And I Can't Hide

by Galen Peoples

Alt. eps. 16 to 21: Angst, suspicion, superpowers, and cosmic awe in the desert. The Six have the artifact, but what is it?, some lose or gain a parent, Topolsky & Nasedo are back, Valenti & Amy are on again...and there are people out there who k n o w.

2. Parts 4 through 6

Episode 1.19X

Marked Man

It started with the missing pictures.

Early that Saturday morning–so early she had not left for work yet–Maria was sitting cross-legged in the lounge chair she favored particularly, and leafing through the family album, while her mother carried four tote bags to the front door, one on each shoulder and one in each hand. She felt annoyed that her daughter (and only housemate) did not bestir herself to help her, but Maria was lost in the past: hers and her mother's. All at once, there came flooding over her features a tide of anxiety, mingled with deprival. She looked to Amy. "Mom, it's not here!"

Amy was struggling to turn the doorknob without putting down (and then having to pick up again) any of her baggage, and she finally managed it. "I have to be going, honey. Whatever the problem is–"

"But 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? I haven't touched it. It's probably just misplaced."

"No! I was looking at it last night."

"You see? It must have come unstuck and fallen into the sofa cushions. Keep looking. I'm sure it'll turn up."

Maria flipped the page. "Another one's not here! The one of me and Roman!"

"Roman, your Dalmatian?"

Maria had a frightening inductive flash. "Somebody must have broken in and stolen them!"

"Who'd do a thing like that? The only person who's been here is Jim, and he wouldn't–" Amy stopped, realizing that she could not be absolutely sure of this. But at the moment her thumbs were sore from carrying and, as she had said, she had to be going. "I'll find out when I get back from the festival. See you on Monday." She squeezed out the door with her cargo. Belatedly, Maria got up to lend her a hand, and together they loaded the bags into the back seat of the Jetta. Amy gave Maria a hug. "'bye, honey. Love you."

"Love you too." To this family-ritual response she added, as Amy buckled up, "Divértete. Have fun, Mom."

Amy threw her a gimme-a-break look. "The crowd has fun, honey. I just sit there and hawk my wares." Then she embarked on her drive, which would normally take seven hours but which she was confident, based on experience, that she could reduce to five if the state police were obliging; that is to say, somewhere else. Maria went back inside, her thoughts still on lost pictures, and lost days. "Poor Roman," she grieved. He had died when she was seven, and his death had hit her hard that she had refused to have a pet since. So that evening the house was entirely hers, and without a visit from Michael or a phone chat with Liz to keep her up late she was in bed a little past 9.

Date: 04/09/00. Time: 0120 hr. That was the official estimate that appeared in the eventual police report. A semi rig was approaching the city on the 285, its headlight beams sweeping the grey asphalt ahead. They flashed onto a human figure lying motionless in the brush, just off the shoulder of the highway. 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 road largely to themselves. When he reached the spot, he found that his eyes had not deceived him: the body was sprawled in a stillness beyond sleep. There was no doubt of the man's condition, but the trucker knelt and felt the neck, just to make sure: it was pulseless and cold. "You're a goner," he declared.

Then he turned the body over–and started at what he saw. Across the rib cage, lying exposed through the rents in the shirt, shone a silver handprint, whose like he had never seen before. He ran back to the 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 again and again, until someone out in the night answered him, assured him the sheriff was on his way.

It was still dark when the knock came at Maria's door. Ignore it as she tried, it would not cease, and soon it was augmented 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 front door latch, she had primed herself to let him know just how much she disliked being roused at that hour of the morning. But the complaint died on her lips when she saw the look on his face. It had a simple seriousness to it, like a minister's, that she had not seen there before. "What's wrong?" she asked. Then a sickening fear grabbed her. "Something's happened to Mom, hasn't it?"

"No, it's her I came to–oh, shoot, she's in Taos. At that balloon thing." He thought for a moment. "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 still be worried about him.

"No, nothing like that." Maria waited. "Okay, I don't know how to break this to you easy, so I'll just say it straight out. It's your dad. He's dead. I need you to ID the body. I'd ask your mom, but..."

"My dad? No, he–" She began to say there must have been some mistake, because her dad had not been around for years.

"A body was found out on the highway. There was no ID on it, but the prints are a match. The FBI's got his on file from that time..." He let it drop.

"But we haven't seen him in, like, ten years." Then she made the connection. "Oh, my God. The pictures. It was him. Not you."

"Not me?"

"Some pictures are missing from the album. Mom said you were the only one who'd been in the house."

"She thought I'd take something of yours without asking?"

Maria cared little just then about his hurt feelings. "Must have been my dad. He sneaked in and took them. He always used to take things without asking, Mom said–money usually. That's the only thing that makes sense."

"Not a whole 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. It shows we still mean–meant something to him, after all."

"Well, maybe," Valenti allowed.

Maria realized she had not yet asked the obvious question. "How did he die?"

"We don't know. But there's a–" He stopped, preferring to hold off for the moment. "You'll see when we get there. Go grab your jacket." Maria felt a churning sensation in her stomach. Her father had meant little enough to her, but she had never seen a dead body except at a funeral service, and this would be different: no minister and no mourners (unless you counted her), just the police.

The churning sensation returned as she faced the double row of slabs in the basement of the sheriff's station–six slabs in all; Roswell had never needed more. Tonight only two were occupied. The morgue attendant led her to the farther one and turned down the sheet covering the body. As Maria stared into the face, she discovered it to be as devoid of meaning as it was of life; this was not the person she had known, however vaguely, only a faint echo of him. "Maria?" Valenti prodded gently. "Is it him?"

"Oh, it's him, definitely. Didn't know for sure if I'd be able to tell, it's been so long. But, seeing him like this..." She began crying in spite of herself. "Damn!" Valenti brought her a tissue from the counter, and she blew her nose on it. "What do you suppose they use these things for down here?" then she shook her head. "Forget it, I'd rather not know."

"Sorry. I didn't expect it'd get to you like this."

"It's not because I loved him!" she broke out. "I mean, maybe I did, back then, but I don't remember."

"It's a reflex," Valenti suggested. "You see your dad's body, so naturally–"

"Mmp-mm." Maria blew again. "What it is, is he wasn't 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 began crying again. "¡Chechon!" she scolded herself. Valenti moved to hug her, and she slid away. Not in a million lifetimes, she thought. Or deathtimes. "Who did this to him?"

"We don't know. Except for this." He folded the sheet down again to reveal the silver handprint. "I'll ask you to keep this–"

Maria sprang back, and glared up at him like a cornered animal. "You put that there!" Everything was clear to her 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!" Valenti and the attendant both started toward her at once.

"Don't touch me! Both of you, keep away!" She ran out to the stairs.

"Her mom'll love this," Valenti muttered. He ran after her, but she was faster than he was, and by the time he reached the street-level doors she had vanished into one of the surrounding alleyways. "Damn!" he said. But he had his ID; he could go home to bed now.

Maria could not–or had much rather not–and to her surprise she ended up at Michael's apartment. In spite of everything, she felt he was the only one who would understand and be able to help. None of their friends had thought it necessary to inform her of his having left, since they knew the two had stopped seeing each other. Admitting herself with her key, which Michael had neglected to confiscate, she saw a figure stretched out on the sofa, evidently asleep. "Michael?" she whispered. The figure half rolled over; she could see now that it was the wrong size. In alarm, she flicked on the light. "Max!" she cried out.

She was disappointed, but she was also relieved. What would she have said to Michael? And what would he have said to her?

"Maria?" Max sat up, yawning. "What are you doing here this late? And what time is it?"

Maria did not know and so could not tell him. "Where's Michael?" she asked.

"Gone."

"What do you mean, gone? Gone where?"

"We don't know. I had a hope he might come back to his apartment. Not much of a hope, I admit, but–"

Maria fell into the chair opposite him and reviewed, with greater clarity of mind than before, what had occurred at the morgue. "Max, Nasedo's here. In Roswell."

"Then you have seen Michael." Since he and Nasedo were together, the conclusion seemed obvious.

But it confused Maria. "Seen him? No, I came to warn him."

"Then how do you know about Nasedo?"

"He's killed–somebody else. Valenti showed me the body. It had his handprint on it."

"Why would Valenti show you?"

"Because–it was my father. Nasedo killed my father. I went into denial mode, acted muy loco. But it was him. I knew. I mean, I identified him." Max wanted to express his condolences but was unsure what form they should take. "It's okay," Maria assured him. "I mean, you know, relatively speaking. Death is never okay really. 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 anybody." She corralled herself back to the point, which she was working out in her head as she was speaking. "But he was my father. And I'm his only child–at least the only one I know of. The last of the Delucas. So it's on my shoulders."

Max was not quite following. "What is?"

"What needs to be done. You know–whatever." Having said this, she realized she had already a half-formed idea of what it was. "You don't know, do you?" she went on. "Until a thing like this happens. Then you see it and you say, yeah, this is why I'm here instead of some place else. And you say, right, okay then, I'm on, I'm down, I'm here to play. Or else you run. And I'm not running. Mom never did, you can bet on that." She sat reconciling herself to her decision. "And so I'm pretty much cool with it. I mean, totally. Totally cool." But it felt awfully final. She wondered why she did not feel more frightened about it than she did; maybe at the moment she was beyond further feeling.

Max had continued to listen dutifully, but with increasing perplexity. "Excuse me, Maria, I have no idea what you're talking about."

This brought her out of her rumination. "Good," she said. "That's good." Then she returned to a thought which encouraged her slightly, the one that had brought her there in the first place. "I can get Michael to help me. When he gets back from–wherever he's gone." Even though he had broken it off with her, wanted no more to do with her apparently, this transcended that; this was about Nasedo.

Max did not know how to break it to her. "Maria, Michael..."

The expression on his face did frighten her. "What about Michael?"

"He–may not be coming back. Ever." He was reluctant to tell the rest. "He left with Nasedo. The two of them together."

Maria took this in. "You're sure?"

"I saw them. We all did." Maria had to admit that it was something he could have done, would have done. Max quickly added, "But I'm sure he had nothing to do with what happened to your dad."

"How are you sure? To Michael we're the enemy, right?"

"That's–just his way of talking." It came out sounding hollow; both of them heard it.

"What did Nasedo look like?" Maria asked. "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." Maria had too, at the gym. "But he looks weaker than he did. Like this world's been weighing on him, draining his energy."

At the same moment Maria heard the word "energy", she saw it written in Michael's hand on a slip of note paper lying atop the coffee table between them. "Energy sources," the top line read, in letters big enough for her to distinguish from where she was sitting. When Max was not looking she leaned forward and scooped up the note. Then she rose. "Gotta get home," she said. "I need my beauty sleep."

Since Max insisted on escorting her she had no chance to read the rest of the note until she got inside. "Energy sources," she read. "Lib. AG. Rocks. RR Mus–ask Liz." The only way she would ever be able to make sense of it would be to do as the last two words directed. She would have preferred not to ask Liz the time of day; but then, she would have preferred not to be in the position she was, not to have to do any of it. She was not sure she could do it anyhow. She searched the family album for another picture of her father, though she knew none existed. In its absence she spoke to the unfaded rectangle that marked where the one had been. "I'm gonna do this for you this once, okay? But don't expect me to make a habit of it." So much and no more had she achieved by 4:30 or so, when sleep kicked in. The alarm was set for 6.

In the grey half-light she walked to the Crashdown and stood in the alley alongside while she tried to work out the best approach to take with Liz. If I can't deal with her, she said to herself, how will I ever handle–him? Before she could resolve either issue, Liz came out and spoke to her. "Hey, Maria," she said, sounding caring rather than hostile. "I was sorry to hear about your dad."

Maria was astonished. "How do you know about that?"

"Deputy Owen's our first customer. You know that."

"Oh, yeah. Don't suppose he mentioned–no, Valenti would be keeping that quiet."

"Keeping what quiet?"

Maria hesitated to tell her: it felt like disclosing family business to an outsider. "There was a handprint on the body."

"You mean like–"

"Like Nasedo." She hesitated again. "And, Liz, Michael's with him. They're together."

"So he did find out," said Liz. "F-word!" She never, but never, used that kind of language, and was immediately ashamed of herself for it. "Sorry," she offered, "I lost control there for a second."

The obvious implication–that she had known something about Michael that Maria had not–passed Maria by; her concern lay in another direction. "I should have seen it coming, you know? Not the alien murder part of it, which is not a thing you normally look for, but the part about Michael cutting himself off from me for all time. That was, like, fated. In the genes. Oil and water–can't mix."

"Oh, you're so right, Maria. More than you have any idea." Given this vent, all of it poured out of her. "You and Michael, or me and Max–any human and one of them–we can't ever have–ever make–ever engage in–" Her cheeks grew redder and redder as she spoke.

"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 to the teeth. "Scientist girl."

Liz nearly smiled at that. "Yeah."

"So what was to confirm?"

The near-smile evaporated. "Their blood–it poisons ours. So it's reasonable to suppose the other–substances their bodies produce may be equally harmful. You understand what I'm saying?"

What am I, ¿la estupida? Maria thought. "How do you know? About their blood being poisonous?"

"Easy," said Liz. "It poisoned me." And her manner was easy–calm, intelligent, and direct; she had come to terms at last with the fact of her own temporariness.

Maria, however, had still to do so. "Oh, my God," she said. "OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod." Despite their recent differences, she felt a vast outpouring of sympathy for the girl she had been friends with for so long. "Then does this mean–are you going to–" She could not bring herself to finish.

Liz helped her out. "Not tomorrow. Probably not for a long time yet. I mean, Grunewald's still with us. But eventually, I guess–yeah."

"Oh, Liz!" Maria could not think of any words more adequate to the occasion.

"It's okay, you know? I'm dealing."

Maria was silent for a few moments while she sorted things out, much more slowly than Liz would have in her place. "You know, though, in a way it's good. For me, that is."

"Happy to help," Liz said bleakly.

Maria missed the irony. "I mean, it makes the situation totally clear. They're the enemy. Bottom line, right?"

"That's what Michael kept saying. That this was what it would come down to in the end and we'd all do terrible things to each other."

"See, that's what I mean. You always do that–make things clear. It's how you run your life. If only mine was that way. It's so much easier to do things when you–"

"Plan them ahead?" Liz suggested.

This was true, but not what Maria had had in mind. "–see them clearly. So make one more thing clear for me, mi amiga."

"If I can."

"Oh, you can. It says so on this note Michael left." She produced it from her purse. "You'll know what it means."

Liz looked it over. "These must be places on that map of his–the one from the cave. This one's the library–"

"I know about that."

"'AG' is Angels' Ground. I don't recognize the others. Michael 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–"

"Energy!" Maria interrupted. "If Nasedo ran dry, that's where he'd go to fill up. One of those places. You wouldn't have a copy of that map?"

"No, why?" Liz made a quick inference. "You're not thinking of going after him?"

"Them," Maria corrected. "Going after them."

"And 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 that Michael was involved."

"I didn't for sure–until I talked to you."

Liz regretted this. "Supposing you do find them? What then?" She was getting an uneasy feeling that she already knew.

"They must have asked themselves that, don't you think? Michael looks at Nasedo and he's, like, 'Hey, Nas, buddy, what do we do here? Give this guy a break? Show him some mercy? Or do we off the sucker?' Well, we know their answer, don't we? 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 started to protest further. "Michael almost went over to him once before. Did you know that?" Liz had not. "That time it was only about me and I could let it pass. This is family."

"Maria, your dad abandoned you. You don't owe him."

"It's not him personally. It's the obligation. Working where you do, you should understand that."

"Maria, look–"

Maria held up her hand. "Stop. Just stop. But if I'm not back in a couple of days and my mom asks what gives..." She paused and smiled. "There isn't a damn thing you can tell her, is there?"

Liz cast around in her mind for another argument she could bring out, and she could think of none. She felt more helpless than she ever had before in her life. Her best friend (she supposed that their talking like this made them best friends again) was planning a terrible, an inconceivable act. Liz could not say absolutely that it would be wrong, considering the circumstances–but it was unconsidered, unwise, and probably impossible; Maria would only end up hurting herself, and maybe Michael–and what if Michael were innocent? But Liz knew it was of no use to keep at her about it; nobody could stop Maria from doing what she had made up (or, as in this case, pretty much made up) her mind to do. However, at least the two of them were "okay" now; that, Liz was thankful for. They sealed their mended bond with a long hug and a short goodbye; Liz hoped it would not be their last. Then Maria set out for the place she knew she had to go next.

It was not yet 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 and about, the nearest were a pair of old women scuttling across the empty gravel lot in front of the tribal administration building.

Maria approached the pair. "Uh, ladies? Excuse me? Can you direct me to the–" She had expected them to stop, but they scuttled on past her as if she had not been there. "To the cave with the paintings?" she said, more loudly. "Or can you direct me to River Dog's place?" At her utterance of the name, one of the women spared her a glance back and a tight shake of the head before she and the other one trotted off out of sight. Maria presumed the woman spoke English (all the other Mesaliko she knew about did), but it was unclear whether the question she had answered was the same one Maria had put.

In any case, she did not need directions, really; she remembered that the cave entrance stood near a river which sliced through the reservation, and which she expected would be easy to find. Once she had left the road, she indeed found it without 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 about a quarter mile, then diverged from it for half that distance, backtracked, then backtracked the other way, and got to where no habitations, and certainly no cave, were to be seen. It was then Maria realized she was lost. Each subsequent change of direction seemed more wrong and made her more frantic until, when she was nearly at her wits' end, she stumbled onto the cave mouth. "Knew it was around here," she said, in a sudden advent of unwarranted self-congratulation.

Once inside the cave, she found herself pulling her jacket collar closer. She followed the passage to the map on the wall, took out a pen, and began to copy the hieroglyphics onto the back of Michael's note.

"Why are you here?" said a voice she would have been unable to hear on a busy street; in the quietude of that setting, it so startled her that she cried out aloud. She turned to see a man sitting cross-legged against the opposite wall.

"You scared me!" said Maria. Then she recognized his jacket. "Deputy Owen?"

He seemed a different person there, hermitlike and meditative. "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." On hearing this, Owen regarded her with greater interest. "It seemed like a good idea at the time," Maria added glumly.

"Doesn't look like anyone's in jeopardy now, though."

"No, I'm–doing a project for school. On Indian cave paintings."

"If you knew anything about them you'd know these aren't Indian. They were made by–a visitor."

"Nasedo?" The word escaped her involuntarily and she quickly tried to cover herself. "That's Mesaliko for 'visitor,' isn't it?"

Owen nodded gravely. "But it's a word not often heard nowadays in this community. It was tainted for us by a visitor we had once, many years ago." He stared at her. "But you know about him, and what he did to your family." It was not a question. Maria's anger rose to her face; a moment later, she masked it. But Owen had seen. "The knowledge has planted a dark seed in you," he said. "It shows behind your eyes." Maria averted them. "Let it die, girl. He's too powerful for you. He's a brujo."

"That word's not Indian either."

Owen shook his head. "There is no Indian word for what he is."

He was unable to tell whether Maria had understood; she gave no sign one way or the other, and that was deliberate. Just then she did not need opposition; she already had little enough confidence in her ability to carry out what she had undertaken. She changed the subject to the one that had brought her there. "You know how to read this?" she asked, turning back to the map.

Owen got to his feet and joined her in front of it. "All my life I've studied these figures, trying to see the meaning in them. It's still a mystery."

"But not totally, right?" said Maria. "I mean, it's a map. Here's the library. And somewhere on it is Angels' Ground."

Owen ran his eyes over the symbols and picked out the one that Michael had guessed. "This is the shape of it. Strange, I've seen it from the helicopter, but I didn't recognize it before. When I'm here, on the homeland, I leave my white job out there." He stared at Maria again. "How did you know?"

"I didn't. Michael did. And rocks–his list says there are rocks."

Owen pointed to the symbol Topolsky had identified. "I've seen rocks like this, somewhere."

"Somewhere close to here?"

"No, not close."

"What about 'RR Mus'?" She was reading from the slip of note paper. Even after having it spelled out, Owen did not get it, and Maria showed him the written words (if they could be called words).

Owen pondered them for a little, together with the two unassigned symbols, and finally extended his finger toward the one Michael had discovered for himself. "'RR' is 'railroad'," said Owen. "This is the railroad museum. Has to be."

"I know where that is! Thanks." Maria took back the note and returned it to her purse. "You know, you shouldn't be so down on yourself. You're great at this seeing stuff."

"Mmm" was Owen's only answer. He was conning the map further, trying to "see" the last, most mysterious symbol, the spiral, by judging the distances and envisioning how they would appear from the county helicopter. Suddenly it came to him: "Why, this is–" He looked to where Maria had been standing, and then out to the passage whither she had gone. "Wait! Come see!" She did not come back, but Owen continued speaking to her as if she were there. "Better you'd waited," he said, "and seen. You're a part of it too. All of you." However, the particular part that Maria had chosen for herself was one that Owen (to the extent his own power of seeing could inform him) forecast that no good would come of. "Next time we meet," he said, "I fear it will be in my job out there." He had always kept a strict separation between his two worlds, personal and professional, Apache and white, but wondered whether the situation, this once, called for him to violate it.

Soon Maria was wishing she had asked the deputy for directions back. But the mist had now lifted and, to her relief, within a few minutes she could see the road, or rather, the cluster of adobe and wood houses that surrounded it. She had found her way out.

She took the road back to town as far as the industrial quarter, then turned off and headed for the railroad yard and former site of the Aickman Museum. Three out of five's not bad odds, she told herself, referring to the map symbols; as she thought more about it she realized the odds were closer to three out of four, since the rocks would be out in the desert, too far to be Nasedo's first choice for a pit stop (as she termed it in her mind).

Maria reached the chain link fence which enclosed the rusted cars and she scaled it nimbly. As she dropped to the ground, a barking started up somewhere nearby. A watchdog? She made ready to take to the fence again if she had to. Around the cowcatcher of the locomotive appeared the head of the creature that had done the barking: a white head with black spots. A second later the rest of him trotted into view, all the way down to the wagging tail. He did not act mean in the least, and Maria loved him on sight; he looked just like Roman! A chill shot down her spine: it was Roman. It was the same dog, and he was dead.

Maria jumped back. The dog turned and scampered out of sight around the engine. She stood frozen, almost too scared to follow, but for her family's sake she forced herself, 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. He smiled down at her.

At first Maria 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 from him. "Baby lamb!" he said, as if his feelings were hurt. "Don't you know your own father?"

"You're not," Maria protested, as much to herself as to him. "You're the one that killed him."

The man smiled again. "Nothing gets past you, does it?" Maria hated him, just looking at him, and wished she had a gun to kill him with. She actually considered attacking him with her bare hands, but he was bigger, and (when his medicine was working) a brujo–and there was nothing else around she could use as a weapon. She was forced to stand there, powerless, and watch as the man's features turned drippy, like jelly, and changed to those of Coach Clay. The clothes that had fit perfectly hung limply on him now. "Oh, dear," he said. "I liked Señor better–or was it Signore?" His face turned drippy again and changed back; the clothes resumed their shape.

Then he hopped down from his perch. If his energy had been flagging, the place had indeed restored it, as Maria had surmised it would. "So you know about him. Then you also know he wasn't worth mourning. What else do you know?"

Maria felt his consciousness wedging into hers. "Excuse me?" She pointed to her temple. "See the sign–'No trespassing'?"

"Sorry." She felt him withdraw. "I do so hate to pry. But sometimes–"

"You were acquainted with my dad, then?"

"Briefly. Even more briefly than you. I believe you were only four years old when–"

"I know the history. I lived it. How did you come to meet him? If you did." She was taking nothing he said at face value.

"You might call us business associates. It was I who lured him here with a proposal to extort money from your mother." Maria saw no reason to doubt that. "It was only a pretext, of course. My true purpose was to take his measure–and, ultimately, his shape."

"Why? Why him, of all people?"

"Why, the better to fool you with, my dear. Unhappily, events betrayed me. The remains were discovered too soon. I knew I ought to destroy them, but it hardly seemed worthwhile. In addition, I failed to take into account your own native shrewdness."

"I'm flattered," said Maria, meaning the opposite.

"On one point, however, I'm afraid you're in error. The handprint on your father's corpse was your boyfriend's, not mine."

"Michael?" Maria both believed and disbelieved this. "Where is he now?"

"Why, I was hoping you could tell me."

She stared at him. "I was told he was with you."

"Was, yes. He went to retrieve some belongings from his house–gifts of yours to carry as keepsakes on his journey. He's very sentimental that way, you know. The cognizance of having lost all chance of your forgiveness weighed heavily on his spirit."

"That is such a crock." It sounded so little like Michael, it almost made her laugh. But what had happened, then? Why was Nasedo looking for him? Or was he? Had he invented the story for a different purpose?

"You're right," he said abruptly, as if he had read her thoughts again. "We're still together. Inseparables. And he's waiting for me a little way from here. If you want to get back at us for your father–I know you do, I can feel it–you'll have to find us." He shifted shape again, dwindling and mutating into the Dalmatian, then shook himself free of his human clothes, and ran to the fence, in which there suddenly opened a hole ringed with fire. He leapt through it, and it closed back after him. Then he sprinted off across the field beyond.

"I will!" Maria shouted after him. "You bastard, you." This, she said in a voice not meant for him to hear. "You killed my dad." And for some reason then she began to cry. Didn't make much of a showing there, she thought. I had him in my sights and I let him go. And how will I ever find him now?

She sensed that he and Michael had never been together; that when he had said so, he had been lying. Yet Max had said the same, 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 was actually sleeping when the vision appeared to her. It might have been a dream, or an image derived from the mental energy stockpiled in that place (though maybe that was all any dream was); whatever the nature of it might have been, it revealed to her, so clearly as to leave no doubt, Michael's–and Nasedo's–destination. She should have been able to guess it before, it was so obvious. Nobody ever fled north, only south; Michael–and Nasedo, probably–would know only one hideout in that direction. But Maria did not have to work out the logic of it; this was contained in the image before her. And all around her: she was at once inside and outside the place presented to her view. A place she remembered: a geodesic dome. And when she returned to normal consciousness, Maria knew where she had to go.

She had intended to allow herself a good night's sleep, which she knew she would need for what lay ahead of her. But anticipation kept her wakeful late, and woke her early. In the morning, she filled her big knit bag with enough clothes and other personal items to last the week. By the end of that time she would–should–have achieved what she had set out to; she dared not think about what would happen if she failed, or for that matter if she succeeded. She was at the brink of a precipice, about to jump, and staring down into the chasm below, assailed by a cramping fear in her chest and belly–but it had been there since she had made up her mind to act; she was resigned to it now.

Only for herself, however; not for her mother. And her concern was not totally unselfish. If her mother became frightened for her, she would tell Valenti, he would put out an APB, and Maria would be stopped before she had started. What was needed was a phone memo that would obviate the possibility of worry. So she improvised one. "Mom," she said into the receiver, affecting as casual a tone as possible in the circumstances, "I need a break from things. Thought I'd head out to Vegas and chill there for a few days. I've got friends there. In the casinos. So you don't need to worry." She paused and clicked the machine off. "Not even close."

She started again. "Hey, Mom? Guess you've heard about Dad dying and that. I'm pretty broke up about it, so I'm taking some time off to heal my profound grief. Going camping up at the Toro rocks. Just me and my bedroll." She clicked off again. "Camping?"

She tried a third time. "Mom, life so sucks."

And once more–but this time without pressing "Start." "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 he refused to, being a total pendejo and general pig–rest his soul. But I never heard you bad-mouth him to other people. If they did, you took his side. And the same with me. When people would come and complain about me–with just cause, God knows–you'd put them in their place. And I always knew if anyone ever did anything to hurt me–which, thank God, it never happened–you'd track them down if it took your whole life."

