MY TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY CH06: WITNESS FOR THE PERSECUTION  (1/5)
DATE: 04/01/01
AUTHOR: Sue Esty
CONTACT: Windsinger@AOL.com
RATING: PG
CLASSIFICATION: XA series
SPOILERS: REQUIEM, 7th season, Deep Throat, Final Extinction, Per
Manum.
KEYWORDS: Mulderangst
SUMMARY: Mulder has survived his first days on the ship (at least
the ones he's been conscious enough to remember), the boredom of his
life with in the mindspeaker colony and first hand experience with
Testing. The results of the latest test, however, has left Charley
Hunter with serious decisions to make on how best to make use of his
badly damaged prisoner.
ARCHIVING: Gossamer, Emphereal, ATXC, and anywhere with permission
and as long as the author's name is retained.
DISCLAIMER: No, the X-Files and the characters of Fox Mulder and
Dana Scully do not belong to me. I would certainly have treated them
better.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is sixth in a series of 'short' stories (they
were intended to be short) chronicling Mulder's confusing,
agonizing, torturous, lonely and wondrous adventures with his
abductors. Three more to go. Believe it or not I am working my way
around to merging to some extent in with CC's universe. That will
begin to become more clear in the next segment. My older work can be
found on Gossamer under 'Esty, Sue' with the newer pieces at
http://members.aol.com/windsinger.

MY TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY CH06: WITNESS FOR THE PERSECUTION (1/5)

 Dearest Scully, as usual when I can't sleep I think of you and
since I'm lying here in the dark and not sleeping that is exactly
what I find myself doing. It's far more pleasant than fretting about
my immediate future. In a few hours Charley will come and take me
away. It's been four months since I was collected like the others
and spirited away from Earth and you, at least seven if you count
the time I spent unconscious for one thing or another, and who know
how much time traveling in space. (Is it as elastic as Einstein
theorized?) I have it on good authority that I was taken from the
mindspeaker's colony seven weeks ago. Now I am being forced from
this second temporary home with my chances of ever returning to
either highly unlikely.  Forced is probably too strong a word. In
some ways it's a relief. After all, what am I leaving behind in
these two little rooms? Only a possibility that if I do not go now,
I may never be able to or least not with my conscience intact. What
haunts me is whether I made the right decision tonight. What I keep
asking over and over is what would you have wanted me to do?

 But I'm getting way ahead of myself. The last you knew... What is
the last you knew? I've been ... I guess the word is 'confused' for
so long... Let's just say that there are a lot of things that I
don't remember, a certain episode that I refuse to remember, and a
lot messed up in between.

 There was Charley's third little test, the brain scan and its side
trip into Hell; that's clear to a certain point. That was the last
time I recorded my thoughts for you in any formal manner. I had been
sucked down into that jellyroll of a bed and the contents of my mind
were being squirted out like grapes under the frenzied pounding feet
of the vineyard workers. I was so... so scared. And I hurt. And I
wanted you. But that was not the worst. The formless dark was the
worst. So dark.

 What's worse than thinking too much? Being unable to think at all.
I was falling through blackness, falling into everlasting night, a
little lightning on the distant horizon but otherwise nothing. And
there was no one, no one at all. Not a friend, not an alien, not
even an enemy.

 And what happened then? Why, I went mad. Not just a little mad, a
lot mad. It must have been madness. I dreamed that someone finally
answered my prayer, that someone came. You'll never imagine who --
that's another story -- but he was a man acquainted with pain, a
soul who knows about survival and about kicking the odds in the
crotch. Maybe he was there, maybe he wasn't, but he held me up for
the longest time. He kept me from falling to where there would have
been no rising. In the end I sent him away, though. I sent him with
a message to my Scully. If the almighty essence that has charge of
this nightmare of a universe has any compassion then that message
reached you. You will know that I live, and that I hold your love
dearer than that life.
 
 Was there really a messenger? I doubt it. I probably just made him
up out of the stuff of my madness, but just the hope that he might
have existed and found his way to you like some dark angel buoys up
my faltering spirit. It's all I live for. That's all there is to
live for, at least that's all I thought there was to live for.

 I've learned otherwise out here. There are other miseries than our
own, Scully. The devils worry other souls than ours. We've known
that for a long, long time... but, heaven forgive me, from time to
time I forget.

 So here, as it was told to me, is the story of what I can't
remember and what I have chosen to forget and what I wish I could
forget. You'll likely find it surprising that I don't question the
teller. I think you'll see why. I'll return before the end.

 ************

 "Ness, HE's here again."

 Ness didn't even look up from her sculpture. It was going to be,
she hoped, a horse.

 "It's been more than five weeks. What vent did he crawl out from I
wonder?"

 Clearly anxious, the first young woman, Marta, replied, "Who care?
What's important is that he doesn't like to be kept waiting."

 "That's because he can't do anything about it. Very well, I'm
coming. This doesn't seem to be working out anyway."

 For the first time Ness looked up to find the interested faces of
six pre-teens raised in her direction. "It's just Rodan. Nothing
exciting about that. Go back to your work. I'll return shortly."
Reluctantly, they did as they were told.

 Marta was studying the abandoned sculpture with a curious eye.
"We're told such things exist on Earth but how I don't know. Gravity
alone would force it to cave in with time. It's not as if it were
made of resin-rock, like a table."

 "Like everything," Ness replied with a sigh. "Guess we have to
have faith. Well, let's get this performance over with."

 Ness knew where she would find him, near the airlock, but inside
or outside she didn't know yet. It depended on whether he wanted to
irritate the member of the Circle he had asked to see or wanted
something from them. The Overseer shapeshifters, also called morphs,
could pass from one atmosphere to the other as easily as opening and
closing channels in their sinus cavities, but Ness was human and for
her to venture beyond the airlock took careful preparations. She
knew all the steps in the nasty process -- as children, they were
drilled and drilled on emergency evacuation procedures -- but like
the other members of the Family was seldom given occasion to use
them such skills. At least Ness found the command to venture outside
the Circle an opportunity. The majority of those in her age group
considered such foyers a punishment.

 Rodan waited for her inside the airlock. He wanted something then.
Ness made note of the tall, broad, square-jawed morph. As always he
was as solid looking as a bulkhead. How did he do what he did?
Morphs could assume a variety of shapes though from what she had
heard they tended to revert to a particular form unless there was
need. Rodan's default form was human-like. But did they make up
their human bodies from their imagination or did they have to build
on an existing pattern? If that were so with Rodan, there must be a
human somewhere who looked like this. The human man would be older,
though, for Rodan had been hanging about the Compound, looking
exactly as he looked now, since before she was a little girl and she
would soon be eighteen.

 He didn't greet her at all. He didn't have to. He and his kind
ruled here. She didn't greet him either but stretched her spine to
its maximum height and looked him straight in the eye. The Mothers
and Grandmothers and members of her own peer group would have found
such confrontation unthinkable. At the age of eight, however, Ness
had developed a theory -- that the morphs must have a deep curiosity
about humans, else why form their bodies into the human shape for so
much of their lives? Making use of her theory, Ness had extracted
this or that favor over the years so that by now she had a small but
precious hoard of influence. It gave her the guts to do just what
she was doing now, approaching a morph with back straight and chin
up. She liked to believe that they respected her just a bit for her
daring.

 She was even more than daring today. She didn't even ask what the
morph wanted. She was irritated at having to leave her sculpture
unfinished. Instead, she came within five paces, stopped, folded her
arms and waited.

 "Ness," he inclined his head, "as I remember. Not like the
others."

 "Is that good or bad?"

 "That depends. Ness, what is it that you want most?"

 The question caught her by surprise. It had to be a trick. What
you wanted most would be the first thing they would take away. "You
know what I want. You know what we all want."

 "Never having known another life, you only think you want Earth.
Speaking in your best interests, you do know what how fortunate you
are. What next?"

 "You know that, too. An end to boredom and the answer to why we
are here."

 He almost smiled. It was at least a smug look at if he had guessed
correctly about something. "That's two questions. You remind me of
another of your race. Questions, always questions."

 Her heart beat a little faster. No member of the Family asked
questions but her. Another human, then. A new member for the Family?
Was that what this was about? Even better, someone who asked those
questions, someone who wasn't willing to stand by and let things
remain as they were year after year after year. Perhaps he or she
would even know what the word 'year' really meant out here in the
great dark.

 "Will I be allowed to meant this person?"

 Rodan's eyes were fixed on her with such soul-searing intensity
that she felt a chill run up her spine. "I need someone. A nurse, if
you will. If things work out, the person I choose could earn, if not
their first or second desire, then their third." No, not a chill,
but a thrill of anticipation. What she was being offered was early
as good as wish number two and equally as rare. The morph seemed to
back away then, not physically, but as if he had dimmed his power.
She had never known him to be this approachable.

 "I'm interested."

 "There would need to be conditions."

 "Of course," Ness said. She had expected nothing else.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  * *

 Two 'days' passed and Ness found herself shivering as she waited
outside the airlock. In that time her life had been turned
completely upside down. In short she had agreed to Rodan's
conditions and followed him to places in the City where none in the
human colony had been allowed to enter in the memory of anyone less
in years than the oldest Mother. Some of the procedures she had been
forced to endure hurt, but she didn't care. Even if what Rodan
hinted at never came to pass she would have a fortune of memories
and experiences to keep for all the long years of her life. Even if
she was never a Mother, even if only a Sister, she would always have
this. She would always be one set apart. Special.

 Not that the Family thought much of her specialness or desire for
adventure. The timid ones fretted and had nightmares at the very
thought of leaving the Family's suite of rooms in the Circle. The
more bold were openly envious though she doubted that any would have
taken her place for all the 'gold at the end of the rainbow'
whatever a 'rainbow' was, whatever 'gold' was. When she took off her
intricately patterned dress cloths to don the plain gray trousers
and shirt Rodan gave her, her Sisters had stared, their faces
registering their disgust. The clothes were not only ugly and
inadequate for the temperature but shirt was far too large and the
pants too long. Clearly they were expected to fit all sizes. Not a
hint envy now.

 Anxious to be out from under all those eyes, Ness had hung her
dress cloths across their open space on the wall of the common room
earlier than necessary. Of course this meant that she had to wait
longer for Rodan. As she stood alone in the lofty corridor, she
shivered though she knew the chill was not entirely due to the
temperature. Both workers and elders passed her with cold,
disdaining glances. She feel even more exposed when Rodan finally
appeared and she felt his hard eyes upon her. How she missed her
layers and layers of draping shawls.

 He noticed her discomfort. "Do you wish to change your mind?"

 "I'm just cold," she answered irritably. "Let's go."

 Many minutes of walking later outside an airlock on the outer rim,
Rodan helped her into a stiff suit that completely encased her body.
It was a good thing she was slender. Clearly the suit had not been
designed for humans. Thinking of what had worn this odd shell last,
She shuddered. Rodan took her by the arm then and led her through
the first set of doors.

 There was no sound, not even the constant throb from City. From
the moment Rodan had made his offer, Ness had been frantically
recording every new sight, sound and emotion. Now she was intrigued
by the challenge of how she would describe nothing. Well, she would
have a plenty of time to get it right. There would be years ahead
when nothing would change, a lifetime of the same sounds, the six
rooms, and the same sixty-three faces.

 She was still thinking about how she would describe the sound of
her own breathing to a story circle, when the second and last door
opened.

 Having lived all of her life within windowless Circle, Ness
understood for the first time why they called this vastness Space.
Despite Rodan's warnings and the foul liquid he had given her to
drink, her stomach knew it too. The blackness was huge, an eternity
of hugeness, and yet not all of it was black. There were the stars -
- bright, white spots on a dense, black cloth -- and at her feet
stretched the umbilical. The umbilical was a flexible tube, flesh-
colored and translucent. It snaked away into nothing. No, not quite
nothing. When she followed the faintly glowing entrail into the
dark, she found that it turned and headed suddenly 'down'. Below her
feet, it ended many hundreds of meters away near a hard and dimly
glowing object of no small size. This had to be the, Portjam, the
transport Rodan had arrived in. Black as space itself under normal
circumstances, the lights of City caused its facetted sides to gleam
like a black jewel half-hidden in the folds of night.

 All other comparisons ended there for Ness was suddenly aware of
what Rodan had referred to as weightlessness. If only she were
weightless. On the contrary, she suddenly felt as if she were too
heavy and falling. In her panic she clung to the nearest thing at
hand. Rodan. She was glad that he was turned from her so that she
didn't have to see the triumph in his eyes at this demonstration of
her timidity. She allowed herself after that to be towed by him
along the winding, translucent path of the umbilical towards the
Portjam.

