot alone in a dim room with concrete walls, wearing a shirt that hung to his knees. He ran out the door into a hall and started for another door at the end. A man in uniform—but not a police uniform—grabbed him by the neck and dragged him back. He tried to struggle free, and was struck down. He picked himself up, started for the door again, and was struck down again. And again, as many times as it took. Until hope—which he understood now—was gone....
  
  “What is this place?” he asked ten years too late. “Where are the people who were supposed to be looking out for me? How is it you can do this to me?”
  
  ...He was changing hands, as a roll of bills changed hands in the other direction. Outside, by a high wall with barbed wire along the top, he was being handed over by the man in uniform to—Hank. He had found his monster. He ran again, and was struck down again, this time by the man who was going to be his father....
  
  “You taught me what this world is like,” he told him, though Hank was no longer around to hear. “It’s a prison. And I’m the prisoner.”
  
  ...He was doing work—all the work, Hank’s as well as his own. And getting smacked for doing it wrong, or doing it slowly, or for any reason at all. He could not fight Hank and win—or had not yet learned he could. So he fought others instead.
  
  ...He was pinned down, and being pounded at, by an opponent who outsized him—pounded so hard and so fast he could not hit back. It was then he discovered what else he could do. He thought of a toy of his, a floppy puppy. Hank had not bought it, of course; another family had moved out and left it behind. It was harmless and squeezeable. If the arm hammering on him were only like that—! And suddenly it was so. The arm went limp and fuzzy. The older boy screamed. Michael quickly undid what he had done (though the arm was never quite the same after that, and eventually the boy had to drop out of Little League). But the boy had seen, and so had the onlookers; they all backed off, and kept backing off.
  
  ...And he got smacked for it—twice for the fighting, twice for scaring the other kids, once for scaring Hank. The others spread the story around school, so that soon even those who did not believe were shying away. Occasionally he would run into someone who had not heard it and was spoiling for him, and he would fight and win, and get smacked and shunned all over again. Finally he stopped fighting....
  
  “What’s the point?” said the present Michael, the product of these tribulations. “No matter how many times you win, they beat you down in the end.”
  
  ...Their faces paraded before him: his abductor, Hank, the kids, teachers, Wiley, Valenti.... “You guys, it’s been great,” he said. “No, seriously.”
  
  Hours past curfew, he returned to the place where he had left an invitation for the one he had looked to see, and now had seen; tonight he looked to see him again. And—perhaps for that reason—he did. He could not have said when the figure first appeared at the edge of the lawn; it might have been there the whole time. “I waited for you,” he said. “Night after night, I waited and I prayed. Didn’t even know who I was praying to.”
  
  “And I came.”
  
  “Yeah, you came. One more disappointment, in a lifetime full of them. You know what I thought? You’ll love this—I actually thought you were—”
  
  “Your father? I am.” And suddenly he was right in front of him. Yet he had not seemed to move. “You were right. You felt it because it’s so.”
  
  Michael wanted to believe, in spite of everything. But also he did not want to be betrayed again. “Why didn’t Max? Or Isabel?”
  
  “Nothing for them to feel. I’m your father, not theirs. You’re my only son.” He smiled. “In whom I am well pleased.”
  
  The Biblical reference slid past him. “You tried to kill me!”
  
  “To make you fight back. And you hate me for it, don’t you?” Michael did not answer aloud; he did not have to. “Good! Nurture that hatred, Michael. Use it. But not on me—on them. The ones who’ve been hurting you all your life. The humans.” Michael wondered if Clay could read his memories, so recently revived. “You’ve learned to defend yourself. That’s good, but it’s not enough. You’ve discovered that yourself. You have to strike first—crush them before they crush you. Because they will, if they’re given the chance.” He paused. “Yes, you’re right. You can’t do it alone.” Michael’s mind had barely formed the thought. “Join with me. And persuade your friends to do the same. We’ll take them on together.”
  
  “The four of us against the whole human population? Yeah, that’ll work.”
  
  “There are others out there waiting to be woken. Or awake, but trackless—in need of a leader.”
  
  “You?”
  
  “You and I. We’ll bring them together and arm ourselves for the fight to come.”
  
  “Arm ourselves how?”
  
  “That object in your keeping—”
  
  “The thing Max found?”
  
  “A Balancer, it’s called—and the only one of its kind left. It can multiply our power a hundredfold.”
  
  “Funny, Isabel said the same thing.”
  
  “Women sense power. They thrive on it.”
  
  “And that’s our weapon?”
  
  “Only the part we see. It’s primarily a channeling device. The true weapon is the Balance itself. And the greater part lies here, beneath us—and in other places, if they can only be found.” So Michael had guessed correctly about them.
  
  “The Balance heals. It healed me.”
  
  “It does what’s it’s asked. Heals, or rends—changes water to wine, or order to chaos. But you have to ask in the proper way. Which I can teach you—if you’ll just give me the Balancer.”
  
  Michael discovered he was not ready to, even for his father—if he was his father; his instinct did not tell him that, but it told him to hold back. “Make you a deal. You tell me how to power it on, and I’ll test it. To make sure it’s what you say.” He was composing the excuse as he went along, and it sounded that way. “In the meantime, I’ll let you have the stones.” In the absence of bargaining chips, they were the closest thing obtainable. And after all, they had been his to start with.
  
  —or had they? “You’ve got stones? A special kind of stones?” From the upswing in his voice, it appeared he had not known that. Michael began to suspect the story was more complicated than he knew, and the stones more important in it. He now repented of his offer, and tried to pass it off as a joke. “That’s what the ladies tell me.”
  
  Clay was not fooled, or amused. “The Stones! And the one—” He cut off what he had been about to say. “—the Balancer! Give them to me!” His desire was showing too plainly; seeing that, he made an effort to moderate it, and to imbue Michael with it. “They’ll be ours, yours and mine. This human colony too. We’ll conquer it and rule together, father and son.”
  
  But it all came too late and too easy, and Michael believed none of it. “Family enterprise, huh? Gee, Dad, thanks for the offer. But I’d rather stay on my own.”
  
  “And the hostiles? Can you defeat them on your own?”
  
  “There’ve been problems,” he admitted. “But a few people have gone out of their way to give me a hand up.” He thought of Max’s father, Liz’s father, Maria’s mother. “What have you done for me?”
  
  “I’ve shown you the way.”
  
  “Your way.”
  
  “The only way for all our people. As you’ll learn in time.”
  
  “Not in your time.” As he turned to go, a wall of fire rose up in front of him. “Again?” he sighed.
  
  “The Stones. And the Balancer.”
  
  “Not a chance.” He focused on the dancing flames and changed them to fountains of water. Almost instantly, they changed back. He did the same again. Again they reverted. Fire. Water. Fire. Water. Fire—but this time rising no higher than his knees; above, all was water, and the blazing orange tongues bent under it. With only a little effort, he found he could quash them; at that moment his power was greater than Clay’s. The wall of water pressed down harder and harder on its flaming base, driving it down farther and farther, until it disappeared. Where it had stood, the grass was charred black.
  
  Clay was on all fours, head bowed, breathing hard. He sat back, took out a bottle like the one Maria had emptied, and shook a few pills into his mouth. “Are you my father?” asked Michael. “Are you anything to me?”
  
  Clay shook his head. He answered between deep breaths. “You have—no father.”
  
  And Michael knew it was true; felt it as he had never felt any kinship to Clay. “So there’s no reason for me not to kill you.” But now that it had come to this, he was not sure he could go through with it, even if he had the power to: in a fight, maybe, but not in cold blood.
  
  Clay seemed not to have heard him. He was looking out over the lawn with an expression that might have been fear or hatred or both. Someone else was standing near the spot where he had been standing earlier, but out of the light: a figure taller than either of them. “Who’s that?” Michael asked. On getting no answer, he looked back: the coach was gone, scared off evidently. He had disclosed some of the facts Michael had been after, but the biggest had been one he had not expected. “Wouldn’t you know? I’ve been searching for somebody who doesn’t exist.” Then the obvious next question struck him. “If I never had a father, how’d I get here?”
  
  Now the figure at the other end was approaching, and Michael recognized him as Valenti. His Rover was parked at the curb; Michael was sure it had not been there before. And he did not believe Valenti was the man he had seen. He felt uneasy at seeing him now, outside his regular shift. “Got a report of a fire on the lawn,” he explained. “Thought I should check it out.”
  
  It might even have been true. “Don’t see any fire now.”
  
  Valenti was too tired to be patient. “I know something’s going on—something not right.” He had picked up hints of it from Topolsky and Wiley. “Feels like....” Like Nasedo, he wanted to say. “Like trouble,” he substituted. “You a part of it? Or just an innocent bystander?”
  
  Michael had been through too much that night to be led so easily. “To answer that, I’d have to know what it is.”
  
  “I think you do. And I think you better tell me.”
  
  He gave a shrug. “Can’t. Sorry.”
  
  “You will be if it ends up hurting somebody close to you. Like Maria.”
  
  “Your sources musta missed the latest. We’re a dead item.”
  
  “Too bad. She was a girl worth hanging on to.” Great, thought Michael, now I’m getting dating advice from the sheriff. “There has to be somebody in Roswell you care about.”
  
  “Yeah, me,” he shot back. “That’s as much as I can handle.” Then he smiled, in a way designed to provoke. “Aren’t you gonna offer me a ride? You know, it’s after curfew.”
  
  Valenti let the attitude pass: with kids, you had to sometimes. “Son,” he said—and it was the only thing he said before returning to the Rover—“you better hope it’s not later than that.”
  
  Until he had mentioned her, Michael had forgotten about Maria—the night’s excursions had succeeded in that purpose—but she had not forgotten about him. She had failed so thoroughly in her efforts to put him out of her mind that he was just about the only thing in it. She had also failed to get any sleep, and the clashing floral patterns on her spreads and curtains had been no help. How could she efface his image just like that? He was the only boy she had ever dated who looked good in a black leather jacket (the original of which she secretly believed to be a piece of alien technology appropriated by humans). He had other positive attributes as well, but this was the one she kept returning to. She hoped against hope he was thinking of her too.
  
  But Michael’s mind was still on the Stones. He stopped by his apartment just long enough to pick them up. “You never were his,” he told them. “Somebody made a mistake there. And he’s not going to have you either. I’ll put you in a place where he’ll never look.” He laughed to think that all night long, law officers had been chauffeuring him home and ordering him to stay put, and he had been disregarding them and going right out again.
  
  This time he ended up at West Roswell High, at their meeting place by the sign. He dangled the sack above his head and shouted from the top of the steps. “Hey, Nasedo! You still want these? Come and get ’em!” No answer came. “So you are gone. Good. Just try showing your face here again—any of them.”
  
  He knelt beside the sign’s base and thrust his hand—the one holding the sack—into the cement, which melted to admit both. Then he withdrew his hand, leaving the sack inside as the cement hardened back. “Pathway to Excellence and Integrity,” read the motto in front of him. “I could use a pathway right about now,” he said. Then he left for home, or its stand-in.
  
  What he could not see when he had deposited the Stones, and could not see now, was that within their sack, they were glowing a bright blue.

ADDED BY ISLANDGIRL 5 FOR GALEN, AS ALL PARTS WERE POSTED IN SEPARATE THREADS

Series: ...And I Can’t Hide
Episode 1.17X: The Grunewald Paradigm
Rating: Teen
Summary: Liz is intrigued by a scientific research project.

Disclaimer: The rights to the characters and situations of Roswell are the property of Warner Brothers, Jason Katims Productions, Twentieth Century Fox, Fox, Regency Television, and Melinda Metz.

• 
  
  
  Night had fallen, but the doctor could not see it: his laboratory had no windows. He slid open a drawer of the file cabinet and took from it a creased brown folder, which he carried to a lab table and laid open, exposing a thick sheaf of yellowed papers. The one on top was a medical form, a blood analysis report, with a photo of a small boy attached. The report itself was typewritten, but in the margin the doctor had penciled the additional note “Non-human—further tests indicated.”
  
  Liz Parker knew nothing yet of this report, or the file that contained it, and so to her today’s arrival was cause for unalloyed rejoicing. It was the day of her release, and she was up, bathed, and dressed before dawn. She was tiptoeing downstairs quietly, as she thought, when a voice from the stairhead startled her. “Going some place?”
  
  She looked up. “Mom! ’morning.” Her mother was still in her robe, and still looking tired, but not solely on account of the hour. “Yeah, Max is picking me up. We made a date to watch the sunrise.”
  
  “Romantic,” Nancy said drily.
  
  “To celebrate the end of my being grounded,” Liz added, feeling somehow a need to explain.
  
  “Which he was responsible for in the first place. You haven’t lost sight of that, I hope.”
  
  “But that—Max didn’t—it was consensual.” She immediately regretted the choice of word.
  
  “What was consensual? Liz, how far has this gone?”
  
  She tightened. “Mom, if you really knew me, you wouldn’t have to ask.” She swung around and hurried down the rest of the way, not bothering any more to be quiet.
  
  “Liz! I’m sorry!” It was too late: her daughter was out the door to the side alley. Sighing, she returned to the bedroom and lifted a curtain to peer down onto Main, where Max was sitting in the Jeep with the motor running. She understood his appeal: he was a good-looking kid. She watched as Liz climbed in at his side and engaged him in a happy welcoming hug, after which he pulled out, cut a U, and sped off down the otherwise empty street.
  
  Her husband sat up in bed. “Was that Lizzie I heard? Where’s she going at this hour?”
  
  “To see the sunrise with her boyfriend.”
  
  “That Max kid?” He shook his head. “Typical adolescent craziness.”
  
  “First love. You remember what that was like.” Jeff looked blank. “Of course not. How silly of me.”
  
  “Well, he’d better get her back in time for her shift. She’s got responsibilities, you know.”
  
  “Then we tell her?”
  
  He looked like a trapped rabbit. “Well, sure, Nance. But we don’t want to—it’s one of those things that has to be done a certain way.”
  
  Nancy had had enough of waiting. She shut her eyes for a moment, and then left for the kitchen to brew herself a pot of strong coffee. Jeff sat in bed for a long time, regretting a few things, and trying to motivate himself to get up.
  
  Outside the city limits, Max found a low bluff that faced east. The sun had not appeared. In its absence they watched the stars, which had begun to fade as the sky showed its first promise of day. Liz snuggled close under Max’s chin. “We’re ba-ack,” she said. He bent to kiss her hair. “Max?” she said softly. He made an affirmative noise. “You say you can’t shape-shift. But you can change other things. Could you shape-shift someone else?”
  
  “Never tried. Doubt it, though.”
  
  “What about changing part of someone? Like if I wanted, oh, a little more of this, a little less of that?”
  
  He chuckled. “Do I get a say on which this and that?”
  
  “Max, I’m serious. What are the limits of what you’re able to change and what you aren’t?”
  
  Max sighed. This was one of those times he could tell she would not give up. “Haven’t really investigated. High time we did, I know. But Isabel and Michael—” He checked himself. With Liz, he had to keep remembering not to volunteer information unthinkingly. “Why do you ask?”
  
  “It’s a natural question.”
  
  He supposed it was, for her. “Since you’re so curious, some day I’ll take you to where we came from, and you can see for yourself.”
  
  She noticed he had dropped the subject, and she permitted him to, since this one interested her just as much. “Oh, yes? Where is that, exactly?”
  
  He pointed toward the V overhead. “Somewhere in the vicinity of Aries.”
  
  “You mean one of its vicinities.” The correction came automatically. “And do you have any idea of the time that would be required for a journey of that magnitude? Given the propulsion systems now in existence—”
  
  Max was smiling. “You romantic, you.”
  
  “I am romantic! But, realistically—”
  
  “Did you talk like this to Kyle when you two were dating?”
  
  “Not for long. His face would get this, like, waxy look—” She glanced at Max. “That’s the one!”
  
  Max adjusted his face. “All men are brothers.”
  
  “Wait a minute. Max?” She had just processed what she had heard moments before. “Vicinity of Aries? That isn’t Aries.”
  
  “Yeah, it is. Michael said it was.” This was the first time he had cited Michael as an authority on anything.
  
  “I don’t care.” She pointed to a spot nearer the horizon. “That’s Aries—or it was.” Most of the stars were gone now. “It’s a diagonal arc.” She stared at the V, which was still shining brightly. “I don’t know what that is. It’s not even supposed to be there.”
  
  “But it is,” Max pointed out.
  
  “If it were a new star cluster, it would have been in the news. And Mr. Seligman would have mentioned it in class.”
  
  Max knew from experience she could go on indefinitely. “It doesn’t affect us. Let’s keep testing our propulsion systems.” He began to plant another kiss on her. She gently restrained him as she nodded eastward. “What is it?”
  
  “What we came for—the sun.”
  
  He gave it a second’s attention—“Yeah, pretty”—and then resumed his advance.
  
  She rose. “Have to get to work. Sorry.”
  
  With a grunt, Max rose after her. “Liz, you work for your dad. I’m sure he’d cut you some slack.”
  
  “Not where you’re concerned. He thinks you’re a bad influence.”
  
  “You agree with him?”
  
  “Why else would I be here?” But she consciously held herself back as she gazed into his eyes; if she were not careful, she would lose herself in those eyes—or lose the ability to reason, which came to the same thing. She allowed him another kiss, but no more.
  
  “After work, then?”
  
  “Have to finish my science fair project. You too, right?”
  
  “Done.” He smiled in apology. “Things like that go quicker for us.”
  
  She was still thinking about him, and herself with him, during her morning shift. But the thoughts were not romantic; as often when she was out of his presence, logic reasserted itself. A chain of observations, inductions, and hypotheses gave form to fears she had entertained since the start of their acquaintance. During a slow few minutes, she resorted to her fellow server and best friend. “You think it’s safe, what we’re doing?”
  
  “Before they’ve had their coffee?” said Maria. “Touch and go.”
  
  “No, having these—close encounters. Of the alien-slash-human variety.”
  
  “Oh. That.” Disappointment was evident in her voice.
  
  But Liz was listening only to herself. “Because just how much do we know about their physiology? Nothing! I mean, not to be gross, but suppose Michael’s—suppose his—”
  
  “Would you stop?” Liz had done so already, and was now blushing. “It’s not something I’ll have to worry about, okay?” She stamped off to the back room. Liz had been surprised by the heat of the outburst, and so had the patrons close enough to hear. Later that day she tried to elicit a reason, but Maria would say no more.
  
  She carried her silence into the school week; to Liz, class was relaxing by comparison. After her last period on Monday, she returned to the biology lab to unwind, as she often did, by examining some new find under the microscope. This afternoon it was a crystal left over from her science fair project; she had observed anomalies in it she could not account for. So fixed was her concentration, she did not register the voice calling her name. A hand tapped her shoulder, and she looked up with a start.
  
  Her biology teacher was standing over her. “Sorry, didn’t mean to distract you. I called, but you apparently didn’t hear me.”
  
  “I was looking into my crystal.” She heard herself. “That sounded strange.”
  
  Ms. Quivers smiled. “Not to me. I know what it’s like to be caught up in laboratory work. If things had gone the way I’d hoped....”
  
  “They didn’t?”
  
  “I didn’t have the gift for it.”
  
  “What gift is that?”
  
  “The one you have. Limitless curiosity—”
  
  “Everybody has that, don’t they?”
  
  “Most of us lose it as we get older. And coupled with it, you have an original mind. Which is the reason I’ve nominated you to represent West Ros in the national science bowl.” She handed her the application form.
  
  “I thought that was only for seniors.”
  
  “It’s for the most able students. In biology, that’s you. Will you do it?”
  
  “What, are you kidding?” But at once she saw a problem. “How much time will it take to prepare? Because, you know, my family has a restaurant. I’m expected to do my part.”
  
  “We can work around that. And most of the faculty are willing to ease up on assignments in the few weeks before. But you’ll have to apply yourself. Beware distractions.”
  
  “Liz?”
  
  Both of them looked up. Max was standing in the double doors. “I forgot,” said Liz. “I was supposed to meet you. Sorry.” She gave him a smile, or what had begun as one: looking at him, she was suddenly seized with the oddest feeling, as if she were still at the microscope.
  
  Ms. Quivers’s expression was in no way mistakable for a smile. Max shifted nervously. She kept her eyes on him while Liz collected her things. “Don’t forget about tomorrow.” Ms. Quivers pointed to the chalkboard, where she had put up a notice for the science fair.
  
  “All finished,” Liz said proudly.
  
  “You’re signed up as a monitor.”
  
  “Oh, right. 7:30 a.m.”
  
  “Do your other teachers know?”
  
  “I showed them the pass.” Then she had a bright idea. “Max could be one too. I could use his help.”
  
  “We have all the volunteers we need. You can ask one of them.”
  
  “Sure, I just thought—”
  
  “No, Liz.” Her tone was firm.
  
  Liz felt rebuked, though she did not quite know why. “See you tomorrow, then.”
  
  “And don’t forget to fill out that application.” Liz nodded. Max held the door for her as she left.
  
  “I don’t think she likes me much,” he said, once he was sure they were out of her hearing.
  
  “She’s given you an A on every test.”
  
  “She had to. I got the answers right.” But something else worried him more. “Seen Michael lately?”
  
  “Haven’t you?”
  
  “Not since this morning.”
  
  “You don’t think the coach—”
  
  “No, he’s gone. His classes have been reassigned. Michael should be happy about that, but he’s not. He seems—more confused than usual.”
  
  “I think something happened between him and Maria.”
  
  “Ah. That explains why he’s off humans at the moment.” He leaned into her. “I, however....” To his surprise, she shied away. “So are you off aliens too?”
  
  “Tell me, Max—how much do you know about your body?”
  
  This response, he had not expected. “Sorry, what?”
  
  “I mean, you’ve never had a thorough examination, have you?” She answered herself. “Stupid question. Because if you had—”
  
  “Once, at the orphanage. Me and Isabel both.”
  
  “Did they find out anything about....”
  
  “Apparently not. Anyway, nothing came of it. The doctor left soon after that.”
  
  “So we have no reliable data on your physical processes.”
  
  Max smiled. “Any particular process you’re interested in?” He took another bob at her.
  
  She evaded him again. “Max, I’m—”
  
  “Serious. I know. But we’ve been apart two weeks. I’m feeling incredibly—affectionate.” She gave no sign she had understood. “Thought you would be too.”
  
  And she would have—if not for the mental cold showers to which she had been subjecting herself for two days. “But first we should make sure we’re—compatible.”
  
  “Liz, we’ve been over this. I’m completely human—well, almost.”
  
  “Almost,” she repeated, significantly. “And how do we know that for sure?”
  
  “I feel it.”
  
  “People feel lots of things, Max. No one’s done a comprehensive analysis. If your blood is abnormal, there are likely to be other abnormalities—in the circulation system, the respiratory system.... These factors don’t exist in isolation.” She sighed wistfully. “Wish I could study you in lab.”
  
  “Cut me up, you mean?”
  
  “Of course not. You can’t dissect someone until they’re dead.” This set her pondering. “Which is often an obstacle to research, because—“
  
  “Liz!” He waved her out of it. “You’re not talking to me now.”
  
  “What? Oh. Sorry.” But eight tenths of her mind was still on the problem.
  
  “You do still want my help tomorrow? To bring your project in?”
  
  This redirected her attention momentarily. “You’re not backing out on me?”
  
  “Just reminding you that you’ll need me in one piece. In case you’re harboring plans to the contrary.”
  
  “Funny man.” She lightly punched his arm. Then she returned to pondering, and he left her to it.
  
  The next morning, the two of them, along with every other student who was taking science (which was to say, nearly every student) descended on the school gym bearing the fruits of their labors, some whole, others in pieces to be assembled on site. Facing them as they entered were long rows of display tables, with monitors—the star pupils, like Liz—assigned to each row to disperse the entrants to the right sections. Each monitor was wearing a lapel button that identified him or her by subject; Liz was labeled “Biology.”
  
  On entering, she searched down the rows for a sign to match; Max followed with a cardboard carton in his arms. He nearly bumped into Kyle, who was identically employed in the service of Pam Troy. His eyes moved from Max’s burden to his own. “Boy toys,” he said in a low voice, “the pair of us. Tools of hot-looking women.”
  
  Max’s face showed prim disapproval. “I wouldn’t put it that way exactly.”
  
  “Max! Down here!” said Liz.
  
  “Kyle! Down here!” said Pam.
  
  Kyle grinned, as if the point were proven, and the two proceeded on their separate ways. But not that separate: the tables the girls had picked were within sight of each other. As Liz was taking out the pieces of her exhibit, she heard Pam complaining, “God, I hate science. It’s so—scientific.” Kyle caught Liz’s eye and flashed her a wry smile. She well remembered that smile. Max left to fetch his own project, and she returned to setting up her own.
  
  She was sidetracked again by a voice close at hand, which she recognized as belonging to the astronomy teacher. “What did I stress in class repeatedly?” said Mr. Seligman. “Real science, not pseudo-science. No UFOs, no alien abductions, no X files—”
  
  “But I thought—” said a smaller voice.
  
  “You didn’t think, Nicky. That’s just the problem. You realize if the papers got hold of this, I’d be a laughing stock with the fraternity of science teachers nationwide? ‘Oh, he’s from Roswell. What do you expect?’ I’m afraid you’ve earned yourself a big fat F today. Now get this tabloid garbage out of here.” He left with his head down, as if to avoid being seen. So he was not looking where he was going, and narrowly missed running into Liz, who had stepped into the aisle to speak to him. “Liz! Oh, dear! My profuse apologies. I can’t imagine where my head was. Did I hurt you?”
  
  His embarrassment spread to her, as it had a way of doing, and she led them both out of it by broaching the fact it had been on her mind to confirm with him. “So, what about this new star cluster?”
  
  “New star cluster?”
  
  “The one shaped like a V. It’s directly overhead.”
  
  “Not in this hemisphere, it isn’t.”
  
  “But you must have seen it!”
  
  “Ms. Parker, I watch the sky faithfully every night. And I can assure you, if any new objects had manifested themselves, I’d be the first to be aware of them. Whatever you thought you saw, it was definitely not stars.”
  
  He left Liz more mystified than before. Was it possible these things only manifested themselves to teens, perhaps through some hormonal hypertrophy of the senses? Mr. Seligman would have called this pseudo-science too. Her eye lit on the exhibit he had suppressed. Curiosity, and three or four steps, brought her to a front view. The heading froze her where she was standing. “Space Child,” it read, “Where Are You Now?” Below it were arranged some photos and documents on blue posterboard. She started forward to examine them.
  
  At once a girl interposed herself: a tall, droopy-eyed girl carrying a display on a wooden base, one corner of which kept threatening to stab Liz in the eye. “You the monitor?” she asked. Liz pointed to her button. “Where’s this go?” As Liz showed her, she could not help glancing back at the thing she was wanting to see. She started back to it after finding a space for the display, whose maker, however, was not ready to let her go. “Should it have my name on it?” she asked.
  
  “And your teacher’s.” Liz pointed to the next exhibit over. “That’s the format.” She tried to go again.
  
  “You have a marker I can use?”
  
  “Sorry, no.”
  
  “You’re the monitor, and you don’t have a marker?”
  
  “Check the front table.”
  
  “Where’s that?”
  
  “The direction my finger’s pointing.” She left the girl only partially comprehending, but had concluded this was her normal state, and beyond her own power to cure. She headed back toward the space-child exhibit, by now almost frantically anxious to see what it contained.
  
  But it was gone; the space it had occupied was vacant. Peering around, she spied it under the arm of a tall, thin boy, presumably its creator. She hared after him, dodging other students and their own creations, and caught him up at the hall door, over a big trash barrel in which he was about to dump it. “No, don’t!” she shouted.
  
  He halted, staring. “Huh? Why not?”
  
  She realized she knew him, a little. “Nicky—Grunewald, right? You’re in Alex’s band. We met in his garage—or somebody’s garage.”
  
  “Yeah, garage is where this should have stayed.” He whacked it one. “Bought me an F. Why shouldn’t I dump it?”
  
  She improvised. “My mistake. I thought you’d taken mine.” He had it positioned so she could see it plainly: the contents included a photo of the 1947 crash site, a photo of a child’s tracks in the desert, a blood analysis with the subject’s name blacked out and the penciled note “Non-human”— “Oh, my God,” said Liz.
  
  Nicky took this as another slam. “It was my dad’s idea. My dad. How many times have I told people, you’re right, he is nuts? Then the one time I go along with him.... I musta been nuts myself.”
  
  “He gave you these items?”
  
  “They’re just copies. The originals are in his files.”
  
  “Where’d he get them?”
  
  “Where he used to work. Old county orphanage.” Liz’s worry ballooned into alarm: that was where Max and Isabel had been taken after being found in the desert. “He thought a few of the kids were—what it says there. He won’t tell me the details, and I don’t ask. But he’s been collecting that stuff ever since.”
  
  “For his lectures? I know he teaches at the college.”
  
  “Nah, that’s a whole other thing. This is his—hobby, I guess you’d call it. He calls it his research. Every night he disappears into his lab and I don’t see him till morning.”
  
  “He has his own lab?” Her interest on Max’s behalf had suddenly merged into a broader stream.
  
  “Used to be a summerhouse, but he had it converted. Why?”
  
  “Oh, I’m quite the lab rat myself. What kind of research?”
  
  “Not sure. Blood tests?” Liz felt her heart jump. “You’d have to ask him yourself. Doesn’t mean anything to me—except an F on this project.”
  
  To a straight-A student like Liz, F was never an acceptable option. “Then do another one. It’ll be marked down for being late, but—”
  
  “That’d take forever.”
  
  “Not if I help you. I can come over tonight.”
  
  “But you’re in biology.” He pointed at her button.
  
  Liz began to suspect him of lacking in imagination. “I’m also attracted to other worlds. In fact, I’ve done some—field research in that area.”
  
  He hunted for the catch. “Well, okay—I mean, thanks. I guess.”
  
  “But I’ll need a favor back.”
  
  His guard went up. “What is it?”
  
  “Introduce me to your father.”
  
  “Is that all? Why?”
  
  “Like you said.” She smiled. “To ask him myself.”
  
  Just then she spied Max returning and quickly doubled over the posterboard so only the bare side showed. “Stash this in your locker,” she suggested.
  
  “Aw, what’s the point?” He stuffed it into the barrel with a vengeance while she watched, unable to stop him. And after he left, there was Max.
  
  —who fortunately had been paying no attention. “Excuse me, Ms. Monitor?” He held out the materials for his own exhibit, which dealt with rabbit farming. (Like Nicky, she had chosen not to ask.) “I need you to put me in my place.” Liz managed a wan smile: sometimes Max’s humor was so—Max-y. As she took him to a table, she cast an eye back at the discarded posterboard. She had to see that analysis.
  
  With the fair continuing all day, she was unable to get at it until late evening. She had persuaded Alex into acting as her accomplice and driving them in his father’s red Volvo. The building was locked, but she had a master key. Alex scowled as she inserted it. “Should you really be doing this?”
  
  “Ms. Quivers loaned me the key. I sort of forgot to give it back to her.”
  
  “Yes, one sees you can do it. The question on the table—”
  
  “You know a better way to get in?” Alex fell silent.
  
  The hall was silent too, except for a loud rumble which he ascribed hopefully to the air conditioning. Liz opened the door to the gym and saw the barrel at once: it was in the same place it had been, but now it was empty. “S-word,” she said, with feeling.
  
  Alex raised an eyebrow. “Liz, you shock me.” He shut the door. As she removed the key, the rumble came again, this time from around the corner, where the hall extended to the right. They went to look, and saw no one. But there was an object sitting on the floor by the janitor’s closet halfway down. She gave a little cry. “Is that it?” asked Alex. She nodded. He hurriedly fetched it. “Now let’s get the hell out of here.”
  
  One of the office doors swung open to discharge a canvas trash cart—the source of the rumble they had heard—and behind it, the janitor called Pete, whom Michael and Maria had failed to recognize the Saturday before. He smiled when he saw the thing in Alex’s hands. “You came for it, then. Thought you might.”
  
  “Did you?” Alex asked uncertainly.
  
  “You or someone. That was why I laid it aside.”
  
  Alex cocked his head at Liz, and they started toward the exit. Remembering her manners, she looked back at Pete, who was still watching them. “Thank you,” she said. He nodded and smiled again.
  
  Not until they reached the steps did she stop to look at the exhibit. “The blood analysis is missing! And it’s the main thing! We have to go find it.” She started back in.
  
  “Whoa! Where would you look?”
  
  “We could ask the janitor.”
  
  “Mr. Creepy? He might be the one who took it.”
  
  “Or somebody else did. But who—” She did not have to finish the thought. “Nasedo!”
  
  “Liz, the fact to focus on at this point is, it’s not here. Come on, before the security guy finds us and asks what we’re doing.” He knew there was always one around.
  
  “We’ll tell him we’re picking up our science project.”
  
  “Oh, uh-huh?” He pointed to the name. “And which one of us will be Nicky?”
  
  “Okay,” she admitted finally, still looking toward the gym. On returning her eyes to the front, she found he had not waited for her vote; he and the exhibit were already halfway down the steps. She ran after them.
  
  In his garage, he left her examining it by the light of a work table lamp while he searched in the house for something he had said he wanted to show her. A few minutes later, he reappeared at the connecting door. “Found it!” he announced as he held up the magazine in his hand. “This, you have to see.”
  
  At first she was disappointed, to put it mildly. “Your dad actually reads this stuff?” The title was UFO Enquirer. The cover showed a bulbous-headed extraterrestrial pawing a scantily clad Earth girl, in advertisement of the feature article “Earth—Alien Spawning Ground?”
  
  “You should see his den. Lined with it. But see this?” He pointed out the name of the article’s author: Dr. Otto Grunewald. Instantly Liz snatched the magazine away and began riffling through it. “Obviously a crackpot,” Alex added.
  
  “I’m not so sure.” She was skimming the first page. “Sounds like he knows his facts.”
  
  “Facts?”
  
  She looked up from her reading. “One fact, he’s definitely aware of. The date on that blood analysis was the day after Max’s birthday.”
  
  “So he—knows when Max was born?”
  
  “Alex, nobody knows when Max was born. His so-called ‘birthday’ is the date he was admitted to the orphanage.”
  
  Alex puzzled over this. “Then Isabel’s birthday should be the same, yes?”
  
  “It was. Mr. Evans had it changed to the date of adoption, so she could have a birthday of her own. Max told me.”
  
  “Wow, that was thought—”
  
  “Alex, the point”—occasionally he tended to miss the point of things, and she had to spell it out for him—“is that Max was the ‘space child’ in that display. Which was Grunewald’s idea in the first place. He knows about him. And about Isabel.” She slapped the magazine shut. “I need to borrow this.”
  
  “Nothing doing! If Dad notices it’s gone—”
  
  “He won’t miss just one.” She had already rolled it up and was stuffing it into her purse.
  
  Alex questioned that assertion, and the likelihood of getting the magazine back intact. “Careful! It’s collectible.”
  
  “Alex, Max doesn’t know about any of this. Don’t say anything to him or Isabel.”
  
  “I would think it concerns them most.”
  
  “It does, yeah. But I—I need to gather more data.” Alex looked doubtful. He did not like the idea of withholding such news from Isabel. And a hunch told him the reason Liz had given was not the only one, or the principal one. “Please, Alex. For me?” This almost always worked with him, and she knew it. Finally he nodded. But he still looked doubtful.
  
  When she arrived at the Grunewalds’ that evening, it was Nicky who opened the door to her. He was obviously pleased to have her there. “Liz! You came!”
  
  “We kind of arranged it,” she reminded him.
  
  “You bet we did. Come in!”
  
  She had never before seen the inside of the house, only the garage. It interested her, as real houses always did, her family lacking one of its own. The current example must have been handsome at one time, but now the walls needed patching and repainting, and the carpet— She noticed Nicky grinning at her in a way she did not quite like. “So what now?” he asked.
  
  She had her answer prepared. “You can start by introducing me to your father.”
  
  Nicky led her to a rear outbuilding and called in. “Dad?” Steps led down into a long white-walled room, immaculately kept, in sharp contrast to the house. It contained everything a well-appointed lab should: sinks, counters, tables, racks, and an array of experimental equipment, as well as a refrigerator and a freezer. It looked as though at one time it might also have been used as a doctor’s office; in one corner stood an examining table and a cabinet of medical supplies. Liz could not help being impressed.
  
  “Yes?” said a voice behind her, close enough to make her start. She turned to stare into a face older and gentler-looking than she had imagined, though the suddenness of his appearance had erased her preconceptions for the moment.
  
  “Dad, this is Liz. The one I told you about.”
  
  “Charmed.” He extended his hand.
  
  “Hi.” There followed an awkward silence, and she climbed right into it. “You mind if I ask you a few questions about your work?” She turned to Nicky. “It’ll only take a few minutes.”
  
  “Sure, go ahead.” He realized she was waiting for something more. “Oh! Right, I’ll just....” He pointed toward the house and backed out.
  
  “Shut the—” his father began, but too late. He went to shut it himself. “Well,” he said as he returned, “and what is it you wish to know?” His speech had retained, to a degree, the flavor of his native language.
  
  “Nicky tells me you’re investigating—” She took a guess. “Blood conditions?”
  
  Grunewald widened his eyes. “This interests you?”
  
  “Oh, I’m heavily into blood.” She did not like the sound of this. “I mean, the whole field of microbiology, I find fascinating. It’s going to be my career.”
  
  “With a specialization in hematology?”
  
  “It’s definitely an area of interest. Of course, by the time I’m through with college, I’ll know where the new ground’s being broken, and I’ll have a better idea of the specific course I intend to pursue.”
  
  Grunewald could not suppress a smile. “You sound as if you were applying for employment.”
  
  She sighed. “I know, it’s how I talk.” But he had given her an idea. “Though, since you mention it, if you needed somebody to help out here—if you had an opening—it’d be great experience for me. If you needed somebody. To help out. Here.”
  
  The doctor studied her longer than she found comfortable. Finally he said, to her surprise, “What an excellent suggestion. When can you start?”
  
  “Right away!” Then she remembered. “Oh, but not tonight. I’m helping Nicky do a new science project. His first one—”
  
  “Yes. My fault, I’m afraid.” His eyes lit up. “But wait!” He went to a closet in the rear wall and rummaged there while Liz waited, taking his command literally. He brought out what looked like a shelf with objects attached to it, and set it on a counter. “Proof one should never toss anything away. I built this thirty years ago.” Liz craned her head forward to examine it closely. It was a framework of what looked like coat hanger wire with three small balls stuck to the ends. Two of them could be swiveled into and out of alignment with the third. The back wall of the shelf displayed explanatory text and diagrams. “A lunar eclipse, in miniature. And by happy coincidence, there’s one due next month. Simply revise these dates, and voila! What do you think of that?”
  
  Liz was thinking it would save her and Nicky a lot of work, but she did not like to say so. “I’m sure it’ll make Nicky very happy.”
  
  “And perhaps restore me to his good graces. After today, he’ll never again take my work seriously.” He paused deliberately. “But do you, I wonder?”
  
