Chapter Fourteen

(Alex):

"It'd be a little suspicious if I asked to go home now," I said to the dream figures of my friends.

"Why - do you think anybody knew about the break-in, or that the computer was used without authorization in off hours?" Maria asked, playing with her fingers nervously.

"Oh, no." I let my hand slip out of Isabel's and started to rub her arm, delighting in how real the sensation of touching her was. "It's just, we're getting closer to a publishable success, and it's oh so very exciting!" I tried to only let a little irony through - I'd be excited about this too, if it weren't for the fact that my own priorities were a bit different. "Don't worry, I'll be able to figure out a way out in a week or so I think. So, let's see... did you see anything in there to explain why Kivar and the others wanted the Granilith so bad? What it could do, I mean??"

"Not really, no," Max said. "A bit about how it was discovered as a relic of alien technology, and how in the days before the Liaret dynasty it was fought over and stolen by different tribes and lords."

"Part of it was probably just that it was under Royal protection," Liz suggested. "Having it, or pretending to have it, would have given Kivar some legitimacy as the new King. And the neighbor planets were upset that he'd lied about something like that."

"Okay, yeah, I guess that makes some sense," I said. "And obviously, if you do go anywhere in the Granilith, it would have to be somewhere that Kivar couldn't seize it, and you, when you land."

"That's the idea - if we get that far." Max sighed. "Right now, I'm starting to lean towards Isabel's attitude - keep reading, keep learning, but just sit tight and keep the G safe."

"Keep our heads down," Liz put in, and laughed. That got everyone going, including me, and I wondered at what point Max's usual strategy mantra had become an in-joke.

"Oh, you caught the reference to Larek, right Max?" I asked.

"Yeah, I did, though I could wish it had said a bit more about him. He was a childhood friend of Zan's, Autarch of the nearby planet of Rahlicx. Apparently, Rahlicx has a check and balance system between an elected Senate and an Autarch who is selected on the basis of test scores and educated to become as capable an administrator and governor as possible."

"Any chance that we could get Larek back here to answer some more questions?" Maria asked. "I mean..."

"Oh, yeah, that worked SO well the last time," Isabel put in. "I nearly killed Brody Davis, and even when Larek was able to get back here safely, he didn't have much time to tell us anything clearly."

"It was enough to save everybody from the Gandarium," Liz countered. "But yeah, I do take the point."

"Also, after Brody got shocked and recovered some of Larek's memories, and I healed him... I'm not sure if Larek could 'use' him again," Max put in. "And he might not have another suitable... abductee anywhere on the whole planet. If Brody had to go from Roswell back to New York for the Summit..."

"Yeah, I do understand the difficulties." Maria sighed. "Just... well, I wondered."

"Any other news?" I asked them.

"Well, let's see... Liz and Michael have been talking about going off to New York with Ava," Liz put in.

I looked over at Maria, who just shrugged. "That's quite a long way to go on a summer trip. Any particular reason why?"

"Well, we've been feeling... big urges again." Maria looked away from me nervously. "The way it was way back when, we first... blah blah blah." I nodded to show my understanding of the vague euphemism. "And, since it kind of seems like with the alien mating instinct, there's something missing in human birth control, some subconscious impulse to sabotage it - I, I just don't want to risk conceiving a child again until I can have a bit more assurance that I can carry him or her safely to term."

"Okay, I'm with you so far," I told her, as reassuring as I could be. "So, Ava thinks that she might be able to help out, but only with something that she left behind in the Big Apple?"

"That's the idea, yeah. Alien contraceptive research. We're supposed to go in a few days, so I may be gone before you get back home."

"That's okay. We'll get back in touch soon, I'm sure."

"We'd better." Maria got up from the dream couch to come over and hug me.

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

"Okay, what if we encode the pointer to that specific quantum state inside a sixty-four bit integer?" I asked Luis and Kristen, in our usual working room the next afternoon. "That would let us..."

