Part 3
It was a week and a half, almost two weeks later, and Liz was sitting behind the counter of the cafe. Things were quiet: there were only two customers in the dining room and they both seemed to be quite content with their orders. Jose was on duty in the kitchen and Clara Williams was also waiting tables... even if that was more literal waiting than the usual effort. And then HE walked though the door.
Liz recognized him immediately, no matter how little she expected him to come back like this... by the face, mostly. His clothes were different than she'd ever seen before... a thick and heavy black t-shirt, ripped in many small places, and a band logo of some kind faded past her ability to recognize it... loose blue jeans almost falling off of him, also faded and torn. Also the hair, and something about his eyes, but there was no mistaking the face. Liz hurried over to meet him. "Michael!!" She lowered her voice to a whisper. "You're back... so soon!!?"
"Umm... yeah," he mumbled back uncertainly. "Just got in about half an hour ago."
"Well... is everything okay?" Liz pressed, softly but insistently. "Did Isabel come back with you? What happened with Tess? Come *on*, Michael, get with the update! I'm dying of curiosity here."
"Umm... chill, okay??" he insisted, raising up a hand in an intercepting gesture. "You'll get the lowdown, but it's kind of a confusing story to tell, and here doesn't seem like the place, now does it?"
"Um, no, I guess I have to admit that that's true," Liz said, more than a little deflated. "Well, I'm not really needed here, so we can go up to the balcony or..."
"No," he said again. "It'll be better if you come with me... someone else can explain most of it. I've never been that big with the talking and talking, you know."
"Umm..." Liz frowned. "No, I guess not. Alright, lead on MacDuff." She tossed her order book onto the counter, and made a gesture to Clara that really could have meant just about anything, but the other girl nodded.
"That's it?" he confirmed. "You don't even wanna change out of your little antennae uniform first?"
"I can take the barrettes out on the way... and I'm not worrying about the dress. I told you Michael, I can't wait to hear what's happened." A thought struck her. "Oh, man, I'd better call the rest of the gang now... Max and Maria will kill me if they I didn't let them know first thing..."
"No," he insisted, grabbing her arm. "If you wanna go right now, we'll go," he whispered, leaning close. "But you can't call anyone else... not until you've come and heard what's what. It might put them in danger."
Liz blinked in surprise, but didn't say anything more, and he led the way back out the door and to the cafe parking lot, and a very unfamiliar car: a Japanese four-door sedan of some kind, colored in rich burgundy, both outside, and, it turned out, inside. "Umm, should I even ask?" she said.
"Probably better not," he answered gruffly. "Umm, we needed transportation and there was no time to be picky. I didn't steal it or anything... exactly."
Something about that statement didn't quite put Liz at ease, but she buckled herself into the shotgun seat without objection and stayed relatively quiet as he pulled out, (without bothering to use the seat belt himself,) and started to head east on second.
The tension of staying silent got to be too much for Liz to take when Michael turned onto a wide cross street, heading south. "Come on, you have to give me *something*. What was it like riding in the granilith, huh? I'm like dying of curiosity here, that's the least you can give me..."
"Just... couldja just, like chill, okay?" he growled uncomfortably. "It was, um, a heck of a ride, but I... eh, I don't really have the words to do it justice. Alright?? You'll hear the whole score once we get where we're going."
"Um, okay," Liz mumbled, more than a little disappointed at how uncommunicative he was being, but not wanting to pressure Michael any more. After a few more minutes, she decided to think of something to say that wouldn't necessarily require a response, and it didn't take her long to come up with one. "Maria's been missing you a lot."
The expression that crossed over Michael's face was hard to describe. "I... I'm, um, lookin' forward to seeing her too, of course. But not until it's safe. Her place would be the first place they'd look for me."
"The first place WHO would look for you??" Liz asked, but he impassively refused to answer. "Are you sure that it was 'safe' to come to the cafe, then?" she pressed.
"Pretty sure... and we had to make contact somehow," he grunted. "Now shut up already!! We're almost there."
And it was only a few minutes before Michael pulled the car in behind a run-down house somewhere near East Chisum Street. "What, did you just move into an abandoned place??" she whispered almost silently.
"It seemed like a good way to stay low-profile," Michael answered, looking around, and then leading her into the building. It definitely looked abandoned inside, although some effort had been taken to make it liveable, on the part of the new residents presumably.