  The question took her off guard, as he must have intended. He studied her again. “I don’t really know that much about it.” Then she realized this was her chance and she had to take it, even if it meant losing the place she had just gained. “Except this.” She pulled out the magazine. Her heart was in her throat as she unrolled it to show him.
  
  Rather than angry, as she had expected, he seemed embarrassed. “Ah. Yes. Have you read it?”
  
  “Yeah—well, some.”
  
  “Then you’re aware that it’s nonsense. Not utter nonsense—you’ll observe I take care to propose nothing that may not be true. On the other side, there’s little to say it is true. The merest speculation.” He sighed. “Not that they care.” He walked over to a picture on the wall: a mounted blow-up of himself at a lectern on an outdoor stage with a multitude gathered around it. “This is my readership—the true believers. Prepared to soar on any wind of affirmation that blows their way. But say what you will of them, they’re the ones who keep the flame alive. Therefore it is to them I address myself. One day, it will be otherwise. And then....” Liz had moved close to the photo and study it. “Something in it interests you?”
  
  She pointed to one of the crowd—a blonde girl in her teens, with a face that was pretty but sharp-featured. “I could swear I’d seen her before.”
  
  “You probably have. That was taken near here. At a great convocation held to mark the fortieth anniversary of the—event. You’d have been a child then.”
  
  “I remember the crowds. And....”
  
  “What?”
  
  “It sounds silly. I remember feeling expectant—excited and expectant. Not about the event, but something else.” She laughed. “Figure that one out.”
  
  Grunewald tapped his lip. “I should need more data than is presently available.”
  
  This brought Max to mind. “Yeah, that’s just the problem.”
  
  “Indeed,” the doctor concurred. He too seemed to have a meaning of his own. They continued staring at the picture together.
  
  By the time Nicky drove her home, the cafe was closed, but Max was standing at the side door. She was not as happy to see him as she knew she should be; why, she could not say. “Who was that?” he asked.
  
  “No one.” She did not want him to find out about Dr. Grunewald; not yet.
  
  “Funny, it looked like someone.” She did not reply. “Been waiting for you all this time. Where you been?”
  
  “I’m working on a—biology project. I’ll tell you about it later. When my findings are conclusive.”
  
  “Sounds mysterious.” He tried to hug her; she dodged him. “Something the matter?”
  
  She did not know, and did not want to think about it. “Tired, is all.” She let herself in. “’night.” Then she shut the door; shut him out. He left puzzled and vaguely unhappy.
  
  Before reaching the end of the block, however, he had a new worry to displace this. A vaguely familiar figure ran out onto the sidewalk in front of him, shouting, “Save me, space guy!” and then into the path of an oncoming car. Behind him, a woman screamed. Only when he recognized her as Jen Trilling did he know who the man was. There was no time to prevent an accident. Yet he had to do something. With an instantaneous power burst, he changed the car’s front end—part of it—to softer metal, starting at the grill and extending far enough back to make a cushion. It swerved and knocked Larry to the side, hard, but not hard enough to maim or kill him.
  
  The driver had no idea of what had happened, but did not care enough to stay and find out. As he sped off, Max changed the car back to normal. Then he ran over and knelt beside Larry, where Jen was already. “Are you hurt?” she asked.
  
  “Yeah, what do you think?” He sat up with a groan.
  
  “What were you trying to do?” asked Max.
  
  “I figured you’d stop the car. Like last time.”
  
  “Are you crazy? Nobody can do that.”
  
  Larry rubbed his neck. “Guess not.”
  
  “And even if—” He gave up. “You’re an idiot.”
  
  “See, Larry? It’s not just me.” She helped him to his feet.
  
  “Can you walk?” asked Max.
  
  He took an exploratory step or two. “Ow! But, yeah.” He pointed after the driver. “That guy’s a public menace! Either of you get his license?”
  
  For Max, that tore it. “You ran out in front of him! There’s no way he could have—” He curtailed the thought as soon as he realized where it was heading. But Jen had heard, and was now regarding him in a new light. “Anyway, you’re lucky to be alive.”
  
  “More than lucky, I’d say,” Jen observed.
  
  Her stare made Max uncomfortable. “Maybe you ought to take him to emergency,” he suggested. “Just in case.”
  
  “No doctors,” Larry declared. “Some of them are in league with—” He stopped himself. “Okay, no more,” he told his wife. “Promise.”
  
  But she seemed strangely less resolute than before. “Let’s go home. I’ll run you a hot bath.” She gave Max a last, undecided glance as she helped her husband off.
  
  Liz had heard none of this, her attention being focused on more personal matters. She had just shut the door on Max and was starting up the stairs when her mother’s voice reached her from the living room. “You still haven’t told her?”
  
  And then her father’s. “I thought we agreed we’d do it together.”
  
  “Yes, Sunday. What happened to that?”
  
  “She was gone half the day.” That was an exaggeration, as he himself knew.
  
  “And when she was here, where were you?” Silence was his answer. “Time we let her know. It affects her more than anybody.”
  
  “As it should.”
  
  “Jeff, shame on you!”
  
  “Isn’t she the reason you’re leaving?”
  
  Liz’s breath caught in her throat. She felt as if a vise were pressing on her head, and her heart. “That’s not true,” her mother protested, echoing her own unspoken thought.
  
  “It’s not another man—or so you say. What else could it be? Hasn’t our whole life these past sixteen years been centered on her? We’ve been so busy keeping the little princess happy—Liz!”
  
  She was standing at the archway, staring in. She had never noticed before how much the room resembled a prison cell, on its brick-walled side. Half one thing, half another; just like her parents. She stood huddled and forlorn, looking like a street urchin in the rain. But only her cheeks were wet. “Go ahead, talk. About how I’m responsible for breaking up our family.”
  
  “Your father didn’t mean that,” her mother said quickly.
  
  His face wore just the look she had foreseen it would. “Lizzie, honey—”
  
  “If I’d died that day, the way I was supposed to, none of this would have happened.”
  
  “Liz!”
  
  “And as for being your princess—you put that on me. It wasn’t what I wanted.” She ran out. A second later, they heard her door slam.
  
  “Thank you, Jeff,” his wife said. “For telling her.”
  
  In a little while, he came knocking at her door, but she did not answer. He tried the knob, but it was locked. “Lizzie?” he called in. “Princess?”
  
  “Don’t call me that!” he heard from the other side. “Don’t call me that ever again!” The voice was muffled; she was buried beneath the covers, still in her street clothes, with eyes shut and ears plugged, in an effort to keep out everything and everyone.
  
  She did not mention the impending divorce at school the next morning; in fact, she did not speak to anyone. After third period, she stopped by her locker, from which she saw Maria at hers, looking almost as unhappy as Liz felt, and keeping her distance. Liz, who could not remember the reason, felt like bridging the gap, so she would have someone to confide in. But before she had made up her mind, she spied Max approaching. Not him, she thought. Not now. “Liz!” She barely smiled. He had expected a friendlier reception, especially at their first meeting of the day. “Have I done something wrong?” She shook her head. “Is there—someone else?” He cast around in his mind. “Kyle?”
  
  Her eyes bulged. “Kyle? My God, never.”
  
  “That’s good. When I saw him looking at you yesterday....” He laughed in relief. “But I should have known you’d have better sense.”
  
  “Oh, really?” Immediately he knew he had said the wrong thing. “Well, guess what, Max? I don’t need your seal of approval on what I do with my life. How I handle Kyle, or my parents, or anything else is based on my decisions as an independent rational being—a human being. You don’t know us well enough to judge us. How could you? Someone like you?”
  
  “Someone like me?” She could see that had cut deeply, and she regretted saying it—but also she did not. He was running his eyes down her: eyes that no longer beckoned her to lose herself in them, but themselves looked lost. “You’re right. I don’t know you at all.” And he left her.
  
  Maria threw her locker door shut with a fierce clang. “Why would you do that?”
  
  “Do what?” But she knew.
  
  “Blow him off like that. The boy adores you!”
  
  “Yeah, that could change. In a flash, Maria.”
  
  “It’s not enough for you he saved your life? When you have someone you can count on, you don’t—”
  
  “You can’t count on anyone, ever. Understand? Even people you thought you knew. And Max is different from us. It’s a scientific fact. His thinking is different, his blood’s different—what else? What’s his life cycle? Maybe he’s going to metamorphose into a—a giant green blob. Michael too. We can’t be sure of anything about them, until we conduct controlled experimental studies—”
  
  “You want to experiment on them? Like Dr. Frankenstein?”
  
  Liz was horrified. “Is that how you see me?”
  
  “Didn’t you tell me once it’s all right for scientists to hurt people, as long as they get the information they want?”
  
  “That’s not what I said. I said sometimes sacrifices are—”
  
  “Human sacrifices? Or only alien sacrifices, like Max?”
  
  “You are totally ignorant of the scientific process.” She knew how stuck-up that sounded.
  
  “I know your ‘process’ has turned you into some inhuman ice maiden—la fría. Why does Max even bother with you? You don’t deserve him for a boyfriend. And you don’t deserve me for a best friend.”
  
  “If you feel that way, why don’t you get yourself a new best friend?”
  
  “Don’t worry, I will!” She thought of the perfect parting shot. “And I know just the one—Pam Troy. Your last boyfriend had the right idea.” Satisfied this had hit home, she left. Liz was alone; all alone.
  
  But it did not last. That afternoon, as she entered the Grunewalds’ front walk, an all-too-familiar voice brought her up short. “So is this his place?’
  
  “Max!” She whirled on him. “Why are you here?”
  
  “Had to find out who it is you’ve been seeing. I knew there was someone.”
  
  “You followed me?”
  
  “What other choice did I have? You wouldn’t tell me.”
  
  “I don’t have to account to you for my movements! Maybe where you come from, this is a normal part of the mating ritual, but—”
  
  “Where I come from? Liz, I’ve spent my whole life here—all I know of it.”
  
  “Exactly. But what don’t you know?” With the air of having won a point, she started on.
  
  He did the same. “Better have a talk with this guy myself. Get a few things straight.”
  
  She halted and faced him. “Max, do not do this. Do not.”
  
  “It isn’t like you to be so secretive.”
  
  “I never had a stalker before.”
  
  “I’m not a stalker!”
  
  “Then stop acting like one. Go, Max. Now.” She waited, and so did he. But she was ready to wait forever, and he saw that. “All right,” he said, with a hint of threat. Then he left. Ironic, thought Liz. Here I am doing all this just for him. And she believed it too. Self-justification, frustration, and a measure of regret competed inside her, but in the end, the scientific spirit overcame all of them. She continued into the house.
  
  Her first assignment of the day—taking an inventory of the equipment—delighted her. Not only because she enjoyed compiling thorough lists of things, but also because it gave her a chance to nose around—to the extent she could, with Grunewald at his microscope a few yards off. At one point she began to interrupt him to ask the name of a particular beaker—or was it a retort?—but stopped herself: best not, for his sake, and her own. After assuring herself, by a glance, that he was not watching, she pulled a little at the top drawer of the file cabinet. Locked, of course. She kept on with the inventory, but her eyes, and her mind, kept stealing back to the cabinet.
  
  With perfect timing (from her point of view), the doctor arose. “Going out for a little. Keep on with—whatever it is you’re doing.” As soon as he was gone, she started toward the desk; the key had to be there, if it were anywhere. But she never reached it. Passing the microscope, she could not resist the yen to peer into it; she never could. And she was astonished by what she saw: a blood specimen, but of a strange type—green instead of red; like so many tiny green eyes staring up at her. She had seen blood of that type before.
  
  Beside the microscope sat a tray containing more slides. She held one of them to the light; it looked like another specimen of the same type. She hoped to view it and all the others before Grunewald got back, but in her eagerness, she moved too fast. As she removed the slide she had already viewed, it fell to the floor and shattered. “Oh, my God,” she said. She knelt and began collecting the pieces that were big enough to grasp.
  
  She heard the door open and she quickly stood. With her rearmost foot, she deftly swept the rest of the glass under the microscope table. But when she looked toward the door, it was not the doctor she saw. “Hey, Liz. Where’s my dad?”
  
  “He left. Didn’t say where he was going.”
  
  “Yeah?”
  
  “Yeah.”
  
  Nicky looked around absently. “You, uh, like this test tube stuff, yeah?”
  
  “Yeah—I mean, yes. Yes, I do.” Her hands were behind her back. In her nervousness, she closed the left one more tightly on the glass it was holding, and one of the shards punctured the skin.
  
  “You okay?”
  
  She covered her wince with a smile. “Phenomenal.”
  
  “You sure?”
  
  “Absolutely.”
  
  Nicky was suspicious, but he did not know what of. “And you’re sure my dad’s not here?”
  
  “You see him anywhere?”
  
  “No,” he admitted.
  
  “Well, then.” Nicky looked for the catch. “I really should get back to work.” She turned away, moving her hands to the front as she did so. Nicky nodded; he was still unsatisfied, but shrugged it off, as he was used to doing with his father. On the way out, he left the door open again.
  
  Liz uncupped her hand and examined the cut. The green blood on the glass had been moistened by her own. As the two pooled together, green and red, they seemed to glow for a moment. From the garage, the discordant notes of an electric guitar invaded the quietude: Nicky was practicing. His rhythm matched her galloping heartbeat. She ran to the sink, rinsed her hand in it, and wiped dry with a paper towel from the dispenser above. She used the same towel to pick up the rest of the glass, fearful the whole while the doctor would return and catch her. When she had collected all of it, she folded it up in the towel, stuffed the towel into her purse, and ran out.
  
  Approaching the cafe, she saw her father and Alex in conversation outside. She did not feel up to either one of them. She circled round and entered from the back alley, up the ladder and through her window. In her bedroom, she re-examined the cut: now it was almost unnoticeable. She extracted her journal from its hiding place within the wall, took it to the desk, and tried to write up her observations impartially and impassively.
  
  She was interrupted by a knock at the door. “Liz?” Her mother: of course. And her purpose would be to lecture her daughter on being sensitive to one’s parents’ needs. Liz knew all about that, but her own needs were all that concerned her right now. So she ignored the knock. “Liz, I know you’re in there. Open the door, please.”
  
  At last she had no choice but to obey. “What?” she said, in a sullen tone seldom heard from her.
  
  “May I ask you a personal question?”
  
  “Can I stop you?”
  
  “Are you and Max not speaking these days?”
  
  Liz was surprised she would know that. “Why would you care? You don’t like me seeing him anyway.”
  
  “True. But then there’s Maria.”
  
  “What about Maria?”
  
  “She’s asked to cut back her hours, to work only the shifts you’re not working. Have you quarreled with her too?”
  
  “She was being unfair.” She wanted to add, And it’s none of your business, but restrained herself.
  
  “Liz, if you’re pushing away everyone who cares about you—”
  
  “I’m not the one who’s leaving!” Instantly she wished she had not said it, or not in that way. But to take it back would have been dishonest.
  
  Nancy shut her eyes for a second. “I see. And now you’re afraid to get close to anybody. Anybody at all. Not the most positive outcome, is it?” Liz did not answer; that was not quite true—but not quite untrue either. “All right. Then do me this one favor—spare me two hours of your time. Shouldn’t take any longer than that.”
  
  “What shouldn’t?”
  
  “What time tomorrow do you get through with your lab work?” This was what Liz called her job when anyone asked.
  
  “Five.”
  
  “That’s fine. We’ll go then. And please try to be on time.” She started away.
  
  “Where are we going?”
  
  “A place I want you to see.” Liz could not imagine what, but did not devote much thought to it; she had a more pressing worry.
  
  She tried not to show it the following afternoon as she attended to her duties, to the extent she could with her heart pounding like a fist on a punching bag. Grunewald was at the microscope table searching through the tray of slides, and then searching through them again. She tried not to look at him. “Ms. Parker?” he called. “Come here a moment, will you?” She came. “One of my slides appears to be missing. Would you be able to shed any light on its disappearance?”
  
  She opened her mouth with the intention of telling a lie. But that was not what came out. “I broke it.” Grunewald’s face betrayed no expression. She felt compelled to go on. “I was looking at it and I dropped it. I hoped you wouldn’t notice.”
  
  The doctor’s tongue made a clock-like sound. “Wouldn’t you have, in my place?” She did not answer. “Of course you would. So that was a vain hope, wasn’t it?” This time he did not wait for an answer. “May I ask where the slide is now?”
  
  “I told you, it broke. I threw the pieces away.”
  
  “Yes, but where is it really?” His eyes bored into her. “With Max Evans?”
  
  She was amazed. “Max? I wouldn’t—no!”
  
  He took a key from his pocket. “Open the top drawer of my filing cabinet, if you please.” She did as instructed. “Now remove the last folder—no, the very last. Open it.” Inside she found a stack of photos—dozens, maybe hundreds—of Max and herself, in every place they frequented: at school, at the cafe, at the park, on sidewalks. Some of the moments pictured, she did not remember herself. And in the same drawer with these, she had seen other folders with other photos. “You came here spying on his behalf, to find out what I know. And you took that slide to show him. Didn’t you?”
  
  “No! I’m not here for him.” She realized this for the first time. “I told myself I was, but it wasn’t true. I’m here because I want to know. Me. Liz Parker.” Grunewald’s eyes showed a glimmer of satisfaction. “You’re right, I haven’t been honest with you. I’m sorry about that. But would you have been, in my place?”
  
  “No.”
  
  “Then that was a vain hope—wasn’t it?”
  
  “Don’t be pert.” But he sounded rather amused. “Very well, I believe you. You may continue working here.” He turned back to his microscope.
  
  But Liz was not about to leave it at that. “Now wait a minute! You have a right to be mad at me because I broke your slide and I wasn’t up front with you about me and Max. But what about you? You knew about us—obviously you’ve been spying on us. The blood on that slide was Max’s, wasn’t it? How did you get it?”
  
  Grunewald regarded her with something close to amazement. “Then you did recognize it! No one else would have. You’re the best possible person I could have found to assist me.” Liz felt herself beaming. “But there are many things you don’t know yet. That blood didn’t belong to your friend. It belonged to my son.”
  
  “Nicky?”
  
  “When he was little more than a baby, I was under contract with the county to provide pediatric services to the orphanage—the old one, out on Highway 285. I believe it was later converted to a cheese factory.”
  
  “I know. Max told me.”
  
  Grunewald rose and crossed to the file cabinet. “There was a fire. It was set deliberately. Someone wanted the records destroyed.” Liz thought immediately of Nasedo. “And they were destroyed—all except the carbon copies I’d taken with me.” He took out another folder and handed it to Liz. It contained the analysis on Max she had seen in Nicky’s exhibit, another, almost identical analysis on Isabel, and other report forms concerning one or the other of them.
  
  “As a part of my duties,” Grunewald explained, “I examined every child enrolled there. One night, two children were brought in from the desert. I knew from the first they were different. Their blood had properties that seemed—almost magical.” Liz envisioned a makeshift office at the orphanage, a younger and more fervid Grunewald, and the two small, scared children under examination, strangers in a strange land.
  
  “Nicky was anemic. Rashly, I infused their blood into him, hoping it would strengthen him.” Liz surmised he must have done it in secret—taken the “magical” children from their beds, drawn their blood behind locked doors, sneaked the specimen out under his coat. She wondered for a moment just how ethical a doctor he had been. But it was not for her to judge him; she could almost imagine herself, in the same circumstances, doing the same.
  
  “I brought in a colleague to confirm my findings about the two children. But they changed the blood somehow—that is, the girl did.” This gave Liz to wonder. How would Isabel have known to do that, lacking language, or information about this world? How would she have known it was what was required to divert suspicion from themselves? Maybe she had picked up an image from Grunewald’s mind and guessed a little of its meaning, and this had been enough to guide her. Or maybe she had seen into his blood, and changed Max’s to match. Again she envisioned the scene: Grunewald inspecting the sample a second time, blaming the children for the change, insisting that his colleague wait while he dragged them back in and took more blood....
  
  “Of course he thought I was insane. Unfit for duty.” Of course, Liz agreed silently. Anyone would have. “He took his opinion to the county board, and my contract was terminated. Later I gave up my practice altogether to devote myself to teaching—and my research.” He stared darkly at the slide tray. “You see, the blood I pumped into my son had the opposite effect from what I’d intended. It weakened his blood—poisoned him.”
  
  Liz felt a momentary chill. She glanced involuntarily at her left hand, which the same blood had entered. Just a smidge, she reassured herself; the cut had stopped bleeding by the time she got home. Of course she would continue to monitor its progress; that was the scientific thing to do. But there was no basis for worry. She was sure that if she told the doctor about it, he would come to the same conclusion. But she was not going to tell him.
  
  Suddenly she became aware her attention had strayed. “...find a cure,” he was saying. “But I had only that small sample of donor blood to start. And now it’s used up. I need more—from Max and his sister. If you were to invite them here, and I showed them the work I’m doing, perhaps together we could persuade them to work with us.”
  
  Liz did not quite understand. “By giving blood?”
  
  “By offering themselves as experimental subjects.” His excitement, which he could not conceal, would have put Liz off if she had not felt it herself. “Imagine—we could examine them and learn all there is to know about their physiology.” He was describing her own fantasy. “It would mark a new chapter in scientific discovery, and perhaps show me the way to a cure. For Nicky, I mean. Will you help me?”
  
  She hesitated—for practical, not ethical, reasons. “First off, you can forget Isabel. Nobody’s ever been able to talk her into doing something that wasn’t her idea to start with. Max, maybe. If you put it to him the right way. And if I can get him over here.”
  
  “Yes, you do that. I’ll take care of the rest.”

ADDED BY ISLANDGIRL 5 FOR GALEN, AS ALL PARTS WERE POSTED IN SEPARATE THREADS


Series: ...And I Can’t Hide
Episode 1.17X: The Grunewald Paradigm
Rating: Teen
Summary: Liz is intrigued by a scientific research project.

Disclaimer: The rights to the characters and situations of Roswell are the property of Warner Brothers, Jason Katims Productions, Twentieth Century Fox, Fox, Regency Television, and Melinda Metz.

• That afternoon Max received an unexpected visit on the job. The UFO Center was empty of visitors, as it often was on late afternoons. He was proceeding along the rows of photos and news cuttings, wiping the dust from their glass protectors, when he happened to look toward the entryway, where a flashing green light simulated...he was not sure what—the landing lights of a UFO, perhaps, or a containment breach at Area 51—and saw Liz on the steps, the pulsing glow giving her features a sinister cast that came and went, came and went. She took the steps down to the main floor and approached him.
  
  Her first words were harmless enough. “Hi, Max.”
  
  “Oh, are we talking again?” He continued with his dusting. “Or is this part of some new experiment?”
  
  She paled a little. “Why—why would you say that?”
  
  “Subject for dissection, remember?”
  
  She strained to recall the conversation, it seemed so long ago. “Oh. Yeah. Sorry.” Further apology seemed in order. “And for yesterday.”
  
  He relented and looked at her. “Me too.” It had been partly his fault.
  
  “It’s only natural we’d have trouble communicating sometimes. After all, you are different from us.”
  
  “Different scary?”
  
  “No!” But this was not precisely correct. “That is, not in yourself—”
  
  “Only as a freak of nature?”
  
  “Yeah, I knew I’d mess this up.” She cut to the chase. “Max, there’s someone I’d like you to meet. He’s the person I’ve been going to see.” She could tell from his face what he was thinking. “It’s not like that! He’s a doctor. I work for him. He wants you to help him in his research.”
  
  Max became wary. “What kind of research?”
  
  “He’ll have to explain. I’ll take you to see him when you’re done here.”
  
  He shook his head. “I’m expected home for dinner. I just got off being grounded. Don’t want to push it.”
  
  “Then after?”
  
  Max felt an uneasiness he could not rationalize to himself, let alone to her. “You’re sure this is something you want?”
  
  “At the moment it’s what I want most in the whole world.”
  
  That settled it. “All right.” After his unjust suspicions, he felt he owed it to her; besides, he had been wrong then, and probably was now. “I’ll pick you up at 7:30.”
  
  “7—” She remembered her appointment. “Oh, no! I have to be some place. Meet you there. ’bye.”
  
  “Liz! Who are we meeting?” But she was already out the doors.
  
  Soon she was sitting in the red Acura, heading south on 285. “Where are you taking us?”
  
  “You’ll see soon enough,” her mother said.
  
  “Who’ll make dinner for Dad?”
  
  “Liz, we own a restaurant.”
  
  She looked back toward town. She was worried about Max, she did not know why; maybe because he was worried himself. But it was usual with him. She had no clue where she and her mother were going, and did not attempt to guess; waste of time. At last they turned onto a winding drive which she recognized as the approach to Angels’ Ground. She wondered why she had been brought there. The parking area was empty; the loving couples would not start arriving for two hours yet. Nancy swung in at one end and shut off the motor. As the two of them stepped out, a soft breeze welcomed them. They made a path along the west rim, with Nancy in the lead. She stopped at fifty yards or so. “This is it,” she announced.
  
  Liz looked carefully; the spot seemed indistinguishable from any other. “Okay. What is it?”
  
  “The place your dad and I used to come every Friday night.”
  
  This made Liz feel a little squirmy. “Mom, I’m not sure I need to—”
  
  “One Friday night, something strange and wonderful happened. Your father claimed afterward he hadn’t seen it. But he did. He blocked it because it didn’t jibe with his world view.”
  
  “What was it?” She was interested in spite of herself.
  
  “Well. At the moment we—I—the moment—you understand, Liz?”
  
  This made her feel squirmy again. “Mom....”
  
  “—I saw a glow. Down there.” Her eyes—and so, inevitably, Liz’s—dropped to that part of her. “I could feel it. The glow. That was the moment you were conceived.”
  
  “But how could you know that? I mean, how could you be sure?”
  
  Her mother laughed. “My little scientist. I just knew. So, you see, your arrival was magical from the beginning. You were—you are—something special to both of us.”
  
  “Except Dad didn’t see it.”
  
  “He did. The first time he held you.” She squeezed Liz’s arm. “It’s not you he blames, baby. Not really. It’s himself. He’s just taking it out on you. And he’s blaming himself for that too.”
  
  Liz understood her father, more or less; the physical phenomenon she had just heard described interested her more. “A glow, you said.”
  
  “I’d sign an affidavit attesting to it. And Amy Deluca—”
  
  “Maria’s mom?”
  
  “She always insisted this was a center of cosmic power. Of course that was Amy.”
  
  This set an idea simmering in Liz’s head. “Mom, is it possible Maria was conceived here too?”
  
  “I wouldn’t be surprised. They used to come up here all the time—Amy and that lowlife she ended up marrying. And later divorcing.” Another recollection came to her. “Glowworm. That’s what she called Maria as a baby. I wonder—”
  
  Liz could hardly contain her excitement. “And Alex’s parents? Did they come up here?”
  
  “Never really knew them. His mother died, didn’t she?”
  
  Liz had stopped listening. “I bet they did. I bet.... It’s more than a coincidence. It has to be. Oh, my God, this is amazing!” In her enthusiasm, she had all but forgotten her mother, who had moved to the edge, facing the sinking sun. After a moment Liz heard a sound she recognized as sobbing. “Mom? What is it?”
  
  “She asks what it is. My life’s about to take a left turn into a tunnel with no light at the end, my family’s disintegrating because of a choice I made, and my only child, who I had believed to be upset about the state of things—who certainly gave every indication of it up to this evening—she is deliriously happy.” She burst out with a cry. “What do you have to be so damn happy about?”
  
  Liz felt a hug was called for. But the two of them had not been like that since she was small. “Mom, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking about the stuff you must be going through. It’s just—what you told me is a really big deal. So big you can’t imagine.”
  
  Nancy thought she might, though. “Does it have anything to do with Max Evans?”
  
  Liz hesitated. “In a way.”
  
  “I know the two of you are into something out of the ordinary—something you won’t talk about to your father or me. We thought at first it might be drugs—”
  
  “Oh, Mom, no!”
  
  “We realize that now. It’s probably something we’re too old to understand. Some kind of cult thing. I know just how exciting they can be. But they can also be consuming. So, whatever this ‘big deal’ is—”
  
  Liz did not want to reveal too much. But also she did not want to see her mother squander her energy in straying down a wrong road. “Mom, what it is, is a—hypothesis. Which, if it’s true, would explain a lot about why Max and I were—destined for each other.” Nancy smiled tolerantly. “I know, it sounds all gooey-eyed. But it’s totally scientific. Like a unified field theory of my life—that part of it at least. And if Alex can confirm it—”
  
  “Baby, some things you can’t predict. As I can vouch from experience.”
  
  Liz had one of her bright ideas. “Do you think, if you brought Dad here—”
  
  “Too late. The chapter’s over. The life has drained out of us.” Liz saw this was true, and that she ought to have seen it before; there had been enough signs. But she had not been looking. “You know my work has been taking me to Santa Fe a lot lately. I’m moving there.” Her daughter had foreseen this likelihood. “I was hoping....” She did not need to finish. “It’s a big city. With a lot more to see, more in the way of opportunities—”
  
  “I can’t.” Soon after Nancy had begun commuting to the capital, twice and occasionally three times a week, she had taken Liz there for a day to show her around, even allowing her to skip school for the occasion. They had taken in the museums and galleries, lunched at the best little Mexican seafood place (which Nancy’s boss had recommended), and gone home with dozens of sights still unseen. Then, the prospect of living there some day had tempted Liz keenly; less so now.
  
  Nancy nodded. “You’ve always been closer to your father, haven’t you? Even now.”
  
  “He needs somebody. To remind him of stuff.”
  
  “Don’t I know it?”
  
  “Then there’s Max. Things aren’t good between us at the moment. I’d like to make them right if I can.”
  
  “Baby, please don’t take this wrong—but I wouldn’t want to see you toss away your future for something that may only be for the present.”
  
  Liz smiled at the obviousness of the advice. “You know, I know that. And I know this chapter will probably end too. But what if it’s not for a long time? What if it’s never?”
  
  “You can’t tell,” Nancy conceded. “Especially at sixteen.” Then, on an impulse, she opened her arms. “May I hug my sixteen-year-old?”
  
  It was out of character, for both of them, but Liz could hardly refuse. The unaccustomed closeness, awkward as it felt, was oddly pleasing. But after a few seconds of it, she found herself getting impatient. “Um, this is great, but I need to get back. I promised to meet Max. And before that, I have to conduct a—field interview.”
  
  Her mother stared at her. “You are the oddest girl sometimes.”
  
  As they walked down to the car, Liz recalled another subject of investigation, which had her increasingly puzzled. “That V shape up there—don’t suppose you know what constellation it is?”
  
  “You’re the science mavin.” She looked where Liz was pointing. “No, I don’t see anything. Must be my aging eyes.”
  
  She could not have missed it: at that early hour it was the only thing in the sky. So she had corroborated Mr. Seligman’s observation. Only we can see it, then, Liz thought. We six. Of course she did not yet know this for a scientific fact. But she would have bet anything on it.
  
  Before leaving for her “interview” with Alex later that evening, she peered into her wall niche, pondering whether to take the Balancer with her. (The name for it, she did not know; Michael had told no one but Max, who had told no one but Isabel.) After Alex, she was going to see Grunewald, and he might be able to infer something of its nature; also, she would have liked to impress him with a find of her own. But Max might not approve; she had better ask him first, and she did not have time then. She sealed the niche again.
  
  As she reached the Whitman house, music reached her ears from the garage, though the door was shut. She pounded on it, without result. The self-correcting clock she always carried read 6:40; she could easily get to Grunewald’s on time. She walked around to the front door, where her knock was answered, none too promptly, by Alex’s father. “You’ll be wanting Alex. I’ll take you back.”
  
  “I tried at the garage. But with the noise....”
  
  “I know! We’re trying to hold a meeting here.” After gesturing her inside, he nodded toward the den, where a group of other dull middle-aged men were gathered: she hated to stereotype people, but after all, some people were stereotypes. “If those kids don’t knock it off soon, I’ll”—he floundered—“have to call an adjournment,” he ended lamely. He led her up the hall.
  
  Her eyes kept returning to the den. “What kind of meeting is that?”
  
  “Not your concern.” His rudeness surprised her. Then he noticed the top of the UFO Inquirer protruding from her purse. “Is that my magazine?”
  
  “It is, yes. I was just—”
  
  He grabbed it out. “How’d you get it?”
  
  “Alex loaned it to me.”
  
  “He should learn to respect other people’s property.” He examined it. “Now look. The corner’s bent.”
  
  Though Liz was beginning to suspect a degree of immaturity in his make-up, she realized he could tell her about Angels’ Ground. Then she would not have to wait for Alex. “Excuse me, you may think it’s weird, me asking this—” But either he did not hear or he was deliberately ignoring her.
  
  They had now reached the connecting door. As Donald opened it, a tide of noise rolled over them. Alex and his bandmates—Nicky on guitar, Markos on rhythm, and Chris on drums—were in full swing. “Alex!” his father shouted. “Company!” With that, he returned to his meeting, leaving Liz on her own. But Alex had heard him somehow. He nodded to her.
  
  When Max arrived at Dr. Grunewald’s, not long after, his apprehensions of ill omen were still with him. He had come early, and was standing on the porch debating whether to stay when the door swung open. The figure behind it, he recognized immediately. “You!” he said, but recovered fast enough to conceal the recognition, if it had mattered. “—must be the man I’m supposed to meet,” he finished. “Liz invited me.”
  
  “Ms. Parker has been unavoidably detained. She asked me to see to you till she arrives.” His manner was easy, almost too easy. With misgivings stronger than ever, Max stepped over the threshold. Grunewald raised the arm he had hidden and plunged a hypodermic syringe into his neck. “And see to you I shall,” he concluded equably. The drug took hold so fast, Max had no time to act before the room went black.
  
  The panic he had felt in the seconds before came to Isabel in a flash. She dropped the plate she was drying, which her mother had just washed. “What’s wrong?” Diane asked.
  
  Isabel stared down at the pieces. If her mother had not been there, she could have reassembled them handily. “Slipped. Sorry.”
  
  The phone rang in the living room. “You get that,” Diane said. “I’m sure it’s for you. I’ll take care of this.” As she was sweeping up, she could half-hear Isabel’s side of the conversation and moved to the entryway to hear better.
  
  “Michael?...Yes, of course I did....No, I’m sure it’s nothing. I would know....You’ll be the first....Yes, I promise. ’bye.”
  
  Diane’s instinct as a mother alerted her that something was wrong. “Was that Michael? What was he calling about?”
  
  “Nothing that need concern him.” Isabel was glad her mother could not see her face; it probably showed the fear she had successfully hidden from Michael, for both his own good and Max’s. He had received the same flash she had, but she had could not trust him to act responsibly; it was up to her alone. She tried to sense her brother, but could not; this meant his consciousness must be functioning at its lowest level, too low for her to pick up at a distance, or not functioning at all. Either he was out cold, or—
  
  She moved to her room so she would not be seen. Already her mother was hunting in the living room for her; in a minute, she would probably come tapping at the bedroom door. There was just time for Isabel to do what was called for. If Max was alive but unconscious, his dreamspace would be out there, open to her, if she could find it. And after much searching, she did. He was not dreaming, exactly, but inhabiting a hazy limbo in which a fun-house mirror image of himself kept materializing and dematerializing, first in one place, then in another. He’s been drugged, Isabel thought. But who by?
  
  At that moment the only person who could have told her—other than the culprit—was shrinking against the door of the Whitmans’ garage, hands over her ears: the Whits made a lot of music for a small space. Alex gestured to the others to cut it. When they failed to heed him, he stepped to the amp and yanked out the feed. The noise subsided with a moan; the other band members, released from their trance-like state, looked around, blinking. “Time for a break,” announced their leader. “I gotta talk to Liz.” One of them lifted the garage door, another grabbed a soccer ball from the corner, and all three ran out to the drive. Alex was admiring the system he had just silenced. “Isn’t the sound awesome? Issy tweaked it for us.”
  
  Liz declined to offer an opinion. There was something else on her mind anyway. “Who are those men in your house?”
  
  “Bunch of UFO nuts. They meet monthly to compare sightings. That’s what you came over to ask me?”
  
  “No, not at all.” She took a deep breath. “Alex, I realize this will sound strange, but—how much do you know about your conception?”
  
  “My conception of what?”
  
  “No, when you were conceived. Before you were born.”
  
  “Oh, that. Never thought about it.” His face wrinkled. “Not sure I want to think about it now. Why?”
  
  “Is there any chance it could have happened at Angels’ Ground?”
  
  “Possible. Isn’t that where guys take girls to—wait!” He rushed into the house. As she waited, Liz idly watched the others kicking the ball around. Soon they moved into the street. Since it was a cul-de-sac, they ran little risk from traffic—not that it would have discouraged them. In a few minutes, Alex returned with a framed photo in hand. “Look at this.” It showed his father and his late mother standing side by side at the location Liz had just visited. “Same place, right?”
  
  “I knew it!” She felt a thrill at having her hypothesis vindicated, and at being part of a wondrous mystery thus far beyond hypothesizing. She took Alex’s hand and led him out to the drive, from which she pointed upwards to the points of light twinkling against the deepening blue. “You can see them, right?”
  
  “Those stars in the V pattern?”
  
  Another hypothesis vindicated. “But why, I wonder? Of course they can—they can do a lot of things. But why us humans?” She had an inspiration. “Maybe it has something to do with that place!”
  
  “Liz, you’re rambling again.”
  
  “You’d ramble too, if—” She never got to finish because at that point a soccer ball struck her on the hip. “Ow!”
  
  Nikos ran up. “Sorry, Nicky bounced it off his head. He does that.” He picked up the ball. “You’re not hurt, are you?”
  
  “A little.”
  
  “Oh?” He shrugged. “Oh, well.” He kicked the ball out to the street and ran after it.
  
  She herself witnessed the next display of Nicky’s patented head block, which she saw was apt to send the ball flying any which way. “Should he be doing that?” she asked doubtfully.
  
  Alex noticed she was rubbing her sore thigh. “Sorry. Is it very painful?”
  
  “Forget about me! I mean, is it right for him to hit it with his head that way?”
  
  “Liz, it’s not a regulation match. They’re just fooling around.”
  
  “But should he be playing that rough? As frail as he is?”
  
  “Nicky frail?” Alex laughed. “He may be skinny, but he’s tough as iron. Even when we were little—well, Nicky was never little—he was always running his trike into things, skinning his knees or elbows. There was always a wound on him somewhere.”
  
  “But that’s not—” She stopped as a suspicion entered her mind. “Alex, how much do you know about his dad?”
  
  “Aside from the alien thing, not much. He may be a crank, but he’s always been okay with me. You know who had it in for him, though? Isabel’s dad. My dad’s a building inspector with the city, and he told me Mr. Evans kept a campaign going against Grunewald for months—filing complaints, circulating petitions, all kinds of stuff. I think he finally shut him down.”
  
  “Why would he do that?”
  
  “Well, you know the rumor. But you can’t—”
  
  “What rumor?” Liz sometimes felt as if she had spent her whole life in a vacuum-sealed chamber.
  
  “You never heard? That he tried something funny with Max and Isabel. When they were kids.”
  
  Dread welled up inside her. What if this had all been a ploy of Grunewald’s to get at Max? Or to get back at Isabel? She had to get over there right away. “Have to go.”
  
