From: Windsinger@aol.com
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 21:24:17 EST
Subject: xfc: NEW: Travels w/Charley 8: Not Kansas (6a/15) by Windsinger
Source: xfc

MY TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY 08: Not Kansas (6a/15)
Sue Esty (AKA Windsinger@aol.com)

BENJAMIN
Year 31, Week 00.0, Dale Reckoning

Daniel was scarcely out of the room when Reese came bearing food. I 
had to encourage Mulder to eat. Free food was, after all, free food, 
and the quality was irritatingly better than mine was. I then helped 
him to straighten the clothes he'd slept in and afterwards to make 
it down the stairs. 

No matter how magnificent the Mayor's residence, it was good to be 
outside. It was a fine day for Dale even for this time of year when 
so many of the days are kind. Growing Days we called them when the 
sun days came after rain days. There was sun yet it wasn't too hot. 

The new year festivities of the night before had taken their toll on 
the colonists. There were few townspeople about even though it was 
nearly noon. I led Mulder to Mac's cabin at the end of the street. 
He was home. He lived with the Apothecary, which was convenient for 
the colony.

Mac was a little wizened man of about Daniel's age. One of the 
original colonists, he knew the mayor about as well as anyone which 
did not mean that he knew him well. Daniel had always been separate. 
Perhaps great men were destined to be so. My thoughts went to Mulder 
-- to Fox -- at my side. Here was another solitary man. Like Daniel, 
he kept his own counsel, and they both bore the marks though I 
wouldn't have noticed Daniel's if he hadn't pointed them out. Was 
Mulder a great man, too? It had been a long time since I felt so 
insignificant, so stupid.

We were waiting for the surgeon in his treatment room and I had all 
these thoughts whirling about in my head, so I suppose it wasn't 
surprising that I found myself blurting out, "Daniel's not going to 
live forever. Are you going to take his place?"

Mulder had been deep in his own head. He came out of it with a start 
and stared at me. "Why would you think that?"

"You're so much alike." I touched my cheek. Mulder did the same to 
his own cheek, feeling there the deep pits with their hard-blackened 
edges.  

His eyes that can be kind were also capable of being hard. They were 
hard now. "Think these are a badge of honor of some kind? Some mark 
of distinction? They are like brands of slavery, signs that show 
just how unfortunate we were to be born the way we were and came to 
be noticed by Charley. That's all they are."

"Interested in telling me what made them?" Mac asked, entering the 
room with the basket of materials he would need for the surgery. 

"I don't think so."

Mac shrugged, wincing from the arthritis in his back. "Not really my 
business. Daniel never told me either."  He gestured a lined hand to 
an elaborate chair of wood. "Benjamin, how about you and your new 
friend move the chair into the sun. You know what to do. It's just 
after noon so the second window." 

Indeed I did. First, I pulled on the second of five ropes that hung 
down in one corner of the room. In response a three-foot square of 
wall opened. Direct sunlight brightened the examining room. I 
directed Mulder and we moved the chair, not into the sun, but a few 
feet from it. 

"Climb on up," I told Mulder, but he only stayed where he was eyeing 
the contraption of wood and rope and well-worn pads warily. "It's 
the most comfortable chair in town," I assured him. "I had two teeth 
removed in that chair."

"Most people aren't so happy about going to the dentist," he 
replied.

"Why? It doesn't hurt."

To that Mulder raised an eyebrow in my direction. Eventually, he did 
seat himself but with a kind of hesitation as if he thought Mac's 
marvelous chair might suddenly come to life and bite him. Once 
settled, the surgeon was at his side, opening a flat pottery dish. 
Using two strips of wood like chopsticks -- I'm told you also use 
chopsticks on Earth -- Mac lifted a large, flat leaf from the bowl. 
With a flick of his wrist he shook off drips of stray fluid and 
extended the leaf towards Mulder's right cheek. Instinctively, 
Mulder cringed back against the seat as far as he could go.

"Hush," Mac said in his soothing tone. "Lie still. This won't hurt."

"It's Numb Leaf," I explained. "You're going to want it. You're 
going to need it."

If he relaxed, I couldn't tell, but he turned his head, exposing the 
right cheek. Deftly, Mac laid the wet, palm-sized leaf so that the 
three awful scars on that side were covered. 

Unconcerned, Mac then went whistling off into the next room, 
gathering bits of this herb and that roll of wadding into a basket 
as he went. 

I watched what I could of Mulder's face. I loved to watch his face 
when he was concentrating hard about something. You could almost see 
the thoughts forming.

"How do you feel?" I asked.

"Id'z nuhm," he said and stopped at the garbled sounds. The left 
side of his face moved as normal when he tried to talk, but the 
right side lay slack. 

"Better not try to talk unless you don't care about being 
misunderstood. It wears off in a few hours."

He was tense, not afraid but apprehensive. I wondered if I could 
hold his hand again. I've watched the surgeon lots of times. He was 
such a smart man. If I had not been adopted as Old William's heir, I 
would have asked to apprentice here and still could not understand 
why no one else had. At least being a Holder did not keep me from 
stopping by the surgery whenever I was in town. For this reason I 
had walked in on many a procedure and I had witnessed that not a few 
landholders, standing where I stood now, would hold the hand of his 
terrified newcomer as the poor creature was being treated. For some 
reason the chair terrified newcomers. Even Mulder's brow had broken 
out in a fine sweat. I wonder why? All I was certain of was that 
Mulder would probably have to think himself at death's door, like 
this morning at Daniel's, before I would be allowed to hold that 
hand again. 

Both of us were distracted by the return of the surgeon. Moving a 
table close to the chair, he began to lay out all he had gathered. 
Besides little pots of this and that, there were pads of moss that 
he would use to absorb the blood and thick wads of a particular 
grass, boiled and woven, which had been used as a bandage for 
decades. Correctly prepared, such a bandage had special properties 
that stopped nearly all infections and slowed superficial bleeding 
like this. On deep wounds, unfortunately, it had little effect. Most 
rare of all, however, was what Mac carried in a small box of carved 
red wood. From within the folds of padding he brought out a sliver 
of something that shone and glinted in the shaft of sunlight, 
sunlight that had moved closer and closer to Mulder's face, as I 
knew it would. The light just touched Mulder's left jawbone and it 
was, therefore, time to start.

"Considering where you come from," Mac said letting the object move 
about in the air as if it were a live thing, "it must be 
inconceivable to you how such a little piece of metal like this 
could be so precious."

Mulder raised his head to see it better and other than that did not 
seem outwardly distressed unless you happened to look at his right 
hand. The clenched hand seemed ready to crack the arm of the chair. 
Hastily, I wedged into that fist a teething stick, one of the pieces 
of hard wood which displayed the numerous teethmarks of countless 
men who have bitten down hard during treatments not so painless as 
this was going to be.  Still, Mulder grasped it hard and Mac hadn't 
even started yet. A little shiver of pleasure fluttered in my lower 
regions at the brief expression of gratitude he sent my way. It made 
me wish that I had offered my hand after all and it wouldn't have 
mattered if the result had been broken bones or not.
    
In the end the anticipation was far worse than reality. With the sun 
neatly timed to be full in his viewing area, Mac carefully scraped 
away layer upon layer of skin until the majority of scar tissue was 
gone. It was a tedious process.

"Better," Mac said, "better. See, Ben, how the patient relaxes once 
he realizes that there is no more to fear and not much pain either."

The surgeon's words actually seemed to rouse Mulder from a kind of 
doze. His eyes rolled to catch the glitter of the blade. "Wonder 
where this comes from on a planet so devoid of metal?" the old man 
asked. "Dental fillings. We melt down the fillings of all those who 
have been dumped upon these shores. You were checked when you came 
in, though you may not remember." Mulder tensed to the point that 
Mac placed a hand on his shoulder and laughed. "Don't worry. Those 
two little fillings of yours are not large enough to be of much use, 
but they're entered in the records. At some point in the future you 
may be asked to give them up but for the moment they're safer where 
they are."
    
In time the procedure was complete. My stomach twisted at the sight 
of the large patch of raw skin. In the end Mac applied a healing 
poultice to the wound and then the bandage. A pinch of nightflower 
bulb in tea and Mulder slept. As there were no other surgeries 
planned, he was allowed to stay where he was. Stretched out as he 
was with arms and legs resting on the chair supports, he looked to 
my eyes very vulnerable. 

We were offered the use of Mac's guest cabin for the night and I 
accepted without asking Mulder. If he complained, all I would need 
to do was describe the raw condition of his face before the bandage 
was applied. I was surprised when he followed me meekly out to the 
little hut in the rear of the surgery's elaborate garden. The town 
being built in a sheltered spot, the rows and rows of medicinal 
herbs and edible plants in their raised beds were already a 
patchwork of greens in a dozen hues. As it was early evening by 
then, we took Mac's offering of supper with us but it was still too 
early for sleep, especially for Mulder who had had his fill for the 
moment, though he did not seem eager for talk either. We sat in 
silence for at least an hour after eating and watched as the last of 
the light left the sky. Only when velvet blue covered all the vast 
space above our heads did Mulder begin to talk. 

He asked about the stars first, about what we called our 
constellations and if there was anything like a 'constant' star that 
could always be found in the same place in the sky. I described the 
Tree and the Loaf, the Mayor's Mouth (he smiled at that one) and the 
Newcomer that is shy and never stays in the sky long when it does 
appear. As the hours passed, I showed him the Baby and the Woman's 
Hair. The blue star called the Woman's Eye behaved most like what he 
asked about. We were silent then until the Moon rose.

"If you call this one the Moon, what do you call your second moon?"

"Little Brother. It's not seen as often and is small and pale by 
comparison."

"How often do you see it and for how long does it stay?"

I shrugged. "Every couple of weeks it rises in the East around 
sunset and sets in a few hours. Stays about four days and then he's 
gone again."

"What about phases?" Mulder asked. "Full moon, half moon, quarter 
moon?"

"For Brother?"

"For both of them." He was lying on his mat with his eyes on the 
heavens, his silhouette a little bulky because of the bandage but I 
sensed an excitement in him. "Is there a predictable time when both 
are full?"

"Twice a year, summer and winter. Last night was the summer 
occurrence. May Day."

He lifted his head at this to stare in the direction of the Moon, 
which was itself no longer quite full. 

"And what will you do in the winter when they're both full? Is there 
another festival?"

"Oh, yes." 

"At harvest time."

"Oh, long after that. We call it Frost's Whiskers. It's supposedly 
the last time we can reliably all get to town, but sometimes the 
heavy snow comes early. One year the snow was so deep that only ten 
people showed."

He didn't laugh as I expected, but was already somewhere else. 
Something I said had disturbed him. He was frowning as his eyes 
fixed on the horizon. 

"Brother won't rise for an hour yet and won't be full any longer," I 
told him. 

But still Mulder waited, his eyes restlessly tracing the stars. 
Finally, Brother rose its head above the tree line and Mulder sat up 
to stare at it. He got up and paced. I noticed with satisfaction 
that he was careful not to step on any young plants even though his 
eyes were almost always on the sky. 

"We should get some sleep," I told him. "There will be a lot to do 
on the farm when we get back." 

He nodded absently and lay down again. 

For myself, I fell asleep almost instantly having had almost no 
sleep the night before. Memories of those hours with Annie colored 
my dreams. I woke once, aroused by the memory of her cool touch on 
my body. I noted that Mulder's face was turned towards the two moons 
and his eyes, still open, glistened as if wet with dew. I slept 
again, eager to return to my own dreams, but this time Annie didn't 
appear. Mulder did, however, and everything was perfect between us. 
Then without warning he was wrenched from my arms. Rising to follow 
I found I was covered in blood.

I took that as a reminder that in the excitement over Mulder's 
sudden illness, I had failed to ask about the long-delayed adoption 
ceremony. If Mulder were formally under my protection then I think 
it would be harder for Daniel to take him from me as I was afraid 
there for a few minutes that he would. On the other hand, Daniel was 
letting him return. Maybe it would be better not to bring the matter 
up. If you don't ask, they can't say 'no'.

End of Chapter 6a

MY TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY 08: Not Kansas (6b/15)
Sue Esty (AKA Windsinger@aol.com)

BENJAMIN:
Year 31, Week 00.1 through 01.0 Dale Reckoning

The farm hadn't fared too badly in our unexpected absence. In fact, 
it seemed to have exploded in green and too much of it was weed. 
What followed were days of solitary work as we went up and down the 
rows, separating the bad from the good, dividing and pruning to 
increase the yield.

I didn't want to think about my Mulder dream so I thought about my 
Annie one. At night I took the memory of her body to my bed. During 
these days Mulder was... Mulder. He worked hard, so much so that it 
was an effort for me to keep up. He kept his own counsel. We had two 
days of rain, seven of sun and all at once it was Tensday, the day 
of rest. In this case it was our off week for visiting Daniel so 
maybe we could actually get something like rest. 

Morning found us sitting outside in the sun. Breakfast of bean paste 
and flatbread was over and, as I had done every other day, I was 
changing Mulder's bandages. The new skin on his right cheek was wet 
looking from the poultice but otherwise pink and on its way to good 
health. A slight breeze ruffled our hair. I looked from time to time 
with satisfaction down the slope and over the fields. As always, 
because he squinted so in the sun, I couldn't tell what he was 
looking at. 

"It's a free day," I told him. 

Mulder turned his head towards me, the eyes still slitted. "Come 
again?"

"A free day. A day to do what you want. I don't take them during 
planting season but the critical time is over. We can go to town if 
you want, but we'll be going there anyway on our next free day. To 
see Daniel... remember?"

Mulder did not ask to go to town. Instead his brow furrowed and the 
set of his chin, already firm, tightened. "Ben, I need your help."

My eyebrows must have went up in shock. To date, Mulder had never 
asked me for anything. 

"I need to find the place where, Charley -- Daniel calls him 'Bek' -
- dropped me off."

He hadn't said why and by the intensity of his hooded eyes I knew 
that I shouldn't ask.

"I'll help," I said, "But I don't have any idea where that might 
be."

"I know that it's my problem to find the place, but I'm going to 
need your help to get me home again." He looked at me with something 
like embarrassment from beneath his long lashes. "I'll get lost 
within a quarter of an hour, especially in the woods, and I remember 
a lot of tall trees though it wasn't a forest." 
    
"We're suppose to rest today and contemplate our good fortune. 
Hiking all over the countryside is not what anyone would call rest." 

He smiled a little and my spirits lifted. It was good to have the 
door he kept closed between us momentarily open. 

"That's another difference between where I come from and here. Many 
of the jobs on Earth these days don't require much physical labor so 
free time is often spent doing something active like sports or 
hiking. So even though you don't need the exercise, you'll help?"

"I said I would."

"There's a little side issue." I should have known. Generally, 
Mulder's an easy person to get along with, but when he has a problem 
there are always complications. "If at all possible, no one else can 
know that we're looking."

It was high summer but somehow I felt a little chill just then. What 
I said though was, "That shouldn't be hard. The land is sparsely 
settled at best and considering the fact that you wandered for what 
we think was a day without meeting anyone, I think we are talking 
about one of the less populated areas. Other newcomers have also 
walked out of unsettled areas, but that was long ago and I doubt 
that anyone remembers from where. We're going to need more than 
'tall trees' to go on."
  
Having looked forward to a swim and a nap and having the time to 
prepare a better meal than the catch-what-you-can of a workday, I 
couldn't pretend to be overwhelmingly in favor of the trip. If there 
was a chance of this openness of Mulder's continuing, however, the 
loss of some sleep and decent food would be worth it.

"But we search for herbs as we go," I insisted. "My stock is low 
from the winter."

He agreed and as we gathered provisions for a wayside supper and 
jars for carrying water, he described every other detail he could 
remember of that night. I knew of no clearing or meadow with a pond 
in the center as he described so we got into discussions about the 
positions and phases of the moons. We discussed how he'd followed 
them that night until he became too miserable from cold and rain and 
Newcomer fever to care in what direction he wandered. 

"This is why you asked so many questions about the moons?" It hurt a 
lot more than I wanted to admit that he hadn't asked in order to 
show that he was taking some interest in my world, the world that 
was now also his world.

"Can't say that it's helped me much, however."

"This isn't a lot to go on," I told him.

For the first time that morning he wore that haunted look that I saw 
now and then. "I know."

Because the moons rise in the south I suggested that we start in the 
northern quarter. It seemed as good a direction as any. The sun was 
warm but there was a breeze so the day would not be too hot to start 
with though it would be by afternoon. 

As we walked I found out everything else I could about what Mulder 
remembered of that night, not about the sky now, but about the land.

