Up the LadderUp the Ladder 
RivkaT@aol.com
 
 
Spoilers: fourth season, through Elegy. You can either assume that
Gethsemane didn't happen or that it had as little effect on the
characters as I grumpily suspect it will.
Rating: R for foul language, minor violence
Classification: XA, UST
 
 
Summary: Mulder gets what he wants most...or does he? It's a
veritable potpourri: oiliens, Krycek, Marita, Sam, you name it.
There are also bees; most everything about them is actually true,
except for the parts that are just paranoia.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or situations and make no
claim to anything herein.
 
 
Up the Ladder 1/8
RivkaT@aol.com
 
 
Sedona was beautiful in the summer, Mulder thought as he
squinted out over the red rocks at the setting sun. It was like a
fucking painting in a cheap motel, it was so gorgeous. If he'd had
the time, he would have joined the harmonic convergence folks
chanting with their crystals, praying to Mother Earth to heal her
poisoned self.
 
 
But he had other business, with a more personal poison.
 
 
Maybe it was strange for a world-reknowned oncologist to
live in Sedona, dragging sick people out into the Arizona desert
among the rocks for a chance to be cured. Maybe the heat helped
dry up the cancers they brought to him; it was as good an
explanation as any.
 
 
Skinner had never explained how he'd found Matt Rafferty's
name, or how he'd gotten Scully into the good doctor's new study,
which just fortuitously happened to concern brain tumors. The
Lone Gunmen had traced Rafferty's grant to a foundation the CIA
had previously used to fund the Contras. Mulder knew the price
Skinner had paid, but at that point he hadn't cared, as long as
Rafferty was a real doctor.
 
 
And Rafferty certainly was. He and Scully could chat away
for hours, comparing horror stories. He'd apparently flirted with
pathology before settling on oncology.
 
 
These days, flirting with pathologists was good enough for
him.
 
 
Mulder kicked the red dirt, cursing himself for thinking about
it. When he'd left Scully in Sedona, two months ago, he'd barely
met Rafferty, just sniffed around him to see if he could be trusted.
He'd thought that the man was just a means to an end, a tool.
 
 
This distraction from his plans was all the worse because he
could tell that something big was brewing; he could feel it
thrumming through the ground like a rhythm. Scully's cure had
come because the silent men behind the conspiracies were settling
up their debts in preparation for the final resolution--or final
solution. Never before had he needed Scully so much, but there
was no way he could tell her about his certainty without risking her
pity. And, yes, he'd go it alone rather than have her reject his
intuitions, or, worse, come back out of loyalty to him rather than
belief in his inferences.
 
 
He'd returned to Arizona to take her home, apparently cured,
only it wasn't clear that she'd be coming home.
 
 
It was a very fine thing to see Scully happy. She sparkled
when she was with Rafferty; it didn't take someone who knew her
well to see that.
 
 
They'd gone out to dinner last night, a cozy threesome, and
she'd shown off her happiness to Mulder like some shiny trinket
she'd found. She wanted the two of them to like each other--two
important men in her life, partner and lover, and they should be
friends--but she must have known that it couldn't happen. Rafferty
openly scoffed at the idea of the X Files. Any time Scully
mentioned conspiracies or experimentation, he froze up, and she
would frown and change the subject.
 
 
It was only Scully's pleading looks that had kept Mulder from
needling Rafferty all through dinner. Well, maybe not. Somehow
his ordinary witticisms didn't come very easy that night.
 
 
When Scully had gotten up to go to the bathroom, she'd been
nervous, not sure what Mulder would do in her absence. As soon
as her Mulder-behave-yourself expression disappeared from view,
however, Rafferty had started to speak.
 
 
"I really love her, you know."
 
 
Mulder grunted and sloshed his ice tea around.
 
 
"Dana can be so...refreshingly naive at times."
 
 
Mulder's head came up; that sounded suspiciously like an
insult. Rafferty put up a hand to forestall his outburst. "What I
mean is...she talks about you all the time. She worries about you.
Because she's your very--good--friend." Rafferty's measured
cadence made the subtle emphasis on the last word stand out
clearly.
 
 
Was this humiliation really required? He'd fucking bared his
throat to Rafferty, deferred to him and his relationship with Scully,
but apparently that wasn't enough.
 
 
"I understand," he said, and gulped the last dregs of his drink,
wishing that it hailed from Long Island instead of Arizona.
 
 
"Good," Rafferty said, and nodded to Scully as she took her
seat again.
 
 
Maybe the manly thing to do would have been to fight
Rafferty for Scully's delicate little hand, but it wasn't going to
happen. Everyone assumed that, just because he was six feet tall
and crazy, he was also dangerous, when in fact the only person he
could beat up was Krycek, and that when the man was handcuffed
and he had Scully for backup. Some part of him craved violence,
for sure--he got beaten up himself often enough to prove it--but he
did a lot better receiving than giving. There's a certain moral high
ground in being the loser in every battle.
 
 
Come to think of it, that might have been what happened at
dinner last night.
 
 
Mulder sighed and poked at the ground with his toe, dirtying
his shoe further. Scully had hardly mentioned Rafferty's name
during the two months she'd been out here, even though they'd
talked every night. Mulder had called because he needed to know
that she was all right. Was she dreaming? Was she staring out at
her furniture from the misleading safety of her bed, wondering
when a demon would change back into a chair? The tumor that sat
in her forehead like a demented parody of a psychic third eye
haunted him day and night. When he was talking to her, before
they were sure that the treatment worked, he sometimes thought
that he could hear it growing, cell by cell, stealing the nourishment
and oxygen that should be for her alone.
 
 
Mulder had said that he called because he had trouble
sleeping without her around and Scully pretended to believe him,
certain that he was just coddling her. But she had to know the
truth, subconsciously at least, or she would have told him that she
was falling in love.
 
 
It's not as if she couldn't have mentioned it, in between the
gory details of the latest bout of diarrhea and vomiting. Dr. Scully
had *regaled* him with detail about her physical condition, as if
that would make up for the complete silence about her mental
condition. When she was blurry with fever, she'd still managed to
pick up the phone and describe the way that the skin was coming
off of her arms and legs in sheets, telling him that nothing else of
interest was happening. And, more fool he, he'd just assumed that
meant she was worried but didn't want to expose her weakness to
him. 
 
 
He realized that he was mad. Nay, furious. This was not how
one treated a friend. Hell, he'd known more about her one-night
stand with Ed Jerse than about Rafferty, until he got off the plane
and they were standing there, arms linked, a happy couple waiting
to greet a family friend. 
 
 
If she hadn't understood at some level how he'd feel, she
would have told him over the phone. Instead, she'd let it hit him all
at once, in public, where he could only try not to react. Scully was
always confident that what they didn't talk about wouldn't exist.
Dana Scully, mistress of denial. No, he reminded himself, Dana
Scully, mistress of Dr. Matt Rafferty, M.D./Ph.D (Harvard).
 
 
So here he was, having stopped his car at a scenic overlook in
the middle of nowhere, pulled off the road to look at red rocks. Red
as Scully's hair, red as the blood that no longer dripped from her
nose every once in a while. The rocks were strong and shaped into
pillars by ages of wind; they rose and dipped in fantastic forms,
punctuated every once in a while by a flash of green--cactus, eking
out a bare existence among all the dusty red.
 
 
The world was red below and clear blue above, not a cloud in
the sky. The heat was furnace-like; the drops of sweat that fell from
his body evaporated moments after they hit the ground. If it were
not for the oxygen in the air, he could have imagined himself on
Mars.
 
 
When he'd gotten in his car to drive back to Scully's rented
condo, he'd found a note on his seat. The handwriting was
unfamiliar, but the faint perfume lingering on the paper reminded
him of Marita. "Africanized bees have been moving up from Brazil
at the rate of 200 miles per year since the 1950s. They reached
Texas several years ago, and should have gone further up. But, for
some reason, they turned left into Arizona. No one has publicly
offered an explanation for why these aggressive bees did not head
toward the eastern seaboard."
 
 
He'd rested his head on his hands and his elbows on the
steering wheel for several minutes. Distractions, always
distractions. He could stay in Arizona and chase killer bees, but
somehow it seemed inappropriate. He'd follow up on the hint like a
good little paranoid, but if he had to stay in this godforsaken state
one second longer than absolutely necessary he'd lose it entirely.
He just wanted to collect Scully and go home.
 
 
So he tucked the note into a jacket pocket and started up the
car. He'd explained his late arrival by saying he'd gotten lost on the
way back; Scully bought the story with complete indulgence.
 
 
And when she'd said goodnight, Scully had told him that she
might not be coming back. That Matt had asked her to marry him,
and that she was thinking about saying yes. So could he give her
the plane ticket, because she was at least staying out here a few
days longer; if she said yes she'd use it to come back and pack up
whatever she'd be bringing out to Arizona.
 
 
He'd congratulated her and handed over the ticket. He
managed to make it to the parking lot of the condo she'd rented
before spewing bitterness and expensive Southwestern cuisine into
the gutter.
 
 
Remembering, with razor-sharp clarity, was enough to make
him nauseous again. He wasn't going to beg. He was going to walk
away and let her be happy.
 
 
Not because he loved her enough that her happiness came
first. No, never that. Because she was Dana Scully and she didn't
fuck around; if she wanted Rafferty that's who she'd have, no
matter how sorry she was for Fox Mulder. And he still had his
pride, as long as he didn't beg in vain.
 
 
He'd thought that nothing more could happen to his heart,
that it had been squashed flat twenty-five years ago. But a
bulldozer was rolling over it again, turning it into a thin grey smear
spread across the universe, an atom thick.
 
 
Strangely, his hands throbbed in unison with his chest,
creating a rhythm of pain that was not quite intense enough to shut
off his mind.
 
 
He stared down at the sheer drop in front of him. The roads
curved, so it was hard to get a sense of how far you'd driven into
the hills until you stopped and looked down at a place like this.
 
 
If Scully could see him, she'd think that he was
contemplating suicide. That was a laugh--both the thought that
Scully would see him, really see him, and the idea of suicide. Not
enough penance done for that, no sirree. Maybe someday, when
things got a little calmer, when he'd had some revenge. But still, he
wondered what falling from such a height was like--was it like
flying, until the very last moment? Was the freedom from ground
and all the impositions of the rest of the world worth it?
 
 
He'd survive. He always survived. He'd been left behind so
many times, always wondering what had happened. This wouldn't
be any different.
 
 
Mulder straightened his shoulders, took a deep breath of
burning-hot Arizona air, and headed back to the car. He had a
plane to catch.
 
 
* * *
 
 
Mulder told Personnel that Scully was having follow-up tests
done; no sense getting her insurance cancelled on her, even if the
bills were trickling to a halt. After so long, they barely bothered to
ask about a pinch-hitter partner, and he didn't think that he even
replied to the query.
 
 
They'd split up during so many of their investigations,
especially near the end, that he wasn't sure he would even know
what to do with a full-time partner. Scully didn't trust him, exactly,
but she knew when to stay out of his way, and her talents were
often wasted in the field when there were bodies whose silent
words only she could hear waiting for her white-gloved touch.
 
 
Ah, thinking about her was counterproductive. He'd go visit
the Gunmen, but their resolute silence about her was just as bad--it
was like having a ghost in the room, or an afterimage burned into
his retinas.
 
 
There were still the bees. Since Skinner's life-saving betrayal,
Mulder had felt that he was close to finding a major truth.
Implicating Skinner had only been a small aspect of the plan. As he
got closer to the heart of the conspiracy, he knew that his soul was
getting a little more gray by the day; a big step had been filing off
the serial number on Skinner's gun. He chuckled, thinking about
the look on the AD's face when the tech had pointed that out.
Saying the gun was found in a sewer grate had been little more
than an act of omission, but tampering with the gun itself was
another level of commitment to obfuscation.
 
 
He was becoming a player, but he intended to play on his
own terms. Skinner owed him, too, now. 
 
 
The bees were the key, he was sure of it. Bees lived in
colonies. They were haplodiploid insects. The males only had one
set of genes; as a consequence, all the residents of a hive were
much more closely related to each other than any human grouping,
which accounted for much of bees' social behavior. He could sense
some sort of clue there to the nature and purpose of the clones. But
why Samantha? And who was the boy--or, who had he been?
 
 
Without Scully--there he went again--no one paid much
attention to his investigations, as if he'd just return to his original
level of ineffectiveness without her. That meant that he could
devote more time to conspiracy theory, and less to the random
weirdness that turned up.
 
 
The prospect of work, as always, helped to define a place
where the pain could be stored for later use.
 
 
So, bees. As it turned out, in one of God's more savage
ironies, Dr. Bambi was expecting her first uber-child. She was
supposed to stay away from actual bugs for the time being, and so
(after inundating Mulder with information about genetic
counseling and prenatal bonding and backaches--what had he seen
in this woman?) she was willing to chat about bees for a while.
 
 
The United States government subsidizes apiaries, to the tune
of millions of dollars a year. It does this because the common bee
is necessary for pollination of a variety of crops, cash and food
both--one-third of America's caloric consumption (though Mulder
was probably at the low end of that distribution). When targeted
for budget cuts, apiary owners have credibly argued that they are
responsible for America's unparalleled ability to feed the world,
and they can't stay in business on honey sales alone. No bees
means no plants next year. The disappearance of bees and other
pollinators could sunder the food chain at one of its weak links.
Last year, they had investigated an X File based in large part on the
disappearance oft frogs--an indicator species--but this year it was
bees--a keystone species. One was a signal, the other the stuff of
life itself.
 
 
Within that life-sustaining government subsidy, though, was
room for a lot of concealment. Labs around the country received
grants to advance apiculture. Bee research: Who would pay any
attention to that, after all? What harm could come of it?
 
 
He'd seen the harm; now he had to find the honey trail.
 
 
* * *
 
 
"Bees are my favorite insect," Dr. Hylton said. He was a tall,
balding African-American man. His booming voice, obviously a
well-developed product of years of speaking in lecture halls full of
students, carried well as they strode across the American
University campus. "What is your favorite insect, Mr. Mulder?"
 
 
Mulder shuddered involuntarily. "I don't have one."
 
