Title: Fish for Fallen Light Author: nevdull Category: X Posted: February 22, 2000 Archive: Yes, but link to http://nevdull.tripod.com/fallen-light.txt Notes: At end. Summary: I started early, took my dog, and visited the sea. "It may be necessary to remark, that previous to the period I beheld this object, I had heard it frequently reported by several persons, and some of them persons whose veracity I have never disputed, that they had seen such a phenomenon as I have described, though then, like many other, I was not disposed to credit their testimony on the subject. I can say of a truth, that it was only by seeing this phenomenon, I was perfectly convinced of its existence..." . . February, 1999: "The sea" . . 90 MILE BEACH NORTHLAND, NEW ZEALAND Toma and Eric ran ahead of their mother, dragging the hapless puppy behind them across the sand. The dog, unharmed, yelped excitedly and tried to right itself by pulling on its own rope tether, but young Eric veered unexpectedly. Christina Kohatu, sighing an eternal parental sigh, waved for the boy to return to her so she could untangle the poor animal. Eric ignored her and continued his ungraceful run down the beach. Toma pulled at her leg. "Can I go down to the water?" "Of course, dear," Christina said absently. She was watching the puppy, who had righted itself and begun running with determination after her son. She followed his path with her eyes, and realized with a start that her son too was moving towards someone. He was a tall, thin man she hadn't seen before -- a foolish pakeha who had failed to put on his sunscreen and was already beginning to peel. Even if he'd been Maori, she would've been alarmed -- he was a stranger headed directly for her child. "Eric!" she cried in warning, dropping their beach items and breaking into a run. The puppy slowed; Eric did not. The man met up with him and rather than snatching him or grabbing him or noting him in any way, the pair squatted down opposite each other and stared with equal fascination at something half-buried in the sand. Christina dropped to a jog, sensing he was not a threat to her family. Nevertheless, she wasted no time and swung her boy up into her arms in a single motion, then turned away and moved back up the beach. Something about the shape told her not to get involved. Or perhaps it was the way the man with the American accent was repeating over and over again, "I got you, I got you." . . July, 1999: "Smiles from far off" . . MALIBU, CALIFORNIA PACIFIC HIGHWAY Bridget Lurie staggered out of the warehouse, eyes blinking involuntarily against even that soft dawn light. It seemed like years since she'd seen the sun, moved freely, been spared the relentless pounding inside that decrepit building. "That shit is phat," Tyler twitched. His oversized ninety-dollar pants were filthy, but his oversized forty-dollar pupils registered only a beautiful internal vista. "Yeah," Bridget said, because no one else said anything. Ann was digging through her backpack looking for keys. Finding them should've been easy; like all her accessories, the backpack was made of clear plastic, but it was so overflowing with empty water bottles, Blowpop wrappers and party fliers that locating anything important was unlikely. "Did you check your pockets?" Bridget asked wearily. She slumped against the car, uncaring that cold morning dew began to penetrate her tight, sweat-soaked tank top. She wasn't thinking of much besides sleep, and whether the two and a half tabs had worn off sufficiently to let Ann drive safely. Bridget silently berated herself for never learning stick, leaned her head against the passenger side window, and napped out still standing. When she awoke she was lolling about in the backseat, her face pressed against the same cold glass but now from the inside. Ann was driving, and in Bridget's initial sleepy assessment her friend seemed to be handling the wheel just fine. Tyler, in the passenger seat, was rubbing his shaved head and watching himself in the side mirror. All seemed normal enough. Then Ann asked whether that was a monkey swimming in the Pacific, and Bridget snapped out of her daze into full alarm. "Man, the best part of a rave is driving home and watching the sun rise," Tyler added, apropos of nothing. "It's so spiritual." "Ann, what did you say?" Bridget leaned forward between the Corolla's seats, studying her friend's face. "Over there." Ann jerked her head. Bridget, despite herself, peered curiously out the driver side window. At first she saw only the thing's wake -- to her eye no different from the small furrows in the water made by countless dolphins, jet skis, and well-tanned lifeguards. Then it surfaced, just for a moment. She pressed her face harder against the cool glass until her breath and the passing trees obscured the sight. FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATIONS Scully was talking to herself. "What the hell?" She turned the paper on its side, which failed to help. Was there a Rosetta Stone for his hieroglyphic scrawl somewhere in this office, or was she stuck transliterating Mulder's appalling chicken scratch all on her own? Her cell phone rang and she jumped. 9am was a bit on the early side for a Monday crisis. "Hey Scully," Mulder said. He sounded perky. "Did I wake you?" "Already at the office." "Didn't finish up the filing on Friday?" "I went through all the old cases, but I haven't put back '98 through '99. I can't say your handwriting has expedited the process much since there's no way I'm closing these cases without properly transcribing the notes into the system. Next time you want to evaluate your 96% hit ratio, put the files back yourself, okay?" "98%." "Whatever." "Scully, admit it. You've been dying to re-file that office for years." "I _did_ re-file it. And then it burned down, and I re-filed it again. My estimation is that it takes you four point five days to obliterate any organizational system." She heard the sound of air whistling past the phone -- he was outside. "Mulder, where are you?" "Sunny Cal-ee-forn-eye-aye. You should be here too. Surf's up, humidity's down, feelin' fine." She leaned back in the desk chair and closed her eyes. Which was more headache-inducing, the sound of the overwrought air conditioner or Mulder's voice? "I didn't know you were taking a vacation," she said. She was afraid he wasn't. "I'm not. Wait, hang on." He seemed to put the phone down, speak to someone, and return. "Listen, I gotta go, but I'm faxing over some papers you should probably look at." She assumed he meant later in the day and was duly surprised to hear the sound of the machine's start-up wail from across the office . "You're faxing it to me now? Mulder, I thought you were outside." "Who needs an office? These are the mobile nineties, Scully -- home is where the technology is. Jim hooked me up with a laptop and a wireless modem." His voice was getting distant; she recognized the tell-tale signs of an imminent hang-up. "Wait, Mulder, who's Jim?" "It's all in the papers, Scully. I'll call you later, promise." "Mulder! What about transcribing all these notes? Mulder!" Like a bewildered character in a film, she stared at the phone after he hung up. MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA After Logan and SFO, the tiny Monterey airport was laughably quaint. There hadn't even been a jetway; they walked with their bags across shimmering tarmac. "The name of the primary driver?" "Vince Riley." The programmer produced his driver's license after dropping it and half-a-dozen video rental cards, ticket stubs and ATM receipts. He smiled sheepishly at his travel companion and stuffed the lot back into his pants. The bleached-blond behind the counter compared, with obvious distain, the haircut in his license photo (dated 1987) to the identical one on Vince's head. "Is there a second driver on the vehicle?" His companion leaned forward, handing over her own blurry but more contemporary identification. "Katherine Liederman. Eye before ee." The attendant nodded and circled a billion and a half places on the rental agreement. "Sign everywhere I've marked," she said to Vince. Katherine checked the time on her pager and bounced back and forth in place. "Registration closes in half an hour," she whispered. He looked pained and he frantically scribbled his signature on the last form. Oops, Katherine thought, I'm sorry. She touched his arm lightly, hesitantly, and the last flourish of his pen carved a gash across the counter. "It's okay, Vince, we can just register tomorrow." It wasn't hard to add a smile -- it was honest. "I'm looking forward to everything -- I'm really glad we're here." He smiled back at her with optimistic trepidation, hoping for hope. MALIBU BEACH, CALIFORNIA Mulder was standing ankle-deep in dead fish. "Surf's up, huh?" Jim Tilson asked, tapping the final keystrokes on the laptop. Mulder shrugged and wrinkled his nose simultaneously; the net effect was a painful-looking facial contortion. "The point is to convince her to fly out here." He looked around. "I don't suppose photos like this make it into California Board of Tourism brochures much." "No, but I hear there's a slot opening up on America's Funniest Home Videos." Mulder thought Scully would find their senses of humor difficult to tell apart, but there was no mistaking the physical dissimilarities between him and Tilson. For one thing, only one of them smelled like a cannery. "It seems like 'surf's up' is part of my problem here," Mulder murmured, stepping away from the crescent-shaped swath of silvery seagull fodder. Tilson pushed his sunglasses up onto his head; fine black hair sprayed off behind it in several directions. He scanned the beach in both directions and checked up at the sun. "Tide's just about ready to go back out, so we probably won't see more of these. At least not for a few hours." "What kind of fish are they?" "Queenfish," the biologist answered immediately. "These are a little immature -- they tend to be closer to two, three feet. Common in these waters but don't usually hang out close enough to the shore to wash up." Mulder brushed his pants off, hesitated, and smelled his fingers. "Speaking of washing up..." "Go ahead. I'm going to finish the count for this morning before Fish and Game show up." He checked his watch. "6am is about when I'd expect them to get the call and head down." Mulder was halfway up the beach before Tilson called after him. "Think she'll show up?" The agent turned back towards the sea, squinting. "Yeah," he said, after some thought. "She always does." MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA "You wanna skip the afternoon session, too?" Vince kicked off his shoes and danced down towards the tide pools, his conference badge fluttering behind him in the sea breeze. It was colder here than on the bay side, but it was considerably less overrun with computer programmers. Katherine leaned back against the hood of the rental car. "You bet." Long hours, bloodshot eyes, carpal tunnel syndrome. The payback came in the form of summer conferences and expense accounts. A warm Ford Taurus and a cool California breeze would keep her planted in the office for an average 11-hour day, no problem. Anything to forget Chicago's freezing winters and humid summers. Maybe the company would let her move out here. She closed her eyes and listened to the sound of the surf. It was especially loud here near the rocks; it helped to drown out the pressured sensation she'd had all day, like there was a headache on her horizon. "You gotta come here," Vince called suddenly. Katherine covered her face with her hands. She liked her co-worker, she did, but this pounding sensation was getting worse. Maybe if she just lay there he'd go away, just for a few minutes. She jumped at the touch on her shoulder. It was Vince, wide-eyed. "Look," he mouthed, and pointed. Katherine caught only a glimpse -- of streaming slivery hair, of smooth grey arms and legs, of skillful northward movement. She sat up immediately. The pounding in her head had ceased. "Get the camera," she said quietly. LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA FBI FIELD OFFICE "Mulder, you have got to be kidding." "Are you saying you're refusing to do this autopsy?" Scully held up the tongs. The fish dangled sadly from one end. "Guess that isn't the one that got away," Mulder said. "Mulder, I'm not remotely qualified to perform an autopsy on a fish, and if I were, I imagine I'd have better things to do." She paused. "Like reconsidering my career." He stepped around the metal gurney, moving closer to her until rebuffed by waves of odor. He settled for leaning against a cabinet near the wall. "I wouldn't stand next to the waste disposal unit." Scully smiled. "Unless you want to drop him in and save me the trouble?" Mulder moved away from the wall, then took a step back from the fish, and finally settled on standing with his arms folded. "That's a she," a voice said. The man shut the door behind him and weaved through empty gurneys to greet them. Tallish, dark hair, fair- skinned but with some Asian in his lineage. Too goofy for academics, but the glasses which hung low on his nose suggested a lot of hours behind a CRT. He put his hand out to Scully, looked down at what she was holding, and then reconsidered with a disarming smile. "Jim Tilson, ichthyologist." Employing a technique she rarely used on her partner, Scully let the fish down gently. She snapped the latex gloves off, tucked them under her arm, and extended a hand. "Agent Dana Scully, fish pathologist." To Mulder, she asked, "I suppose this is the man responsible for freeing me from D.C. weather?" Tilson answered first. "Indeed. Agent Mulder was kind enough to fly out here on the basis of my hunch alone, but he suspected you'd need a bit more convincing." "Frankly, this week nothing could've been more convincing than relief from D.C. ninety-eight percent humidity." Mulder cleared his throat. "I was about to suggest to Agent Scully that we begin the examination of the evidence, and all the better now that you're here, Jim..." "Whereas I was about to suggest that you explain to me again the significance of this particular avenue of investigation." Her voice was pleasantly dismissive, but she'd begun to slip into the gloves again. Mulder sighed. "Dr. Tilson has been tracking a series of sightings up the California coast, sightings which are... or rather appear to be... related to unexplained fish deaths but which actually may..." "It's a