 Halfway through the long tube she rolled to stare backwards
towards where they began. Her mouth fell open as she gaped at the
sight of the City behind them. She had nothing in her experience to
compare it to. It seemed an explosion of tall, white towers, wrapped
around and around with a tangled necklace of the most brilliant
gems. Somewhere in that palace of splendor, floating in this gap
between the stars, was the small slice of cylindrical space where
four generations before, a handful of humans had been brought to
bear their young and live out their meaningless lives. Was their own
true home, this Earth that was spoken of, as beautiful as this? Or
as cold and sterile?

  None too soon for her stomach, but far too soon for her nerves,
they reached the Portjam's black side. Only now were the thousands
and thousands of intricately carved characters truly visible. New
Writing! Before her hungry mind could memorize more than a few of
the hieroglyphs, Ness found herself pushed inside a very small
airlock. Once safely beyond the second door, Ness and Rodan removed
their clinging, heavy suits. Before she could catch her breath,
Rodan was off, forcing Ness to follow at a trot. As she ran, the
cool air drifted through the thin fabric of her very inadequate
pants and shirt, chilling her sweat. Keeping up with Rodan as he
negotiated the endless twists and turns of the ship, at least kept
her warm. It gave her very little time; however, to see much except
to marvel on how cramped and poor the ship felt. Accustomed to the
lofty, wide halls of the City, with all of its light and the rich
carvings on so many of its surfaces, the corridors of the Portjam
felt barren and oppressive.

 Removing her helmet, her first impression had been of the spicy
alien aroma. It was far heavier than in the City. She assumed that
was because of the contained space, though as they moved through the
corridors it became clear that the Portjam was not in any way small.
The ship could easily support a crew of a hundred or more in
addition to cargo. And exactly what kind of cargo did this black
ship carry? As Rodan's steps finally slowed to stop outside the arch
of a closed doorway, Ness realized that she was going to find out.
She also became aware of a pungent smell, a scent both foul and
irritatingly familiar though she couldn't immediately place it.
Rodan paused briefly outside a doorway and as it opened she was
struck by the odor a hundredfold. Before her was a large,
rectangular room crowded with adult humans. Now she placed the
scent, that of the commode up close, or of many unwashed bodies. The
very old came to smell this way sometimes unless they were reminded
to care for themselves, and then she remembered a different but
similar smell, that of babies when there had been babies. There
hadn't been a child born in Family for more than six years.

 In complete and utter silence, dozens of dull eyes stared her way.
Ness couldn't help but shudder. Bad sanitation, poor hygiene, ragged
clothes -- how could they allow themselves to sink so low? When she
took the time to study the room and its inhabitants more carefully,
however, her anger turned to shock and sorrow.

 Though the room was as large as the Circle's common room, it was
dimly lit and depressingly stark. It was also not just overcrowded
but horribly overcrowded. Almost as strange as the continuing
absence of any noise was the fact that all the inhabitants were
male. There were men in the Circle, too, but not nearly so many and
so very different. These were thin, gray, listless creatures. She
expected some excitement when she entered, a rising of expectant
voices at the arrival of someone new. That's how the Family would
react. Instead, other than the attention of their eyes, she was
greeted with only a whispering wave of rustling cloth and the soft
pad of a few bare feet on the hard floor. Some who were sitting on
the floor stood, but most kept their seats. A few never stopped
sipping from ugly bowls of brown liquid which was uglier still.
Those that were wandering aimlessly about the room had turned their
pale faces in her direction, but on the whole their blank
expressions did not change.

 It was the absence of color and activity that Ness found most
alarming. There was nothing here. Nothing to do. There were no
looms. No precisely woven works from generations past covered the
walls and floors or the bodies of the persons that lived here. Nor
were there any scratch boxes for writing and drawing, no plasticform
for sculpture or groups of children devising games. There were no
Mothers and Fathers and Sisters intently teaching or telling
stories. Only slack-faced, dead-eyed men.
 
 And she had resented her life as dull. All that Rodan had told her
was that this group was especially gifted with a kind of latent
telepathy, which they were being encouraged to develop. She had
never thought, however, the lengths such 'encouragement' might take.

 "What are you doing to these people?" she asked her companion,
even her soft whisper sounded loud in this eerie silence.

 "I told you. It's no worse than what they have done to themselves
in the past. To discipline the mind you deprive the body. Mystics
and holy men on Earth have strengthened their minds and purified
their 'souls' this way for centuries."

 "Perhaps by choice, not by force," Ness hissed, remembering a
story of Buddha from her instruction on comparative religions. It
took her a moment to realize that she was looking anxiously from
face to face. At least a part of her had not forgotten why they had
come.

 "He is with the sick," Rodan informed her and led her to the back
of the room. Along the way Ness noted that the walls were lined with
stack upon stack of long closed doors and wondered what could
possibly be behind them. The question vanished from her mind as they
approached a set of six thin, gray pallets arranged in two rows
against the back wall. Three of the pallets were occupied, two by
thin men silently sleeping, each of which was closely attended by a
second man awake and aware of the visitors. She barely saw the third
of the three because when it became obvious that this was their
destination, half a dozen of the gaunt figures, most of which she
realized were in truth fairly young men, moved to gather
protectively round. Here she found more emotion than on any of the
faces she had heretofore seen. Here was suspicion and, though she
could scarcely believe it, a kind of silent rebellion.

 Distractedly, Rodan made a dismissive motion with his hand and
after a surprising degree of hesitation, the crowd of defenders
moved away. All but one. This was a relatively handsome young man
with deep, dark eyes. He was as thin as the others but showed where
he must have been well built once. He was kneeling beside the
pallet, holding the hand of the third invalid.

 "Please step away," Rodan commanded warningly. The dark-eyed young
man made a move to rise only he couldn't. It turned out that he
wasn't holding the hand of the sick man, the sick man was holding
onto that of the young man and with a grip that would not be
released.

 "Let her take your place," Rodan ordered, pushing Ness abruptly
forward. With effort the young man peeled away long fingers and
passed that dry, cold, grasping hand into Ness's. The grip of
skeletal bones came crushing down. Could an eagle's talons be like
this? When the young man began to move away, Ness stared with
confusion from the morph to the retreating young man and back.

 "He's the one," Rodan announced, clearly surprised that she did
not already know. He was gesturing down at the invalid beside which
she now knelt.

 Ness stared, first unbelieving and then in despair. No, this
couldn't be! The morph had shown her a picture, a most amazingly
realistic picture that he had called a photograph. The man in the
picture would be her charge if she agreed to accept the task. But
this was not the man in the picture! Shown in profile that man was
healthy and strong, or as much as she could deduce through the hard
lines of the dark, curiously-fashioned clothes he wore. Knowing he
needed nursing, Ness had expected to find her charge changed from
the glossy image, after exposure to this kind of 'encouragement' who
would not be, but she found her hand stuffed into the claw of what
appeared to be an old, old man. The skin of his hands and arms and
face were sickly pale and webbed with a thousand small wrinkles and
there was so little flesh on his bones that the skeleton showed
beneath. Ness stared wildly at the morph and her fears were
confirmed.

End of Chapter 1

MY TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY CH06: WITNESS FOR THE PERSECUTION  (2/5)
DATE: 04/01/01
AUTHOR: Sue Esty (Windsinger@AOL.com

 "You can't be serious."

 "Perfectly. I told you he was ill."

 "Ill, not dying." And except for the grip like iron skull-faced
man might well be dying if not dead. Even his eyes were open and
empty like the only dead person she had ever seen had stared.
Nothing but bones and that wrinkled skin, his wasting was worse than
that of the very oldest of the Family's old. Yet if Rodan and his
photograph were to be believed he wasn't old.

 Her innate curiosity asserting itself, Ness found herself studying
the man's face carefully. She had never seen severe illness before
though she had been told about it. Could sickness and deprivation
reduce a person to this? She noted that his skin was not only loose,
but dry, as well as the palest pale. The whites of his eyes weren't
white but red. There was something like a red burn on the corner of
his mouth, but no other obvious injuries.

 "What did you do to him? Why is he so much worse than the others?"

 Rodan shrugged as if the matter was not his concern. "He had a bad
injury when he first arrived. Not our fault. He never fully
recovered from that. Since then he's had the same food as the others
but while they have withdrawn into themselves and accepted their
situation all he has done is fight us -- in his heart if in no other
way. There were tests but largely he burned himself down to the
state you see here. Our intention was never that he should descend
to such a state, but while he lived with the mindspeakers he had to
be handled like the others."

 "Tests..." Though Rodan had passed over the importance of Tests
there were nightmare stories about such things from the first and
second generations. The oldest bore faint scars though they refused
to speak of their experiences. Still the stories, true or not, were
told at night, whispered from adolescent to adolescent, making the
transfer of that part of their history a right of passage. As their
current life was so tedious and dull and had been so for so many
years, most harbored doubts as to the truth of the tales. Ness
looked down into the stark, wasted face and no longer doubted.
Sadness and trial were written in every line of his face. Even with
eyes open, Ness had never seen such anyone who looked so lost.

 "Clearly he needs tending," Rodan stated, unnecessarily. "This is
what you have agreed to do."
 
 "You never warned me about this!" she whispered harshly, still
staring, appalled at the corpse-like hand in hers. "What if he dies
despite what I do."

 "It will take much more than this to kill Mooncalf. You don't know
him the way we do. Improvement in his diet alone will in time make
up for much that his aggressive metabolism has done." Her response
was to stare back at the shapeshifter with skepticism. "There is
potentially another problem. The last test was exceedingly
stressful, mentally as well as physically. You may find reaching
him... difficult."

 'Difficult'? Ness wondered what that meant. Nothing good. She
looked down again at her charge. He was a far cry from the fairy
tale prince she had allowed herself to envision. And she had given
up so much for the dream. So what was new? Dreams did not come true.
Not for her, not for pets in a cage that no longer entertained their
owners. One made do with the wheel and the stick.
 
 "Do you intend to abide by our agreement?" Rodan asked.

 "Of course I will. It's not as if I had a choice." She stared
around the dismal room. "Will we stay here?"

 "Here? That would be even more of a disruption to what we are
trying to do." Rodan's face, which she thought she knew so well,
came suddenly alive with an anger she had never seen before. "I told
you, this place is for the gifted ones, the mindspeakers. He is not
a 'speaker'. Where he will be sent has yet to be determined, until
that time he must be removed from here."

 "Then why was he brought here to begin with?"

 "He was a speaker once, the strongest, the best of them, but they
destroyed his gift."

 "'They'?"

 "Your kind!" And he spat out the foul version of the name the
Overseers used for the people who came from Earth. Ness must have
shown her confusion on her face. The members of the Family, the only
humans she had ever known, were always kind and polite -- boring --
but always kind and polite.

 "They cut into his brain!" Rodan snarled. "They took it all! We
thought his silence was just due to stubbornness and the injuries he
sustained upon his arrival and that time and exposure to the others
would cure him. We know now that it won't." In response to Ness's
mystified eyes, Rodan abruptly rolled the emaciated figure over onto
his side, pulled down the bony chin and parted the brittle, lifeless
hair. Bending down, Ness saw a livid red scar on the scalp. With
fascination she followed the ragged line from ear to ear.

 "This is horrible."
 
 "You have no idea how horrible. The wonders of which he was
capable." Rodan looked with disgust at the body as if it were little
more than trash already. "What an abomination. And the last test may
have broken all that remained. He should have told me. We would not
have attempted the procedure. I would have mourned the loss of his
talent, but he means more to the project than that."

 Ness would have asked what project, but the morph clearly wasn't
listening. His fingers were parting the hair again, exposing the
scar. "Perhaps not all lost," came his voice almost in a whisper.
"Perhaps there is a way to sway the Third faction after all." His
head jerked up. The eyes he fixed on Ness held a savage intensity.
"But first he has to be strong enough to stand witness. That's what
you must do. Bring him out of this as best you can though there may
be little chance of repairing what, separately, our two peoples have
done."

 Ness leaned back on his heels and, bewildered, watched Rodan
launch to his feet, and stride for a few paces up and down the room.
The poor, pale men of the compound scattered.

 Ness had never actually liked the shapeshifter, though he had been
a welcome distraction from the eternal tedium of her life. Now she
felt emotions stirring within that were far more personal. The morph
cared nothing for this man, for any of these men. And her own
people? She saw for the first time that he wouldn't hesitate to
torture any one of the Family just as cruelly if there was reason
and with as little remorse.