 
"Pity," the older man said, slowing to look back at his
companion. "It's been said that the study of biology tells one
nothing about God except that He has an inordinate fondness for
beetles. But I like bees best. Bees are at the top of the heap, social-
 
 
organization-wise. They're self-sacrificing, and within the group
there's virtually an absence of social conflict, though of course
there are exceptions. And what have we learned from them? To
live in harmony, to support the natural cycle of life? No, we've
learned that honey tastes good. All that claptrap about killer bees--
 
 
bees are nearly harmless, unless one has the misfortune to be
allergic. A bee's stinger, you see, is attached to its internal organs;
when it stings, its guts are literally pulled out with the stinger and it
dies. Bees, unlike wasps, therefore do not sting lightly."
 
 
"But could a variety of bee be bred that *would* have a
propensity to swarm and sting people repeatedly?"
 
 
"I take it you mean that the bees as a group would sting
repeatedly," Dr. Hylton said with a scholar's pedanticism, "because
of course each bee would only sting once. Even Africanized bees
only sting when provoked, or when they're interfered with during
the period when a breakaway colony swarms to find a new home.
It's hard to see how--not to mention why--someone would breed
bees more aggressive than that, because they'd wipe out their stock
each time they checked for aggressiveness."
 
 
"But it's the workers who swarm and attack, correct?"
 
 
"Yes." 
 
 
They'd reached the science building, a white marble edifice
with an impressive dome, in good Washington style. Dr. Hylton
took the steps two at a time, and held the door for Mulder.
 
 
"Then," Mulder said as his eyes adjusted to the dimmer light
inside the building, "is it possible that specially aggressive bees
could be bred by only selecting those queens whose drones were
most aggressive for propagating the next generation? Could such a
program have produced bees that behaved in the way I described in
my message?"
 
 
Dr. Hylton paused and gave the question his full attention
before pushing open the doors to the auditorium.
 
 
"Bees aren't like flies, Mr. Mulder. With flies, you can get a
twenty-four hour generation. Bees live longer, and we understand
their genotypes far less well. If such a program did exist--and I
think I would know if it did!--it would have to have begun in the
1960s, to get the kind of extreme agression you described. It's an
interesting theory, but much more science fiction than fact."
 
 
When he said "1960s," Mulder had a sudden intense memory
of his father, returning from one of his mysterious trips. Fox had
run to hug him, even though Dad hated that girly stuff from a boy,
and his father had pushed him back with more force than usual,
wincing. He'd said that it was insect bites, and he'd been stiff for
the next few days.
 
 
The power of Mulder's flashback did nothing for the
professor, who was walking away from his transfixed interrogator.
 
 
Mulder followed Dr. Hylton down the aisle as he headed for
the lectern. Students were chatting and settling in all around them.
"What about designing bees that could carry a modified smallpox
virus--is that possible?"
 
 
"As far as I know," Dr. Hylton said, opening his briefcase
and removing his class notes, "no one has ever tried to use bees as
a disease vector. It's just...well, it's just strange...Although, there
have been some recent advances with modifying bacteria and
viruses...The bacteria break down pesticides that would otherwise
kill the bees; there have also been some successful experiments
with genetically engineered viruses in caterpillars, though of
course the research is directed to killing the insects with the
viruses, not using them as vectors. So, yes, I suppose that it's
theoretically possible that someone could modify disease-carrying
bacteria or viral agents, to live in bees."
 
 
He pulled his glasses from his jacket pocket, looked down at
his notes, and raised his head to address the class. Obviously, the
interview was over.
 
 
"Today," he said, in a voice so loud that it hurt Mulder's ears,
"asexual reproduction."
 
 
Mulder walked out as the lecture began. Some of the students
looked at him funny, but that was hardly a shock.
 
 
* * *
 
 
"What do you know about bees?"
 
 
He'd finally gotten the strength to visit the Gunmen, and now
he directed the question at Langley, who pushed off from the
ground, sending his wheeled chair scurrying across the floor to
stop in front of another computer console.
 
 
"The U.S. government funds bee research nationwide; many
states do as well. Funding has increased dramatically in the last
few years. Seen many honeybees in your backyard lately?"
 
 
"Can't say that I have," Mulder drawled.
 
 
"That's because they're *dead*," Frohike interjected. "There's
no place in the country that hasn't experienced *at least* a ninety
percent drop in the number of wild honeybees; most places the
figure is nearer to one hundred percent. Even commercial apiaries
have lost from fifty to eighty percent of their bees in the past few
years, to flooding, cold, and two kinds of mites."
 
 
Byers chimed in. "There's research going on to breed mite-
 
 
resistant bees, but so far the results haven't been encouraging. The
best bet looks to be crossbreeding with bees imported from
Russia."
 
 
"But no one knows about this," Frohike continued smoothly.
"It's one of the great hidden biodiversity problems. Other kinds of
bees--birds and bats, too--pollinate, but mostly they stick to
particular species. Honeybees are generalists. And they're
disappearing."
 
 
"It's almost like," Mulder said slowly, "someone's opening up
a niche."
 
 
Three sets of glasses reflected the overhead lights as the
Gunmen stared up at him, processing his suggestion.
 
 
He set them to compiling a list of researchers who'd received
funding for bee research for at least two decades, preferably more.
Long-term plans meant a long-term paper trail, and perhaps they
could find a clue.
 
 
* * *
 
 
When he came into his office and Scully was sitting at the
desk he'd ordered her as a welcome-home present, he just assumed
that he'd graduated into full-blown hallucinations. It was not that
different from seeing his sister out of the corner of his eye.
 
 
He sat down at his desk and opened the *Washington Post*.
Until he got a new partner, he couldn't go out in the field, and that
meant that he was getting to be a real fan of the Style section.
 
 
Her voice curled out of the dimness of the basement room
like an eddy of smoke. "Aren't you going to say 'Welcome back?'"
 
 
Mulder put the paper down slowly, so that Scully wouldn't
see that his hands had started to shake.
 
 
"You're..."
 
 
"I'm back, Mulder."
 
 
"Why?" He was honestly curious, which probably helped
keep his voice from cracking.
 
 
She smiled crookedly at him. "Matt...couldn't accept what I
do. He doesn't believe in conspiracy or government betrayal and he
doesn't think I need to look any further for the truth." Her voice
was tired and wondering. "How can you love someone so much
who doesn't believe in the things that are most important to you?"
 
 
He took a deep breath through his nose and closed his eyes.
"It's not that hard," he said. "So, what do you know about Zuni
fetishes, Scully?"
 
 
End Part 1/8
 
 
 
 
 
 
Up the Ladder 2/8
RivkaT@aol.com
 
 
They emerged nearly unscathed from *that* adventure;
Mulder's bruised and swollen ankle hardly even counted. When
they returned, Mulder determined to get back to bee-hunting.
 
 
"The Gunmen called," Scully said as Mulder walked into the
office. "They want to do a profile on us. They asked me to describe
you. I said that words could not explain you, and that we were
highly sensitive about publicity after the Jose Chung fiasco."
 
 
The call had apparently triggered something in her, though,
and she plunged onwards. "Seriously, we need to think about
appealing to a wider audience, making the X Files better known so
that we can't just be shoved--"
 
 
"Into the basement?"
 
 
She ignored him and continued without missing a beat. "--
 
 
aside when political forces deem it expedient to thwart our work.
Frankly, *The Lone Gunman* is not the kind of reputable
publication we should be thinking about. *Other* FBI divisions
get good publicity; why not ask the PR people for some help?"
 
 
"Because they'd laugh at us, Scully. They'd schedule us an
interview with Sally Jesse Raphael, right after the kids who fuck
their mothers' lesbian lovers." He leaned against the doorframe,
crossing his arms in front of himself and smirking at her. Now
*this* was living--Scully and a good rumble; there was hardly
anything more to be wished for.
 
 
"At least there's a chance people will watch tabloid TV; the
Gunmen, much as I respect their talents, do not survive because of
their mass readership...How do they survive, Mulder? Is it legal?"
 
 
"Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies."
 
 
Scully shifted in her seat, smoothing a hair that had fallen out
of place. "In any event, we should think about wider exposure as a
long-term goal."
 
 
"I hear Playboy is doing a 'Women of the Federal
Government' spread."
 
 
"Maybe Bambi would be interested."
 
 
"I wish..."
 
 
She spun away from him in mock disgust.
 
 
"Look, Scully, if you don't want to talk to the Gunmen, that's
fine, but I owe them. They want a story, they'll get a story, and
later on we can try it your way."
 
 
"So, how are you going to describe me?" Her voice had a rare
teasing tone, and she looked up at him through a curtain of rust-red
hair.
 
 
"Smart as a whip and twice as sexy?"
 
 
She stared at him for a moment. "I'm not even going to go
near that," she said.
 
 
"A petite powerhouse of pontificating pulchritude?"
 
 
"Ok, now I'm really upset."
 
 
He gave her his best shit-eating grin and nearly skipped over
to his chair to call the Gunmen.
 
 
In return for the "exclusive interview," Byers told him some
disturbing facts about smallpox. No one vaccinates against
smallpox anymore, because it's supposed to have been eradicated
in the wild. The recent outbreak of monkeypox, a kissing cousin, in
Zaire cast some doubt on the wisdom of the end of vaccination, but
no one credible was seriously suggesting that smallpox could
return to the developed world. 
 
 
Which, in the Gunmen's estimation, was a fabulous reason to
suspect that very plan, somewhere in the bowels of government.
 
 
The CDC maintains a repository of smallpox, scheduled to be
destroyed in 1999 to mark the total elimination of the disease. Kept
in well-guarded freezers, the virus is supposed to be completely
under control.
 
 
But.
 
 
Smallpox is a hardy little killer; no one really knows how
long it can survive in the open. Archaeologists investigating
ancient centers of disease are beginning to demand vaccination for
the young Ph.D. students on digs in order to protect them, just in
case. In places, such as the steppes of Russia, where victims were
buried in permafrost, the temperature of the ground approaches that
of the CDC's freezers, where the virus is preserved under ideal
conditions. Even in subtropical conditions, it can be cultured from
the disintegrating scabs and boils of corpses dead for decades.
 
 
The upshot was that, if one wanted a stock of smallpox with
which to experiment, one wouldn't have to break into any highly
guarded facilities. The right graveyard (and smallpox killed lots
and lots of people around the country) would do just fine.
 
 
Combine that with bee research, and you were getting a lot
closer to a deadly biological weapon.
 
 
* * *
 
 
The elevator wasn't working when he got home that night, so
he took the stairs. He'd usually take stairs two at a time when
Scully wasn't around, but the ankle kept him hobbling and cursing
the incompetence of the supervisor. (On the other hand, he
supposed, he'd have been kicked out of any well-run building years
ago, so he shouldn't complain when that same indifference worked
to his disadvantage.)
 
 
As he rounded the corner of the stairwell and the door to his
floor came in sight, someone grabbed him from behind. The first
punch hit him in the kidneys to make him double over in pain.
Instantly, his assailant had him on the ground. Heavy knees
pressed into his back, and the attacker was throttling him by the
neck. His gun was tossed down the stairwell; he heard it hit on the
ground floor.
 
 
"I have a message for you," the voice said from behind and
above him. Mulder managed to keep himself from being smashed
into the dirty concrete of the stairwell, but could only lift his upper
body a few inches off of the floor with the weight on his back. He
wanted to get out a snappy remark, but the pressure on his
windpipe made it unlikely that he'd succeed.
 
 
"We have been tolerant," the low, rough voice continued,
"but our patience is diminishing. Leave off your inquiries into
smallpox. Sometimes a cow has to be sacrificed for the good of the
herd; don't try to stand in the way of evolution."
 
 
The pressure intensified, and fuzz began to overtake the
edges of his vision. The world sloped, yawing crazily as his elbows
gave out, and then vision disappeared.
 
 
He came back to consciousness when the little old lady in 45,
who already thought that he was mad, bad, and dangerous to know,
came up the stairs with her mesh bag of groceries and began
twittering in horror and fear. Not the most pleasant of sounds to
hear upon awakening, but at least he did wake up. He waved off
her half-hearted suggestions that she summon assistance and
staggered back to his apartment.
 
 
A good threat was always a spur to him; it was an indicator
that he was on the right track.
 
 
* * *
 
 
Needless to say, the next morning's meeting with Skinner
didn't proceed as planned. He went in early to deal with the
inevitable confrontation with Scully; the office light was already
on when he arrived.
 
 
Scully looked up as he came in, noted the absence of a tie,
and opened her mouth to say something, then looked more closely.
 
 
"If you say word one about auto-erotic asphyxiation," he
rasped, "we're through."
 
 
She rose from her seat and came up to him, pushing the collar
of his shirt aside to get a better look at the damage. "Have you been
to the hospital?"
 
 
"What are they going to do, put a cast on it?" His own voice
was an unfamiliar buzz.
 
 
"Do you know who you pissed off this time, Mulder? Here,
don't talk, just write it down."
 
 
She pulled a pad of paper from the chaos of his desk and
handed it to him with a pen. "I bet you think whoever did this did
you a favor," he scrawled.
 
 
She frowned up at him. "That's not funny."
 
 
"Smallpox," he added, underneath his first line.
 
 
"Is that why Skinner wants to see us?"
 
 
He nodded, then realized that the motion also made his
bruises hurt. Scully smiled sympathetically at his pained
expression, and went over to her new desk. She rummaged around
in one of the bottom drawers and emerged, triumphant, with a
bottle.
 
 
"Liquid painkiller, adult-strength," she said with satisfaction.
"Do you need a straw?"
 
 
"Are you sure you weren't waiting for this to happen?" he
wrote.
 
 
She carefully measured a dose into a stray plastic cup and
gave it to him, including a straw despite his refusal to answer the
question. Mulder knew he wasn't going to be allowed to go to the
meeting without drinking it, so he gave in.
 
 
It tasted terrible, of course. He was still making faces when
they got into the elevator to go meet Skinner. People gave him
funny looks--so what else was new? Scully, though, gave him a
classic tolerant poor-injured-Mulder look, and that made things
better.
 
 
Kimberly ushered them right in, and Skinner looked up from
the papers on his desk and immediately asked, "Agent Mulder,
what happened to you?"
 
 
"Agent Mulder was assaulted, sir, by an unknown assailant
who warned him against pursuing one of our current
investigations."
 
 
Skinner frowned. "I see. This wouldn't by any chance be your
investigation into a disease that everyone in the scientific
community agrees has been conquered, would it?"
 
 
Mulder looked outraged. It was such blatant hypocrisy for
Skinner to talk about the problem like that, when he'd seen,
*participated in*, the project that was testing the super-virulent
smallpox.
 