mermaid," Tilson said. During the ensuing long pause, Scully looked back and forth between the two men. Only Tilson received an expression that suggested surprise. "Possible mermaid," Mulder added lamely. Scully settled her gaze on the biologist. "So, you're a friend of my partner's, then?" MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA The sun-bleached photo booth attendant took nearly all of the "guaranteed one hour development time" just to locate the envelope of freshly minted prints. Vince pushed rumpled bills across the high counter and didn't wait for change. Katherine registered the disappointment in Vince's posture even before she grabbed the fuzzy photographs away from him and saw them for herself. "What the hell is this supposed to be?" They were taken in such haste that the first six were barely in focus. It could've been a dolphin, or a seal. Or even a tire. They flipped to the last photo together. Vince's shoulders squared up immediately. "Looks like seven is our lucky number." "No shit," she whispered. She held the print up into the midday sun like a vacation slide, or a trophy. LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA "We're going to your office?" Scully asked as Tilson pulled her up into the poorly-lit van. She could stand upright but not by much. "So to speak," Tilson was saying, and then looked past her into the branch office lot. "Where's Mulder?" "He's trying to upgrade the rental car. Something about a new gizmo he can't live without." Her eyes adjusted to the eccentric lighting scheme and she frowned. "And what is all this?" "My office," he explained. "It's by necessity mobile." He sensed her hesitation. "I've got your standard windowless research facility back at the college, but that doesn't do a lot of good here." "Which college did you say that was?" He hadn't, of course. "Northeast Iowa Community College." Scully took in the haphazardly-arranged electronics, coffee-ringed journal articles, and discarded fast food containers. Bubbling exotic fish tanks with blue-white fluorescents were the only lighting, and cast an unpleasant pallor over all the junk. "They have much of a marine biology department at a community college in the Midwest?" She was goading him, but he refused to be offended. Like Mulder, disbelief only seemed to fuel his excitement. Tilson stared at her over his oval-shaped glasses and talked with his hands. "Look, I'll admit my CV could use a little polish. My research methods are unconventional, my goals are off the academic map. I use my standing, such as it is, to pursue my own ends which rarely coincide neatly with the latest trends in my field." He jerked his thumb out the sliding door of the van, to indicate her partner who was supposedly bringing their car around. "I'm surprised you'd have a problem with that kind of technique." She glanced down briefly, and then out into the field office lot. "I don't have a problem with it." She coughed a little. "Not coming from him, anyway. It's different -- he's not ostensibly a scientist." Tilson pulled up a sealed bucket marked "live bait" which he used as an impromptu seat. "I'm not _ostensibly_ a scientist, either. Community college credentials don't get me published in the hottest journals, but frankly there aren't enough peers qualified to review the kind of research I do. If you want to play that game, though, I can tell you all about my six years in the Boston University Marine Program at Woods Hole where I made significant advancements in watershed-estuary couplings." "No, I--" "Do you doubt Mulder's abilities as an FBI agent just because he has extracurricular extraterrestrial activities?" Scully shook her head but didn't care to expand on this particular can of worms. Especially not when her opponent was actually sitting on one. "How did you first get in touch with Mulder, anyway?" "We travel in similar online circles." Scully thought along one track and answered along another. "Mermaids.com?" "Something like that." She sighed and glanced outside the van again; the rental car was nowhere in sight. Mulder had probably lost the requisition form and was off somewhere filling out another. She turned back to the biologist. "You really believe this is a mermaid?" "I'm not the only one. The Aboriginal Australians feared the cow-sized bunyip. The Celtic selkie was part seal rather than part fish. Slavs believed that vodniks were waterdemons who arose after the death of a child. The Japanese Ningyo myth tells of a fish-human mermaid which, if eaten, would grant eternal youth and beauty, and so on." "But doesn't the fact that such a variety of myths exists invalidate the proposition that they are all based in fact? If a 'mermaid' actually existed, why wouldn't the mythology show some continuity?" "Legends are told and re-told. I would expect some distortion of the facts as a natural consequence of their recitation. It's more important, I think, to consider the possibility that these myths represent a fundamental, undocumented life form that if discovered could have radical repercussions on the way we view life on earth." "You're sure your name isn't Mulder?" He laughed quietly and pushed his glasses a bit up his nose. "I guess just telling stories isn't going to convince you." "I always preferred the 'show' part of show-and-tell." "I think I can handle that." She pulled up a milk crate. "I'm ready." He smiled again -- he did that a lot -- and she had to like him. She just did. MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA By the time Katherine and Vince drove up to the beach late that evening, there was nowhere to park. It seemed like the entire peninsula had gone out for an evening stroll on the beach -- minus the strolling and plus several hundred cameras and video recorders. They waded through two miles of parked cars, occasionally trailing their hands along the ticking hoods with their fading warmth. Vince was unaware that he was still wearing his conference badge, although discussing the standards issues related to the IP v.6 Internet protocol was no longer anywhere in his mind. He was gaping at the transformation that had occurred on the beach since that morning -- the publication of their photo, the dozens of corroborating sightings. Spotlights from the Coast Guard vessels created a pool of artificial daylight almost half a mile wide, just outside the perimeter of a great array of nets. The slick, black bodies of reconnaissance scuba divers with their head-mounted lamps appeared and disappeared beneath the dark water. Orders were barked out of PA speakers affixed to the boats. Silent police cars with rotating colored lights marked off the edge of the ocean from the front of the enthralled crowd. The creature was nowhere to be seen, but if the whispers of onlookers were to be believed, the Guard had isolated it in their nets. They were just attempting to capture it safely. Katherine sighed quietly. "This was a mistake." "What?" Vince asked. She just shook her head. A balding man standing near Vince craned his paradoxically hairy neck up and over the crowd. "Why don't they just tranquilize it or something?" he said, to no one in particular. "If they don't know what it is, they won't know how much to give it," Katherine answered. "Too much anesthesia could kill it." "What's happening?" a woman's voice yelled from the front of the crowd. Another voice echoed it. They seemed to be directing their comments to the ships which had erupted into a flurry of activity. Spotlights were hastily trained on a cluster of divers who had just surfaced. "What is it?" Baldy asked. Katherine couldn't contain her sudden relief, but she spoke so quietly that only Vince heard her. "It's gone," she said. "It got away." She turned to him, handed him her keys. "You drive. It's going north." -- "What am I looking at?" Scully asked. She tilted her head in the opposite direction, on the off-chance it made more sense that way. "It's a mermaid corpse." "That looks like roadkill." Tilson adjusted the focus on the frame. His ineptitude with the slide projector was sadly familiar. "More like beachkill, I suppose. This photo was taken six months ago, not far from Auckland, New Zealand. I had hoped to get there sooner after I received the report, but it's not like you can just fly around the world at a moment's notice." "Not ordinarily, no." "Anyway, I managed to snap these few photographs on my arrival date, but when I returned later that evening with my gear to collect the corpse, it was gone. The guys I'd paid to watch the thing swore no one had come by, but there it was. Or wasn't." Scully laughed. "Dr. Tilson, I don't know whether to call that all terribly convenient, or to ask you if you want a job." "Should I take your mirth to mean that I'm making headway in convincing you?" "Convince me with _what_?" He held up his hands, slide pointer sweeping around the room. "Fair enough. Would tissue samples help?" Scully shifted position on the uncomfortable makeshift seat and crossed her arms. "Try me." "Great." He danced around her, flicking off the slide projector with audible relief. "Come 'ere." Scully moved to the well-lit shelf along the length of the van which seemed to pass for a "laboratory". At best, it was a receptacle for a microscope and some smudged and dirty petrie dishes. At worst, it was really, really cramped. He gestured and she stood on her toes to peer in. "What am I looking at besides some necrotic tissue?" she asked. He leaned in closer, speaking into her ear as she studied the sample. "What kind of necrotic tissue?" She paused, considering. "Mammalian. Subdermal." She increased the magnification. "There's an awful lot of fatty tissue here. Are you suggesting this is from the creature you found?" "The percentage of fat cells there is consistent with aquatic -- not terrestrial -- mammalian life. Fat is an insulator that..." "Yes, yes I know," she snapped. Scully looked up from the eyepiece and controlled a small start at his unexpected proximity. "So it's from that creature you found? I thought the specimen disappeared." "It did, but I recovered this tissue from the rocks on that same beach." Scully folded her arms again. "_Presumably_ from an organism you were unable to study. And there's no guarantee this isn't just some unfortunate seal that died there days or even weeks earlier." The biologist grinned from behind his reflective lenses. "Oh, that I can guarantee." He leaned over her suddenly, reaching up and over her head. Another fluorescent light jumped to life, and Scully turned to face a familiar series of short horizontal black bands. "DNA analysis I ran on the issue," Tilson explained. "This should convince even Dr. Scully." -- Mulder heard the report on the news as he filled out the second car rental form. If they didn't make the damn things so small, he wouldn't lose them all time. Buried in the low din of anxious tourists and indifferent clerks was the sound of the radio, but a few choice words emerged clearly enough to draw his attention. He leaned over the counter to hear better and after a moment hit the first entry on his speed dial. "Scully! Are you and Tilson in the van?" She made a strange surprised noise. "It's not a-rockin', if that's what you're asking." This gave him pause. "Do I have a reason to be jealous?" "Only if you're attracted to dead fish." He could only imagine the biologist's version of her half of this conversation. "Put on the radio," he said, glancing towards the portable on the clerk's desk. "109.9 FM." Scully's voice, muffled, echoed his words. He heard Tilson curse, no doubt looking for the misplaced knob from the old van's radio. He heard the sound of shifting clothing, no doubt his partner re-crossing her legs in impatience. Then, finally, he heard the doubled signal from the radio -- just in time. "And in the weird and wacky department, how about the Monterey Mermaid? That's what locals are already beginning to call what could be the biggest discovery, or biggest fraud, of the century. Local authorities claim nothing more remarkable than travelling dolphin pods and ask that no one visit the beaches in question as ecologists are already voicing concern about overcrowding in these fragile ecosystems. But if you've just gotta see what everyone's talking about, head down to Monterey." Mulder nearly forgot the rental's keys. MARINA, CA There was no need for hallucinogens on this beach, the sky black and lit by rising embers from the bonfires that surrounded her. Outside, the music was freed of its characteristic ominous warehouse reverberation; instead it poured out across her body as the sea poured over the sand and evaporated away as easily as the same water under a hot sun. Bridget closed her eyes and twirled, no longer bothering to keep pace with the frantic, repetitive beats. "This is what it's all about," repeated the sample. "This is what it's all about. This is what it's all about. This is what it's all about." Yes, she thought. Yes. The sample faded away; the DJ was working her magic, aligning not just the beats of the next song, but -- it seemed to the delirious crowd -- aligning the very planets overhead. Sparks from the fires became stars, the stars rained down and became life. "What were the skies like when you were young?" asked the music. Bridget knew her thoughts made no sense, but like the song enveloping her it had its own logic, its own beauty, greater than the sum of its simple parts. Electronic noises or the philosophies of a young girl -- on the dark summer beach surrounded by strange friends and friendly strangers, it was truth. "The sunsets were purple and red and yellow--" She was twirling, twirling, her feet now touching damp sand, touching water, and she lost her balance and was falling on her ass and laughing with the crazed wonder of being alive. She looked back towards the beach and saw hundreds worshipping the roaring fires, the monolithic speakers, bowing before the dreadlocked DJ who'd gone topless hours ago. "--on fire--" A white-capped wave rose up and Bridget swallowed a mouthful of salt water mid-laugh. She staggered to her feet, spitting and giggling at the same time, and began to twirl again -- three hundred and sixty degrees of overwhelming visuals, repeating and repeating. "--and the clouds would catch the colors everywhere." On the beach, the dancers were waving their arms in unison, like sea fronds buffeted by waves. The sea was dark. On the beach, someone threw driftwood into a bonfire, and the fire flared into the