By: Mariatex
mariatex@worldnet.att.net
 

Date: Tue, 28 May 96 21:53:27 -0500

This three-part tale is a semi-sequel to my previous story, "Dawn,
Texas" (available at the gossamer archive--or by email from me).
I think that "Utopia" can stand more or less on its own, although
there are references which might be more intelligible if you've
read "Dawn."

This is *not* a "relationship" piece--in my timeline, Mulder's
romantic interest lies outside the FBI.  However, I like to think
that his sacred partnership with DKS is portrayed respectfully and
realistically.  To do so was one of the three challenges I issued
to myself in crafting this fable.  Here's hoping I got it right...

Once again, I have taken dramatic license with the geography of the
state of Texas.  There *is* a Utopia in the Hill Country, and you
*do* have to ford a river to get there.  However, it is located
much further from Austin than 33.7 miles.  In addition, The Univer-
sity described herein bears little or no resemblance to the actual
UT campus.

Before beginning, I need to thank WestShore who was unfailingly
sympathetic while I struggled (creatively and otherwise) during the
writing of "Utopia."  She also gave me invaluable editorial advice.

Any reader comments on this story would be welcome.

DISCLAIMER: Clearly, FM, DKS ad the X-Files belong to Chris Carter,
Ten Thirteen Productions and Fox TV.  They are borrowed here
without permission, and with no expectation of profit.  As for the
rest of it: I made this.
 

Perception's a tool that's pointed on both ends.

_Red Dragon_
Thomas Harris
 

**************************

"Utopia, Texas"
by mariatex@delphi.com
 

Part One of Three

     By the fall, the two of us had fallen into a very agreeable
pattern.
     About once a month, Mulder would be able spend a slightly
extended weekend--Friday night to Monday morning--with me in Texas.
I had officially joined the PhD program at the University of Texas
at Austin by then.  As I was only required to be on campus Tuesdays
and Thursdays, I'd been able to rationalize living off campus.
*Way* off campus.  In a rental house on fifteen acres just outside
of Utopia, Texas, to be exact.  Thirty-three-point-seven miles from
my front door to the parking lot nearest the physics building.
     Mulder usually arrived on a flight from Dulles which touched
down at Austin National early Friday evening.  When he had called
to make arrangements for his first visit, I'd offered to pick him
up at the airport, but he had declined.  I continued to make that
offer each time Mulder phoned to let me know he'd be coming,
but gave up once I figured out that it was never going to be
accepted.  Mulder's stated excuse was that he hated for me to have
to make such a long round-trip.  I didn't doubt the veracity of
that statement; it was probably true enough.  Still, I had a
feeling that my mileage was not his main concern.  For some reason,
Mulder simply preferred to drive to Utopia by himself.  I fretted
about this implicit rejection of my company until I realized that
I felt exactly the same way myself.  It was always a tonic for me
to make that trip without a chattering passenger.  Alone and
undistracted, I could fully savor the sight of Austin--the
skyscrapers and the brown smutch in the sky--receding in my rear-
view mirror.  I would roll down the windows, pop a Stevie Ray
Vaughn tape into the cassette deck, and happily mark off the stages
of my journey--the first glimpse of cattle, of a hawk circling, of
goats grazing by the side of the road.  With each sighting, I could
breathe a little deeper, think a little more clearly.  The final
break with the big city came just before the turnoff for my house,
where the Crystal Creek--a tributary of the Sabinal River--was
allowed to flow over the road.  I usually gunned the engine as I
approached that water crossing; if we'd had any recent rainfall,
the result would be a very satisfying splash.  There was something
about fording the creek which made me feel that I had entered a new
world, one which did not include any of my urban worries.  It was
like crossing the Pecos, the Delaware, the Rubicon; things were
always different, better on the other side of a river.  Mulder too
must have enjoyed travelling solo, so that he could concentrate
fully on the decompressing pleasure of putting so many picturesque
miles between himself and the FBI, of gradually shedding his
uptight DC persona, of leaving behind his big-city blues.
     I would be ready when he finally pulled onto "my" property,
his rental car leaving a plume of white dust in the air.  After a
lengthy welcome, Mulder would change out of what he called his FBI
drag and join me on the porch.  I had furnished it with a set of
old but still serviceable green wicker furniture from the Austin
Goodwill.  We'd have a few beers and a plate of nachos while
watching the sun go down.
     Mulder was usually pretty quiet at first; he would simply sit
there, absorbing the silence and the scenery.  After a few minutes,
though, he'd start talking.  Sometimes I heard about his latest
case.  It was mind-blowing to listen to tales of psychics and
mutants and a boxcar in New Mexico while we lazed in the midst of
all that exurban peacefulness.
     In speaking about his career, Mulder was unfailingly modest,
ascribing most of his early successes to luck--and his later ones
to Dana Scully.  Unfortunately for him, there were limits to how
much he could downplay his abilities with me--after all, I'd
already seen him in action.  By carefully interpreting his matter-
of-fact accounts, I was able to glean that Mulder had been a star
from the beginning.  The FBI had quickly identified--and exploited-
-his uncanny ability to synthesize from a smear of blood to a point
of view, to look at a series of chaotic, seemingly unrelated crime
scenes and find the thread of some lunatic logic, to project
himself so deeply into the mind of a barely human monster that he
could explain and predict his behavior.
     Mulder let me talk too.  He was always interested in my tales
of academia, and sympathized endlessly when it came to the running
test-of-wills I was conducting with the chairman of the Physics
Department.  While maintaining an outward pose of openmindedness,
Dr Bonaviste consistently worked behind the scenes to thwart the
careers of less "traditional"--read non-white, non-male--physics
students.  I'm sure that for him, it was a logistical choice;
people like that had no chance of excelling in the hard sciences,
and so most of the encouragement--and resources--needed to go to
more promising candidates.  Mulder was the perfect person to talk
to about that kind of stuff; attentive and empathetic, he gave
advice which was consistently on target.  Pretty soon I had Dr
Chauviniste eating out of my hand.
     We talked until quite late the first time that Mulder came to
Utopia, and I was apprehensive about what would happen when we
finally ran out of things to say.  We'd hung out together only once
before, back in the spring, when I'd been living in Dawn, Texas.
Mulder and I had met when he'd shown up there to investigate the
disappearance of Rachel, the twelve-year-old granddaughter of my
friend, Nerline Waddell.  He'd left immediately after wrapping up
the case, but came back to the area not long afterwards in order to
check out a famous UFO-related local landmark.  Mulder had seemed
interested in me when I ran into him during that return visit, but
the getting-acquainted process had been cut short by an urgent call
from DC.  When Mulder got in touch to wangle a return invitation,
I was in the middle of interviewing, enrolling, moving.  I never
really got a chance to pin down what expectations he had for his
visit; as far as I knew, he was just in the mood for was some
platonic R and R in rural Texas.  I hoped otherwise, but I couldn't
be sure.  So when the conversation did finally lag, I was very
careful.  Getting to my feet and stretching, I announced that I'd
had a long day and needed to get some sleep.  Leaning over to give
Mulder a goodnight kiss, I made sure--and this took iron self-
discipline--that it was no more than a casual, friendly gesture.
But when I began to pull away, he grabbed my hand and wouldn't let
me go.
     I was thrilled--right at the very top of my head, a delicious
tingling sensation started up.  However, one slight nagging worry
prevented me from being totally ecstatic.  A lifetime of
socializing with physics nerds might not have prepared me for a man
of the world like Mulder.  I worried about measuring up, about
looking good enough, *being* good enough for him.  But that night
I learned that penetrating insights could be used for more than
nailing bad guys--and outmaneuvering department chairmen.  Mulder
instinctively understood, not only what I was going through, but
also what to do and say in order to put me at ease.  It didn't take
him long to make me feel cherished, loved, beautiful.  There was no
first-time awkwardness, not a single mood-breaking question or
hesitation.  He got inside of me in every possible way; when it
came to what I wanted, what I needed from him, Mulder just *knew*.
     I learned something else about him that night.  I had always
known that Mulder was a person of contrasts; from the beginning,
I'd been struck by the difference between the Joe-FBI surface and
his interior life--the flights of intuitions, the out-there
opinions.  But that wasn't the sole dichotomy in his makeup--the
suit-and-tie exterior also contrasted sharply with his sexual
technique.  This guy who hardly ever raised his voice, who was
unfailingly modest and self-effacing, who seldom wore shorts, or a
partially unbuttoned shirt, was a wildman in bed.
     To say that I lost my inhibitions--and that Mulder had none to
begin with--is to understate the case.  At one point, I found
myself in a most unusual--and satisfying--position.  While I was
more or less...submerged...and Mulder was kind of...suspended...he
managed--what control!--to reach around and somehow...hmmm...you
see, we were pretty much...
     Well, even if I could describe it, you wouldn't believe it.
I was lame for a day and a half, I had to wear turtlenecks during
a heatwave and that tingling sensation eventually became a little
annoying, but I tell you, for a week afterwards I had a smile on my
face that I don't think a car wreck could have wiped off.