 
"I must point out, sir," Scully said, taking up the gauntlet,
"that only a few months ago, no one thought that monkeypox could
be spread from human to human. Then it happened in Zaire, and
people died. Diseases don't go away easily. They fight back. The
same type of thing could happen here; in fact, I believe that the
same thing *has* happened here, though the CDC is unwilling to
make this information public."
 
 
Skinner looked down at his desk. Mulder knew that Skinner
saw Scully as some sort of embodiment of truth, justice, and the
American way--"nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins
remembered," or something like that. If the smoking man could use
Skinner's weakness against them, why not use it for them?
 
 
"The order that you terminate this investigation comes from
the highest authority," he said, obviously uncomfortable. "The
Bureau is no longer interested in your theory. Why don't you take
some time to recover, Agent Mulder, and think about what you
*do* have to investigate."
 
 
Mulder shrugged. Skinner hadn't exactly said that he had to
stop looking, just that the Bureau didn't approve, and that was not a
unique situation.
 
 
* * *
 
 
Scully insisted that he use the enforced idleness created by
his near inability to talk to finish up the paperwork that had been
piling up since her return.
 
 
They were working in companiable silence when her phone
rang.
 
 
"Scully."
 
 
Her expression changed, and she swiveled away from Mulder
so that he couldn't see her face. 
 
 
"Hi," she said softly. "No, but I'm at work...I think about it
too...No, it's not final, but it's not going to change any time soon,
and I want to be fair to you...Look, I'll call you tonight, all right?
Yes."
 
 
"The great doctor?" he croaked as she put the receiver back
on the hook, and instantly regretted saying anything at all to cause
the pain that flashed across her face.
 
 
"He's a nice guy, Mulder. I..."
 
 
She obviously had no idea what she was going to say next, so
he took pity on her and scrawled a note on his pad, handing it
across the gap between their desks.
 
 
"I'm glad you came back."
 
 
She looked at him, then back down at the paper. "I had to
come back." Her voice was nearly inaudible. "But sometimes, I
really want a happy ending."
 
 
"What do you see in him?" Oh, he couldn't believe he'd just
said that, in his pathetic, lacerated voice.
 
 
"He doesn't *press* me all the time. He's willing to wait for
me."
 
 
"Sounds more like a dog than a boyfriend, Scully." Was there
any Superglue
 
 
Up the Ladder 5/8
RivkaT@aol.com
 
 
* * *
 
 
Now that they had the bees, it was time to pay a visit to the
bee research lab maintained by the Department of Agriculture in
Beltsville, Maryland. It was the only lab, according to the Gunmen,
that had been doing bee research since the 1960s. All the other
grantees were of more recent vintage.
 
 
All along, this had been happening nearly next door; a pretty
funny joke on him, if you thought about it.
 
 
He stood at the bottom of a hill. The hill was covered with
tiger lilies, orange and black so thick that the green of their stalks
and leaves was buried beneath the petals. Bees, hundreds of them,
leapt from flower to flower.
 
 
"It takes an average of 100 to 200 visits for a bee to
successfully pollinate a flower," a woman's voice said from behind
him.
 
 
"I've heard the 'bees are our friends' lecture, and I believe it,"
he said, turning to see a tall Asian woman. "Agent Mulder, FBI."
 
 
"Dr. Youn, Department of Agriculture," she replied with a
hint of mocking. "We have an appointment?"
 
 
"Thank you for agreeing to see me on such short notice."
 
 
"I don't really know why you're here, actually. They said
something about funding irregularities--but I'm a scientist, I write
grant proposals but I don't really know much more than that about
the money."
 
 
"What I'm interested in is the history of research at this site,
actually. It's the oldest bee research facility in the country,
correct?"
 
 
She smiled. Her straight black hair brushed against her jacket
as she looked down and retrieved the glasses that were hanging
around her neck. When she put them on, she looked ten times more
academic and imposing.
 
 
"Yes, it is. We're mostly interested in pollination, for obvious
reasons, but lately we've been doing a lot of work on the tracheal
and varroa mites that have caused such devastation in bee
populations nationwide."
 
 
"Do you breed bees?"
 
 
"You mean, for particular traits? Well, we're involved in a
program to breed 'well-groomed' bees; it turns out that bees that
clean themselves often do better against mites, so we're trying to
select for that trait."
 
 
"What about aggressiveness?"
 
 
"Like killer bees? Don't pay attention to the tabloids, Mr.--
 
 
Agent--Mulder. Even Africanized bees aren't that aggressive."
 
 
"But has anyone bred bees for aggression?"
 
 
"Is the FBI interested in new methods of building security or
something? Believe me, you should stick with Dobermans. Bees
are the good guys. No one here has any interest in increasing the
public's perception of bees as a threat. These days, every bee is a
good bee."
 
 
"So you don't believe that the government has in any way
encouraged the recent bee die-offs?"
 
 
Dr. Youn frowned severely. "It's true that we haven't always
responded as quickly as we might, and bee research is desperately
underfunded, but *encouraged*? Why would you ask something
like that?"
 
 
"From what I understand," he said, trying not to be distracted
by the low hum generated by the thousands of bees on the hillside,
"mites kill very quickly. How could they have spread so far, so
fast, when they kill their hosts within days, and they do most of
their damage during the winters, when bees don't leave the hive?
Usually parasites that virulent are self-containing."
 
 
Her mouth opened, then closed.
 
 
"You *are* a bee research facility," he said, pressing the
advantage. "Do you mean to tell me that no one has asked why the
mites are so successful?"
 
 
"I don't know what to tell you," she said faintly. "If you're
implying..."
 
 
"I'm not implying anything. I'm asking. Is there any chance
that human agency is involved in the spread of the mites?"
 
 
"That's ridiculous," she snapped. "Are you really paid to go
around asking people insane questions? What would anyone want
to kill off bees for? Bees produce billions of dollars of benefits for
Americans every year."
 
 
"So I've been told," Mulder said, and left her. She stared after
him, angry and puzzled.
 
 
He hurried back to meet Scully and find out what she'd
discovered.
 
 
* * *
 
 
Scully was standing right by the door when he entered the
lab, looking at a glass-encased honeycomb. Bees were, well, busy
doing bee things inside.
 
 
It made Mulder nervous to see her surrounded by the bees--
 
 
there were glass cases scattered across the room, each apparently in
use for various experiments--but he knew she'd dismiss his
concerns, so he didn't say anything about it. "What have you found
out?" he asked.
 
 
"Something incredible, I think. These bees, except for the one
with the green dot--" she pointed to a bee almost obscured by the
attentions of countless other bees swarming over it--"are ordinary
honeybees; I got them from the federal bee research lab out in
Beltsville. I let one of our unfrozen worker bees in, and she
immediately sought out and killed the queen. Then she started
destroying all the larvae in their cells. Four hours ago, she began
laying eggs of her own; I assume, though I did not see, that she
mated with one of the males so that she'll be able to have male and
female larvae. The honeybees are helping her replace the old
queen's eggs with hers. In six weeks, there won't be a regular
honeybee left in the hive."
 
 
"I thought worker bees weren't fertile."
 
 
Scully shook her head absent-mindedly. "That used to be the
conventional wisdom, but it turns out that workers do lay eggs; it's
just that other workers seek out and destroy eggs that aren't the
queen's. It's the genetics of the situation, you see: The worker is
more related to her own daughters than to the queen's eggs, but
more related to the queen's eggs than to her sister's eggs, so she
lays her own but destroys everyone else's..."
 
 
Mulder nodded as if that made perfect sense. Evidently
Scully had once again become an expert on a subject in a few
hours' time, whether by quick study or pure osmosis (her speed at
assimilating data made the latter seem quite plausible to him).
 
 
"So what you're saying is that when these bees are released
into the wild, they're just going to fly right into all the existing
hives and take over."
 
 
"If you think that's disturbing," she said, "you're going to
love what comes next."
 
 
Scully had concocted a grotesque apparatus that took up most
of the length of the central table in the lab. It consisted of a large
glass box, holding a section of honeycomb that was itself
sandwiched in between two panes of glass, with circular exit holes
near the bottom that allowed the bees to fly around inside the box.
Petri dishes filled with clear liquid dotted the bottom of the box;
the journeys the bees were making from the dishes to the comb
suggested that the liquid was sugar water, or something like it.
 
 
Flanking the large central box were two smaller boxes. In
each, a white mouse waited, looking nervous. Sliding trap doors,
shut for the moment, connected the smaller boxes to the main bee
box.
 
 
"This is Tyler," Scully said, pointing to the mouse with the
red dot on the back of its head. "I've been working with Tyler all
day. This," she said, walking over to the box containing the other,
unmarked mouse, "is our other test subject."
 
 
"What, he doesn't get a name?"
 
 
"You'll see why in a minute. I've sprayed Tyler with a
pheromone I've extracted from--the clone's sweat, though it was
also present in her saliva and mucous membranes. I think that I
could synthesize it, given time, but for the moment I'm using the
real thing."
 
 
"This is going to be gross, isn't it?"
 
 
"Got it in one. Come over to Tyler's door; on the count of
three, we'll open the doors together. You see how to do it?"
 
 
Mulder nodded.
 
 
"Good. One, two, three!" They pulled up simultaneously.
Tyler immediately flowed through the door and went over to a
petri dish on his side. The bees paid him no attention whatsoever. 
 
 
Mulder focused his attention on the poor fellow on the other
side, who was edging his nose cautiously over the threshold. The
first bee noticed him, and Mulder thought he heard the angry
buzzing begin.
 
 
In seconds, the mouse had been stung once. Then twice, three
times, accelerating every moment until he was covered with bees,
writhing and bucking in a desperate attempt to get them off. He
crushed a few against the glass wall of the box, but his struggles
were weakening as soon as they began. Between the still-angry
bees stuck to his fur, Mulder could see boils breaking out.
 
 
When the attack ended, there was nothing but a furry bag of
bloody bones that used to be a mouse, studded with the corpses of
bees.
 
 
Meanwhile, Tyler was still sucking up sugar water as if it was
going out of style.
 
 
Mulder couldn't speak for a second. Scully looked at him
expectantly. "Scully? For my birthday next year, why don't you
skip the cologne and give me some of this stuff?"
 
 
"I'm afraid we're all going to need it, if these bees spread
further. Mulder, I've sent a sample of the pheromone to the CDC,
and I've also sent samples to a few friends of mine, and to some
professors I've never met but who are supposed to be expert
apiologists. I want you to give some of the pheromone to the
Gunmen, and tell them to spread the samples far and wide, I don't
want to know where. If this evidence disappears...we need to be
able to reproduce it."
 
 
Scully's paranoia frightened him more deeply than the dead
mouse. He nodded. "I'll do it right now, if you've got them ready."
 
 
She turned and went over to a counter on the far wall,
returning with ten vials, each neatly labelled and tightly sealed.
When he left, she was preparing to gas the bees. Aside from the
frozen larvae, the risks of keeping live bees around were just too
great.
 
 
* * *
 
 
After dropping the pheromones off with the Gunmen, Mulder
took a little side trip back to Beltsville. It was already dark when
he arrived. According to the information he'd gotten from the
Department of Agriculture, there wasn't even a security patrol
around the building, only an alarm. They studied bees, for Pete's
sake; who would want to break in or blow them up?
 
 
The alarm was standard government-issue; he nearly beat his
best time disabling it and getting in, but he had a little trouble with
the actual, physical lock on the door.
 
 
Dr. Youn's reactions had seemed reasonably sincere, so he
bypassed her office and headed straight for the Director's.
 
 
His luck had saved his life numberless times, but it was not
powerful enough to lead him to the right file cabinet on the first
try. He spent several mind-numbing hours flipping through various
and sundry reports on the most intimate details of bee life and
death, grant proposals, building maintenance requests, and all the
other things that end up in file cabinets in case someone,
somewhere, demands an accounting.
 
 
In the bottom drawer of the fourth file cabinet, directly
underneath the Director's Bill-and-Hillary picture, he found a
section on varroa and tracheal mites. The general subject matter
was unsurprising, but the contents of the fourth report, discreetly
bound in dark crimson with only a grant number on the front, were
shocking.
 
 
He knelt on the scratchy carpeted floor, using his pocket light
to read until it dimmed, and then spent several minutes bumbling
down the darkened halls until he found a copy room. The
photocopy machine demanded a department code before it would
agree to make copies for him, but some forgetful person had
thoughtfully taped a list of codes to the wall above the machine. He
chose "Procurement."
 
 
As he copied, he kept alert for any noise. It wouldn't do to be
surprised by a security guard who didn't show up on the official
payroll. Though, if this report was accurate, none of the real
research was done here; Beltsville was just a conduit for the
money, and therefore its relative unguardedness was unsurprising.
 
 
What had caught his eye about the report was the glossy
insert at the front. Beautifully colored photographs of bees--dying
and deformed bees, that was. Bees with tracheal mites that had
gorged so heavily on the bees' blood that the bees' throats burst
from within and the mites tumbled out. Bees who'd shared their
larval cells with varroa mites and emerged with only three limbs,
or one eye.
 
 
After the pictures, the maps of the United States. The first
showed "implantation sites" as black dots. The maps were colored,
the key showed, by number of honeybees per acre, with blood-red
for the greatest concentration. The first map, dated 1992, showed a
nearly scarlet country, punctuated with black dots.
 
 
In 1993, parts of the country--the parts where the black dots
had been thickest--were already fading to pink.
 
 
By 1997, there was barely any true red left; the few patches
he saw corresponded to major commercial apiaries and a few hardy
university research centers.
 
 
There was a map projecting the state of the nation in 1998. It
was bone-white.
 
 
He returned the report to its place among all the other reports
about the mites, the ones in which researchers announced their
despair, puzzlement, and slight hope for breeding and importation
programs. It was a traitor, that report of calculated genocide in the
midst of dedicated soldiers, but he needed to leave it where it was.
 
 
* * *
 
 
Despite the new information, Mulder went to Massachusetts
again as planned the next day. He and Scully could hardly keep all
their bee research secret, but the pace of events seemed to be
accelerating, and somehow he knew that the past and the present
were intimately connected. 
 
 
He went to see his mother in the retirement community she'd
moved into after Samantha's return, as if that event had finally
made her acknowledge her growing infirmity.
 