sky. The sea was dark. On the beach, the party raged. The sea was dark but now lit by bright new eyes. Bridget spun to a halt and stared. The eyes sank into the water. "Burning, burning," the sample repeated. "The earth is burning." LOS ANGELES, CA Scully did the autopsy on the fish anyway, and was just finishing up when she was interrupted. "When the hell is he going to call?" Mulder stormed, sweeping past the examining table and moving halfway across the room before noting the odor. He spent the rest of the conversation with his hand covering his face. "Why?" she asked. "Need a date to the prom?" Her partner folded his arms as much as was possible while simultaneously blocking his nose. "I'm not that much of a narcissist." Scully removed her surgical mask with precise impatience. "He does bear a certain resemblance to you." "He does not." "He does." "I'm taller," Mulder pointed out. "I didn't mean a physical resemblance." "Is that a compliment to me or to him?" "Neither. Are we done here?" "The autopsy?" "The banter. I'd like to tell you about the autopsy." Mulder waved her on with the hand not engaged in odor control. "Well," she began. "I was hoping to be performing this with an actual ichthyologist, but with our physician-in-residence en route to Monterey, I've had to do my best on my own." She sighed. "Apparently my best isn't enough -- I can't tell you anything about what's happened to these fish." "You found something you can't explain?" "No, I found nothing. Tox screens came back negative -- at least for those things we can test for. No signs of physical injury. No unusual radiation. No strange malformations. They're just... dead fish." "The appearance of which happen to coincide with this and every other alleged mermaid sighting to date." "Documented by Tilson, you mean." "Yes, just like the genetic similarities noted between the New Zealand corpse and the human genome." "Similar, but not identical." "99 percent identical, Scully!" "Mulder, chimpanzees share 99 percent of our genes." "Chimpanzees don't swim in the ocean. Even if you don't accept Jim's belief that he's tracking a mermaid, you have to admit that the discovery of a previously undiscovered, aquatic, near-human primate is a major scientific breakthrough." "I find it hard to believe that such a creature could exist in open water without having been brought to light before. Mulder, we're talking about an air-breathing organism -- not some deep-sea evolutionary throwback." "Most sea mammals are highly intelligent. This one could be even more so if it were closely related to humans. Maybe it's just been avoiding us." "For hundreds of thousands of years?" "That's the whole point, Scully. It hasn't been avoiding us. Many of the historical reports about mermaid-like creatures involve intentional but isolated contact." "How convenient that they never show up when Mom and Dad and the kids have their camcorder out." "Maybe Mom and Dad and the kids don't have anything interesting to say." Scully gave up. "It certainly doesn't help Tilson's credibility that he refers more often to mythology than to modern-day zoology when discussing it." "But the mythology fits the circumstances at hand, Scully. Mermaid legends frequently associate an appearance of the creature with unusual oceanic events like sudden fish kills, and the sheer number of these myths -- from Aboriginal Australia, ancient Japan, Rome, the Scottish highlands, Russia -- strongly suggest some kind of truth to the idea that there are intelligent, human-like creatures living in the sea." "Which, if eaten, grant eternal life." Mulder stared at her with an expression of mounting frustration. "I'm not discounting any of this out of hand, not even Dr. Tilson himself." She added a half-smile. "I've grown fonder of his kind in recent times." Mulder straightened a little against the wall. "You've got a thing for nuts now?" "Let's just say I'm less allergic." Mulder's phone rang and he answered it still smiling. "Yeah." After a moment he whispered loudly, "Better get your shots." "Tilson?" He nodded. She let him listen for a moment, impatience building. "What?" she finally said. "What's he saying?" "Yeah, okay, we'll be right up." He closed the phone and put it away with deliberate care. "Scully," he began, eyeing the table full of fish internals. "How do you feel about sushi in Monterey?" SANTA CRUZ, CA "On the whole, it's not as tacky as I expected." "How tacky were you expecting?" "Like Jersey shore tacky. Coney Island tacky. This isn't that, and there's less trash." "Don't talk about our fellow beachgoers like that." "Har har." Vince eyed her over his Ray Bans -- expensive sunglasses that had been tremendously stylish fifteen years ago. He'd bought them in July. Katherine said something next, but it was drowned out by the screams from the car-full of teenagers plummeting down the final roller coaster loop. She shook her head in frustration and stole another one of the cheese fries from the cup in his hand. Vince took particular note of the way she licked off the grease. She led him away from the rides, games, and other attractions that were part of the boardwalk's ticket economy. Katherine leaned on the railing dividing the sand from the walkway and cocked her head as if listening. Her officemate hesitated before asking. "Can you hear it?" "I don't know. It's not like that." She squinted with some kind of effort. "I just know where it is, you know? Like someone told me and I forgot who they were." This begged the obvious question. "Where is it?" The roller coaster car clanked methodically up the incline, building momentum. "She's coming," Katherine said. MONTEREY, CA "More dead fish," Scully observed. "You know Dr. Tilson, I don't remember seeing this in 'The Little Mermaid'." Oblivious to the smell, the biologist moved in and out of the fields of fish and exuberant seagulls. "Hollywood has done as much damage to mermaid mythology as it has to all other pre-Christian beliefs -- packaged it in an attractive animated story and stripped away the power." He stepped towards the agents, his back to an outcropping of sea-battered rocks. "Mermaids of lore are not helpless blondes who want nothing more than the love of a good human. The Japanese ningyo, for example..." "Yes, we know," Scully said sourly. She turned to her partner. "Mulder, how much time did the sheriff say we had?" They were virtually alone on a spot of shore that had been cordoned off by health officials when the onslaught of dead fish had rolled in. A crowd had been gathering after the initial sighting but most onlookers were sensible enough to recognize a potential health threat when they saw one. "An hour or so," Mulder answered. After that, officials would sweep in to clean the beach. "I'd rather use that time talking to the witnesses -- to determine if there's any truth to their report or if they were just looking for some publicity. There's nothing I'm going to learn here. Are you going to stay with Dr. Tilson?" "You may as well stay too, Agent Scully," Tilson said. He stood between them. "I overheard the cops a minute ago -- they can't find the original witnesses. Couple of computer people here for a conference, and it seems like they skipped town." He paused. "Not the behavior of determined publicity-hounds." Scully frowned. Worse, there was sand in her pumps. SANTA CRUZ The water was shockingly cold for the summer. In her mind, California equaled beach, beach equaled heat, and the ocean should've followed similar trends. She realized, just as her feet could no longer touch the bottom, that the West Coast was different. She had grown up watching Atlantic currents be born, but Pacific currents were old and swept in from parts unknown, bearing cold-water secrets. Briefly she looked back to shore, hoping a well-meaning lifeguard hadn't spotted her so far out, and also wishing to catch a glimpse at Vince. He waved boyishly; she would've blushed if her face weren't already flush from the chill. He'd wanted to go with her but he wasn't much of a strong swimmer, he'd said. As for her, all those lessons at Girl Scout Camp had finally paid off. Besides, she thought, this wasn't something he was supposed to see. Tiring a bit, she rolled over and spread her arms to allow her to float. Out past the waves she could bob in the current and feel the warmth of the sun against her closed eyelids. The contrast between the sensations -- hot air above and cool water below -- was stimulating yet somehow soothing. She was reminded of the early days of the Internet, the anonymous addresses and secret files. No search engines, no indices, no animated paperclips. She'd stayed awake for hours, just drifting, feeling the data brush by her like lost fish in shallow waters, sometimes grabbing at random and throwing back what she didn't need. Disembodied, she could move anywhere -- servers in Japan, text files in Australia, archives in Finland. It changed, though, as the net grew. The web put a friendly face on the data, homogenized it, trademarked it, made every exotic locale a dot-com and every document easily translated. Even as it grew, it became smaller; its infinite depths flattened into endless linear connections as keywords replaced exploring. There was more than ever to find, but the pleasure of the journey was gone. But soon, she thought. Soon. When it finally touched her, it was like a mother's caress -- a gentle brush against a long-suffering wound that had forgotten to heal. MONTEREY, CA Fitting both agents and the biologist in the same burgeoning van was quite a trick. They managed only after discarding four giant buckets of sea salt. "I've got a theory," Mulder mused, "that might satisfy both of you." "Really?" Tilson and Scully said. Mulder leaned forward on his knees. He would've preferred a more dramatic pose, but he couldn't stand up in the van. "Scully, what do you know about human evolution?" She blinked in surprise and shrugged. "Nothing much in depth, I suppose. Humans and apes have a common ancestor. Somewhere along the way, the lineage split, and one branch became upright and big-brained and the other developed a propensity for bananas." He nodded, springing up, and moved bent-over to the slide projector. To Tilson he asked, "May I?" The other man shrugged in a manner not unlike Scully. "Be my guest." Mulder quickly loaded slides from his jacket pocket. "Before you ask, Scully, no, I don't just carry these around with me. I had these FedEx'ed from the office yesterday afternoon when this theory popped into my head." After an additional bit of focus and fiddling, a sketch of a branching tree with various human, ape and intermediary forms came up on the screen. There was a large cloud drawn near the bottom of the tree, with a question mark in the center. "What is that?" Scully asked, pointing to the cloud. Produced from nowhere, Mulder flipped his wrist and extended a telescoping pointer only inches from her face. "Exactly!" he exclaimed. "That's the question. What is the missing link? What is the intermediary form between ape and man?" Tilson sprung up and crossed in front of the projector. Casting a biologist-shaped shadow on the figure, he pointed above the cloud to a variety of branches labeled with long Latin names. "These are the intermediary forms. The australopithecines. Early hominids living in Africa." Mulder swung the pointer in his direction. "Characterized by what?" "Um, larger brains. Some tool use. Upright stance." "Exactly again! All significant differences from the ape-like ancestor. When did these changes take place? Where is the form between the early apes and these early humans, who show these _exclusively_ human characteristics?" "Chimpanzees use tools," Scully corrected. "And the larger brains didn't develop until the later hominids," said Tilson. "Many animals use a partial or fully upright stance," Scully continued. Mulder swatted the screen with the pointer. "OKAY. But you agree that these characteristics are _mostly_ unique to humans?" "'Mostly unique' is an oxymoron," Tilson offered. Scully smiled into her hand. "Fine," Mulder growled. "But yes, we agree," she finally managed. "We don't know where that missing link is. It's one of science's great mysteries." Tilson held up a hand. "Not so mysterious, really. Modern evolutionary thought supports a notion of punctuated rather than gradual change. Big changes in morphology -- body development -- happen quickly in response to climactic changes. The traditional image of evolution as a gradual, incremental process wouldn't produce the huge leaps we've seen in the fossil record." "Right, exactly," Mulder said, relieved. "Major climactic changes, and an isolated population." "What are you suggesting?" Scully asked. "The traditional explanation for these 'mostly unique' human characteristics was a change from an arboreal existence to a terrestrial one, surviving on the flat African savanna using intelligence, tools, and the increased mobility afforded by walking upright." "But?" "But the scientific evidence doesn't bear this out. As Jim said, some of these features -- namely, tools and larger brains -- don't appear in the fossil record until after upright stance. And upright stance isn't very efficient or fast; just try running from a cheetah. Or even a dog." He paused for effect. "And then there's the matter of hairlessness." Tilson's voice was clipped. "Body heat regulation on the hot plains." "But that doesn't faze the hundreds of other mammalian species which have been adapted for those climates for millions of years. Panting is a very efficient means of heat regulation that doesn't require the development of a complex system of sweat glands. And both of you should know that evolution, like all systems, follows the laws of entropy. No more energy will be put into the system -- like developing a new cooling mechanism -- unless there is a substantial benefit to the organism." "So then what?" Scully asked. Mulder took a deep breath. "It has been proposed that humans didn't evolve exclusively on the African plains. That they went through a short but dramatic phase of development that irrevocably changed their physiology, and has left its mark on them, on us, even today." He looked levelly at the scientists. "And that this phase of evolution took place in an isolated body of water. From this we gained a layer of body fat, control over our breathing which led to speech, a far greater sense of balance than any mammal except the aquatic seal, a natural inclination to enjoy