  “Did I say something wrong?” He watched her as she dashed off. “Yep, must have said something wrong.”
  
  At Grunewald’s, she knocked insistently for half a minute before the doctor showed his face. “Where’s Max?” she asked, between gulps of air; she had run all the way and was still breathless.
  
  “He said he had to be getting home. Waited for you nearly an hour. Early, you see. I hope I was right to let him leave?” Liz did not know whether to believe him or not. The words, and the apparent concern, came too readily. He was not quite connecting with her, only making a show of doing so. But also he looked tired. Maybe that explained it.
  
  But it did not explain the lie. “You told me Nicky was frail.”
  
  Grunewald made a guess. “Yes, one wouldn’t know it to look at him. And I suppose he doesn’t take the care he should.”
  
  Again the explanation flowed too easily, and she doubted it, but she also doubted herself for doubting. She had found the doctor recessive at the best of times, and tonight she could not read him at all. “You’re sure Max went home?”
  
  “Haven’t I just said so, my dear?”
  
  She let the sexism pass. “I’ll try him there.” The doctor smiled distantly and shut the door. She heard the lock click. This aroused her suspicions again. But on balance she thought it smartest to check at Max’s house before anything else. There she could also ask Mr. Evans to confirm Alex’s story.
  
  Grunewald returned to his examining table. Next to it he had rolled a short stand with a squarish bag attached to it; from the bag ran a tube that ended in a needle. “Now we will have the blood of you,” the doctor said to the subject on the table, who could not hear him. “All the blood, I think.” He smiled distantly again. “Yes, that will be good.”
  
  An arch of leaves, like a huge croquet wicket, marked the entrance to the Evanses’ front yard. The path was paved with four-squared stones, which Liz normally took time to appreciate, but not tonight. She was only a quarter of the way to the door when Isabel crossed the lawn to intercept her. “Where’s Max?”
  
  “He isn’t here?”
  
  “Would I ask if he was? He said he was meeting you.”
  
  “Is your dad home? I need to talk to him.”
  
  Isabel laid a hand on her shoulder with more force than Liz considered polite. “First we have to find Max. He may be in trouble.”
  
  “I know. Your dad can help. He knows about Dr. Grunewald.”
  
  “Grunewald?” A horrible idea flashed into Isabel’s mind—and she was not picking it up from Liz. “Is Max with him?” Liz’s face betrayed her fear. Isabel grabbed her by the neck, even more rudely than before, and shut her eyes. To Liz, it felt as if a light were being trained on the myriad segments of her mind, each of them in turn, at a speed that was inconceivable. Isabel was scanning her thoughts, both public and private, but passed over all of them except one. When she opened her eyes again, they were full of accusation. “You invited him there? Liz, how could you?”
  
  “I didn’t know.” Her voice was shaking. She felt herself about to cry.
  
  “We’re going back there. Now.”
  
  In seconds, the Jeep, with the two of them in it, was racing through town. “Grunewald was the doctor at the orphanage,” said Isabel, “until he got himself fired. They found out he was crazy.”
  
  “He told me you were responsible. That you changed Max’s blood sample. Was that true? At that age?” She knew this was not the time to ask, and that she had no right, considering the trouble she had placed them in. But she could not help herself.
  
  Isabel sounded defensive rather than proud. “I didn’t know I’d done it. I don’t know how I did it. I sensed he was going to hurt Max, and—it just happened. And did he tell you what he did after that? He started stalking us—following us around, taking our pictures.” He still is, thought Liz, only you don’t know it. “One day he lured us to his office to try and get more of our blood. We got scared and ran away. He chased us into the candy store. The lady there called our dad—thank God.” Liz wished, wished, wished she had known all this before; how could she not have? “The one man Dad did everything he could to save us from,” concluded Isabel, “and you delivered my brother into his hands. How loyal, Liz.”
  
  This was crushing. Liz searched for some idea, any idea, to contribute. “You could ask Michael to help.”
  
  “I don’t want Michael’s help. He’d probably kill Grunewald.”
  
  “And you won’t?”
  
  “Not unless—” She chose to shut off the thought. Moments later she pulled up at the house. “Follow me and do exactly as I say. Understand?” Liz was gazing out at it, dismayed by the transformation it had undergone in her eyes: once charmingly unkempt, it now loomed up as a ramshackle ruin, with menace abiding in every recess. “Liz! Do you understand?” Recalled to herself, she gave a little nod.
  
  Isabel led the way to the porch. “Go ahead, knock.” Liz did, but Grunewald did not answer. Isabel had not expected him to. “Stand back,” she ordered. “And never tell anyone about this. Not even Max.” She turned to the door.
  
  Almost at once it began to bubble. It melted away to both sides and ran down the frame to form a puddle of brown ooze on the floor. Liz stared in amazement. “That looks like—”
  
  “Chocolate,” Isabel confirmed. “It’s easier if you know the substance you’re dealing with.” She marched into the house, with Liz at the rear; she looked back, and in seconds the door was restored. “Rule number one: clean up your mess as you go. You might not get another chance.”
  
  “The lab’s that way.”
  
  “I know. I sense him there.” She headed to the back. Liz cast her eyes around warily, expecting the doctor to fly out at them from some corner.
  
  The lab was unlocked. Grunewald was not to be seen. Isabel rushed to Max, still lying unconscious on the table. She shook him, called his name, but he remained inert. Shutting her eyes, she tried his dreamspace. He was no longer skittering here and there, but his form was half-transparent. She did not dare to touch him in that state. “Max!” she called. “You have to wake up. I have to get you out of here.” For a few moments, he seemed not to have heard. Then his form grew solid, and he lifted his eyes to hers. He nodded slowly.
  
  She emerged from limbo into the world of the woken. Beside her, his body stirred. He opened his eyes to see her standing over him, with a face radiating gratitude. She did not usually show her love so much; like, never. “Thanks,” he whispered.
  
  Isabel dropped a tear, and was cross with herself for it. “Damn, I’m turning into Liz.”
  
  Liz was hovering in the space between the house and the outbuilding; Isabel had instructed her to wait there. A clatter issued from a shed to the side. Liz watched it anxiously. In a few seconds, Grunewald emerged. His eyes were bleary; his shirt hung outside his trousers. And he was carrying a surgical saw. She moved to the lab door and blocked it, as far as her size would allow. He stopped on seeing her. Her presence there appeared to be confuse him. “Ms. Parker,” he said, as if he had finally located the name in some long-disused file. “Stand aside, if you please.”
  
  “You lied to me.” Her indignation overcame her judgment. “Nicky doesn’t have anemia. He’s not dying.”
  
  “No. I am.” He lifted the saw. She shrank back. But he was not looking at her; he was looking at his own arm. She winced as he sliced through his shirt sleeve, just above the wrist. The wound dripped onto the red brick paving. “It was the blood, you see. It poisoned me. Not Nicky—me.” The syllables came in a monotone, slurred, and with an accent thicker than normal. “Undid my practice. Ja, even turned Helene against me. She said I was crazy. Would have taken my son from me, but I told her I would have her declared crazy. It was the blood. It drove her away. Now his blood will bring her back.” Liz realized he was speaking of Max. His lips pursed in a pout. “But der bag, it does not work, nein. The blood does not flow. It trickles in dribs und drabs. With this, it will flow.” Lifting the saw again, he lurched toward her.
  
  “Drop your weapon!” Liz looked to the house. Valenti was standing at the back door and Deputy Owen in the kitchen behind him, their guns trained on Grunewald. “Drop it, I said!” This time he complied. “Liz, come around to me, slowly.” Grunewald made no move to stop her.
  
  Once she was out of harm’s way, Owen hurried past her to him. He was grappling with a set of cuffs when he noticed the arm dripping blood. “He’s wounded!”
  
  “Take him to the car and bandage him up,” Valenti ordered. They kept a first-aid kit under the dash. “But cuff the other hand to the door handle first.” Owen marched him off along the side of the house. “Come on,” Valenti said, to someone Liz could not see. She had not suspected there were others with him.
  
  But now they appeared in the doorway: Agent Topolsky and a man who was also obviously FBI. Liz lunged in front of them, trying to make it look like she had stumbled, but stalled them for only a few seconds. “Nice try,” said Topolsky.
  
  Hearing her voice, Isabel quickly instituted a change of plan. Max was safe now; that was what mattered. He was just beginning to recover from the sedative, and too groggy to summon his powers to his own aid. “I’ll call Dad,” she told him. The meaning was somewhat cryptic, but he was hardly listening anyway. She ran her eyes over the file cabinet, the refrigerator, the slide tray—every object in the room that might contain evidence pointing to the two of them—and focused on each in turn. Then she hurried to the wall and dived into it, literally. By the time the door burst open, she was gone.
  
  The two FBI agents and Valenti clattered down the steps and scanned the room. Liz trotted in after them, like a puppy. She ran to Max, who was straining to sit up. She put an arm around him. “Let me help you.”
  
  He was aware enough to hear that. “Help me?” He shook off her arm. The rejection, and the justice of it, made her ache. But she got her wish nonetheless. When he swung his feet down onto the floor and tried to stand, his legs faltered, forcing him to lean on her despite himself.
  
  Ignoring him for the moment, the two agents searched the room and found—nothing. The file cabinet contained no files, only dust. The slide tray contained no slides, only a pool of liquid that smelled like—the agent elected to investigate no farther. The beakers in the refrigerator contained what appeared to be Jello. Everywhere they turned, it was the same: the evidence, if there had ever been any, had changed to something useless. Topolsky turned on Max. “Did you do this?”
  
  Liz answered for him. “He was unconscious.”
  
  Topolsky realized someone was missing. “Where’s the girl who was with you?”
  
  “What girl?”
  
  Valenti advanced on them until he was standing shoulder to shoulder with his colleague. “Don’t play dumb with us, Ms. Parker. Isabel Evans.”
  
  “She left. By the back way.”
  
  Valenti looked around. “What back way?”
  
  Topolsky returned her attention to Max. “What did Grunewald do to you?”
  
  Now he was fully cognizant, though his head still felt weighty. “He was showing me around his lab. Guess I fainted. Haven’t been eating well lately. Stomach problems. You know.”
  
  “What did he say to you?” Topolsky asked.
  
  “He was raving,” Liz interjected. “You don’t want to pay attention to anything he says.”
  
  “Were you aware he’d been shadowing you and your friends?”
  
  “Which you’d have cause to know,” she shot back, a little too tartly.
  
  “We’ve been watching Grunewald,” Topolsky conceded. “You were observed visiting this house on several occasions.”
  
  “I was doing some work for him.”
  
  “Why did you come back this evening?” asked Valenti. Both examinees were mute. “The two of you better start talking, or—”
  
  “Or what?” a voice broke in. They turned to see Philip Evans on the steps. He hastened to his son’s side. “You all right, Max? Isabel told me—”
  
  “I’m fine.”
  
  Philip turned to Valenti with an air of grievance so self-evidently justified that every right-thinking citizen would be moved to rise up and support him in it; Liz remembered he was an attorney, and she was grateful for that now. “Why are you detaining these children?”
  
  “Just trying to determine if a crime’s been committed.”
  
  “The way you were talking, it sounds as though they’re the suspects.”
  
  “We believe Dr. Grunewald may have abducted your son with intent to commit bodily harm. If Max is unwilling to cooperate—”
  
  “I told you, I was unconscious. I don’t remember anything.”
  
  “There’s your answer,” said Philip.
  
  “Liz wasn’t,” Topolsky put in.
  
  She started to answer. “Liz, you don’t have to say anything,” he cautioned. So she did not.
  
  “Could Grunewald have had an accomplice?” Topolsky suggested shrewdly. “Someone to lure Max here?” Liz froze.
  
  “Why did you come, Max?” Valenti asked.
  
  Max stared at Liz. “I thought she’d be here.” She dropped her eyes.
  
  “That’s enough,” Philip declared. “If you have further questions, you can ask them after he’s rested. Needless to say, I would insist on being present. And on seeing to it Ms. Parker is properly represented. Kids? Time to go.” He ushered them out. The law officers did not hinder them.
  
  “I could charge Grunewald with attempted assault,” said Valenti. “Kidnapping—I don’t know.”
  
  Topolsky seemed unconcerned. “Let’s wait for the psychiatrist’s evaluation. I have a feeling the doctor won’t be making his rounds for a while.”
  
  “If it wasn’t for that guy being a lawyer....” Topolsky nodded in sympathy. “Tell me, Agent, you ever want to know the truth of something so bad it gnaws at your gut?”
  
  “You don’t know the half of it.” She was gazing at the photo of the UFO convocation, at a figure in the crowd—the one Liz had thought looked familiar. Then she headed out, and her associate followed her. Valenti started to follow them both. Glancing at the photo, he was stopped cold. The girl in it was Kathleen Topolsky: younger and brighter-eyed, but unmistakably the same person. Never in a million years would he have expected that. He filed the information, in case it should ever be called for, and continued out.
  
  Liz was home in minutes. During the ride, neither Max nor his father so much as glanced into the back seat. As she opened the door of the Mercedes, Philip addressed her without turning to her. “Liz, I think it’d be a good idea if you didn’t come around any more.”
  
  This stung badly. “Mr. Evans—”
  
  “I can get an injunction. If it becomes necessary.” He was still facing the windshield, and so was his son. She restrained herself with an effort from doing something really immature, like crying. She stepped out onto the sidewalk. As she shut the door, Max rolled down his window. She looked toward him hopefully. Maybe, after all, everything was all right; maybe—
  
  But he was wearing that scowl that was almost a frown. “Guess the experiment was a failure. And you won’t even be able to publish your results.” He rolled up the window before she could answer—and she had no answer for him anyway. The grey Mercedes glided off; that was that.
  
  The Crashdown was closed, but her father was there, waiting. “Liz, finally. You know your friend Maria got herself terminated?”
  
  Liz had to work to recall what that was about. It seemed like a story from another life. “Thought she was cutting back on her hours.”
  
  “Wouldn’t have been enough to justify keeping her on. What happened between you two?”
  
  “Philosophical difference.” That summed it up as well as anything. She looked out the window in the direction Max had gone—for good, she supposed. “And, you know, for once she was right.”
  
  Just before bed, she extracted a specimen of her blood and put it under the microscope. It had been in contact with their blood, which Grunewald had claimed to be toxic to humans; this was probably just a sign of his mania, but as a good scientist, she could not dismiss the claim out of hand; she must continue to observe and record her observations dispassionately. Yet now, when it was needed most, her lack of feeling failed her: she was scared to look.
  
  She heard a tap at her window, but saw no one. Max! she thought. He was the only one besides herself familiar with her rooftop retreat. Sticking her head out, she discovered a girl leaning against the wall, looking away. “Isabel? Is that you?”
  
  “Max sent me.” She was fidgeting. “To pick up that—thing you’ve been holding for him.”
  
  “He couldn’t come himself?”
  
  “You honestly think you have a right to expect that?”
  
  “If I could just explain to him—”
  
  Isabel had had more than enough. “Liz, just go and get it, okay? I’m only doing this for Max.” Liz fetched the Balancer from its hiding place. She had never wanted the responsibility for it anyway. So why was she feeling sorry to give it back?
  
  “Thanks,” Isabel said brusquely. “Oh—sorry about the handprint.” A moment later she disappeared over the side.
  
  Puzzled, Liz consulted the mirror. Her hair had fallen to one side, partly exposing the back of her neck, which bore a shining silver residue where Isabel had grabbed her earlier. Luckily, her hair had hidden it from the adults, and the fingermarks were now fading; soon they would be gone.
  
  She no longer felt scared. She took her journal from its niche, which she had left unsealed after removing the Balancer, took it to her desk, and opened it to the first blank page. Then she bent over the microscope.
  
  Her blood was still red—but that was not all. Now it had a strain of green swirling through it, like a chocolate swirl in vanilla ice cream. She kept staring at the swirl, thinking it was a mirage and would go away; finally she accepted that it would not, and maybe never would. She could not complain: she deserved it. She had become her own test subject.
  
  She picked up two objects from the desk, first sliding one of them out of its frame, tore up both together, and dropped them into the wastebasket beside her. One of them was her application for the science bowl. The other was a picture of Max Evans.

ADDED BY ISLANDGIRL 5 FOR GALEN, AS ALL PARTS WERE POSTED IN SEPARATE THREADS


Series: ...And I Can’t Hide
Episode 1.18X: The Wrong ‘Uns
Rating: Teen
Summary: Isabel makes an unexpected acquaintance at school.

Disclaimer: The rights to the characters and situations of Roswell are the property of Warner Brothers, Jason Katims Productions, Twentieth Century Fox, Fox, Regency Television, and Melinda Metz.

• 
  
  
  On the southwestern outskirts of Roswell, between the town proper and the desert, stood some two square miles of prefabricated frame houses. Outside one of them, behind a wire mesh fence, a small boy was sitting in his dirt yard, scooping up some of the dirt with a toy steam shovel; this was how he chose to spend his Saturday mornings.
  
  After a little, he noticed a slightly bigger boy with slightly browner skin watching him from the gate. The watcher smiled shyly. His eyes widened as the lock on the gate changed to salt, or something that sure looked like it, which then crumbled away. The gate opened . After a moment’s hesitation, he entered. The boy in the dirt held his shovel out to him. Soon they were taking turns playing with it.
  
  The woman who lived the next house over peered through her screen door and saw the two of them together. “¡Dios mio!” she cried. She ran out into the road, halting a few feet short of the open gate, and shouted to the bigger boy. “¡Salgase de ahi! ¡Immediatamente!” Unwillingly, and with an apologetic smile, he got up and walked out to her. Then he realized he had taken the steam shovel with him. As he started back in to return it, she pulled it out of his hands and flung it at its owner. Then she herded her own boy back to the house. “¡Nunca vuelvas a entrar ahi! ¿Entiendes? ¡Nunca! ¡Ellos son los malos!” She shot a hostile look back at “ellos,” or the only one in sight, before slamming the door after her.
  
  The boy in the yard looked sad. His shovel was lying on its side. He wished for it to stand up, and it did—but immediately fell over again. He bent sideways to look at it better. One of the wheels was bent. He wished for it to straighten out, and it did. The toy righted itself and came rolling to him. He stopped it with a look, then picked it up, got up himself, and went inside. He was tired of the game for today.
  
  In the town proper, some older boys were congregating at what had been until today the residence of their fellow band member. “You came,” Nicky said. “Thanks.” A grown-up the others did not recognize was stuffing his luggage into the rear of a Navigator parked in the drive.
  
  “You going to live with your mom?” asked Alex.
  
  “They haven’t exactly been able to find her. For now I’m staying with my cousin in Salt Lake. Hey, you guys can visit on break. We’ll jam, maybe land a gig there.”
  
  “Definitely,” agreed Alex, bobbing his head a few times.
  
  “I mean, it’s not like the group’s disbanding.”
  
  “Disband? The Whits?” A silence ensued. It was the silence of an empty house, an empty garage.
  
  But there was something else on Nicky’s mind. He leaned close so the others would not hear. “Alex, those friends of yours. Are they—what my dad thought?”
  
  Alex affected a puzzled frown. “Friends? Uh, which ones?”
  
  “Isabel Evans,” Nicky whispered. “Is she—one of them?”
  
  “Isabel? Is Isabel—” He laughed. “Isabel!” He laughed again.
  
  “What I figured.” He reflected. “Woulda been cool, though. So long, bro.” He gave Alex a hug—a guy hug—and then the others took their turns. They said goodbye as if it were not the real thing, as if they were really going to get together some time, and did not know, all of them, that his leaving was the end.
  
  Alex was still feeling melancholy at lunchtime as he took the last bite of his Canis Major (“A great dog!” the menu translated; the name was Liz’s invention). He waited at the register for Liz to take his check. Until then he had not noticed she was the only server. “Where’s Maria?”
  
  “She’s no longer with us.”
  
  “You mean she’s dead?”
  
  “No, she’s around. Just not—around.”
  
  Glancing toward the street, she saw the Jeep approaching with Max at the wheel, Isabel alongside. He slowed down in front of the cafe. Her face took on hope, until she saw the two women jaywalking in front of him. As soon as they had crossed, he went on without a sideways glance. Her feeling that she had it coming to her did nothing to allay her disappointment, which she tried but failed to hide. “Guess they’re around-not-around too, huh?” Alex ventured.
  
  “Okay, tell me what it is I don’t know!”
  
  “The question on my lips,” said Alex.
  
  The first, angry voice was Michael’s, as Liz could have guessed if she had not recognized it. She looked up in surprise. The last she had known, he was at the grill, and now he was standing over her, fuming like a bull. “I have no idea what you’re referring to,” she said. It did not sound convincing even to her.
  
  “Max and Isabel drove by without stopping. It’s on account of me, isn’t it?’
  
  Liz was truly amazed. “You?”
  
  “There’s something you all aren’t telling me. You think I’m too stupid to figure out what it is. But I will. You can bank on it.”
  
  “If you do,” said Alex, “clue me in. I’ve been dropped from the routing list too.”
  
  “Will you let it go, both of you?” Some of the customers turned their heads. She lowered her voice. “If there’s anything you need to know, I’ll be the first to tell you.” A customer at the other end of the counter called for more water, and she went to bring the carafe from the side counter. Michael had returned to the kitchen.
  
  “Need-to-know,” Alex mused. “Suppose she could be a spy on covert assignment?” He considered the proposition, and Liz. “Unh-uh,” he concluded finally.
  
  The longer Michael stood alone over the grill, the greater his sense of grievance became. Liz watched through the order window as he administered harsh treatment to a variety of sandwich ingredients, the tomatoes faring worst. At last, taking pity on him (and them), she went back for a talk. “You’re right,” she confessed, “there is something, but it’s got nothing to do with you. It’s between me and Max.” Which was true enough as far as it went.
  
  “The two of you have a fight?”
  
  “Kind of,” she dodged. “You’re better off not knowing any more.” She almost wished she did not know.
  
  “And that’s all there is to it?”
  
  “Yes—no! One other thing.” It did not pertain, and might not matter now, but it was a puzzle she could not let go of. “That V shape in the sky—you said it was Aries. What made you say that?”
  
  “I just know it is.”
  
  “But it isn’t. I can show you in a book.” She knew he trusted books.
  
  “Okay, show me.”
  
  Alex had left the restaurant in search of the Evans siblings—one in particular—and found them at a competing establishment two blocks down. Taco UFO was the name listed in the book (locals pronounced the second word “you-foe”), but the sign at the top of the pole that stood alongside read simply “Tacos.” The only seating it offered was at the outdoor picnic tables below the sign. Max and Isabel were sharing one of these, facing each other with matching gloomy looks; two uneaten tacos in plastic baskets, and many unopened packets of hot sauce, lay between them.
  
  “Hey, you two!” Alex greeted them as he walked up. Isabel regarded him balefully; Max, not at all. “Mind if I join you?” No answer. “Okay, then. I’ll just sit here quietly. In kind of a—meditative, nonverbal kind of—impasse—aw, shoot, Max, why don’t you and Liz make it up? Whatever the problem is, it can’t be worth this.”
  
  Max stared at him as if he had not spoken. “I need to talk to you. Over there.” He led him to the Jeep and reached in to pull the Balancer from under the front seat. “I need you to hold on to this for a while. There’s nobody else I can trust.”
  
  “I don’t know. If my dad finds it—”
  
  “Then see he doesn’t find it.” He pressed it into Alex’s hand. “Thanks,” he said, before Alex could object. Then he called to Isabel. “Toss you for the Jeep?”
  
  “I’ll walk.”
  
  “Okay, see you this evening.” He left, still looking morose.
  
  “And goodbye to you too,” said Alex. He felt conspicuous with the Balancer and stuffed it into his pants pocket, where it strained the seam; he was limping a little as he returned to the table. “So, Isabel,” he said, plumping himself down opposite her. She gazed away with a sigh.
  
  Meanwhile Liz was spending her break in the staff room, giving Michael a crash lesson in constellations. “This is how Aries looks from the Earth.” She pointed to the illustration in the textbook.
  
  He studied it for a minute. “Must be a different Aries.”
  
  “There can’t be two—”
  
  “I don’t care! The V shape is Aries. I feel it!”
  
  Resistance was futile. “Okay,” Liz allowed, “it may have something to do with Aries. But it definitely isn’t the constellation as normally observed. If it was, everybody could see it. Maybe it’s a form of radiant energy outside the normal spectrum, and we’re able—”
  
  Michael only got as far as the word “energy.” “It is! Remember those stones from the cave? They start glowing when they’re near the places on the map. Those places are energy sources. One of them’s the library.”
  
  “I know another one! Angels’ Ground!”
  
  “Where kids go to park?”
  
  “Well—energy.” He saw the sense in this. “You have your map with you?” It was never far from him now. He retrieved it from his jacket, which was on the coat tree by the door. Liz looked it over. “If this is north, and this is the library, then Angels’ Ground—wait, this isn’t right. None of the symbols are in the right place.”
  
  “Then it isn’t one of the energy sources.”
  
  “But it has to be!” She realized something that should have been obvious to her before. “We can test it with the stones! If they glow in proximity to it—”
  
  “Sorry, they’re—in storage.”
  
  She waited, but that was all he would volunteer. “Well, I’m sure anyhow.” She pointed to the map again. “This isn’t north. We won’t know the orientation until we’ve identified the symbol for Angels’ Ground—which is one of these four.” Reasoning farther (once she got going, she found it hard to stop), she continued, “I could draw up four different maps, overlay each one on a map of Roswell, and search for obvious correspondences or discrepancies. It will take time—”
  
  During this speech Michael had been looking increasingly troubled. “Forget about it.”
  
  “Why?”
  
  “You’ve already told me too much. Anything I find out, I may have to use against you some day—against all of you, if it comes to that.”
  
  The prediction was surprising, coming from him, but she saw it fit in with Grunewald’s findings, and her own fears. “You think it will come to that?”
  
  “It’s what Nasedo wants. And a lot of humans, I’m sure.”
  
  “Not you, though.” His face reflected the same confusion it had in his earlier conversation with Maria. “Do you?”
  
  “Doesn’t matter. I’d still be betraying you—and making you a traitor.”
  
  Liz stared gravely at him. “That would be between you and your conscience. On that day, if it comes, we’ll all have to choose sides, and betray someone.” She added, in a quieter tone, “Maybe some of us have already.”
  
  He got up. “Well, you won’t be doing it on my account. I think too much of—” He stopped; that sounded corny. “Think too much,” he amended. “But don’t you think about it. Leave the alien stuff to us—to me.”
  
  “Understood.” This satisfied him well enough, and he returned to the kitchen, unaware that to Liz’s precise mind “Understood” was not synonymous with “I’ll do that.”
  
  Outside the taco stand, Alex continued to sit silently, since Isabel seemed indisposed to conversation. At last, however, she spoke. “Alex, don’t you have somewhere to be? Other than here, I mean.”
  
  From long practice he was able to take this more or less in stride, and he chose a more positive line to pursue. “Liz told me about you rescuing your brother. That was brave of you.”
  
  “Trust Liz to keep a confidence.” Well, it had seemed positive. She stood and looked at him. “Don’t tell Michael, whatever you do. He doesn’t know the history with Grunewald.”
  
  “How could he not know?”
  
  “We hadn’t reconnected at the time. If he finds out now, he’ll think we’ve been keeping things from him.”
  
  “He thinks so anyway. So what’s the difference?”
  
  “Do as I tell you! And stop annoying me!” Then she remembered her New Year’s resolution not to be so imperious with people she knew. “Sorry if that sounded rude.”
  
  “No, we certainly wouldn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.” Isabel looked as if she wanted to answer him, but walked off without doing so.
  
  His eye, following her, also took in the order window, where he saw a face he knew. “Maria,” he said absently—and then, “Maria?” He walked over to her.
  
  She gave him an imitation of her usual smile. “And now Alex. La reunión familiar. Who knew?”
  
  “You moonlighting?” He thought for a moment. “Suppose technically this would be sunlighting.” He realized that sounded like something Liz would say .
  
  “Yup, finally shook the Crashdown—thank God! This place is so much more convenient.”
  
  “Better pay? Better hours?”
  
  “Actually, no. And no.”
  
  “And farther out of your way. Sure, I see the convenience of that.”
  
  A Chevy pick-up pulled in. “Oops, the trail boss. He doesn’t like us socializing on Taco time. Vamos.”
  
  “Alex Whitman,” he muttered as he left, “outcast.” Ahead on the sidewalk, he saw Isabel stopped at a playground fence. He had never pegged her as having maternal leanings. He guessed she was remembering her own childhood, and regretting the other one—the one she wished had been hers—as indeed was the case. As she watched, a small girl who was climbing the slide slipped on one of the rungs, clung desperately to the handrail for a couple of seconds, and then fell. She hit the ground hard, and it ripped her sleeve. She began to sob. An older girl, probably her sister, ran to comfort her. In the middle of it, Isabel had lunged forward as if about to act, and then restrained herself.
  
  Now she noticed Alex standing beside her, and realized he must have seen it all. “You again,” she said, and she started off again.
  
  But this time he followed. “Me again, yeah. Excuse me for trying to remain a caring friend in the face of continual rejection.”
  
  “You don’t understand.” This was the politest reply she could muster.
  
  “I understand you could have put your oar in back there and kept that girl from hurting herself, but you chose not to.”
  
  “It wouldn’t have been good.”
  
  “Helping people isn’t good?”
  
  She flared at that. “I do help, or I try. But the regular way—the normal way.”
  
  “Isabel, what’s normal for you—”
  
  She swung on him. “Is the same as for everybody else. There aren’t special rules for people with—abilities. Just because I can do things doesn’t mean I don’t know they’re wrong.”
  
  Alex made a stab in the dark. “Does this have anything to do with what happened at Nicky’s? And what did happen, by the way?”
  
  “Didn’t blabbermouth Liz tell you all about it?”
  
  “All she said—”
  
  “Look, I’m not Wonder Girl, all right? I can’t go around crumbling doors and melting into walls!”
  
  He stared at her. “You did that? Wow. That’s—impressive.”
  
  “Doors and walls are there for a reason, Alex!”
  
  “To keep other people out?” He made another stab. “Or to keep you in?” She did not answer. Uh-huh, he thought.
  
  Her brother, after leaving her, had stopped by the UFO Center to collect his paycheck and found someone there he would never have expected to—at least it looked like him—studying a diorama of a crashed saucer and three dummy aliens (which Max had privately assigned the identities of himself, Isabel, and Michael). “Dad?” he called tentatively.
  
  Philip was more surprised to see him than the other way around. “Thought you were off duty.”
  
  That he had timed his visit on that assumption did not occur to Max until after he got home. He held up his paycheck. “What are you doing here? Thought you considered this stuff—”
  
  “Moonshine? Maybe. But still worth examining, wouldn’t you say?”
  
  “Most of this is tourist bait. The serious material, if you can call it that, Milt keeps under lock and key.” He nodded toward the upstairs office.
  
  “Have anything by Doc Grunewald?”
  
  Max’s guard went up. “Grunewald?”
  
  “He’s written on the subject, hasn’t he?”
  
  “I wouldn’t know.”
  
  Philip stared hard at him. “Son, what really happened at his place?”
  
  “Told you, I was out cold. He must have drugged me.”
  
  “Sounds as though he’d been planning to conduct some kind of experiment on you. Wouldn’t be the first time. Though you may not remember—”
  
  “I remember.”
  
  “He always was suspicious of you. The pair of you. I dismissed him as a nut—well, he is a nut. But is he completely nutty, I wonder?” He was getting too close for Max’s comfort. “Recount for me if you will the exact sequence of events before you blacked out.”
  
  “So you can shoot holes in my testimony? I told you, Dad, I remember nothing. Nothing at all.”
  
  Philip smiled like someone who had anticipated his answer, and every other possible answer. “We’ll talk about it later. When it’s not so painful for you. See you at dinner.” As he ambled out, Max was left with a feeling of being on shipboard in choppy seas.
  
  The two of them did not talk about it at dinner. Indeed, nobody talked about much of anything. Brother and sister remained as depressed as they had been all day, and their depression infected the rest of the table. After Isabel had retired, her mother looked in to find her regarding herself in her curtained mirror with no more joy than she had shown all evening. “Honey, you all right?” Isabel forced a smile, not very successfully. “I saw at dinner something was bothering you. If it’s about that man Grunewald, your father assures me he’s safely locked up.”
  
  “It’s not him, it’s me. My—body.” That was the closest she could come to describing the problem. “I hate it. Hate it hate it hate it.” For further emphasis, she threw herself onto the wire frame bed.
  
  “Isabel Evans!” Her mother stood beside her and placed an affirming arm around her shoulder. “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with your body.” She scrutinized the reflection. “You’re a little wide-hipped, is all. It runs in the—many of us are prone to it.”
  
  Isabel had forgotten about that: great, one more reason to be unhappy. “That wasn’t what I meant.”
  
  “What, then?” Isabel shook her head: what could she say that her mother would believe? “I suppose all those boys climbing over one another for a date with you don’t bolster your confidence?”
  
  “Oh, boys are....”
  
  “Yes, they are. They most certainly are.” Her face took on an expression of unaccustomed slyness. “Of course, there’s Alex Whitman.”
  
  “Alex?” He had not figured in her thoughts at all. “What about him?”
  
  “He seems to have a good head on his shoulders.”
  
  “Oh, yes. He knows all there is to know, especially about me. Just ask him. He’s always full of good advice. And always so helpful—always wanting to do things for me. Why can’t he just leave me alone?”
  
  “Have you asked him to?”
  
  “Are you kidding me? Yes!” She did not care for the drift of this conversation.
  
  “And did he?”
  
  “Yes! But he’s never very far away—because when I need him, there he is. What did I ever do to—”
  
  “Merit such devotion? Nothing, probably. But that’s how it generally works. Strange, isn’t it?” She smiled in apparent mystification, which did not fool Isabel. And Isabel had not fooled her either: she did not really want Alex to leave her alone. But what did she want of him? Her mother did not know, because Isabel did not know herself.
  
  During school hours, she was keeping what Alex considered bad company: Ursula Slavin’s clique, which she had made her own. At noon on Thursday of the same week, waiting together in the lunch line, they filled the cafeteria with their chatter and laughter, which was too shrill to be wholly genuine. “But, Ursula!” Isabel protested. “Of course I’ll be on the prom committee with you guys. How could you doubt me?”
  
  “Well, you’ve been so busy. With those other friends of yours.”
  
  “I don’t have any other friends! You know that.”
  
  “What about Maria Deluca? Of the flea-market Delucas? And Michael Guerin? The creature from the trailer park? You’ve been observed, Isabel. People are talking.”
  
  “Who’s talking?”
  
  “Well, us. And we’re your friends. I can only imagine—and, God, here’s another one.” Alex, with a musician’s instinctive timing, had just joined the line. “Honestly, Isabel. Alex Whitman? Does he have a prayer of being perceived as a social asset?” He could tell she was talking about him, he could imagine the kind of thing she was saying, and he was disappointed in Isabel for listening; he was often disappointed in her. But then, he was often disappointed in himself too, and so he did not hold it against her, much.
  
  If he had known, he would have counted it in her favor that she did not surrender without resistance. “Alex is nice! He’s—his own man.”
  
  “Fine,” said Ursula, with a catty smile at the others, “as long as he’s not yours.”
  
  After filling their trays, the girls proceeded to their usual table with Ursula in the lead, but she stopped dead a few yards short. Someone else was sitting there—a small, dark girl Isabel could not recall having seen before. “Oh, my God,” said Ursula. “An e.t.”
  
  This disconcerted Isabel for a moment. “What?”
  
  “A freshman.” She did not know the girl personally, but you could tell. “At our table. Isabel, read her the act.” Isabel seemed to hesitate. “Go on, Isabel! The way you did last time.”
  
  Isabel became aware of all eyes on her, including Alex’s. “Why don’t we just take another table?”
  
  “Isabel! We have our status to uphold. If we let one of them take our place, soon we won’t have a place.”
  
  “But she was there first.”
  
  “So? Don’t tell me you’re feeling some kind of sympathy for her?”
  
  “No, that would spoil the image, wouldn’t it?”
  
  Ursula stepped as close to her as her tray would permit. “Isabel, what is wrong with you? You’re the one who named them e.t.s to start with. Which I must say was highly appropriate. Go chase her away.” Her tone, and her expression, grew dark. “Otherwise we might start thinking there’s something weird about you.”
  
  The threat hit home. Isabel cast her a glare, and then turned it into a fake one, which restored Ursula’s trust. Putting Alex out of her mind (almost), she took a deep breath and approached the table in a manner that reminded him of the Queen of Hearts. “...unless it’s this little e.t.” The girl looked up with big grey eyes, which seemed even bigger by contrast with her features. “You’re new to this planet,” Isabel continued, “so you couldn’t be expected to know. But for future reference, this table is ours. We occupy it every day at this hour.”
  
  “I know,” the girl said, “I’ve seen you.” She resumed eating, undisturbed. Ursula and the others made expostulating noises. Alex, who had been listening with some concern—for both of them—smiled his relief: this one could stand up for herself.
  
  “And you still sat here?”
  
  “Why not?”
  
  “Allow me to explain to you in terms you can understand.” Ursula’s eyes glinted. This was the “act” she had looked forward to hearing Isabel deliver again. Alex, to whom it was new, listened less happily. “We are upperclassmen. We are the rulers of this planet. You are a freshman—an alien species—an inhabitant of the most insignificant planet in the most obscure galaxy in the known universe. You have no rights. You exist by our sufferance. We tell you where to walk, where to sit, when to come, and when to go. So—” Glancing accidentally at Alex, whose stern eye was on her, she faltered. “So—” For some reason, she found herself powerless to continue.
  
  Seeing this, Ursula stepped up and finished for her. “So either you do as we say or go back to your own planet.” She threw Isabel a chiding look. One of the other girls grabbed a flyer from the bulletin board—a cartoon of the famous Roswell alien, big-eyed and chinless (which Isabel often used to annoy her brother by saying it proved people knew about him)—and handed it to Ursula, who tried to stick it to the girl’s back, but it would not hold.
  
  The girl did not bother with her. She was staring at Isabel questioningly. “Go on!” Isabel said—and then, in a whisper, “Please?”
  
  “All right.” She wiped her mouth daintily. “I was finished anyway.” She rose and picked up her books. “For today,” she added, with a glance at Ursula. As she passed between them, she touched Isabel’s hand. You can’t change what you are, she said—but she did not move her lips. Isabel stared at her in a kind of shock.
  
  The girl drew her attention to the salt and pepper shakers on the table; one was white, one black. A second later, they switched colors. The girl smiled at her ever so slightly, and walked off. Isabel continued staring after her. She hardly heard Ursula’s “My God, did she touch you? Isabel?” After a few seconds, she sat down with the rest and put up a front of ordinary sociableness, but her thoughts were—so to speak—in a galaxy far, far away.
  
  Alex had seen that something had happened between the two of them, but not what it had been. He hurried out after the girl and found her standing in the shade of the building, gazing out at the blue and gold umbrellas of the lunch patio with an expression he could not fathom. “What’d you do to Isabel?” he demanded.
  