 
He met her in one of the visiting rooms, a warm library-type
room whose shelves were covered with books bought at estate
auctions and never read since. She came in and they kissed, like
long-lost strangers.
 
 
A few questions about the new place and how she liked her
neighbors, and then he got down to business.
 
 
"Mom, did Dad ever talk to you about bees?"
 
 
"Bees?" she asked, confused. Whatever question she'd been
expecting, bees weren't a part of it. "I don't remember...but your
father had so many projects. After a while, I didn't listen very
hard."
 
 
"But he never said anything about insects? What about
smallpox?"
 
 
She sighed and twisted a thin Medicalert bracelet that circled
her wrist. "I don't know, Fox. It's so hard to remember..."
 
 
Mulder gave up and turned to more personal matters.
 
 
"I never asked you, Mom. About me and Samantha. *When*
did Dad ask you to make a choice?"
 
 
His mother sighed and looked out the window, rocking back
and forth as she did incessantly these days. "Sam was just a baby,
my beautiful baby girl. You were already reading, you always were
a precocious child. He said...he said that it was all for the best, that
it would give her an advantage. A leg up on the world, he called it.
So they took her away, and the next day she was back. She was
colicky, but Samantha was a fussy baby. Bill hated that so..."
 
 
"What happened later?" he said gently. It was like
questioning any other witness--get her to tell the story in her own
words, prompt but don't demand.
 
 
"They took her--checkups, Bill said. Always just afternoons,
while you were in school. She didn't seem to mind...She said they
played games with her, just games, nothing wrong. But when,
when she was taken, that's when I knew. All along it had been a
lie."
 
 
"Did Dad ever explain anything to you, about what was done
to her?" The need in his voice frightened him; it made his mother
cringe back towards the wall.
 
 
"He never said. I don't think he meant it to go so far...When I
met him, you know, he was so dashing. He was fighting the
Communists, proving that not all of us were traitors, that we were
real Americans. He believed he was doing God's work...I believed
it too." 
 
 
And that was all she would say. Mulder caught the shuttle
back to D.C.
 
 
* * *
 
 
Scully spent the day making bee puree. Take lots of dead
bees, grind them up, and extract the virus from the goop. She
needed a sufficient supply of virus so that she could get help
working on a vaccine, perhaps even a cure. When *that* effort got
boring, she'd go check on her clone cell cultures, which were doing
a pretty good job of producing the necessary pheromone.
Production was too slow to provide a large number of people with
effective protection if, God forbid, the bees did start appearing
around the country, but they could at least build up a limited
supply.
 
 
Why bees as a delivery agent, anyway? Perhaps because they
were not quite as indiscriminate as an airborne virus, especially if
one had access to the protective pheromone. And if a bee could
spread one virus, there was no reason that it couldn't spread others
too. The bees were a flexible delivery system; the choice of super-
 
 
smallpox was no doubt only for convenience's sake. Though she
had a vague sense, like a small itch at the back of her brain, that
somehow the genetic tags on the smallpox scars were somehow
related to the bee program. When vaccination had stopped, the
tagging program had ended--why record just one generation? What
was supposed to happen to everyone else?
 
 
Idle speculation produced no vaccine, so she tried to
concentrate on the immediate issues.
 
 
When Scully went to pick Sam up from the after-school
program, she felt a real sense of accomplishment, even though she
was almost too tired to make dinner and settled on macaroni and
cheese from a box.
 
 
Samantha, bless her heart, did the dishes, and Scully just sat,
typing occasional notes into her laptop about other avenues of
research. Sam joined her at the table. They worked well together;
both of them were able to focus to the point of tunnel vision, and
they didn't need to talk to enjoy each other's company.
 
 
Scully's cell phone buzzed, and she reached for it. Sam was
bent over her homework, chewing on the end of a pencil.
 
 
"Scully," she said. Was Mulder going to be late? He was due
in any minute.
 
 
"Agent Scully," Marita Covarrubias said. "I've made a
terrible mistake."
 
 
"What do you mean?" Scully asked, instantly wary.
 
 
Sam was staring at her--her expression must have been
worrisome.
 
 
Static began to take over the line. All Scully could hear was
the SRSG's tone--the woman was frightened nearly out of her
mind.
 
 
"Dana," Sam said gently, as something black swirled in her
eyes, "I'm afraid that I'm going to have to ask you to hang up the
phone."
 
 
End 5/8
 
 
 
 
 
 
Up the Ladder 6/8
RivkaT@aol.com
 
 
* * *
 
 
Mulder slung his suit jacket over his shoulder and attempted
to whistle the tune to "Don't Cry for Me Argentina." Despite the
somewhat unsatisfactory conclusion to the interview with his
mother, he was feeling good. He'd never quite realized how nice it
was to have someone to be waiting for him when he got back from
a trip. If he tried hard enough, he could even imagine--
 
 
No use being silly, even in his own head.
 
 
Wheezing more than whistling, he turned the key in Scully's
door.
 
 
Normally, Sam would come running at this point, but he
didn't see her. Maybe Scully had put her to bed early. 
 
 
The lights were out. 
 
 
Scully could be reading in her room. But this was quickly
adding up to a bad scene.
 
 
"Sam?" he called out, drawing his gun. Safety still on, just in
case Sam came running out, but it would give him a bit of a boost.
"Scully?"
 
 
"Right here, Mulder." The voice came from the darkened
kitchen, and he spun to look into the room.
 
 
Scully was sitting at the kitchen table. There was a glass of
water in front of her, half-empty. He saw it gleam in the moonlight
drifting in through the window over the sink. He could see the
vague outlines of Sam's drawings from school, stuck on to the
refrigerator by magnets.
 
 
"Are you all right, Scully?"
 
 
"I'm fine, Mulder. Isn't that the expected response?"
 
 
He stepped closer. In the darkness, he could barely see her
face.
 
 
"Mind if I turn on the lights?" he asked, trying to sound
flippant.
 
 
"I like the dark," she said. "It conceals a multitude of sins."
 
 
"That's what's wrong with it," he replied. "It's harder to find
the truth in the dark."
 
 
"Not always," she said, low and husky, as she rose to stand
right in front of him. "Mulder..." She took his forgotten gun from
his hand and placed it on the counter. 
 
 
"Where's Sam?"
 
 
"Asleep in my bedroom."
 
 
"Why...?"
 
 
"Shhh," she said, putting a finger to his lips. He opened his
mouth to speak again, tilting his head back to break the contact.
 
 
"I--ah--I have to go to the bathroom," he said.
 
 
She smirked. "Don't be long."
 
 
He retreated down the hall, passing past Sam's closed
bedroom door, then Scully's. He flipped on the bathroom light,
then stared at himself in the mirror for a minute. He'd have to
pretend to do something, so he ran the water, splashed some on his
face, then flushed the toilet.
 
 
Scully always told him what a slob he was. He thought she
liked being able to nag. So, as always, he left the bathroom light on
as he left.
 
 
In the yellow light that spilled onto the hallway floor, he saw
a few drops of dried blood.
 
 
His first thought was that Scully had suffered a relapse. That
could explain why she was acting so oddly.
 
 
"Scully?" He returned to the kitchen, determined to get a
straight answer from her. She was sitting down again, and she
looked up at him as he approached. "Tell me what's going on."
 
 
He turned the light on and looked in her eyes. They were
black, swirling with moire patterns.
 
 
Fuck fuck fuck. How long would it take him to reach his
ankle holster?
 
 
"Don't worry," Scully said. "I won't hurt her. I was waiting
around to give you a message--an explanation, really."
 
 
"You're one of those things from the submarine, aren't you?"
 
 
"I was never in a submarine, but I think you have the idea."
 
 
"Let her go."
 
 
"But I haven't told you my story. Don't you want to hear it?"
 
 
Mulder took an unwilling step forward. "Is Sam all right?"
 
 
"She's in Dana's bedroom, as I said. How come Dana's never
around when you see all the things she won't believe? I think you
leave her behind so that you can maintain the thin protection of her
skepticism; if she believed, the two of you might go off and totally
destroy your own credibility. Look at what happened at that Senate
hearing, and that meeting where Dana tried to convince your
superiors that people were being tagged with alien proteins through
smallpox inoculations. Crazy, right?"
 
 
"Is there a point to all this? I get enough of this from Skinner.
I can't believe you'd come from another star system to instruct me
on career dos and don'ts."
 
 
"Very well, then. Lecture begins: What you think of as the
'greys' are our previous hosts. Unfortunately, after a few
generations under our tutelage, most species seem to wear out. Our
presence can cause DNA coding errors; also, so few survive the
initial assimilation process that inbreeding becomes a problem.
Your sister has been kind enough to be my host for the past few
decades--though I admit, that was much longer than I had
intended."
 
 
"Why isn't Sam dead of radiation poisoning?"
 
 
"I see that you've encountered a youngster from my people.
As we age, we learn to control the more immediately negative
effects of our presence on our hosts. Only adults are allowed into
high-quality hosts such as Samantha--and you, I might add."
 
 
"Do they *know* what's happening to them? Is Scully still in
there, with you?"
 
 
"Yes. It's quite an eductation for the little skeptic, don't you
think? Samantha, on the other hand, was joined with me young
enough that she's essentially split off a part of her personality to be
me. She doesn't resist me like adults do, and she doesn't remember
when I'm in charge. You should thank me, really; I protected her
when Dad got a little rough and you failed to deflect him. As I was
saying, we like our symbiotes--"
 
 
"You mean slaves."
 
 
"As you once said, potayto, potahto. The clones are much
better raw material than you one-off humans. The alien DNA helps
make them more...pliable, and the cloning means that there's no
unique upbringing to defeat. Less innate intelligence and creativity
to work with, but you take what you can get. When we take over
entirely, we'll set up creches to raise children in so that we won't
need to clone to get total control over the formative years."
 
 
"So where did Sam fit in?" It didn't even sit like Scully.
It...lounged. Like a predatory cat, watching the mouse try to run
away in vain. He couldn't believe that he'd thought it was her at
first.
 
 
"Brilliant, young, and trainable. We use only genius-level
templates to make the clones, so the intelligence degradation
caused by the process doesn't make itself a burden. Unfortunately,
your human friends in the Consortium began to suspect that our
ultimate plan was not conducive to their continued power, and they
set upon me unawares. I was frozen--using our own technology--
 
 
do you think that's tragic irony, or poetic justice? No matter. When
Ms. Covarrubias used her influence to have me thawed out, she
was operating under the mistaken assumption that Samantha's only
value was as a bargaining chip with the various Mulders. She
replaced me with a clone, and told her superiors that she'd just had
a clone programmed to act like the real Samantha. Her crush on
you is rather charming, isn't it? It's a problem of secrecy: When
even the covert operatives don't understand the skullduggery, they
can make serious errors."
 
 
"But, if you were frozen, why were there clones running
around?"
 
 
"Because your Consortium had adopted our technology,
attempting to use it against us. They thought that a cloned army,
backed by those horrid hybrid things, could defend against us. We
planted the idea in one conspirator's head, to be thought of if you
ever decided to betray us. It always helps to have a contingency
plan. A lesson I see that you could well learn, from Ms. Scully's
memories.
 
 
"All I need to do now is find our communication devices--a
missile silo, I see?--and call my relatives to our new home."
 
 
"What about the bees?"
 
 
"Bees?" it said, sounding confused for the first time.
 
 
"The Samantha clones--they were taking care of plants for
bees, a kind of bee that can carry a quick-killing virus."
 
 
"Well, how the hell should I know? I'm not the one who's
been awake for the past quarter century. I'm here to thank you, not
to do your job," it concluded, some of Scully's characteristic
exasperation in its voice.
 
 
"There's just one thing I don't understand," he said.
 
 
"One thing? You have a high opinion of yourself."
 
 
He stared at her face--smooth, skeptical--that lush mouth,
slightly higher on one side than the other. Not at the eyes. "Why
are you telling me all this?"
 
 
It snorted. "The compound your friends used to freeze
Samantha stilled her brain waves. They never thought to wonder
what would happen to *me*. I was all alone in that icebox for
twenty-five years. It's possible that I'm not quite the rational being
I was when I went in. Believe me, there will be an accounting.
 
 
"I suppose I'm telling you all this because I think someone
should know. Your betrayal was mine, too; we have the same
enemies. And if it weren't for your handsome face and tragically
romantic quest, I'd still be an ice cube. So I owe you and your
animal charm."
 
 
"I wish I could say I was pleased to be of service," he said.
 
 
"I'm going to go now. I'd hate to have you or Dana get hurt,
so don't try to stop me. Samantha will need to see a doctor--there's
some internal bleeding from the transfer."
 
 
He looked toward the bedroom door.
 
 
"Make the right choice this time, Mulder. It's what Dana
wants."
 
 
It stood and took Scully's keys from the table. "Have a nice
life," it said. "You probably have two or three years--more if you
get to the jungle, or somewhere else that's thinly populated. Enjoy
it while you can."
 
 
And then it was gone.
 
 
Mulder called 911 from Scully's bedside. Sam was breathing
shallowly, unevenly. Then he called Mrs. Scully, and asked her to
meet Sam at the hospital, and to take care of the girl until he could
return. He waited, thanking the FBI for making them move to
Virginia where ambulances actually came within the decade.
 
 
Not soon enough, the ambulance arrived, and they loaded
Sam on. 
 
 
He was acutely aware that he was abandoning her again. But
it was not as if he were a doctor, not as if he could take care of her
like Scully.
 
 
He went out to his car. There was someone leaning against
the driver's side door. Mulder drew his gun, keeping it down at the
side so as not to scare any passers-by. The figure was watching
him; no use trying for surprise.
 
 
Finally the figure's face became clear.
 
 
Why was he not surprised?
 
 
"Hello, Alex," Mulder said as he took aim.
 
 
"We don't have time for this fight, Mulder," Alex said,
keeping his arms crossed over his chest.
 
 
"What are you doing here?"
 
 
"Well, gee, Mulder, do you think it has anything to do with
the alien entity you've been harboring for the past few months?"
 
 
"What's your business with it?"
 
 
"I'm a good guy," Krycek said, grinning. "I'm going to make
the world safe for humanity. Even for you Amerikanetz, more's the
pity. How did it convince Scully to go drive off with it?"
 
 
"It didn't *convince* her of anything. It *took* her."
 
 
Krycek nodded. "Makes sense. It's easier for an adult to
travel alone. Though if it wanted someone who could see over the
steering wheel, it could have made a better choice."
 