the water where few other apes will voluntarily swim. We cry salt-water tears like dolphins; we sweat salt water like no other animal. We are really, deep down, an aquatic ape." The others were uncharacteristically silent. Mulder changed slides. "And this," Mulder continued, pointing to the fuzzy duplicate of the photo that had been broadcast on the news, "whatever this is, was left behind." SANTA CRUZ Vince was horrified when she didn't resurface. He did the only thing he could. "Where did you last see her?" In a movie the lifeguard might've buried someone like Vince in the sand, but in real life he looked sincere: alerted but sensibly calm where the smaller man was nearly in hysterics. "Over there," he pointed. "By the rocks -- that jetty thing." In the next second the lifeguard and his tan clones had slid gracefully into the water joining companions already in lifeboats. Despite the effort, he knew they weren't going to find her, not because of any dramatic premonitions but because something, everything, would happen to destroy the little hope he'd been cultivating. She was too perfect; it couldn't possibly be meant to be, not for him. The sun sank closer to the Pacific and taunted him with its spectacular beauty. "Vince Riley?" His eyes were watering but his face was hard-set when he turned around. Nothing, nothing could be worse than what had already happened. "You're going to have to come with me," the cop said. "There are some people from the FBI who'd like to speak with you." -- Tilson and Scully had their heads together, in the metaphorical sense. Mulder needed to butt in but felt like a younger sibling with an inferiority complex. He'd been unexpectedly delegated as the one to sign into the motel and now he was running a little to catch up to them. "Um, hello?" Tilson looked briefly annoyed that their mindmeld had been interrupted and said nothing. It was his partner who did him the courtesy of actually stopping. "Yes, Mulder?" she asked. "Have you given any thought to what I proposed?" Scully's face was written in a scientific jargon he didn't understand. She exchanged a quick glance with Tilson, who nodded sagely. "If I were to accept this 'aquatic ape' hypothesis," she began. "Which you're not." "Right. What's the connection with the dead fish? That's the only part of this that seems more reasonably explained by myth." Another encoded look to her right. "Don't get excited yet." Tilson chuckled. Mulder had stopped in front of his room. "I don't know what the connection is. There's got to be something we're missing. Should we go over the eye witness reports again, dial into the office and search those freshly-typed case files?" She answered his smile with hesitation. "Tilson and I were going to use this time to review the literature. We're both a little weak on evolutionary biology." "Oh, right." "It's important if we're going to consider your hypothesis seriously." "Of course." She was already stepping away from him, backlit against the afternoon light like a bad photograph. "Call me when the Monterey couple is brought in." "Absolutely." Tilson's expression was unreadable. "Talk to you later, Mulder." It was easier to pretend he hadn't heard him than to respond. Mulder shut the door. -- Tyler kicked Bridget in the face. It was his gentle way of waking her up, as opposed to screaming in her ear. "What the fuck?" she snarled. "Sorry." Not that he sounded like it. "I said, what the FUCK?" "Asshole's kicking us out. Says his parents are coming for a visit. Get your shit and meet us out by the car." "Goddammit." She'd been too wasted to take a shower last night, and now she wasn't going to get it until who-knows-when. She smelled of "rave juice" -- a noxious compound of dirt, sweat, smoke and indefinable warehouse sludge. A sample of it ringed Tyler's ripped and oversized pant legs, of which she had a clear view as he nudged her in the ear again. "I'm fucking GOING," she snarled. Dave's voice shattered down the hall, remarkably loud as it passed through his door and out from under the pile of teenagers in his bed. "Would you guys shut the FUCK UP AND GET OUT?!" All Bridget was doing this morning was repeating herself. "I SAID I'M FUCKING GOING, OKAY?" She staggered up, swiping the t-shirt she'd used as a pillow and looping her bag over her shoulder. "Where are we going?" Tyler shrugged boyishly. For once, he looked his age. "Dunno." Buzzing, buzzing in her head. Not all of it, strangely, felt uncomfortable. When they got out to the car, she told Ann which way to drive. -- Scully changed her mind and sent Tilson away too. Both of them could be lumbering, well-meaning oafs who wouldn't let her finish her sentences. She needed the short-lived hour before their interrogation to recharge and gear up for the next round of assaults on her belief system. Then she noticed her room smelled like cheap paint and realized she'd wound herself into a hideous mood. The motel was new but poorly constructed. The bathroom door had been hung wrong and didn't close completely, and the hot and cold taps were mis-marked on the sink as well as in the shower. Somehow they'd still managed to buy old sheets; overbleaching had left them crisp white but vaguely powdery to the touch. She was going to need a gallon of moisturizer again, and if she kept picking them up on the road her bathroom at home was going to be overrun. She called her mom from the road because she hadn't in awhile. Scully noticed that her mother didn't bother to ask where she was calling from anymore. -- "She said it was going north," Vince offered. Scully strolled around the table, staring out the window. "But we know that. Everyone knows that. The first sighting was in L.A. County, now Monterey -- one would assume a northerly projection." "Did she say why she knew this?" Mulder asked. Vince shook his head. "Did she say anything at all about it?" "She said that she sensed it, but she didn't know why. I didn't want to ask too many questions." He paused. "We just work at the same office, we're not close or anything." Something in the hitch of his voice made Scully glance over. "Yet?" He only blushed. Mulder looked inexplicably proud of her. "I know that you're worried about her, Vince," Scully continued. "I know that you want her back safely. But the lifeguards and the Coast Guard have been over that beach for hours and haven't turned anything up. Tides were calm yesterday. It's possible that she drowned, but I'm sensing that you don't think so." Vince shook his head and rubbed his red-rimmed eyes. "We're going to do everything we can to find her," Mulder assured. "But we'll need your help. If you know anything, or if you're keeping something from us..." "Why the hell would I do that?" he snapped. His voice began to rise; his hands slammed against the table. "Can't you tell I would do anything to get her back? Don't you know what that's like?" There was a long silence in the room. Mulder finally broke it. "We'll be in touch, Mr. Riley." -- Tilson pushed the door open a bit. "Am I interrupting something?" "Oh, Dr. Tilson, come in." Scully quickly took off her glasses and sat up in her chair. "Did you knock? I didn't hear you." "No, sorry. The door was open." Scully smiled and gestured towards the bed. "I didn't think you'd barged in. What's on your mind?" "First of all," he began, "I need to clear something up." "Okay." "I insist you call me Jim." Scully smiled. "Dana thinks that's a reasonable request." "Excellent. I'd like to know Dana a bit better." Her smile faded. "Oh?" "I brought Mulder in on this because it seemed we could connect on both professional and personal levels. We have the same need to both justify what we do in a strict, rational sense, but also push the boundaries of that rationalism." He adjusted his glasses. "But what I've seen so far is that you're the brains of the operation, not just the brakes." "Oh?" "He comes up with these wild ideas and just dumps them out. It's up to you to synthesize them and come up with a hypothesis that's actually workable." Scully said nothing. "But it seems that he expects your default position to be no, to push back. And Dana, you don't strike me as that kind of person." "Jim, I--" she started, and stopped. She realized she was gripping the sides of the chair. "I'm not sure," she began, and stopped again. She distinctly heard footsteps moving away from her motel door. -- The cool water running over Bridget's face was so enormously relieving it was worth the effort of squishing her head under the spigot of the restroom sink. There was nothing refreshed about the eyes that stared back at her when she straightened up and looked into the mirror. "What would make you go home?" she said to her reflection. "Nothing," Ann answered. She was trying to wash glitter off her cheeks but the dirty old soap with the tectonic cracks wasn't fit for the job. Bridget bared her teeth and inspected her gums. Still bleeding. "Why, Bridge? Thinking of bailing out on the great adventure? Ready to settle down? Tyler's B.O. finally getting to you?" Ann gave up and wiped her face dry on her shirt, briefly exposing her navel ring. Bridget wondered if the net effect there was to clean her face, or the shirt. "I dunno. I think I'm getting too old for this -- just going on and on and on, never looking back. The scene's so new, right? There's no history. No one's writing this stuff down. It's like I can't even remember half of what we did last month." "That's because you bought all your shit from Dave." Bridget shook her head, undoing her pink plastic barrettes. "That's not what I mean. I dunno, maybe it's a little of what I mean. Maybe the drugs aren't about just doing whatever for a night. Sometimes I think it's about finding some other space -- something without words." Ann moved past her to the restroom door. Opening it let in a little of the dawn light and its accompanying early-morning chill. "What do you want, Bridge? You're my best friend. I'll do anything. You wanna go home? I can scrape up the cash -- really." "No, really." Bridget gripped the open door and guided her friend through. "It'll be okay soon. We're going the right way." . . August, 1999: "Teeth of foam" . . SANTA CRUZ, CA "Come in," Scully said. She shifted position in the chair and awkwardly rubbed at her neck. "This is where you tell me how much you need a massage." She twisted her head in one direction, and then another, alternating until two successive "cracks" broke the silence. Mulder shivered in a clearly involuntary response. "I guess I don't," she said noncommittally. "Right." He hung back near the door and inspected her ceiling for a moment. Eventually, he nodded at the papers in front of her. "How's it going? Every time I've come by you've been out." "I'm sorry, Mulder." She rubbed the bridge of her nose beneath her glasses. "I've been on the road a lot, talking to 'witnesses'." "I hear air quotes." "Obviously I would've brought you in on anything that looked promising. Most of them were anything but." She flipped over the paper on the top and read aloud. "'Above the waist, he was shaped like a man, but as the water was clear my informants could perceive that from the waist downwards, his body tapered considerably or, as they expressed it, like a large fish without scales but could not see the extremity.' You must get this stuff on a regular basis -- I have no idea how you can deal with it." "Heavy sedatives." "That explains a lot." "Still, Scully, I would've come with you." There was an almost painful sincerity to his voice. "I, I know." She wondered how she could phrase this, any of it. "It's been good, being away from the office. A little like my first summer vacation since the twelve grade. I've needed some time by myself." His sincerity waned. "By yourself?" "I've met with Tilson a few times," she answered honestly. "To discuss his research, provide some additional scientific perspective. But mostly by myself, yes." He considered this for a moment. "Look, I came by to tell you that I think we should call it a loss." "Call what a loss?" "The case. Write it off. Throw it back into the pile and reel it in if it resurfaces." "After I write up your notes again?" "What?" Scully tucked a slice of hair behind her ear. "Nothing, forget it. What about our missing person?" "You mean our drowning victim?" "Is that what you really think happened?" "No," he said. "But at this point, I don't think it matters what I think." She sighed. In the old days, she would've been more annoyed, but she was tired of reading from the same script. "Did you already book us a flight?" "Not us -- you. I'm going to stay and clean things up, but you're out of here tomorrow morning." "And how long are you staying?" He shrugged. "A few days." "Then I'll stay with you. I'd like to go through these sightings just a few more times anyway." She nodded at the teetering paper trail. Mulder shook his head. "No, you should go. Start closing the case from the office." She paused, puzzled but determined. "No. I'll stay. Cancel the flight." Abruptly, he stood and moved to exit the room. "Okay, fine." "Mulder, what is this about?" "Nothing." He didn't turn around, and the door slammed a little behind him. Scully wondered aloud. "What the hell?" -- "Hey Mulder." Tilson didn't look up from the oceanographic map spread out across the floor of the van, but he did lift his pen from the northerly line he'd been drawing. The agent surprised him by only grunting. "What is it?" The second grunt did, at least, formulate itself into words. "Just getting some of Scully's things." He thumbed through a stack of notes. Tilson stood. "Why isn't she picking them up? For that matter, why is anyone picking them up?" "We're going to need to get back to D.C. as soon as possible." "Something afoot?" Mulder found a few documents which he tucked under his arm. He paused, scanning the van, until Tilson calmly pointed to another pile near the turtle tank. "Not the best use of taxpayer dollars to keep us standing around here waiting when our subject has disappeared off the map." "I didn't think taxpayer dollars were something that concerned you in most of your investigations," the biologist remarked mildly. "Look Tilson, I trusted your hunch enough to fly myself and my partner out here. We've followed up on the case for three weeks now and nothing has panned out -- don't blame me because your mermaid was a wash." Tilson crossed his arms. "I wasn't blaming you, but I'm not going to agree that--" "Scully is staying longer because