"Okay, we're here," she said. "Start talking. Or, if somebody else is supposed to explain... well, where *is* anybody else?? Where's Isabel??"
"Umm... Why don't you sit down?" Michael muttered, indicating a none too attractive but probably stable armchair. "I... this might be difficult, but you need to relax. Everythin's going to be okay."
"I... I'm not at all sure I feel like it's safe to relax," Liz said evenly, suspicions suddenly starting to pop out in her mind, but he gave her a look, and uneasily she sat. "Something's wrong... and you flinched when I mentioned Isabel. She isn't here, is she??"
"No, she isn't," a new voice announced, entering the room. Liz turned her head, and saw her face. Tess' face. But not quite Tess - not her mannerisms, not her arrogant posture... not even Tess' hair or clothes. And certainly not pregnant. Ava, Liz realized. She got up in surprise -- or at least, she *tried* to stand up. Her arms and legs couldn't move from the chair.
And Liz turned to stare at the young man who had brought her there, a chain of deductions reaching its logical conclusion. If the girl was not Tess, then the guy was not Michael, and had to be... "Rath," she whispered, finally seeing it. He had done a good job of... well, of acting not like himself, if not acting perfectly like Michael either. Liz had ignored all of the little jarring details in her pleasure at seeing Michael again.
And then the implications of the situation started to sink home. Here she was, effectively restrained and helpless, far from home or anywhere that her friends would know to look for her, along with two alien clones. One of them had been almost a friend and had helped her once, but the other had shown himself to be a brutal thug who had plotted to kill his brother and leader, and who had very nearly murdered Max in New York. What could the two of them want with HER, now???
Isabel was aware of the granilith sitting at rest, a small part of it underneath the murky waters of the swamp, most of it poking out into the air, for a little while. *How do we get out??* she wondered. She tried to make a mental effort to leave the granilith's energy matrices, as she had consciously entered them, but it did no good.
And then, maybe forty-five seconds after the landing, (though it was hard to judge time in that state,) she was standing there, calves about eight inches deep in the muddy water, standing next to the curve of the granilith cone, and Michael and Tess were there with her. She almost thought she heard the faint trailing echo of a 'pop' sound caused by their sudden appearance. Isabel opened her mouth to say the first thing that came to her mind, but Tess beat her to it.
"What a fuckin' godforsaken waste of space you had to drag me to, Guerin!" Okay, that was going a little further than Isabel would have, but it was hard to argue that the wetlands seemed anything better than depressing and uncomfortable. She certainly hadn't expected for her best pair of boots to get wet, when she'd decided to wear them on the interstellar trip.
Michael didn't comment, so Iz decided to try a more practical concern. "Okay, what do we do now??"
"Well," Michael said, thinking about it. "The colonists would have detected us coming in, and I'm guessing that they know pretty much where we are. So they'll come looking for the granilith, and who has it. We should probably try to make some kind of shelter and wait for them."
"And what if they don't have any clue where to find us??" Tess shot back bitterly. "I guess it would be expecting too much for you to touch down somewhere in the vicinity of, I don't know, civilization??"
"I didn't know where to find civilization," he admitted unhappily. "I only just managed to figure out *which* planet in this star system we should be aiming for." He mumbled something under his breath, and Isabel tried to pretend she didn't know and didn't care that he was adding 'assuming I figured right' or something like that.
He tramped across a stretch of oozing mud and floating moss to scramble up onto a bar of more solid ground, examining the plants available there. "These trunks seem pretty strong, and the... whatever these are," he gestured at a wide, flat, patterned sheet of blue stuff that seemed to fill the same role as leaves but not the same definition, "is practically solid enough to work as a wall. Would be enough to build a lean-to or a hut of some kind. Little help, Izzy??" Isabel grabbed Tess' arm, (not about to let her get very far out of reach if she could help it,) and dragged her up the bank. After Tess wrenched herself away and sulkily sat on a flat rock close by, Isabel pitched in with all the enthusiasm she could... well, dredge up, using her powers whenever she could and her bare hands whenever she had no other choice. Slowly, a large and sturdy, if bare, shelter began to take shape.
It was hard work even so, and seeing Tess just sitting there did nothing to improve Isabel's morale, but on the other hand forcing her to lend a hand seemed like a line neither of them wanted to cross, and probably more trouble than it was worth, anyway. To distract herself, Isabel muttered, "I wonder what the rest of the gang are up to, back in Roswell."