 So why help him? To refuse would only make the morph angry and how
could that help the Family? It wouldn't help this poor man, either.
She had no particular experience in medicine or nursing, but then
neither had any of the Family for they were seldom ill. It was
unlikely that she could make this creature's situation any worse.
And then there were these new emotions, an unexpected desire to
protect this man which was no small thing. In the Circle no one
needed protection, except from boredom, and no one needed her for
anything. In the Circle there were too many eager hands for even the
simplest task. If the youngest should stumble, six hands were there
to break their fall. But this man... clearly no one had been there
to break his fall. So what if he was not what she had bargained away
so much for. He needed her. At least he was all hers to care for and
to save if she was willing to accept the challenge. And she would
accept it, because if she turned this task down, Rodan would just
find someone else. Ness knew of two -- no, three -- other young
women of the Family who would jump at an opportunity to escape the
eternal sameness of their lives just to be needed like this.

 And what really would she be giving up if she let this chance go
by? Nothing. It was all given up already.

 Ness became aware that Rodan was still striding with suppressed
energy up and down the gray, dismal room. Whatever this idea he had
was, it had taken solid hold. He was going to use this poor creature
as the critical part of some plan that was certain and Ness found
that the very idea frightened her very much.

* * * * * * * *

 They didn't bring the invalid back with them. Rodan left
instructions with two of the small workers and he accompanied Ness
back to City, reversing the way they had come. Ness's thoughts were
not on the thrill of the journey this time. As she was towed along
the umbilical, she was only momentarily distracted when the glorious
visage of the station as it loomed up in her faceplate. Her emotions
were in turmoil. For the first time she really understood what that
phrase meant. Except for the adolescents who rebelled as soon as
they came to truly comprehend the limitations of their lives,
emotions were heavily suppressed within the Family. It was either
that or continual bickering or worse. The oldest teaching blanket
depicted the bitterness of the fighting in the early years of her
ancestor's 'benign' captivity. There had even been murder committed.
Restraint was not only admired, therefore, but necessary. This left
current day Family members little opportunity to exercise their
emotions to anything approaching what Ness was feeling. Her words
had set the morph on a path for which her poor patient may never be
able to forgive her.

 Upon their return to the City, Ness thought at first that she was
being taken back to the Circle's set of six rooms. At the last
moment, however, Rodan subtly changed direction. The two-room
apartment she was shown was probably adjacent to the Circle's, but
Ness knew that they might as well be orbiting another star for all
the interaction they would have. No, she and her patient would be
each other's entire world for as long as Rodan thought fit. Living
as close as she had with the other members of the Circle since the
day she was born, Ness found her new situation both liberating and
intimidating. Intimidating when four of the little workers brought
her patient on a litter and left them alone together in the silent
apartment.

 Kneeling beside the pallet, Ness studied her charge. The transfer
must have been traumatic. His eyes were closed and he looked, if it
were possible, even more frail than when she had seen him on Portjam
surrounding by his friends. Friends? Defenders? She realized that
she knew nothing of this man's history or how long he had been
housed in that terrible place with the speakers.

 Ness felt a sudden weary heaviness. Guilt. She had have been
instrumental in taking this man away from all he knew, from his own
equivalent of Family. Mute they may be, but she had seen their eyes.
Anger, suspicion and loss had been reflected there. Clearly, they
could hear perfectly well and had followed she and Rodan's
discussion. The shapeshifter made no announcement, but they knew
that their companion was being taken from them, unlikely to return.
There had been no time for good-byes.

  Somewhere a bell chimed and Ness started, only to berate herself
seconds later for her skittishness. There was no reason to be
surprised. She knew the tone well and as expected she found several
parcels waiting in the small airlock provided for deliveries beside
the door to the apartment. As expected, the parcels contained food.
Supplies were delivered to the Circle in the same way each day. Her
mood lightened by the very normality of the transaction, Ness made a
cursory sort through the packets. It seemed normal fare to her but
even that was far, far better than the horrible brown stuff she'd
seen one of the speakers eating. There also seemed to be quite a lot
of food for two people. As she dug deeper into the bags, she even
found more than a few luxuries. There had to be something here that
her patient not only liked, but that his wasted stomach could
tolerate. Clearly, Rodan was serious about wanting this one to
recover.

 But recovery for what purpose? Ness shivered and turned up the
heat in the room as far as it would go, which she knew was not very
far. If she only had some hint of what she had to prepare him for.
To help him recover physically would be relatively straightforward
considering the food that had been provided, but Rodan had mentioned
that there had been some mental stress. She wouldn't push on that
now. Later when he was stronger.

 Ness's nose wrinkled. He and the very thin blanket he was wrapped
in smelled of the too-close quarters of the mindspeakers. Though she
would have liked to wash him first, his lips looked so dry that Ness
decided that fluids were his most immediate need. She began with
juice, a luxury, but which Rodan had provided in abundance. Propping
the long, limp body up into her arms was harder than she expected
but she managed. Before she set the flask to her patient's lips,
however, Ness hesitated, plagued by a nagging suspicion rare for
her. She found herself tasting the drink before offering it to the
man.

 "I don't know why I did that," she said to the figure in her arms.
"We've never had any problem with the food except when they provide
us with something new and then we are warned in advance."

 His head lay like a dead weight against her shoulder. For a second
time she touched the lip of the flask to the edge of his mouth the
way she'd seen sleepy babies fed years before. When he remained
unconscious, she wet a finger with the juice and traced his cracked
lips. When there was still no response, she had no recourse but to
force his tight jaws loose enough to dribble in the liquid. Getting
him to swallow took even greater patience. By trial and error she
finally managed to empty half of the small bottle in an hour. Though
both of them were left exceedingly sticky, she felt that at least
some had found its way into his stomach. By the end, he did not seem
any more wakeful than before, however.

 Cleaning came next. The apartment's generously-sized washroom had
a commode as well as a curtained area that must house a shower like
the one in the Circle, but her patient was not ready for either of
those yet. Instead, using a few bowels and some cloths and soap,
Ness managed a kind of washing. With the light blanket removed, he
seemed even thinner than before. At least there was some reaction
this time. Perhaps it was the affect of the air on his pale, wet
skin, but he stirred slightly and his lips cracked open in reaction
to the moisture of the cloth on his face. He got more juice for that
which he actively accepted, finishing the small flask in a short
time. Ness felt such a sense of accomplishment that she didn't even
mind when he fell back into his stupor almost immediately after
being dried and covered again. For a clean covering she had to use
their only sheet. They had transferred some of her long woven tunics
from Circle but they would need more. Hesitant as she was to ask for
anything, since in her experience the Overseers reacted with disdain
to every request the Family made, she would have to request more
blankets at the very least.

 Content with the fluids she had gotten into her patient, Ness went
off to take her own shower. Sticky with juice and smelling of the
mindspeaker's colony and the 'other' sweat from the vacuum suit, she
wanted one very badly. She stood still, however, puzzled by what she
found behind the curtain in the washroom. The plumbing was there,
the pipes and knobs, but the water fell not onto a shallow trough of
a few inches, but into a huge oval bowl that was nearly as long as
she was tall and thigh deep. A removable plug could keep the water
from running out immediately. It was very like the large old cooking
pot that the Family filled with water and used to immerse the
tiniest babies. when there had been babies.

 Ness stared at the size of the bowl. Water was precious and had to
be carefully rationed and recycled. If she dared actually fill this,
which she was currently doing, she would be seeing more water in one
place than she had in her whole life. Guiltily, she let it fill
until it was knee high and then climbed in over the high sides,
gradually lowering herself to a sitting position. It was the oddest
and most wonderful sensation. She realized that if she dared she
could raise the level higher still so that the delicious warmth
covered her breasts. She didn't dare, though, not just yet, but she
did curl up, inhaled an extravagantly huge breath and ducked under.
What an indescribable thrill it was to be completely immersed. As
the initial rush eased, Ness just laid back, scrunching down until
the water came up to her chin. In this peaceful place she finally
had the time to think about all that had happened over the last
days.
 

 Cold woke her. Looking for a blanket, Ness stirred and instead
found wet everywhere. She sat up with a start, sending the water
sloshing. She had fallen asleep and the water had gone cold.

 Her patient! With a slip and a slide and a splash, she was out of
the huge wash bowl, sliding across the smooth floor of the small
wash room and skidded into the main room. She shouldn't have
worried. He was as she had left him, curled on his side on the
sleeping pallet. No, not quite the same. His position was subtly
changed. There was also an aromatic smell about him that hadn't been
there when she left.

 But it was his eyes that caught and held her. They were open,
brown shot with green, and staring in her direction. When he became
aware of her notice, he immediately lowered his eyes to fix them on
the thin, rumpled sheet gathered around his sticklike, bare limbs.
Only then did Ness remember that she was naked. In ten seconds she
had retreated to the washroom, thrown one of her loose tunics over
her head and returned. Though out of breath for all her hurrying,
she was too late. His eyes had closed again.

 Had she imaged that intense awareness? But there was no time for
that. There was that sharp, unpleasant scent again.

  She crouched down. "It's all my fault, I'm sorry. I should have
thought about that. I shouldn't have fallen asleep."

 If he meant to shake his head in denial, it came out as a kind of
wobble. His lips moved but no sound came out at first then something
thin and weak made its way through those nearly clenched teeth.

 "No, mine. .useless..."

 "Shush, it's not worth arguing about. Let me help you roll off
onto the floor and I'll see what we can do about getting rid of
these wet things."
 
 "I still need..." His eyes slitted eyes were aimed at his crotch
again.

 It took a moment for Ness to realize what he was needed and then
she blushed, as embarrassed as he. "There's a commode in there," she
inclined her head towards the washroom. "If I help you, can you
manage?"

 She thought it unlikely, but his answer was to attempt to rise and
with her awkward assistance he did. He was unsteady on his feet and
the waist she tried to clasp had no flesh on it, but he was stronger
than she expected and more awkward than heavy. Once before the
commode he insisted on standing though he had to brace himself
against the wall as he waited for her to leave the small room. She
peeked in a few minutes later to find him leaning against the wall
next to the shower that was more than a shower, still clutching the
pungent sheet that was still the only thing that covered his
emaciated frame. She was struck by his attitude, however, which even
standing still seemed sparked with an unexpected energy.

 Stumbling for something to say, Ness stammered. "You can sit in
there and fill that big bowl up with water."

 He stared at her as if he thought she had three heads. "Bathtub,"
he said, patiently. "It's called a bathtub." Though the words were
still weak there was a softening of what until now had been a stern,
rigid face. She saw for the first time the shadow of the handsome,
smiling man from the picture.

 "Would you like to try it?" she asked. "The sides are very high.
Can you get in."

 "Getting in is easy," he wheezed. "I can fall in." He swayed.
"Getting out though may be a problem. Maybe you should just leave me
here full time. Easier cleanup for you."

 "I tried that. I may have fallen asleep, but it's not really very
comfortable." Her voice faded as she realized from the tiny
incongruous spark in his red-rimmed eyes that he had been joking.

 Flustered, she murmured, "Let me help you." He certainly was long
and his balance not good so with the tub's floor still slick from
her own bath, his getting seated was more like the controlled fall
he had jested about. He was so frail that for a few seconds she
worried about broken bones, but the effort only forced a few grunts
from the thin body. Being careful not to stare, Ness ran the water.
Belatedly, she hoped that she hadn't used their daily -- or weekly -
- ration already. She hadn't, there was plenty. Almost immediately
he melted into its warmth, sliding down till the level covered the
knife blade of his collarbones. Ness tried not to look down into the
water before she drew away, but she had already seen much when she
withdrew the sheet. Her patient's skin was not just pale but bluish
as if he were lightly bruised all over. His groin area seemed more
deeply battered than any other place; not that she was an expert in
men's anatomy. Having to live so closely together, Family members
kept to one's self when one could. There had to be some surprises
for those who would eventually couple. There were certainly few
enough secrets for those who lived within the Circle.

 Returning a few minutes later with a scrap of weaving he could use
to dry himself, Ness noted that he hadn't allowed his skin to stay
blue for long. He had taken a piece of cloth and the hard soap and
was already scrubbing. Hard. Between that and the water, which was
as hot as he could get it, the skin she could see above the water
line was already pink. In fact, he scrubbed with such ferocity that
she feared that he was going to draw blood. There was none of that
but he soon exhausted himself and on her third trip into the
washroom, this time to bring him one of her formless tunics to wrap
himself in, noted that he had ceased washing and was lying back
again, eyes closed.