Maria paused. "You wouldn't do that for him now, I know. He's not your responsibility any more. But he is mine. Just because he was my dad. I don't know how this will all end–God, I don't even know how to start–but somehow–"

She was interrupted by a pounding at the door, which at first she took for a gunshot: it was the way her mind was running. "Maria! You cooping in there?" The voice was Valenti's. Then he said to someone with him, "Shoot, she doesn't know anything. If she did I'd have picked up on it." The phrase "fat chance" for some reason recurred to Maria then.

"She knew his Indian name." The second voice was Owen's. "She might know more than that. You should question her about it." On hearing this, Maria assumed that he had reported their whole conversation, and she was disappointed in him for it. She did not know that he had made an intentional effort to preserve as much as he could of her privacy, and the sanctity of his own retreat, by telling his boss as little as necessary that would still (he hoped) keep her dark seed from flowering.

"Probably found it out from her boyfriend," said Valenti. "Or Liz Parker. They've got the stick-to-it-iveness to dig up stuff like that. But not Maria."

"She seemed pretty inquisitive to me." She silently thanked Owen for that.

"Yeah, but there's a difference between–is that the phone I'm hearing?"

It was. Maria did not dare answer it with them standing at the door and able to hear in. So she left it to the machine. Following the recorded message, she heard her mother's voice on the line. "Honey, I know you're at school this morning. Just calling to let you know I'll be in Taos an extra day." Maria desired desperately to run and pick up the call, to talk to her mother one last time before–whatever was going to happen happened. But the two men were at the door. "Man at the festival wants to discuss distributing my novelties," her mother's voice continued. "Can you believe it?"

Through a window Maria saw the sheriff returning to the Rover; Owen was already in the front seat. They were leaving at last! "By the way," her mother's voice asked, "did that picture of your father ever turn up? Love you. 'bye." Maria raced to the phone and grabbed up the receiver. "Mom?" She heard a click on the other end. "No," she said sadly, "it never did."

The arrival of the message reminded her that she had still to compose one herself. She thought of a cousin who had just sent a post card to her and to Liz both, at Liz's address, so that her mother had not seen it and did not know that the family was vacationing in Cancun–a location from which they could not readily disprove an alibi. This inspired Maria to a final recording session. "Mom," she said, "I've got to get away from here for a few days, on account of Dad and everything. Get my head clear. Erica and her family have invited me to spend a week with them. Hope you won't mind." That was not all she was hoping, but the rest could not be said. "Don't bother calling me. I'll call you. Love you. 'bye." Then she replaced the receiver. Done.

After a long, slow look around, as if it might be her last, she left the house. As she walked the block and a half to the bus stop, she got the uneasy feeling she was being followed. She quickly swung around, intending to surprise whoever it was, but she saw no one. On reaching the bus bench, she dropped her bag onto it and herself alongside. The uneasy feeling persisted. Maria put it down to nerves.

A grey Mercedes in the far lane slowed down as it passed her, then 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 square 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. "Well, hi there," he said, with that superficial cheerfulness which many adults affected and which few teens trusted. "Shouldn't you be in school today?"

"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.

"Hop in," said Philip. "I'll take you to the station." Maria tried to think of a plausible excuse. "Quicker than waiting," Philip pointed out. Maria realized how suspicious it would look to refuse. So she got into the car. Once they were underway, however, she sat with her eyes on the floor and did not volunteer speech. "Seen Max lately?" Philip asked, with seeming casualness.

Maria had been prepared for an interrogation; this opening question was easy. "Yup, saw him yesterday, as a matter of fact."

"And Isabel?"

"Our paths don't often cross."

"I get a feeling there's something the two of them would like to tell me. But they're feeling kind of shy about it." He glanced at Maria. "You wouldn't have any idea what that might be?"

"Sorry, out of the loop these days. Since I stopped hanging with Liz."

Philip shook his head. "Yes, I'm quite disappointed in that girl. She appears to have set everyone in your circle at odds." The criticism was miscalculated: even when she had been her angriest at Liz, Maria would have recognized it to be 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, Maria."

She stepped out. "Thanks for the lift."

"You're visiting, who was it now? Sick uncle?"

"Aunt."

Philip put on a puzzled frown. "Could have sworn you said it was your uncle."

Maria 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 just bet."

"I'll give your best to Max." A shadow of doubt crossed Maria's face; it was fleeting, but it was enough to satisfy Philip that she had not quite told all. With the push of a button, he rolled up the window, and his Mercedes glided off; just to be safe, Maria watched it until it had disappeared.

But now she was feeling guilty. Philip often had that effect on people, especially young people; many grown-ups did. Maria wondered if they had to practice until they got it down. Shaking off her feeling of guilt, she faced east and trudged toward the 285 with her bag slung over her shoulder. No turning back now, she thought. I mean, yeah, I could, but I packed all this stuff.

Liz had been worrying about her all night and all morning, and took the first opportunity she found to communicate her worry to the one person she thought might be able to help. But Isabel was having none of it. "No offense, Liz," was her response, "but at this point 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, but Liz obtruded. "Michael's pretty distant right now, isn't he?"

Isabel stared at her. "You know about that?"

"I know he's with Nasedo. But you can find them, can't you?"

"And 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." Isabel gave a little huff. "Why can't you humans see to yourselves?" Liz had no answer for that. "Anyway, I wouldn't be able to reach them. Michael will have a firewall up. So will Nasedo."

Liz had an answer this time. "But 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."

So Isabel tried, but with no confidence in the result. "You know this won't work," she said, twice. Then, to her amazement, it did: she made contact almost without effort. It happened that Maria, still short on sleep, was half-dozing as she stood on the shoulder of the highway, holding a hand-lettered sign that read "Marathon, TX." A sidewind from the next truck brought her to her senses, but by then Isabel had had a peek into her dreamspace and at the only object in it: a geodesic dome. "Marathon, Texas," she said.

"That's where they've gone?"

"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, shaking 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."

"That's the way to Marathon!"

"Exactly."

"We have to go after them!"

"Yes, I suppose we do." Obviously she was not thrilled by the prospect. "I'll hunt up Max."

"I'm going too."

"Oh, no, you're not. You'd just be one more human to rescue." Liz had to acknowledge that 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 after she had told him the plan. Before the two of them left for home that afternoon, they had run through all the possibilities and ascertained that none of them would work–at any rate, not with their father: he was used to cracking alibis.

"You realize I have no idea what I'm going to say," he confided to Isabel as they entered the house.

As she was about to reply, their mother called into the front hall from the living room. "Kids, is that you? Come say hello to our guest." With an exchange of wary looks, Max and Isabel 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 there (the others were all Nasedo, in his different forms). "You know Ms. Topolsky," Diane said. Topolsky flashed them that smile which always seemed to be masking something.

"You're later than usual today," their father observed. He was right; their discussion had taken much longer than they had been aware of while it was going on. "Where were you all this time?"

"Library," said Isabel.

"School," said Max, overlapping her. But he quickly corrected himself. "School library." Philip stared at both of them, a little too long, as they stared at their guest.

Sensing her cue, Topolsky rose. "Time I was going." But the children's relief was short-lived. "You have my card," she reminded their parents. "You can call me at any time. But use my cell–I'm working out of home at the moment." After a polite exchange of goodbyes, Diane saw her to the front door.

"Why do you have her card?" Max asked his father.

"She's investigating a rash of teenage crime here in Roswell." He 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 came back. "No, nothing like that. She was just asking us to keep our eyes open and report anything unusual we observe."

Few things 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 Isabel. "Have we?" Before they could reply, another concern pushed that one to the side. "Heavens, I should be starting dinner."

"Our turn," Isabel promptly offered. When Max 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 the children listened from the kitchen.

"We'll have to watch them," said Max.

"You mean while they're watching us?"

Max 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 Maria's natural 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 about the situation, and so was he. But what else could they do?

Some time between that evening and the next morning, the object of their worry woke in the big steel cab of a sixteen-wheeler that was barreling west on highway 180. It reminded her of the locomotive engine she had seen at the museum. But the driver definitely did not remind her of Nasedo, in any of his guises; more than anything else, he reminded her of a cheeseburger. He had introduced himself as Barry when he had pulled over to stop for her. Now he was looking down at her small but attractively rounded form with a good deal more than abstract interest. "Woke up, did you, sweet pea?" he asked cheerily.

Maria looked around vaguely. "Why am I here?" Then it all clicked into focus, and the weight of her obligation–the one overriding obligation–descended on her again. "Oh," she said. "Yeah." She gazed out onto a landscape not perceptibly different from the one she had left behind. "Where are we now?"

"A ways from Marathon yet. You go on and sleep." Maria obediently curled up and shut her eyes. "We got plenty of time to get acquainted." Barry reached down and squeezed her knee. "Nice seat covers, doll." Maria's eyes immediately popped open as the truck barreled on.

In spite of her best efforts, however, she again nodded off, and dreamed of an empyrean that was furnished in geodesic domes of all colors and sizes. She floated from one to another, searching, ever searching, and kept discovering more domes that she had missed, so the search went on endlessly, and she could find nobody in any of them, not Michael or Nasedo or her father or...

When she woke again, a cold grey dawn had risen, exposing flatland on all sides. The truck was parked on the shoulder of the road, and Barry was standing a few yards out from it with his hands at his midsection and (mercifully) his back turned. Maria thought of running away while he was relieving 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 that the glove compartment was not latched and an oily rag was wedged into the crack. This offended her sense of order, which (in spite of appearances) was acutely developed, the start of its development dating from that morning when she had woken to find her father gone. She stuffed the rag into the compartment and tried to shut the hatch again, only to discover that the rag had been the only thing holding it in place; the latch was missing.

As she began to return the rag to where it had been originally, she glimpsed an inch or so of what looked like a gun barrel at the very bottom of the compartment. She slid aside the top items to reveal a Taurus .38 and a box of ammunition, both of which she immediately made up her mind to steal. This was, like, fate. She would need them for what she had in mind, and in addition, she would now be armed to make her getaway.

She took out the gun and the box, pushed them down to the bottom of her bag, and wedged the glove compartment shut with the rag. She was just reaching for the handle of the side door when the other door swung open. Maria quickly shut her eyes. As soon as she heard the door slam, she opened them again and turned to Barry, now re-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 that by "the boy" he meant himself. "Only fair, after a girl spends the night with me." He winked and laughed. Maria's face puckered involuntarily; she tried to cover it over with a would-be playful smile. "Truck stop's up ahead," said Barry.

"Lobo Truck Cafe," read the dusty sign, and followed it up with the promise of food, drink, and music. Barry parked at the outer edge of the lot. Maria, after negotiating the climb to the ground, 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 greater concern: a state trooper's white-on-black was sitting in front of the building. Maria tilted her chin down and hunched forward, as if trying to shrink herself to the point of being undetectable; this was not lost on her companion.

Entering, she saw the trooper seated at a counter to their left. She swung to the right and, jockeying into position ahead of Barry, led him to an end booth, where she chose to sit with her back to the room. As they skimmed the menu, the waitress (Maria had an idea they were still called waitresses out here) 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 there. I'm Maria." Brenda said nothing. "Okay," she continued, "so would you have, um, a selection of herbal teas?"

"We have tea."

"Tea," Maria said, "will be fine."

Brenda's gaze had been alternating from one to the other almost with the precision of a metronome; it was starting to make both uncomfortable. "She's my niece," Barry volunteered. "I'm her uncle."

Brenda's expression did not change. "I'll just fetch that coffee. And a tea for your..."

"Niece," Barry repeated, enunciating the word distinctly. He glared after her as she left. "That one could stand to be a mite friendlier." He eyed Maria. "You too, sunbeam."

Maria turned cautiously toward the front and saw the trooper rising to leave. Relief showed in her face. Barry grinned slyly. "You're a runaway, ain'tcha?" Maria tensed as she turned back to him. "Don't fret, peach blossom. I'll take care of you." He extended his foot and nudged hers. Maria immediately withdrew both legs and squirmed out of the seat. "Back momentarily," she said. As she started off she realized she had left behind the bag with the gun in it. She hurried back to pick it up and then hurried off again. "Be sure and flush that radiator good!" Barry yelled after her. "We got us a long drive ahead."

"That's what you think," Maria 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 she usually could not explain them well enough for other people 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."

"Life's amazin'," Sully pronounced.

The unexpected addition of a third, masculine party threw Maria off a little as she gave her account, which she had rehearsed only slightly. "Okay, what happened was, I bummed a lift in his rig 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 real person, you know? Neck a tad pink, coming on to red–but I'm a strong believer in tolerance toward persons of all colors, and body types. And he was okay to start with–not particularly sensitive to women's issues, but not a serial predator. Only then he started moving into–areas of concern." She stopped. "Do you have any idea what I mean?"

Brenda laughed. "Kitten, I knew what you meant before you started."

"So I was thinking–that is, if you wouldn't mind–"

Sully came out to them and picked up a baseball bat from under the counter. "You want I should teach the bum a lesson?"

Maria waved her hands. "No, no! Envisioning something slightly less extreme. For instance, I was thinking, if 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.

Sully did not hesitate. "Come with me," he said. He peeled off the help-wanted sign, marched back to Barry's table with the two women following him part of the way, and slapped the sign down in front of Barry. "I'm short me a waitress. I'm hirin' your friend. Any objection?"

Barry looked down at Maria. "Thought you were headed for Marathon."

"I changed my mind."

Barry was obviously disgruntled. "You know she's a runaway? Prob'ly underage. She tell you that?"

"Sorry," said Sully, "little deaf in this ear."

Glancing out the window, Barry spied the trooper, who was still sitting in his unit. "If you're not interested," Barry said, "bet he will be."

"Hal?" said Brenda. "I just bet he will–uncle."

Barry practically jumped out of his seat. "I never touched her!" He waved a finger at Maria. "And you can't say I did!"

"You took a liberty with my knee," she pointed out.

Barry's face grew red. The other two stood staring at him. "All right for you, then. But see if I ever stop here again." He picked up the vest jacket he had shed.

"You promised me a breakfast," Maria reminded him. Suppressing an oath, Barry pulled out his wallet, found the smallest bill in it–a twenty–and flung it onto the table. A few seconds later he was over and out. "I think I lost you a customer," said Maria.

"And good riddance," said Sully. "We don't need his kind anyways."

The three of them walked back to the counter together. "Have a seat," said Brenda. "We'll talk." She brought Maria her tea. "Twenty bucks buys a lot of breakfast. What'll you have?"

"Short stack of Vermonts," said Maria, without thinking.

Sully, who was just re-affixing the help-wanted sign, looked up with interest. "Either you got a relative in the restaurant business or you've waited tables yourself."

"Sure, I've waited tables. You want to know how to get the last half-teaspoon out of a can of coffee, ask me."

Brenda leaned on the counter. "Where was that, now?"

"The Crash–" Maria stopped in mid-word. "The Cash 'n' Carry. In Las Vegas. But it closed. Months ago. Years, actually." She hoped this sounded more convincing to her listeners than it did to her.

Brenda glanced at her boss. "What do you think, Sully?"

"Think you can handle a room this size?" he asked Maria.

She calmly sipped her tea "Piece of cake."

"Okay." He peeled the sign off again. "Job's yours. Nine bucks an hour."

"Deal," Maria said, automatically. No antennae anyway, she thought. A second later she realized what she had done. "Job? No, wait. I can't–" Then she reconsidered. Of the several facts that were vying for her immediate notice, trying to cut in front of one another to be first in line, the one that beat out the others was that she had little cash on her (and the state of her bank balance was such that ATMs–even if she could find one–would be of little use). In the zeal that had launched her on her mission, she had insufficiently taken into account her practical needs (except of course food). She had allowed herself a week, but had not truly expected the task to take that long; two or three days at the most. Now she began to see the limitless range of possibilities real life held to frustrate even the simplest plan.

"All right," she said finally, "but it can't be for long. There's something I have to do." Or maybe she did not really want to do it; maybe accepting this job was just an excuse to postpone the moment of truth. But Maria chose not to think about that. Truth be told, she always preferred not to delve into her feelings and motives; it made her kind of antsy, and in the end you were the same person no matter whether you liked it or not, so what was the purpose?

"I'll take whatever you can give," Sully said amiably.

"And who knows?" said Brenda. "We might grow on you." She bestowed a smile on her such as she had not shown Barry. "You can sleep on the sofa-bed in my trailer." This sounded okay to Maria.

Then she noticed for the first time the door to the lounge. "You have entertainment here?"

Sully shrugged. "Depends on your definition."

"There's a band comes in," Brenda said more helpfully.

It was fate again. "Because, as a matter of fact–I also sing."

So that evening the easel standing next to the lounge entrance held a placard, done up with indelible marker in the performer's most artistic lettering, announcing the Culberson County debut of Lizz Alexx (the best-sounding stage name she had been able to devise at short notice). A little before showtime, two young men arrived in matching black shirts and pants; one 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 like most of her outfits, luckily, suited the theatrical setting), stepped up to introduce herself. But it turned out she did not need to. "You're the singer, huh?" said the guitar man.

"What's it look like?"

He barely spared her a glance. "Like a little nobody with a slick-sounding story managed to b.s. her way into a gig here."

"Yes, which having done, I feel entitled to claim a certain respect as my due. How quick can you pick up a song?"

"How quick can you drop it?" he shot back.

"You have possibilities," she said. "Definite possibilities." Her eye lingered on him for a second; he was not unattractive, for a back-country type. "But that's not why we're here," she concluded.

"Got that right." His attention remained fixed on his instrument.

"Well, good. As long as we're clear on that." But she could not help feeling slighted, in the same way she had often felt with Michael in times past; long, long past.

For the next half hour she stood to one side watching the crowd collect, until she realized that those she was seeing were all there would be. But of course, it was only her first tour, and she had not had time to get out the publicity. And an audience was an audience. Her first number (of the three total), she had chosen to suit the venue; it was her only composition that qualified as country. This was the first verse:

"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 taking in the performance from the doorway. When the song ended, 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 set, the audience, and even Maria's back-up, seemed to agree. So great was the pleasure she took in this that it filled her head to the exclusion of everything else, including the purpose for which she had traveled so far.

It even followed her to bed that night. When she slept she dreamed again of geodesic domes, but this time the dome was a club where she was the featured act. At the close of her set the lights rose on the listeners to reveal them all as monsters from the planet Lizz, with bills for mouths and flippers for hands. But they were a good crowd–a great crowd. "So where you all from?" she asked, and then realized she already knew. And among their number was Michael (she recognized him somehow), sitting at ringside and clapping his flippers vigorously.

At that point Maria woke–she had to, the show was over–but that image of Michael remained in her mind. She had come to get justice on him and his partner, not to become a music legend; it was the old story, forest for the trees. "I made a vow to myself," she said, aloud. "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, definitely–but not for a few days yet. She owed that much to Sully, and to her own financial solvency: a person had to eat, after all. "I didn't plan this very well," she said. "A few more days will give me time to plan it better." This was true, but she would never do it (unless she were forced), whether she had a month, a year, or a decade at her disposal–and somewhere at the back of her mind, she knew that, or half knew it; people had told her often enough. "Five days," she said. "I'll give myself five days. Or seven maybe. They'll still be there." Since they were in flight, this prognostication was by no means certain–and Maria 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 Lobo, like the Crashdown, opened at 6. Its first customers were a pair of farmers who always came in together. Maria tried on them the greeting she had worked up the previous afternoon: "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 two?"

"You can git on over here and sit on my lap," said the shorter of them. "How 'bout that?" He was not being genuinely lecherous, like the departed Barry; only tiresome, after the manner of older men with younger 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 her rescue if need were, "Dan's always been this dumb."

Dan seemed not to mind the insult. "Know one thing for a fact." He stirred his coffee slowly. "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 been showin' a picture around looks a whole 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 them alien abductions." He squinted up at Maria. "Must be a accidental resemblance, huh?"

"Yeah," Maria murmured, "must be."

"Come with me, kitten," said Brenda. She led Maria away until the farmers 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 Hal or 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 for Maria to escape her obligation; no one would have blamed her. But she was not that much of a coward. She shook her head. "Not yet."

"I thought not. You git on out there. I'll think of something."

The "something" turned out to be a bottle of hair dye, and within a few minutes Maria was submerging her head in the bathroom sink. "Is this really necessary?" she asked.

"You got a better idea for getting out of here incognito?" Maria did not. So she stayed under, and bobbed up in a short while to face the mirror with a new 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." Brenda handed her a towel. "Here, dry." She went into the front room, took her wallet from her purse, and cleaned it out. She called into the bathroom. "I got enough here to pay you for the time you worked. Plus, I'm putting in a bonus to see you a few miles farther." A tingle of intuition prompted Maria to come out into the front room, just in time to see Brenda open the knit bag–but not in time to stop her seeing the object lying at the bottom. Too late, Maria ran up and grabbed the bag away.

Brenda stared soberly at her. "I sure hope that's got nothing to do with the guy in your song."

She's too good a guesser, Maria thought. "I keep it around for protection."

Brenda clasped her hand in a way that was 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 that's 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," said Maria. "Seriously."

"Easy to say." Of course, thought Maria; she had only said it to get the woman off her back. "But try to remember it when the time comes." She whisked Maria's new hair. "Dry enough. Time you high-tailed it out of here. The next town over's Valentine–not much bigger'n this, but it's got a bus stop. I'll take you in the truck."

And so, much 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 the campus, two of the people she had left behind met for the first time (not counting the classes they shared) since their official estrangement. The one who was forcing the meeting, by waiting at an exit she knew the other had to use, was not looking forward to it. But she had to know what there was to be known–if there was anything. The other would have walked on, ignoring her, but she blocked his path. "Have you heard from Michael?"

Max shook his head. "Maria?"

Liz shook hers. A silence fell between them. "What's going to happen now?" she asked. "To them? To all of us?"

"How would I know?"

"What do we do if Maria–or Michael–" Liz could not bear to finish.

"What we have been doing all along. Whatever's necessary."

"You mean, kill them? Nasedo and–and Michael?"

"Whatever's necessary," Max repeated. "But only when we know something for sure."

"But how? We're not police, or soldiers. We're kids. How can we do things like that?"

Max answered quietly–and, Liz 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 other choice."

Liz 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 school grounds now looked more deserted than ever. Liz 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. However, by the end of the evening she was feeling ashamed of herself, and her sympathy shifted back to Maria–who, though Liz did not know it, would soon need all the good will she could get.

The following morning, after disembarking in Marathon, she immediately began looking around for someone old. The man her eye eventually landed on exceeded the requirement: he looked as though he had been a fixture in the tiny park ever since the grass had been laid. His name (though Maria would never have a chance to learn it) was Carlos.

"Excuse me?" he heard, in his dozing. He woke to find a girl standing over his bench, whose appearance he regarded with some astonishment, as being more outlandish than he was used to (or than she remembered). "There's a building somewhere around here," she said, "shaped like this." She bent her fingers as if holding a ball, and then wiggled them as if squeezing a sponge. "You know the one?"

"Sure I do," he said–rather amazingly, given what he had been given to work from. "Atherton place. Queer fella, Atherton. Talked to himself a lot. He was a writer, you know. They're like that, writers. 'course, he's dead. Don't talk at all now."

"Where is the place?"

Carlos 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, are you?"

"What if I am?"

"Pretty far piece to walk. 'course I done some walking in my day. Couldn't afford a car, and there weren't no buses then, so either you walked–"

"¡Ay, mierda!" Maria quickly turned her head. A woman had walked past them on her way to the bus depot–a woman Maria had recognized, without doubt. But what would have 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 narrowly at Maria. "Gal, what you got it in mind to do?"

"What I have to." It was good she had the chance to affirm that now.

"Cops gonna try and stop you?"

Maria watched Topolsky enter the depot. "Not if I can help it," she said. With that, she took her chance. It had been her design to leave inconspicuously, but Carlos defeated it by shouting loudly after her: "That's the spirit, gal! Don't let 'em nab you! This is a free country!" and following this exhortation with the first six bars of "My Country, 'Tis of Thee." Inexplicably, it did not bring Topolsky out, but it did cause someone else to look over: a man standing in the shadow of the building who had not been there a moment before; Carlos was certain of that. He would have remembered the face.

Maria took care that she was not followed on her way out to Atherton's; the miles of empty desert, and mostly empty road, made it easy to tell. The walk was not so 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 within sight of the dome, the stone house next to 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 to rest her legs. The brush and the distance hid her from the view of anyone who might happen to be looking.

She reached her hand into her knit bag and grabbed out a smaller plastic bag full of tortilla chips. The rip and crinkle of the plastic, and the crunch as she bit into the first chip, seemed to resound thunderously. She extracted each chip thereafter as if it she were handling an explosive substance, delicately and in slow motion.

What did she think about while she was waiting? And what had she thought about during her walk? She could not have said afterwards herself. 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 there, or the reasons why she should have stayed where she was. She had gone through all of that already, or as much as she intended to. And anyhow 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 ahead, which still seemed unreal and abstract to her, as if she were reading about someone else who was doing 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 that he was now helping her in his own behalf. But characteristic of him: it was always all to do with himself.

She suddenly remembered that Michael believed Nasedo to be his father (she did not know he had since 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, in which case he would have no time at all. So she supposed it did not really matter either way.

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 closer to ten), she got up and started toward the dome, with the way lit for her 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 and unceasing silence she surmised that Michael and the others must have left–if they had ever been there at all; dreams were not always true, and perhaps hers had misled her.

At long last she reached the dome. She approached the recessed door and peered through its single hexagonal pane. The view inside was darker than it was out. The doorknob was locked, as Maria had expected it to be. She began a circuit of the perimeter. A quarter of the way around, she found the first evidence of habitation: a Jeep Cherokee parked between the two buildings. She realized now that she needed a plan. And in the crunch, forced at last to come up with one, she did. Having laid down her bag, but holding onto her gun, she looked for some rocks to throw at the wall, to wake the people inside. To her disappointment those she found were too small to wake anybody. So she came up with another plan.

She walked out to the Cherokee and began swinging with the gun at one of the side windows until she smashed it in. She intended thereby to set off the alarm, but when none sounded, she guessed (correctly) that the vehicle was Nasedo's antique and alarmless Cadillac, camouflaged so as to contradict any APB the police might have broadcast. However, she had made enough noise to achieve her purpose. The recessed door opened, and Michael appeared; Maria hastily took cover against the dome. As he went out to inspect the SUV, she stole inside behind his back, pressed herself against the curving wall, and waited there in the dark. Her heart seemed to be beating in double time. When Michael returned, he passed her without seeing her and continued into a tunnel that connected the dome with the house. Maria waited fifteen minutes longer, counting out the seconds by the "potato" method, and then followed him.

The tunnel opened onto an ordinary corridor, which opened in turn onto a vacant room. Maria stopped in the entryway. Just enough moonlight flowed in through the bare windows to show that the house had never been completed–or perhaps 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 once heard called Pete, and Michael was sitting catty-cornered to him; the others were lying on the floor. All appeared to be asleep. Maria stood watching them, the gun quivering along with the hand that was holding it.

She could hear the noise Michael made in place of snoring; someone who had never heard it would have had to work to detect it. After it had gone on for five minutes without a let-up, Maria ventured a step forward. And then another. Michael emitted a loud cough, or something like it. Maria froze. A few seconds later, the former noise resumed. She continued, almost on tiptoe, and halted between her prospective targets, looking from one to the other. Finally her eye settled on Nasedo. She started to raise the gun–

And found herself without the will to use it. After coming so far! 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; she 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 horrible it would make her feel; like an attack of food poisoning.