Tess smiled a small smile. "Trying not to worry about when you're getting back... talking your parents out of calling the missing children's department... or is that runaway teenage brats??"
Michael looked up at that. "Already?? We've only been gone a d..." He broke off, fixating on an expression in Tess' eyes. "Alright, what's the big gag??"
"You didn't get that far in the translation, did you?" Tess snickered. "It seemed like only a day to us, but actually we've been in transit for over a week at least. Some kind of hyper-relativistic effect at high interstellar speeds." She shrugged her unconcern. "Didn't really matter to me... I had no hurry to get back home, only to get out of that place they call 'the Earth...' But I bet it hurts to know that they've been missing you for days and days already, and you didn't even realize, huh??"
Isabel *was* stung by the news, she had to admit it, but shook it off and resumed the task at hand, seaming two blue panels together to form a section of wall. "You know, you could get off your ass and pitch in too -- we're all in this together now, pretty much, and the shelter's for you too." After a moment and a thought, Isabel added with a small amount of honest concern... "How's the baby doing?"
Tess sighed loudly and stood up, going over and adjusting the way Michael had fitted a few trunks together to form a corner of the leanto roof. He took a look once she was done, and nodded approvingly. "He and I seem to be breathing better, thank you. Which suggests that Michael here may have actually picked a winner, will wonders never cease." She looked around. "We're going to need some stuff in the way of furniture here... makeshift chairs, tables, even beds."
"Sounds like it's my turn to go scavenging," Isabel decided. "You take over with the walls here." And she headed out of the leanto to start scrounging for anything in the swamp that looked like it might be useful."
Liz looked from the face of one dupe to the other and back, still bound to the chair she sat in via invisible alien forces. Frantic, she blurted out the first thing on her mind. "What the HELL are the two of you doing working together? And why -- last time I knew, you were fierce adversaries." Gulping, she made a dreadful guess. "Ava, did he threaten you somehow to go along with this? Or coerce you by holding some secret above your head? Come on, you don't have to do this... I'm your cornball--"
"No, no, I think you've got it all wrong," Ava insisted with a sweet, friendly smile, cutting of Liz's panicked babbling. "Rath's trying to do a face turn, though subtlety still isn't his trump suit, so I'm not surprised you got the wrong idea."
"Umm... huh?" Liz replied, somewhat lost in the lingo. "Rath's doing what to his face??"
Ava chuckled again. "He's trying to do the right thing, become a good guy. A face, instead of a heel. Now, if you'll agree not to attack either of us or try to leave until we've explained everything, then he'll let you go. *Won't* you, general??" Rath didn't look too happy about the idea, but he nodded somberly, which surprised Liz. Unless this was quite an involved scene being played out for her benefit, it seemed at least like Rath wasn't in charge here. Or at least not entirely... maybe they were both partly in charge.
"Um, okay, I promise. No attacking either of you, or leaving before you're done, as long as that can be done in a timely fashion and I'm free to go afterward."
"Um..." Ava weighed that over. "Agreed in principle, but you may have to give us some leeway on 'timely fashion...' There's quite a bit to fill you in on."
"I'll try to be patient," Liz agreed readily. Somehow this seemed very important... and suddenly her extremities could move again. She fought back the urge to leap up out of the chair, and instead just shifted to make herself comfortable as best she could.
"Okay, and you asked why we was tag-teamin' it," Rath started, pulling up a seat of his own... though the thing he sat upon seemed hardly to qualify as a chair. "Well, not long after the summit, me an' Lonn had a big fallin' out. I'd decided that I wasn't wild about some of the things we'd done... like icin' Zan. I know yous probably thoughtta me as a stone cold killer, but Zan really was like a brother to me. I gave in to my dark side and nullified him, and that's sometin' I'll probably hafta carry 'round inside of me forever. And then we tried to play Max, and squash him after he stood his ground to Nicholas, and Max didn't deserve nunna that. He's a stand-up guy, maybe better than Zan 'cuz he didn't have to grow up in the shitholes of the big city the way we did." Rath shook his head. "Sorry 'bout goin' on an' on there... the point is that I wanted to make a change. Lonnie, she was still high on being her own bad girl self, and so we split up and went separate ways. I didn't like who I saw when I looked at her, or at myself for that matter. But after wandering around by myself for a little while, I clued in that I didn't really have any idea how to start making it right."