 
Mulder growled and stepped forward.
 
 
"Oh, grow up. Short jokes should not be high on your list of
priorities. Do you want to come with me, or not?"
 
 
"Come with you where?"
 
 
"I can track it," Krycek said, showing Mulder something that
looked like a combination GPS link and radiation counter. "I'm
going after it with or without you. Come with, and maybe you can
figure out a way to keep Agent Scully in the land of the living,
because I sure as hell don't care if she makes it out of this."
 
 
"Touch her and you're a dead man."
 
 
"Maybe you haven't been paying attention, Mulder, but
there's no 'her' left. Just that *thing*. And it's not like I have any
great affection for her, but the only human being who deserves to
have that thing in him is your cigarette-smoking friend."
 
 
Krycek put the tracker away and opened the car door--the
door that Mulder had locked, he noted, but it seemed a relatively
unimportant crime.
 
 
"Your choice, Mulder."
 
 
What kind of choice was that? Krycek might kill him on the
way, or use him for bait if the oilien was at all affected by Scully's
memories, but any chance was better than nothing.
 
 
He pulled the keys from his pocket and tossed them to
Krycek. "I hope you've got a big bankroll," he said. "When I don't
show for my presentation tomorrow, I'm going to be an ex-FBI
agent just like you, except for the traitor part."
 
 
* * *
 
 
And once again they were driving, out in the middle of
America, heading for the missile silo.
 
 
"Have you ever asked God for something, said 'this is it, God.
Give me this and I'll never ask for anything again?'" Mulder asked
Krycek.
 
 
Krycek looked over at Mulder, whose eyes were half-focused
on the road. "Maybe."
 
 
"I did it a number of times. When Sam was taken, every night
I asked God to bring her back. I told Him that's all I ever wanted,
that whatever Dad wanted to do was ok, if He'd only bring her
back. Then when Scully was taken, I tried it again. I think God gets
tired of hearing people whine. I think He doesn't believe them
when they say they'll never ask for anything again, and that's why
He doesn't grant their prayers."
 
 
"That's...an interesting doctrinal innovation," Krycek said
nastily, "but do I look like your rabbi?"
 
 
"No, you look like the traitor who killed my father and helped
take Scully, but I thought we'd avoid those subjects. I guess we
could talk about *your* life," Mulder said. "The people who love
and trust you--oh, sorry, I suppose we'd just be sitting in silence."
 
 
Krycek mumbled something that was almost certainly an
anatomically impossible Russian suggestion.
 
 
There was, in fact, silence for about fifteen minutes. Krycek
shifted restlessly in the passenger's seat. Mulder squirmed as his
back began to ache--long road trips always did that to him, no
matter how carefully he adjusted the seat. Scully had gotten him
one of those blue fluid-filled pillows about a year back, just a
present for no reason, but it had gotten blown up (along with the
rental car) during one of their misadventures a few months back. It
would have been a great comfort.
 
 
"Our one advantage," Krycek said as Mulder drove, "is that it
doesn't know the ship's been moved. Last time Scully knew about
it, it was still in the hellhole where they left me."
 
 
According to Krycek, the ship had been moved to another
storage site, an abandoned military research facility in Oklahoma,
as soon as the Consortium had discovered Marita's deception.
 
 
"I've been wondering about that," Mulder said, checking the
mileage sign whooshing by. "Everyone else that thing possessed is
dead from radiation poisoning. Was it your charming personality
that protected you? I thought that cockroaches were supposed to
survive nuclear war, not rats."
 
 
"I'll ignore that in the interests of cooperation."
 
 
"That thing in Scully said that it was older and in better
control of its bodily functions, which is why it didn't kill its hosts
so quickly. But you were inhabited by the other one, the young
one."
 
 
"I'm an operative, Mulder, not a scientist. All I know is that I
was in the silo, and then I got sick and the oilien came out of me. It
went into the ship, and then I was all alone. After a while, there
was a funny smell and some pink froth. It was dead."
 
 
"How do you know?"
 
 
"I don't need to know what planet it came from to know when
I smell decomposition, fuck you very much."
 
 
"But why would it die? If it needed a host to survive, why
didn't it just come out and hitch a ride with you again?"
 
 
"Beats the hell out of me."
 
 
"There's got to be something...How much do you know about
the deal the Consortium made with the oiliens, their technology for
assistance taking over?"
 
 
"I know we betrayed the oiliens--big surprise there, right?
And that the hybridization with the greys that created the
shapeshifters was a big side project--your father's, if I understand
correctly."
 
 
"Scully--the thing in her called them 'horrible.' The oiliens
didn't approve?"
 
 
"The oiliens didn't know at first. Frankly, I agree with it.
Those things are vicious. One nearly killed me once, before I met
you. When I was in the midst of changing sides; don't really
remember from which to which."
 
 
"Nearly killed you? How?" Something was clicking in his
head, as the puzzle shifted and its outlines became clearer.
 
 
"Sprayed some blood in my face--is it blood if it's green?
Nearly blinded me. I was in the hospital for weeks. Had some
plastic surgery done, actually; explains why I've got such a pretty
face."
 
 
Mulder couldn't even think of an appropriately snide remark;
all the active brain cells were otherwise occupied.
 
 
"So the other oilien made it to the ship," he mused, "but didn't
manage to phone home. Otherwise, we'd already all be wearing a
new set of eye colors. What stopped it?"
 
 
Krycek wisely didn't interrupt.
 
 
"What if you made it sick? Poisoned it somehow? What if the
antibodies from your previous exposure to the shapeshifter's blood
gave it an allergic reaction, one that it didn't recognize until it was
too late?"
 
 
"What are you saying, Mulder? That we should call for
shapeshifter backup and get one to bleed on Scully?"
 
 
"No. Too dangerous." He shook his head, staring at the
passing mile markers. "But...if we could get it to transfer back into
you--"
 
 
"First," Krycek said furiously, "I would not have one of those
things inside me again to save the *world*, much less to preserve
the remote chance that you will *ever* get laid by Dana Scully.
Second, we don't know that it would work on an older one--
 
 
remember, it told you that it was different, not as wasteful--maybe
it's hardier, too. Third--I can't even believe I'm trying to rebut this
rationally, Mulder, you're a fucking nutcase. I don't know what
Ouija board you consulted to come up with this theory, but it's
more insane than your usual productions, which is saying a lot."
 
 
Krycek rolled his head from side to side, easing the neck
muscles. "Hold on--the clones bleed green too, don't they? If the
oiliens like the clones, why not the hybrids?"
 
 
Finally--an objection he could answer. Scully would be so
proud. "Blood and Kool-Aid are both red, Krycek, but that doesn't
mean you're indifferent to what's in your IV." Mulder leaned back
into the seat and stretched a little. "And what is your plan, Mr.
Secret Agent?"
 
 
"I'm going to blow that fucking thing to bits."
 
 
"Then you made a serious mistake bringing me along."
 
 
Krycek made a strangled sound and turned on the radio, as
loud as it could go.
 
 
* * *
 
 
They stopped for drive-through: KFC, a compromise between
McDonald's and Wendy's. 
 
 
"So," Mulder said, making conversation as he crumpled up
his napkin and threw it into the backseat, "how'd *you* get out of
Russia?"
 
 
Krycek's hands clenched on the steering wheel. Which would
have been unremarkable, had it not been for the huge dent left
behind.
 
 
"What the hell is that?"
 
 
Krycek smirked, but Mulder thought his expression was
hiding a more painful emotion. "No arm, no test. When I jumped
out of that truck--remind me to thank you for that, sometime--I met
up with some escapees from the camp. I told them I was just
another poor sucker like them, and they repaid me by cutting off
my arm.
 
 
"I'll spare you the next few pages of the story. It would only
confuse you, anyway. Suffice it to say that, a few nights ago, our
old smoking friend contacted me. He offered me a truce, if I
brought this escaped alien in. As a sign of his good faith, he had
one of his healers regrow my arm--halfway."
 
 
The road was straight and deserted, so Mulder wasn't
bothered when Krycek took one hand off the wheel to roll up the
sleeve on the other, exposing a smooth, hairless forearm that
seemed to turn into plastic at the elbow joint.
 
 
"Have you ever seen one of the healers work?" he asked
rhetorically. "It's an amazing thing. It hurts like Hell, I must say,
but it's incredible to watch. All I had was a shoulder, and then
growing out of it like a fucking worm was my arm again. First the
bone, then the nerves and tendons, then the muscle, and only at the
end the skin. He had it stop halfway down, said I'd get the rest back
when I came back successful. But they gave me this mechanical
arm for the meantime--developed for American soldiers; it links
into the existing nerve network and responds just like a real arm,
except for the part about being able to bend tungsten. I'm thinking
of keeping it, though it does itch a bunch at the joint."
 
 
"Jesus," was all Mulder could manage. He stared at the arm
as if it might suddenly get a mind of its own and lunge for him.
 
 
"You bet. When I was a kid, I never imagined I'd grow up to
be a cyborg."
 
 
"Oh, but assassin was part of the career plan?"
 
 
"Sure," Krycek said, with such apparent sincerity that Mulder
was taken aback.
 
 
A few minutes later, he gave conversation another try. "Since
we're allies now, why don't you tell me what you know about the
bees?"
 
 
"Bees? Like bzzz, bees?"
 
 
"Just like that, only louder and even nastier than you, plus
they carry smallpox, whereas I believe rats tend to carry plague."
 
 
"Oh, stow it. I don't know jack about bees, Mulder. Even
Sears has divisions, for Christ's sake, and my employers are a little
more carefully organized than that."
 
 
They got about fifteen more silent minutes out of that
exchange.
 
 
Then: "I've been thinking," Mulder said.
 
 
"That explains the burning smell."
 
 
Mulder glared at him. "All right, all right. What have you
been thinking, Mulder?" Krycek's tone was patronizing.
 
 
"I accept that you won't try to get the oilien in you again. But
I've been exposed to shapeshifter blood too; I nearly died. If we
could get it to trade Scully for me..."
 
 
"Why would it do that?"
 
 
"Because we'll tell it that I know the new location of the
ship."
 
 
"Why would *I* agree to that?"
 
 
"Because then you can follow it, and if it doesn't get sick, kill
it--kill me--instead. You'll know where it's headed, which is more
than you'll know once it finds out that the silo is empty."
 
 
They drove in silence for several minutes. Krycek kept
frowning, glancing at Mulder, then looking back to the road.
 
 
"If I did agree to try this," he said, finally, "we'd need to keep
it from accessing your memories. Otherwise it will know, and will
just jump out of you at the first chance it gets--which will probably
be back to Scully."
 
 
"How are you as a hypnotist?" Mulder asked.
 
 
Krycek began to give him an are-you-serious look, then
stopped, obviously realizing the futility of such a project.
"Actually," he said, "I understand you're a good subject, and I have
some...chemical aids that could help."
 
 
"Don't tell me. They look like ordinary pens--they even
write--but they can inject powerful drugs. Q showed them to you
just before you left for this assignment."
 
 
"No," the younger man said, "I only use those when there's a
chance my luggage will be inspected. I'm carrying real syringes
this time." Mulder was mildly afraid that this was a completely
serious response.
 
 
They pulled over to do the hypnosis when the tracker said
that they were within fifteen minutes of Scully's rented car.
 
 
Mulder sat on the hood of their car and unbuttoned his
sleeve, patting his arm to help the vein pop up. They'd bandied the
details of the story Krycek would implant back and forth for the
past few hours, and Mulder thought that the alien would accept it
as plausible Mulder suicidal/self-sacrificing behavior.
 
 
The sting of the needle was almost unnoticeable, but after a
few minutes Mulder thought that he could feel the drugs curling
through his system. 
 
 
"Wait," Mulder said, as the drugs took hold. "What's the
explanation for why you're helping me?"
 
 
"Don't you know?" Krycek asked silkily. "I've had a crush on
you for the longest time." He ran a finger down Mulder's chest,
stopping just above the button on his pants.
 
 
Mulder thought woozily that letting Krycek drug him
senseless was not the smartest thing he'd done that week. And then
there was just a fog.
 
 
End 6/8
 
 
Up the Ladder 7/8
RivkaT@aol.com
 
 
* * *
 
 
They caught up with Scully just outside of the silo. It had
stopped the car and pulled it over to the shoulder. It was looking
off into the horizon, shading its alien eyes with her hand. Except
for the road, everything was a sandy, gritty brown--you could
believe that the earth was flat, out here.
 
 
Mulder pulled up behind the other car and parked.
 
 
"All right," it said when they got close. "You're obviously
here to talk, not fight, so let's have it."
 
 
"I want to trade," Mulder said.
 
 
"What do you have that I want?"
 
 
"The location of your ship," he said, staring at the thing
residing in Scully's form. "It's been moved."
 
 
"Why should I believe you?"
 
 
"You'll know as soon as you make the switch--if you're not
satisfied, you can just grab Scully again. It's not like she'll be able
to overpower this body."
 
 
It tilted its head up, the way Scully always had when she was
considering his latest insane theory.
 
 
"All this for a partner, Agent Mulder?"
 
 
"I believe that's Mr. Mulder, after this weekend," he said with
a flash of his old humor.
 
 
"Ah." It smiled. "Your loyalty is charming."
 
 
"Give Scully back," he said.
 
 
"You'd sacrifice the whole human race as you know it for one
woman?"
 
 
"There is no one but Scully."
 
 
It turned its back on him. It hadn't been taking care of
Scully's hair; he could see tangles, and the ends were flying in
many directions.
 
 
A small eternity passed. 
 
 
"Very well," it said, turning. "Come here."
 
 
He moved forward, but was shocked when it embraced him
and tilted its head up, seeking his mouth.
 
 
"What are you doing?" he whispered.
 
 
Its mouth--Scully's mouth--was inches from his face.
"Transfer has to be accomplished somehow," it said. "Isn't this
appropriate?"
 
 
"Fuck you," he said, low and harsh.
 
 
"Do you want me to tell you that she wants you? That she
almost called out your name when Matt was inside her?"
 
 
"Scully," he said, looking at her lovely mouth and not at her
swirling eyes, "if you can hear me, I know this isn't you."
 
 
It chuckled and pulled his face down.
 
 
* * *
 
 
The first thing Scully realized when she got herself back was
that she heard someone being violently ill a few yards away.
Mulder was holding her--she opened her eyes and his were
mottled, staring back at her. 
 