  She looked at him with the same unflustered air. “That’s hers to tell, if she chooses.” And she walked off again. Isabel was watching from inside, and wondering what they had said to each other. But she would not ask. She would not even think about it.
  
  Liz, on the other hand, liked to think about everything. After school that day, she stopped by the Roswell Historical Society, which had its office in a tiny building at one corner of Summerhaven Park. It was only open two afternoons a week, not counting Saturdays, and this happened to be one of them; the docent on duty was an elderly woman with glasses. “I’m doing a project on the town’s history,” Liz lied, “and I have questions about some of the local landmarks. Like the library, Angels’ Ground....”
  
  While she was thus occupied, Isabel was trying to manage herself, as she had been trying all day, with less and less success, in consequence of her encounter at noon, which she had been thinking about, almost exclusively. She had met a girl like herself! That was exciting, because it was a first. And scary, because the only alien they had known of other than themselves was a serial killer. And ego-threatening, because she was no longer the only known female of the species. When she had met the other one, she had been obviously trying to pass for human, denying her identity. That was embarrassing.
  
  She knew she should tell Max about her. She was longing to, in a way. But she felt constrained to keep it secret. If she could only talk to her alone, just the two of them, she could find things out. But what would she ask? And would she be able to understand the answers? She doubted if the girl would let her get that close anyway, now. And telling Max would not make it any easier. He would try to simplify matters and end up making them more complicated; it was what he was best at.
  
  But he was also her brother. And she felt a need to talk to someone. So that night she slipped into his room long after they had “gone to bed,” but knowing he would be awake. She hunched down on the throw rug by the bed with her knees drawn up to her chin. “I did a really stupid thing today.”
  
  “So what else is new?” Isabel did not smile. “Stupid how?”
  
  “I was mean. To a freshman.”
  
  “Oh, well, if it was just a freshman....” She smiled a little this time. “You’re not a mean person. Why would you act like you were?”
  
  She tilted her head and rested one cheek on her knee. “To be normal.”
  
  “How many normal people have you ever actually met? I have a feeling the normal ones, so-called, are the exceptions. And they’d probably rather be the freaks.”
  
  “So-called,” his sister added. “Mmm, maybe.” She noticed the photo on the nightstand was lying face down. She lifted it to peer at. “But if I could be the girl in this picture....”
  
  “Liz?”
  
  “Is this who she is?”
  
  He studied the photo. “No. Nobody could be that girl.” He returned it to its place, face down. “Why on earth would you want to be?”
  
  “On earth,” she repeated, with meaning. “Why do you think, Max? So I won’t have to face who I am.”
  
  “I thought you were okay with it. I mean, we haven’t talked about it for a while—”
  
  “Since we were ten. Then, I felt I was someone really special, only no one else knew it yet. But some day they would, and then I’d be, like, their queen. It’s not like that, Max. I’m changing. My body’s changing.”
  
  “Mine too. Happens to everybody at our age—the biology book says.”
  
  “Not like this. I feel the power growing inside me, but I hardly know anything about it. What it can do—what I’m capable of. Neither do you. And of course Michael....”
  
  “Others might. Others of our kind—if we knew any. Unfortunately—” Isabel had opened her mouth to speak. “What?”
  
  She shook her head. “No, nothing.” She stood. “Thanks for listening.” She hurried out. Her brother looked after her curiously. Sometimes he understood her; sometimes, like now, he was forced to defer understanding.
  
  Not an hour later, she was leading Alex onto the stage of the school auditorium, with the entire student body out front. He tried to bolt for the wings, but she held him fast. “You can dance,” she said. “Try it, you’ll see.” And suddenly he was dancing, beautifully, and the crowd was cheering. “Now take off your clothes.” And suddenly they were off, and he was in his t-shirt and shorts before God and everybody.
  
  And now something was happening to his body. A fin thrust out of his front, ripping his boxers, and a larger one out of his back, ripping his shirt. The crowd was jeering. His jaws grew out a yard from the rest of his face, turned on Isabel, opened wide—and swallowed her whole.
  
  ...He sat up in his bed. By the night-light he could discern a girl sitting on the spread near him. “Isabel?”
  
  She laid a soothing hand on his cheek. “Hush! You’re dreaming.”
  
  “Doesn’t feel like a dream.”
  
  “It has to be. You know that’s the only place I can open up to you.”
  
  “Were you responsible for that coming-out party?”
  
  “Sorry. I wanted you to know how it feels. How I feel. Sometimes it makes me—I may say things that aren’t very—” She struggled to finish.
  
  “Hey, it’s okay,” he said. And it was; she saw in his eyes that it was. She could have wept for gratitude, if she had been someone other than Isabel. “Wish I could help.”
  
  “Actually, you can. That’s the reason I’m here.”
  
  “Ah. Not drawn by uncontrollable primal lust?” She gave him one of her looks. “Hey, you said it was a dream.”
  
  “Alex, that freshman. The one I—the one in the cafeteria. She’s a not-of.”
  
  “Not-of?”
  
  “—this Earth.”
  
  “‘Not-of.’ I like that.”
  
  “You’re not surprised?”
  
  “Well, you know how it is. If you’ve seen one alien....”
  
  She suspected him of being deliberately annoying. “I want you to find out all you can about her. Who she is, where she’s from, where she lives. I know you can hack into the school’s computer.” In fact, he had a simpler means of access, but did not let that be known generally. “Will you, as a favor to me?”
  
  As he was working up to an answer, weighing the ethical considerations against the erotic, a figure materialized at the foot of his bed. It was hazy, and had a golden aura around it. “You win,” he said. “It’s a dream.”
  
  “It is now,” Isabel said wonderingly.
  
  The haze cleared to reveal the person they had just been talking about. “Wouldn’t it be simpler to ask me?” She smiled at Isabel so easily, it was as if Isabel’s harassment had had no meaning—and Isabel began to believe it had not. “I’m Neila McFadden. I’m from—well, the first Earth city I saw was Richmond, Virginia. You can come and see where I live for yourself.” And she gave the address, which was located in the complex of prefab houses southwest of town.
  
  Isabel drove out from school the following afternoon. Shortly after passing the city limit, she took the precaution of pulling to the side of the highway and making sure no one was following. The only vehicle she saw or heard was a sixteen-wheeler heading in the other direction. Satisfied, she drove on.
  
  After a little, she exited into the grid of lanes that divided the little properties. She saw no street signs and few visible house numbers to use as guides, but instinct, or some wilder talent, might have kicked in to assist her. She stopped at a house on whose front stoop stood a plain-faced Hispanic woman keeping a close eye on a boy at play. Isabel called to her from the front walk. “Excuse me? Can you point me to the McFadden house?” The woman stared blankly. Isabel struggled to dredge up a recollection of freshman Spanish. “¡Buenos dias, senora! ¿Por favor, donde esta la casa del McFadden?”
  
  The woman’s eyes bulged. “¡Largo de ahi! ¡Esos son malos!” She followed this with a string of epithets too rapid for Isabel to understand.
  
  “Perdona me—”
  
  “¡Esos son malos!” the woman repeated. “¡Malos!” She waved the boy to her, swept him in ahead of herself, and slammed the door behind them. Isabel was about to climb back into the Jeep when a sturdy-looking old woman shouted to her from a rocking chair on the porch across the way. “She’s right, you know. Ain’t too bright, but she knows that much.”
  
  Isabel walked over to her. “Sorry, what was it she said? My Spanish—”
  
  “Wrong ’uns, she called ’em. And wrong ’uns is what they is.”
  
  “Oh? Why’s that?”
  
  The old woman shrugged. “’cause God made ’em that way, I reckon.”
  
  “Where’s their place?”
  
  “Next one down on that side. One with the big wire fence around it.”
  
  “Thanks.”
  
  “But you stay clear of there, honey. They’re no good. They’re—”
  
  “Wrong ’uns, got it.” She walked to the fence, feeling less happy than before. “So much for positive intergalactic relations,” she muttered to herself. She halted at the gate. The greater part of her was anxious to go in; the other part was just anxious.
  
  “If Alex was here,” she reasoned with herself, “he’d say: Isabel, are you sure you want to do this? And I’d say: Yes, Alex, I’m sure—and it’s none of your concern anyway. And he’d say: Isabel, everything you do concerns me. You’re the woman of my dreams—literally.” She shook her head. “Alex would never say that. He’d say: But, Isabel, aren’t you scared? And I’d say: Of course I am. I know nothing about this girl, except that she’s like us. And I was invited.” She shook her head more forcefully. “This is a waste of time. I’m going in.” She continued standing there. “I am.” And finally, “Now.” As if she had spoken the magic word, the gate unlocked itself and swung open. “Well, come right in,” she said on its behalf.
  
  As she started up the path, Neila opened the front door. She was smiling. “What kept you?”
  
  “Should I have RSVPed? I don’t know the etiquette for dream invitations.” She thought again. “It was a dream, wasn’t it?”
  
  Neila left the question unanswered. “Come in.” Isabel did so with some trepidation. But nothing sinister befell her. The lair of the “wrong ’uns” was not what she would have expected, had she given any thought to it in advance: it appeared bigger inside than out, and was furnished like a model home beyond Earth’s precincts. “So this is what houses on our world look like.”
  
  “Do they? No idea. I copied it from Better Homes and Gardens.”
  
  Isabel turned to her purpose, or want of one. “You know why I’m here, right? Because I’m not sure I do.”
  
  “To learn,” Neila said simply.
  
  “I don’t think I’m ready for it.”
  
  “If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have come.”
  
  “But this power inside me—”
  
  “The Balance.”
  
  “Is that what it is? It’s so strong. I’m afraid I may hurt someone.”
  
  “If you’re holding a gun and don’t know how to use it, will that stop you hurting someone? Come to the kitchen. I’ll brew us a pot of tea.”
  
  She did so in the conventional way, except for the large quantity of pepper she added. “Why go through the process?” asked Isabel. “Can’t you just—”
  
  “It’s never quite the same. Hadn’t you noticed?”
  
  Isabel laughed. “I thought it was just me.”
  
  “Some things,” said Neila, “require time.” She said nothing else but stood watching the kettle, waiting.
  
  Isabel breathed in deeply. “Okay, how do I start?”
  
  “You already have.”
  
  “Where does it end?”
  
  “There is no end, that we can see.”
  
  They took their tea in the front room, seated together on what Isabel guessed was a sofa. “I’ll teach you all I know,” Neila promised. “There are others who know more.”
  
  “Like your mother?”
  
  “I never had one. Or a father. I was ship-born.”
  
  “You mean—out there?”
  
  “No, on Earth. But a long way from here. So was Aluben, my brother—adoptive brother, that is.” She regarded Isabel curiously. “Weren’t you?”
  
  “We don’t know. It looked like the inside of a ship. But it wasn’t where they found the wreckage of the landing—we’ve searched there. It was some place farther out.”
  
  “Was it just you and your brother?”
  
  “Adoptive brother. And Michael.”
  
  “Yes, I was forgetting him. Will you tell them about me, do you think?”
  
  “No,” Isabel said quickly. “That is, not yet. Have you told anyone about me?”
  
  A small boy ran in from the rear hall. “He’s the only one I could tell. Ben, say hello to Isabel.” Inside her head, Isabel heard a shy ’lo. “He doesn’t talk much—aloud, that is.”
  
  Isabel always had difficulty communicating with children, mute or otherwise. “Hi there, big fella. How you doing?” was the best she could come up with.
  
  “He was sick this morning. That’s why you didn’t see me at school.”
  
  “He seems okay now.” In fact, he had begun running in circles around them, and she was trying to shut her ears to the relentless tattoo of his feet.
  
  “Oh, we don’t stay sick. You didn’t know that?” Neila shook her head. “We have a long road ahead of us.”
  
  Isabel felt a need to prove she was not as backward as her new friend supposed. “My brother brought someone back from the dead once.”
  
  “I heard about that. Pretty reckless of him, wasn’t it?”
  
  “It was,” she admitted. “Brothers.” Both of them laughed.
  
  The one that was Neila’s, having grown tired of running, went to the bureau (or what Isabel assumed to be a bureau) in the dining room and took from the bottom drawer a set of building blocks, which he proceeded to play with in an unusual way: he would stack them and change them into balls, which promptly fell and rolled in all directions; then he would collect them, change them back to blocks, and stack them again; and so on, without end. “Surprises him every time,” Neila remarked.
  
  “He makes it look so easy.”
  
  “It is easy.”
  
  “Not for me.”
  
  “Then we’ll make it easier.” She rested her cup and saucer on the coffee table (coffee tables were impossible to disguise, Isabel concluded). “I want you to change these to your favorite color.” Isabel focused on them, and they turned pink. “No,” Neila said, “your true favorite.” They turned dark purple, almost black. “Ultraviolet,” she observed approvingly. “Now the table.” Again Isabel focused, and again rang the change. “And now the walls.”
  
  “That’s too much!”
  
  “Picture it in your mind. Not just on the outside, but inside, where all the tiny things—” She searched for the words.
  
  “At the molecular level?”
  
  “That’s what they call it!” Isabel, who was no science whiz, wondered momentarily if Neila knew as much as she was giving her credit for. Well, we’re aliens, she thought, not Rhodes scholars. She turned her attention to the wall opposite her. “See the plaster,” Neila bade. Isabel shut her eyes and concentrated. Soon it was clear in every detail. “Now the paint.” It was easy this time, because she had done some painting herself. “Now will it to change.”
  
  Isabel tried, but found herself straining. Superficial though the change was, it was harder than, say, melting a door, because it was at once more subtle and more widespread; she could see the big picture but could not hold on to it. At last she succeeded, but only in part: the new color washed down the walls, as if someone had flung a giant can of paint, but stopped in the middle, leaving the bottom half the original yellow.
  
  Ben ran to Neila and buried his head in her chest. Bad, she heard. “Don’t be frightened,” she soothed him. “It’s just colors.” She turned back to Isabel. “Your shade is too truthful for him,” she explained. “Don’t worry. Go ahead.” Isabel tried again, but the color trickled down only a little farther. “You’re trying to persuade yourself you can do it. Just accept that you can. Slide back the door of your cell.” At first Isabel did not understand. Then all at once she felt it, and it was exactly as Neila had described: a sudden release from confinement into a limitless universe, of which she was in charge. Almost before she could take another breath, her ultraviolet had blanketed everything.
  
  And now Ben was crying. “You don’t like it?” said Neila. “You pick one, then.” He thought for a moment. “Cat?” she repeated. It puzzled her for a moment, and then she smiled. “Oh, cat!” She whispered to Isabel, “It belongs to a neighbor.” She shot her eye around the room and decked the walls in stripes of orange and grey.
  
  “Oh, please,” said Isabel. She changed them to pink. Not to be outdone, Neila changed them to sky blue. The two kept up the contest, working their way through the spectrum, until at last they timed their changes at the same instant, and the clash of their energies exploded in a confusion of colors like an omnidimensional rainbow. Ben clapped his hands. They all laughed.
  
  Isabel felt up for anything now. “What next?” she asked eagerly.
  
  “Next.... I know. You’ll make it colder.”
  
  “I tried that once. Couldn’t do it.”
  
  “But you’re free now. You’ve opened the door.” Isabel knew it was so—and that she would never go back into confinement; never never never. “Imagine absolute cold,” Neila instructed her, “and begin moving toward it.” Isabel found it was easy—ridiculously easy. “Closer. And still closer.” Ben was shivering. “Ben, you know how to warm yourself. Do it.” He ceased shivering. “You can stop now,” Neila told Isabel. But the temperature continued to fall. “Isabel, stop!” Ice was forming on the walls and the ceiling. Isabel’s eyes were fixed, and her body was quivering like a hummingbird’s, too rapidly to be seen.
  
  At once Neila countered with a power play of her own, and the temperature began to rise. The icicles cracked. The noise broke Isabel’s trance. She saw the walls running with water. Within seconds, it had all evaporated, and the room was back to normal. She felt as if she had been on a roller coaster and under a steam press, both at the same time. “What happened?”
  
  “The power was controlling you. If you don’t keep it in check, you’ll get swept away by it. That’s why it’s called the Balance.” She gazed admiringly at her. “You’re stronger than I expected. Much stronger than me. Almost a warrior.”
  
  Isabel began to blush, and found she could control that too, which she reflected would come in very handy. “Wonder what Alex would say.”
  
  “Your human friend? Don’t tell him. Anything we reveal to them, they’ll only use against us.”
  
  “I’ve been told that before.” And as then, she reserved judgment, at least where Alex was concerned. “What about seeing into their minds? How can I get better at that?” She was still thinking of Alex.
  
  “That isn’t a power that can be developed. It’s a bond that exists—or doesn’t—between you and the other mind.”
  
  “And dreams? I can visit other people in their dreams. Max can’t.”
  
  “No. Only women possess the dream power. It can be developed, but only in a wrong way—to twist other people’s dreamspaces and corrupt their minds.”
  
  “I could bring them good dreams instead of bad ones.”
  
  Neila stared at her. “That’s how it’s done.”
  
  Isabel was silent. Once or twice she had fallen prey to that temptation; she wondered if Neila could tell. From now on she would have to remain in command of herself. After all, she was almost a warrior.
  
  She volunteered nevertheless to cook dinner for the family that evening, and it was ready almost before they could turn around. Max watched with strong misgivings as she carried in the last of the casseroles, using a pair of pot holders for show. “How’d you get it done so fast?” her mother asked.
  
  Isabel smiled brightly. “Who knows? Maybe I’m a witch.” Her brother flashed her a cautionary look, which she ignored.
  
  Philip started to serve himself. “This one’s not hot.”
  
  “Isn’t it?” She laid a hand on it. “Feels hot to me.” Her father tested it again and quickly drew his hand back. “Did it burn you? Sorry.”
  
  “Wasn’t this way a second ago,” he said.
  
  “But it must have been!” said Diane. She looked around helplessly. “Mustn’t it?”
  
  “Yeah,” Philip agreed, “must have.” But he still looked doubtful.
  
  Isabel ignored Max’s disapproving stare. “Dig in, everybody!” she chirruped.
  
  After dinner, the two of them shared dish duty, but Isabel had them all washed and dried in a few seconds. Max beckoned her into the adjoining laundry room, out of sight of their parents, and spoke to her in a whisper. “What do you think you’re doing?”
  
  “Dishes.”
  
  Her blitheness irritated him. “You have to stop! They’re getting suspicious.”
  
  “Let them. I’m tired of pretending—tired of crawling when I could be walking. Don’t you ever feel like that?”
  
  “Of course. Things could be so easy otherwise. So many things.”
  
  “You said we should develop our powers.”
  
  “Not to the point where we give ourselves away. We can’t take that risk.”
  
  “Can’t! Everything’s always ‘can’t’ for you! I say it’s time to see what we can do.” She breezed off before he could answer. He stared at the finished dishes with more worry than a casual bystander would have thought they merited.
  
  The same evening, in the Crashdown kitchen, Liz proudly reported to Michael on her discoveries in the archives. “I checked out the sites on your map—the two we know about.”
  
  “I told you to leave that to me.”
  
  “No, listen! Both places have a record of strange occurrences. Electrical disturbances, unexplained noises, car batteries dying for no reason—that’s at Angels’ Ground—”
  
  “Yeah, I’ve used that one myself.”
  
  “It’s proof you were right. About them being sources of energy. I’ll bet every one of them has stories like that connected with it.”
  
  Michael could not repress his interest. “Did you ask if there were any other places weird things have happened?”
  
  “Michael, we’re in Roswell, alien capital of the world. There are reports of weird incidents everywhere. To find what we’re looking for, first we’ll have to determine where the other sites are. Then we can look them up specifically.”
  
  “Liz!” her father called from the front. She started out.
  
  “Thanks,” Michael said. “But I still don’t want you getting involved in this alien stuff.”
  
  She turned in the exitway. “Afraid it’s too late.” The door swung shut after her. Max, he thought. She must be talking about Max.
  
  He hitched a ride out to Angels’ Ground that night, at an hour late enough for the loving couples to have finished their business there. He hiked up to the top, where he sat cross-legged, facing the town, and pondered what Liz had told him, together with what other information he had. He had two maps in front of him: one was the replica of the cave painting, the other a street grid of Roswell. Following the strategy proposed by Liz, he tried postulating first one and then another map symbol as representing the place he was.
  
  Suppose it were the lines like whipcords? Then north would be at the top left, or almost. But if it were the row of boxes, north would be at the top right. And the distance to the symbol for the library was shorter, which meant the scale would be smaller—or would it be larger? If it were the whipcords, the boxes would be to the left; if it were the boxes, the spiral would be in the same place the whipcords would be if—
  
  Michael felt his mind giving way. It could not handle that many contingencies at once. “Too much!” he shouted, rubbing the back of his head.
  
  “Doing some surveying?” a voice called.
  
  This time he did not have to look to know who it was. “Ms. Topolsky! Wouldn’t you know?” He tucked the star map under the other one. “Nah, just practicing my map reading. For a class project.”
  
  “It’s past curfew again.”
  
  “So arrest me.”
  
  She shook her head. “Out of my jurisdiction.”
  
  “You know, I’ve never been sure what all your jurisdiction covers.”
  
  She sat down next to him with more agility than most adults possessed. “Oh, a very broad spectrum. Including what happened at Dr. Grunewald’s.”
  
  “Doctor who?”
  
  “You mean the others haven’t told you?”
  
  “Nah, they’re not telling me much these days. What happened?”
  
  “They won’t tell me either. But I’ll share my surmise, if you like.” Michael shrugged. “The doctor abducted your friend Max, intending to torture or perhaps kill him. His sister and Liz Parker broke in and rescued him. They may also have done something to unhinge Grunewald—his mind’s completely gone. But don’t worry, he’s safely under observation.”
  
  “Why would he kidnap Max?”
  
  “He seems to have gotten it in his head that Max was an otherworldly being.”
  
  “What proof did he have?” He immediately revised the question. “I mean, thought he had.”
  
  “None,” she said, “now.” She could not keep the edge out of her voice.
  
  Michael felt relieved. Then he remembered they had all hidden this from him, even Liz. “And I’m the only one who didn’t know?”
  
  “Now you do,” Topolsky pointed out. “And in exchange....” She took a sheet of paper from her purse. “Can you tell me what this is?”
  
  It was a sketch of the Balancer—not quite accurate, but close enough. “Who did it?”
  
  “A student.” Michael remembered the boy outside the rest room, and wondered how the drawing had made its way to her desk. “Well?”
  
  Michael felt pressed to give an answer, and decided the easiest would be the truth—but not all of it. “Something Max found.”
  
  “What does it do?”
  
  “So far, nothing. Except—no, nothing.”
  
  “Who has it now? Max?” Michael hesitated. “Remember, I told you about Grunewald. He didn’t.”
  
  “Yeah. He’s got it.” Then an idea struck him: since she knew about Nasedo—how much, he was uncertain—she might also know about the map. “Okay, my turn. See if these symbols mean anything to you.” He got to his knees and began to trace them in the dirt with his finger. He finished the whipcord lines and had no sooner started on the solar system than she clutched his arm. “What do you know about those?”
  
  “What those?”
  
  “The rocks.”
  
  “You can tell from this?”
  
  “It’s their exact shape. You’ve never seen them yourself?” He shook his head. “Then where’d you get this picture?”
  
  “Saw it on a wall.”
  
  “Graffiti?”
  
  “Come to think of it, yeah. Where are they located?”
  
  “The desert southwest of here. I don’t know the exact location.”
  
  “How far?”
  
  “I said, I don’t know.” The subject seemed to disturb her. But she was the one who had brought it up.
  
  “The exact shape....” Michael mused. “Wait a second!” He looked at the drawing he had begun, then at the plateau, and quickly added the final strokes. “Remind you of anything?”
  
  She squinted at it. “A nipple?” He raised his eyebrows. “Sorry, that’s what it reminds me of.”
  
  “And women say guys only think of one thing.” He pocketed the maps and scrambled to his feet. “Here, I’ll show you.” At the west end of the parking area stood a natural rock pile. They helped each other to a ledge halfway up, which gave a view onto most of the plateau and the winding approach, where she had left the Impala. “See?” he said. “It’s the same”—and, allowing for a few adjustments, it was. “They’re not just symbols. They’re pictures of those places.”
  
  “Where is this wall of yours?”
  
  He deemed it imprudent to tell her, and dropped the subject. “Mind if I bum another lift?” He started down without waiting for her, figuring she could find her own way, as she did. Feel free, she replied—not aloud, but she knew he would not be listening.
  
  At the same time—or a little before, or later—Alex was scaling a dune steeper than any at Angels’ Ground, or indeed anywhere in the waking world, with Isabel preceding him, her bare feet gliding easily over the sand. On reaching the crest, she turned and lifted her arms, as a starry galaxy spun in the black sky behind. The whistle of the wind was multiplied into a choir of soprani. “Can you really do all this?” he asked.
  
  Tonight she did not have to remind him it was a dream. “This is only the beginning,” she said—whereupon she metamorphosed into a queen, or goddess, or something that partook of each, whose like he never could have looked on and lived, except in a dream. He dropped to his knees before her, and she accepted it as her due: she was mere Isabel no longer, she was Isabel triumphant.
  
  Though it was Alex’s dream, not hers, it imbued her with an elation that lasted through most of the following day. In the afternoon Neila and she made arrangements for her next visit—that is to say, her next lesson—and while they were standing together, Ursula and some of her clique (which was no longer Isabel’s) passed without acknowledging her, or she them. She was not sure who had cut off communications first, but either way, she was glad about it. So was Max, who had arrived in time to witness the double snub: he had never liked those girls, and never understood what Isabel had seen in them.
  
  However, he also scowled after Neila; she had cut the conversation short, as prudence advised, when she saw him coming. “Who was that?” he asked.
  
  The same cardinal virtue advised Isabel to adopt an air of seeming indifference. “A friend.”
  
  “What’s her name?”
  
  “Neila. Why, does it matter?”
  
  “She the one you burned up all those miles on the Jeep going to see yesterday?”
  
  She had not expected him to notice, or to make the connection. “What if she was?”
  
  “Something strange about her. She might be a decoy put here by the FBI.”
  
  “She’s just a kid!”
  
  “So?” Isabel had no answer. “Keep away from her until I make sure she’s all right.”
  
  This was more than his sister, with her new sense of empowerment, could put up with. “Who are you, my jailer? You have no right to dictate who I can and can’t see!”
  
  “Didn’t mean it to sound like that.”
  
  “Well, it did.” Both were stubbornly silent for a little. Then Isabel who advanced a peace offering. “Please, Max. I’ve never had someone to talk to before—someone who understands.”
  
  “Understands?” She had revealed more than she had meant to. “That’s what it is about her. You never said.”
  
  “Her name’s Neila. She’s teaching me things, Max—things you can’t begin to conceive.”
  
  “Who are her parents?”
  
  “She doesn’t have any. Like us.”
  
  “She must live with someone—some adult. She hasn’t mentioned them?” Isabel shook her head. “Don’t you think you should ask?”
  
  “That’s between us.” She was angry because she had been thinking the same thing herself, but had been afraid of taxing her new friendship. “And you keep your nose out of it.”
  
  “Can’t promise that.”
  
  “I mean it, Max. Stay away from her!” She stormed out, leaving him more fretful than before. But then, every new thing made him more fretful than the last thing. It was his curse.

ADDED BY ISLANDGIRL 5 FOR GALEN, AS ALL PARTS WERE POSTED IN SEPARATE THREADS


Series: ...And I Can’t Hide
Episode 1.18X: The Wrong ’Uns
Rating: Teen
Summary: Isabel makes an unexpected acquaintance at school.

Disclaimer: The rights to the characters and situations of Roswell are the property of Warner Brothers, Jason Katims Productions, Twentieth Century Fox, Fox, Regency Television, and Melinda Metz.

• If Max had been aware of Michael’s investigations, he would have looked on them as further grounds for worry; because with Michael you never knew. All that day, in his free time, he had been studying the map; apart from his reading, this was longer than he had ever concentrated on anything. In addition to the word “Library,” he had added the tags “Angels’ Ground” and “Rocks—Desert (where?)” alongside the appropriate symbols. Only two were left to be identified; he had not had a chance to ask Topolsky about them, but they probably would have meant nothing to her. It was a fluke that she had known about the rocks—and how had she known?
  
  Now it was clear the symbols were simplified but recognizably accurate diagrams of the sites they represented: the diagonal lines were rocks, the concentric circles Angels’ Ground— But hold on! The spot in parentheses? How could that be the library? There was no obvious point of resemblance.
  
  That evening, he went to take another look. There was no higher ground from which to view the whole building, only the lawn surrounding it. The lawn! He remembered now that around to the side, almost at the back, stood a small amphitheatre, where he had attended concerts in the summers—and it was an ellipse. It, not the library itself, was the true energy center. And again the map had shown it accurately.
  
  He turned his attention to the two unknown symbols: the spiral and the row of five boxes. Surely the original of the latter would be easy to track down. He could gauge its general direction from that of the rocks: if they lay to the southwest, as Topolsky had said, the boxes lay west, more or less—and if the map was to scale, they were even farther off than Angels’ Ground, which would be some walk. But again, the town was not all that big. The prospect of further geographical calculations, more complex than those he had weathered already, daunted him more. This feels like homework, he thought. Steeling himself to the necessary exertion, mental as well as physical, he set out.
  
  Before long he came to row on row of apartment houses. He sought among them for a building with only five units, but found none. He knew he was being optimistic: the place he was looking for must be much farther on. So he kept walking. The apartments gave onto houses—miles of them—which gave onto a corner of the business district, which in turn gave onto more houses. He felt as if he had been walking half the night. But it was only a little past curfew when he reached a low, broad industrial area which stretched for blocks. Around him he saw nothing but parking lots, fences, and walls, looking sterile and desolate under the security lights, and separated too widely to be the objects of his search.
  
  He was about to give up when he glimpsed an empty lot, or a succession of them, in the distance, and beyond it an aggregate of smaller shapes, in whose midst he saw those he was looking for: five exactly. They were a bit longer than the map pictured them, but in exactly the right configuration. He could not imagine at first what they could be. Then he remembered the old railroad yard. It had been shut down, reopened as a museum for a time, and then shut down again. But the rusting rail cars remained—where else could they go? Little by little, as he drew nearer, he was able to see them in greater detail: a locomotive engine, a string of passenger cars, and a caboose with two of its walls caved in as from a collision.
  
  On reaching the yard, he found it surrounded by a chain link fence, but of course this was no obstacle to him. In the cave, the Stone that had marked this site had been set in the westernmost of the five blocks; the engine was the westernmost of the five cars. It was there he went first.
  
  After hauling himself up the tall steps into the cabin, the first thing he noticed was an item of clothing draped over the throttle—a sweatshirt. He turned it over. “Coach,” read a patch on the back: Nasedo had been there too. Michael was about to climb down when he heard a sound: a bell ringing, faint but clear—dingdingdingdingding: a train bell. It kept ringing, growing louder all the time. Through the front window, he saw a light—a train light—a hundred yards ahead, bearing down on him out of the darkness as if on the same track. The ground shook. But it was impossible: the track ended where the engine was standing.
  
  Hardly knowing what he was doing, he leapt out onto the ground and shot a look around. There was no train—how could there be?—only the bell, the light, and the shaking. He started running, and did not stop until he was well past the fence. He quickly mended the hole he had made in it, and stood in the middle of the field beyond, panting and—he now realized—trembling. “What the hell was that?” he asked.
  
  Almost at once, the answer came to him. It almost made him laugh. Unexplained occurrences, Liz had said: he had just had a taste of them, and they had terrified him; no wonder the museum had shut down. But why train lights, train noises? Maybe traces of the real things lingered like echoes, and the energy of the place amplified them; maybe those were what people called ghosts. But they were chance emanations, with no malevolent will behind them—not tonight at any rate. However, he had no desire to repeat the experience. He had found what he was after.
  
  Once back home, he added another tag to the map. Now only one symbol remained a mystery: the spiral. He had never seen anything like it anywhere. Yet it stirred something in him that was like a memory. His instinct told him it was not like the other symbols, that its significance was deeper. It was engraved in the Balancer, and Isabel had a pendant in the same shape, another artifact they had found. He wondered whether the symbol affected her the way it did him. If he stared at it too long, it brought to mind things that bothered him. And people: usually Hank and, for some reason, Maria. He made an effort to put it out of his thoughts. He had to be up early for work the next morning.
  
  Since this was a Saturday, Isabel was able to recruit Alex to drive her out to Neila’s in his father’s Volvo, Max having already claimed the Jeep—on purpose, she suspected, to prevent her going. If that were his plan, he had failed in it. They reached the house before noon.
  
  She did not go in at once: she was waiting for something from Alex. “Glove compartment,” he said finally. Inside, she found the Balancer, wrapped in a rag. She transferred both to her purse. “Still think I should check with Max first,” said Alex.
  
  “Trust me, if anyone can tell us about this thing, it’s Neila.”
  
  “Yeah, maybe.” But that had not been his point.
  
  “Thanks for the ride.” She opened the door. “You can pick me up around two.”
  
  “Unh-uh. I’m waiting.”
  
  She looked doubtful. “Long wait.”
  
  “Brought my games along.” He lifted a laptop out of the back seat. “Scouts’ motto—‘Be prepared.’”
  
  “You were never a Scout!”
  
  “Yeah, my motto too.”
  
  She gave him the most uncomplicated smile he had ever seen on her. “You’re a nice guy, Alex. You know that?”
  
  “Story I get is, we finish last.”
  
  “Not with me you don’t.” On impulse, she leaned over and kissed him. The beam on his face this generated was still there after Neila had ushered her into the house.
  
  She began her visit with a confession. “I told my brother about you. Didn’t mean to, it just came out.”
  
  Neila nodded. “Guess he was bound to find out sooner or later.”
  
  “He asked me questions about you. I didn’t have the answers.”
  
  She read between the lines. “You could find them if you tried, by searching my dream closet. I could do the same with you. But do we need to do that?” Isabel shook her head. “Your brother wouldn’t understand.”
  
  Isabel had her purse open and her hand on the Balancer. It froze. “You’re right,” she said after a moment. “He wouldn’t understand at all.” She withdrew her hand, uncertain if what she had been about to do was right. Perhaps she would know later. She shut the purse, laid it on the sofa, and sat down herself. With barely a thought for Alex, who was still playing in the car, she turned her attention to whatever new task she might be set.
  
  “In my mind,” Neila said, “I’m holding the image of a form. Find it, see it, and change the table to match it.” Isabel concentrated. Within a few seconds, she found it, saw it—really saw it—and tried to make the change, but with no result. “All you have to do is slide open the door,” Neila reminded her. She did so; her face brightened with the freedom of it. Now the table grew into a cube twice the size it had been. “Now repeat. Different form this time.” Again Isabel concentrated, found it, saw it—and made a face. “No snide remarks!” Neila ordered. The cube changed to a valentine heart that was twice as big again. “Repeat!”
  
  This time the job took longer. Isabel’s face showed great perplexity. At last the heart expanded, almost exploded, into a geodesic dome so large it scraped the ceiling plaster. “Isabel!” Neila exclaimed. “This isn’t what I was thinking of at all.”
  
  They both stood and circled it. “No,” said Isabel, “me either.”
  
  Outside, Alex heard a car approaching. There was no reason the sound should have startled him, but it did; the afternoon had been that tranquil. The girls would have heard the sound too, if they had not been absorbed in the manifestation that had appeared before them. “You must have picked it up from some place,” Neila said.
  
  “Or something triggered the memory. I was inside one of these once.” This brought to mind the pendant she was wearing, which her top concealed (she wore it for luck, but never so it could be seen, in case the wrong people were watching). “That’s where I found this.” She lifted it out.
  
  Neila stared at it strangely. She went to a bookcase (which unlike most of the furniture Isabel had been able to identify on account of the books in it) and took down a photo, which she brought to show her. “It’s the same one, isn’t it?”
  
  The photo showed two men in front of a dome like the one Isabel had just created—in fact, the one she had been in, an add-on to the house of a man who had once written a book about aliens. From its dust jacket she recognized him as one of the men in the picture. And he was wearing the pendant that was now hers. “That’s James Atherton. Who’s the man with him?” He was tall, with a black beard, and wearing a cowboy hat.
  
  “My father. He gave him that charm.”
  
  A chill gripped Isabel. “You never had a father. You said so.”
  
  “Sorry, I meant stepfather. I sometimes forget, we’ve been with him so long.” In the pause that followed, the sound of the motor reached them. Neila peered out a window, and her face lit up. “It’s him! I wasn’t expecting him back until next week.”
  
  Isabel was confused. “Who?”
  
  “The one we were just talking about. My stepfather.”
  
  No, she thought, no. Backing toward the door, she bumped into the dome. “I have to be somewhere. A date. I have a date.” She hardly knew what she was saying.
  
  “Stay! I want you to meet him!”
  
  Isabel ran out, ignoring her cries. A battered Cadillac convertible was turning in at the gate. She raced past it to the Volvo and opened the door on the driver’s side. “Slide over!”
  
  When Alex was slow to comply, she forced her way in, shoving him aside. “Hey! Not your car!” he protested. She started it up, glancing back at the house. Neila was standing at the door, looking bewildered, as Alex was too. Isabel wished she could pull her out of there—and her brother too, of course—but it was impossible. The driver of the Caddy looked the same as in his photo, though next time, she knew, it would probably be different. She swung out and shot off down the lane in the wrong direction, turned at the first crossing, and doubled back at the second. “What’s your hurry?” asked Alex. “Who was that guy?”
  
  “Nasedo.” Her eyes remained fixed on the road. Why did he have to be Neila’s father? Hers, of all people? For once, something in her life had been perfect and made her happy, really really really happy, and now—
  
  No sooner had Alex absorbed the news than a thought struck him. “Hey, where’s your purse?”
  
  It took less than a second for the realization to hit. She jerked the car to a halt. “Crap!” He had never heard a scream like that from her before. “I left it there!”
  
  “Left it? But it has the—”
  
  “I know!”
  
  “It’s with him!”
  
  “Alex, I know! I was so rattled—” She buried her face in her hands. “Oh, God. What’ll I do? What’ll I do?” At first thought, she was not even figuring Alex into the equation.
  
  “Max’ll kill me.” He knew this was not the most important consideration at the moment, but it was the one uppermost in his mind. “He’ll do the opposite of what he did to Liz. He’ll make holes in me.”
  
  “After he’s finished with me.” She snapped out of it; feeling sorry for themselves would not help. “We have to go back for it.”
  
  “And take on Nasedo? Just you and me?—well, you.”
  
  Another impossibility. “You’re right. We’ll have to involve the others—except for Michael. But we won’t tell them about—that. Not yet.”
  
  “Why?”
  
  “Because I don’t want them to know, okay? Until I can get it back.” Covering your ass, in other words, Alex thought. Like the rest of the world. He understood the motive, but he did not admire her for it; or the rest of the world.
  
  In less than an hour, however, he was at the UFO Center telling Max only as much of what had happened as she had instructed him to. “Nasedo?” Max repeated. His next question echoed his sister’s “Michael doesn’t know, does he?”
  
  “Isabel thought it’d be best to keep it from him. For now.” The qualification was his, not Isabel’s. “She’s gone across to tell Liz.”
  