 Ness looked in at regular intervals after that if only to check
that her patient did not drown himself by accident for he appeared
to be deeply asleep. He spent hours in the 'bathtub', unmoving for
the most part. Ness replaced the cold water with warm as needed. At
rare moments when his eyes were open, he only stared at the bare
walls, allowing his thin, limp arms to float on the surface.
 
 When she wasn't checking in on her patient, Ness removed the damp
bedding, and, rolling all the cloth into a ball, left it behind the
same door through which the food appeared. If the system worked the
way it did in the Circle, the little workers would take the laundry
away and leave fresh. They did. She had clean, dry things in less
time than it took for her to prepare a simple meal from the bulk
food that had been left for them. She made something like a stew,
mashing the ingredients soft and brought that and more of the
precious juice into the washroom.

 He became aware of her only with difficulty. He truly seemed to
wake only after she had worked the first small spoonful of stew in
between his cracked, closed lips. The eyes opened in wonder
revealing those strangely perceptive hazel orbs once more. Tired
eyes, she thought, and sad. The tissue around their rims was red and
tender looking. At least for the moment, they also registered
surprise.

 "It's warm," he marveled, rolling the small mouthful around with
his tongue.

 "Is it too hot?"

 "No. But where did you get this? All we were fed before..." His
voice faded, this face graying before her eyes.

 So she'd been right about the brown stuff she'd seen in the
mindspeaker's enclave.

 "We're given the food raw. We place the bowl in the warmer, it's a
compartment in the wall, and press a button. The more times we press
the button the longer it cooks and the warmer the food becomes. It
doesn't take long, but we don't know how it works."

 His head bobbed understanding as he reached out unsteadily for the
bowl so that he could feed himself. "Microwave," he murmured around
a second and larger bite. His hand with its long, bony fingers
shook, but he did well enough and drank all the juice and when that
was gone slowly but steadily sipped on what she identified as
drinking water. The food seemed to give him strength and he finally
allowed her to help him from the bath. He needed the help, too, to
step over the rim but shrugged her hands away as soon as he could.
Clothed in one of the long tunics, he gingerly covered the ten feet
into the main room. He didn't exactly thank her for taking care of
the mess he had made, but he did nod her way once before performing
a slow collapse onto the newly clean pallet.

 Pulling a thin blanket over his head, he closed her out and did
not emerge again for many hours.

End of Chapter 2

MY TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY CH06: WITNESS FOR THE PERSECUTION  (3/5)
DATE: 04/01/01
AUTHOR: Sue Esty (Windsinger@AOL.com

 The next three days passed similarly. Circle inhabitants figured
the length of a day two ways. The first captives to be interred in
the Circle had lived on Earth and could still approximate a second.
Later someone managed to make a small hole in a large bowl and the
length of time it took for the bowl of water to empty from a set
level was estimated at twelve hours. From this they figured Earth
days, weeks, months and years. They kept track of the time in a
special sand sheet. All important dates such as the length of their
captivity and dates of births and deaths were maintained in Earth
time. Not having access to the Circle's 'clock', Ness had no choice
but to use the informal method and count the number of times the
lights were turned on in the apartment and the number of times the
lights were turned off, conditions over which even the Family had no
control. Though the length of the 'on' and 'off' periods varied
somewhat, one of each together lasted approximately fourteen hours.
For this reason, Ness knew that they had been together three Circle
days even though her charge slept much and ate little meals whenever
he wasn't sleeping, regardless of the status of the light.

  He began to eat larger amounts and less often as his shrunken
stomach expanded. The second night he over-ate and paid for his
binge with horrible abdominal pains. As he huddled, groaning, around
his extended middle, he would from time to time look her way and
with such a hard, accusing expression as if he felt she was somehow
to blame.

 "The food's fine," she responded, on the defensive. "It's good
food. I ate it, too." It was beyond Ness's comprehension that this
did not soften his fierce gaze in the least.

 For two of the days, all they had between them to wear were a
couple of Ness's old loose tunics, the overlarge gray pants and
shirt that Ness had worn to the Portjam, one sheet and one thin
blanket. When she apologized for the shortness of the tunic which
barely reached his bony knees, her patient muttered something that
sounded like, "You haven't seen hospital gowns," the reference to
which Ness didn't understand but longed to. For despite all her
questions, her companion stayed sullen and silent except for the
occasional comments that slipped out only in the rare unguarded
moments.

 At last the new garments which Ness had mustered up enough courage
to ask for arrived. The rolls and rolls of colorful cloth filled the
same small airlock through which their food appeared. Even though
they were not at all new but worn in places from decades of use,
they were a great improvement to their wardrobe. For the first time
she caught a glitter of interest in her companion's eyes as he
examined the weave with a appreciative eye.

 "And your people made these?"

 "Every one." He was holding a piece, turning it around and around,
clearly trying to fathom how it was worn. "I guess this is not what
you are use to," she remarked and, after extracting some pieces long
enough for him, explained briefly how to put the ensemble together.
Fingers clutching the thick fabric, he vanished without another word
into the privacy of the washroom.
 

 Dropping down onto her mat, Ness hissed in exasperation. He
wouldn't even change clothes in front of her!

 They had two sleeping pallets now, one for each of them, the
second delivered at his request. Ness had considered telling him
that she had already asked for a second and been denied, but decided
that their relationship would worsen -- if that were possible -- if
he caught her in a lie. It was not that he was unkind, just totally
inside himself. What was she suppose to do? Were men on Earth so
different from those in the Family?

 She was still sitting on her pallet and sulking when he emerged
from the washroom. She blinked at the sight of him. Almost from one
hour to the next his appearance improved as his face filled out and
the worst of the lines of pain and exhaustion, dehydration and
starvation began to fade, but the change this time was startling.
Part of it was the clothes. He was inexpertly draping a blue and red
toga over a rich brown tunic, one that was finally long enough for
both his arms and his legs. For the first time, except when he slept
hiding under his blanket, the terribly thin arms and legs were
covered and the thick cloth gave him enough bulk in other areas to
allow him to appear lean but no longer bone-thin. But the real
difference was in the relaxed way he held his body. As if no longer
self-conscious, an entirely new man was revealed. The affect so
changed his face that it took her breath away.

 Flipping the trailing end of the long piece of weaving over his
shoulder, he glanced up at her almost shyly. "I had to play Julius
Caesar in a school play once, the first times I was ever stabbed in
the back, though not the last. Did I put it on right?" Taking her
expression of astonishment as affirmation, he went back to fingering
the cloth whose comfortable weight was designed for this chilly
place.

 "I think this is the first time I've been warm since I got here,"
he announced with the same expression of relief she had seen when
she had filled the tub for his first bath.

 "How long ago was that?" she asked, relieved to finally find an
opening to ask one of her thousand question. "You did live on Earth
once, didn't you?" but he answered nothing. Instead, the shadow
passed over his eyes again and he returned to some simple stretching
exercises.

 Furious, Ness rose up with a jerk and stalked away to the kitchen
corner to make dinner. "If he was cold before," she fumed silently,
"he should have said something. I can think of other ways in which
both of us could have kept warm." Even later when she handed him a
heaping bowl of his favorite stew, he barely grunted his thanks. The
tiny window that had opened with his gratitude for the clothes had
slammed shut once more.
 
 

 If it were possible, the lights-out periods were the worst. After
the first days of exhausted coma-like catatonia, he began to sleep
more normally, turning from time to time as people do. In addition
to having to lie in the dark and see the shape of him so far away in
the dimness, Ness found torture in his dreaming. Dreaming... What
dreams! She would awaken to the sound of his heart-wrenching
weeping. He would be curled in a ball rocking and staring blindly
into the dark. When she tried to comfort him, he shied from her as
if her touch was fire. Instead, he scrambled into the far corner
where he would crouch wild-eyed and shaking until long after she
went back to sleep herself, or attempted to. And so it went. In the
morning he was back to a few mumbled syllables when she brought him
food, and a word of praise as to its taste or the way it was cooked.
Sometimes there was a question about what it was. Otherwise, he
exercised or laid with his back to her and spoke not at all.
 

 It was during their fifteen meal together that Ness found that she
was couldn't bear the silence any longer. In the softest voice she
could manage, she asked, "Why don't you talk to me? Why don't you
trust me?"

 He had been recording each meal-taking by scratching on the wall
with a piece of something protein-ish he had incinerated in the
microwave. In response to her words, his head came up with a snap.

 "We've both human," she added if that explained it all. She could
make no sense of the ironic smile that came to his lips.

 "Are we? Considering some of the sides of Humanity I've seen,
you'd be surprised how little that matters."

 "You're very bitter."

 "I have reason to be." She had expected him to leave it at that
but he must have actually looked into her face for once. "Try to see
it from my point of view. I have only your word for who you are and
where you come from. Granted, you don't know what a bathtub is or a
microwave. Even if what you say is true, there's the fact that we've
been locked in here together. You haven't said why, but I can
guess." And with that he turned slightly away from her. Not enough
to be completely rude but enough to say clearly that there wasn't
any more to be said.

 But for once Ness didn't let it end there. "I really don't care
for your guesses. We are together so I could help you. You were not
getting any better where you were!"
 
 "According to whom?" When she had no answer, he continued in the
same bitter tone, "Did Charley -- this Rodan as you call him -- tell
you what I was not getting any better from?"

 "A little." At his look of disbelief she added, "No details. He
said some test." More scorn. "Help me to understand. Tell me about
it." In response, his face, already pale, went suddenly gray and a
deep shudder passed through him. "No, don't. I'm sorry. Don't think
about it, don't tell me. I don't need to know." Under her breath she
cursed herself.  She'd lost patience and pushed him too far and too
quickly. He was always so close to the edge, an edge over which she
knew he saw whatever horror he'd been through, whatever horror he
cried and wept about in his dreams.

 Leaving him alone to pull the shattered fragments of body and soul
back together, Ness returned to nibbling at her food, though she
wasn't hungry. What more did she have to do? She had nursed him,
washed him, given him clothes and food. He should be grateful. She
was young and female and good-looking enough. He was male and,
though older than she, young enough. As the day before had proved,
he was also well on his way to becoming the strong, good-looking man
she had been promised. They were alone, yet he not only would not
couple with her, he actively avoided her and the few words that
passed between them were scornful and suspicious. This was not the
way it was suppose to happen. Was this what her ancestors, the
people of Earth, were like? Cold and mistrustful. If he didn't like
her, that was his choice, but in the Circle they made more of an
attempt to get along. For good or ill the members of the Family
were, literally, one's whole world. You couldn't afford to be picky.

 Ness spent a lot of time retelling the teaching stories to
herself. She knew why there could be nothing like true love within
the Circle. For some reason men were in the minority, making up less
than a third of the total. You couldn't be exclusive. It was not
only unfair but also cruel to those left alone. You slept with whom
you wished and, though everyone had his or her favorites, you moved
around. Variety was not frowned upon, but selfishness was.

 All this is what she would tell him in time, but for the moment
she only asked, "Would you rather be by yourself? I can ask to be
taken back to my own people."

 And what would she do if he said 'yes'?

 She waited and the long silence made her stomach shrivel into a
small, hard lump. It took more courage that she thought she had to
raise her head. He was watching her, wearing his misery like a
shroud. His eyes, which so often in the days before had looked out
at her like two dead stones, were serious and aware. She took hope
in the delay. He was thinking. She had no doubt what an immediate
response would have been.

 "Are you expecting the polite, socially acceptable response?
Because I don't feel very polite or sociable these days."

 "I don't want to go on like this. If you want to be alone then be
alone but I want the truth."

 That twist of his lips again, an ironic smile, then more silence
though the mind across from her was clearly working. He seemed to
come to a decision. "Where I come from there are many, many people.
There's a lot of stress, too. There's just so much 'stuff' you're
expected to do, to be. Just for that reason, I've always gone out of
my way NOT to be what people expect. You get a lot of privacy that
way. In the end my being alone has always just made it easier for
everyone. Not that I can't have people around when I want them -- my
basketball buddies, a crowded movie theater, a weird evening with
the Gunmen, a video and popcorn with Scu-- with a friend."
 
 Ness's ears perked up at his use of this partial name. In the
dark, nearly obscured by whimpers and sobs, she had heard it in its
entirety before.