 
She wrenched herself away and staggered back, nearly
stumbling over the sick man--Krycek--in her haste to get away
from what her partner had become.
 
 
Krycek recovered quickly and grabbed her, enveloping her in
his arms. She started to struggle, but he whispered into her hair,
"Quiet! I'll explain in a minute. Let him think I'm your friend." His
breath was nearly enough to make her gag.
 
 
Scully stilled and waited, wrapping her arms around him. She
heard a car start, and the Mulder-thing took off.
 
 
"What do you remember?" Krycek asked when she wiggled
out of his arms.
 
 
"Everything that happened," she replied. He nodded shortly.
 
 
"Look," he said, "I have to follow Mulder. I can't let it get
into that ship. I'm sure someone will be by soon and you can
hitchhike back into town."
 
 
"I'm coming with you," she said.
 
 
"Look, Scully--" He cringed at her glare. "Dana, I work
alone."
 
 
She shoved the gun she'd lifted from his back holster into his
stomach. "Not right now, not when Mulder's involved."
 
 
He stood still. She could almost see the wheels spinning in
his head--could he take her? could her presence prove useful?
Slowly, he raised his hands in surrender. "Have it your way," he
conceded. "Just don't be upset when it doesn't end well."
 
 
Scully made Krycek drive, so that she could keep a better
watch on him.
 
 
"Why are you with Mulder?"
 
 
"I had the tracking device he needed to find you, and he came
up with the plan."
 
 
"What is the plan, exactly? I can't see you risking your life
just to rescue me."
 
 
He laughed. "How little you know me, Dana. No, Mulder has
a theory about why I survived my encounter with the other alien
like this one--he thinks my previous exposure to the blood of one
of the shape-shifting hybrids made me toxic to the alien, instead of
vice versa."
 
 
"You had one of them inside you," she stated. He nodded,
and she shuddered involuntarily. "I hope that makes you wake up
screaming every night."
 
 
"Looking forward to the future, Dana?"
 
 
She shifted in her seat and returned to the more pressing
subject. "And since Mulder's also been exposed, he thought he
could kill this one if he could convince it to transfer into him."
 
 
"You're good at this. Ever considered a career in
investigation?" He was mocking her. There was nothing that she
hated more; she could converse with him while he was being evil,
but patronizing was another thing entirely.
 
 
She scowled at him. "But why didn't it figure that out as soon
as it transferred in?"
 
 
"That's where I come in. I hypnotized Mulder, and he thinks
he just made the trade to save the love of his life. He also thinks I
have a thing for you too, which is why I agreed to help. He's going
to the new storage site for the transmitter now, and when he gets
there he'll find an electronic lock that will take even him a couple
of days to crack; by that time, the poison should work if it's going
to."
 
 
"What if it doesn't?"
 
 
"Then," Krycek said, slowing down to pull into a service
station for a fill-up, "I kill him."
 
 
* * *
 
 
The new location meant another day's drive. They stayed well
behind Mulder's car; they knew where he was going, so they
stopped to eat while he barrelled on. Evidently the oilien didn't
mind running Mulder's body into the ground; it must be looking
forward to a world of new slaves.
 
 
Every minute the journey took gave Mulder's theory another
chance to work. The other oilien had survived for days in Krycek
before succumbing, if that was indeed what it had done.
 
 
As with much investigative work, there was much more
waiting than action involved. When they arrived at the site Krycek
had identified, they parked about a hundred yards from the
abandoned building, just inside the razor-wired gates with the signs
telling people to stay away from government property. The car
Mulder had used was just a little closer to the building. Aside from
the two cars, there were no signs that humans still inhabited the
area. The building's windows were brown with dirt and some were
spiderwebbed with cracks.
 
 
They got out of the car and sat, Scully on the curb and
Krycek on the hood of the car. Krycek had bought gum at the last
gas station, and he chewed it methodically, spitting out one wad as
soon as it lost its flavor and stuffing another in his mouth. Mulder
had been at the site for four hours by the time they arrived, and
nothing more happened that day. The sunset was pretty, though.
Even Krycek wasn't entirely unaesthetic, if she ignored what she
knew about him and his terrible haircut.
 
 
Scully sat and contemplated her life. Who would have
thought that it would come to this, waiting in the middle of
nowhere with Alex Krycek to see if an undeniably alien being
would die on its own or take her partner with it? She was tempted
to kill him, just on general principles, in case everything else
turned out badly.
 
 
Maybe she should have stayed with Matt. Everyone makes
sacrifices; hers could have been her quest, rather than her love life.
Then she wouldn't have known about the coming invasion; she
could have been blissfully happy (except for being barren and
never knowing why Missy had to die, of course) until the very last
minute. And Mulder probably would have ended up here without
her anyway, saving the world.
 
 
She wished that they could have a fire. It was a little chilly,
with the sun down. She didn't really feel like sleeping. Even
ignoring the stress from the fact that Mulder was the prisoner of
that *thing*, she'd only trust Alex Krycek if he were on her
autopsy table. And even then, she might remove his heart just to
make sure. Cutting off his head and stuffing the mouth with garlic,
though, would be too extreme.
 
 
Scully had never believed in possession by demons. Sure, it
was in the Bible, but she'd preferred to think of it as a metaphor for
all the ills to which mortals were heir.
 
 
Now she had a much better idea of what it was like.
 
 
She'd always prided herself on maintaining control. Her
worst moments--breaking down over Pfaster, the whole awful
episode with Ed Jerse--were about losing control. To be a puppet
for that alien thing had been worse than anything she could have
imagined.
 
 
When the phone had gone dead and Samantha's eyes had
whirled like black water rushing down a drain, Scully had frozen.
What do you do when your beloved surrogate daughter starts
manifesting signs of possession? It's not as if she could have pulled
a gun on Sam.
 
 
The girl put her pencil down and walked over to Scully.
"Dana," she'd said, and reached out her hands to cup Scully's face.
Then...
 
 
Then came the part Scully preferred to forget about. It had
been painful, intrusive, and humiliating. It was like a rape, but she
couldn't even struggle.
 
 
When Samantha had released her, she was fully under the
alien's control. Samantha collapsed, bleeding a little from the ears,
and Scully had carried her into the main bedroom, storing her for
later use.
 
 
All that time she'd been waiting for Mulder, she'd felt the
alien rifling through her mind. Scenes replayed in her memory,
sending waves of emotion through her--pleasure, pain, anger,
amazement, hilarity, everything overlaid with the oily touch of the
alien as it learned her darkest secrets. It was like being ridden, and
like being swept away by an undertow.
 
 
It was so good at reading her that she wasn't even sure how
much of what it had said to Mulder about her was wrong.
 
 
Then, while it was driving out here, it had left her thoughts
alone, mostly. She'd watched the gas gauge with hopeless dread,
because every time it stopped for a fill-up it played with her some
more. Now she was at Missy's hospital bed; now she was at Ahab's
funeral; now she was being ditched by Mulder (tick tick, Scully).
Stroking her pain, her loss, her frustration with Mulder until she
would have cried, if she'd had control of her tear ducts; she would
have thrown a tantrum, kicking and screaming, if she'd been able to
move her limbs of her own volition. Knowing that it was
manipulating her emotions didn't help. 
 
 
When she was so consumed with rage that she couldn't think,
it started to hit her with love. Mulder's arms around her, the fear in
his eyes as he pleaded with her mother to let him in, that grin of
triumph when they solved a case together and proved that, as a
team, they were unbeatable. On and on until there was a black hole
in her heart; she felt herself collapsing inward, being sucked into
that place beyond the event horizon where Mulder was waiting and
would wait forever.
 
 
Lacking volition gives one plenty of time to think. She had
thought, when she joined the X Files, that the truth would always
be available and understandable. That, even if it required hard
work to find, in the end there would be one story to tell. It hadn't
happened that way, of course, and looking back her expectation
seemed hopelessly naive. These days, she'd settle for a modicum of
closure: Bad guy dead, or inexplicable events halted at least.
 
 
She'd been having some doubts about her skepticism (if that
made sense) for a while before this latest morass. Especially out in
Arizona, when she was surrounded by people who believed that
the world worked exactly the way that it was supposed to, and that
taking bribes and dropping trousers was about as bad as
government misconduct got. She'd look at them and wonder how
they could be so trusting, so confident that bad things happened to
people for no good reason.
 
 
Scully could sense the alien's amusement at her confusion
and fear. Forget abduction, this was a hijacking, and it let her know
that she was supposed to be learning something. Just what, it left
for her to figure out as it took her on guided tours of her past. The
last time they'd stopped for gas, it had replayed for her all her
memories of making humiliating mistakes: Mispronouncing
"orgasm" in conversation with teenaged-but-quite-experienced
Melissa; completely forgetting the telltale signs of Kleinfeldter's
Syndrome in front of everyone on rounds; nearly letting that
strange man have his way with her; and a catalogue of other
embarrassments she'd never managed to erase from her
consciousness. When it was through with her, she felt like a totally
incompetent fool, and knowing that she was being manipulated
helped just about as much as telling herself that no one had really
noticed the original mistakes.
 
 
Finally, the transfer (and hadn't *that* been a wonderful
experience?). She was inexpressibly glad that the alien had
controlled her throughout, so that she couldn't admit how much she
wanted Mulder to take on the burden of the possession. If she'd
been stronger, she would have willed that he be spared it. But all
she'd wanted was for the pain to stop, so she'd been thrilled that
he'd do this for her. After all this time, to discover herself a
weakling, in need of having her battles fought for her--it was
humiliating. It was the alien's next-to-last victory over her.
 
 
Unless, of course, they somehow managed to pull Mulder's
scheme off and make it out alive.
 
 
She sighed and pulled her knees up to her chest, hugging
herself. Why did this have to be so complicated? Even with the
therapy, Mulder was pretty thoroughly broken. He was like the
snake she'd shot so long ago: She wanted to fix him, so desperately
that she'd do anything, but it was going against the laws of nature
to hope for success.
 
 
Then again, some of the things they'd seen went against the
laws of nature as she knew them. Maybe insane hope was the
proper response to an insane world.
 
 
Scully looked up at the stars. Here in the middle of nowhere,
the light pollution was at a minimum, and the stars were as thick in
the sky as flowers in a well-tended garden--or as mines on a
carefully-laid battlefield. Was the alien's star visible? How long
had it traveled, to take her will and her words?
 
 
How could any human ally with that thing, knowing what it
could do to a person? Knowing that it wanted to take over the
world--if it was even telling the truth; maybe it was even worse
than that. If the truth of this ever came out, there would have to be
trials whose revelations would rival those of Nuremberg.
Scully was pulled from her reverie when Krycek's pocket
began beeping rapidly. He pulled out another device and looked at
a readout. "He's cracked the first set of codes," he said. "If he could
get that far this fast, we don't have much time. There is one more
electronic lock. If the radiation readings don't change within two
hours, we have to blow it up; we can't wait for Mulder's theory to
work."
 
 
"I don't think so," Scully said, rising to her feet. He looked
up, and stared down the barrel of the gun she'd taken from him.
 
 
"I wouldn't shoot if I were you," he said.
 
 
"You were always going to kill him," she said. 
 
 
"Better safe than sorry. Dana, this is a fail-deadly detonator; I
have to type a code in every fifteen minutes. If you shoot me,
Mulder blows up anyway. Just a few minutes ahead of schedule,
that's all. And we should really get further away, if you want to
survive."
 
 
"What's in there?"
 
 
"Besides the oilien spacecraft and the oilien, you mean? Just
a little backpack nuke; I borrowed it from the Pentagon, since they
weren't using it to defend you against the Red Menace anymore.
Good thing another enemy came along, isn't it, or these kinds of
weapons might find their way into the wrong hands."
 
 
Scully cocked the gun.
 
 
"Dana," he said, edging toward desperation, "do you really
think I'm lying? I don't want to die here, and I bet you don't either.
Is one man's life worth a world's?"
 
 
"I don't make those trades," she said, and shot him in the arm.
 
 
Sparks flew everywhere as he screamed and dropped the
detonator, sliding off the car in an ungraceful heap. Scully walked
over to his writhing body and kicked him in the head, three times,
until he was still. The prosthetic arm--she couldn't wait to find out
the story about that--was still twitching and jerking, but she
ignored it, picked up the detonator, and headed toward the research
facility.
 
 
As she ran, she noted that the detonator gave her eight
minutes.
She aimed for the door that was swinging open, its lock
snapped. The alien hadn't felt any need to hide its tracks.
 
 
There was enough dust on the floor to help her out. One path
had been worn through it, showing the marks of many feet: the
endless army of workers that the dark forces commanded, moving
the ship, then Krycek, then Mulder and his passenger. She
followed their trail to a darkened stairway--there was the first
electronic lock, flashing a pleasant green--and down.
 
 
Two flights down, the stairway opened onto a large
underground storage area. It was almost completely dark, except
for the purplish glow from the alien spacecraft.
 
 
There wasn't any time to examine it, despite her burning
desire to look into what had to be a miracle of physics. It was big,
black, and incredibly frightening. For once, that was just enough
information; maybe more than she wanted to know.
 
 
Mulder was never going to let her live this one down. It was
hard to imagine what could possibly count as solid evidence of
extraterrestrial life if this wouldn't cut it.
 
 
Mulder was lying on the cold concrete floor, discarded,
twenty feet away. He had a nosebleed.
 
 
She hurried over to him, knelt, and tugged at his arm.
"Mulder, wake up. I can't carry you. Come on, wake up."
 
 
He groaned and batted weakly at her arm with one bruised
and bloody hand. The alien had been using his body fairly
relentlessly, it seemed. He still wasn't conscious, but he was getting
closer. 
 
 
Five minutes.
 
 
She turned him over, picked up his feet, and began dragging
him toward the exit. She had no idea how she could get him up the
stairs, but she wouldn't leave him behind. He left thin trails of
blood from his hands.
 
 
Dragging him was difficult, much harder than fifty minutes
on the Stairmaster plus free weights. Her back immediately began
to ache, and her arms soon joined it. She hoped that she didn't hit a
bump; it would probably tear his head off.
 
 
Lights were flashing on the massive craft in the middle of the
room: pink, green, yellow. They illuminated the odd indented
swirls that might be decorative carving or might merely say "This
End Up" in Oilien. The lights flickered, dimming, then getting
stronger, then blinking off.
 
