amanda le Bas de Plumetot
feathers@cyberspace.net.au
 

--------
I wasn't sure if I should post this here or not. It's been a long time
since I've posted stories here. I was going to save it for that fanzine,
but they don't seem interested in my work. I hope someone on this group
is.

I'm not positive about the break up of the story, it might run a little
longer than 5 parts. Anyone interested in it, I will be loading it up
onto my local website soon (some time this week) if you want it all in
one hit with pictures. Otherwise, if you prefer, I will also put the
whole thing here.

DISCLAIMER:
The characters in this story are owned by Chris Carter and 1013
productions and have been used without permission. No harm is intended.
This story may be freely distributed, so long as this is not done so for
money, and the author's name remains intact. This story is copyright 1997
Amanda le Bas de Plumetot.

This is an X-Files adventure story, rated about a PG for some yucky bits,
but mostly pretty harmless. The house in the story is kind of a grandiose
version of my place :) (and guess who'se sleeping in my bed? :)  ) There
is a h/c element. Poor Mulder...how he suffers for his art...I'm sooooo
mean (heh heh)

*:)
amanda

DISTANT SKIES part 1

DISTANT SKIES

        It wasn't a headache.  Not exactly.  It was just the droning of
the plane's engines that had been going on for so long now that Scully
was convinced it had somehow insinuated itself into the rhythms of her
brain.  It had driven itself into her until a kind of nausea had built
up, not like air sickness, but just plain *tiredness*.  She was fed up
with being on the plane, and the thought that there was another ten hours
of this to go made her feel frustrated.  The little kids in the middle
row a few seats behind were doing better than she was, but their parents
had had the presence of mind to buy Mickey Mouse colouring books at
Disneyworld.  Scully knuckled sleep out of her eyes and ran her fingers
through her hair.  The Pacific passed relentlessly below and the cabin
was beginning to fill with light as people woke up and raised their
little plastic blinds to look out of their little perspex windows.
        Mulder was still asleep.  When Scully had finally drifted off,
hours ago, her partner had been very determinedly awake, hammering away
at his laptop.  At some time, when the plane was dark and still though,
even Mulder's paranoia had given out.  It was an indictment on his
personal credo of "trust no one". The pilots and cabin staff hadn't gone
to sleep. Any one of them would have had access to any one of the
sleeping passengers... Scully stopped herself in mid thought and stared
intently at her partner.  For what seemed like a very long time there was
no movement at all.  Then, eventually, she followed the slow rise and
fall of his chest as he breathed. Scully smiled at herself, she was
getting as bad as he was, but, as Mulder so often reminded her, "just
'cause I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get me."
        Two flight attendants came slowly down the aisle, bringing their
trolley of what was bound to be a lame excuse for breakfast.  Mulder's
legs stuck out into the aisle, almost tripping the female attendant.  She
smiled at the sleeping passenger and gently moved his feet under the seat
in front of him.  Mulder didn't even twitch.  When sleep finally caught
up to him, he abandoned himself to it.  Breakfast came and went, Scully
let him be. Waking him would have done him no good, and forcing that food
upon him would only have added insult to injury. She was slightly envious
of his determined ability to sleep and she had a sneaking suspicion that
when they got there he wouldn't suffer a wink of jet lag, while she would
only be recovered by the time they had to turn around and  head back home
again.  However long that may take.
        Mulder had a secret agenda. There was no other explanation for
them taking this case. Skinner had looked upon the request kindly, and
Scully was rather under the impression that the Assistant Director
thought he was sending the two of them on a bit of a junket. A straight
murder investigation with an overseas holiday thrown in. Skinner perhaps
thought that Mulder thought he had been working too hard and needed
vacation. That was a joke. Mulder? Vacation? The man's deathbed would be
wired up to the internet so that he could be onto any UFO sightings as he
was on his way out. There was no question that the reason Mulder had
requested this case was because he was onto something, and Scully wished
he would tell her about it. She wished it so badly that she was probably
going to have to stand on him on her way to the lavatory in order to wake
him up and grill him. It would be a good move for a number of reasons; he
wouldn't be lying there looking so damned comfortable, while he was only
half awake and vulnerable she'd have a better chance at getting
information out of him, and she needed to force some food into him. He'd
got away with avoiding breakfast, but if he didn't get some morning tea
or something soon, his blood sugar levels were going to drop and he'd be
surly till they got there.
        He was looking dreamy and foolish when she came back from the
bathroom. "Hi, Scully."
        "Good morning."
        "Sleep well?" It seemed innocent enough, but it was the kind of
question that was likely to get a fairly terse reply.
        "Mulder I told you at the beginning of this little trip that I
don't particularly like plane travel. Since then I've revised my opinion.
I hate it. I hate the noise, I hate the food. My skin's so dry from the
air in here that it feels like it's about to crack and peel off.  I don't
know how they do it, but they even manage to make the water taste bad on
planes. Now I can tolerate this when it's a two hour hop at home, but I'm
going to need a *really* satisfying explanation for why we're going to
Australia."
        Mulder looked moderately surprised, "There's been a murder of a
US Government employee."
        "Forgive me for being naive, but I was under the impression that
they actually have some kind of police force in Australia."
        "Cade Wilson was working on a classified project. In order to get
the full profile of the man we may need to spend an extensive amount of
time interviewing the people he was working with."
        "Can I have the real reason now?"
        "Scully, I'm an employee of the United States Government ready to
direct my life to satisfy its merest whim. One of our countrymen has been
killed on foreign soil. Justice must be done, and it must be *seen* to be
done in the eyes of these foreigners. What makes you think I need *any*
other reason?"
        "Mulder, I've worked with you for enough years now to know a
hidden agenda when I smell one. Now are you going to tell me what's
really going on, or do I have to kill you and tell Skinner you had to be
subdued with extreme prejudice due to an acute case of claustrophobia."
        "Claustrophobia?"
        "Mine."
        Mulder grinned and pulled a bundle of papers out of his
briefcase. They were copies of the Dandenong Trader, not more than a week
old. "These were hand delivered, there wasn't time for them to even be
posted from Australia. They were left outside my door the day before we
left."
        Scully flicked through the newspapers, they were tabloids, a
local paper, about seventy percent advertising. She frowned at the black
ink smearing her hands, as if this whole business wasn't bad enough, now
she was going to be covered in newsprint. The papers all had bold
headlines and smudged pictures of UFOs. "Cute, Mulder, but I thought
you'd gotten over this kind of tabloid headline when you were about
sixteen."
        "Take a close look, Scully," he pointed to a paragraph, "These
lights were seen five nights in a row over the Belgrave-Hallam road."
        "So the hoaxers didn't want to go too far from home."
        "The unit Wilson was working for is located in Harkaway, about
five kilometres from where the lights were spotted. Wilson was killed in
Selby, about five kilometres in the other direction."
        "Speak English, Mulder."
        "About five minutes' travelling time. As the saucer flies."
        "So you think there's a connection?"
        He shrugged, "Who else is going to look for one?"

