"We know where the monster was, about two minutes ago," Michael said. "We know which direction it's going in, and I think that Liz has figured out a sort of way of tracking it through the tunnels, yes?"
"As long as it sticks with this way of 'hiding', yes," Liz said, not liking this. "But - well, are we going to just charge off, the eight of us? What about the rest of the posse?"
Michael and Rayde looked at Max, out of habit, but he seemed to still be a little woozy from his recent tumble and cure and wasn't immediately jumping into the leadership role. Isabel, also, wasn't about to take charge, and somehow Liz thought to herself that this was one of those situations where she couldn't let Michael take charge. (Rayde might be okay, but Liz wasn't sure if she'd take a position of authority over the Royal Four.) As Queen-to-be, it seemed to be up to her.
"Do any of you have a way of sending a message to the others?" she asked. "And giving them reliable directions for a rendezvous here?"
"Well, yes," Isabel admitted. "But if we're going hunting among the tunnels for the Beast, trying to run it to ground and give it battle wherever it went to hide - I, I'm not so sure that Alex will be of any help there."
Liz considered that objection. "Alright. Alex will go back to the ship and wait there, where he'll be safe. We don't really want too big a crowd down here, anyway." She counted off who was back there with Alex and made a snap judgement. "Kyle's to go with him, to make sure that he's safe on the way out, not that I really expect the Beast will be able to interrupt them en-route." She took a deep breath. "Will you be able to tell if they're actually willing to go?"
"Yeah, umm, just give me a minute." Isabel frowned, her face screwed up tight in concentration.
"Hey, wait a second," Michael insisted. "That critter is making tracks as we speak, and it'll be harder to track it your way the farther away it gets, right?"
Liz stood her ground with as much confidence as she could scrape up. "And it does us no good if we track it down and don't have enough firepower to make an end of it, Michael! There are three hybrid girls back there with an awful lot of juice, not to mention experience and inventive ways to use it, and we need to give them the time to reach us!"
"Yes," Max said, turning to Michael. "If you've got a problem with the way Liz is calling the shots, Michael, then you've got a problem with me. She's got an excellent point, as far as I can see..."
"Big surprise that you can't see anything wrong with Liz!" Michael flared angrily. "She's the reason we're in this mess - she turned tail and ran, and you ran right along with her because you can't see straight when it comes to Liz Parker. You never could, ever since..."
"Michael, no," Maria said sharply, and Michael immediately stopped in midsentence. "You don't get to impugn Liz's courage like that - not until you've looked into that thing's eyes, and felt its power yourself." She took a deep breath. "But it would be a very good idea not to, because we really don't need to have someone else run screaming off into the night."
"We're good," Isabel said, as if she were coming out of a trance and had heard nothing of the argument and ensuing confrontation. Maybe she really hadn't. "Alex and Kyle are on their way back, though I'm worried that they may not sit tight if we don't come back in victory fairly soon. The girls, including my worser half, should be here in a minute and a half." She looked around. "What's been going on?"
"The monster has a power, in its gaze?" Rayde asked Maria. "Some sort of a panic reaction?"
"That's what I think," Maria said. "I was plenty scared already, but - but I knew the plan, and I wouldn't have broken, even with Liz and Max already gone, unless there weren't something more to it. And I definitely believe that Liz wouldn't have run first if something hadn't been twisting her mind to it."
"Okay, so nobody look into its eyes," Isabel summarized. "Do we need to have mirrored shades or something?"
"No, it seems pretty specific," Liz said. "I was just about staring at it, when I got - whammied. Stupid."
"We none of us knew about that danger," Max said. "I just hope that there aren't many more dangerous surprises."
"This may be a useful one," Eleeron said. He had been squatting down very low, possibly examining the floor of the tunnel along which the Beast had escaped, and then he turned and rose to a full stand, one forefinger extended in front of his face. (In the light of Michael's glowing hand, Liz noticed the human features of the Husk that Eleeron was wearing for this part of the mission, and also the smoothness with which he achieved the change in position - betraying a strength in his Antarian knees and leg muscles that not many human beings could match, she thought.) "There is a residue here that was not present in the tunnel that we used to reach this spot. I suspect that it might be left by the creature as it moves."