"Oh, my... wow," Luis breathed. "Is that even possible? If so, how didn't I see it?"

"Because our man Alex has 'the knack,'" Kristen remarked, while I squirmed a bit uncomfortably. "Depending on what you had in mind, you could build a quantum list, or even some form of binary search tree with this idea."

"Oh, yeah, right." Peter thought about that. "Isn't there some kind of a binary tree that will approximate array index-based access in log-of-n time?"

"Yeah, I think so," Luis agreed.

"So where to next, hotshot?" Kristen asked me, and I couldn't help but let out a sigh. "Is there something bugging you? Thought you'd be more jazzed about this?"

"Yeah, um, well..." Oh, why not start to set the stage now? If Kristen could tell that I wasn't so excited about staying on the project, it didn't make that much sense to keep on like everything was in geeker heaven. "I... I guess I've just been feeling homesick lately. My best friend - her mother's going to be getting married, and everybody's talking about the plans for the ceremony. I guess I just... I do wish I were back home in Roswell."

Luis had passed the textbook over to Peter while I was talking, and left Peter to continue the search. "Did you realize you were feeling that way until just now?" he asked quietly.

"Maybe. Didn't really want to say something, since everything's so busy and people are so excited about..."

"Well, I wish you would have." Luis sighed. "You may not realize it, but as your liaison faculty advisor, I made certain serious promises when you came up to join the program, Alex. Your parents were a little concerned about us pressuring you to stay on longer than you wanted to stick around, that if you really felt it was time to go back to Roswell and enjoy the summer with your friends, I should do everything that was necessary to make it happen quickly."

I blinked. Was it really going to be this easy? "Umm... well, that's good to know. If I said that I did want to go, how quick is quickly?"

"Hmm -- we'd have to wrap up a few things - maybe day after tomorrow."

Took a deep breath. "Let's get on it."

"Not just yet." Luis took a deep breath. "I'll go make a few calls, and you head out, take a break, yeah?"

"Hmm. Okay, twist my arm, it's such a gorgeous day outside for a walk," I admitted.

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

(Isabel):

I was lying front-down on my bed and considering the whirlpool galaxy necklace that I'd gotten back from Maria's room. Everything pointed to this being important; especially how Michael and Max had both recognized its shape as matching an empty spot in the ship they'd toured in Utah. Even my own alien senses could detect some potential in the pendant, but it was being - well, blocked somehow. Or... or broken.

Like a lightning bolt crashing down, the obvious answer hit me. Broken. The pendant was physically broken into a big part and a little part. Was that all that needed to be fixed? Concentrating hard on the two different parts and the rough edges between, I brought them together and used my powers to mend the break, knitting the molecules back together into a coherent whole. And the surge of... of something nearly knocked me off the bed. Not a power or energy, exactly, but a... a resonance, a humming that wasn't true sound, or a traditional signal like radio or microwave or light or any of those, but something that the Antarian part of me was picking up loud and clear. Could it be a telepathic broadcaster of some sort? Or a subspace transceiver using tachyon emissions or whatever to reach far-distant worlds?

The thing *was* a communication device, I was sure of that. Possibly even the 'communications technology' mentioned in the book. But - but how was I expected to use it? I held it in both hands in front of me, concentrated on staring at the design, sort of like we had when using the orbs or the healing stones, (okay, so there wasn't a design on the healing stones, but I'd sort of concentrated on staring deep inside it and the light had come on,) and after a long moment, said "Hello, can anybody hear me?" Got nothing back, the pendant stayed completely silent, and somehow I could tell that this was the wrong way to go, that it didn't transmit sound or anything like that. Tried a few other things, including thinking my words at it hard without saying them out loud, and using the thing like a web-cam, feeling increasingly silly. Then I turned over, lay on my back, closed my eyes, and tried to slip into a deeper rapport with the thing, letting it rest on my forehead or my chest. "What is your secret?" I mumbled.