she thinks for some reason that she should follow up on those ridiculous first-person accounts, but my director has ordered us back and for once I am not going to be the one called into the office to be spanked." Mulder shoved the collected folders and notes into a briefcase and slammed it shut. "Look, I know it's none of my business..." "You're right," Mulder said. He stepped out of the van without another word. Tilson waited a bit, to be sure he wasn't coming back. Then he smiled. -- "If Skinner was the one who wanted us to leave, why didn't he tell me that?" Tilson diplomatically shook his head. "He calls me when he needs Mulder back. He calls me for everything." The biologist was quiet. "This is ridiculous. I'm talking to Mulder and straightening this out." She reached for her cell phone. "Wait," Tilson said. She paused, mid-grasp, and he continued. "Let him blow off some steam. You've got all of tonight to make your arrangements." Now it was his turn to hesitate. "I want to show you something." She blinked. "What?" "Come take a drive with me." Off her look, he added, "It'll just take a couple hours." "I really should settle this." "And you will. But you've been working on this case, what, twenty hours a day? If you're leaving, this is your last chance to see what I want to show you." "Okay," came her halting response. She picked up the Nokia. "Leave the phone," Tilson urged. "No deal." He sighed but held the motel door open for her. -- Mulder was overstuffing his suitcase when the smothered, trilling noise began. It sounded like his cell phone, if the phone were crying out for help beneath deep water. "Shit," he said. He'd packed it by mistake. Upending the suitcase solved the problem and he answered the ring gruffly. "Agent Mulder? This is Vince Riley." He sat down heavily, wrinkling the recently-unpacked dress shirt. "Yes, Mr. Riley." The programmer sounded guilty, but Mulder thought it was nerves. "I was hoping you had an update on Katherine. I know you said you'd let me know, but..." "I wish I could tell you something good, Mr. Riley." He paused, considering how to approach this. "The entire investigation is at a standstill. I understand the county has declared her 'presumed drowned'. No reliable sightings of the... creature have appeared." He inhaled. "The FBI is abandoning its hands-on investigation but I do intend to keep the file open as long as possible." Riley's voice sounded flat. "Does this mean you're leaving California?" Good question, Mulder thought. "Yes, my partner and I will be wrapping things up over the course of the next day or so." There was no response for a long time. Mulder cleared his throat and began to apologize for needing to hang up. "Maybe this is something you've already looked into," Riley said, his words running together in a rush, "but I found something on the net that might be relevant." "What is that, Mr. Riley?" "Another girl. She's missing, and her friends say she went missing in the ocean." Mulder frowned although no one could see him. "We've been monitoring the missing persons and drowning reports all up the coast." "I don't think this one was reported. It's a group of kids, really, runaways travelling around from party to party. Cops aren't the kind of attention they want, but they did seem pretty spooked about the whole thing. They posted to a few mailing lists wondering if she'd turned up in any other groups, and I just happened to find it while searching around." His breathing slowed a bit. "I haven't had much else to do," he explained. Mulder sandwiched the phone between his ear and shoulder and powered up the laptop. "Send me everything you've got," he said. -- They swung off Highway 101 just south of San Francisco, heading west towards the ocean. The green exit sign passed overhead. "Half Moon Bay?" Scully read. She looked over at Tilson and tried to catch his expression through his sunglasses. He only nodded. "Right turn ahead," said the rental car. Usually only Hertz installed navigational guidance, but Lariat had a new offering and Mulder had taken the upgrade with geeky gleefulness. GPS in the vehicle struck her as uncharacteristically unparanoid -- couldn't it beam their position back to the mothership? "...followed by slight left turn," the computer continued. Tilson guided the car agreeably. The exit lane widened into a mini-highway that snaked between two faded green hills. Scully cracked the window a little and sniffed. The air smelled of salt, mist, and, curiously, garlic. "Are we going to the beach? Because I can't say I packed for it." The car answered for him. "Left turn in one mile." That would take them sharply south, away from the water. Scully probed his expressionless face again but finally turned away in resignation. The road began to climb; the traffic thinned out of the main artery onto twisted capillaries bordered on both sides by small farms. Strangely rustic for the Bay Area. Scully cracked the window a bit more to let in the sound of the wind. "We're almost there," Tilson said. "Sharp left ahead," agreed the computer. Mulder stood dumbly outside the motel and wondered where their rental car had gone. Scully tried not to be alarmed when Tilson pulled over on the side of the tree-lined road. This grove formed a preternaturally dark archway by the sheer density of their altitudinous growth. It had been late afternoon when they turned off the freeway; under the trees it was twilight bleeding into night. "What are we doing?" The hitch in her voice was cautious concern, not fear. He was a biologist, after all, and she was an armed and trained agent. An agent in the middle of nowhere, but still. "Trip complete," burbled the computer, and obligingly powered itself down. "Just about ready," he said, tapping the dashboard near the clock. "What happens at 5pm?" she guessed. His smile broadened. "Magic." She raised an eyebrow but didn't otherwise flinch. "Oh, forget it," he blurted. "Let's go now." He hopped out of the car and ran around the front to her side. She hesitated only until he looked down at her over his sunglasses with his Christmas-eve grin. His hand felt warm and dry in her grasp. Scully stepped out of the car with slow precision, trying on a faint smile. It fit okay. A few minutes later, her abandoned cell phone rang from the back seat. When she didn't pick up her phone, Mulder called the rental office, wondering if he should disguise his voice. He strongly suspected rental agencies screened their calls for him. "Oh my God," Scully whispered. "Isn't it gorgeous? I've always want to show someone." "Shh," she said. She stepped out of the grove and off the road, onto the rocky, grassy rise along the shoulder. "Be careful," Tilson warned. "It drops off quickly." "Quiet!" she hissed, waving at him. They had climbed several hundred feet into the hills, only a few miles from shore. She had been expecting a scenic view of the town rolling into the ocean, the land sliding down to meet the sea, but when they emerged from the trees she thought for a moment that the sea had risen up to meet them -- some kind of benevolent tsunami. Then she realized it was fog. The entire valley through to the horizon was cloaked in a flat plain of thick, bumpy mist. It was a sensuous, liquid mist, a mist that sucked up trees, roads, homes, hills -- a mist that was visibly moving. Sunset for the rest of the coast was nearly an hour away, but for them it was in a matter of minutes as the edge of the corona dipped into the fog plain, splaying out in autumn-colored swirls like melting popsicles, like delicate grape and cherry and raspberry lime tendrils. "It's..." Scully sought a word more beautiful than "beautiful." "Shh," Tilson said, with a wry smile. -- "Where the hell were you last night?" Mulder asked. Scully resisted the urge to fold her arms. "I was with Tilson." She could tell him more, tell him that she came home before he did, that she fell asleep to the sound of his high-volume channel surfing through the motel's prefab walls. Instead she said, "I thought you were leaving." "We are," he answered slowly, "but not for D.C." "We?" "Vince Riley contacted me with a lead on a possible other witness, also missing." Finally, she did fold them. "We work on this case for over three weeks and our first lead comes from--" "From someone emotionally invested in this case, yes." She blinked. "What do you think I've been doing with my time?" "I'm sorry," he demurred. "Where is Tilson now?" "He's back in Monterey. He was brought down to consult on some potentially interesting audio data collected at sea." Mulder had seemed ready to take the conversation in one direction but now seemed derailed. "What kind of audio data?" "A team from the Monterey Bay Aquarium had been out studying humpback pods off the cost of Carmel. Some anomalous data cropped up in their submersive recordings. I don't know what it's supposed to be; Jim's going to call us back when he knows more." Mulder's face twisted slightly; she thought he was asking for more information. "They did mention they were bringing someone down from Berkeley who works in analyzing voice recordings." "Human voice?" "I asked that. If they thought it was human it could be our missing person and should be a Bureau matter. Apparently it's still inconclusive and needed a scientist rather than an FBI agent." He smiled pointedly. "How about both?" Scully walked to the window and moved the sallow linen drape aside. Morning light filtered into the motel room. "How about you tell me why you're looking for Tilson?" "Something else came out of my conversation with Riley." He hesitated, as if weighing social politics. "I'm not sure Tilson is on our side." "Our side?" "The side of the truth." Clumsy words coming from anyone else, but she'd learned to accept with equanimity his strange lexicon of SAT vocabulary, heartfelt patriotisms and fart jokes. "What did you find?" was all she said. "I'll tell you on the way to Monterey," he replied, and stepped towards her. MONTEREY Tilson was rushing to meet them as they crossed out of the sunlight and into the aquarium. "Come through here," he said, leading them away from the adults wearing fannypacks and the children wearing styrofoam lobster hats. The door they passed through was marked simply, "STAFF." The secret parts of the aquarium were all business: sterile hallways flanked by labs -- most open, most filled with complex plastic tanks. No delicate coral, colorful plant life or educational signs; these tanks were appointed instead with an incomprehensible array of pipes, pumps, tubings and fittings, all monitored and controlled with the precision of hospital life-support equipment. Similar goals: to sustain life in an environment that had become hostile. Tilson moved ahead. Mulder's evidence was hardly damning yet, but if he was right, Scully thought, the biologist wasn't merely wasting their time -- he was endangering lives. Mulder himself, she realized, had not said a word since they'd left the car. There were three men already in the lab. One was obviously an intern, with all the wide-eyed enthusiasm that pervades young scientists who believe they are perpetually on the verge of the discovery of the century. Next to this sandy-haired student stood a more serious older gentleman who was as underwhelmed as the boy was exuberant. Aquarium management, she guessed. Finally, the Berkeley analyst, refreshingly free of the untamed facial hair which tended to cluster at that campus. He projected confidence, calm expertise. Recent tenure, she thought. "Agents Mulder, Scully." Tilson introduced the others in turn. Her assessments were right, except for Douglas Stoll, the "manager", who turned out to be the team leader on the whale survey and continued to exude all the scientific curiosity of a pair of pantyhose. "Doctor Jay," said the audio engineer. He noted Mulder's snicker as they shook hands. "David Jay," he explained, and added a smile to show he took no offense. The intern was, of course, delirious with excitement. "Really nice to meet you guys," he said. He pronounced the first word like "rilly". Mulder moved smoothly to business. "What have we got here, Tilson?" "This data was taken July 22nd, the date of the Liederman disappearance, but the signal I'm about to play was recorded four hours earlier." He paused with just a hint of melodrama. "All we know for sure is that this is not a whale." Scully noted in passing that the FBI wasn't the only organization still using reel-to-reel. Tape began to spool past them; at first, all they heard was static. And then, a woman's voice. Or not a woman. Scully was still trying to decode what she was hearing when the voice stopped and the static resumed. "Play it again," Mulder said. A woman, and yet not. A wail, and yet... "Again," he urged. The third time, Scully shivered. "It sounds," he began. Mulder had an unsettling way of instantly analyzing data recordings and she half-expected him to make a dramatic and revealing pronouncement right then and there. Instead, he subsided, and Scully felt herself speak up. "It sounds hopeful," she blurted. Four pairs of eyes met hers with incomprehension. Mulder showed some tact by changing the subject. To the boy, he asked, "You were on the boat? Did you see anything?" "Nuh-uh. The recorder starts up when it hears a cue and we always check up on deck when it does. This time we didn't see anything -- it was totally calm out there." "What was the result of the audio analysis, then?" Doctor Jay cleared his throat. "I only brought a subset of my tools here. To get a complete report I'd have to run it back at my lab." Mulder nodded impatiently; he was familiar with the standard scientific disclaimers. "But the results are consistent with the usual qualities of formants in human speech. Not exact, but consistent." He looked as if he wanted to say more, but seemed naturally unwilling to speculate. Tilson had no such restraints. "It can't be Katherine Liederman, because she wasn't taken until 3pm. It has to be something else, something..." Hopeful, Scully thought, but kept quiet. She wasn't sure where that feeling had come from. "...aquatic," Tilson finished. The acoustic engineer was already objecting. "There is only preliminary evidence to suggest that the signal is anything human-like. And even if it is a person, it could be nothing more than a sound carried by another ship." "But there were no other ships," the intern objected. The team leader cut him off. "I'm concerned that the scientific reputation of the aquarium