"Like a trail, which we could follow!" Liz concluded triumphantly. "A way to find the beast that won't become useless in just a few minutes."
"As long as it works," Michael pointed out. "If that trail is left by the monster's travel, it might be under deliberate control. It could have left that path as it came, and then sneak off into a side passage without leaving anything behind, so we take the wrong route."
"The monster is leaving something behind?" a new voice asked. Liz looked in that direction and was even more pleased to see Ava, Tess, and Serena coming towards them, two of them with a hand shining to light their way.
"Well, Michael, we'll try comparing the results from both techniques, and see where it gets us," Liz said. "And on that note, let's move out. Our friends are close enough to catch up to us."
But she hung behind a little, wanting to chat with Ava about all that had happened in the past hour or so.
#
"Come on, Liz, just keep on steady, you're doing a great job," Ava assured her as they made their way around yet another oddly angled turning. "Frankly - well, I don't know Max as well as you do, but I wouldn't be surprised if he's just doing the quiet thing because he wants to see how you handle it."
"Hmm." Liz considered this. "Does that suggest that if I make a really bad call, one that puts people on the team at risk, he'll suddenly pipe up and countermand me?"
"Maybe - if I'm right," Ava said. "But come on, you won't screw up. I know you that well."
"Was Zan like that?" Liz generally didn't ask her friends questions like this about her long-lost love, but this time she couldn't help it.
"Um - not really. But, well, in some ways Zan was more insecure than Max is. He couldn't stand to let anybody else be running the show, even if it was just because Zan was letting them, to see what would happen."
"Not even - not even Lonnie? I've heard stories..."
"Well, depends on how you mince the definitions. There were times when Lonnie wasn't listening to what Zan told her, and he just let her go and learn her own lesson. Times when it was Lonnie and Rath off doing their own thing, and even when Lonnie and Zan were both running a plan equally, and not really doing any power-struggle politics between themselves." She sighed. "But Zan leaning back and letting Lonnie be in charge of any team that included him? Not really."
"Okay." Liz was thinking of something to ask Ava, along the lines of how she felt about Kyle staying behind, when Michael let out a holler from further up the line, so Liz made her way past several other people in dark jumpsuits to see what the fuss was all about. Michael, Rayde, and Max were all considering a Y-intersection.
"No residue, either way," Michael said. "No moving tunnel walls ahead on both forks, as far ahead as I can scan. We've been led down a false trail."
"I - I don't think so, Michael," Liz muttered. This wasn't anywhere near where Maria had first noticed the creature's influence, Liz thought, and though it was possible that the beast had managed to get here and then back away to the last junction without them noticing, she didn't think that was likely. "But I think that you might be right, that it's figured out a way to move ahead without leaving a track. Maybe that was just because it hurt itself, crashing against our shields, and now it's healed enough."
"So where is it, and how do we find it?" Michael demanded of her angrily.
"Two possibilities," Isabel suggested, stepping near. "Either it's gotten far enough away that it's out of your sensing range, Michael - or it's staying still and pretending to be a real dead-end."
"If it's got that much of a lead on us, then we should probably just figure out a way to get back to known territory and come up with a new plan," Max admitted regretfully.
"Yes, so we test the other possibility first," Liz said. "I count - um, seven dead-end passages within sensing range. Is that all anyone else has?"
There was a bit of frustrated sensing, visualizing, and counting. In the end everyone agreed - except the gruff skin Swander, who said that he counted eight. "Okay, make us a map," Liz told him. "Umm - anyone got paper and some kind of marking..." Swander just walked over to the wall and started marking out passages and dead-ends by changing certain molecules of the dark rock into a silvery-white color. "Okay, we'll have to remember to change that back, or else it's defacing a National Park," Liz noticed. "But this is good. Number off the deads - yeah, thanks." She felt very glad that he was using Latin numerals. "Number seven is the one that's too far away for me to sense easily - I assume that's the same for the rest of you?" It took a moment for everybody else to consider the map, and agree."
"So, I assume that everybody picks a dead end and sends some kind of energy pulse towards it?" Michael asked. "If one of them is really the Monster, it won't react the same way as a genuine rock wall."