  “Liz!” Max’s first thought was that she should not be told anything more about them, ever. Then he reflected on it. “Well, maybe it’s best. She might be able to help.”
  
  She was not helping at the moment, in any way Isabel could detect. “Are you sure?” she kept repeating, and Isabel had to keep insisting, “I told you, I saw him.” They were in the staff room of the Crashdown; Isabel had unstopped the door from the kitchen to keep Michael from hearing. His back had been turned—she had made sure of that—but not quite long enough to prevent his catching a glimpse of her top as the door swung in. He could not mistake that top.
  
  He heard Jeff at the back room door. “Lizzie! Doing a solo out here!” This confirmed his guess about who Isabel was talking to.
  
  “Five minutes, Dad!”
  
  “You’ve had your five minutes.” From the order window Michael saw him return to the front, visibly frustrated. He was not a good server, but he made up for it by being a good host, and he was too busy schmoozing with the customers to notice the woman who was not sitting—not today—but just wandering through looking for someone. When she reached the door to the rest rooms at the back, she discovered a need she had been unconscious of and went in to meet it, paying no attention to the sign reading “Rest Rooms for Customers Only.”
  
  Liz’s “five minutes” had not ended yet. But something else was about to, and Isabel would later be cross with herself for not having seen it coming. “Michael mustn’t find out,” she was saying.
  
  “Does it really matter?”
  
  Her tone of bleak indifference took Isabel by surprise. “You know Michael as well as I do. He’ll try to kill him, or join up with him. Either way, he’s in danger.”
  
  “Nasedo’s no danger to you. Just us.” She looked away. “But then so are all of you. He does it his way, you do it yours. Same difference in the end.” That morning, she had been brooding on her condition, as she had been doing more and more often lately, and this always left her sour.
  
  To Isabel, it was just a distraction from the crisis at hand. “What are you talking about?”
  
  “It’s the reason you were sent here, isn’t it? To contaminate our blood? Except Dr. Grunewald found out about it.”
  
  “Grunewald was crazy.”
  
  “Then I’m crazy too.”
  
  “You’re sounding that way.”
  
  In fact, Liz’s condition was getting to her: when she was in her present mood, the weight of her hopelessness leaned on her other thoughts and threw them atilt. "One drop, Isabel. From one of his slides. That’s all it took.”
  
  “Took to do what? I don’t have time for this.” Michael was listening from the other side of the door; unheard by them, he had crept up and put his ear to the crack.
  
  “Took for your blood to poison mine. If you want, I can show you. Under the microscope.”
  
  Right now Isabel was preoccupied with organizing the rescue of Neila, and the Balancer. She felt for Liz but could do nothing for her, as far as she could see, and so dismissed the problem as no concern of hers; triage, they called this in rescue operations. “That won’t be necessary. Does Max know?”
  
  “And if he did? What’s one human more or less?”
  
  “I think you mean more to him than that.” She did think so, even now. But it had sounded perfunctory: she was holding back her sympathy in the service of being practical. And it would not have helped anything anyway.
  
  Michael was trying to make sense of it all. He could not see the hardening of her expression, but could hear it in her voice. “Look, obviously I can’t contradict you. I don’t know why we’re here for a fact, any more than you do. But I do know one thing, now.” He heard her footsteps as she paced. “I thought we could work together to fight Nasedo, in spite of our differences.” At the mention of Nasedo, he listened harder. “Now I see Michael was right. We’re natural enemies. This proves it.”
  
  “Maybe it’s not natural. Maybe you were engineered for this.”
  
  “Even worse. I’m really sorry, Liz—though you may not believe it right now. Sorry we ever interfered with your life. Max should have—” She stopped.
  
  “Let me die? Yeah, guess he should.”
  
  That was not what Isabel had meant—was it? They had reached the end of the conversation; the end. “Crap,” she said, for the second time that day.
  
  Michael was ready to barge in and demand a full explanation from them when somebody beat him to it: the door from the cafe opened partway, and Jen’s face appeared in the gap, gazing fearfully at Isabel. “What are you?”
  
  “How much did you hear?”
  
  “All of it. From in there.” She pointed toward the ladies’ room. “Through the wall.”
  
  “Have to fix that,” said Liz.
  
  Isabel turned her eyes in that direction. “Done.” She turned back to Jen. “If you heard, then you know. But you can’t tell anyone.”
  
  “Especially your boyfriend.” The two of them moved to flank her, one on each side, suspending their just-concluded separation agreement to mount the joint attack.
  
  “Husband,” Jen said. “He’s my husband.”
  
  “You married the guy?” said Isabel, and then, “Sorry.”
  
  “He’s not like that all the time.” But she sounded defensive. “Not with me. Or with his sister. She’s got a birth defect. Really, that was the reason for the alien thing—he was looking for a cure, from up there.” Then the truth struck her. She stared at Liz. “But you were healed. Larry was right!”
  
  “And if he finds out,” said Liz, “his life could be in danger. Yours too.”
  
  “Danger from what?”
  
  “You know about the silo murder?” said Isabel. “The handprint they found?” Jen nodded. “The guy who made it—he’s back.”
  
  Michael gave a start, which caused him to bang into the door. Those on the other side heard, but before they could act on the knowledge, Jeff burst in. “Okay, Lizzie, back to work! And you two, out of here! This area’s clearly labeled for staff only.”
  
  Per Isabel’s instructions, Max and Alex were waiting on the sidewalk in front. “You have the Balancer on you?” Max asked.
  
  Alex had not heard the name before. “The what?”
  
  “Sorry. The artifact we found.”
  
  “No, we—have to drop by and pick it up after we leave.” It was not exactly a lie, but it was intentionally misleading, and he did not feel right about it. “Why not tell Valenti? He’s been hunting the guy for years.”
  
  “And if he gets arrested, what happens to his stepchildren? They’ll be like me and Isabel. Orphans.”
  
  “So you’ll let him keep killing because he’s a family man?”
  
  “I haven’t worked that out. But I’m not bringing the sheriff into it.”
  
  “Into what?” said the voice they had least wanted to hear: without even trying, Valenti had stolen up on them from behind. “What’s going on, you two?” They stood facing him awkwardly.
  
  —and might have stood so all night if the girls, who were just coming out of the back room, had not seen their predicament. “Great,” said Isabel.
  
  Jen sized up the situation at once. “Leave this to me,” she said, surprising the others. She ran out to Valenti and grabbed his sleeve. “Sheriff, I want to report a missing person. My husband.”
  
  “Ma’am, one minute, please—”
  
  “He’s been gone all morning. I’m afraid he’s been abducted by aliens.” This made him turn, and the boys too. “I’m in the kitchen making scrambled eggs,” she went on, “his favorite. But no bacon—he used to eat it every morning, but I put a stop to that after we got married.”
  
  While Valenti listened with growing impatience, Isabel slipped out behind his back. She waved her thanks at Jen. Max joined her, and they hurried across to where the Jeep was parked outside the UFO Center. To his annoyance, she claimed the driver’s seat. “We have to wait for Alex,” he said. “He’s got the Balancer at his place.”
  
  “Not any more,” said Isabel. She started the engine.
  
  “So I finish the eggs,” Jen continued, “and I call him. ‘Larry!’ I call. He doesn’t answer. And when I look, he’s gone! And he hasn’t been back since.”
  
  Valenti scratched his neck. “And you suspect aliens are responsible?”
  
  “Well, last night I woke up and heard this weird squeaking. Like mice.”
  
  “Maybe it was—” He saw the Jeep hanging a U, and saw who was in it. “Hey!” he shouted. It disappeared around a corner.
  
  The person Jen had reported as missing was just turning the same corner, on foot. “Larry!” she cried. She ran to meet him.
  
  “I’ve been looking all over for you,” he said.
  
  “Me too.” That much of her story had been true. “Where have you been?”
  
  “Interview.” He could not hold back. “Jen, I got the job!”
  
  “Oh, Larry!” They hugged each other. She called back to Valenti. “Guess what? He wasn’t taken by aliens.”
  
  “Got a job at the library,” he said proudly.
  
  “Same difference,” Valenti muttered.
  
  “Let’s celebrate,” said Larry. “What do you say to dinner at Chez Pierre?”
  
  “I say—ooh la la!” And they walked off arm in arm.
  
  Alex was now alone with Valenti, and uneasily aware of that fact. “Mr. Whitman.” Valenti grinned. “Since it’s just you and me, what say we step out back for a chat?” He motioned toward the alley that ran alongside the restaurant.
  
  “Chat about what?”
  
  “What you kids are hiding.” Alex put on an absolutely-not-hiding-anything look, of a kind Valenti had seen many times before. “It could be more dangerous than you think. Suppose something happened to Isabel Evans?” Alex glanced sharply at him. “Expect you’d feel pretty cut up about it. I’d like to spare you that. But you’ll have to work with me.” Alex recognized the tactic, but it was having its effect regardless. By the time they reached the alley at the rear, Michael, who had been keeping an eye on everyone’s comings and goings, had posted himself just inside the back door, holding it open far enough for him to overhear.
  
  Isabel, meanwhile, was heading west on the 70 at a speed Valenti could not have matched, and which had her brother clutching the door frame. “Will you slow down?” he pleaded.
  
  “No.”
  
  “Oh. Well, okay, then.” Somehow she had assumed command, and he did not challenge it. “Where are we going?”
  
  “Nasedo’s.”
  
  “And you have the Balancer with you?”
  
  She hesitated while she cast around for a strategy that would keep her from having to tell him outright. “Not—exactly.”
  
  “Didn’t you say Alex gave it to you?”
  
  She hesitated again. No strategy had revealed itself. “Not—exactly.”
  
  “Then what exactly? Isabel, where is it?”
  
  This time she hesitated much longer, until she realized avoidance was impossible. “I left it at Nasedo’s.”
  
  “What?”
  
  “I couldn’t risk going in alone. I mean, I had Alex with me—but I needed you.”
  
  This placated her brother a little, as she had hoped it would. “We have to get it back. Who knows what he’ll do with it?”
  
  “It’s more important to get her out of there. Her and Ben.”
  
  “I wouldn’t say more important—”
  
  “Of course they won’t listen.” She was now speaking mainly to herself. “He’s never harmed them, and probably never will. But he’s a murderer. Sooner or later it will all come down on them. It always does. Then everybody ends up getting hurt.” Max had questions, but held them back until she was done. “You were right, Max. I was wrong. We should keep to ourselves—not get involved with other people. It only makes matters worse. And now Liz—” She stopped.
  
  “What about Liz?”
  
  She tried to tell him as simply as possible. “Her blood got another kind mixed with it. Our kind.”
  
  This confused him. “I don’t see how—”
  
  “Not you. There was an accident in the lab. Her blood was poisoned by ours. Just like Grunewald said.”
  
  “Grunewald is—”
  
  “Crazy. I told her. Didn’t ease her mind much, though.”
  
  “You’re sure? Absolutely sure?”
  
  “She is. And she’s the scientist.”
  
  Max shook his head. “There must be a way to save her—some way, somewhere.”
  
  That was just like him: now, when they had to be thinking practically, his head was still in the clouds. “Why must there? You can’t save everybody, Max. And now, thanks to me, we may not even be able to save ourselves. I’ve bungled it completely.” That was the other side of self-determination.
  
  But she had succeeded in putting a stop to his meaningless invocations and restoring him to the present concern: he now looked as desperate as she did. “Could things get any worse?” he said.
  
  “Afraid so.” She nodded toward the rear view mirror. “The same car’s been tailing us for miles.” She turned onto a side road. The car sped past them. She saw it was the one that had brought her the same way earlier. “Alex! You can’t go out there on your own!” But before she could deal with this new problem, a cry reached her—and not one her brother could hear. It filled every corner of her mind. Though it was wordless, soundless, its message was unmistakable: it was a cry for help. And she knew who the sender was; every consciousness was as individual as a silver handprint.
  
  Max saw alarm written in her features. “What is it?”
  
  “Neila. In trouble.” But where? She searched the landscape. “There!” She pointed to a grey Sebring with smoked-glass windows that soared past in the opposite direction: that was the source, without doubt.
  
  “Is Nasedo with her?”
  
  Isabel imagined him as she had seen him, and cast her mind into the Sebring, seeking a match. “I don’t think so.”
  
  “Then he’s still at the house. That’s where Alex—”
  
  “I can’t be bothered with Alex now.” But she felt a twinge of conscience saying it. She climbed back onto the highway and followed the Sebring. When it turned off, heading south, she did the same.
  
  The Volvo continued to Nasedo’s house and stopped in front. The driver switched the ignition off without a key (which he did not have in any case) and jumped out. He said, to people not present, “So this is the place you didn’t want me to know about. Ha! Found it anyway.” He crumbled the gate with a look, tramped up the path, paused at the door, then crumbled that as well, and crossed the threshold. The dome still crowded the living room. Michael circled it with care, expecting the coach to pop out at him any second. He reconnoitered, one room at a time.
  
  Only one door was shut. He threw it open. The room was dark. But no sooner had he stepped in than he sensed another presence there. He made a light like a will-o’-the-wisp, which fluttered just below the ceiling. It revealed the room’s occupant—a man in bed, half-lying, half-sitting. He smiled at Michael. “I’ve waited a long time for this.”
  
  “Yeah,” said Michael. “Me too.” Ben’s playground ball was sitting by the door (the room was his). Michael lifted it and hurled it at the bed with such fury that it burst against the headboard. The reclining man had deflected it, but just barely. “Why did you have to make me fight you?” Michael shouted. “Why?” The man stared at him, uncomprehending.
  
  The Sebring and the Jeep that was dogging it had passed out of the city into the desert. The Sebring turned off onto a narrow road, followed it for a short way, and then abandoned it to take off across the waste; the Jeep followed suit. Both were trailing walls of dust. The Jeep had an easier time over the rock and brush, and gained on its prey steadily, but too slowly for Isabel’s taste: she wanted a resolution now. She wheeled around to a view of the front tires, focused on them, and turned them to granite, forcing the sedan to a stop. Two “suits” jumped out, carrying revolvers, which turned red hot under Max’s gaze; the suits threw them down and fled. Unexpectedly, two more vehicles—a beige Rover and a black Impala—bore down on them from the turnoff road, blocking their escape. One disgorged Valenti, the other Topolsky and another suit, all with guns drawn. The runners halted.
  
  The Jeep pulled up next to the Sebring. Isabel rotted one of the rear doors, and it fell away, revealing Neila, Ben, and a heavy-set woman with greying hair beside them. She grabbed Ben by the collar. A second later, her hands flew to her head, releasing him. He and Neila scrambled out, and she enfolded him in her arms. Isabel ran to them; Max followed. The law officers walked up with the two fugitives in tow. Isabel, to whom it was not yet clear they were being detained rather than reinforced, favored Topolsky with her most scornful stare. “So the FBI’s stealing children now? Nice way to make a living.”
  
  Topolsky nodded toward the pair. “Not ours, I’m happy to say. But I bet I know whose they are.” She peered into the sedan. “As I thought. Hello, Margaret.”
  
  “Kathleen,” the grey-haired woman replied coldly.
  
  “Out.” She did not move. “Now!” This time she slid out, grumbling, and was confronted by the row of not-ofs—more than she could ever have seen together in one place; her belief in them, if it had ever wavered, was now confirmed. “Allow me to introduce your child stealer,” said Topolsky. “Margaret Seaver from the Bureau of Energy Alternatives Management—BEAM, as it’s called.”
  
  “More than from the Bureau, dearie. I’m the new number two.”
  
  “I wouldn’t brag too loudly about that,” said Topolsky.
  
  “Who’s number one?” asked Valenti. Seaver ignored the question.
  
  “Wouldn’t we like to know?” said Topolsky. She looked toward Neila and Ben. “And these are the children.” She gazed at them with a catlike curiosity that suggested she had heard something of them before. “What’s your business with them?”
  
  “The family’s being detained on grounds of national security. Sheriff, I expect your support in this.”
  
  “My job’s enforcing the law. These kids haven’t broken any laws, that I know of.”
  
  “Some things, there are no laws to cover—yet. We create our own as need arises.”
  
  The sheriff met her commanding stare with one of his own. “That kinda makes you the criminals, doesn’t it?”
  
  “And inasmuch as your agency has no police powers,” Topolsky added, “I’m taking you all into custody on suspicion of kidnapping and child endangerment. You have the right—”
  
  Seaver laughed derisively. “You have no legal basis for holding us.”
  
  “Some things, laws don’t cover,” Topolsky rejoined. “So we make up our own.”
  
  “One phone call—one—and I’ll be out. And so will you, dearie—out on your well-shaped ear.”
  
  “Who said anything about a phone call?” This seemed to unsettle Seaver somewhat.
  
  “Where’s the father?” Valenti asked suddenly. “He was at the house too.” Isabel and Max glanced at each other: how had he known that?
  
  “Margaret?”
  
  “We saw no one else there.”
  
  “No, you wouldn’t have looked. Not once you had the children. They’re who you were after—your ‘energy alternative.’ And one that doesn’t require recharging.” The scorn in Seaver’s expression did not entirely mask her displeasure at the extent of her rival’s knowledge.
  
  None of this was lost on Valenti. “I get the feeling I’m in over my head.”
  
  “So are they,” Topolsky said, eyes trained on Seaver, “only they don’t know it yet.”
  
  A familiar figure had left the sheriff’s car to join them. Valenti looked cross. “Didn’t I tell you to wait?”
  
  “For how long?” asked Alex.
  
  “How can you be here?” said Isabel. “You drove past us twenty minutes ago.”
  
  “That was Michael. He swiped our car.”
  
  Max looked at Isabel. “We have to go after him.”
  
  “Maybe not,” Valenti said, pointing toward a Cadillac that was approaching from the road. Michael was driving (which in itself would normally have been sufficient to frighten Max and Isabel), Nasedo beside him. They stopped some fifty yards away. Nasedo climbed out, with evident effort, and held the door open. “Children!” he called. They ran to him, and Valenti reached for his gun. Nasedo held out an object resembling a Nerf football; instantly, cylinders of a glass-like but impenetrable substance rose up like cornstalks, encircling the sheriff and each of his colleagues.
  
  Seeing her opportunity, Seaver broke into a run, or an attempt at one. But the dirt around her feet changed to a thick tar that held them fast. Nasedo, who had done it, walked out to her, evidently full of purpose, though his steps were uncertain. He clutched her neck with a gloved hand. Before Max or Isabel could think of a way to stop him, they realized he did not intend to harm her: he was doing a mind bind. It lasted only a few seconds, but it appeared to drain all the energy from him, and when he stepped back, he looked nearly as scared as Seaver. “That’s what you have in mind for the children? All of them?”
  
  “Papa!” Neila shouted. “Time to go!”
  
  “You must be stopped,” Nasedo continued, “but by your own people. Otherwise, more will follow in your path.”
  
  All these complications had gotten in the way of Isabel’s main purpose, but she had not forgotten it, and the more events countered it, the more urgent it had seemed. She approached her friend. “Stay here! I’ll find a place for you and your brother.” Then she had a wonderful idea. “You can live with us! We can be like sisters.”
  
  “Sorry, Isabel. He comes first.”
  
  “But there are things you don’t know about him.”
  
  Neila smiled sadly. “You don’t understand.”
  
  “I can help you. We can help each other.” Her voice grew increasingly strained. “You’re the only one I have!”
  
  “I know.” Neila wiped her cheek. “But, Isabel—he’s the only one we have.”
  
  Max approached the car. “Michael, don’t do this. Take his road and you’ll never find the way back.”
  
  Michael gave a half-smile. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Maxwell. As usual.”
  
  “Please, Michael,” said Isabel, “think what you’re doing.”
  
  To her he spoke more gently. “Have a little faith, Issy. Just—a little faith.”
  
  The children climbed into the back seat, and Nasedo rejoined him in the front. “Goodbye, Isabel,” said Neila. “Remember me.” They took off in another cloud of dust.
  
  “Remember you?” Isabel echoed, too late for the other to hear. “What do you think?” The parting was killing her. She guessed she was not that much of a warrior, after all.
  
  “I’ll put out an APB.” Valenti ran to the Rover.
  
  Isabel watched the lengthening dust trail. “I’m responsible,” she said to Max. “For everything that’s happened.”
  
  “Not Liz.”
  
  “No. But Neila. And Michael.”
  
  “And the Balancer,” he added untactfully.
  
  It had scarcely figured in her thoughts. She had always had a prejudice against it, and its loss mattered little to her compared to that of Neila, which was like losing a part of herself. “I wanted to come into my own. I did. And now we’ve lost both of them.”
  
  Her brother replied quietly. “I think we lost Michael a long time ago.”
  
  When Valenti returned, he was scowling. “So much for the APB. They jammed the radio somehow.”
  
  “And the somehows mount up,” said Topolsky. “Or had you noticed? See you back at the station.” She and her suit marched the prisoners off to the Impala.
  
  Alex gave a sigh. “Better collect Dad’s car. Assuming it got to where it was going.”
  
  “Want to report the theft?” Valenti asked.
  
  “Not sure. Since I took it without permission in the first place—”
  
  “I getcha. Come on, I’ll drive you there.”
  
  “I’ll take Alex,” Isabel said, resuming command. Even the sheriff did not question it. “You can see Max home.”
  
  Max was not crazy about the idea. “I can’t come with you?”
  
  “I need to talk to Alex. Alone.” She beckoned him to follow her.
  
  Max and the sheriff stood for a few seconds, each trying to come up with something in the way of polite conversation. They at last gave up, by joint unspoken consent, and headed for the Rover.
  
  After all the others had left, Isabel and Alex remained sitting in the Jeep, not talking. He could sense she was working up to saying something she did not want to say. She did have feelings for him—her mother had been right about that—and she was thinking of telling him how far they extended, just this once. But in the end, it was the bottom line that prevailed. “We can never be together, Alex. Put it out of your mind. I have.”
  
  Is that all? he thought. “This makes—let’s see—repetition five thousand two hundred ninety-eight. Or is it nine?”
  
  “I know. I’ve been unfair with you. I was unsure of myself, and I took it out on you. But this time it’s real. On account of Liz and—all of it. Okay?” She reflected that if she had been as much a leader as she had been pretending, she would not have been soliciting his consent.
  
  “What’s Liz got to do with it?” Isabel had assumed she would have told him, but he was obviously mystified; one more duty for her to perform.
  
  By the time they reached the patch of frame houses, the shadows were lengthening, and they had passed beyond all that could be said. They found the Volvo easily enough—but it was now parked in front of a vacant lot. Isabel’s purse was lying in the middle of it. As she picked it up, she stared around her at the emptiness where this morning her finishing school had stood, and she felt bereaved all over again. There was a pit inside her that was aching to be filled, and the only person who could fill it was gone. She thought of the pendant. Now, too late, she wished she had given it back.
  
  After dropping Alex off at home, she sat on the street in the Jeep, and continued to sit there until the sun had sunk out of sight. Everything goes away, she thought, suddenly or by degrees.
  
  She was still thinking it that night, awake in bed, when her mother looked in. Since she had last seen the room, Isabel had changed the walls and the ceiling to the color Neila had called ultraviolet. She had promised herself to change it back, but had not yet had the heart: it was her only memento. “When did you repaint?” Diane asked, and got a half shrug in response. “I must say....” She stared around at the womb-like enclosure. “I don’t know what to say.”
  
  Isabel changed the subject. “Sorry I didn’t let you know where I was today. We were helping a friend. On the road.”
  
  “Oh, Max called. He said you were with him.” He would have, thought Isabel. And just when I thought I was being most independent. “I wasn’t concerned. I can always trust him to look after you. Though you’re getting to the point where you can look after yourself. You’re not a little girl any longer. You’re becoming your own woman. Strong, self-reliant—and sometimes rather frightening.” She gazed at the walls again, and then into her daughter’s eyes. “I might almost say, alien.” Isabel felt a little shudder run through her as she recalled Neila’s warning about humans. Her mother smiled distantly. “Good night, Isabel.”
  
  She did not get to sleep for a long time afterwards. If her mother might not be what she appeared—if she could not place her trust even there—the same was true of everyone and everything. She fought against accepting it, but at last she did. It relieved her mind, in a way: the uncertainty was a form of certainty.
  
  As she was on the verge of falling off at last, unable to judge whether she were asleep or awake, a girl’s figure manifested itself, as it had once before. I came to say goodbye, she heard. The visitor had not moved her lips.
  
  Nor did Isabel. It doesn’t need to be. We could keep meeting here.
  
  Neila shook her head sadly. You’d find out where we are in real time. You’d send others for us.
  
  Yes, because your stepfather—
  
  Don’t! Or I’ll have to leave. The force of this was much greater than if it had been spoken; it felt almost like a physical restraint.
  
  No! I need you!
  
  Not any more. You’re free.
  
  If Isabel believed that, she did not admit it. Only because of you. You showed me how to do things I could never have imagined. But without you I don’t know how to handle it. I’m out here on my own.
  
  Neila smiled. You always have been. You’ve just become aware of it, is all. You’ve woken from your dream.
  
  Isabel remembered the deed she had left undone, and reached up to her neck to remove the pendant. Take this. It was never really mine. Each extended her hand. The object rippled as it passed from one the other; from one state of reality to the other. Neila lowered it onto her neck and looked at Isabel for what both of them knew would be the last time. Be strong. And be kind. The strong have to be kind. And the kind have to be strong. She regarded her in a way she never would have dared to in their conscious lives. Goodbye, dear Isabel. I love you forever. Then she retreated into the shadows as she had come.
  
  If Isabel had been asleep, she woke, and felt at her neck. The pendant was really gone; that much, she had accomplished—but only that; the rest of it was gone too. She turned to her pillow. “Me too,” she whispered, and her voice broke, as it would not have in a dream: the reason she preferred them at times like this. “Oh, my wise Neila. Me too.”

ADDED BY ISLANDGIRL 5 FOR GALEN, AS ALL PARTS WERE POSTED IN SEPARATE THREADS

Series: ...And I Can’t Hide
Episode 1.19X: Marked Man
Rating: Teen
Summary: Maria suffers a family loss.

Disclaimer: The rights to the characters and situations of Roswell are the property of Warner Brothers, Jason Katims Productions, Twentieth Century Fox, Fox, Regency Television, and Melinda Metz.

• 
  
  
  It started with the missing pictures.
  
  Early Saturday morning, so early she had not yet left for work, Maria was sitting cross-legged in the lounge chair she particularly favored, leafing through the family album, as Amy carried four tote bags to the door, two in each hand. She was somewhat annoyed her daughter, and only housemate, did not stir herself to help, but she was lost in the past. Suddenly a mingling of alarm and deprivation flooded over her features; then she looked to her mother. “Mom? It’s not here!”
  
  Amy struggled to turn the doorknob, and finally managed it. “Honey, I have to get going. Whatever the problem is—”
  
  “The picture’s not here! Did you take it?”
  
  “Picture? Which picture?”
  
  “The one of you and Dad. The only one of you and Dad.”
  
  “Yes, and does that tell you something? No, I didn’t touch it. I’m sure it’s just misplaced.”
  
  “No, I was looking at it last night.”
  
  “Well, you see? Probably came unstuck and fell into the sofa. Keep looking, it’ll turn up.”
  
  She flipped the page. “And another one’s not here! The one of me and Roman!”
  
  “Roman, your dog?”
  
  “Somebody must have broken in and stolen them!”
  
  “Who would do a thing like that? The only person who’s been in here is Jim, and he wouldn’t—” She stopped as she realized she could not be sure of that. But at the moment her thumbs were sore. “I’ll find out when I get back from the festival. See you Monday.” She squeezed out with her cargo. Belatedly, Maria rose to lend a hand, and together they crammed them into the back seat of the Jetta. Amy gave Maria a hug. “’bye, honey. Love you.”
  
  “Love you too.” And to the ritual response she added, as Amy was buckling up, “Divértete. Have fun.”
  
  Amy flashed her a gimme-a-break look. “The crowd has fun. I just stand there and hawk my wares.” Then she set out on a drive that normally took seven hours but which she had confidence she could reduce to five, if the state police were obliging—that is, elsewhere. Maria went in, her thoughts still on lost pictures and lost days. “Poor Roman....,” she grieved. He had died when she was seven, and it had hit her hard; she had not kept a pet since. So that evening she had the house all to herself, and without Michael to keep her up, she was in bed a little past 9.
  
  Date: 04/09/00. Time: 0120 hr. That was what the police report would eventually state. A semi rig was approaching town on the 285, its headlight beams sweeping the asphalt ahead. They flashed onto a human figure lying still in the brush, just off the shoulder. The driver pulled over, stopped as far ahead as it took him to brake, and walked back, bracing himself against the wind of other trucks as they passed; at that hour, they had the roads largely to themselves. On reaching the spot, he found his eyes had not deceived him: the body was sprawled in a stillness beyond sleep. Little doubt of the man’s condition, but he knelt and felt the neck, just to be sure: it was pulseless, and cold. “You’re a goner,” he declared.
  
  Then he turned the body over—and recoiled from what he saw. Across the rib cage, which lay exposed through rents in the shirt, shone a silver handprint, whose like he had never seen before. He ran back to his truck, hauled himself into the cabin, and switched the mike on. “Breaker, breaker, any station, emergency. There’s a dead man, repeat, a dead man, on boulevard 285 north of Roswell. Notify sheriff, repeat, notify sheriff.” He kept it up, the same message over and over, until someone out there answered, assuring him the sheriff was on his way.
  
  It was still dark when the knock came at her door. Ignore it as she would, it refused to go away, and soon it was joined by Valenti’s voice. “Amy? Come on in there!” Maria sat up, growling, and felt on the floor for her top and jeans. By the time she undid the latch, she had primed herself to let him know just how it felt being roused at that hour. But she was stopped short by the look on his face, which she had not seen there before; it had a simple seriousness about it, like a minister’s. “What’s wrong?” A sickening fear grabbed her. “Something’s happened to Mom!”
  
  “No, it’s her I was—oh, shoot, she’s up in Taos. At that balloon thing.” He thought for a second. “Afraid I’ll have to ask you to come downtown with me.”
  
  “Why, am I in trouble?” Another fear grabbed her. “Has Michael been arrested again?” Odd she should be worried for him now.
  
  “No, nothing like that.” She waited. “Okay, I don’t know how to break this to you easy, so I’ll say it straight out. It’s your dad, Maria. He’s dead.”
  
  “My dad? No, he—” She started to say there must have been a mistake, because her dad—
  
  “A body was found out on the highway. There was no ID on it, but the prints are his.”
  
  “But I haven’t seen him in, like, ten years.” Then she made the connection. “Oh, my God. The pictures. It wasn’t you.”
  
  “Wasn’t me?”
  
  “Some pictures are missing from the photo album. Mom said you were the only one who’d been in the house.”
  
  “She thought I’d take something of yours without asking?”
  
  She cared little about his hurt feelings. “Must have been my dad. He sneaked in here and took them. It’s the only thing makes sense.”
  
  “Not a lot of sense,” Valenti murmured.
  
  “No, don’t you see? He didn’t have any pictures of us, and he wanted some to remember us by. We still mean—meant something to him, after all.”
  
  “Maybe,” he allowed.
  
  She realized she had not asked the obvious question. “How did he die?”
  
  “We don’t know. But there’s a—” Then he changed his mind. “You’ll see when we get there. Go grab your jacket.” Maria felt a churning in her stomach.
  
  She felt it again when she faced the double row of slabs in the basement of the sheriff’s station. There were only six altogether; Roswell had never needed more. Tonight only two of them were occupied. The attendant led them to the farther one and turned down the sheet draping the body. Staring at the face, Maria discovered it was now devoid of meaning, as it was devoid of life: not the person she had known, or known vaguely, but only an echo of him. “Maria?” prodded Valenti.
  
  “It’s him, very definitely. Didn’t think I’d be able to tell, it’s been so long. But, seeing him like that....” She started crying in spite of herself. “Damn!” Valenti brought a tissue from the counter; she blew her nose on it. “What do you suppose they use these things for down here?” She shook her head. “Forget it, I’d rather not know.”
  
  “Sorry. I hadn’t expected it’d get to you like this.”
  
  “It’s not because I loved him!” she broke out. “I mean, maybe I did, back then. I don’t remember.”
  
  “Reflex. You see your dad’s body, naturally—”
  
  “Mmp-mm.” She blew again. “What it is, is he wasn’t ever there when I needed him, and now he won’t ever be. Of course I knew he wouldn’t be coming back, but I could always pretend. And now....” She started crying again. “¡Chechon!” she scolded herself. Valenti moved to hug her; she moved away. Not in a million lifetimes, she thought. “Who did this to him?”
  
  “We don’t know. Except for this.” He turned the sheet down farther, revealing the handprint. “I’ll ask you to keep this—”
  
  She had sprung back, and was glaring up at him. “You put that there!” It all seemed clear now. “That’s not my dad! It’s a trick, to try and get me to tell you things! I know how you operate. But I’m not buying it. You understand? None of it!”
  
  “Maria!” He and the attendant started toward her.
  
  “Don’t touch me! Both of you, just keep away!” She ran out to the stairs.
  
  “Her mom’ll love this,” muttered Valenti. He ran after her, but she was faster. By the time he reached the ground-level doors, she had vanished into one of the surrounding alleys.
  
  —and to her surprise, ended up at Michael’s. Despite everything, she felt he would understand, and be able to help. Their friends had not thought it necessary to inform her of his departure, since the two of them had stopped seeing each other. Letting herself in with her key (which he had neglected to confiscate), she saw a figure stretched out on the sofa, apparently asleep. “Michael?” The figure stirred. She flicked on the light. “Max!” She was disappointed, but also relieved. What would she have said to him? And what would he have said to her?
  
  “Maria?” He sat up. “What are you doing here?”
  
  “Where’s Michael?”
  
  “Gone.”
  
  “Gone? What do you mean, gone? Where?”
  
  “We don’t know. I had a hope he might come back to the apartment. Not much of a hope, I admit, but—”
  
  Maria sat in the chair opposite him and reviewed what had occurred at the morgue. “Max, Nasedo is here. In Roswell.”
  
  “Then you have seen Michael.”
  
  This confused her. “Seen him? No, I came here to warn him.”
  
  “How do you know about Nasedo?”
  
  “He killed—somebody else. Valenti showed me the body. It had his handprint.”
  
  “Why would Valenti—”
  
  “Because—it was my father. He killed my father. I was in denial about it—crazy in denial. But it was him. I mean, I’m the one who identified him.” Max wanted to express condolences but was uncertain what form they should take. “It’s okay—you know, relatively speaking. Death is never okay. But I’m not broken up over it or anything. I mean, I hardly knew the man. And based on what I do know, he was no great loss, to me or anybody.” She corralled herself back to the point, which she was working out as she spoke. “But he was my father. And I’m his only child—at least the only one I know of. Last of the Delucas. It’s on my shoulders.”
  
  “What is?”
  
  “What has to be done. Whatever.” Having said so, she realized she already had a half-formed idea of what it had to be. “Whatever,” she repeated, and it became clearer. “You just don’t know, do you? Until something like this happens. Then you see it—yeah, this is why I’m here, instead of some place else. And you say, okay, I’m on, I’m down, I’m here to play. Or you run away. And I’m not running—Mom never did.” She sat there reconciling herself to it. “So I’m cool with it. Totally.” It felt pretty much final. She wondered why did not feel more scared than she did; maybe she was beyond further feeling.
  
  Max had been listening dutifully but with increasing difficulty. “Excuse me, Maria, I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
  
  She came out of her rumination with a “Good. That’s good.” Then she had another thought which encouraged her slightly. “Maybe Michael can help. When he gets back from—wherever he’s gone.” She remembered he had been mad at him too.
  
  “Excuse me, Maria, Michael....”
  
  The gravity of his expression scared her. “What about Michael?”
  
  “He—may not be coming back.” He was reluctant to tell the rest. “He’s with Nasedo. The two of them left together.”
  
  She took this in. “You’re sure?”
  
  “I saw them leave. We all did.” And now Maria remembered the rest of it. Yes, that was something he could have done, would have done. Max added quickly, “I’m sure he had nothing to do with what happened to your father.”
  
  “How are you sure? To him, we’re the enemy, right?”
  
  “That’s—just his way of talking.” It came out sounding hollow; they both heard it.
  
  “What’d Nasedo look like? I mean, when you saw him.”
  
  “Hispanic. Tall and lean, with a beard. I’d seen him in that form before, only I didn’t know it was him then.” Maria had done the same, in the gym. “But now he looks weaker than he did. Like this world’s been weighing on him, sapping his energy.”
  
  In the same moment Maria heard the last word, she saw it on a slip of note paper that lay on the coffee table between them. “Energy sources,” read the first line, which was written in bigger letters than the rest. When Max was not looking, she leaned forward to scoop it up, and then stood. “Gotta get home,” she said. “I need sleep.”
  
  Since he insisted on escorting her, she had no chance to study the note until she got in. “Energy sources,” it read. “Lib. AG. Rocks. RR Mus—ask Liz.” The only way to make sense of it was to do as the last two words directed. She would have preferred not to ask Liz anything; but then, she would have preferred not to be doing any of it—and was not sure she would be able to anyhow. She searched the family album for another picture of her father, which she had knew did not exist. In its absence, she spoke to the off-colored rectangle where the one had been. “I’ll do it this once, okay? But don’t think I’m making a habit of it.” That was as much as she had achieved by 5:00 or so, when sleep kicked in. But her alarm was set for 6.
  
  In the grey half-light, she walked to the Crashdown and stood at the head of the adjoining alley while she continued trying to figure out the best approach to take with Liz. If I’m this bad with her, she said to herself, how will I ever handle—him? Before she could decide, Liz came out to her. “Hey,” she said, sounding compassionate rather than hostile. “Sorry to hear about your dad.”
  
  Maria was astonished. “How do you know about that?”
  
  “Deputy Owen’s our first customer in the morning. You know that.”
  
  “Oh, yeah. Don’t suppose he’d have mentioned—no, Valenti would be keeping that quiet.”
  
  “Keeping what quiet?”
  
  Maria hesitated to tell her: it felt like revealing family business to an outsider. “There was a handprint on the body.”
  
  “You mean like—”
  
  “Like Nasedo.” She hesitated again. “And, Liz, Michael was with him. They were together.”
  
  “So he found out,” Liz said unhappily. “F-word!” She never used that kind of language, and was immediately ashamed of it. “Sorry. I couldn’t help myself.”
  
  The obvious implication—that she had known and Maria had not—passed Maria by. Her concern lay in another direction. “I should have seen it coming. Not the alien murder part, which is not a thing you normally look for, but the part about Michael cutting himself off from me forever. That was, like, fated. In the genes. Oil and water—incompatibles.”
  
  “You’re so right. More than you have any idea.” Given a vent, all of it poured forth. “You and Michael—me and Max—any human and—one of them.[/I] We can’t ever have—ever engage in—” Her cheeks reddened.
  
  “Liz, I get it, all right?”
  
  “I mean, ever. Ever ever. It’s not safe. I should have told you before—I owed you that much. I was waiting for further observations to confirm it.”
  
