go to main “bone of contention” selection page
Bone of Contention by Kel & msk
Title: Bone of Contention
Author: Kel and msk
Email: [email protected] [email protected]
Category: Casefile
Spoilers: season 6ish
Rating: R
Archive: Just ask.
Disclaimer: Not ours. Sigh.
Summary: When an investigation in the middle of nowhere opens old wounds, 2000 miles away becomes too close to home. Can Mulder and Scully unravel the puzzle before they fall apart?
COMMENTS: Huge, huge thanks to MaybeAmanda and Syntax6 for thorough and speedy beta. Thanks to Nell and Linda for invaluable help along the way. Our eternal gratitude also to our own resident veterinarian, the lovely Enigmatic Dr, for beta and technical advice on all things sheep.
Author’s Notes: at end.
Bone of Contention – Part 1
The world’s leading authority on female sexuality was a man. Less surprisingly, he was in Sweden. With the six-hour time difference, Mulder had to call him early in the day. When Scully gathered up some papers and announced that she was “going over to physical anthropology to gloat,” Mulder had his opportunity.
First he locked the door.
“More questions, Mulder? You never seem to like my answers,” said Dr. Eklund.
“You never give me any answers,” Mulder reminded him.
That had been true from the start. Anders Eklund seemed intrigued by Mulder’s inquiries, but he always replied with skepticism and more questions. Mulder sometimes wished that Eklund would speculate, extrapolate, or just plain take a guess, but he never did. Even so, the scientist’s approach to the subject and the questions he raised were always thoughtful and frequently helpful.
“You’re asking me to predict the sequelae for a procedure that does not exist. There is no technique to mature and extract all of a woman’s ova,” Eklund said airily.
He had been hammering on that point since their first conversation.
“Work with me, Anders. Hypothetically, if a woman—” Mulder began.
“The answer, once again, is that I don’t know!”
“Hey, you have to let me ask the question,” Mulder complained.
“You want to know if a woman’s fertility could be restored after the harvesting of all her eggs. You want to know if there would be any physical damage that would interfere with her sexual function. You want to know if she could regain a normal libido—as if anyone could define what that might be.”
“Not this time,” Mulder said. He’d asked those questions and others without satisfaction. Dr. Eklund had become his main source because he was clean, not because he had answers.
“You understand that any of my answers are speculative, since there is no such thing as superovulation,” Dr. Eklund said.
“Unfortunately, there is,” Mulder said.
“So you say. In that case, why don’t you ask your questions of that unfortunate hypothetical woman?”
Mulder glanced at his watch, then at the door. Scully would be gone until noon, if not longer. Nevertheless he lowered his voice.
“I’ve read of brain damage where a person with profound loss of sensation and function can be ignorant of his deficits,” Mulder began. “Even when questioned directly, the victim will invent excuses or simply deny the situation.”
“That is outside of my expertise,” Eklund said.
“I’ve heard that a person who loses his hearing eventually loses the memory of hearing, so that he can’t even imagine what sound is like,” Mulder began.
“I am not a neurologist.”
“So maybe a person, a woman, who had lost the ability to respond in that way, to feel those feelings …”
“Hm,” said Eklund. “She might not even realize there was anything wrong.”
“She might be better off if she didn’t know,” Mulder muttered.
When Eklund answered, his voice was distinctly serious.
“Obviously you don’t want to torment her. She cannot help what she does not have.”
“That’s what I thought,” Mulder said.
“But you can use observation. I take it this woman is someone you know.”
Mulder nodded as he re-checked his watch. “I know her.”
“And you have a frame of reference from behavior before the procedure.”
“Er…” Mulder began. In truth, there were so many variables to his hypothesis, Eklund would probably laugh his ass off. “It’s complicated.”
“Ah, yes. I understand. You’ve been protecting her in case she can’t respond. Perhaps you should offer her something to respond to,” Eklund concluded.
“I could try,” Mulder said.
There was a pause, and then Eklund spoke again.
“I don’t say this to be cruel, Agent Mulder, but there’s another possibility you must consider. Sexuality is so individual, after all. Perhaps you’re just not her type.”
“The bone specimen does not correlate with any known missing persons for a very good reason,” Scully announced. “It’s from a sheep.”
She was presenting her findings to the division of forensic anthropology, more generally known as the “bone boys.” She’d seen them perform miracles of identification from mere chips of skulls or vertebrae, but on this occasion, she was the one who had forced the bone to give up its secrets.
“Now wait a minute. I’ve seen sheep bones before,” said a blond with a receding hairline.
That one was Michael, Scully remembered. Though she’d worked with these people on several occasions, she had to struggle to keep track of the names and faces.
“On gross examination, the morphology of the bone is entirely consistent with human anatomy,” Scully said. “Under the microscope, the pattern of the osteons indicates an animal source. The tissue, in fact, is ovine.” “Dana, you’re too good to be running around in the field. Come to Anthropology and rule us as our queen!” proclaimed Craig Leder.
Leder was the division chief. It had to be a little awkward, for him and the others, that she had been the first to take a slide of the specimen. Nevertheless, they were welcoming her discovery and offering their congratulations.
Scully glowed in their recognition. When it came to forensics, she was the ultimate jack-of-all-trades. She sliced, she diced, she read PET scans, she identified insects. Mulder took it all for granted, but it was … unorthodox. Actually, it was insane.
The bone had stirred considerable interest when it arrived at the FBI. It looked for all the world like a human thigh bone. The size suggested that its source was a juvenile, but the advanced calcification told a different story. To complicate matters further, a couple of marks near the head of the bone hinted at a surgical intervention, now healed. The bone boys had passed it along to Scully hoping she could identify a disease that would explain the oddities. The last thing they were expecting was what she had found.
“Maybe you could give me a few pointers on microscopy,” suggested a man in wire-rim glasses.
“Looking for a private lesson, Jamie?” someone called to him.
Jamie blushed at his co-worker’s jibe, and Scully blushed too. Still, it was fun to be the center of attention. The banter and praise continued until Mulder entered the room.
Scully assumed he came bearing an important message, most probably a new assignment that couldn’t wait. She met his eyes expectantly but saw no urgency. Mulder gave a barely perceptible shrug of the shoulders, then he pulled a chair away from the workbench and took a seat by the wall.
The chatter of the bone boys dropped to a hush. An outsider in a suit was a curious event for them.
“My partner, Fox Mulder,” Scully introduced him. An upward inflection betrayed her own uncertainty regarding Mulder’s presence.
Mulder flashed one of his charming, easy-going smiles. Unfortunately, he also spoke.
“I just dropped in to hear the scoop on your woolly biped.”
“Is this a joke?” asked Michael.
“You know, the sheep that walks like a man.” Mulder must have sensed the hostility around him, but it only seemed to egg him on. “A lonely shepherd boy far from home, a soft, cuddly sheep—”
Scully felt her spirits drop.
“I never implied that the creature was a biped,” she said defensively, stung by Mulder’s mockery. He’d been distracted and uninterested earlier when she’d told him about the odd-ball discovery, but she hadn’t expected him to follow her up to Anthropology to ridicule her in front of her peers.
“Maybe you’re confusing it with bigfoot,” said Michael. “Sorry, Spooky, but we’re scientists.” Not only Michael, but the whole group had closed ranks, emotionally and spatially. Scully found herself surrounded by forensic anthropologists.
Mulder seemed even more the outsider, and he seemed bewildered by the antagonism he’d engendered.
“But if the animal had a hip like a human being … ” He let the question sputter to a halt.
“Maybe it didn’t walk,” offered one of the bone boys. “A crippled individual with a congenital defect … “
“And yet it survived to adulthood,” mused Scully. Mulder had in fact raised a pivotal question.
“Where did the specimen come from? Were any other bones included, or other tissue, or maybe soil samples? Who found it?” Mulder asked. Scully could hear the enthusiasm in his rushed monotone.
“Time out,” snapped Craig Leder. “My budget is barely adequate for our human cases. We all agree this thing’s a sheep.” He looked around as his colleagues nodded their agreement. “Let it drop, Agent Mulder.”
“Aren’t you curious?” Mulder asked.
Leder turned away from him, as if to reject the idea.
“Agent Scully, this bone is perfect to stump the panel at our next convention,” he said to Scully. “You should be there.”
Challenging the experts to identify strange specimens was a standard feature whenever forensic professionals gathered. It was more like a party game than a genuine inquiry. The bone boys were inviting her to their party. Meanwhile, Mulder had shoved his chair back by the workbench and he was watching her from the doorway.
“I’m really not comfortable … ” She wanted to be gracious, but Mulder was retreating from the room and it was difficult to keep her focus. “I’m really not comfortable presenting a specimen before I understand it.”
The group around her seemed to back off. Scully realized how harsh she sounded and softened her tone.
“Can we draw any conclusions about how this animal might ambulate?”
“Our work is based on measurements gathered from hundreds of specimens,” said Jamie. “What you’re asking for would be pure speculation.”
“Understood.” She nodded. “Can we speculate?”
“I don’t really see the point,” Leder said. “Maybe if we get a slow day, I’ll have one of the boys crank out some possibilities.”
Scully sighed in resignation. Earthbound, the bone boys could no more speculate than they could fly.
“Thanks guys. I’ll be in touch.”
What Mulder wanted more than anything was to find a two-legged sheep monster so he could bring it back to the slimy creeps in Forensic Anthropology and let it stomp them to death.
And he would watch and say, “Tough luck, fellas. I guess it can walk.”
What a dull bunch they were. Give them a rib and a jaw, and they were perfectly content to sketch it into a whole person. But give them something entirely new, and they backed off.
Scully was pissed at him for calling her discovery a woolly biped, but at least he was taking it seriously, which was more than you could say for the bone boys. It seemed like a hell of a coincidence that a sheep would just happen to have a deformity that gave it a human hip bone. Mulder wanted to check it out.
So, what did he know about the sheep bone? Not much.
He knew it was from Montana.
Significance? Unclear. Montana had sheep, after all. Sheep, cows, mountains, trout, right-wing survivalists, big-time drug-smugglers …
Perhaps he was being unfair, Mulder thought.
The bone was discovered by a hunter and his dog.
Of course, hunters finding bodies was like UNSUBs turning out to be white males between 20 and 45 years old.
The bone was discovered in a sparsely populated part of the state.
D-uh. If you took everyone in Montana and put them in one room, you still couldn’t call it a crowd.
Mulder turned to his computer. Perhaps there was something in Montana besides sheep, trout, and psychos.
Now, this was interesting. Weymouth Scientific had a major facility in Montana. In the same sparsely populated corner that had produced the sheep bone.
Weymouth Scientific was a name Mulder recognized from the financial pages; the company had rebounded from bankruptcy to become the darling of Wall Street. He was fuzzy on the exact nature of their business; something medical, as he recalled.
He needed to learn more about Weymouth and more about sheep. He could poke around on the Internet, but he was reasonably certain he’d find nothing to explain a human’s thigh on the body of a sheep.
Scully had once expressed admiration for his willingness to sift through files and transmissions that any other agent would just throw in the garbage, but he knew she wouldn’t feel that way if she was watching him now.
He skipped past NAKED FARM GIRLS LOVE THEIR ANIMALS and thousands of references to the cloning of Dolly the Sheep. A link to a university site seemed worth a click, but when it opened, he saw that it was a poem.
Interesting, though. The beginning caught his eye:
“Farm boys wild to couple with anything, with soft-wooded trees, with mounds of earth. mounds of pine straw, will keep themselves off animals by legends of their own…”
He had to laugh. The last thing he’d expected in a poem about bestiality was humor. Then came the legend, the admonition the farm boys shared:
“I have heard tell, that in a museum in Atlanta, way back in a corner somewhere, there’s this thing that’s only half sheep, like a woolly baby pickled in alcohol, because these things can’t live.”
Aha. Maybe he would forward this to the blockheads in Anthropology. With their stunted imaginations, they would accept it for fact. Probably take a field trip to Atlanta.
The poem took another unexpected twist, and the last part was told by the half-sheep itself, dead in a jar:
“I am here, in my father’s house. I who am half of your world…”
Then the poem described the sheep, mother to the sheep-child, seized by something “from another world” and forced to carry within her the creature doomed to die. “Because those things can’t live.”
Mulder remembered another child who was not meant to be.
It was probably a clever poem, startling, maybe, but not upsetting. A morality tale to resist a temptation that wasn’t a temptation, except in legend.
It was about the wild farm boys, not the innocent ewe. The sheep was an object.
Mulder found himself nauseous as he reread the poem.
Scully. Twice they took her and twice they used her for a container. A fuckin’ incubator. Someplace to grow monsters and half-breed babies who had to die.
When Scully entered the office he kept his eyes on his monitor. He wasn’t ready for conversation. Unfortunately, she was.
“Was there a reason for your unexpected visit to Forensic Anthropology?” she challenged him.
“The bone,” he mumbled in reply, slowly raising his eyes to take in her pale, serious face.
Scully frowned.
“When I described the specimen this morning, you couldn’t have been less interested,” she said.
“I was busy,” he said.
“Busy studying the clock,” she countered.
“Yeah, well, I had to make a phone call. Six-hour time difference,” he explained.
“Personal call,” Scully said. “You were waiting for me to leave.”
He didn’t try to meet her eyes.
“Personal,” he agreed.
She continued her inquiry.
“You completed your important personal phone call, and then you decided to follow me to Anthropology so you could ridicule me in front of my peers,” she said.
Scully, here and now and in his face, was a powerful antidote to the memories of Scully frozen and mute. He pointed his finger at her.
“Bullshit,” he said.
“Woolly biped? Was that a phrase chosen for its scientific accuracy?” she asked.
“I don’t care what you call it. I just want someone to tell me what it is,” he said.
“They don’t know,” she said.
“They don’t care. They just want it for show and tell at their next convention,” Mulder said accusingly.
“They have their hands full identifying human remains. An animal specimen takes a lower priority,” Scully said.
“Leaving us to follow up on your discovery,” Mulder said. “That’s what I’m doing now.”
She dropped into her chair, and the confrontation was over.
“Don’t try to snow me. You’re checking out porn,” Scully said.
Mulder remembered what was on his screen and how slow his computer was. He started the log-out process.
“You wanna see? Hot, horny coeds who love to party?”
“I’ll pass.”
Bone of Contention – Part 2
“If the pattern continues, we’ll fly the final leg in a crop duster,” Mulder said. They had spent the entire day in transit, switching from one plane to another. They awaited their last ride in a primitive airport whose only attempt at entertainment was a pinball machine.
“Do we have to talk about airplanes?” Scully asked.
Scully’s vague anxiety about flying had all but disappeared over their many miles flown, but she still didn’t like small planes, especially at night. Mulder was torn between humming “Peggy Sue” and trying to offer some distraction.
“I think we should start our investigation at Weymouth Scientific,” he said.
“Mulder, you’re positively fixated on that company. The bone was found in Montana, and Weymouth is in Montana, but that’s not exactly a smoking gun,” Scully said.
“The bone was found less than thirty miles from Weymouth. Thirty miles, Scully, in a part of the country where there are miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles.”
“And what exactly does that prove? It could be completely coincidental.”
“Weymouth is a medical research company,” Mulder said. “The bone represents a mutation.”
“We don’t know what the bone represents, beyond an odd-looking sheep. It might be a pure coincidence that it resembles a human bone,” Scully said.
She definitely sounded distracted.
“Furthermore, whatever grandiose thing you read on their web site, Weymouth is in the business of making tubes,” she continued. “Not clones, not monsters, not woolly bipeds. Tubes.”
“Tubes?” Mulder echoed.
“Catheters, Mulder. For angioplasty, for epidurals, for nephrostomies. They make tubes,” she said.
“Weymouth was one of the hottest properties on NASDAQ, back in the ‘80’s,” Mulder said.
“Everything was hot back then,” Scully said.
“They began to plummet in 1990. Weymouth bought back thousands of shares, successfully avoiding a meltdown. Prices stabilized and recovered,” Mulder said.
“Do you even know where you’re going with this?” she asked pointedly.
“Here’s a company that that narrowly missed bankruptcy. Now, for reasons unknown, they choose to hide their research center on the edge of civilization. And then we have the sheep bone, an inexplicable mix of human form and sheep DNA, and it turns up in the same remote location.”
“It boggles the mind,” Scully said.
“Sarcasm is easy, Scully.”
“No, really. It boggles the mind that Skinner approved this case.”
“That brings us to my final argument,” Mulder said. “Skinner wasn’t hooked until I brought up the Weymouth angle.”
“Interesting. I don’t suppose he shared the reason for his interest,” she commented.
“All I can tell you is that he was his usual irritable, uninterested self until I dropped the name Weymouth.”
“And then he said, ‘Now it all makes sense. Go get ‘em, Mulder.’”
“Actually, he frowned, sneered, and muttered something that sounded like, ‘Look into it.’ I thanked him and left before he could change his mind.”
“And here we sit,” Scully said somewhat woefully.
Mulder stood and stretched. “I’ll see if someone can tell me how much longer we have to wait.”
If Skinner knew a reason to investigate Weymouth Scientific, he knew more than Scully; if Mulder knew a reason to investigate Weymouth, he hadn’t managed to explain it.
Scully hadn’t bothered to challenge Mulder when he proposed the case because she was sure Skinner would nix it anyway. The joke was on her, and here they were.
She understood Mulder’s motive, if not his logic. He was flipping the bird to the forensic anthropologists. They’d lost interest in the sheep bone and Mulder wanted to show them up. He wanted to demonstrate to Scully that he took her findings seriously, even when her colleagues did not.
She understood her own motive as well—where Mulder went, she followed.
“Women love Mulder,” Langly had said once, in a complaining kind of way. He’d said it to Scully, as if she was something other than a woman herself.
Scully was a woman. Scully did love Mulder.
But it was so much easier for all the other women who loved Mulder, because they didn’t have to put up with him.
He was a rigid man of strong beliefs that changed suddenly, drastically, and unpredictably. He was articulate and verbose, yet on the whole uncommunicative. He told her she completed him, that he couldn’t go on without her. Of course that could be said of his cell phone as well.
“You need to get out more,” her mother once said.
Wonder if Mary Magdalene’s mother ever her told her that. “Mary, you need to get out more. What about that nice boy, Peter?”
Despite his messiah complex, Mulder was not Jesus Christ. Where Jesus cast out demons, Mulder attracted them. Jesus walked on water and Mulder did the crawl. Jesus multiplied the fishes and Mulder flushed them down the toilet and bought more.
But there was one similarity. Neither one of them was the dating type.
Scully sighed. It was all very well to complain that Mulder had a messiah complex, but it was her own choice to build her life around him. It wasn’t her first choice, but it was the best of all the available options. Mulder filled her life without fulfilling her needs. She couldn’t live without him, and he didn’t leave room for anyone else.
Mulder stood leaning against the counter, talking on a desk phone. He hadn’t come back to report on the status of their flight, but he didn’t have to. The noise she thought she was imagining grew into a certainty. An aircraft was approaching.
Mulder rejoined her.
“Good thing I called, or we wouldn’t have a car,” he said.
“Lariat screwed up again.”
“No, the travel office screwed up. Lariat doesn’t have an outlet here, but they booked us anyway.”
“So we’ve finally ventured beyond the realm of Lariat. Does that mean we’ll find a couple of mules tied to a hitching post?” Scully asked.
“Accounting’s gonna bust a blood vessel. I booked us with Avis—that’s all there is.”
“We’d better be damn sure to document that when we submit our expenses,” Scully said. Of course, she was talking to herself. That would definitely be her task.
“Explain about the private jet, too. No scheduled carrier and all that,” Mulder said.
“Private jet?” He hadn’t mentioned that before, and she knew it wasn’t an oversight. Commercial aviation maintained a decent safety record, and had for years. General aviation was spottier. Your life really depended on the integrity of the pilot.
“Sorry.” Mulder’s little nod acknowledged that he’d held off on sharing the unwelcome news.
“I hate when you do this,” Scully said. “You hoard your information until you decide I’m worthy to receive it.”
“You would have worried about it all day,” Mulder said.
“Or maybe I would have made different plans. At least I could have checked out the aircraft and the pilot,” she said. But that wasn’t even the point. Mulder had no business protecting her, if that’s what he thought he was doing. He had no business standing between her and the facts. Besides, protecting her was only part of his rationale. Mostly, Mulder didn’t want to listen to her complaints.
“I said I was sorry.”
He wasn’t off the hook, but this wasn’t the time or place. Judging by the noises from outside, their ride was here. Even if the damn thing was a crop duster with a picture of Patsy Cline stenciled on its nose, she was going to have to get in.
“We might as well go outside,” Scully said. She hoisted the strap from her carry-on over her shoulder as she rose from the bench and set her suitcase on end so it could roll.
She looked up to see that a man had entered the building. His weathered Stetson and brown suede jacket made her think of a cowboy, but logic told her he was probably their pilot.
“At least he’s not wearing a baseball cap,” Mulder muttered under his breath.
“Evening, folks,” the man called. “You must be my passengers.”
“Rock Creek. Is that where you’re headed?” Mulder asked.
“You bet. I’m Brian Yates, and I’ll be your pilot.”
He had a long, easy stride, and he reached Scully’s side in time to relieve her of her luggage.
“Let me help you out, miss,” he said, the very picture of Western chivalry. How refreshing, Scully thought.
He had sandy blond hair and a mustache a little darker. He should lose the stash, Scully thought.
“We’d like to see your maintenance log,” Scully said as they started toward the door.
“It would be my pleasure to show you,” Yates answered.
Rock Creek, Montana, was a strange, strange place. The airport was large enough to accommodate commercial flights, but it didn’t seem to get any. No Avis office, either. That was in town, at the Exxon station.
Avis was willing to pick them up at the airport, but the pilot said it was on his way anyhow and he could give them a lift.
Mulder was about to accept, but Scully beat him to it.
“Thank you, Brian,” she said.
Good thing one of them had remembered his name. Mulder would have probably answered in a John Wayne voice, and he would have said something like, “Much obliged, Slim.”
Naturally Slim drove a pick-up truck.
Mulder tossed his suitcase into the back of the truck, while the pilot did the same for Scully’s bag. When the doors to the cab were unlocked, Mulder waited for Scully to climb in first. If the driver was unsavory or lecherous, Mulder would have taken the middle seat, but Brian appeared to be housebroken. Scully took her place in the middle, and Mulder climbed in after her and closed the door.
“Whoopi Goldberg,” Scully said suddenly.
Mulder eyed her quizzically, but she was turned to the pilot.
“Oh, yes. Definitely,” he agreed.
Apparently Mulder had missed something by napping on the plane.
They drove along through the rugged, rolling terrain. In places the road climbed high to crest the hills, and elsewhere the rock had been blasted aside, leaving sheer walls of red and gray stone. Old Drummond Road ran two lanes east and two lanes west, but for most of the ride they had all four lanes to themselves.
“It’s pretty,” Scully commented.
A few minutes later they passed a sign: Junction 1 Mile, Peyster Road.
“That’s how you get to Weymouth,” the pilot informed them. Mulder wondered if he was passing along some general information or if Scully had mentioned their interest in the company.
“Do you ever fly for them?” Mulder asked.
“Sure.”
“Weymouth maintains a small corporate fleet, but mostly it serves the eastern office. Brian picks up a large share of the work from the Rock Creek research center,” Scully explained.
There was a “yield” sign where Peyster Road crossed Old Drummond Road, but no one to yield to. They drove on.
“Sure you have enough gas to make it to the service station?” Mulder asked.
Brian laughed.
Mulder had called it the edge of civilization, but that didn’t do it justice. It was more than the middle of nowhere, it was the essence of nowhere, a paragon of nowhere.
“Maybe next time you could set us down a little closer,” he complained.
“Not in a fixed-wing I can’t.”
“Honestly, Mulder. We’d take at least this long to get home from Dulles,” Scully reminded him.