He grew thoughtful when I asked about the ground underfoot where 
there weren't any trees. 

"Mud," he said immediately and then "some long saw grass." He looked 
my way never slowing his stride. "There's a plant they call saw 
grass near where I grew up, near the ocean. I don't see any ocean 
here but the edges of this grass was similar to that. I remember the 
tiny, sharp barbs on the blades."

"I know what you mean. Unfortunately, it's everywhere. What about 
cultivation?" 

He opened his mouth to speak, then dropped back mentally to think 
again. There was certainly something about today that was different 
from the days we spent focused on farm work. Mulder was more alert, 
more 'himself' I guess you would say, the way he had been at the 
festival when we weren't being watched. He seemed to come truly 
alive only when there were new things to see and do or in this case 
when there was a problem to solve. My heart sank. How could he ever 
be content on the farm with its endless cycle of planting and 
harvest interrupted by the boredom of winter? 

At this point he came out of his reflection. "As best as I can 
remember, and you can take that as pretty accurate even with the 
fever, I didn't see, or step on, any plowed fields at all."

"The north quarter still seems most likely then. The ground is not 
as good as in the east or west quarters. Hardly anyone lives there, 
though I suppose you could even walk from one end of the East 
quarter to the other and not step on anyone's oats or beans but 
you'd have to be trying hard."

I was pulling up memories of the times I'd been in that area from my 
wandering adolescent years when Mulder invaded my thoughts "Speaking 
of 'hard'..." his voice had an odd quality, teasing and yet not.

"What?"

"When you told me all about this place, you failed to mention the 
Graypeople."

I felt the heat rising to my face and it wasn't the fault of sun and 
solid walking. "I guess that's because I don't think of the 
changelings as being part of our world. They're like aspects of a 
myth, just drifting in now and then."

"And the one we met at the Mayor's on new year's eve was a myth?"

I blushed again. "I swear, that was the first time ever for me with 
one of them." 
     
He grinned wickedly at my discomfort. "I take it that that as the 
first time for a couple of things." The rising heat on my face must 
have been pretty obvious. "Sorry, that was too easy," he apologized 
and it was clear that he meant it. It was even more clear that there 
was a serious side to this discussion. "I do need you to tell me 
about it -- not your night," he added hastily, "but about them and 
their link to Daniel and your people."

My night... Ohhh, my night. It was a good thing that he didn't want 
to hear because I don't know if I could ever talk to anyone about 
that. "There's not much to tell about the Grayrobes beyond the 
obvious. They have their own colony in the South quarter. We call 
their town South Cove, it being south of Stony River and where a 
sort of bay is formed by two ranges of high hills. From discussions 
with them, Daniel thinks they were brought here about the same time 
we were but while we are totally human -- our elders just had some 
special traits that didn't breed true -- the Grayrobes have 
shapeshifter genes."

"So Daniel told me, but why here? Why exile them here? Sorry, I have 
to apologize again. I didn't mean to infer that your own colonists 
were exiles --"

"But we are, we know we are. But while we were just dumped here to 
be forgotten, the Grayrobes were sent here to procreate and 
stabilize their genes, at least that is what Daniel says. He does 
stay in contact with them even though no one else is suppose to go 
there. He says that that's best." Ben lowered his voice to a 
conspiratorial whisper. "Daniel's man heard some of their talk once 
and spoke to Jim Pete's man who mentioned to Mac that years ago 
groups of them were even removed, but to where and how and by whom 
we don't know. They must still hope for Daniel advises them that if 
they want to get off this planet, they must at least give the 
appearance of being as civilized and normal as possible. It's 
generally thought that the 'urge' is strong is them, that's why they 
keep to themselves most of the time."

Mulder's eyes had taken on a faraway look. "How do the two groups 
get along?"

"As you would expect considering what they are though we don't see 
much of each other."

"It's interesting that Daniel didn't mention a group of them being 
taken away," Mulder mused. 

When he didn't speak again for a few minutes but turned lazily to 
pitch rocks to our right and left, I had to ask, "Why ask now and 
not anytime last week?"

Seemingly disinterested, Mulder pitched another rock. "Because there 
is a group of them following us."

I jumped and instinctively started to turn but Mulder grabbed my 
arm. "No, don't look."

"How do you know?" I whispered which is hard to do when you're 
breathing hard. For the first time I realized that Mulder had picked 
up the pace during the last few minutes.

He shrugged and sent me a smile. "In my old life I was followed far 
too often by people not all that interested in my continued well-
being. One learns."

I shook myself, shivering in the light of that rather feral smile 
more than anything else. Around the farm, though he seemed at peace, 
Mulder seldom smiled. Now that we were being followed for who-knew-
what reason he grinned like the most far-gone of newcomers. 

We came to a rise studded with high sharp rocks and Mulder quickly 
ducked behind an impressive tumble of them, dragging me with him. We 
laid on our stomachs and looked down the steep, ragged hill we had 
just climbed. My heart thumped in my chest as I stared unbelieving. 
Far below, moving from scrubby tree to scrubby tree, were shadowy 
shapes.  

Mulder's expression showed no fear, only thoughtfulness. "You say 
that there are rumors that some of the Graypeople were taken off 
world? I think I met some on mine. They lived isolated from the rest 
of society and followed a strict social code. They also dressed in 
simple clothes. If this is where they came from then their genes are 
even less stable than their breeders believe them to be. A rogue 
appeared from their group that they had no way of controlling. It 
killed."

"What happened to him?"

Mulder shrugged. "Like most of the phenomena I studied over the 
years, he disappeared. They all disappeared. There's evidence, at 
least evidence to my eyes, that they were removed by spacecraft."

"Perhaps they're not following us, " I said, hopefully. "Perhaps 
they are just collecting plants as we are."

"Somehow I doubt it. You say that they live in the South quarter and 
we're north of your town? They're a long way from home then and from 
what you say they don't get around much. Have you heard of any 
wandering in this area?"

I shook my head. "No, but then I may not. There are not any farms 
here, nor any town fields either. Too many rocks, too many trees. 
There is better land and closer. That's why I thought of our looking 
for your drop point here. It's desolate."

Mulder scanned the area, brow furrowed. Desolate was right; uneven 
ground, rises up and slopes down, standing stones and scattered 
vegetation. 

"Trying to imagine it at night?"

"Doesn't look right." 

"From your description I wouldn't think so. The land levels out 
further on and there's more woods. That's where I thought we'd start 
looking."

Mulder looked from side to side evaluating our options for either 
defense or escape. Or attack, I realized, and felt a little sick to 
my stomach. "Are we going to have to fight?"

"Three-to-one odds and they may be armed for all we know? I doubt 
it. Come on." And he started down the path away from where the dark 
specs were climbing but soon left the trail to ease himself down the 
face of the rock. I'm no climber and he had to guide my feet. About 
twice our height from the lip of the trail, there was a slight 
overhang and under it, not a cave, but a slight depression. There we 
huddled in a shadow so deep I couldn't even see his face inches from 
mine. We sat and we listened. The wait wasn't long. Soon we heard 
scuffling sounds of soft shoes on rock and even a few quiet voices. 
The rock amplified well. Then there came another and odder sound.

"What are they doing?" I asked in my softest whisper. "That sounds 
like... Did I hear someone sniffing?"

Mulder's face in the deep shadow was all attentive, wide eyes and no 
small amount of apprehension but again no fear. "That's exactly what 
they're doing. Pheromones, maybe? Do you have anything in your bag 
there that has a really nasty smell?"

We actually had been gathering plants as we walked or at least I 
had. Mulder's thoughts had been largely elsewhere. I had looked for 
herbs as we walked especially the relatively rare ones, which were 
good for barter, as well as the medicinal plants everyone kept. Then 
there were the special ones that only Mac and the apothecary had 
need for. I had even found two that even I had never seen before and 
I'm considered a bit of a fanatic about such things. Now Mulder was 
asking for something with a strong smell. I dipped with certainty 
into the bag and found by touch two rough, prickly pods. I showed 
Mulder how to split the pods and warm the fibers rapidly between his 
hands. The familiar, strong aroma burst forth. We rubbed the juice 
on our skin and then settled down to wait -- settled down except for 
the beat of my heart, that is. Above us bodies were moving about and 
I seemed to sense them smelling for us even if I couldn't actually 
hear them doing so. 

We must have waited a quarter of an hour for them to leave and then 
another hour to be certain they hadn't left someone to watch on this 
high place. Finally, we moved stiff muscles and climbed back up the 
rock face. It was good to move. It was even better to be out in the 
fresh breeze again. The dead air in our little cave had gone 
unpleasant from our onionpod-coated skins. There was no sign that 
the party had even stood on this rock except for a few more 
footprints in the dust, feet wrapped in a soft covering while ours 
were bare.
    
After taking a few more minutes to scan the area in all directions, 
we proceeded cautiously on our way again. It was only then that I 
thought to ask, "What's a pheromone?"

Mulder used few words in his explanation, but by his very reluctance 
to go into detail about the subject I got the general idea of what a 
pheromone was and how it was used in the animal kingdom to ensure 
procreation. It shook my fondly held vision of romantic love that 
humans had pheromones as well. Mulder laughed and admitted that it 
wasn't a popularly accepted idea where he came from either. Though I 
was not fool enough to believe that I 'loved' Annie, did this mean 
that I did not at least like her for her/his/its self?
 
We had come down from the highlands to the more rolling plains with 
great care. We did not see the party of changelings again. We didn't 
see anyone. Still we moved from one group of trees to the next and 
stayed in the shadows. At this point, my job as leader came to an 
end. This was, I told Mulder, the most likely area for his drop 
point, at least the best that I could come up with from his 
description. It was clear from my companion's serious expression, 
however, that he was not encouraged. The trees seemed too small. He 
remembered tall trees if not a particularly large number of them in 
any one place. Still, it was more of a possibility than any terrain 
that he'd yet seen. 

For the next several hours Mulder kept moving though he remained 
alert for any other search parties. At this point I simply followed. 
The relative inactivity gave me too much time to think and as usual 
during such times I found my mind and other parts of my body 
dwelling upon Annie and how I would be with her again the next week. 
How much more complicated were my feelings for her now, however.

Occupied with matters of his own, Mulder only became aware of my 
mood when I failed to answer a question. "Anything wrong?" he asked.

I shrugged. 

"Annie?"

"So did I really like her, or did she make me like her?"

"Men have asked that for thousands of years. You've had an 
experience that you might never have had without her. That's worth 
something."

I almost tripped over a rock hidden in a few stalks of witherbush. 
Angrily, I ignored Mulder's proffered hand but steadied myself. "I 
feel like a fool."

"That also has been going on for thousands of years. I said that I'd 
met a group of these gender changelings before. Before we knew what 
they were my partner touched the hand of one of their young men. She 
was only trying to be friendly and he seemed so shy. Their code of 
conduct was very strict, very reserved, so I'm not sure that he was 
even consciously aware of his power. All I know is that they 
exchanged something through the sweat of their palms. That's where 
my pheromone theory came from."
     
"He had her? Scully?" I had taken to calling her Scully just as he 
did. It seemed to please him to be able to talk about her with 
someone. I was also shocked. From the stories Mulder told I had come 
to think that she could walk on water.

"It was a near thing," he corrected with surprising heat. "I caught 
them together. I was like she was drugged. It didn't seem that way 
with you."

"Probably because I wanted to go." 

We walked on a little farther and passed through a line of trees. On 
the far side was a V-shaped gully cut by a small stream, not what we 
were searching for.

"But what happens next time?" I asked, my mind still on Annie -- and 
Arniesse as well, I had to admit --, as it was really impossible to 
separate the two. "If I'm not willing, will she work that same magic 
on me. Will I be powerless?"

Mulder's smile was a little sad. "I didn't mean to ruin the 
experience for you. Will you go with her the next time?"

I clutched at my gathering bag and shrugged. "I d-don't know. What 
should I do?"

"That's not for me to say." 

Confused as I was, it was a comfort that his eyes were as kind as 
they were amused.

I became suddenly aware of the position of the sun in the sky. How 
had it come to be so low? "Mulder, we need to start back. We really 
do," I added this last when I saw him hesitate, his eyes anxiously 
scanning the miles of land before us. There was still a lot of area 
to search. "It will already be dark before we reach home. We can try 
again on our next free day." 

"But that's not for two weeks!"

There was not much I could say to that. Numbly, he turned in a full 
circle. As far as I could tell, he was storing everything in memory. 
Finally, with shoulders slumped and that crease deep between his 
eyes, he started off.

"Uh, this way," I called.

Almost sheepishly, he made what was nearly a right turn and followed 
me home.

End of Chapter 6

MY TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY 08: Not Kansas (7a/15)
Sue Esty (AKA Windsinger@aol.com)

MULDER:
Year 31, Week 01.9 Dale Reckoning

What a difference seven Earth weeks has made. When I first walked 
outside of Benjamin's cabin, the air was cool and only two of the 
fields had been planted. Now the soil of six fields is hot from the 
summer sun under my toughened bare feet and the green plants are 
higher than my knee and full of lush foliage. 

I thought about how quickly time was passing as I trudged up the 
road towards the town for the second time. 'Trudged' is very 
definitely the right word. I didn't want to be making this 
pilgrimage to see Daniel. But an order was an order. I'm adding a 
footnote here that I only went for Benjamin's sake. I believed that 
he would get into trouble if I skipped our appointment. If it had 
been my choice, I would have spent the day prowling that barren land 
in the north quarter as much to find the rendezvous point for my 
eventual return as to keep my distance from Daniel. I didn't trust 
him even after all his talk of our shared past or maybe because of 
it. While we played chess and jousted with words maybe I could 
extract from that wily old man more information about the Project 
and even about Charley. I would need all the edge I could for later. 
Daniel's domineering manner actually made me more uneasy than his 
resemblance to Charley. He's a man of power, after all, and men of 
power will always push their weight around no matter how altruistic 
their intent. It's the means they will go to to achieve their ends 
that so often goes so wrong.

I would have waited to arrive in town after dark but Ben had 
business to conduct. Reluctantly, I assumed my Bob-ness, which meant 
that I was in a bad mood by the time we appeared at Government 
House. A message delivered quietly to Ben by Reese of all people 
instructed us to go to the back door and that's what we did. Reese 
met us without our even needing to knock. The study had been 
prepared; a fine meal laid out for four. It irked me that Daniel was 
so certain that we would come and that we had.  

If Benjamin found some relief from his Southern Sweat, which he had 
in the worse way, it would all be worth it. He had been jumpy for 
the last few days and for Benjamin very quiet. As we waited in the 
study for Daniel he was perspiring visibly even though he stood far. 
Yes, I know it was summer but all nights on Dale are cool. 

"You going to make it through dinner?" I asked.

His smile was shaky. "I don't understand why my desire to see Annie 
should be so strong when I know that it's only ph-pheromones."

"Maybe it's not only that. Men -- and women -- can become enamoured 
from a picture, from a voice. It's not all chemical." My words 
didn't seem to help, but I had to try something. After all, he 
wouldn't have to deal with this relationship if it hadn't been for 
me. How I wanted to play the big brother and take him away and find 
him a nice girl, but I wasn't his big brother and any attempt to act 
like one would be misinterpreted. I couldn't find him a nice girl, 
either. So I stood in the fire lit room that glowed golden from 
polished wood and I did nothing. 

"Farmers, welcome!" boomed a familiar voice. Daniel's. He was less 
formally dressed than before but somehow he looked even more like an 
aging Charley. He threw a great-uncle-like arm briefly around Ben 
and muttered the Dale equivalent of 'How's them Redskins', then came 
over, I thought, to shake my hand. Instead, before I could move 
away, he took my jaw in his big workingman's fingers and moved the 
right side of my face into brighter light. "Wonderful. Mac still has 
the touch." He released my face. "Did I tell you that we called him 
Mac the Knife the first few years that we were here? That, of 
course, was before our lives became so grim. Arniesse, don't lurk 
out there, come in."

The slender changeling, still in his gray robes, entered silently. 
Shyly he looked at Ben who glanced shyly back. The holder's face 
flushed amazingly back and forth between pale white and embarrassed 
crimson. The two didn't touch but stood close together and stayed 
that way, not growing nearer nor drawing farther apart.

Without preamble we sat down at the table, the mayor gesturing for 
me to sit at his right hand, for Benjamin to sit at his left and 
Arniesse to sit across. My stomach didn't share my misgivings for 
the evening. It rumbled expectantly at the thought of the excellent 
food to come. As you know, Scully, I'm no food snob. I'll eat just 
about anything set before me if I'm hungry and I was ready for a 
change after almost fifty days of a diet consisting of something 
like thick oatmeal, a kind of flat seed bread, stewed root 
vegetables, a sprinkling of nuts and dried fruits, and whatever new 
greens we could find growing wild. The good inventive cooking I had 
briefly tasted was clearly for the winter months or special 
occasions. There was just too much to do during the growing season 
to take the time.