  That was Liz, all right. “Scientist girl.”
  
  She almost smiled. “Yeah.”
  
  “So what was to confirm?”
  
  The almost-smile evaporated. “Their blood—Maria, it poisons ours. So it’s reasonable to suppose other—substances their bodies generate do the same. You understand what I’m saying?”
  
  What am I, ¿la estupida? Maria thought. “How do you know this? About the blood being poisonous?”
  
  “Easy. It poisoned me.”
  
  “Oh, my God.” Despite their recent differences, Maria felt a huge outpouring of sympathy for the girl she had been friends with so long. “Then are you—”
  
  “Not tomorrow. And probably not for a long time. I mean, Grunewald’s still with us. But eventually—I guess so, yeah.”
  
  “Oh, Liz!” She could not think of anything else to say.
  
  “It’s okay. I’m dealing.”
  
  Maria was silent for a few moments while she sorted things out, more slowly than Liz would have in her place. “You know, it’s good, in a way. For me.”
  
  “Happy to help,” Liz said bleakly.
  
  Maria missed the irony. “I mean, it makes the situation clear. They’re the enemy, right?”
  
  “That’s what Michael kept insisting. That this was what it would come down to in the end and then we’d all have to do terrible things to each other.”
  
  “See, that’s what I mean. You always do that—make things clear. It’s, like, how you run your whole life. If only mine was that way. Makes it easier to do things when you can—”
  
  “Plan them first?” Liz suggested.
  
  That was true, but not what Maria had had in mind. “—see them clearly. So make one more thing clear, mi amiga.”
  
  “If I can.”
  
  “Oh, you can. It says so on this note of Michael’s.” She produced it. “Tell me what it means.”
  
  Liz looked it over. “These are places on the map. See, this one is the library—”
  
  “I know about that one.”
  
  “And ‘AG’ is Angels’ Ground. I don’t recognize the others. He must have found them on his own.”
  
  “What does it mean, ‘energy sources’?”
  
  “That’s what they are. Repositories for cosmic energy of some kind. In fact, your mom—”
  
  “Energy!” Maria interrupted. “If Nasedo ran out of energy, that’s where he’d go to fill up. To one of those places. You have a copy of that map?”
  
  “No, why?” She made a quick inference. “You’re not thinking of going after him?”
  
  ”Them,” Maria corrected. “Going after them.”
  
  “What happens if you find them?”
  
  “Then—I’ve found them. The two that killed my father.” Her face was set.
  
  “You don’t know Michael was involved.”
  
  “I didn’t until I talked to you.”
  
  Liz regretted that. “Suppose you do find them? What then?” She was getting an uneasy feeling she knew already.
  
  “They must have asked themselves that, right? Michael looks at Nasedo and he’s, like, ‘Hey, Nas, good buddy, what do we do? Do we give the guy a break? Show him a little pity? Or do we off the sucker?’ And we know their answer. Worked for them, works for me.”
  
  “You’re not saying—”
  
  Maria met her gaze without blinking. “Aren’t I?”
  
  Liz was aghast. “Maria, think what you’re doing!”
  
  “Get in that habit, I’d end up not doing anything.” Liz began another protest. “Michael almost went over to him before. Did you know that?” She had not, or not exactly. “But that time it was only about me. I could have let it pass. This—is family.”
  
  “Maria, your dad abandoned you and your mom. You don’t owe him.”
  
  “It’s not him personally. It’s the obligation. Working where you do, you should understand that.”
  
  “Maria, look—”
  
  She held up her hand. “Stop. Just stop. But if I’m not back in a couple of days and my mom asks....” She paused and smiled. “There isn’t a damn thing you can tell her, is there?”
  
  Liz tried to think of some other argument she could use, and could think of none. She had never felt so helpless. But she knew it was not just her; nobody could stop Maria once she had made up her mind—that is, pretty much. But at least the two of them were “okay”; that was something. They gave each other a hug and goodbye; Liz hoped it would not be their last. Then Maria started out for the place she had to go next.
  
  It was not quite mid-morning when she reached the sign welcoming visitors to the “Homelands of the Mesaliko.” On Sundays the gift shop was closed, and the reservation—which was never bustling, even at its busiest—seemed almost deserted. Of the few people out, the nearest were a pair of old women scuttling across the empty gravel lot in front of the tribal administration building.
  
  “Uh, ladies? Excuse me? Can you direct me to the—” She had expected them to stop; they scuttled on without paying her any attention. “To the cave with the paintings?” she said, more loudly. One of them spared her a glance and a tight shake of the head. Maria presumed they spoke English—all the Mesaliko she had met did—but was unsure if the question that had been answered was the one she had put.
  
  In any case, she had not needed to ask really: she remembered the cave stood near the river that sliced through the reservation, and this, after leaving the road, she found with no difficulty. But it was blanketed in a mist that hid all but a few yards of the surrounding terrain. She followed the tall grass along the bank for a quarter mile or so, diverged from it for half that distance, backtracked, backtracked the other way, and ended up where no habitations—and certainly no cave—were to be seen. It was then she realized she was lost. Every subsequent change of direction made her more frantic until, when she nearly at wits’ end, she stumbled onto the cave mouth. “Knew it was around here,” she said, in a rush of unwarranted self-approval.
  
  After entering, she found herself pulling her jacket collar closer. She followed the passage to the map, took out a pen, and began to draw a copy on the back of Michael’s note. “Why are you here?” said a voice she would not have heard on a busy street; in the quietude, it so startled her she cried out.
  
  She turned to see a man sitting cross-legged at the other wall. “You scared me!” Then she recognized his jacket. “Deputy Owen?”
  
  He seemed a different person here, solitary and thoughtful. “You know you’re trespassing? This cave’s council property. Whites aren’t allowed unless they’re specially invited.”
  
  “I was invited, once. I helped save someone’s life.” He regarded her with greater interest. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” she added.
  
  “Doesn’t look like anyone’s in jeopardy now.”
  
  “No, I’m—doing a project for school. On Indian cave paintings.”
  
  “If you knew anything about cave paintings, you’d know these aren’t Indian. They were made by—a visitor.”
  
  “Nasedo.” The word escaped her involuntarily; she quickly tried to cover herself. “That’s the Mesaliko for ‘visitor,’ isn’t it?”
  
  He nodded solemnly. “But a word not often heard nowadays in this community. It was tainted for us by a visitor we had once, years ago. But you already know about him. And what he did to your family.” It was not a question. She let her anger show for a moment before masking it. “The knowledge has planted a dark seed in you. It shows in the darkness behind your eyes.” She averted them. “Let it die, girl. He’s too powerful for you. A brujo.”
  
  “That word’s not Indian either.”
  
  “There is no Indian word for what he is.”
  
  She turned back to the map. Owen was unable to tell if she had understood him or not. “You know how to read this?” she asked.
  
  He rose and joined her in front of it. “All my life, I’ve been trying to see its meaning. And it’s still a mystery.”
  
  “But not totally, right? I mean, this icon stands for the library. And one of the others stands for Angels’ Ground.”
  
  He ran his eyes over the symbols and picked out the one Michael had guessed. “This. Strange, I’ve seen it from the helicopter, but I never recognized it—when I’m here, I leave my white job out there.” He stared at her. “How did you?”
  
  “It was Michael, not me. And rocks—it says there are rocks.”
  
  He pointed to the symbol Topolsky had identified. “I’ve seen rocks like that somewhere.”
  
  “Somewhere close?”
  
  “No. Not close.”
  
  “And ‘RR Mus’?”
  
  Even after having it spelled, he did not get it, and she showed him the note. He pondered it, together with the two unidentified symbols, and finally extended his finger toward the row of boxes. “Railroad museum. Has to be.”
  
  “I know where that is! Thanks.” She returned the note to her purse. “And you shouldn’t be so down on yourself. You’re really good at this seeing.”
  
  “Mmm” was his only answer. He was studying the map again, trying to “see” the last unidentified symbol—the spiral—by judging the distances to it and envisioning how they would appear from the air. All at once, it came to him: “Why, it’s—” He looked to where she had been standing, and then out to the passage. “Wait! Come see this!” She was gone. But he continued speaking to her as if she were not. “Better you’d waited, and seen. You’re a part of it. You all are.”
  
  The particular part she had chosen, however, was one he forecast no good would come of. “Next time we meet,” he said, “I fear it will be in my job, out there.” As he had told her, he tried to keep a strict separation between his two worlds, personal and professional, Apache and white. He pondered whether, this once, the situation called for him to violate it.
  
  Maria was soon wishing she had asked him for directions, but the mist had now lifted, and within a few minutes, to her relief, the road appeared—or rather, the cluster of adobe and wood houses facing it. She took it back to town, turned off into the industrial quarter, and headed for the railroad yard. Three out of five’s pretty good, she told herself, referring to the map symbols; in fact, the odds were nearer to three out of four, since the rocks were probably desert, too far away to be Nasedo’s choice for a pit stop, as she termed it in her own mind. She came to the chain link fence enclosing the rusted cars and scaled it nimbly. As she dropped to the ground, a barking started up somewhere close by. A watchdog? She made ready to take to the fence again.
  
  Around the cowcatcher of the locomotive appeared the head that had done the barking; it was white with black spots. A second later, the rest of him trotted into view, down to the wagging tail. He did not act mean at all, and Maria loved him on sight: he looked just like Roman! Then a chill shot down her spine: it was Roman. She jumped back. The dog scampered around the engine out of view. Maria stood frozen, almost too frightened to follow, but for her family’s sake, she forced herself to, one foot at a time, until she had rounded the engine nose and could see up the cabin steps. A man was sitting at the top.
  
  At first she took him for a tramp, and then she recognized the face, unchanged from twelve years before; it looked more like him than the one she had identified in the morgue. Another chill seized her, and she backed away. “Baby!” he said. “Don’t you know your own father?”
  
  “You’re not,” she protested, as much to herself as to him. “You’re the one that killed him.”
  
  He smiled. “Nothing gets past you, does it?” Maria hated him, just looking at him, and wished she had a gun. She actually thought of attacking him with her bare hands, but he was bigger than she was—and when his medicine was working, a brujo, as Owen had put it—and there was nothing else around to use as a weapon. So all she could do was stand there, powerless. As she watched, his features turned drippy like jelly, and changed to those of Coach Clay. The clothes that had fit before now hung too long on him. “Oh, dear. I think I liked Señor—or was it Signore?—better.” His face turned drippy again and changed back.
  
  Then he hopped down from his perch. If his energy had been flagging, the place had restored it, as she had guessed it would. “So you know about him, do you? Then you also know he wasn’t worth mourning. What else do you know?”
  
  She felt his consciousness wedging into hers. “Excuse me?” She pointed to her temple. “There’s a sign up—‘No trespassing’?”
  
  “Sorry.” She felt him withdraw. “I do hate to pry, but sometimes—”
  
  “You were acquainted with my dad?”
  
  “Briefly—even more briefly than you. As I recall, when you were two years old—”
  
  “Uh, I know the history. It’s mine. How did you meet him? If you did.”
  
  “You might call us business associates. It was I who lured him to Roswell, with a proposal to extort money from your mother.” Maria saw no reason to doubt this. “Of course, it was only a pretext. My real purpose was to take his measure—and his shape.”
  
  “Why?”
  
  “The better to fool you with, my dear. Unluckily, events betrayed me. The remains were discovered too soon. I ought to have destroyed them, but it hardly seemed worthwhile. And I failed to take into account your own native shrewdness.”
  
  “Thanks,” said Maria, meaning the opposite.
  
  “On one point, however, I’m afraid you’re very much in error. The handprint on your father’s corpse was your boyfriend’s, not mine.”
  
  Maria both believed and disbelieved him. “Where’s Michael now?”
  
  “I was hoping you could tell me.”
  
  She stared at him. “He’s with you, isn’t he?”
  
  “Was. He went to collect some things from his house—gifts of yours, to carry as keepsakes. He’s very sentimental that way. The awareness that he’d lost all chance of forgiveness from you weighed heavily on his spirit.”
  
  “That is such a crock.” It sounded so little like Michael, it almost made her laugh. But then, what had happened? Why would Nasedo be looking for him? Or was he? Had he perhaps invented the story for some different purpose?
  
  “You’re right,” he said abruptly. “We are still together. He’s waiting for me just a little way from here. If you want to get at us—and I know you do, I can feel it—you’ll have to hunt us down.” He shifted shape into the Dalmatian again, shook himself free of his clothes, and ran to the fence, in which there suddenly opened a hole ringed with fire. He leapt through the middle of it, and it closed back. Then he sprinted off through the field beyond.
  
  “I will!” she shouted after him. “You bastard.” This, she spoke in a voice not meant for him to hear. “You killed my dad.” And for some reason she began to cry. Didn’t make a very good showing there, she thought. I had him in my sights and I let him go. And how will I find him now? She sensed he and Michael had never been together; that when he had said so, he had been lying. Yet Max had said the same thing, and he had been telling the truth. That was logically impossible. There was something she was not seeing—something, somewhere—somewhere Michael was, with Nasedo....
  
  She could not be sure afterward when she fell asleep. Or if she were sleeping when she had the vision. This might have been a dream, or an image derived from the mental energy that had accumulated in her surroundings (but maybe that was all any dream was); whatever its nature, it revealed to her, so clearly as to leave no doubt, Michael’s—that is, Nasedo’s—destination.
  
  She should have been able to figure it out for herself, it was so obvious. Nobody ever fled north, only south. He would know only one hideout in that direction; Nasedo too, probably. She did not have to work out the logic of it; that was contained in the image before her—and all around her: she was at once inside and outside the place she was being shown. It was a place she remembered: a geodesic dome. And when she returned to normal consciousness again, she knew where she had to go.
  
  She intended to allow herself a good night’s sleep, which she knew she would need for what lay ahead. But anticipation kept her wakeful until late, and woke her early. In the morning, she filled her knit bag with enough clothes and other personal items to last the week. By the end of that time, she should have achieved what she had set out to; she dared not think about what would happen to her if she failed—or, for that matter, if she succeeded. She was at the brink of a precipice, about to jump, staring into the chasm below. The cramping fear in her chest and belly had been assailing her ever since she had made up her mind to act. She was resigned to it now.
  
  But only for herself; not for her mother. Her concern was not totally unselfish: if her mother was afraid, she would tell Valenti, he would put out an APB, and Maria would be stopped before her mission was realized. What was needed was a phone memo that would obliterate any possibility of worry. She tried improvising one. “Mom,” she said into the receiver, affecting as casual a tone as possible, “I need a break. Heading for Vegas to chill for a few days. Don’t worry about me.” She clicked the machine off. “Yeah, fat chance of that.”
  
  She started again. “Hey, Mom? Guess you’ve heard about Dad. I’m taking some time off to get over it. Going camping out at the Toro rocks—” She clicked off again. “Camping? Uh, I don’t think so.”
  
  She tried a third time. “Mom, life so sucks.”
  
  Then once more—but without pressing the start button. “Mom, you’ve always told me families have to stick together. Everybody still thinks Dad ran out on you. I’m the only one who knows you ordered him out. Unless he changed his ways, which, being a total pendejo and pig, he refused to. But you never once bad-mouthed him in front of other people. And if they did, you always took his side. Same with me. When people would come and complain about me—God knows, with just cause—you’d put them in their place. And I always knew if anyone ever did anything to hurt me, which, thank God, never happened, you’d track them down if it took a whole lifetime.”
  
  She paused. “I know you wouldn’t do that for him. I wouldn’t expect you to. It’s not your responsibility. But it is mine. Because he was my dad. I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know how it will end—God, I don’t even know how to start—but somehow—”
  
  She was interrupted by a pounding at the door, which she first took for a gunshot: it was the way her mind was running. “Maria! You cooping in there?” The voice was Valenti’s. Then she heard him say to someone else, “She probably doesn’t know anything. If she did, I’d have picked up on it.” The phrase fat chance for some reason recurred to her.
  
  “She knew his Indian name.” The second voice was Owen’s. “She might know more. You should question her.” She assumed, on hearing this, that he had reported their whole conversation, and she was disappointed in him for it. She did not know he had made a deliberate effort to preserve as much as he could of her privacy and the sanctity of his retreat by telling his boss as little as he had to that would still—he hoped—keep her dark seed from flowering.
  
  “Probably got it from her boyfriend,” said Valenti. “Or the Parker girl.”
  
  The phone rang. Maria did not dare answer it with them at the door, able to hear inside. So she left it to the machine. After the recorded message, her mother’s voice came on. “Honey, I know you’re at school this morning. Just calling to let you know I’ll be here an extra day.” She wanted desperately to run and pick up, to talk to her mother one last time before—whatever happened happened. But the men were at the door. “Man at the festival wants to discuss distributing my novelties,” the voice continued. “Can you believe it?”
  
  Through a window, she saw the sheriff returning to the Rover, with his deputy inside: they were leaving! “By the way,” her mother said, “did that picture of your father ever turn up? Love you. ‘bye.”
  
  Maria raced to the phone and grabbed the receiver up. “Mom?” She heard a click on the other end. “No,” she said, after a moment, “it never did.”
  
  The arrival of the message reminded her she still had to compose one herself. She thought of a cousin who had just sent a post card to her and Liz both, at Liz’s address, so her mother had not seen it, and did not know the family was vacationing in Cancun—a location from which they could not readily disprove an alibi. This inspired Maria to a final recording. “Mom, I’ve got to get away, on account of Dad and everything. Erica and her family invited me to stay with them for a week. Hope it’s all right.” That was not all she was hoping, but the rest could not be said. “Don’t bother calling. I’ll call you. Love you. ’bye.” And she replaced the receiver. So much for that.
  
  After a long look around, as if it might be her last, she left home. As she walked the block and a half to the bus stop, she got an uneasy feeling she was being followed. She quickly swung round, intending to surprise whoever it was, but saw no one. On reaching the bench, she dropped her bag onto it and herself alongside. The uneasy feeling persisted. She put it down to nerves.
  
  A grey Mercedes in the far lane slowed down as it passed her. It stopped at the corner, made a U, and returned. Maria transferred her bag to her lap, ready to run if necessary. The car veered close to the curb and pulled up in front of her. By then she had recognized it, and so when the window rolled down, she was not surprised to see Mr. Evans at the wheel. “Hello, Maria,” he said, with that apparent cheerfulness adults often affected and teens never trusted. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”
  
  “I’m going to visit a sick—aunt.”
  
  “Oh?” Yeah, oh, Maria thought. How do you answer a question like that? It’s not even a question. So she did not try to answer. “Hop in,” he said. “I’ll take you to the station.” She tried to think of a plausible excuse. “Quicker than waiting,” he pointed out. She realized how suspicious it would look to refuse. So she got in. However, once they were underway, she sat with her eyes on the floor and did not volunteer speech. “Seen Max lately?” he asked, with seeming casualness.
  
  She had been prepared for an interrogation; this question was easy. “Saw him yesterday, as a matter of fact.”
  
  “And Isabel?”
  
  “Our paths don’t cross very often.”
  
  “Got a feeling there’s something they’d like to tell me. But they’re being kind of shy about it.” He glanced at her. “You wouldn’t have any idea what it might be?”
  
  “Sorry, out of the loop. Since I stopped hanging with Liz.”
  
  Philip shook his head. “Yes, I’m very disappointed in that girl. She appears to have set everyone in your circle at odds.” The criticism was miscalculated: even at her angriest, Maria would have recognized it as untrue. “What could her motive be, do you suppose?”
  
  “Like I said, I’m in the dark as much as you.”
  
  The car pulled up at the bus station. “Here you go.”
  
  “Thanks for the lift.” She stepped out.
  
  “You’re visiting who, now? Sick uncle?”
  
  “Aunt.”
  
  He put on a puzzled frown. “Could have sworn you said it was your uncle.”
  
  She looked him in the eye. “No, sir. She’s always been my aunt.”
  
  He smiled at her. “Have a safe trip.”
  
  She smiled back with equal insincerity. “You bet.”
  
  “I’ll give your best to Max.” A shadow of doubt crossed her face; it was only momentary, but it was enough to satisfy Philip. With the push of a button, he rolled up the window, and the Mercedes glided off; she watched it until it disappeared. Now she was feeling guilty. He often had that effect on people, especially young people, as many grown-ups did; she wondered if they practiced it until they got it down. Shaking off the feeling, she faced east and trudged toward the 285 with her bag slung over her shoulder. No turning back now, she thought. I mean, I could, but I’ve packed all this stuff.
  
  Liz had been worrying about her all last night and all this morning, and took the first opportunity she found to communicate her worry to the one person she thought could help. But Isabel was having none of it. “No offense, Liz,” was her answer, “but I think it’d be best if we all kept our distance from each other.” And she continued down the locker hall, or tried to.
  
  “Michael’s pretty distant right now, isn’t he?”
  
  She stopped and turned. “You know about that?”
  
  “I know he’s with Nasedo. But you can find them, can’t you?”
  
  “Suppose I could? Why should I tell you where they are?”
  
  “Maria’s gone after them. Nasedo killed her father. I think she’s going to try and settle the score.”
  
  “She won’t. He’ll settle her.” She gave a little huff. “Why can’t you humans look after yourselves?” Liz had no answer for her. “Anyway, I can’t help. Michael will have a firewall up. So will Nasedo.”
  
  Liz did have an answer this time. “Maria won’t.”
  
  “True. But outreach only works on humans when they’re asleep.”
  
  “Maybe she’s sleeping now.”
  
  “In the middle of the day?”
  
  “Worth trying.”
  
  Isabel did so, without any confidence in the result. “You know this won’t work,” she said, twice. But to her amazement, it did: she made contact almost without effort. It happened Maria, still short of sleep, was half-dozing as she stood on the shoulder of the highway, behind a sign that read “Marathon, TX.” A sidewind from the next truck brought her to her senses, but by then Isabel had had a look into her dreamspace and the only object in it: a geodesic dome. “Marathon,” she said.
  
  “That’s where they are?”
  
  “It’s where she’s going.” This gave her a new idea. “Wait.” She shut her eyes and concentrated. Half a minute later, she opened them again. and shook her head as if to clear it. “Wow, do they ever have a firewall up. The four of them combined. I could never penetrate that. But their collected energy is so strong, I was able to trace it to its source.”
  
  “Which is?”
  
  “In the vicinity of highway 90.”
  
  “The way to Marathon!”
  
  “Exactly.”
  
  “You have to go after them!”
  
  “Yes, I suppose we do.” But she was obviously not thrilled about it. “I’ll hunt up Max.”
  
  “I’m going too.”
  
  “You’re not. You’d just be one more human to rescue.” Liz had to acknowledge she was probably right. “And what would you tell your parents?”
  
  “What will you tell yours?”
  
  “Oh—Max will come up with something.”
  
  “What? Tell me, what?” he demanded of her, once she had told him the plan. By the time they got home that afternoon, he had run through all the possibilities and determined none of them would work—at any rate, not on their father: he was used to cracking alibis. “I have no idea what I’m going to say,” he confided as he followed his sister into the front hall.
  
  As she was about to reply, their mother called to them from the living room. “Kids, is that you? Come in and say hello to our guest.” With an exchange of wary looks, they rounded the corner to find their parents sitting and having drinks (whether alcoholic or non-, they could not discern) with one of the people they would have least wished to see, and the others were all Nasedo, in different forms. “You know Ms. Topolsky,” said Diane.
  
  Topolsky flashed them that smile which always seemed to be masking something. “Where have you been?” their father asked.
  
  “Library,” said Isabel.
  
  “School,” said Max, overlapping her. He quickly corrected himself. “School library.” Philip stared at both of them, a little too long, as they stared at Topolsky.
  
  Sensing her cue, she got up. “Time I was going.” However, the siblings’ relief was short-lived. “You have my card,” she reminded their parents. “Call me any time. On my cell. I’m working out of home at the moment.” She and her hosts exchanged good nights, and Diane saw her to the door.
  
  “Why do you have her card?” Max asked.
  
  “She’s investigating a rash of teenage crime here in town.” Philip looked from one to the other of them. “Neither of you is involved in any sort of illegal activity, are you?”
  
  “Did she say we were?”
  
  Diane heard him as she returned. “Nothing like that. She was just asking us to keep our eyes open, and to report anything unusual we observe.”
  
  Few things truly shocked Isabel; this did. “So now you’re spying for the FBI?”
  
  “When the community’s facing a threat,” said Philip, “it’s up to everyone to pull together.”
  
  “And anyway,” said Diane,” our family has nothing to hide.” She looked hard at the two of them, especially Isabel. “Have we?” Before they could reply, another concern knocked that one aside. “Heavens, I should be starting dinner.”
  
  “Our turn,” Isabel promptly offered, and when her brother was slow in agreeing, she led him out by the arm. Once they had left, their parents leaned close together and spoke in whispers, as they listened from the kitchen.
  
  “We’ll have to watch them,” said Max.
  
  “You mean while they’re watching us?”
  
  He smiled at the irony. “One big happy family.”
  
  “What do we do about going to look for Maria?”
  
  “We don’t—not with the FBI breathing down our necks. We’ll just have to trust to her common sense.”
  
  Isabel considered this. “As Dad would say, you’re assuming a fact not in evidence.” Max nodded, acknowledging the point. He could see she was unhappy with the situation; so was he. But what else could they do?
  
  Between that evening and the next morning, the object of their worry awoke in the big steel cab of a sixteen-wheeler barreling west on highway 180. It reminded her of the locomotive engine she had seen. But the driver definitely did not remind her of Nasedo, in any of his guises; more than anything else, he reminded her more of a cheeseburger. He had introduced himself as Barry when he pulled over for her. Now he was looking down at her small but attractively rounded form with more than abstract interest. “Woke up, did you, sweet pea?”
  
  She looked around vaguely. “Why am I here?” Then it all clicked into focus, and the weight of her obligation descended on her again. “Oh. Yeah.” She gazed out on a landscape not perceptibly different from the one she had left behind. “Where are we?”
  
  “A ways from Marathon yet. You go on and sleep.” She obediently curled up and shut her eyes. “We got plenty of time to get acquainted.” He reached down and squeezed her knee. “Nice seat covers.” Her eyes immediately popped open. The truck barreled on.
  
  In spite of her best efforts, however, she nodded off again, and dreamed of an empyrean furnished in geodesic domes of all colors and sizes. She was floating from one to another, searching, and kept discovering more she had missed, so the search went on endlessly, and she found nobody in any of them, not Michael or Nasedo or her father or....
  
  When she next woke, a cold grey dawn had risen, exposing flatland on all sides. The truck was parked on the shoulder, and Barry was standing a few yards from it, his hands at his midsection and—mercifully—his back turned. She thought of running away while he was satisfying his need, but then thought twice about it. What if he ran after her? Safer to play him along for a while and wait for a better chance.
  
  She noticed the glove compartment was not latched. An oily rag was wedged into the crack. This offended her sense of order, which (in spite of all appearances) was highly developed. After stuffing the rag in all the way, she tried to shut the hatch, only to discover the rag had been the only thing holding it in place; the latch was missing. As she started to return it to where it had been, she glimpsed what looked like a gun barrel at the bottom of the compartment. She slid away the items on top to reveal a Taurus .38 and a box of ammunition. She immediately made up her mind to steal them; this was, like, fate. She needed a weapon for what she had planned. In addition, she would now be armed for a getaway.
  
  She took out the gun and the box, pushed them to the bottom of her bag, and wedged the glove compartment shut. She was reaching for the door handle when the other door swung open. She quickly shut her eyes. As soon as it slammed, she opened them and turned to Barry, again enthroned beside her. “Huh? Wassa sim?” she mumbled, yawning and stretching. “Is it morning?”
  
  “Sun was up ahead of you, baby socks. And breakfast is on the boy here.” Maria gathered he meant himself. “Only fair, after a girl spends the night with me.” He winked and laughed. Her face puckered involuntarily; she tried to cover it over with a playful smile. “Truck stop’s up ahead.”
  
  Lobo Truck Cafe, read the dusty sign; this was followed by the promise of food, drink, and music. He parked at the outer edge of the lot. After negotiating the climb to the ground, Maria walked around the mouth of the truck to where he was waiting for her. “Giddy-up, little filly,” he commanded. “Nose bag time.” Her indignation at being so addressed was immediately displaced by a bigger worry: a state trooper’s white-on-black was sitting in front of the building. She tilted her chin down and hunched forward, as if trying to shrink down to the point of being undetectable; this was not lost on her driver.
  
  Entering, she saw the trooper at the counter to their left. She swung to the right and, jockeying in front of Barry, took him to a booth at the end, where she sat with her back to the room. As they skimmed the menu, the waitress (Maria had an idea that out here they were still called waitresses) stepped up to the table. “Coffee for the boy here,” said Barry. “How ’bout you, sugar loaf?”
  
  Maria peered at the badge the waitress was wearing. “Brenda,” she said, “hi. I’m Maria.” Brenda said nothing. “Okay,” she continued, “so would you have, um, a selection of herbal teas?”
  
  “We have tea.”
  
  “Tea,” said Maria, “will be fine.”
  
  Brenda’s gaze had been alternating from one to the other of them almost with the precision of a metronome. It was starting to make them both uncomfortable. “She’s my niece,” Barry volunteered. “I’m her uncle.”
  
  Her expression did not change. “I’ll just fetch that coffee. And a tea for your....”
  
  “Niece.” He stared after her as she left. “She could stand to be a mite friendlier.” He eyed Maria. “And so could you, sunbeam.” Maria glanced back cautiously. Relief showed on her face when she saw the trooper getting up to leave. Barry grinned slyly. “You’re a runaway, ain’tcha?” She tensed again and looked back at him. “Don’t you fret, cherry blossom. I’ll take good care of you.” He extended his foot and nudged hers with it. She withdrew both legs and squirmed out of the seat. “Back momentarily.” As she started away, she realized she had left the bag with the gun in it. She hurried back for it and then hurried off again. “Be sure and flush that radiator good!” Barry yelled after her. “We got a long drive ahead.”
  
  “That’s what you think,” she muttered. Passing the register, she noticed a help-wanted sign taped to the front. This inspired one of the brainstorms she was prone to—which were often sound, though usually she could not explain them clearly enough for others to see it. She approached Brenda, who was busy preparing the tea. “Um, excuse me?” Brenda glanced up. “That guy I’m with, el zorro, down there? He’s not really my uncle.”
  
  Brenda called into the kitchen. “Sully, guess what?” A round face with a stubbly chin appeared at the order window. “Not her uncle.”
  
  “Ain’t life amazin’?” Sully observed.
  
  The unexpected addition of a third, masculine party threw Maria off a little as she gave her account. “Okay, what happened was, I bummed a lift from him back—back a ways. Which was not the wisest move, I admit. But it was a ride, and it was free. Not that I’m looking for a free ride,” she hastened to add, “either literally or symbolically. But at the time, he seemed like a genuine person, you know? Neck perhaps a tad pink, coming on to red—but I’m strongly committed to tolerance toward persons of all colors, and differing body types. And he was okay to start out—not sensitive to women’s issues particularly, but not a serial predator. Only then he started moving into—areas of real concern.” She stopped. “Do you have any idea what I mean?”
  
  Brenda laughed. “Kitten, I knew what you meant before you got started.”
  
  “So I was thinking—that is, if you wouldn’t mind—”
  
  Sully came out to the counter and picked up a baseball bat from under it. “You want I should teach the bum a lesson?”
  
  Maria waved her hands. “No, no, no! Envisioning something slightly less extreme. Like, I was thinking, if the two of you could pretend you were hiring me for that job you have posted, I could disengage without a big ‘the power compels you’ confrontation. If you wouldn’t mind.” She waited hopefully.
  
  “Come with me,” Sully said. He peeled off the help-wanted sign, marched back to Barry’s table, the two women following part of the way, and slapped the sign onto it. “I’m short a waitress, so I’m hirin’ your friend. Any objections?”
  
  Barry looked down at Maria. “Thought you said you were headed for Marathon.”
  
  “Changed my mind.”
  
  He was obviously disgruntled about it. “You know, she’s a runaway. Prob’ly underage. She tell you that?”
  
  “Sorry,” said Sully, “little deaf in this ear.”
  
  Through the windows the trooper could be seen sitting in his unit. “If you’re not interested, bet he will be.”
  
  “Hal?” said Brenda. “I just bet he will—uncle.”
  
  Barry practically leapt out of his seat. “I never touched her!” He pointed at Maria. “You can’t say I did!”
  
  “You took a liberty with my knee.”
  
  His face grew red. The other two stood staring at him. “All right for you, then. But see if I stop here again.” He grabbed up the vest jacket he had shed.
  
  “You promised me breakfast,” Maria reminded him. Suppressing an oath, he pulled out his wallet, found the smallest bill in it was a twenty, and flung that onto the table before stamping out. “Think I lost you a customer,” she said.
  
  “Good riddance to him,” said Sully. “We don’t need his kind anyway.”
  
  They all walked back to the counter together. “Take a seat,” said Brenda. “We’ll talk.” There she brought Maria her tea. “Twenty bucks’ll buy a lot of breakfast. What’ll you have?”
  
  “Short stack of Vermonts,” said Maria, without thinking.
  
  Sully, who was just re-affixing the sign to the register, looked up with interest. “Either you got a relative in the restaurant business, or you’ve done some waiting on tables yourself.”
  
  “Sure, I’ve waited tables. You want to know how to get the last half-teaspoon out of a pot of coffee, ask me.”
  
  Brenda leaned on the counter. “Where was that, now?”
  
  “The Crash—” She stopped mid-word. “Cash ’n’ Carry. In Las Vegas. But it closed. Months ago. More like years, actually.” She hoped this sounded more convincing to them than it did to her.
  
  Brenda glanced at Sully. “What do you think?”
  
  “Can you handle a room this size?” he asked Maria.
  
  She sipped her tea placidly. “Piece of cake.”
  
  “Okay.” He peeled the sign off again. “Job’s yours. Pays nine bucks an hour.”
  
  “Deal.” No antennae anyway, she was thinking. A second later, she realized what she had just done. “Job? No, wait.” But then, of the several facts vying for her attention, and trying to cut in front of one another to be first in line, the one that beat out all the others was that she had not much cash on her, and the state of her bankbook was such that ATMs would be of little use. In the zeal that had launched her on this mission, she had taken insufficient account of practical needs—except of course food. She had allowed herself a week, but had not truly expected it to take that long; two or three days at the most. Now she began to see what a limitless range of possibilities real life offered for frustrating even the simplest plan.
  
  “It can’t be for long,” she told them. “There’s something I have to do.” But maybe she did not really want to do it, after all; maybe accepting the job was just an excuse to postpone the moment of truth. She chose not to think about it. Truth be told, she always preferred not to delve very deeply into her feelings and motives; it made her kind of antsy, and in the end you were the same person whether you liked it or not, so what was the point?
  
  “I’ll take whatever you can give me,” Sully said.
  
  “And who knows?” said Brenda. “We might grow on you.” She granted her a smile such as she had not shown Barry. “You can sleep on the sofa-bed in my trailer.”
  
  It sounded okay to her. And now she noticed for the first time the door to the lounge. “You have entertainment?”
  
  Sully shrugged. “Depends on your definition.”
  
  “There’s a band comes in,” said Brenda, more helpfully.
  
  Fate again. “Because, as a matter of fact—I also sing.”

ADDED BY ISLANDGIRL 5 FOR GALEN, AS ALL PARTS WERE POSTED IN SEPARATE THREADS

Series: ...And I Can’t Hide
Episode 1.19X: Marked Man
Rating: Teen
Summary: Maria suffers a family loss.

Disclaimer: The rights to the characters and situations of Roswell are the property of Warner Brothers, Jason Katims Productions, Twentieth Century Fox, Fox, Regency Television, and Melinda Metz.

• That evening, the easel at the lounge door held a placard, done with indelible marker in the performer’s most artistic lettering, to announce the Culberson County debut of Lizz Alexx (the best-sounding stage name she was able to devise at short notice). A little before showtime, two young men arrived in matching black shirts and pants; one of them uncased a guitar, and the other seated himself at the drum set already in place. Maria, having changed to the only other outfit she had brought with her (which, however, like most of her outfits, suited the theatrical setting), stepped up to introduce herself. But it turned out she did not have to. “You’re the singer?” the guitarist asked.
  
  “What’s it look like?”
  
  He barely spared her a glance. “Like a nobody with a slick-sounding story managed to b.s. her way into a gig here.”
  
  “Yes, and which, having done, I feel justified in claiming a certain respect as my due. How quick can you pick up a song?”
  
  “How quick can you drop it?”
  
  “You have possibilities,” she said. “Definite possibilities.” Her eye lingered on him for a second. “But that’s not why we’re here.”
  
  “Got that right.” He remained fixed on his instrument.
  
  “Well, good. As long as we’re clear on that.” But she could not help feeling slighted.
  
  For the next half hour, she stood to one side watching the crowd collect, until she realized that was all there would be. Her first number (of three, total) was chosen with them in mind; it was her only composition that qualified as country. This was how the first verse ran:
  
  “Well, he took me to the movies
  And he took me to the town
  Then he took me to the cleaners
  While the stars were looking down.
  Now I’m lost out in the desert
  And it’s lonely all around
  And I never will forgive him
  While the stars are looking down.”
  
  Her employer was listening from the doorway. When the song had concluded, Brenda, who was serving, looked to him for his verdict, and felt unaccountably proud when he delivered a thumbs-up. By the end of the performance, the audience, and even the backing band, seemed to agree. So great was the pleasure Maria took in this, it filled her head to the exclusion of everything else, including the purpose for which she had traveled so far.
  
  When she slept, she dreamed again of geodesic domes, but this time her dream took a form even weirder than before. The dome was a club, and she was singing there. At the close of her act, the lights rose on the listeners to reveal them as monsters from the planet Lizz, with bills for mouths and flippers for hands. But they were a great crowd. “So where you all from?” she asked, and then realized she did not need to, she already knew. Michael was among their number, clapping his flippers vigorously.
  
  At that point she woke—she had to, the show was over—but that image of him remained in her mind. She had come to get justice on him and his partner, not to become a country legend; the old story, forest for the trees. “I made a vow to myself,” she said. “Well, not a real vow—more like a promise. But it wasn’t a promise either—I mean, I never actually used the word ‘promise.’ It was more of a thought. Like, there are soft thoughts and hard thoughts, and this one was definitely hard—‘You are doing this, girl!’ Yeah, more like that.”
  
  She had to get going. And she would, absolutely—but not for a few days yet. She owed that much to Sully, and to her own financial solvency: after all, a person needed to eat. “I didn’t plan this well. A few days will give me time to plan it better.” The last was true, but she would never do it unless she were forced, whether she had a month, or a year, or a decade to spend at it. Somewhere at the back of her mind, she half knew that; people had told her often enough. “Five days,” she said. “I’ll give myself five days. Or maybe seven. They’ll still be there.” Since they were in flight, this was by no means certain, and she half knew that too. “Probably will,” she amended. Then she dozed off again.
  
  Her travel alarm brought her out of it. The trailer was dark, but she forced herself out of bed: the cafe opened at six. The first customers were a pair of farmers who entered together. She tried out the greeting she had worked up the previous evening before going to bed: “Good morning and welcome to the Lobo Truck Cafe, where you can always count on service with a smile, or a low-carb, high-energy substitute. What can I get you boys?”
  