She lashed herself on by recalling–once, twice, three times–the wrongs he had done her; that they had both done her, Nasedo corrupting Michael and Michael welcoming it. The contempt they had shown her family! Herself forgotten about, her mother used without her knowledge, her father left as road kill. And the ingratitude of Michael! Her mother had made him feel welcome in their house (not at first, maybe, but later on), they had given to him and he had taken from them, emulating Nasedo–his idol, his mentor, probably his father–who took from every human being he met. Selfish, murdering bastards, the pair of them. She believed she could shoot them now. She raised the gun.

Instantly a beeping arose. Maria had never heard it before, but she guessed its source. It was coming from Nasedo's direction. He and the others began to stir. Panicking, Maria waved the gun and squeezed the trigger before she meant to. The report echoed through the unfurnished room. The bullet landed in Nasedo's arm. Michael bounded forward and tackled Maria. 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 enough light remained 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 either 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 he was 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 Maria and to her only. "It's true I am a criminal. An undocumented alien. To live in the shadows was not 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 inside him was more than he could abide. He tore at his mind as if he had been 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."

"He means 'framed'," said Michael. "There's this other Vallosan–that's the name of our planet, Vallosa–who came to Earth at the same time he did."

"Klima. We were two of the sentries appointed to see the ships to Earth."

"Ships?" said Maria. "There was more than one?"

"A small fleet containing 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," Feddin continued. "The genetic matter was housed in the core. On landing, the core was ejected, and torpedoed underground to a point miles away. I searched for it, and returned to search again. I never found it." He turned to Michael. "But I left the signs of the Stones for River Dog to reveal to you, in case you had survived."

"He's also the one who healed River Dog that time in the woods," Michael noted.

"I traveled far, searching for other ships and their sentries, while Klima did the same. Ultimately we found each other. I also found two ship-borns whose sentries had passed"–he nodded toward Neila and Ben–"and took them under my wing. Klima dreams of finding the rest and assembling them into a great army. The human woman Seaver dreams of harnessing them together into a living power station–and worse. Such ambitions are futile. For this world to survive, our races must live in harmony. Ones such as these would prevent that. So Klima murders and casts 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 it, but she 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. There is no cure that we know. The tablets we take only retard the rate of decay."

Maria remembered Nasedo's–Klima's–pill bottles. "What kind of tablets?" she 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," said Maria. "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 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 it is called a Balancer. But do you know what the word means?"

"Klima said 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 stored in those 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 whenever they get near those places," Michael said. "Why doesn't this one?"

"It does. You have not seen its true form. And you have not heard its true voice, for it has not yet called to you. But it will one day. And when it does, heed its summons. It will lead you to the truth of your destiny." He passed the Lodestone to Michael as if it were an orb and scepter. 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 or Klima's. We're nearly spent."

"Not yet," came a voice. The Lodestone sounded its clarion, and its spiral shone forth.

"He's here!" Michael cried. The light Neila had created earlier had continued to dwindle, unnoticed; the corridor from the dome was now nearly pitch dark. Out of its darkness a figure sprang at Michael: Maria recognized the face as her father's. This was the real Nasedo–Klima! She grabbed back the gun and fired at him. This time her aim was true, and he doubled over with a groan. Michael reclaimed the gun from her. "No more weapons for you," he said. "You can't be trusted with them."

Clenching his teeth, summoning every grain of energy left to him, Klima lifted his shirt and thrust his thumb and forefinger into his belly, whose flesh melted to admit them. At the same time he opened his jaws and produced a sound resembling a death rattle. When the thumb and finger re-appeared, the bullet was clasped between them. Klima emitted a long, weary 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 it seemed to fit somehow.

"I'm no monk."

"No. And no immortal either." With more strength than they had suspected he had left in him, Klima conjured up a ball of lightning and sent it spinning toward his enemy. But its speed was only half of what he had willed, and Michael was able to block it. Klima did not send a second.

Michael outlined a strip on the floor and made it rise, elongating itself as it went like a window blind being pulled in reverse, all the way to the ceiling. It made a wall between themselves and Klima. "Time you bailed," Michael told Feddin.

"And you."

"It's you he's after, not us."

"He's right," said Neila. Feddin nodded. The new wall blocked the exit to the dome, but there was a door at the front of the house. 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 that time."

As he and the others left, Michael remained at the wall, prepared for a further attack, but none came, except for the tempter's raspings 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 this was followed by more, much more, of the same. Worry began to champ at Michael: he knew which side was the right one, but the others did not, and they 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 their combined powers would be much stronger than his and Feddin's, with the latter as weak as he was, and then it would all be over, the world would be–

Suddenly, like a bubble popping, the worry ended. Michael realized Klima had been feeding it into his brain, like wartime propaganda transmitted over the radio. But he had stopped now; the Balancer had gone dark. "He's gone," said Michael, and he returned the wall he had made into the floor.

A minute earlier they had heard Feddin's car take off, and now they heard the growl of another one 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 Agent Topolsky," said Maria. She went to pick up her bag, which was still lying by the wall of the dome.

"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 Maria had forgotten all about. "Like that. When the ships came in, that's where they discharged their surplus energy. Every type of energy operates to a certain pattern, called an energy signature. In this case it's a V. It's linked to the original source–which is part of Aries, by the way–and also to the other outlets here on Earth. Like this one." For Maria this was one step too many; her confusion showed in her face. "The points on the map," Michael reminded her. "The library–"

"–Angels' Ground, rocks, railroad museum," she recited. Michael was surprised that she knew them too. "Number five, unknown. Or did he tell you?"

"He didn't know either."

"But it's his map!"

"He dreamed it, and just painted what the dream showed him. But he did say the spiral isn't like the other symbols. It isn't a picture of any place, it's a rune from their alphabet. A rune of power, he said."

"So what does it mean?"

"It can mean more than one thing, depending on the direction you're looking." Michael read her expression. "No, I don't get it either." He slapped his forehead suddenly. "I'm getting sidetracked here. What I wanted to say is, Feddin taught me that fighting's not the answer. It might have been on our planet, but not here." The next admission came hard, but only from lack of practice. "I was wrong, okay? But so were you, coming after us the way you did. If we can both get past that–"

Maria would have liked to. But no. "It's no good, Michael," she said.

"What isn't?"

"Us. Now."

"Why?"

"You heard about Liz?"

"The blood poisoning? I can fix that."

"You can?" If so, he had been right about having learned a lot.

"Molecular regeneration. You have to watch what you're doing, but–yeah. Not a problem. So we can still–"

"No." Maria would not allow herself to forget the main issue, the only issue. "When we were faced with a choice, you chose Nasedo–the one you thought was Nasedo–and I chose my family."

Michael could not believe she was still hung up on that. "That's history."

"History is who we are. It's all we are." Maria had not realized this until she said it. "My father is dead. The one who killed him was one of you."

"And the father that 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 three words, faintly. And they were the last to be said; at any rate, Michael could think of no good reply. The two of them stood silently and unhappily in the white glare of the headlights, which were now very close, and drawing closer. When they were five or six yards away, they stopped and then went dark, at the same time that the car they belonged to–a black Impala–went silent. Michael remembered, almost too late, that he was still holding the Lodestone. He quickly dropped it into Maria's bag.

Topolsky stepped out of the car and cast her eyes around. "Okay, where is he?" Michael and Maria pretended to look even more ignorant than teens did naturally, by Topolsky's 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 had a mother and two–" Only then did she realize what she had done, or failed to do. "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. "And 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. "Lay you odds that's Agent Stevens. Into the car. Hurry." The other two hesitated, confused: weren't she and Stevens on the same side? "Trust me," she said, "you don't want to be found here." Once inside–Maria in back, Michael in front–they discovered that Topolsky had come there alone, which they were pretty sure was not the standard protocol for raiding the hideout of a suspected serial killer. She kept the lights off as she cruised around to the rear of the dome and then steered for the hills, driving half-blind, but also invisible to Stevens (if it were Stevens) and also, she hoped, eclipsed from his view by the Atherton buildings. She found, or knew, a pass through the hills and emptying onto the 385, which after a drive of a few hours intersected the highway they wanted: the highway to Roswell.

During most of 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 the one she had thought he was, and he had brought himself back to life; this did not change the feeling that she had discharged her duty, and she was willing to let the matter rest there. After a little she fell asleep.

She woke some time later 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." The tone was almost flirtatious. "You were a great help last time. You always are. We'll talk more at your place."

This exchange stayed with Maria all the way home. When the Impala deposited her at last in her driveway, she unloaded a look of disappointment on Michael which puzzled him deeply. He had not seen it when she had 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 Michael capable of collaborating with Nasedo–but never with Topolsky. Nasedo was not their personal enemy; they had made themselves his. But Topolsky was, and always had been; that was one of the core beliefs their 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 this was worse, this hurt the most. It was now night again, and Maria watched as the Impala was swallowed up into the darkness.

She turned toward her house reluctantly, not quite ready to abandon the life of the road, brief as her experience of it had been, for the calmer waters of home life. But as soon as her mother appeared in the doorway and the first sight of her daughter safe and sound purged her face of its fears, Maria could not help feeling happy–dizzyingly happy. They ran to hug each other. "Honey!" said Amy. "Jim and I have been so worried."

Only then did Maria take account of the figure standing just inside the door. She gently disengaged from the embrace. Her mother touched the black foliage Maria did not remember having. "What'd you do to your hair?"

Jim looked annoyed. "Guess we can cancel that missing persons report." They followed him into the living room.

As he took up the handset of the phone, Maria recalled the alibi she had prepared. "Didn't you get my message?"

Amy's face took on a rather severe look. "You mean about Erica? Their machine says the family's on vacation."

This part, Maria had rehearsed in the car on the way back. "Yeah, they took me with them. It was great. Sorry to run out on you–"

"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 talked it over with 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, 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 'way 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 an acid tone, "'babe'?"

"I was getting there." Amy sounded slightly defensive. "Honey, you know how I've always said 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 going to be 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, more unreal than her experience with the two Nasedos. "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?" said her mother.

"See me fight to contain my rapture." Her eyes were full of dread.

A second later, it turned to panic. She had caught sight of her knit bag, which she had tossed carelessly onto the sofa; inside it a corner of the Lodestone was showing. Maria quickly reached over and shook the bag. The Lodestone 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 under 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. One 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 speak again, as she had before leaving, to the space where her father's picture had been. "Dad–" She stopped as a jolt shot through her: the picture was back now. She flipped through to the picture 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 Maria knew, as surely as anything could be known, that she had not: he had. He had returned to put them back, he had been there, in the house, maybe in the form of Valenti, or of her mother–or of her. And he might come again at any time, in the same form or in whatever form he chose. From now on she could never be sure of anyone again.

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 had 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 Maria in the mirror. "What did you just put in my purse?" she demanded 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 here," Liz pointed out. She unfolded the rag. "Maria! I don't want this back!"

"If it's with me Valenti will find it. He's in the house, like, all the time now."

In the face of this threat Liz agreed to accept the consignment provisionally. But before they were finished with their break she had spotted Isabel in the quad and hastened out to her to arrange a transfer of the property without delay. "You take this," she said, exposing part of it for Isabel to see.

But Isabel was not one to be ordered, especially by Liz, and especially in this matter; if anyone was going to be giving orders, it was her. "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 nearly as shocked by this news as Isabel had been herself. "Why don't you try Michael?"

"Not a wise move," said Maria, who now joined them, having followed Liz at an ambling pace. "He's spying for her too."

"Michael?" It was Isabel's turn to be shocked again. "If that's true, there's no one else we can trust." She turned back to Liz. "Except you. You'll have to hold onto it for a while."

"Why should I be the one to take the risk? Max and I aren't even together any more."

"Liz, we've all taken risks."

Liz answered quietly. "I think I've been handed more than my share."

Isabel had not considered it in this light, and now saw the justice of Liz's position. "You're right. It's unfair to you. But I can't–" She stopped and considered. "Tell you what. You keep it for tonight, and I'll speak to Max about it. We'll–figure something out." Then she left them. Liz had no choice but to be content for the time being.

Throughout the conversation Maria had been trying to think of a way to work around to her second purpose, and once they were alone again, 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 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–"

She was interrupted by Michael, stamping up to them from the same direction in which Isabel had left. "You!" he shouted, pointing at 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 Topolsky as a threat considerably altered Maria's feelings about the situation, and she now tried to re-route the discussion into the area of friendly chat. "Wow, you know, now, that's a coincidence. Because I was just telling Liz–"

"Lost her job how?" Liz had noticed lately how impatient with irrelevancies she had become; she put it down to stress.

"Arrested the wrong person, apparently." Liz pondered this as Michael resumed talking 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?" And with that, he stamped off again, no happier than when he had arrived.

He left Maria upset, and quivering in her upset. "Ohh...! Breathe deep, breathe deep..." She suited the act to the word. "What was I saying before?" 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." Liz nodded several times and opened her mouth twice before further speech emerged. "See, Maria, 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–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 that 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?" Maria watched the horde of students passing her by. "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!" Liz knew this sounded too glib, too prim, and too everything else she was at her least likable.

"Well, when you figure out how it is, you be sure and let me know." Maria's 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. Maria lingered as if wanting to say something to him, but when her mother called, she came. She returned later, 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. And 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 disappeared, and the years slid by–years without you, and more years 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 few seconds. 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.

Maria had been abandoned. And that was how she felt. 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 again to be lonely, just alone; two different things, and alone was better. As far as she could foresee any future for herself at that moment, those were the only options on the horizon.

Episode 1.20X

A Darker Sun

He was close this time, real close. He could smell it. A man 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 it was they did) somewhere near there, 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 deliberate 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 down, and extracted it. The answering gleam it brought to his eye would have puzzled most observers: it was only a scrap of metal. He transferred it eagerly to his satchel.

A shadow somewhere blocked the sun. Swift 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?" he asked. "Are you–one of them?" The stranger did not answer but continued his advance. He strode up to Swift and confiscated his satchel, nearly wrenching his shoulder off as he did so. "Hey, that's mine!" Swift protested. He felt the stranger clutch at his neck. Pain shot into him, followed by a yawning blackness.

As he lay inert on the ground, the stranger rifled through the satchel and tossed aside first one and then another of the pieces so painstakingly collected, and flung the bag away contemptuously. Then he turned to the ex-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 that 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 located at one of the side exits from the physical sciences building (which was also the shop building), Kyle Valenti and two of his fellow Comets–easily identifiable by their blue and gold lettermen's jackets–were crouching beside a device which in a different setting would quickly have been recognized as a pneumatic tire pump. A long hose ran out of it along the floor of the stairwell into a drainage pipe set in one of the walls. Kyle and one of his teammates were peering over the wall and the other one had his hands on the pump handle. At Kyle's signal he pressed it down, and then he raised his head to watch along with the other two. A moment later all were convulsed with laughter, which they strove manfully to suppress.

It was then that Max happened to emerge through the exit door into the stairwell, nearly bumping into Kyle, and spurring him to a churlish "Hey, ace, wanna watch where you're going?" However, when he saw who it was, his manner changed at once. "Max! Say, hi. So what's up?"

His smile of exaggerated friendliness, Max saw through at once. He ran his eye over the apparatus the three had set up. "What's that thing for?" he asked. Kyle scratched the back of his neck absently, and they all looked in different directions. "Okay, skip it," said Max. "I was only asking to be polite." He started up the stairs.

Kyle laid a hand on his arm. "Wait." He seemed anxious on second thought to keep Max there. "You're a guy, you'll appreciate this." The side of the building they were on faced a walkway; the drainage pipe, Max now saw, ran directly under this and appeared to end at a grating in the middle. Kyle pointed out a girl coming up the walk, gestured to Max to crouch down, and did the same himself. Then he signaled to the pump man, who pressed the handle again. As the girl stepped over the grating her skirt flew up, partly revealing her briefs; she gave a little shriek and at the same time, thrown off guard, she caught her heel on one of the bars, stumbled, and dropped her books, at the same time as she was smoothing her skirt down. She somehow managed to avoid a fall, to Max's relief, but as she collected up her books her eyes darted around suspiciously. Max could not see whether her embarrassment had been witnessed by any students other than themselves.

Those with him in the stairwell had ducked down and were clutching their mouths tightly, having a struggle again to contain themselves. "Ain't it a hoot?" Kyle whispered. He seemed not to have noticed that Max was not laughing.

"That's it?" said Max.

"My granddad told me once 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."

"Oh, 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 any of you have seen girls' underwear?"

"That's not the point."

Max remained sober of countenance. "What is the point, Kyle?"

"The look on their faces! Like they've been–I don't know–"

"Violated? Ritually abused?"

Kyle looked upon him with pity. "You just don't get it, do you?"

"One of those girls might be Liz. Or my sister."

"Aw, Liz is a good sport." Kyle considered. "I don't know your sister."

"Why should she have to be a 'sport' and put up with your juvenile pranks?"

"'Pranks'? Who says 'pranks' now?" He looked to his friends for enlightenment; they shrugged. Then he put an arm around Max's shoulder in big-brotherly fashion. "See, Evans, you may not be 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. "Here comes another one!" Tommy moved his hands into place on the pump and Kyle gave the signal. "Now!" he whispered.

A larger pair of hands descended on Tommy's, arresting them in mid-push. "I don't think so," their owner said. The others turned to discover Principal Wiley in the stairwell with them; all their faces, except Max's, convicted them without a trial. "May I ask who borrowed this device from the auto shop?" said Wiley. After a moment's hesitation, both Kyle and Paulie raised their hands. "You may return it to where you found it. You've earned yourselves detention this Saturday." He cocked his head at Tommy. "You, get out of here." Max began to follow him. "Not you, Evans."

"But I wasn't–"

"My office. Now."

Max took in with him an unconcealed air of grievance, which he was not slow to give voice to. "I wasn't part of that out there. I was just an innocent bystander."

Wiley was staring out his office window. "Yes, I know. I heard the whole conversation."

"Then what am I doing here?"

Wiley strode back to his desk and leveled a penetrating stare on him. "Tell me something. 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 did you choose not to take part in Mr. Valenti's little prank?"

Kyle's earlier question was thus answered definitively, but Wiley's seemed to Max askew somehow. "You want your students to spend their lunch hours looking up girls' dresses?" he asked.

"Of course not! It's my place to frown on such behavior. But not you, at your age. You should be champing at the bit to pull down a girl's pants. If you're not, there's something wrong with you." A suspicion flashed into his mind. "You do like girls, don't you?" Then he remembered. "Of course–the incident with Ms. Parker in the eraser room. To tell you the truth, that relieved my mind about you. I thought, finally, he's learned how to be human." Max's face reflected his astonishment, mixed with fear that he had been found out, but he quickly masked both feelings with his customary bland, blank demeanor. "Until then," Wiley went on, "whenever I'd see 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. Usually he had no high opinion of Wiley's perspicuity, but this time he had hit it on the button. "Whatever the condition," he said, "I've got just the treatment."

He picked off a Xeroxed flyer from a stack in his top right drawer and reached it over the desk to Max, who read it over–and then read it over again. He thought he must be missing something, and then realized that he was not; Wileywas. "Country line dancing?"

"Best thing there is," said Wiley, "for developing socialization skills. Great workout too. Our group meets on Wednesdays. Will we see you at our next meeting?"

"It's–sure something to think about." Max was at a loss how else to answer. "Thank you," he added.

Wiley nodded smugly and told him he could go now.

Once out in the hall, Max deposited the flyer in the first trash barrel he came to; he would have to remain unsocialized, he decided. But the rest of Wiley's message stayed with him, like a muscle cramp he could not shake. And Wiley's first question, which had so disconcerted Max at first hearing, he was now asking himself: Who are you, Evans?

He and Liz had not spoken that day, or the previous few days. Now that Michael and Maria were back, Liz had no plausible reason to approach him, and he would have felt awkward approaching her. She had been equally out of touch with her oldest friend of all. But him she found an excuse for visiting after school that afternoon.

She found his garage door raised and Alex himself busy clearing out the Whits' former rehearsal space. "Alex," said Liz, "hey." Focused on unscrewing a mike stand, he hardly acknowledged her arrival, and Liz wondered at this a little, it was so unlike him. "Saw your flyer on the bulletin board at school," she said. "You're selling your guitar?" The question was redundant, since the instrument 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 environmentally unfriendly. Besides, I can use the cash."

Liz stared at him as if she had never known him. "But what about your music? You were so committed to it."

"Aw, it's no good now. I can't hear it the way I used to."

"Alex, a slight hearing loss is a simple condition to–"

"Not hearing loss. Anyway, not that kind." Alex seemed a little embarrassed. "I used to hear music everywhere I went. Really heard it, like I was receiving it from some other plan–some other place. And all I had to do was write down what I heard. Now it's not there any more. It is for some kid somewhere, I'm sure. Just not for me."

Liz thought of a possible explanation. "Is Isabel still avoiding you? Or are you avoiding her?"

"Both. We agreed it's for the best."

"Yeah, Maria isn't speaking to me either. You know, you and I are the only two whose friendship hasn't changed. Since the fourth grade. That's something to–" Alex was looking away from her, biting his lip. "Alex, what is it? Tell me."

He was silent for a few moments. "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 that. The point 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 thought; 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. I do." Alex began to apologize to her. "No, I mean, I really do." Best to leave, and not linger; her recent experience had taught her to remain unsentimental in such situations. "Have a good sale, Alex," she said, and then rethought. "No, have a great sale. And a great life." Another thread cut; maybe the last of all. She left sadly and resignedly for home.

If she could have seen Max just then, and could have felt any more unhappy than she did already, she certainly would have. He was sitting on his bed among piles of his belongings–clothes, CDs, books, sports equipment–examining each of the items in turn and then putting it down with an air of dissatisfaction. "I give up," said a voice behind him. He turned to see his sister in the doorway. "What are you doing?" she asked. "If I'm not being too nosy."

"You are." Isabel predicted he would give a fuller answer on the count of three. She began counting: one–two– "Wiley called me in today," said Max. "He says I'm only half a person. And, Isabel, he's right. Half of me is 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 that the topic bothered her. "I don't think about it. I find enough things 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?"

Max looked it over again. "No. I can see that now. But how, then?"

"I'll tell you, but you won't like it." Max waited. "Intuition." He shook his head. "You see? The word frightens you."

"It's not the word."

"All it means is knowing, but without knowing why."

"I don't have any intuition. You do, I don't."

"That's silly. Everyone does. You just have to–slide back the door."

"Then why haven't you? If it's as easy as all that."

Isabel knew what he meant. Why hadn't she acknowledged that side of herself: her alien side? Not her powers, which she had (for a time) worked to develop, but what lay within her: her thoughts and feelings–if he and she had any feelings beyond those that were human; Isabel could not be sure they did, and she was not eager to find out. "Because I don't want to," she said. "Not yet. It would mean the end of everything we know." She gazed around the room. "This, at least."

"This will end some day," said Max. "For us. It has to."

"You know that?" He nodded. "But without knowing why." In saying this Isabel tried to look wise, rather than superior, because she was not feeling superior at all. However, Max had to admit to himself that this time his sister might be right.

That evening he stationed himself outside the UFO Center, where he could stare across at Liz when 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 for sure. He saw her break into a smile, which she cut short–or he imagined he did; he probably could not tell, either. 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 all at once his perception of her changed: she seemed to have receded, as if one or the other of them had moved a block farther away. She turned from him, unsure of herself, of him, and of the two of them together. And he felt hurt–but only a part of him did; another part–the part that was now observing her from a distance, as she did her microscope specimens–that part did not care. Looking from her to the street, he discovered that the whole town now seemed to him a foreign country. He felt as remote from the passers-by as if he were separated from them by a dense force field. Then all at once it burst, and he was back in the midst of them: his neighbors who were also strangers, in a strange land which was also his home. It all confused him beyond his ability to sort it out right then and there. Yet he had to sort it out; and when Liz looked across again, he was gone.

Great as her disappointment was, it was surpassed by her relief; she too was having trouble sorting things out. He and she distrusted each other, and with reason: she had betrayed him; he had spurned her. But she had not known about Grunewald, any more than he knew 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 than he had, 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 persuade her otherwise, however she might try to persuade herself, her faith in the fact was inalterable beyond persuasion. And it made her desire him very deeply–no matter what he had done, no matter what he could ever do. Her mind held enough authority over her senses to suppress the desire but could never 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–and it had never quite gone away since. So it was now.

Max went where he always went when his human life became unmanageable: to the desert. He found a precipice from which he could look down 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 he found himself among them, looking down at the lights of Roswell far below. Those seemed to grow even smaller, and smaller still, merging finally into one light that was infinitely far away. Then suddenly he was back on Earth again, and the stars were in their places above.

Max 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 him. "This place is everything to me. Yet it's nothing. Liz is everything to me, yet–" He suppressed the inescapable conclusion. "No!" he shouted. His voice echoed across the desert. He let the echoes die away until he could hear 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. "How can I live without seeing?" The world around him seemed not to care. "If I have to live blind, I don't want to live!" He ran toward the precipice and poised at the edge, ready to throw himself down–

–when he heard the sound: the beeping he had heard before: the voice of the Lodestone. 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, and he saw both its sides: the one facing him, with a face that was Feddin's, and the side that could only be seen 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 before in the weeks past. But it was different this time; they all knew it. Max seemed to have a size to him the others had not seen before. Their childhood's end was drawing near.

"You both heard it?" asked Max. The other two nodded. "Was it real?"

"You have to ask?" said Isabel.

"I think he means, real to them," said Michael.

"We hear it, they don't," Isabel explained. "You must have triggered it yourself."

"I did? How?"

"By wanting to know."

Max 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 yet. Neither does Michael."

Michael nodded in confirmation. "Isabel says you think we're half-baked or half-assed or something. Well, 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 own brow. "It's scary."

Max could not believe they would not want to come. "But this is it. This is what we've been waiting for all our lives."

"We're not ready, Max," said Isabel. "Neither of us. I'm sorry, but you'll have to go alone."

"Alone? How can I?"

"It makes no difference whether you're with someone or not. You're always alone. We all are. That's who we are." She seemed to have grown wiser by his experience.

Max's eyes met hers and then Michael's. He saw a sadness in both of them he had not seen before, or had not noticed. "Then you do know. Both of you."

"As much as we want to right now," said Michael.

"Okay," Max said at last. "But I may call for you before it's through. You can't sit in the park forever." Neither of them contradicted him.

"And before you leave," said Isabel, "go and heal Liz."

"I will if I can."

"Any of us can, now." She knew Michael had learned as much from Feddin as she had from his stepdaughter. "But it should be you."

"She'll have to trust me. She wouldn't before."

"Should she have? Or should you have trusted her?"

"No," Max admitted. "And for different reasons than we thought. But she will now." He saw ahead, and it made him sad. "Whether she should or not."

He knew the way to her window; it was open, as it always was. Liz lay asleep, her head buried in a pile of pillows. Max 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, all things about her, he still loved–or at least the human part of him did.

It was not long before she opened her eyes. She was startled at first by his being there, but only at first, and was not offended, as she might have been. Max had been right: one look–one real look–between them, 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 about me–what I am. I see that now. Because I do too."

"If there's anything I–if there's anything at all–"

"There is something." He indicated the pillows behind her. "In there."

Liz sat up, and her bedcovers fell off, revealing her negligee. She felt no shame, or even embarrassment, but for some reason her heart began to pound faster. A beeping arose from the pillow at the bottom of the pile. "Someone will hear!" she whispered.

Max reached down and inserted his hand into the pillow slip. As soon as he had touched the small object within, the beeping stopped. "May I take it?" he asked softly.

"You're not taking it," said Liz, "I'm giving it." She gazed at him with loving eyes. "It was always yours to have, anyway."

As Max withdrew his hand, Liz gave a small gasp of unexpected pleasure. She shut her eyelids to everything else. Max leaned over and kissed them. "Thank you," he whispered. Liz opened her eyes again. "I'm going out there now," Max said. "To the place where we came from, to find out who I am. If I come back–"

"If?" The word alarmed her.