        It was nine in the morning when the plane arrived in Melbourne. A
blustery winter morning that had given them a roller coaster landing that
had Scully almost swearing she'd walk home before she'd get on another
plane. They survived it though, and made their way past customs
        They were met on the other side by Harry Williams, an
un-uniformed Senior Detective in the Australian Federal Police. Williams
was perhaps a year older than Mulder and towered above him like a genial
giraffe. He didn't bother with an airport trolley, just hefted Mulder and
Scully's bags under his arms and led the way to his car.
        The sun was shining as they made their way through the car park,
but the air was cold and the wind was strong. "Lucky your flight arrived
when it did," commented Williams. "Much more of this and I reckon they're
gonna have to close the airport."
        It took almost two hours to get to where they were staying,
travelling through Melbourne and then along interminable freeways where
the going was slow due to roadworks. Scully dozed in the back seat.
Mulder sat in the front and chatted with Williams. Scully was lulled by
the droning of their voices and the comforting sound of the car's engine.
She hadn't realised Mulder had ever lived in Australia.
        When they finally turned off the freeway the scenery turned from
light industrial to rural. They seemed to be surrounded by huge
eucalypts. Williams finally turned the car down a dirt track. "Nearly
home," he told them. They were going to be staying at his house.
        The house was set amongst the trees on the dirt road. It was a
sprawling shoebox of western red cedar, but well hidden by bushes.
Harry's wife Robyn came out as the car rolled down the driveway. She
smiled, introducing herself and calling Mulder and Scully by name. She
mispronounced Dana, calling her "Dah-na" rather than "Day-na".  She
called Mulder "Mulder." He grinned at that. It made a nice change for
someone to get his name right and his partner's name wrong.
        Robyn showed them to their rooms. They were in the west wing of
the house with a rather luxurious shared bathroom between the two
bedrooms. Robyn smiled at the two of them, clearly she was happy to
provide them with two rooms and let them take care of the details
themselves.  Scully's room was on the south side, the window looking out
onto a pleasant courtyard containing daffodils and a large urn with
goldfish in it. There were baskets of fuchsias hanging up and a large
tree fern in the corner. It was pretty and relaxing. The wind hardly
disturbed the courtyard at all.
        Mulder's room was on the north side of the bathroom, just down
the hall from Scully's. It had a balcony overlooking the valley. There
was a twenty foot drop from the balcony, but the view across the valley
was lovely. The hill opposite was thick with the rich green of eucalypts.
Half way down the hill he could see the road leading to Belgrave. Scully
came up behind him to look out the window.
        "Great view of Safeway's car park," Robyn grinned.
        Mulder liked the view, though he didn't like the wind. It was
coming from the north, and booming through his room. He stepped out onto
the balcony and a cold gust hit him in the face. A moment later a
kookaburra landed on the verandah rail beside him and sat there, glaring
expectantly at him.
        "Looks like you have a welcoming committee," said Scully.
        "Oh, he just wants to be fed," said Robyn. "When you've finished
unpacking come into the dining room and we'll have some lunch."
        Mulder and Scully unpacked and showered. It felt good to wash
hours of flying grime off. Mulder came into the dining room with his hair
still damp. Scully came in with her hair blown dry and just stockings on
her feet. The house was warm and comfortable and lunch was pumpkin soup
and garlic bread. The house seemed huge, but it was a single open plan
room with an exposed beam ceiling. Lounge room merged with dining room,
and the dining room was divided from the kitchen only by a low bench.
They sat at the table and looked out a north facing window at another
verandah. They watched a group of rosellas squabbling over sunflower
seeds. A red and blue rosella kept chasing off the scruffy looking green
rosellas.
        "Don't tell them what you have in your pockets, Mulder," said
Scully.
        Mulder looked slightly hurt. "Actually, I wasn't allowed to bring
any sunflower seeds into the country. I was going to wait till you all
had your backs turned, and then I was going out there and mug the birds."
        Scully grinned at him.
        "Don't laugh," he said. "That's how come I started eating
sunflower seeds in the first place."
        The kookaburra was back, with several friends, and they watched
for a few minutes as Robyn hand fed the birds on pieces of meat. A tabby
cat sat staring out the window, leering at the birds. It lashed its tail
chattered its teeth and squeaked at the birds. Magpies came stalking
along the verandah rail, hassling the rosellas, but not game to take on
the kookaburras. A little silky terrier singled out Scully as the most
likely prospect for a handout, and sat by her feet, trying to mesmerize
her into feeding it. Eventually it worked, and Scully slipped it a crust
of her garlic bread. It was a pleasant, entertaining way to spend lunch.
        "Just the two of you?" said Scully. "No children?"
        Harry laughed. "With all these birds and animals we don't have
room for children."
        "Big house for just two people," said Mulder.
        "Robyn's actually setting the place up as a Bed and Breakfast.
You two are our test case."
        Robyn came back in from giving the birds their lunch and brought
coffee and cake to the table.
        "I have to ask," said Scully. "How did you know to call him
Mulder?"
        Robyn looked slightly confused. "Well, we got notification that
you two were coming. I'm sorry I mispronounced your name, Dana. It's just
that I have a friend who spells her name the same way and pronounces it
the other way."
        "Yes, but calling Mulder Mulder."
        "Oh, I guess it was presumptive. I hope you don't mind. I just
like to be on a first name basis with everyone who comes into my house."
She didn't look at all apologetic.
        "But Mulder is my surname," said Mulder.
        Robyn looked quite surprised. "Oh. I'm sorry. That is rude of me,
isn't it? I'd just never heard of anyone called Fox before, so I assumed
it was your surname. I'll call you..."
        "No." He held up his hands. "Call me Mulder. That's what I like."
        "It's his foible," said Scully. "Humour him."
        After lunch Scully said she was going to the morgue. Forensic
pathologists had made preliminary studies, but she wanted to look at the
body herself, make her own conclusions based on solid evidence, not what
she'd read in someone else's report.
        "I really thought it was pretty straightforward," said Harry. "I
mean, they got the dogs and everything. I was pretty surprised, really,
when I heard they were sending you two across."
        "Dogs?" said Scully.
        "The two dogs that killed Wilson," said Harry. He frowned. "I
thought you knew. Wilson got his throat ripped out by a couple of
pitbulls. Horrible animals, I don't understand why anyone would want to
keep them for pets."
        Scully turned a very cool stare at her partner. "Dogs, Mulder?"
she said.
        "Causing the untimely death of a U.S. citizen, working for the
U.S. government on foreign soil," said Mulder.
        "Mulder when you described this man's death, you used the word
"murder" to me."
        "We don't know what the dogs' motive was," he suggested.
        "Don't worry, Mulder," she placed a placating hand on his arm.
"I'm sure there will be a murder here before too much longer. Harry,
would you please make sure that the dogs' bodies aren't destroyed before
I can see them."
        "Are you going to the morgue as well, Mulder?" asked Robyn.
        "Not yet," muttered Scully.
        "Ah, no...I have some...other business that I need to tend to."
        Scully gave him a look that would have registered on a Geiger
counter.

        Harry drove Scully to the morgue in his car. Mulder was left with
the rental car and a bunch of maps leading him to the U.F.O. sites that
had been written about in the local newspapers. He drove along twisted,
unmade roads and got lost several times. Eventually he found his way to
the paddock that had been marked on the map.
        It wasn't much of a crop circle. The paddock was mostly used for
agisting horses and some cattle. Still, it was clear where the grass had
been flattened into a large circular shape. There were burnt patches as
well. Mulder paced the circumference of the circle, stopping at the burnt
patches to dig the soil and deposit small amounts of it into stoppered
vials he carried. The burnt patches were oddly located at random about
the paddock. Some of them weren't even in the flattened circle. Mulder
frowned. He went back to his car and pulled the newspapers out of his
case. He looked at the weather reports and the descriptions of the nights
that the lights had been seen; fine and cool. Cold with a light drizzle.
Some rain. Fine and cold. No mention of wind.
        Mulder searched again. In one corner of the paddock was a small
group of gum trees. One of the trees had been damaged as if it had been
run into by a car. There was glass on the ground, brown shards of broken
beer bottles and the clear glass of whiskey bottles. Mulder scoured the
paddock. This time he found remains of something near one of the burnt
patches. It was fabric of some kind. Mulder lifted it up with the tip of
his pen and dropped it into a plastic evidence bag. It looked like latex.
It looked like the remains of a large balloon. Further on he found the
charred remains of a signal flare.
        It was hardly worth keeping any of this, now that he had figured
out what had gone on. Fox Mulder had travelled all the way to Australia
for a hoax. Somebody's drunken idea of a joke. Large balloons, filled
with helium, sent aloft with  burning signal flares. A bright light that
hovered in the still night sky, and then disappeared. A crop circle made
by a "U.F.O." whose inhabitants were too drunk to avoid a tree. Mulder
sighed. Scully was going to take lumps out of him.

        Cade Wilson's body was a mess. Not that Scully hadn't seen worse.
Her own dog had done quite a job on his first owner, but then Queequeeg
had acted out of necessity, and he had been a delicate eater. Wilson had
been mauled by the two pit bulls. They had apparently used him for a game
of tug-of-war after he was dead. It wasn't a nice thought at all, and
there was no sensible explanation for why anybody would want to keep a
dog like that for a pet.
        She studied the measurements and photographs of the dogs'
jawprints that the forensic pathologist gave her. She frowned as she
looked at the information before her. There was no question that the two
pitbulls had mauled Wilson. Their tooth marks were as individual as
fingerprints and she could tell which dog had made each bite. They had
torn his arms and face. They had almost pulled one of his feet off, and
they had mauled his genitals in ways that made her want to cross her
legs. She could probably tell Mulder all about those injuries the next
time he really annoyed her. But neither of the pitbulls had given Wilson
the bite on the neck and throat that killed him. A third dog...a third
animal had been there as well. As far as Scully could tell, Wilson was
well and truly dead by the time the two pitbulls attacked him, they had
been playing with the body like it was a big toy.

DISTANT SKIES 2/5(?)
 