Something occurred so faintly that I wasn't really sure if it was an impression from the pendant or a memory. Larek had come to Earth in the body of Brody Davis. Same with the emissary, and those other people who had been at the New York Summit. They'd come to earth into human bodies - they'd COMMUNICATED with Earth, not by sending their words or thoughts or images here, but by traveling here in spirit. Was - was it at all possible that this pendant could let me do the same thing? Not by trying to call Larek here to Earth in Brody's body, as I had once tried disastrously to do, but by going to him where he was?

The thought was startling enough to make my bed spin and do corkscrews as I lay there, (or so it seemed in my head at least,) but I gradually grew more and more certain that it was right... or at least worth a try. Larek - the name, the thought of him grew in my mind. We'd trusted him at least once before, and his information had helped save the whole world from the Gandarium. I... I knew him, in a sense, not what he looked like, but I'd been in his presence and remembered his words, and I'd felt his essence as I tried to draw his spirit out into Brody. And the book translation had told me of his world, the planet Rahlicx, a beautiful planet of small seas and fertile islands, orbiting a yellow-white star a few light years or so away from Antar.

It took only the slightest mental confirmation before I realized that my spirit was shooting far away from planet Earth, seeking out Autarch Larek. Probably as I lay there on the bed, I'd already slipped deeply enough into a mental trance, my powers resonating with the pendant, that all the heavy work had been done for me. Considered returning at that point, to tell Max and the others what I'd already found out, to ask their opinion before taking any more of a risk, but there was a strong urge to keep going, at least give myself a chance to find Larek. If I didn't find him, I could still get back to Earth, right? And then my consciousness took a quantum leap across hyperspace, and I wasn't quite so sure...

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

(Isabel)

I was in a room, lying on a bed, and for an instant I thought that the whole thing had been a failure or a vivid dream, that I was back home. But no, the room didn't look the same, or the bed, and I was... well, I wasn't sure about myself, because something was wrong. I staggered up to my feet, looked around the room, noticed absently that I had greenish skin and very dark hair in the mirror, also that something seemed to be kind of odd about colors. But I couldn't move very well, tripped and fell splat on the floor, which was hard and a bit rough, like stone or concrete. Let out a cry of pain and then got up again, more carefully, spotted a communication device on a countertop, made my way over to it, and then realized that I had no notion how to work it. All the buttons were marked with Antarian symbols, and even if I could remember what they meant, I didn't have any instructions. And I certainly didn't know any 'phone numbers' or the equivalent. So I settled for going to the door, pounding on the wall until I found the touch contact that made it swing into my room, going out into the cavern and yelling for attention.

Someone hurried over, an older Antarian woman I judged, and to my surprise I could understand her words. "Birena, what on earth is... oh, no, what's wrong?"

"Larek," I insisted, hoping that the same trick would use to let the word be understood by her. "Not - not really Birena, just borrowed her body for a moment. Came to talk to Larek - it's very important."

"What??" the woman muttered. "What kind of game are you..."

"It's not a game, Langda," an Antarian man said from behind me. I turned around to look him and tumbled down again. "Call the chamberlain quick, get anybody important down here," he said to the first woman. "I... I will do what I can to get you an audience with Larek, but don't exert this body that you've 'borrowed' and answer my questions. Who are you, and what world do you hail from?"

"Isabel Evans, of Earth," I muttered. "Not - not really Vilandra of Liaret, but there's - there's a family connection..."

"The exiled Royal Four?" he muttered. "Oh, boy, this is bad news."

"Why?" I asked. "Will Kivar know that I came here, and give Larek a hard time for it?"

"No, I wasn't thinking of that. But... you have no idea of the dangers of psychic identity transference under uncontrolled conditions, do you? Just found a spiritual resonance crystal and had to give it a try..."