Before food, however, Mayor Daniel poured each of us a cup of some 
very excellent alcoholic beverage that I had not encountered before. 
I felt my insides unwind a little as the warm liquid made its way to 
my stomach. I'd better watch my intake, I thought. It had been 
another long day what with working till mid afternoon, the long walk 
to town, the tension of running errands with Ben and now this 
different kind of tension. If I wasn't careful, I would be lulled 
asleep again like the last time.

The talk was of town affairs, weather and crops. Ben and Daniel did 
the talking. Arniesse didn't speak at all, nor did he drink much, 
though his quick eyes showed that he was aware of everything. 
Knowing what he was and what he could do and now a little of how his 
race had been created, I couldn't help but be aware of him. What 
with Charley's older face on my right and this old X-File recreated 
on my left, I had the most amazing sensation of having one foot in 
each of two worlds and neither of them what anyone would call 
normal. 

"Benjamin," the old man said, "would you be useful and step into the 
kitchen and tell Reese that we're ready for supper?"

Ben rose eagerly. Once he left the room, Daniel raised his cup and 
turned in my direction. "I'm told that you and Ben took a long 
excursion into the north quarter on your free day last week. I had 
assumed that you would use these off days for rest." 

I didn't give the old man the satisfaction of seeing me squirm. I 
had had no choice but to make the attempt during daylight. On foot, 
it was too great a trip to take at night and rather defeated the 
purpose of being able to identify the rendezvous point for later. I 
was not surprised that Dan Rowe would have ways of finding things 
out especially since that unexpected party of Graypeople had picked 
up our trail. I was only regretted that he had. 

"May I ask what took you there?" asked the old man when I hadn't 
offered an explanation.

"Pharmacology," I replied and followed that with what I hoped looked 
like a casual sip of the wine. "Benjamin has an interest in 
medicinal plants. He has some new ones to show the apothecary." All 
of which was true, at least in part.

"Ah." The 'ah' conveyed that Daniel was not fooled in the least. I 
knew he wasn't finished with this particular topic. Further grilling 
was interrupted for the moment, however, when all at once the oddest 
sensation raced up my arm all the way to my shoulder. As if my 
fingers had touched a live electric wire, the arm jerked away from 
the stimulus. Immediately, my eyes dropped to the place on the table 
where my left hand had been. Arniesse's slim one lay inches away. 
Though he moved not at all, the eyes that regarded me were huge and 
dark. For a moment I found I could hardly catch my breath, not from 
Arniesse's eyes, but from the incredible ache in my shoulder and arm 
that was taking its time going away. With my right arm I hugged my 
left against my side biting down on my lip. Did it hurt? Yes and no. 
It was not so much pain as a terrible weakness as if muscles and 
bone had turned to jelly. 

"Problem?" the old man asked innocently? 

I struggled, fighting to make sure I could talk normally before I 
did. "Must have pinched a nerve today," I managed.

Daniel refilled the cups. "Hard work, farming. I doubt you were born 
to it. Ivy League, were you?"

What was he talking about? With effort I picked up the thread of the 
conversation. "Oxford."

The mayor's mouth opened in an 'Oh' this time. "Those years were 
after my time. I guess I'm not surprised. You were smart. They 
wouldn't have used you as a test subject if there hadn't been at 
least the seeds of intelligence to start with."

He spoke so calmly of what had so much to do with destroying my 
happiness and that of my sister and, eventually, yours as well, 
Scully, that I wanted very much to smash his face in. 

"How are the headaches by the way?" he inquired, rapidly changing 
the subject once again. 

Before I could construct an evasive answer, Ben's chipper voice 
replied for me from the doorway. "They're much better, aren't they, 
Mul -- Fox? Mac gave him some leaf rolls of something before we left 
town the last time."

The calculating old man's eyes glittered cat-like in the light of 
fire and flame. "That's good news, Fox. I'm so pleased to hear it."

Ben had returned bearing a large platter of bright and exotically 
spiced food. He nearly glowed in anticipation. On the other hand my 
stomach was now queasy from the sickening weakness in my arm, which 
had lessened only a little. Reese followed Ben, carrying crocks of 
spread and a basket of fresh bread.

Conversation ceased as the meal commenced. Arniesse and Daniel ate 
sparingly due to age and a greatly more sedentary life style. I 
would have eaten my fill if only to save the farm a meal but worried 
about how much would stay down. I needn't have worried about 
offending our host; Ben easily ate enough for both of us. I 
restricted myself to nibbling on some bread and moving food around 
on my plate, a technique of how to appear to eat and yet not eat 
that I learned long ago while working on profile cases with you, 
Scully.

<And which fooled me for all of twice,> I heard your voice say, cool 
and clear as a bell. In fact, the words were so clear that I 
actually sat like a stone and waited expectantly for more, but no 
more hallucinations came to me as sweet as that. I noticed another 
sweetness though. Reese had added more of the heavily scented wood 
chips to the fire before he bowed out of the room. I caught his eye 
just before he left. If I knew him better, I'd say he was warning me 
of something. I had no idea of what. When I excused myself to visit 
the facilities out in the back garden, Reese was called in to clear 
the table, giving us no time to talk. Coincidence?

Arniesse was facing Benjamin when I returned to the room. Ben was 
obviously flushed but with eagerness, not fear. I found it 
strangely... civilized... that Arniesse's arms were at his sides. It 
was Ben whose hands raised to gently touch the changeling's 
beautiful face. Even as I watched that face's outlines fogged and 
then magically reformed into Annie's, alike but, oh, so unalike. Ben 
initiated the kiss, too, a chaste, shy meeting of lips. Only then 
did Annie embrace him, pausing after a moment to touch her palm with 
Ben's. His face transformed at that moment into an expression of 
such ecstasy that I knew that even though chemistry was in affect 
now it had had nothing to do with what had gone on before. Somehow I 
had a feeling that this play was being acted out for my benefit so 
that I would have no doubt that it was Ben's choice.

But voluntarily his choice was another matter. The young farmer may 
know everything there was to know about soil and water and seed, but 
nothing about the kind of temptation Annie was offering, with or 
without chemical inducements. A lovely, mystery woman, a magical 
woman.  Bloody hell, as my Oxford classmates would say, a woman! At 
least as close as Ben could ever hope to come to one. But her 
origins didn't seem to matter to Ben, certainly not at the moment. 
They were locked together now and his deeper breathing was loud in 
the otherwise silent room. Annie broke off first, restraining him 
enough to lead him stumbling from the room before he took her right 
on the floor of the study.   
    
I was embarrassed for him, as he was clearly incapable of being 
embarrassed for himself.

"Do you think me cruel?" Dan Rowe said handing me a cup with yet 
another liquor. Was he trying to make me drunk?

"I don't judge him. This is not my culture nor my world."

"But it is your culture and your world now, unless you plan to leave 
it sometime in the future which we both know is impossible, don't 
we?"

I made no response except to take my seat before the chess board 
that had replaced the remains of dinner. Daniel took his place in 
the large chair with a knowing smile and we began. 

We talked of the strangest things. Male stuff like sports. When on 
earth Dan Rowe had been a New York fan, any New York team, and 
wanted to know how each had faired over the thirty years he'd been 
gone. We talked of advances in technology. The computer revolution, 
especially its saturation into the world's information 
infrastructure, sounded like science fiction and Dan Rowe was as 
aptly attentive as any audience a storyteller could ask for.

We faded into silence as the game became more complicated, but 
finally during one of my turns I had to ask, "Do you know what they 
did to me?"

The old man's eyes shadowed. "As I said, they activated some dormant 
genes. I can't be more specific. Some didn't work out too well. Do 
you remember being sick when you were about six?"

It hit me like a blow that until that moment I had entirely blocked 
out that memory. Always so healthy before, my parents thought I was 
pretending to be ill to get attention now that I had to be in school 
all day and my little sister Sam, now two, could stay home. Oh, they 
took my six-year-old self to doctors, but those wise men could find 
nothing wrong. Of course, they only could be expected to look for 
the conventional things. I was carted home, 'phantom' pain and all, 
and forced to go to school no matter how I felt. Without sympathy, 
with no understanding, with the welts of my father's belt under my 
clothes, I dragged myself to the bus. Clearly, it didn't matter that 
there were days when my joints hurt so bad that I could barely walk 
or could hold a pencil only with pain so extreme that I seriously 
considered holding it in my teeth. Nor did it matter on other days 
when it felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest or ants were 
crawling under the skin of my palms and the soles of my feet.

*Poor, poor Fox. I didn't know. *

I looked up to rediscover time and place. It was a mild shock to 
find Dan Rowe's too-familiar face staring into mine. I must be more 
tired than I thought. I didn't think that I had spoken aloud.
 
"Yes, it was pretty awful, as if you cared."

"I did care," he said emphatically. "I was just helpless to do 
anything about it, except, as I said before, to hold your hand and 
then only when 'he' allowed it."

"But I'm not that little boy any more."

"No? We never entirely cease being who we were."    

"Nor can we ignore what the world has made of us."

His eyes seemed to have misted over. "No, nor that either." He shook 
his head then as if, like a bothersome fly, he were chasing a 
thought away. "You were sick more than once. So one of the times the 
pain was mostly in your joints? What about the other times?"

 "Early in second grade I went through a period when I couldn't sit 
still. The teachers had to report their frustration of course, but 
no amount of punishment from ol' Dad made any difference. The back 
of my thighs were black and blue for weeks. If it had happened now I 
probably would be diagnosed as Attention Deficit and put on Ritalin. 
Instead they finally decided that I was bored and moved me to third 
grade. Later that year to fourth."

"Was it difficult?"

I think I surprised myself with my answer for I had never thought 
back on that time if I could help it. "I had to study a little 
harder, but that wasn't a problem. Socially, however, it was hell. I 
was actually pudgy at age twelve but never since then." 

"Got your growth spurt early?" the old man asked with a twinkle in 
his eye.

There was no mirth in my response. "Stopped eating." Stopped 
breathing, too. Stopped being. But this man didn't know anything 
about Sam, about what happened to Sam. He knew nothing about me 
after I was about ten or eleven.

"I don't know what Ritalin is," Daniel was saying, "but it's 
fortunate that they didn't give you any drugs. Your brain was 
growing too quickly and your hormones were already out of balance. 
To try to affect that process with drugs would probably have made 
you psychotic."
           
But they had. Did this mean that my 'condition' after Sam's 
disappearance had been only partially due to shock and grief and 
guilt? 

"That was hell what he did," I said.

The response was barely a whisper. "I know. If it helps Charley was 
only acting under orders." Then the old man's head bowed. For the 
time being the game was forgotten. Once again, he was millions of 
miles and thirty years away. He looked so old at that moment I 
almost felt sorry for him. I rose to get Reese to see if there was 
anything that should be done but I wasn't even at the door before he 
called me back. He had risen and was pouring a splash of thick, red 
liquid from a small, pottery jar into each of two cups. He handed 
one to me. From the amount we were both given, I assumed it was a 
rare cordial of some type. 

"To our pasts," he said raising his cup, "and to our futures." 

The liquor was as thick as it had looked and sharply tangy on my 
lips. I only allowed it to briefly touch my tongue before I placed 
the cup back on the table. 

"You don't care much for that one? No matter," he murmured with a 
wave of his hand as he dropped down slow and wearily into his chair. 
Old eyes looked up at me but saw what wasn't there. "You were such a 
sweet child. Frightened and sweet and biddable."

I felt sudden urge to laugh but didn't. "I don't think anyone would 
use 'biddable' to describe me any more."

"It would be so much easier if you could be. Can't you? Put your 
life in my hands as you did then?"
                        
I wanted to repeat that I was not that little boy any more, but my 
tongue felt strangely thick. And why did the room and my head, seem 
suddenly so foggy.
                                
The fire crackled sending up its aromatic smoke and the chess game 
sat forgotten. I continued to feel, not sleepy, but a little as if I 
were floating or stoned, the good parts of being stoned. 
Automatically, a misty sort of prayer that I wouldn't have to pay 
for this later drifted through my brain. I had knowingly indulged in 
the weed once and only once and terrible LSD-type nightmares 
followed. Unwillingly, I had inhaled that sweet smoke since more 
often than that. As a rookie agent paying my dues, I dreaded the 
after affects of drug busts where the poor perpetrators tried to 
burn the evidence. 

But the smell from this fire was not the same and if I had known 
what was coming, I would have asked for a joint and gladly.

Daniel was moving about the room, though I don't remember him 
rising. One by one he blew out the candles until only the firelight 
was left. He stood before the hearth now, his broad back to that 
single source of light and heat so that what I saw through heavy 
eyes was only a dark silhouette. 

* There's something I need to show you. Let's go downstairs. *

Did I go with him? Alone? As you may have noticed, Scully, I was 
rather short of backup and, as you also know, I'm a sucker for 
mysterious conversations, so I rose, floating.
  
"After you," he said with a slight bow and gestured for me to 
proceed him. I did, out the door and into the foyer. Automatically, 
I turned left into a part of the house where I had never gone 
before. I turned left and then left again past the kitchen where 
Reese stood with a glum expression on his long face, his hands full 
of plates. 

 I wanted to call out to the old BoB but the words wouldn't come. My 
mouth was beginning to feel numb. 'He's drugged me! Help!'

*Yes, you are but its more than that and you'd know it if you let 
yourself believe. *

I continued on into a narrow hallway with several doors but I took 
none of them. My hand unerringly went to what looked to be a small 
knot in a board above my head and pressed it.
        
A panel opened into blackness, but my head knew when to duck and my 
feet knew where the trends of the narrow, steep stairs were. I went 
down. I knew rather than saw that there were no windows here and 
that it would have been just as black if it had been bright day 
outside rather than night. Still I could see enough to know that I 
stood in a small hallway with a single door on either side and a 
ceiling so low that the splinters of the rafters plucked at my hair. 
Waiting revealed within a few seconds a dim luminescence reaching 
out like ghostly hands from the walls. 

End of Chapter 7a

MY TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY 08: Not Kansas (7b/15)
Sue Esty (AKA Windsinger@aol.com)

MULDER:
Year 31, Week 01.9 Dale Reckoning (continued)

Once again, as if I knew where I was going, I opened the door to a 
right hand room. The glow from the walls was brighter here but still 
no more than blue moonlight. I stood on the threshold of what seemed 
a pleasant bedroom except that the bed sat in the middle of the 
room. It was a wide bed and had a real mattress, almost the size of 
what Daniel had in the master bedroom upstairs. There was no 
headboard or footboard, just that mattress on a kind of stage. On it 
was spread a quilt of rare quality for this place. And at each 
corner hung ropes ready for use and their use was obvious. 

"We may have been brought to a new world but our tastes mirrored 
those of the old," the old man admitted softly with resignation. 
"The first few years there was no time to think about sex. We just 
tried to figure out how to survive. We planted our future in the 
soil - corn, barley, children and wives.  Corn and barley grew and 
was fruitful; cemeteries are only what they are. After those years 
there didn't seem to be any point in not taking what few moments of 
forgetfulness we could so we acted out the old fantasies. Master and 
victim, is popular. To have total control over something versus 
having no worries at all. Most partners take turns. This place is 
very private, as you can see. It is used only by those of the first 
generation who remain and who have the will to feel at all anymore - 
the first generation and their guests. Participation on both sides, 
of course, is by consenting adults... usually.

Distantly, I felt my balls and my anus contract in tandem bringing a 
brief echo of horrified arousal.

"Next room," he said, amusement in his voice at my paralysis. Numbly 
and without any conscious control, I moved at his command.

The left-hand room was about the same size as the right. Its 
immediate feature was a long shelf that ran against one wall roughly 
the height of a bench and long enough for a man to lie down upon. It 
glowed a bright, violent violet color, nearly red. My feet went to 
it and I stared down. The covering was similar to thick, pile 
carpeting. Velvety. Almost soft-looking. Almost.