She was right, and he’d probably complain about all the traffic. But this was disturbing.
When they reached the Exxon at last, Mulder felt actively relieved to see other cars and other people.
“We’re staying at the Silvermine Inn,” Scully said when Brian stopped the truck by the service station office.
“Only game in town,” Brian said. “It’s another eight or nine miles down the road.”
Scully slept well through the night but awoke in the morning feeling uneasy. She had an unpleasant task ahead of her, and it had nothing to do with the investigation.
She had to tell Mulder.
What was so hard about that? Just look him in the eye and say it:
“I have a date tonight.”
It wasn’t as if she owed him an explanation. They weren’t married. They weren’t anything. Really, why make a point of telling him at all? It might never come up.
But it would. After they talked to whoever they were going to see at Weymouth Scientific, maybe poked around in the area where the bone was found, and whatever—at the end of the day Mulder would want to get something to eat. He would expect Scully to come along.
She didn’t want to lie to him, nor was it a practical solution. Omission was one thing, but bald deception was another.
Scully reminded herself that she hadn’t done anything wrong. She had been invited to dinner by a handsome, charming, intelligent man, and she had accepted. The only reason she felt so peculiar about it was because she was out of practice.
She was surprised when Brian Yates asked her out, and even more surprised to hear herself agree. She could barely remember the last time she’d been on a date. It would be fun. Pointless, but fun.
She pulled on her robe and walked across the hallway to rap on Mulder’s door. Worrying about how to tell Mulder was taking up way too much of her attention; she would just do it and get it over with.
All that resolve, and Mulder wasn’t even in his room. Scully went back to her own room, determined to stop ruminating about her date and to deal with the investigation ahead. A phone call to Weymouth Scientific secured an appointment with the director of the lab. She dialed again and touched base with Rock Creek’s sheriff. Satisfied, she stepped into the shower.
She hurried herself along her morning routine. Mulder could return from a run and be cleaned up and ready to go in a matter of minutes, and Scully didn’t want to be the one who held them up.
Her efforts came to a halt because she didn’t have her toothpaste. She knew exactly where it was; at home, in a zippered bag, along with several other essentials. She’d brushed with tap water the previous night, but it wasn’t very satisfactory.
Toothbrush in hand, she went back across the hall, and this time Mulder opened the door to her knock.
“I need to borrow some toothpaste,” she announced.
“Only if you don’t try to return it,” he answered, stepping aside to let her into the room. He was buttoning the cuffs of his shirt, and his damp hair was pushed back on his head, except for the few places where clumps of it stood on end.
“You sound positively chipper,” she said. He’d been such a grouch the night before, mouthing off about the long drive from the airport.
“Spectacular place for a run. No traffic.”
Scully found Mulder’s toothpaste by the bathroom sink and squeezed a bit onto her brush.
“I found where they’re hiding the people,” Mulder continued. “If you keep heading east there’s a road down into the valley. Mostly newer construction, but some big old houses too.”
Scully rinsed her mouth.
“I reached one of the directors at Weymouth. He’ll see us this morning,” she told him.
“I was expecting more resistance.” Mulder sounded disappointed. He was sitting on the bed when she exited the bathroom.
“Ready in five minutes?” she asked, and he nodded distractedly. She was all the way to the door when he called to her.
“Scully? You look really nice.”
She didn’t even have her make-up on yet. Maybe that was his point.
“Thanks,” she said uncertainly.
Ten minutes later they were in the car, heading to the research center. This time they had to share the road with a scattering of other motorists. Probably people from the houses Mulder had discovered, heading for their jobs at Weymouth Scientific.
“Who did you talk to?” Mulder asked.
“Dr. Sage Revere, director of research. I told him we were interested in their use of animals, and he invited us for a tour,” Scully said.
“Snow job,” Mulder predicted.
“You’re just disappointed that you don’t have an excuse to break in.”
“What does that mean?”
She’d intended her statement as a joke, but Mulder’s tone had that snotty edge that meant he was offended. Too bad; she had no intention of backing down.
“If he’d refused to see us you’d say he had something to hide. He agreed to let us in, so you’re sure it’s a snow job. Why do we need to talk to him at all? You have it all figured out.”
“I’ll explain it to you.” He couldn’t have sounded more pedantic. “We’ll follow along on his orchestrated tour and hang on every word he says. There’s nothing more seductive than an attentive audience. If he has something to hide, he’ll slip.”
Mulder was so damn sure of himself. So positive that Revere was going to lie to them. Maybe Revere would take them directly to his lab to meet with Woolly the Wondersheep.
“Don’t tell him you’re a doctor. Don’t say anything smart. Just smile and nod.”
“Do you want me to flirt with him?” she asked acidly.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he answered, appearing to be vaguely amused at the concept. Scully had to restrain herself from punching him.
Dr. Sage Revere turned out to be as smooth and elegant as his name and diction. He greeted them with a mixture of cordiality and bemusement. He was the host who was too well-bred to mention that he hadn’t invited you.
“Perhaps you could share the reason for this visit,” he said, but Scully sidestepped, and he didn’t push for an answer.
“I crewed with a Chuck Mulder at Dartmouth. From Chappaqua,” he told Mulder expectantly.
“The Chappaqua Mulders.” Mulder nodded knowingly. “Yes.”
Revere’s smile froze.
“Well then,” he said. “Let’s begin our tour.”
The scientist removed his suit coat and folded it over the back of his chair. He took a white lab coat from a coatrack and donned it.
Scully had worked with researchers who took pride in their ragged, stained lab coats. Revere was from the other school; his lab coat was impeccably white, with a colorful crest on the shoulder bearing the “Weymouth Scientific” logo.
She and Mulder followed him into the elevator, then through a heavy door into a room with rows of small glass tanks.
“We’re very proud of these fellows,” Dr. Revere said fondly as he lifted the top off one of the tanks.
Mulder pushed closer, seemingly fascinated. Scully wondered if he expected Revere to pull a sheep out of the tank.
Revere opened a pack of latex gloves and put them on carefully.
“Have a look,” he said. He reached into the tank and drew out a flat brown worm. “Leeches. Used medically to enhance perfusion.”
“You’re kidding!” Mulder was good. Anyone would think he adored bloodsucking worms.
Meanwhile, Scully was biting back a yawn. There was nothing revolutionary about applying leeches to reverse venous congestion after certain surgeries or injuries.
“Can I hold it, or will it bite me?” Mulder asked.
Revere pointed to the box of gloves, and Mulder turned the art of putting on gloves into a display of clumsiness.
Mulder the naive science groupie. Don’t be afraid, Mr. Scientist. I’m just a buffoon.
For the rest of the morning, Scully kept her eyes open and her mouth shut while Mulder peppered the lab director with questions.
He sounded like a ten-year-old on speed, Scully thought. What do you feed the mice? Can we go in there? Do you have any monkeys? What’s behind that door? Can I pet the cow? The questions were meant to sound pointless, but Scully knew what he was doing. Gradually his oblique approach was revealing the shadows in the landscape, the subjects and locations that were discouraged or forbidden.
Scully couldn’t bring herself to join in on Mulder’s chorus of wows and gee-whizzes, but neither did she point out that Weymouth’s idea of research seemed to be a rehash of well-established technology.
The Weymouth employees went about their business quietly, glancing up from clipboards or monitors only long enough to note the presence of the lab director and the two strangers. A team of security guards in blue blazers followed them along at a respectful distance.
Around noon, Revere glanced at his watch, gave a tight, humorless smile, and announced that regrettably he had an important meeting to attend.
“Okay if we poke around on our own?” Mulder asked innocently.
“That would be neither safe nor appropriate,” Revere said. The two guards moved closer until they were at his side.
“Perhaps we can continue the tour later?” Scully suggested. It was almost the first time she’d spoken.
“I’ve been more than generous with my time,” Revere said. “You’ve been less than candid regarding your purpose here.”
It was a strangely civilized confrontation, because everyone, including the guards, continued to smile.
“We’re interested in your work with sheep,” Scully injected hurriedly.
“Sheep,” Revere echoed.
“A very unusual sheep,” Mulder said.
The guards had advanced until they were flanking Mulder and Scully.
“We have some information that we’d like to share. And some questions. We can have this cleared up in a matter of minutes,” Scully said.
Revere seemed to consider.
“Two o’clock. I’ll hear what you have to say.”
Bone of Contention – Part 3
It was a number he rarely called, but Sage Revere knew it by heart.
A Chicago area code, although he didn’t believe the party was really in Chicago. It didn’t matter; the phone would ring unanswered, and minutes later, someone would call him back.
When Revere was approached by the shadowy investors’ group almost a decade ago, he’d asked many questions and received very few answers. In the end, he’d accepted their offer of a financial bail-out despite his misgivings. In exchange for their dollars and their demonstrated political clout, he agreed to use his knowledge and his company to pursue certain pet projects.
Revere’s biggest mistake had been in believing that Weymouth Scientific represented the syndicate’s only investment in the biomedical research sector. Weymouth was one of many medical and pharmaceutical companies that the investors controlled, and it was far from the largest. Weymouth’s big project, which seemed so audacious to Revere, was really only a little training exercise. The investors had no stake in the outcome, except as a test. Success would give Weymouth—and Revere—a chance to be part of the real work.
Success at the trial project would prove his competence. It would also prove his capacity to expand his personal morality past the conventional limitations. It was a painful process, but once begun, it couldn’t be abandoned.
Revere’s call-back was prompt, as always, but the voice on the phone was a new one.
“Good afternoon, Dr. Revere.”
The voice seemed very young. Revere surmised that the investors’ group inevitably assigned the Weymouth account to their most junior employee.
“I have visitors from the FBI asking about sheep. Your organization is supposed to spare me that kind of annoyance.” He shaded his accusation with an undertone of arrogance. The syndicate might be huge and mighty, and Weymouth might be their merest pawn, but Revere himself was a man of distinction, and the man on the phone sounded more like a boy.
“You have safeguards in place, doctor.” Young or not, he sounded self-assured and disinterested.
“Safeguards?” Revere echoed. He knew of no safeguards, beyond the protection of the investors’ group.
“Hold on, please.” After a couple of minutes of silence, the young man got back on the line. “Project Zero is to be isolated at all costs.”
“I’m aware of that,” Revere said.
“The rest of your work is expendable.”
Revere felt his chest tighten. The investors’ syndicate had pledged to shield his company from poking and prying by the government. He was not going to be brushed aside by a lackey.
“I want to talk to Mr. Terranova,” Revere demanded.
Terranova, the top man at the syndicate. Revere saw him a few tense and nervewracking times a year when he came out to inspect the program.
“He’s unavailable. Look, Dr. Revere, there’s really no problem. They’re asking about sheep. You have sheep to show them.”
“Show them the sheep? Just give them up?” Revere asked.
“Appease them. Your secondary experiments were chosen for that purpose.”
Revere saw considerable potential in those experiments and significant grief if he shared them with government investigators.
“There will be consequences,” he said.
“Our problem, not yours. It will be handled.”
“Why wasn’t I forewarned? More to the point, why wasn’t the investigation quashed at the source?”
“Since you’ve somehow caught the attention of the FBI, you should be asking yourself where your own security has failed. Look to yourself, doctor, and those around you. Either someone’s been careless or you’ve been betrayed.”
“He’s hiding something, Scully.”
Mulder unwrapped his ham and cheese on slightly stale white bread and took a bite. Pickings in Rock Creek were somewhat slim, so lunch was courtesy of the Exxon Mini-mart, brought back to Weymouth Scientific’s parking lot where Mulder positioned them stakeout style with a view of the front door.
“I agree,” she said, reaching into the paper bag on the seat between them. “I’m just not sure he’s hiding what you think he’s hiding.”
Scully sighed as she spread the paper napkin over her lap with exaggerated care and unwrapping her turkey on wheat. He knew she hated eating meals in the car. Mulder wasn’t unsympathetic, but for him, this was a step up from eating dinner standing over his sink.
“If it isn’t ‘Ovis Erectus,’ what is Revere trying to conceal?”
“Medical research is a cut-throat business, Mulder. Scientists guard their work like a shepherd does his flock.” At Mulder’s grimace of disbelief, she went on. “Revere could be hiding a dozen things that the scientific community would consider heinous and none of them are necessarily a tap-dancing sheep.”
“Baaaaa,” he bleated, leaning close enough to smell the light citrus scent of her shampoo. She pushed him firmly back into his own airspace.
Scully bit into her sandwich, grimacing slightly as she reached for her coffee. Mulder smiled in sympathy; his sandwich was pretty dry too, distinguished only by its utter tastelessness. He washed another bite down with a gulp of barely cold soda.
Mulder rolled down his window allowing a blast of crisp, autumn air to flood the car.
“Ahhh,” he said, taking a deep breath. “Gotta love that fall smell.”
Scully shot him an annoyed look as she pulled her jacket closer around her. Shivering, she cradled her coffee cup between her palms. “Mulder, it’s 50 degrees out there.”
“Bracing, isn’t it? Reminds me of fall back East. Bonfires, football games, making out under the bleachers. Those were the days.”
“Reliving your youth?”
“To be honest, it wasn’t much fun the first time. But I do miss some things,” he said, wistfully. He fidgeted with the plastic wrap from his sandwich. If you want to go fishing, he thought, you have to cast out your line. “So, Scully…did you date a lot in school?”
“What?” she asked, turning sharply to face him. “Where did that come from?”
“Just trying to pass the time. So, did you? Date, I mean.”
“In high school? Not much,” she said, shaking her head. “I was a bit of a bookworm.”
“Me either. I was awkward around girls—six feet tall, one hundred fifty pounds worth of teenage insecurities. Ate, slept and breathed basketball.” His mouth was already dry when he swallowed the last of his sandwich. “I didn’t come into my own until college. How about you?”
“Still on the dating thing?” she asked, shooting him a curious glance. At his ‘go on’ gesture, she continued. “Okay. I went out more often in college and med school. But by the time I was in my residency, what I craved wasn’t a man, but a full night’s sleep.”
And now she lived like a nun. With a gun. Might as well reel in the fishing line. “What do you miss about it?”
“Mulder,” she said, her expression becoming more unsettled. She stalled for time, taking a sip of coffee. “What’s up with you today?”
“I told you, just passing the time. Go on—what do you miss?”
Scully placed her cup in the car’s plastic holder and sat back, arms folded across her chest. “I don’t know…getting dressed up, I guess.”
“That’s what you miss?”
“Yeah. I used to really enjoy getting ready to go out for the evening—taking time with my hair and makeup, choosing what outfit I’d wear, pulling out special clothes I couldn’t wear to work.”
Mulder pictured a fishing line pulled out of a cool, blue lake, swinging empty in the bright sunlight. He had no clearer picture of pre-abduction Scully as a sexual being than he had before his fishing expedition. Maybe if he took a different approach—asked a more specific question.
A simple direct question about her sexuality. That’s what he needed. By the way, Scully, how often do you masturbate?
Yeah, right.
Mulder cleared his throat.
“Scully—” he began.
“It’s two o’clock,” she said, stuffing her half-eaten sandwich back in the paper bag. “Let’s go look for your sheep.”
“Research today is about politics as well as science. It’s not enough to gain knowledge; you have to win the hearts and minds of the public,” Revere said.
“People who don’t think twice about eating a hamburger burst into tears over a fur coat,” Mulder commented.
“It’s sentimentality without logic,” Revere said.
Revere and Mulder were walking ahead, and Scully felt as if she was scampering to keep up.
“You said you could explain the bone specimen,” she said, mostly to assert her presence.
“The sheep bone.” Revere sounded polite and cultured, with no trace of his earlier irritation. “We do use sheep in some of our work.”
“Why sheep?” Scully asked. Pigs and cows were fairly common as research subjects, but sheep were not.
“The femoral artery is the same size in man and sheep,” Revere answered, “which presents certain opportunities when it comes to the development of medical devices to be used in humans. The artery is superficial in humans, making it relatively straightforward as an entry point to other arteries, or the heart. In standard sheep, it is considerably deeper.”
“Standard sheep,” Mulder repeated, and Scully knew he was thinking about Ovis Erectus.
“I’m going to show you something that might look startling, or even cruel,” the scientist said. “I want to explain that the first of these sheep resulted from a spontaneous mutation. Weymouth’s role was not to create these animals, but only to recognize their potential for use in medical research.”
And to breed more of them, Scully thought.
Revere had brought them to a large door. Black stenciled letters declared “Restricted Access,” and a keypad lock reinforced the point. Revere paused before he opened it.
“How you felt about animal testing in general?” he asked.
“Hey, if you’re the dominant species, go ahead and flaunt it,” Mulder said.
“Animal testing is justified when there are no adequate alternatives and it is conducted humanely,” Scully said.
“Which is also our philosophy at Weymouth Scientific. Now, these sheep may look peculiar, but there’s nothing to suggest that they’re not as happy and healthy as any other sheep,” Revere said.
He opened the door.
There was straw on the ground, and the bleating of sheep in the air.
“It’s necessary to use some ingenuity to duplicate the conditions we’d find in human use,” Revere explained.
Scully was riveted by what she saw, and she barely registered his words.
There were eleven of them, these mutated sheep. Four were on the ground, three with their back legs stretched out behind them as they supported themselves on their forelegs. The fourth was actually sitting, its legs splayed in front of it. When one of the sheep took a few steps, its rear legs dragging uselessly as it walked.
Three of the sheep were hanging from harnesses, munching contentedly from a rack of feed.
The final four sheep were also held in harnesses, but their hind limbs were locked in braces. A clunking machine forced them to march in place.
Scully took it all in, trying to imagine what a life like this would mean to an animal. At the same time, she felt a reasonable certainty that she’d found the source of the peculiar bone. These crippled sheep might very well have humanoid femurs.
“We rotate them through the three phases. That maintains them and also mimics, at least roughly, the human experience,” Revere said.
“What are you testing?” Scully asked.
“As I explained, these are useful for anything that is inserted via the femoral artery,” Revere said. “It’s solid, responsible work, but it looks cruel and bizarre.”
“I suspect an x-ray of those sheep would prove a match with our bone specimen,” she said flatly.
“I’ll save you the trouble,” Revere said. “We are prepared to accept full legal and financial responsibility for violating government regulations.”
“We have more questions,” Mulder said hurriedly.
“I have some of my own,” Revere replied. “I expect a full account of where the bone was found, and by whom, and of how it made its way to the FBI. By our own policy, medical waste should be burned completely in our on-site incinerator. I need to learn how and why our policy was breached.”
“Dr. Revere, I understand your desire to bring this matter to a close—” Scully began, but he interrupted her with a preemptive wave of the hand.
“If you check with your superiors, you’ll find that arrangements are already in place. We’ve offered a generous settlement and the FBI will make available the information we need to repair the obvious flaws in our waste disposal plan.”
He was probably telling the truth, Scully thought. It wouldn’t be the first time Mulder and she had been undercut by their own agency.
“Hey, how about those leeches? Think we could see them once more?” Mulder asked.
Good try, she thought. Stall for time and maybe he’d miraculously stumble on old Ovis Erectus pouring herself a cup of coffee in the break room.
“Let’s go, Mulder.”
Her partner nodded in agreement, and Scully felt uneasy. Logically, their work was done. They had found the source of the puzzling thigh bone, and they even had an admission of wrongdoing from the medical company.
“I guess there’s nothing left to do but write up the reports,” she offered tentatively.
“Well, as long as we’re here, Scully…” Mulder began.
“Yes?”
“We might as well have a look at the spot where the bone turned up.”
“I talked to the sheriff this morning. It’s kind of out of the way,” she said. “I don’t really see the point, Mulder.”
“Nice walk in the woods? I bet it’s beautiful. Wild, unspoiled…”
“I suppose I could call Sheriff Morris again and ask him to meet us,” Scully said.
“That’s okay. I took care of it.”
“Thanks for letting me know,” she said sourly.
“I did let you know. Just now.”
Wonderful. If only he’d let her know earlier, she could have brought a change of shoes. Her low-heeled boots looked casual enough for a walk in the woods, but the soft leather would be ruined.
They’d probably be hiking around the wilderness right up until dinner time, and there was still the matter of her date. She still hadn’t mentioned it to Mulder. If she put it off much longer, Mulder would get the news from Brian himself.
Tom Morris turned out to be a suit-and-tie sheriff, older and more citified than Mulder expected from their brief phone conversation. He drove them out of Rock Creek along the ubiquitous Peyster Road, past Weymouth Scientific finally turning off onto a dirt road.
Actually, “road” was a rather ambitious term. It was more of a dirt path, a scrabbled-out track, a furrow. Morris’ cruiser bumped along the ruts until Mulder was sure the fillings in his teeth had come loose.
“We’ll have to go the rest of the way on foot,” Morris said, stopping the car. The path had deteriorated into nothing but rocks and vegetation. They got out of the car, and Mulder hoped Scully was wearing shoes that were suitable for hiking. He’d certainly hear about springing this on her if she turned an ankle in high heels.
Scully glared at him as they picked their way along behind the sheriff as he moved through the brush. He chanced a look down at her feet. Low heels. He was safe.
“Fella was out here from California hunting deer, when his dog started rooting around in that clearing ahead.”
Sheriff Morris led them beneath a bower of branches to a spot where the sunlight poured down on a floor of ferns and small rocks.
“County coroner thought it was a child’s bone at first, but it couldn’t have been because we don’t have any children missing around here.”
Mulder knew Scully would bust if he didn’t challenge the sheriff’s logic.
“The victim wouldn’t have to be a local child,” he said mildly.
“Of course, of course. But we’re over an hour to the interstate, further still to the rail line. When there’s a stranger in town, I know about it,” Morris said.
“So you contacted the FBI?”
“Yeah. Just to be on the safe side. I honestly didn’t think I’d hear back on it. So, you said the bone was from a sheep.”
“You find that surprising?” Mulder asked, watching Scully out of the corner of his eye.
“Well, yeah. This is cattle country. You don’t find many people raising sheep in this part of the state.”
Bone of Contention – Part 4
“Getting ready for your big date?” Mulder asked. He was lounging on the bed in Scully’s hotel room while she finished applying her makeup in the bathroom.
“You do have your own room, don’t you, Mulder?” she called back through the open door.
Half an hour ago, he’d poked his head into her hotel room to ask her where she wanted to eat. She’d answered casually that she had plans. Very, very casually. He must have looked like an idiot with his mouth wide open.
“You have plans?” he’d asked.
“I have plans,” she’d answered.
“And may I ask with whom?”
“Brian Yates.”
He’d almost laughed then, which would have been a huge mistake. Scully had watched him with some curiosity, waiting for a reaction. Mulder would be damned if he gave her one; he’d kept his expression as neutral as possible.
Scully was a lousy liar. Couldn’t con her way into a kid’s party, much less a government facility. No, she always let him do the talking because she was as transparent as a pane of glass. What the hell was she up to, trying to pump a suspect for information? She was always protesting that his techniques were unorthodox, unethical, and unprofessional. Not that she didn’t reap the benefits when he bluffed his way past the various gatekeepers and guards.
Not that Yates was a suspect. He didn’t work for Weymouth Scientific, but he flew for them often. He’d know who came and went around the facility. Scully had obviously gotten to know him pretty well while Mulder had caught up on his sleep. Stupid, stupid nap.
He should have seen the signs. Scully, smiling as she handed her suitcase to that overgrown Ken doll in a Stetson—the woman who prided herself on carrying her own weight letting the big, strong man take over. Where the hell was her pride?
And then there was the flirting. Scully didn’t flirt. That was one thing he could bank on. Mulder’d been oblivious at the time, but thinking back, there was a considerable amount of sidelong glances and breathy laughter.
Mulder looked down at his shoes. Scully would yell at him for putting them on her bedspread. He frowned. It wasn’t like they were muddy or anything.