"I, umm, I have some notion of the dangers to the host body," I admitted, feeling suddenly mortified that I hadn't thought of them before I left. "A - a few months ago, I used Larek's sympathy with his Roswell host to draw him back to Earth unprepared. The host almost died. But... but I thought that with healers available here..."

"There's that, but the dangers to the individual traveling can be great as well," my welcome wagon guy said severely. "Without your spirit present to regulate your body, I fear it may be slipping away as well."

"Oh, no," I muttered. "Can - can I wait long enough to speak with Larek himself, or should I give you a message to pass on?" She smiled a bit sheepishly. "Who are you, anyway?"

He smiled slightly. "My name is Veren Smeet, and I'm a healer in the Autarch's service. So, yes, I think that we do have some time hopefully. Please maintain eye contact." He reached out and took a firm hold of Isabel's shoulder, and with a shudder she felt that something which hadn't been working properly inside Birena's torso ever since she'd arrived was now set to rights. "But if there's anything important that is not for Larek's ears only, perhaps it would be better to explain to me while we wait."

I don't really remember what I said to Veren, though I remember babbling for at least a minute, probably several, about going into Alex's dreams and seeing how he saw me, which really didn't relate to anything. Finally someone else appeared, and I recognized Larek immediately. He did seem to look more than a bit like Brody, though there was also no way to miss the fact that he was the president of a whole world or something like that.

Larek reached out to touch my arm, (okay, Birena's arm,) and shuddered. "Isabel, whatever you have to tell me, make it quick and go home RIGHT NOW. Birena is adapting well, but I can tell that your Earth brain is starting to go into oxygen starvation death."

What now? How could I explain it so quickly? "We... we need to know more about the situation here," I gasped out. "Found instructions for using the Granilith, we can use it to travel in, but don't want to let Kivar get ahold of it. So many questions, but there's no way I have time to listen to the answers. Can - can you get back to Roswell? But - but don't use Brody Davis; you probably can't. He - he had an accident, accessed your memories, and couldn't deal with them. Max had to heal him."

"I... I believe I understand the essentials," Larek said softly. "I will do what I can to help you, but there isn't time for any of it now, as you said. Go home now."

"How - how do I separate from Birena?" I gasped out. "I... I think that I could follow the resonance to my own body home through hyperspace, like I followed the memory of your essence here, Larek. But - but I used the pendant to separate from my body back there. Do - do you have another one here? Or - or is there a different way to do it, since I'm in a borrowed body and not my own?"

It wasn't hard to see a worried look cross over Larek and Veren's faces at the same time.

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

(Max):

"How're you doing?" I said, as I led the way up the stairs. Liz had come over for dinner with the parents, but I didn't intend to let them be around for ALL my time with her.

"Ahh, okay I guess. Missing Maria, and Ava - it's weird having them out of town, and Alex not back yet, and everything."

"Yeah, I know. It's a bit weird when Michael isn't always showing up too," I said. "They won't be too long in New York, though."

"They'd better not be."

"So, we've got over half an hour before my Mom pulls the chicken out of the oven," I said softly, closing the door to my room once we were both inside. "What now?" Liz chuckled as I sat down next to her on the bed and she kissed me eagerly.

*FLASH!* The image was simple but incredibly clear and realistic - a handsome man with chalk-gray skin and a prominent ridge above his eyebrows, sitting on an imposing silver-trimmed chair, which in turn was sitting on a raised dais. Could that chair be a throne, perhaps? Well, maybe, but not an obvious one. The man had no crown or royal scepter, or robes any of the other trappings. In fact the cut of his clothes didn't seem too far from a business suit. He wore no jewelry at all unless you counted the glasses, which weren't richly adorned frames or anything. The man nodded, a bit reluctantly, and then I was staring at Liz, who also had a flashed expression on her exquisite face. "What did you see?" I asked. No matter how in sync we are, we seldom get the same flash at the same time, I've noticed. It's like a perspective thing, never the same imagery for different brains.