"That's it, except I'm doing the picking," Liz told him. "Michael, you're on one, Max two, Isabel three, Tess four, Ava five, Rayde Six, Swander is seven since he can see it, and Eleeron is on eight."
"What about me?" Serena grumbled.
"I don't get a shot either," Liz pointed out. "Neither does Maria."
"Yeah, but you're terrible at targeted energy projection, and I'm great at it," Lonnie insisted.
"Nevertheless." Liz didn't really want to get into her true reasons - that she hadn't wanted to leave out the five hybrids that she knew and trusted, or the three trained Antarian soldiers, and she'd run out of targets at that point. "On the count of five - one, two, three, four, five!"
All eight of the aliens she'd named let loose with a blast of some sort of intricate light, which rushed down one of the tunnels of the Y intersection or the other. "I - I think I got it," Tess breathed. "It - it's still not moving, it's trying to bluff us out, but - but what I hit was an absorption field of some kind, not a real rock."
"Lead the way, Tess," Liz insisted, knowing that this would be faster than having everybody check the map to refresh themselves on the way to dead end four. Tess would know the route by which she'd sent out her pulse. She let Serena, Rayde, and Swander crowd in after Tess, and fell into step next to Max.
"Well handled," he told her with a little sly smile that suggested to her that Ava had been right. "I liked the bit with counting out all the numbers yourself." He looked like he wanted to say something more, but they were both a little out of breath at that point. Liz smiled at him and kept following the rest of the 'pack.'
"Wait!" Serena suddenly hissed, reaching out to gently pull Tess back, just as they were about to turn round the final corner. "Strategy! Do we really want to charge in, shields blazing or whatever, giving it no choice but to run away again? We have no idea how long a tunnel there is on the other side of that thing, and if the plan is still to slowly squeeze it to death between our shields, we'd have to wait until it wanders into a dead end, or a loop that we know the extent of."
"And it knows these caves much better than we do," Maria pointed out uncomfortably.
"Just a second," Tess said, and crept forward to poke her head around the corner. In a few seconds she was back. "Just wanted to check, it is there."
"Okay, what's your plan, Serena?" Liz asked, as Max nodded at her approvingly.
"I don't have it all yet," Serena admitted reluctantly. "But if we can - can lure it back here, into this corridor, and away from the side passage - with some of us in each side, we'll be in great formation for the endgame."
"I don't think it'll buy any of us now as helpless prey," Isabel said slowly. "Not even Maria and Liz - not after they shielded together and drove it away. That's assuming that it can recognize any of us, but I don't think that's such a stretch."
"And the one person who is relatively helpless isn't here," Serena added. Isabel glared at her. "No, that was the only call we could make at the time. And even if we had the perfect bait, I'm not sure if that canny creature would go for it as long as the rest of us are anywhere near."
"So how can we get it to come towards us?" Michael asked slowly.
"Can we - can we change what it's aware of?" Liz asked, turning reluctantly towards Tess. "Is its brain anything like what you'd be able to mind warp, Tess?"
Tess considered that big question for a long time. "Maybe, just maybe - not the same way that I'd trick a mind that's more - sentient, but I think that after that first close contact, I've got a bead on it." She drew in a deep breath. "I - I'm scared, though. If this doesn't work - I think the monster's mind might be able to drag me in and chomp on me just as badly as its real tentacles and teeth could."
"Is there any way that we can help protect you, if the worst starts to happen?" Liz asked.
Tess sighed softly, and nodded. "Yes. You and Maria - the other hybrid girls don't have the right orientation to their powers, nor the guys, or the hired help."
"But we're the ones who can - what, shoot back blasts of telepathic energy at the thing until it lets you go?" Maria asked, confused. "I don't think anyone's ever listed that among my talents before."
"No, it's not that simple," Tess said. "If this goes wrong, you won't be able to hurt the beast enough to make it let me go, or do anything to pull my mind free. The only way to save me will be to hold me steady," and here, Tess nodded first at Maria... "And then, fashion a decoy of my mental self, which it will then concentrate on holding for just long enough."