     Mulder seemed to thrive on no more than a couple hours of
sleep a night; it didn't matter if those hours had been preceded by
three or four rounds of passionate gymnastics.  When I would wake
up late on Saturday morning, he'd be gone.  First, he would do a
run of about eight miles, sprinting down my long driveway to FM 150
and circling back to the house over a dirt road which connected two
large ranches.  After his run, he'd take a shower and bike into
town.  Mulder generally had a light breakfast at the Crystal Creek
Cafe, a local watering hole I'd recommended to him as being
frequented almost exclusively by down-home regulars; I knew that he
would enjoy the atmosphere.  I found out later how much the
atmosphere enjoyed *him*.
     Usually, when strangers dared to show up at the Crystal Creek
for breakfast, the regulars reacted by subjecting them to
unnervingly intense scrutiny, and then ignoring them altogether.
As the result of some mysterious process, Mulder was exempt from
this treatment.  Although, according to all reports, he did no more
than sit at a table and have coffee and maybe toast, he quickly
evolved into the special guest star among that cast of characters.
It got to the point where Lurlene and Wanda, the two ancient
waitresses, would nearly go to Fist City over the issue of who got
to serve him.  The manager of the cafe was forced to work out a
turn-taking arrangement so that the two old bats wouldn't have to
be physically separated every time the object of their affection
dropped in.
     I often wondered what Mulder thought about all this.  As I
said, he was the most self-effacing person I'd ever met;
ironically, he was also the most accomplished, the most unusual.
Yet Mulder resolutely avoided being complemented or flattered;
indeed, any suggestion that he might be at all out of the ordinary
was met with near-hostility.  How could he reconcile that humble
self-image with the relative pandemonium which greeted him at the
Crystal Creek?  There was no way Mulder could have simply failed to
notice those goings-on.  A guy who had once walked into my extreme-
ly cluttered office at school and pointed out that the phone,
half hidden under a pile of papers, was off the hook (it was, but
only by about a quarter of an inch) could have hardly overlooked
the sight of two female senior citizens playing tug-of-war with a
menu.
     I wasn't any better able to answer that question after viewing
the phenomenon first hand.  One day Mulder found me awake after his
run and persuaded me to accompany him to the cafe--I insisted we
take the car.  Old crusty ranchers who had hardly ever given me the
time of day were soon clustered around our table, glad-handing us
both and asking my friend for his opinion on subjects as disparate
as whether current methods of prevention would contain a recent
outbreak of brucellosis and if crime was actually on the increase
or decrease.  People practically trailed us to the exit as we
left.
     When Mulder was through breaking hearts at the Crystal Creek,
he would bike back to my house.  I'd have the _Utopia Reporter_
waiting there for him.  He looked forward to reading our weekly
newspaper, shaking his head in wonder at some of the articles.
Like some small-town Texas papers, the _Reporter_ published the
"police calls" made during the previous week, and Mulder took
particular delight in reading about what passed for violent crime
in Utopia: trespassing, vandalism and the occasional case of
cattle-rustling.
     While Mulder read the paper, I would check the contents of my
kitchen cabinets and refrigerator in preparation for a trip to the
grocery store.  But instead of writing down what I needed, I simply
called out the necessary items to Mulder.  Even if he appeared to
be totally engrossed in the _Reporter_, he could remember what I
told him and, at the grocery store, would patiently reproduce the
list for me as we pushed a cart up and down the aisles of the
Wimberley HEB.
     Sometimes, we'd be shopping for a quiet supper for just the
two of us, but quite often we hosted a group of university types
for a very informal dinner party.  These affairs were originally
limited to my physics colleagues--pre- and post-docs, grads and
undergrads.  The first party was held to introduce Mulder to the
nerdlings, as I called our group.  It was such a success that
Saturday-night dinners at my house became a kind of irregularly-
scheduled tradition.
     Conversation was the main attraction.  Nerdlings love to
argue, and prize a rollicking difference of opinion above almost
all other forms of collective amusement.  Since we are remarkably
homogenous when it comes to conventionally divisive topics such as
politics and religion, our arguments are usually about more
abstruse topics--dark matter and event horizons.  Our smart-aleck
guests couldn't wait to pit themselves against one another in hopes
of coming out on top in a discussion of Einstein's ball-in-a-box
argument.
     It did my ego good to know that the food was also a draw.  Of
course, nerdlings are generally undemanding in that regard.  I love
to cook for science majors; they tend to rave about any dish which
is not actually burned.  Mulder too was overly impressed by my
cooking prowess.  I tried to take the mystery out of the process by
telling him that it was only thermodynamics.  But he, like the
nerdlings, remained unconvinced that some kind of estrogen-related
magic wasn't involved.
     Eventually, word began to spread.  Whiz kids from other
departments started calling me up and fishing around for
invitations.  Mulder and I came to host pre-med students, budding
astronomers, would-be geologists and several exceptionally self-
confident liberal-arts majors--including a junior studying art-
history whom I initially thought had some kind of intellectual
death wish.  When the non-scientists proved able to hold their own,
I quit using career choice as a criterion, and broadened my
definition of nerdling.  In the end, the sole qualification for
attending became a high IQ--as long as you had that essential
ingredient, you could probably hold your own.  To my intense
satisfaction, the star of one Saturday-night show turned out to be
a Dylan Thomas-specialist whom I'd invited because her monograph on
"The Force That Through the Green Fuse," published in the UT
literary quarterly, had influenced my thinking about reactivity.
She wowed the nerdlings with Dylan's cutting-edge views on ecology.
     My single regret about these evenings was that female
partygoers like the English major were usually heavily outnumbered
by males.  I tried hard to hang onto the few women guests who came,
but it was difficult.  The occasional spouse or girlfriend who
would accompany a nerdling were frequently intimidated by the
content and tenor of our conversation (Mulder once had to rush
outside to break up a fistfight occasioned by a wave/particle
disagreement).  In discussing this problem as we readied the house
one Saturday afternoon, I said that I sympathized with Wendy; I too
was surrounded by Lost Boys.  Mulder barely reacted to that
statement, but alluded to it later that night, when I discovered
that two math majors had worked out a complicated problem on my
grandmother's tablecloth.  "What should I do?" I asked in
desperation.  "Think happy thoughts," he deadpanned.
     Despite having to act as the bouncer on occasion, I know that
Mulder had a great time at those parties too.  And the same
understated charisma which attracted the Crystal Creek Breakfast
Club worked on the nerdlings as well.  At first, since they had the
strength of numbers, our guests engaged in some fairly challenging
behavior.  Mulder might have commanded a certain amount of respect
as an FBI agent but he was, after all, a practitioner of one of the
softest of sciences.  As such, he was fair game for intimidation
tactics by the nerdlings, especially my physics pals.  These were
guys, after all, who tended to think of inorganic chemistry, for
example, as a no-brainer time-waster.  They soon learned, however,
that there was no percentage in trying to outsmart Mulder.  No
matter how esoteric and high-falutin' the subject under discussion,
he could not only keep up with them, he was capable of making
thought-provoking contributions.  Once he floated a theory about
quantum cosmogony which had even the post-docs amazed.
     After having earned the respect of the nerdlings, Mulder
easily came to merit their trust as well.  At some point in the
evening, one of them would usually seek him out for a one-on-one
talk.  I'd catch sight of Mulder over in a corner somewhere,
listening with his typically fervid concentration, while a high-
IQ basket-case elicited his advice or just poured out his heart.
     One of Mulder's most frequent "patients" was Peter Fisk; I
often saw the two of them huddled together.  Peter had aggressively
lobbied for an invitation; although medical students didn't
generally count for much with the nerdlings, he had evinced no
qualms about going up against them--with good reason.  Peter had
enrolled at UT at fourteen years of age, and at eighteen was in his
second year of med school, preparing for a career in neurobiology.
Known inevitably as "Doogie," he was fearsomely intelligent, and
his scholastic career perfectly reflected that fact: he'd scored a
1600 on his SAT's in seventh grade, aced the MCAT at fifteen, and
had the equivalent of a 4-point from first grade on.  His
performance at our parties was equally distinguished.  If the
concept under discussion would not be already known to him--and
that happened very rarely--Peter could grasp it after the most
perfunctory explanation.  And God help you if a concept *he* was
explaining to *you* took more than two seconds to be assimilated.
Listening to Peter talk, I sympathized with his teachers; in
kindergarten, he had probably given lectures on the Phoenicians
to the hapless caregiver trying to teach him his ABC's.
     There was a limit, however, to Peter's genius.  In the area of
interpersonal skills, he was effectively disabled.  It seemed
impossible for him to talk about himself without adding a lot of
boastful asides; I didn't mind this trait too much, but other
nerdlings sometimes became quite annoyed.  A couple of the physics
post-docs actively sought a confrontation with Peter one night
which I had to break up by pulling the lasagna out of the oven
early--luckily, no one pointed out that it was barely warm in the
center.
     Mulder, who was bemused by Peter's lack of social savvy, once
explained to me that bragging was psychologically necessary for
him. "It's how Peter defines himself, Becca," he said.  "He's
always been the wunderkind, the prodigy.  If he doesn't
continually present himself that way, Peter loses sight of who he
is."  I found it most interesting that Mulder was so tolerant of
his patient's behavior.  I had absolutely no doubt that he too had
maxed out the IQ machine at 180.  Yet it would have been utterly
out of character for Mulder to flaunt his intelligence the way
Peter routinely did.
     The attitude of Peter's friend Danny Cross fell somewhere
between Mulder's amused forbearance and the nerdlings' edgy
irritation.  Danny had been Doogie until Peter showed up; he was
another medical prodigy, just not quite as prodigious.  Also in his
second year of med school, he clocked in at a comparatively middle-
aged twenty.  Predictably, Danny had become the target of some
ribbing about having been surpassed by the young up-and-comer.  In
spite of this, the two geniuses had become friends, and even
devised together some wild variation of laser tag which--in
violation of every rule and in true nerdling style--they conducted
late at night in various highly restricted areas on campus.  My
conclusion after having observed their interaction, was that,
despite the eye-rolling he sometimes did while Peter pontificated,
Danny had adjusted to his demotion well.
     Mulder disagreed.  He made his opinion known one Sunday
morning as we talked over the party which had been held the night
before.  This conversation proceeded in a desultory way as we lay
in bed drinking coffee and reading the _Sunday New York Times_ that
Mulder special-ordered from the Utopia Gro-Mart at ruinous expense.
When I favored him with my analysis of Danny's relationship with
Peter, he said, "I don't know, Becca.  It seems to me there's some
psychopathology there."
     Given my deep reverence for Mulder's brainpower, it wouldn't
have been possible for me to consciously discount that statement.
But I did kind of file it away in a dismissive way.  Since Danny
wasn't frothing at the mouth or actively targeting Peter, my own
viewpoint had more credibility with  me.  This woeful lapse of good
judgment was especially ludicrous given the fact that, only a few
weeks before, I'd made an attempt to horn in on Mulder's area of
expertise, and had wound up badly embarrassing myself.