  “You can git on over here and sit on my lap,” said the shorter of the two. “How ’bout that?” He was not being truly lecherous, like Barry; just tiresome, after the manner of older men with waitresses.
  
  “And again I wonder,” said Maria, “is there something about operating a tractor that paralyzes the higher brain functions?”
  
  “Nope,” said Brenda, coming to the rescue if need were, “Dan’s always been this dumb.”
  
  He seemed not to mind the insult. “Know one thing.” He slowly stirred his coffee. “You see Hal coming, you better tuck this ’un out of sight.”
  
  “Who’s Hal?” asked Maria.
  
  Brenda looked worried. “Why, what’s she done?”
  
  “Nothin’ as I know of. But he’s showin’ a picture around looks a lot like her. Says it’s somebody went missin’ up in Roswell.”
  
  “Was Hal that trooper?” asked Maria. She thought of the stolen gun in her bag.
  
  “Tony and me,” Dan continued, “we figgered it was one of those alien abductions.” He squinted up at Maria. “Must be a accidental resemblance, huh?”
  
  “Yeah,” she murmured, “must be.”
  
  “You come with me, kitten.” She led Maria away until they were out of earshot and then handed her a key ring. “Go to the trailer and wait there.”
  
  “What are you going to do?”
  
  “Tell you when it’s clear in my own mind. I know I’m not letting anybody take you back—unless you’re of a mind to go.” She looked squarely at her. “You’re not, are you?”
  
  It would have been the perfect chance to escape her obligation; no one would have blamed her for it. But she was not as big a coward as that. She shook her head. “Not yet.”
  
  “Thought not. You git on out there. I’ll think of something.”
  
  The something turned out to be a bottle of dye. Within a few minutes, Maria was submerging her hair in the bathroom sink. “Is this really necessary?” she asked.
  
  “You got a better idea for getting out of here unnoticed?” Maria did not. So in a short while she bobbed up to face the mirror with a crop of jet-black plumage. “See there?” Brenda trumpeted. “Your own mama wouldn’t know you.”
  
  “My mom’s seen my hair every color. And just for information, I know some people who could do this a lot faster.”
  
  “Well, excuse me for keeping you.” She handed her a towel. “Here, dry.” As she did so, Brenda stepped into the front room and emptied her wallet. “This is what you’ve earned. Plus a bonus to see you a few miles farther.” She pulled open the knit bag before Maria could move to stop her. Her eye fell on the gun. Maria ran up and grabbed the bag away.
  
  Brenda stared at her. “Hope that’s got nothing to do with the guy in your song.”
  
  She was too good a guesser for Maria’s liking. “It’s for protection.”
  
  Brenda clasped her hand in a way that felt almost motherly, except that Maria’s own mother would never have done it. “Kitten, I’m a big believer in letting everybody blaze their own trail. But there’s some holes so big, once you step in ’em you can’t ever get out. And all it takes is that one step.”
  
  “I’ll be careful. Seriously.”
  
  “Easy to say.” Of course, thought Maria, since she had only said it to get Brenda off her back. “But try to remember when the time comes.” She whisked the new hair. “Dry enough. Time you high-tailed it. The next town over’s Valentine—not much bigger’n this, but there’s a bus stop. I’ll take you in the truck.”
  
  And so, sooner than she had expected, tricked out in black hair and showgirl make-up (which she had applied in the truck), Maria found herself on board a Trailways bus, jouncing slowly but surely southeast, toward Marathon.
  
  Late that afternoon, as the purple shadows stretched out lazily across campus, two of the people Maria had left behind met for the first time since their estrangement—that is, outside of the classes they shared. The one who had forced the meeting, by waiting by an exit she knew the other had to use, had not been looking forward to it. But she had to know—if there was anything to be known. The other would have just walked on, ignoring her, but she blocked his path. “Have you heard from Michael?”
  
  Max shook his head. “Maria?”
  
  Liz did the same. A silence fell between them. “What’s going to happen?” she asked. “To them? To all of us?”
  
  “How should I know?”
  
  “What’ll we do if Maria—or Michael—” She could not bear to finish.
  
  “What we have been doing. Whatever’s necessary.”
  
  “How? We’re not police, or soldiers. How can we do those things?”
  
  He answered quietly—and, she thought, bitterly. “Once you and I thought we couldn’t live without each other. Now we are. What you think is impossible becomes possible, if you have no choice.”
  
  She felt an ache she could scarcely bear. “Max—”
  
  “Like I said—sometimes people don’t have a choice.” He left, and this time she let him. The grounds looked more deserted than ever now. She could not decide whom to feel more sorry for, Maria or herself; finally she settled on herself, and went home to see if she could spread a little of her misery to her parents, who she secretly felt deserved it. By the end of the evening, however, she was feeling ashamed of herself, and her sympathy shifted back to Maria—who, though Liz did not know it, would soon be needing all she could get.
  
  After disembarking in Marathon the next morning, she immediately began looking around for someone old. The man her eye landed on exceeded the requirement: he looked as though he had been a fixture in the tiny park since the grass had been laid. His name (which she would never have a chance to learn) was Carlos. “Excuse me?” He surveyed her in some astonishment; her appearance was more outlandish than he was used to or she remembered. “There’s a building somewhere around here shaped like this.” She bent her fingers as if holding a ball, and then wiggled them as if squeezing a sponge. “You know it?”
  
  “Sure I do,” he said, rather amazingly, given what he had had to work from. “Atherton place. Strange fella, Atherton. Talked to himself a lot. He was a writer, you know. They’re like that, writers. ’course, he’s dead now—”
  
  “Where is the place?”
  
  He pointed. “Back the way you come about three miles, then north another two. You’ll hit a dirt road and take that another mile. You’re not walking?”
  
  “What if I am?”
  
  “Far piece to walk. ’course I done some walking in my day. Couldn’t afford a car back then, and there weren’t no buses. So either you walked—”
  
  “¡Ay, mierda!” She quickly turned her head away. A woman had walked by them on her way to the bus depot—a woman Maria recognized without doubt. But what had brought Topolsky there?
  
  Carlos had seen her too. “Cops after you?”
  
  “What makes you think she’s a cop?”
  
  “Why, ain’t she?” He peered more narrowly at Maria. “Girl, what you got in mind to do?”
  
  “What I have to.” It was good she had the chance to affirm that.
  
  “Cops gonna try and stop you?”
  
  Maria watched Topolsky enter the depot. “Not now,” she said, and with that, she took her chance.
  
  It was her hope to leave inconspicuously, but Carlos ended that by shouting after her, in a loud voice, “That’s the spirit! Don’t let ’em nab you! This is a free country!” and following this with the first bars of “My Country, ’Tis of Thee.” Luckily, he did not bring Topolsky out, but he did cause someone to look over—a man standing in the shadow of the building, who had not been there a moment before, Carlos was certain. He would have remembered the face.
  
  Maria took care she was not followed out to Atherton’s; the miles of empty desert, and mostly empty road, made it easy to tell. The walk was less easy, but her job at the Crashdown had accustomed her to spending hours on her feet. She made such good time that when she arrived in sight of the dome, the stone house beside it, and the range of low hills behind, she still had most of the afternoon and the whole evening left to wait. She dropped her bag and plopped down in the dirt. The brush and the distance hid her from the view of anyone who might have happened to be looking.
  
  She reached her hand into the bag and grabbed out a smaller bag full of tortilla chips. The rip and crinkle of the plastic, and the crunch as she bit into the first one, seemed to resound thunderously. From then on, she extracted each chip as if it were an explosive substance, in slow motion.
  
  What did she think about while she waited? And what had she thought about during her walk? She could not have said afterwards: maybe nothing, maybe other things; probably everything except what she should have been thinking about. She certainly did not reflect on her reasons for coming, or the reasons why she should have stayed where she was. She had gone through all that already, or as much as she intended to. And it was too late now; her course was set.
  
  Not until the sky began to darken did she feel the cold. Instead of buttoning up, she let it seep into her, to help prepare her for the task. It still seemed unreal and abstract to her, as if she were reading about someone else who was going to do it. She lifted out the Taurus and the box of ammunition. She had never loaded a gun before, but as a small girl she had watched her father do it; ironic he was now helping her in his own behalf. But characteristic: it was always all to do with himself.
  
  She remembered suddenly that Michael believed Nasedo to be his father; she did not know he had discovered otherwise. “I hope he is,” she said. “Then we’ll be even. And you’ll understand why I have to do this.” Of course he would only have a few seconds to achieve this understanding—unless she took care of him first, and then he would have no time at all. So either way, it did not really matter.
  
  Not owning a watch, she had to guess at the time; she felt as if she had been sitting there for a week. Past midnight, as she guessed—it was actually nearer to ten—she got up and started toward the dome, her way lit by the stars and a gibbous moon. Her advance was so gradual that for many minutes she felt she was getting nowhere. She took care to tread softly, but from the relentless silence, she surmised Michael and the others must have left—if they had ever been there at all; dreams were not always true, and maybe hers had misled her.
  
  She approached the recessed door and peered through its hexagonal pane. The view inside was darker than out. The doorknob was locked, as she had expected. She began a circuit of the perimeter. A quarter of the way round, she found the first evidence of habitation: a Jeep Cherokee parked between the two buildings. Now she realized she needed a plan. And in the crunch, forced at last to come up with one, she did. Having laid down her bag and gun, she looked for some rocks to toss at the wall. To her disappointment, those she found were too small to wake anybody. So she came up with another plan.
  
  She retrieved the gun, walked out to the Cherokee, and smashed in one of the side windows, intending thereby to set off the alarm. When none sounded, she realized the vehicle was probably Nasedo’s antique Cadillac, camouflaged to throw off their pursuers. But she had made enough noise to achieve her purpose: the door to the dome opened, and Michael appeared. She hastily took cover against the building. As he went to inspect the SUV, she stole inside behind him, pressed her back against the wall, and waited there in the dark. Her heart seemed to be beating in double time. When he returned, he passed her without seeing her and went on into the tunnel that connected the dome with the house. She waited about fifteen minutes longer and then followed him.
  
  The tunnel opened onto an ordinary corridor, which opened onto a vacant room. She stopped in the entryway. Just enough moonlight flowed in through the bare windows to show that the house had never been completed—or maybe Atherton had designed it that way, with its studs and joists exposed. Propped against one of them sat a tall, bearded man, whom she had heard called Pete; Michael was sitting catty-cornered to him; the others were lying on the floor. All appeared to be asleep. She stood watching them, the gun quivering with her hand.
  
  She could hear the noise Michael made in place of snoring; a stranger would have had to work to detect it. After it had gone on for about five minutes without let-up, she ventured a step forward. Then another. Michael emitted a loud cough, or something like it; she froze. A few seconds later, the former noise resumed. She continued, nearly on tiptoe, and halted between her prospective targets, looking from one to the other. Finally her eye settled on Nasedo. She began to raise the gun—
  
  And found herself without the will to use it. After coming so far too! Eres una gallina! she chided herself. What kind of a daughter was she? This kind, apparently: whatever she owed to her family, she did not want to kill for them; did not want to be the kind of person who did that. She had not realized it until now, when she was called on to pull the trigger. Her imagination had not been vivid enough to foresee how it would make her feel—which was horrible, like an attack of food poisoning.
  
  She lashed herself on by recalling—once, twice, three times—the wrongs he had done her; that they both had done her, Nasedo corrupting Michael and Michael welcoming it. The contempt they had shown her family!—herself forgotten, her mother used without her knowledge, her father left as road kill. And the ingratitude of Michael!—they had made him feel welcome (not at first maybe, but later on), they had given to him, and he had taken from them, imitating Nasedo—his idol, his mentor, maybe his father—who took from every human he met. Selfish, murdering bastards, the pair of them.
  
  Maria believed she could shoot them now. She raised the gun.
  
  Instantly a beeping arose. She had not heard it before but guessed its source. It was coming from Nasedo’s direction. He and the others began to stir. Panicking, she waved the gun toward him and squeezed the trigger before she meant to. The report echoed through the unfurnished room. The bullet landed in his arm. Michael bounded forward and tackled her. She hit the floor painfully. He felt for the gun and yanked it away. The beeping subsided.
  
  Behind him, a girl Maria did not recognize jumped to her feet and raised an arm. A fiery ring erupted in the middle of the air, throwing light everywhere. In a few seconds, it faded away like a flare, but some of the light remained, enough to see by. The girl knelt at Nasedo’s side. A moment later, a young boy joined her. Michael found himself staring down at the last face he would have expected to see. “Maria! What the hell did you think you were doing?”
  
  “He killed my father.”
  
  Michael’s face showed a new understanding. He slid off her, and his head drooped wearily. “No. He didn’t.”
  
  She sat up alongside him. “Then you did.”
  
  “No.”
  
  “I saw the handprint! It had to be you or Nasedo.”
  
  “His name’s Feddin. And he never killed any of those people.” He looked to Neila. “How’s he doing?”
  
  “I’ve healed the wound. But he’s even weaker than before.” He certainly looked it.
  
  “You up to explaining?” Michael asked him. “If you aren’t—”
  
  “She has to know.” The tall man addressed himself to her. “It’s true I’m a criminal. An undocumented alien. To live in the shadows wasn’t my choice—it’s my curse. But I’m no murderer.”
  
  “The only one he ever killed was Hank,” said Michael, “and that was by accident.”
  
  “I visited him in the guise of a social worker—”
  
  “Which, if one of them was an alien,” Michael interjected again, “who’d know the difference?”
  
  “I warned him to cease mistreating Michael. He was drunk and he attacked me. I reached into his mind to calm him. But the awareness of another spirit in there with him was more than he could abide. He tore at his mind, as if he were tearing at his flesh, to get me out of it. At last he tore it open. He pled with me to make the pain stop, and I did—in the only way I knew then. I had no part in those other deaths, though I was blamed for them.”
  
  “He means ‘framed.’ There’s this other Vallosan—that’s the name of our planet, Vallosa—who came to Earth at the same time.”
  
  “Klima. He and I were two of the sentries appointed to see the ships to Earth.”
  
  “Ships?” said Maria. “More than one?”
  
  “A small fleet to carry the seeds of our emigration. My ship carried Michael and the others—that is, the genetic matter from which they were to be formed.”
  
  “It’s complicated,” Michael put in.
  
  “I was quartered in the outer shell. The genetic matter was housed in the core. On landing, the core was ejected, and it torpedoed underground to a point miles away. I searched for it, and returned to search again, but I never found it.” He turned to Michael. “That was why I left the signs of the Stones for River Dog to reveal to you. In case you had survived, after all.”
  
  “He’s also the one who healed River Dog that time in the woods,” said Michael.
  
  “I traveled far, searching for other ships and their sentries. Klima did the same. Ultimately we found each other. Later I also found two ship-borns whose sentries had died”—he nodded toward Neila and Ben—“and took them under my wing. Klima dreams of finding them all and assembling them into an army. The woman Seaver dreams of harnessing them together as a living power station, and worse. Such ambitions are futile. Our races must live in harmony together. Ones such as these would prevent that. So Klima murdered those people and cast suspicion on me, to discredit me—because I counsel peace.”
  
  Now Maria recognized the magnitude of the sin she had nearly committed. “I’m so sorry,” she told his stepchildren. “I would have done the same thing to you that bastard did to me. You’d have had every right to kill me.”
  
  Neila recollected a line from a song. “‘And another eye for another eye, till everyone is blind.’” Maria saw the wisdom of this, but wondered where justice fit in.
  
  “Klima has not much time left,” Feddin went on, “nor have I. Your world is not ours. Its atmosphere withers us slowly. There’s no cure we know. The tablets we take only retard the rate of decay.”
  
  “What kind of tablets?” Maria asked.
  
  “All of Vallosa was saturated with a unique thermal energy, which you know as the Balance. Certain places in this world are possessed of the same energy. The pills are ground from the stone in those places.”
  
  “But Michael doesn’t need to take pills. Or Max, or Isabel.”
  
  “No. The ship-borns have adapted—or were adapted. That’s why it’s up to them—to the next generation—to decide the future of our two peoples.” He turned to Michael. “You still have the Stones I left for you?” Michael nodded. “I left you this too. Under the tower.” He held up an object that had been concealed by the folds of his coat. “You know this as a Balancer. But do you know what the word means?”
  
  “Klima told me it’s a channeling device.”
  
  “Klima said truly—but did not say all. This is a Lodestone—the Lodestone, the last one remaining. It calls to the other Stones with a greater power—one Stone to rule them all, one Stone to bind them. The lesser ones permit you to tap that power—the power that was Vallosa, the power that’s stored in the places the Stones revealed to you, the power of the Balance. But with the Lodestone—the one Stone—you can channel the power when and where you will it, if you will it strongly enough.”
  
  “The other Stones glow blue when they get near those places. Why doesn’t this one?”
  
  “It does. You’re not seeing its true form. And you’re not hearing its true voice, for it has not yet called to you. But it will one day. When it does, heed its summons, and it will lead you to discover the truth of your destiny.” He passed it to Michael as if it were an orb and scepter, but in doing so, his arm faltered, and Michael had to support it with his own. “You see? The power is now yours to wield. Not mine, and not Klima’s. We’re nearly spent.”
  
  “Not just yet,” came a voice. The Lodestone sounded its clarion, and its spiral was shining.
  
  “He’s here!” Michael cried. The light Neila had created earlier had continued to dwindle, unnoticed; now the corridor from the dome was nearly pitch dark. From the darkness, a figure sprang at Michael; Maria recognized the face as her father’s. This was the real Nasedo: she grabbed back the gun and fired. This time her aim was true, and he doubled over with a groan. Michael reclaimed the gun. “You can’t be trusted with these,” he told her.
  
  Clenching his teeth, summoning every grain of energy left to him, Klima lifted his shirt and thrust his thumb and forefinger into his belly; its flesh melted to admit them. At the same time, he opened his jaws and produced a sound resembling a death rattle. When he withdrew his thumb and finger, the bullet was between them. He emitted a long sigh and then addressed Maria in a rasping whisper. “Ill-bred child, to shoot your own father.”
  
  “Excuse me, we’ve established you’re not.”
  
  Slyness crept into his half-shut eyes. “But how you wish I were. It wasn’t me you were trying to kill just now. It was him.”
  
  “No!”
  
  “You ought to thank me for having spared you the task. The ingratitude of you humans.” He turned his scorn on Feddin. “And you take their side, monk.” The description surprised the others, yet seemed to fit somehow.
  
  “I’m no monk.”
  
  “No. And no immortal either.”
  
  With more strength than they had suspected he had in him, he conjured up a ball of lightning and sent it spinning toward his enemy. But its speed was only half what he had willed, and Michael was able to block it. He outlined a strip on the floor and stretched it upwards all the way to the ceiling, like pulling a window blind in reverse, creating a wall between Klima and themselves. “Time you bailed,” he told Feddin.
  
  “And you.”
  
  “It’s you he’s after, not us.”
  
  “Michael’s right,” Neila said. After a moment, Feddin nodded. The new wall blocked the tunnel to the dome, but there was a door leading out the front. The children hurried to it, and Feddin followed.
  
  “Thank you,” Michael said. “For all you showed me.”
  
  Feddin smiles. “You showed it to yourself. I only pointed out the way.”
  
  “Will we ever see each other again?”
  
  “So I sense. But in a different channel of vision.”
  
  “Like UPN?” asked Maria, who was feeling a little lost.
  
  “Farewell,” said Feddin, “until then.”
  
  As he and the others left, Michael remained at the wall, prepared for further attack, but none came, if he discounted the tempter’s voice on the other side: “You’ve chosen the wrong ally, ship-born. But your friends won’t. The day will come when you’ll have to fight them, or join them.” And there was more of the same—much more.
  
  Worry champed at him: he knew which side was right and which was wrong, but the others did not, and would not believe him if he told them, any more than they had ever listened to him before; they would throw in with Klima, and together their powers would be stronger than his, and— But all at once the worry evaporated, and he realized Klima had been transmitting it, like the enemy in a war sending propaganda over the radio. But he had stopped, and the Balancer had gone dark. “He’s gone,” he said, and he slid the wall back into the floor.
  
  A minute or two earlier, they had heard Feddin’s car take off, and now they heard the growl of another in the distance. Leaving by way of the dome, they saw a pair of headlights winding through the flats in their direction. “That would be Topolsky,” said Maria. She went to pick up her bag, which was still lying by the wall.
  
  “I understand what you did,” said Michael. “I want you to know that.” He added, after a pause, “I hope you understand what I did.”
  
  “I do now.”
  
  “Feddin taught me so much.” Surveying the night sky, he spied the V shape, which she had forgotten all about. “Well, like that. When the ships from Vallosa came in, that’s where they discharged their surplus energy. Every type of energy operates to a certain pattern—its energy signature. In this case, a V.”
  
  Maria found herself listening with more attention than she would have expected of herself. “V for Vallosa,” she murmured.
  
  “It’s like a local outlet for the original source—which, by the way, is part of Aries. This is linked to it, and also to the natural outlets on Earth. Like the one here.” For Maria, this was one step too many. “The five points on the map,” he reminded her. “Library,—”
  
  “—Angels’ Ground, rocks, railroad museum,” she recited along with him, ticking them off on her fingers. He was surprised she knew too. “Number five, unknown. Did he tell you where it is?”
  
  “He didn’t know either.”
  
  “But it’s his map.”
  
  “He dreamed it, and just painted what he saw in his dream. He did say that symbol isn’t like the others. It’s a rune from their alphabet—a rune of power, he said.”
  
  “What does it mean?”
  
  “It can mean more than one thing, depending on the direction you’re looking.” He read her expression. “No, I don’t either.” Then suddenly he slapped his forehead. “I’m getting sidetracked here. What I wanted to say was, Feddin taught me fighting’s not the answer. It might have been on our planet, but not here.” The next admission came hard, but mainly for lack of practice. “I was wrong. But so were you, when you came after us. If we can both get past that—”
  
  She would have liked to. But, no. “It’s no good.”
  
  “What isn’t?”
  
  “Us. Now.”
  
  “Why?”
  
  “You heard about Liz?”
  
  “The blood poisoning? Sure, I can fix that.”
  
  “You can?” He had been right about having learned a lot.
  
  “Molecular regeneration. You have to watch what you’re doing, but—yeah. It’s not a problem. We can still—”
  
  “No. When we were faced with a choice, you chose Nasedo—the one you thought was Nasedo—and I chose my family.”
  
  “That’s history.”
  
  “History is who we are. It’s all we are.” She had not realized this until she said it. “My father’s dead. The one who killed him was one of you.”
  
  “And the father who beat me up was one of you. So?”
  
  “So we’re enemies. You had it right the first time. Obviously, we don’t have to kill each other. But we can’t—do the other thing either. It’s in the genes. Oil and water.” She repeated the last words, faintly. And they were the last word; at any rate, Michael could think of no good reply. The two stood silently in the white glare of the headlights, which were now very close, and drawing closer. Five or six yards away, they stopped and then went dark, at the same time the car they belonged—a black Impala—went silent. Michael remembered, almost too late, he was holding the Stone. He quickly dropped it into Maria’s bag.
  
  Topolsky stepped out. “Okay, where is he?” They pretended to look even more ignorant than teens generally did, in her observation. “Come off it, I know he’s here. This is the only place that makes sense.” The FBI was smarter than Maria had given them credit for. “The only car I passed on the road was carrying a mother and her two—” Then she realized. “Oh, no. I should have taken a closer look. They can’t change shape, can they? But he can.” She gazed out at the dark hills with an air of regret. “This was my last chance. To know for a moral certainty what was true, and what wasn’t.”
  
  A second pair of headlights was closing on them. “I’ll lay odds that’s Agent Stevens. In the car. Hurry.” They hesitated, confused: she and Stevens were on the same side, weren’t they? “Trust me, you don’t want to be found here.” Once in, they discovered she had come there alone, which they were pretty sure was not standard protocol for raiding the hideouts of suspected serial killers. She kept the lights off as she cruised around to the rear and then steered for the hills, driving half-blind, but also invisible to Stevens—if it were Stevens—and, she hoped, eclipsed from his view by the dome. She took a pass through the hills that emptied onto the 385, and this, after a few hours’ drive, intersected the highway to Roswell.
  
  During the ride, the three did not speak, so preoccupied was each of them with concerns too private to share. Maria had done what she had come for, though not in the way she had expected: she had killed her father’s murderer, but he was not who she had thought, and he had brought himself back to life. This did not change the feeling her duty had been discharged, and she was willing to let the matter rest there. She slept most of the way back.
  
  She woke to hear whispers from the front seat. “I need information.”
  
  “Again?”
  
  “Of course. It’s my—it’s what I do.”
  
  “Then I don’t have a choice, do I?”
  
  “Now, don’t be moody.” Her tone was almost flirtatious. “You were a great help last time. You always are. We’ll talk more at your place.”
  
  The exchange stayed with Maria all the way home. When the Impala deposited her in her drive, she unloaded a look of disappointment on Michael that puzzled him deeply. He had not seen it when she had him marked as Nasedo’s accomplice; what could be worse than that?
  
  To Maria, it was this. Before her adventure, she would have believed him capable of collaborating with Nasedo, but never with Topolsky. Nasedo was not their enemy—they had made themselves his—but Topolsky was; that was one of the core beliefs the group shared. Either Michael had abandoned the loyalties he had lived by—which was bad enough—or they had never been real, and she had never really known him—and that was worse; that hurt the most. She watched as the car was swallowed up into the darkness. It was now night again.
  
  She turned toward her house reluctantly, not quite ready to abandon the life of the road, brief as her experience of it had been. But as soon as her mother appeared in the doorway, and the first sight of her daughter safe and sound purged her face of all its fears, Maria could not help feeling happy, dizzyingly happy. They ran to hug each other. “Honey!” said Amy. “Jim and I were so worried.” Only then did Maria take account of the figure standing just inside. She gently disengaged from the embrace. Her mother touched the black foliage she had not remembered having. “What’d you do to your hair?”
  
  Valenti looked annoyed. “Guess we can cancel that missing persons report now.” They followed him into the living room.
  
  As he took up the handset, Maria recalled the alibi she had prepared. “Didn’t you get my phone message?”
  
  Amy’s face took on a severe look. “You mean about Erica? I called. Machine says the family’s on vacation.”
  
  This part, Maria had rehearsed in the car. “Yeah, and they took me with them. Sorry to run out on you like that—”
  
  “I’m the one who should be sorry. It must have been an ordeal for you.” You have no idea, thought Maria. “I can’t say I had any feelings left for your father. But he was your father. You know, you could have gone to Jim. He’s helped a lot of young people with their problems.”
  
  “These would be the ones he had put away?”
  
  Valenti had finished his call in time to hear this. “Hey, now, I’m not that bad. Besides, it’s time you and me started getting closer.” He winked at her. “A lot closer.”
  
  Maria averted her eyes. “Um, if you’re actually hitting on me with my mom in the room, this is stranger than anything I care to be involved in.”
  
  “No, no!” He stepped up to Amy and put an arm around her. “Better tell her, babe.”
  
  Maria did not like that, or the arm. “Yeah, why don’t you,” she said, in a rather acid tone, “‘babe’?”
  
  “I was getting to it.” She sounded slightly defensive. “Honey, you know how I always say life has a way of balancing the bitter with the sweet?”
  
  “I never heard you say that.”
  
  “Well, I just did. You lost a father—now you’re gaining one. Jim and I are getting married.” Maria stared at them. They both seemed to be channeling the identical smiley face. She felt as if she had crossed over into a dream state. “We’ll be a real family again,” said her mother. “That is, for the first time.”
  
  “Without secrets,” Valenti said pointedly.
  
  “Won’t it be wonderful?”
  
  “See me fight to contain my rapture.” Her eyes were filled with dread. A second later, it turned to panic: she had caught sight of her knit bag, tossed carelessly onto the sofa, and inside it a corner of the Stone was showing. She reached over and shook the bag. The Stone slipped from sight. She breathed a sigh of relief. But how many more close calls would there be? My father the sheriff, she thought, and his daughter the felon. Luckily, she was only guilty of attempted murder. But no; on second thought, she decided there was nothing lucky about any of it.
  
  Late that night beneath the stars, and the lights that were not stars, an old man with long white hair, held in place with a plain cotton band, sat beside the placid river in the Frazier Woods. Another he had known, wearing the shape he had known him by, walked out from the trees to sit beside him. River Dog did not have to look up. “My friend,” he said. “I hoped we would meet again one day. They told me you were a killer.”
  
  “They told you what they believed. What do you believe?”
  
  River Dog nodded. “I knew it was a lie.”
  
  “The days pass quickly for us both. I think this will be our last meeting.”
  
  “Yet it may be we will walk together after, in the forest that has no end.” He reached out his hand.
  
  As River Dog clasped it, his tears blurred it to his sight. “I will hold this as my hope.”
  
  “And so will I.” They parted hands. The visitor rose and left as he had come.
  
  Before going to bed that night, Maria took out the family album, to talk to the space where her father’s picture had been, as she had once before. “Dad—” She stopped, with a jolt: the photo was back. She flipped through to the one of her and Roman; it was back too. She started to go ask her mother if she had found them and restored them to their places—and then knew she had not. He had. And he had returned to put them back. He had been there, inside her house, maybe in the form of Valenti, or of her mother—or of her. And he might come again, in the same form, or whatever form he chose. From now on she could never be sure of anyone.
  
  After arriving at school the next day, one of her first acts, as the impositions of her academic schedule permitted, was to get together with Liz to resolve two matters very much on her mind. The first one, she quickly disposed of—or thought she had—while they were visiting the girls’ room and Liz was occupied in one of the stalls. But she came out in time to catch it in the mirror. “What did you just put in my purse?” She extracted the object, which was wrapped in a muslin rag.
  
  Maria glanced around edgily. “Don’t let anyone see it.”
  
  “There’s no one else in here.” She unfolded the rag. “Maria! I don’t want this!”
  
  “If it’s with me, Valenti will find it. He’s in the house, like, all the time.”
  
  Before they were done with their break, Liz had spotted Isabel in the quad and hastened out to her. “You take this,” she said, exposing part of it for her to see.
  
  But Isabel was not one to be ordered. “Put that thing away!”
  
  “It’s not safe at Maria’s. Because of the sheriff.”
  
  “It’s no different with us. Our parents are spies for Topolsky.” Liz was shocked by the news. “Why don’t you try Michael?”
  
  “Not a wise move,” said Maria, who had just joined them, having followed Liz at an ambling pace. “He’s spying for her too.”
  
  “Michael?” Now it was Isabel’s turn to be shocked. “If that’s true, there’s no one we can trust.” She looked at Liz. “You’ll have to hold onto it for a while.”
  
  “Why should I be the one taking the risk? Max and I aren’t even together any more.”
  
  “We’ve all taken risks.”
  
  “I think I’ve been handed more than my share,” Liz replied quietly.
  
  Isabel had not considered it in that light. “You’re right. It’s unfair to you. Keep it for tonight, and I’ll speak to Max about it.” Liz had to be content with that.
  
  All this time, Maria had been trying to think of a good way to work around to her second purpose, and once they were alone, Liz saw the marks of her thinking inscribed on her face. “Something else?”
  
  “Yeah, um, another favor—last one, promise. What it is is, I kind of got in trouble with my boss for taking all those days off. Which, needless to say, my teachers aren’t thrilled about either. But they have to take me back, and my boss doesn’t—won’t, actually. So what it comes to is, I’m out of a job. And so I was wondering if you’d be willing to talk to your dad about letting me re-up.” Liz opened her mouth and held it in that position. “Liz, did you hear me?”
  
  “Right, Maria, the thing is—”
  
  Michael stamped up to them from the same direction Isabel had left in. “You!” He pointed to Maria.
  
  “You yourself,” she retorted, unfazed.
  
  “Did you tell Isabel I was a mole?”
  
  “Why, did I blow your cover?”
  
  “I’m not.”
  
  “I heard you and Topolsky talking in the car.”
  
  “That was none of your business. Anyway, she’s not with the FBI any more. She lost her job.”
  
  The removal of her as a threat altered Maria’s feelings, and she tried to move the discussion into the area of friendly chat. “Wow, you know, now, that’s a coincidence. Because I was just saying to Liz—”
  
  “Lost her job how?” Liz had noticed how impatient with irrelevancies she had become lately; she put it down to stress.
  
  “Arrested the wrong person, apparently.” Liz pondered this. He continued, to Maria, “She’s been through a lot of stuff. If you talked to her—“ He shook his head. “Forget it. You actually believed I’d rat you out to the FBI?”
  
  “You didn’t trust me either, when you had the chance.”
  
  “Guess I was right, then, huh?” He left no more happy than when he had arrived.
  
  “Ohh...!” Maria was quivering. “Breathe deep, breathe deep....” She suited the act to the word. “What was I saying?” Liz hoped it had slipped her mind. “Oh, yes. So if you could arrange to get me back in at the Crashdown, it would be helpful. In the way of financial remuneration, ¿comprende?”
  
  “Absolutely. That would be—perfect.” She nodded several times, and opened her mouth twice, before further speech emerged. “Maria, see, the thing is, my dad and I aren’t exactly seeing eye to eye these days. With the divorce and everything. Plus which, he’s hired somebody else to cover your hours. So a rehire would be a little—problematic. At this stage.” She smiled hopefully. “You understand.”
  
  “Yeah,” said Maria, “I get it.” She had once accused Liz of being an ice maiden; at the moment, Liz had nothing on her.
  
  “It isn’t that I don’t want to help—”
  
  “Of course not. How I could ever form a mistaken notion like that?” She watched the passing students. “You’re no different from the rest of them. Ursula Slavin, Pam Troy—the ‘nice’ kids. To you, I’m a nobody. Disposable.”
  
  Liz could not believe her ears. “Maria!”
  
  “That’s the one thing me and Michael had in common. Wrong side of the tracks, wrong side of the bed—wrong side of everything.”
  
  “It’s not like that at all!” She knew that had sounded too glib, too prim, and too everything else she was at her least competent.
  
  “Well, when you figure out how it is, be sure and let me know.” Her voice broke on the last words, but she was determined not to let Liz see her cry. So she walked away. “Maria! Please!” she heard behind her, but she would not—could not—look back. She owed her pride, and her family’s, that much.
  
  She did not weep, nor did any of the other mourners, so called, at the funeral of Alberto Antonio Deluca (July 17, 1953 – April 8, 2000); it began, it ended, and they left. She hesitated, as if wanting to say something to him. But when her mother called, she came. She returned when the cemetery was empty, except for the dead, and she knelt before his headstone, but not in an attitude of prayer.
  
  “Dad,” she said, “Dad, Dad. I don’t remember much about you. But I’m sure you didn’t remember much of me either. How could you? You weren’t working at the time, but you for sure weren’t hanging around the house—though I remember once you took me out for an ice cream. Then you took off, and the years slid by—years without you, and more without even the sense of you. And then you came back. You did come back. True, it was to rip Mom off—but we all gotta look out for ourselves, ¿es verdad?”
  
  She was staring off to some place, or no place—any place. “See, Dad, the deal is, as of the moment I don’t have a boyfriend, or a best friend, or a job. I’m even—” Her voice broke again. “—even losing Mom. And you could say, in a way, I did it all for you. The good daughter. So we’re quits now. For the ice cream.” She was silent for a second. Then she mouthed a word that began with an f, ended with an r, and was not “father”; it was the last word she ever spoke to him, alive or dead.
  
  She had been abandoned. And she felt abandoned. She could do nothing about the fact, but she would not permit the feeling: as she walked back home, she kicked it farther away from her with every step—and they were loud steps. She vowed never to be lonely, just alone; they were two different things, and alone was better. And as far as she could foresee a future for herself, those were the only options on the horizon.

ADDED BY ISLANDGIRL 5 FOR GALEN, AS ALL PARTS WERE POSTED IN SEPARATE THREADS

Series: ...And I Can’t Hide
Episode 1.2ØX: A Darker Sun
Rating: Teen
Summary: Max questions his identity.

Disclaimer: The rights to the characters and situations of Roswell are the property of Warner Brothers, Jason Katims Productions, Twentieth Century Fox, Fox, Regency Television, and Melinda Metz.

• 
  
  
  He was close, real close, this time. He could smell it. You developed a nose for these things—and he had had the benefit of nearly forty years in which to sharpen his senses. The e.t.s had slithered out (or lumbered, or oozed, or whatever the hell they did) somewhere near here, give or take a few miles, or a few hundred. Give him time (if he lived that long) and he would home in on the ship that had spewed them out—not what he and the others had found ’way back in ’47, but what they had not found.
  
  Sgt. Yancy Swift, U.S. Army Air Corps (Ret.), combed the ground foot by foot, inch by inch. A canvas satchel stamped “Property of U.S. Army” hung from his shoulder. He moved slowly, both from age and by method, bent almost in an L (his energy configuration, as Michael might have called it). He glimpsed something gleaming in the dirt two feet away, knelt, and extracted it. The answering gleam it brought to his eye would have puzzled most observers: it was only a scrap of metal. He eagerly transferred it to his satchel.
  
  A shadow blocked the sun. He looked toward it. A man (if it was a man) was standing on top of the hillock ahead. He descended toward Swift, who squinted to see him better. “What do you want?” The stranger did not speak but continued his advance. “Are you—one of them?” He marched up to Swift and confiscated the satchel, nearly wrenching his shoulder off. “Hey, that’s mine!” The stranger clutched at Swift’s neck. Pain shot into him, followed by a yawning blackness. As he lay inert, the stranger rifled through the satchel and tossed aside first one and then another of the pieces that had so painstakingly been collected. He flung the bag away contemptuously. Then he turned to the airman’s unconscious body and regarded it with a cold eye, almost an appraiser’s eye, as if calculating whether it were worth putting to some practical use of his own.
  
  That was on Saturday. Two days later began a new school week, which would be the longest of Max Evans’s life.
  
  The incident that kicked it off was not momentous; it was almost shabby. In a shallow stairwell at a side entrance to the shop and physical sciences building, Kyle Valenti and two of his fellow Comets, easily identifiable by their blue and gold lettermen’s jackets, were crouching beside a device that in a different setting would have been readily recognized as a pneumatic tire pump. A hose ran out of it along the floor and into a drainage pipe set in one of the walls. Kyle and one of his teammates were peering over the wall; the other teammate had his hands on the pump handle. At Kyle’s signal, he pressed it down, and then raised his head to watch along with the others. A moment later, they were all convulsed with laughter, which they strove manfully to suppress.
  
  It was at that moment Max came out the door into the stairwell and nearly bumped into Kyle, spurring him to a “Hey, ace, you wanna watch where you’re going?” But when he saw who it was, his manner changed. “Max! Say, hi. So what’s up?”
  
  The smile of exaggerated innocence, Max saw through at once. He ran his eye over the apparatus they had set up. “What’s that for?” Kyle scratched the back of his neck, and the three of them all looked in different directions. “Skip it. I was just asking to be polite.” He started up the stairs.
  