"Your - your mother, Max. Or - I think she was. The same lady as we saw in the Pod Chamber, didn't look quite the same, but the resemblance was clear. Lying on a bed, with people gathered around her. Some of them were aliens... but I think one was Isabel."

"Wow," I muttered, wondering what the meaning of that might be. "As if... as if she were..."

"As if she were dying? Maybe. I'm not really sure, but it didn't really seem out of place for a deathbed gathering - or just for a sickbed. So, what about yours?"

"Umm... a guy sitting on a chair," I said. "Alien guy, kind of tough in a smart way. I guess that - that it could be Kivar."

"Boo, hiss," Liz immediately responded.

"I don't know... I mean, I don't really want Kivar to stay in charge, but I'm getting a bit less sure that he's a villain. We've read the propaganda of the old royal family, and heard the party line from Kivar's lackeys, and the truth is probably somewhere in between."

We ended up doing more talking about alien political history after that, until my Mom called up, said that dinner was almost ready, and asked me to check on Isabel since she wasn't answering. I didn't expect anything important when I opened Isabel's door and stepped inside, but the flash of alien power was impossible to mistake.

At first, it just looked like Isabel was asleep, lying on her back, on top of her covers, wearing casual day clothes. I realized that the alien power was concentrated in the rejoined whirlpool pendant, clutched to her chest, and got the shivers all over. Sure enough, as much as I shook my sister, she showed no signs of rousing - one eye fell open after a bit, but it stared out at me completely unseeing.

"Oh, god," Liz muttered, stepping up behind me. "What - what's wrong with her?"

"I... I don't know," I said, concentrating on her with my powers. I couldn't get a decent connection for healing, but my other alien senses were telling me that it probably wouldn't have helped either. Isabel's body was whole and undamaged, perfectly healthy, except for... well, even her brain wasn't hurt or damaged exactly, but brain activity in the topmost sections that handled sense perception, higher reasoning, and personality were very low and quiescent. What could have caused that, and how could I change it back? Extending my senses, I realized that some of the energy fields that I could normally perceive with ease were missing or severely faded, as if the spirit that made her the Isabel I knew and loved had - just gone somewhere else. That was as much as I could tell, and I wasn't able to make much more sense of things.

"I don't think that I can bring her around quickly," I muttered. "Maybe - maybe one of us should see what we could to do head off Mom and Dad."

"I'll see if I can sell them a quick excuse, but I'm not leaving for long and you shouldn't either," Liz said, surprising me with the vehemence and certainty in her tone. "She *needs* us. Your parents finding out wouldn't be a huge sacrifice to make if it means that she's okay."

"Hmm, alright," I said. "Do you want to know what I've figured out so far?"

"Of course." So I explained about everything that I'd sensed, from the first flash of power centering on the restored pendant.

"Alright - maybe it's a booby-trap or something. Can you sense anything actually harmful about the pendant?"

"Hmm." Considered it. "No, not malicious or... or adverse, but it -- it's dangerous. Something that - that she might have used the wrong way, and it hurt her though it wasn't meant to do that."

"Radio in the bathtub syndrome?"

"Ooh, come on." I winced at the image.

"Okay, sorry," Liz admitted. "Well, that could be it. Or - or maybe somebody sensed her using the pendant, and used a long-range alien attack to keep her from telling its secret to the rest of us?"

"Well, maybe, I guess... doesn't seem to fit with what I saw in her brain - an attack wouldn't peel off those energy layers so cleanly - it would leave debris and ragged edges behind I would think."

"Max, what's the damn holdup?" Dad called from down the hall, and I got an ice-cold sensation down my back.

"Isabel's taking her sweet time staying woken up," I called back, because it was vaguely like the truth and would explain why we were hanging around. Suddenly, to my horror, Liz leaned over the bed and took the pendant in her hand, leaving it close to Isabel but concentrating on the design fiercely.