will be tarnished by premature speculations." Scully realized her initial assessment was right: Stoll was a bureaucrat in training. Someday soon he would rise to his level of incompetence and get into the management business. She briefly wondered when she'd lost her automatic respect for authority and nearly laughed aloud for even considering. Or not so nearly -- she felt the smile on her face and so did Tilson. He'd turned to look at her and in the split-second before she anxiously looked away she saw his face light up. Mulder saw none of the exchange. He was arguing, predictably enough, with Stoll. "Who are you," her partner was saying, "to decide whether or not this investigation has scientific merit?" Stoll spluttered -- a thoroughly unpleasant expression of angry disbelief. "I might ask you the same question. Isn't your jurisdiction over crimes?" "Kidnapping is a crime in FBI jurisdiction, and kidnapping is what I am investigating." "Who was kidnapped again?" the boy asked softly. Scully realized she didn't know his name. "What could this possibly have to do with kidnapping?" Stoll's voice rose. "You think this woman was abducted by dolphins?" Scully knew Mulder's next words to be political, not an expression of his beliefs. "There is good evidence to suggest that this is a woman's voice, and that is sufficient cause for me to confiscate this and any other data recorded on your team's outing." He cut off the other man before he could object. "Now, I can promise you that I will not unduly associate the aquarium with any speculative hypotheses regarding the tape's content, but I cannot guarantee that if rigorous investigation does suggest an origin other than human." "What?" said Stoll. "Frankly," Mulder continued, "if I'm right you'll want all the credit you can get." He moved towards the door; Scully scrambled to follow. "I'll stay here and continue the analysis," Tilson called after them. Scully looked back, but when Mulder failed to slow, she left without saying a word. The haunting sound on the tape stayed with her. -- "There have been four sightings, Scully. Four. All since we've been here with Tilson, and not one of them has had fish kill incidents associated with them." "How do we know they're confirmed?" Mulder continued as if he hadn't heard her. "And now that I've had time to check, I've found more, dating back months -- in Hawaii, in Fiji -- each one passing without incident. That's why we haven't heard about them." "But --" "The first fish washout was here in California, and Tilson was there. I witnessed the second at close range, and he was there. All of other ones we've seen, we've seen because he's been there. It's a simple pattern, and it fits. Hell, Scully -- you were the one who got me thinking about it when you asked how the fish were related to this whole scenario." "But why? Why would he destroy what he's sought all his life?" "That's something I need to find out." "And just how is he killing the fish?" "That's the other thing." Scully got up from the desk and moved through the room impatiently. "He's helped us, Mulder. He brought us on the case in the first place." "That does not exonerate him!" "What you've presented me with does not incriminate him, either. You've got nothing but the possibly coincidental relationship between Tilson's sightings and the fish kills --" "Only the sites he's visited have had fish deaths. The sightings Riley reported to me up in Washington weren't in any way related to fish deaths." "-- but to his credit he's brought us what could be evidence critical to this investigation." Mulder paced to one end of the motel room and stopped. "And you've shown nothing in his favor but that he has a shaky scientific reputation. Or am I failing to consider his nice smile?" She wanted to stand up from the bed, to storm across the room and shake sense into him. "I hope you are not implying --" "I didn't say anything." "-- I hope you are not implying that I am letting any other factors cloud my judgment in this case." They could play the who-makes-it- more-personal game for hours if they liked. She didn't. "You, of all people, should know..." "Know what?" She bit the inside of her lip and didn't care that he saw. "You should know that I wouldn't cross that professional boundary." Nowhere to go from there but down. "I thought I knew a lot of things about you," he said flatly. She heard every subsequent angry footfall down the hallway -- a lot of them. He wasn't going the few yards to his room; he was leaving. She heard him yell something briefly, and then nothing more. And then the knock. "Mulder?" "It's Jim." She opened the door to find Tilson standing back into the hallway. "What did Mulder say to you?" "He said I had impeccable timing. What the hell does that mean?" She sighed and let him in. "Forget it." She gestured to the unmade second bed. "Do you have any news?" "Dana, are you all right? You sound --" "I'm fine. What did you find out?" He shook his head a little, not in answer to her question. He sat. "We did further analysis on the sound signals. I don't even know where to start. For one thing, there's a lot more on the tape than you heard." She sat across from him with interest. "Later in the recording?" "No, more data in that timeframe. Frequencies above the human range. Repeating, staccato noises." "What, like echolocation?" "Exactly. High frequency clicks and pops, but not in a pattern I could pin down to an extant cetacean species." He shifted a bit closer. "But there's more. We pieced apart the sound frequencies you did hear, those in the human range. Those aren't navigation -- they're communication." She swiped some hair away from her face. "Isn't that a bit premature?" "Maybe," he shrugged, and smiled too. "Whale songs have repeating patterns, but they're slow. Songs repeat over periods of hours. These sounds were different -- they had components we could dissect and count. About fifty to sixty, repeating in matters of seconds." "Representing what?" "Well, we don't know for sure, of course. But I think they're phonemes." She raised an eyebrow. "Phonemes." "Or some kind of equivalent. But the pattern fits -- English has roughly forty phonemes, which are combined and recombined to form words. Other languages have more or fewer. And these phonemes were produced using sounds not unlike those produced by humans." "And it, whatever it is, was producing both simultaneously?" "Dolphins can whistle and echolocate at the same time. The directional system is generated by a specialized nasal organ. These... organisms could behave in a similar way." Scully leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees, her hands over her face. "And why couldn't this just be some kind of dolphin?" she said, talking into her palms. For a moment, there was no answer. When she opened her eyes and looked up, Tilson was gazing steadily back at her. Slowly, he took her hands in his and pulled them away from her face. He held them lightly, his palms open. "Dana," he said quietly, "that's what _we_ are going to find out." He slid one hand out from hers and used it to move that errant strand from her face again. Scully withdrew a bit, blinking as if awoken. She looked down and covered his other hand with her own, patting it. "Thanks, Jim." In his same reverent voice he whispered, "You bet." He reached for that dangling bit of her hair which had again fallen, but she slipped neatly sideways. "This day has really been a roller-coaster for me. I can't even remember if I'm flying out tomorrow." He stood but kept his distance. "That's your decision though, of course. Right?" "Well, yeah. Right." "Flying where?" "First to L.A., to reopen the case as a kidnapping, and then to Seattle to meet up with Riley." "Kidnapping?" Tilson looked surprised. "Mulder wanted additional resources at hand." "But you don't have a suspect. Well, not really." "We have enough evidence for what we need." "Enough for a lie?" "It's complicated." "Obviously, but still..." "It's always complicated!" Tilson rocked for a moment in her wake. "I'll get going," he said finally. "Please call me tomorrow if you're still in town. I need you... on my team for this." "Right." Scully sighed. "Jim?" "Yes, Dana?" He was silhouetted in the bright fluorescent light from the bathroom; she couldn't read his expression at all. "Why are you looking for it?" He answered immediately. "I want to tell the world." "Okay," she said. She forced a smile. "I'm sorry." "I know you are." When the door clicked shut, she walked back to the desk. Their case notes, hers and Mulder's, had been almost completely entered into the computer after weeks of little else to do. She could finish them up in fifteen minutes, leave them in Mulder's room, and send him off on his Vince Riley goose chase. And then what? The laptop was still on and open to the right file; the handwritten notes were here just as she'd left them -- --under a new pile that Mulder had thoughtlessly dropped on top. "Damn him." She opened the top folder with self-righteous force, winging a previously-trapped napkin into the air. It settled on her keyboard. The handwriting was her partner's; his words were surrounded by geometric doodles and lines, as if he'd written it while on hold: "A.D. Skinner rants. Does Scully ever prance? In my dreams, sometimes, we dance. The Truth is in my pants." Scully didn't know whether to laugh or to cry or to quit. Instead, she turned off the laptop and the lights, and fell heavily onto her bed, still dressed. She fell asleep instantly, dreaming of herds of camels swimming an endless sea. In the morning, she packed hastily, leaving just enough time to write a note. SEATTLE Ann heard the doorbell ring, heard Matt or Mike or Mark or whoever actually lived in the apartment open the door. It should have been Vince, the guy who was going to help them find Bridget, but she was frankly surprised that anyone showed up on time anymore. "I thought you were bringing some cops with you?" she asked, when Matt or Mike or Mark sullenly showed Vince into the room they were crammed into. "FBI agents," Vince said. "But they're not coming until later." "Huh," she said. "Have a seat or something, if you can find a spot." She couldn't blame the guy for looking less-than-enthused about his seating options. The carpet was completely skanky and the floor was mostly full of other rave kids sleeping the day away. Vince found a spot between two Asian girls who didn't seem to do anything but eat ecstasy like it was baby aspirin and then giggle a lot. At least they were reasonably small and didn't take up a lot of room. "So," he said, with a hitch of uncertainty. "You said your friend is missing?" "Yeah. Tyler and I -- that's Tyler in the corner -- we pulled over the car when Bridge started screaming and yelling about that they were here or something, and the next thing I knew she'd booked out of the car and into the water." "This was here in the Sound?" "Uh-huh. Tyler has some cousin in Aberdeen and since we were up here anyway we figured we'd crash there, but before we even got to the house Bridge insisted we detour to the beach just to 'check it out'. Next thing we know, she's run into the waves and disappeared." The Vince guy was frowning. He looked sort of attractive when he did, in a vaguely nerdy way. "Wouldn't you think she just drowned? Did you call the police?" Ann laughed. "With the shit we have in the car? Yeah, right. We needed to get to a city fast to unload what we'd picked up in SF and since Bridget said go north we figured we'd just do it in Seattle. Anyway, there wasn't anybody on the beach for miles -- too fucking cold. If she drowned it's not like it would've mattered if we could call somebody." "Right, so why did you, uh, post on the net to find out if anyone'd seen her?" "Because she wasn't fucked up at the time or anything. And we went to high school together -- she was like the swim team superstar. She couldn't just jump in the water and die." Midway through her speech she'd realized he was looking at her differently. Sixteen or not, Ann knew what she was seeing; she tossed her hair back and leaned towards him a bit. Vince smiled in response. "Where are you guys off to next?" "Dunno. Seattle, to offload our shit, and then we'll see where that takes us. As long as the car doesn't give out we'll keep traveling." "How about Vancouver?" Ann considered this. "I hear they have a good scene there. How come?" "The FBI sent me here to convince you to meet them in Vancouver. They can't do it themselves -- as government officials they aren't allowed to persuade any American citizens to leave the country." She frowned. "Really?" Vince nodded solemnly. "But they have a strong lead that suggests that Bridget and some other women might be up there, and they want to continue the investigation from there." "I'd have to check with Tyler," she answered hesitantly. "That's fine," he smiled. "I really can't persuade you more forcefully, but I think it's the best hope for getting your friend back." His expression flitted with sadness. "And mine." "Uh-huh," Ann said. She'd tuned him out a bit at the end; she was trying to remember if she knew anybody (or wanted to avoid anyone) in Vancouver. "Okay." "That's great! Why don't you check with Taylor --" "Tyler." "--and if you wouldn't mind, let me use your computer? I need to send an email message to my FBI... contacts." "Can't you just call 'em?" Vince looked at her with an expression that could've been condescending, but somehow wasn't. Ann felt a bit older and flushed a little. "Ann, this is sensitive material. I need to send it via an encoded channel electronically, not just call them on the phone where anyone could overhear." "Oh, okay." She rose from her squatting position to get the laptop, but Vince's warm dry hand paused her. "And after all this Ann, maybe we could spend some time together?" She couldn't help it -- he had a sweet smile and he was so much older. "Yeah, that'd be cool." VANCOUVER The Canadian rental car was considerably less chatty. Not so the crowd of hipsters who greeted them outside the warehouse in their expensive but ragged oversized clothes. Many of them slunk away, their hands fingering unseen items in their pockets, but most approached fearlessly. More than a few of them were wearing alien paraphernalia; Scully wondered if Mulder considered them devotees or poseurs. Riley was ostensibly their liaison but in this world he was out of his element. Scully interceded before Mulder tried his jive talk