Daniel reached for a pottery jar that worked like a watering can and 
sprinkled the verdant felt. Where the water fell, strands of moss-
like plants immediately thickened and began to glow a brighter, 
bloodier, more luxurious crimson. Instinctively backing away, I came 
up with my hip against a massive table so heavy that it didn't move 
even a quarter of an inch when I bumped into it. By the bloody light 
I could see that the top was deeply scratched and scarred by what 
looked like claws and splattered with some dark, dried substance. 
Holes had also been drilled into the thick surface and from some of 
these ropes dangled. I backed away and felt something brush my face. 
More ropes were hiding in the shadows; these tied to rafters spaced 
the width of a man's spread arms. Jerking around I found items on 
the walls, too. Just whips and straps of various thicknesses, some 
like cat-o-nine tails. Having so little metal, the variety of 
implements was not in any way extensive, but the intent of this room 
was as clear as the intent of the other had been. 

My host bid me sit. There were four options: the red, living bed; 
the scarred and stained table; a study arm chair complete with 
dangling ropes; and a simple stool which would put me lower than 
Daniel like the child I once had been. I took the armchair but only 
balanced on the edge and kept my arms away from the ropes. 
    
"What do you think?" he asked, leaning against the table, arms 
crossed.

I opened my mouth to speak and found it was an effort and the words 
came out no louder than a whisper. "Not very original."

"But basic. We have not had the luxury of time on Dale to develop 
subtlety."
 
"The blue room I can understand. But who do you bring here? How many 
of Charley's castoffs can there be?"
    
The old man laughed. "You've grown up to be a very interesting man, 
Fox. I would like us to be friends, I really would. I see so much of 
myself in you as I was many years ago. For that reason I think you 
can be made to understand why I do what I must do now."

I heard the words but they didn't make sense somewhat. Whatever he 
had given me in that last drink which, thank my discriminating 
palette and suspicious nature, I had barely tasted, was causing me 
to drift away from the conversation.

*Fox*

With an effort I lifted my heavy head to find him standing knee to 
knee with me. With a gentle hand he lifted my chin so that I was 
forced to look up into his eyes. * I need information, Fox. I must 
have it. * "I asked you the last time we met. You didn't answer 
then, but you were having one of your headaches at the time and so I 
gave you the benefit of the doubt -- perhaps you didn't hear -- but 
when I asked about your sojourn north today, you lied to me. I need 
to know when Charley is coming back. I need to know where you are 
meeting him. There, see how simple it is? Just that and we can go 
back upstairs and finish our game of chess."

The question sent a wave of dull panic through my numb body. I 
didn't say anything. I had heard him the first time and recognized 
the trap then.

His hand was still on my chin but now with his other he began to run 
his fingers over my hair as if he were petting a dog. I wanted away 
from him but I couldn't move. 

*Wake up, F. I know you can hear me. * 

"You asked about his room? We do have malcontents on Dale, 
troublemakers, and, yes, we bring them here. Domestic quarrels, 
jealously, just like on old heterosexual Earth. We're sitting in the 
center of the courthouse and jail and prison of Dale and I am judge, 
jury, executioner, attorney for the defense and prosecuting attorney 
all rolled up into one. You don't even have to pay me. Can't solve 
the problem among yourselves? The troublemakers come here. After a 
few hours, or a few days, or a few weeks, in either this room, or 
the blue one, or both, he goes back to his own home and rarely 
causes trouble again. We don't have the manpower to waste on prisons 
and guards. So you see I know what I'm doing and I will find out. 
Want to tell me now?"

The weird floating feeling made me want to tell, but I wouldn't, I 
couldn't, not if I ever hoped to see home again, home and you, 
Scully. That scrape of knowledge was the only item of value I 
possessed on this planet. Lose that and Daniel wouldn't need 'me' 
any more, only the muscles and dumb obedience of a plow horse. 
Besides how could Daniel possibly have forgotten the level of pain 
Charley/Bek/Rodan and his Beast could dish out. Whatever level of 
discomfort this old man could exert would be child's play compared 
to that.

He increased the pressure on my jaw forcing my head higher until I 
was standing, moved like a puppet by his touch. *I think it's time 
that you remove your clothes. *
    
A thunderhead of silent resistance sprang up between us. "Fox, I 
want to see what shape you're in. Strip please." His voice was 
matter-of-fact, analytical. I did nothing. He waited. I waited. I 
waited for the tension storm inside me to come to a head and break. 
Anything to give me some strength, some rage. But there was nothing. 
It was as if the storm had passed me by. I could see it evaporating 
into nothing more than mist. Quiet was all I felt, like the 
stillness of a pond at dawn, a pond that reflected his will at the 
loss of my own. Only distantly was I aware that my hands had gone to 
the long vest I wore for warmth over the crudely woven shirt. They 
shook and my arms and shoulders wouldn't coordinate even enough to 
shrug off such an uncomplicated garment as that. The old man helped, 
not rushing me. After the vest he helped pull the shirt over my 
head. By this time my head and body felt so alien to each other that 
I lost my balance as the shirt came free and nearly fell. Taking one 
of my wrists in each of his hands, the old man raised my arms above 
my head, angling my body so that my hands each touched one of the 
thick ropes that dangled from the ceiling rafters. "Hold on," he 
suggested, "or you'll fall down." 

So I hung to the rough ropes while he casually untied the drawstring 
on the loose trousers and I felt the rough fabric slide over my hips 
to the floor. Damp, chill air goose-fleshed my exposed skin, which 
was pretty nearly all my skin now except for a few inches covered by 
the loincloth.  Due to the scarcity of the more finely woven fabrics 
this was all the underwear we wore. Daniel removed the fallen 
trousers from around my ankles as at his touch I lifted my feet one 
after the other like that obedient horse.

That's how I came to be standing naked in a chilly cellar, 
maintaining some semblance of uprightness only by clinging 
voluntarily to ropes whose purpose was not usually so voluntary. I 
said that the underground room was cold and yet a fine sweat aided 
the old man's fingers as they traveled over my body. He asked soft 
questions. He was interested in musculature and how much weight I'd 
gained or lost under Charley's care, then he concentrated on the 
scars. The first he studied were the deep ones near my wrists and 
ankles from the Beast as those were the most recent and had only 
recently begun to heal. 
                                        
"These look bad but you should have seen mine. After five years they 
were like craters but toughened over time with scar tissue so that 
the attachment rarely hurt any more. Obviously, you never reached 
that stage." He didn't seem to expect an answer so I didn't give him 
one. I seemed to be drifting farther away again and that seemed a 
good place to be. Familiarly, he patted my hip as he straightened up 
after examining the deep punctures on my lower legs. "Just like the 
marks on your face, Mac can reduce these if you want. On the other 
hand, you might consider keeping them. Your future partners may find 
your battle wounds arousing." 

He went on moving from scar to scar, clucking with dismay over the 
long one on my thigh where the gunshot had nearly cut short my life, 
if not any possible progeny, that night on the docks. When he found 
your bullet hole, Scully, he whistled. "That was close. Careless of 
you." He didn't mention the deep new scar down the center of my 
chest, a souvenir from my evaluation after my collection from the 
woods of Oregon. He seemed to know all about that one.

How long ago that time seems. Sometimes it's hard to believe that I 
had another life. This was one of those times.
 
From behind, a finger traced the outline of my left shoulder blade 
stopping suddenly at a spot I could never have seen. "I know this 
scar," he said with some deep emotion. "Bek drew a biopsy from the 
scapular marrow. Though you were only six or seven at the time you 
didn't cry but I thought you might. That was when I first realized 
how strong you were... or stubborn. They are much the same thing." 
He turned me to face him, which forced my hands free of the ropes. I 
had to hold onto him or fall. Like Charley he is taller than I am 
and heavier of bone both naturally and from age. He held me easily, 
all at once staring down at my left arm.

"It's still cold from where Arniesse touched you?" he asked in 
wonder, and then he stared searchingly into my face. "What did they 
think they were making when they created you?" he asked but not of 
me.

"Fox, listen," he snapped with irritation. He must have thought I 
was avoiding him. I tried to focus on his face but couldn't. "This 
is not the time to be either strong or stubborn. This is the time to 
surrender, because I assure you that you cannot win."   
        
I tried to break away, but my body still behaved like some too 
easily manipulated toy. One shove from him and I stumbled toward the 
glowing red bed. I nearly fell across it. My bare knees did collide 
with the edge. It was all I could do not to touch that shimmering, 
malevolent surface. As florescence will, especially in a darkened 
room, the pulsing energy caught and held my eyes, burning the thick, 
overflowing color into my brain.

Through the dizzying, crimson strands that twisted behind my eyes, I 
heard the voice from my childhood nightmares speaking with devil 
sweetness, "Please understand, Fox, I have no wish to bring more 
pain to the child I helped to torture so many years ago. By 
remaining silent, however, you give me little choice." 

His hand trailed down my spine. *Lie down, Fox. Like the good boy 
you were, lie down on Daniel's Bed.*

Not in a million years. I wasn't that far gone. I didn't know what 
was growing on that bed but it wasn't violets or fine Kentucky Blue 
Grass. In every way this crop was far more alien than anything I yet 
seen on this planet.

End of Chapter 7

MY TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY 08: Not Kansas (8/15)
Sue Esty (AKA Windsinger@aol.com)

MULDER

A large hand fell on my shoulder.  Though I made no move to comply, 
neither did I find the strength to turn and run.

"Fox, please. Let us be civilized. I can call down my men to help 
me. You don't want them down here, believe me you don't. They'll 
expect payment for their trouble of a particularly intimate kind. 
It's either this bed here and now or the bed in the other room first 
and this later."
    
Curse the man but I knew that he told the truth. When Ben and I 
approached Government House only a few hours before I had seen an 
surprisingly large number of men about the grounds. All tried to 
look busy but each one watched us, and in particular me, with that 
hungry look I had seen first in John Ironlegs and then at the May 
Day festival. I still saw it in Ben; though knowing my feelings, he 
had learned to hide much. No, Ben's rather plaintive wanting was not 
at all on the same level as what the mayor's handpicked men hoped 
for as they circled like carrion crows. 

As if testing the waters of an unknown pool, I began by placing one 
hand on the bed. Despite its wicked color, it felt very much like 
the carpet of thick, course moss it appeared to be. The small, 
scarlet plants seemed to come alive at my presence, however. They 
sprang up curling around my fingers. Pressing down, I found that the 
springiness of this bed went inches deep.

*See, nothing to fear. Go on. *  

The gods help me, but I did, mostly because there was no choice.  
All too aware of my nearly bare butt -- the loincloth had somehow 
managed to remain intact -- I knelt first, my knees sinking deeply 
into the loom. Then slowly I stretched myself out, on my back, of 
course. I was not so spaced as to lie face down. And then I waited. 
My skin itched a little for the surface was scratchy, but, 
surprisingly, it didn't hurt. 

Not yet, I told myself.

I was concentrating so strongly on the sensation of the small, red 
plants wiggling slightly about and under my body that I didn't feel 
the old man's first contact with my chill, sweating skin. I just 
happened to open my eyes to find his bulk hovering immediately over 
me, the fingers on one hand spread over my chest. Clearly, something 
was going to happen and he was going to be right there to watch.

"It takes a while," he said softly. "On the street, when they talk 
about Daniel's bed, they are referring to this one, not to my sexual 
prowess. I encourage the rumors." A finger ran down my skin to 
linger overlong about a sensitive nipple.

"What's going to happen?" I asked in a tight voice.

His smile beamed. "Wait and find out." His fingers explored some 
more. By the casual way he went about it, I was led to believe that 
this handling was just a kind of perk and not part of the main 
event. The main event was supposedly going on at the interface 
between my skin and the mossy, pulsing carpet. That skin felt 
increasingly warm but that was all.

*It's not too late you know, Fox. You can tell me now and I can end 
this before it goes any farther. *

*And miss the experience? * I asked, wondering why my voice sounded 
so odd.
    
*I daresay you could live your life quite fully without this 
particular experience, * he replied. He was running a fingertip 
along my jaw now and staring into my face, his voice dreamily 
creepy. *You have such an incredible face, such amazing bone 
structure. I wish I had known you in your teens, in your twenties, 
any time before Bek got hold of you again. I see too many new lines 
that I guess were not there last year. You have no idea how you 
stand out here. You're like a piece of fine art among all us old 
weathered acorns. In exchange for just a few hours of your time and 
a few scruples, you could demand anything. * 

He had to have felt the shudder that passed through me that even the 
drugs couldn't suppress.

"Very well, maybe not. But even though you don't indulge yourself 
with Ben now, you will want to take partners in time. You'll truly 
go crazy in the place if you don't. I just wanted to warn you not to 
sell yourself short."

All this advice only confirmed my deepest fear, which was not the 
one you might think. Dan Rowe didn't plan to remain on Dale much 
longer, but he expected that I would be. He was determined to take 
my place, my berth home. 

There was no time to worry about that now, however, short of staying 
silent. My back was beginning to get more than warm. Visions of a 
slow-acting acid that in time would strip the flesh from my bones 
began weaving into my brain. I found I wanted to move, had to move. 
"Stop!" Daniel warned his voice surprisingly insistent. "You will 
hurt less in the end the longer you stay completely still." 

Maybe so but his continuing to idling stroke my balls though the 
scrape of loincloth wasn't helping any.

He must have seen the direction of my gaze, for with an apologetic 
smile he moved the hand to casually rest on my thigh near the 
sensitive shotgun scar, not a lot better.

 "You're beginning to feel it now aren't you? An unbearable heat? 
But you must bear it."

It wasn't only heat. All at once I felt a sudden sharp prick on the 
calf of the leg his hand rested on. It was rather like being stung 
by a very small bee. The old man must have felt the leg jerk 
slightly in response for he gave that leg a little pat. "Yes, things 
are moving along. I take it that that was the first one? Red Dan is 
a plant with stingers. Don't worry, there's not any poison involved. 
What they have are tiny but very effective grappling hooks." I could 
believe that; five more just got their hooks into my butt. "It's a 
primitive planet geology-wise. These small soil builders just 
developed a rather unique mechanism for clinging to and breaking 
down rock." 

Ouch! This unique mechanism just fired off about three dozen more of 
these little pincers, and, I knew with horror, I was lying on 
thousands of the little soil-builders. Then there was no more time 
to think. Just as a pan of popcorn begins with a few kernels 
popping, and then a few more, and then more and more, faster and 
faster. The little explosions, each on its own rather minor, were 
going off in the hundreds. A cry was wrenched out of me as my body 
tried to bow away from the attack. Daniel was there, however, which 
was the real reason why he had waited over me. He threw his not 
inconsiderable weight against my chest, holding me down. 

"Intimacy is not my sole intent here," he assured me, grunting with 
the effort. "They won't attach in the same place twice so you _ must 
_  not _ move _  or the results will be twice, three times as bad."

Maybe true, but I wasn't in any position to believe him at the 
moment. Like the popcorn, the rate of new stings, now that about a 
thousand had gone off, had slowed, but each of the little wounds 
still hurt, each and every one of them.  Daniel knew this, too, and 
had removed most of his weight. From somewhere he came up with a 
cloth of surprising softness and began wiping gently at the sweat 
that was running like a stream down my face. 

"I know it's painful. Just a little while longer." 

Oh, god... oh, god... oh, god... oh, god... I think I would have 
preferred to have been tied down. Then I could strain against the 
bonds and still not actually move. It was this dependence upon self-
control alone that was a killer. There were tears of pain running 
down my face now as well as the sweat and my body was shaking. I 
pressed my lips together tight to stifle the nearly overwhelming 
compulsion to scream. 

"We'll do fifteen minutes. For some infractions, the down time on 
the bed is half an hour, for severe crimes of revenge or cruelty, an 
hour. The hook is actually the sharp tip of a new taproot. It's 
working its way in now, microns at a time, rooting itself into your 
skin. It flourishes on nerve the same way that Earth plants seek 
water and sun. It must be nerve to explain how much agony they 
cause. Hush, hush, be still. The implantation phase will soon be 
over. For your contemplation, this is just a taste of the misery 
this planet is capable of delivering in the right hands."

I didn't know how much longer 'a little while longer' actually was. 
When forty percent of your skin surface is on fire nothing is 
'little'. Finally, he said in the calmest voice, "I think that's 
sufficient. You can get up now." Only I couldn't. To a large extent 
it was exhaustion and shock from the massive attack on muscle and 
skin and nerve, but not all. Like Gulliver among the Lilliputians, I 
had become attached to the earth, not by one tiny bond, but by 
thousands.

As had probably been his intent all along, Dan Rowe, my tormenter, 
became my savior. He took my shoulders in his large, strong hands 
and gave a mighty heave. I did scream this time. It was as if chunks 
of my flesh were being ripped out by the roots. Not a totally 
inaccurate description.

While I was still at the top of the pain curve, I was thrown down 
face first onto the dungeon's heavy, wooden table. With the speed 
and skill of long practice, the old devil slopped onto my enflamed 
back, butt and legs some thick substance that sank immediately into 
each of the legion of wicked fishhook wounds. Another scream was 
torn from me and even to my ears the sound was barely human. I can't 
remember how long I screamed before the wings of the merciful dark 
came to carry me away.