        Scully was looking forward to getting back to the house with
Harry. It had been a long flight and the jetlag was beginning to catch up
with her. Harry drove slowly along the small roads near his house.
Several times they stopped to chat with the drivers of cars coming in
opposite directions, or Harry would just wave, and the other driver would
wave back. It seemed like everyone around there knew everyone, and nobody
was in much of a hurry.
        When they got back, Scully gratefully accepted the hot tea Robyn
gave her. She sat by the window watching the kookaburras fluff up their
feathers against the cold. Mulder came in the door not long after Scully
and Harry arrived. The house smelt of good cooking and it was warm
inside, the gentle breath of the ducted heating a contrast to the howling
wind outside. Robyn had lit a fire in the little dining room/loungeroom
fireplace. It gave focus to the warmth. Mulder stood in front of the
fireplace, letting the warm seep through to his bones. It had been really
cold out there tracking down stupid hoaxers.
        "So how was your U.F.O.?" asked Scully. She really knew how to
hurt.
        "Great if you like helium-powered signal flares. How was your
dogbite?"
        "The dogbites were terrific. I just wish I knew what had killed
Wilson."
        "Not a dog?"
        "I don't know. I'm going in tomorrow afternoon to talk to a
zoologist, see if we can figure out the dentition of the animal that
killed Wilson."
        Robyn called them to dinner. "Vegetarian lasagne," she explained.
"I didn't think you'd be wanting a heavy meal so soon after your flight.
I hope you don't mind eating vegetarian, Mulder." She cast a hooded
glance at Harry, "I know a lot of blokes who don't think they've had a
proper meal if they haven't had meat."
        "I'm fine," said Mulder.
        "He's just pathetically grateful when anybody feeds him," said
Scully.
        The combination of warmth and good food and general fatigue
caught Scully early. She needed to sleep. She even caught Mulder rubbing
his eyes. "Not going to sit up all night watching television?" she asked.
        He looked blearily at her.
        "We could put a tv in your room if you like," said Robyn
earnestly. "It's not a problem, there's a..."
        "No, it's fine, really. Thanks," Mulder waved off her
helpfulness.

        He had been asleep. Despite the way the wind buffeted his room he
knew he had been asleep, because he had been having a really stupid dream
about going to someone's wedding and wearing a garment covered in
silk-ribbon embroidered flowers. Now he was awake, though, suddenly
alarmed and out of bed at the sound of Scully's yell. He dashed into
Scully's room, gun in hand.
        "What is it? What happened?"
        Scully was standing beside the bed looking flustered. Her hair
was flattened and her nightgown was still twisted about her middle. She'd
had time to grab her gun, but no time to straighten her nightdress. She
was peering intently out the window, trying to make something out in the
dark courtyard beyond.
        "Something's out there, Mulder."
        Mulder scratched at his head and adjusted the waistband of his
boxers up and tugged  the hem of his tee shirt down. It was something
like two in the morning and the house was quite cool now. "Something like
what?" he said. "The cat? A branch scratching at the window?"
        Scully shook her head. "I don't know. I heard something, and it
wasn't a cat."
        "The wind then." He was tired.
        "It wasn't the wind, Mulder, there's something out there."
        "You were probably dreaming." Apparently a little sleep
deprivation made Mulder terse.
        "Mulder I heard it, it..."
        At that moment the wind did drop, and this time they both heard
the noise. It was a strange, rumbling growling sound. Not low, like the
growl of a dog, but mid range, it sounded to Scully a little like someone
with some sort of chronic obstructive airways disease, trying very hard
to breathe after just performing in a triathalon.
        "What the hell was that?" said Mulder, his face going pale.
        A light came on in the front room and Robyn came trudging in,
clutching a dressing gown about her and scratching at her flattened hair.
"You okay?" she said.
        Scully gestured towards the window. "There's something in the
courtyard."
        Robyn shrugged. "Goldfish?"
        "It made a noise," said Mulder.
        "Did it sound like this?" said Robyn, and made a very good
impersonation of the sound they had heard.
        Mulder nodded.
        "That would be Droopy."
        "The friendly ghost?" said Mulder.
        "Brushy tail," said Robyn. "Hold on." She disappeared back into
the main part of the house and returned a moment later with a piece of
bread with honey on it. She pulled back the curtains and opened Scully's
window. Cold air came flooding in, and a moment later something landed
with a thump on the window sill. "Droopy, come and say hello to our
guests and stop scaring them." She handed over the bread and honey.
        The animal on the window sill looked to Mulder like a large
domestic cat on steroids. It moved with the kind of burly stiffness of
guys who did weights, but it had a sweet, dimwitted look on its face and
a brushy tail. Its fur was mostly a smoky grey colour, fading to yellow
underneath and the very fluffy  tail was black. It had large ears, one
sticking up, the other sticking out at the side, one droopy ear, hence
the name. Droopy accepted the bread and honey and sat perched on the
window sill holding it with its front paws and nibbling away.
        "Is it a little kangaroo?" said Scully, rather taken with Droopy
now that they had been properly introduced.
        "No, he's a possum. He's kind of a pet. We raised him up when he
was just little, and he thinks it's okay to make a racket when he wants
to be fed. Sorry he woke you, I should have warned you, but I really
thought he'd just keep out of the weather tonight, or I'd have left
something out for him."
        Mulder reached out and stroked the fur, it was deliciously soft.
Droopy reached round and grabbed Mulder's hand, hoping for more bread and
honey. It looked at Mulder. It had a pink nose and rather a stupid
expression. Cute, but not as smart as a cat or dog.
        "Be careful, Mulder," Scully warned, seeing the way the possum
held his hand and sniffed at his fingers.
        "Don't worry," said Robyn. "Droopy doesn't bite. And there's no
rabies here."
        "Are there koalas?" said Mulder.
        "No, and be grateful there aren't. If one of them woke you up in
the night you'd think there was a murder going on."
        Droopy was satisfied that the bread and honey was all gone. It
jumped off the window sill and back into the courtyard where it
disappeared over the trellis. Robyn apologised for the interruption to
their sleep, and they crawled back into their beds. Scully snuggled down
and tried to rewarm herself. Mulder dragged his quilt about him and tried
not to listen to the howling wind outside.

        Harry laughed at them over breakfast, and then conceded that
perhaps it might be scary, or at least off-putting to have a possum
shouting through your window. Especially if you'd never met one before.
Nobody seemed any the worse for their close encounter with Droopy. Harry
had slept through the whole thing.
        After breakfast Mulder and Scully were going to talk to interview
Ron Bogut, owner of the late, and apparently lamented pitbulls. Mulder
brooded as they drove to Bogut's house.
        "Motive," he said finally.
        "They were dogs, Mulder. They didn't have a motive."
        "Even dogs don't kill for no reason."
        "You want a course in canine psychology? They're territorial
animals. They killed him because he trespassed."
        Mulder didn't seem convinced. "We know so little about Cade
Wilson," he said finally. "We know he worked at some government
installation in Harkaway. We don't know what he did and we don't know
very much at all about his personal life."
        "He lived alone not far from Bogut's house. Maybe he made a habit
of goading Bogut's dogs, and then one night the gate wasn't shut
properly."
        "You said the pitbulls didn't kill him," said Mulder. "Suppose he
knew something."
        "What? About U.F.O.s, Mulder? Like the ones you tracked down
yesterday?"
        "What's the best way to hide something like that, Scully? Add in
some evidence to make it all look like a hoax."
        "Face it, Mulder, you're scraping the bottom of the barrel
looking for conspiracy theories on this one. Why don't you just admit
that you've dragged us down here on a wild goose chase? Now the best
thing we can do for Cade Wilson is to find out as much as possible about
his death so that he can rest in peace and with a little dignity."
        Bogut's house was small and shabby. There was a dead car in the
front yard and the fence was held together with wire strands in places.
It wasn't surprising that his dogs had got out.
        Bogut was a skinny, unkempt man with long, filthy looking stringy
hair, and a home-made cigarette that seemed permanently attached to his
lip. His reaction to Mulder and Scully was a whole lot less than
friendly. When he saw their FBI. identifications, he was downright
hostile.
        "Whada you Americans want? Bloody seppos."
        "We wanted to talk to you about the death of Cade Wilson," said
Mulder.
        "My dogs never done it. They never killed him. They never hurt no
one." Bogut waved his hands around as he spoke, punching holes in the air
with his right index finger. He turned so that it was Scully he
addressed. Mulder drew back, leaning against the wall of the house. He
almost looked relaxed, but he was watching Bogut's body language, keeping
an eye on Scully. Not that she particularly needed a minder, but Mulder
was a good deal taller than Bogut, and all he would need to do would be
to step between Bogut and Scully.
        "Mr Bogut, I've seen Cade Wilson's body..." began Scully.
        Bogut stared at her as though she had just admitted to having a
really unpleasant social disease. "You went to look at his body?"
        "I'm a doctor, I specialise in..."
        "You're sick," he said. "You're a sicko. You go round looking at
dead bodies."
        "It's my job, Mr Bogut. Now I can tell you that your dogs did a
great deal of damage to Mr Wilson's body, but they didn't kill him."
        Bogut picked at the filthy cigarette stub in his mouth. He picked
it out and flicked a strand of tobacco off his lip, then returned it,
speaking around it. "How can you tell that?" he said finally.
        "We made measurements of the dogs' mouths and teeth. We can tell
which dog produced which set of bite marks. There was a third dog, one we
haven't tracked down, and that was the one that bit Mr Wilson's neck and
throat. That was the one that killed him."
        "So my dogs were innocent," said Bogut.
        "Well, they didn't kill anyone," said Mulder.
        "Fat lot of good that does them now," snapped Bogut. "The police
had them put down." He stared a challenge at Scully. He had tried to
ignore Mulder. He seemed to like the idea that he might be able to
intimidate Scully, since he was taller than her. "So why are you telling
me this?" he said.
        "We thought you might know of another large dog in the area,"
said Mulder. "Maybe your dogs had a playmate."
        Bogut informed them in terms that lacked neither certainty not
subtlety, that his dogs did not have playmates. That his dogs ate other
dogs for breakfast and had pussy cats for between meals snacks. That his
dogs were the most ferocious animals this side of the black stump, and
nobody in their right mind would come within a bull's roar of them. But
of course they didn't kill people.
        Mulder and Scully returned to their car. "Lucky I spent so much
of my youth hanging around sailors," said Scully. "Otherwise he might
have said some words I didn't know."
        "Wish I had your background, Scully. I was embarrassed.
Interesting dogs. Completely harmless except when they're killing
things."
        "Nevertheless, they didn't kill Wilson. I thought Bogut was
justifiably upset."
        "I think he had two big, mean dogs in order to compensate for
other aspects of his life."
        "I don't think I want to hear your Freudian analogies, Mulder."
They returned to Harry's house where Robyn had just prepared lunch for
them.
        "Are you coming into town with me to see this zoologist?" asked
Scully.
        Mulder shook his head. "No, but would you mind giving me a lift
to Wilson's house? I just want to look around a little."
        "How will you get home?" said Robyn. "You can borrow my car if
you like."
        "It's okay," said Mulder. "It isn't that far. I'll walk."
        Robyn looked at the wind-lashed trees outside of the window. The
airport really had been closed this time, and not even the kookaburras
and rosellas had turned up at lunchtime. She turned a concerned look on
Mulder.
        "Really," he said, "I'll be fine. I need to blow away all the
cobwebs after the plane trip."