"Liz, be careful," I muttered. "Are - are you trying to figure out what happened to..."

"No, just - had an intuitive guess about what needed to be done," she muttered. "I'm shining a light to help her find her way home."

"Home from WHERE?" I muttered. But then, it did seem to fit, that Isabel's energy, her soul, had left her body voluntarily. Where might she have gone, heedless of the dangers of not getting back on time? I waited, with bated breath, as Dad knocked on the door, and watched as he pushed the door open, a bit more slowly than I had.

"Isabel? Are... are you sure that she's just asleep?"

There was a long pause, during which I struggled to try and find the right words to say. And then a miracle happened.

Isabel groaned and half-turned over onto her side. I'd been so worried that I hadn't been watching her aura or her brainwave patterns, but both were almost normal and still recovering. It might be a little while before she was up and eating dinner, but at least she'd be okay.

Liz dropped the pendant and looked around, still a bit nervous. But she must have seen the relief in my face, because she smiled back at my Dad. "Sure I'm sure. Wonder if it's not having a summer job that makes her so lazy."

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

"Harvard's a great school, and I'm sure there's a lot of amazing things that you could learn there," my mother told Liz. "But, well, it's such a long way from your family and the great friends that you have here, Liz. Are you sure that you want to go away for four years?"

"Mom!" Isabel exclaimed.

"What?" After looking at Isabel, she must have been able to interpret the glare quite well. "No, not because she's a girl or anything honey - I'd say the same to any of you who had their hearts set on an Ivy League place..."

"It's alright," Liz insisted. "Actually, I'm not that sure I want actually to GO to Harvard - but I'm bound and determined to earn a spot there. Then I can decide if I'm taking it or telling them I'm taking a pass."

Dad immediately hooted with laughter and appreciation at that declaration. "Oh yes. Have I mentioned that I'm starting to like you more and more these days, Liz?"

"No - and does that mean you didn't like me so much when Max first met me, Mister Evans?"

"Don't call me Mister Evans any more, really. Would 'Phil' be too much to ask for?"

Liz hesitated, and then somebody knocked on the front door. After a silent moment, Mom got up and answered it - and brought Tess and Kyle into the front hall. "Umm, sorry to break up the party," Tess said, "but I needed to talk to, err..."

"Maybe it's about time we tackled the dishes, anyway," Dad said in a low, slightly regretful voice. A lot of dinner had been strained in a way that Mom and Dad had obviously been unable to account for, and things had only just really started to loosen up when the moment had been lost.

"Yeah, thanks Mom," Isabel said when she saw her nod agreement. "Hopefully it'll go better tomorrow, with Alex's welcome home shindig."

"One can only hope," my mother said philosophically. And then Isabel made a quick round of the younger people in attendance, nodding meaningfully at each of us, before leading the way up to her room.

"Okay, here's what happened," she whispered once Kyle had closed the door behind him. "I - I went to another world, Rahlicx. Like the way that Larek comes here. I talked with him briefly, and he's going to try to get back here or send us word some other way. It was probably stupid, and I could have killed some poor girl in the Autarch's palace and ended up a vegetable, but..."

"I... I'm not sure that 'stupid' quite covers it," I said, shocked. This was the first opportunity that Isabel had had to tell Liz or I what had happened. "Why, why didn't you at least wait tell one of us..."

"I don't really know," Isabel admitted, "unless the exhilaration of putting the pendant back together and figuring out what it was for was affecting my judgment. Probably nobody else should get as deeply into resonance with it as I did, just in case."

"You put the pendant back together?" Kyle asked.

"Yeah, maybe you'd better start at the top, Isabel," Liz suggested.

"One question first," I said. "How did you guys know to come by?" This was directed at Tess and Kyle. "Or was there some other issue you wanted our help with?"

"No, Liz called me, said we'd better come by around eight thirty," Tess said. "And that something had happened to Isabel, but she was okay now."