    
I was still face down but on something softer when I came around the 
next time. Daniel's bed, his other bed, the one in the center of the 
blue room on the other side of the stairway. I was tied down, wrists 
and ankles, and every inch of my body hurt with a mile deep kind of 
agony. The open wound of the exposed half of me felt an acre in size 
and throbbed like a giant heart. What woke me was the sensation, not 
altogether horrible, this time of something cool being poured onto 
those huge, raw wounds. I wasn't allowed to enjoy it, however. A 
pair of large hands began massaging the solution deep into what was 
left of my skin. Under the circumstances, this was not the most 
relaxing of experiences. It was all I could do not to give out with 
a shriek yet again and it would not have been one of those girly 
screams, Scully, let me tell you. I chose to faint again instead.

 
Far too soon I heard a voice. "Welcome back," cooed Daniel's voice 
from very close behind me. I had no doubt that the large hands that 
had so roughly 'attended' to my back had also been his. 

I groaned and didn't mind if he heard it. I don't even dream any 
more, Scully, that you'll be beside me when I fight my way out of 
the deep. They've taken even that from me. 

"What was that all about?" I growled, vainly struggling against my 
bonds.

"Immediately after? Neutralization phase to kill off any living Red 
Dan. Necessary unless you want the root to continue to grow and grow 
uncontrolled throughout your body. In time they'd intertwine around 
your nerves until they reached the spinal cord, the brain--"    

"--I get the picture. And after that? The massage?"

"My apologies," but he didn't try to hide the satisfaction in his 
voice. "Had to work in some antiseptic and topical analgesic to 
fight infection and give you 'some' relief. On rare occasions we've 
had some deaths --- from shock."

"Heaven forbid that the condemned should die."

He nearly chuckled and ruffled the hair on the back of my head as if 
I were that child again, and he the parent. " Believe it or not, I 
am not a bad or evil person, Fox. I am, however, a very, very tired 
person. Do you have any idea what it is like to be responsible for a 
whole world, not only for the people's survival, but for their being 
here at all? And we died and we continue to die. Don't you see how 
important it is that I talk with Bek?"

"My place," I murmured. "I believe that you -- " The slightest 
breeze across my damaged skin stopped my breath dead for a second. 
"-- that you had your chance."

I felt him move from where he'd been sitting on the bed near my hip. 
"Is THAT what this silence is all about? You believe that I would be 
fool enough to go back and play the dog to Bek?"

"So you're perfectly content here ruling your little piece of 
botanical hell?"

"If one is strong enough, I won't deny that one can find 
satisfaction even in hell but so much still needs to be done. All I 
want is to talk. All I want is a chance to argue the case for my 
people."

"Which I can do... if I see Charley... if he really does come back."

The old, lined mouth was tight and bitter. "I don't think you can. 
You are weak, Fox. Just see all you did at my bidding today. No 
wonder Bek has no respect for you."

If I had not still been tied down, I would have risked tearing the 
skin of my back in two to turn around just to get a look at the old 
man's face. I had not detected the slightest sarcasm in that voice; 
he had sounded utterly sincere, and, therefore, utterly insane. If 
he honestly believed that having the tricks and the tools to torture 
another human being made him the superior man and more worthy of 
respect, then this world and Benjamin and I were in more serious 
trouble than I thought. A sociopath is far more dangerous than a man 
who is merely desperate. 

"I'll find the place," I vowed, "and if Charley comes he will 
listen."

"I don't think so. You have been on Dale... what? Half a growing 
season? What do you really know about our lives? We need medicine, 
minerals, and vitamins to replace what this planet leaches out of 
us. We need tools and better seed. We need a cure for what killed 
our women and real families."

The scene was surreal. The blue room smelled of mildew and old lust. 
My bloody back, buttocks and legs lay exposed to the wide open air 
while a mad dictator spouted the party line the way, I assumed, that 
he had during every one of the colony's uncontested mayoral 
campaigns over the last thirty years. 

And I didn't believe a word of his being content to rule here. 
Unfortunately, there were quite a lot of words so that, as he paced, 
I found my eyes droop closed. There was a hypnotic quality to that 
deep voice. Luckily, I fell asleep from sheer exhaustion long before 
he was able to change my mind. He may even have forgotten about me, 
enthralled as he was by the sound of his own voice. In any case he 
left me alone and allowed me some sleep. 

I dreamed though as is the way with fever dreams I didn't remember 
much. As my dreams go I believe that these were only disturbing. 
Mostly they were about the ghosts of all those who have been 
humiliated here. The wept in every corner. In general I was ignored. 
They must have mistaken me for one of their own, just one more of 
the dead... or one nearly dead... or one soon to be dead. Sleep lasted 
for perhaps two hours. Daniel came then and silently and without 
undo melodrama pumped his pound of flesh into my body. Then he left 
me alone once again with the dead. They're better company, let me 
tell you. At least he released my bonds with strangely gentle hands 
before he left. Finally, his heavy footsteps vanished up the stairs 
and I heard a bolt far away slide true.

I was left with the silence. The silence was good. I sucked in the 
quiet as if curling into my tomb. Alone with the ghosts I had a good 
cry. Does the soul a world of good. On this occasion it didn't help 
my body much however. Even the slight struggling for breath to get 
around my congested nose triggered outrage from the hundreds of tiny 
pieces of wickedly sharp dead roots that were still imbedded in my 
skin. The agony kept me awake until, like a kennel of sleepy puppies 
that are temporarily awakened from slumber, the disturbed nerve 
endings gradually quieted. I got a little more sleep then until I 
woke coughing from the damp. That brought tears to my eyes and not 
tears of self-pity time. It also brought an end to sleep for that 
night. 

Neither did I expect that I would get much for many nights to come.
 
With that cheery thought, I decided that it was past time to go if I 
could. Stiff and in the kind of pain that in my old life would have 
told me instantly that it really was far too early to leave the 
hospital, I levered myself off the bed and began to dress. It was 
agony. Use of any of the muscles in the vicinity of the stingers 
triggered a chain reaction of pain that was beyond description. 
Worse, the nearly imperceptible points of the hooks caught on my 
clothes so that tear-wrenching showers of hurt accompanied every 
move I made, breathing included. This, I decided, was going to get 
old real fast, so old that I won't even try to describe the 
experience of climbing the stairs.  It was only when I got to the 
frozen panel at the top that I remembered the sound of a bolt being 
thrown. I could sit and wait on the cold, damp steps in total 
darkness or make my agonizing way back down the stairs and wait in 
the room of blue luminescence. I went back downstairs but I didn't 
hurry. Nothing to do but wait till morning which seemed a very long 
time in a sadist's lair with no moons, nor stars, nor hint of coming 
dawn. 

For what felt like days, I lay on my stomach across the bed and 
tried not to move, not even to breathe too deeply. My fever rose and 
fell like waves on the ocean. At last, I heard faint scratching 
sounds from the panel door at the top of the stairs. Only then did I 
crawl the steps again. The panel swung open with the tiniest 
pressure this time. I found Reese waiting for me though he 
discouraged conversation. He gave me a chunk of bread and a cup of 
water for my breakfast, showed me the back door, and indicated that 
I was to wait. I cursed the hundred-year-old slowness of my steps 
but it was as fast as I could go. The completely passive expression 
on the old newcomer's face indicated that he had seen men in my 
condition before, probably often. Outside in the small yard between 
the house and barn, I looked for a place to sit before I fell down. 
I had to make due with a pile of firewood that had splinters of its 
own though I leaned against it rather than actually sat down.

I had certainly fallen far from privileged guest status. It seemed 
an hour before Daniel finally appeared, dressed neatly for the day 
while, with practically no sleep and no desire to tighten my clothes 
lest they touch my skin any more than they did already, I must have 
resembled the most addled of newcomers.

"Had time to think, Fox?"

"'Mulder'. As for time, I've had sufficient but then I didn't need 
any. Nothing has changed."

"I disagree. We know each other so much better. In your gut you 
already know that I will win, that I have won, but I know that I 
will have to punish you harshly and often before you will 
acknowledge that in your mind. As for your name, I will continue to 
call you Fox, if for no other reason than you don't like it. Bek, or 
Charley as you call him, did intend this to be your purgatory, after 
all or he wouldn't have sent you here. He would not want me to be 
gentle."

"Don't worry, you haven't been." I made no attempt to keep the 
hardness out of my voice. "Now is there really any point to 
continuing this melodrama? Where's Ben? May we leave now?"

"He's finishing his breakfast and will be with us soon. If you 
insist on leaving so quickly, then I must be brief. I've been 
thinking again on a topic that came up the last time you were here. 
I'm considering keeping you here with me."

Fear twisted in my nearly empty stomach. "And your reason?"

"As Mayor, I don't need any. I want you near me; that's enough. I 
would have your most desirable figure decorate my cellar room for 
the entertainment of my friends and your own education. You see, I 
realized during my middle-of-the-night visit -- sorry, but I 
couldn't sleep at the thought of you down there -- what your problem 
really is."

"And what's my problem?"

"You do not know your place. You have not accepted how things work 
here. You do not see what to everyone else is so obvious. Clearly, 
our Benjamin, for all his graces, has not been the best teacher for 
you." 

"And what should he have taught me?" 

The old test pilot began to circle like a university professor 
before freshman. "That this colony is not a democracy and never has 
been. We live too fragile an existence for that. I have the 
responsibility for this world and with the responsibility comes 
ownership. I, therefore, own this world, and everything and everyone 
in it, including you. I decide their fate. I decide who farms and 
who is to be trained in other skills. I decide what is to be planted 
and how it should be divided. I decide what farms should perhaps be 
given over to another's keeping or left to go fallow. I am -- as I 
went into last night -- lawmaker, judge and jury. What you 
experienced last night," he brushed his hand across my back forcing, 
I regret, a heart-stopping spasm of pain, "is only a taste of what I 
can do and no one will stop me. You are a bright man, Fox. Bek would 
not have chosen otherwise, but your stubbornness has been your 
downfall. You've had your chance with Bek. It is time to let another 
try."

"You failed as well."

"And had thirty years to regret it. Besides, I'm not doing this for 
myself."

"I said that I'd talk to Charley." 

"My apologies but I can't risk throwing away this world's only 
chance." His voice had been firm but unheated. Now it grew softer. 
"I know you despise your life here. Once I'm restored to my proper 
status I will be in a position to help the entire colony, including 
you."

I wanted to laugh. "My apologies, but I've been fucked over so 
thoroughly for the last eight months that last night barely 
registered. So excuse me but I'm not ready to trust anyone right 
now. And if I were, you wouldn't be at the top of the list."
    
"You're the one who doesn't understand. Trust is not the issue. 
Ownership is, power is. I own you, just as I own Benjamin. And I'm 
not asking, I'm telling. It is also my responsibility to know 
everything about every resource available to me and you are one of 
those resources.  In the end, you will live where I tell you to 
live. As far as fucking goes, you will allow yourself to be fucked 
by whom I say. You will tell me everything about Earth that I need 
to know, everything that has changed in twenty years. To show that I 
am not unreasonable I will allow you to go home with Ben today. It's 
a less stressful environment from which to contemplate your future, 
but realize that that could change tomorrow. In the meantime go 
ahead, exhaust yourself. Bring in crops, construct cathedrals. The 
colony can use both. You wouldn't be so worried about the winter if 
Charley were returning before spring so I can afford to be patient. 
But be warned, if I do not have the information I have requested by 
the time the harvest has been taken in, there will be changes."

I hoped that my voice was as cold as I intended. "I've lived with 
Charley, so have you. You know, therefore, that there is nothing you 
can do to me physically which would force me to change my mind."

"Not to you perhaps but have you considered how your continued 
recalcitrance could affect our mutual friend?"

I should have known that it would come to this. "Why involve 
Benjamin?"

"Because you care. Why do you think that I let you stay there so 
long? That sweet boy can worm his way into anyone's heart. I have 
only to decide that it is not an efficient use of the colony's 
resources to keep a farm going that's so distant. I can pull him 
into town. Without a farm he no longer qualifies for a BoB. I bring 
you into my household. He can work in the community fields."

"Take away his land and it would break his heart."

"You talk about breaking hearts, you who would see the last of our 
women and children in their graves."

There was no point in continuing this particular argument. I very 
much doubted that Dan Rowe would even remember the names of the 
dying women and children once he had his feet on the deck of a 
spacecraft again. Even less would he endanger his position with Bek 
by fighting for people he need not ever see again.

"You can, of course, remove your little friend from this matter, 
Fox. You come to my house willingly and he can keep his hermit's 
existence. There needn't be any questions or disgrace. There have 
been sharecroppers before who have given up their BoB's for 
incompatibility. Either way, you will live with me here and work in 
the house. Nights mostly, that's when I entertain the major 
landowners. Truthfully, after thirty years we are dead weary of each 
other's company and the sight of each other's faces... as well as 
other parts of our anatomy. I'm serious. Sooner or later you will 
tell me what I need or your life as you have known it, here, there, 
and for all time, will be over. If you are very stupid, I will have 
to tie Benjamin's well being into the deal as well, because neither 
of you is as important as the survival of this colony."

"I'll tell Ben."

"He won't believe you. I'm God the Father here. At the most you'll 
disillusion him and strip away what little security and happiness he 
can find in this world." At that moment Daniel looked up, 
distracted, at a noise from the house and then sighed deeply as if 
he had just completed an unpleasant task. "I believe that that gives 
you enough to think about until we see each other again."

At that moment Ben came out the back door, black hair tousled. A 
smile beamed in greeting as he saw me. He glowed with health, and 
happiness and the satisfaction of a young man well laid.

There had to be way... 

... To make it through the next weeks despite the pain in my body that 
threatened to pull me to my knees even now

... To protect poor, innocent love-struck Ben

... To find the elusive rendezvous point, before Daniel did.

I had only to stall. 

Right.

"I'll think about it," I told my Lenin wanna-be.

"Then I'll see you in two weeks."

End of Chapter 8 

MY TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY 08: Not Kansas (9/15)
Sue Esty (AKA Windsinger@aol.com)

BENJAMIN
Year 31, Week 2.1 through 9.0, Dale Reckoning

Summer. It is the season of the year that makes life possible on 
Dale or at least bearable. Taking into account the amounts and 
timing of sun and rain, it had not been the best summer for crops 
but neither had it been the worst. As in any summer, there were not 
enough hours of daylight to accomplish all that needed to be 
accomplished before the busy harvest season and dreaded winter that 
always followed. I was so busy that I failed to notice for weeks 
that there was something wrong with Mulder. When I did I couldn't 
remember back to when it started.

After my second incredible night with Annie I was not only exhausted 
but completely obsessed with thoughts of her. The following day 
passed in a blur. I only remember that Mulder was not eager to have 
Mac work on the left side of his face. That surprised me since he 
never complained of any particular pain associated with having the 
right side done, but his steps dragged as he went down the street 
towards the surgery. Now that I think of it, his eyes looked as 
exhausted as mine felt, but I figured that if he stayed up all night 
playing chess and talking the high talk with Mayor Dan that he had 
no one to blame but himself. Come to think of it, he dragged on the 
road home as well even though he slept a few hours on his stomach in 
Mac's garden before we left. Funny, I don't remember us talking much 
at all that day. Wrapped in my own thoughts, I would all at once 
find myself striding meters ahead and then would have to wait for 
Mulder to catch up. I had never known him to be slow. Maybe it only 
seemed that way since I was eager to get back to see if the beans 
needed fertilizing yet.

"Fertilizing as in spreading fertilizer?" Mulder asked. His tone was 
listless as though he was only asking out of politeness.
    
"As in playing midwife," I corrected as I looked down on the tiny 
flowers hiding among the thick green leaves of the bushy plants. 
"These are an earth species. On earth inserts would pollinate them. 
On Dale --"

"No insects."

"We're the insects. It's a manual process." 

We proceeded to spend the next three days on our knees with damp 
wads of cloth brushing the stamens of every tiny flower. When I 
think back, that's when I should have first noticed that Mulder was 
ill. Those were hot, sunny days and while I worked stripped to the 
waist, Mulder kept his shirt on insisting that he wasn't hot even 
though the sweat rolled off him in sheets.