"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 grew sober. "May I take your hand now?"

"I only wish," Liz said, with a different meaning.

Max held her hand between both of his, shut his eyes, and concentrated. A look of confusion came over his face. "How–" Then he understood, and he opened his eyes. "You don't need healing. Your body has healed itself. Your blood has absorbed ours. Now it's stronger than ever."

It was Liz-the-scientist who responded to the news first, to assess whether or not she had cause to hope it was true. "No, that's impossible," she said. "Grunewald..." She looked for an explanation. "Maybe his blood was weak to start with and mine wasn't." It convinced her; she stared at Max. "I'm all right?" He nodded. "I'm all right," she repeated, in awe. A second later, the larger import of it struck her. "Then we can be together! I can come with you!"

"No." Max withdrew his hands. "You belong here. I don't."

"It's your home too."

"My home–and my prison." As he said this, he was so absorbed in his own feelings that he did not notice Liz's reaction. "I feel like a tissue sample on one of your slides. Stuck here by somebody I never knew and can't even imagine. My rightful place is with my people, if they still exist. Your place is with yours."

Liz's whole being denied this. "I don't have any people! My parents are breaking up, my best friends aren't speaking to me any more. You're all I have. Take me with you, Max. Please!" She bent in to him and kissed him deeply.

Max allowed the kiss to last longer than he knew it should, and then pulled away, though he did not want to; he would always not want to. "I'm sorry," he said, and he started to the window.

Liz flung herself after him. "Max! Don't leave me here! Don't leave me alone!"

He pulled away again, more forcibly this time. "No more!" he said. "This is goodbye." Then he left as he had come, through the window.

But if he thought that ended it, he was not really thinking, or thinking of Liz: of who she was. As he started away down the alley, he heard her call him. "Max!" she called, and he stopped; he had to–yet at the same time he had to go. Liz was descending to him by the fire ladder, still in her negligee, her curves highlighted by the twin-headed street lamp at the corner of the building. The ladder ended a few feet short of the pavement; she jumped down, landed on all fours–but gracefully, like a cat–and then picked herself up. The pavement was made of stone, with inlaid patterns of brick, patterns more intricate than Max had ever realized. As Liz stood to face him, her negligee rippled in the light wind. He had never seen anyone so beautiful.

Staring at her, he seemed to come to a decision. He waved his arm, and her negligee became a sandstone-hued gown, cut to an Attic pattern. Then he passed his arm across himself, and his apparel changed to a tunic the color of red clay. "Come with me, then," he said. "You can only come as far as the gate, no farther. And 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. Hand in hand they turned and began to run, in long strides, with the wind lifting them, so they were almost flying–or were they flying?

Much later–how much later Liz could not have said–they were camped together at the bottom of a valley encircled by high cliffs and visible only to the stars. She was lying propped up on one of her arms, a little apart from where Max 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 cold desert night: jeans, sweaters, and jackets. The Lodestone lay between the two of them, its spiral pulsating with light. "If only–" Liz began.

Max shook his head. "There are always if-onlys."

Liz continued undeterred. "If only we could stay like this forever. With the desert asleep all around us."

"It never really sleeps. Nothing does, in your world of ours." He turned his eyes on her–and they were not human eyes. Liz shrank away. A second later they had returned to normal. "You did that," she said accusingly.

"I only raised the blind," said Max. "You saw what was there to be seen, as your perception translated it to you. And now you understand why you have to stop at the gate. What lies on the other side..." He paused. "...wasn't meant for your eyes. Only ours." And Liz shivered, for the first time that night.

When she woke in the morning all was grey. Max was already up, and waiting for her. Neither of them had brought along any provisions for the journey; Liz realized she had unconsciously trusted to him to take care of their needs. She would have enjoyed the usual morning comforts–a bath, a change of clothes, breakfast–but Max's quietly expectant air discouraged her from asking. She rose, and they set out.

In mid-morning they reached the outskirts of the Frazier Woods. These lay near the Pohlman ranch, where everyone knew the saucer had crashed in 1947. Inside Max's jacket the Lodestone began to beep, and they heard the growl of engines. A few seconds later a caravan of olive-drab Jeeps appeared on the road ahead. The pair ducked behind a clump of bushes. The Stone's beeping continued. Max removed his jacket and wrapped the Stone in it, muffling the noise enough so that it was drowned in those of the caravan. Of the official personnel who rode past them, most were Army, but a few were not; Max recognized one of them as Margaret Seaver, the director of BEAM.

The path the vehicles turned up, he recognized too: it led to the crash site. 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 compound as government property. "Was this the gate you meant?" Liz asked. Max shook his head.

Inside, the soldiers and civilians were met by others. When the last of the train had passed through the gate, a corporal swung it shut and secured the padlock. "The government's taking it over again," said Max. "The place the ship landed."

"Why, after all this time?" Liz asked.

"They must be looking for something." He thought of Seaver. "Energy, maybe."

"But there's nothing here any more. Is there?"

"There never was." He remembered Michael's account of what Feddin had said. "This was only the husk, the ship's outer body. The heart of it–the place we came from–lies out there." He looked to the south. That, he knew, was the direction in which he had to go.

Liz was feeling pangs in her stomach, and they were growing sharper all the time. As Max walked ahead of her, showing no sign whatever of fatigue, the distance between them grew steadily. At long last, coming to the foot of a small rise–yet another rise–she halted. "Max!" she called. "I'm thirsty!"

Max stopped and looked back with something like impatience. Then his face softened and he turned his eyes to a point on the ground a yard or so from where Liz was standing. A few drops of brown liquid seeped through to the surface and gradually expanded into a little pool. Liz peered into it questioningly. "Tea," Max 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. Liz 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 unnoticed so far by either of them; he was watching with even wider eyes.

Liz knelt to scoop up a helping of tea. "Careful," said Max. "It's hot."

She took a sip. "It's good. But not quite–"

"Yes, that's what Isabel says."

"You're not having any yourself?"

"I don't need any." It sounded like a rebuke. He allowed her to finish one cup and half of a second cup, and then he 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. It began to dwindle. When it was done dwindling, it had become a teacake. The second observer was impressed all over again. Liz began to bite into the cake and then, remembering her manners, held it out to Max. He shook his head. She lit into it greedily. Before she was half finished, Max started off again. "Wait!" she said, picking herself up.

"I can't. I have too far to go." He continued walking and Liz hurried after; their unsuspected companion followed her at a distance. Soon Max had far outpaced them both. He climbed to a ridge that looked down on the plain they would have to cross. Liz labored most of the way up, and once at the top she halted. "Max, 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, and now she looked hurt. Max 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."

Liz moved toward him with a weary, heavy step. "I thought we were running away. Just the two of us."

"No!" Max cried. Liz recoiled at the force of it. "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," she amended. Love had told her. If she had only listened to it all along!

"You only see the part you want to see," Max said. "The part that fulfills you." Liz heard this as the accusation it was. He softened his tone again. "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 me finding it. You're only–in the way."

Liz 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?" Liz repeated in a small voice.

"Liz, listen." Max's 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. If you have any feelings for me–"

Liz lashed out at him with the first words that came to her tongue. "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, isn't it? Cold and selfish."

"And your people are childish and undisciplined. Always letting their feelings run riot."

"I'm not the one raising my voice, Max." She knew she was sounding priggish again, but she could not help herself.

"Because of you! You!" Max was trembling. "Just let me alone, can't you? If you hate me that much, it should be easy." He started off again.

Now Liz 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 now!"

"Max!" She ran at him in an attempt to embrace him. He shied to one side. They were standing nearer the edge than either of them realized. Liz took a wrong step and went over. "Liz!" Max cried. He reached out for her, but too late. The hill stood at an angle of about thirty degrees, so she slid instead of falling. But it ended in a sheer drop: the ground under Liz's feet gave out unexpectedly, and she plummeted eight or ten feet onto the hard earth.

From above Max heard her cry out. "Liz!" he shouted. "I'm coming!" He half jumped, half climbed down to her, and knelt by her side.

"My ankle!" she groaned.

"I'm sorry. I was angry too. Let me fix it." He tried to take Liz's 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. Yeah, I got that." She turned her face from him.

"Liz!"

Then a shadow fell on both of them. On a hilltop west of the ridge a man was standing–and not the one who had been spying on them, but someone younger and bigger. The slope below him was a gentle one, and the way down to them was easy, so that it took him only a few minutes to reach them.

Liz was surprised to find herself staring into 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 remembered him vaguely. "The guy from the dating show, right?"

"Just my cover, old man. I'm actually an NMU student. Archaeology."

"What brings you out here?"

"Archaeology. Visiting some old ruins. What about you?"

Max had to think up a reasonable cover story. "Taking a hike."

Doug turned back to Liz. "What happened?"

"I fell," she said. "My ankle–"

"I know a place I can take you." Without asking her permission (let alone Max's), he lifted her up and headed back toward the hill he had just come down. His breathing grew a little heavy, but he did not complain.

"Hey, we were going a different–" Max began, and then left off: not the right time, he saw. He followed in Doug's steps, now feeling useless as well as remorseful. "I could help you," he offered, but Doug seemed to be ignoring him–as Liz certainly was. Behind them still trailed their stalker, who had at his disposal a knowledge of the particulars, every jog and jag, of all the paths for miles around, stored in a mind that had spent forty years learning them.

From the top of the hill they saw the highway; Liz had not realized it was so close (in choosing his course, Max had sidestepped it deliberately). On the roadside a little way down sat a white adobe-style building, and Doug made for it at a fast walk; his arms were tiring of their burden, but he preferred that Max did not find out, as he would if he were asked to take over–and it seemed Liz would not want to be handed off to him, anyway.

A battery of wooden signs, taking up most of the store frontage, promised the usual snacks and souvenirs, and also a UFO museum, which was claimed to contain the genuine remains of the Roswell saucer. Max had little faith in the claim but had a desire to investigate it nonetheless. He followed Doug inside. At once his eye lit on a door at the far end with a "Museum" sign above. Surrounding him and the others were racks and stands sparsely stocked with tourist-geared trinkets, including some of Amy's.

"Anybody home?" shouted Doug. "We could use some help out here!"

"Aw, pipe down!" a voice shouted back from somewhere at the rear. "I'm comin', ain't I?" Moments later a grizzled figure in fatigues pushed around the shower curtain hanging in the doorway behind the front counter. They had no way of recognizing the man as the one who had been shadowing them. A minute after their arrival, he had scuttled in at a side door.

"This woman's been injured," Doug informed him.

"I can see that myself. Bring her in the back." He slid aside 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 private opinion of Max might have been, he could not help smiling at this.

The store itself was not large; the back room was smaller. Swift gestured toward a cot in the corner. Doug sat Liz on it and up-ended the pillow against the wall so that she could lean back on it. As their eyes met she remembered why she had found him so attractive on the one 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 of disrespect at Max to point up the contrast. If her eye had lingered on him a little longer, she might have seen that the remorse she was wishing on him was already well in place.

Swift pulled a stool up beside her. "Let's have a look at you now." He removed the shoe and the sock from the injured foot 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 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 with them. "When were you in the Corps?" Doug asked, out of politeness.

"Tour of duty '40 to '48."

"Then you must have been around when–"

"When it all went down? Hell, boy, I wasn't just around, I was there. Seen it for myself." Max felt a surge of interest in what he might have to tell. "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 just tourist fodder. You don't honestly believe in little green men from Mars?"

"They ain't little. And they ain't green. And they prob'ly ain't from Mars. But hell, yes, I believe in 'em. Met one of 'em myself couple days ago."

"Oh, yes? What'd he look like?" Doug glanced in amusement at Max and was surprised to find him listening intently.

"Like you and me," said Swift. "They can do that, you know. Didn't get a long look at this 'un, though, 'cause he knocked me out too fast. And when I come to, I had a silver handprint on me–here." He pointed to the right side of his neck. Doug bent to look. "Nothin' there now."

"Is that all he did?" Max asked.

"Sure, that was all." Swift glanced slyly at him. "Why, what else'd you expect?"

Take your body and keep it for a while was the answer Max was thinking, but could not say aloud. If Klima had done so, he would probably be telling the story now, just as Swift (if he was Swift) was doing. But why? Liz would have asked, if she had known to. Why would he risk exposing himself that way? Max knew the answer. Klima would do it partly to boast, partly to play with his human listeners–and if he suspected who Max was, partly to test him. It was exactly what he would do. Max had no idea how one would recognize a shape shifter on sight and he continued to stare at the sergeant, searching for signs. "Maybe you know already," he suggested.

The sergeant stared back at him with the same knowing look. "Maybe I do," he said. He looked toward Liz, turning the right side of his neck to Max–and revealing the silver handprint, to Max's eyes at least; it was outside Liz's line of sight, and Doug was looking the other way. It had not been there earlier, and in a second or two it disappeared again. It was the sign Max had been looking for. It appeared Klima was playing with him too.

He watched for another sign–some word or glance from the old man–to confirm this. But all he did, that Max could see, was to wrap off Liz's ankle. "There you go," he said. "Stay off it all you can." Max kept watching, but Swift either did not notice or pretended not to. After returning the tape and the bandage to their places in the kit, he opened an aspirin bottle, shook out two pills, fetched a cup of water from a cooler by the doorway, and brought them to Liz. "Here, these'll help a tad."

"May I have some of that?" asked Doug.

At first Swift thought he was referring to the aspirin, but then saw Doug had taken out a pill case of his own. "My allergy's acting up again," he explained to Liz. "All this dust." And indeed the room was layered with it.

Max was struck by the oddity of what he had heard; it distracted him briefly from the manifestation he had just witnessed. "You're allergic to dust," he asked Doug, "and you're going into archaeology?"

"That's right, why?"

Max shook his head as if to say (as he was thinking), Strange beings, these scientists. But then he had known that already from his experience with Liz.

Doug knelt beside her cot. "Feeling hungry?" he asked. She shrugged. "Suppose I buy you lunch?" He added, with a smile, and in a lower voice, "Or what passes for lunch here."

"Such a gentleman to offer!" she said, speaking in Max's direction. "Yes, thank you so much." She shifted her position, and groaned a little.

"Don't try to move." Doug turned to Swift. "You sell food here, right?"

"You bet I do. Big selection. And the microwave'll heat it right up for you." He winked. "We got that from them, you know. Come on, I'll show you." He exited through the curtain.

Doug smiled at Max. "I think the sarge has been feeding on locusts and honey a little too long."

But Max was not smiling. "Don't let him fool you. He may be more dangerous than you think."

"You're seeing things, old man," said Doug. Max glanced sharply at him, and then realized it had only been a figure of speech. "Must be the high desert air."

"Maybe so," Max replied vaguely. But he had seen the handprint. It had been shown to him alone: only Klima could have done that. Unless... Max had been called to the desert, and was being prepared (he felt), to receive knowledge. What it was, what form it would take, and how it would be imparted were alike a mystery to him; who knew but what his vision of the handprint might be a part of the process? Klima might have had nothing to do with it; Swift might in fact be the innocuous recluse he appeared. But somehow Max did not believe it. He decided he would withhold final judgment, and in the meantime watch his step.

"Trust me," Doug was saying to him, "the biggest danger here is the food. I strongly recommend inspecting it before biting in." His suspicions notwithstanding, he shortly returned to Liz carrying two sandwiches on plastic plates. He rested one of them on her cot and seated himself on the stool alongside. "Brought you the vegetarian. I thought it'd be the safest. I'm risking 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 a day. If somebody got in and grabbed it ahead of her–well, you wouldn't want to be her lab partner that afternoon, believe you me."

Liz thought his story one of the least compelling she had ever heard. However, when Max re-entered, her interest seemed to revive. "Dougie, how fascinating!" was what she said. But she did not care to hear any more. "So, you're doing research out here?"

"What? Oh, yes," Doug said, finding himself having to switch gears unexpectedly. "Digging for native American artifacts. At it three weeks. Once I set myself a goal I can't let go until I've found what I'm after. As a fellow scientist you must know the feeling. Your subject is–don't tell me now–"

She did, anyway. "Molecular biology."

"Right, right! The paramesia."

"Oh, Dougie! Nothing is more satisfying than having a heart-to-heart talk with someone who understands." She was not interlacing her fingers below her chin, but that was practically the only limit to her coquetry. The discouragement of Max–of his human side, anyway–was effectively complete. With bowed head, he slipped out the side door. At the moment there was no apparent danger from Klima (assuming he even was Klima), and Max needed some distance from the others. Liz had shown him, all right; she had achieved the goal she had set herself. But she felt disappointed nevertheless.

"What projects are you working on now?" Doug asked.

"None," she said curtly, and then, trying to hide her indifference–mainly out of courtesy, now–she added, "That is, nothing much."

"I don't know about you," Doug said in a confidential tone, "but I'd rather be sifting through a heap of dirt than wasting my time at some school prom."

"Yeah," Liz agreed glumly, "why dance when you could be sifting?"

"Exactly."

Liz gazed toward the side door with a sigh. "Guess I'm not as hungry as I thought I was. Mind if I take a nap now?"

"Of course." Doug removed the plate to the stool he had just vacated. "In case you decide you want 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 was not thinking about Liz any more. With greater ease than he had expected, he had dispatched his feelings about her to a remote part of his consciousness, where they could neither hurt nor hinder him. Now he was standing a little away from the store, surveying the horizon. Something in him drew his eyes to the sun. Seeing it, he knew. It's almost time, he thought. Time for exactly what, he did not know, or exactly where it would befall, but he knew beyond a doubt that the moment was nearly come.

He also knew he should have been alone. Liz had distracted him already; Shellow might be in his way; Swift, if he was Klima (or even if he was not), might try to stop him, and in doing so might pose a threat to Liz. In that case Max would do his best for her, but it was more important that he do what he had been called to do, and none of them, not even Liz, must keep him from it. He would deal with them in whatever fashion was dictated by events and his own knowledge–including, perhaps, the knowledge he had without knowing how.

Doug had returned to the store, where Swift was leaning lazily on the counter. "She's sleeping now," said Doug.

"Best thing for her. Where's the other one got off to?" Doug nodded toward the windows. Swift watched Max for a little. "Don't let that 'un fool you. Might be more dangerous than he looks."

"Funny, he said the same thing about you."

"Eyewash." Swift punctuated the comment by spitting into the waste can. "Did I hear you say you was doin' some diggin' round here?"

"That's right. Know any likely spots?"

"I might." Doug waited; Swift considered. "Yep, I just might. Tell me, while you was out diggin', you ever happen to run across somethin' you wasn't lookin' for? Somethin' you didn't know what to make of? Somethin' funny-like? And you just let it lay there? You ever run across anythin' like that?" His eyes glinted.

Doug sidestepped the question. "I'm interested in everything that's been deposited here over the years. It's all relevant."

Swift mulled over his reply. "Tell you a story. You don't have to believe it if you don't want to, but it's the God's honest 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 already known to the hearer:

On the night of July 7, 1947, Swift 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," Swift recounted, "only one 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 scattered over a quarter mile. "I tried to tell 'em that was just the hull. Weren't enough to account for the whole ship. Way I figured, 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 where we was."

Doug appeared to be considering the possibility. "It would have left traces in the earth, wouldn't it?"

"Coulda changed it to somethin' that don't show traces. Like water, maybe."

Doug looked more interested than he had before. "Where do you think it went?"

"That's the big question, ain't it? Thought you might have an idea. I been lookin' for forty years. Got old lookin'. I'll show you what I've dug up so far. Maybe you can make somethin' of it."

Just then Max walked in. Doug waved him over to them. "Max, guess what? The sergeant has offered to show off his collection. You should see it too." Swift was visibly unhappy about this, having intended for his own reasons, whatever those might have been, to confer with Doug in private.

"Wise idea," Max whispered to Doug, as Swift went ahead of them to unbolt the museum door.

"Why is it a wise idea?" Doug whispered back.

"In case he's–an impostor. You're safer with me along."

"Careful, old man," Doug advised, only half-jokingly. "Or I might start thinking you're as dotty as he is."

The inner room was on the same scale as the others but looked even tinier. Narrow aisles divided the rows of display cases. Just like the science fair, Max thought. The walls were hung with photos and newspaper pages he was well acquainted with himself, from the collection he dusted twice a week. The glass cases housed a melange of disparate items: rocks with colorful strata, patches off Air Corps uniforms, rows of scrap metal. The centerpiece of the collection was 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, "give or take a 3 margin of error." The result resembled a gourd with its bottom half smashed flat.

"Spitting image," Max said, "no doubt about it." Doug suppressed a smile, and the two of them proceeded into the next aisle ahead of the sergeant. "You're right about him," Max whispered. "He's a crackpot."

Privately, he was still not certain. Swift's air of harmless lunacy might be just the impression Klima was trying to create. It did not jibe with his other known personae (excluding perhaps Maria's dog); he seemed too clever, as well as too proud, to waste time playing the fool. But they really knew very little about him–and Max had seen the handprint.

He continued down the aisle after Doug as they summarily reviewed each exhibit in turn. "What a waste of time," said Doug. "Glad he didn't charge–" On reaching the last case he stopped short, and his manner changed. "Max, come 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 like those on the cave map. He did not know whether Doug was familiar with it or them, but his excitement certainly seemed to equal Max's own. "Sergeant?" he called. "Where did you find this?"

Swift joined them in front of the case. "Out where some of you scientist boys was diggin' a few years ago. Doubt if this one's the real McCoy, though. Don't fit with the rest."

"Can you take us there?" Doug asked eagerly.

Swift was obviously reluctant. "Don't like to leave the place untended. 'specially with the girl here."

"You could close up for a half hour. Leave her to her nap. It wouldn't take any longer than that, would it?"

"That depends on what you find." He crooked a finger at Doug and led him a few feet away. "Do we have to take him?" he whispered.

Doug looked as if he were seriously considering the question. "If we leave him behind, he's apt to abduct the human female. Then it'd be our fault."

Swift scratched his stubbly chin. "Hadn't thought of that. You're right. He'd best come too."

Leaving the human female to her nap as Doug had suggested, the three trekked out to the dig site. But it offered little to view, either from the original period of use or from the date of excavation; if there were any artifacts remaining, they still lay buried there. "Yes, I know this place," said Doug. "Quemaduras. And the pit." He pointed toward the gaping hole in the middle. It had shelves jutting out at different depths, the lowest of them thirty feet below ground level. The project had evidently been discontinued before completion and left as it was. "The circle of truth," Doug Said, "was situated in the center, about nine feet down."

"Circle of truth?" Swift had not heard the phrase before.

"This was a holy place of the Mesaliko. A kind of shrine where they opened themselves to receive knowledge from the spirits of their ancestors–or their own imaginations, if you prefer. Nothing extraterrestrial about it." He sounded disappointed again.

But Max was not. Anticipation was swelling in him, and had been ever since their arrival. Doug was right: no alien artifacts were to be found there, but it did not matter; this was the place to which Max had been meant to come. Everything that had happened–the quarrel with Liz, her sprained ankle, Shellow's rescue, the sergeant's knowledge of this place–had conspired to bring him, in spite of himself, to where he had to be. Here he would receive the revelation that was at hand; this he knew, but without knowing how. Aware, yet unaware, he started toward the pit.

The Lodestone began to beep, but faintly. This recalled him, and he stepped back. The sound ceased. Though the site was not one of those on the map, it evidently contained a measure of the same energy, the Vallosan energy. If Max concentrated for a moment, he could feel its pull, but it was as weak as the signal the Stone had emitted. Perhaps there were many small repositories like this, scattered all over the Earth; they might be almost anywhere, and might be responsible for powering all kinds of minor phenomena without anyone's ever guessing.

"Did you hear a noise?" Doug asked him.

Max feigned innocence. "Noise?"

"Step forward again," The instruction proceeded from what sounded like a true scientist's curiosity. Max could not do it, could not disclose the presence of the Stone to the others--but what excuse could he make?

At that moment, by luck or some other agent, a welter of dust flew up around them. "Sandstorm!" Doug shouted. "We have to leave!" Suddenly he was seized with a fit of coughing and sneezing, doubtless produced by the allergy he had spoken of. He started off with Swift.

Max lingered where he was. "I'm staying!" he called back.

"Not–safe!" Doug managed to bark out, between coughs.

"I'll risk it."

Doug stared curiously at him, as if he was almost ready to stay himself, and for the moment his coughing was stilled, as if Max's intention had driven it from his mind. A moment later it kicked up again, and his companion drew him on. "Let him git blowed away, if he's that set on it," said the sergeant. "All this goo's prob'ly his doin' anyhow." After they had gone several yards, they looked back to see Max standing in the eye of the whirlwind, untouched, with a circle of calm all around him. "What'd I tell you?" said Swift.

Once the storm was behind them and Doug was able to resort to his pill case without its contents being blown away, he did so; shortly afterward his attack appeared to subside. And now the sky had begun to dim. "Is it my imagination," he aske, "or is it getting darker?"

"The eclipse!" Swift exclaimed. Until then the demands of his unexpected guests had put it from his mind. "Almanac said one was due."

For miles around–downtown, at the high school, at the reservation–people stood like store window mannequins as the untimely night fell. Liz–the only person of Max's acquaintance who could have told him precisely when it would happen–was almost the only one sleeping through it.

The sandstorm had passed. Max walked to the pit and, standing at its edge, turned to the black sun. What was the hour of darkness for others was for him the hour of seeing. He removed his jacket, shirt, and shoes. Barefooted and bare-chested, he climbed down into the excavation, to the heart of it, directly below the space where the holy circle had stood. There he sat cross-legged. And shut his eyes. And saw–

The same thing he had seen with his eyes open: darkness. But a lesser darkness, with the blue night sky spread out above him and the desert around him. A girl child was standing with him–naked, as he was: the first scene in the drama of his life on Earth. It was succeeded by a later one, and that one by a later; scene upon scene, each supplanting the last more quickly than the one before; dozens, scores, hundreds of them, the totality of his experience on this planet racing past him, and catapulting him finally into today. And over it all hung the dark sun, in which he saw Feddin's face–that is, the face he knew.

Then another face eclipsed it: Coach Clay's. The mouth opened and the tongue extended, with a pill resting on it. For some reason this troubled Max; it reminded him of someone else he had seen taking pills. But who? The face changed–to Doug Shellow's. That was who it had been: Klima had taken his shape; and he was with Liz now. But Max could not stop on her account, or on any account; the hour of seeing had arrived.

Liz, still lying in the back room, opened her eyes. For a few seconds she was not sure they were really open: the room had been dark before, but it was darker now. "Why is everything so–" Then Liz-the-scientist remembered. "The eclipse! And I'm missing it!" She sat up. "Doug? Max?" she called. She received no answer. "They must all be out watching it." She got to her feet: her ankle still pained her, but less than before. She limped to the dividing curtain and peered out.

The shop was dark as well as empty, except for a light from the museum. Its door was standing half open. Liz hobbled down to it and pushed it open the rest of the way. The light– "Oh, my God!" she cried. The light emanated from the floor; it was the luminescence of a silver handprint, which gave an eerie glow to the face it was tattooed on: Sergeant Swift's face. He was lying dead. And Doug was gone. Liz knew now who he was. But where was he? Outside, and alone with Max! Fear–for Max–coursed through her.

Max himself was remote from present cares. His vision–the light at the heart of the darkness–had begun. He saw himself, and all his selves–the Vallosans; saw them in all their dimensions, ranging over time and space. In their true form, they looked human-like but not human: greyer and more leathery. And their home world looked Earth-like but not like Earth; its sunlight was darker, its landscapes narrower. He remembered it from a life, or lives, past–but someone else's, not his. Its denizens, however, he knew; he knew them in himself. If his knowledge of them had needed and sought and found words, they might have been these:

Isolated. Alone. That's what I am–what we all are. We Vallosans. Alone all our lives. We have communities but no community. We have feelings, but they're never shared; we believe they remain purer in isolation. There are myths of love and friendship, but they're like the Earth myths of men flying: only children and dreamers believe them.