From the new tilt of Tess' head, she considered that to be Liz's job, which shocked her thoroughly. "Me? Create a false clone of - of your mind? Why would you think that I could do that?"
"Well, you did it for yourself," Tess pointed out. "In our lesson yesterday, on diversionary tactics. I told you to create a mental image of yourself, which would fool anybody trying to level a psychic attack at you. You did it great, and I don't see any reason you couldn't do the same on my behalf."
"But - but..." Liz had put that exercise out of her mind, partly because Tess had seemed too unimpressed by her performance at the time. But now - "Can you do this mental decoy thing, Tess?"
"Well yes, under good circumstances, but if the Beast's mind gets me, my powers will not avail me. And the two of us are apparently the only ones with enough of a naturally creative mind to accomplish it. Come on, get ready."
Liz sighed, and stepped up to follow Tess at a distance of something like five or six feet, Maria following her. Tess stepped out into full view of the monster, and relaxed when it seemed unsure whether to attack her or run away. "We'll need our teams in position before I try the lure," she realized. "Probably our strongest five on the other side of the junction, there - so they can move in when I get the Beast to chase us back here for fifteen feet or so."
"Okay, you pick 'em, then," Liz suggested.
"No, after you," Tess countered with an overly formal bow. Liz turned around to Max, but he evidently wasn't about to get her off the hook this time.
"Okay - Rayde, Eleeron, Swander..." That was easy enough, picking the full Antarians - and now two of the hybrids. "Serena, and Ava?"
"Got it," Ava agreed, following the other four into position. "We won't let you down."
"Never that," Liz agreed. Silently she wondered if she'd stacked the deck too far, that the six of them who stayed behind might have a harder time keeping the Beast contained, but there was no time to worry about it now. Tess concentrated, and Liz felt/heard, like a faraway gust of air, the wrenching of subjective reality that her powers triggered, even though it was hardly aimed at Liz herself. Liz tensed herself, wondering what the signal would be if Tess got into trouble, how either she or Maria would know...
And then Tess was running back away from the intersection, grabbing Liz's arm, and Maria and Max were moving too, and as Liz forced herself to a jog she realized that it had worked. The faint sound of tentacles in motion could just be heard over many footsteps, and Liz tried to count paces, knowing that it wouldn't be long before...
Tess and Maria turned around on either side of her, and Liz made her spin so quickly that she lost her balance. Tess wasn't holding her anymore, (obviously,) but Maria reached out to steady her best friend, and Max moved in to occupy a space that Tess was leaving for him on Liz's other side. Michael was next to Maria, and Isabel on the other side of Tess - not quite the core six of them, that would be with Alex instead of Tess, but Tess was worthy of being here, at...
Liz was nearly so lost in thought that she missed her cue to join in forming a united front of barrier energy, which would have been unfortunate. In fact, she was late enough that the shield segments that the others had summoned nearly failed for the lack of a unifying bridge in the middle, and then without any direct instructions on that behalf from their 'owners', the green of Max's field and the blue of Maria's spread together, trying to find unity by joining together. But then Liz's rosy light filled in the narrow space in between, and blended with other shades, to become one part of an actual rainbow of alien power - not just rose-pink and green and blue, but purple and cornsilk yellow and a sort of a brick orange..
Through the six rippling veils of color, (they hadn't been summoned in parallel, but in series as it were, but now that the six-fold shield had solidified Liz felt certain that there were now six layers thick of energy protecting her at any one spot,) she saw the monster scream in rage, and spin around, trying to make its break for safety. All retreat, too, had been barred from it as well, courtesy of another joined shield from the five aliens who had gone the other way. It must have learned by this point that matching its strength against their shields was pointless, because instead the beast turned sideways and started bashing its head against the tunnel wall.
"Quickly," Max called, returning to the role of leader as he saw an unexpected crisis. "If it can actually break through into another open space, we'll lose it, and I don't think we'd ever catch it in a tight spot one more time."
So Liz stepped forward, close to the shield, and took yet another preparatory deep breath. To move the shield together, all six of them would need to visualize the transition at the same time, which was a mental manoeuvre requiring the utmost care. If anybody was so much as a millimetre out of sync, the force field might collapse explosively. Considering that the monster was probably tougher and able to withstand such a blast better - the aftermath would probably be quite unfortunate.