 "There are even fake people like on the radio or television. Since
my... abduction..." He seemed to draw even further within himself at
the word if that were possible. "Let's just say that it's taken me
time to understand what being part of a community can really mean."

 "You miss your friends on the ship." Of course he would.

 "Yes, but more importantly I realize how they must be missing me.
My being taken away so abruptly... I know that must have left a
hole. You don't know what a big step it is for me to say I
understand that. They will worry; they cared for me." At the sight
of her downcast face, he added, "Just like the hole you must have
left in your Family when you left to take up this little job for
Charley. Just like the hole that will be left here if you returned
to them now. I wouldn't belong to any kind of a community any more
then, now would I? Not even a community of two." Nervously, he
clasped his arms around his knees. "True, I wouldn't have any
responsibilities, easier that way, but meaningless. It's you who
should be begging to leave. I haven't been doing my part here.
That's makes me a pretty selfish bastard."

 Ness waited through this longest speech that she had heard from
him and didn't breathe. She didn't understand 'bastard' in the way
he obviously meant it and couldn't figure out 'television' or his
reference to 'Gunmen', but his overall meaning was clear. And he
recognized his selfishness; that was a good sign. Most importantly,
he wasn't going to ask her to leave and had almost worked around to
something that might be an apology. Knowing he had gone about as far
as he was able for the moment but wanting to keep him talking, Ness
sought around for a safer topic.

 "What's your name?"

 He stared at her. "Charley didn't tell you?"

 "He called you 'Mooncalf' once, but that sounded more like a title
and not a very nice one."

 A ghost of that smile. She liked that. "As nicknames go, it's
actually fairly accurate, but, no, it's not my name." He seemed to
need to think before answering further. "Call me Ishmael."

 "Ishmael..." The word felt nice and her tongue and seemed
familiar. Then she remembered. "It's like in the story they tell
here about a great whale." His smile broadened. Had she passed some
kind of test? "I always liked the end: 'And the Rachael, seeking for
her missing children, only found another orphan.' I hope that's
right."

 He seemed to be concentrating at something inside his mind.
"Pretty close. 'It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her
retracing search after her missing children, only found another
orphan.' I think I like yours better."

 Brow furrowed, she studied him intently. "Ishmael's not really
your name, is it?"

 His eyes were no longer bright, but neither had they turned back
to stone. "It will do for now."

 "And you're that orphan."

 "In more ways than one. Father dead, mother dead, sister dead. Now
my world and all on it might as well be dead. I'm about as much of
an orphan as a person can be."

 "But your world isn't dead. It's still there, as you said, and
full of people."

 "Too many people. Crowded with them."

 Now the second in the thousand questions she wanted to ask. "Tell
me about Earth?"

 Another smile, a wide, happy one. "You first," he said. "Tell me
about the Family and how they came to be here and where 'here' is.
This entire situation has been too much about me so far."

 So she told him about the City, of which he knew not at all, and
the Family and the Circle where they lived their lives. His eyes
grew warm and soft as he listened and he even forgot to eat. She
talked about how long ago her ancestors had been taken from Earth
and how the Family had come to call their enslavers 'Overseers',
since they had never in all the long years, provided any name for
themselves.

 "From America, the ante-bellum South," she told him, "though for
short we refer to them as the Oz. That's also from a book. Have you
heard of it?" She asked.

 Another rare and gentle smile. He had.

 She hadn't realized that she had so much to say and once started
found him an active listener. No, more than active, ravenous once he
had opened the door. His questions were endless. It went on that way
until she was hoarse from talking. Stopping for water, she saw on
his face what she had missed in her preoccupation to recite the
gifts and foibles of each of the sixty-three people who lived within
the Circle. The little lines had deepened around his eyes.

 "What's wrong?"

 His hands came to his temples and pressed there hard. "Headache."

 "Is it going to be a bad one this time?"

 Even the slight inclination of the head he replied with made him
grimace. "To have someone to talk to. It's been so long. I was
enjoying our talk."

 "My talk," she corrected, softly. There were tears of pure pain in
his eyes as she helped him to the washroom. It was their ritual when
the headaches came on which they did almost every day. The only
difference this time was that he allowed her to hold his head as he
retched. She then drew him a hot bath. It was the only thing that
helped the swift, agonizing attacks, and then not much.

 The headaches were a great concern. He had admitted under
questioning that they began on the Pathjam in the mindspeakers'
colony, or so and from Ness's observations were increasing in number
and severity. At least they did not last long. When they were not
too bad he joked in woeful tones about needing an aspirin, whatever
that was. But he was indeed spiraling down into one of the bad ones
this time, which meant that he wrapped a strip of cloth about his
eyes, lay like a dead thing in the bath, and asked for hemlock.. As
before, all Ness could do was listen as the jokes faded into
incoherent whimpers and mumblings. As he disappeared into the Black
Time, she warmed the water when it cooled and watched that he did
not intentionally or unintentionally slip beneath the surface.

 There was another difference about this attack. When she led his
faltering steps to his pallet when the worst was over, he seemed
less self-conscious about clinging to her in his weakness. She had
just settled him and was about to turn away to let him sleep when he
spoke. His voice wasn't strong but it was clear.

 "My sister was abducted when I was twelve. For so much of my life
I imagined her being held in a place like this." The next words
caught in his throat. "I wish that she had been."

 "Why?" Ness asked gently, daring to touch a lock of hair that had
fallen over the cloth that still covered his eyes.

 "Because even though the Family isn't free you clearly care for
each other. And just now when you listed for me the names of all its
members, I would have heard her name -- Sam. I would have found her.
I half expected to." Ness didn't think she had ever heard a voice so
sad.

 "You never found her?"

 "Not alive and in a far worse place than this."

 There was nothing more to say after that. In seconds she could
make out his slow, regular breathing. Retreating to her own bed,
Ness found that she was both crying and smiling. The cost on both
sides had been great but at least there was now a crack in the wall
he had built about himself.

 Ishmael.

 Her sleep was not interrupted by his dreams that night.

* * * * * * * *

 Ness woke slowly from a long, dreamless sleep. It was an odd
waking however, more like swimming though a huge pile of dense yarn.
Her limbs felt heavy and it was a terrible burden to lift them. Only
the urgency spurned on by a very full bladder got her moving at all
and for that she managed nothing more complicated than a rather
disorganized crawl. Her eyes were not even open yet. When she did
try to see, she found the lids nearly glued shut with a layer of
that sandy grit that one finds sometimes, only this was far thicker
than usual. It was only when stumbling like a sleepwalker back to
her pallet that she noticed a faint, metallic scent. This was
something new to her and it was disturbingly on her skin as well as
in the air.

 She had actually dropped back onto her pallet and pulled up the
covers before she thought to check on 'Ishmael'. If he wanted to use
it, however, that was his decision.  Levering herself with effort
onto one elbow, she thought she saw him lying at an angle so that
his most slender profile, still very thin indeed, was turned her
way. But even to her sleepy mind something didn't seem right. Too
weary to get to her feet again, she crawled to his mat. Closer, the
illusion of a real body under the mound was even less convincing.
Slowly, and then faster as alarm mounted, she began sorting through
the pile of fabric unable to believe what she found -- or did not
find. He was gone! The blankets he used were here, plus all the
extra woven fabric from the Circle that he used for additional
warmth. She also found his favorite dress cloths, the somber set of
blue and red and brown that he wore most often. Her Portjam shirt
that she'd given him was mixed among the tangle. The only garment he
owned which was missing were the thin, one-size-fits-all Portjam
trousers that he slept in. Those and Ishmael himself.

 Despite the emergency, Ness was finding it hard to understand why
her body should still be behaving as if it were half-asleep. When
she found herself searching frantically for him in the same
improbable places again and again, she realized that it wasn't only
her body that was still half-asleep. It was as if her mind was in a
fog. Never having been exposed to the sensational melodramas of
twentieth century entertainment, it came to her only with effort
that the unusual metallic scent might somehow be associated with how
long and deeply she had slept and with how much difficulty she was
having waking up. It was while splashing herself with cold water
that she came to the belated conclusion that she was probably not
the only one affected by the odd drowsiness. She probably had not
even been the chemical's primary target. After all, Ishmael had been
taken, not her. From what she heard while he dreamt, he had suffered
terribly since he was 'collected'. He would not have gone easily
with any of them. He would have fought and kicked, bit and scratched
and screamed.

 Unless he was drugged past knowing.
 
 "Damn bastards!" The words were not ones Ness would have dared use
within the Circle, but alone and in combination Ishmael had made use
of them often enough in the last few days. In her rage they felt
just right.

 Ness ran to the apartment door and slapped down the black call
bar. It was usually sufficient to depress it once and a worker would
appear in a few minutes to see what was needed, but she had never
been so desperate before. Ten, twenty times she slapped at it and
then found herself irrationally pounding on the stone-hard door with
her fists. In her carefully controlled life, Ness had never
experienced such a surge of anger. She couldn't stop herself from
pounding and screaming and didn't want to. Swollen from repeated
impacts against the unyielding material, her hands throbbed.

 Frustrated with unexpected tears running down her cheeks, Ness
halted, shaking, and backed away. Through a red blur she spied the
box where food was delivered. Hastily, she opened the small airlock.
Two food bundles rested inside. Two! Had she slept through one
entire day and into the next?

 Unexpectedly, Ness found herself grabbing up one of the parcels
and throwing it as hard as she could against the wall. Grains flew
out in a shower, soft vegetables plopped messily down with a splat,
and hard fruits went rolling. Ness stared at what she had done with
amazement. Still, like the swearing, the violent act had felt right
all the more because the Family had been told by the Oz again and
again how precious the food was and how they should be grateful. It
was one of the exiled group's earliest memories. Her Ishmael's
ravenous hunger and genuine gratitude and enjoyment of it these last
few days brought its importance back. But now he was gone, taken
against his will she was certain, because he would never have gone
voluntarily into City's corridors, which were even chillier than
here, without his new warm clothes. Even more than the food he had
craved the warmth.

 The slight whir of the door lock being disengaged caused Ness to
spin. Hastily, she wiped her eyes. Rodan. Who else would it be but
the one her Ishmael called Charley with no hit of respect
whatsoever. With astonishingly uncontrolled and uncharacteristic
power, she found herself flying at him.

 "Where did you take him? Why take him? Damn you, we had a
bargain!"

 Rodan fended off her flailing arms with no effort. In fact, in his
distraction he appeared completely unaware of her anger.

 "Get dressed. I need to take you to him."

  Ness didn't need to look twice at this face which she knew so well
to begin moving. That visage was as fixed and dispassionate as one
of the carved hieroglyphs, but she could sense that something was
wrong. To throw on a long tunic dress took no time at all. She was
still draping a heavy shawl in hasty loops as she followed his
stiff, broad back into the air lock. With a grimace she took the
sponge from his hand and breathed/swallowed it down. It was still
spreading out its groping tendrils when the shapeshifter released
the restraining bar on the outer door and moved quickly out into
what to her was toxic air.

 Following at Rodan's heels, Ness moved into the maze of bright,
chill corridors that spread in a complex three-dimensional web
throughout City. The trip was not a short one and, though Ness had
to run at times to keep up, she did not once ask him to slow his
pace. At first she took no notice of the area of the complex they
were entering, but it soon became obvious that they were in
territory of which the human colony had no stories. The halls,
spacious before, became even wider and loftier. And brighter. Ness
was accustomed to the Overseer's need for light but this pained even
her eyes. Still, she was able to make out the carvings on the walls
through the glare. This was High writing as the humans had
christened it, far older than the New writing. The carvings were
executed on a massive scale as if each were intended to stand
eternally as a testament, permanently screaming out the Overseer's
most profound manifests. At least it was a little warmer here.

 I'm approaching the center of the wheel, she thought in awe, the
heart of City.

 Suddenly, Ness found herself facing three sets of twelve-foot
double doors. Though made of the stone-like composite used
everywhere in the City, these were highly polished, as well as
heavily carved. Feared clutched at her stomach at the very thought
of the importance and terrible magnificence of what must lie within.
Ahead, two tall elders entered the right hand set of doors and for a
moment Ness caught a glimpse of a blazingly white, cavernous space
beyond.

 She was saved closer acquaintance with what was clearly an
important meeting place for Rodan turned abruptly and slipped
through a narrow door a mere eight feet high. Intended to blend into
the wall, Ness had nearly missed it.