The one thing we have–almost the only thing–is war, always and forever. It's our occupation, our avocation–our life. Not war between races or countries, because there is only one race and only one country, and not for a flag or a creed, because we don't have those. It's for ourselves: for individual gain and glory. In that sense we're all mercenaries. Life for us is a battle; we've made it so. War doesn't scare us–why should it? If we're wounded we heal ourselves; if we feel pain we anesthetize ourselves; if we die it's over. We fight for the necessities–space to live, bread to eat–but no more. We believe it's wrong even to want more.

Yet we're not barbarians. We have art and literature–but not as things apart: everybody paints, everybody writes. Why did I never write a poem for Liz, I wonder? Was it my human side that held me back? We create–but we don't save what we create. We attach no importance to beauty for its own sake, only for the power it holds.

We have no religion–that is, most of us. But we wonder about things. When we're not fighting, we're experimenting: figuring out how things work and how to make them work better. That's a different kind of war, I guess. There are a few holy ones–mystics and their disciples–who reject the Vallosan way and live on their own, in the desolate places. They're left to themselves, and no one mourns them when they die. In fact, no one mourns any death, or celebrates any birth. Families are strictly biological. Children are assigned by lot. And raised to be– Isolated. Alone.

So he ended where he had begun. And in fact his perceptions had not been consecutive but concurrent, each one coexistent with all the others. "Who are you, Evans?" Wiley had asked him, and he had asked himself; now he knew.

"This is the other half of me," he said aloud. "Why I can't give myself to Liz the way she gives herself to me. Half of me wants it, the other can't comprehend it. And I have both halves in me. That will never change. I'll always be divided. Never whole."

"Never," a voice echoed.

Max opened his eyes. A dark figure was standing above him in the blackness, at the brink of the pit. "Klima!" said Max. "It was you who communicated that image to me at Swift's place. So I'd suspect him instead of you."

"One of many stratagems I've learned in my time here. To confound the humans."

"You've done more than that to them. You murdered Hubble's wife, Maria's father–"

"It wasn't murder. It was war. That's why we're here. Join the fight. Become who were you created to be."

"Then I'd become you. One of those is too many."

"In that case, give me the Lodestone."

"I need it. To take me where I'm going."

Shellow–that is, Klima–smiled. "It will do more than that." He searched mentally for it, on and near Max, and realized at once it must be elsewhere. Max's mind flashed immediately to where it was, and he could not hide the thought fast enough: Klima turned to the pile of clothes on the ground nearby. A beeping arose from the jacket. As he moved toward it the dirt under his feet changed to ice. He fell and began sliding toward the edge of the pit. Laughing at having been caught by such a basic trick, he spun around and propelled himself back toward the jacket. He reached out for it.

–but another hand grabbed it ahead of his: Liz was there. She had hurried to Max's aid–as fast as her ankle would allow her to–no matter whether he wanted it or not, no matter whether he deserved it or not. Klima turned on her. But before he could act a tower of earth rose between them and toppled over onto him. He dissolved it to a thick fog. Out of the fog sprang Max, helped along by the ground, which changed to bouncy rubber wherever he stepped. When he reached Liz's side he took up his jacket and unsheathed the Lodestone. The spiral bathed them both in its blue light and Max felt its power flowing into him as he faced Klima. "Hurt her," he said, "and I'll kill you where you stand." Hearing this, Liz was not as mad at him as she had been before.

Klima seemed to be debating whether to try him or not. "Coward," he said. "Human. You're not even part Vallosan." But this was his parting shot. He turned and fled, into a darkness more profound than the eclipse could account for.

Then it ended and day returned and it was almost as if the night had never been and Max and Liz were by themselves once more. He knelt beside her. "Will you let me heal you now?" he asked. She extended her ankle to him. He passed his hand over it. She flexed it and felt no pain. Without further word, he rose and started away. She jumped up and ran after him, without difficulty now. "Go home, Liz," he said; this time he was not angry.

"But I saved your life." Her voice was shaking, but she pressed on. "We saved each other. We're–comrades in arms."

Max smiled at the double meaning. "All right. You've earned your place on the journey. And we have little enough time left to us, anyway." So together they headed out across the plain.

That night in Roswell, two hours after having gone to bed, Diane rose in her sleep and walked through the house to the laundry room, where Isabel was waiting. "Sit," she commanded in a whisper, and Diane lowered herself into one of the pair of folding chairs Isabel had set up there. She sat with her back straight and her eyes still shut. Then her daughter spoke to her–not to her waking mind but to the part Isabel could enter, though Diane herself could not.

"I have to go somewhere," Isabel said. "But before I go I wanted us to take a dreamwalk together. So I could tell you–all that we should have told you before. You won't remember most of it–sorry, that's how things have to be for now–but I wanted to tell you, at least once–though there's not that much to tell. We don't know much, you see. Max has gone to find out more, and he's summoned me and Michael to find it out with him. We have to be there too, otherwise Max wouldn't have summoned us. I don't know how long it'll take or when we'll be back. But you don't have to worry about us. Remember that much. And maybe you can get Dad not to worry too. Tell him we've gone camping with Michael."

Isabel gazed at her mother with affection. "You've been wondering who I am–what I am. So have I, and so has Max. All we know right now is, we came here from a place a long way off, where they can do things that people here can't. Change things, and change ourselves–well, some of us can. See into other people, and see into their dreams. I know it's scary to think there are people who can do those things. But believe me, it's a lot scarier if you're the one who can do them. The thing you have to keep remembering"–she meant herself as much as her mother–"is that it's natural. As natural as it is for a bird to fly or a fish to swim." She smiled at the song that began playing, unbidden, inside her mother's head. "That's right. 'Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly.' See it as just another mystery of the universe–as wonderful and unexplainable as a sunset over Bitter Lake or snow on the peaks of the Guadalupe Mountains. Think of it like that and you won't be scared. Remember that too. And remember–don't ever forget–I love you."

This was inadequate to her feelings. But words always were. Maybe when she knew more she would be able to say more or say it better. "Okay," she concluded, "you can go back to bed now." Diane rose and walked off as if hypnotized. Returning to the hall, she did not see her husband, who, having woken to find her missing, had come looking for her. As she passed him, he watched her curiously. He had never known her to sleepwalk before.

Glancing in the direction she had come from, he saw Isabel in the laundry room, folding the chairs back; she did not see him. A look of suspicion crept over Philip's face–but he was not sure just what to suspect. He was still revolving it in his mind when he returned to bed. It was lucky for Isabel he did so because if he had continued watching he would surely have stopped her leaving. She went out by the back door and crossed to the park, where Michael was waiting. She could not very well take the Jeep, and he did not have a car. So the two of them left on foot, following Max's summons to the desert.

Out there, before night had fallen–and it would be true night this time–Max had sighted their birthplace (or what was for them the equivalent) rising from a line of rocky hills, the place from which they had wandered as children ten years before: the rocks pictured on the map. "That's where I'm going," he told Liz.

"Then this will be our last night together," she said. Max nodded. "Can we make it–something special?" Her look was openly inviting. Max extended a hand toward the earth. It rose up on three sides to encurtain and enroof them, and then it became a canopied tent made of red velvet. From the same earth Max fashioned two golden goblets and a fountain of Bordeaux, with which he filled the goblets until they overflowed. He gave one to Liz. Holding it in both her hands, she sipped long and deep from it. Her head, unaccustomed to wine, began dancing. "This is so, so great," she said. Then she wagged a finger at him. "But, y'know, it's not 'xactly what I had in mind."

Max smiled. "I know. But it's all I can give."

After two gobletfuls Liz was feeling not only airy but sleepy; she slid over to where Max was sitting and leaned her head on his shoulder. He placed a comforting arm around her, and together they sat staring out the front of the tent, toward his destination. Neither of them spoke for a while.

At last Liz said, "You're not with me, are you? I mean, really, really with me. Are you?"

"No," Max admitted, "but you're with me. For tonight at least." Liz held that thought. "I've sent for the others," Max added, bursting her bubble a little. "The gate wasn't meant for me alone. The three of us must pass through it together."

"How do you know that?"

Max smiled again. "Intuition."

Another silence followed. "Max, what'll happen to us? After tonight?"

"I told you, it will all be different."

"But we still might–we might–might–" Her voice trailed off with her thought.

He hushed her. "No sense trying to make out objects when it's pitch black. You humans spend too much time doing that."

"Of course. What else is there to do?"

"What I'm doing. Wait."

"Then I'll wait with you. Wait long as you want. You bet bet bet I will." She snuggled up against him and shut her eyes.

"There's that about humans," said Max. "They're loyal."

"And you're not?"

He pointed. "See that stone?"

"What about it?"

"It will be there tomorrow, and next year, and a century from now, unless someone moves it. But you can't say it's loyal. It's just–fixed."

For some reason then Liz began to cry. She tried to stop herself but could not. Max continued staring out toward the hills, pretending not to hear her, until the crying had stopped, to be replaced by an audible steady breathing. Then he began to recite, in a voice low enough not to wake her:

"Elizabeth Valerie Parker

child of Earth

the day I found you

I also found myself

or thought I had.

Before that day

I never understood

what happiness was

in life on this Earth.

Then I understood

or thought I had

because we were happy

and I thought it was

the same kind of happiness

for you as for me.

But yours is face to face

and mine is behind a veil

as if I could not absorb it

could not endure it

unless it was filtered

filtered of impurities

the matter of this Earth.

So it seems in the end

I am not like you.

I thought I was

felt I was

or felt I could be.

But the harder I tried

to be like you

to be of this Earth

to live on this Earth

the more my other side

rose up against it

my alienness

that is, me.

So I came here to find

that side of me

that alien side.

Maybe there never was

another side.

Maybe all the rest

was only you.

Soon I will know

soon I will go

and gaze into the mirror

waiting for me here

mirror of that self

mirror of Vallosa.

Then I will become

the thing I see

with no more pretense

no more Max Evans.

Dream of him softly

child of Earth

after he is gone

into that mirror.

Dream of who he was

or was in you

once upon a time."

And so he had written the poem he had never gotten around to before. But, being of Vallosan extraction, he did not trouble to commit it to paper or to memory, and as soon as it was spoken it was gone.

In the morning Liz woke to find herself alone. The canopy had disappeared, and so had he. "Max!" she called. The only answer she got was her own echo. She began running toward the hills, and when she could run no longer she walked. Eventually she saw him, but as a tiny figure far ahead. She called again, but she knew there was no way he could have heard her. At the foot of the hills she saw two other figures waiting, and knew who they must be. Soon the three of them joined hands and climbed up out of sight.

An hour later, against all of her expectations, she saw Max once more. Climbing the same slope the three had taken, she attained to a view of a higher slope above and a shallow valley below, where there stood exposed the ship's core, or much of it. The core was oval in shape, with a hull of its own, separate from the one that had been shed on landing, and this one was the same color as the surrounding dirt–if it was not the dirt itself Liz was looking at. Max and the others were standing opposite it. Liz did not know that until three quarters of an hour before it had been completely buried and they had spent that time vacuuming off (without benefit of a vacuum cleaner) the earth that had covered it .

She gazed at it in awe. She was actually seeing the craft that had brought them to Earth. Most people believed it had never existed, yet here it was. From where she was, she could see no way down to it. Yet the others had managed to get to it somehow.

And now Max pointed the Lodestone at it. A hatch appeared in its face and slid up with a faint humming sound. The three entered, Max last of all. "Max!" Liz called. He looked back at her–but with the same alien eyes as before: a stranger's eyes. Then the hatch slid down, shutting him off from her, perhaps forever.

Inside, the three looked around them. The core was bigger than it had appeared from without. Its inner walls were embellished with the symbols from the cave, writ large; these were not painted or inscribed, but seemed like part of the walls themselves. The visitors made a brief reconnaissance and discovered that the large central chamber they were in opened in one direction onto another, smaller chamber which contained two sets of pod-like berths, four to a set, and connected with tubes. This configuration was the same shape as the sixth symbol, the forgotten symbol, on the map: the one that was placed outside the V but near the picture of the rocks; it was a picture of the pods. Into the wall behind them were set eight transparent cylinders, with additional tubes running between them and the pods. And that was all the apparatus they saw. "There are no controls," said Michael. "How'd they work this thing?"

"The same way we opened the hatch," said Max. "By force of will. Or does that sound too crazy?"

Isabel gave him "that look." "Max, we're beings from another planet standing inside the ship that brought us. The ordinary rules about what's crazy don't apply."

Outside, Liz traced the rim of the valley, searching for the path down. At last she found it. A few minutes later she was standing where the others had stood, facing the core. She tried to get in–pounded at the hatch, kicked it, looked for something to pry it open with–but soon saw that her efforts were useless. She slumped down and began to cry; Max had said it was no place for her, and he had been right. She continued crying until she had cried herself dry, and then continued sitting, having no further reason to stay but no wish to go.

Presently she felt the ground beneath her tremble, and she heard the growl of engines. She climbed back up to the rim and looked over. On the plain below, a contingent of Army Jeeps was moving in, and with them a pair of earth movers. The Jeeps might have been the same ones she had seen at the Pohlman ranch, because Seaver was there too; she climbed out and strode among the soldiers, pointing here and there, and shouting orders. She pointed to the hill Liz was standing on, but for some unrelated purpose; she was not really looking at it and had not seen Liz, but Liz ducked down anyway. It took a minute for the significance of the earth movers to hit her. When it did, her fear–for Max again, not for herself–got the better of her common sense, and she started down the hill at a rush.

The three inside had no inkling of what was going on outside; the core was soundproof. Having finished their reconnaissance, they looked at one another uncertainly. "So, we're here to find out stuff," said Michael. "How?"

"Simple," said Isabel. "By opening ourselves to it."

The other two knew she was right. "Well?" said Max. "Are we ready?"

Isabel looked at Michael; after a moment he nodded. "We are now," she said. They all took a deep breath and joined hands. Isabel shut her eyes, and the others followed her example.

For several seconds nothing happened. Then a wild jumble of images, noises, and other sensations broke loose inside their heads; it was like playing a thousand VR games at once. They opened their eyes, but it made no difference: their true surroundings had vanished, lost in the chaos. They had to struggle to keep it from sweeping them away with it, into madness. "It's too much!" Michael shouted.

Isabel resisted best: she was used to psychic spaces that made no sense. "Focus!" she cried. "Pick out one thing and use it as a lens."

"The Lodestone!" Max felt blindly for it and held it out in front of them. "We can focus on this." They did so, with great effort. And they saw it–dimly at first, then clearly: saw it solid and immobile, a fixed center in the whirling disorder. They channeled their perceptions through it, and little by little the disorder sorted itself out. Presently they became able to understand some things, first one and then another. And they did it in communion: the understanding of one was the understanding of all. "I see," said Michael, in a tone of awe. "I mean, I'm starting to now."

The soldiers outside did not notice Liz until she reached the bottom. The nearest one, whose dog tag identified him as R. Aguilar, Corporal, moved to apprehend her–without need, since she was already approaching him. "What are you doing here?" Liz demanded.

"That would be my question." He nodded toward a "No Trespassing" sign like the one Liz had seen at the ranch.

She thought fast. "Rock collecting. For a geology project."

"Where are your rocks?"

Maybe she had not thought fast enough. "I didn't find any. Of the right varieties."

"Where's your car?"

"I don't drive."

"You hiked from Roswell?"

"I'm a wizard hiker."

Seaver stepped up to them. "What's this girl doing here?"

"That would be his question," Liz rejoined, rather tartly.

"Says she walked from Roswell," said Aguilar.

"Which, oddly enough, is true," Liz noted.

"Take her to the motor area," Seaver ordered. As the corporal started to lead her off, Seaver made a chopping gesture in the direction of the earth movers, and they roared to life.

"No! cried Liz. "You can't do that!" She started back, but Aguilar grabbed her by the shoulder and held her fast.

Her protest had stirred Seaver's interest. "Why not?" she said. "Are there others still up there?"

"No," said Liz; she could hardly have answered otherwise. She searched for another justification. "It'll destroy the ecosystem."

"A system that's of no use to humans should be destroyed." Liz was prepared to debate the point but never got the chance. "Get her out of here," Seaver said. Liz watched helplessly as the big machines lumbered into position and gouged out their first load of dirt.

The onslaught had an immediate and unexpected result. The entire hill began to vibrate, the vibration spread, and earth came pouring down in an avalanche, raising a dense fog of dust. The machine operators scrambled down off their perches and out of the way. When the dust cleared, Liz saw that the hill was only half as high as it had been, and flat at the top, though the whip-like rocks above it remained untouched. The core could not be seen. She would have been happy for that but for one fact, which she realized with a surge of alarm: the core was now completely buried, and those inside were buried with it.

They were still unaware of what was passing outside; they were absorbed in the vision they were undergoing. Now that they had learned how to read it, they discovered that they themselves had determined its form, through their unspoken questions; it was a compilation of the data required to provide the answers. But it also seemed like life unfolding before them–their life somehow, and yet not theirs.

...Vallosa, as it had been, they saw, and one of its many battlefields–probably a permanent one. But the combatants were fewer than they had been two decades earlier. Constant warfare dwindled a population, even allowing for the power to heal and to resurrect. Too busy fighting, the Vallosans had not been tending their planet as they should have, and so its resources had dwindled too...

On an airfield, a fleet of ships sat waiting–ships to carry the seed of Vallosa to a planet that was not yet dying. One of them was the ship whose core they were standing in now. In the enclosing section, the part that would later be jettisoned, sat a cot of a sort, but no other amenities, and no controls. Feddin entered, in uniform. He shut the hatch, reclined on the cot, and strapped himself in. A holster on the wall beside him held the Lodestone. He laid a hand on it and willed the ship to take off...

In mid-voyage, while he was asleep or in some form of suspended animation, the ship was jolted by some outside force (the envisioners were not told what, because the core itself did not know). Five of the wall cylinders were dislodged, their seals broke, and the contents trickled out. That was what had become of their shipmates...

The ship landed in a field. A fiery projectile shot out of its side into the earth and sped underground, its glow visible on the surface as a circle of blue light gliding across woodland and desert. From the hull that it had abandoned staggered its pilot, injured and shaken, but alive. Far off, under a range of rocky hills, the core came to rest, and there went dark...

Back in Roswell–the Roswell of the present–an olive-drab Jeep pulled up outside the Crashdown, and Liz climbed out. She surveyed the familiar facade, tinted purple in the dusk. Not long since, she had expected never to see it again, and she still felt divorced from the place, as if it were one she had known in her childhood and was now revisiting for the first time.

When she entered, her father dropped what he was doing (which he had had no very clear idea of to start with) and ran to her. She had not given him a thought until then. "Lizzie!" he said. "Are you all right? Where in Pete's sake have you been?" Liz became aware that he and the customers were staring at her. She was herself only half-conscious of her soiled clothes, and could not see how weary and bedraggled she looked.

"I ran away," she said. "With Max." She felt as if her voice were issuing from someone else.

"I knew that kid couldn't be trusted! Glad you came to your senses, though."

"I didn't. He sent me away. Turns out we're–from different worlds." Her father did not know what to make of this. Liz saw past him to the girl working the tables, and realized that her face was familiar too. "Maria?" She was not supposed to be there, was she? Or had that all been settled? Liz could not quite remember now. "Maria's back?"

"The girl I hired quit. So I re-hired your friend." Maria was regarding Liz with what might have been concern or mere curiosity, but upon Liz's volunteering a smile, she quickly turned back to her customers. Liz felt a slight pang of regret, like the echo of a long-ago disappointment. "I want to know exactly where you've been," her father was saying, "and what that boy did to you."

"Dad, he didn't do anything–at least, none of the things you're thinking. I would have been back sooner, only I sprained my ankle." Jeff's eyes went to it automatically. "It's fine now," Liz said.

"Quick recovery," Jeff observed.

"Has Mom gone?"

"No, she insisted on sticking around until we knew you were safe."

Now Liz remembered it all. She had slipped back into her old place as if she had never left it. "I messed up your plans again, didn't I?"

"Lizzie–"

"It doesn't matter. Honestly, it doesn't. Right now I just want to get some sleep, okay?"

Jeff had no choice but to acquiesce. "Okay. But tomorrow we talk things out."

"Sure, tomorrow. 'night." She started toward the back.

"'night, pretty pumpkin peachy-pie!" This effusion surprised them both. Liz turned completely around to face him. "Wow," said Jeff, looking sheepish. "Haven't called you that in a long time."

Liz stared at him reproachfully. "You're right, Dad. We really do need to talk."

Back in her room–which was also as if she had never left it–she resisted the temptation to fall onto the Laura Ashley covers and went instead to the window, as if she could see the desert from there, and prayed to the machine that had swallowed him and the others. "When you're done with him, please send him back." She could scarcely finish. "As Max, not a stranger." She clung to that hope, even as she gave herself up to the inducements of Laura Ashley, while far away, under the New Mexico desert, the vision of the ship-borns continued into the night.

...Forty years passed. The core remained buried, and asleep...

Then it woke. A crowd was gathered above to celebrate the night of its coming; their accumulated energy penetrated to it, saturated it, and brought it to humming life. It knew what it needed; it was programmed to know. Its energy called to one of those from above: a fifteen-year-old named Kathleen.

She probably did not know, probably thought she was going off exploring on her own. At the time, she had a curiosity about everything in the universe, much like Liz Parker's now (and later as a teacher she would recognize the kinship). The thing drew her up into the rocks and then down toward itself, eking out a passage in the earth for her to take. Kathleen ventured in, then ventured deeper, and yet deeper. Too late, she realized she had gone too far; the tunnel had closed behind her. The thing drew her inside it, through its open maw. And then...

What came immediately after was missing from the record. The next thing the vision showed was Kathleen lying in a faint under the rocks. When she recovered consciousness, those were the first things she saw. But exactly what she had been subjected to within remained a mystery. Perhaps when the core had blocked her memory of that, it had blocked its own also. Or perhaps it was programmed to keep the technical details to itself. But they knew what had happened, and why, even if they did not know how. Blood, or some other source of genetic material, had been transferred from her to the cylinders, to mingle with the Vallosan material already contained there. The synthesis would create hybrid beings–themselves...

And now they saw their own genesis. The material from the cylinders ran into the pods. Bodies formed there and grew, their physiological processes slowed almost to stasis. And so they lay for twenty-six months...

Then the boy who was not yet named Max had a dream. His consciousness was propelled forth by the same energy that had conveyed him to this unknown world. He dreamed of a girl his age, with long black hair. She had a name, but he did not yet know it. In her bedroom, miles away, she shared the dream with him. The two of them floated together in a cosmos of stars and shooting stars and rainbow clouds of gas. They regarded each other with the fascination of two different species, unlike but not unfriendly.

"My name is Liz," the girl said. "What's yours?" The boy stared at her without understanding. "I live back there, in Roswell." She began to float toward him. He floated an equal distance away. "What's the matter? Can't you get close to anybody?" And then she knew. "You're from up there! Mommy says nobody lives up there. I knew she was wrong." The boy floated away farther. "Come back!" He faded to nothing. "Come back," she said wistfully. "some day. Please?"

The boy sat up in his pod; the force of his dream had woken him. Its mental energy had woken the other two as well. Innocent of this world, or of any, they opened their eyes to life...

Max–present-day Max–broke out of his vision with the same force he had all those years earlier. And again he brought the others out with him. Neither complained; they knew what they had sought to know, and were not then capable of absorbing more. They took long, deep breaths as they recovered from the exertion. "Visions take a lot out of you," Max observed.

One thought stood out in Isabel's mind. "We are human."

"Half human," Max corrected. "Vallosans made human. Destined to be always at odds with ourselves, and everyone else."

"And Topolsky's our..." For some reason Michael found himself unable to finish.

"As far as anyone is," Isabel said carefully

"So that's what it was," said Michael. "We kinda messed up her life, you know?"

"I didn't know," said Max. "How do you?"

"Things she told me. She's still not sure what's real and what isn't." Michael shook his head. "We've messed up a lot of people just being here."

"Now we've seen the omega factor," said Isabel. "Our planet's ending."

"And the alpha," said Max. "Our own beginning."

"And we know more than we saw." It was Michael who put it into those words, but they were all aware of it; the vision had penetrated to more than their senses. "We know what they were thinking and feeling. What they had in mind when they sent us here."

"We were sent to take over," said Max. "Not by waging war, as Klima wants, but by invading the human bloodline, as Grunewald feared. But not to kill humans–to mutate them."

"Turn them into Vallosans," said Michael.

"Exactly. Except it won't work, maybe because we're part human already. Liz's blood is the proof of that."

"Good," said Isabel. "It was a stupid idea anyway."

Michael was walking along the wall, running his eyes over the symbols. "I can read these now. Can you?" He laughed. "Yeah, of course you can." He stopped at the spiral. "But not this one. And it's the most important of all." He tried, but gave up. "No information."

"I think you have to–" But Isabel never got to finish, for just then the light that radiated from within the walls began flickering. "Bet this thing used up all its juice on us," said Michael.

"Sooner or later the ambient energy will regenerate it," said Max. "Until then..." He pointed the Stone at the hatch. "No use."

"Leave it to me," Michael said confidently. He focused on the hatch and melted it through–only to bring the earth that lay on top pouring in.

"Well, I hope you're satisfied," said Isabel. "This is another fine–"

"We'll turn the dirt into hard rock," said Max, thinking more practically, "and bore a tunnel through to the surface."

They turned toward it as one.

A few minutes later they climbed out into a new day, not having realized until now that the old one was gone. Also, the hill had changed shape. "What the hell happened here?" Michael asked.

As if in answer, a pair of heavy-duty engines started up below, and the ground beneath them shook. They looked over the rim (which was lower than it had been before) and saw the earth movers in motion; the onslaught had resumed. Even as they saw, they were seen; one of the operators pointed up at them, with a shout, and they dropped down again. Max thought fast. "We'll have to destroy the ship," he said.

Michael protested. "But there's more information in it. A lot of things we don't know."

"That's why we have to destroy it. If the Army get their hands on it–"

"Michael!" Isabel was looking down again. "Klima has to take pills, you said." She pointed to Corporal Aguilar, who was standing alone at the foot of the hill and doing just that.

"A lot of people take pills," Max pointed out.

"I got business with this one," said Michael. He plunged his hands into the earth, worked it like clay, and lifted out a basketball.

Isabel clutched at his sleeve. "But how do you know it's him?"

Michael shrugged. "I don't." It appeared that the knowledge he had gained at Feddin's feet had not reformed him entirely. He rose to standing and hurled the ball down at Aguilar (or whoever it was) with superhuman force; more than his arm by itself was capable of. Perhaps he had known more than he had pretended to–perhaps some instinct had told him–for no sooner had the corporal spotted the approaching missile than it exploded. "It's him, all right," said Michael. "He's with the military."

"I don't think they know it, though," said Max.

"That's his advantage," said Isabel. "He can become anyone he likes, any time he likes. If he's out to make war, he can make himself the head of the Army–of both armies. And if he gets hold of this thing–"

Hearing this, Michael understood at last. Klima could destroy the planet; he probably would not want to do that, but he might choose to wipe out the human race. Which would include Maria–but why was Michael thinking of her now?

"You're right," he said to Max, "it has to go. But are we powerful enough to do it?"

"Together–with the energy here at our disposal–maybe. We'll try melting it down."

They joined hands and concentrated. At first the core resisted. Then it changed into a tangle of energy that throbbed and whirled and sparkled. "Are we doing that?" asked Michael.