"Alright, let's see," Isabel said. And she told us the whole story - how she'd been trying to figure out the importance of the pendant, realized the impressive properties it gained when joined together using molecular knitting, and ended up using it to pay a visit to Larek. She went into a lot of details about her experience at the palace, what it was like to have her soul sharing somebody else's body, her conversations with the Court Healer Smeet, and her brief conversation with Larek.

"He's going to get pissed at us soon," Kyle joked. "Bothering him for every little thing."

"The Gandarium trying to wipe out life on Earth was not 'little'," Isabel snapped, not getting the joke. "And this thing - I admit that no worlds hang in the balance, but we've got a decision to make that will affect our entire lives and not enough information about at least one of the choices."

"Actually, it might affect the course of at least one world," Liz put in. "If Max is still considered a King figure on Antar and his people are waiting for his return to set them free or whatever..."

"Well, no point in worrying about that unless some strange guy shows up and says that he's Larek," I pointed out. "Pretty sure that you're right, Isabel - he wouldn't be able to use Larek as a host anymore and it might be a bad thing if he were to try."

"What does it take for somebody to be a host, though?" Kyle asked. "I mean, if Isabel was able to just pop into the body of this Birena girl..."

"And nearly killed her, if Veren hadn't been there," Isabel pointed out. "Plus, since Birena lived in the Autarch's palace, maybe she was on standby for someone else to use her body on business - the leader of one of the other planets, for instance. They didn't recognize that she was abducted right away, but I didn't arrive at a pre-arranged time, and I didn't announce myself according to the usual protocol, whatever that might be..."

"Yeah," I said. "So how *did* they get you home to us?"

"Well... they didn't have anything exactly like the pendant on hand, but Larek was able to get his hands on something that was an aid to concentration that he thought might help. And I was trying really hard, and I managed to separate from Birena, and I was trying to follow resonance back to my own body, but I couldn't really sense it anymore. Then I sort of saw a bright blue light shining, and headed for it, and bang, I was over Roswell and homing in on our house, with the blue light just dying out over it. I'm convinced that was you, Liz, using the pendant to give me a signal."

"I'm just glad that something worked," Liz said modestly. "If I really did help out, then great."

I waited around unobtrusively until Isabel went to sleep, a deep but natural slumber, and then took care of one thing that I felt had to be done before the day was out, and since Isabel had not taken it upon herself, (and I'd been watching for any signs of her taking a private moment for this,) it seemed to fall to me. That was calling Alex and letting him know that Alex was okay, without going into enough details to really scare him, or more than I should admit on a phone line that might just conceivably be tapped. He was pretty confused at the start, but ended up getting the message okay. (It probably added to the confusion that he saw the call answer for our private line and thought I was Isabel when he first picked up.)

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

(Liz):

Alex came home today, finally - a bit earlier than he'd expected, because Luis made things so easy for him, but it's been so long since I've seen him really that it felt like even longer. I dropped a few hints about having a party of some kind to celebrate his return, and he mentioned that he'd love a pool party, but couldn't because nobody in the gang really has a backyard pool. (To look at the front of the Harding-DeLuca-Valenti place, you'd think that it would have one, but I guess Nasedo didn't care about stuff like that, and if Tess did, I'm not sure how much weight her opinions had.)

But Isabel seems to have latched onto the idea with her trademarked selfless stubbornness, and I'm sure that a pool party will be thrown. No idea where, or when, but I know to get out of her way - or help out, if she asks for help, in this kind of mood. Michael and Maria should be back from New York by tomorrow, and Maria will love getting into the pool party spirit. Ava will probably have fun too; Michael will pretend that he isn't...

As the four of us wandered through the park together, (Max was the fourth, I didn't mention him yet did I? Oops,) Isabel explained again about how she'd come to take her crazy trip to another planet, reconnecting the two parts of the Whirlpool pendant and realizing that it had the power to send her mind to other places.