Continued in Part Two
 

===========================================================================

From: mariatex@delphi.com
Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative
Subject: NEW: "Utopia, Texas" 2/3
Date: Tue, 28 May 96 21:56:22 -0500
 

"Utopia, Texas"
by mariatex@delphi.com

See Part One for disclaimer

Part Two of Three

     Walking near the northern edge of my landlord's property one
sunny, blustery day, Mulder and I had come across a man's wallet
lying on the ground.  I confidently theorized that it had been lost
during the current deer season--the owner still leased the acreage
to a few hunters each year.  Mulder didn't contradict me; he just
hunkered down and looked at the wallet, eventually transferring his
gaze outward to our surroundings.  I was actually somewhat miffed
that he continued to investigate rather than immediately
corroborating my theory.
     Mulder didn't pick up the wallet until quite some time had
passed.  I watched over his shoulder as he shuffled quickly through
the contents.  Big deal, a couple of credit cards, no cash.  In
case he was mentally quibbling with my scenario, I said, rather
defensively, "You don't need cash when you're hunting deer."
     "Yes, but there's no hunting license either, is there?" was
his reply.
     That was the first time I ever picked up on something.  When
Mulder knew something which nobody else had figured out yet, he
tended to put that knowledge in the form of a question.  No reply
was necessary to this type of question--in fact, almost every
question Mulder posed was basically rhetorical.  If you wanted to
reply, that was fine, but you didn't need to--he already had the
answer.  "Doesn't it look as if the wallet's been out here for at
least a couple of months?" he asked.  Well, as a matter of fact...
     "See how there's kind of a tideline?"  Mulder gestured to a
faintly visible arrangement of twigs and leaves which *did* appear
to have been left when some body of water receded.  Apparently, the
very firm, very dry ground on which we were standing was actually
the bed of an on-again-off-again creek.
     "Isn't it a little more likely that this wash would have
flooded in the spring?"  Now that you mention it...  "And a couple
of those credit cards have already expired."  Oh, have they?  I
hadn't noticed...
     "If you followed this wash, wouldn't it eventually flow under
Highway 12?  There should be a bridge there, don't you think?"  I
struggled to situate this particular location according to my
extremely hazy mental map of Hays County.  Yeah, probably...
     "I'm wondering if maybe a truck driver wasn't accosted south
of that bridge after a big storm during the spring of last year--we
could probably pin down the date better if we checked the weather
records.  The guy who robbed him may have stripped out the cash as
he was driving away from the scene, and then tossed the wallet into
the floodwaters as he crossed that bridge."
     I finally spoke up.  "South?" I nearly squealed.  "Why south?"
     "Isn't there a rest stop south of where that bridge would be?"
     Come to think of it...  "Why a truck driver?" I was compelled
to ask.
     Mulder handed me one of the cards he'd taken from the wallet.
"It's a commercial driver's license."
     He was right, of course.  When we finally got hold of Mr
Farrell--like all truckdrivers, he didn't spend much time at home--
the story he told dovetailed exactly with Mulder's re-creation.
     So why I failed to credit his comment about Danny's state of
mind, I'll never know.  If I had reflected for one minute on how
Mulder had solved the abduction/murder of my friend Nerline's
granddaughter, I would have come to recognize an obvious truth--his
deductive powers were far superior to mine.  And the wallet
incident should have been the clincher, should have led me to
believe that Mulder was very certain of his analysis of Danny.
Because for once he didn't put it in the form of a question.

     One weekend, Mulder picked up his Sunday _Times_ late Saturday
afternoon during an emergency trip to the Gro-Mart.  I had left him
in charge of the spaghetti sauce while I hung up a load of wash.
As soon as I walked back inside the house, I knew that there'd been
a disaster; the smell of burned marinara is quite distinctive.
Mulder was extremely apologetic; he had turned up the heat on the
theory that "it would cook faster."  I had to forgive him--that was
a reasonable excuse, thermodynamic-wise.  However, I was still
left with the dire necessity of producing gallons of spaghetti
sauce within an impossibly short period of time.  Mulder quickly
suggested that, under the circumstances, store-bought sauce would
be an acceptable substitute for home-made.  He wound up buying out
the Gro-Mart's entire stock of Prego.
     Despite that last-minute crisis, the party seemed to go well.
Only Mulder was ill at ease.  "Where's Peter?" he asked me after it
had become obvious that Doogie wasn't coming.  "I don't know," I
said.  "I never heard from him."
     "What about Danny?"  He too had failed to show up.
     "Now, Danny called," I said.  "He couldn't make it.  Had
a paper to write or something."
     I couldn't imagine why the absence of those two guys was a
source of concern to Mulder, but it clearly was.  And my answers
did nothing to make him feel better.  I might have worried more
about his discomfiture if a vehement dispute about Stephen Hawking
hadn't broken out shortly after that exchange.  As a fervent
disciple of Rupert Sheldrake, it was incumbent on me to downgrade
Hawking's accomplishments.  "If he was a *real* physicist, he'd be
at Cambridge," I said, which made his admirers howl.
     I looked around for Mulder.  Although he himself had gone to
Oxford, he was usually willing to help me out whenever I got myself
in a rhetorical jam.  But I couldn't find him anywhere.  The last
time I'd glimpsed Mulder, the art-history major had been asking him
for advice about term-paper topics.  Now she was sticking up for
Hawking, and he was gone.  I searched all through the tiny house,
even knocked on the bathroom door.  No Mulder.
     I finally found him on the porch.  When I opened the front
door, the light from the living room spilled out, and I could see
him standing, leaning against one of the posts which held up the
porch roof, staring out into the dark.
     "Mulder, what's wrong?" I asked, rubbing my arms.  It was cold
out there.
     When he turned to me, I saw that his eyes were haunted.  I
hadn't seen that expression on his face since back in Dawn, when he
had been overwhelmed by the plight of poor Rachel.  Sometimes when
Mulder first showed up at my house, there would be a trace of
ghostly pain in his eyes, but after a few hours--and a few beers-
-it would disappear.  Now I was seeing the full-force version of
that look again, and I had no idea why.
     "Becca, Peter is not answering his phone," he said.  I noticed
then that he had the cel phone in his hand.
     Huh?  "He's probably out, honey.  That's all."
     "I need you to call Danny."  Apparently, Mulder knew Peter's
number, but not Danny's.
     My first instinct was to ask him what was going on.  My
second, much stronger impulse mandated that I avoid any such
questioning.  For some reason, it was vitally important that I
accept everything Mulder was saying at face value.  Asking any of
the questions currently surging through my brain would be taken as
evidence of disloyalty.  So I simply said, "Sure, I will.  Let me
go get his number."
     Inside the house, Hawking had been forgotten.  Now the
nerdlings were arguing about whether it could be proven that
Newtonian principles would hold true in all galaxies.  I scurried
immediately for the bedroom--Mulder had transmitted to me something
of the urgency, the concern he was obviously experiencing.  As I
made my way back to the porch, I flipped frantically through the
pages of my address book.
     I was handed the phone the instant I came through the front
door.  I dialed the number.  Two rings.  "He's not there, is he?"
Mulder asked.
     "I'm going to get the answering machine," I said.  "Should I
leave a message?"
     He shook his head wearily.  "Do you know where Peter lives?"
     I handed him the phone.  "Sure.  He and Danny are both in
Milton," I said, naming the biggest dorm on campus.  "They share a
suite--neither one of them has a roommate."
     "Can you take me there?"
     That was too much; I couldn't suppress my incredulous
reaction.  "Now?" I asked.  I felt an instantaneous stab of guilt
when I saw the deeply disappointed expression on his face.  At
least I didn't go on; at least I didn't say, "Mulder, I can't leave
now.  I have a houseful of guests and absolutely no clue about
what's going on."  I attempted to make up for my betrayal by
pretending I hadn't asked that one-word question.  "Sure, I can go.
Just give me a minute."  I ran back inside, told the oldest, most
responsible post-doc that I had to run an errand, grabbed a sweater
and then stuck my head out the front door.  "Do you need me to get
your coat?" I asked Mulder.  He didn't say anything, merely waited
for me to notice that he was already wearing it.