routine. "We're looking for a Tyler O'Leary and Ann Bigay." Blank stares. "We were told they were attending this event." More blank stares. It would have been an entirely silent tableau but for the muffled bass throbbing from inside the pockmarked warehouse. Scully noted more bystanders: rows of dirty teenagers sprawled against the outer walls like a police lineup in an apathetic precinct -- all ink-stained fingers and flashbulb eyes. To Riley she said, "Are you sure this is right? Are you sure they left Seattle?" "According to the email I got just before you picked me up, yeah." A ragged blonde kid stepped around the corner then, zipping his pants and wearing a t-shirt Scully would've loved to have analyzed. His hair was omnidirectional as it sprayed out from around a pair of orange- tilted wraparound sunglasses worn on his head, and his sneakers flashed multicolored LEDs with each confident step. Scully was surprised they made that kind of shoe in his size. One of the death row witnesses scrambled to his feet, waving a glow- stick at the adults and speaking to the kid. "Tyler, man, better fucking run. I think your ass is busted." Tyler squinted one eye at the well-meaning bystander. "Chill, Camper. It's all good." He surveyed the three of them with equal interest. Mulder noted a small red dot moving about on his tie. He looked down, then up, and finally into the end of a laser pointer that flared brilliantly as the teenager played it back and forth across his face. "Nice suit," the kid said. "Are you the Tyler O'Leary that had contacted Vince Riley about a missing friend?" Scully asked. He yawned and nodded, dropping the laser pointer into his pants. After a moment's silence, he snarled at the kids who still hung nearby, and proceeded to sit on the hood of the agents' car. "Have you had any luck finding her?" Riley said earnestly. Tyler shook his head. "Nah. Like I said, none of us were all that surprised or nothing. Bridget's one fucked-up chick." It was Mulder's turn. "Can you tell us a bit about what let up to her disappearance?" A man of few words, Tyler shrugged once more. "Can you tell us anything?" Scully said tonelessly. The teenager regarded her with patient contempt. "Look lady, I said I don't know. She was cool most of the time, but sometimes she was a freak. She told us she thought we should go up north." "Why?" "Nobody asked. I assumed she'd heard about a party or something, but she didn't explain. Next thing I know she's got Ann pulling over somewhere along the Sound and running down towards the water. I went after her, but she was gone." He reached into his pants, which seemed capable of holding just about anything, but pulled out only a cigarette and a pack of matches with a lone occupant. "Where is Ann?" Tyler looked at them like he was re-evaluating the quality of the Quantico admittance exam. "What do you mean?" Mulder frowned. "Ann? Your friend -- you just mentioned her." "Uh, she's with _your_ friend. Riley." They all simply stared. "The one I was emailing -- Riley. You know, tall guy, glasses, messed- up hair? He met up with us, hung out, dropped me off here, and kept goin'. They're supposed to come back tomorrow morning to get me when the party's--" "But _I'm_ Riley!" "--over. What?" Riley unfolded the printout he'd stuffed into one of his many pockets. "Is this your email address?" Tyler inspected the page with heroic efforts at focusing on the words. "Yeah, that's mine. But dude, I totally didn't send this." "But it was sent from your computer?" Mulder asked. "Yeah. Headers look right. I wish I'd seen this when the guy was sending it -- I would've wondered why he was sending it to himself." He pointed at Riley. "Yourself." The programmer shook his head. "This is confusing." "Tyler, where did they say they were going?" Scully interjected. She felt suddenly quite ill. "Shit, wait, they said. Hang on." "Scully," Mulder whispered, "what is Tilson doing? What does he want?" "His team," she answered quietly. "He wants her on his team." Mulder frowned. "Vancouver Island!" Tyler punctuated his revelation by flicking his cigarette over the car roof. "He said she'd go swim with the dolphins or some shit, and you guys would find Bridge." He noted their expressions and misunderstood. "Yeah, I thought that was pretty shitty of her too, but you gotta know Ann. She's a good friend, but she doesn't always make the most mature decision, right?" "How long ago did they leave?" Tyler laughed hollowly. "Dude, I have no idea what _day_ is it, much less what time. I feel like I've been talking to you guys for _hours_." To Mulder, she said, "We can contact the Vancouver PD and get info on the island, some ideas where they might be." "We're on Canadian soil, Scully. I can pull favors in the Bureau but up here we've got nothing." "Kidnapping isn't nothing!" "Who? Katherine Liederman? She's a disappearance at best. That Ann girl? We have a witness standing right here who saw her go with Tilson willingly." "Under false pretenses, Mulder." "That's not an emergency search-party offense and you know it." She looked faintly horrified. "What are you suggesting? We do nothing?" "Maybe you should consider that for a change." "What the hell does that mean?" Mulder's voice was steely. "How did Tilson know where they would be?" She let out an exasperated sigh. "Because I left him a note telling him where we would be, and that was a mistake. Is that what you want to hear?" What did he want to hear? she thought. She searched his face but the lights from the warehouse were moving everywhere, creating shadows and creases where none existed. "For chrissakes, Scully," he said finally, "I'm not suggesting we don't not go to the Vancouver Police with this." She blinked rapidly. "What?" "I don't think that we shouldn't keep the police out of the investigation," he continued. Her arms relaxed a bit, fell to their sides. "But we shouldn't not do everything we can't do to not find these women. I don't think neither of us knows that we wouldn't not be their best hope." Scully narrowed her eyes, but gently. "Mulder, you are so weird." In a low voice she added, "Okay." He nodded, just once. Turning to Tyler, he said, "Thanks, man," and extended a hand. The boy looked surprised, scrambling off the hood but tangling his hands in his pockets in the process. When his right emerged, it was clutching an empty liter bottle of water labeled "Crank-2O." He snorted in surprise and tossed it to the ground. Off Mulder's raised eyebrows he said, "It's caffeine, not drugs -- that's only the name." The agent looked puzzled, and then laughed. "Oh, no, I was just wondering how that fit in your pants." His hand was still extended; Tyler finally took it and gave it a sincere but weak shake. "Heh, that's cool. Are we all good?" "Right on, my man," Mulder said. He made some kind of spastic gesture that seemed to be intended as a "hip" shrug but made Scully think she should prescribe him something. Tyler, to his credit, pretended not to notice, and instead waved and ran into the club. Mulder wondered aloud. "Those pants must be, like, size sixty." "Yeah," Scully said airily. "You could hide anything in there." Her partner looked at her expectantly. "Like the Truth." She quickly turned to watch Tyler disappear into the heaving masses, hiding the amusement in her expression. When she looked back around, Mulder's gaze was traveling up and down her body in that way it sometimes did when he didn't know she was watching. She glanced pointedly at Riley, who had already climbed into the back seat of the car, but in the end succumbed to an embarrassed flush. "What?" she snorted, looking down at herself. "What?" "Tyler's pants are nine times your size and I bet you've got more in _those_ pockets. Where do you keep those endless latex gloves?" "Is this where I ask you about your flashlight?" "Why, would you like me to take it out?" "That'd be helpful -- I'm not sure I could find it." He pretended to wince; she pretended to be suddenly fascinated by the warehouse. He followed her gaze. "Could I interest you in a dance?" "If you tried to dance to this, Mulder, I'm afraid someone would call a paramedic." Their careful smiles overlapped like little waves. "Are we going after Tilson?" Mulder asked. "And Ann, and Katherine, yes," Scully answered. All better? he asked. Yes. . . September, 1999: "Lips of sky" . . VANCOUVER ISLAND PACIFIC RIM NATIONAL PARK RESERVE Tilson was a scientist, not a liar and a kidnapper, and dragging the stupid girl with him felt wrong. It wasn't supposed to have happened like this. Dana was supposed to be with him because she wanted to be, not because he'd pretended to be someone else. And this druggie sixteen year old had the privilege of witnessing this event instead of the brilliant doctor who could actually appreciate its importance. Mulder would recognize the importance, too, but he wouldn't be very useful now, would he? At least Ann had happily swallowed the animal tranquilizers he'd given her ("This is like K, right?") and while not totally knocked out was pliable enough when led by the arm. He pulled her up onto a flat, dry rock overlooking the inlet, next to its more level neighbor which supported the army of photographic, film, and recording equipment. The harpoon lay safely across his lap while he waited. KITSILANO, VANCOUVER Riley seemed happy to make himself useful -- he was Map Guy. "It looks like Bridget met it, them, whatever, right here." He pointed to a point just west of Aberdeen, Washington, on the Pacific Coast. "Then back out to sea, they traveled northward and the next land they'd hit would be the western end of Vancouver Island." Scully nodded. "Which is where Tilson brought Ann." "Well, somewhere. It's not a small island. But the only way there is by ferry, and the only ferry we can take today leaves from this point here." He gestured appropriately. "We'll go due west, landing in Nanaimo. From there, it's just west on highway 4 through the center to the Pacific end of the island. They could be anywhere north or south from there, though." Mulder watched the exchange from inside the car. His partner and the programmer were bent over the map which Riley had spread on the hood. The car was parked alongside the water which cut across the north end of the city and separated it from the rockier land on the other side. Scully's red hair was framed by the impossible green, grey and snowy white of the mountains rising up behind her. The wind was making it hard for her to read the map and he watched intently as she sighed in frustration and held a clump of it back. "What about the other ferry to the south?" She pointed with her free hand. "Would they have had time to catch it?" Riley was posed against the same majestic backdrop, but even without his biased perspective Mulder doubted anyone would think the awkward geek in his early 30's benefited from outdoor scenery. Or maybe Katherine Liederman did. It was hard to predict human attraction. Mulder hadn't heard Riley's reply, but Scully seemed displeased with it. "We'll just have to take our chances," she said, frowning. She let go of her hair and it swirled around her face again, obscuring everything but her chin. "How long do you think it'll take?" Riley checked his watch, predictably digital. "We can make the 11am ferry with plenty of time. Guessing from the departure times the trip's about an hour, and to drive to the west end..." He measured the distance across the map while a rusted freighter crept into Mulder's line of vision. "Three hours or more. Looks like winding roads." "Dammit. That's not a lot of time." Scully shifted her weight and her head moved behind a splotch of bird shit on the windshield. Mulder turned on the wipers. "I don't know," Riley was saying, "I don't know anything about this, actually. Are we going the right way? Are we even going to find Katherine?" Scully turned and appeared to follow the path of the water as it carried the freighter out to sea. When she looked back, her expression was unreadable. "We're going the right way." -- Ann didn't come out of it immediately, but when she finally emerged from the depths of her K-hole, strange and distant as it was, she was in part aware of disorientation and of the lingering grasp of the drug. Mostly she was aware of being uncomfortable. Cold. Cold and wet. Her face was up against a rock that tasted of brine. "Wha?" Vince jumped and looked down at her wildly. For a moment, he didn't seem to know who she was. "Where am I?" she managed. "You must have quite a tolerance for that stuff," he remarked. "Doesn't matter much. They'll be here soon." That she knew without question he was right did not in any way lessen her fear of the gun in his lap. -- The roar of the ferry's engine was no match for the wind, but Mulder pushed through the door to the bow without going back for his coat. If Scully could stand it, he'd have to. She was alone at the edge, framed once again by spectacular scenery: mountainous islands and coves which slid past at varying speeds. He was beginning to wonder if she was consciously posing. He joined her at the prow, where the winds and risks were greatest. She looked up at him calmly and with a quiet half-smile, like she expected poetry. "I'm the king of the world!" he exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air. Scully rolled her eyes extravagantly. "Killed the mood, huh?" "That's okay," she said. "I've got enough mood for both of us." She paused. "You know, I didn't even see that movie." Mulder had. "Why not? Dashing heroes, tragic love, high body count." She turned away and looked out over the water. "Can you hear it?" he asked quietly. "Is it like--" "No. It's not like that, not at all. It's-- it's okay." "Don't run off," he smiled. "Promise?" She nodded, but she didn't turn around. -- It took longer than he'd expected; several hours longer. He just hoped they'd get in before sundown and the opportunity for the best photos would be lost. He hoped Dana wouldn't arrive until it was all over. He hoped that his trail of breadcrumbs had been sufficiently large and that Mulder hadn't blundered in, scattering them in that oafish way he had. The girl was quiet again and had been for some time. He didn't know whether she'd been swept under by the ketamine again, or if she was just afraid. Either would do, under the circumstances. Two things then happened at once. When she replayed the events later, which she rarely did, Scully had almost no memory of the terrifying drive from Nanaimo to the