“I wanted to discuss the case with you. We asked simple questions, and instead of giving us an answer, they tried to dazzle us with bullshit,” he said, picking at a loose thread on her bedspread. What we could have talked about over dinner. If she wasn’t going out with that damn flyboy.
“What? I can’t hear you,” she called back over the sound of the water running in the sink.
Mulder was too lazy to get up off the bed, but he raised his voice.
“They’re trying to con us with fancy footwork and decoy sheep.”
“Decoy sheep?” she asked, leaning around the bathroom door. She looked different, somehow. Her eyes were sparkling. He didn’t like that one bit. “Now that’s a phrase you don’t hear every day.”
“They didn’t show us everything, Scully.”
She retreated into the bathroom again. Mulder pulled at the thread, watching as a hole developed in the spread.
“I don’t doubt that, Mulder,” she called out. “I told you before, scientists are very protective of their work.”
“What do you think you’re going to find out from Yates?” he asked.
“What are you talking about, Mulder?” Scully had left the bathroom, hands on her hips. She wore a white blouse and black skirt. Clothes he’d seen dozens of times before, but somehow, tonight, they looked different. Softer.
“I know what you’re planning. You’ll ply him with liquor until he spills his secrets,” Mulder said. “Just remember, he’s looking to do the same thing to you.”
“You do have your own room, don’t you? Or maybe you could go sit in the lobby,” she asked, sounding distinctly unamused.
“Be careful, that’s all. I won’t be more than a couple of minutes away,” he said.
“Get that right out of your mind, Mulder. You’re not going to follow me,” Scully said.
“You need backup, Scully. I don’t know where you got this idea in the first place. You’re not exactly Mata Hari material.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Mulder?” she asked, her voice sharp and raised in anger. When she continued, her voice was lower, but the anger unmistakably remained. “It’s not a mission. It’s a date. Nothing more, nothing less. Dinner between consenting adults.”
Scully on a date. Damn it, they didn’t date. Wasn’t that in the Mulder and Scully rule book? On the same page as suggested activities to pass the time while you sit by your partner’s hospital bed and how to check for surveillance equipment.
Apparently, Scully had tossed out the rule book at the sight of Brian Yates striding through the airport. Tall, tan, and reassuring. Confidence in a cowboy hat. “Hi there, folks. I’m Brian Yates.” And all of a sudden Ms. “I’d Like to See Your Maintenance Log” had no problem getting in that tiny little plane.
Like a fool, Mulder had used the flight to catch up on his sleep.
“It’s a real date? Not part of the investigation?” he asked, still reeling from the news. “Cause you—we—don’t really date that much.”
“I’ve noticed,” she said, turning to face him.
“What happened to your face?” Mulder asked haltingly.
“You don’t like it?” she asked.
“Do you did want my honest opinion?” he asked. He wanted to scrub the smooth matte finish right off her skin to expose the dusting of golden freckles.
“No,” Scully said. She picked up her necklace from the dresser, the cross glinting in the light, and held it around her neck. “Can you close it for me?” she asked.
Hands shaking slightly, he leaned down, almost touching his nose to her neck.
“Drakkar,” he said. “That’s mine.”
“I didn’t pack any cologne,” she said apologetically. “Do you mind?”
The clasp caught, and he stepped away.
“Have a good time,” he said.
Mulder had nothing to worry about, he told himself.
Brian Yates was a pilot, and Scully really didn’t like airplanes.
Brian Yates lived in Montana, and Scully lived in DC.
Brian Yates suffered from halitosis, impotence, and uncontrollable flatulence. Most likely.
But it was really okay, Mulder decided. Nothing more than a wake-up call. If Scully wanted to keep company with a man, that was fine. Mulder’d just have to find a way to remind her that he himself was a man.
He’d half convinced himself she’d closed that part of herself off—or that it had become closed off because of the things they’d done to her. His nightmares offered him the choicest images of violation: her belly distended obscenely, the whirring drill piercing her; red hair floating in aspic as her eyes stared unblinking and her body incubated a monster.
He refused to contemplate what this date meant.
Instead of watching the clock and wondering when Scully would get back, he would use his time productively, digging the dirt on Weymouth Scientific.
Breaking and entering usually called for the basic black get-up that Scully referred to as his suicidal-jogger look, but today he stuck with a suit and tie. He armed himself with the customary gun, flashlight, utility-knife combo, then added a camera and a key card, which had conveniently found its way into his possession during the official tour. More than half the access codes in the world are 1-2-3-4, but not this one. He’d watched carefully as the crafty crew at Weymouth punched in 2-3-4-1.
The parking lot was almost a quarter full although it was eight o’clock. His car would not attract unwanted attention. The key card opened the front entrance and he proceeded to the elevator bank without interference. The elevator indicators showed some activity at the upper levels, but almost nothing in the lower half.
Because Mulder had been patient and alert, listening for nuance and fact amid Revere’s overblown PR, he had a destination: Level three.
The elevator made the stop but didn’t open. A keyhole next to the button told the story. Mulder rode the elevator up another floor.
The fourth floor was quiet and dark. He found the exit to the fire stairs protected by an alarm bar. The other doors along the corridor were locked. When he heard an elevator stop and slide open, he ducked against a doorway, holding his breath as a woman emerged, dragging along a cart with a bucket and mop. She opened one of the locked offices and rolled her cart inside. At the sound of water hitting the floor, he edged toward the room to have a look. Maybe there was a way to snag her elevator keys.
The woman had pushed her cart to the far corner of the room to begin her cleaning. If that’s where she kept her keys, he was out of luck. Instead, he returned to the elevator.
Much better luck here. The elevator car remained in place with the door open. Inside he found a ring of little keys hanging from a lock in the button panel. Mulder stepped into the car, turned the key, and took it down to level three.
A different key released the door. He pocketed the whole set before exiting into an area that smelled like a barn. Using his key card to open a heavy door, Mulder was greeted by a noisy hum of clanks and rumbles.
The corridor was wide, and the doors on either side were wide as well. He pushed on a door, startling a white-haired man in a lab coat who had been engrossed in the display on his computer monitor.
“Restricted area,” he barked indignantly.
“Are you talking to me?” Mulder asked. He had made a career of entering places he didn’t belong, and his instincts told him that this man would respond to a bully.
“This area is supposed to be off limits,” the technician said apologetically.
“And yet here I am. Doesn’t that tell you something?” Mulder asked arrogantly.
“It’ll only take a sec for me to check back with security,” the man said, reaching for the phone. “Usually somebody lets me know in advance.”
“Your injured feelings don’t concern me,” Mulder said. “You’re supposed to be ready at all times.”
“It’s not that—” the man started to explain, but Mulder cut him off.
“So far you haven’t impressed me,” he said, and the man shrugged helplessly.
“Gray door at the end of the hall,” he said. “Do you want me to go with you?”
Mulder gave a small sneer as he shook his head.
The gray door wasn’t locked, but it was unexpectedly heavy. Mulder put on some vinyl gloves before he pushed it open and entered a large, dim room full of equipment. Long fluorescent tubes glowed on the ceiling, but most of the light flickered from monitors and digital displays.
The room was full of electronic gadgets, with one wall taken up entirely by what appeared to be a series of computer terminals and television screens. Near the center of the room was a large rectangular tank resting on a platform.
The machinery closest to the tank seemed different in character from the other equipment. The noises from these machines were not the artificial pings and hums of electronic devices but the clunks and whirs of moving parts. Rhythms melded and clashed.
The tank dominated the scene like the coffin at a wake. Mulder fished his camera from his pocket as he approached it.
Thick hoses and bundles of wires snaked over the top of the tank connecting with the machines surrounding it— An aquarium run amok. He got an impression of green gel inside, but maybe the walls of the tank were green.
He was close enough to touch the tank, and the smooth warm surface clinked like glass when he tapped on it. He could see there was something moving inside.
The thing in the tank might be a sheep, but Mulder really couldn’t see it well enough to decide. It could be a goat; it could be a dog. If the tank was open on top, he’d have a better view from above. He could probably get enough of a toe-hold on the platform to hoist himself up.
He stuffed the camera back in his pocket in preparation, but he wasn’t keen on making the climb. Stalling, he wiped the glass with his gloved hand, vainly hoping for a clearer view.
He heard a scuffling noise from inside the tank, followed by a phlegmy gurgle. The form in the tank pressed up against the glass and then retreated. Something pressed against the glass, matching itself to where Mulder’s hand was pressed.
Matching itself finger to finger, its hand against his.
The thing in the tank had hands.
When Mulder heard the heavy door open he realized that he hadn’t photographed his discovery. He should have done that right away, and he should have instructed the white-haired technician to remain at his station.
“I’ll need your name for my report,” Mulder said curtly as he raised his camera to his eye. When he felt a hand on his shoulder he knew it was not the white-haired technician.
“Wait for me outside,” Mulder said imperiously, but it didn’t work. Shit, Whitey must have called security after all.
Hands gripped him from behind and a soft mask pressed against his face. The vague shape in the tank, with its hand against the glass, blurred and doubled until blackness washed over everything.
Bone of Contention – Part 5
Maybe Scully had sworn herself to chastity, somewhere along the line, and she just didn’t remember.
It wasn’t as stupid as it sounded, she decided. Maybe under torture by government doctors. Or how about one of the times she thought Mulder might be dead. She could have thought or uttered something along those lines—*God, just let this turn out okay, and I’ll never have sex again.*
Or maybe it was Mulder who had struck the bargain.
Or maybe she was just another silly girl with a crush on a mentor who couldn’t or wouldn’t return her feelings.
Scully had certainly noticed the rugged pilot who flew her and Mulder on the last leg of their trip. He was good-looking, ringless, and the right age. She’d sized him up casually and automatically, the way she might admire a coat in a shop window as she walked by.
She was astonished when Brian Yates asked her out, and just as surprised to hear herself accept. She didn’t go out much. Hardly anyone asked her.
It was pretty clear Mulder no longer saw her as a woman. Somewhere along the line, she’d become a neutral being in his eyes. Maybe it happened at the same time she took her vow of chastity.
She remembered being vaguely pleased that Mulder didn’t treat her differently from male agents. His propensity for holding doors and guiding her around were vestiges of his up-bringing. When push came to shove, he knew she could do the job; he was gender-blind in a way. For a woman who had worked so hard to be taken seriously in a man’s world, this was an amazing, wonderful thing.
But apparently, she’d sacrificed something vital by keeping her femininity under wraps. While she saw Mulder as the man she loved in all respects, he had ceased being able to make the leap.
She was Scully. Friend, partner, agent. Nothing more.
Maybe that’s what threw her about Brian. He saw her as a woman.
Not that Mulder wasn’t possessive. He hadn’t been happy to find out this was a real date. It upset the status quo. She was supposed to be there, in lock step with him, a fixed point in the chaos of his life. But that wasn’t the same as being interested in her as a woman. Or being in love with her.
Now Scully sipped her after-dinner coffee as Brian told her about the time his little niece decided to surprise him by decorating his new pick-up.
“See, I always tell her how much I love her pictures, and she thought I’d be happy,” he said. “I wish I could get it repainted but I’m afraid to hurt her feelings.”
“Maybe she’s the next Picasso,” Scully suggested. “It could be worth a lot of money one day.”
“Do you like art?” Brian asked. “I own a real Picasso. A lithograph, but it’s signed and numbered.”
“You’re a cultured cowboy,” Scully noted.
“Hey, just because I like to live out where you can see the stars at night doesn’t mean I don’t know my way around the galleries,” he said. “Tell you what. I’m flying to Amsterdam next week. Take a few days and I’ll show you the Stedelijk museum.”
“Brian, I don’t think so,” she said, although she found herself tempted.
“Yeah, I know. You only want to see the Van Goghs,” he said with an exaggerated sigh.
Scully wondered if she might suggest something more local. The Freer, perhaps. Would that be too forward? Not after the guy offered to fly her to Europe.
“I never take out my passport until at least the third date,” she said.
“I’m in Baltimore a couple of times a month,” he said.
“Baltimore,” said Scully. “Well, well, well.”
Roger liked working the late shift ‘cause no one was around. He could do things at his own pace, without anybody calling him slowpoke. He could talk to the animals without anyone snickering about it or saying things to make him feel stupid.
Roger knew about animals, but at Weymouth Scientific he had to do things the way he was told. He showed Mr. Metzger how easy it was to kill a white mouse by rapping its head hard against a countertop, but Mr. Metzger said that was wrong. Snap the neck like this, with your thumb. Roger liked to use his big knife for castration. Slit the sack, twist, and cut. But Mr. Metzger said to use the Burdizzo.
Roger filled his pocket with alfalfa cubes before he went to settle the cripple sheep for the night. He liked it when they took their treats right from his hands.
Pamela used to do that, too, he thought with a sigh, but now she was gone. Roger knew a lot about tending sick animals, but nothing was any use. Dr. Revere was there when she died, and he said, “You did everything you could.”
Dr. Revere was the boss of everybody, even Mr. Metzger, but he was a nice man. He didn’t say “shit” and “fuck” and “bugger” like Mr. Metzger did.
Dead animals were supposed to get burned in the incinerator, but when he picked Pamela up, he felt her legs dangle down like a person’s would do. It just felt wrong to burn her like trash.
Nobody saw him take her out to his van. Nobody saw when he buried her in the woods, but it was a pretty spot that a sheep would like.
She was named for Pamela Anderson, ‘cause that was a pretty name. It wasn’t like Roger thought she was a real girl.
Roger was in with the cripple sheep, making sure the place was clean and everybody was comfortable, when Mr. Metzger came in to get him.
“Got a job for you,” he said.
It was a different kind of job, that was for sure. Roger knew all about animals, but they wanted him to take care of a person.
The man was sleeping on the couch in the staff lounge, with a security guard sitting next to him. The guard got up to leave, once Roger was there to take his place.
“What should I do?” Roger asked.
The guard shrugged.
“Keep him comfortable. Keep him asleep until Dr. Revere gets here.”
“Okey-dokey,” Roger said, settling into the chair that the guard had vacated. For a while he just sat and watched. The man looked comfortable just the way he was, but that didn’t mean he would stay sleeping.
Roger had the medicine that made the sheep go to sleep, for when they got their experiments. The man looked big enough that he could have some too. Roger was afraid he’d wake up when he took the fancy city jacket off him, but the man was sleeping hard, so hard that Roger figured he’d had a shot already.
He pulled the man forward until he was sitting, his head lolling drunkenly as Roger pulled first one jacket sleeve and then the other off. The man’s arms flopped around like over-cooked noodles. Roger dropped him back onto the couch and stood looking down on the sleeping man. It was hard to tell if the man was breathing, so Roger placed his hand on his chest. He only relaxed a little when he felt the chest rise and fall.
The medicine was a little creepy. It wasn’t natural for a sheep to sleep so hard, or a person either. But the way Doc had explained things, it was good medicine, and as long as everyone kept breathing, it was okay to give as much as you need.
If this was her date for the year, at least it was a good one, Scully thought. There were awkward moments but there were also long stretches of comfortable conversation. Brian invited her to his place to see his Picasso, then babbled in embarrassment to assure her that it wasn’t a line.
It was Scully herself who suggested a drive up the mountain for some star-gazing.
“You don’t have the light pollution we have back home, and the elevation must give you a fantastic view,” she said.
“It sounds like a line to me,” Brian said, but he agreed to take her.
She was going to reply with a quip about getting him drunk, but she held off in case he would take it as a reproach. Brian couldn’t drink because he was on stand-by, and Scully had abstained as well, despite his insistence that it wasn’t necessary.
Scully’s social skills were not as rusty as she had feared. She was able to talk intelligently about things unrelated to aliens, insects, or Mulder. Mulder was very much on her mind, however. She felt slightly disloyal about leaving him on his own. She hoped he found a good game on TV.
Even when she wasn’t thinking about Mulder directly, she was using him as a standard for comparison. She found herself surprised when Brian put cream in his coffee, because Mulder drank it black.
He drives like Mulder, she thought approvingly as he guided the car up the empty, climbing highway.
“Can you talk about the case you’re working?” Brian asked, and Scully saw no harm in sharing the basic facts.
“It started with a specimen sent to the FBI for identification,” she began. “Local law enforcement assumed the bone was from a child, because of the size, and they feared foul play.”
“Oh, God,” said Brian, and Scully realized again that most people didn’t deal with crime every day of their lives.
“It wasn’t from a child,” she hurried to explain. “We knew that almost immediately, because of the degree of calcification.”
“A small adult, then,” Brian concluded.
“A sheep, actually. Under the microscope, the arrangement of the osteons clearly showed that the bone wasn’t human,” Scully said.
“Let’s hear it for the osteons,” Brian said. “But I can’t believe you traveled all this way to find out who had lamb chops for dinner.”
“This wasn’t from anyone’s dinner,” she said. “The reason everyone thought the bone was from a human child was because of the shape. It looked like a human hip bone.”
“Okay,” Brian said, drawing out the syllables. “But, um, so what?”
Mulder’s reaction had been nearly identical when she’d first brought the weird bone to his attention. She’d asked him pointedly why his fuzzy photos could justify spur-of-the-moment jaunts to any damn place he wanted to go, while her duly documented and processed specimen was only good for a “so what?”
Mulder saw the bone as a way to top the geeks in Forensic Anthropology and here they were.
“An abnormal specimen like that raises some interesting questions,” she told Brian.
“Oh, I’m not complaining,” Brian said. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“So, tell me about your work,” Scully said.
“I get by,” he said modestly. “My contract with Weymouth Scientific gives me a nice chunk of change with a lot of flexibility, and that’s what I like.”
He slowed the car and drove it onto the shoulder of the road.
“Where are we?” Scully asked.
“Good spot for star-watching,” he explained and he got out of the car.
They were near the summit, and it was easy to imagine that they stood at the edge of the world. Scully knew that beyond the peak lay a valley, and no doubt another mountain beyond, but she couldn’t see them.
“There’s Orion,” Brian said, pointing at the sky.
“That’s an easy one,” said Scully.
“The Big Dipper,” he continued.
“Okay, now I’m impressed,” Scully laughed.
He didn’t answer, but laid his arm across her shoulder. She took a small step away from him.
“See that very bright star that forms Orion’s shoulder? That’s Betelgeuse,” she said.
“So, you really like stars,” said Brian, putting his hands in his pockets.
“Down on the right, that other bright star is Rigel,” she said.
“They all have names, huh?” he asked. He sounded amused.
“Actually, no. There’s one… I can’t really see it now, but it’s by Alnitak. They just call it HR 1988,” she said.
“You seem nervous,” Brian said.
“A little,” Scully admitted. “Maybe this wasn’t a great idea.”
“It was a wonderful idea,” he said. “Tell me the rest of the stars.”
“You’re making fun of me,” she said.
“Dana, I’m trying very hard to behave myself. Work with me here,” Brian answered.
“Right.” She turned away from him and back to the stars. “The middle star in Orion’s belt, that’s Alnijam.”
“Does that mean something?” he asked. His voice was so close that he had to be leaning down to talk to her.
“Mulder would know,” Scully said, aware of the slip as she made it.
“Sounds Arabic,” Brian commented, unperturbed.
She looked up into his eyes, noting that they were blue. Denim blue. Why did she find it surprising that they weren’t hazel? Brian stood so close she could smell his aftershave. Or maybe it was hers.
Brian’s face seemed to be moving closer to her, and she wondered if he was going to kiss her. She wondered if she was going to let him. Before her muddled brain could decide what to do, the sound of a cell phone cut through the night.
“Damn it,” said Brian as he flipped his phone open.
If he’d turned away or lowered his voice, Scully would have gotten into the car to give him some privacy, but he seemed comfortable to take the call in her presence.
“Yeah, I’m on it. You have lousy timing, that’s all,” he said. “And I want that jet fumigated afterwards.”
“Going somewhere?” Scully asked when he closed the phone.
“I have to pick up the human ashtray,” he said.
“What?” Scully asked in surprise. Prickles of curiosity traveled through her.
“Mr. Terranova. He smokes like a chimney,” Brian explained. “Maybe we can finish my astronomy lesson another time.”
“That would be nice,” Scully said, but her mind was elsewhere. There were thousands of chain smokers, she told herself.
“If it was anyone else I’d invite you along for the ride,” Brian said apologetically. “This guy is not someone you want to meet if you don’t have to.”
“How often does he come out here?” Scully asked.
“Couple of times a year, but it’s always been pre-scheduled. That’s the trouble with being on-call. Sometimes they call you.”
“What does he look like,” Scully asked.
“The ashtray?” He smiled a goofy smile as he opened Scully’s door for her. “Now that I think of it, he looks like an ashtray.”
“Older man, gray hair, drooping features—” Scully prompted him. It had to be him. He did look like an ashtray, cold and flat and gray. She had to call Mulder. They must be very close to something if the smoking man was here.
“Dana, I have a better question,” Brian said. “What does tomorrow look like? The stars will still be here.”
Bone of Contention – Part 6
Mulder lay very still and kept his eyes closed. His thoughts were marching around his head in every direction, refusing to line up to let him understand what was going on.
The sheep-thing with hands. Floating in a green tank, so like the clones he’d seen so long ago. Like Scully, frozen in her aspic coffin.
He had figured out one thing. Every time he moved or opened his eyes, someone jabbed him with a sharp needle and he went back to sleep.
He tried not to let his breathing show his panic. They had to think he was still asleep.
Someone was in the room with him, a man who hummed to himself from time to time. When Mulder opened his eyes or tried to change position, the man rebuked him with a cluck of the tongue and another shot in the deltoid. Other than that, the man seemed perfectly content to leave Mulder alone. A door squeaked open and somebody entered, but Mulder forced himself to remain still.
“His partner’s on her way to pick him up. Is he giving you any trouble?” That was the man who had just walked in.
“No trouble, Mr. Metzger. I give him medicine to make him sleep.” That was the guy who’d been sitting and humming. His voice sounded thick, and Mulder wondered if he had a hearing problem.
“Damn it, Roger. I hope nobody checks him for needle marks,” Mr. Metzger said.
“I take care of him like they said,” the thick-voice protested. “Make him comfortable.” He pronounced the word “comforble.”
“Well, don’t give him any more. Hit him on the head, if you have to.”
Mulder hoped he was making a bad joke, but the other man answered him seriously.
“But that would hurt him,” the thick-voice complained. “They told me take care of him.”
“You gave him the same medicine you use on the sheep? How did you know how much to use?” Mr. Metzger asked.
Mulder felt a huge hand clasp his upper arm and squeeze gently.
“Well fed. Mostly growed. He get a regular dose,” Roger explained.
“Don’t poke him. You’ll wake him up,” Mr. Metzger warned.
Mulder’s arm was released.
“Sorry,” Roger apologized in a loud whisper.
“Give him one for the road, and then leave him alone,” Mr. Metzger instructed.
Another jab, and Mulder’s thoughts dispersed into jumbles. Ouch. Scully. Sheep. Sleep.
Revere led Scully to an ordinary door, which opened into a large room furnished as a lounge. Mr. Metzger followed them inside. Scully’s eyes narrowed as she took in the scene.
Mulder lay stretched out on a couch, apparently asleep. A giant of a man, dressed in tan coveralls and work boots, sat on a chair nearby. The man gave Revere a big smile.
“Hi, Doc!” he said happily. “How come you’re here at night?” Then his gaze shifted to Scully and his eyes opened wide.
“Wow,” he said.
Under other circumstances, Scully might have spared a kind word for the big, slow man.
“Quiet, Roger,” Dr. Revere said. “Please return to your regular duties.”
Roger picked up a big metal tool, something resembling a tin-snip, and lumbered out of his chair.
“Pretty,” he whispered to himself as he left the room. Scully leaned over the couch, watching Mulder breathe.
“What happened to him?” she asked, her voice sharp with concern.
“He was found in a restricted area, Agent Scully. Perhaps a better question is what was he doing there.”
Scully turned back to her partner, smoothing the hair back from his forehead. As much as she wanted to press the issue, the fact was, Mulder had been trespassing.