 As expected from its unpretentious portal, the room was small and
even in the dim light was clearly unadorned. There were no ornaments
or carvings here, only flat, bare walls. Not ceremonial then. One
light panel glowed faintly blue by a large set of plain, tall double
doors that from their location must open into the vast room beyond.
Then this must be a preparation room of some kind.

 She was at the point of asking why she had been brought here when
Rodan waved his hand impatiently across a light sensor. The room
blazed into full City brilliance. As Ness's hand came up
automatically to shield her eyes, she heard a slight scuffling.
Blinking, she tried to find the source of the sound.

 Lost in the shadows before, but now clearly visible, was a high
shining tower of crystal, in shape like a truncated pyramid. Taller
than the width of its base, it stood man-high -- human-high -- and
it wasn't empty. Not a jewel then, but a container, a cage.

 Ness's eyes fixed low on the cage's floor where only barely
distorted through the shining crystal could be seen an incredibly
pale, naked form. It was huddled in the corner of the square base,
long back and broad, hunched shoulders turned towards her. Pasty-
white arms were raised, covering its head.

 Legs weak as water, Ness slipped to her knees. "Ishmael?" she
breathed. She couldn't help but make it a question. This was no
elder, no worker, and yet its skin was the same powdery pale.
The figure was shaking continuously, making small frantic movements
as if desperate to find a way to make its ball of quivering flesh a
smaller target. And though the glass at each change of position came
the faintest whimpering.

 "God deliver us, what have you done?" she demanded, dragging her
attention back to Rodan.

End of chapter 3

MY TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY CH06: WITNESS FOR THE PERSECUTION  (4/5)
DATE: 04/01/01
AUTHOR: Sue Esty (Windsinger@AOL.com)
 
 The stone face was not apologetic, but the words nearly were.
"Perhaps a miscalculation. We thought he was sufficiently recovered
for this. We may have been wrong, but there is no way to go back
now. The council is called; he must be ready. He must stand up and
show himself."

 This made no sense until, turning back, Ness was finally was able
to make sense of what she was seeing. There was one flash of color
besides the white. Bright red. A ragged, curved red line above the
shoulders that something she could see and something she couldn't
depending on the position of the concealing arms.

 "Oh, my God, you've cut off his --  But why? The scar? To be able
to see that?" She had spoken in a biting whisper, as if afraid to
hear the words herself, but they had been loud enough. A thin wail
began from within the cage, cut off abruptly as if its maker had
bitten his lip.

 Ness dropped back onto her knees. "Ishmael, oh, Ishmael, I'm
here..." she called softly.

 "'Mulder' would get through to him better," Rodan grudgingly
suggested, "and speak closer to the base." Indeed there were slits
at the base like vents; otherwise there was no break in the seamless
glass.

 Already on her knees, Ness leaned forwards but could think of
nothing to say. She noticed other colors now. Purple and red marks
ringed his wrists and splotches the size of hard fingers stood out
sharply on his upper arms. Drugged he may have been, but he hadn't
entirely given up without a fight.

 "Mulder? That's his name, his real name? What can I possibly say?"
When Rodan made no suggestions, she began to creep slowly around
base of the cage, hoping to catch sight of a face amidst the thin
arms and raised, bony legs. The figure only seemed to quiver with
greater violence.

 "Mulder, it's Ness, it's Ness." Clearly he heard, but his only
response was to turn completely from her and huddle even more deeply
into himself so that all she could see once more was his long bare
back. "Mulder, you have to believe me. I didn't have anything to do
with this. I would never have anything to do with helping them do
anything as horrible as this. But I'm here now. I won't let them
hurt you any more."

 A grunt came from Rodan. "You will have to do better than that. He
may be in shock but no fool. He knows that you have no more power
here than he. You are ours, just as he is, ours to serve our needs
and our need at the moment is for him to stand and show himself to
the council. The evidence must be seen."

 "Evidence!" she snapped. "Of, what?"

 "Of what animals humans are. I showed you before what they did to
destroy something so unique." He folded his arms, shoulders tight,
then unfolded them, the kind of nervousness Ness had never seen from
the shapeshifter.

 So he answered to superiors, too, and he was worried.
 
 "He must stand and lower his head so his mutilation --"

 "Damn you!"

 "Just get him standing so the scar will show clearly. For though
his own free will or mine, he will be seen. It would be far better
for us all if he would stand on his own." After a moment he added
in, if it could be believed, a softer voice, "I know this one. Get
him to crawl out of his own head and he will choose to be man rather
than to be spread out and pinioned like an insect. But we have only
a few more minutes --"

 "Then stop talking and leave us alone!" Ness snarled, As she
turned her head she saw something. A large mirror. She had never
thought that the Overseers owned such demonstrations of vanity. The
glass cage and its prisoner were all too readily reflected in its
surface. "And cover that thing before you go!"

 With surprising compliance, Rodan did what he was told. "Five
minutes," he warned before stalking out.

 Not knowing what else to do, Ness sat at first in silence. "He's
gone," she finally said and rigid muscles relaxed if only a little.
Ness edged around the glass case again so that she would no longer
be facing his back if he were not rolled quite so tightly into his
ball.

 "Mulder... that's your name?" She tried for a lighter tone. "I can
see why you didn't tell me. What were your parents thinking." No
response. " She leaned forward until her forehead was against the
glass's pristine surface.

 "This is terrible, what they've done and now what they want you to
do. I never knew cruelty like this existed, but then, until I was
taken to the Portjam and saw how the 'speakers' were made to live, I
didn't know very much, did I?" There was no change in his posture,
just that uncontrolled shivering.

 "Mulder, listen, please. What can I say? I'm 'sorry' is pretty
pitiful. There has to be other words but if there are I don't know
them. I'm sorry they hurt you. I'm sorry they did this terrible
thing to you. But more than anything I'm so, so sorry that I'm not
your Scully."

 That got a response. Fists clenched, involuntarily opened, and
clenched again in grief. The miserable tangle of flesh seemed to
expand for a moment only to collapse into itself smaller than
before. "She's the one you want, isn't she? She's the one you trust.
I'm sorry but I'm not her. I've been sorry every minute of these
last days, but I'm only Ness and all you've got."

 Rocking forward so his head was between his knees he covered his
face with his hands. "How do you know?"

 The words were so ragged it took time for her to understand them.
Ness licked dry lips. "You said her name once in passing as if she
were only a friend -- but you cry it out over and over in your
dreams. 'Scully... Scully, help me.'"

 A violent tremor passed through the huddled form.
 
 "I admit that they promised me things," she told him, finding
herself talking just to fill the silence. "They promised me you and
in my ignorance I expected that it would be just that easy. But you
don't belong to me any more than you belong to them." He was
completely still now. Listening?

 "I promise that I won't expect anything from you any more. It was
wrong of me. But you must let me help get you through this, because
this is important."

 He raised his face from his hands. "No!" His voice was no louder
than a husky whisper as if he had screamed himself hoarse long
before but strong enough.

 "It's not for them, it's for us, because it won't be only you
they'll be looking at. They'll be seeing me, and my Family, and the
'speakers', and all your friends on Earth."

 In reaction to her words he threw back his head and laughed, an
eerie, nearly hysterical broken laughter that shocked her even more
than the first sight of his face.

 "Look at me!" he demanded, and then went on, softer, as she
reluctantly turned to him. "Just look at me! What do you see?"

 Wetting her lips, she took a deep breath. "So they cut off your
hair."

 "Brilliant," he muttered sarcastically and ran a shaking hand over
the top of his arm and back down again. "There's none here either."

 "But why is your skin so white?"

 "I think they burnt the hair off and in doing so killed the top
layer of skin. Dried it to a powder." Distractedly, he picked up a
few dry flakes from his arm and let them drift to the floor of the
crystal cage. "There was this cubicle." He found a bruise and the
ring of red around his wrist and seemed surprised to see it there.
"I think they use the equipment on themselves to achieve that
perfect pasty color." A fingernail flicked at the powdery layer of
dead skin and the tip of a tongue tried a wet dry lips. Ness forced
herself not to react to that shocking redness against the white.
"That's why it's all gone, head, arms, chest -- what little I had.
Everywhere." And with this last word he cast a quick glance into the
shadow between his legs. She didn't ask for further explanation.

 "D-Did it hurt?" she stammered.

 "I've had gun shots hurt less," he quipped, but then thinking
reversed himself. "No, it didn't hurt at all."
 
 "Rodan says that your own people gave you the scar when they took
out... whatever it was. Is that true?"

 A slow nod. "I was dying. They wanted what was inside My survival
was only a side effect. That explains why they were a little...
heavy-handed." His wandering hand edged towards the top of his head
but thought better of it. "How bad is it?"

 She swallowed. "Eyebrows are gone, too."

 His lips parted, but he did not speak at first. In fact his lips
were almost blue. He must be freezing. "Pretty bad then. Even
Skinner has eyebrows."

 Ness found herself actually studying the vision he made now that
the shock was over. "Actually, it's not 'bad'. You just don't look
like you. Can you stand?" she asked, suddenly.

 The deep frown looked ugly indeed on that bald face. "After what
they've done, you want me to give them what they want?"

 "If you do this right you'll be giving them what they ask for but
they won't be getting what they want. I know that doesn't make sense
but just stand, please? For me? For us all."

 He looked long into her eyes. Finding no hidden agenda other than
the one she had already confessed to, he stood. It took a while. He
was very weak. His thin legs shook as he clawed painfully to knees
and then to feet. He shivered. The gooseflesh gave his powdery skin
a vaguely bumpy appearance, which was bumpy enough from the bones
that still stuck out so easily everywhere. Spindly white body; a
round dome of a head; bruised eyes, black and huge in that thin
face. He fit perfectly within the crystal cage, his head barely a
foot from the truncated top.

 "Happy? Can I die now?"

 Not taking her eyes from his, Ness stood carefully herself and
slowly removed the cloth from the mirror, hoping that this was the
right thing to do. "Look. At a quick glance you could be one of
them."

 He flinched violently as if the sight was like a physical blow. He
had to reach out, palms shoulder-high to brace himself against the
transparent walls to remain upright, but he stood.

 "True, it's not a very good likeness," Ness said, hurrying on,
"too tall for a worker, too short for an elder, but not totally
unlike. Mulder, they are not just going to see the scars. They are
going to see you -- and us -- and if we are lucky a bit of
themselves."

 He shook his head slowly back and forth. "You are so young. Do you
know on Earth what we do to the species most similar to us who dare
to be not quite us? We hunt them down like animals." In a sudden
burst of anger, the heel of his hand hit the side of the crystal.
"We put them in cages and display their every private moment to
gawking eyes." He hit the glass again, stronger. "And we breed them
to this one and that one because WE know best!" Another hit, full
strength. He swayed and cradled his right hand but the glass
remained completely intact.

  Seeing that she had made her point about the mirror, Ness hastily
replaced the cloth. "Very well, not a perfect option, but what else
can we do? We in the Family believe in a God, did I tell you that?
Our God will bring us home; home to Earth. We will do anything,
anything, to hasten that departure. That can't happen if we're dead.
Mulder, as a group, we're dying! They could decide to euthanize us
at any time just so they don't have to bother to feed us any more,
but that would only make our final days come faster. Every day we
say a group prayer that the food arrives and that the water spills
from the tap. Stay alive, Mulder! I know this goddamn funkin'
stinks, but if your cooperation allows us to live just one more
day..."

 He blinked, the faintest ghost of a smile touching his blue lips.
"Great," he whispered in that broken voice he had used all along.
"You have the opportunity to live with a 'modern' man for four days,
and what do you learn? How to swear, and not even very well."

 "Please..." She repeated, to bring him back to the subject. She
stepped up and placed her fingers on the glass not that far from his
cheek. "Don't make them hurt you, don't make them kill you. Allow
them to think, really think about us for just one moment. And if you
can't find it within yourself to do it for me or for my people, then
just live if only for the chance to see your Scully again. Believe
me, Mulder, they don't need you living if they just want to show off
your scars."

 Hearing her, the black eyes closed, hard to tell with the lids so
bruised, but the forehead definitely furrowed. He remained still for
so long that Ness wondered whether he was getting one of his
headaches and despaired.

 Finally, he spoke as if from far, far away. "Don't be afraid.
Charley will not allow me to be killed -- damaged a little more
maybe -- but not killed. Not now, not soon." He raised his voice,
seeming to not mind that the effort must be painful. "Get in here,
Charley, and let's get this over with. Bring on the dancing bears
and the bat-faced woman! It's time to gawk at the hairless freak!"