     Mulder sat in silence for most of the 45-minute drive to
Austin.  It wasn't until we were right outside the city that he
finally spoke up.  "Tell me about these laser-tag games Peter and
Danny played."
     Huh?  Why the hell were we talking about laser tag?
     "Well, you know, they'd play laser tag," I said lamely.
During the ensuing silence, I tried desperately to come up with a
few details to embellish that very plain statement.  "But they
never went to the public place on 7th.  They'd gotten ahold of the
equipment somewhere--you know, the vests and the guns.  That way,
the two of them could play whenever, wherever they wanted.  They
especially liked to do it at night in places which were kind of
off-limits.  Peter told me that trespassing added to the thrill."
     "So where did they play?"
     It suddenly occurred to me that Mulder was speaking in the
past tense--and that he had me talking that way too.  I swallowed
a choking fear, and concentrated again.  "Well, I know they played
after hours in the lab part of the Biology building.  Peter told me
about how he ran around a corner down there one time and nearly
smacked into--"  I stopped after looking over at Mulder; he was in
no mood for anecdotes.  I reverted to wracking my brain.  "And they
played in the basement of the hospital, somewhere down around the
MRI machine."
     Mulder peered at me quizzically; I guessed that a single
anecdote would be acceptable.  "They stayed down there too long,
and both their watches went crazy from the magnetism."
     He nodded.  "Where else?"
     I tried to recall what I'd heard from Peter and Danny about
their laser-tag adventures.  I suddenly remembered one story which
had scared me to death.  "They could get out on the roof of Carter
Three."
     That was it, I could tell.  It happened right then.  Although
there was no outward sign of it--Mulder remained perfectly calm and
composed--my last revelation had triggered something.  All those
seemingly unrelated facts were being given cause-and-effect
coherence inside his brain.  Of course, I remained completely in
the dark, as anybody else would have been.  But, for Mulder, it was
enough to go on.  Because he could fill in any gaps with his
trademark intuitive connections.
     "Carter Three?" he asked after a long moment.  "What's that?"
     "Part of the Carter complex," I told him.  "It's where all the
physical science departments are located.  The three buildings-
-Carter One, Two and Three--are all connected underground and by
these aerial walkways.  Peter and Danny told me they found an
unlocked door which led to the roof of Carter Three.  It was
awesome up there, according to them.  You could see forever.   And
there were no guardrails, no fences, nothing to stop you from
falling--just this brick wall no more'n 6 inches high which ran
around the edge of the building."
     "How many stories?" Mulder asked.
     I didn't know for sure.  "Eight or nine."
     Mulder nodded thoughtfully and didn't speak again until we
pulled up in front of the dorm.  "What's Peter's room number?"
     I had to consult my address book.  "He's on the fifth floor,"
I replied.  "518."
     Mulder strode through the corridors of Milton so quickly that
I had to keep breaking into a run in order not to be left behind.
As I hurried along, I began to feel disoriented, dislocated.  I
didn't know what was going on, what I had gotten myself into, why
I was jogging down the
corridors of a UT dorm instead of arguing about Stephen Hawking
back at my house.
     There was no response when Mulder knocked on the door of 518.
"Peter?" he called out.  Still nothing.  He tried the door, and the
knob turned easily in his hand.
     Although Mulder had said nothing about what he expected to
find, I had responded to his demeanor by working up this
generalized sense of dread.  And so, when he pushed open the door,
I steeled myself to see something horrible--wrecked disorder or
maybe even blood.
     To my relief, Peter's room appeared perfectly normal.  A
little on the messy side, that's all.
     "What now?" I asked Mulder, thinking that this scene must be
at odds with his expectations.  But he was too preoccupied to
answer.  Watching him prowl through the room, not touching
anything, I thought to myself that it was is if he was questioning
the room, giving the inanimate objects in it a visual equivalent of
the third-degree.
     I looked around while waiting for Mulder to acknowledge my
presence.  When my gaze traveled over Peter's computer, I decided
to make a helpful  announcement.  "The computer's off."  Although
Mulder's back was to me--and to the computer, he said, "I don't
think so.  Isn't the screen just blanked?"  Only then did I become
aware of what he had already scoped out; the lights on the tower
unit under the desk indicated that the hard drive was on.
     Mulder now joined me in front of the computer, the two of us
staring at the darkened screen.  I was going to depress a key in
order to activate the display, but Mulder caught my hand.  He did
it using a pencil he picked up from the desktop.
     There was some kind of Windows-based word-processing
application open, and on it Peter had written a note.  "It's all
been a big lie.  I'm sorry."
     "What does it mean?" I asked Mulder.
     He didn't answer my question.  "Check the time," he said
instead.
     I started to look at my watch.  "No, on the screen," Mulder
said.
     I hadn't seen the tiny time-and-date statement in the upper
left-hand corner of the note.  Peter had used some kind of special
feature to fix exactly when the document had been created.  It said
11:20.  Now I did have to look at my watch--10:30.   "He probably
just never changed the computer's internal clock when daylight
savings ended," I postulated.  "Or maybe he's got battery
problems."  I was not yet cured of the impulse to assist Mulder by
offering up my own amateurish theories.
     He didn't comment on either idea.  Staring at the screen, he
said, "I need you to take me to Carter Three, Becca."
     I was more successful at suppressing the natural questions at
this point.  I still had the feeling that Mulder would be
disappointed if I quizzed him.  However, I no longer believed that
it was because my curiosity would be taken as evidence of
disbelief, and therefore disloyalty.  In fact, Mulder was loath to
be questioned because he didn't have any answers.  Not the kind of
answers which would make sense to someone less attuned, less
perceptive than himself.
     As soon as we got outside the dorm, I was prompted for
directions to Carter Three.  Mulder then took off at a dead run;
there would be no keeping up with him now.  As I trailed along in
his wake, my feeling of estrangement grew.  I could now barely
recognize Mulder.  The guy I knew was a sweetheart who always
offered to help clean up and liked kicking around ruined Texas
forts, imagining how they looked in 1861.  This Mulder, the one who
didn't care that he was leaving me behind--and in the dark--was a
stranger to me.  I'd always known that he was capable of an
extraordinary focus, but this level of ruthless singlemindedness
was frightening to me.
     When I finally caught up with Mulder, he was standing in the
middle of a walkway, craning his neck to see the roof of Carter
Three.  I dared to ask a question.  "Do you think they're up
there?"
     As usual, I got no reply.  Instead Mulder lowered his gaze,
seeming to notice for the first time that the sidewalk on which we
were standing was heavily traveled.  Quite a few students were
passing by us, talking and laughing.  I too checked out the date-
night activity.  When I looked over at Mulder, he was gone.  I
finally caught sight of him as he rounded the corner of the
building, heading for the back.
     "What's on the other side?" he asked me after I joined him.
He continued to alternate staring up towards the roof of Carter