“Would you excuse us?” she asked. Mr. Metzger took a step back, folding his arms across his chest. Revere didn’t budge. Scully shrugged and turned back to Mulder. She wanted to wake him up gently, without company, but it wasn’t her choice. He didn’t wake up when she touched his arm, but when she loosened his tie he jolted awake and took a swing at her.
“Mulder, it’s me,” she reassured him, easily blocking a clumsy left hook.
She saw his fear recede as he recognized her. He looked around the room warily, his eyes darting from one man to the next.
She leaned in closer.
“Mulder, what’s wrong?”
He answered in a whisper.
“Scully, in case I haven’t made this clear in the past, I love you,” he said.
She turned from him to accuse the others.
“He’s been drugged!” she said angrily.
Revere’s response was equally aggressive.
“I know what you’re trying to do,” he challenged. “Cover up an illegal breakin by going on the offensive. Forget it. We’re the victims here. We’ve done nothing except rescue this man when he got himself in trouble.”
“I know my partner, and I can tell when he’s been drugged,” she said staunchly.
“He was running wild in a medical facility. I wouldn’t be surprised if he helped himself to some goodies,” Revere said.
“Could have been an accident,” Mr. Metzger interjected. “He knocked over a big glass bottle, back in the sheep pen. Maybe he got a whiff of the fumes.”
“Where’s his gun?” Scully demanded.
Metzger gave her the gun, the clip, and a plastic bag containing a pocket knife and flashlight.
“We didn’t want him to hurt himself, considering the condition he was in,” he said.
There would have been a camera, but it wasn’t in the bag.
“Scully,” Mulder hissed her name. When he saw he had her attention he continued in a whisper. “I saw it.”
“I don’t believe their story about inhaled fumes, Mulder. It’s barbiturates that make you say you love me,” she whispered back.
“You know I love you. You don’t have to make me feel like a jerk for saying it.” He looked honestly peeved. “Make them show us the sheep hybrid, then get me the hell out of here.”
He seemed to be in a twilight state, and Scully wondered if he’d remember any of this the next day.
“Can you walk?” she asked. He was unusually clingy as she helped him sit up, and she wanted to rush him back to the hotel to gather evidence of whatever they’d done to him. But she also wanted to see what was hidden behind the wide doors before Revere forgot his promise to show her.
Mulder could walk, once they got him to his feet, but he was weak and off-balance.
“You okay, buddy?” Revere asked, and Scully wanted to slap him for his false, folksy concern.
“Show us the human sheep,” Mulder growled.
“Come with me,” Revere said, and Metzger looked surprised.
“You’re conducting experiments on these animals?” Scully asked. The memory of the deformed sheep wasn’t far from her mind. How much worse would the ‘human sheep’ be? Mulder kept his hand on her arm as they followed Revere down the hallway.
The next area had the barnyard smells and sounds, but the sheep here looked normal, at least to Scully.
“They’re just plain sheep,” Mulder complained.
“They’re Friesians.” The words came from the large man in the khaki coveralls who had been sitting with Mulder in the other room. He ambled up to them from the back of the large room, and Scully saw he was cradling a small lamb.
“Roger’s very proud of these sheep,” Revere said. “He takes good care of them.”
“Dairy sheep. They make milk,” Roger said.
“They’re genetically altered so that they produce human hormones in their milk. These are your ‘human sheep,’ Agent Mulder,” Revere said.
“No.” Mulder shook his head vigorously, then winced. Scully regarded him with concern.
“We found our mutant sheep,” she said. “I think we can leave now.”
Roger stepped closer, as if he was offering the lamb to her.
“Want to pet him?” he asked. “He won’t hurt you.”
His big, open face beseeched her, and it only took a moment to be kind.
“He’s very pretty,” Scully said.
“He’s a ram lamb,” Roger said.
Scully smiled politely and patted the woolly little head.
“Roger, I believe you have work to do,” said Revere sternly.
Roger’s mouth formed a tight frown, but only for a second.
“Okey-dokey,” he said as he carried the lamb back to the penned area.
“The thing I saw earlier was not a deformed sheep or a dairy sheep,” Mulder said.
“Agent Mulder, I suspect that your exposure to Halothane is the explanation for whatever you imagine you saw,” Revere said.
“You used Halothane on him?” Scully asked. She hadn’t noticed any marks on his face from a mask or its straps.
“He broke a bottle of the stuff when he was charging around. We’ll add that to our fine, improper storage of volatile inhalants,” Revere said.
Suddenly Scully didn’t care about the sheep bone at all. She was enraged at what had been done to Mulder and that Revere was so confident he’d get away with it.
“Let’s go,” she said. She expected Mulder to argue with her or take issue with Revere’s stupid story, but he didn’t say anything. He was standing there, swaying slightly, looking gray and unfocused. She followed his gaze and saw that Roger was sitting on a low wooden bench at the rear of the enclosure with the little lamb on his lap. He held it pressed down against his knee, one hand gripping its tail, the other holding a large clamping device that encircled its testicles.
The lamb bleated as the clamps closed. Roger held the tool in place for a few seconds, then opened it, moved it fractionally, and closed it once again.
Scully wished she hadn’t seen it, but she couldn’t force herself to turn away until she heard a soft thud behind her.
Mulder was on the ground, pale, sweaty, and unresponsive.
“Halothane,” Revere said.
“City boy,” Roger pronounced.
Mulder sat on the bed, shoulders hunched, staring down at his shoes.
“I passed out,” he said.
“That’s easily explained by the drugs and the emotional impact of what you witnessed. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Mulder,” Scully said.
“I was carried out of the building by a ball-busting bumpkin,” he groaned.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” she said. She’d been kneeling next to Mulder, patting his face to rouse him, when the sheep-tender, Roger, had leaned down and scooped her partner off the floor. Revere had suggested calling an ambulance, but Scully said she just needed help to get him to the car.
“You had your weapon,” Mulder said reproachfully. Scully’s eyes narrowed with confusion until he explained: “If it happens again, shoot me.”
“It’s good you were drugged,” she asserted. “Whatever you saw, we have no evidence. But I can probably find proof of what they did to you.”
What had Mulder seen? The crippled sheep with their useless hind legs were the probable source for the sheep femur, but Mulder was speaking of a different mutation, a sheep with human hands.
Revere had argued that Mulder was “unreliable, overwrought, and undoubtedly under the influence of some powerful chemicals.” Scully could have asked him why a company with nothing to hide had filled her partner with powerful chemicals and stolen his camera, but she didn’t bother.
Then Revere had posed his million-dollar question, the one that was supposed to make her shut up and go away:
“A hybridized human? Why?”
She wondered if Revere himself knew the answer, or anyone at Weymouth Scientific. Maybe the only one who knew was that chain-smoking VIP that Brian told her about.
Mulder was mired in mortification, or maybe just lost in thought, and Scully left him to go to her room for her phlebotomy equipment. She paused in the doorway, turning to tell him she’d be right back. Mulder had his hand cupped at his groin, taking inventory, she surmised, so she continued on her way without speaking.
She wanted to run a tox screen on him, and she needed to keep the blood samples cold until they could be processed. The ice machine was at the other end of the hall, and when she returned to Mulder’s room, she found his clothes in a pile on the floor and the shower running full blast.
Scully slammed open the bathroom door, but it was too late.
“Mulder!” she rebuked him.
Mulder pulled back the curtain.
“Want to scrub my back?” he asked.
“What if you pass out again?” she asked.
“I told you, shoot me,” he said. “But I won’t pass out. I’m one hundred percent and steady as a rock.”
If he was 100 percent and steady as a rock, he wouldn’t be standing in the shower washing trace evidence down the drain.
Scully sighed and retreated to the bedroom. Maybe his clothes would yield some useful evidence. She was still picking through his jacket when he emerged from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist.
“Sit down. I want to draw some blood,” she told him.
“Good idea,” he yawned, settling onto the bed. The procedure would have been smoother if she’d directed him to the desk chair, but she sat next to him, took his right arm over her lap, and accomplished the collection.
Mulder pressed a piece of cotton to his arm and watched as she filled her blood tubes.
“Maybe you should run the precipitin test,” he said. The precipitin test was a quick way to distinguish human blood from animal blood.
“To find out if you’re turning into a sheep?” she asked. If he really was delusional, it was temporary, caused by drugs, she decided. More likely, it was a joke.
“You know, Scully, it’s not that hard to imagine how they created a sheep-human hybrid. The real question is why they would do that,” he said.
She hadn’t yet told him about the smoking man. Brian’s sudden assignment to bring in a gray-haired bigwig who chain-smoked Morleys has raised her suspicions, but it wasn’t a positive ID. She couldn’t trust Mulder to make that fine distinction in his present state.
“To create a better test subject?” she hypothesized.
Of all the dumb “scientific” explanations she’d ever invented for Mulder, she thought that this one might be the dumbest, but he seemed willing to give it some thought.
He walked to the dresser and pulled a pair of boxers from a drawer. Scully managed to be looking in another direction when he dropped the towel and pulled on his shorts.
“I was going to ask you about that,” he said. “What’s the point of testing something on a genetically altered test subject? Doesn’t that invalidate your results?”
Scully took a deep breath. “I have a theory,” she said.
“Do you?” he asked.
“They’re doing it for practice, to perfect the process. To prove they can create a viable creature using disparate genetic material,” she said.
“A rehearsal, or perhaps an audition,” said Mulder. “The other sheep are just for camouflage.”
“An audition for the real thing,” Scully said. “For a different human hybrid.”
“Well, Scully, who do we know who might be interested in something like that?” Mulder asked.
Mulder’s intuition. She used to call it paranoia.
“Revere made it sounds as if the fix is already in to close the case,” Scully said. “Weymouth gets off with a fine for littering, basically, and nobody complains about your breakin.”
“Smug bastard,” Mulder said.
“That’s just it, Mulder, he didn’t sound smug at all. He sounded worried,” she explained.
“If he’s doing business with the devil, he should be worried,” Mulder said. “But we have to get something solid before the FBI calls us back to Washington. And don’t take any calls from Skinner until we have something to show him.”
“Roger’s a weak link,” Scully said. “I’m going to work on him.”
“That big lug who held me in his arms? He’s mine, Scully,” Mulder said.
“I think he likes me,” Scully explained.
“You think he likes you? You think he likes you?” Mulder gave her one of his “are you for real” looks. “Stay away from him, Scully.”
“He works directly with the sheep. He must know something, probably more than Revere gives him credit for,” Scully said.
“Let’s see if we can get his address. I want to drop in on him tomorrow and thank him for taking such good care of me,” Mulder said.
“I’ll dig up an address and whatever else I can find on him,” she said, gathering up the ice bucket and her supplies. “You think you can get some rest?”
She hoped for his sake he would. His breathing, mentation, and motor function all appeared normal, and if he went to bed now he could sleep off the remainder of the drug and feel fine in the morning. If he stayed awake and tried to work, he’d probably give himself a hell of a headache.
“You’re leaving?” Mulder asked.
Here it comes, she thought. Maybe he’d ask her to tuck him in, or some other silly comment about him and her and bed.
“Do you need me to sing you a lullaby?” she asked.
He gave her a pained smile.
“I wanted to tell you I was sorry for ruining your date,” he said.
Scully really hadn’t expected that.
“You didn’t ruin it, Mulder. We…uh…decided to make it an early evening.”
Bone of Contention – Part 7
This was turning into the longest day of Sage Revere’s life. A pre-dawn conference call from the backers’ group in New York had persuaded him that charm and bullshit would solve his FBI problem. For the next eight hours, he had played gracious host to Agents Scully and Mulder, smiling until his jaw ached. Then he’d spent an hour on the phone with the mysterious Mr. Terranova, who was clearly unimpressed by his efforts so far.
Next he’d called an emergency meeting of his own staff, who were close to mutiny over how he hoped to handle the situation. Then, just to make his joy complete, there came the call from the plant. Agent Fox Mulder had somehow wormed his way into Room Zero.
The backers’ group seemed to feel that Fox Mulder was a bit of a fool, a bit of a madman. A flamboyant fellow who took himself seriously, even though no one else did. Mr. Terranova painted a different picture; Mulder was a bulldog, a crusader. A man who couldn’t be appeased but mustn’t be destroyed.
Agent Scully, everyone agreed, was an easy card to play. Show her a little science plus a plausible rationale, and she would buy it. Too late he’d learned there was an overriding principle: don’t mess with Mulder.
But the day wasn’t over yet. Mr. Terranova was flying in for a face-to-face. Revere dosed himself with an extra Ventacort tablet and a couple of puffs from his inhaler. He was intensely sensitive to cigarette smoke.
He drove his wife’s car to the landing field to meet the jet.
Revere expected his meeting with Terranova to be acrimonious, but from the moment the old man deplaned it was obvious he was feeling expansive and philosophical.
“Don’t feel badly, Dr. Revere,” he said. “You’re hardly the first working stiff to be foiled by Fox Mulder.”
“He hasn’t bested us yet,” Revere asserted. He was quite relieved that Terranova was traveling without luggage. A short visit had to be a good sign.
The old man got into the car and lit a cigarette, and Revere was glad he’d remembered to bring the Volvo instead of the Mercedes. He’d remained hopeful that he could salvage his project until Terranova spelled out his agenda.
“It’s over, doctor, at least for now. Have your legal team draft a letter of responsibility, finalize your settlements with EPA and whatever other bureaucracy gets a cut, and most important, destroy your hybrid,” he said.
“Is that necessary?”
“The first commandment is ‘leave no trace.’ That commandment has been broken, and now you must clean up your mess. You must find your weak link, Dr. Revere, and eliminate it.”
“We’re looking into that,” Revere answered.
It remained a mystery to him how the incriminating bone had found its way into the woods, where a hunting dog could sniff it out and an over-eager sheriff could decide it belonged to a human child. Weymouth had an on-site incinerator where all medical waste, incriminating or not, was burned thoroughly.
“If you’d been honest enough to warn us about your breach, we could have contained the investigation before you had agents knocking at your door,” Terranova said.
“If you could just take a moment to see how far we’ve come,” Revere said. “We’ve created a biological entity that’s never existed before, a creature whose shape and character and physiology defy nature itself.”
“I’m aware of your successes, and I assure you that Weymouth will remain in consideration for the final stage of the project. But now you must destroy your achievement and expunge any hint that it ever existed,” Terranova said.
“I’m just not sure destroying the hybrid is necessary, sir. We have Mulder’s camera, and no one will believe his story without evidence,” Revere said.
“You don’t know Agent Mulder,” Terranova said.
The old man smiled when he said it, and the effect was unsettling.
“You seem to know him very well,” Revere said.
“I’ve known him since he was a small boy,” said Terranova. He said it with such tenderness and pride that Revere half expected him to start pulling out snapshots and old diplomas.
“Does he work for you?” Revere asked.
Terranova’s featured hardened.
“No, Dr. Revere, Agent Mulder is not in my employ.” he said. “Agent Mulder seems to be a threat to your organization, sir. Wouldn’t it be safer to eliminate him?” Revere asked. He knew that the backers’ group was not subtle. He’d expected that Terranova’s visit would include plans for Mulder’s removal, but now it appeared that the old man had some weird emotional attachment to the agent.
“Unfortunately, Mulder is not expendable.” The old man took a long drag on his cigarette, blowing out smoke from between pursed lips like a wheezing dragon. “He’s necessary to the project.”
“Perhaps you could scare him off, then.”
“I’m afraid Agent Mulder doesn’t frighten very easily. In fact, I don’t think anything scares him.” Again, the strange expression of pride crossed the old man’s craggy features before disappearing in the next puff of smoke.
“With all due respect, sir, I think everyone is afraid of something. You just need to find the trigger point.”
The old man nodded sagely, placing the cigarette between his thin lips and inhaling deeply. “You may be right, Dr. Revere. Yes, I think you may be correct.”
As Revere turned the Volvo into Weymouth’s parking lot, Terranova stubbed out the remains of his cigarette in the car’s ash tray. Almost immediately, the tall man was patting down his pockets in search of another cigarette.
“Oh, by the way, I’m going to need a vehicle while I’m in town. Something large, with cargo capacity.”
Revere’s hopes for a short visit were squashed like Terranova’s cigarette butt. “I can make Weymouth’s company car available to you, Mr. Terranova. I think you’ll find our Navigator sufficient for your needs.”
“Perhaps, Weymouth would have been better served by tightening up security, instead of acquiring an overpriced luxury truck.”
Revere wondered how much of Weymouth’s precious funds would be spent on fumigating the Navigator after Terranova had defiled it with his filthy cigarettes. Damn, Revere thought. He loved that vehicle. It would be weeks before he could use it without wheezing up a storm.
“I assure you, we make excellent use of all our resources,” Revere sputtered, releasing the door locks.
“I hope so, doctor. Our organization frowns on waste.” The old man unfolded himself from the car. “By the way, I’ll require a few items while I’m here.”
Scully hoped Mulder wasn’t underestimating Roger. He’d gotten up early so he could be waiting outside Roger’s house in the morning. He hadn’t planned beyond that, but Mulder was good at improvising.
Scully was going to arrange to have Mulder’s blood samples shipped and analyzed, and then she was going to contact Dr. Revere for x-rays of his mutant sheep. It was eight AM, but she was still in bed, trying to convince herself she wanted to run a couple of miles before breakfast.
Her phone rang, but it wasn’t Mulder; it was Brian Yates.
“Normally I’d wait a few days, but I know you won’t be in town long,” he said.
“That’s okay,” said Scully.
“Well, then, have you had breakfast?” he asked. “Your hotel does the best biscuits north of Atlanta.”
Scully didn’t want her association with Brian to come to the attention of Revere or the others.
“How about someplace less public?” she asked.
He didn’t answer for a while.
“Do you want to come here?” he asked tentatively.
She wrote down the directions he gave her, then called the FBI to fax a photo of the smoking man to the hotel. She wanted to ask Brian if that was his passenger last night. It took her ten minutes to get dressed, but it was another fifteen minutes and two more phone calls before she had her picture. The drive to Brian’s took about half an hour.
Brian lived in an ordinary ranch house, not a log cabin or a cottage.
“Private enough for you?” he asked.
She realized belatedly that she’d been sending the man a slew of mixed messages, and he was receiving her with as much caution as warmth.
“I just thought it would be better if we weren’t seen together,” she explained.
It was a nice house, very neat with loads of books.
“Oliver Sacks, Stephen Jay Gould… I have those too,” she said, looking over his shelves with more curiosity than decorum.
“I even have the one by that wheelchair guy,” Brian said. “But I’ll have to beef up my astronomy collection. What were you telling me about? Betelgeuse and Rigel?”
He showed her his Picasso, a black-on-white lithograph that was lively and vibrant even without colors. Then he offered to cook for her, but it turned out they shared an appreciation for shredded wheat. Brian served up fresh-brewed coffee with real cream, and he even had her brand of orange juice. It was Mulder’s brand too, these days. She’d converted him.
Unfortunately Scully’s growing interest in Brian was matched by his increasing wariness.
“Maybe I’m way off base, and maybe there’s another explanation for the way you’ve been acting, but I have to ask,” he said. “Are you married?”
Scully was thunderstruck.
“Do I act married?” she asked. Did she? Sure, she was committed to Mulder. She might as well be married for all the impact he had on her life, but she was floored by the idea that this was detectable to anyone but her. “That’s an interesting answer,” he said, pushing his bowl away half-unfinished.
“I’m not married,” she hurried to assure him. “I think you may be misreading my concern and commitment to Mulder for something different.”
“Mulder? Is he the reason you don’t want to be seen in public with me?” Brian asked.
“No, not at all.” She shook her head at the idea of stepping out on Mulder. “I’m investigating the company you work for, and it could get awkward for you if they know you’re talking to me,” she said. She realized she had been gripping her spoon, and she laid it down carefully on her saucer.
“I don’t work for them, Dana. It’s a contractual arrangement. If you thought I had the inside scoop on Weymouth Scientific, you’re going to be very disappointed,” he said.
She wanted to protest that her motivation was entirely personal, at least at first. Instead, she took out the picture of the smoking man.
“Do you know him?” she asked.
“Mr. Terranova, the human ash tray,” he said, looking up from the photo.
She slowly released a breath. So it was CSM after all. This just confirmed what she’d suspected since Brian mentioned his mysterious passenger.
“I guess you’ll be leaving now,” Brian said.
“I’d really like to get to know you,” she said sincerely.
“Maybe after you’ve finished this case,” he said. He rose from the table and started to clear the abandoned breakfast.
“That would be nice,” Scully said. But a voice in her head whispered, “Mulder, Mulder,” and it sounded like her voice.
“Hotcakes or toast,” Roger insisted, following the words with his finger as he read from the menu.
“Leave it to me,” said Mulder.
“Wow.” Roger was impressed.
Roger wanted steak, eggs, hotcakes, and toast, and Mulder made it happen. He had expected that someone would have warned Roger not to talk to him, but it didn’t seem to be the case. Roger didn’t hesitate to accept breakfast, and once the dilemma or hotcakes versus toast was out of the way, he was ready to shoot the breeze.
“I want to thank you for helping me out yesterday,” Mulder said.
Roger used his index finger to collect a drop of pancake syrup from the table, then licked it off with a big slurping sound.
“That’s okay. You’re not heavy and you didn’t fight,” he said.
“Did you think I was looking for a fight?” Mulder asked in surprise.
“A ram as big as you, he would fight me,” Roger said.
“A ram as big as me…” Mulder couldn’t follow Roger’s stream of thought. “How big is a ram?” he asked.
“Real big one, maybe three hundred pounds. One your size would be big enough to breed, even if he wasn’t full-growed,” Roger supplied helpfully.
“Do you breed them?” Mulder asked.
“Doc takes care of that. AI and stuff,” Roger said.
“Artificial insemination? Do all the rams get castrated?” Mulder asked.
“You didn’t like it when I clamped the ram lamb,” Roger remembered. “Got to be done, though. Can’t breed them all.”
If Mulder could keep Roger talking about the sheep, he’d have to get around to the hybrid in the green tank.
“All in a day’s work for you,” Mulder said.
“Uh-huh. Baby lamb like that, he don’t even feel it very long. Not like a big ram,” Roger said.
“I guess that would be more difficult,” Mulder said.
“Uh-huh. Ram your size, I’d have to tie his legs,” Roger explained. “Wouldn’t clamp him, either. Just slit the sac and cut ‘em out.”
It was a little like interrogating a serial killer, Mulder thought. He had to sound interested and sympathetic despite his distaste. It wasn’t a fair comparison, though. Roger was just a guy who took pride in his work.
“What’s the hardest thing you have to do?” Mulder asked.
Roger’s open face clouded into a frown, and he answered in a low, conspiratorial tone.
“I don’t like to burn them up,” he said.
“When do you have to do that?” Mulder asked.
“The dead ones gotta go in the incinerator,” Roger said. ‘Cause they are biological waste.”
Mulder thought about the sheep bone found in the woods.
“Do you always burn them?” he asked.
Roger looked around guiltily.
“I won’t tell,” Mulder assured him. “You won’t get into any trouble.”
It was lucky Scully wasn’t there, he thought. Her face would have signaled his lie, maybe even to Roger. Or maybe not. They’d both become loose with their promises of protection, their assurances that the system would work. Maybe she would have lied right along with him.
“Sometimes I bury them in the woods,” Roger said furtively. “For respect.”
“Could you show me where?” Mulder asked, keeping his question casual.
Roger chewed his steak and considered.
“Maybe I could show the lady,” he offered, tilting his head and glancing up and sideways into Mulder’s face. Mulder wasn’t sure if Roger was being shy or sly with him.
“Agent Scully? She could come with us,” Mulder said.
He’d warned Scully to keep her distance from Roger, who clearly found her fascinating. He was childlike in some ways, but he was physically powerful, and it made for a dangerous combination. Meanwhile, Scully had warned Mulder that Roger might be shrewder than he appeared, which was starting to look like a good bet.