Only in hindsight do I see that day. Mulder worked as hard as ever, 
harder even, but he worked slower and with less attention. He 
dropped things. The lines on his face are deeper. On a rare warm 
night I took my mat to the barn to sleep and the next morning 
witnessed Mulder rising from his. He didn't think I was awake yet. 
It was painful to watch he was so stiff. He had also slept fully 
clothed. It hurt that he trusted me so little. Respecting his 
wishes, I had made no advances for weeks. Did he think I was going 
to waste away pining over him?  Well, Winter bite him! I had Annie. 
But I did worry that he might be sick. When I tried to bring up the 
subject, he curtly cut me off and then refused to take a break in 
the afternoon as we usually did. We were well started on the extra 
room, or sauna as he called it, and he would work on that from 
before dawn sometimes until after dark. 

What worried me more than anything, however, was that there was no 
light in him any longer. He found no joy in his efforts as if it 
were all of a sudden just work to him.

I didn't actually notice the sadness in his face so much until after 
the bandages came off from the second of Mac's operations. As 
before, the job was well done. Handsome before, I found myself 
dreaming of that now-restored face, so I guess I lied when I swore 
that my lusting days were over. On the other hand, maybe it wasn't 
desire, because what I dreamed of was seeing him smile because he 
didn't.... not any more. The Tensday after the one when the second 
operation was performed, he woke me while it was still dark -- which 
in mid summer is very early -- so that we could start for the north 
country to look again for his landing place. He didn't need to tell 
me why we needed to leave so early. He was afraid of our being 
followed again. As it turned out, we weren't, but we returned late 
and footsore instead of rested, as we should be after a free day. 
Worse, Mulder saw nothing that looked like the land around where he 
had been dropped off.

The week that followed was much the same. Mulder was tense and 
frustrated, but he refused to talk to me about what was bothering 
him. We worked like newcomers on the sauna house. I worked just as 
hard as he did even when I would have liked to be sitting in the sun 
enjoying this time of comparative peace before harvest season began. 
With one wall against the chimney of the cabin, one against the hill 
but lined with stone and the other two free standing and thick with 
stone, the sauna was an impressive structure even if I did not quite 
fathom its purpose. Mulder swore, however, that in the depths of 
winter I would be happy to have it. I'll take his word on that. It 
will be worth the trouble if it makes him happy, though a warm, 
hard-muscled body next to mine would have been as welcome and less 
trouble. Guess it has been too long since Annie. 

When it came time to be on the road to Stony River to keep our 
appointment with Daniel, I didn't have to remind Mulder. Again, he 
didn't act as if he wanted to go. It was more as if it were a 
punishment than the honor it was. His shoulders slumped and he ate 
even less than before at dinner. Arniesse was once more at table and 
despite my preoccupation with that presence I couldn't help but 
notice that there was even more tension between he and Mulder then 
before. Mulder was always careful not to get too close. A small, 
mean part of me wondered if he was jealous. Served him right, though 
I couldn't imagine why. Could he want Annie for himself or was he 
just regretting that I had someone and he didn't?

It was morning before I even found myself thinking of Mulder again. 
I had finished breakfast and was going outside to find him so that 
we could start for home when Daniel took me aside. I will not write 
here what he told me in secret, nor from what I was intended to 
infer from a twist of those thin lips and the sweep of those large 
hands. Nor could I, even if I tried, describe with any accuracy the 
storm of conflicting emotions that conversation started boiling 
within me. What it did mean was that when I saw Mulder again, I saw 
him through different eyes.

For one, he looked terrible. He had seemed unwell the last time we 
left Daniel's. He seemed far worse this time though it may only have 
seemed so because I was less preoccupied with my own affairs. This 
time I saw beneath the exhausted drag of his feet and the stiffness 
behind his every movement. He was in a sullen mood as well, like so 
much of the time since our previous visit with Daniel. Now I saw his 
bad mood for what it was, a gathering darkness, a deep depression of 
spirit, a soul that had been forced to look into the face of a 
future reality to which death must seem more welcome. 

My poor Fox. I would have wept for him if I could. I would have 
railed and beat my fists to the skies if that would have helped. 
Meanwhile, he held it all inside and Daniel warned me to say 
nothing. A month went by. Four weeks since Daniel opened my eyes 
and, Almighty Spirit, help me, but I held my peace. To watch him 
struggle through each day under his horrible burden was agony. He 
worked as if possessed, as if a fire burned within that only a 
blanket of exhaustion can dim and then only for a little while. 

I admit that there are other reasons for my silence. Pity. Spite. 
Resentment. Even my relationship with Annie was not the bright thing 
it had been. If finally got through to me that she had been brought 
in only to complete the foursome, to keep me busy. Mulder and Daniel 
had discovered that there were things that they wished to do 
together while there was still time and I would have been in the 
way. Daniel, after all, knew my opinion of rough play. I thought I 
was right because it explained why Mulder was so tired and sore 
after each visit and did little more than stare at the ground as if 
shamed all the way home. He was doing things with Daniel, bad 
things, hard things, when he had refused the gentle, good times he 
could have had with me.

I found no more pleasure in my life than Mulder did. The only bright 
spot during the whole end of the summer was seeing how the crops 
grew. What was going on between Mulder and Daniel couldn't tarnish 
that for me. How green the plants were, how tall or lush according 
to the nature of each, and how bountiful their fruits. The more they 
grew, however, the deeper became the shadows under Mulder's eyes. 


More weeks passed and the crops were golden or red or pump in the 
fields or on the trees. It was Cup Day, which meant that harvest 
would officially begin the next day. Every year before this one I 
had spent Cup Day in town, celebrating and getting drunk with my 
friends in preparation for the big push of digging and cutting and 
picking. It was not that all the crops ripened at once, it was just 
that we have to leave them as long as we can or starve before 
spring. This was the latest we dare leave the Earth plants out in 
the fields because when winter comes, it comes with a vengeance. A 
week more and the town of Stony River will host the Harvest 
Festival. It's the most important event of the year because it's 
only then that we'll know how many of us are likely to survive the 
winter. If there is already snow and there are still crops out in 
the fields, then not many.

This year I did not spend Cup Day in town.  

"I just want you to know that I won't spend another holiday crawling 
over these hills with you!" I grumbled testily as we walked down the 
last slope of the northern uplands. Over the months we had covered 
all of the north and only the fertile and more populated eastern 
quarter remained.

Mulder knew it, too and was in even a worse mood than I was. He 
turned on me, growling, "Then you won't need to worry about missing 
any more of your rustic hoe-downs! If I haven't found the damn place 
by this time next week, then it will be too late. We won't need to 
come!" 

"Wrong. We'll have to find it within the next hour because there 
won't be time to come back. You're just going to have to learn to 
live without knowing!"

In response Mulder turned to his right and stalked away. It was 
growing late and, as it was also overcast, it would be too dark to 
see even earlier than usual. Mulder had become increasingly frantic 
over the past hours. Undernourished as he was from barely eating 
these past months and burning up what he did eat, he stumbled over 
rocks and any sudden rise of ground. His hands were scraped, as was 
his chin and his knees. This must be how an animal behaves, a 
creature moving on instinct and emotion rather than thought. I had 
hoped that Daniel's warnings were wrong, but I saw it all coming to 
pass before my eyes. Would the final breakdown come today, before 
the harvest? I had hoped that we would at least have that. Anger had 
left me for pity when I finally spoke. "Mulder, it's not here."

His body whipped around. The tired red of his eyes blazed back at 
me. "It has to be here! Do you think I sprung fully formed out of 
the earth like one of your dirt devils!"

"Of course not, but maybe it's not as you remember it. What you 
remember may not exist. You were very sick those first few days."

Even in the near darkness I saw his face change, the anger flowing 
out of him to be replaced by the utter misery beneath. As if all his 
strength evaporated with the anger, he gingerly sagged down onto a 
rock, dropping his head into his folded arms. "I have to find it," 
came the muffled words after a moment. "Oh, God, please, I have to."

"You won't tonight. We have to get back; it will rain soon. You're 
weak already. Do you want to get sick?"

Slowly, the head came up with, amazingly, a sliver of a smile. "For 
a moment there you sounded so much like Scully."
    
"Then she had sense."
    
"That's right, she did -- she does -- but I didn't listen to her 
either. Ben, did it ever occur to you that looking in the rain, in 
the dark may be just what I need? That's what it was like when I 
came down."

"What good will it do if it kills you?" I sulked.

"What good will it do if I don't find it?"

"That's rather hard for me to answer since you've never told me why 
it's so important. You said you would tell me later."

"And it's still not later enough, Ben. You have to trust me."

I was silent and I looked off down the trail towards home.

"Do you, Ben?"

I still didn't turn back to him right away. When I did it was with a 
jerk. "Trust you? How can I when you do such mad things? How can I 
when you don't talk to me anymore, when you care so little about my 
feelings that you don't even take care of yourself? And then you 
insult me by rejecting everything I have to give and do it with --" 
Enough, I sprang to my feet and started off towards home. "Stay if 
you want to! Go and get yourself killed! Run out on me and get lost. 
What do you care? It will be my shame, not yours!"

"Benjamin! Damn you, Ben, get back here!" The first use of my name 
had been angry. The second more commanding and a little anxious.

I kept walking, almost running into the pre-storm gloom. I didn't 
know what else to do now. I wasn't going to beg him; I couldn't beg 
him, but what he proposed was completely irresponsible.

Then I heard the quick footsteps behind me. They were almost silent 
what with the rising of the wind as the storm came nearer. Then I 
heard his heavier than normal breathing. He must have run to catch 
up. "Benjamin, stop..."

"From all you've said, the doctors are good where you come from. But 
here, even though we can cure a lot, we can't afford to be stupid. 
We can't cure everything. You could die."

"I hear you; hear me! I need to search for just a little while 
longer, but I also need you if only to walk me out of here. Please 
believe me, the last thing I want is to humiliate you in front of 
your people but I must find this place." Not waiting for my answer 
his eyes drifted away towards the hills, already planning. "Maybe if 
we --"

It was while he wasn't looking that I swung around and hit him with 
my work-hardened, open palm. 

I would never have thought myself capable of such a thing. It was 
with all my strength, too, which is a lot what with all my pent up 
frustration at the ruin of what I had expected to be a beautiful 
summer. Even more surprising I found him on the ground at my feet, 
staring at me with an expression of dumb astonishment and blood on 
his lip. 

That image sent pain through me in a way I didn't think possible. 

Blindly, I began stumbling, shaking, and weaving with no direction 
across the dry plain. After a few moments I heard his pounding 
footsteps behind me. When he took my arm I tried to wrench it away, 
but he was ready this time and hung on.

"Ben, stop. All right, from your point of view I know that I 
deserved that. So why...?"

Why am I crying was what he meant. I hated the sound of my slurred 
voice when it finally came out. "Because it's going to happen 
again."

His hand went to his mouth. "I certainly hope not."

"It is! You don't know, but Daniel told me!" I stared at him, at 
those wide, intelligent, half-amused eyes and the tears came harder. 

His mouth became firmer. A tight line. "What did that serpent tell 
you? Whatever it was, don't believe it."

"Mulder, let's go home."

"Tell me!"

"Don't make me. I don't want to. Let it be as it is for as long as 
it can be."

He studied me, in a way that should have made me angry, but didn't. 
There was such a mixture of emotions on his face and in the stance 
of his body. Had I just confirmed what he had already suspected? If 
so, he should be in mourning for his dying mind, but instead his 
eyes, his self, were all for me. Oh, Spirit, there was some 
affection for me in him after all and all this time I thought he 
didn't care. Not love, nothing sexual -- you can't have everything -
- but with part of his soul anyway. This Scully, whatever perfect 
creature she may be, did not have all of him.

And what harm could it possibly do for him to find this place he had 
been seeking for so long if it brought him some peace for a little 
while.

"I know where it is," I confessed. As simple as that after all these 
weeks, it felt has if a huge burden had lifted that I hadn't even 
known I'd carried.

He was staring at me, a break in the clouds allowing a wash of 
sunlight gold to find his face and accentuate every perfect bone. 
"You what?"

"I know where it is, the place you described."

I had braced for angry words, there were none, just a harder set to 
his jaw before he indicated for me to lead on. Though it was growing 
steadily darker, we made and lit no torch. We'd retain our night 
vision longer that way. We moved at a fast walk. When the ground was 
fairly free of rocks, we trotted. Mulder followed in silence. There 
were still neither questions nor recriminations. Those would most 
likely come later. Until then we still had a half-hour of hard 
traveling.

The land rose and fell, became at times more wooded then less, and 
yet after all these weeks of hiking its slopes were nearly as 
familiar as my own fields. Finally we got to a ridge and I paused at 
the top to catch my breath before speaking. In the distance the 
growling storm was drawing closer. A rising breeze caught at our 
sweat-dampened hair. "It's near here. We split up that day," I said 
and gestured to my right. "You went that way. I went to the left. We 
agreed to meet at the top of that hill." I pointed further on but 
more in the direction that he went that day than I. 

Mulder's eyes narrowed. "I remember, but that was when? During our 
third day of searching?" That simple fact clearly stung.

There was no point in trying to explain. I headed down a steep slope 
to my left, the same way I had gone that day. At the bottom I turned 
left to once again crawl over the ankle-twisting rubble at the foot 
of a tall outcrop of rock that had hid the land beyond from the top 
of the low ridge. A faint intermittent lightning lit our way though 
we were more blind after it faded. I guess that it was because of 
this vision of bluish lights and black shadows that I didn't catch 
on until later what was so different about the place than I 
remembered. First, there should have been a belt of tall trees just 
on the other side of the cliff. There were only a few there now. 
Confused, I stumbled into what should have been a bowl-shaped 
meadow. Instead, the space appeared to be only one end of a long 
plain that stretched to the next rise of ground hundreds of meters 
away. There was a bit of scrubby forest but only on two sides and 
that just dark smudges even with the lightning. 

My steps faltered. "I don't understand. It was here, just as you 
described it. A meadow ringed with trees with a little pond in the 
center. When I saw it there wasn't much water, but I could tell that 
there had been more during the rainy season. But where are the 
trees?" I started walking. My feet could sense the land falling 
slightly and then rising again where the pond should be but the 
ground was thick with lush rush grass.

"Where's the pond?" If no pond, then I would have expected a patch 
of dry mud. Anxious, I looked in Mulder's direction expecting to 
find accusing eyes on me, but there was none of that. He didn't even 
seem to remember that I was there. He had followed me out and stood, 
head down, examining the rough tufts of the rushgrass. Then his eyes 
went to the tall rock outcropping that we had passed. 

"Stay here," he ordered and headed in that direction. In the near 
darkness I could barely see him moving around under the few trees. 
From time to time he stooped to search the ground then moved a few 
yards and stooped again. He traveled out from there, cris-crossing 
the field that was ten times too large for the meadow he had 
described. For more that fifteen minutes he moved from one location 
to another. As the evening became increasingly darker, I watched him 
but I was equally as aware of the storm. It was moving closer but 
slowly, the thunder growling louder and louder as it rolled against 
the cliff. Finally, he returned to me, his expression thoughtful and 
still surprisingly free of anger.

"Mulder, I swear, this was the place."

"I believe you. The ground is cut up all around the base of the 
cliff. A lot of trees were taken down recently and even their stumps 
pulled out before the ground was leveled again, or at least they 
tried to level it. In places they did too good a job. They even put 
sod down in the bare patches." Both stiff and tired, he crouched 
down and soon his long fingers were searching with determination 
among the roots of the tough grass plants at our feet. Soon he rose 
and brushed off his hands though I could tell that not all the dirt 
came off easily. Mud. 

"As far as the pond goes, it's wetter down under the sod than it 
should be. There was water here at one time but water can be drained 
off and this time of year will not be replaced very quickly. Then 
there's your growing season. It's short so vegetation has to mature 
early if it's going to at all. Look at your fields. Weeds can be 
planted just as easily as crops and will grow just as quickly, if 
not more so. Ben, someone spent a lot of time here a few weeks ago, 
taking out trees, draining the pond and then covering the evidence. 
Knowing how hard it is to fell a single tree here without good 
tools, we are talking about a lot of manpower. The cliff makes this 
whole area look different but I didn't see the cliff then because of 
the large number of trees and it was dark and rainy that night. I do 
remember a particularly dense patch of what I thought was woods. If 
that was the cliff masked in part by the tallest trees, then..." he 
thought and after a moment pointed to the South. "The moons would 
have risen in that direction on the night I arrived. Am I right?" He 
was pointing to a patch of cloudy sky where he said that he had seen 
the Moon and his brother just above an entire line of trees though 
there were only a couple in that area now. 

"It would be in that direction, yes," I told him. Numbly, I stared 
around, still unable to comprehend the change. "Are you saying that 
all of this was done on purpose? What purpose?"

"Ben, who did you talk to about what I was searching for?"