Three and down at the ground around the building's periphery.
     I felt so relieved that Mulder was actually speaking to me
that I practically started jabbering.  "Just a parking lot--it
probably stays deserted over the weekend."
     We rounded the corner of Carter Three.  As I had predicted,
the lights and activities of Saturday night faded away; it was much
darker and quieter back there.  As it happened, I was staring up at
the roof when Mulder stopped dead in his tracks, and so I very
nearly ran into him.  He was staring at a shadowy area near the
base of the building.  Gazing in the same direction, I could see
only a flash of pale color.
     "Oh, no," Mulder said, and I could hear despair in his voice,
but no surprise.  It was is if he had been hoping against hope not
to see exactly what confronted him now.
     "What, Mulder?" I asked.  I still couldn't make out what it
was in the shadows.  When he again failed to answer, I had to find
out for myself, to follow him as he walked towards that
indistinguishable pattern of light and shadow.  I didn't want to do
it; the foreboding was very strong now.  But my need to know proved
to be more powerful.
     It wasn't until I got within a few feet that I saw what Mulder
had seen from very far away.
     Peter.
     He looked--there's no other word for it--broken.  It was
instantly clear, from the unnatural lines and angles of his body,
that he was dead.  I felt horror, revulsion and--in contrast to
Mulder--shock.  Without even realizing that I was doing it, I
started retracing my steps backwards.
     I stopped after going about ten feet, and turned around to
face  towards the parking lots.  That's when I was finally able to
put it all together.  "Poor Peter," I said mournfully as I thought
about the letter on the computer back in his room.  Now I
understood that it was a suicide note.  The stress must have gotten
to Peter; there was no way any mere human being could have lived up
to the demands of being as infallibly, robotically intelligent as
Doogie felt he needed to be.  The note made it plain that he had
begun to feel like an impostor. In the end, doing a swan dive off
Carter Three was the sole way for him to relieve the pressure of
maintaining that pose of intellectual invulnerability.
     When I looked back, around, I saw that Mulder was crouched
over the body.  I figured that as soon as he had finished his
examination, we'd get on the phone and contact the authorities.
     But Mulder didn't go for the cellular when he was finally
through.  "What's the fastest way back to the dorm?" he practically
barked at me when he finally rose.  "Is it the way we came?"
     "Yes..." I said hesitantly.  "Unless you cut through the
parking lots--see, that's Milton over there."  I pointed to where
the top two floors of Peter's dorm were visible in the distance.
     Mulder took off running again.
     This time I had to ask.  I grabbed a sleeve of his coat as he
went past me.  "Why, Mulder?  You've got the cel phone, don't you?
Just call from here!"  I thought that he was in a hurry to get in
touch with the police.
     Mulder hurt my hand as he roughly twisted out of my grasp;
without answering my question, without any explanation, he started
off again.
     I soon lost sight of him.  As I followed much more slowly, I
resolved that from now I would make sure my life was much simpler
and quieter than this.  I didn't know how I could arrange it so
that I never had to have to see a dead body or trail after a
stranger.  But I was determined to avoid any repeats of this grim
evening.
     After walking a ways, I reached a point where I had to guess
which route Mulder had taken around the building looming directly
in front of me.  I must have guessed wrong, because when I came
around the right corner, I saw him on my left.  Standing stockstill
and staring at a figure about twenty feet away.
     What was Danny doing here?  I couldn't imagine, but Mulder
knew.  He was already asking Mulder-style questions.
     "You wrote the note, didn't you, Danny?"
     *Danny* wrote the note?
     "Were you supposed to call Becca and say that neither you or
Peter would be at her house tonight?  Is that what you *told* Peter
you would do?  But you didn't mention him, did you, Danny?  You
wanted it to look like you had no idea where Peter was--like you
hadn't had any contact with him.  Is that how you tried to set it
up?"
     Danny didn't even attempt to answer any of those questions.
Instead he just stared at Mulder.  Eyes wide, he seemed to be
hypnotized with fright.
     "How did you lure Peter to the roof tonight, Danny?  Was he
supposed to meet you there for the grand championship of laser tag?
But you were late, weren't you?  Because you had things to do after
he left the dorm.  You had to change the time on Peter's computer,
write the note and then change the time back again.  So that the
police would think he jumped off the roof much later than he did,
so you could establish an alibi just in case.
     "That was the easy part though, right, Danny?  The hard part
was shoving him off the roof of that building.  Did Peter struggle,
Danny?  Did he beg for mercy?  Did he scream on the way down?"
     Oh...my...God.
     "Now you have to hurry, don't you, Danny?  Got to get back to
the dorm so people will be able to testify that they saw you during
the crucial time period *before and after* Peter supposedly wrote
the note?  What do you think, would three witnesses be enough?  Or
do you need more?  How many people are you going to have to talk
to, be seen by before you'll feel safe, before you'll have a really
good alibi?"
     Danny continued to stand there, rooted to the spot.  I could
almost sympathize with how he felt; he must have been sure a minute
ago that he'd gotten away with murder.  He had planned well: by
killing Peter, Danny had freed himself of the humiliating presence
of the new, improved Doogie; by crafting that note, he had created
the impression that his previous humiliation had been illusory,
the result of some kind of posturing trick.  But now this guy he
barely knew was asking questions for which he clearly did not need
answers.  Mulder knew all about Danny's most secret thoughts and
plans, had divined the homicidal need for revenge which he'd
cultivated in the darkest depths of his soul.  I could well
understand the paralyzing panic he must have felt.  Looking at
Danny standing there, two words flashed into my brain and kept
repeating like some deadly mantra: lethal injection...lethal
injection...
     Now Mulder began inching forward.  "What do you have in the
bag, Danny?" he asked.  I hadn't noticed till then that he was
carrying a blue nylon gym bag.  "Is the laser-tag rig in there?
Did you take it off Peter's body?"  Danny now started moving just
as slowly backwards.  "What else is in there?  What else did you
take?"  He kind of squinted as he spoke; it was as if Danny was
trying frantically to keep Mulder out of his mind, and it had
become a little difficult for him to see what was going on in
there.  "I know you took something, Danny."  Suddenly, he stopped
short.  "You took part of his brain, didn't you?"
     Danny stopped, too.
     "What were you going to do with it?"
     No answer.
     "Were you going to eat it?"
     With that, Danny dropped the bag and took off.  It was blind
flight--he had no chance to escape.  Mulder was bigger, faster,
fitter and, like Peter, smarter than him.  But in the end none of
that mattered; Danny still felt a visceral compulsion to flee this
unfolding nightmare.
     Before Mulder ran after him, he yelled to me, "Get the bag!"
     I obediently went over, picked it up and began walking in the
direction in which the two of them had disappeared.  It wasn't
until I'd gone a few steps that it truly hit me what was inside of
that bag.  Then I did two things which I previously would have
thought it impossible to do at the same time: I started crying and
I threw up.