 
Scully saw a curl of pink foam ooze from one of the swirls.
Just a few more feet...Mulder's head jolted, and then he woke up.
 
 
"Scully?" She dropped his feet as he put a shaky hand to his
face. "I don't feel so good." Now he looked like he'd been kissed
by a bunch of sloppy women: red blotches everywhere.
 
 
"That won't be a problem in a minute, unless you stand up
and get the hell out of here," she said, and took his hand to help
him up.
 
 
He stood, with some effort, and they hurried to the stairs.
 
 
Three minutes, the detonator showed as they leapt through
the door and hit the hard-packed earth running.
 
 
They ran back to the car. Even with her shorter legs, Scully
had no problem keeping up with Mulder. His body must have been
just about done for.
 
 
Krycek was waiting for them, eyes locked on the detonator in
Scully's hand.
 
 
"You've killed us, you bitch. How does it feel to be
responsible for the death of the human race?"
 
 
"Shut up, Alex," she replied. "Are you going to put the code
in, or do you want to die here and now?"
 
 
"I'd rather roast in nuclear fire than have that thing inside me
again," he said. "Three lives, and maybe for nothing--maybe it's
already called all the relatives, thanks to you."
 
 
Thirty seconds.
 
 
Mulder was shaking, unable to stand. He collapsed, curling
up into a ball on the ground between Scully and Krycek, holding
his knees to his chest. 
 
 
Fifteen.
 
 
Krycek looked down at Mulder with pity and contempt and
something Scully couldn't quite identify.
 
 
She had a blinding flash of insight. Was this how Mulder's
brain worked, filling in the details from small clues he couldn't
explain to anyone else? She tapped at the keypad.
 
 
"What are you doing?" Krycek screamed. "Stop!" He lunged
at her, but Mulder grabbed at his leg as the traitor went over her
fallen partner. Krycek might have made it, but his still-twitching
metal arm must have thrown off his balance, because it jerked to
one side and he went over just as she pressed "Enter."
 
 
Scully waited. The world had narrowed to a grey LED
screen. The display no longer showed the countdown; it was
processing the code she'd entered.
 
 
There was a burning smell.
 
 
Krycek sagged to the ground.
 
 
They didn't blow up.
 
 
The counter reset to fifteen minutes again.
 
 
Scully tugged Mulder to his feet, then did the same for
Krycek. 
 
 
"Come on," she said. "We've got fifteen minutes."
 
 
"Wait," Mulder said. "In there--the evidence--" He was pale,
shaky, but still on fire with truth-seeking, Scully could tell.
 
 
"No," Krycek said. "I sent a message a few hours ago--if it
doesn't blow up within the next half hour, they're going to hit this
area with a tactical nuke and fuel-air bombs, for good measure.
There's nothing we can save."
 
 
Mulder stood, looking back at the building.
 
 
Scully took his hand in the lightest of grips, trying to reassure
him without damaging him further. "We'll find proof," she said. "I
know it. But let's not get killed today, all right?"
 
 
They drove away from the research facility at a speed faster
than the speedometer would measure. After fifteen minutes, there
was a dull boom, and a tiny black cloud appeared on the horizon,
blotting out the stars that were already beginning to fade into the
dawn.
 
 
They stopped the car to look at it. Even Krycek, cradling his
still-spasming arm, got out to gawk. They must have made a
strange sight: two ragged men and a scruffy woman, standing by
the side of the road, shoulders slumped in fatigue, looking back
into the near-darkness.
 
 
"How is the government going to explain this, I wonder?"
Mulder mused.
 
 
"Another chemical spill, maybe?"
 
 
"Yeah, what happens when all the kids born next year in the
state have three heads?"
 
 
Krycek turned to them, grimacing. "Don't you know
anything, Mulder? That kind of nuke's not much more than a big
bag of TNT. Sure, there's more bang for the buck, but it's no
Chernobyl. It does a localized job, and there are accepted cleanup
tactics. They *were* designed for the European battlefield, you
know, and the Army wasn't willing to apply the old 'destroy the
village in order to save it' rationale when it was great-granddad's
village they were talking about."
 
 
"If it's that small, why did you think it would be enough to
kill the alien?" Scully asked. "Something that emits radiation
apparently at will would probably not be highly vulnerable to
nuclear assault."
 
 
Krycek shrugged. "Guess it's a good thing for everyone I let
Mulder come along."
 
 
Mulder turned, and was stepping toward Krycek with
mayhem in his eyes when his fatigue caught up with him and he
stumbled. For once, he actually thought about his next move. He
turned back to Scully instead, and held out his arms.
 
 
They hugged, crushing the breath out of each other. Mulder
held Scully's head in his hand, pulling her cheek to lie against his
chest. They listened to each other's heartbeats slow to normal.
 
 
All too soon, Scully pulled away. 
 
 
He looked down at her, smiling fondly. "Did I ever tell you
that you have great eyes? I like them much better white than
black."
 
 
"Flattery will get you nowhere, Mulder."
"So what was the code, Scully?" He leaned in, as if they were
discussing a normal investigation.
 
 
She smiled sweetly at him. "Let's just say that you have an
admirer among the rodent world."
 
 
He shot an incredulous glance at Krycek, who just raised his
eyebrows.
 
 
"Sunflower seeds, Mulder," Krycek said, and Mulder
stiffened.
 
 
"Ah..." he said sheepishly, releasing Scully, "I hope you don't
mind the cover story."
 
 
"Considering the results," she said, "I think I'll forgive you.
Don't move, Alex," she called out to the man who was not edging
toward the car quite subtly enough.
 
 
"Look, our arrangement is over. Why don't you--"
 
 
"What's that?" Scully asked, pointing off about forty-five
degrees from the slowly-shredding cloud from the explosion. They
all peered at the grey smear, barely visible against the predawn
sky. It seemed to be getting closer.
 
 
"Bees," Mulder wheezed. "After us. Get in the car! Close all
the windows and the vents and turn the air conditioning on!"
 
 
The grey cloud was getting closer. It looked as if it was
heading for the car of its own volition.
 
 
Mulder tried to push Scully towards the car, but lacked the
strength. She had to assist him in. Krycek seemed to think that
there was no harm in going along with this latest bit of insanity, so
he didn't cause trouble.
 
 
Sandwiched between the two men, Scully saved most of her
attention for Mulder. He was going to need the usual mending and
patching, but he'd probably be ok. She peered out of the window,
over his slumping body. 
 
 
"Are you carrying any of that pheromone?" he asked as she
buckled him in.
 
 
"I didn't exactly get a chance to pack, Mulder," she said. "I'll
put it in my utility belt from now on, all right?"
 
 
She thought that she could hear a faint buzzing through the
glass as the cloud hit ground level, about ten yards from the car.
She could see individual bees now at the edges of the swarm, black
dots in the air.
Krycek turned the key in the ignition, and the car started up.
 
 
The first bees hit the windshield, diving straight at the
passengers' eyes. They hit the glass with such force that they
smashed into it and stuck, oozing bee innards. Scully stared, wide-
 
 
eyed.
 
 
"Air conditioning," Mulder insisted, and Scully turned the
controls to maximum.
 
 
Now more bees were arriving, and they weren't all sacrificing
themselves. They began to land on the windshield, coating it.
 
 
"That won't do much until the engine's been running a while,"
Krycek pointed out.
 
 
"Then drive," Scully suggested, trying to ensure that the
vents were bee-proof. Krycek hit the gas, throwing her back into
the seat, and he spun the car around in a tight, blind turn, then
began speeding down the road back the way they'd come. Almost
as an afterthought, he turned the windshield wipers on. They swept
the window a few times, until they were too clogged with bee
corpses to function.
 
 
Mulder watched over his shoulder as the bees that hadn't
made it to the car yet gave chase. "How fast can bees fly, Scully?"
 
 
"I'm a doctor, not an entomologist. But--" (never let it be said
that she'd pass up a chance to give an opinion, however tenuously
scientific) "--they're too small to go very fast very long." 
 
 
Nothing was crawling through the vents, as far as she could
tell. Could bees really figure out how to get into a car? Most of the
ones on the windshield had stopped moving entirely; others were
blown off by the speed of their passage.
 
 
Sure enough, the car pulled away from the pursuing cloud
quickly. When the swarm dropped from sight, Mulder chortled.
 
 
"What?" Krycek asked, annoyed.
 
 
"It's just that this is probably the first *not*-close escape I've
had in my career. All the others have been near misses. This is kind
of boring."
 
 
"Boring?" Scully and Krycek said simultaneously, and
exchanged a hitherto unprecedented (perhaps unimaginable) look
of complete understanding.
 
 
"Tell you what, Mulder," Krycek continued, "I'll let you off
here, and you can walk back until you see them again, throw a rock
at them, and try to outrun them. Will that make you happy?"
 
 
He just chortled again and rolled his head back against the
seat. "Home, James," he said airily.
 
 
End 7/8
 
 
 
 
 
 
Up the Ladder 8/8
RivkaT@aol.com
 
 
* * *
 
 
If it had been a movie, it would have ended when Mulder and
Scully got off the plane and Sam jumped into Mulder's arms.
 
 
But it wasn't, and she didn't. 
 
 
Instead, when they'd gotten a little further from the alien's
corpse and attendant devastation, Mulder called Mrs. Scully on his
cellphone. She answered on the third ring.
 
 
"Mrs. Scully?"
 
 
"Hello, Fox." She sounded cooler, more distant than usual. It
was late in Maryland; he'd undoubtedly woken her.
 
 
"How is Sam doing? Can I speak to her?"
 
 
"I'm not sure how she is. You'd have to call the hospital to
see if there's been any change since I left, a few hours ago."
 
 
"She's still there?"
 
 
"Fox, she hasn't been conscious since she arrived. The
doctors say there's no reason for it, but she's catatonic."
 
 
It was perhaps not surprising that Mulder and Scully were not
paying enough attention to prevent Krycek from slipping away at
the airport.
 
 
* * *
 
 
They stopped in at Quantico just long enough to pick up a
supply of the pheromone; Mulder insisted on it. He wouldn't go to
the hospital without it, and Scully was very much afraid that he
was right. She stayed in her office to write a report that might
possibly enable them to keep their jobs and to give Mulder some
time with Sam. Frankly, she wasn't sure that she was ready to face
the little girl from whom had spewed that *thing*.
 
 
The pheromone was still there, and Scully gave Mulder a
spritzer she'd made from an empty perfume bottle. 
 
 
When she handed the bottle to him, he'd given her a look that
let her know that he considered perfume a threat to his masculinity. 
 
 
"It may smell a little like White Shoulders from the bottle, but
the natural smell of the concentrate is a lot like Pine-Sol, so
consider yourself lucky. It could be worse; bee sexual pheromones
smell like Lemon Pledge." 
 
 
Scully had checked their other evidence before she began her
report. All of the bees, dead and simply frozen, were gone.
Unsurprising, but grim nonetheless. If anything, the continued
safety of the pheremone argued for the theory that they still had a
friend in the secret government. 
 
 
* * *
 
 
When Mulder arrived at the hospital, Skinner was with Sam.
Mulder wasn't very surprised; he'd known that Skinner was
looking for a reason to keep living. With his wife gone and his soul
sold to the devil, Skinner seemed to think that victory in Mulder's
quest might somehow justify what his life had become.
 
 
And children can make one so very hopeful.
 
 
"Agent Mulder, am I to understand that you left this child
while she was sick, without letting anyone know where you were
going and without reporting in until now? I suppose I should have
expected it from you, but Agent Scully..."
 
 
"Agent Scully was indisposed, sir."
 
 
Skinner's eyes narrowed. "A relapse?"
 
 
"Well, no--do you want me to tell you what happened, or
would you like something that you could believe?"
 
 
"I'm going to ignore the incipient insubordination of that
remark and just ask for the truth."
 
 
"All right, but don't say that I didn't warn you. Sam was, until
a few days ago, inhabited by one of the alien creatures of the kind
that was on the downed submarine we investigated a few years
back--the one connected with Alex Krycek's disappearance after
we went to Hong Kong. When its safety was threatened, the alien
transferred into Scully, intending to return to its ship and carry out
its undoubtedly nefarious purposes. Krycek was dispatched to kill
it; I persuaded him to try a tactic that might save Scully; it did; the
alien is dead and the evidence is, of course, destroyed."
 
 
"*That's* the best you can do? Couldn't you think up some
more plausible bullshit?"
 
 
"I'm not at my peak right now," Mulder said, indicating the
still form on the bed. Sam hadn't moved or made any sign that she
was aware of their presence. "I think that when the alien left her, it
may have done more damage to her mind than it did to the adults it
used, because it had been with her for so long and from such a
young age."
 
 
"Do you think she'll recover?"
 
 
Mulder sighed, and finally crossed the room to take his
sister's hand. "I wish I knew."
 
 
"You don't deserve her."
 
 
Mulder looked at the older man. "You'd know, of course.
You've been in the smoking man's pocket so long there's lint on
what's left of your hair."
 
 
"I believed that it was the wisest thing to do, under the
circumstances. But it seems that even your good fortune gets the
better of you, Agent Mulder. I wish you luck. You'll need it."
 
 
Skinner left. 
 
 
Mulder pulled up a chair, and settled in to wait for a miracle.
 
 
* * *
 
 
Waiting in silence was never his strong suit. Eventually, he
began to talk to her. He described the flowers blinding the window,
cheerful and grotesque arrangements sent by the various Gunmen.
He told her stories he'd once read--lots of Isaac Asimov, the
shaggy-dog stories with the groan-worthy punchlines, until the
lack of giggles got to him and he switched to Tolkien.
 
 
After a while, he just talked.
 
 
"You know," he said to the still form on the bed, "it's like I
keep climbing this ladder. Every time I reach another rung, I think
'This is it. Now I've found the truth, now I can stop looking.' But
it's never the top, and I've climbed so high I can barely breathe and
I still can't see Scully's heaven. Maybe the ladder never stops;
maybe it just goes on and on until it comes to the place it started
from, and I'll be climbing in circles forever."
 
 
Scully's voice, coming from the door behind him, cut through
him like a sword. "You can't stop climbing." He heard her move
across the floor, and she put her hand on his shoulder. "If you stop
climbing, everything about you that makes you who you are would
disappear. And we're so far up now--it's too late to think about
going back."
 
 
He reached up across his chest to clasp her hand. "Do you
regret it?"
 
 
"I regret that the evil we've seen exists. I don't regret a single
step I took with you."
 