“Just the lady agent,” Roger said stubbornly.
“That’s not going to happen,” Mulder said firmly.
Roger’s switched from defiance to wheedling:
‘Cause maybe you would faint again. So I should take just the lady,” he said.
“She doesn’t like the woods,” Mulder said.
“The woods are nice. I could show her,” Roger said.
“She doesn’t like the woods, Roger,” Mulder repeated more forcefully. “But she does want to see the special sheep.”
He felt like a pimp. I’ll give you Scully if you show us the sheep.
“The cripple sheep with the bad legs,” Roger said eagerly. “I could show her.”
“Not those. The one in the green tank,” Mulder said.
Roger frowned.
“She’s sick,” he said. “You should leave her alone.”
“The lady agent is a doctor,” Mulder said. “She could help.”
“Ah,” said Roger slowly.
His transparent face was a parody of someone deep in thought. His mouth dropped open, and his eyes moved up and leftward, as if he was trying to remember something. Mulder knew he had scored a point.
“A pretty lady doctor,” Roger murmured.
Bone of Contention – Part 8
Roger was late to work after his big breakfast with Agent Mulder. He hurried to Room Zero to check on Cindy. Cindy was always sick, but some days were worse than others.
Roger walked to the back of the support module and climbed up the steps so he could see inside. Roger wasn’t sure what the green stuff in the big tank was, but Doc said it made Cindy get well. Sometimes Roger thought Cindy would feel better if she could get out into the fresh air and sunshine instead of being cooped up in the lab.
“How you feeling?” he asked. Of course Cindy didn’t answer, but she turned toward the sound of his voice and she gave him the V-sign, like he’d taught her. Roger smiled proudly as he returned the salute.
“Roger.”
Dr. Revere’s voice startled him. The doc was sitting behind one of the computers, and Roger hadn’t realized he was in the room.
“Sorry I am late,” Roger said. “I ate a big breakfast.”
The doc sighed.
“I envy you, Roger. A simple man with simple dreams,” he said.
He sounded so sad.
“Did you have a bad dream?” Roger asked sympathetically as he climbed down the steps. “Did you not sleep good?”
“What happens to a dream deferred?” asked Dr. Revere.
Roger looked at Dr. Revere in confusion. Sometimes the doc said weird things.
“A dream that won’t come true,” Dr. Revere explained.
“Oh.” Roger nodded; he understood that just fine. “I going to feed Cindy,” he said.
“No.” Dr. Revere shook his head.
Roger could see that Cindy was weak and gasping, but he could always coax her to take a few swallows.
“She’ll eat for me,” he promised.
“It’s all over. I’m sorry,” Revere said.
Roger knew a day would come when nothing anyone did would make a difference, but he didn’t think today was that day. The doc was in a bad, bad mood, so everything looked bad to him. He thought of something that would cheer him up.
“I almost forgot to tell you the good news,” Roger said. “Agent Scully is a doctor! She can help us.”
“Agent Scully isn’t the problem. It’s the other one, Agent Mulder,” Revere said bitterly.
“He is who told me,” Roger argued.
“Cindy’s been sick for a long time, Roger. You know what we do when an animal is so sick that it can’t get better,” Revere said.
Roger thought back about that guessing game, where everything is animal, vegetable, or mineral. Outside of that, it seemed plain wrong to call Cindy an animal. Also, she’d been sick like this before and got better. Maybe Dr. Revere didn’t remember.
“Don’t give up,” he said.
“We can’t let Agent Mulder capture her. That’s the main thing,” Revere said.
“Capture her? For what?” Roger asked.
“We can’t let him take her. It would be terrible.”
“I won’t let him do terrible things,” Roger said staunchly. He wished he was good with words so he could make the doc listen to him.
“You won’t be able to stop him,” Revere said.
Roger didn’t know why Dr. Revere would say that. Mulder was easy to stop with the mask and the sleeping medicine.
“What about last night?” Roger asked. “We stopped him good.”
“He’ll just keep coming back,” Revere answered angrily.
“That’s not Cindy’s fault!” Roger said.
“Damn it,” Revere said in a voice that made Roger remember his pa. “I don’t want this any more than you do, Roger, but it has to be done.”
“You said take care of her,” Roger whispered. He hoped Doc wouldn’t yell at him. He hoped if Doc yelled at him he wouldn’t cry.
“Roger,” Doc began, seeming to calm down. “Killing Cindy would be the kindest thing we could do.”
“How could that be kind?” Roger asked, fighting tears.
“There’s something you deserve to know,” he said. “Do you remember when Cindy was just a baby? Do you remember that question you asked?”
Roger blushed. It was a hard question and a bad question, and worst of all, Dr. Revere had laughed at him, and even told it to Mr. Metzger, like it was a joke.
“I’m a dummy,” Roger said.
“When you saw what Cindy was, you asked about her daddy,” Revere said.
“But you explained it to me, how science made her,” Roger reminded him. “And Mr. Metzger called me a dumb bubba.”
“I lied to you, Roger. It wasn’t science,” Revere said. “It happened exactly the way you thought.”
Roger shook his head emphatically.
“That’s just stories,” he said.
“Somebody did a bad thing, Roger, exactly as you suspected,” Revere said. “Now he wants to do the same bad thing to Cindy.”
“It’s just stories,” Roger repeated.
Kids used to say that about Ronnie Favors, how his pa caught him at it early one morning, and said he’d clamp him just like a sheep if he ever did it again.
“Why do you think Agent Mulder is so interested in Cindy?” Revere asked.
It was ugly talk, and it was hard for Roger to think about it to figure out if it was true. His stomach felt funny when he thought how he’d had breakfast with Mulder.
“Do you want that to happen to Cindy, sick as she is? Is that how you want it to end for her?” Revere asked.
“I won’t let him,” Roger said.
Revere stood up and came out from behind the long counter.
“You’ve been a good, loyal friend,” he said. He clapped Roger on the arm.
Roger knew that people sometimes told you nice things before they asked you for a favor. He’d better explain that he didn’t really mean it.
“I don’t kill people,” Roger said, in case that’s what the doc was thinking. It wasn’t fair to kill Cindy when it was Mulder who wanted to do terrible things, but he knew that killing Mulder would only make more trouble.
“For God’s sake, I don’t want you to kill him. Even if you did, they’d send other agents,” Revere explained. He patted Roger’s arm again. “I know how you feel about this sheep. Take a few minutes to say good-bye, and then do what you have to do.”
Doc walked away, and the heavy door locked shut behind him. If he really understood how Roger felt, he wouldn’t have called her a sheep.
Roger thought again about Agent Scully, the pretty doctor. Maybe if she knew that Agent Mulder wanted to do terrible things to Cindy, she could stop him. Maybe if Agent Mulder saw how sick Cindy was he would leave her alone. Or maybe if he knew she was a virgin.
Scully’s phone rang as she started the car. Mulder needed a lift. It was just as well that Brian had cut their breakfast short.
What was she thinking, trying to start a relationship while she was on a case? She knew better. But she was always on a case, and Brian had seemed so perfect. What fun it might have been to have a boyfriend like that, somebody smart and dashing who would fly in every couple of weeks and sweep her off her feet.
An out-of-town relationship that wouldn’t interfere with her work. A long-distance lover who wouldn’t complain about Mulder. Mulder wasn’t her boyfriend, but he filled her thoughts and took all her attention until nothing was left for anyone else. As if she was hemoglobin, and he was her carbon monoxide. The hemoglobin should be looking for some nice oxygen to carry through the bloodstream, but if it meets up with a carbon monoxide molecule, it grabs on and won’t let go.
Mulder probably had the same problem, but he didn’t seem to care. He should have been on the prowl for one of those tall, leggy bitch-women that rang his stupid chimes, but instead he spent his days with a dowdy redhead and his nights with his video collection.
She loved him, whatever love was. When Scully was a college junior, she’d spent a series of weekends with her roommate, Rachel Perlmutter’s, family. She used to think it was funny to hear Rachel’s grandmother talk about love. “You young people make things so complicated these days. It’s simple. I cook the food, he eats the food,” Grandma said. “He makes the money, I spend the money.” It was something like that with her and Mulder, but the currency exchanged was vision and proof, peril and rescue. They hadn’t chosen one another, but then again, neither had Rachel’s grandparents.
Mulder loved her too, at least when he was drugged. In Valium, veritas?
Well, something good had come out of her breakfast date. The anonymous smoker had a name. She would have been more excited by the discovery if she wasn’t so certain that it was an alias, and probably one of many.
Mulder was waiting for her in a place called Amy Beth’s Cafe. Scully would have been glad of another chance at breakfast, but Mulder had been sitting there an hour and the staff was starting to get curious. She helped herself to some breath mints on her way out.
In the car, Mulder put on quite a display of adjusting his seat. She wondered if he was really that inept or if it was his way of griping about being stuck in the passenger seat. She decided to head for the gas station. Mulder could prove his manly worth by pumping gas, and she could pop into the mini-mart and grab a yogurt.
“Terranova. Mean anything to you?” she asked as she pulled away from the curb.
“There’s a software company, I think. Also an after-hour’s club in Arlington,” said Mulder.
“Cancer man is using the name,” she told him.
“Really?” His face split in a huge grin. “Go, Scully!”
She was proud herself, but she hadn’t known what to expect from Mulder. She should have told him before they got in the car. It would have earned her at least a high-five.
“I’m sure it’s not his only name,” she said modestly.
“It’s the first one we’ve ever learned,” Mulder said. “Is he definitely involved here?”
“He flew in last night, spur of the moment,” she said.
“He flew in,” Mulder repeated. “We’re on to something, Scully. This is big—I can feel it.”
“If this is as big as you think, Mulder, they’ll go to any lengths to protect it.”
“We’ve got to get back inside Weymouth.” Her partner was practically glowing with intensity with the knowledge that their nemesis was in town.
Mulder hadn’t asked her how long she’d known about the cigarette man, and she was grateful for that. She couldn’t predict how he’d react knowing that she had kept the information to herself until she could confirm it. He’d been so edgy about her relationship with Brian. Scully wondered if he was jealous, but then she chided herself. Most likely Mulder’s concerns were entirely professional, and he’d share them when he was ready. Any other speculation would just set her up for a major disappointment.
“We have to be careful,” she said.
“There is a hybrid sheep, Scully. I saw it, and Roger confirmed it,” Mulder said.
“We need a search warrant,” Scully said. She waited for a response, finally turning in time to catch Mulder’s tight-lipped exasperation.
“Why don’t you work on that,” he suggested sharply.
“Forget it,” she said, acknowledging his unspoken objections. “Instead, we go back to Weymouth. You demand to see Revere and the brass. Argue with them, aggravate them, do anything to keep them occupied. That will give me a chance to make nice to little boy blue.”
“Roger’s not a little boy, in case you haven’t noticed,” Mulder said. “Don’t make the same mistake Revere made. Roger’s not as dumb or passive as everyone thinks.”
“I told you that from the beginning,” Scully reminded him.
“Anyway, you’ll do a better job than me of keeping Revere out of the way. You can trade laundry tips for brighter, whiter lab coats,” Mulder said.
Scully went in to pay for the gas, and when she returned to the car she took the passenger seat. Mulder filled the tank, glad to see she’d relinquished the wheel.
He was very disturbed when he realized she was eating a yogurt.
Mulder knew she’d met with Brian Yates that morning, because the malodorous flyboy had to be the one who had ID’d the smoking man for her. Whatever they’d done, it hadn’t included breakfast, or Scully wouldn’t be scarfing down the Dannon’s. Mulder decided to believe in the simplest explanation. Scully had met with Yates to show him a picture of the smoking man. Period.
Any disturbing visions of Scully’s stack-heeled shoes mingling with Yates’s cowboy boots was Mulder’s own damn problem and utterly unfair to Scully.
The seat on the driver’s side was all the way forward, and Mulder could barely get in to release the catch. He looked over to see if Scully was the least bit apologetic, but she seemed to be highly entertained by his suffering.
“I’m sorry, Mulder. Would you rather I drove?” she asked.
“Enjoy your yogurt. You can drive on the way back,” he said. Then he could watch while she struggled to haul the seat far enough forward that she could reach the gas pedal.
He finished adjusting the seat, but then had to open the door to unsnag the shoulder belt. Finally they were underway.
“What do you plan to do while I’m discussing sodium hypochlorite with Dr. Revere?” Scully asked.
“Roger has an emotional investment in his animals,” Mulder said. “I’m going to use that to my advantage.”
“You’re going to sing him the Whiffenpoof Song?” Scully asked.
“Something like that. You just worry about Dr. Moreau,” he said.
Their arrival at Weymouth Scientific was greeted with open hostility. The guard at the gate kept them waiting while he called his superior for instructions, and when Dr. Revere appeared at last, his face was like granite.
“You may never understand the damage you’ve caused. You’ve proved nothing, but the board of directors has chosen to bow before the pressure of your overgrown, overfunded bureaucracy,” Revere said.
Bureaucracy, the “B” in FBI, thought Mulder, but he resisted the urge to share his wit.
“We’re hardly to blame if your research couldn’t withstand the critical scrutiny of your own organization,” Scully said.
No, Scully, don’t piss him off, Mulder thought. She was supposed to settle people down—getting in their face was his job.
“Come with me,” Revere said.
He conducted them to the elevator and up to the restricted level. Angry glares followed them at every step.
Revere led them to the holding area for the malformed sheep.
The bone fragment that had sparked their investigation was almost certainly from a sheep of this kind, but Mulder no longer found them interesting.
“These harmless animals helped save human lives,” Revere said. “Would you like to see them once more before they’re destroyed?”
“You can’t destroy these sheep—” Scully said, but Revere interrupted her.
“I know that. I can’t do anything until and unless I’m instructed by our lawyers. Our lawyers are talking to your lawyers, and the writs are flying back and forth,” he said. “But I have no doubt this will end with the sacrifice of these sheep, and the milk sheep as well. So congratulations! Science has been stopped in its tracks, and all because you couldn’t give me a chance to explain.”
Pompous jack-ass, Mulder thought.
“That was quite an outburst, doctor,” Scully said. “Unfortunately you have yet to convince me that more animal study is needed in the now well-established field of inserting medical devices via the femoral artery. In fact, I’m quite baffled as to the significance of any study that relies on a creature that has no existence outside of your laboratory.”
Revere was speechless, and Mulder realized a bit belatedly that he was the good cop.
“Destroyed? You mean killed?” he asked. “Even the lambs?”
Scully gave a barely audible huff that Mulder read as a critique of his acting. Revere, he hoped, would interpret it as impatience with his sentimentality.
“I know you showed us last night, but I wasn’t able to take it all in,” Mulder said. It didn’t matter what he said, because clearly there was something Revere wanted them to see.
“I’ll still need those x-rays you promised,” Scully said.
Revere didn’t deign to answer, but he opened the door to his personal freak show.
Even by the light of day with his head clear, Mulder saw it as a demented nursery rhyme. Twelve lame sheep, see how they crawl, or something like that. Mulder’s own skepticism about the scientific usefulness of such aberrant animals had been confirmed by Scully’s rant. Revere had been careful to explain that the crippled sheep had resulted from a spontaneous mutation, but that didn’t excuse whoever had propagated them and destined them to their regimented existence. Sprawl on the floor, hang from a hook, or march in place.
No part of it was in the service of knowledge. It was all for show.
“If you’re ready, we can move on to the dairy sheep.” Revere addressed himself to Mulder. “I don’t believe you’ll encounter any distressing procedures today.”
Distressing procedure was an adequate description, Mulder thought.
Scully had tried to reassure him that it wasn’t as bad as it looked. She’d even drawn him a picture. “See, Mulder, Roger wasn’t actually ‘smashing its nuts.’ The clamp crushes the spermatic cord, interrupting the blood supply as well as the flow of sperm. The testes shrink and die from lack of nourishment and eventually just fall off.”
Mulder had thanked her for the clarification and announced how relieved he was, but only to shut her up. She’d wanted to explain and illustrate all the other methods of castration. The dairy sheep were a soothing sight after the deformed animals. They munched contentedly and paid their visitors no heed. Mulder looked over the lambs but couldn’t pick out the one from last night. None of them were walking funny.
“This is all too fascinating, but we’re ready to see your crowning achievement,” Scully said.
Jeeze, Scully, turn it down, Mulder wanted to tell her. It’s one thing to be assertive or even aggressive, but Scully was acting like a jerk.
“There’s nothing more to show,” Revere said. “I’m aware that Agent Mulder believes he saw something else, but he himself admits he was not operating at full capacity.”
“Humor me. Show us the room at the end of the hall,” Scully said.
Revere shrugged.
“Very well,” he said.
Now Mulder knew the real purpose of the tour. The hybrid sheep was gone and the room would look perfectly normal. Instead of a coffin-sized aquarium and banks of life-support machines, they would see desks and chairs and shelves. Revere had erased every trace of his forbidden accomplishment, and he wanted Mulder and Scully as witnesses.
Mulder was sure that Scully had figured it out as well. She could look for signs of recent redecorating, and she wouldn’t need his help to find them.
“Excuse me, is there a bathroom?” Mulder asked.
Scully probably wanted to strangle him, but her obvious displeasure worked in his favor. Revere took in the tableau and granted Mulder’s request without suspicion.
“In the data room, other end of the hall,” he said.
“Thanks. I’ll catch up with you in a minute,” Mulder said.
Once he made it into the hall, Mulder weighed the possibilities. Revere had plenty of time to dispose of the evidence. The chances of finding even a trace of the sheep with hands or any of the equipment were just about nonexistent.
Revere would have undoubtedly left the cleanup to Roger. Probably thought the big lug didn’t have an independent thought in his head, but Roger was a lot stronger willed than Revere gave him credit for.
Roger was the key. Mulder wondered if he was still in the facility and decided to check the parking lot for Roger’s pride and joy—his beat up old van. Scanning the parking lot, adrenaline circulated through his veins. His breath caught as he spotted Roger’s van pulling out onto Peyster Road.
Breaking into a run, Mulder fished in his pocket for the car keys. Scully was going to kill him, he thought, as he slid into the front seat. She’d be furious when she realized he’d stranded her, but ultimately, she’d understand that he had to follow their only lead.
Bone of Contention – Part 9
Even before Revere pushed open the heavy door to usher her into the room, Scully knew what she would find. Nothing.
Mulder’s absence only aggravated her frustration, because she had to pull a fast 180 and take on the “good cop” role that should have been his.
“We use this room for clerical functions. As you can see, it’s entirely unsuited to housing animals,” Revere said.
Scully saw the scrape marks on the floor and smelled the wet paint, probably disguising any animal odor from earlier. She couldn’t quite force herself to apologize for thinking Revere might be trying to hide something.
“Is Roger around? I’d like to thank him for his help yesterday,” she said.
“Roger?” Revere seemed surprised. “I’d be glad to convey your appreciation.”
“I want to thank him personally,” she said.
“Very kind of you,” said Revere, “but really, it’s best not to disrupt his normal routine.”
Scully could have pushed harder, but she didn’t think she’d get anywhere. Furthermore, Mulder might have located Roger himself. If Mulder was bonding with the good shepherd, she didn’t want to sabotage his efforts.
There was another matter. She’d drawn blood last night to prove that Mulder had been drugged, and the Vacutainers were back at the hotel, floating around in a bucket of melted ice. If she didn’t deal with them promptly, they’d be useless.
“In that case, I believe my business here is complete,” Scully said.
Revere was only too happy to be rid of her. On their way out he asked one of the security officers to locate Agent Mulder, but the man explained that he had already left.
“Poor guy said he had a problem with his colostomy bag, had to run out in a hurry,” he said.
Recently Mulder had been experimenting with the theory that the most personal and distasteful explanations were the best, because nobody wanted to question them. Ringworm, flatulence, seasonal hemorrhoids, genital warts—he’d had a good deal of success.
She didn’t miss a beat.
“I hate when that happens,” she said. “He’s probably waiting for me in the car.”
He wasn’t, of course. The car was gone and Scully was effectively stranded. For a second she thought about calling Brian Yates for a ride, and then she phoned her hotel and asked if they could send a car.
Animals were born to die. That was one of the lessons Roger learned growing up on a farm.
Only Cindy wasn’t an animal.
Roger had been lambing since his youngest years. He’d seen lambs you had to turn to deliver them, and lambs born dead, and once even a lamb all wrong with its brains in a sac on top of its head. Things happen sometimes, sad things.
But when Cindy was born, he knew he was looking at something that shouldn’t be.
Not like a lamb, but more like a lamb than like any other thing. Blue eyes. Hands.
It was wrong, more wrong than locking the keys in the car or leaving the oven on all night. It was wrong like kicking over a gravestone or touching yourself in the shower.
Roger had heard it could happen, but he thought it was only stories. Lies like people tell kids so they won’t make their eyes cross or run with scissors.
The doc was all proud, like the monster baby was something good.
Roger wondered about the baby sheep-thing a long time before he figured out a way to ask, and even after he got an answer it didn’t make sense to him.
There had to be a father. Everybody has a father.
Roger used to think the doc was the one who had done it, even if he wasn’t the father, purely speaking. Now Doc had finally told him the truth and it was more awful than Roger could have ever imagined. It was wrong on top of wrong on top of wrong.
Best would have been if she never was born, and many times she was fixing to die. It was all the work it took to keep her alive that made him end up so he loved her.
All those nights of sitting up with her, all the nasty medicines he coaxed down her throat, and now she had to die to keep her safe from Agent Mulder. How could that be right? But Doc was smart in ways Roger couldn’t understand. If he killed Cindy she’d go to heaven, where people don’t have bodies and she would be a beautiful angel, but Roger couldn’t do it.
He wanted to take Cindy someplace safe where no one would find her. He thought and thought about what to do. How could he keep her warm and feed her? Roger wrapped her up in canvas like a big bundle and carried her out to his van. It was a pure miracle that no one stopped him.
He couldn’t take her home, ‘cause the landlady didn’t even allow cats. Pa sold the farm years ago. There was only one place he could think of, and it wasn’t great.
The woods. It was pretty there, like he’d told Agent Mulder, but he couldn’t choose a pretty part. He had to go somewhere he could drive the van. It was too cold out for Cindy, and he’d have to leave her in his van, at least until he could build her a shelter.
Some people used the woods for the town dump, and he drove along the tire tracks until they ended next to an ugly hill of mattresses and other household debris. He could use some of those things and build her a little hut. It wouldn’t do for long, but maybe by then he could think of something better.
He put the van into park and left the motor to run.
“How are you, girl?” he asked. Cindy’s thumb and forefinger formed an “O,” as she gave him her sign for “okay.”
This wasn’t the way Roger had pictured it. He thought Cindy would get weaker without her special chamber. He thought his job was to be her comfort in her final hours.
Now she looked better than she had for days. Even her breathing was better—less phlemmy. Her eyes were clearer too, not as gummy as they’d been before. He should have been happy, but this created a whole new bunch of problems. Roger couldn’t care for her and keep her away from Agent Mulder forever. It wasn’t possible.
Roger thought about what Mulder had done, and he grimaced in disgust. Back home when they said what little Ronnie did in the meadow, well Ronnie was short, and pimply, and scared of girls. Agent Mulder was a growed-up man from a city. He didn’t have cause to do it even once, and here he was looking to do it again, even after he saw what had happened from the first time. Plus, this meant Agent Mulder was Cindy’s pa and what he wanted to do was even more terrible.
Evil. Stubborn. Tricky.
Yesterday, when he was guarding Agent Mulder, Mr. Metzger said he should hit him on the head. He wished he had done it. Hit him as hard as he could, and Mulder would die, and it would be Mr. Metzger’s fault.
Killing Mulder was the right thing to do. Even if Roger could keep Cindy safe, what about the other sheep? Other sheep to make other babies like Cindy. Killing Mulder was the right thing to do, but it would only bring more trouble. Roger knew he was too selfish to do it.