Concluded in Part Three
 

===========================================================================

From: mariatex@delphi.com
Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative
Subject: NEW: "Utopia, Texas" 3/3
Date: Tue, 28 May 96 21:58:18 -0500
 
 

"Utopia, Texas"
by mariatex@delphi.com

See Part One for disclaimer

Part Three of Three

     In the beginning, Mulder handled it much better than I did.
The two of us spent hours at the headquarters of the campus police,
giving statements and answering questions.  Mulder's preliminary
huddle with the cops took over an hour, but he kept coming out to
the visitor's area to see how I was doing.  And he sat in on my
interview, holding my hand under the table.
     When we got finally permission to leave, I was relieved, and
thought that Mulder's silence during the trip back to Utopia was
symptomatic of the same emotion.  As it was almost five o'clock in
the morning by the time we got home, the nerdlings had long since
departed.  I took one look at my poor trashed-out house, at the
dishes piled in the kitchen and the beer bottles strewn everywhere,
and did the only sensible thing--I went to bed.  Falling asleep
almost immediately, I didn't know when--or if--Mulder ever joined
me.
     I woke up very late the next afternoon.  Although I still felt
terrible about poor Peter, I wasn't quite as devastated as I had
been the night before.  Somehow during the night I had achieved a
fragile measure of peace about the whole horrible situation.
     Mulder hadn't.  I found him on the porch, staring off into
space, and when he turned in my direction, I saw, with a sinking
feeling, that the haunted look was again in his eyes.  My first,
hopeful thought was that he simply needed more time, and so, after
greeting him in a low-key way, I retired to the office and tried to
busy myself with academic paperwork.  But mostly I thought about
Peter.  All the nerdlings were doing the same thing.  I took a
number of phone calls from friends, some of whom had just heard the
news, and were reeling from shock.  I was still on the phone when
Mulder stuck his head in my office and announced he was going for
a walk.  A walk, not a run--that should have been a tipoff.  He was
gone for a long time; when he got back, I had dinner on the stove.
     Neither of us ate a great deal, and conversation was minimal.
Mulder did brighten a bit while speaking quietly of what he'd seen
during his walk; he had managed to catch a glimpse of the very shy
all-white doe which occasionally grazed with our resident deer
herd.  When the conversation--never exactly zipping along to begin
with--lagged, I made the mistake of mentioning news that had been
passed on to me from one of the nerdlings: Peter's parents had
arrived from Dalhart and a memorial service was being planned.  The
conversation pretty much came to an end at that point.
     Mulder offered to do the dishes, but I shooed him away.  After
the doom-and-gloom atmosphere of dinner, I needed a break.  My
suggestion that he watch some TV was not heeded; instead Mulder
returned to the porch.  As I washed up, I tried to imagine how he
was feeling.  Naturally, Mulder was heartbroken about what had
happened; we all were.  But while the rest of us remained more or
less functional, he seemed incapable of doing anything besides
walking and sitting and halfheartedly eating.  You'd think that
Mulder's profession would have inured him at least somewhat to
sudden death.  Yet he appeared to be much more affected than us
civilians.
     I dried my hands, and went in search of a box of kitchen
matches.
     Out on the porch, I lit the kerosene lamp balanced on a
rickety table near Mulder's elbow, and then dragged over a small
wicker ottoman so that I could sit right in front of him.
     I had planned to plunge in right away, but when Mulder looked
at me very gravely, I hesitated.  Just the sight of his still
beauty in that flickering light was enough to throw me off my
prepared speech.  And there was another reason why I froze in my
verbal tracks.  I had been impatient when I walked out on the
porch, had been about to deliver some kind of stiff-upper-lip
speech.  But when I saw the expression on his face, I was jolted
into the perception that Mulder was suffering on a level I could
not comprehend, much less mitigate.  I gave up on the idea of
delivering that speech.
     After another moment's reflection, I quit thinking about
trying to direct this conversation at all.  I was in the Mulder
Zone now.  With him zeroing in on me like that, only the most
heartfelt, soul-to-soul communication was possible--all agendas,
evasions and euphemisms would be useless.  There were rules
implicit in that hazel gaze: Mulder wasn't going to hold anything
back, and I couldn't lie--he'd be able to see it in my face.  In
the end, the absolute truth was going to be revealed, no matter how
much it hurt.
     I took a deep breath, and asked a Becca-style question--I
didn't know how Mulder would respond.  "Honey, what's wrong?"
     There was a long pause, during which he stared at me even more
intently.  Mulder was gauging how receptive I might be to what he
was about to say.  I also got the feeling he was somehow finding
out that I'd had an emergency appendectomy in the fourth grade.
     "I should have seen it coming," he finally said.
     So that's what this was all about.  I began to make the stock
reply, "Mulder, you couldn't possibly--"
     He cut in, almost angry.  "I *told* you," he reminded me.  "I
*told* you that there was a pathological component to Danny's
relationship with Peter."
     I was a little frightened by this uncharacteristic display of
vehemence, and had to work to remain calm myself.  "I know you
did."  I was  anxious to prove that I wasn't doubting his word.  "I
remember that very well.  But there's a big difference between
understanding that a guy might have some kind of psychological
problem and being able to predict what he's going to do as a result
of that problem."  I thought of what I was saying as inarguable
wisdom which would inevitably have a soothing effect.  "I mean,
nobody can make that kind of prediction."
     "*I* can."
     I had been leaning forward, but when Mulder said that, I sat
back, stunned.  On the surface it was a boastful statement--the
first one I'd ever heard him make.  Yet I didn't take it as such;
from the bitter, resigned tone of Mulder's voice, it was obvious
that he did not consider himself blessed.
     Mulder continued.  "Becca, that's what I do for a living--I
predict what people are capable of.  Sometimes I work backwards-
-I start with the crime and work my way to the criminal, go from
the painting to the painter.  But other times I start with a
person, and then I have to judge whether he or she can commit
certain acts.  And that night I knew Danny could kill."
     I recognized the truth of what he was saying immediately.
Although it tended to slip my mind on occasion, I knew that Mulder
was spooky, that he could discern things--patterns, tendencies,
traces--which were effectively invisible to the rest of us.  It was
the synergistic function of that ability, along with eidetic memory