But Max had called 'forward', so forward they would have to go. Max and Maria each held out their hands for her, though there was hardly much room in the tunnel for the six of them to manage such a link comfortably. But anything that might better link them all seemed to be a good idea, and anyway, Liz was not about to refuse an opportunity to hold hands with the man she loved or her oldest friend in a situation like this.
"On the three," Max whispered softly, and a sort of mental picture flashed into Liz's head - a progress bar marking off the time more precisely than words could. "One, two, three." And with that, all six of them pushed the shield further out into the tunnel. Somehow Liz could tell that the other side was also compressing the space from the other side.
Max signalled for them to start after moving nearly a foot, just as the inner surface of the shield was about to make contact with one of the monster's tentacles as it followed the creature's body from side to side.
"What - what about the air in there?" Liz asked. "Do our shields let gas particles through? If not, then we're going to be fighting higher and higher pressure as we compress it more tightly."
From the look he favoured her with, Max seemed honestly a little surprised that she was bringing up that point now. "I'm letting through air molecules of recognized types - oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide and water vapour," he said. "We don't want to let every gas particle through, in case the creature can emit a noxious or incapacitating vapour. Didn't we mention this in the shield training?"
"You didn't with me," Isabel muttered. "Probably the four - err, seven of you had time to agree to it on the way over from Antar though."
"Okay, well, no big harm done," Liz said. "Isabel and I can adjust our energy accordingly. And don't forget the argon, there's enough of that, especially down here, that it might be a problem."
It became slightly anticlimactic to keep squeezing the shields in from either side, especially as the monster became constricted enough that it could no longer pound on the walls and started to whine a little piteously. Liz struggled once or twice against feelings of guilt, but kept reminding herself that the beast was, at its heart, a wild and ferocious thing - it could feel pain, yes, but would cause death and destruction if it was let go free, and there seemed to be no practical way to keep it safely in captivity.
"Wait a second," she asked as they prepared to squeeze it for another half inch or so. "You said that Nicholas planted an egg here - is there any way it could have laid an egg of its own in this time?"
"Wait a second; doesn't that take two of them?" Isabel asked, startled by the notion.
"Usually, on earth - but not always, and for something alien..." Liz trailed off, looking up to Max for some reassurance.
"For this species, it doesn't always take two parents, no - but it's not old enough to 'lay' at all," Max said confidently. "That's another factor in the timing of why we came here now."
"And we're so glad that you're here," Isabel told him with a little grin.
It was after three pushes from their side, in the middle of a similar effort from Rayde and her team that the creature finally died, letting loose a faint and strangled cry, and its body half-melting and then solidifying into an unrecognizable shape. They weren't sure that that was the end of it for a while - Max and several of the other aliens took turns connecting with the remains and looking for any possible sign of life, and even after they were all reassured the 'corpse' was dismembered - some of the most organized and complicated chunks blasted into char or vaporized into component parts. The rest were scattered around the caverns and the desert above. Liz was a little disgusted by the 'thoroughness', but if these sorts of precautions would make triply certain that no alien monster would attack her loved ones back here on Earth...
Something occurred to her with that thought. If she was right in her guess that this monster had been the 'enemy' that Future Max had referred to, then they had finally headed off that possibility once and for all. She had not really thought of it for years - not since the night that Jim Valenti had proposed to Maria's mother, and Liz had resolved to herself that Future Max's prescription, that Tess had to stay with the Royal Four, didn't necessarily require his means to that end, that in that timeframe, Max needed to fall out of love with Liz herself. She had even admitted to Max that the 'Kyle incident' had been faked, but had never told anyone the full story, except for Maria...
And just at that point, Max was by her side. "Looks like we're almost done here," he said. "Back to the ship, and we'll take off before next morning. Probably land somewhere a bit more convenient at least once - Las Cruces, or Roswell, or both."
"Good," Liz said. "I've got loose ends to tie up with my classes this term, and need to see my parents at least once before - before we go." Max nodded. "And I think I'll have a story to tell you guys about tonight at dinner - something that nobody has heard yet except for Maria."