        Cade Wilson had lived in a modest western red cedar place at the
bottom of the valley. The garden was tidy and cared for. Outside of the
front window was a bird table covered in sunflower seed husks. As Mulder
let himself in a group of rosellas flew down to the table and peered at
him, making hopeful sounding "ding" noises. Once inside it was obvious to
him that somebody had been there before him. Nothing was badly disturbed,
the house didn't look ransacked, just the opposite. There was a peculiar
neatness about the house. Something made Mulder feel as if someone had
been there, going through Wilson's things, and then wiped away all their
fingerprints afterwards. Or worn gloves during the process.
        There were pictures on one of the walls, Wilson with friends. A
lot of pictures that involved people wearing backpacks and standing
beside tents. Apparently one of the reasons he had come to Australia was
because he liked the outdoors and spent a lot of time bushwalking.
Wilson's calendar had a lot of social dates marked on it. Dinner with
different sets of initials. Place names and abbreviations, written over
weekends. Bushwalking trips, Mulder supposed. He found an address book by
Wilson's phone and compared the names with the initials on the calendar.
He slipped the book into his pocket.
        Wilson's computer sat on his desk. There was no clutter of any
kind, not even a notepad or whyteboard. There were no used discs. There
was a box containing a few blank floppies in the top drawer of the desk,
but no sign of any work that Wilson might have been doing. There was a
very clean spot on top of Wilson's filing cabinet, the dust was much
thinner there than around the top edge of the filing cabinet. Mulder
could see faint marks on the corners of the clean patch. The impressions
left by the little rubber feet at the corners of disc storage boxes.
Wilson's whole box of discs had been taken.
        Inside the filing cabinet Mulder found personal papers. Wilson's
will, his gas and electricity bills. His credit card statements and
accounts. His tax file number and divorce papers. The two lower drawers
of the cabinet were empty. Someone had just removed all the suspended
files. Mulder could only imagine who had been there before him.
        He wandered outside to look at the places Wilson had walked. He
dragged his overcoat around him. The sky was grey and menacing and the
wind was a constant roar in his ears, sometimes rising to booming gusts.
It was cold, but it wasn't raining. He decided to take himself to the
place where Wilson had died.
        There was a path leading down from Wilson's back yard, alongside
the track of Puffing Billy, the tourist steam train, down into the valley
and alongside a rather sad looking creek. The path went past the back of
Bogut's yard and Mulder wondered for a moment about Scully's suggestion
that he might have teased the dogs. It seemed unlikely though. There were
probably enough twelve year olds who teased those dogs. There was no real
reason for them to have any interest in Wilson.
        He heard the "hoot" of the little steam train as it crossed the
nearby trestle bridge, and stopped to watch it pass him. Despite the cold
weather there were people sitting in the open sided carriages. Kids sat
there with their legs dangling, grinning and waving at him. Old ladies,
men with video cameras, a whole school's worth of kids, and a heap of
tourists. They all waved, and he couldn't help but smile and wave back at
them. Then he went back to following the path, till he arrived at the
spot, still marked with police tape and gore, where Cade Wilson had died.

...to be continued
available in full at

http://www.xsystems.com.au/~feathers
DISTANT SKIES 3/5 (?)

Tim Schroeder wasn't happy. He had been looking at the x-rays and photos
that Scully had brought for a very long time. He had taken several
measurements of his own, and asked twice for Scully's credentials, which
he had studied intently. There were models and skeletons on his desk and
he compared them painstakingly with the bite marks of whatever had killed
Wilson.
        Scully watched him silently. She wanted to ask him a million
questions, but she did not want to add to his anxiety. He had picked up
the phone and asked someone to bring him "TC  five and six". A while
later a young man had brought up a glass case containing the skulls of
two animals.
        "I can absolutely promise you," said Schroeder eventually, "that
the animal that did this was not a canid."
        "Not a dog," said Scully.
        "Not a dog of any breed or any kind. Not a wolf or a fox or an
Outer Mongolian ferret hound or any kind of hyaena."
        "Since you've established what it isn't, I presume you must know
what it is,"  said Scully.
        "What it is, is a problem. Don't get me wrong, this could be very
good. I think the current bounty is something like ten thousand dollars."
        "For what?"
        Schroeder opened his mouth as if he was about to enlighten
Scully, and then closed it on a grin. He really wasn't sure what to make
of this whole situation. "Are you really sure this isn't some kind of
hoax?"
        "Doctor Schroeder, a man is dead. If this is a hoax, then we have
some very sick practical jokers on our hands."
        "Okay," he waved placatingly at her. "Sorry. It's just ... well,
say you found a body that had been mauled by something, and you figured
out that the only thing that had teeth like that was say ... a
sabre-tooth tiger."
        Scully looked at the pictures and then back at Schroeder, a
little confused by what he had just said. "Do you mean you think a
sabre-toothed  tiger killed this man?"
        "Something like that." He indicated the skulls in the box.
"Thylacinus cynocephalus, otherwise known as the Tasmanian wolf or
Tasmanian tiger," he said. "The largest of the dasyurids."
        Scully raised one eyebrow.
        "Carnivorous marsupials. There's no question that's what killed
him. The dentition's quite recognisable."
        "Why is it a problem then?" asked Scully.
        "Thylacines have been extinct in Tassie for over sixty years."
        "What about the mainland?"
        "Haven't been on the mainland for between two and five thousand
years. They were wiped out when the dingoes were introduced. No one's
quite sure why. It was originally thought to be, um, kind of an
ecological dispossession. Current theory runs that thylacines might have
been susceptible to canine distemper or some other dog disease that wiped
them out. Dingoes were never introduced to Tassie, but the sudden
reduction in numbers of Thylacines seemed to coincide more with animal
illnesses than the hunting that was going on at the time."
        "So you're saying a thylacine killed him, but it couldn't have."
        Schroeder thought about this for a moment and then nodded. "Yep,
that's about the strength of it. Sound like a hoax to you? I mean, if
someone hadn't died because of this, I'd be taking along your photos and
x-rays to the Tassie government and claiming the ten thousand dollar
reward they're offering to anyone who can prove the existence of
thylacines."
        There wasn't a whole lot else Scully could do from there.
Schroeder would write up a report about the animal that had killed
Wilson, and she would have to make the best of it. There was simply no
way of knowing what the animal was, and no way she could find a
thylacine. People had been searching for over sixty years and had no
luck.
 
        Nevertheless, she began a web search when she returned to Harry's
house, and learned a great deal about the dead animals. Dozens of them
were sighted every year, both in Tasmania and on the mainland. The
Tasmanian government had an official policy of not releasing any news
about thylacine sightings, claiming that if there were still pockets of
them, they needed to be left undisturbed. Despite claims that the animals
had been extinct from the mainland for thousands of years, a femur dated
at less than a hundred years old had been found in the northwest of
Western Australia. Thylacines had been sighted in the area around Selby,
where Wilson had been killed.
        When Scully rang the Victorian government to ask for their
official position on reportage of thylacine sightings, she was met with
blank silence on the phone. The man on the other end could not understand
why she or anyone would want to report an extinct animal. Eventually
Scully managed to convince him that somebody just might see one, and he
laughed at her and told her they'd be better off ringing the Truth than
the government. The Truth, Robyn explained, was a particularly trashy
tabloid that made little effort to live up to its name. It rated up there
with the National Enquirer, though with fewer Elvis sightings and more
pictures of naked women.