western coast of the island -- just the vague sense that they shouldn't be passing on so many high-altitude curves. Everything was crystal-clear from the moment she drove their car, directed by some unnamed intuition, to the rock-strewn cove and found Tilson aiming the harpoon into the water. "No!" she screamed, pushing out of the car and reaching for her weapon. Tilson did not hesitate, and did not turn. He fired. Katherine saw the harpoon break the surface in the strange slow-motion that occurred whenever the world above interceded in her new life. It was rolling as it entered, spiraling downward, entering the water tip first and then widening its intrusion, until the spear had submerged and all that followed were the deadly barbs along the pole. Each point tore a sunlit fracture in the delicate canopy above which would expand outward in a widening light-ringed circle. Pressure from the harpoon pushed trapped air into her environment, air which clustered against itself into perfect spheres of thousands of sizes and scattered in all directions up and away, away from the terrible iron death that left such beauty in its wake. There was no discussion required for their immediate division of labor: it was Mulder who hit Tilson with a full-body tackle, knocking him to the sand, and Scully who scrambled up onto the slick black rocks to retrieve the girl. She could hear the sounds of the men wrestling below her, but her attention was focused on the young woman beside her with pupils like obsidian saucers. "Ohmygod," the teenager repeated, scrambling barefooted against the rock. "There's blood in the water -- Bridge's in the water but she doesn't want to come out." "Shh," Scully soothed, because she knew the girl was right. "Stay here, it'll be okay." She flattened Ann's unwashed hair and pushed gently on her shoulders. "Stay here." Without turning back to check on Mulder or Tilson or Vince, she dove into the water, on the edge of the widening red stain. Television would lead one to believe that punching a man in the face is easy as talking to him, but the truth is that it hurts and is liable to break the assailant's hand. Mulder hammered Tilson in the jaw anyway. The biologist hit the sand with his ass and immediately began to crabwalk backwards with real fear. He probably didn't know he still held the harpoon gun, but it was doubtful he'd have the presence of mind to reload it. Mulder lurched after him for a moment like Frankenstein's monster and then thought the better of it. Arm extended, head to one side, he pointed his service weapon at Tilson and said dryly, "Federal Agent. Freeze." Tilson stumbled and fell back on his elbows. He said nothing, merely breathed heavily and looked disheveled. Half of his glasses had snapped off and the other half hung down by his nose. "The monocle really helps with this mad scientist thing you've got going." Tilson had obviously been reading the right script. "You don't understand," he whined. "You were trying to advance science? It was all for the common good? They laughed at you back at the university?" Tilson sneered in a way that was somehow, despite his current position, genuinely threatening. "Fuck the common good. This was about me, and Dana." The gun which had been lowered jerked back up again. "What about Scully?" "It wouldn't come close without a woman, the ningyo --" "The what?" "The mermaid. That's why I couldn't capture it before. I was always too late and they would never come close to a man alone." Mulder heard splashing noises behind him, and female voices. His aim did not waver. "It was you, poisoning the fish." "Yes." "Why?" "To find proof. Proof of my beliefs." "That sounds a hell of a lot more justified coming out of my mouth than from someone with the rap sheet you've lined up." "Yeah, I hear you have a spotless record." He rubbed his bloody jaw against his shoulder. "You treat all your suspects like punching bags?" "Only a select few. Welcome to the club. Now, stop copping my lines and tell me why." Tilson's sneer became dismissive. "I know you, Mulder. We're a lot alike. You wouldn't come this far without doing your homework." "The ningyo," Mulder said evenly, "is the Japanese mermaid. It is believed that eating the flesh of the mermaid will grant eternal life. You didn't want it alive for study -- you wanted it dead, to eat it." "Also for study. I would share the discovery with the world. What if you're right, Mulder? What if this is our ancestor?" "Bullshit." "I'm not denying my intentions. I'm not you, Mulder, cloaking my megalomaniac desire to be right in Truth, Justice and the American way. How could I deny wanting eternal life?" "But only for women, Tilson. In the myth, men who eat the ningyo die." "I considered that a risk worth taking." "Why Scully, then?" Tilson sat up and brushed off his free hand. The other still clutched the harpoon. "Who else would you give the gift of eternal life?" "Why does everyone assume I'd want that?" answered Scully, just before she fired her weapon. Mulder turned in horror, saw Scully standing where Tilson had been, looking down at them from the rocks. One arm was lowering her gun slowly; the other was around the blood-soaked figured of Katherine Liederman, naked under Scully's ruined jacket and supported on the opposite side by a teenager he presumed was Ann. Mulder's eyes traveled from the young girl to the injured but conscious woman, and finally to Scully, who merely nodded in Tilson's direction. He looked back. Tilson hadn't been shaking off sand -- he'd been reaching for another harpoon bolt. Mulder watched as his grip on it slackened; it finally rolled harmlessly onto the ground. "I would've seen him, Scully. I would've gotten him before he fired the shot." "I know, but. Just in case." Tilson didn't meet his gaze. He was staring wide-eyed at Katherine and her matching wound. Mulder heard Scully's voice, flat and far-away. "It wasn't meant for you, Jim. Why did you try to take it?" They never heard his last reply. Riley had finally come running from the car, yelling with joy and fear. -- "...If the above narrative can in any degree be subservient towards establishing the existence of a phenomenon hitherto almost incredible to naturalists, or to remove the skepticism of others, who are ready to dispute everything which they cannot fully comprehend, you are welcome to it. Your most obliged, and most humble servant, William Munro." -- An account of a mermaid sighting in Caithness, Scotland, published in 1809. -- Scully switched the cell phone to her other ear. The first one hurt after her conversation with Skinner. "She doesn't remember anything, does she?" "How'd you guess?" Mulder asked lightly. "After six years, I'm sensing a pattern." "Riley's been with her in the hospital round the clock, and she says she doesn't remember a thing from the time she walked down the beach in Santa Cruz to when you pulled her out in Vancouver. But she's going to be fine otherwise. The harpoon just grazed her." "Uh huh." "What do you think?" I think she's lying, Scully thought. "She might remember more as the recovery proceeds." "I hope so." Doubtful silence on the line. "How did the second analysis on the fish samples go?" "I've sent everything off to Quantico -- every substance in Tilson's van, every dead fish we found. He knew he was bringing the FBI -- you -- in on this; he would've been careful. I'm guessing some kind of selective neurotoxin, but it'll be weeks before we know for sure." She changed gears. "Why you, do you think?" "You know, I ask myself that all the time." "Not often as I do. What do you think?" "I think I have to stop picking up cases online." He started to say something else, and then sighed. "What did Skinner say?" "He said our West Coast vacation is over and he wants us back ASAP. He claims this new case is for both of us -- UFOs and evolution and murder." "Oh my." She smiled into the phone. "Can you finish up here?" "You mean, do I know it's my turn to write up my illegible notes? Yes, I do." Scully laughed. "Okay. There's something I need to do today." His breathing changed in the way it did when he was holding something back. Usually that foretold mysterious vanishings, but this time he was just being polite. Maybe he realized what Tilson hadn't: some things weren't for him. "Okay," he said finally. "Call me when you're done." "Of course," she said. "You know," he interrupted, "there was one thing I forgot to mention about Tilson's Japanese myth. About the ningyo." "What's that?" "Traditionally, their appearance heralds war." She said nothing for awhile. "Goodbye, Mulder." It must've sounded as strange for him to hear it as for her to say it. Usually they just hung up. "Bye, Scully," he said slowly. Someone behind her tooted his horn. Scully waved into the rearview mirror and guided the car onto the ferry. Bridget followed the others into the cove, moving alongside anonymous feminine bodies which rose and fell beside her, nudged her up towards the breach and back down into the darkness. Some spiraled around, brushing thin hands along her body, trailing delicate webbed fingers across her face. Others would surge forward suddenly, only to caress her stomach with their tails as they dove downward, pushing off her playfully to slow her down as they leapt forward. Everything around her was brightening, becoming clearer as they neared the shore. Clearer too was the sense of the one they had lost, and there was a chorus, gentle sighs of regret, but no, the lost one told them all, it was for the best, they had saved her and there was someone who had been waiting for her, someone who needed her. They understood that, of course, and they chattered and sung in anticipation for the event that was to come. They chattered and sung and called out to the one who would bear witness, begging her to join them, because as Bridget knew you could go back, you could always go back, it was never too late. Scully slipped out of her pumps when she stepped out of the car and carried them with her across the sand to the cove. A few days of wind and sea had wiped away the tracks and the blood, and no onlookers had taken their place in this largely wild stretch of beach. The cove was deep and quiet and secret again, drenched in its twilight colors. It was paradoxically easier to scale the rocks barefoot. It hurt less and her feet knew where to go. What had been treacherous and slippery beneath her shoes was now a silky cushion of water and plant life. When she reached the plateau, she wiggled her toes. The cove was open-mouthed, allowing passage from the west and north, and it was from the sun-drenched western end that they swept in. They were swift, and silvery; they surfaced one after another again and again, like mercury waves. Occasionally she caught glimpses of tin- colored hair spreading along the surface -- the hair would hold position for a moment, drifting in the tide, and then be gone. Scully leaned forward and put a single toe in the water. Tilson was there, suddenly, smiling in that way that had so disarmed her. Mulder's smile, without Mulder's history. "I want to tell the world," he said. No, she thought. I thought that was the right answer, but I was wrong. After all the secrets that've been kept from me, I realize that some things, still, should be kept hidden. I am a silent witness, and that alone. Mulder's smile again, this time on its rightful owner, in sharp relief under the field's night game lights. Yes, he is why I cannot follow. But whatever it is you have called me to see, I am watching. Suddenly there were more of them, swirling in from the north. These were different: she couldn't hear them, couldn't quite sense them. They felt foreign but not dangerous, alien in the most innocuous sense of the word. Even their swimming pattern was different -- less direct, more elliptical, looping in on themselves like cream in Mulder's coffee. His face again, in a scene she didn't remember but somehow understood. The way he gazed at her sidelong, devoid of expectation but full of hope. Scully watched as the two patterns slid into the cove, one group on each side. Braver individuals from each group ventured out, almost touching the other, and then pulled back in splashes of water and barely-glimpsed limbs. Some silent threshold was reached and the pattern changed. Spirals within spirals formed as both groups mixed and swam together around a single point of still water. Each member froze in its place, rotated together like stars in a galaxy. From the central, still point came the sound of a young girl's laughter, and the brief flash of a young girl's hand. The pattern broke as each swam away, the fractal dissolving into its chaotic components. Silver and grey glittered wet orange in the reflected light and bodies began to surface, to roll over each other, until the entirety of the cove was filled with roiling flesh, the air filled with laughter both ancient and new. And the sun was huge and red and never-ending. -- Thanks to JET, who braved the first and last versions; Jill, for her quick and helpful turnaround; and cofax, who wreaked havoc on my prose to make it all come out right. Endnotes: This is fiction, not a textbook. None of these characters could be expected to be experts in the field of physical anthropology and therefore many of the details regarding early human evolution have been glossed over. It's an exciting field and new discoveries are turning over long-held beliefs each year. You can catch up on some of these at the talk.origins web site (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/), or better yet read one of the many popular science books on the topic. Terrance Deacon (_The Symbolic Species_) is my personal hero. The aquatic ape hypothesis has been called "a beautiful theory killed by ugly facts." As it was originally conceived it is almost certainly wrong. However, recent findings about the earliest hominids suggest a more wooded or swampy climate than previously believed and thus the hypothesis has seen a resurgence lately. At the very least, it's interesting reading. Start here: http://home.flash.net/~hydra9/aquape.html More early mermaid reports can be found in http://rubens.anu.edu.au/student.projects/mermaids/sightings.html Comments, criticism, and plankton gladly accepted at nevdull@mailcity.com. If each day falls inside each night, there exists a well where clarity is imprisoned. We need to sit on the rim of the well of darkness, and fish for fallen light with patience. -- Pablo Neruda