"Really?" Max said with a very curious and intrigued smile. And then, he repeated "Dinner!" with a lot more emphasis. "God, I'm starving! Feel like I could eat a cow - live."
"Eww, please don't." Liz bumped her hips against Max's playfully. "But I'm not surprised, we didn't get much of lunch eaten, and it must be..." Automatically she lifted her left wrist, but there was no watch on it - it hadn't really been comfortable to wear against the thick cuffs of the battle suit, and anyway she had probably forgotten when they'd been wakened so early. "Any idea what time it is, local?"
"Hmm." Max pulled a tiny little device out of one pocket, a bit narrower than a credit card, touched its surface a few times, and then blinked in some surprise. "Seven thirty."
"In the evening?" Liz exclaimed. At this time of year, night would have closed in hours ago. "How? I mean, I know that we could have taken a few hours getting ourselves lost and then found again, but after that, the final battle didn't take long..."
"And it's been more hours that we've been cleaning up," Max pointed out. "For one thing, we didn't get up as early as you might have thought we did, just because we were both tired out." Liz nodded, accepting that. "And 'lunch' was quite late - after the stories, and the chess game, and so on."
"Okay." Liz sighed, accepting those explanations. "So yeah, I imagine we'll all be able to pack in a big dinner, after a day like this. And the ship should be able to take off as soon as we're all there, though maybe later in the night will be less conspicuous." She looked up at him. "And when we're alone together, in your cabin, are you up for a repeat of last night, or do we have to wait until we're on the program?"
"Hey, I let you have last night on the 'we could die tomorrow' excuse," Max laughed. "More seriously, though - I want you every minute of every day and night, Liz Parker, but still - my own choice is that we do this right, and that would seem to include being careful about anything that impacts our family planning. No birth control is foolproof, and that goes double for people in our circumstances."
"Right, of course, that makes sense," Liz said, sighing. "Careful. But isn't it supposed to be the girl who's naturally inclined to be careful about getting pregnant, and the guy who's so overcome with - desire that he can't help himself."
Max shrugged. "This - this might be overreacting, but I have to admit, I always see Maria's face, that night."
"What, when they - they put Danyel into his pod?" Liz asked.
"No, not about Danyel. The night she lost Keva." Liz gasped softly. "Sorry, I didn't mean to - but yeah. The look on her face when she first saw me, not that she ever blamed me for not being around - and at the memorial ceremony we had. I know that even - well, it's a slim chance, even with what we know, that you'll lose our baby, but..."
"Who knows?" Liz put in. "It happens often enough for regular people here on Earth. And for all the talent of Antarian healers and doctors, there's obviously a lot that they don't know yet about human and hybrid biology."
"Yes, but let's not worry about it now," Max pointed out. "Come on - there's nothing more for me to do here - let's go back to the ship."
"What, you're not going to wait and be the last one out, like a good leader?" Liz teased him.
"I think half the team or more is ahead of us," Max said with a smile. "Rayde and her people are going to spend another little while searching for any dangerous residue, and Michael and Maria were still disposing of a tentacle chunk, last I heard. They might have gotten distracted in some reasonably comfortable cavern."
Liz shook her head. "Alright, well I'm certainly good to go." She offered her arm, and Max took it with a smile. They'd only gone through one other cavern and two tunnels before meeting a tall, voluptuous figure in a black suit. "Hello, Serena," Liz said, with a grateful nod.
"Hey, Parker," Serena put in. "Any word on my ride, boss?"
Max looked down at Liz, and she shrugged. "I - I still can't say for sure, but I don't think you should hold out hope." Liz tensed slightly, more than half expecting an explosion of anger as the tempestuous New York hybrid realized that her hoped-for reward was being drawn away once the job was over.
But Serena just nodded - almost serenely. "Sorta figured that, but I had to ask. Are any of the gang going to be hanging around once you weigh anchor? My old North-eastern buddy and her man?"
"Yeah, neither of them has expressed any interest in a ride to Antar yet, and nobody's talked about wanting them to come," Liz admitted. "It'll be hard to be apart from Ava - like it was difficult to be so far away from Maria for so long - but I know that she doesn't want to move in on Tess' territory, and Tess seems to love her new home."