    As if he had indeed been listening, Rodan reappeared. His eyes
went first to Mulder who was barely able to stand on his legs, but
stand he did, grim and defiant. Ness thought that she had never seen
such a curious expression on the morph's face. It was as if this
curiosity of his had in no small way surprised him.

 "Yes, it is time to go," Rodan agreed as if to himself and then,
ignoring Mulder, said to Ness. "You did well."

 "There you're wrong. He's not doing this for me."

 "It doesn't matter," the shapeshifter said, passing a hand rapidly
over a control panel. First, the small room went dark, and then a
thin crack of brilliance appeared as the tall doors to the counsel
chamber began slowly to open. As if riding on a thin cushion of the
softest air, the crystal rose. Though no more than a few millimeters
off the floor, it floated towards the opening doors. At the same
time, lights came up around its base, lights which amplified back
and forth, back and forth, from facet to facet, illuminating the
still white figure within.

 Ness found herself thinking of a pillar of salt. Was all this
punishment for seeing what should not be seen, for knowing what
should not be known?

 Walking numbly beside the sled Ness could just see beyond into
that light. The counsel chamber was shaped like the inside of a
globe, a huge ball of white, hundreds of feet in diameter. Figures,
thousands of figures, tiny because of the distance, looked down from
platforms that covered the inside of the ball. Ness's own bowels had
turned to water and this was not even her trial. In fear she stared
up at Mulder. Amazingly, he seemed to have forgotten his unique
place in the proceeding. Head tilted back; he craned his neck to see
the tiers upon tiers of the spidery forms watching from high, high
above his head.

 All at once Mulder's entire body convulsed, hard. Instinctively,
his hands came off the walls as if they burned. Most of the pain
seemed to originate with his feet, however, which he tried to jerk
off the floor both at once. Ness caught sight of Rodan's glowering
brows and watched as he mimed a bowed head followed by an abrupt
motion of this hand that she read as 'Now!'. By gestures she
translated for Mulder, who bent his neck in a parody of what Rodan
had asked for. For his impertinence he received another and longer
shock until, with even his bruises now pale, he mimed Charley's
position well enough to satisfy. Clearly, the scars had to show, but
just as clearly the posture of a supplicant was not to Mulder's
taste. Ness's anger at the unnecessary cruelty was as hot as it was
impotent.

 The door fully open, nothing lay between them and the thousands of
eyes, but Ness's were only for Mulder face. The most incredible
emotions reflected there just below the surface. One moment she
thought him ready to spit venom, the next she saw him stagger as if
he were being crushed by the sheer weight of all those black,
lozenge-shaped orbs. Alarmed that he might fall, Ness tried to keep
up with the cage's progress to offer him moral support if nothing
else. All at once, however, she found herself being held back. Rodan
wasn't going to let her follow! Though not certain that she knew
what the phrase meant, she shouted just before the doors closed her
out, "Give 'em hell, Ishmael."

 The blue lips pressed together for a moment as if the suppress
another bout of hysterical laughter and then he called back over his
shoulder, "I believe they have the market on that already."
 
 ****************

 For Ness the wait was interminable. For Ishmael -- for Mulder --
it must be torture. Three hours passed and he hadn't returned and
neither had Rodan. When the tall doors finally began to open again,
they did so with a terrible slowness. Stiff from her wait in the
cold room, Ness had problems of her own rising and barely had time
to step aside before the pyramid coasted at some speed into the prep
room, Rodan striding rapidly at its side.

 The crystal's prisoner was still on his feet but only because his
palms were pressed white against the glass's smooth sides.  Even
though he could fall now, there was no letting go though whether
from fear of punishment, habit, or complete unawareness that his
ordeal was over -- Ness didn't know. One look at his empty, blood-
shot eyes told Ness that it was most likely the last. She wanted to
comfort him with 'It's over.' But was it? Even as she watched, his
too rapid breathing because suddenly labored then torturous. His
chest heaved and his mouth gaped wide.

 Rodan was, of course, in the room, observing with maddening
impassivity. "What's wrong?" she demanded.

 "A miscalculation in the volume of atmosphere the display case
needed to carry. The presentation took longer than expected."

 "Well, do something!"

 The morph did. His finger moved across the carved ball he had been
fingering in his hand and the glass walls disappeared. They did not
rise or fall or open, they simply vanished as if they had never been
any more than a reflection.

 His support gone, Mulder fell forward. Ness only barely caught him
in her arms. He was stiff, cold, shivering and gulping in the City's
air, City air that over time was poisonous to humans. Allowing him
to slump to the floor, a furious Ness leaped for a small box affixed
to the wall of the room and marked with the one Overseer hieroglyph
that she knew all too well. With the smooth mindlessness that comes
with many drills over all the years of her short life, Ness tore one
of the packages open with her teeth even as she raced back. She had
the soft, squishy thing in her hand when she reached Mulder's side,
who was not only violently choking but whose skin had turned an
unhealthy purple.

 "He won't take it," Rodan said with a laconic calmness. "He said
he never would again."

 "He will from me," Ness snarled even as she heaved the convulsing
body back up onto her lap and squashed the sponge squarely over his
nose and open mouth. "Breathe," she commanded. "Breathe, damn it,
don't let them win now."

 Green eyes opened wide. First in confusion, then in slow
recognition, and finally with a hard, stubborn resistance. Her hand
moved automatically to stroke his hair but there was none. She
smoothed his forehead only and saw a tear fall onto his face but
couldn't imagine where it had come from. "Don't die," she whispered,
seeing the distinct possibility in the darkening eyes. "Not for
this. Not for them."

 After a moment his eyes closed and, after another half dozen
fluttering heartbeats, his chest moved tentatively. The surface of
the sponge bowed inward a little. As if a crack had been made in a
dike, his chest suddenly made a great heave and the pinkish mass
flowed in entirely. He gagged and choked for a terrible time while
she held him. Afterwards he just hid his face in her shoulder and
huddled against her. Desperate for what? Her meager warmth or
protection? She thought both.

* * * * * * * *
 It's me, Scully. I'm back.

 Sorry for the long interlude but I don't like mysteries,
especially not big, gaping ones in my memories so I needed a record
of what happened even if only through another's eyes. I retained
bits and pieces of this story, but far more was lacking than not,
and nothing was in order. That's happened to me more than once
before and you know how crazy that makes me. I remember being sucked
into that black hole. That was when the brain scan, in the process
of shaking out my mind and sifting through the contents therein, ran
into the scar tissue from CSM's little slice and dice. There was
nothing coherent after that for a long, long time. Of all things, I
vividly remember a hot bath and being warm at last. Similarly, there
was my first decent food, food not only hot but which had taste.
Creature comforts all. Ness, I'm mortified to admit, I do not
remember much from those first days except as a benevolent, hovering
presence, like an angel or a very competent maid. I wasn't very nice
to her. Probably it was because, as she so very astutely put it, she
wasn't you.

 There was more but my half-drugged, middle-of-the-night abduction
to the depilatory facility pretty much wiped everything else off the
calendar. Fuzzy from some really heavy drugs, I was certain that I
was going to be plucked and scalded for someone's breakfast. When
the chunks of my hair began to fall out around me like snow and even
the hair on my arms shriveled and flaked off, I very distinctly
remember screaming. This is when I went from crazed to psycho and
learned how amazingly strong those little worker guys are for their
size. They take a very nasty, all-business approach to those who
disrupt their tiny, disciplined world.
 
 Then there was a white room. Not very descriptive, I know, since
all their rooms are white, but being naked and hairless and crazy
all at the same time cements this particular white room in my
memory. When I tried to leave I couldn't find any walls much less an
exit. The little workers came and went but I just kept stumbling
into these curtains of static that hurt like hell, all of which only
made me less reasonable. Throwing myself against anything I could
find, whether it hit back or not, and swearing at Charley came next.
When the invisible walls began to contract until there was not an
arm's length of room around me, I really lost it. I think they shot
me with something then, electrical or chemical I don't know, but all
at once there was this bright, bright halo of pure numbing light --
and I wasn't feeling anything any more -- no anger, no fear, no
thought.

 I woke under that damn bell jar still unable to summon the rage I
needed so badly. It was as if they'd sucked it out of me. I felt
sick and disoriented and as afraid as I have ever been in my life --
except for those times when your life was in danger. Those times
were worse but -- forgive me -- not by much. I was also awash in
some serious psychotic withdrawal. All I wanted was for reality to
disappear... permanently. I think that was when they brought Ness
in. Shit, but I didn't want her to see me, I didn't want anyone I
knew to see me. Scully, I never thought myself particularly vain,
but I'm learning that I am. If not, then why the overwhelming desire
to be suddenly and entirely dead.

 It was only Ness's use of your name that jump-started the few sane
synapses I had left at that point.

 What I recall about being Exhibit Number One and put on display to
a gathering of elders is definitely more nightmare than memory. It
was like being trapped in some 'B' grade Science Fiction movie. I
felt as if I were this ant, stuffed under a drinking glass by a
giant, and brought out for all the vulgar curious to ogle at, a
specimen trapped as if in amber between the two sides of a slide and
set under the microscope's huge, unblinking eye. It took everything
I had, and much of what I paid dearly for later, to keep from being
squashed flat by all those dead eyes. Scully, when there is only
what you came into the world with -- including the no hair part --
posturing doesn't mean much. It's not so much that I wanted to die
then, I wished that I had never been born.
 
 Inside the jar, it was hard and sterile and cold and terribly
exposed. I was never so thankful for those courses the Academy made
us take on the psychology of torture, because that's what it was,
torture. Naturally, I put my own spin on the sanity check stuff that
I played over and over in my head -- 'I will not hare out... I will
not humiliate myself... I will not humiliate my race... I will not
wet myself... I will not shit myself... I will not scream....'
that's what I remember about the cage. An eternity of holding it
together heartbeat after heartbeat. Then there was Charley's idea of
a teaching aid. The waves of pain he sent up through my feet were
like flails that charged up and down my legs. Stand this way, not
that way. Eyes open, not closed. It's fortunate that tears were
allowed because even to save my life I couldn't have stopped them.
At the time there seemed no end to any of it. Bliss is fleeting;
agony really can stretch on forever.
 
 That's when I found the way out.

 Remind me to give you a lesson or two on self-hypnosis. There's a
lot it can do, even open-eyed. I used every bit I learned in that
obscure biofeedback course that that gnome Dr. Weerd taught at
Oxford. Now there's a guy who could have walked straight out of
Hogwarths. I even pulled a little from the obligatory psyche
evaluations we were forced to attend every time the wrong crowd
picked up one or the other of us. How I hated those.

 Well, I've definitely been running around with the wrong crowd
lately, Scully. I would gladly attend a dozen sessions just to get
home, two dozen, a hundred... Please, please, God. If I ever do get
home, I'll probably need them.

 I think I've spent enough time reminiscing about my moment in the
limelight. There's really nothing more to remember because I was so
spaced by the time it all ended that I can recall nothing of what
Ness reported, not even the almost suffocating part, but it all
sounds most plausible.

End of chapter 4

MY TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY CH06: WITNESS FOR THE PERSECUTION  (5/5)
DATE: 04/01/01
AUTHOR: Sue Esty (Windsinger@AOL.com)
 

 The time after is clearer, at least after the first week. I woke
wondering how I had burned my feet until they were nearly raw and
why my eyes felt so tired. Then this draft went up the back of my
neck ... and all the way up and over to my forehead. That's when I
remembered about my hair or lack of it and how I've never had to
shave since I was taken, not once. I nearly lost it again at that
point until Ness realized what the problem was. Immediately, she
called in Rodan and read him the riot act. She was impressive, which
means that she reminded me of you, and there is no higher praise
than that. Brought tears to my eyes.

 Anyway, thanks to Ness and Rodan's concoction, which I took twice
a day for a week, I had a nice stubble going on chin and scalp
within a few days. I dare say that made me easier to live with. Too
bad that it tasted like gravel in warm piss. In hindsight, I think I
would have gotten use to being bald if it had never grown back.
Skinner does more than okay and Bruce Willis can still attract both
the babes and the big bucks. It was just the shock and the way it
was done and by whom that made it so horrible.

 So at the moment I've got more on my head than I've had since
college and the best beard I've ever been able to grow. Not that I'm
all that fond of it. It itches and it's hot. I'd love a shave but as
you can imagine no razors are allowed. No sharp objects, no easy way
out. That's probably the reason why they normally give the men
whatever they do in our food. Assuming that it's some variant of a
female hormone, then I suppose there is the side benefit of keeping
us docile.