If only he knew where to find the pretty lady doctor, to stop Agent Mulder from what he was doing.
But what if Dr. Revere was wrong? What if he was lying, and Agent Mulder hadn’t done what he said. Or maybe he had done it, but he was sorry and he wasn’t looking to do it again?
Roger had got himself snarled up like a ball of yarn, and unless everything happened just right, he was never going to find the loose end. Sighing unhappily, he got out of the car to start a fire. He needed hot water to fix Cindy’s meal. She didn’t have the right teeth for regular feed.
That’s how it happened that he was outside the van, watching the flames, when the car pulled up. Roger remembered carrying Mulder last night and putting him in that same car, and doing it gently because he didn’t know he was carrying a monster.
Mulder got out of his car and looked Roger’s way, but he went over to the van and tried to open the door. When he couldn’t do that, he tried staring in the window, but that wouldn’t let him see the back of the van.
“You saved her,” Mulder said, walking toward Roger. He sounded happy and friendly.
“I’m making a fire,” said Roger. He eyed Agent Mulder warily.
“Dr. Revere ordered you to destroy her, but you wouldn’t do it,” Mulder said. His voice was gentle, as if he admired Roger for being smart and strong. Roger knew better than to believe him.
Roger kicked at the ancient ash around the base of the fire. There had been other fires here before, lots of them.
“You came for her,” he said.
Mulder didn’t even try to lie.
“Yeah. I have to get her out of here before Revere figures it out,” he said.
“You can’t have her,” Roger said, a catch in his voice.
“Can I see her?” Mulder asked quietly.
He sounded nice, but a nice man wouldn’t keep coming after Cindy.
“I’ll show her to Agent Scully,” Roger said. He looked right into Mulder’s eyes, to show he could be stubborn too.
“Roger, try to understand. If I call Agent Scully now, Dr. Revere will know where we are. He’ll follow us here,” Mulder said.
“Then you go get her yourself,” Roger said. “Me and Cindy will wait.”
Mulder shook his head, and he folded his arms across his chest. He didn’t say anything for a while, but then he pushed his hair back from his forehead and he tried again to get his way.
“Cindy. That’s a pretty name. But we need to take her someplace where we can get some back-up,” he said. “I’ll tell Agent Scully where to meet us.” Roger couldn’t follow what Mulder was trying to say. He understood that they were sitting pretty much in the doc’s backyard, and it would be easy for Doc to get Cindy back if he showed up with enough help. But where could they run to that would be any different? Yellowstone, maybe, where the rangers might help them?
But it was just too far. Everything was too far, especially if Mulder thought he could ride in the back of the van with Cindy. It was true that Revere wanted her dead, but Mulder wanted something even worse.
A big, snarled-up ball of yarn, and no way to get it untangled. Roger wondered if there was any way to make things okay again. He should have listened to Doc and sent Cindy to heaven when he had the chance. He should have listened to Mr. Metzger and sent Mulder to hell.
He reminded himself that Mulder had a gun. He was small, but he had a gun.
“Okey-dokey. We’ll do it your way,” Roger said.
“Thank you,” said Mulder.
As they walked back to the van, Roger looked around for something to hit with, but he didn’t see anything he liked much, and he probably wouldn’t need it.
Mulder reached the back of the van, then turned.
Roger took out his key. The big set of keys was hanging in the ignition, but he had a key that opened the doors.
Roger thought about the people who came early and had to wait for the Wal-mart to open. That’s the way Mulder was looking at him, fidgety and impatient.
Slowly Roger put the key in the lock.
“She’s up near the front. You’ll have to climb inside to get a look,” he said.
“Thanks,” said Mulder.
If only Mulder was a little closer, Roger might be able to smack him in the face with the gate as he swung it up. Only he wasn’t.
“Stand back, so the gate don’t hit you,” Roger said, and he waited, refusing to open the van until Mulder took a step back. Even after he had the back open, he held his ground a second.
“It’s a big step. I’ll help you up,” he said.
“I’m fine,” Mulder said, and Roger moved aside just a little. He waited until Mulder had one foot up on the van.
“I will help you,” he said.
He tried to make it look like an accident, muttering, “Sorry, clumsy,” as he pushed Mulder’s face against the floor. Mulder didn’t seem to get it until Roger was sitting on top of him, and then he said, “Roger, cut it out.”
“Gimme the rope,” he called to Cindy, and she tossed it to him.
“Roger!” Mulder yelled.
Mulder was smaller than a ram, and all in all he was easier to tie. Roger took away his gun and remembered to remove the bullets. He put both in his pocket, thinking he might return them to Agent Scully when it was all over. “Not gonna let you hurt her,” Roger said, adjusting the rope around Mulder’s wrists. He didn’t want to cut off the blood. At least not there. “No sir. Not gonna let you do it.”
Bone of Contention – Part 10
“What the hell is the matter with you, Roger?” Mulder shouted as Roger belly-flopped him deeper into the van. His chin whacked against the gritty floor, jarring his teeth and causing an impressive set of fireworks behind his eyes.
“Don’t do no good yellin’, Mr. Mulder. Nobody can hear you out here.”
With one last mighty heave on his belt, Roger shoved Mulder ahead a few feet until only his ankles remained outside the van. The floor was rough against his cheek, and his shin was going to have a lovely bruise from the doorway.
Drawing a long breath of stale, musty air, Mulder forced himself to slow his frantic breathing. He had to keep his wits together. Roger might be dumb as mud but the man was incredibly determined about whatever he’d gotten into that thick skull.
The van smelled of rust and something vaguely animal-like underlaid with a strange medicinal smell. Mulder could think of no good reason for that smell.
Roger loosened the rope at Mulder’s wrists, but unfortunately, only enough to ease the pins and needles sensation in his hands.
“Roger, you need to untie me. I’m trying to help you!”
“I know all about you. I know the bad things you did, and I won’t let you do them anymore.”
He cast his mind back over the brief conversation he’d had with Roger before the big man had overpowered him. Mulder grimaced, hearing Scully’s voice in his head. Don’t underestimate him, huh Mulder? Isn’t that what you told me?
What bad things was Roger referring to, anyway? Mulder tried to think. His contact with the big guy had been extremely limited. What on earth could have set Roger off?
How fucking humiliating, he thought. Trussed up like a prize pig—outsmarted by a man who had to read the instructions on a bottle of shampoo. Scully was going to have a field day with this one. That is, if she ever FUCKING GOT HERE TO RESCUE HIM!
Damn, why the hell had he gone and stranded her at Weymouth? Oh sure, it sounded like a good idea at the time. Scully must have been furious when she got out to the parking lot and found he’d hared off after Roger. She’d probably rip him a new one if she were here. That is, after she stopped laughing at his predicament.
He’d gladly face any comments by Scully—any humiliation at all—just to have her show up. He had a very bad feeling about this.
“Damn it, Roger, that’s enough. Let me go!”
Mulder felt Roger’s bulk shift over him as the man grabbed him by the shoulders and flipped him onto his back. One of his wrists was bent the wrong way, and it hurt like hell. Mulder let loose with every swear word he could remember.
“Fuck, Roger—that hurts,” he said, finally running out of epithets.
“Don’t talk like that,” Roger said, darkly. “‘Specially in front of a lady.”
Mulder’s gaze ricocheted around the interior of the van, taking in the torn ceiling fabric, a ragged hole in one of the seat backs. The overhead light cast shadows in the corners, but Mulder could see two rows of bench seats and a large red and white plastic box.
Over the scuffed vinyl seatback, a tangle of dirty white curls appeared. Mulder was riveted as a pair of blue eyes peered over the edge. Clearly, whatever it was, this creature was terrified. Mulder couldn’t remember ever seeing such a tragic gaze.
Delicate, human hands gripped the back of the seat, the finger nails smooth and gently curved. The face was odd, not quite sheep-like, not quite human. The wool on the face was sparse, showing pink skin beneath. The nose wasn’t as long as the sheep Mulder had seen at Weymouth; the ears were folded more closely against the head.
He couldn’t see its mouth, but wheezing, frightened sounds echoed through the van.
“It’s okay, Cindy. He can’t hurt you. I’m gonna fix it so he can’t ever hurt anyone again.” Roger’s voice was soothing as he spoke gently to the creature.
“Roger, don’t do it!” Mulder pleaded. His only defense was his words, and Roger was a tough audience. “I’m a federal agent. Do you know what happens to people who kill a federal agent? The electric chair, Roger. They’ll fry you in the fucking chair, and maybe Cindy too, for being your helper.” “Dirty-mouth dummy,” Roger said disdainfully, looking him right in the eye. Mulder tried to twist away as he felt Roger’s hands on his belt buckle.
“What the hell are you doing? Stop that!” he ordered, trying to sound commanding instead of terrified and helpless as Roger opened his trousers and jerked them roughly down to his knees. “Dirty-mouth dummy,” Roger said again.
“I’m glad you called. Sorry about being such a jerk,” Brian said.
His calm, friendly voice on the phone was a relief. Scully was hesitant about asking him for a favor, after their chilly parting that morning, but she needed a lift and the hotel car wouldn’t be available for another hour.
“Don’t be glad yet. I’m going to ask you to do something for me,” Scully warned him.
“As long as it isn’t illegal,” Brian said.
“I need a ride,” she told him. “I’m over at Weymouth Scientific without a car.”
“So it’s nothing personal. You’re just using me again,” he said cheerfully.
“I’m afraid so,” she answered, marveling that he could be so easy-going.
“Favors are my specialty. At least you’ll get used to having me around,” he said.
Scully hung up and tried Mulder’s phone again. The wind had picked up and Scully shivered a bit as she waited outside the door. No matter how cold it was, she had no intention of going back inside. By the time Brian pulled into the parking lot, she had tried Mulder’s line two more times, without success.
“I was way out of line,” Brian said when she got into his car. “I know you’re working, and I’m in no position to put demands on your time or attention.”
“But you had a valid point,” she said. “Let’s put on the brakes, at least until this case is over.”
“Exactly. We’ll just let things take their own course.” He gave her a jaunty smile, and she thought how rarely she’d seen Mulder smile that way.
They drove to her hotel, where Scully picked up the tubes with Mulder’s blood. The ice had completely melted, but the water was still very cold when she shook the last droplets off the vials.
“Now I have to find out about shipping,” she said.
“The Fed Ex office is all the way to Banner Falls. Maybe you could have the hotel take care of the arrangements,” Brian suggested as she pulled the hotel room door shut behind her. “Fed Ex,” she said decisively. “I can pick up a rental car at the Exxon.”
The service station, besides its mini mart, contained a branch of a car rental company. Accounting would freak out when they saw that she and Mulder had rented a second car.
“I’ll drive you to Fed Ex,” he said. “Remember, I’m the favor-man.”
“I could never ask you to do that,” she said, shaking her head.
“You didn’t ask. Let’s go,” he said.
Brian’s hand was at her back as they left the hotel. Scully drew in a sharp breath at the familiarity of the gesture.
Agent Mulder never took his eyes off Roger. He couldn’t talk or holler anymore, but his eyes were enough to show he was scared.
“You had no cause to raise such a racket. You’re hardly gonna feel it,” Roger said. “I’m not fixing to kill you.”
At first Mulder had tried to talk to him, stating all the reasons to let him go. But then, when Roger had his pants open and dragged down to his knees, Mulder had put up enough of a fuss that Cindy started to whimper. He wouldn’t shut his mouth so Roger shut it for him, using the wide silk tape to do the job.
“You’re only gonna be better off for it. You won’t be thinking wickedness all the time,” Roger said. He tore off an extra length of the tape to hold Mulder’s penis up against his stomach. Keep it out of the way. Mulder writhed like a fish on the hook as he tried to move away from Roger. Hoarse, muffled sounds came from behind the tape across Mulder’s mouth.
Roger was working as fast as he could, and Mulder’s panic was getting him rattled. He took a vial from the medicine kit; it was the sleep medication he’d used the day before.
“You shouldn’t even need this,” he said reproachfully as he pulled some up into a syringe.
One of the reasons Roger didn’t like working with horses was that they’d get into a panic and stare at you with their great big rolling eyes, and that’s what Mulder was doing to him.
“Settle down now,” Roger said as he jabbed the needle into Mulder’s thigh. “Go to sleep.”
Cindy’s curiosity was starting to get the better of her shyness, and she crawled over to see what was going on. Roger was fixing to shoo her away, except it turned out she was helpful. She gave Mulder something else to look at with his big, scared eyes, instead of staring at Roger.
Roger loaded a second syringe with Xylocaine, and he took his smallest needle for the injection, but Mulder was bucking and thrashing from the moment Roger touched his sac, even before the shot.
“That’s it. That’s the last it’s gonna hurt,” Roger said as he withdrew the needle.
Xylocaine needs a few minutes to work. In the meantime, Roger got the rest of his stuff ready. Scalpel, couple of clamps, and some stitches.
“You won’t hardly bleed, either,” he said.
Hogs are hard. Sheep are easy. He figured Mulder would be somewhere in between.
Bone of Contention – Part 11
“Quit looking at me like that,” Roger said. “See, you won’t even feel it.” He gave a tap, to show he had everything all numbed up, but Mulder was still staring, all bug-eyed and crazy.
“Serves you right,” Roger said, but he couldn’t work this way. He took out the vial of medicine that had knocked Mulder out just fine the day before. “I don’t know why you won’t go to sleep. You can have one more shot, and then I’m getting you done right no matter how hard you stare.”
Even all tied up, Mulder tried to get away from him. It made the needle go in funny, and Roger was annoyed.
“See, you made it hurt more. Dummy,” he said.
Then they both heard it; a car approaching on the rutted, unpaved ground. Cindy heard it too.
“Eh?” she asked.
They heard a door creak open, and footsteps, and then Mulder really went wacko, thrashing, even banging his head on the floor to make noise. Roger couldn’t remember if he’d locked the rear of the van.
The handle turned.
Roger held his breath. He was in trouble now for sure, whoever it was.
He pushed Cindy up toward the front of the van and down between the seats, in case it was Doc Revere. Maybe he wouldn’t see her. Maybe he’d just see Mulder, and let Roger finish his work.
The gate swung open. The man outside was older than Mulder, older than the doc. His face was deeply creased, and his hair was gray. He was smoking a cigarette.
“Well, Fox. You’ve gotten yourself in quite a fix, haven’t you?” he asked.
The man was nice and friendly, and the way Mulder looked at him, all hateful and mad, convinced Roger that he was a good man.
“That’s a mighty sharp knife you have there,” the smoking man said to Roger. He took a long slow drag off his cigarette, nodding as he released the stream of smoke.
“Got to be,” Roger explained.
“What’s your name?” the man asked, and Roger told him. “Well, Roger, you’ve given me the best laugh I’ve had in a long time. Or don’t you agree, Mr. Mulder?”
Mulder moved his head like he was trying to say something.
“He’s stubborn,” Roger commented.
The smoker sat down on the tailgate. Roger hoped Cindy wouldn’t get too cold with the back of the van open, but he didn’t want to upset the friendly visitor.
“He always has been. Perhaps he’ll be less stubborn once you complete your operation,” the man said.
“That’s how it goes,” Roger agreed. “Makes ‘em calm and happy.”
“Calm and happy. You’ll like that, won’t you, Fox? It will be a such a relief after a life so full of turmoil and unhappiness,” the smoker said.
If looks could kill, like Pa used to say. Mulder didn’t look like a frightened horse any more; he looked like a crazy bull.
“He don’t believe it,” Roger said, and the smoker laughed.
“How odd. I’ve heard he’ll believe almost anything,” he said.
The old man was having a lot of fun, but Roger didn’t want to waste any more time. The air in the van was now thick and gray with smoke. Cindy coughed quietly, and Roger’s heart started to pound, but luckily the smoker didn’t hear her.
“Okay if I cut him now?” Roger asked, and waited for an answer.
“We’ll let Mr. Mulder decide. Take the tape off his mouth,” the smoker said at last.
“He’ll holler up a storm,” Roger warned him.
“We have to ask him if he wants this operation,” the smoking man said.
Roger didn’t answer. He didn’t see why Mulder had to agree to anything, since he was all tied up. Animals didn’t know what was best for them. You had to do things they didn’t want because you knew they needed it, and Mulder needed this.
Roger thought maybe the smoking man was trying to rile him, just like he was trying to rile Agent Mulder. He shrugged, as if he really didn’t care, and ripped the tape from Mulder’s mouth. Mulder flinched and made a hissing noise.
Roger was closer to him, but Mulder tried to pick up his head enough to talk to the smoking man.
“Let me go, you bastard,” he said. His voice sounded funny, as if he was drunk. Roger had never noticed that effect before because the other animals couldn’t talk.
“Very well,” the smoking man said. “It’s his choice.”
Roger was disappointed but not surprised.
“We’ll use the other agent for our plan,” the smoker added.
Roger was confused because the other agent was Agent Scully, and he couldn’t do to her what he was doing to Mulder. Surgery like that you need a vet. It sounded like the man thought he and Roger had a plan, but Roger had never seen the smoker before. How could there be a plan? Roger was used to being confused when other people talked, but he wasn’t confused about this.
“What are you talking about?” Mulder rasped.
“I thought you’d be more chivalrous, Mr. Mulder. After all, Agent Scully has already endured more than her fair share,” the smoker said. “However, either one of you will serve our current purpose.”
“If you cut off my balls, you’ll leave her alone? Why the hell should I believe you?” Mulder asked.
“You can believe whatever you like,” said the smoker. “Roger, find his phone, please.”
The phone was right in his jacket pocket. Roger held it up like a trophy.
“Dial up his partner,” the smoker instructed. “After he tells her how to get here, you can cut him loose.”
“What is her number?” Roger asked.
“Push the number ‘one,’ and then ‘send,’” the smoking man said. “Now hold it so he can talk to her.”
He had some trouble pushing the tiny buttons with his big finger, but he managed at last and brought the phone to Mulder’s face.
“Scully, I need you to get over here. I’m in the woods just south of Weymouth Scientific, about a quarter mile off the road,” Mulder said. “And hurry.”
Roger folded the phone and reached to untie the cord around Mulder’s ankles, but the smoking man stopped him.
“So number one is her home phone,” the smoker said. “Try it again, Roger, only this time press the number ‘two.’”
“I did what you said,” Mulder protested.
“Then do it again,” said the smoker. “To her cell phone.”
“Fuck you,” said Mulder.
“Does that mean you’ve changed your mind?” the smoker asked.
“I’ll kill you,” Mulder said angrily.
“You’ve never been calm and happy before. Perhaps you’ll thank me,” the smoker said.
The smoker was getting on Roger’s nerves, not just because of the cigarettes, but because he talked as if everything was a joke that only he understood. Also, he was making it take too long. Cindy hadn’t had her breakfast, and Mulder was going to need another shot soon.
Cindy coughed again, and this time everyone heard it.
The smoker gave Roger a harsh look and said, “Bring it out.”
“Huh?” Roger asked.
“Bring the test animal out where I can see it.”
Roger knew he had to obey. As he climbed into the van, the smoker turned around and tossed a rag so that it fell over Mulder’s face.
“You’ve seen quite enough already, Mr. Mulder,” he said.
The radio was set to “easy listening,” and the bland music filled in the gaps in the conversation. Instead of driving to Banner Falls, seventy miles away, Brian was taking Scully to rent a car.
“Separation anxiety,” Brian pronounced after a long silence.
“Uh-huh,” Scully answered absently.
“You needed a ride to the Fed Ex office, I offered you a ride, and now you won’t go because you can’t get your partner on the phone,” he continued.
She registered his irritation more than the specifics of his complaint, but her thoughts were elsewhere. He was driving her to the Exxon station where she’d get a car of her own, and that was all that mattered to her.
“I’m his back-up,” she explained.
“My sister went through this, when her youngest started kindergarten,” Brian informed her. “Justin was fine. It was Mommy who couldn’t let go.”
“I’m sure he’s fine,” Scully answered.
“You did want to get your evidence shipped out, remember? Or was that my imagination?” Brian asked.
“I changed my mind,” Scully said.
“All because Agent Mulder won’t pick up his phone,” he said.
“I have to be available,” she said without expecting him to understand.
Brian kept his thoughts to himself until his phone rang. Flipping it open, he took the call with no attempt to conceal the conversation.
“It’s okay, I wasn’t doing anything anyway,” he said into the phone. “A dog? Shouldn’t be a problem, especially if it’s riding in a carrier.”
“What was that about?” Scully asked when he closed his phone. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d given her the cold shoulder, but he turned to answer her.
“Mr. Terranova’s leaving town with his new companion,” Brian laughed. “I never figured him for an animal-lover.”
“A large dog? Traveling in a closed carrier?” Scully asked. This time he didn’t answer. “Brian? What time are you meeting him?”
He adjusted his Stetson and turned up the volume on the radio, and when he spoke, his jaw was set.
“About a mile more to the service station,” he said.
“Thanks. I was just wondering.” She was trying to pose her questions in casual language, but his expression told her to give up. Brian thought she was playing games or using him, and maybe she was. In any case, she didn’t have time to work at changing his mind.
She wanted to try Mulder’s number once more, but she forced herself to wait. No one spoke until Brian pulled into the Exxon station.
“Thanks,” Scully said as she got out of his car. He nodded slightly, and then he drove away.
Scully had to stand by the service desk until the manager was free, because he was the only one who could access the computer for the rental company. He tried valiantly to sell her on an upgrade, but she held her ground and he backed down. Finally she had her car.
With no clear destination, she decided to drive back to Weymouth and see if she could pick up Mulder’s trail from there. Before she could turn the key, her phone rang and she flipped it open.
“Mulder, where are you?” she snapped. Thanks to his tired old disappearing act, she’d pissed off the only normal man on earth who found her attractive.
“Ah, you’re wondering where Agent Mulder might be,” said a familiar voice.
Her gut clenched, but she held back her fear and let out her anger.
“Where is he?” she barked.
“I remember when Mulder was outstanding in his field,” the voice said. “Now, I’m afraid, he’s out lying in the woods.”
“What have you done to him?” she demanded.
“When you find him, tell him he owes me one. Two, really.”
“I don’t know what kind of game you think you’re playing—”
“Don’t take too long. The nights are cold here, and Agent Mulder is somewhat less durable than the proverbial brass monkey.”
Bone of Contention – Part 12
It was a dream he’d had before. His besieged brain tried to wake him even as his leaden body urged him to sleep a little longer.
These nightmares first appeared when Scully was missing. Usually it was Scully stripped and bound and helpless, but sometimes it was Mulder himself. He struggled to escape his troubled sleep, but his weariness was too great.
When he finally awoke, the dread had ebbed and the feeling that screamed him to consciousness was pain.
His arms! Crushed between his own weight and the rough, cold ground. He tried to pull them free, and he realized with a grunt that his wrists were tied. Finally he managed to lurch himself over onto his side, bringing fresh pain to his strained shoulders. He stilled himself to catch his breath and let the circulation return.
He was exhausted. He wanted to go back to sleep almost as much as he wanted his arms free.
As the pain in his arms subsided, the panic returned, a visceral horror that gripped his throat and soaked him with sweat even as he struggled to remember the cause of his fear.
Roger and the sheep hybrid and the cancer man and—oh, God!
They hadn’t killed him, but maybe he’d be better off dead.
He writhed frantically on the ground, ignoring the angry jolts of pain in his arms as he curled himself into a “C” to inspect the damage.
No blood. No blood that he could see, anyway. A strip of white tape across his pelvis—what the fuck? Sick, dirty bastards, what had they done to him?
Nothing hurt down there. Was that good?
He needed his hands, but his hands were useless, trapped behind his back. If he could bring his legs up and squirm them through the loop formed by his conjoined arms, he’d be able to check himself for damage.