  “Wait a minute.” Kyle laid a hand on his arm. “You’re a guy, you’ll appreciate this.” That side of the building faced a walkway; the pipe, Max now saw, ran directly under it and probably had its end under the grating in the middle. Kyle nodded toward a girl who was approaching on the walk, gestured to Max to crouch down, and did the same himself. Then he signaled the pump man, who pressed the handle again.
  
  As the girl stepped across the grating, her skirt flew up, partly revealing her briefs; she gave a little shriek and at the same time, thrown off guard, caught her heel on one of the bars, stumbled, and dropped her books, as she smoothed her skirt back down. Somehow she managed to avoid a fall, to Max’s great relief, but as she collected her books, her eyes darted around suspiciously. He could not see whether her embarrassment had been witnessed by anyone other than themselves.
  
  Those with him in the stairwell had ducked down and were tightly grasping their mouths, once more having a struggle to contain themselves. “Ain’t it a hoot?” Kyle whispered. He seemed not to have noticed Max was not laughing.
  
  “That’s it?”
  
  “My granddad once told me they used to have something like this at county fairs when he was a kid. I was telling Paulie—you know Paulie and Tommy?”
  
  “Yeah, they beat me up one time.”
  
  “Right, I forgot. It was nothing personal, they woulda done the same to anybody.”
  
  “Ah. Must be great guys, then.”
  
  “I knew you’d see it. Anyway, so Tommy figured out how to run the hose through the drain so it blows up girls’ dresses and shows their underpants.”
  
  “And this is the first time you’ve seen girls’ underwear?”
  
  “That’s not the point.”
  
  Max remained sober of countenance. “What is the point, Kyle?”
  
  “The look on their face! Like they’ve been—I don’t know—”
  
  “Violated? Ritually abused?”
  
  Kyle stared at him pityingly. “You just don’t get it, do you?”
  
  “One of those girls might be Liz. Or my sister.”
  
  “Aw, Liz is a good sport.” He considered. “I don’t know your sister.”
  
  “Why should she have to be a ‘sport’ and put up with your childish pranks?”
  
  “‘Pranks’? Who says ‘pranks’ any more?” He looked at his friends; they shrugged. Then he took on a big-brotherly air. “Evans, you’re evidently not aware of it, but this is the kind of thing guys do when they get together. Just stupid stuff like this. That’s what it means to be a guy.” He peered out again. “Hey, here comes another one!” Tommy moved his hands into place. “Now!”
  
  A larger pair of hands came down on Tommy’s, arresting them in mid-push. “I don’t think so.” The others turned to discover Principal Wiley in the stairwell with them; all their faces except Max’s suddenly looked very guilty. “May I ask who borrowed this device from the auto shop?” After a moment’s hesitation, Kyle and Paulie raised their hands. “You may return it to where you found it. You’ve both earned yourselves detention this Saturday.” He cocked his head at Tommy. “Get out of here.” Max began to follow. “Not you, Evans.”
  
  “But I wasn’t—”
  
  “My office. Now.”
  
  Max took along an unconcealed air of grievance, which he was not slow to give voice to. “I wasn’t part of that, you know. I was an innocent bystander.”
  
  Wiley was staring out his office window. “I know. I heard the whole conversation.”
  
  “Then what am I doing here?”
  
  Wiley strode back to his desk and turned a penetrating stare on him. “Just who are you, Evans?”
  
  Max paled. “Why—why would you ask me that?”
  
  “For a long time now I’ve had my eye on your friend Michael Guerin. He’s always turning wrong corners, always bucking the system. But maybe he’s just a noise maker, and you’re the square peg. Why didn’t you take part in Mr. Valenti’s prank?” (This at least answered Kyle’s earlier question.)
  
  “You want your students to spend their lunch hours looking up girls’ dresses?”
  
  “Of course not. It’s my place to frown on such behavior. But not you, at your age. You should be dying to pull down a girl’s pants. If you’re not, there’s something wrong with you.” He had a sudden flash. “You do like girls?” Then he remembered. “Of course—the incident with Ms. Parker in the eraser room. Tell you the truth, that relieved my mind about you. I thought, finally, he’s learned to be human.” Max’s face showed his astonishment, alloyed with fear, but he quickly covered it over. “Until then, whenever I saw the two of you together, it seemed like she was there for you, but you were only half there for her. Where’s the other half, Evans? Saving it for a rainy day? Or is it like the theoretical black hole? Things go in, but nothing ever comes out.”
  
  Max squirmed a little in the big chair. He had no great opinion of Wiley’s perspicuity, but this time he had gotten it right. “Whatever the condition,” he went on, “I’ve got just the treatment for it.” He took a sheet of paper from a ream in the top right drawer and reached it across the desk.
  
  Max read it over, and then read it over again. He thought he must be missing something. “Country line dancing?”
  
  “Best thing in the world for developing socialization skills. Great workout too. Group meets on Wednesdays. Will we see you there?”
  
  “It’s—sure something to think about.” He was at a loss what else to say. “Thank you,” he added. Wiley smiled smugly.
  
  He and Liz had not talked that day, or the previous few days; now that Maria and Michael were back, she had no good-sounding reason to approach him, and he would have felt awkward approaching her. She and her oldest friend had been equally out of touch. But she found an excuse for stopping by his place that afternoon.
  
  She found the garage door up, and Alex busy clearing out the Whits’ old rehearsal space. “Alex, hey.” Focused on unscrewing a mike stand, he barely acknowledged her arrival; she wondered at that a little. “Saw your flyer on the bulletin board,” she said. “You’re selling your guitar?” The question was redundant, since it was lying in plain sight with a “For Sale” sign propped against it.
  
  “Yeah, I thought of smashing it up—very rock-idol thing to do—but it seemed environmentally unfriendly. Besides, I could use the cash.”
  
  She stared at him as if she had never known him. “What about your music? You always seemed so committed to it.”
  
  “Aw it’s no good. I can’t hear it the way I used to.”
  
  “Alex, a slight hearing loss is a simple condition to—”
  
  “No, not hearing loss. Not that kind.” He seemed slightly embarrassed. “I used to hear music everywhere, okay? Really hear it, like I was receiving it from another—some other place. All I had to do was write down what I heard. But now it’s not there any more. I’m sure it is for someone, just not for me.”
  
  Liz thought of one possible explanation. “Is Isabel still avoiding you? Or are you avoiding her?”
  
  “Both. We agreed it’s for the best.”
  
  “Yeah, Maria’s not speaking to me either. You know, you and I are the only two whose friendship hasn’t changed. Not since fifth grade. That’s something to be—” He was looking away. “Alex, what is it?”
  
  He was silent for a few moments. “You know, I’ve had a lot of big ideas, in the day. The pancake burger, clothes that never need washing, house with a convertible top—but never mind all that. Bottom line is, the Whits were the only idea I ever got going. And now they’re gone. Oh, we could find a new guitarist, but it wouldn’t be the same.”
  
  “And you blame me.” Of course he would: she blamed herself.
  
  “I know it’s not fair, Nicky’s dad was a maniac and he tried to carve up Max or whatever—”
  
  “I understand.” Alex started to apologize. “No, I really do. Have a good sale, Alex.” She rethought that. “No, have a great sale. And a great life.” Another thread had been cut; maybe the last one of all. She left sadly for home.
  
  If she could have seen Max just then, and could have felt any sadder than she did already, she almost certainly would have. He was sitting on his bed between piles of his belongings, examining each of them in turn and putting it down with an air of dissatisfaction. “I give up,” said a voice behind him. His sister was standing in the doorway. “What are you doing? If I’m not being too nosy.”
  
  “You are.” She predicted he would give a fuller answer on the count of three. One—two— “Wiley called me in today. He says I’m only half a person. And, Isabel, he’s right. Half of me’s there, the other half is—a void. Where something should be, there’s nothing—nothing at all.” He looked at her hopefully. “Do you have any idea what I mean?”
  
  It was clear the subject bothered her. “I don’t think about it. I find enough to keep me occupied so I won’t think about it. And you still haven’t said what you’re doing.”
  
  “Looking for that other part of me. The dark side of the moon.”
  
  “In this stuff?”
  
  He looked it over. “No. I see that now. But how?”
  
  “I’ll tell you, but you won’t like it. Intuition.” He shook his head. “You see? The word frightens you, but—”
  
  “It’s not the word.”
  
  “All it means is knowing, without knowing why.”
  
  “I don’t have intuition. You do, I don’t.”
  
  “That’s silly, everyone does. You just have to—slide back the door.”
  
  “Why haven’t you, then? If it’s as easy as all that.”
  
  “Because I don’t want to. Not yet. It would mean the end of everything we know.” She gazed around the room. “This, at least.”
  
  “This will end some day. For us. It has to.”
  
  “You know that?” He nodded. “And without knowing why.” She tried to look wise rather than smug. Her brother had to admit that this time his sister might be right.
  
  That evening he posted himself outside the UFO Center, where he could stare across at Liz, whenever she passed into view behind the cafe’s blue gingham curtains. On one such pass, she glanced out and saw him watching her—or imagined she did. He was, of course, but at that distance she was probably unable to tell. He saw her breaking into a smile, which she cut short—or he imagined he did. It did not matter whether either had truly seen or not; each knew, without seeing, what the other would do. They were that close.
  
  Then suddenly his perception of her changed. She seemed to have receded, as if one or the other of them had moved a block farther off. When she turned from him, unsure of herself, of him, and of the two of them together, he felt hurt—but only a part of him. Another part—the part that now observed her from a distance, as she did her microscope specimens—that part did not care. Looking from her to the street, he discovered the whole town now seemed a foreign country; he felt as remote from the passers-by as if he were surrounded by a force field. Then suddenly it burst, and he was back in their midst: his neighbors, who were also strangers, in an alien land which was also his home. It confused him beyond his ability to sort it out then and there, and when Liz looked again, he was gone.
  
  Great as her disappointment was, it was exceeded by her relief; she too was having trouble sorting things out. She and he distrusted each other, with cause: she had betrayed him; he had spurned her. But she had not known about Grunewald, any more than he had known about the blood poisoning. And after all, she had only herself to blame for that. Reason advised her she had been more in the wrong, but hurt feelings kept her from admitting it.
  
  Yet he still loved her: he might not know it, but she did, and always would. However he might try to convince her otherwise, however she might try to convince herself, her faith in that fact was unalterable. And it made her desire him deeply—no matter what he had done, no matter what he would ever do. Her mind held enough authority over her to suppress the desire, but could not eradicate it. Once, in the seventh grade, she had gone without liquids for a day, to see if she could do it; the experiment had succeeded, but had left her with a greater thirst than she had ever known, one that had never gone away. So it was now.
  
  Max went where he always went when his human life became more than he could tolerate: to the desert. He found a precipice from which he could look back on Roswell—a toy town full of tiny lights, beneath a sky sprinkled with tiny lights of its own. He stared up at those brilliant pinpricks in the black-blue curtain, and suddenly found himself among them, looking down at the lights far below. Then those seemed to grow even smaller, and smaller still, merging finally into one light infinitely far away. Then suddenly he was back on Earth, and the stars were in their places above.
  
  He dropped to his knees in supplication to them, or to other bodies he could not see. “I shouldn’t be here, but I am. Why?” They did not answer. “This place is everything to me. Yet it’s nothing. Liz is everything, yet—” He suppressed the inescapable conclusion. “No!” he shouted. His voice echoed across the desert. He let the echoes die away until he heard only his own breathing. “You were wrong, Isabel.” He was not sure if he had spoken it, or only thought it, or if there was a difference between the two. “It isn’t knowing without knowing why. It’s seeing without seeing why.” He got up. “Why am I living blind?” The world around him seemed not to care. “If I have to do that, I don’t want to live!” He ran toward the edge of the precipice and poised there, ready to throw himself down—
  
  Then he heard it—the beeping he had heard before. But this time the Stone was calling to him; he heard it as plainly as if he were holding it in his hand. He raised his head to the great round moon that hung over the valley. He saw both its sides: the one facing him, with a face that was Feddin’s, and the side he saw with a keener sense than vision—the dark side, whose face was swathed in shadow.
  
  Isabel and Michael were waiting for him on his return, waiting in the park where they had met in weeks past. But it was different this time. Max seemed to have a size to him they had not seen before. Their childhood’s end was drawing near. “You both heard it?” he asked. They nodded. “Was it real?”
  
  “You have to ask?” said Isabel.
  
  “He means, real to them,” said Michael.
  
  “We hear it, they don’t,” she explained. “You must have triggered it yourself.”
  
  “I did? How?”
  
  “By wanting to know.”
  
  He understood now. “Let’s go, then. It’s time.” He started off. The others did not move. “Well?”
  
  “I told you before,” said Isabel. “I don’t want to know. Not yet. Neither does he.”
  
  Michael nodded in confirmation. “Isabel says you think we’re half-baked, or half-assed, or something. This half’s as much as I can deal with right now. There’s more power out there than I knew. And not only out there.” He placed a hand on his brow. “It’s scary.”
  
  Max could not believe it. He stared at them. “But this is what we’ve been waiting for all our lives!”
  
  “We’re not ready, Max,” said Isabel. “Neither of us is. You’ll have to go alone.”
  
  “How can I?”
  
  “It makes no difference. You are alone, whether you’re with someone or not. We all are.” She seemed to have grown wiser by his experience.
  
  His eyes met hers and then Michael’s. He saw a sadness in both he had not noticed before, or noticed sufficiently. “Then you do know. Both of you.”
  
  “As much as we want to,” said Michael.
  
  “All right,” Max said at last. “But you may be called for before it’s through. You can’t sit in the park forever.” Neither objected to this.
  
  “Before you leave,” said Isabel, “heal Liz.”
  
  “I will if I can.”
  
  “Any of us could, now.” She knew Michael had learned as much from Feddin as she had from his stepdaughter. “But you should be the one to do it.”
  
  “She’ll have to trust me. She wouldn’t before.”
  
  “Should she have? Should you have trusted her?”
  
  “No,” he admitted. “And for different reasons than she thought. But she will now.” The realization made him sad. “Whether she should or not.”
  
  He knew the way to her window: it was open, as it always was. She lay asleep, her head buried in a pile of pillows. He slipped in under the rice paper blind, then knelt beside her, and gazed on her tenderly. Her face, her hair, the aura of grace and delight she radiated, he still loved—or that part of him did.
  
  It was not long until she opened her eyes. At first she was startled, but only at first, and she was not offended, as she might have been, at his being there. He had been right: one look between them—one real look—and yesterday’s mistrust was forgiven, if not forgotten. “I’m sorry,” he said. “So sorry.”
  
  “It was my fault.” Her words tumbled out on top of his. “I should never have gone there, never sent you there.”
  
  “You couldn’t help yourself. You had to know—who I am. I see that now. Because I do too.”
  
  “If there’s anything—anything at all I can—”
  
  “Yes. There is something.” He indicated her pillows. “In there.”
  
  She sat up, and the covers fell off, revealing her negligee, but she felt no shame, or even embarrassment. Her heart began to pound faster. A beeping arose from the pillow at the bottom of the pile. “Someone will hear!” she whispered.
  
  He reached down and inserted his hand into the pillow slip. As soon as he laid it on the small object within, the beeping ceased. “May I take it?” he asked softly.
  
  “You’re not taking it. I’m giving it.” She gazed at him with loving eyes. “It was always yours to have anyway.”
  
  As he withdrew his hand, she gave a small gasp as of pleasure, her eyelids closed to everything else. He leaned over and kissed them. “Thank you,” he whispered. She opened her eyes again. “I’m going out there. To the place where we came from, to find out who I am. If I come back—”
  
  “If?” she said, alarmed.
  
  “If I do, things will be different. But whatever happens, it won’t erase what we’ve had. This—amazing thing we’ve had.” His expression became grave. “May I take your hand now?”
  
  “I only wish,” she said, with a different meaning.
  
  He held it between both of his, shut his eyes, and concentrated. A look of confusion came over him. “How—” Then he understood, and opened his eyes. “You don’t need healing. Your body has healed itself. Your blood has absorbed ours. It’s stronger than ever.”
  
  “That’s impossible! Grunewald—” She cast about for an explanation. “His blood might have been weak to start with.” She stared at Max. “I’m all right?” He nodded. “I’m all right,” she repeated, wonderingly. Then the larger import of it struck her. “We can be together! I can come with you!”
  
  “No.” He withdrew his hands. “You belong here. I don’t.”
  
  “It’s your home too.”
  
  “My home—and my prison.” He did not notice her reaction to this. “I feel like a tissue sample on one of your slides. Stuck here by somebody I never knew, and can’t even conceive of. My rightful place is with my people, if they still exist. Your place is with yours.”
  
  “I don’t have any people! My parents are breaking up, my best friends aren’t speaking to me. You’re all I have. Take me with you, Max. Please!” She bent in to him and kissed him deeply.
  
  He allowed it to last longer than he knew he should, and then pulled away, though he still did not want to. “I’m sorry.” He started to the window.
  
  She flung herself after him. “Max! Don’t leave without me!”
  
  He pulled away again, more forcibly this time. “No more!” he said. “This is goodbye.” He left as he had come.
  
  If he thought that had ended it, he was not really thinking, or thinking of her—who she was. As he started away up the rear alley, he heard her call his name. She was descending the fire ladder, still in her negligee, her curves highlighted by the twin-headed street lamp at the corner of the building. She jumped the few feet to the pavement; it was made of stone, with inlaid patterns of brick; patterns more complicated than he had ever realized. As she stood to face him, her negligee rippled in the light wind: he had never seen anyone so beautiful.
  
  As he stared at her, he seemed to reach a decision. He waved his arm, and the negligee became a sandstone-colored gown, cut to an Attic pattern. His arm passed over himself, and his apparel changed to a tunic the color of red clay. “Come with me, then,” he said, “as far as the gate. You’ll have to return alone. But we can travel together, this little while.” He stretched out his hand. She reached out and took it. Together they turned and began to run—in long strides, with the wind lifting them, so they were almost flying....
  
  And then—how much later Liz could not have said—they were camped at the bottom of a valley encircled by high cliffs, and so, visible only to the stars. She was lying propped on one of her arms, a little apart from where he was sitting with his knees raised, staring out onto the dark terrain. He had exchanged their classical attire for something less romantic, but more practical, and better suited to the desert night: jeans, sweaters, jackets. The Lodestone lay between the two of them, its spiral pulsating with light. “If only—” she began.
  
  He shook his head. “There are always if-onlies.”
  
  She continued undeterred. “If only we could stay like this forever. With the desert asleep all around us.”
  
  “It never really sleeps. Nothing does, anywhere in the universe.” He turned his eyes on her—and they were not human eyes. She shrank away from them. A second later, they were back to normal. “You did that,” she said accusingly.
  
  “I only raised the blind. You saw what was there to be seen, as your perception translated it. Now you understand why you have to stop at the gate. What lies on the other side wasn’t meant for you.” She shivered, for the first time that night.
  
  When she woke in the morning, all was grey. He was already up, and waiting for her. Neither of them had brought along anything for the journey; she realized she had unconsciously trusted to him to provide for their needs. She would have enjoyed the usual morning comforts—a bath, a change of clothes, breakfast—but his quietly expectant air discouraged her from asking. She rose, and they set out.
  
  At mid-morning they reached the outskirts of the Frazier Woods. They were near the Pohlman ranch, where everyone knew the saucer had crashed in 1947. Inside his jacket, the Lodestone began to beep, and they heard the growl of engines. A caravan of olive-drab Jeeps appeared on the road ahead. The two of them ducked behind a cluster of bushes. The beeping continued. Max removed his jacket and wrapped the Stone in it, muffling the noise enough so it was drowned in the noises of the caravan. Of the official personnel who rode past, most were Army, but a few were not; he recognized one of them as Margaret Seaver, the director of BEAM.
  
  The path they turned up, he recognized too. “That leads to the crash site,” he said. He and Liz followed at a distance. The beeping had now subsided. Within a few minutes, they reached a fence, which had been newly repaired; a fresh sign on the gate labeled the tract as government property. The soldiers and the civilians were met by others. When the last Jeep had passed inside, a corporal swung the gate shut and secured the padlock. “They’re taking it over,” said Max.
  
  “Why, after all this time?”
  
  “They’re looking for something.” He thought of Seaver. “Energy, maybe.”
  
  “But there’s nothing here any more. Is there?”
  
  “There never was.” He remembered what Michael had told him. “This was only the husk—the ship’s outer body. The heart of it lies—out there.” He looked south; that was where he had to go.
  
  Liz was feeling pangs in her stomach. As Max walked ahead of her, showing no sign whatever of fatigue, the distance between them grew. At last, coming to the foot of a small rise—another rise—she halted. “Max!” she called. “I’m thirsty!”
  
  He stopped and looked back with something like impatience. Then his face softened. He turned his eyes to a point on the ground a yard or so from where she was standing. A few drops of brown liquid seeped through to the surface and gradually expanded into a little pool. She peered into it questioningly. “Tea,” he said. He turned to the sand at its edge, where a little ball arose, spinning as if in a kiln. A minute or two later, it stopped spinning to reveal itself as a ceramic teacup. She marveled at it, as she always did at such productions, though she should have been used to them by now. And there was a second observer—hidden behind a rock, and so far unnoticed by either of them—watching with even wider eyes.
  
  She knelt to scoop up a helping of tea. “Careful,” said Max. “It’s hot.”
  
  She took a sip. “It’s good. But not quite—”
  
  “I know. That’s what Isabel says.”
  
  “You’re not having any?”
  
  “I don’t need any.” It sounded like a rebuke. He allowed her to finish one cup and half of a second, and then started on.
  
  “Max?” she called again. “I’m hungry too.”
  
  This time his exasperation was audible. He turned to a dried shrub a few yards off, and it began to dwindle. When it was done dwindling, it had become a teacake. The hidden observer was impressed all over again. Liz began to bite into it. Then, remembering her manners, she held it out to Max; he shook his head. She lit into it greedily. Before she had finished, he started off again. “Wait!” she said, picking herself up.
  
  “I have too far to go.” He kept walking, and she hurried after. Their unseen companion followed at a distance. Soon Max had far outpaced both. He climbed to a ridge that looked down on the plain yet to be crossed. Liz labored to reach the top, and once there, she stopped. “I have to rest.”
  
  “If you can’t keep up, go back.”
  
  “I’m doing my best!”
  
  “That’s not good enough!” He had not meant to shout, but neither had she; now she looked hurt. He spoke more softly. “It’s not your fault, it’s mine. I was weak. I brought you along when I shouldn’t have. That will just make it harder in the end. Return to Roswell, where you belong.”
  
  She moved toward him with a weary, heavy step. “I thought we were running away. Just the two of us.”
  
  “No!” She recoiled at the force of his cry. “You haven’t heard me! I’m going where I can find out who I am—what my purpose here is.” His hands were pressed to his chest. “Everything I’ve been hungry to learn all these years.”
  
  “I know who you are!” She remembered she had not been so certain a few weeks before. “Now I do.” Love had told her. If she had only listened to it all along!
  
  “You only see the part you want to see—the part that fulfills you.” She heard this as the accusation it was. Again he softened his tone. “That isn’t enough for me any more. I have to know the other side. Because there is one, whether you want to see it or not. And you’re no help to finding it. You’re only—in the way.”
  
  She withstood the blow. “But we have something special.” She looked imploringly at him. “Don’t we?”
  
  “Yes! That’s what’s holding me back—binding me!”
  
  “Binding?” she repeated in a small voice.
  
  “Liz, listen.” His face and voice were showing increasing strain. “I have to break free—free of everything. Otherwise I won’t be able to do this. And I have to. Please, if you have any feelings for me—”
  
  She lashed out at him with the first words that came to her. “Feelings? You’re the one who wants to wipe out your feelings—wipe me out. But I guess that’s what your people are like. Cold and selfish.”
  
  “And your people are childish and undisciplined—always letting your feelings run riot.”
  
  “I’m not the one raising my voice, Max.” She knew she was sounding priggish, but she could not help herself.
  
  “Because of you! You!” He was trembling. “Just let me be, can’t you? If you hate me that much, it should be easy.” He started off again.
  
  Now she regretted all she had said. She ran after him, footsore as she was. “Max, I didn’t mean it. I was angry. Please don’t send me back. There’s nothing for me in Roswell.”
  
  He turned on her. “That’s not my problem any more!”
  
  “Max!” She ran at him in an effort to embrace him. He shied to one side. They were standing nearer the edge than either realized. She took a wrong step and went over. “Liz!” He reached out for her, but too late. The slope stood at an angle so she slid most of the way down. But then came an unexpected drop, eight or ten feet deep. He heard her cry out. He half jumped, half climbed down to her.
  
  “My ankle!” she groaned.
  
  “I’m sorry. I was angry too. Let me fix it.” He tried to take her hand; she pulled it away. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I was only trying to explain—”
  
  “That I’m in your way. I got that.” She turned her face away.
  
  “Liz....”
  
  A shadow fell on them. On a hill west of the ridge, there was a man standing—not the one who had been spying on them, but someone bigger and more youthful. It took him only a few minutes to get down to them. Liz was surprised to find herself staring up at a face she knew. “Doug?”
  
  “Liz! Didn’t expect to run into you out here. And—Max, wasn’t it? Doug Shellow.” He extended his hand.
  
  Max vaguely remembered him. “The guy from the dating show, right?”
  
  “Just my cover. I’m really an NMU student. Archaeology.”
  
  “What brings you out here?”
  
  “Archaeology. Visiting the old ruins. What about you?”
  
  Max had to think up a story. “Taking a hike.”
  
  Doug turned back to Liz. “What happened?”
  
  “I fell,” she said. “My ankle—”
  
  “I know a place to take you.” Without asking permission, he lifted her up and headed back toward the hill he had come down. His breathing became a little heavier, but he did not complain.
  
  “We were going a different—” Max began, and then stopped: not the right time. He followed behind. Now he felt useless as well as guilty. “I can help you,” he said, but Doug seemed to be ignoring him, as Liz certainly was. Behind them trailed their stalker, who had at his command all the particulars—every jog and jag—of all the paths for miles around, from a mind that had spent forty years learning them.
  
  From the top of the hill, they could see the highway; Liz had not realized it was this close. In choosing their course, Max had sidestepped it deliberately. At the roadside a little way down sat a white adobe-style building, and they made for that. A battery of wooden signs, which took up most of the frontage, offered the usual—snacks and souvenirs—plus a UFO museum, claimed to contain the genuine remains of the Roswell saucer. Max had little faith in the promise but felt a desire to investigate nonetheless.
  
  He followed Doug into the store, where his eye lit, and remained fixed, on the door at the far end with a “Museum” sign over it. Otherwise, the three were surrounded by racks and stands sparsely stocked with tourist-geared trinkets, including some of Amy’s. “Anybody home?” Doug shouted. “We could use some help out here!”
  
  “Pipe down!” a voice shouted back at him. “I’m comin’!” Moments later, a grizzled figure in fatigues pushed around the shower curtain that hung in the doorway next to the counter. They had no way of recognizing him as the one who had been shadowing them; a minute after their arrival, he had scuttled in at the side.
  
  “This woman’s been injured,” Doug informed him.
  
  “I can see that for myself. Bring her in the back.” He slid back the curtain and waved them through.
  
  Max was near enough Doug to whisper, “Is he one of the old ruins you’re visiting?” Whatever Doug’s opinion of Max might have been, he could not help smiling.
  
  The back room was no larger than the front. Swift pointed to a cot in the corner. Doug sat Liz on it and up-ended the pillow against the wall so she could lean back on it. As their eyes met, she remembered why she had found him so attractive on the single date they had had. “It’ll be okay,” he said soothingly.
  
  “I’m sure it will now,” she replied, “thanks to you.” She flashed a glance at Max. If her eye had lingered on him a little longer, she might have seen that the remorse she was wishing on him was already in place.
  
  Swift pulled a stool up next to her. “Let’s have a look at you.” He removed the shoe and the sock, and raised the jeans leg a couple of inches. “Not meanin’ to be fresh,” he apologized. He inspected her turned ankle. “Just a sprain. Don’t you worry, I know how to treat ’er. Learned first aid in the Air Corps.” He stood to attention. “Sergeant Yancy Swift, retired.”
  
  Doug stuck out his hand. “Doug Shellow. This is Liz Parker. And Max—somebody.”
  
  “Evans,” Max said, in some annoyance.
  
  Swift went to a shelf and lifted down a first aid kit, from which he took out a cloth bandage and a roll of tape. He returned to Liz and set to wrapping her ankle. “When were you in the Corps?” Doug asked.
  
  “Tour of duty ’40 to ’48.”
  
  “Then you must have been around when—”
  
  “When it all went down? I wasn’t just around, I was there. Seen for myself.” Max felt a surge of interest. “And since my discharge, I been collectin’ the proof. Got stuff in my museum you never saw, I bet.”
  
  “Come on,” Doug chaffed him, “that’s tourist bait. You don’t honestly believe in little green men?”
  
  “Ain’t little. And they ain’t green. But hell, yes, I believe in ‘em. Met one myself couple days ago.”
  
  “Oh, yes? What’d he look like?” He glanced at Max, and was surprised to find him staring at the old man intently.
  
  “Like you and me. They can do that, you know. Didn’t get a long look, ‘cause he knocked me out. And when I come to, I had a silver handprint on me—here.” He pointed to his neck. Doug bent to look. “Nothin’ there now, though.”
  
  “That’s all he did?” Max asked quietly.
  
  “Why, what’d you expect he’d do?”
  
  Take your body was the answer Max thought of, but could not say aloud. He had no idea how to recognize a shape shifter on sight, and kept staring at the sergeant, searching for signs. “Maybe you know that already.”
  
  The sergeant was staring at him in much the same way. “Maybe I do.” Then he turned back to Liz—and Max saw the handprint on his neck. It remained for only a second, but it had definitely been there—or at any rate he had seen it. It had been out of Liz’s view, and Doug was looking the other way; it had been shown, as if deliberately, to him alone. It was the kind of sign he had been looking for.
  
  He watched for another one, some word or glance from Swift, to confirm it. But Swift gave neither; all he did, to appearances, was to wrap off Liz’s ankle. “There you go. Stay off it all you can.” Max kept watching him, but Swift either did not notice or pretended not to. After returning the tape and the bandage to their spaces in the kit, he opened an aspirin bottle, shook out two, fetched a cup of water from a cooler by the doorway, and brought them to Liz. “Here, these’ll help some.”
  
  “May I have some of that?” asked Doug.
  
  Swift thought at first he was referring to the aspirin, but then saw he had taken out a pill bottle of his own. “Sympathy pains?” Max asked, rather snidely; he had recovered enough from the shock of the manifestation he had witnessed to begin resenting him again.
  
  “Allergies,” said Doug. “All this dust.” Indeed, the room was layered with it.
  
  “You’re allergic to dust, and you’re going into archaeology?”
  
  “That’s right, why?” Max shook his head. Strange beings, scientists—but he had known that from his experience with Liz.
  
  Doug knelt by her cot. “Feeling hungry?” She shrugged. “Suppose I buy you lunch?” He added, in a lower voice, “Or what passes for lunch here.”
  
  “Such a gentleman to offer!” she said, in Max’s direction. “Yes, thank you so much.” She shifted her position, and groaned a little.
  
  “Don’t try to move.” He turned to Swift. “You sell food here, right?”
  
  “You betcha. Microwave’ll heat it right up.” He winked. “We got that from them, you know. Come on, I’ll show you what I got.” He left through the curtain.
  
  Doug smiled at Max. “I think the sarge has been feeding on locusts and honey too long.”
  
  “Don’t let him fool you. He may be more dangerous than he seems.”
  
  “You’re seeing things.” Max looked sharply at him, and then realized it had just been a figure of speech. “Must be the clear air out here.”
  
  “Maybe you’re right.” He had had visions before, and this one could have been induced by some other force. He decided he would reserve judgment, but watch his step.
  
  “Trust me,” Doug was saying, “the biggest danger here is the food. I recommend inspecting it before biting in.”
  
  His suspicions notwithstanding, he returned to Liz in a few minutes with a pair of sandwiches on plastic plates, rested one of them on her cot, and seated himself on the stool alongside. “Brought you the vegetarian. Figured it’d be the safest. I’ll risk the chicken salad myself. Funny, I once knew a girl who was addicted to chicken salad sandwiches. The vending machine on campus carries them. But it only carries one every day. If somebody got in ahead of her—well, you wouldn’t want to be her lab partner that afternoon, believe me.”
  
  Liz thought this story one of the least compelling she had ever heard. But when Max re-entered, her interest appeared to revive. “Dougie, how fascinating!” was what she said. However, she did not care to hear any more. “So, you’re doing research out here?”
  
  “What? Yes,” he said, unexpectedly having to switch gears. “Digging for native American artifacts. At it three weeks now. Once I set myself a goal, I can’t let go till I find what I’m after. You must know the feeling. Your subject is—don’t tell me—”
  
  She did anyhow. “Molecular biology.”
  
  “Right! The paramesia.”
  
  “Oh, Dougie! Nothing is more satisfying than having a heart-to-heart with someone who understands.” She was not interlacing her fingers below her chin, but that was about the only limit to her coquetry. Max’s discouragement was complete. With head bowed, he slipped out the side door. Liz had achieved the effect she had set out to. But she felt disappointed nonetheless.
  
  “What projects are you working on?” Doug asked.
  
  “Nothing,” she said curtly, and then, trying to mask her indifference—mainly out of courtesy, now—“That is, nothing much.”
  
  “I don’t know about you,” he said in a confidential tone, “but I’d rather be sifting through dirt than wasting my time at some prom.”
  
  “Yeah,” Liz agreed glumly, “why dance when you could be sifting?”
  
  “Exactly.”
  
  She gazed toward the side door with a sigh. “Guess I’m not as hungry as I thought. Mind if I take a nap?”
  
  “Of course.” He removed the plate to the stool he had just vacated. “In case you want to finish it later.” Liz made an affirmative noise, tried to turn over, then remembered she could not, and satisfied herself with turning her head and shutting her eyes.
  
  
  Max stood outside surveying the horizon. Something in him drew him to raise his eyes toward the sun. Seeing it, he knew. It’s nearly time, he thought. Time for what exactly, he did not know, or where exactly it would befall, but he knew, incontrovertibly, the moment was nearly come. He also knew he should have been alone for it: Shellow might get in the way; Swift might try to stop him—and in doing so, might also pose a threat to Liz. Max would do his best to protect her, but it was more important he do what he had been called to do and none of them, not even Liz, keep him from it. He would deal with them in whatever fashion events and his own knowledge directed.
  
  Doug had returned into the store. “She’s sleeping now.”
  
  Swift was leaning lazily on the counter. “Best thing, I figure. Where’s the other one got off to?” Doug nodded toward the windows. Swift watched him for a little. “Don’t let that one fool you. Might be more dangerous than he looks.”
  
  “Funny, he said the same thing about you.”
  
  “Eyewash.” He punctuated the comment by spitting into the waste can. “Hear you say you was doin’ some diggin’ round here?”
  
  “That’s right. Know any likely spots?”
  
  “I might. Tell me, while you been diggin’, you run across anythin’ you wasn’t lookin’ for? Anythin’ you didn’t know what to make of? And you just let it lay there? Anythin’ like that?” His eyes glinted.
  
  “I’m interested in everything that’s been deposited out here over the years. It’s all relevant.”
  
  Swift mulled over the reply. “Tell you a story. You don’t have to believe it if you don’t want to, but it’s the God’s truth. I was with them that found the saucer out at Pohlman’s.” He proceeded to give his account in some detail (most of which was known to the hearer already):
  
  On the night of July 7, 1947, he was one of a party ordered to investigate reports of a UFO landing in a field on the Pohlman ranch, off highway 42; it was he himself who questioned the rancher. “Said he heard a noise like a big drill, only hell of a lot louder. Whole ground shook, he said.”
  
  The Air Corps men combed through the wreckage and found only a few scraps of metal, along with smaller debris that was scattered over a quarter mile. “I tried to tell ’em—that was just the hull. Weren’t enough to account for a whole ship. Way I figured it, the insides musta been jettisoned, same as a rocket jettisons the first stage as it goes up. ’cept this went down, at an angle like so”—he slanted his hand at forty-five degrees—“and kept goin’ till it come to a stop hundred or two hundred miles from Pohlman’s place.”
  
  “It would have left traces in the earth.”
  
  “Coulda changed it to somethin’ that don’t show traces. Like water, maybe.”
  
  Doug looked more interested than before. “Then where is it?”
  
  “Thought you might have an idea. I been lookin’ for forty years. Got old lookin’. I’ll show you as much as I’ve dug up. Maybe you can make somethin’ of it.”
  
  Just then Max walked in, and Doug waved him over. “Max, guess what? The sergeant has offered to show off his collection. You should see it too.” Swift was visibly unhappy about this, having had it in mind to impart the more confidential data on his discoveries to Doug’s ears alone.
  
  “Wise idea,” Max whispered, as Swift went ahead of them to unbolt the museum door.
  
  “Why is it a wise idea?” Doug whispered back, going along with him.
  
  “In case he’s a—an impostor. Safer with me along.”
  
  “Careful,” Doug advised solemnly, “or people might start thinking you’re as dotty as he is.”
  
  The inner room was on the same scale as the other two, but looked smaller. Narrow aisles divided the rows of display stands. Just like the science fair, Max thought. The walls were hung with photos and newspaper pages he was well acquainted with from the collection he himself dusted twice a week. The glass cases housed a melange of items: rocks with colorful strata, patches off Air Corps uniforms, rows of scrap metal, and—the centerpiece of the collection—a scale model combining the shapes of the scrap and those of the presumed missing sections into a theoretical whole. “This is how I figure that puppy musta looked to start with,” said Swift, “allowing for a little guesswork.” The result resembled a gourd with its bottom half greatly enlarged.
  
  “Spitting image,” Max said, “no doubt of it.” Doug suppressed a smile. They walked on ahead of him, into the next aisle. “You were right,” Max whispered. “He’s just a crackpot.”
  
  Doug was focused on the exhibits. “What a disappointment. Glad he didn’t charge—” He stopped as he came to the second case down, and his manner changed. “Max, have a look at this.” The fragment within was unprepossessing—small and dun-colored, partly on account of its dirt coating, which had been left intact. Then Max’s heart gave a leap: under the dirt showed a row of hieroglyphics that looked like those on Feddin’s map. He did not know whether Doug was familiar with it, but his excitement appeared to rival Max’s own. “Sergeant?” he called. “Where’d you find this?”
  
  Swift joined them at the case. “Out where some of you scientists was diggin’ a few years ago. Doubt if this one’s really alien, though. Don’t fit with the rest.”
  
  “Can you take us there?”
  
  He was obviously reluctant. “Don’t like to leave the place untended. ’specially with her here.”
  
  “You could close up for a half hour. Leave her to her nap. Wouldn’t take any longer than that, would it?”
  
  “Depends on what you find.” He crooked a finger at Doug and led him away from Max. “Do we have to take him?” he whispered.
  
  Doug seemed to be considering the question carefully. “If we leave him behind, he’s apt to abduct the human female.”
  
  Swift scratched his stubbly chin. “Hadn’t thought of that. You’re right. He’d best come too.”