Rath let out a loud breath and continued his tale. "I ran into Ava sometime in the middle of January, I guess, in a little roadside restaurant near Columbus. Craziest thing, both of us ending up at the same place and the same time. At first, she was a little afraid, that I'd come to take something out on her, but I didn't even want to. The way I used to treat Ava like space trash was one more thing I was on the guilt trip over. So, we started to actually talk, and it didn't take long for the subject to around come to your friends, here in Roswell. Ava kind of missed you, Parker, and was hoping that Michael and Isabel were doing okay. And I had some bad news to share on that score."
"What?" Liz prompted. The idea of Rath being remorseful had seemed incongruous to start with, but she had started to tentatively accept it and was following the tale avidly.
"Well, did Max tell you about the part of the Summit story where Lonnie and I dragged Tess back down into the sewers, after we tried to bump Max off and it didn't work?"
"Yeah, after I saved him," Liz whispered, relishing the memory in retrospect.
"That... that was you?" Rath repeated, stunned. He turned to Ava. "I -- I thought you..."
Ava grinned lopsidedly at him. "You thought? Now there's an unlikely thing, Rath boy. What could I do? I couldn't have made Max see anything from five thousand miles away; you know that. Isabel put Liz into the back of Max's mind, and he spotted her in the nick of time."
Rath shook his head. "Like a dreamwalk? But Max was wide awake the whole time..."
Liz took a turn. "The subconscious mind is just as active when somebody is awake as when they're dreaming, or nearly so. We just don't see it so clearly then."
"But Liz is Max's soulmate," Ava put in, bringing a horrible blush to Liz's face. "Even buried in the depth of his mind, he saw her... well, come on Rath. You were just getting to the good part when we all got sidetracked."
Rath nodded. "Well, something happened down in those tunnels that I don't think you know about. I..."
"I knew that there had to be more than the story that Tess told," Liz blurted out. "It just didn't make sense that you'd try for a moment to interrogate her with your power and then just leave."
"Um, yeah," Rath muttered. "I tried to get into Tess' head, find out where the granilith was hidden because Lonnie wanted to use it as a bargaining chip with Kivar. I didn't get its location, but I did see a *lot* of other stuff from inside her head. And then Tess forced me out and used some kind of plasma lightning against us... Lonnie tried to fight back, but soon it was clear that we either had to scram or get toasted. We ran."
"And a few moments later, Max found Tess down there," Liz said, seeing how it fit together. "She couldn't explain why you guys had left, because Max would freak if he realized that Tess had that kind of firepower at her disposal. So she tried to pretend that she was disoriented enough from the mental attack to not remember."
Rath nodded. "And the stuff I saw inside her mind... I don't generally mind having a rep as hard-core, but that chick's thoughts frightened even me. She hated you and your other human friends, Liz, well, except for this Kyle Valenti guy, who she kinduv had the hots for. Resented the way Michael and Isabel... and especially Max didn't want to get on board with their 'true destiny.' I saw all kinds of plans and fantasies inside that innocent little blond head... couldn't tell the difference between them a lot of the time, but still it had been chewin' on me. Max was a stand-up guy, and even though Michael and I have our differences, by this point I kinduv understood him a little. Didn't really like the thought of Tess using them like the whole galaxy was turning around her... or Isabel or you, Liz, even Maria and Alex."
"I'd gotten a bad vibe from Tess myself, the few times that we'd met," Ava put in at this point, "but I told myself it was nothing. Nobody else seemed to like what they saw when they met their opposite number after all. But when Rath started to tell me what a bitch she really was, I agreed that we had to do something. Even if we weren't really sure what... if Tess had been more than a match for Rath and Lonnie, she could definitely kick *my* ass even with Rath watching my back."
"Don't sell yourself too short," Liz put in. "You're stronger than you think... even stronger than Lonnie, in the important ways, for my money."
"Vixen's gotta point," Rath muttered under his breath.
"Okay, so, um..." Liz mumbled. "Back on track. You came back to Roswell in secret at this point? Maybe tried to watch what Tess was up to without letting her know you were there??"
"Not quite," Ava put in. "First, Rath convinced me that we should try to find Lonnie, see if he could convince her to back us up. With all three of us, we'd have a fighting chance against Tess no matter how many nasty tricks she'd learned... not that either of us wanted it to come to that."