It would have been a simple exercise in handcuffs, but the rope that tied his wrists gave him almost no slack, and his bruised arms and shoulders ached at the added abuse. Mulder ignored the pain in his arms and the pain in his face where it pressed against the pebbled ground. He wriggled his way through the maneuver, forcing the fear from his mind.
His trousers and shorts were bunched down around his shins. The strip of white tape across his lower gut yanked at his penis. Better not to think about that. Think about something else. Something safe.
On the mound, Mike Torrez. Munson catching. Chambliss on first, Randolph on second, Dent at short, and Nettles on Third. In the outfield…
Finally, success. Hands still bound, but now where he could use them. His balls felt solid, sweaty, and warm. Pretty much as he remembered them.
“Thank you, God!” he whispered out loud.
Now with the overwhelming pain in his shoulders eased, other sensations were becoming apparent. Small stones dug into his bare butt. He squeezed his eyes shut as he felt the tape pull at the skin of his groin.
His fingers found the edge of the tape. With one quick motion, he ripped it off.
“Fuck!”
It was a hell of a bikini wax, and he’d probably removed some skin along with the hair. It was a small price to pay. His fear washed away in waves of relief, and as the tension abated, the lethargy returned.
Drugged, he realized, remembering the needles.
He could probably free himself with enough effort, but he was so damned tired. He lay on the ground, curled protectively around his treasures.
Your balls or your life. Easy choice, because you’d be better off dead. Cancer Man played for high stakes, and Mulder did too. Death was always on the table.
But not this. Not what they threatened today.
I would have killed him, Mulder thought. He’d been close before, but this time he would have pulled the trigger. Three times. Twice for Cancer Man, and once for himself. He wouldn’t bother leaving a note. It wouldn’t be needed.
There was a trick that female agents sometimes used. He’d seen Scully do it, and he’d even heard her explain it to a young rookie:
“For a recalcitrant subject, try pointing the gun at his groin instead of his chest. It helps him focus.”
“That really works?” the rookie had asked, her voice full of skepticism. “A shot in the chest can kill you.”
“Men aren’t always rational,” Scully had answered.
Unlike Scully, who was always rational.
She talked about her body as if it was something separate from herself. “I have cancer”—she’d only said that once, the day she told him about the tumor. After that, it was “the cancer that invaded my body.” It was almost as if she’d willed it to be something apart from her after that first day.
It was one huge difference between them, because Mulder knew he was his body.
Balls were courage. Under “man” in the dictionary, it said, “see balls.”
It wasn’t just a metaphor.
He really should try to get himself untied. At the very least, he should find a way to pull up his pants.
Again he brought his hands down between his legs, fingering himself carefully. All there. He was still himself. He brought his hands up before his face, studying the coarse rope around his wrists. Hemp, not nylon, and the knots were fast. He could probably find a way to grind through, or even chew his way free, but it wouldn’t be easy.
His trousers were slightly more cooperative. Gradually he squirmed and tugged his way back into his clothes. It was worth the considerable effort needed to zip his fly and buckle his belt. He was on the ground with his hands tied, but he didn’t feel so utterly vulnerable.
He should kill that bastard, for what he could have done, even if he didn’t do it. He should kill that smoking bastard for knowing how frightened Mulder really was.
The sounds of an approaching car cut through his rage and turned it to terror. They were coming back. They had taken Cindy someplace safe and now they were coming back to finish the job.
“Where the hell are you, Mulder?”
Her words echoed through the car as she turned it off the main road onto the rutted path that cut through the trees. This had to be the right place, she thought. Ahead of the car, several sets of ridges looked fresh in the high beam’s brightness.
The car bumped and bounced over the uneven terrain. The accountants were going to complain loud enough about the second rental car without having to pay for a wheel alignment or damaged axle.
Scully replayed Cancer Man’s cryptic words, wondering what condition she’d find her partner in this time. A body could only take so much abuse and Mulder had already exceeded his quota of unconsciousness on this case.
She rounded a slight curve in the path, spotting a dark form sprawled in the headlight’s shine. Scully stopped the car, realizing the dark form was Mulder.
“Are you injured?” she called out as she ran from the car.
Mulder lay on his back, blinking in the bright light. He seemed dazed and terrified, the fear gradually morphing into relief at the sound of her voice.
“Scully?”
“Oh my God, Mulder. What happened to you?”
He winced as she grabbed his upper arms to help him into a sitting position. He shook his head slightly, as if to clear it.
“Oh, the usual,” he said wearily, holding up his bound wrists. “Do you have anything handy to cut these ropes?”
“I’ll be right back.” She ran back to the car, wishing she’d brought her medical bag. The rental company had included a small emergency kit in the back of the car. She hauled it out and carried it over to Mulder.
“I don’t see anything here…wait…maybe I can do something with the end of this screwdriver. Oh good, they have a solar blanket,” she said, shaking out the silver foil fabric and draping it over Mulder’s shoulders.
The screwdriver was useless on the coil of rope around Mulder’s wrists, but she finally managed to loosen the bindings enough to free him. His wrists were rubbed raw and looked extremely painful.
Mulder’s hands must have ached with pins and needles as he hissed out a breath and tucked them under his armpits, rocking back and forth. Suddenly, his hands flew to his ankles, scrambling over the fabric of his slacks. He shook his head.
“My legs were tied before. They must have untied them before they left. How did…how did you know where to find me?” he asked.
Something about Mulder just didn’t feel right. He seemed distracted and fuzzy. His clothing was rumpled, but no more than she would have expected after being tied up and left in the woods.
Mulder brought his hands down to rest over his lap. Scully dragged her gaze away, trying not to think about why Mulder seemed to be cupping his privates.
“Cancer Man called me. He said you ‘owe him one.’ Mulder, are you all right?”
“I’m just a little woozy.” He didn’t seem able to meet her eye. “I saw her, Scully, the hybrid sheep. Roger got her away from Weymouth. We’ve got to look for them.”
“Brian got a call earlier, from the Smoking Man. He wanted to be flown out and he said he was bringing a large dog in a crate.”
“You were with Brian,” Mulder said, flatly.
Why did she feel defensive? It was his fault she had to call Brian in the first place.
“Well, you stranded me out at Weymouth, and the hotel didn’t have a car available to pick me up for an hour. You’re lucky Brian could drive me to pick up another rental car or you’d still be lying there tied up.”
He looked at her for a moment, nodding and then closing his eyes as if the motion had made him dizzy.
“We’ve got to catch up with them, Scully,” Mulder said, struggling to his feet. One hand flew to his head as he swayed and reached out to grab her arm for balance.
“Mulder, you should be checked out.” She slid an arm around his middle.
“No time. Got to get to the airport.”
There was really no point in arguing, so she helped him to the car. He didn’t appear to be in immediate danger, though her instincts were telling her something wasn’t right.
“Okay, we’ll head out to the airport,” she agreed, reluctantly, helping him into the passenger seat of the car.
The path was too narrow to turn around, and Scully wasn’t sure she could maneuver the car in reverse all the way out to the road. She drove forward until she came to a slight clearing on the left and turned into it, narrowly missing Mulder’s rental.
“Avis will be happy to know their car is intact. Scully, I don’t have my weapon,” Mulder said, patting his clothing down. He opened the car door, staggering a bit as he stood up.
Her partner’s eyes darted around the clearing, his hands shaking slightly. The car’s headlights illuminated the clearing well enough to show nothing was there except rocks, leaves, and dirt. Mulder walked a few paces into the clearing and then froze in the beam of light. Gently touching his arm, Scully moved past him.
She opened the abandoned rental’s door, searching under the seats before popping the glove box.
“Bingo,” she called out. Mulder signed with relief when she produced his weapon, ID, and cell phone. This seemed to release him from his stasis and he walked over to her.
“Thank God,” he said. “Skinner would rip my head off and insert it where the sun don’t shine if I lost another gun.”
He holstered his weapon, shoving his phone and ID in his jacket pocket. Crossing to Scully’s car, he pulled the door open and slid inside.
“Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Scully backed out and pointed the car down the path and out to the road.
Mulder was silent for the rest of the trip out to the airport. Scully snuck glances in his direction, noting that his gaze never left the passenger window and his hands never left his lap.
They arrived at the airport, driving directly to the airfield where they’d landed a few days before. A man crossed the field, a clipboard in his hand.
“We’re looking for Brian Yates,” Scully shouted as they crossed to meet the man. She pulled out her badge, flipping it open so the man could see it.
“You’re about an hour too late,” the man said, looking up at the night sky. “Brian took off with an older man—one of his regular fares. Is Brian in some trouble?”
“No, he’s not in any trouble. You mentioned the older man. Did anyone else take off with Brian?” Scully asked.
“Now that’s a funny thing. One of those big luxury SUVs pulls up, and the old man gets out along with this big guy. I’ve never seen that old guy without a cigarette in his mouth, and this was no exception.”
“So he was smoking a cigarette,” Mulder prompted, gesturing impatiently for the man to continue.
“Yeah, the old man wanted Brian and the big guy to load this crate on the plane. Some kind of animal was in the crate. The old man said it was a dog, but it didn’t sound much like one.”
“What makes you say that?” Scully asked.
“Something was wheezing in that crate, coughing like. Just wasn’t making dog sounds. So, the big guy said the animal was sick and cigarette smoke bothered it. You know, the big guy seemed kind of dumb, but he was stubborn. Said he wouldn’t let the old man take it if he didn’t stop smoking. Then Brian says he isn’t carrying a sick animal on his plane. They argued and the old man got on the plane alone.”
“What happened to the big man?”
“He drove off with whatever was in the crate.”
Bone of Contention – Part 13
“Drive me to my car. I’ll haul ass and see if I can catch them before they make the interstate. You head over to Roger’s place. I don’t think he’d bring Cindy there, but it’s possible,” Mulder said.
Time was not on their side, and he squirmed impatiently, sitting in the passenger seat as Scully looked him over, frowning slightly.
“I’m taking you back to the hotel,” she said at last.
Mulder shook his head. “If you find him, call me. I don’t want you trying to apprehend him by yourself.”
Scully flipped her phone open. “Sheriff Morris, this is Special Agent Dana Scully. I need you to put out an APB.”
Mulder glowered as she described the subject and his vehicle, and when he heard the phrase “assault on a federal agent,” he had his hand to his balls before he could suppress the gesture.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Mulder said when Scully closed her phone.
“Roger has an hour’s head start,” she reminded him. “We can’t catch him by ourselves.”
“The sheriff won’t help us,” Mulder said. He couldn’t voice his real concern—what Roger would tell the sheriff if he was caught. A full description of Mulder hog-tied, helpless, and wild with terror as Roger prepared to relieve him of his wickedness.
“He’s sending a deputy to Roger’s home and he’s alerted the highway patrol to look for the Explorer,” Scully countered. “He’s doing his job.”
Finally she started the engine.
“Just drop me off by my car so I can do mine,” he said brusquely.
“You’ve been drugged, Mulder, for the second time in two days.” Her voice was gentle, calm, and measured. She was irritating the shit out of him. “You may not be aware of it, but your speech, your movement, your thinking—they’re impaired.”
“At least I didn’t say I love you,” he snapped.
She didn’t answer. She didn’t even look at him.
“You’re the victim, Mulder. Your injuries are evidence,” she said.
“I don’t have any injuries,” he said quickly.
“Your wrists are abraded. And we’ll get you to a doctor for a thorough check.”
“Drop it, Scully. I told you I’m not injured.”
There were a dozen ways she could have overruled his refusal. Probably it was the practical difficulties that made her relent.
“Blood work,” she said.
“You can draw blood,” he agreed.
That appeased her, and they rode in silence.
If there was one person in five billion who could never understand, it was Scully. “A knife invaded my body and removed its testicles.” That would be Scully-ese for what they tried to do to him.
“I’ll read your statement before you submit it,” Scully said.
“Thanks. I’ll use the spell-check,” Mulder said stonily.
“Mulder, please. You can’t expect yourself to be an objective investigator when you’re also the victim.”
Victim. Anybody could be a victim. Hell, most people were, eventually, one way or another. But the words felt heavy with shame.
“I’m not going to worry about testifying against Roger until they catch him.” The car was warm, and if only Scully would quit bothering him, he could probably take a nap.
“It’s not just about Roger. It’s about you, and your ordeal.”
Bile rose in his throat as little details came back to him: Roger unbuckling his belt, the feel of another man’s hands on his genitals, the smell of his own fear-sweat as he struggled against his restraints.
If she didn’t stop talking about his “ordeal,” he might just have to jump from the car.
“Shut up, Scully,” he hissed. It was the closest he could come to a polite reply.
She gave a little nod and pursed her lips.
“I won’t mention it again,” she said. “But whenever you’re ready—”
“Goddamn it!” Mulder exploded. “Spare me, okay? Spare me this bullshit. Spare me your hypocrisy.”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t seem angry. Her demeanor was gentle and controlled, solicitous and tolerant.
“You make me sick,” Mulder said bitterly. He saw a spark of pain in her eyes, but somehow that made him feel better. “You let them blow up your body, and stuff it with monsters, and steal your eggs, and then you tell me I have to talk about what happened to me when nothing happened!”
“You bastard.” She sounded as if she was choking. Good. Choking on her hypocrisy.
“They took your eggs, Scully. And now—now I don’t even know who you are.”
Her face was deadly white, a mask of pain that he had caused. An enemy attack would have been gentle by comparision, he thought. It takes a real friend to wound a person this deeply. His satisfaction evaporated, leaving only horror in its wake.
“Oh, God, Scully, I’m sorry. I know you didn’t let them,” he said.
“After everything, after all this time, you don’t know who I am?” she whispered.
“I was drugged,” he said stupidly.
“Because I can’t have children, you don’t know who I am?” she asked.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Isn’t that what you said?”
“No. But eggs…hormones…sex…and you don’t date.”
She gripped the wheel. “No point in dating if you can’t make babies. Is that what you’re suggesting?” she asked angrily.
“Hormones,” he said lamely. “And feelings, and biology. Scully, I don’t know what they did to you. Do you? I just didn’t know if everything worked the way it should. Or if I should just forget it.”
Mulder knew that with every word he made everything worse, but he was afraid if he stopped now, they would never speak again.
“‘Cause if you don’t, that would be okay. I do love you, Scully, even though you make me feel like an ass whenever I say it.”
Her knuckles were white. Her lips were trembling.
“I love you,” he said. “I am an ass, but I love you.”
If only she would talk. If only she would yell at him.
“Scully, you never told me about your date.”
“I have no intention of discussing my date with you.”
Thank God. She was talking to him.
“Did you have a good time?” he asked conversationally.
“Why? Don’t believe a barren woman can have fun?”
If it wasn’t about sex, it wouldn’t be so goddamn complicated. Those bastards had “hyperovulated” her, but nobody knew what that meant. He couldn’t find a doctor who had ever even heard of such a procedure.
If Scully had been returned with a leg injury, they could talk about it. He could ask her, “Do you want to take a walk?” And she could answer, “No, I no longer want to walk.” Or, “I want to walk but I can’t.” Or, “I want to walk, but not with you.”
“Please tell me about your date,” he pressed.
“Typical date—for a woman without ova,” Scully said.
“Scully, don’t—”
“Dinner. French food—very good. You know, many cancer patients lose their sense of taste, but I’ve been fortunate.”
Mulder winced.
“Then we took a drive in the country, to look at the stars.”
That son of a bitch, Mulder thought.
“Then I rescued you from the mad scientists, and Roger used that clamp-thing on the little lamb…”
That clamp-thing. He’d forgotten about that.
“…You passed out, and we went back to the hotel…”
That huge, curved pair of pliers that could geld a ram without a cut, without spilling a drop of blood. Roger said it didn’t even hurt for very long.
“Like I said, just a typical date.” Her voice traveled up and down the scale, as if she couldn’t control the pitch.
Hell, with a little Novacaine and maybe some knock-out drops, the damn sheep wouldn’t even know it had been castrated.
“Anything else you want to know, Mulder?”
Maybe the stupid sheep would be standing in the shower one morning and its balls would just drop off.
“I can tell you about my breakfast with Brian, if you’re curious.”
Mulder didn’t feel any pain, but that proved nothing. It might even be a bad sign.
It explained a lot.
Scully kicked off her shoes and sat against her bed’s headboard, wishing she had a cigarette and a stiff drink. Oh yes, Mulder’s revelation explained a whole raft of previously baffling events.
No wonder he’d gently put her off after her cancer had gone into remission. He obviously cared about her; she had no doubt of that. But when she had tried to advance them into a new direction during their little detour from the partnership seminar in Florida, he’d neatly sidestepped the issue, leaving her holding the wine and cheese.
At the time, she’d assumed he was still reeling from almost losing her. Or maybe she just wasn’t his type—not tall enough, leggy enough, sexy enough. It was finally clear, though, that he’d been repulsed. Oh, he’d been too kind to actually say it. Unless he was drugged, Mulder would never come out and admit he saw her as a neuter, a freak show exhibit.
Her face burned with humiliation.
After they’d gotten back to the motel, she’d insisted on bringing her medical bag to Mulder’s room to draw more blood samples. He’d wanted to come to her room, but she couldn’t risk being unable to evict a remorseful Mulder trying to explain away his words.
It had taken every ounce of strength not to cry in front of him. She’d avoided his eye, concentrating instead on the task at hand. When she’d rolled back his sleeve, she winced again at the sight of his raw wrists.
She’d escaped back to her room as soon as she’d filled the last vial of blood and packed her equipment. Mulder had been in mid “Scully, wait,” when she’d closed the door behind her.
Scully knew it was a matter of time before Mulder found an excuse to come over. She hoped the drugs in his system kicked in and Mulder went to bed. She didn’t think she could handle another confrontation tonight.
The knock on her door was distinctly unwelcome.
“Scully? Can I come in?”
“Not right now,” she called.
“It’s kind of important.”
“I’m not feeling well,” she said in a mammoth understatement.
“I really need you.”
Scully had promised herself she’d be brave and strong, and although she wasn’t yet ready to test herself, she opened the door a few inches.
“What’s wrong?” she asked him through the gap.
“I need you to check something,” he said.
“Check what?” she asked him brusquely, hoping her tone would discourage him.
“Can I come in?” he asked again.
“What for?” she asked impatiently.
“Scully, you don’t even have to look. I just need you to check and see that, umm…everything’s the way it should be.”
His fear and urgency finally penetrated the haze of her own misery, and she opened the door and let him in.
“What’s wrong, Mulder?”
“Nothing. Probably,” he said.
“Then what do you want me to check?” Her exasperation was pushing her closer to tears, and if he made her cry she would have to kill him.
His face twitched in a dozen stupid ways and he gestured awkwardly at his belt buckle as he answered.
“Down there.”
“Oh, Mulder!” This was too much. He was too much.
She’d squinted at his retinas through her ophthalmoscope. She’d cleaned and sutured the occasional laceration. She’d put him on antibiotics for bronchitis when he swore it was just a cold.
But “down there”? Did he understand that her usual method of examination was to slice off a chunk and send it to histology?
“Goddamn it, I need you! You’re the only doctor within a thousand miles who doesn’t work for Weymouth Scientific.”
She wouldn’t refuse him. She might want to, but they both knew she wouldn’t.
Something had happened to him out in the woods, though he clearly wasn’t ready to tell her about it. She’d noticed the way Mulder’s hands had gravitated over and over to his “boys.” She had wondered what had been wrong, and had been poised to tackle the subject when he’d struck out at her.
Maybe that had been the point.
“All right. Sit down.”
She observed him as he walked across the room and sat on the bed, noting that his movements appeared normal and comfortable.
“You’re staring at my crotch,” Mulder complained.
It was years since Scully had conducted this type of exam, and what she remembered most from her very limited experience was the incredible awkwardness. She joined him by the bed, reminding herself that she was a professional and he was a patient in need of her care.
“Do you have any swelling, lumps, or tenderness in the scrotum?” she asked.
“No.”
“Do you have any swelling, lumps, or tenderness on the penis?”
“Damn it, Scully, I didn’t ask you to humiliate me! I just want you to make sure there’s nothing wrong,” he pleaded.
She interpreted his answer as a “no.”
“Are you aware of any painless lumps on the testicles?” she asked.
“I don’t believe this!” Mulder complained.
Another “no.”
“Have you had any unprotected intercourse?” she asked stonily.
“In my life?” he shot back.
“Recently,” she clarified.
“Like you have to ask me that,” he said bitterly. “Like you wouldn’t know.”
“Do you have any discharge or pain with urination?” she asked.
“No,” he answered.
Despite Mulder’s impatience, Scully knew the history was as important as the physical assessment. But she was out of questions, and it was time to snap on the latex and do what she had to do. If she and Mulder both survived the exam, there would be concrete proof that no one ever died of embarrassment.
“Okay. Take off your pants.”
She studied the ceiling as she pulled on her gloves, and when she looked down, Mulder was still in his boxers. Apparently he expected her to peek through the slit. Their eyes met, and, sighing with resignation, he stood up and shucked off his shorts.
“L-lie down,” she stammered.
Now Mulder studied the ceiling as she studied his scrotum. It was cool in the room, which wasn’t going to make this any easier.
“You know, it would help a lot if you’d tell me what the problem was,” she said.
“Just get it over with,” Mulder said with manifest misery.
“Let me know if anything hurts,” she instructed him.
Her first touch nearly launched him off the bed.
“Sorry,” he gulped. “Your hands are freezing.”
“Gloves,” she corrected him as he settled back onto the bed.
“Well?” Mulder asked a few minutes into the examination.
“I’m not finding anything remarkable,” Scully said. “Is there something in particular you’re concerned about?”
“Um,” he said.
It was terribly unprofessional of her, but she wondered if a twist or two wouldn’t encourage him to speak up.
“Um, how are those ol’ spermatic cords of mine?” he asked.
She located the cords once again, palpating gently between thumb and index finger.
“Palpable, nontender. I find no evidence of injury or pathology, but a Doppler study would be more conclusive,” she said.
“Nothing’s crushed down there?” he asked.
More than ever she wanted to squeeze the truth out of him.
“Tell me what happened back in those woods!” she commanded.
He heaved an immense sigh of relief.
“Apparently nothing.”
It would take threats and pressure to force him to talk, and she couldn’t make herself apply either with Mulder at such a disadvantage. Damn him for using his vulnerability against her.
“Do you think you could find somebody else on this planet to check your prostate?” she asked.
“No problem.”
“Get dressed.”
Bone of Contention – Part 14
He awoke the next morning with the firm conviction that something was right. Ancient memories swam through his brain as he sought the source of his happiness. Snow day? New puppy?
No. Better. Scully was okay. She’d always been okay. The things he’d imagined and feared… well, maybe he really was paranoid. Hell, if there had been a way for them to turn Scully into someone who couldn’t love him, they would have done it. But they couldn’t, which meant she could.
That date with Brian, that was a good thing. It proved she was okay. It wouldn’t be a good thing if Mulder believed for a minute that Brian had a chance in hell with Scully, but for the first time in a while, Mulder was optimistic. All he needed to do was show Scully he was interested in her “that way.” Easy.
And Mulder was okay too. Original equipment intact.
The memory of the near miss clouded his joy, but he pushed it aside. He’d think about it later. Or, more practically, he’d add a clause to his living will, and then never think about it again.
He forced his mind back to happier thoughts. Planning Scully’s dream date. Not dinner-and-a-movie. Not football, not basketball. Something different, something classy—the Symphony.
He pulled out his phone.
The Mulder magic almost failed him. Ticketmaster offered him separate seats in the second tier. Danny Vallejo said he’d ask around. (“Symphony? What’s up with that, Mulder?”) Langly wanted to know if he was smoking crack. Finally he called the box office and found success. With his mojo working, not to mention his Gold Card, it was time to strut his stuff. First a shower, reconfirming that his equipment remained intact. Usually his mind wandered as he washed up automatically. Today he was aware of everything, and intensely grateful that nothing but water circled down the drain.