        The schoolkids had come and gone, whipped along by the wind like
the tattered leaves. Meanwhile Mulder pottered around the site of
Wilson's death. There was plenty of evidence of a struggle, but the dogs
had wrestled with his body, and most of the crushed undergrowth had
probably been caused by that. The light was starting to fail. Wind lashed
the trees above his head and great clouds rolled over the sky, turning
afternoon into night. Mulder had to make the most of what little time was
left before those clouds opened up and rain destroyed any evidence the
police might have missed.
        There was an impression on the ground, and a plastic supermarket
bag. It looked as if somebody had been sitting on the bag, using it to
stop his clothes getting wet from the damp earth. Waiting for something?
Mulder wondered what Wilson might have been waiting for at night time in
the winter. Sometimes Puffing Billy ran a night train. Perhaps the lonely
man sat here watching the little train full of happy people going past.
Mulder made a mental note to check Puffing Billy's timetable for the
night of Wilson's death. Somehow it didn't seem that likely though.
Somehow Wilson didn't seem that much of a pathetic loser. He had friends
and quite an active social life. There was no reason to suppose he spent
his winter nights sitting in the cold pining for a ride on Puffing Billy.
        Mulder spread the plastic supermarket bag back on the ground and
sat down on it, dragging his coat tight against the wind and blinking
hair out of his eyes. The track ran straight in front of him, aside from
that, and the flattened area off to his left, he was surrounded by dense
bush. Tree ferns towered above him and there was a dense cluster of
prostanthera about him. The whole place felt almost prehistoric. Mulder
took in the full scope of this perspective, and realised there was a kind
of tunnel through the undergrowth to his right. It was curious, as if
some kind of animal had pushed its way through the scrub. There was even
a track.
        Mulder crouched down and pushed his way through the dense bush.
If he kept doubled over, he could make his way along the animal's path,
though his hair kept getting tangled in branches and his coat kept
snagging on blackberry brambles. He searched the side of the path for
spoor that the animal might have left. Once or twice he spotted
footprints of what might have been a dog. He wasn't really sure. The
light was failing and he'd felt the first large drops of rain on his
head. He turned to go back along the track to the path when he caught
movement out of the corner of his eye.
        Something was standing on the path, right where Wilson had been
attacked. It moved its head, looking about. At first Mulder thought it
was a dog, a labrador, then, in profile, a Staffordshire bull terrier.
Stripes ran across its spine from half way along its stiff, thick tail to
its shoulders. He stayed very still, it didn't seem to have seen him,  it
was too busy sniffing the ground where Wilson's blood was thick. He saw
it lick at the blood and then yawn, its jaws gaping wider than any dog's
jaws he had ever seen. He must have made some small sound that the animal
heard above the wind, because it suddenly looked up and saw him. Mulder
could hardly believe his eyes at what it did then, rose up on its hind
feet, turned tail, and jumped away into the dark, like a kangaroo. It had
to be some weird carnivorous kangaroo that nobody had ever heard of, and
with those jaws it could certainly have been what killed Wilson.

        The rain was getting heavier now, and despite his expectations of
the storm abating, the wind was gusting stronger. Mulder started to make
his way along the path, fighting off prickly brambles and peering through
the gloom. He lost his way along the path and somehow found himself on
the train tracks. He decided to follow them, at least to the road
crossing. There were no brambles to tangle him up, though the sleepers
were slick with rain and he kept slipping on them, falling right over
once, and bashing his elbow on one of the rails.
        He pulled his flashlight out of his pocket, but it didn't seem to
help much. The rain had become so heavy, it seemed to somehow soak up all
the light. All about him he could also hear the frightening sound of
trees breaking and branches crashing to the ground. When he got to the
level crossing he suddenly realised he had no idea which way to go. He
pulled the cell phone out of his pocket but got no response from it. It
wasn't dead, there just wasn't any signal for it. He shoved it back in
disgust and set off in  a random direction where he could see a street
light in the gloom. A moment later there was a booming roar of wind and
the street light died.
        Mulder kept doggedly trudging through the rain. There was a
terrible ripping crash of splintering branches and something whipped
towards him. He cringed away, putting his hands over his head as a
defence. A tree branch cracked against his left hand and made him yelp
with pain. He surveyed the damage with the torch. Yep. It was bleeding.
He was officially allowed to cry. He hadn't felt this pathetic in a long
time.
        A pair of headlights cut through the gloom and Mulder flagged the
car down with his flashlight. The car bore the insignia of the
electricity company. The driver pushed the passenger's side door open.
        "Don't you look like something the cat dragged in?" he yelled
over the wind.
        "I'm lost," Mulder admitted as he got into the car.
        "You're that American cop staying at Harry's place, aren't you?"
said the man.
        "FBI." said Mulder.
        "There's a difference?"