and incredibly acute perception, which accounted for his
investigatory brilliance.  And, of course, I had learned that it
also helped in dealing with obstructive people and contributed to
great sex.  But I had naively failed to understand the full
implications of his being able to sense what other people could
not.  I'd assumed that Mulder had the option of turning that
near-clairvoyant judgment on and off; now I knew that even at
dinner with the nerdlings he was compelled to see, and that he had
to live with the potentially serious emotional consequences of what
he saw.
     I was lost in contemplation of this new insight into the
workings of Mulder's mind for quite a while.  But I reverted to my
usual matter-of-fact self when a very practical objection to what
he had said occurred to me.  "OK, Mulder, so you knew that Danny
could kill.  What could you have done about with that knowledge?
Warned Peter?  Called the police?  Nobody would have believed you--
everybody would have thought you were just being ridiculous."
     I was encouraged by the fact that Mulder seemed to welcome
those words, but my heart sank as soon as he spoke.  "Don't you
see, Becca?  That's *exactly* the problem.  That's *exactly* why I
didn't warn Peter or call the police.  Because I didn't want to
look ridiculous.  Now, you tell me--was that a good enough reason?
Do you think Peter's parents would forgive me for not saving their
son's life if I explained that I didn't want to look ridiculous?"
     Mulder held that all-knowing eye-contact with me for a long
time; he was daring me to disagree with him.  I didn't even try.
We were in the Mulder Zone, and so he could anticipate what I was
going to say, and would have an immediate rebuttal.  I remained
convinced that his thinking was flawed in some fundamental way, but
couldn't articulate where he had gone wrong.  Sighing loudly, I
gave up and went back inside the house.
     Now, I may not have a doctorate in psychology from Oxford.  I
may not be able to predict with chilling accuracy what a
maladjusted medical student was capable of doing.  And obviously I
was stumped when it came to consoling the man who could.  Yet, in
this case, the lowly physics pre-doc, the hapless nerdling who had
limited insights into human behavior--even her *own* behavior--did
have a trick up her sleeve.
     I tiptoed to the bedroom closet and fished around for Mulder's
duffel coat.  Sticking the cel phone I extracted from one of the
pockets inside the waistband of my jeans, I skulked to the living
room.  From there I could see that the coast was clear, that Mulder
was still out on the porch.  I then proceeded into the bathroom,
lowered the toilet seat, sat down, pressed #1 on the memory-dial
and said a prayer.
     "Dana Scully."
     Thank you, God.
     "Dana, this is Becca Jones.  How are you?"
     "I'm fine," she said, understandably surprised to be getting
a call from me.  We had spoken in passing a few times.  Dana had
initially been wary of me--a natural reaction in view of how close
she was to Mulder.  When I proved to be properly respectful of
their connection, she had relaxed considerably.  Our conversation
these days mostly amounted to mock threats on her part to come to
Texas in order to straighten me out about field theory.  But now
she asked, "The question is, how are *you*?"
     I was getting a little tired of dealing with ultra-intuitive
FBI agents.  "Not good.  And neither is Mulder."
     "Tell me."
     I started at the beginning and gave her the whole story.  To
my embarrassment, I started crying towards the end.  Fortunately
Dana remained comfortingly unfazed.  Until I got to the part about
how Mulder felt guilty for not having saved Peter.  Then she
sighed--it was the all-purpose reaction to Fox Mulder that night.
"You know, when the announcement is made that the earth will
shortly be vaporized as the result of a nuclear accident, Mulder's
last words are undoubtedly going to be 'I'm sorry.'"  She sighed
again.  "You'd think that a guy who is capable of out-thinking, not
only every criminal he's ever encountered, but also all his co-
workers and superiors, would be capable of comprehending the simple
difference between predicting what acts someone might be capable
of, and performing those acts himself."
     I had to sigh too.  "I know.  It's like, because Mulder didn't
prevent what happened to Peter, he *caused* it."  I paused before
speaking again.  "Dana, would you mind talking to him?  I don't
know how to make him feel better, and I know you'd have the right
words to say."
     "Sure," she said.  I think she was gratified that I deferred
to her when it came to handling Mulder at this critical juncture.
"Put him on the line."
     I was reluctant to contradict that plan of action, but had an
alternative in mind.  "Why don't you call him, like you were just
checking in?  It might be better if he doesn't know the two of us
talked."
     "That's a good idea," Dana said.  "I'll wait a couple of
minutes, and then call."
     After hanging up, I ran some water and made washing-up noises.
Then I replaced the phone in Mulder's coat pocket and went back to
the kitchen, where I made more such noises.
     When I heard the phone, I leaned out the front door.  "Mulder,
your coat's ringing."
     He didn't even look at me.  "That's OK, honey.  I wouldn't
mind getting it for you," I said.  "No problem at all."
     I retrieved the phone and handed it to him.  "Imagine that!
It's for you."
     From the kitchen, I could barely hear Mulder talk.  At first
his answers were monosyllabic, and the silences between those
answers long.  But then I noticed that he was talking more, and
that his voice sounded slightly louder.  Then, miraculously, I
heard him laugh.
     I suppose I should have been wracked with jealousy that Mulder
was responding so well to Dana's therapy when my own had proved
completely ineffective.  But I wasn't.  I had always known that
their relationship was unique.  They had been through so much;
Mulder and Scully, as he invariably called her, had faced down
countless bad guys, squeaked through innumerable life-and-death
situations, been there and back together.  And nobody had spent
more time in the Mulder Zone than Dana.  In many ways the bond
between them was deeper, more profound than the one between Mulder
and me.  He and I were only sleeping together; the two of them had
saved each other's lives.
     After a while, I could tell that he had hung up.  Elaborately
drying my hands on a dishtowel, I stepped out onto the porch.  "Did
you and Dana have a good talk?"
     He looked at me and smiled--the haunted look was almost gone.
"Yes, we did."
     "Good," I said, walking towards him.  "I'm going to hit the
sack."  I leaned over and kissed him.  "Don't stay up too late."
     "I won't."
     My thoughts whirled around for a while after I crawled
under the covers; I was quite proud of myself for having so neatly
manipulated Mulder.  This pride lasted only until he gently slid
into bed next me as I lay curled on my side, facing the wall.
Putting his arms around my waist and resting his chin on my
shoulder, Mulder whispered, "Thanks, Becca."