Clean, dry, and dressed, he knocked on Scully’s door and prepared to sweep her off her feet. She answered, mumbling a greeting around her toothbrush. He caught a fleeting glimpse of damp hair as she turned and retreated to the bathroom.
“So, Scully. How do you feel about Telemann?” he asked, enjoying the sight of her round little ass. God, he loved the way that skirt clung in all the right places.
“What?” she called from the bathroom over the sound of running water.
“Do you like Telemann?”
“The composer?” she asked, obviously confused. She moved to the dresser, putting her watch on. Her voice was quiet and controlled when she spoke again. “What’s going on, Mulder?” She turned to face him then, and he realized how tired she looked, how pale and fragile. The skin around her eyes seemed bruised. She looked like she’d spent more time crying than sleeping the night before. Guilt twisted in his gut as he remembered the conversation that had preceded his impromptu physical.
“Scully…” He stalled, unable to broach the subject of dating in the face of such pain. “Are you all right?”
At first he thought she was going to cry, but then her expression twisted into anger.
“Why wouldn’t I be? What’s that saying about the empty vessel? That it makes the loudest sound.” “Scully, I was crazy last night. I was scared and confused.”
“I’m barren, Mulder. Sterile. Not a woman, just some left-over parts that used to be a woman.”
“I’m so sorry, Scully. You have to believe that. I wasn’t in my right mind. You said it yourself—it was the second time I’d been drugged in two days. You can’t take anything I said seriously.”
She shook her head, a bitter little smile playing over her lips. “You want me to believe you love me when the only time you say it you’re in a barbiturate stupor. You can’t have it both ways, Mulder.”
He took her by the shoulders and shoved her to the bed.
“Sit down,” he ordered her. “You’ve got to listen to me.”
He saw her jaw tighten with outrage, but she sat. Even if he found the right words, he didn’t know if she would hear them.
“Scully, do you remember when you said that it wasn’t always about me? Well, this is. This is all about me.”
“About you? I’m the only one whose sexual function is in question. You’re all man, Mulder, as we proved last night with that exercise in physical assessment.”
“When I think about what happened to you, I think how I wasn’t there for you. And I tried to get you back, but I was too late, and then I didn’t even know where to look. And in all this time, I’ve never even been able to get them for what they did to you. And that does make me less of a man, Scully, just as much as if Cancer Man had turned me into a capon.”
Scully’s eyes widened as Mulder realized his slip. He had just revealed the darkest shame of his captivity.
“Oh, Mulder.”
Her sympathy troubled him more than her anger, but he decided to make use of it.
“You see. It is about me,” he said.
“You’re fine, Mulder, I promise you.” She rose from the bed, facing him squarely. “You weren’t talking about capons yesterday, you were talking about eggs and hormones. You were wondering what I was. Those are the things you said yesterday.”
“But it was still about me. About whether you could love me.” She shook her head slightly, and then turned away. He watched her as she walked to the window, shoulders high, back straight. He didn’t know what more he could say.
The awkward silence was interrupted by Scully’s ringing cell phone. She gave Mulder an almost painfully resigned look as she flipped her phone open.
“Good morning, Sheriff Morris,” she greeted the caller, then fell silent as she listened.
“We’ll be right there,” she told Morris before closing the phone.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“A Lincoln Navigator leased by Weymouth Scientific was found burning in the woods off Peyster Road.”
They were going to continue this conversation if he had anything to do with it. Scully had to let him in, had to listen to him. But right now, she was heading out the door and all he could do was follow.
He hurried after her, getting to the driver’s side first. Things were going to be hard enough as it was. At least driving the car would take some concentration and keep him from going crazy.
They found the burning SUV without much difficulty. It wasn’t far from where Mulder’s car had been left in the clearing. Sheriff Morris was standing talking to another officer a few feet from the smoldering truck. He turned and watched them approach.
“Damndest thing, it’s like that SUV was roasted from the inside out. The paint’s barely blistered and the gas tank didn’t blow, but the passenger compartment’s practically vaporized,” he told them before going back to his squad car. He leaned in through the open door and reached for the radio speaker.
“We need a forensics team,” Scully said. “Victim identification will be extremely difficult.”
Morris nodded.
“The state’s sending some crime scene techs, but they won’t be here till tomorrow.” He caught Scully’s scowl. “Car’s still too hot to process anyway. And the victims aren’t going anywhere—if there were any.” Scully stepped back from the stinking truck and turned to Mulder.
“Do you think Roger was in the car?” she asked, studying him carefully. He shrugged, watching smoke drift from the big Lincoln. Even after the horror of his near castration, Mulder felt no triumph at Roger’s fiery end. Too many questions remained. Whoever set Roger on his mission of mutilation hadn’t used threats or payment; the slow-thinking giant really believed the world would be a better place if Mulder sang soprano. Was Revere that clever? How had he done it, and why?
“They’re getting rid of the evidence, Scully. If Cancer Man couldn’t take Cindy with him, he had to make sure no trace of her remained.”
“I think you’re right, Mulder. We have to get back to Weymouth.”
She was efficient and focused. Mulder sighed with pity, for her and himself. Scully could charge around issuing orders about a case they’d already blown, but she couldn’t avoid it forever. Very soon they would have to have the conversation that would transform the hardboiled FBI agent back into the angry, red-eyed woman only barely containing her tears.
“Hurry,” Scully said. She opened the car door, eyeing him quizzically as he stood, leaning against the hood. “Mulder, Revere’s in danger. So is anyone else who knows.”
Shit. She was right. Galvanized, he opened the door.
“Hold on.” Sheriff Morris approached them, cutting a wide path around the smoking Lincoln and turning his face to avoid the odor. “It just came over my radio. Weymouth’s off limits. Some sort of chemical spill.”
Mulder squared his shoulders and looked the other man in the eye.
“We’re federal officers, Sheriff, investigating a series of federal infractions. You don’t have the authority to stop us.”
“Stop you? I just thought you’d want to know.” Morris shook his head and shrugged. “Knock yourselves out.” Once they made it back to the open road, Mulder was able to pour on the speed. The only signs that Scully was less than comfortable were her feet planted against the floorboard and one white-knuckled hand gripping the dashboard.
They were a half mile from Weymouth when they heard the helicopters. Mulder craned his neck to follow two Blackhawks swooping ahead of the car.
The car lurched to a halt as they approached Weymouth. Firetrucks, rescue vehicles, state police cars, all crowded the normally deserted Peyster Road in a surreal landscape.
Mulder pulled onto the shoulder of the road, hopping out of the car and jogging past the vehicles. He was vaguely aware of Scully calling his name as she hurried after him.
“Sir, you need to get back in your car!” A large man in military fatigues approached Mulder, pointing in the direction of the road. “This area is restricted.”
“I’m a federal agent,” Mulder said, flipping open his ID.
“I don’t care if you’re Eliot Ness, turn around and leave. This facility is a class five biohazard.”
“Which is why Colonel Ostelhoff called for my assistance,” Mulder explained patiently.
The soldier wasn’t impressed.
“I never heard of any Colonel Ostelhoff. But Colonel Jackson gave the order to clear out all civilians.”
Mulder gave a look that was meant to convey sullen defeat and got back in the car.
“Revere isn’t answering his phone,” Scully informed him. “Mulder, what’s going on?”
The line of vehicles heading toward Weymouth was bumper to bumper, but Mulder nosed into the traffic and forced a gap, waiting for the truck ahead to move enough so he could complete the turn.
“We’re leaving?” Scully sounded surprised. “Just driving away?”
How times had changed. Instead of fighting with him to keep out of trouble and do what they were told, she was questioning why he would give up so easily.
“Wait,” he said.
He drove another hundred feet and then stopped, blocking the lane.
“They’re evacuating the area. This is the only road they can use,” he explained. When a car pulled up behind him, he was ready. ID in hand, jacket open to reveal his weapon, he approached the driver.
“How ya doin’ there, sir. Colonel Jackson wanted to clear up a few details before we let you go on your way,” he said. Scully appeared at his side. Her ID was in evidence, but not her gun.
“Oh, man!” The driver got out, kicking at the dirt, looking back at the Weymouth building and then to Mulder. “I work in the mail room! I don’t know anything, least of all how I’m gonna make my next mortgage payment.”
“I understand, sir. We just need to go over a few questions,” Mulder said.
The driver nodded.
“What happened when you reported for work?” Scully asked.
“I was late—with half the parking lot roped off, I had to park way out back,” the driver said. “Didn’t matter, because they were shutting the place down on account of that spill.”
“Has that ever happened before?” Mulder asked.
“Hell, no. Nobody even knew they were using poisons and radiation.”
“And you left the plant immediately?” Scully asked.
“I wish. I had to stay behind and run the shredder.”
“What do you know about the nature of the spill?” Mulder asked.
“Just what they told us. Nothing dangerous, just a precaution.”
“Thank you, sir. You may go,” Scully said.
“I wasn’t finished,” Mulder complained mildly after the driver had gone, his car groaning and shuddering as he bounced on the rough shoulder to avoid the Avis rental.
“He’s a little fish. Let’s see who else shows up,” Scully said.
“Revere? You really think so?” he asked. That would be one whopper of a coincidence.
“No, Mulder, I don’t. But I don’t know where else to look, either.”
It was ten minutes before the next fish swam along, and he was another guppy. They had to pull off the road for a large green army truck—Mulder wasn’t foolhardy enough to try his “Colonel Jackson” line on actual soldiers.
“Army trucks, fire trucks, ambulances—not a bad response time for a hazardous spill in the middle of nowhere,” Mulder said.
“All they need is landscapers and builders,” Scully said. “Then they can cover it over and put up a playground.”
The road had cleared, and the only traffic moving was by air. Two more Blackhawks arrived, and one took off and returned, unless that was a different one. Mulder drove the car back onto the road.
“We’ll cast our line once more, then call it a day,” he said.
Mulder passed the time with his binoculars, although nothing he saw added to his knowledge. Scully was back on the phone, trying to find Revere.
“What are you doing, calling every listed number in Rock Creek Crossing?” Mulder asked, yawning.
“I finished Rock Creek Crossing. Now I’m calling every listed number in Old Drummond.”
“Then you can try New Drummond.”
“There is no New Drummond, Mulder. Just Drummond, East Drummond, and Drummond Centre. You need to do your homework.”
After years on the road to places only slightly more cosmopolitan than Rock Creek Crossing and the Drummonds, Mulder felt he could picture them all. Drummond Centre probably had a trailer park and maybe a gas station. Scully’s phone rang, and she reached for it eagerly. Her face fell as she listened.
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” she mumbled, and then she hung up.
“I don’t suppose that was Dr. Revere,” Mulder observed.
“Skinner. We did great,” she sighed. “Saved the world from Weymouth Scientific with all its chemical-nuclear-biological threats. Time to come home.”
“Oh, well. Want to see who else comes by? Strictly out of curiosity, of course.”
“I’ll give it ten minutes,” Scully agreed.
No one had driven past since the army truck, but soon a vehicle came hurtling down the road. Mulder watched it bear down on them, ready to stomp on the gas if it didn’t stop.
It did, with a squeal of the brakes. Scully got out first, her hand on her gun as she approached the Mercedes. Mulder followed, equally wary.
“It’s him,” Scully said.
The door of the luxury car flung open, and Sage Revere lurched out. His face was rigid as he took in the vehicle and the armed agents who blocked his path. Then he turned from them, looking back at the research facility he commanded.
“Dr. Revere, I’d like you to come with us,” Scully called.
Revere turned to face them.
“What happens to a dream deferred?” he asked woodenly.
“Get into the car,” Mulder said. He motioned from his gun to his car, using the gesture to make the suggestion more persuasive.
“That company was my dream. I accomplished things I didn’t think possible,” Revere said.
“That’s what we want to talk about,” said Scully. “Please come with us.”
Revere shook his head. He looked gray and ragged, as if he’d slept in his thousand-dollar suit.
“You can’t hurt me. You’ve already done your worst,” he said. He paced away a few yards, then stood staring back at the large Weymouth building.
“Dr. Revere, we believe you may be in danger,” Scully called.
Revere was walking back to his car, his gait robotic. It occurred to Mulder that they might all be in danger, this close to the Mercedes.
“Scully, get in the car,” he said.
“Please, doctor, let us take you into protective custody,” Scully called.
Mulder noticed a new wave of activity at the Weymouth building. The Blackhawks took to the air, and the hazmat teams were returning to their vehicles. The trucks closest to the building began pulling back, forming new lines closer to the periphery.
“Scully, let’s go,” he called. “Now.”
Revere gripped the door handle.
“Protective custody,” he sneered. “What’s the point?”
“The people you work for don’t leave loose ends, doctor. You’re a loose end,” Mulder called raggedly. Scully caught his eye as they both hurried back to the car. They couldn’t protect Revere if he wouldn’t cooperate. They probably couldn’t protect him even if he did.
Revere was one hell of a loose end, and not only for the consortium. Mulder had a lot of questions about Roger and his clip-scheme, and Revere held the answers.
“Maybe it just sags like a heavy load,” Revere intoned.
“Mulder, run,” said Scully, her voice totally calm.
“Or does it explode?” Revere threw open the door to the Mercedes. Nothing happened.
Mulder threw himself into the car, a split second behind his partner. He floored it before he had the door closed.
“You gotta love a rich white guy who quotes Langston Hughes,” he commented.
Scully turned around in her seat as Mulder continued to gain distance from the Mercedes.
“He’s going the wrong way,” she said.
“Back to Weymouth?”
“But everyone else—they’re pulling out.”
The explosion slammed them down and then forward, scraping the undercarriage against the road. The steering wheel shuddered in Mulder’s hands but he held tight and never took his foot off the accelerator.
“My God,” said Scully.
“We can’t help him. I’m not going back,” Mulder said. He was driving too fast to risk a glance in the rearview mirror. The shock of the explosion was huge, as if they’d used an A-bomb to destroy one vehicle.
“That wasn’t Revere. That was Weymouth,” Scully said.
Bone of Contention – Part 15
285 miles to Bozeman. If Scully did the math, dividing the miles on the highway sign by their rate of speed, factoring in a long wait at the Bozeman airport, flight time, layover time, and traffic from Dulles to Georgetown, it would be 1.75 days before she hit her front door.
Rock Creek’s little airport was pandemonium with EPA officials arriving and unloading equipment. It was probably just as well that they couldn’t make a connection there; Scully wasn’t eager to face Brian Yates today.
She wasn’t eager to face a lot of things right now.
She and Mulder had to talk. It couldn’t be put off forever, but she was feeling too bruised to handle it here and now. Maybe when they were back home, when she felt safer, more in control.
Mulder stole glances her way, looking as if he had something to say and no way to say it. Scully toyed with the idea of feigning sleep to avoid his eye, but decided that would be cowardly. Not that she was willing to let herself be ripped into pieces again, but fakery just seemed wrong. She watched the trees pass by in a blur, keeping her gaze away from her partner.
“I fucked up.”
His words jolted her, and she turned to face him. He looked miserable.
“I realize the case didn’t wrap up neatly, but even with the loose ends, Skinner was pleased.”
“That’s not what I meant by ‘fucked up’,” Mulder said, shaking his head.
“Weymouth won’t be doing any more unethical testing,” she said, studying her folded hands as they rested in her lap.
“Weymouth blew up. Three cheers for the FBI.”
“I suppose we should be used to it by now—having proof only to have it snatched out of our hands. I know you’re frustrated, Mulder.”
“Frustrated,” he echoed hollowly. “You could say that.”
They traveled in silence, listening to wheels passing over pavement. It had been miles since the last car shot by in the opposite direction.
“We have to talk, Scully.” Mulder’s voice was quiet and tense.
“We’ve been talking,” she offered weakly, praying he’d sense her need for time and distance.
He didn’t comment, but the muscle in his jaw twitched, her own personal barometer of Mulder anger. His fingers clenched and unclenched around the steering wheel until with a sudden jerk, he pulled the car onto the shoulder of the road.
“Mulder?”
Without answering, he yanked the key out of the ignition, released his seatbelt, and pushed the door open. Mulder was out of the car and ten feet away before she got her seatbelt off.
“Mulder,” she called, slamming the car door and hurrying after him. He didn’t stop walking until she caught him by the arm.
“Okay,” she said. “We’ll talk.”
He nodded, hands in his pockets against the cold.
For a man who’d wanted to talk, Mulder remained silent, staring down the empty road.
“I can’t stand it,” Mulder said at last. “After everything we’ve been through, everything you’ve been through, what’s breaking us apart is something I said. I can’t take it back, Scully. I would if I could.”
“That’s a bit melodramatic, wouldn’t you say?” she asked, hoping her voice didn’t betray her.
“Is it, Scully? Are you going to be able to get past this?”
“You have to give me some time, Mulder.”
“Time for you to pretend it never happened?” he asked darkly.
“What the hell do you want, Mulder? You called me a neuter. I can’t just ‘shake it off’ in a matter of hours.”
“Is that what you heard, Scully? Because that isn’t what I meant, not ever.”
She sighed, wanting desperately to be doing anything but having this discussion.
“Apology accepted. Let’s get out of here.”
She gestured toward the car, but he didn’t budge.
“Like a brain injury. It can change your personality, how you move, how you speak. You’re a doctor, Scully. You know it’s true.”
“This wasn’t a brain injury.”
“Hormones, Scully. Body chemistry. I was afraid. I just didn’t know.”
“Mulder, even with a brain injury, even if someone can’t talk, or can’t move, you don’t wonder who they are. That hasn’t changed.”
“I guess I just forgot how strong you are.”
She almost laughed. Strong. She felt as if she’d been trampled.
“I don’t feel strong,” she said, wrapping her arms around her middle.
“You’ll always be you, Scully. You never waver, no matter what happens.”
What did he see when he looked at her? Apparently, not the doubts and fears that threatened to overtake her. She wanted to laugh, or cry, but that would only interrupt him.
“I saw that yesterday,” he said. His voice shook a little, but he went on. “When Roger… when Roger was… what Roger was threatening… I couldn’t have lived with the results.”
“You’re stronger than that,” she said, taking his hand and squeezing hard, as if to will him away from his dark thoughts.
“I couldn’t have gone on from that. Even if I had found a way, I wouldn’t have been me.”
“We don’t need to talk about something that didn’t happen.”
“They used to think the heart was the seat of your emotions, but that’s wrong. A man with a heart transplant is still the same man. But your brain, your nuts—you gotta have those.”
“Mulder, we aren’t our bodies. Testicles don’t make a man any more than ovaries make a woman. We’re made up of bone and muscle and skin, but those things aren’t us.”
“Spoken like a true pathologist,” he said wryly.
“Exactly,” she agreed. “When I perform an autopsy, I’m working on a body, not a person. What made that person who he or she was is gone.”
She brought his hand up between them, cradling it between hers.
“Mulder, you’d be the same man. Trust me on this.”
“I wouldn’t be. I don’t have your ability to lock things up in separate compartments and keep going as if nothing happened,” he said. “That’s what makes you stronger than I am.”
“It’s not as if nothing happened, Mulder. I’m not convinced it’s a ‘strength’ at all.”
“I’m finally starting to understand,” he said. “It used to drive me crazy, but now I realize it’s how you were able to survive. And I’m grateful that you have that ability to keep yourself separate from all the terrible things that happened to you.”
She nodded, convinced of his sincerity, if not the truth of his words.
“Scully, you may not believe me, but I do love you. Nothing would ever make me stop loving you. No matter what happened to you or how it changed you, I’d love you.”
She looked at him, blinking back tears. Everything about him, his voice, his eyes, told her he meant what he said.
“But Scully, it terrified me to think they’d taken so much from you…that if you weren’t whole, you might not be able to love me the way I love you.”
Silence stretched between them as they stood on the side of road, wind tearing at their hair and stinging their eyes. Scully tried to swallow past the lump in her throat. Finally, she found her voice.
“Then I guess that proves I’m whole.”
Scully shivered either from raging emotions or the cold wind cutting through her coat. As her words sunk in, astonishment bloomed on Mulder’s face.
“Say that again,” he said.
“I think you heard me the first time,” she answered, smiling gently.
He stepped closer, gathering her into his arms. He was beaming, and she’d never seen his amazing face so alight with joy.
“I think we need to mark this moment,” he said huskily.
He bent to kiss her, his lips soft and pliant against hers. His arms tightened around her as her hands came up to encircle his neck. As he deepened the kiss, she felt her knees wobble. The wind whipped at her suit and she began to shiver.
“Cold?” Mulder asked. “Let’s get back in the car.”
He put an arm around her shoulders and drew her close as they walked back to the car. Scully slid her arm around his waist, drawing close to Mulder’s warmth.
“You never did answer my question,” he said, leaning down to open the door for her. “What do you think of Telemann?”
“Come on, girl, just a little further.”
Cindy gripped Roger’s arm as he led her into the cafe, shuffling awkwardly in her new canvas shoes.
“It’s gonna be fine now. Don’t you worry,” he assured her.
He hoped he was telling the truth. The place was dim and empty. Cindy had on his big old coat, and his Christmas-present scarf over her head. She looked like a foreign lady. A short little foreign lady who had been in an accident, maybe.
“There you go. You can sit down right here.” He supported her as she dropped into her seat, smiling his encouragement.
Cindy trusted him when he told her they were going to be all right. They weren’t looking to bother anybody, and there was no reason for anyone to bother them. Roger was good at lots of stuff. Anything with lifting and fixing. Especially anything with animals.
Mr. Terranova had given him his fancy big truck for a present, but that wasn’t Roger’s way. He just used it to drive back for his own van, bought and paid for, with the help of the credit union.
No more credit union. No more job, either.
“It’s gonna be fine,” Roger said again.
“Mm-hm,” Cindy agreed. She patted his arm.
The waitress who approached their table was heavy with a great big bosom. Not like Pamela Anderson Lee, more like a grandma.
“How’re you doing tonight? You know what you want?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am, cheeseburger with fries. And a bowl of oatmeal for…her.” Roger hadn’t figured out what to tell people about Cindy. His friend? His sister?
“Sorry, no hot cereal after eleven,” the waitress said.
“You don’t understand—” Cindy needed something soft and easy to swallow. Maybe she could eat noodles or mashed potatoes, but that wasn’t what she was used to. Roger had tried to think of all the things that could go wrong, but this hadn’t occurred to him.
“Hey, it’s all right. I’ll get them to cook up a bowl of oatmeal for your wife.”
Roger sighed with gratitude and the waitress nodded sympathetically.
“Poor thing,” she asked. “What was it that happened to her?”
Roger didn’t want to lie, but he really couldn’t tell the truth to the waitress. He wished he had someone smart like the Doc to tell him what to say. He felt his face getting red.
“It’s okay,” the waitress said, patting Roger on the shoulder. “It must be real hard to talk about.”
“It is,” Roger said, relief pouring over him. He looked at Cindy, her calm blue eyes shining at him. Things were going to be scary until they found someplace to settle, but he’d do anything to keep Cindy safe. Cindy gave him the “okay” sign, her slender fingers curved to make an “O.”
Roger nodded emphatically.
“Everything’s gonna be just fine,” he said.
The End.
“I like fusing ideas into one vision. I like seeing that vision come to life with other people who know exactly what it takes to get there.” Amy Tan, The Opposite of Fate.
EX-LIBRIS: X-LIBRIS
This file has been downloaded from x-libris.xf-redux.com. It contains work/s of X-Files FAN FICTION and FAN ART which are not affiliated with Ten-Thirteen or The Fox Network. No income is generated from these works. They are created with love and shared purely for the enjoyment of fans and are not to be sold in any format. The X-Files remain the property of Chris Carter, Ten-Thirteen and Fox, unfortunately.
Individual stories and art remain the property of their talented creators. No copyright infringement is intended. Any copyright concerns can be addressed to [email protected].
RETURN to main “bone of contention” selection page