        Scully had managed to work herself up into a fair state of worry.
Any other man would have availed himself of the local hospitality and
found a cozy fire to sit out the storm in front of. Mulder was presumably
out there doing something life-threatening. There was a loud knock at the
door and before anyone had time to answer it, someone opened it and came
inside, shouting out: "Hello, Harry. Does this belong to you?"
        The electricity man came in with Mulder in his wake, looking
bedraggled and sheepish. "Found him out there looking like a little lost
lamb," bellowed the man, whose name was Steve. He didn't stay. There was
a lot of cleaning up to be done in this storm.
        Mulder stood by the front door and proceeded to strip off
clothing until he reached a stage where any more undressing was going to
result in somebody being embarrassed. He warmed up under the shower and
dressed in his jeans and a fleecy pullover and thick socks, then sat by
the fire. He assessed the bruise on his elbow and decided he would
survive. Scully surveyed his hand, disinfected it,  bandaged it, and told
him he would live. Robyn took his wet coat and suit and hung them in the
laundry to drip. She put his shoes by the fire. There was no ducted
heating, the heating was gas, but it was powered by electricity.
Everything had to be done by candle light. Power had been off for over an
hour now.
        "Mulder, we have a problem with food," said Robyn. "I managed to
get the cooking done before the power went off, but all we have is an
electric stove. I can offer you cold, congealed osso-bucco, or fresh
baked bread with ... whatever you like on it."
        Mulder considered the possibilities. What he really wanted, right
now, after facing the storm and nursing his wounds, while he sat by the
cosy fire, was nursery food. "Do you have any peanut butter?" he said.
        "Bought a jar specially," said Robyn. "Peanut butter sandwiches
it is."
        When Mulder asked about his cellular, Harry just laughed.
"Digital?"
        "That's right."
        "Yeah. Doesn't work around here. Only got analogue boosters on
the hill up there." He pointed vaguely out the window where they could
see nothing but solid blackness. The electricity was out everywhere.
        "I'm pretty sure I found the animal that killed Wilson," said
Mulder.
        Scully raised an eyebrow. She hadn't yet told him what Schroeder
had told her.
        "Another dog?" asked Harry.
        "No. Looked more like a man-eating kangaroo to me."
        Harry laughed. "A carnivorous kangaroo?"
        Robyn placed a plate of peanut butter sandwiches in front of
Mulder. She put a glass of milk beside them, if you were going to have
nursery food, you might as well do the whole thing properly. Harry
brought in a bottle of red wine.
        "Nearest thing we have to a carnivorous kangaroo is antechinus,"
said Robyn.
        "Could they kill a man?" asked Mulder.
        "Only if he was Tom Thumb. They're about the size of a juvenile
rat."
        "No." Mulder shook his head. He bit into the sandwich. The bread
was soft and still warm and the peanut butter was his favourite,
crunchy-style. "This thing was big and it had stripes."
        Robyn frowned. "Sounds like a numbat," she said. She grabbed one
of the candles and disappeared upstairs for a moment. When she returned
she was carrying a large coffee-table type book called The Australian
Museum Complete book of Australian Mammals. She flicked through until she
found the appropriate page, and then placed the book down on Mulder's
lap.
        There were two pictures on the page. The top one showed two
little animals that looked about as dangerous as squirrels, the bottom
photo was of a slightly larger animal with its head down and tail stuck
out straight. They had stripes, like the animal Mulder had seen, but he
wasn't sure. There was something odd about the stripes, light on dark
instead of dark on light. He flicked back over the page and looked at the
animals' statistics.
        "Two hundred and forty three plus a hundred and eighty one,
that's ... three ... four twenty four millimetres head to tail. How big
is that?"
        Robyn held her hands about fifteen inches apart.
        Mulder took another bite of his sandwich and washed it down with
a sip of the wine. It was an interesting combination. He shook his head
at Robyn, "That's no good. The thing I saw was as big as a dog."
        The little dog settled itself pointedly at Mulder's feet, waiting
for a crust.
        "Big as a big dog," he said. "About the size of a greyhound, only
better built." He looked again at the book. "The distribution's wrong for
a numbat. Anyway, it says here these things eat termites. It wouldn't
have the strength in its jaws to kill anyone. It doesn't say anything
about them jumping, either. This thing jumped, like a kangaroo." He
flicked back one more page through the book and stopped at the picture.
"That's it," he said.
        "Thylacine?" said Scully, without even looking at the book.
        Harry began to laugh and Robyn frowned.
        "Is that was forensics came up with?" said Mulder.
        Scully nodded. "There's only one small problem," she said.
        "They've been extinct for sixty years," said Robyn.
        They talked long into the night and consumed more red wine to
keep the cold and storm out of mind. Mulder ate more peanut butter
sandwiches, just for the sake of the delicious home made bread. By the
time they went to bed the storm had become, if anything, even wilder.
There was no electricity, but the phone was still working. They crawled
into their beds, pulling their quilts tight about them against the cold.
Riding the storm like a ship at sea.
        When Scully woke, the wind was still blowing. The sky was grey
and surly, the house was cold, and neither the electricity nor the heater
had come on. She heard a noise from the adjoining bathroom. Mulder was
up. She heard the sound of his feet padding on the wood floor, and then
nothing.
        "Mulder?"
        Nothing.
        She dragged a dressing-gown on over her night dress and went down
the hall. The bathroom was empty, the toilet cistern still filling.
"Mulder?" He hadn't closed his bedroom door, so she figured he was
decent. He preferred to take a shower, anyway, first thing. She could see
his outline, hunched under the bedclothes. "What's wrong? Too much soft
city living,?" She could hear his teeth chattering.  She perched herself
on the end of his bed and pressed her hand over one of his feet through
the bedclothes. "You've become dependant on central heating." She reached
over and ruffled his hair.
        Mulder uttered a low moan, then abruptly rolled out of the bed
and dashed past her to the bathroom again. He didn't even look at her.
After a little while she heard the toilet flushing, and when he came back
his face was pasty and slick with sweat and his hands shook as he crawled
back under the covers. "Cold," he muttered, dragging the quilt tight
around him.
        "Come on, you didn't drink that much wine last nigh," she said.
She put her hand on his forehead and slid her fingers through his damp,
hot hair. "Oh, god, Mulder. You're burning up. How long have ...?"
        She didn't get a chance to finish her question. Mulder pushed
past her again and stumbled back into the bathroom. By the time he got
back Scully had straightened out the bottom sheet of the bed and tidied
up the cover so that he could just pull it over himself when he climbed
back into bed.
        "Is there any nausea and vomiting?" she asked, once he had
crawled back under the covers.
        "No. Just diarrhoea, but it's ... I'm bleeding."
        Scully rolled him onto his back and probed his stomach with her
fingers. Even the gentlest pressure hurt him and he pushed her off with
shaking hands and dragged the covers up again. "Don't, Scully. Just take
my word that it hurts, okay?"
        There was a sound at Mulder's door. Robyn was standing there in
her pyjamas and dressing gown, with a jar of peanut butter in her hand.
"Oh, shit," she said.
        "That pretty much covers it," Mulder agreed weakly.
        "Oh, Mulder, I'm so sorry," said Robyn. "I had no idea. I've just
heard about it on the radio." She held up the peanut butter. "There's
been a recall on this brand of peanut butter. People have been going down
with salmonella poisoning."
        Robyn didn't have Tylenol, only Herron, a paracetamol. It would
take down the fever and pain. Scully sat by Mulder's bed and mopped his
face with a damp wash cloth. "Take a shower and put on clean shorts and
tee shirt. I'll change your bedclothes. You'll feel more comfortable."
        Mulder whined at the prospect of having to get up. The thought of
washing all the sweat off in the nice warm shower was pleasant, though.
        "I'll go down to the supermarket and get you some of those sports
drinks after breakfast," said Robyn.  "It'll help keep you hydrated and
balance up your electrolytes."
        Mulder shook his head, "No. We can pick some up ourselves on the
way out."
        "We?" said Scully. "Mulder, you're not going anywhere."
        He griped against the pain in his belly for a moment before he
was able to reply. "We've got to talk to somebody in the National Parks
service about evidence and sighting of a so-called extinct animal. We
also have to get to Wilson's work place. There's something going on,
Scully." He said all this through chattering teeth, with his bedclothes
drawn up about his chin, and his eyes having difficulty focusing on
Scully's face.
        "You're not going anywhere, Mulder. A minute ago you were
complaining about taking a shower. I don't believe you could even walk to
the front door by yourself, and I certainly don't want you in a car with
me while you're in this condition."
        "Can't you get me some antibiotics or something."
        "No. I'm not licenced to practice medicine in this country. Even
if I was, I wouldn't be prescribing antibiotics for salmonella poisoning.
What you need is rest and fluids. If you promise to do that, I'll go and
talk to Wilson's colleagues and the wildlife people."
        Mulder made his grudging promise and then stumbled off to the
bathroom. Scully and Robyn changed his sweat-sodden sheets and had their
breakfast. By the time Scully was ready to go, Mulder had fallen into an
exhausted sleep. She held her hand lightly against his forehead, it
seemed a little cooler. Presumably the pain killers were having some
effect.

to be continued...

full story (with some relevant piccies) available on my website

http://www.xsystem.com.au/~feathers

*:)
amanda
DISTANT SKIES 4/5

  Mulder had lost count after about the fifteenth trip to the toilet.
Robyn peeped around the door of his bedroom  to tell him she was going to
be leaving the house. He just nodded. He didn't have the energy to really
care. He had pulled the covers around him and slept fitfully, roused
occasionally by great gusts of wind. He heard something that sounded like
someone moving around in the house, but he wasn't sure if it was Robyn,
or just the wind. At some stage the little dog came mooching into his
room, looked at him, and then wandered out again, its claws clicking on
the wood floor. Something landed on his bed and startled him out of his
doze. It was the cat. It sniffed his face and then curled up and slept,
its body pressed hard up against his back so that they could share each
other's warmth.
        He blinked at the sunlight. Robyn was in his room with
supermarket bags in her hands. She presented him with sports drinks,
bottles and bottles of it. There was pink, orange, yellow, green, and a
really outrageous blue colour. She had also bought him some kind of
yoghourt drink that was supposed to be full of friendly live bacteria,
and a six-pack of hypo-allergenic,  aloe-impregnated, extra soft toilet
paper. He took the paper.
        "I promise you my undying gratitude and my firstborn," he mumbled
on his way through to the bathroom.

        The people at the Centre for Animal Disease Research weren't
obstructive. Not exactly. Nor did they lie when she asked them questions.
Not directly. But there was a lot of fencing with the truth and a lot of
prevarication.
        Scully interviewed some of Wilson's work mates. They were friends
who seemed truly dismayed at his death. One of the women spent a good
part of the interview crying and the men spoke quietly with the confusion
that people have over a death so utterly senseless.  Wilson had led an
active and happy social life, and been a productive, worthwhile member of
the team. That was as far as it went. They didn't know anything about
Wilson having an interest in an animal that was presumed extinct. When
she tried to find out exactly what he had done as part of that team the
shutters went down. No one wanted to talk to her.
        It was obviously some kind of genetic research, Scully could
glean that much from what she saw on whyteboards and notes about the
place. Nothing was definite, though, and as she turned towards one desk
with an open file on it, the man she had been talking too suddenly
stopped mid sentence, lunged at the file and walked off with it, not
bothering to explain her behaviour to her.
        Tom Flynn, head of the research facility did not want to make
himself available to her, so Scully simply pushed past the young man who
had installed himself as door minder and went into the office. The young
man followed her in, hovering by the door.
        Flynn was in the middle of a phone call when she walked in on
him.  "I'll call you back," he said. "It seems I have a Situation here."
He put the phone down and stared at Scully. "How may I help you, miss?"
        Scully flipped her I.D. open at him. "Special Agent Dana Scully,
FBI. You can help me by answering a few questions."
        "If it's within my jurisdiction." He motioned for her to sit
down. "I doubt very much that I can tell you anything that the others out
there can't tell you. They actually knew Cade better than I did. My
contact with him was strictly work related. We didn't socialise at all."
        "Perhaps you'll be able to tell me about what Mr Wilson was
working on," said Scully.
        "I understand Cade died as a result of being mauled by dogs."
        "He was killed by an animal's bite," said Scully.
        "Nevertheless, it has nothing to do with his work," said Flynn.
        "The more information we can get on Mr Wilson, the more thorough
his profile. It might help us find out more about his death."
        "Miss Scully, information about what we do here is on a
need-to-know basis."
        "And I don't need to know?"
        He shrugged. "That's right. Now if you'll excuse me, I was in the
middle of a very important call. Mr Lieber will see you out."
        The young man followed Scully closely till she was out of the
door and well on her way to her car. He moved with the kind of certainty
of someone who spent a lot of time in martial arts. She probably would
have humiliated him as well as beaten him up, if he'd put her to the
test. But there was no point. She wasn't going to learn anything by
hanging around. She decided to return to Harry's place and check on
Mulder.