"We found her," Rath added, "She'd moved a bit from our old 'hood, but not far... the lower west side, running con games on the newbie rubes, and cleanin' up pretty good. I gave it my best shot, shared what I'd got from Tess with her, but she didn't care. She wasn't going to Roswell again ever, and that was that. So I swiped some of her take for plane fare to New Mexico." Liz couldn't help laughing at that twist ending, though it definitely seemed in keeping with the way Rath and Lonnie used to behave with everyone else.
"It didn't take too much effort to get set up here in Roswell. When Ava and I toned down the true Manhattan style and took care not to look much like our opposite numbers, no-one seemed to pay any attention. Didn't take long to figure out that Tess was up to something that she didn't want any of the rest of you to find out about... mysterious phone calls and email messages. She left town secretly, and Ava tailed her... all the way to Las Cruces, where she met up with Alex at the university... the poor kid was freaking out until she gave him a dose of a super-brain-warp, and then it was like he was another guy, you know?? Ava passed me the news, and I was able to ask around, carefully, and find out that everyone here in Roswell thought that the guy was in Sweden on a student exchange program."
"So... wait a second," Liz interrupted. "You *knew*?? You knew what Tess was doing to Alex, and you didn't let any of us KNOW??"
"Calm down, cornball," Ava said softly, sounding uncertain like she was trying to soothe a little girl she wasn't too familiar with. "We were both pretty freaked ourselves, and not sure if Tess was suspecting that she'd been made. If either of us just popped out into the open, Tess woulda found some way to keep us from spillin' the word."
"And if we'd tried to make contact secretly," Rath put in, "how were we supposed to get Max or the others to trust us, compared to Tess, who they thought BELONGED with them? Well, at least, more than we did."
"You could have come to me, Ava," Liz insisted. "We would have found a way. But I guess the two of you were cowards. The hell -- Alex didn't *have* to die!!!" She was nearly screaming now.
"Actually... I didn't die." It was the last voice Liz ever expected to hear -- to really hear with her own ears instead of in her mind, again... and she whirled to the tall, gawky figure standing at the edge of the room. "It's good to see you again, Liz."
"*Alex*???!?" Liz gasped, beyond shock or startlement now. "Buh--- but *how*???"
"Long story," Alex quipped, stretching his arms as if inviting her to come over and give him a hug.
Maria's phone rang just as she walked longingly past the little makeup boutique on the second floor, east wing, and she brought it to her ear in a second. "DeLuca speaking."
"Um, hey, it's Max. This isn't very important, but, umm..."
Maria smiled a little as she headed for a free spot on a bench. Max Evans never seemed to be that sure of himself on the telephone... well, not when it wasn't a crisis situation. "Hey, I'm not busy or anything. Spill what's on your mind, bud."
There was a brief laugh from Max. "Um, well... I was just wondering if you'd heard from Liz recently."
Maria thought about that a second. "We chatted last night, not about anything much. Our friends and wondering when they might get back and what they'd have to tell us about." Max would understand that veiled reference. "Haven't talked to her today, but then I didn't really expect to. Why??"
"Just trying to track her down."
"Well, she should be on shift at the cafe now."
"I already tried there," Max said. "Jose said that she took off about half an hour ago -- slow afternoon, apparently."
"Hmm, that does sound a little odd for Liz," Maria said. "I'll have to ask her what the deal is when I go in... assuming that she's back for the dinner rush."
"Yeah," Max said, sounding a little reassured. "Listen, are you... can you talk freely??"
Maria looked around. She didn't tend to get paranoid just because she was on a cell phone, but... "I'm at the mall right now, just window shopping a little. Can call you back from the car or something."
"Ummm..." Max hesitated a moment. "Yeah, that'd be cool, thanks. I'm at home."
"Okay. Ring you back in five." Maria headed back out to the parking lot, (thinking regretfully of all the nice clothes that she wasn't letting herself spend hard-earned money on,) and hit the 'dial last caller' button as soon as she was in the driver's seat of the Jetta. "Hey, me again."
"I would never have guessed," Max's voice came back dryly. "Okay, well, Liz told me about the... well, the future me thing."
"Oh, right," Maria agreed. "Pretty weird, huh?? I mean, it sounds strange enough to me... I can hardly even imagine what it must be like for you, considering that... well, it was you."
"Weird??" Max repeated. "Okay... the girl I love broke my heart and pretended to sleep with her ex in order to break my heart... so that I'd hook up with the girl who killed her best friend and almost betrayed me to my worst enemy. And a time travelling thirtysomething edition of me put her up to it. 'Weird' doesn't really begin to cover it."