"It's doing it," Max answered. In response to their desire, re-fueled by the same energy they had invoked, it was finishing the job for them. "God, Max," said Isabel.

Then, unexpectedly, the tangle leapt out at them, and with such force that it blew Michael and Isabel backwards and knocked Max to the ground before dispersing into the air. And as Max fell, the Lodestone slipped–or was drawn–out of his pocket into the hole the core had left, and whose sides now collapsed, filling it with earth and swallowing up the Stone. Max grabbed after it, but too late.

Michael glanced below. Some of the soldiers were starting up the hill. "Time we were out of here," he said.

"The Stone!" Max shouted. "We have to get it back!" But there was no way to do so that he knew of, especially with their enemies closing on them.

"It's gone, Max," said Isabel. "Accept it."

Max would not do that; he could not. Yet he had to. And so, after a moment so long that it seemed to Isabel almost endless, he turned away from the dirt pile in which the Stone might lie buried forever, and the three of them fled over the hill, just ahead of the Army's arrival.

Late that night, as Liz lay in bed, he came in and woke her. His body was still out in the desert; it was his mind that burst into hers, causing her to clutch at her breast and gasp. But that was not out of fear: it was bliss having him inside her. Miles away, he gasped too, and sat up with a lurch, waking his sister, who was lying close by him in the tiny camp that the three of them had made. Michael was still asleep. "What is it, Max?" whispered Isabel. "What's wrong?"

"I made contact with Liz just now," he said. "Didn't mean to, it just happened."

"And she broke it off?"

"No." There was a trace of regret in his voice, but none of doubt, for he had no doubt any longer. To be always at odds with everybody: that was the destiny he had sought, and found. "She didn't break it off," he said. "I did."

And Liz, lying in the aftermath of his precipitate withdrawal, was left still tingling, still steeped in the sense of him, and wanting it never to leave her. "I won't sleep," she promised, regardless of whether he could hear or not, "until you're resting here with me. Here in Roswell–home."

Episode 1.21X

Homecoming Day

"We don't have to be at odds with anybody," said Isabel.

The three who were from Vallosa, but of Earth, had just walked in from the desert, soaked in the vivid oranges and violets of a New Mexico sunset, and now, near its end, they paused at the border of the town they had set out from, which lay placidly awaiting their return. It had not changed, as far as they could see. But they had. Max did not at first recognize the statement his sister was contradicting: the words that he had uttered while they were inside the core of the ship that had brought them to Earth. "Sorry," he said, "what?"

"You said we were destined to be at odds with everybody," said Isabel, "including ourselves. Because we're half and half–half human, half Vallosan. But why is that a given? Why can't we have the best of both worlds? When we became human we lost the power to change shape, and probably other powers too. But we gained something more precious–the power to choose."

Michael stared toward their destination. "And we're choosing Roswell?"

"Looking that way," said Max.

"But it's such a crappy little town!"

"But it's our home," said Isabel.

"Our home," Max echoed ruefully. "God help us."

That night Alex found himself wandering in what almost anyone would have sworn was the desert they had just come from. Its counterfeit was beyond the capacity of his dreaming mind to create unaided, and when he turned he knew whom he would see.

"I'm back," she announced brightly.

"Back, are you?" said Alex. "Well, well. What do you know? That–that's a good thing."

The response was not all Isabel had hoped for. "I stopped by earlier, but you were busy. You didn't even look at me."

"Yeah, I've had a lot to do." Alex paused. "You know, in my dreams." He searched the landscape for something to busy himself with at that moment. But deserts were short of busy work.

Isabel strove to keep the conversation alight on her own. "Liz is fine. Did you know that?" Alex had not. "Not poisoned, after all. So it looks like it's okay. For us, I mean. To be together." Feeling more awkward than she was used to, she assumed the queenly form that had so awed him last time, trusting that it would work again. "Come and worship at my altar, puny human," she bade him. She meant it humorously (for the most part), but if Alex chose to take it seriously that would have been all right with her too.

Alex was tempted despite himself. "Yeah, you know, that's all fine, and I'd like to stick around. But I just remembered something important I gotta check on." He made a grimace, in place of a smile. "Waking up now." He opened his eyes; sure enough, he was back in bed. "Damn," he said.

In the quiet night outside, a black Cadillac convertible was cruising slowly up Main Street, pulling a Winnebago trailer behind. The front seat of the car was occupied by a man and a woman in black suits. The man's eye fell on a building emblazoned with the letters "UFO" shining in green and yellow. The building was closed now. He pulled to the curb and went to the glass doors to peer in. He could make out nothing inside, and the windows were no help, since they had been painted over. The woman got out after him, lifted a black satchel out of the back seat, and unlatched it to reveal a sealing tape dispenser and a stack of handbills. The man took one and taped it to the nearest lamppost. Then the two of them returned to the car and continued up the street, stopping once or twice in every block to repeat the procedure.

On Saturday morning Liz, who was working the early shift at the Crashdown, happened to spy the notice from across the street and sneaked away from her post long enough to check it out. "Beware!" it warned. "Aliens Among Us! Learn the Truth!" The time it gave was 8:00, that evening and the evening after; the location was the fairground.

Kyle happened along while she was reading. "What's this?" he asked.

"Another alien scam."

He looked it over. "Says it's free."

"Trust me, Kyle, they're selling something."

One line of the notice arrested Kyle's attention. "Oh, no," he said.

"Kyle, what is it?"

"Oh, no," he repeated, "no, no." He stepped up to the lamppost, pulled the notice down, and hurried off to find his father.

Jim was not at the station, or on patrol duty; the desk sergeant told Kyle he had no idea where his dad was. But Kyle did. His grandfather was now confined to bed, and the nurse at the rest home said he had not much time left; Junior's visits were growing shorter all the time–today's had lasted only ten minutes–but he kept them up faithfully, with a few lapses.

"Guess I'll be taking off now, Pop," he said as he got up from the chair. Senior did not reply, and had never acknowledged his presence there. "Okay, then, I'll see you tomorrow–or, I don't know, the day after, maybe."

Kyle was waiting in the parking lot at the wheel of the Mustang, on which he would shortly be able to claim squatter's rights. "Yeah, I figured you'd be here," he said.

"Don't suppose you'd care to go in and pay your respects to your granddad?"

"Why, what difference would it make? He's off in the twilight zone, anyway. Not to sound callous about it."

"No, perish the thought." Jim realized he was holding his hat, which he had removed inside. He now returned it to his head. "So what brings you here if it isn't family?"

"Oh, it is," said Kyle. "I came to show you this. In case you haven't seen it." He thrust the notice at him, and spilled the news it contained before his father had had a chance to discover it for himself. "Mom's back."

"Back here? Since when?" Jim read unhappily, and let drop a word he would have rebuked his son for using.

"Ain't life just a kick in the ass?" Kyle observed.

The fairground was vacant at that time of year, yet with all its acreage to choose from, the couple had parked their convertible and trailer by the north gates. The sheriff arrived to find them putting up a large tent of the type used for revival meetings. He sat in his vehicle watching them. He could not make much of the man, except to note with some satisfaction that he was a half foot shorter than himself, and balding.

The woman, at first glimpse, he saw with fresh eyes, and started to think he must have been crazy to let her go; here was someone who was clearly her own woman, but also a man's woman. Then he realized this new impression was the same as his first impression, all those years before–which had lasted only as long as it had taken him to get to know her. He had to admit that had been a while: about Kyle's age at the time.

She noticed him watching her, and her eye lingered on him for a few seconds, with a look he remembered all too well. Seeing it again, he was not sure he wanted to talk to her at all, but to leave then would have looked cowardly. He stepped out of the Rover, approached to within a few yards of her, and stopped. "Michele." He spoke, and looked, like a man discharging an unpleasant but necessary duty.

"Jim." The man with her was pounding in a tent peg a few yards away. When he finished, she summoned him by a glance, and he walked over, still carrying the mallet. "This is my husband," said Michele, "Len Trivitt. Len, my ex­husband, Jim Valenti."

"County sheriff. Yes, I've heard about you." Len made it sound as if what he had heard was not entirely creditable.

"Have you? I hadn't heard about you. What are you doing in Roswell?"

"As you see." Len pointed to the notice in Valenti's hand.

Valenti crumpled it. "I saw. What are you doing in Roswell?"

"Our permit is in order. I can show it to you if necessary."

"Believe a copy crossed my desk. Didn't pay it much attention, to tell you the truth."

"You should. Pay attention. It's the duty of every citizen, especially those in law enforcement, to safeguard their homeland against–" He seemed to be seeking the proper word. "–outsiders."

"Ah. A patriot." Valenti was more patriotic than most, but he had a feeling this one was not, except in the service of some other, lesser cause.

"Come tonight. It'll open your eyes."

"My vision's working fine, thanks all the same." Len gave him a baleful glare. Then he returned to setting up.

Jim continued watching Michele. "What?" she asked finally.

"Nothing you'd care to ask me?"

"I could ask how you've been. But what would be the point?"

"Thought you might ask how Kyle's been. Most moms would. But there you go." This took her a little aback, and she did not attempt no answer. "One thing's settled anyhow," Jim went on. "Kyle thought you left us because you were sick of me harping on aliens all the time. He would think that, of course, because that's what you told him. He knows better now. We both do." He held up the crumpled notice. "It wasn't the aliens. So tell me, Mich, what the hell was it?"

"You," she said flatly. "Since you insist on knowing. Just you." Jim felt the sting of it, as she had intended; she watched long enough to make sure, and then went to assist her husband. Jim returned slowly to the Rover, trying to shake the last part of the conversation from his mind. As he drove out the gates, she glanced after him; it would have given him a little of his own back to see that she looked almost as unhappy as he did.

Alex too was up early, and getting ready to leave for town. He had stopped at the hall mirror to adjust his bow tie when his father staggered past in his nightshirt, heading for the kitchen. "Why you all dressed up on a Saturday?" he asked.

Alex followed him, picking up his portfolio on the way, and watched from the door as Don took down the Cheerios box and began searching the cupboards for the right-sized bowl. "My meeting. I told you."

"Ye-es. Now I remember."

"You were going to stop by later. Like we discussed."

"As we discussed."

"Dad, this could be a big deal for me, if I can swing it. Maybe I don't have a band any more, but I can hire bands."

"Yeah, that's great, Alex." Don was pouring out the little "o"s a few at a time, to insure they did not stack up higher than the rim of the bowl. "Congratulations."

"I haven't done it yet!" He watched as his father rolled the cereal bag shut–five turns exactly–and returned the tab on the box into its slot. "Then I can expect you around 10:30?" he asked. Don was thinking he might also want a banana. "Dad?"

"Huh? Sure, Alex, sure." No, no banana, he decided. He turned away to open the refrigerator.

"To inspect the premises." Alex took two or three steps closer to him. "Dad, 10:30, okay?"

Don turned with a look of exasperation on his face and a milk carton in his hand. "I'm not simple-minded, Alex! If I said I'd be there, I'll be there."

"'If.' Fine." Alex was still far from confident of that guarantee. But he had to get going. "I'll see you then," he said. His father did not hear him. He was calculating the proper level for his milk.

Leaving him the Volvo, Alex set out on his red bicycle for the building he had had his eye on for the past month. It was situated two blocks from the cafe and had two floors of offices, but the only part Alex cared about was in the basement.

He entered by the glass door that fronted the sidewalk and took the stairs down, two at a time. On reaching bottom he nearly collided with the man he had come to see. "Mr. Fulweider? So sorry. Alex Whitman." He stuck out his hand–a little too brashly, he feared.

Fulweider seized it even more brashly, and pumped it as if it were labeled "Shake well before use." "Call me Cy, kid," he said. "You're on time. That's good. I like a kid that's on time. Shows he's on the ball. Basement room's back here. That was what you wanted to see, wasn't it?" He beckoned him down the narrow hall to a barn-like storeroom, which looked pretty much the way Alex had remembered it.

"So, kid," said Cy, "what's the concept? In words an old fart like me can understand."

"A club. For teens mostly. Music, dancing, drinks." He quickly clarified the last word. "Non-alcoholic."

"Good, good. One less license to worry about. And easier on the insurance. Believe me, the insurance can kill you."

"I visualize it as a showcase for emerging bands. Music of the future. Which of course ties in with the theme."

"Which is?" Alex looked blank. "The theme, kid, the theme! Lay it on me."

"Oh, right. Here." Alex unzipped his portfolio and took out a drawing. The room it pictured resembled a snack bar in Walt Disney's Tomorrowland circa 1955. "I call it the Orbit Lounge. We'd have ambient space music between the acts. Dance floor here, stage there, bar over there. What do you think?"

Cy looked out over the room, squinting, as if that helped him see better. "Nah, nah, nah," he declared. "Never work."

"Huh? Oh." Alex was disappointed to have his idea rejected so fast. But he figured he knew a lot less than Cy about these things. "Okay," he said, "well, thanks for your time." He returned the drawing to the portfolio. "I'll just–"

Cy was moving around the floor, paying him no attention. "Stage'll have to go here, by the heavy-duty outlets. Bar on this side next to the pipes. You got yourself a plan there, kid."

Alex brightened. "You really think so?"

This made Cy doubtful for a moment. "Why, don't you?"

"Sure!" Alex was quick to affirm. "Absolutely! I just thought... And you'd be willing to put up the capital?"

"Show me the numbers and we'll talk."

"Got 'em right here." Alex opened the portfolio again.

Cy clapped him on the back. "I like doing business with you, kid. You come prepared."

A voice called down from the entrance. "Alex?"

Will wonders never cease? he thought. His father had actually shown up, and early. "Down here!" he called back. "It's my dad," he told Cy. "He's a building inspector with the city. I asked him to stop by and give the place the once-over, just informally, to see if there are any issues we should be aware of. Hope you don't mind me jumping the gun. I figured it'd save time if we did reach an agreement."

"That's the way, kid. Think positive. And always stay two jumps ahead."

Don appeared at the doors. "Ha, found you. It's like a maze down here."

"Dad, this is Cy Fulweider. Cy, my dad."

"Don Whitman."

The two shook. "Don, you got yourself one sharp kid here."

Alex felt embarrassed but pleased. "Do I?" said Don; this diluted Alex's pleasure a little. Without further preliminaries his father began nosing around, peering through doors and into corners. "What was the plan again?" he asked. "Some kind of rec center, was it?"

"A club, Dad. With live music."

"Ha, neighbors'll love that." Don shook his head. "Place shouldn't present any major problems. It was a dance club years back." He looked at Cy. "Maybe you remember it?"

"Before my time, Don." He must mean his time in Roswell, thought Alex. He's sixty if he's a day.

"So, Alex," said Don, "what's the gag? You planning to turn this into a mod hipsters' pad?"

Whenever he tried to speak the lingo (which, happily, was not often), Alex could barely understand him. "Don't know about the hipsters," he said. "But here's the plan." He took out the drawing again.

"Didn't know you could draw." Don lifted his glasses to examine it more closely.

"I can't," Alex freely admitted. "I sketched out what I wanted, and Markos..." He saw that his father's face had grown flushed; that meant he was upset at something. "Dad, what is it?"

Don handed the drawing back. "I don't think this is such a good idea, Alex."

"Why not?"

"Looks like you're treating the whole alien business as a joke. Some people might not appreciate that."

"What people?"

Cy barged in before he could answer. "Now, now, Don, we can modify the concept. Always room for a little improvement. The key thing–" He laid a hand on his back and started to guide him out; to Alex he mouthed the words "Wait here." "–is to piggyback on the town's existing image," he went on. "Roswell, flying saucers, spacemen, famous monsters, screen thrills. Snare ourselves some free publicity–which as an intelligent individual I'm sure you'll appreciate. Besides, Don, an orbit lounge isn't the same as an invasion of saucer men, hah? A lounge is a place to relax." The two of them exited into the hall.

"'Way to go, Alex,'" muttered Alex. "'Gee, thanks, Dad.' That'll be the day." Then he brightened. "But I got the deal!" He felt like telling someone, anyone–that is, anyone other than his father.

Two blocks down, Kyle was sitting by himself, nibbling his doughnut thoughtfully (for him). "Always wanted a sister," he said.

Maria was behind the counter, refilling a napkin dispenser. "Why, so you could steal her toys?"

"Don't worry, I won't steal Michael."

"Funny. Not."

"This could be worse, you know."

"We could be in jail?"

"We could be living with my mom." That reminded him. "And your mom better not do the same number on my dad that she did."

"Hey, if anyone's gonna step on anyone in this relationship, it's Mr. Law and Order."

"He's not like that." Then Kyle thought about it a moment. "Okay, he is. But it sounds like your mom could use some stepping on. I hear she's a real loose cannon."

"Your dad said that?"

"I've heard it around."

"From who? Who's been insulting my mother?" Maria held up the coffeepot menacingly.

"Whoa!" Kyle sprang from his seat. "Not wise to assault the son of Mr. Law and Order. Not to mention your new stepbrother. I'm outa here." He made for the doors.

"You didn't pay for your doughnut!"

He waved airily. "Put it on my dad's tab."

"He doesn't have a tab." But Kyle was out of hearing, or pretending to be. "And tries to weasel out of paying," Maria concluded, speaking to herself, "just like his spawn."

In heading out he nearly bumped into Alex heading in. "You're dressed up," Kyle remarked.

"Yes, I am, Kyle. Astute of you to notice. And you want to know why?"

Kyle thought. "Nah, I don't really care." He went on.

Alex continued to the counter. "Hey, Maria."

"You're dressed up," she said.

"Again, yes. And you want to–?" A customer called her away before he could finish.

Liz passed by on her way to the kitchen. "Liz! Sweetheart!" A little of Cy had rubbed off on Alex without his knowing it. Liz nodded at him coolly, remembering their last conversation. "Ask me why I'm dressed up. Go ahead, ask."

"I can't now. I have orders waiting." This being his third strike, Whitman left the field.

Outside, he found the Trivitts putting up more copies of their self-advertisement in the spots they had missed earlier. Alex came up behind Michele and perused it over her shoulder. "Nice layout you got there. With the spacecraft hovering and everything."

"The woman who does them for us is very good." She vouchsafed Alex a knowing smile. "I'm Michele Trivitt." Just then Len came up and took more copies out of the satchel slung over her shoulder. "This is my husband Len."

"Alex Whitman." He thrust out his hand. "Manager of the Orbit Lounge. You may not have heard of it yet. Interestingly, it too has an alien theme."

Len pointed to the UFO above the cafe. "Like that?" Then to the "UFO" sign on the other side. "Or that?"

"No, everyone's been there, done those. I like to see us as putting a twenty-first-century spin on the conventional alien motif while optimizing the potential of its subliminal retro associations." What the hell am I saying? he asked himself.

"And you believe these efforts will save you?" Len asked.

"Uh, sorry?"

"Once they take over, you think they'll cherish a soft spot for the quislings who paved their way?"

"Still not with you there. Could be your use of the term 'quisling'–"

"Then you're one of the innocents. Lambs to the slaughter. Never suspecting that your Crashdown, your UFO Center, your Planet Club–"

"Orbit Lounge, actually."

"–are so much propaganda, designed to embed a false conception of extra-terrestrials as cute and harmless–'Phone home, phone home'–when all the while they're moving into position to strike." Alex could not help laughing at this. "You laugh," said Len. He pressed a notice into Alex's hand. "Come tonight and learn the truth. We'll see if you're still laughing then." And he moved to the next block to continue spreading the word.

"Commitment," Alex said, watching him go. "He's got commitment. That's a good thing." He considered. "Focus is a little narrow, though."

Michele had moved away too. Having seen that the notice they had posted outside the UFO Center was missing, she had gone across to replace it. Farther up the block, she spied Valenti's Rover; Amy was stepping out of it. As Jim swung around and headed the other way, she started into the building. Her way lay past Michele, who stepped out to speak to her. "Excuse me, you must be Jim's new friend. I'm right, aren't I?"

Amy caught the patronizing air; she had heard it often enough before. "Fiancé, in point of fact. And you are?"

"The ex-wife."

"Oh!" This unsettled Amy a little. "Jim didn't mention you were in town."

Michele let that pass. "We're speaking at the fairground tonight. You should come." She handed her one of the notices. "You work at the museum?"

"No, just scouting out ideas. I'm self-employed." She put a slight emphasis on the "self." Then she pulled out a key ring linked to a figurine of the Roswell alien (the one Isabel liked to call "Max") and dangled it in front of Michele's nose. "This is what I do."

The other woman cast a pitying look on her. "So he's sucked you in too, has he?"

"Has he?"

"Into his alien obsession. Don't kid yourself. Wife or no, you'll always play second fiddle to that." She indicated the figurine.

"I see." Amy skimmed the notice. "And what chair are you occupying now?"

Point for her side, Michele had to concede. "I know, it looks like I just bounced from one UFO nut to another. But this is different. It's an assignment."

"Is it?" Beneath Amy's pursuit of fugitive ideas a native shrewdness had always thrived, and it asserted itself now. "Who does the assigning?"

Michele's guard rose again. "Come listen tonight. You may be motivated to change lifestyles yourself."

Amy did not show up that evening (fat chance, as her daughter might have said), but plenty of other people did: the Trivitts commanded a full house and then some. Don Whitman's UFO group took up the entire front row. Liz, who was there checking out the event on Max's behalf, ran into Pam Troy, who also was alone, to Liz's great surprise. "Kyle's not with you?" she asked.

"He wouldn't come. The jerk! And he knew I wanted to see this."

"Well, she is his mom. It's tough for him."

"Like I don't have problems? The two of us are so over. We didn't have much in common anyway. Except the–" She stopped, putting her hand to her mouth, and turned on Liz a pair of eyes brim-full of sympathy. "Oh, I'm sorry. You haven't yet, have you?" She squeezed Liz's hand. "You'll know too, dear. One day." Now I remember why I hate her, thought Liz.

The lights that were strung along the tent frame blinked off and on. Excusing herself, Pam went to choose a seat, and Liz did the same. When all the spectators had done so, or resigned themselves to standing, Michele stepped up to the mike. "Good evening to you all," she said. "I'm Michele Trivitt." Outside, huge loudspeakers broadcast her voice throughout town. Her ex-husband heard it from his office window and paused in his work to listen. "Some of you knew me as Michele Valenti," she went on. "To you, as well as those of you I haven't met yet, welcome. And thanks for coming. I recognize there are other places you could have elected to spend your Saturday night–and none of them are in Roswell." The crowd laughed. "I guarantee you won't regret electing to spend it here."

At that point the ship-borns entered at the rear of the tent, where there was standing room only. Liz had been watching hopefully for them, and when she saw Max her heart jumped. She would have gone to him immediately but would have had to force a path through the crowd, and called too much attention to herself and him. Near him she saw Ms. Topolsky, looking (for want of a better word) lost; her appearance worried Liz a little.

"Though most of you will be unaware of it," the speaker continued, drawing Liz's focus to the front again, "a threat hangs over our nation–over our world. You won't see it reported in the newspapers, in magazines, or on tv, but it grows more imminent every day. It's impossible to predict when the blow will fall–maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe next year. But it will fall–unless the necessary measures are taken immediately. Len will spell out for you what those will entail. He's been a long time uncovering the facts, he's visited a lot of places, and spoken to a lot of people. You're here want to know the truth, and he's here to tell you. Ladies and gentlemen, my husband, Len Trivitt."

Len took over the mike amid scattered applause. "Do you know who you are? Do you?" His listeners were puzzled. "I do. I hope you do. You know when you were born, where you were grew up, where you went to school, who you dated, and married"–he smiled at Michele–"where you work, what you work at–all this you know." He paused for effect. "But what about the man next to you? How much do you know about him? If you grew up with him, or you work with him, you know who he is, right? Am I right?" He paused again. "Wrong. He may be just who you think he is–or he may not be. He may look the same, act the same–but inside he's not the same. He's a fake–a replacement put here to fool you. And there are a lot of them, these fakes. You can't tell them from the real thing. The woman in front of you at the checkstand. The couple next door. The teenager next to you on the road. Me."

His audience made uneasy shuffling noises. "Sounds crazy, right? Am I right?" No one answered. "Let me tell you something. The government has a list, with hundreds of names on it–and that's only those that are known. Why are they here? Who put them here? What's their game? Ultimately, to destroy us." He waved his hands. "I know, you don't want to believe it. I didn't either. But tonight you'll see the evidence, which was classified until very recently. Memos, photos, scientific reports that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt there are enemies among us. Not just the fakes–the people you think you know. But the ones you don't know. The strangers–the wrong ones."

The ship-borns had begun to look worried. And they were not alone. "Look around," said Len. "Anyone here you don't recognize?" People began searching for unfamiliar faces. "That new neighbor. New man on the job. New teacher at your child's school. New kid in class. And all the visitors–the tourists–the bus passengers. Who knows where they came from? And the misfits–the loners–the oddballs. The ones who don't make friends. You know who I mean. You know who they are, right? Am I right?" Some in the crowd began to stare hard at some others. "Just imagine how many more of them are out there! In Albuquerque and Santa Fe, Nevada and Colorado. All over the country. All over the world. All those strangers. Who are they? What are they hiding? Where did they come from?"

Michele, who had moved to the rear as he was talking, flipped a breaker, and the tent fell dark; some of the spectators gasped. She switched on a slide projector beside her, and an image flashed onto a screen behind Len: a photo of Earth as seen from space. "They came from there." Next appeared a photo of a UFO. "And they landed here." And next–which startled the ship-borns–a photo of the rocks where they had just been, where the core was buried. "There've been incidents–fifty years of incidents. You've read about them yourself–maybe you've experienced some of them. Sightings, animal mutilations–even murders." This catalog was accompanied by a series of crime-scene-like photos, including one of the silver handprint–and, last of all, a shot of a turquoise dress stained with blood. Liz gave a small cry, and immediately covered her mouth. That was her dress, from the day she had died.

Glancing back, she saw the ship-borns slipping out, together with a few others trying to beat the rush to the parking lot. As Isabel was leaving, she spotted Alex eyeing her furtively from a side seat; when she returned his look, he looked away. Subduing her disappointment, she joined the others outside a few yards from the tent, where they paused to confer.

"This is the worst," said Max.

"Like a nightmare come true," Isabel agreed.

"What do we do?" asked Michael.

Just then, the tent lights came up. "Be sure to come back tomorrow night," they heard from inside and over the loudspeakers. "You won't be sorry." This was followed by loud applause. People began standing.

"We get out of here, is what," said Max, in answer to Michael's question. "We'll talk tomorrow." He and Isabel took off.

Michael did not, and was the only one left by the time Liz made her way outside. "Is Max gone?" she asked. "I was wanting to talk to him."

"Yeah, well, we all want stuff." He did not have anything more useful to say.

"Is he okay? I mean, are all of you?"

"We got through it," Michael said. "And we returned to find–this. I guess maybe Klima was right." But this time he said it with unmixed regret. "Maybe it's going to be a war, after all."

Liz nodded toward the tent. "It will be if people listen to those two. Sounds like that's what they want. And want us to want. But why?" Michael shook his head.

Alex had intended at first to wait for his father but had then decided there was no point: the UFO group was gathered around the speakers, besieging them with questions to the point of crowding out all other comers; clearly, they would not leave until they were asked to. So Alex left. On the way out he passed Topolsky, still standing at the rear–the only one left there now–and he greeted her by name, but she gave no sign of hearing him. He was a little worried for her too.

Michael noticed her as she left the tent. He had continued hanging around with the objective of doing the Trivitts some mischief (like erasing their slides) and had only just come to the realization that it would be pointless: the information they were communicating was now public knowledge; it ought not to have been, but it was, and Michael could do nothing about that. So he decided to keep a watch on Topolsky instead. She looked as if she might bear watching.