        The wind had dropped, replaced now by constant drizzling rain
like a balm on the sodden, beaten earth. Mulder was asleep. He didn't
move when she came into his room and pressed her hand against his
forehead. The cat looked at her, licked one paw, stretched and went back
to sleep. Mulder was still hot, but the paracetamols were holding the
fever and the pain, and he'd been drinking the vividly coloured
concoctions Robyn had bought for him.
        Scully spent the afternoon working on her case notes. Just as the
batteries in her laptop died, the electricity came back on. Robyn was
overjoyed, it meant she could cook instead of having to phone Harry to
bring home pizzas. It seemed as if her life revolved around cooking. She
bemoaned the fact that Mulder was going to miss out on the lamb roast she
had planned for dinner that night.
        Mulder woke at some time during the night, turned on his light,
and reached for one of the sports drinks. Then he realised the
electricity was back on. He moved with painful care to the bathroom then
eased himself back into bed to finish off the drink.
        "That looks tasty." Scully was standing by his bedroom door.
        He held up the electric blue drink. "Don't worry, I've made a
note of the additives in this stuff. I'm gonna email Frohicke and ask him
what kind of experiments they're performing on people with it."
        "Well you sound better, how do you feel?"
        "Like I was run down by a really big peanut." He sipped the
drink. "How did you go at the research place?"
        "They didn't tell me anything."
        "Scully I could have told you they weren't going to talk. What
did you learn there?"
        "That they're working on animal genetics. I don't know any more
than that. The whole setup is on a need to know basis, and I..."
        "...didn't need to know," finished Mulder glumly. "Did you talk
to the wildlife people?"
        "Not yet. I was babysitting you all afternoon."
        "All this attention."
        "You should get sick more often."
        "You haven't really made it worth my while, Scully."
        "I'll put that comment down to delirium. I'm going to see the
wildlife people in the morning."
        "What time is it?"
        "After eleven. I'm just turning in."
        "Scully, do me a favour."
        "What's that?"
        "If there's any wildlife outside your window, I don't want to
know."
        By next morning Mulder felt as if rogue taxidermists had been
working on his body. Someone had replaced his muscles with cotton wool
and his bones with pipe cleaners. He felt dizzy when he got up and
exhausted after a visit to the bathroom. He wasn't sweating, though, and
apparently the seething mass of salmonella in his bowel had either been
forcibly ejected or overwhelmed by the nice bacteria in the yoghourt
drink Robyn had given him for dinner last night.
        Scully came into his room, looking far more healthy and happy
than anyone had a right to on this dismal morning. "Mulder, do you have
the forensic material?"
        "Wha'?"
        "The pictures and measurements I got from Dr Schroeder. The
evidence that what killed Cade Williams wasn't a dog."
        "I saw them on, ah ... the night of the storm. That was all. You
took them."
        "They were in my room.They're not there now."
        "You ask Robyn? Maybe she went in there to dust or something and
tidied them away."
        "She didn't touch them."
        "Harry?"
        She shook her head. "They're gone, Mulder. Someone must have come
in."
        He slumped back into his pillow, a look or resignation and defeat
on his face. "Yesterday. Robyn had gone out to the shops. I thought I
heard a noise. I wanted to get up and see who it was, but then the dog
came into my room, and I figured it was just him that I'd heard. I should
have got up."
        "Got up and done what?"
        "Well ... stopped them from taking the evidence."
        "How, Mulder? Faint on them?"
        "Scully they came in here. Right under my nose. It's like I'm the
only person in the world who can successfully pull off a wild goose
chase, and every time I get the thing cornered, someone hits me on the
head. I wake up and I'm left with nothing but a handful of feathers and a
"one that got away" story not even a fisherman would believe." He'd
worked himself into a lather of agitation and Scully thought he almost
looked as if he was about to cry.
        "Calm down, Mulder."
        "How can I?"
        "Take it easy. It's not going to help if you make yourself ill
again. Besides, Dr Schroeder will have records. I'm going to ring him
this morning."
        "Do it now, Scully."
        But Dr Schroeder wasn't in. The woman in his office explained
that he had left the day before on extended leave, and she didn't know
how to get in touch with him. When asked about the evidence from Wilson's
death scene, she went away, leaving Scully on hold for nearly ten
minutes.  Scully gave her identification over the phone, and explained
that she needed the information couriered to her immediately. The woman
said she would need to validate the identification, but would send the
material out within the hour.
        Scully waited for the best part of two hours for the material to
arrive. When it did, there were no pictures of the wounds made by the
thylacine, and there was no mention of the third animal causing the death
of Wilson.
        Scully phoned the woman back again, but she didn't know any of
the details of the death. "I'm sorry, I only started in this department
this morning." All the material was apparently in order.
        "I really need to view and photograph Mr Wilson's body," said
Scully. There was a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
        "I'm really sorry. We released his body back to to American
government."
        "Surely he was being shipped home to his family?"
        "No. I saw the form when I was down there getting that stuff for
you. It was care of a Dr Flynn. He was scheduled for cremation
yesterday."
        "What about the dogs? I ordered the bodies of the dogs to be held
for me."
        "No. Sorry. They were disposed of yesterday. We had them
incinerated."
        Scully could hear that wild goose hissing at her.
        "I'm sorry, Mulder," she said.
        He shrugged, resigned. "You'd think I'd be used to it by now. It
doesn't get any easier."
        "I'll go and see the wildlife people this afternoon."
        "What for, Scully?"
        "Maybe I'm used to it."

        Ranger Bob Watkins from the Department of Conservation and
Natural Resources lent a rather more sympathetic than Scully had
expected. He listened patiently to her description of the animal that
Mulder had seen, the way it had behaved, the way it moved. He listened
silently and with interest to the story of Wilson's death. The damage
done to the body by the pitbulls. The third set of teethmarks, the ones
that had killed Wilson. The ones that had been positiviely identified as
thylacine teeth. He listened with concern about how the identifying
material from Wilson's death had been taken, virtually from under
Mulder's nose.
        "What I believe," said Scully, "is that you have an animal which
is listed as extinct, but isn't extinct at all. It's living in the area
and it kills people."
        "Let me show you something," said Ranger Bob. He spun his chair
across the meagre floorspace that made Mulder's basement look palatial
and pulled up beside a filing cabinet. He pulled out a file that was a
handspan thick, whizzed back across to his desk and dumped the file down
in front of Scully. "Thylacine sightings. We have more, these are just
from the past ten years."
        Scully slid her nail down the fanned edge of the file. "How many
are there?"
        "All together, over a thousand. About ten percent of them are
what we call "credible sightings". Those are the ones made in good light
by people who know what they're talking about, or occasions where there
have been more than one witness to coroborrate the sighting."
        "But the animal is still listed as extinct."
        "A thousand sightings, uh ... Agent Scully, and not one, not one
piece of hard evidence. We've got police officers, retired judges, a
couple of wildlife officers and a whole troop of Boy Scouts who've all
seen thylacines. Not one of them had a camera."
        "They weren't very prepared."
        "Not one photo, no tracks, no scats, not even a single dead one.
Nothing. Just sightings. Just ... people who see things."
        "How localised are the sightings?"
        "Everywhere. Everywhere from far north Western Australia to
pretty much the whole  eastern seaboard from Buderim in Queensland down
through New South, Mallacoota and Eden on the Victorian border, through
the Dandenongs, like this one, and all over Tassie."
        "What do you think they're seeing?"
        "Ghosts."
        Scully looked stricken.
        "Well I don't know. Ghosts seems like as good an explanation as
any. The lost spirits of deposed thylacines, haunting their ancestral
hunting grounds..."
        Scully put up her hands, "Oh, please. You're beginning to sound
like my partner."
        "I'm sorry. I just can't think of a better explanation. You tell
me of any other large carnivore that you can think of that apparently
lives on nothing. Tell me any animal that doesn't leave any kind of
footprint. A large carnivore that is seen once and immediately changes
its territory for fear of being seen again. There are guys out there in
Tassie who have been setting up cameras for decades. They don't care
about the bounty. They've spent more than ten thousand dollars on film an
cameras. All they want to do is just find one of these things alive."
        "But you don't believe this."
        "A large carnivore needs a large territory. It also needs food
and a mate. Its offspring needs mates. There has to be a gene pool to
keep these animals alive and viable. These animals have never been seen
on the mainland. The last known Tasmanian specimen died in 1936.
Ironically, that was the year they were declared a protected species.
Nobody even knows very much at all about how these things behaved. They
were all too busy shooting and trapping them to bother learning anything
useful about them. They just wasted the whole species."
        "But it's not impossible that they're still extant. Only last
year two new large species were discovered in New Guinea."
        "Animals that the local natives knew about and were familiar
with. Agent Scully, you're an officer with the American Federal Bureau of
Investigation."
        "That's right."
        "So you're an experienced officer of the law."
        "That's correct."
        "Tell me, Agent Scully, say you caught some kind of mass murderer
or something. Say you knew he'd done all this stuff, but you didn't have
any hard evidence. Nothing that proved conclusively that this guy did it.
What would be your chances of obtaining a conviction."
        "If I had a thousand eyewitnesses?"
        "I studied psychology too. You and I both know how utterly
unreliable an eyewitness is. If you took each one of these," he slapped
the stack of reports with the flat of his hand, "and went through it like
the defendant's lawyers would, you'd find something to discredit every
single one of them. So what would your chance be of a conviction?"
        "Not good," she admitted finally.
        "You'd be laughed out of court."
        "I don't think so."
        "You wouldn't get a conviction, though. There would be too much
room for reasonable doubt."
        "So what are you going to do with this report?"
        "Without those pictures of teeth marks you said were stolen ... "
he shrugged and looked pointedly at the stack on the desk.
        She nodded and prepared to leave.
        "Agent Scully, if it's any consolation, I have a report of a
sighting in there myself."
        She gazed at him, waiting for him to continue.
        "Three years ago, not far from where your partner saw this one,
along Puffing Billy's track."
        "No hard evidence?"
        He shrugged, "Camera jammed. Bloody thing worked perfectly up
till that moment, and I haven't had a single problem with it since."
 