"Yeah, I haven't really got my head wrapped around that part myself," Maria said, "except that, when Tess skipped town the first time around, you didn't realize that it was really better that way."
"Yeah," Max agreed a little bitterly. "But it sounds like that was the only plan that Liz and I were able to come up with to stop the end of the world... and it's pretty much a no-go now. What does that mean for us??"
"That you've got at least a few years before you need to start obsessing over it?" Maria suggested. "Also... well, this might sound weird, but... even though Tess' reasons for seducing you weren't honorable - she's going to have your child. That kid is going to be twelve years old when whatever it is goes down... which is young I know, but as much as I dislike his mother personally, he's going to be quite a guy. Maybe he'll be able to change the way things happen."
"Wow," Max mumbled. "My son with Tess as the savior of the Earth... I don't think I can even begin to come to terms with that idea at the moment."
"That's okay, it's pretty out there I know," Maria agreed. "Well, I hope you find Liz. Just try to be honest with her, and let her know how much you love her, and I think the two of you will be okay. Did she mention how she's doing on the 'you and Tess' front??"
"Not out loud, but I know it's hard on her," Max muttered. "She understands that I was in a dark place, influenced by Tess' powers, but that doesn't change the fact that I slept with her worst rival and had a child with her. I don't think she knows of a way to get past that. If it were me, well..." He laughed. "That's the worst irony, isn't it?? The very thing that she pretends to do to me, with the noblest of motives... I go and do the real thing back to her, for all the worst reasons. And now we're kinda too messed up to know where to go next."
"Well... I hope you figure it out."
"Thanks, Maria. See you tomorrow at Kyle's place?"
"Uhh, yep. Bye."
"Bye." She hung up the phone, trying to remember what was tomorrow. Oh, right, they had a little meeting scheduled, just to keep in touch on the ongoing conspiracy, not that there was much need for an update lately.
Well, she had decided something. Maria got up to head back into the mall. She was going to buy that gorgeous black silk top, and maybe try a new set of blush and lipstick. Life was much too short to *always* save up for tomorrow.
"I'm hungry," Tess grumped. "All that stuff we ate or drank in the granilith seems to be draining out of my system like it was never real in the first place... which I'm not convinced it was. And I didn't have anything since noon, the day before we left, because the problems with the baby were killing my appetite."
"You see anything that looks appetizing, feel free," Michael told her. "Just don't bother me about it." Tess was right about the insubstantiality of their trip inside the granilith, but on the other hand, Michael wasn't sure that he'd burned any real energy while they'd been inside... he'd appeared here on this planet almost in exactly the same physical condition as he entered. Of course, he'd been able to grab a quick breakfast with Maria right before heading off to the pod chamber... the second last time he'd seen her --
Tess had gotten up from the wooden drum of tree trunk, quite like the ones that Michael and Isabel were also using as chairs, and started to stalk the narrow strip of firm ground outside the shelter. There was a sound of some kind of activity, and Michael groaned and got up to investigate when he heard Tess muffling curses. "What is it??"
She pointed at some kind of amphibian. "I'm hungry enough to actually try frying and eating one," she said, "but they're quick, and I can't use fire or lightning safely with all this water around. You're better at using just pure force to attack, Michael -- wanna help me catch my dinner??"
"No, not right now," he said brusquely. "Amphibs can be poison -- I think that probably holds true on just about any world." A pause. "On the other hand, I think there are probably roots on that plant that are edible... and safer, if you're REALLY starving."
"Ehhh... I don't like the idea of roots," Tess mumbled, and shoved past him to go back into the shelter. Michael followed, and found that Isabel was trying to get his attention as he returned.
"I'm worried about those clouds," she said, indicating the far horizon off at about two o'clock. "Might be a windstorm strong enough to blow this lean-to straight away."
"Hmm." Michael looked at the odd blue clouds hanging in the faintly orange sky and nodded. Groaning, he headed back out of the shelter and into the swamp water to get a better look. After a few paces, he put his hand on the huge rim of the granilith cone to steady his balance... and gasped.
All of a sudden, he was more aware of that weather pattern than he could possibly be of anything with just his usual human senses. Trajectory, wind speeds, cloud densities, precipitation patterns, and anticipated forecasts just flooded into his mind. "Oh, wow."
"What is it??" Shooting one look at Tess, Isabel hurried over to join him. "What is it, Michael??"