She turned in at the first alley, stepped into the circle of a street lamp, raised a standard-issue S & W .40 (which Michael had not seen she had), and aimed it into her open mouth. It would not fire. She stared down the barrel: it was welded solid.

A hand took it from her. "You don't want to do that, teacher," said a voice she knew. Her eyes rolled back into her head. Michael grabbed her just before she fell.

She woke on a brown sofa in a small apartment. The first thing that met her eyes was a "Danger" sign on the kitchen wall. Appropriate, she thought. She had not yet recognized where she was.

It came to her when she saw Michael at the sink. He brought in a cup of juice he had just finished squeezing with Isabel's housewarming gift, and he knelt to give it to her. "Tomato-guava," he said. "Maria turned me onto it."

Topolsky took a sip, but hardly tasted it. "Never thought you'd be saving me."

Michael shrugged. "Life is strange."

"That's affirmative. You have no idea how strange mine has been."

"I might," said Michael. Topolsky looked at him uncertainly. "For instance, I know about what happened to you the day of the big UFO bash. At the rocks."

"No, that was–"

"A dream? That's what everybody said, wasn't it? When you tried to tell them? Until you got so you weren't sure yourself any more. And you joined the FBI to find out. But that didn't help, because even when you found out the crash was the real deal, you still couldn't be sure about what happened to you that day. It was real. One hundred percent. You can trust me on this one."

"How could you know?"

"I saw a–kind of a movie of it."

"Where?"

Michael debated whether to tell her. "In the ship." Topolsky struggled to make sense of this. "We found it. We were inside it."

Topolsky could scarcely believe what she was hearing. "Take me there! Please!"

"I can't," Michael said quickly. "I mean, I'd like to"–that was only half true–"but it's gone now. It self-destructed."

Topolsky felt disappointed again, as she had so often before. "What did it do to me? I know it did something. But I don't remember what."

"They cut that part," Michael said truthfully. He could not tell her the whole truth; not yet.

"It was the ship that brought you, wasn't it?" Michael nodded; she knew already, and so there was no point in pretending any more. "Maybe that's why I feel so close to you," she said. "To all of you."

"Yeah, that's probably it." He was eager–childishly eager–to reveal the true nature of their bond, and also to realize it; after all, he had never known a mother. But he could not take it on himself to do so without the others' approval. Yet he could not leave Topolsky on her own either; not after what she had tried to do, and with what she now knew. "You better stick close to us from now on," he said.

The suggestion seemed to agree with her. "But will your friends trust me?"

"After the show tonight it won't be easy for us to trust anybody." He smiled. "But I'll work on 'em."

The next day was Easter. But Alex did not spend the morning in church. He was laboring in his lounge-to-be, pushing a floor brush that Fulweider had lent him and using a sheet of pegboard–in the absence of a dustpan–to transfer the refuse to a bag.

Gradually he became aware that something was happening around him: the walls were changing color. From off-white (which had probably begun life as white) they were changing to Loden green; it streamed down them in a smooth coat, like paint from a roller. It scared him, and he could not look away from it, because it was on all sides.

Then he realized who was doing it. Not that many people knew Loden green was his favorite color. Also, he could sense her in back of him, he did not know how; sound, smell, something. He turned to confirm the impression. Yup. Only she was closer to him than he had expected. "Change it back," he said.

Isabel reached out to touch his arm. "Alex?" He stepped out of her reach. "Alex, guess what? I'm human–at least, half of me is." Alex looked her over despite himself, as if checking out the claim. "All three of us are. We had to be, you see, to survive here. We're like you."

Alex cast an eye to the wall. "Not exactly."

"True. We're not exactly like anyone. But that doesn't mean you and I can't be close." She reached out for him again.

"I said, change it back!"

"Alex, please? With so much hostility out there, can't we share just a little affection?"

He turned on her. "It's me, all right? Not you, me. I thought I could do it–break down the fences, hop a comet, and go sailing through the galaxy like Liz. But I'm strictly a small-town guy. An alien girlfriend is great in theory." He forestalled the correction Isabel was about to make. "Okay, half-alien. But that's half too much. I don't like you popping up in my dreams, or changing ketchup to mustard, or being on the FBI's most-wanted list. I only want to lead my simple little earthly life without any complications. Please, Isabel, change it back. Now."

Sighing, Isabel did as requested; in a few seconds the room was restored to its former off-white. "Guess you wouldn't be up for breaking into their trailer, then. To find out what all they have on us?" Alex's face told the answer. "No, I didn't think so," she said; and her face told of regret. "All right, Alex. Have it your own way. But you could have chosen differently."

When she had left, Alex retreated to the wall and sank down–shrank down–to the floor. He had never felt so measly in his life. "How?" he asked the not-quite-swept, not-quite-white room. "Tell me, how?"

After a long day of sweeping and wiping, which had felt less satisfying after Isabel's visit and had been interrupted by many things–meal breaks, further musings on his plans for the place, and intermittent funks in which he did nothing but stare at the walls and reflect on how much better they would look in Loden green–Alex came home feeling despondent on the whole. And it did not cheer him up to find that his father's UFO conclave was still in session, past its usual time.

As he passed the door of the den his father waved at him. "Alex! We were just talking about you. Step in here for a minute, will you?" Alex did so, a little warily. "You know most of the group. But there is one new face–Phil?"

The man turned toward them. "Mr. Evans!" Alex said in surprise. "Never saw you at one of these before." In fact he was the only sensible man he had ever seen in that room.

"Only my second time," Philip said.

"But not the last, I hope," said Don, patting him on the back with greater familiarity than Philip appeared comfortable with. "Phil was just telling us he's filed an appeal for the release of Doc Grunewald."

"Grunewald?" This surprised Alex even more. "Didn't think you were a big fan of his after what he did to Max."

"Excuse me, we don't know what he may have done to Max, or vice versa. Max isn't saying. In any case, Grunewald's now a victim himself. There was no hearing to ascertain his sanity. The government secreted him away to silence him. But they can't suppress the truth forever." Alex listened in amazement; he began to wonder if he were dreaming it all. Isabel could have told him–but no; he did not want to think about Isabel.

"Alex," said Don, with the air of bringing up an unpleasant subject, "the fellas and I were just discussing this Space Bar of yours."

"Orbit Lounge," Alex noted.

"Whatever. We feel it'd be more prudent if you were to take a different tack."

"Oh? Why's that?"

It was Philip who replied. "We're seeing a growing backlash against the continuing and systematic effort by the media to instill in the public mind a sympathetic attitude toward nehis–"

"Excuse me," said Alex, "nehis?"

"NHIs," Don translated. "Non-human incursors."

"–to distract us," Philip finished, "from the very real menace they pose to our human way of life."

Don's description was more succinct. "Bunch of pro-alien propaganda, is all it is."

Alex looked from one to the other. "You sound like those two at the fairground." He did not remember seeing Philip there, but then he had not been looking for him.

"They know what they're talking about," his father averred.

"They're fanatics!" Alex insisted. Then he thought twice. "Or they're pretending to be."

"What do you mean?" said Philip.

"Kind of funny, don't you think, their showing up right at the same time the Army's moving in?"

A man he did not recognize stood up. "What do you know about that?"

"Everybody's seen the Jeeps on the highway," said Alex. "I bet it's got something to do with this new energy bureau, BEAM." He turned to Philip. "Ever hear of it?"

"Heard the name. That's all."

"Probably how they prefer to keep it."

"You want to watch that kind of loose talk," the stranger said.

Alex distrusted him already. "Excuse me, who are you?"

"This is Trent," said Don. "He's from–where was it, now?" Trent did not answer.

"So you're a booster of this covert agency?" Alex asked him.

"Extraordinary crimes have to be stamped out by agencies extraordinary." Alex had heard something of the kind before but could not remember where. Trent stepped closer to him, close enough for Alex to detect whisky on his breath and a dull meanness in his eyes. "Believe me, son," he said, "you don't want to come down on the wrong side of this thing."

Alex's dislike of what the man stood for exceeded his fear of the man himself and spurred him to stand his ground, almost against his own will. "Agreed," he said. "Before choosing a side I like to know exactly who I'm siding with." Trent's scowl deepened. "'night, Dad," said Alex. "Mr. Evans." As he left the room he heard a voice behind him: "Where'd you say he goes to school?" The voice was Trent's. This unsettled Alex. But it also made him angry. He had been headed for his room but now changed his mind; Isabel might have had an idea, at that. He slipped out the front door while his father's group was still engaged in noisy agreement with one another.

The fairground was empty when he got there. The tent and the trailer were both dark; he listened for voices and heard none. He went to the trailer door and knocked. He had no idea what he would say if someone answered, but he guessed that no one would and he was right. He searched the tent for an object he could force the door with; all he could find was a clipboard–not ideal, but it might do. He tried to wedge it between the door and the frame. A minute's effort told him that would not work. As he was contemplating what to try next, he heard a voice in his ear, which made him jump: "You realize breaking and entering's a crime?"

For a moment Alex was afraid the voice was Trent's. He was actually relieved to recognize it as belonging to a representative of duly constituted authority. "So it's important to know what you're doing," Valenti concluded, stepping up beside him; Alex now saw he was carrying a long crowbar. He ran his eye along the door frame until he found a gap and jammed the bar into it. "Give me a hand here, will you?" The two of them leaned their combined weight on it, and with a crunch the door popped open. "Like a can of peas," said Valenti.

"I never liked peas much." Then Alex realized this was not quite to the point. "What are you doing here, anyway?"

"Same as you. Investigating." They stepped up into the cavelike space. Valenti activated his flashlight. It showed up a stack of boxes in the corner, on each of which were stenciled the letters "B E A M." "I was right," said Alex. "That's who they're working for."

"You mean, who planted them here. Or it mighta been some other group BEAM is partners with."

"Who?"

"Take your pick. FBI, CIA, WB, any set of initials that come to mind. There's nobody we can rule out absolutely."

"Why would they send out agents to stir up prejudice against aliens?"

"If I was guessing? As justification to do what they want with them. Like those two kids–snatch them, harness them, milk them for all they're worth. And if any bleeding hearts get wind of it, you can always say you're just putting down the bad guys."

"'Who have no rights the white man is bound to respect,'" Alex quoted.

Valenti nodded. "History repeats."

"Then may I take it you're no longer a believer in the alien conspiracy?"

"Wouldn't go that far. But it's obviously it's not the only conspiracy going."

Alex shook his head. "I don't want to be mixed up in this. Not at all."

Valenti smiled grimly. "Me either, son. What's that got to do with it?"

Alex's eye fell on a map that was pinned to the wall. "Sheriff? Some light over here." It was what he had thought: a copy of the cave map. One area was circled in red. Alex did not have to read the label to recognize it. "That's Angels' Ground."

Not far from the fairground lay the UFO Center, which was closed for the night. But someone was inside. The manager, having received a report of a prowler from a neighboring property owner, now returned to check it out. He lived nearby, and he felt a responsibility to his archives–the Sadusky collection–if not to the barn-like edifice that housed them. Through its front doors he saw a light, and a shadow flitting back and forth in front of it. He quietly let himself in and crept down to see whose shadow it was.

He was relieved, but also puzzled, to find Max there, hard at work. He had somehow slid aside two of the exhibit cases to clear a wall, and was now walking along it–and as he walked, forms materialized in front of him, bulging out of the plaster one after another: he was sculpting a relief mural with no hands. Milton was too astonished to do anything but stare. On reaching the end of the wall, Max turned and saw him at the foot of the stairs. "Milt! I–" But no further words came.

With his well-tried air of office as a recourse, Milton was sooner able to put a good face on the situation. "What's all this, Evans? Eh?" He trotted out to take a look.

From a distance the piece had been too complicated to make out, a wild tangle of shapes and colors. Up close, all was so vividly clear that it almost set Milton back on his heels. Below a sign that identified this new section of the museum as the "Hall of Humans," with "Lest you forget" as its motto, the mural vividly chronicled the most terrible deeds in human history from antiquity through the present. Some of them were in the history books; some, Milton–who was up on his history–did not recognize, and he wondered where Max had dredged them up from.

"The other side of the coin," said Max. "Humans and the suffering they've caused. They're the real monsters." He was not forgetting that he was human himself; indeed, that fact was uppermost in his mind.

"Not a fan of the species," Milton mused. "So you think our planet ought to be handed over to the newcomers lock, stock, and barrel?"

"I don't know about that." Max pondered. "No. I guess it's six of one, half dozen of the other." That describes me, he thought. It describes the three of us. Then he remembered his "place," as his employer would see it: he was just a kid who worked there part-time, not a curator or an exhibiting artist. "Sorry I put this up without asking. I was–inspired." By an attack of self-loathing, he might have added.

Milton let his eyes wander among the other exhibits, which he had put up himself, and with considerably more trouble than it had taken Max. "Back in third grade," he said, "I was the most popular kid in class. The one who knew all about the aliens. Every day at recess the others would ask me scads of questions. And I had all the answers. Then they moved on. By the sixth grade they were making fun of me–Miltie the Martian, they called me. And in high school–well, forget it. But I couldn't stop. I was hooked. And my greatest hope was that some day–some day..." He looked squarely at Max. "Keep me on the beam, Evans. Tell me you're not one of those." He pointed across to a dummy of a bug-eyed monster.

Max smiled. "No, I can honestly say I'm not one of those."

Milton turned to the new installation. "And humans aren't all like this. But you know that, don't you?" And Max did, then; funny how a second perspective could keep a person "on the beam," as Milton had put it. He was an okay guy, Max decided, or was trying to be. As he took a second look at the mural its virtues stood out more clearly, the initial shock having passed. "On the other hand," he granted, "I guess a little self-analysis never hurt anybody."

"You mean you're going to keep it?"

"Too much trouble to take it down. And it might get us some favorable coverage. I'll send out the release tomorrow."

Max had not expected this. On Vallosa everyone had created art, and he had done that; on Earth they kept it around for other people to see, and now he was doing that too; he had to now. Six of one: there were ways. "Come on, Evans," said Milton. "Time to go home." He paused as if making up his mind to something, and then spoke in his natural voice. "Glad you chose this as your–destination. I hope you are."

Max found an understanding in Milton's eyes he had not expected to see there. "Working on it."

His boss laid an encouraging hand on his shoulder. "Don't give up on us. I need you here."

Max smiled at him. "You're right, Milt. Some humans aren't so bad." Milton returned the smile, and they walked out together.

The following morning Alex stopped in at the Crashdown to warn Liz that her interest in Angels' Ground was shared by the new visitors, or by those who had sent them. He also wanted to find out what all she knew about the place. But his musician's timing betrayed him again. She, Michael, and Maria had been working every day through the spring break; since Maria was still barely speaking to either of the others, conditions were strained at best. And this morning Liz did not trust herself to speak to anyone except in her capacity as a server; it was the morning her mother was due to leave. So when Alex (whom she had already written off in any case) tried repeatedly to engage her attention, following her from sideboard to table to counter, Liz refused to acknowledge his presence by either word or sign, making him feel rather foolish. Yet he did not give up; the matter was too important to both of them, to all of them. "Liz," he began, "you remember what you were saying before about–"

He had gotten only that far when her mother entered from the back room. Jeff was trailing her with armloads of suitcases, which he carried out to the Acura in front. Lacking for the moment any customers whose needs required filling, Liz picked out an empty table and pretended to be cleaning it.

Nancy came over to her. "I'm going now, Liz." Her daughter gave no indication of having heard her, any more than she had seemed to hear Alex. "You can visit whenever you like," Nancy said. "No need to call ahead." She hesitated and then went on. "After you graduate, if you should decide–that is, I would like having you in the house. I'd like to continue being your mother." Still no sign Liz had heard; Nancy made a last attempt. "Don't I even get a farewell hug?"

"Oh, Mom!" Liz ran into the back, fighting away tears–and her mother, now left standing alone, was fighting similarly. She had hoped for a happier send-off. But, all in all, this one better befitted the life she had known there. She left without a goodbye, unless it had been implied in her last words. Not the best time to talk to Liz, Alex decided, and he left too, headed for his lounge-in-the-making.

When he saw it he got a shock. At some time during the night the room had been trashed, what there was of it to trash: the walls had been spray-painted with anti-alien slogans, some barely readable, and some obscene: "Martians Go Home," "Nehi Lover," "ET Fone DEAD," a crude rendering of the Roswell alien inside the "No..." icon, and more of the same. The perpetrators were not in sight. "Is this supposed to scare me?" he shouted with bravado. But he approached the door of the closet door, which was shut, with some trepidation.

Soon after the building opened, Isabel stopped by again. She found the room empty to appearances, but when she poked her head into the closet she discovered Alex inside, squatting with his arms clasped around his knees. "Why did you come back?" he asked.

Isabel knelt beside him. "I felt your need." This elicited the kind of look from him that she would have expected–which was very much like "that look" of hers: maybe they had more in common than either of them knew. "No, literally," she said.

Alex almost smiled. "Can't keep any secrets from you, can I?"

"Do you want to?"

"I don't know." He dropped his head. "I don't know anything any more. That stuff on the walls..."

"I can make it go away." Then Isabel remembered how her last offer of help had been received. "If you'd like me to, that is."

"I don't want it to go away, I want it never to have happened."

"So at the first sign of opposition, you give up?"

"I didn't say that."

Isabel smiled encouragingly. "Then you're going ahead with your plans."

"I didn't say that either." He was silent for a while. "I just thought it'd be a cool business venture, you know? I didn't expect threats or hate crimes. I didn't expect a war!"

"Alex, sometimes we get situations we don't ask for. The question is, do you face them or run away?"

"I duck," said Alex. "Until it's all over."

"Time you came out of hiding, wouldn't you say?"

"I'm too chicken."

"And you think I'm not? You have a whole world to reinforce your image of yourself. Until a week ago I had nothing–no validation, no explanation of who I was, or who I could be. Then I met someone who showed me. It was liberating. For once I could say, 'I am what I am, I'll do what I want.' Then it all went wrong and she was gone and I had no one to turn to. Except you–and you turned away."

"Like you never did that to me? Every time I thought we were going to nail down this thing between us–"

"I know, Alex, I was stupid and I'm sorry. Once this crisis is over–"

"Will that ever happen? Isn't crisis what our life's all about?"

"Ours?" Isabel looked hopeful now. "Is that what you want, Alex?"

He gazed at her with a fervency she found really touching. "Oh, yes. Definitely." Then he wavered. "I mean, I think so."

"Alex!" He could be so exasperating sometimes! Isabel got to her feet. "All right, then. Are you willing to stand up for it?"

"Huh?"

"Us. This place. Yourself."

That whipped up Alex's courage. "You bet!" Then he wavered again. "Uh, the only thing–"

"Alex! "

"Okay, yes!"

Isabel waited. "Well? Come on." Alex looked baffled. "Do it!"

"Huh?" Then he realized. "Oh, you mean–" He stood up–for them, the place, himself. Isabel clasped his hands and planted a kiss on his lips, which extended itself pleasantly.

A few minutes later they came out into the graffitied room. "Who was responsible for this?" asked Isabel.

"Probably my dad's UFO buddies. They've been listening to those rabble-rousers at the fairground–who are working for BEAM, by the way."

"You know that for a fact?"

"I burglarized their trailer like you asked."

"Oh, Alex! How sweet of you!"

"It was the sheriff who did it, mainly. For an officer of the law, he's very cool about committing felonies. BEAM's name was on everything in the place. They're war-mongering, is what it is. Against–well, against you guys."

"What do they stand to get out of it?"

"Don't know. But they have their eye on a place Liz knows something about–Angels' Ground."

"Then we have to get her here," Isabel declared. "And the others too. Maybe we can stop this war before it happens."

When Max arrived, only a little later, he heard space music (courtesy of Isabel) as soon as he entered. He followed it to the former storeroom, which had now been renovated (also courtesy of Isabel) into what enormous cut-out letters above the raised stage proclaimed to be the Orbit Lounge. Alex stepped up to him on his right and Isabel on his left, the one attired as a Buck Rogers counterpart of the night club emcee in the movie Cabaret, the other in a slinky hostess outfit to match. "Welcome to the Orbit Lounge, sir," the emcee greeted him, "your home away from your home–planet."

The hostess slipped a drink into her erstwhile brother's hand. "Here you are, sir. One Saturnian smoothie."

Max was convinced they had both gone daft. "Why did you summon me here?" he demanded. "What the hell's going on?"

"That's what I'd like to know." Max turned to see Michael at the entrance. "I'm only here because Liz insisted," said Michael.

Maria was there too, standing on the opposite side from him with her arms folded. "That makes two of us. Where is the girl?"

"Here!" said Liz, as she breezed in past them. "Sorry I'm late. I had to get rid of the customers."

"Wait a minute," said Michael. "Who's covering while your dad's gone?"

"Nobody. I just closed up. Since he's gone he'll never know."

"Ay, caramba," Maria murmured.

"Got that right," said Michael. They were as one on that score, at least. When someone over-disciplined like Liz threw the rules aside, who knew what might happen?

"I put up a sign," she told them, by way of exculpation. "It says we're sorry for the inconvenience."

"Yeah, that'll do it," said Michael, meaning the opposite.

Isabel stepped forward. "Max, you asked what's going on."

"What the hell's going on," he corrected.

"Let's start with Liz. I think all of you are aware she's no longer high-risk."

"My blood is stronger than ever," Liz said proudly.

"Our mission here was to end the human race by mingling our blood with yours. But it turns out your blood works on ours too. Instead of a take-over, what you get is more of a merger."

Maria was not to be placated so easily. "But people have died–my dad for one. Your people killed them."

"One person," said Michael. "Klima."

"And can you tell me the same urge isn't in you? In all of you?"

"Of course it is," said Isabel. "And this is in you!" With a wave of her hand she restored the hate messages to the walls. Those who had not seen them were appalled, then angry. "But there's more to it than that," she continued. "The three of us are only half Vallosan. Human genes were poured into us–everything that's in you is in us. But the opposite is true too. Everything that's in us is in you."

Maria set her chin stubbornly. "I don't accept that."

"We'll show you," said Liz. "Come on."

"Where to?"

"Where it all started for us. Angels' Ground."

So the six came to stand together on the plateau that was Angels' Ground, with the Jeep sitting where they had left it at the head of the drive. "The energy within our planet," explained Isabel, "drove its cities and its spaceships. It also entered into our genetic material. It makes us what we are."

"The same energy," said Liz, "exists in isolated pockets on Earth. Like this one. And the others Michael was looking for."

"BEAM is looking too," Alex noted. "At this one especially."

"That's because the strongest concentration is here," Liz replied. "And it was here the three of us–Maria, Alex, and I–were conceived. At the moment of our conception, the energy of this place soaked into us." She turned to Max. "Your blood could never have harmed me. You're within us. And we're within you. It's no accident we found each other."

"No man is an island, entire unto himself," Michael pronounced rather grandly.

"That's another quote, isn't it?" said Maria. She repeated it silently to herself. "But a very cool one. Muy chido." She smiled at him. Suddenly everything was cool. But only with him, and them; outside that circle of safety lay Klima and who knew how many more. They had to stick together.

Max, who had thought it through on the drive up, had arrived at a similar conclusion, and now proposed it to the others. "In this war we can't take sides because we're on both sides. So we'll make our own side. We'll fight for we believe in–what's best in all of us, Vallosan or human. Wisdom. Respect. Love." He was standing at the edge that overlooked the town. Liz came up beside him and locked her hand in his. The others joined them, one by one, until all were standing shoulder to shoulder on the lip of the plateau.

"My side is with you," Liz told Max solemnly. "I knew it before we ever met."

"I wouldn't be too sure of that." He was remembering the dream they had shared as children. As their eyes met, he imparted it to her.

Liz's face lit up. "That was you!" she said. "I understand now."

"I've been through the gate," said Max, "and I changed as I was meant to. But I was wrong about us. What we have hasn't changed. Since we were"–he lifted their linked hands–"this high. And it won't."

"Forever and always," Liz said.

"Forever," Max echoed her, "and always." The other couples repeated the vow, and all three sealed it with a kiss. As their lips touched, an aurora borealis filled the sky above them.

Liz laughed to see it. "You're doing that!" she accused Max, as she had once before.

"We're doing it," he said. They all watched the display in awe.

Then there came to them the growl of engines: a row of Jeeps was circling up the drive below. And then the knock of a hammer: two soldiers were pounding a sign into place at the foot of the hill. From now on the Ground would be off limits, and the rocks, and the woods. Things had changed, and they could all feel it, Max most of all. "And now," he said, "the battle for Roswell begins."

"There's a dark night ahead," said his sister. "I hope we see a dawn." They hurried back to the Jeep and drove down on the other side.

The three ship-borns, after they had dropped off their human partners, paid a call on the sheriff. Hearing a knock, he looked up from his paperwork to find the three of them already in the room, standing in front of the door. He eyed his holster, which was slung over a chair against the wall. "How'd you get past the front desk?" he asked.

"Side door," Max replied.

"It's locked."

"Not to us," said Isabel. "As you should know better than anyone."

Valenti recognized the significance of the admission. He wondered why it was being made to him; he hoped, not as a last request. "Oh, yeah?" he said noncommittally, and he rolled his chair nearer to the holster.

Isabel explained. "Alex trusts you. I trust Alex. Max trusts–well, you can work out the rest."

"And, you know," Michael added, "it's not like we have a lot of people to choose from."

"Jeez, you sure know how to make a guy feel wanted." Valenti considered. "Okay, not that I need it necessarily, but if you could provide a small demonstration–just to convince me my imagination's not running away with me."

Isabel raised her hand to volunteer, just like in class. On the desk sat a brass paperweight in the shape of a cannon. She stared at it until it turned brown. "Looks to me like chocolate," said Valenti.

"Try it."

He broke off a corner and nibbled on it. "Not bad, but–"

"It's never the same," said Max, ahead of his sister.

"No offense, but I preferred it in brass." Isabel changed it back, but with one corner still missing. Valenti turned it over meditatively. "Funny, my whole life I've been scared of you–of people like you, that is. Now I find I've been scared of the wrong people." He looked at Maria. "Ask your mom how she'd feel about having dinner guests this evening."

Her mom said she was okay with it, the evening came up in due course, and Liz and Max were the first of the guests to arrive–not counting Michael, who was helping in the kitchen. They all tried to blot out the voice that resounded through the streets, as it had the evening before. "And if you're asking yourself who's to blame," the voice thundered, "look no farther. It's them–the invaders–the monsters."

Amy heard that part of it as she let her guests in. "He's at it again?"

"Since the sun went down," said Max. "And he's sounding wilder all the time." Jim came to the door to listen.

"I don't like it," said Amy.

"I don't like them," Jim answered. "The Trivitts. Even though I know they're just plants. But it looks like this is their day."

Then the rest of the party showed up, practically on top of one another, and Amy greeted each in turn. "Deputy Owen. Mr.–Sadusky." The women did not ring a bell. "I don't know either of you, do I?"

"Jen."

"Kathleen."

"Wow!" Amy shook her head, as if she were fluffing her hair.

Maria looked around, puzzled. "Uh, why 'wow'?"

"As in, wow, what a wonderfully diverse community we'll be breaking focaccia with this evening!" She waved them inside. "I mean, think of the harmonics!"

"Oh, yeah," said Valenti, shutting the door. "Them."

Throughout dinner he hurried each course along so he would have plenty of time for a briefing afterwards. He began it before the others had finished the tiramisu. "Reason I asked you here," he said, "was, number one, so we could all get acquainted. Because we–most of us," he amended, glancing at Amy, "have something in common. Special knowledge, like."

"What kind of special knowledge?" Amy asked innocently.

Jim did his best to answer without answering. "Knowledge about–oh, what's going on in Roswell. Incidents other people aren't aware of. Stuff like that. So–"

"Well, I certainly can't claim any such thing," Amy broke in. "No more than anybody else. And as for Milton here, or your deputy–no offense, I'm sure they're intelligent people, but–" She saw that the others were looking down or away. "I have a feeling I said something that was supposed to be left unsaid."