I don't know why he asked. He already knew. I could see it in his 
eyes. 

"But I didn't tell him where. At the time I hadn't found it yet."

His hand made a dismissive movement. "It doesn't matter how. He 
has."

I looked at the changes again; the amount of manpower it must have 
taken was incalculable. "Why would he do this?"

"To keep me from finding this spot. Maybe even to keep a certain 
someone from finding it from above --" From a space craft he meant. 
"-- so that same certain someone would have to contact Dan Rowe if 
he wanted to find me. Probably both."

A bright flash of close lightning dazzled our eyes, immediately 
followed by the first true crack of thunder. The wind rose even 
stiffer and a few fat drops of rain began to fall.

"Let's go home, Ben. We have a harvest to bring in," and he headed 
off towards the cliff with a swinging, nearly carefree step, 
oblivious of the storm.     

End of Chapter 9 

MY TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY 08: Not Kansas (10a/15)
Sue Esty (AKA Windsinger@aol.com)

MULDER: 
Year 31, Week 9.8, Dale Reckoning

The mid to late summer months were hell but now life is 
comparatively pleasant-- just as long as I don't move too suddenly 
or try to sleep on my back. I almost regret leaving so soon. Not 
that I'll miss digging potatoes, a bushel of which is almost as 
heavy as a box of rocks, but I will miss knowing how they taste in a 
warm stew when you know that you grew them yourself. I won't miss 
cutting and processing ropeweed. It leaves a sticky residue on your 
hands that only hard work in serious dirt will remove, but I will 
miss not having the experience of leisurely winter nights braiding 
rope and telling stories and having no one after your hide except 
perhaps Old Man Winter. I won't miss hand-fertilizing beans, but 
I'll miss shelling the pods and then soaking the stems and leaves to 
make what passes here for paper. Nothing taken for granted, nothing 
wasted. Most of all I'll miss Benjamin, of course. I'll miss his 
free and easy smile and generous nature and the quiet passion in his 
eyes when he looks over his land. I won't miss that same passion 
when he looks at other things. It hurts me as much as it must hurt 
him when I pull away. But we have come to a peace, he and I, and I 
think that over time we could be friends with no need for walls. If 
all goes as planned, however, we won't have the time so I guess the 
wall stays.

I freely admit that if life with Ben has not been idyllic these past 
months then it has been my fault. I'm sorry that I ruined this short 
time we had, but what could I do? I was locked into seeing that 
devil Daniel. The man is nothing if not intelligent. Threatening 
Benjamin was the most effective blackmail he could have come up 
with. Every two weeks I sat at his table and forced myself to make 
torturous small talk with the happy threesome. With the departure of 
the lovers I was then compelled to participate in torture of an 
entirely different sort downstairs. Unfortunately, my trip to 
Daniel's Bed was only the most physically enduring of our nighttime 
activities. We won't go into the psychologically enduring parts. His 
intent was that I not forget him during my weeks off and, believe 
me, I wish I could have.

Poor Benjamin. I can't imagine what he must have thought once my 
visits with Daniel began to go bad. Even after two weeks of healing, 
I still can't move an inch of skin that has touched that bed without 
pain. The level of discomfort is simply in inverse proportion to the 
time that has passed since our last visit. Add the fact that I was 
frustrated to the point of obsession for so long over not being able 
to find the rendezvous point, and my disposition has been truly 
rotten. Over the years, Scully, you had a chance to become 
accustomed to my 'black' moods -- well, maybe not used to them, but 
after seven years you certainly were able to identify them. Imagine 
how totally bewildered Benjamin must have been. Looking back, he was 
more than that. He was nearly crazed with worry and only my damned 
insensitive, obsessive, selfish myopia kept me from seeing that. 
Poor, poor, Benjamin. No wonder he believed whatever Godfather 
Daniel told him.   
     
Once I could find the rendezvous point whenever I needed, you would 
think that things between Ben and I were able to get back to normal 
-- it there ever was such a thing. Instead, he was even more 
confused than ever. Oh, I was out of the black time but you know 
what that means, Scully: I was on aggressive hyperdrive, bad jokes, 
and all. Me bi-polar? Naw, watch that sickle fly! I knew that I was 
working like the possessed, but I had to do something with all my 
frenetic energy while I waited for 'the day' to come.
  
It was not that the effects of my four trips to Daniel's bed were 
not still with me. They were. Thousands upon thousands of tiny roots 
like minute cockleburs had dug themselves irrevocably into my hide 
and I could count every one as I laid awake at night wondering how I 
could exhaust myself even more the next day so that I could get at 
least some sleep. There was relief. As I've said, the resting 
threshold subsided on the off weeks, which harvest week was. The 
resting threshold was what I could still feel even after lying 
perfectly still for some minutes You would think that on the off 
weeks at least the days were bearable. They were, but there was 
never any real relief, only the dread of the cycle beginning all 
over again on the next free day.

As I've said, however, with the finding of the rendezvous point the 
worst of the blackness lifted. Knowing where as well as when I'd be 
leaving I finally knew for certain that I wouldn't have to sit 
through another of Daniel's dinners and the hell that always 
followed. As long as it had taken me to pinpoint the 'where', it had 
taken me almost as long to nail down the 'when' and I still wasn't a 
hundred percent sure of that. Let's just say that since we were due 
to appear on Daniel's doorstep the next evening a least some wish 
fulfillment went into the calculation.

So how did I finally determine that the next night would be the 
night? Because that is also the night of Harvest Festival, the 
official ending to all the digging and reaping. It was also the 
night of Brother's next full moon, though there was some guesswork 
in that because it was more often overcast at night than not. Both 
of Charley's instructions would then be fulfilled -- the first full 
moon after the harvest --  and I'd be off this muddy dirt ball.

I'm certain that in the beginning I over-analyzed Charley's cryptic 
instructions. I assumed for too long that both moons would need to 
be full before he returned, but Charley never said that.  Similarly, 
the Harvest Festival wouldn't begin until sundown and would last all 
night, but I counted on Charley's not meaning that the rendezvous 
would be the first full moon after the festival. That would mean the 
next full moon after this one. After all, he said 'harvest' not  
'Harvest Festival'. Not that I didn't worry. Charley might argue 
that Brother is not the 'Moon' and, therefore, cannot be a full moon 
but, no, I won't go there. That is the path to despair. I must get 
out of here even if it is only to get beyond Daniel's grasp. I've 
called him Godfather and that is as good a title for him as I can 
think of. He's ruthless in what he is willing to do for his 'family' 
and I fear that if I am not gone soon that I'll find more than a 
dead horse's head in my bed this winter. 

Have I remarked that the winters on Dale are very, very long?

Winter was also not so far away. It had been a frosty night, and 
frosty nights always make going to the latrine in the early morning 
a truly religious experience. It had also been a very brisk day for 
fall. Our exertions kept us warm enough, but when we stopped our 
sweat cooled instantly. It couldn't have gotten over fifty degrees 
Fahrenheit all day and with a clear twilight coming the air cooled 
fast. 

I'd worked since first light with Benjamin alongside me. As it had 
been for weeks, however, Ben kept a grudging silence all day except 
for the most commonplace statements about the weather and 
occasionally nagging gripes to me to eat or take a break, neither of 
which I did often. He had been bending and ripping great tufts of 
the tall rice-wheat grass from their roots with an elaborate 
twisting motion. He was skillful from long practice. I followed 
along binding the long stems into sheaves. They need to stand thus 
like little cornshucks for a week to dry.  Their golden tassels 
release their pearl-like grains better then, or so I'm told. 

After two fields of this our movements had become hypnotic. I saw 
little more than the ground of crumpled stalks in front of my face 
and thought only about how much less of a torture this would be if I 
did not have to manage with Daniel's handiwork written in the skin 
of my back. At least it had been seventeen days since our last trip 
into town. If it were four or five, or even ten, all this bending 
and stretching would have killed me or at least I would have been 
ready to consider death as an acceptable option. Last week during 
the really bad days we picked applepears and dug potatoes so at 
least the activities were varied. Free today of any need to 
concentrate on the task at hand, my mind dwelt most often on how 
much I should tell Benjamin about my leaving and when I should break 
the news. Part of me wanted to wait until the next day, the last 
day, until early afternoon, just before I needed to start heading 
north if I was going to reach the rendezvous point by nightfall. 
That wouldn't give us much time for good-byes. But what can one say 
at a time like that except for the obvious? Still, it felt wrong to 
just drop the ball and run. You might think that since we had acted 
almost like strangers for most of the summer that that the going 
away would be easier. It didn't. It was worse. I would have the last 
memories be better than that.

What it came down to was that I owed him more than a wave and a 
handshake.

"And thanks for all the fish...." I murmured under by breath. If Ben 
heard, he didn't even ask for an explanation the way he would have 
that first month.

A few minutes later Benjamin's voice came again and it was accompanied by a 
sigh of surprisingly deep satisfaction. "Mulder, we're finished," 
cut through the fog. 

Numbly, I looked up from my bent over position to find no more tall 
stalks before us. Bone weary, I stood, I winced, I stretched and 
found to my amazed eyes that the entire field was flat except for 
the neat bundles of drying shucks. The two fields up slope looked 
the same.

"We're done!" Ben declared with a tired grin. "Completely done and a 
day early. We were crazy to work this hard but we're finished." All 
I could do was stare unbelieving at what the last of the light 
revealed. As I gaped at stubbled fields, empty vines, and overturned 
earth where we'd dug the 'potatoes', Ben was going on about "Just 
think, we can sleep in and still go into town early tomorrow." 

I found that Ben is studying me for my reaction. 

"Funny. You know that that is just about the last thing I want to 
do. Not the sleeping in part... but the other."

He gave me a broad grin, his old Ben smile from the early weeks. "I 
thought you'd say that." 

Just then a stray breeze blew over us full of wet cold. "Brrr..." he 
said, rubbing his arms. "We may even have snow by morning."

"Aching muscles and a cold night, looks like I'd better show you how 
to enjoy a sauna," I offered. 

At that he brightened considerably. "I hoped that you'd offer. When 
I realized we'd probably finish today, I started the fire in the 
outer oven when I went up to get us something to eat."

I couldn't help cocking an eyebrow in his direction.

"Looking for ulterior motives?" he asked.

"Always."

"Look, we've cold, we're exhausted, and every joint in my body tells 
me what I'm going to feel like when I'm sixty. Nothing could 
happen."

If there was anything that I have learned in my misspent life, it 
was that nothing is certain. 

"I do want to know how much heat we can get," which I did since, if 
I didn't find out on this night, I would never know. Carefully, I 
revised my comment to, "We may have some cracks we still need to 
fill. When this wind whistles through them, we'll know."

So we headed up the slope towards the cabin. Ben even restrained 
himself when I swayed slightly, clamping his jaws together to keep 
the 'I told you so' from getting out. I admit that my blood sugar 
was in the basement that day. You know that I never feel like eating 
when I'm tired, Scully. I planned to eat a hearty breakfast. 
Charley's food was almost not worth eating.  The very thought of 
eating my next evening meal gave me gooseflesh.

But not there yet. It was with a sense of accomplishment that I 
looked upon the addition to Ben's little cabin. It looked rather 
like a huge stone beehive with a bad tilt, but at least nothing 
short of a substantial earthquake would bring it down. Ducking 
inside, I welcomed the toasty heat on my chilled skin and there was 
comfort in the golden dimness of the light from the slowly burning 
stove. In one respect, however, I had erred. The chamber was 
impracticably large for one man alone and would take too much fuel 
to heat properly. Worse, it would make him feel the emptiness even 
more than he must in his cramped little cabin. For the first time I 
wondered if that was why the little dwelling was the size it was and 
as cluttered as it is, especially now that we had filled its shelves 
with the fruits of Dale's short growing season. 

As to the size of the beehive, maybe we would have time to put in a 
drop ceiling before I went. But then I would have to explain the 
reason for the rush job.

"Did I do it right?" he asked eagerly, referring to the fire.

"Oh, yes." Gratefully, I took in a deep lungful of the almost too-
warm air. It rolled luxuriously through my lungs all the way to my 
toes. There was even a mildly tart-sweet scent to the wood he had 
chosen which was pleasant.

 Like the huge cat that a neighbor on the Vineyard once had, I 
dropped down onto my stomach. The ground was cushioned with a thick 
map of newly cut rush plants that had their own fresh scent. 
Happily, I moaned.

With similar animal pleasure, Benjamin laughed and began almost to 
tear at his shirt. I couldn't blame him. This was not the place for 
clothes, but I didn't dare remove mine. Not that I had actually seen 
my back, but I had seen enough of the back of my legs even in the 
dim light of my small oil lamp in the barn to know what it must look 
like. The shirt stayed on. The heat was still glorious, soaking into 
my muscles all the way to bone. Even though the rushes on the floor 
had a dryness about the edges from the heat, enough moisture 
remained to take the warmth to itself. While I muzzily contemplated 
the greenery before my nose, Benjamin was doing his best to appear 
nonchalant about removing his loose, draw-string pants at the same 
time staring at me curiously as if he had questions and didn't know 
if he should ask. Why had I taken to lying on my stomach these past 
months rather than sitting like a normal person was probably one of 
them. He did ask another in a round about way. 

"You told me that people don't wear clothes when they take these 
'treatments'."

"They don't. I'm just too tired to move," I lied. The truth I 
concealed, however, was not the truth Benjamin thought. Like a 
shadow I saw that hurt look cross his face again. The fact that he 
covered it quickly made it all the more poignant. I should tell him 
about my leaving now, there could not be a better time, but Ben cut 
in with another question first.
   
"I hid what I knew about the landing place, yet you've never blamed 
me from causing you so much grief. Why?" 

I propped my chin up on my folded hands and studied the young farmer 
sitting there in nothing but the little rag of cloth that we used 
for underwear. He had no idea how good-looking he was. That's when I 
heard your voice again, Scully, clear as anything: "What a loss." 
The thought made me smile the tiniest bittersweet smile. When would 
I ever see you again? Would I ever see you again? For the first time 
in many months it hit me with full force that returning to Charley 
with my tail between my legs was only the first step in a long, and 
possibly, never ending, journey home.

"I don't see what's funny," Ben sulked in the midst of my melancholy 
reverie. 

"Sorry, I wasn't smiling at what you said but about something else. 
As far as blame goes, I'm the last person to lay that on anyone's 
doorstep Daniel you've known your whole life. He's as much of a hero 
as you have in this place. Who am I?"

"You're mine." Ben's handsome face was serious, almost angry. "I 
don't mean that the way I once did, but you're mine to worry about 
and I worry about what you think. If I'm not your friend than who 
will be? Daniel's interested in you but I realize now that he 
doesn't really 'care' about you. You're just another problem, like 
finding enough clean water in the summer or keeping mold from the 
seed corn."

"Just what kind of a problem did he tell you I was?"

Ben's eyes went to the floor. "He stopped me at breakfast. The 
second time we stayed the night at the house." 

While I was left waiting outside with my bread and water and newly 
scored back. 
 
"What did he say?"

Ben shrugged. "He asked first how things were going. I said, well, 
but that you were extremely anxious about something. He said, yes, 
that he knew about the trip north, but not about what we were 
looking for." Even in the dim golden light of the fire Ben's face 
mirrored his distress. "I should have realized then that he was the 
one who sent the party of Grayrobes to follow us! If only I had 
thought! I shouldn't have spoken. All that happened was my fault!" 
His broad hand smashed into his palm with his anger. 

Stiffly, I moved to his side, wanting to reassure him and yet unsure 
of how to do it. "Benjamin, it's not your fault. You told him I was 
looking for the landing place? Well, he already knew that."

"I least I didn't tell him where." His lower lip still trembled.

"If you didn't, then I believe you."

"Then how did he find out?"

"I don't know but I'm sure that he has his ways. What did he tell 
you besides asking you to spy on me?"

Benjamin flinched as if he'd been struck. "Two weeks later, he 
stopped me again at breakfast. He told me terrible things. He said 
that what happened to the others was also happening to you only 
later and more slowly." I stared at him dumbfounded. Hastily, he 
went on. "He said that in time you would be like the others and that 
it would all be as I had always dreamed, but that during the 
transition he was afraid that you might become violent or at least 
erratic in your behavior. For my own protection and that of the 
colony, he insisted that I report to him everything that you did and 
everything you talked about. That's why the landing place was so 
important. If we found it, and you wandered there on your own, I'd 
need to be able to get a search party there quickly."

My expression must have been grim. "And even then you didn't tell."

"If you can't find it while in your right mind, how could you 
after.... after... what Daniel tried to make me believe. And if you did 
wander off to that place," he stared down between his crossed legs 
blushing, "I didn't want anyone else to know. I would want to find 
you myself."