 
"What if she doesn't wake up?" he whispered.
 
 
"We'll still love her. And we'll expose the truth for her. For
everyone hurt along the way."
 
 
She came around the chair and let him hug her. He buried his
face in her stomach, just for a moment, and then let her go.
Relentless as a bulldozer, Scully was. She'd be with him, whatever
happened next. And somehow, that made reaching the next rung
easier.
 
 
"Scully?"
 
 
She pressed him to her more closely. "Shh, Mulder. Don't say
anything you won't want to face later."
 
 
He chuckled ruefully, muffled by the fabric of her suit.
"Sometimes I think you know me too well."
 
 
"Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever know you at all."
 
 
"As long as there's room on that ladder for both of us."
 
 
She ran a hand through his hair. "If not," she whispered, and
he could feel her, alive and breathing and perfect, "we'll just get a
wider ladder."
 
 
* * *
 
 
Scully pulled up a chair, and by the time an hour had passed
she was dozing on Mulder's shoulder. She and Sam seemed to
breathe in tandem, the slow, noisy breaths of the unconscious and
sleeping.
 
 
After a while, a nurse came in and opened a cabinet on the far
side of the room, next to the bathroom door, and removed a blanket
which she laid carefully on Scully. The thin blue blanket covered
Scully from her sneaker-clad feet, brushing against the floor, to her
determined chin. Mulder smiled gratefully at the nurse, who
winked at him and left, lowering the lights on her way out.
 
 
He was almost ready to doze off himself when a black spot at
the edge of his vision caused him to come awake.
 
 
He thought it was a trick of the dim light at first, like chairs
turning into monsters, but then he saw another. The bees were
crawling from a ventilation duct above Sam's bed. 
Mulder reached into his pocket for the perfume bottle,
moving his hand as slowly as possible. He wished that he'd asked
Scully to lecture at greater length about bee abilities, since he had
no idea whether they could see well in the dark, or whether they
tracked other creatures by smell, motion, or something else. He
was sweating profusely, terrified by the realization that the only
people in the world who mattered to him were under attack, and
completely vulnerable.
 
 
"Scully!" he hissed as he doused Sam and her bed in a mist of
pheromone. He could barely work the small sprayer with his
bruised and scratched hands, courtesy of the oilien; his finger kept
slipping off the bottle. Scully stirred, and he grasped at her arm to
still her.
 
 
Unfortunately, she was not good at waking silently and
instantaneously, and she murmured and pushed at him.
 
 
The perfume bottle slipped from his blood- and sweat-slick
hand and shattered on the tile floor, sending a spume of liquid up
into his eyes and mouth, soaking him--but providing no protection
whatsoever to Scully.
 
 
The noise made her wake up fully, and she rose from the
chair, grabbing at her gun.
 
 
Mulder saw no choice in the matter; he threw himself on top
of her, knocking the chairs to one side and pushing her down to the
floor. He tried to cover her completely with his pheromone-
 
 
protected body. At first he thought that his clothes might transfer
some of the liquid onto her, but then he realized that the damn
blanket had insulated her from any leakage. He had no idea how
many bees were in the room by now, but he thought that he could
hear buzzing over Scully's protests.
 
 
"Scully, don't move," he ordered, trying to find her ear
beneath the tangled cloud of hair at his chin. "There are bees in the
room, and I dropped the bottle and broke it so there's nothing to
protect you. I'm going to stay on top of you, ok?"
 
 
She stilled, and he could feel her thinking furiously, going
from a sleepy haze to total concentration in seconds.
 
 
"They'll still be able to crawl under you," she whispered,
muffled by his shirt. "Where are they?"
 
 
He twisted his head around and looked at the wall. From his
angle on the floor, only a small section above Sam's bed was
visible. He saw a mass of bees hanging on to the vent; a few were
venturing downwards, toward the monitoring equipment, but none
were flying around.
 
 
"Not doing much now," he said. "We might have a minute
before there's enough of them to swarm and attack."
 
 
"Can you reach the cabinet next to the bathroom? I'll be safer
inside, if there are no big holes."
 
 
Mulder stretched out his arm, trying not to crush Scully or
expose her to the bees' attentions. His fingers brushed the bottom
of the cabinet door. He tilted himself a little further over her,
silently apologizing for getting her in this mess, and then he got
three fingertips around the door and pulled. It was the kind that
closed with a magnetic latch, so, after a few painful attempts, he
was finally able to make it swing open.
 
 
"When I roll off you, you get in. On three, one, two, three!"
 
 
Mulder rolled toward the bed, vaguely hoping that the bees
would see him coming nearer and attack him if they picked on
anyone, and Scully scrambled for the cabinet.
 
 
Then she was in, and he slammed the cabinet door on her and
he'd never been so incredibly grateful that she was tiny.
 
 
"Remember, Mulder," her voice came through the door,
barely audible, "this isn't an antidote to the super-smallpox. Don't
make them mad. Leave them alone and they'll do the same for
you."
 
 
"We can't just let them live peacefully in the middle of the
hospital," he said harshly, speaking to the edge of the cabinet door
in hopes that she could hear him. "They'll kill indiscriminately."
 
 
He heard clunking and banging--a muffled "ow!"--and then,
faintly, the familiar noise of a cell phone being dialed. Mulder
smiled in the near-darkness, praising the inventor of glow-in-the-
 
 
dark buttons.
 
 
Still leaning against the cabinet door, Mulder watched as the
bees circled, looking for something to attack. He didn't move (he'd
decided to try a new strategy: taking Scully's advice), and Sam
wasn't going anywhere. The bees continued to flow into the room,
but seemed nonplussed once there. They flew in small circles
above the vent, occasionally venturing further into the room but
then returning. The cluster on the wall grew into what must have
been thousands. Scully had calmly given her badge number and
called for an extermination team and an evacuation of the hospital
floor, and from her increasingly detailed instructions it sounded as
if she were actually being taken seriously.
 
 
"...Pink and white, because bees react better to those colors,"
Mulder heard as a bee finally decided to make a run at his head. He
closed his eyes and thought that he felt the wind of its little wings
as it swooped over him. After a few seconds, he opened them
again, and it was gone, lost in the burgeoning mass over the bed.
 
 
A few of the bees began to investigate the flower
arrangements on the windowsill. He thought that, all in all, a
hospital wasn't a terrible place for bees to live, since they'd have
constant access to fresh flower arrangements. They really seemed
to like the daffodils, the most cheerful flower in creation, but they
essentially ignored the lilies. 
 
 
With an effort of will, he dragged his attention away from the
flowers. Watching wonders of nature was not going to keep them
all alive.
 
 
He could hear sounds from the hall now, drowning out
Scully's continued orchestration of the situation from her tiny cell.
People moving--someone was reminding them to keep their voices
down, even as other voices were raised in hysteria. Wheels rattling
and squeaking had to be patients being moved--God, this was a
children's ward, he'd put that out of his mind entirely, and children
were the most vulnerable of all to smallpox.
 
 
Just when he thought that things were going to be all right--
 
 
the noise from the hall was dying down, and Scully's conversation
was sounding more and more encouraging--the bees on the wall
finally reached a critical mass, and a cluster of them fell, landing
on Sam's bed with an audible splat.
 
 
Mulder was frozen in horror as they crawled over the bed,
seemingly dazed by the fall. Some tried to fly back up but didn't
get far; others simply began walking over the white sheets,
exploring.
 
 
If he lunged for them and tried to sweep them off of her, she
could get stung in the confusion. But the longer they stayed on her,
the more likely it was that they'd just sting her on general
principles.
 
 
A fat bee crawled over her right hand, limp and vulnerable
outside of the covers. Over the thumb, then back on the sheet, then
the index finger--the sheet--the middle finger--the sheet--it crawled
*up* the ring finger, over the knuckle, into the webbing between
ring and pinky--then off.
 
 
Mulder would have welcomed a heart attack. Other bees were
straying toward her hands, her neck and face.
 
 
What if the exterminators burst in and frightened the bees?
They might attack the first available victim, provocative
pheromones or no.
 
 
Grimly, he stood and edged toward the bed, hoping that they
wouldn't take it as a challenge. There were no bees on her hands at
the moment, so he took the sheet by its top edge, his hands grazing
her fragile shoulders, and slowly pulled it down, trying to roll the
bees along with the sheet.
 
 
Carefully pulling the sheet, hands spread far enough apart to
leave a place for them to collect in the middle, he peeled it slowly
off of his sister's motionless body. The bees' activity level stayed
the same, though now some of them were crawling toward his own
hands--not a concern, unless they went over and back onto Sam's
now unprotected body.
 
 
Behind him, from the cabinet, Scully was making inquisitive
noises; he put her out of his mind and concentrated on pulling
evenly, nonthreateningly. Over her waist, now; the hospital gown
ended and there were Sam's knobby knees, still scabbed from that
big fall she'd taken at soccer practice only last week. Finally there
were her perfect feet, and he gathered the sheet into a bag of bees,
pulling out the bottom corners of the sheet to place the contents
carefully on the floor.
 
 
Then he backed away and looked up for the first time in what
had to have been hours.
 
 
Bees were no longer coming through the vent. They were
milling about aimlessly, buzzing a little and then retreating into
silence. Well, he was uncertain too. 
 
 
Mulder took off his jacket and laid it over Sam, to give her
some more protection.
 
 
The door burst open and the exterminators charged in,
spewing their blessed poison.
 
 
The bees instantly swarmed, attacking the white-suited
invaders ferociously even through the insecticidal haze, but they
were no match for the quantity of gas thrown at them.
 
 
Mulder just sagged down on the bed and watched, unable to
react beyond putting his arm around Sam and waving the fog away
when it began to interfere with her breathing. Being in this room,
practically bathing in insecticide, was probably not the healthiest
thing for her, but that didn't seem like a central concern at the
moment.
 
 
Mulder's shell-shock made it necessary for Skinner, who'd
appeared as soon as the men in white confirmed that they couldn't
find any more live bees in the vent, to open the cabinet and let
Scully out. He barely noticed Skinner's solicitous behavior toward
Scully--giving her a hand, guiding her out of the room with a hand
on her shoulder--as the doctors began to check Samantha's
condition. They wanted to give her oxygen because of the
insecticide, and he moved off of the bed to let them work.
 
 
As a professional, he recognized several symptoms of shock
in his behavior, especially his calm detachment, but he didn't really
want to break down right now, so he decided to ride it out. He
could break something (himself, maybe) when he got home.
 
 
He drifted out into the hall, where Scully was explaining
what had happened to Skinner and several people in lab coats.
CDC, maybe?
 
 
"Agent Mulder?" Skinner saw him emerge from Sam's room,
and waved him over. 
 
 
Scully took one look at him and moved to put her arm around
his waist, breaking off in the middle of a multisyllabic monologue. 
 
 
"It's all right, Mulder," she said, ignoring everyone else.
"She's safe."
 
 
"Too close," he said, and then surprised himself by fainting.
 
 
* * *
 
 
The next thing he saw was Scully's face, filling his entire
field of vision. She was sideways. <Why, Dr. Scully, what big eyes
you have,> he thought, and giggled.
 
 
"Hey there, sleepyhead," Scully said. "Want to share the
joke?" She pulled back and he turned his head to follow her,
deciding as he looked beyond her that he must be in a hospital bed.
 
 
"Sam's all right," she said, before he could ask. "No worse,
anyway. One of the nurses thought he heard her say some words
while she was being moved, but there was a lot of activity going on
at the time and you shouldn't necessarily put much stock in that."
 
 
Scully handed him a glass of water with a straw sticking out
of it. He tried to bring a hand up to take it, but saw that his regular
hands had been replaced with fluffy white paws--bandages. She
held the glass under his chin and carefully bent the straw until he
could reach it.
 
 
He tried to drink quickly, so that she wouldn't have to hold
the glass in such an awkward position, but then he nearly choked,
and he decided that she'd prefer cramps to Mulder-recycled water.
 
 
When he was done, she put the glass on a tray to one side of
the bed.
 
 
"How are you feeling?" she asked.
 
 
"Better. I'm sorry I dropped the bottle, Scully."
 
 
"I've had more pleasant accomodations," she said drily, "but
it wasn't your fault, Mulder. The, uh, the alien treated you pretty
badly. I'm just glad that cabinet was nearly empty."
 
 
"I hid in a cabinet once, too, you know." She looked at him
inquisitively. "I was nine, Sam was six, and Dad was mad, not that
the last describes a particular timeframe. I knew he would hit me if
he caught me, so I determined not to get caught. I hid under the
sink...I can still smell the banana skins and meatloaf scrapings from
the trash can. I put my arm in my mouth and bit down hard so that I
wouldn't throw up. He was calling for me and he came into the
kitchen just as I'd shut the cabinet door. I was shaking so badly, I
knocked over a can of oven cleaner, but he was stomping out and
he didn't hear.
 
 
"He found Sam instead. I learned a big lesson that day. After
that--I didn't always keep her safe. But if she got hit, I was always
there to get hit more, so that it would be as easy as possible for her.
I taught her to hide when she could, and I'd come when he called.
She'd hide in the dryer, because she was little enough to fit in; he
never once looked in there."
 
 
Scully's left hand had come up, covering her mouth. She
shook her head, and the tears in her eyes spilled onto her face at the
motion.
 
 
"Hey," he said, trying to lighten the mood, "it was a long time
ago. Now I have a whole new reason to be grateful to cabinets."
 
 
She still couldn't speak. She leant down to hug him,
awkwardly, not putting any of her weight on the bed. He patted her
back with his clumsy, gauze-covered hands, breathing in the
unique spice-and-liniment smell he knew so well.
 
 
"We're going to beat them, I swear," she said into his neck.
He rubbed his jaw against her cheek, feeling two days' beard rasp
against her smooth skin.
 
 
Too soon, she straightened up. But there was a new gleam of
determination, and even hope, in her eyes.
 
 
"Get some rest, Mulder," she said fondly. "Big day tomorrow.
Skinner and I have some ideas about keeping Sam safe while we
figure out what in hell's name is going on. We made the
*Washington Post* with last night's attack. It's time to bring this
out into the open."
 
 
END
 
 
Author's notes: This began as an exercise, essentially: write
something that would be mostly Mulder. Nobody could have been
more surprised than I when the oilien swam across Sam's eyes.
Thanks to CiCi Lean and Jill Selby, who read parts as this got more
convoluted.