Valenti scratched his temple. "You have to tell her," said Maria.

Liz nodded. "She's bound to find out sooner or later."

"Find out what?" Amy asked.

Valenti looked down the table. "How about the rest of you?"

"I think it's too late to do anything else," said Max. There was a general drone of agreement.

Valenti sighed. "So be it. Amy–babe–jeez, where do I start?"

"Let me," said Isabel. "It'll be easier to take coming from another woman." She turned to Amy. "There's no way I can prepare you for what you're about to hear. A person's internal belief system is so fragile, so delicate, a thing like this could demolish it completely." She clasped Amy's hand. "Be brave."

By that point Amy was looking as befuddled as it was possible for a person to look. "I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about."

"No, you don't. And the reason–you poor, unsuspecting dear–"

Michael, having tired of this exchange, and particularly of Isabel's part in it, cut to the chase. "Ms. Deluca? Keep your eyes on that dessert spoon." He focused on it, and it changed to a silver heart. He picked it up and handed it to Amy. "For our hostess." He forgot that it had been hers to begin with.

So did she. "Why, it's beautiful! Thank you!" Then the significance of it hit her. "Wait a minute! You did that. Just by looking at it."

"Little more complicated than that. But essentially, yeah."

"Then you're..." Michael shrugged apologetically. Amy's eyes moved to Isabel. "And you?" Isabel smiled. Then to Max. "And you?" Max nodded. She looked finally at Maria. "Not you, I hope?"

"No, no!" her daughter assured her.

Amy sat for a long time, absorbing it, while the others watched uncertainly. Finally she broke into laughter. "Well, this is just–so great!" Maria and her future stepfather exchanged looks of surprise. "All the time I've been selling these tacky alien doodads, the real thing's been right under my nose and I didn't see it."

"Then it doesn't shatter your world view?" Isabel asked hopefully.

"Honey, it is my world view."

"You mean you've always believed in us?"

"No! I always thought it was a cartload of crap. A nice way to earn bread, but still a cartload of crap. No, my world view is that everything is always much screwier than we have any idea of. So this is just–the perfect thing."

Jim grabbed her hand. "I had a feeling we were made for each other. Now I'm sure of it."

"My God," said Maria. "I may be part of a functioning family unit. Will I be able to cope, I ask myself."

"Shut up," Michael said amiably–and to the surprise of everyone, including herself, she did.

Valenti resumed his briefing. "Okay, counting Amy, we're a dozen. The rest of the town is out there listening to that firebrand. If they get unruly–and I'm guessing they will–it'll be up to us to calm them down. I'm appointing you my deputies for tonight. Everybody okay with that?"

None of the party looked overjoyed, but most nodded. "Why'd you choose us?" asked Jen. "We're not trained or anything."

Valenti glanced at the ship-borns. "You came recommended."

"Hold on now," said Alex, somewhat belatedly. "Just us? Against all of them?"

"One of my regulars is out of town. The rest will have their hands full protecting the public buildings. I can radio for extra help but they'll be a spell getting here. In the meantime, we're it."

"Do we get weapons?" asked Milton.

"Just the ones that are authorized to carry them," Valenti replied. "Me, Deputy Owen, and Agent–excuse me, Ms.–Topolsky. And of course some of us"–he glanced at the ship-borns–"have them built in. I'm hoping that'll be enough. If not, we'll proceed as the situation dictates."

"I don't know," said Alex. "It sounds–"

Valenti looked him in the eye. "Son, it's your town. Question is, are you willing to stand up for it?"

"The standing-up thing again. I see." He glanced at Isabel; she clutched his arm supportively. "Yeah, yeah," he said, "okay."

The crisis came sooner than any of them had anticipated; they first heard it at a distance through the windows. The crowd that Trivitt had been haranguing had cleared the tent and were now parading raggedly down Main Street with him at their head. "Whose town is this?" he shouted. "Is it yours? Is it?"

"Yes!" they shouted back at him.

"Then why are they here?" He pointed to the Crashdown and the UFO Center. "You want to know why? Do you?"

"Yes!" they shouted again.

"Because they have allies here conspiring with them, sneaking them in–till before you know it there'll be more of them than there are of you. Then your days will be numbered. One clutch of that cold hand and you'll fall cold and lifeless, with a silver handprint on your chest. You and your families and your children–innocent babies. And any of you who survive they'll hunt down, and they'll turn their death machines on you–kill you slowly, without mercy–tear through your flesh and bone just to see how humans die. Is that what you want? Is it?"

"No!"

"Then get them! Get them! Get them before they get you! And the collaborators too–the quislings–the traitors! The ones who are hiding them! You know where they are! There! And there! Find them! Kill them! Kill the nehis! The e.t.s!" (He pronounced it "eaties.") "And the e.t. lovers–the bleeding hearts–the ones who are different–the ones who don't belong! You know who they are! And you know what to do with them!"

A man in the crowd held up a lighter and flicked it to life. "Burn them!"

"Yes!" Len hissed, his eyes gleaming wildly. "Yes! Burn them! Burn them all!" The mob responded with cries of bloodlust.

Michele, who had been watching in growing alarm, saw that her husband and the rest of them had passed beyond reason. "Len, stop!" she cried.

But it was too late. All those around her were possessed with the same fury, and now it exploded in their midst, propelling them this way and that–but all of them in the same few ways, so that without purposing it they grouped into smaller but more or less cohesive bands. Only one person stayed aloof: an old man with a Roswell Daily Record tucked under his arm. He retreated to the shadow of a storefront to watch.

One of the bands broke into the UFO Center and dragged out the dummy alien, along with a length of bundling cord, which they wrapped around its neck and used to hang it from a lamppost. Someone set a lighter to the figure, and within seconds it was ablaze, to the cheers of the ravagers. Another of the bands assaulted the Crashdown. Some rammed at the doors; others hurled rocks at the saucer over the doors; three began to scale the wall. Jeff stuck his head out his bedroom window. "Hey, you!" he shouted. "Get off of there!" The attackers began to pelt him too. The old man in the shadows smiled.

The disturbance brought out the armed half of the sheriff's posse: himself, Owen, Topolsky, and the three ship-borns. He had left the others at Amy's to watch that end of town, to which the hysteria had not penetrated yet. He led his contingent to the intersection of Maple Street (Amy's street) and Main, from which they could see the frenzy spreading throughout the business quarter. The three teens saw people they knew, people they liked, or did not like: their teachers, their principal, kids from school, store owners–and fathers. Isabel clutched Max's arm. "I saw Dad!" And then she did not see him. "Do you see Mom?" Her eyes searched the crowd.

"You three," Valenti said, "it's time. Whatever you can do, do it. We'll be your back-up."

"But our parents–" Isabel began.

"Hey, we've all got friends and relatives out there. Best thing you can do for them is put a stop to this craziness."

"Isabel, he's right," said Max. But she had realized it before he said it.

The two of them and Michael looked at one another, and found themselves instantly welded into a single consciousness. "It's like back in the ship," said Michael. "I'm having thoughts that aren't mine. And mine are swimming around in this pool that's three times as big as it was."

Isabel smiled. "I believe it's called being of one mind."

Together they formed a plan faster than they could have spoken it. They turned toward one of the marauding bands, and then to the asphalt at its feet. The marauders found themselves sinking into a lake of black gelatin–but gelatin that clung to their legs and would not permit them to advance.

And now the old man stepped out of the shadows. He pointed his rolled-up newspaper at the captives. Moving as one, they ceased struggling and dropped their eyes to the gelatin, which rolled back in a wave, as if it had been icing on a cake. The wave changed course toward the ship-borns, and then itself changed, into a rolling bank of hot lava. The ship-borns raised up a glacier, waist-high, which blocked it. The lava hissed and steamed against the ice and then burbled away to nothing. "How'd they do that?" asked Michael.

Behind the crowd the old man had stopped to rest against a lamppost and was fumbling with a segmented pill holder. No sooner had Michael seen him than an unspoken exchange took place between him and the others.

Klima–

–powering them–

–by channeling energy–

–from one of the map sites–

–the only one close enough–

–the one we haven't identified–

–and he's using the Lodestone–

–but it was lost–

–then the Stones from the cave–

–but I hid them–

–and of course Michael knew where he had hidden them, and so of course they all did.

Now Max spoke aloud; speech seemed to give his commands greater force. "We may be able to use them against him. Michael, you and I will go get them. Isabel, bring the others." She knew which three he meant. "We may need them too." He and Michael departed for the school, and Isabel for the Delucas'.

The Earthly members of Valenti's contingent had been standing a little apart, powerless to do more than watch as the magic show unfolded. Now they were not sure what to do. During Klima's weak spell his unknowing agents had lost their impetus and were standing sluggishly, swaying a little. "Let's keep our eye on 'em," said Valenti. "See what they do next." The others looked doubtful. "Anybody got a better plan?" Nobody had. So they remained where they were, taking no action but monitoring the now-dormant rioters.

Turning onto Maple Street, Isabel failed to see the figure crouching in the bushes at the corner. As she passed, he sprang out at her. "The blood!" he cried. "The poison in the blood!" His speech was thick and slurred. His hands grabbed at her neck. Without thinking, Isabel dug her nails into one of them and used the contact to send his animus back at him. He collapsed onto the pavement, clutching his head; a moment later he was out. Only then did she recognize him as Grunewald, and she felt pity for him. "I wish I could help you," she said. "But you've gone beyond a place where that's possible." Besides, she had her duty to carry out. So she left him lying.

At the Delucas', there were always alien-themed trinkets hanging from the deodars in the yard, both for decoration and for sale, if anyone asked to buy. One of the bands of raiders had spied them and were plucking them down to tear asunder or to crush underfoot. Isabel arrived to find Amy and the others trying to fight off the intruders. She changed the grass around their feet to cement, which set instantly, pinning them where they stood. They struggled vainly to free themselves. "Come with me," she ordered the three teens. "We need you." As the adults began to follow she held up a hand. "Sorry, kids' night." Watching them go, Amy felt a little like the grown-up Wendy watching her daughter fly off to the Neverland.

She perked up again on realizing that she now had in her power the people who had destroyed her handiwork. She picked up a baseball bat one of them had dropped and then she circled them, smacking it against her cupped hand. "You know how long it took me to make those? You–" She drew the bat back as if to swing; the captives cowered away. Then she lowered it again. "–are so lucky I'm a pacifist," she finished. Her fellow deputies, Milton and Jen, were patrolling the street; the immediate neighborhood was quiet. So she went inside.

The captives, perforce, remained as they were. Then after a minute they tensed, all at the same time, as if the same electric current were passing through them all. Together they turned their heads toward the cement at their feet. It melted into water, freeing them. They moved in a body out of the yard and toward the school. In other parts of town, other groups were doing the same.

Max and Michael were at the school already. Michael withdrew the Stones from the base of the sign–and they were glowing; their blue light showed through the sack. "They weren't doing that before," he said. Both boys realized what it meant, but Max was faster at putting it into words. "This is the last site on the map! West Roswell High! I bet if we knew the history–"

"We know the year it was started," said Michael.

They moved to the bronze dedication plaque at the top of the steps. "'1947,'" Max read. "The year we landed." The coincidence had not struck him before. "Maybe it was put here just for us."

"The plaque?"

"The whole school."

They had no time to weigh the theory then, for Isabel and those she had been sent to fetch came running up the steps, followed at a distance by the mob. It had now regrouped into a single organic unit, many-bodied, single-brained, and that brain guided and goaded by its creator, who was walking alongside driving his herd. "It's them!" he shouted. "The strangers! The wrong ones! Kill them!"

Under his sway and fueled by whatever power he was wielding, his minions turned the school steps into a thick ooze, veined with blood and lightning. It distended and reared up over Max and the others like a giant jellyfish. Michael, who was carrying the Stones, changed it to a ball of green fungus, which then exploded, spraying their attackers with slimy mold. "Nice one," Max commented.

"He's channeling the energy of this place," said Isabel. She could have flashed the message silently to the two of them but spoke it aloud for the benefit of the rest. "And using them as a conduit."

"Which can go in either direction," Max pointed out. "We'll run the energy into ourselves."

"Can we handle it?" asked Michael.

"With the Stones, I think so."

Michael opened the sack and began passing them out, like treats from Santa's bag. But there was one too few. "That's okay," Alex said, "really." He stepped away.

But Isabel was not about to let him off that easily. She grabbed his arm and pulled him back. "We'll share," she said firmly.

The six lined up and raised the Stones in unison. The Earth kids felt the Vallosans steering their thoughts into the right paths, which were (literally) alien to them. Yet they as well as the others could sense that something was off: the power was there, but it was unequal to the task, weak and distant.

Michael was the first to see what the problem was. "V formation!" he directed. "The signature pattern! That's the way the energy has to flow!" So they realigned themselves like the icons on the map, with Max at their apex, and immediately the energy began to rush into them. "Can you feel it?" Max shouted to Liz.

"Max, my God! It's like the best–" Even in those straits, her sense of decorum censored the thought. "–massage ever," she finished. Her body and those of the others had become receptacles for its power, and took on auras of the same otherworldly blue.

And then something else intruded on her consciousness: a force pulling her where she did not want to go; pulling her toward Klima. It was too much for her, or for any or all of them, to resist long. He was holding his rolled-up newspaper pointed in their direction; from inside, through the layers of newsprint, a light shone brightly. And suddenly the paper blew off, as if in a high wind, to reveal what it had been concealing. "The Lodestone!" Michael cried. "He found it somehow." But its light was no longer blue. Now it was a fiery red.

"It's drawing the other Stones!" said Isabel.

"And us!" said Max. "He's using all that energy we absorbed to suck us in. We'll have to discharge."

"In which direction?" Michael asked.

"Guess."

Max trained his eyes on Klima, and, following his lead, the others did the same. Uniting into a single force, the novice Earthlings riding on the backs of the more seasoned Vallosans, they fired with all the power in their joint arsenal. Klima did not see it coming. The impact of the hit knocked him back several yards, and onto his knees. When he looked up, he had a different face, and an older one. It cost him much effort to pick himself up, and with a hobbling gait he returned into the shadows, where he vanished. "Took care of him," said Maria.

Michael shook his head. "Wish it was that easy."

Then he and the others, again in silent communion, worked to undo the damage that had been done, everywhere it had been done. Those who had done it were now cut loose from their tether and remembered next to nothing of what had happened after they had entered the tent earlier in the evening. Deprived of purpose and of understanding, seeking comfort and peace of mind where it was soonest found, they began to leave for their homes, a few at a time.

Valenti found Len Trivitt sitting on a curb, looking as confused as his former disciples. His wife ran up and sat at his side. "Len! Are you all right?"

"What happened?" he asked her. "What the hell happened?"

Valenti regarded the two of them coldly. "Musta been aliens."

"Aliens?" said Len. "There are no aliens. That was all–" He stopped, realizing his slip.

"A hoax?" said Valenti. "I thought you two were the great alien experts."

Len lowered his head. "That was a performance," said Michele. "We don't know any more about them than that speech you heard. It was part of the packet we were handed. We were sent here to plant the seed of suspicion in people's minds."

"Sent by BEAM?"

Michele showed her surprise. "How did you find that out?" She saw he was not going to tell her. "Yes," she said. "But it's bigger than that."

"How much bigger?" Valenti asked. This Michele could not or would not say. "How many others were sent?" he went on. "To how many other towns?"

"You think they'd tell us?" She seemed sincerely distressed. "It was never supposed to come down this way." Her face took on a dark look. "I don't believe we were the only agents at work out there."

Valenti stared at her impassively. "You want to be careful what you say, Mich. That kind of crazy talk can break up a family." Michele appeared suitably chastened.

"Okay," said Valenti, "get up, the pair of you. You're both under arrest for inciting to riot." He raised his voice to reach what was left of the crowd. "The rest of you, go home. Hell night's over." And everybody went.

...yet the six–the ship-borns and their Earthly complement–were somehow still there. And somehow it was now daytime. Yet apart from themselves the campus was deserted. Their footsteps echoed in the stillness as they walked to the edge of the quad and stared across the empty concrete expanse.

"Didn't we go home?" Alex asked. "I could have sworn we went home."

"A long time ago," Isabel agreed.

"Then what are we doing here?" said Max.

Liz knew. "We have to be here." She pointed to a banner above their heads. "It's Homecoming Day."

"Everything looks normal," said Maria. "That is, apart from the total absence of living organisms."

"Not quite normal," said Michael. His eyes were on the banner. "Homecoming's in the fall."

"We're dreaming!" said Isabel. She was amazed at herself for not having spotted it sooner. "It's a dream we've created for ourselves."

"Not me," Liz declared. "I'd never dream of a place with nobody in it."

"Oh, no," said Alex. He rushed off with a worried look on his face. His comrades, puzzled, followed him down the halls and into a classroom. "My home room," he said. He checked the roll book on the teacher's desk. "My name." He held it up for them to see: his was the only name written on the page, or on any of the pages. "My dream. My ideal. Alex all by himself, with no one left to be afraid of." He looked sheepishly at Isabel. "Sorry, Is. I'm still a frightened small-town boy. And my fear's imprisoning all of us."

"Don't let it!" Isabel urged him. "Fight it!"

"I don't think I can."

"Try."

He tried, but faltered. "It's no good."

Isabel grabbed both his hands. "Alex! Really try." She stared into his eyes, and into his mind–his waking mind, but this was where his nightmares fed; terrible forms–and terrors without form–overhung on all sides. "My God, Alex! How long has it been in this state?"

"As long as I can remember."

"I think it's time we cleaned house." Concentrating, Isabel summoned up all the resolve she could and spread it to Alex, dividing it with him as if they were sharing a sundae together; she had enough for both of them. With her reinforcement, Alex was able to push his fears back, and kept pushing until they dissolved into the walls of his mind; they were not gone but were now mingled with his other thoughts and feelings, in the right proportion. He felt a relief deeper than any he had known since he was a small boy. "Gosh, Is," he said.

But then–

They were at the Orbit Lounge, dancing; the dance floor was dark and crowded; overlapping spotlights, in a range of colors never seen on Earth, skittered about on the walls. The crowd was mixed: an intergalactic petting zoo comprising extraterrestrials of every conceivable shape and feature. Then the lights went out, and the aliens turned on them, thrusting at them with their claws and maws–

"Maria!" Liz said sharply. "This has to be your dream. Snap out of it!" She gave Maria a shake. The monsters vanished.

But then–

They were in the Crashdown. No monsters here, nothing to fear–except the man who was about to shoot his partner. Maria looked at Liz. "This one's yours, kid." The man pulled his gun. Liz was standing in the line of fire as she had been that day, but this time she was smiling calmly. "Um, shouldn't you move or something?" Maria suggested.

"It's all right. My biggest fear used to be dying. But Max took that away." And sure enough, the bullet passed through her without effect.

But then–

They were in Hank's trailer, with Hank. "Aw, gimme a break," said Michael.

Isabel realized what was happening. "It's Klima, using the dream power against us." Then she realized something else. "Only women possess the power. That means–"

And then–

It was nighttime again. They were in the school stadium. The scoreboard above traced out the spiral rune in yellow lights. The bleachers were filled. All of Roswell was there...

But they were not only in Roswell. They were also on Vallosa, on one of its eternal battlefields among the dead, the wounded, and those eternally killing; and what were bleachers in the other world were here barbed-wire cages, and the spectators in the stands were prisoners...

They saw both scenes at once, in dual focus. They were existing on two planes of reality, one more than they were used to. Below the stadium lay the nucleus of the energy that resided there, and it empowered them to bridge both space and time. For Vallosa was gone; its death plains were gone. The six of them were both then and now, both there and here.

A figure was crossing the field toward them: Klima, in her true form, which encompassed all her forms: a hundred-headed goddess, with all the heads contained in one. And she was bearing the Lodestone. Its spiral radiated a blinding light, like a sun's light–not blue, but red.

"Now you know," she said, "what the rune signifies. You see it–you feel it. Hatred, always and everlasting. This is the only truth, the only source of victory. Many Vallosans fought all their lives and never learned that." She lifted the Stone high above her head. "Behold my dream." Red beams shot out from it in all directions; the sudden surge of energy caused her to stagger a little.

"You can't frighten us!" Alex shouted. Then he corrected himself. "Actually, you can. But it won't do you any good."

Klima regarded them with disdain. "You would resist me. Yet your own hatred draws you." The Stones they were holding–which they now realized they had been holding them all along–were glowing blue, yet red was beginning to creep in at their edges. Again they felt the power of the greater Stone pulling them. The three Earthlings were horrified to feel within them a loathing that was not theirs, and still more horrified to see the faces of the ship-borns contorted with it: they all looked like Klima. Liz had said she "hated" Pam Troy, but now she knew she had never truly hated–and, she hoped, never could.

Klima laughed with greedy delight. "You're mine. And you won't be alone. Who knows how many others there may be? An army at my command. We'll uncover all the wells of power and fuse them into a force such as this world has never seen–the force of hate."

Liz grabbed Max by the arm. "Don't listen to her, Max! That's not who you really are–any of you!" After a moment, his face relaxed and was as it had been, and so were the others'.

But Liz knew she had not done it. At the far end of the field–both fields, the stadium and the battleground–another figure was standing. He called out to Klima. "You speak by halves, sister. As always."

Klima turned with a sneer. "If it isn't my brother! The monk–the hermit." Brother and sister, thought Liz. My God, no wonder they're always fighting.

"Neither monk nor hermit, dream twister," Feddin retorted. "But one who sees both halves of the circle–the dark and the light."

Shrieking with rage, Klima turned the Stone on Feddin. A red shaft shot out of toward him. Then another. And another. He dodged them as he continued his approach. But each of his steps fell more weakly than the last. The red bolts grew weaker too. The powers of the two Vallosans were waning, eroded by the very energy that enabled them.

At last Feddin stopped in front of his sister. She drew back, but not far enough. He laid his hand on the Lodestone, and its light shifted from red to blue. Feddin turned to the six. "In the sandwriting of our dead world," he said, "this rune signifies hatred. That much is so. But it also signifies love. The two are halves of the same circle. Each is the only power that can defeat the other. Neither can be defined, only discovered. And the discovery can only happen within yourself. Some of you have discovered hatred. Others"–he looked at the Earthlings–"have yet to." His voice enlarged to resound over the whole field. "But how much greater is the power of your love!"

As they listened any dark feelings they had harbored were swept away, to be replaced by pure light: the blue light of the Stones they were holding. It all poured into the great Stone, the one Stone, which flashed a brilliant white and then burst into a thousand gleaming slivers; the spectacle of it was like Roswell's yearly Fourth of July display, only bigger and better. Klima was thrown back several yards; Feddin stood his ground. But what had disintegrated, the others saw at once, was only an outer shell; the thing it had encased was intact, exposed–and it was hurtling toward them. Max made a leap for it; Liz did the same, but two seconds sooner. As the others gathered around she opened her hand to reveal a round yellow gem, like the others but larger. "Behold the Lodestone," said Feddin, "freed of its confines. It should be borne by the one in whom the power of love is strongest."

Liz offered it to Max. He shook his head. "By rights it belongs to you." Feddin nodded his approval.

"Then it belongs to us all," said Liz. She gave Alex her smaller Stone so that each of them had one. Without another word they moved into the V formation.

But now they were one too many. "Where will you stand?" Max asked Liz.

"Where the ship stood." she said.

"The sixth symbol," Max murmured.

Liz nodded. "It knew what you had to do all along."

When she had taken her place they all lifted their Stones and extended them toward the center of the V. Their hands were glowing blue. The glow spread up their arms and to their whole bodies, and blue rays emanated from each of them to all the others, forming a web of blue light, as if they were suns in themselves. They felt flowing through them what they could only have described as goodness: the essential goodness of the universe. When it had filled them completely they opened their hands to reveal–nothing. The transfer was complete; the power of the Stones had passed into them.

They looked around for Klima, but she was gone. So were the football crowd and the corpses of the field. Only Feddin remained. "Is it over?" Alex asked him. "I think it's over."

Feddin looked kindly on them. "Not for you. For you are now the guardians of the citadel–you and such allies as you can muster. The war for this world begins here. With luck, it may end here. Our day–mine and Klima's–is past. The future is yours."

"We don't mind," Liz said. "Honestly, we don't. Only–first, could we get some sleep? For some reason I can't keep my eyes open."

"Return to your beds, my children." His voice echoed in their heads. "For in truth you never left them. All that has passed"–the voice began to fade–"was in the dreamtime."

On the last words, Liz opened her eyes to find herself in her room. Now she remembered having gone home hours before. Her head sank into the pile of pillows and she returned to sleep. But this time it would be a sleep free of false dreams. The six of them had prevailed, tonight. But there would be more nights to come.

The following Sunday a pair of visitors slid chairs up to the bed where Jim, Sr. lay with his eyes shut. "Clock's winding down," the orderly had told Junior. He was one of the pair; the other was a girl his father would not have recognized even if he had been aware of her. Very gently she took his hand, and very gently reached into him.

He opened his eyes. They took her in, and then they took in his son. "Jimmy!" he said. "Why didn't you tell me? I was right the whole time." He was not angry, but happy: vindicated at last. "You oughta had told me," he said.

Junior struggled to hold back his tears. "Only part right, Pop. You figured them for the bad guys. And the one you were tracking was one of the worst. But some of 'em"–he glanced at Isabel–"are the closest thing to angels we're likely to see."

"Reckon I'm–'bout due to find–out." The last word was little more than a gasp; there was no more strength in him. He shut his eyes again.

"He's going," said Isabel. "Shall I let him?"

His son nodded. She released the old man's hand. His breathing became shorter, and soon it stopped. He was at peace finally, and it showed in his face. Jim let the tears roll now, and through them he looked across at Isabel. "Thank you," he said.

She smiled. "He was a kind man. A good man."

"I'm glad you saw that in him. Not many people did, later on. But he was doing his best, you know? Trying to deal with it."

"You mean, with us," said Isabel. "I know. We all have to learn to do that."

When they emerged the other five were waiting outside. Alex saw a grace in Isabel's countenance that had not been there before. She moved to him and clasped his hand.

Then the sheriff spoke. "I got something to say to you three. And your friends here." He paused, searching for the right words. "A lot of people have been hurt on account of you being here. Not your fault, it's just how things played out. But you can help. You can fix it for some of 'em. And keep other people from getting hurt too. Nobody else can do that. It's your–calling, so to speak. So would you think about it? Please, just–think about it?"

Each of the six glanced at the others.

"I'm in," said Michael.

"All opposed?" Maria asked. There was a silence.

"So," said Max," tomorrow we start saving the world."

"Not tomorrow," said Liz. "We've got school–really, this time." The others groaned; in the fuss it had slipped their minds.

"Dear journal," Liz wrote that evening, "you may be wondering why you haven't heard from me in, like, forever. It seems that the more caught up in life you are, the less you have to say about it. I used to confide to you all my hopes and expectations. And now guess what? Not only have they all come true, more things have happened to me than I ever dreamed of. And it just doesn't stop. So I have a feeling you won't be hearing from me for a while. Hope you won't mind. Good night. Yours truly, Liz."

She shut the book. Then she crossed to the window and leaned out. She stared into the sky, past the V pattern to a true star: Polaris, the fixed center of an ever-revolving wheel. And to its truth she addressed a prayer:

"Star light, star bright

First star I see tonight

Wish I may, wish I might

Have the wish I wish tonight."

She turned to the boy who had been standing silently behind her the whole time, waiting for her to finish. She was all his now. And he was hers. Forever and always. Their two bodies united–arms, lips, all that could meet or be met–tinged, as if by magic, with the silver of the celestial lights.