     Mulder and I never got a chance to talk the next morning.  He
had to leave early--the Austin police wanted him to stop by
headquarters to give yet another statement.  And even before he
left, Mulder was pretty much inaccessible.  As we scurried around,
searching first for one missing shoe and then for tissue paper in
which to pack a deer skull, he was on the phone, arguing with the
forensic psychiatrist who would be interviewing Danny later that
day.  He kissed me goodbye in between saying, "I told Henderson
that the those results would be anomalous," and "No, that's
*perfectly* consistent with his post-offense behavior!"
     I stayed on the porch and watched until the white plume of
road dust had completely dissipated.
     Later in the day, Mulder's distractedness, his lack of feeling
began to bother me.  There had been nothing remotely passionate or
regretful about his leavetaking.  Left to my own devices, I managed
to transform that bothersome thought into a full-fledged worry.
According to my theory, Mulder had liked me--had liked coming to
Utopia--as long as his visits had represented a break from all the
convoluted traumas of the Bureau and the X-files.  Rural Texas had
been Mulder's escape valve, his safety zone.  But the Hill Country
had lost its idyllic power once Peter died.  His murder had
reminded Mulder that no escape was possible, that things were
exactly as sordid and scary on both sides of a river.  The
attractions of Utopia--and my attractiveness--had diminished
significantly as a result.
     I dragged around the house all day, doing mindless chores in
between spells of melancholy inertia.  Occasionally, I'd find
myself staring off into the space, a sponge in the air, thinking
about Danny's furtive psychosis, about Peter's broken body, about
Mulder's inattentive kiss.  After the sun went down, I fixed a
sandwich, settled down in front of the computer and called up the
latest version of my dissertation notes.  Once again, I did almost
no work.  Instead I meditated on how there would be no more wild
arguments about Stephen Hawking, no more trips to the HEB with a
living, breathing grocery list, no more nights twined with a man
who could effortlessly read my body as well as my mind.  The tears
I eventually cried were equally selfless and selfish.  I cried for
poor Peter, for his desolate parents, for the loss of all the
enriching contributions he would have made if he hadn't
unthinkingly earned the enmity of a secretly twisted soul.  And, of
course, I cried for myself.
     At about eight o'clock, the phone rang.  I picked it up and
said a rather dispirited "Hello."  The person on the other end
asked me a question, and I've often wondered since if he enjoyed
his usual level of confidence about the answer.  "I know I burned
the spaghetti sauce, Becca.  But if I promise to be good, can I
come back next weekend?"

     I can't wait.
 

                       mariatex@delphi.com
     ------------------------------------------------------
           "There is no denying this in the final end.
       But we must, dear Fox, deny it all along the way."

                    _You Can't Go Home Again_
                          Thomas Wolfe