"Like a planet isn't big enough for both of them?" Serena pointed out. "And Antar isn't all there is over that way, either. Have you seen any of the other planets in that sector, King Max?"
"Well yes, but I haven't had much time for real exploring," Max admitted ruefully. "Larek invited us over to Rahlicx to throw a feast in his honour, after Kivar was dispatched, and - and there was a second Summit meeting with all the planetary leaders, and a few other important figures, on Taliernar, with Duchess Kathana hosting."
"Alright." Serena nodded, and the three of them continued on the way out, Serena falling into step next to Liz. "Well, do keep me in mind, and if you have another ship doing a trip - or something like that gateway you mentioned..."
"You'll have a chance to come see it all for yourself," Max promised her. "Count on it."
"I will, your majesty."
Liz smiled to herself at that. It would be convenient to go back and forth between Roswell and Antar, more quickly than driving back from campus. She wondered what Antar would really be like for her - surely nobody else's descriptions could really do justice to the sense of living on a completely different planet.
#
"...I was trying hard to keep from crying as we danced to the music," Liz told the entire company, after finishing a truly excellent dinner aboard 'Czechoslovakia.' "He - Future Max sort of spun me around, and I let my eyes close. There was a kind of wash of love that came through me from him, and that surprised me - not just that he loved me, but that it was a feeling uncomplicated by grief or uncertainty or anything else. Unconditional." She looked over at Max, thinking that now she finally understood how the two of them could feel something so simple for each other.
"And - there was a new sensation of air around me, and at first I thought that it was just a breeze. Maybe there was a breeze. But when I opened my eyes again, he was gone, and I was alone on the roof." And at that point, I couldn't keep the tears back, she thought to herself, but didn't admit that out loud. "And - well, that's basically the story, the secret part. You guys who were around in Roswell probably know as much about the aftermath as I do, though this revelation may cast different lights on various details.
Serena instantly spoke up. "So - so exactly what did he say about - about Serena?" She was clearly reserving judgement on whether the name meant her, in this context, or if that was a coincidence.
Liz took a deep breath. "Not much - he only ever mentioned her once. He was - well, he was about as close-mouthed and enigmatic about my future as you might expect a time traveller to be from the movies, though in his case I never really saw the reason for secrecy, given that he had a great chance to arm me against disaster, but never mind. Serena - would be a friend of mine one day, and that she had told him, because of the quantum mechanics of time travel, both he, and our Max, would be destroyed if they came into contact."
"Quantum mechanics?" Serena puzzled over that phrase, trying to figure out how it fit in. "Quantum mechanics is concerned with the ultra-microscopic view, of course, how subatomic particles work and interact, and a person like Max isn't really a coherent entity over time in a quantum-mechanical perspective. The particles that make up him - or anyone else - are constantly being exchanged, swapping in and out of his cells, as he breathes, eats, and takes a crap. So how could contact between them be that devastating?"
"I'm not sure," Liz said, wondering if Serena would continue. She was coming to her own decision about the Serena identity now.
"Of course, the time travel would have brought particles back to loop over their own previous time, but there'd be no certain way to keep them from colliding with each other - Max could easily breathe the sae oxygen particle out and in at the same moment," Serena continued to muse.
"What if it's not about matter, but energy?" Maria asked. "Quantum mechanics has to say something about energy - is there energy inside Max that doesn't change over the years?"
"We're not sure yet," Rayde admitted. "I think that's a question that neither Antarian science nor the scholars in the use of our powers can answer yet."
"I've thought about all of this before," Liz said, "and maybe it's not as microscopic as the reference to Quantum Mechanics made it sound. Future Max seemed to be somewhat aware of the changes that I was making in the timeline - usually it tended to take a little while before those changes 'stabilized', but what if that effect would speed up, the more directly relevant the changes were to himself? If Future Max met Max, everything Future Max did or said would become part of his memories of the past, which would change him, making him react, and so on in an endless cycle."
"That sounds like the winner to me," Max decided. "But no offense, Serena, you can talk more with Liz about what this means for your relationship a bit later. I'm still a bit concerned about the future safety of planet Earth."