to be continued...
DISTANT SKIES 5/5

The little dog came into Mulder's room, and he came mooching out after
it, both of them wandered into the kitchen, looking for food. Robyn was
there, cooking, as usual. Mulder plonked himself down on a chair beside
the breakfast bar and watched her. She had been making some rather
wholesome blueberry muffins and she set some on a plate before Mulder
with more of the yoghourt drink. She hardly spoke and refused to meet his
eyes.
        "You okay."
        "No." It was obvious, now, that she had been crying.
        "Wanna talk about it?"
        "It was something you said yesterday."
        "I'm surprised."
        "What, that an offhand little remark like that could actually
hurt someone?"
        "No. That I was actually capable of coherent speech yesterday.
What did I say?"
        "That you would ... you would give me something."
        "My virginity?"
        "Your firstborn."
        "Well, you're second in line. I promised my virginity to Scully."
        "Don't joke, Mulder."
        "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. If I had realised the
comment would hurt you so much I never would have said it in the first
place. I mean that, Robyn. Did you have a child?"
        "Yes. A daughter."
        "How did you lose her?"
        "She was taken from me."
        Mulder sat himself up straight in his chair. "Who took her?"
        Robyn shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot and Mulder pushed
out the chair beside him. She sat down and picked at one of the blueberry
muffins. "It's not that easy to talk about without people thinking I'm
crazy."
        "Alien abductions never are," said Mulder. "It happened to my
sister, though. Believe me, I do understand."
        "Aliens. That's what everybody thinks they are. Little green men
from Mars. I suppose in a way they are aliens. Different to us, that is."
        "What do you mean?"
        "It's the U.F.O.s,  I guess. Everybody thinks space ships, so
everybody assumes they're from another planet."
        "And you don't."
        "Think about it, Mulder. Why should they? It's a hell of a long
way from those other planets out there. Not that I'm saying there
couldn't be life, but why come here? And why the big secret? And why are
they always associated with the American government? 'Cause you can bet
your boots that the minute you start seeing U.F.O.s. Real ones. That the
US government isn't going to be too far away. There will always be some
kind of installation or army base or something."
        "So you think it's my government doing some kind of weapons
test?"
        "Maybe that's what you'd like me to think." She looked at him
appraisingly. "Nah. I trust you. You're trying to dig it up too, aren't
you?"
        "The truth is out there somewhere," said Mulder. "Sometimes I
feel as if I'm moving in on it. People tend to get killed when that
happens though."
        "Did you ever think why they take people? Did you ever think what
possible use it might be to them, all those tests and things they do on
people? There can only be one reason."
        "What's that?"
        "They're people. People working with the American government.
They have advanced technology, they do experiments on people, and they're
working on some kind of genetic thing. Only members of the same species
can breed together, Mulder. I did my biology. Whoever it is doing this,
they have to be humans. I think they're from the future. I think they're
Americans from a world where something has gone badly wrong and they need
our help. They need to breed humans who will suit the world that they've
harmed in some way. I can't see any other explanation for it."
        Mulder sat for a very long time and considered what she had said.
"Interesting theory," he said eventually. "It's not one that had occurred
to me." It could easily explain why the Russians and Americans were still
in conflict, despite all that had happened since the Berlin wall came
down.
        "I spent a long time thinking about it," she said. "I had plenty
of thinking time. After they took her."
        "How old was she?"
        "She was only tiny. So tiny. You don't have kids, do you?"
        "No."
        "I wouldn't have believed it if it hadn't happened to me. You
fall in love with them, you know. I know it doesn't happen to everyone,
but it does happen. It's like being hit by a brick. You have this baby,
and you're in the hospital feeling like death warmed up, and you've got
this squalling little brat that you don't know what to do with, and
suddenly bang! You fall in love," she shrugged. "I suppose it's
hormonal."
        "She was eight weeks and five days old. I woke up that morning
and there was blood on my pillow. It wasn't much, but I couldn't figure
out how it had got there. Then I found this." She turned her head to the
side and lifted her hair across so that Mulder could see a scar just
below her ear. "It didn't hurt, and it healed really quickly, but I never
found out what had caused it. I didn't really care much at the time,
because that was the night they took away Daphne and left me with the
changeling."
        "I thought changelings were fairy children."
        "Maybe what we called fairies a hundred years ago we call U.F.O.s
now. Something was there in her cradle, but it wasn't my daughter. I
suppose it was one of their experiments. A hybrid that failed. I tried to
tell Harry but he didn't listen."
        "What happened?"
        "Two days later she died. They called it cot death. Sudden Infant
Death Syndrome. They said my baby was dead, Mulder, but I know she's
still alive. They have her."
        "What happened to the body?"
        "They took her away for an autopsy. They do autopsies on all
S.I.D.S. babies."
        "What was the finding?"
        "There was no finding. The ambulance crashed on the way to the
hospital. There was a fire. The guys inside got out, but everything else
was incinerated."
        "So there was no telling if the baby died under suspicious
circumstances."
        "There was no way of telling that it was my baby, Mulder. There
was no way of telling that it was even human."
        "They didn't autopsy the remains?"
        "They said it didn't seem worthwhile. Too much damage had been
done by the fire. Not that anyone particularly wanted to listen to me. I
spent the next three years in and out of institutions and having therapy.
They called it grief, post natal psychosis, bipolar disorder, post natal
depression, hell, I've even got schizophrenia down on my record. They
wouldn't listen to the truth, though."
        "They never do, do they?" Both Mulder and Robyn jumped at the
sound of Harry's voice. Neither had heard him come in. "C'mon, Rob.
Mulder doesn't need to hear this."
        "Everyone needs to hear it. You know why we never had kids after
that, Mulder? Because when they took me they damaged me. My fallopian
tubes are full of scar tissue. The doctor at the clinic said it was a
miracle I ever conceived in the first place. He made like it was God's
will or something that she was taken from us so soon."
        "Rob." Harry put his broad hand on his wife's back and steered
her off her chair. She followed his gentle guidance with resignation.
This scenario had happened many times before and Harry always won. She
didn't even put up a token resistance. "Come on, love. We'll go get your
pills."
        "But it wasn't God's will," she said as he walked her out of the
room. "It was my fault, Mulder," she strained her head round, looking
back over her shoulder. "Her middle name was Persephone. Do you
understand?"

        Scully and Mulder sat on the plane. Going home. There was very
little in Scully's report. She wasn't that happy with it. A man was dead,
an animal had killed him. She couldn't say what that animal was. She
couldn't, in her report, claim that an animal only known to be extinct
had caused a death. Not without the proof of the photos and measurements.
A man's pet dogs had been killed. They were unpleasant dogs, in Scully's
opinion, but they had been the man's pets, and they had died for no real
reason. A small injustice to add to her list. She finished off the report
and snapped down the lid of her laptop.
        Mulder was reading a book of Greek mythology and eating peanuts
from a little  foil pack.
        "I thought you'd sworn off peanuts for life."
        "They didn't have any sunflower seeds."
        She peeped at the story he was reading. The story of Persephone
and her abduction to the underworld. A beautiful child who so enchanted
the dark lord of Hades that he kidnapped her from her loving mother and
took her to the pits of the Earth. Persephone pined in her new home, and
the Earth grew barren as her mother, Cybele, forgot to tend the crops and
plants, too busy in her desperate search for her daugher.
        "I could spoil it for you and tell you how it ends," she said.
        "It's an abduction story, Scully. They never end."

the end

I hope you liked it.
I'd love some feedback.

*:)
amanda

Hermes guides Persephone back from the Underworld
to be reunited with her mother Demeter.