 Or is domestication the intent and the lack of facial hair the
side affect? I'm just relieved that the male prisoners don't develop
the more obvious female characteristics.

  Whatever the plan, the Oz seem to have been able to develop a
cocktail of chemicals that both sexes can consume and yet affects
males one way and women another. This makes me curious on exactly
how women are affected, but considering our current relationship, I
don't want to get into that with Ness right now.

 Now that I've filled you on the prisoners' normal dietary
supplement, I have to mention that I'm fairly certain that Ness are
I are not on it now. We are getting, instead, a special blend. I
don't know how this affects Ness, but I do know that all at once I'm
horny as hell. Not that I wasn't horny before, but after seven years
of working with you, Scully, I have developed no small degree of
control and yet it's barely enough. Let's just say that if another
male walked in right now, I'd have him out in twenty seconds, hooves
and teeth and horns flying.

 So, no, I haven't taken my current state of discomfort out on Ness
but, as my Scots ancestors would say, things are a might tense.

 We live in two rooms. Ness tells me they are the same ones we were
given after I was removed from Stockhome and before I was sheared.
I'll take her word on that. There is nothing to do but weave and
only that since she got her little table loom. That leaves a lot of
day to fill. Luckily, Ness is ravenously inquisitive about Earth,
not surprising since no one from her Family has been outside City in
four generations, and so I talk a lot.

 (Sigh... Do you know how much it hurts to dish out a straight line
like that and not hear your acid-tongued reply? What I would do for
a good tongue lashing from my Scully.)

 Anyway, I teach and exercise while she weaves. There's no need to
get too close that way.

 Out of boredom, I've tried my own hand at weaving. I can see why
it's one of the few activities allowed. It requires no particularly
sharp objects and the product that results provide both clothes and
blankets for naked people and furnishings for the depressingly naked
rooms. If the pattern is challenging, the pursuit becomes at the
same time intellectual and repetitious. In other words, it's the
perfect activity for people with all the time in the world and yet
no time at all. It forces a level of concentration and yet after a
while no concentration so the time just flows. It must be a good
pass time for monks. As you know, though, I'm no monk and since I
also find myself eating like a plow horse, I exercise pretty
continually. Mostly I exercise because I just have to move, but it
also helps the new weight to come on as muscle.

 Oh, Scully, if only you could see me now. I'm easily in as good of
shape as at any time you've known me or at least it seems so in
comparison to the pitiful condition I was in before. I suspect that
in addition to everything else my 'medicine' contains a steroid the
like of which most athletes would die for and -- I remind myself --
some do.

 The result of all this is that I've got more energy than I know
what to do with, I'm bulkin up like a prime steer, and yet I don't
feel anything like a steer. This is especially true when I get too
close to Ness or, heaven forbid, that we should accidentally touch
as she shows me how to set up the loom. It occurred to me on about
the second week that I didn't need to be in this kind of shape to
join Ness's commune. On the contrary, the last thing the Oz could
possibly want is a restless malcontent like me in that contented
little herd. No, they have something else planned for me where my
being physically fit is critical and I just know that I'm not going
to like it. By 'they', of course, I mean Charley.

 It's for this reason that I haven't allowed myself to get close to
Ness and give her what she so desperately wants and what 'they'
obviously want me to give her. How do I know what she wants? Come
on, Scully, I can practically smell it. It's in every liquid, doe-
eyed look that she sends my way. It's in the little suffering sigh
that seems potentially to hover about her bowed shoulders. Do you
think I'm blind? Well, yes, in this area you would be right to argue
that I am, but when there's not a case to distract me I'm really not
as chronically self-centered as you might think.

 (By the way, I'm expecting to get points big time for this when I
get back. In my current state of perpetual 'readiness', this staying
a celibate stud is killing me. At least I'm using precious little of
the hot water.)

 What it comes down to after nearly a month of this is that if I'm
not going to be staying, it's time that I left. It would be less
stressful to trade insults with Charley then to be around Ness
twenty-four/seven. For this reason I was actually waiting for my
walking papers to come down and late yesterday they did.
 
 

 Just before the time for the evening meal last night the common
room lights flashed twice. This is Charley's signal that he wants to
talk. Ness went alone to the meeting because I won't wait on that
faux-man's pleasure unless my presence is specifically requested.
Besides, if I'm right I'll be seeing Charley entirely too much in
the next little bit.
 
 Ness returns after quite a long time. I don't look her in the eye
because I already know she's been crying. She has a bundle of
clothes in her arms. I concentrate on those. Though still gray they
are not the thin things from Stockhome, but more substantial. Though
still folded, I can see seams and pockets. These are tailored 'Man'
clothes like Charley wears on his human body.

 I finger the woven cloth of the toga I wear. The weave is not very
good and the pattern childish and irregular, but I wove it myself
and it's warm. It can serve as a coat or blanket for wherever I'm
going, it's bound to be cold. "I'd like to take this with me," I
whisper.

 "Damn you, you knew!" she screams as she throws the bundle at me.
It opens. I was right, a one-piece gray coverall in something like
heavy cotton.

 Unfortunately, he's coming for me at 'lights on' the next day and
it's not even light's out yet. Nothing to pack except the toga and
nothing to do but listen to a friend sob. I realize that that is
what she has become -- a friend.

 I listen for a while as she tries not to cry too loudly but even
with the washroom door closed I can hear her. We don't eat or even
talk about eating. Lights out doesn't help; I can still hear her
sniffling from the pallet across the room. It's going to be a long
night.

 I know it's a mistake, but after two hours in the dark like this I
go and sit down beside her, not too close, but on her pallet.
 
 "Why not me?" she whispers. I hate that sound in the back of their
throats when people have been crying. "Am I that ugly?"

 "You're not; you know you're not. It's all I've been able to do
not to take you here, there and everywhere these past weeks. But
that would mean starting something that I knew couldn't last."
 
 She turns around to glare in my direction. In the nearly total
darkness she's not afraid of what I may see, but then I don't need
light to know that her eyes are swollen from crying. "And this is
why you've given me nothing!" She makes a small derisive laugh and
the dark silhouette before me slowly shakes its head. "Oh, I was
stupid. From the old stories, I thought --"

 "That real earthmen take it where and when they can? Some do, and
not just in stories. Is sex very free in the Family?" She nods
slowly. "I expected so. There's the ratio, not nearly fifty-fifty,
and you live very closely together."

 "And there's not much else to do."

 I smiled her way gently. I hope she can tell. "That, too."

 "So the stories are wrong?"

 "Groups living isolated like the Family eventually change the
stories to fit with the way they actually live."

 "This doesn't make me feel better."

 For a instant as we sit in the dark I flash on Ness as Sam, and
imagine our having
'wise' older brother to younger sister discussions about an
inappropriate teenage crush. It hurts.

 "Ness, there are several young men in your circle. You've
described them all to me. You like them. You'll be back with them
soon. You were just attracted to something. different."

 "Different is important if the alternative might as well be your
own brother." I can hear her shifting an arm's length away from me
in the dark. "I wanted it all. I wanted you to love me for myself
alone  me, but  that wasn't the only thing, that wasn't even the
most important thing. For my greed I will pay for the rest of my
life." When she went on her voice was bitter. "I should have come to
you when you were still half out of your head, maybe at night in the
dark when you called her name. Maybe you wouldn't have known the
difference."

 And here I thought it was all about sex. Now who's been clueless?

 "You wanted my child that badly?"

 "Is that so impossible to believe?"

 "You should have talked to me about this before now."

 "Would that have made a difference in the way you feel?"

 I hesitated. "Probably not, but it would have given me time to
think. It would have given us time to do something about it if I did
decide to... assist you." After all, I did agree to help you,
Scully, before we became intimate in the real way, but this was so
entirely different on so many levels. "It is most likely too late.
It usually takes more than one... attempt. You must know that a man
and a woman can only conceive at certain times."

 "Between random man and woman, that's true," she agreed, a touch
of eagerness entering her voice as if she had found a crack in my
arguments. "But you and I, we're not normal that way."

 I'm certain Scully would agree to the not normal part, but this
was something particular and it made a chill run up my back.

 "What, Ness? What did they do to you? What did Rodan promise you?"
I'm certain that she can hear the anger in my voice and I didn't
care. "It was for taking care of me, wasn't it? Was my complicity
suppose to be some sort of reward?"

 Her dark form shrank away from me. "It sounded so easy at the
time; such a sure thing. I would take care of you and they would
'adjust' me so that I would be certain to conceive. So I'm like a
box now, a treasure box, but you hold the only key. No other man can
give me what I need."
 
 "Ness... Ness... " I moaned, "that was a poor bargain. You have no
idea how poor."

 "But as long as it is you, we only need to lie together once. Just
once," she whispered again.
 
 Her revelation hit me hard and, damn that shapeshifting bastard,
but it smelled like the kind of thing he would do: make conception
dependent upon a very specific genetic catalyst. The right male, the
right female and it starts a chain reaction. It would be the
ultimate means of controlling your breeding program. Wouldn't want
your experiment to be ruined through random selection or something
petty like love or commitment. I'm just lucky that they didn't alter
her pheromones, too, so that I couldn't resist her.

 But considering how I've been feeling these last few weeks, maybe
they have.

 But this is where they went wrong. The harder they push, the
harder I push back.

 "Ness, you should never have let them."

 "I was my choice."

 "Forgive me but knowing Charley I doubt the 'choice' part. Well, I
have the right to choose, too." I could hear something like a
sniffle from her. It makes me angry all over again, but not at her.
"Ness, try to understand. It's not as if I haven't been milked, and
often, by these people. I'm sure that I have bastards enough in the
cosmos and clones as well, but this is at least one small thing I
can control. I won't perform for their amusement." She was clearly
crying now, though very, very softly. There has always been real
tears with Ness, no play-acting. What did she know about deception?
When did she ever have need to know? How I wanted to take her in my
arms like a child and comfort her, which meant it was the last thing
I should do.

 "It's for the best. Who knows what my genes are like after what
I've been through? You could end up with anything. And any child of
mine, Ness, believe me, any child of mine is cursed. They will take
away. At the very least they'll take it for testing again and
again." She continued to sit grieving and silent. What might happen
did not get through. "Most important, Ness, if you respect love,
there's Scully. I've never kept Scully from you. Do you think I
wouldn't see her when I closed by eyes?"

 "I wouldn't care."

 "A part of you would. always. And a part of me would."

 Ness ran her fingers with irritation through her hair. "I am SO
stupid."

 "You're not."

 "I thought it would be easy. You were kind after a while. You were
healthy. You don't even have the nightmares so much any more and you
don't call out her name. I thought since she wasn't here and I
was..."

 "But she is. She's here," dramatically I placed my hand over my
heart. "And she's here," I touched his temple,

 I may not cry your name out loud, my dear one, but in my head, in
my head I never stop.

 Ness has drifted away and by the light of the few fluorescent
panels left glowing during lights out I can see that she has begun
to pull down the woven cloths. Over the weeks they have come to
decorate a goody expanse of the sterile walls of our main room. "I
should have known. I should have known they would cheat. Just my
luck to be presented with an 'honorable' man."

 I went to her side to help and together we slowly folded the
weavings. "Why tell me now after all this time?" I asked.

 "What do I have to lose. It's too late. You'll leave in a few
hours and I'll go back to the Circle. There will be no child for me.
I suppose that I really haven't lost anything then since there would
not have been one anyway. I told you that there has not been any
children, not even any pregnancies for a long time." I could feel
her desperation through the very length of the cloth the spanned us.
"Do you understand what that means? With no children, there will be
no one to teach. No one to be Mother and Father and Sister and
Grandmother to. No reason to keep the stories, no reason to weave
the tales into pictures in the cloth. No reason to do anything."

 It's cruel maybe, but tentatively I put my arm around her
shoulders. I think I needed the comfort as much as she.

 "I don't want your pity," she sniffed, trying to pull away.

 "It's that or nothing. Actually, there is more. There is
friendship."

 After a moment she leaned into me. Despite the layers of clothes
we both wore, I could feel her trembling. Shit, I was trembling,
too. I led her back to the pallet so that we could sit down before
we both fell down.

 I began to rub her chilled, bare feet. It was something to do with
my hands. She sighed, deeply. "You're not what I expected."

 "A lot of people say that."

 There is nothing much more to discuss. I did sleep with her to
keep us both warm but sleep is all we did. Just before she fell
asleep, when I felt her