"You don't think that the Creature of Carlsbad was the danger that Future Max came back to stop?" Ava asked him.
"Not for sure, no. Maybe I'm being overly cautious - from the hints that my future self dropped, it seems unlikely that he or Isabel or Michael ever went back to Antar, and without going there to learn about the egg, I don't really see how anybody could have destroyed the Creature. As long as that entity was here on Earth, there doesn't seem to be any reason for Kivar to launch a more conventional attack force - but he's not the only one I might have referred to as 'our enemies', not knowing the events of that time-line."
"And what is that leading to, Maxwell?" Michael asked in his most laid-back tone. He and Maria were sitting snuggled up together at the table. (They'd insisted on armless chairs to make this easier.)
"It's another good reason for what I was already planning," Max admitted. "That the Royal Four, and their chosen partners, should all come back to Antar - and that it's more important than I realized that we consolidate our power base there, and establish the portal link back to Earth as soon as possible. Just in case."
"Well, am I then to assume that you're issuing an invitation?" Isabel asked him pointedly. "I know that you've talked to Liz about taking her back with you, but..." She let the obvious conclusion to that sentence go unsaid.
"Yes, I suppose I am," Max said, nodding in appreciation for such a good opening. "Isabel, I understand now, as I did then, some of your reasons for not coming with us last time. But Vilandra's reputation will no longer be an issue on Antar for you. We've established the precedent that we live on Antar as unique individuals, connected to the Royal Four of Sanren's time, but responsible only for our own choices and crimes. Also Vilandra's own story is not as tarnished as you feared, though there's still some doubt, and a few people who believe the worst, but... I want my sister to come back with me this time, to see all that I've accomplished, and greet the Antarian people as one of their princesses."
"Princess Isabel," Alex said out loud. "That does have something of a ring to it." Isabel shrugged with as much diffidence as she could muster, but Liz thought that she was warming quickly to the whole idea.
"And - and as premature as it might be to say this much - I do hope that the two of us can celebrate the loves that we both found on Earth - by marrying in a double ceremony," Max said. He was holding Liz tightly under the table, where she alone could tell, and know how nervous he was about this.
Isabel jumped up, her temper flaring even behind a mouth that kept threatening to show some fraction of a smile. "God, Max, don't they have manners on Antar? No matter what you hope or wish for, Alex and I getting married is a subject that's supposed to be broached by - well, by one of us, first of al. Not for you to meddle in with your talk of a royal ceremony, and..."
"Well." Alex chuckled. "Then if I let Max beat me to the punch, allow me to minimize the offense in lapse of time as much as I can, at least." He got up out of his chair and knelt next to Isabel on one knee. "I - I didn't bring the diamond ring, it's back in my lockbox in the dorm room, because I was worried about it getting lost in all the excitement - or somebody finding it at the wrong time. Had pretty much decided to wait until Spring Break to ask you - before Michael showed up."
Isabel let her eyes fill with tears, shot one more half-angry look at Max for precipitating this on his own terms instead of letting it develop naturally, and then blurted out, "Yes, I will."
"Hey, don't I get to actually ask the question first?"
"We all know what you're asking, honey," Maria put in affectionately. "Frankly, I think that you're doing better to let your actions speak for you, instead of insisting on putting things out loud. You do sometimes flub the talking part when it gets really important, old friend."
"Hey, let the man speak his piece," Michael countered, broadly grinning as he took the other side. "He's no worse than the rest of us when it comes to putting his foot in his mouth from time to time - and I managed alright, when it was my turn, didn't I? Didn't Max?"
"I - I will listen to anything you tell me, sweetie," Isabel told him, effectively ending the debate. "I do feel as if I've already given the only answer that matters, but if you want me to answer the same question after you've said it out loud, that I can certainly do for you."
"Okay." Alex paused a moment, and then shook his head. "Dammit, I knew how I was going to start a minute ago!"
Everybody laughed at that point. "Maybe you should wait and try again when we're not all watching," Kyle suggested.
"I think that's a great idea," Isabel told him, and even Alex had to admit that he saw the wisdom of that much.
But they toasted the second royal engagement for a long while, and had more singing and dancing and stories, and it was a long time before anybody was alone together that night.