It was interesting to hear a second version of the tale - the first time, Isabel had still been quite shaken by all that she'd been through, and that nervousness, (unusual for her, but understandable given the unusual circumstances,) had colored most of her descriptions, making her repeat herself and focus on probably-insignificant trivia while forgetting more important details. Now, she was clearly much more in charge of herself and more composed about the whole thing, downplaying the risks that she had accidentally undertaken and the danger of her feat. Probably she was more concerned about Alex being worried for her in retrospect than anyone else around her.

"Okay, so, if we trust Larek to keep his word, which I think that we do on principle and because of the way he's behaved on previous encounters, then we expect him to get word to us somehow, but don't really know how or when," Alex summarized. "He might be able to come here in a human body again, though probably not through Brody, but he might just as likely find some other way to institute communication - there might be some alien agent here on Earth working for Larek, who he might choose to send a message through. Or who knows."

"An alien agent?" Max said, seeming a bit surprised and curious about the notion. "Like the Skins were working for Kivar?"

"Along those lines, yeah," Alex agreed. "Probably not as many as the Skins in Copper Summit."

"Yeah, it does make sense," I put in. "We don't really know what the requirements for mentally 'abducting' someone are - I mean, Isabel, you did it without any prep-work on Rahlicx, but not well, and that girl might or might not have been already prepped for other Very Important Aliens. I think I find it easier to believe that someone actually in New Jersey was involved in what happened to Brody Davis on the turnpike, than that Larek was able to do it all from another planet with his own powers."

"I'm pretty excited about all of the wedding hoopla by this point," I had to admit after a moment. "You guys are all going to come, right? I know that you each got invitations..."

"Oh, sure, yeah," Isabel said, and Max and Alex both rolled their eyes slightly, realizing that her 'sure' was committing both of them to going for certain. "Understand about the whole wedding party deal - it's still just a small ceremony, right?"

"Well, pretty small," I agreed. "Something like fifty or sixty people counting the wedding party and all the invited guests." Decided to try needling Alex just a bit more. "You've *got* to come look at the chapel before the dress rehearsal, Isabel - it's just gorgeous."

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

Max drove me home, and the two of us were oddly quiet. Wanting to bring up a new subject, I suddenly said, "What was Larek like, the time you met him in New York?? I mean, personally. Anything like Brody?"

"Hmm - not really, though it's a bit hard to keep them separate, with the same face, and so on." He sighed. "Guess that's going to be especially weird if Larek shows up inside another 'abductee'." He didn't say anything as we parked in the Crashdown lot. "He wouldn't put up with any of Nicholas' nonsense in the negotiations, and he was the only one there who really treated me with any kindness or concern. It was a bit weird to talk with him, mostly because it was obvious how little he understood about life here on Earth, but... there was one bit at the end, where he said something about how much I reminded him of Zan. That was after I pretty much told Nicholas to go stuff Kivar's offer up his butt and go back where he came from, and got all the other leaders upset with me. From the words Larek was saying, he was sort of telling me off too, or dressing me down, like a teacher who's disappointed in the progress of his favorite student. Said that Zan failed in what he tried to accomplish while he was king because he tried to do too much too soon, and history was repeating itself. But - but even though I hated being spoken to like that, I could... could sense how much he'd cared for Zan. It isn't so hard for me to see why he was Zan's best friend."

"Wow," I said, trying to digest all of this. "I didn't realize you felt that way, when we called on him to help with the Gandarium."

"Yeah, well, we weren't really sharing a lot of stuff back then, were we?"

"Nope. I hope that I get another chance to meet him."

"Me too." We got out of the Jeep, and kissed goodnight. Unlike any other night, we didn't really get carried away with the making out, just shared one really good kiss and said goodnight, and I headed upstairs. I guess that's it.

TO BE CONTINUED...