"I... I can't explain it," he said, gently lifting his hand from the surface of the granilith and noticing the sensor data just kind of 'switch off.' "Put your hand on the granilith and tell me what you feel, if anything."
Shrugging, Isabel did... and drew in a surprised breath herself. "The... the colony, it's about twenty-five miles that way." She pointed off... well, if the storm was still approaching from two o'clock, the direction she was indicating was about nine-thirty. "Or a settlement of some kind at least, lot of buildings all close together. There are parties moving around the edge of the swamp in some kind of ground vehicles... but I'm not sure that they're equipped to come in after us, even if they know that we're here."
This was another shock to Michael. Somehow he'd expected that if Isabel got anything from the granilith, it would be the same thing that he'd seen -- but then, she hadn't been focusing on the storm the way he had. He resumed his own contact. "The storm is going to be here in about ten minutes, with hurricane-power wind and some kind of precipitation that might be caustic. We cannot stay here." He thought a moment. "Judging by the directions, we should probably head directly for that settlement of yours."
"How??" Isabel replied. "Even if we can tow the G behind us, we can't outrun that storm slogging on foot through the mud."
"No," Michael said, getting an idea. Tess had moved closer by this point, standing at the edge of the firm ground where they had built their shelter... she still didn't want to get her feet wet again Michael guessed. "Not 'behind' us. I've got an idea... damn, but to use the granilith for anything other than sensing, we'll need the key again. Do you have any idea what happened to it?"
"Oh, no." Isabel looked back to the shelter pointlessly, then started vainly searching her clothes. "Do you suppose it's still back on Earth??"
"Wouldn't make much sense... that would be like designing a car to drop its ignition key on the ground wherever you start it from." Michael started to search the smooth granilith cone itself for anyplace that the key might be retrieved... then stopped as he realized, quite to his amazement, that the long crystal stick that was the granilith key was strung onto the chain running from one of the pockets to another on his jeans. He stared at it for a long moment. "This wasn't here while we were still inside... I know that much." He tried to remember if he'd noticed the chain since emerging in the swamp, but couldn't. Wouldn't he have felt the extra weight before this??
"Maybe it was inside the granilith mechanism as long as we were travelling, and got returned to you automatically when we emerged," Isabel suggested. "Because you were the one who had been driving. I have to admit, stringing it on the chain was a nice touch."
"Rats, foiled again," Tess muttered, splashing into the swamp water now. Michael wondered what might have happened if Tess had gotten the key when they'd emerged, and known how to do something dangerous with it and the granilith... and fought back a shudder. They'd dodged a danger he hadn't even thought of.
"Too bad, so sad," Isabel quipped at Tess. "Okay Guerin, what's your plan??"
Michael didn't answer in words... instead he took a firm hold of the key in his left hand, touched the granilith cone again with his right, and focused on Isabel. Suddenly she was rising into the air... and Michael concentrated, manoeuvring her up and dropping her into a 'riding' pose on the very top of the cone. (The point of the cone was now lifting straight up into the air so that the top of it was a flat line. The bottom of the cone rim was only barely skimming the edge of the water... the granilith cone was now levitating itself too. Just how Michael wanted it.)
"Hey, how the heck am I supposed to... huh."
"Stay on??" Michael called up in reply to Isabel's complaint. "Does that answer your question."
"Umm... I'm not sure," she replied. "Not exactly sure *how* I'm staying on, but I seem to be. So if you can keep whatever you're doing up, I guess it's not much of an issue."
"Okay. You still got a firm bead on the settlement??"
"Yep."
"Alright then. You'll be the navigator, and I'll drive from the stern." He turned to Tess. "Your turn."
"Riding the granilith??" she repeated dubiously. Just for that, Michael started levitating her into the air without waiting for Tess to indicate that she was ready... settled her a little back from Isabel, and then took position just behind her.
"Right forty degrees," Isabel called as he was getting himself settled, and Michael made what he hoped was an appropriate change in the way the cone was pointing. Geometry had never been his best subject. He also lifted the cone up a bit higher so that friction in the water, or running into swamp plants, wouldn't be a problem.
"Let's just get moving!!" Tess exclaimed. Michael risked half a look backward, and realized that the storm winds and hissing of the first rainfall were visibly approaching across the wetlands. Hoping for the best, Michael pushed the granilith forward at maximum juice.
For the record, the granilith can do zero to eighty miles per hour in about 3.1 seconds. What's more surprising is that none of them actually fell off.
TO BE CONTINUED...