Ah, saved once more by Benjamin's youthful infatuation.

"You believed what Daniel told you about what was happening to me, 
didn't you?"

"What was I supposed to think? He said that you had had an attack 
just that night as well as two weeks before. He asked if I had found 
you changed and I had! It was as if all the life had been sucked out 
of you. I was so scared."

"Then it got worse," I said seeing how my blackening mood must have 
looked from his point of view. I guess that I hadn't been hiding 
things as well as I thought I had. "I'm sorry about that. I was 
having some problems physically, but more importantly I should have 
talked to you. I was just obsessing about our trips north being so 
fruitless. I get that way. It's hell for the people I'm around and I 
should have remembered that. Scully got use to it, or at least 
understood. It was a mistake not speaking but I also wanted to 
protect you. People close to me tend to get hurt." I looked at him 
carefully for the truth of this next bit. "Do you still believe it? 
That I'm 'regressing'?"
    
"No. Now that you know where the meadow is -- or was --  it's all 
different, or mostly different. Different in a different way. But if 
you're not sick from that then..."

"What?"

"Why do you let him hurt you? I know he does. You shouldn't let him. 
You mustn't let him. I know that he's the Mayor but you don't have 
to do what he says. There's a way. We don't have to go again."

This was the perfect opportunity. It was now or never. "Benjamin, 
there's something I need to tell you. I won't be going again --"

"Let me see," he demanded almost feverishly. "Let me see what he's 
done to you."

And he should know. He's going to be living with this madman. 
Clearly, the existence of Daniel's bloody bed was not generally 
known. On the other hand, if I were trapped without hope on Dale 
where a madman and a sadist ruled, I would be equally wary of 
speaking out. 

Though I hesitated I felt Ben's hands lift the back of my shirt. I 
didn't help a lot but I didn't hinder him either. I heard the hiss 
of his breath and at the same time was struck by a completely 
unexpected blast of raw emotion. I couldn't even say what it was. 
Not pain, not embarrassment, not even sexual in any way. Whatever it 
was it was incredibly overpowering. This was the time to swoon if 
there ever was one. Luckily we were sitting on the floor and Ben's 
hands caught and kept me from slipping sideways. 

Still dazed, I felt a finger touch the mottled, purple and green 
skin, felt the pain of sharp little hooks dig a little deeper. I 
tried to stop the sharp intake of breath but his exploration had 
surprised me. 

"I didn't expect this...I'm sorry.... Oh, Mulder, I'm so sorry." He 
murmured so deep and low that it was as if I could feel the words 
rumbling in my own throat. I could hear the shock in his voice as 
well and feel the misery swelling in his chest and the wetness as 
the silent tears began to slide down his stubbled cheeks. 

He had been sitting behind me all this time. All at one he bent 
forward, moved aside the hair that had grown long and kissed very 
tenderly the back of my neck. I felt the moisture of that kiss on my 
lips, tasted the sweat of our toil in the fields. A flame shot up 
into my head and flooded down into my gut all from that one intimate 
touch.

The sensation was exquisite, the dizziness soaring upwards on the 
soft magnificence of eagle's wings. This sensation I knew.

The flame-golden room had begun to spin in a great swirl of rising 
heat. After a time, however, the turning began to slow and a kind of 
wavery vision returned. I was looking down in horror at the ruined 
back of a lean, broad-shouldered man. It was impossible to know 
whether the skin had been dark or fair because the entire surface 
was covered with thousands of tiny black and purple ulcers that had 
blossomed into one huge, mottled bruise. The destruction was solid 
except for a few inches of nearly spared flesh at the hipline where 
the band of the loincloth would be if he wore one. But he wore no 
trousers, not even a scrape of a ragged bit of cloth to cover the 
most intimate parts. They were just then being cast away. I could 
feel the desert heat from the fire on my own flesh -- arms and 
shoulders, belly and back, loins and legs. We are, both of us, quite 
as naked as two people can be. 

The injured man didn't speak. His head drooping as if in shame -- or 
perhaps surrender. He did not turn at the touch of my hands or the 
feather light caress of tongue and lips when I could a patch of skin 
not too badly damaged. I realized that I am crying, crying softly in 
little whimpers, crying in pity and in wonder and in joy. Pity was 
obvious. Wonder and joy because I could scarcely believe the gift 
I'd been given, that this poor, battered creature was allowing me to 
comfort it. He had been all my desire for so long. It truly was a 
blessing to have something real and important that I could offer. 
And I would be so gentle; though, it would be difficult to be 
patient. There was a fire in my groins and a desperate need to fill 
my hungry arms that had been empty too long. 

Shifting away from my hand that I had laid too heavily on the ruined 
skin, he moaned softly. 'Sorry... sorry... I didn't mean to hurt you.' 
He was crying now, dry sobs in his belly. Beautiful, oh, so 
beautiful. Again he whimpered. I was hurting him. I was doing this 
all wrong. I had planned for so long that I would be kind, but it 
has been months.... I....

Wait... 

I...? No, it was Ben who was going to be the gentle one. I was... I am... 
not Ben. Then why was I seeing... myself? No flayed sailor could ever 
look so bad and yet it appears just the way I thought it would from 
the way it feels. Felt. Felt for the pain was gone, blissfully 
gone.... Because I really am outside myself and that is my body, 
horribly battered thing that it is, and yet I am touching it with 
insistent love-starved hands, hands whose every crease is darkened 
with years of toil in the fields. 

Not my hands, nor my eyes.

Shit! Have to close my mind... back away.... 

It was so hard but at least there was some separation.  That's 
better. There he is. There I am. I could feel hunger but at least I 
knew that it was his and not mine. Poor Ben. He was starving and my 
body was just the food he craved. With alarm, I realized that my 
abandoned husk was not so unresponsive as I thought. Stop. Take a 
deep breath. Close my eyes this time. But they were closed. I was 
looking down into my own face and I could see that my eyes were 
closed. But then how could I see my face?  Keep focused. Remember. 
That's right, the same way that I saw the moonscape of my ravaged 
back and the vulnerable softness of my neck below the hairline that 
Ben kissed.  Because I was seeing through Ben's eyes just as I could 
feel the beating of my heart though Ben's hand. 

A wave of tenderness, headier that a shot of the finest liquor 
underpinned the desperate rift that I was trying to maintain between 
what thoughts were his and what were mine. Oh, fuck, but it was 
hard. And it was hard, I realized with insane amusement. Very hard. 
Hard and long and thick and in real need to do some deep exploring. 
I'm talking Ben here. My hapless wanna-be lover hadn't yet mustered 
the courage to touch mine yet though he longed to. 

The separation between us was gone again, all focus lost in a 
child's fingerpainted swirl. I was Ben more than I was myself. We 
were so helplessly consumed by his lovemaking, our lovemaking, that 
there was no he or I any longer. What in the hell was happening -- 
and I don't just mean the sex, which wasn't bad at all.

And then... BOOM! Like an explosion, all noise and confusion one 
second and gone the next. For an instant a sensation of motion, of 
flying through the air, or Ben was, and then the most terrible pain 
when his head hit the stones of the opposite wall. The shock threw 
me out of his head and back into my own. I knew without a doubt that 
that was true. I don't even need to open to my eyes to be certain 
because the pain in my back and my legs and my butt that had been 
mercifully, if inexplicably, gone for those few blissful minutes, 
was back. What was new was this huge nothingness where Ben's blazing 
desire had been, his -- love, for that's what it was -- and for the 
briefest of agonizing moments, his pain. He must be unconscious, I 
prayed that it was only that. What was left of me besides the 
baseline ache from my sores and the hole where Ben had been was a 
body that, incredibly, was still singing in full appreciation of the 
aroused state it had been left in.

Unfortunately, that extraordinary sensation lasted all of about a 
heartbeat and a half. For now the storm that had torn Ben from me 
descended in full force. In form it was very much like a great 
threatening blackness, the kind that spawns tornadoes. It loomed 
over my head. It bent, it touched me where it shouldn't, or perhaps 
where it should. It ripped an animal growl from my throat that was 
part anguish and part ecstasy. The hands are large and strangely 
cold and all at once they reached for my head and....

I screamed. I wouldn't have chosen to but there was no time to 
prepare. It's like someone has thrown open a door and a terrible 
wind of needle-sharp knives exploded in my direction and every one 
found its mark. The shock was the worst but as that faded there was 
pain enough left. Pain and I have been enemies for so long, however, 
that the sensation was almost like meeting an old friend who you no 
longer care for but with whom you have shared so much. It was one of 
my headaches, one of the worst. Blindly, my hand groped for my 
discarded shirt where I'd sewn a crude pocket to store my 'magic' 
pills, the ones from Mac's friend, the apothecary, that stop the 
headaches flat. The dark storm cloud had stayed with me, however, 
and the shirt was kicked beyond my grasp. Then he placed a heavy-
soled boot on my chest and ground my traumatized back into the dirt. 
Through a red fog I sew Dan Rowe standing over me, and partially on 
me, a satisfied sneer on that face. 

End of Chapter 10a

MY TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY 08: Not Kansas (10b/15)
Sue Esty (AKA Windsinger@aol.com)

MULDER: 
Year 31, Week 9.8, Dale Reckoning (Continued)

"Poor Fox. Headache? I think, however, that you should do without 
your fix for a bit. By the way, did I tell you how highly addictive 
they were?"

And I had been taking more and more, one every time even a ghost of 
a headache appeared on the horizon. I had had too much else to worry 
about. I should have known there would be hell to pay. Guess it 
starts now.

"Very f-funny," I wheezed.

"Not funny at all, as I'm sure you'll find out as your time without 
them goes on."  Seeing that I was not going to struggle, he removed 
his foot and crouched down beside me so I would be sure to catch 
every word. "Ready to talk dates."
 
"Go f-fuck yourself." I actually managed to snarl.

"In truth, I had someone else in mind, but first.... What happened 
here tonight? Do you have any idea at all?"

I hadn't had time to think about it, as rudely interrupted as we had 
been, and it hurt too much to think much now but my suspicions were 
sufficient.  "It's back, isn't it?"
    
"Gold star for you. Yes, it's back. It's been back. You've been 
reading my thoughts on and off since we first met. Didn't you 
realize that that's what the headaches meant? Didn't that devil tell 
you? The mindspeech centers of your brain have been growing back for 
some time. That has to be at least one of the reasons why he sent 
you here. Several of us thought to be mindblind developed modest 
abilities within a year of our arrival. That drug I asked Mac to 
give you eases the transition, lowers the barriers, and sharpens the 
focus. That's why it relieved your special kind of headache. Comes 
from a plant that concentrates certain compound in its leaves. It's 
even better if taken into the lungs, goes straight to the head that 
way. I made certain to burn it in my study when you came to visit. I 
also put a large amount in your fire here when Ben and you were off 
toiling so diligently.  Ben didn't know. He wouldn't have approved. 
Ben has a little of the ability himself, though he tries to deny it. 
It's why your mood swings affect him so. It's also how my spies 
found out about the meadow and the pond and that you would be 
finishing up tonight. Since distance does matter they have to be 
good at lurking about. They are. But nothing we did explains how you 
two were able to bond in such an extraordinary manner tonight. That 
really was something special. I can hardly wait to participate." 

He learned closer, whispering, though each word still felt like a 
booming inside my head. "I was surprised when you told me about the 
mindspeaker colony that you came from. Obviously they don't use the 
drug there, which means that Charley hasn't told. Now that's 
fascinating. I should have realized long ago that he hadn't, 
otherwise they would have been down here long ago harvesting both 
plant and people. Suddenly, we're a lot more valuable than I 
thought."

"He won't d-deal. Neither will I."

His smile was feral. "I wouldn't be so sure of either. You have 
something to protect. He has something to hide. Makes his taking me 
all the more important. And I do want to help my people. Most are 
good people and they deserve better than this. But since I can't do 
anything from here I need to get back. No, don't worry, I won't ask 
you again right now -- waste of time -- and even if you were willing 
to talk now it would be too easy. I'd rather take the time to do it 
right. A year was how long it took the talents of the rest of us to 
make itself known. Bek would wait for that. You're just amazingly 
precocious. So we have till spring..." 

Casually, the old devil began exploring this and that part of my 
naked body. Gratefully, I felt a great deal of nothing, which was 
fortunate since I couldn't have done a thing to prevent him. The 
migraine had set in in full force, obliterating totally the sweet 
singing in my nerve endings. Light blinded, dizzy, and nauseous - 
Jeez, but I felt like shit. 

That was when I heard a moaning from a distance and the shifting of 
a body against stone and earthen floor. Benjamin? How badly was he 
hurt? I had seen/heard/felt the crack of his skull against the wall. 
I wanted to call to him, but I also wanted to leave him outside of 
Daniel's radar for the time being. Besides, those were not the 
sounds that a totally conscious man makes. No, Ben was best where he 
was, which was not close enough for Daniel to easily pull a knife 
on. Dan Rowe knew all too well by now that he could threaten to cut 
off chunks of my flesh and I'd offer to steady the knife for him, 
but touch Ben and I was his -- body if not soul. I'd done far worse 
and would again, maybe even tonight. It really didn't matter. Let 
him play his power games. Just leave me free for tomorrow; just 
leave me free for that and all the rest is dust. I'll deal with the 
psychological impact of Daniel's dirt later.

But that wasn't to be either. 

"You may wonder what brings me here, tonight of all nights," the old 
devil remarked, with a snake's kind of sly pleasure which should 
have warned me of bad things ahead all by itself. "When my 
informants reported that you and Ben had finished slaving in the 
dirt for the season I thought I would come and save you from another 
chilly night on the barn floor. Wasn't I surprised by what I found? 
Don't look so stunned. Surely you remember what I promised so many 
months ago? You and I are going to spend the winter together. Might 
as well start tonight."

No, oh, no. No, NO! 

I made one surge upward, a futile but purely involuntary act and his 
huge hand came down hard on my throat as fast as a striking snake. 

"See that's what I was afraid of, that you'd decide that it was time 
to be difficult. That's why I've decided that the town's no place 
for you. Too open, too public. Besides, too many people would expect 
me to share. Somewhere South, I think."

My insides went cold. I thought that my life had gotten about as bad 
as it could. I was wrong.

He lessened the choking pressure on my throat but the foul imprint 
of those hands remained. "You're a tasty dish as you are, but I 
believe I have patience for a little experiment I've been dying to 
try. I just happen to have all the necessary ingredients. Plus it is 
very, very private here. If it works the way I think it might, it 
will be well worth the wait. Arniesse!"

I had dreaded that this was what he'd meant and damn but I'd been 
right. But Daniel's pet genderswapper was not the only one who 
stepped into the dim stone room. He'd brought five friends if I 
could count the flock that followed him in through the dizzying 
pounding in my head. This time all of them were black-robed like 
carrion crows. None wore female guise. With a convulsive shudder my 
bowels turned liquid but I was too busy being afraid to be 
embarrassed. Daniel only laughed at my shame. "Something finally 
that terrifies you on a very personal level. Very useful." He 
crouched down again and briefly ran a trailing finger along my jaw 
and over one cheek. "For the life of me I don't know why you should 
be so distressed. If this works, you should be even more desirable 
than you are now, not that it would matter a fig to the population 
of old Stony if you were as plain as week old bread."

Headache or no, how I wanted to stick my fist in his smirking face 
and I tried, but fast as that snake again he had my wrists in his 
hands and was pulling my arms over my head. I was working on a bolus 
of spittle, but Arniesse's flock was suddenly swooping down on me as 
if my resistance and the mayor's move had been their signal. I 
didn't know that such young, bored, pretty-boy faces could mirror 
such callus intent.

In a single wave they were on me but it wasn't their soft hands that 
hurt even though a full dozen of them all at once were pressing down 
with all their weight on my face and chest, shoulders and groin, and 
arms and legs. It was the power that surged out from them. A 
glancing touch from Arniesse had numbed my arm for days. Twelve 
solidly placed hands and six determined minds blasted my world from 
its foundations. It was all coming apart again as it had before when 
Charley lost control; muscles went soft and flowed like water, bones 
melted. And it hurt, if that were possible, a thousand times more 
because the attempt was clumsy as they lacked both Charley's god-
like power and control. Not that I was capable of making sense of 
what they intended from their brutal attack. There was just pure, 
horrible pain as my body began to slowly unravel cell from cell. 
There was screaming and then more screaming and all in my voice. The 
cries went on until I knew only that broken sounds and the pain, and 
both followed me down into a well of pure inky dark.
 
End of Chapter 10