Turnabout

for Lincoln. From there, they planned to catch a train to Chicago, and then either fly or continue by train to Boston. It seemed quite a convoluted travel plan, but it was low profile, and Isabel thought it might even give her and Kyle a chance to rest up during the journey. «Okay, let's do it, then," Isabel said, facing the others in the sparsely populated train station. She hugged Max fiercely, then Michael, then Maria. Liz put up her hand in a wave and backed up, a wan smile on her face. She doesn't want me to touch her any more than I want her to touch me, Isabel thought. She waved back, then turned to gather her bag. Kyle shook hands with Max and Michael, and hugged Maria and Liz. «See anything about me?» he asked Liz as they parted. «Don't talk to the lady in blue polyester on the train," Liz said. «She's going to bore you to tears, and then hit on you.» Kyle saluted. «Got it.» They all laughed for a moment, and then Isabel and Kyle turned to board the bus. They sat together, with Isabel at the window. She watched her brother and friends through the slightly dusty Plexiglas. As the bus pulled away, they waved again, and Isabel waved back. She realized that with a very few short-range exceptions, this trip would take her farther away from Max and Michael than she had ever been before. But Liz's visions terrified Isabel even more than did being separated from nearly everyone she'd ever known. I have to get away. Beyond that, she tried to take comfort in the knowledge that Jesse would be waiting for her in Boston. Even if he didn't know it yet. The thought of Jesse holding her again was comforting, but not enough to quell her roiling stomach. I'm still afraid that something horrible is going to happen. They've already divided us. Now are they going to conquer us? The Colorado/Utah Border Max looked over at Liz and smiled. He had been driving the Microbus for hours now, crossing Colorado on Interstates 76 and 70. Now they were entering Utah, and in five or six hours would be headed through Nevada, toward Las Vegas. Liz was staring out the partially open window, her sunglasses on to protect her eyes from the bright sun and hot desert air that whooshed by the Microbus. Perhaps sensing Max's glance, she turned and looked at him. She's so beautiful, Max thought. He mouthed the words I love you to her, and his heart melted as she squeezed his hand and mouthed the words back. The radio was on loud to cover any noises coming from the back of the VW Michael and Maria had pulled the privacy curtain earlier, and Max didn't know if they were fighting, or engaging in more pleasant pursuits. Probably a little of both, if their past is any indication, he thought with a smile. The desert scenery was stunning, a beautiful panoply of ochers and reds, but they didn't have any more time to take in the sights today than they'd had the last time they had passed this way, over a year ago. That was when Max and Liz had come up to Salina, in search of a secret government facility. They had found it, underneath Sam's Quick Stop market, and then faked a robbery to gain access to the site. Max had entered the underground storage facility and had seen the ship the ship that had brought his essence to Earth during the summer of 1947. In the intervening time, the military had apparently repaired the ship but had been unable to make it run. Max and Liz had quickly been caught by the police, arrested, and charged with armed robbery. The subsequent days had been tense. Neither Max nor Liz could fully explain their actions, either to their parents or to the courts. Phillip Evans had done his best to help them, but although Max was set free, Liz was held under more substantive charges: She had been holding the weapon they'd used in the «robbery.» Max had returned later to the underground facility, only to find the ship gone. His father had followed him to the site, and after the pair had discovered that a dangerous chemical was being stored there, they struck a deal with an FBI agent who led them to Liz's release. That misadventure had been the beginning of the most disastrous time in Max and Liz's relationship, and may have led to the unraveling of their lives in Roswell. Max knew that this was the time when his father had started developing strange suspicions about him and Isabel. It was also when the Parkers had forbidden Max from seeing Liz. Max recalled that he had offered to break Liz out of jail before they knew she would be freed. «And then what?» Liz had asked him. «Just be on the run the rest of our lives? We'd never be able to go home again. No, Max, I'm sorry, but that's just too far for me. I'm not ready to give up my home or my family.» But nine months later, that was exactly what Max and Liz and the others had been forced to do. They had been pushed out of Roswell, away from everything and everyone they knew. It's got to stop, Max thought. We will not be on the run for the rest of our lives. He turned the music down and tilted his head toward the back of the Microbus. «Michael? Maria? I'm going to need one of you to drive here pretty soon. Liz and I really shouldn't be in the front.» Some noises and bumps came from behind the privacy curtain, and finally Michael's head popped forward. «What's up?» «Salina," Liz said, pointing off in the distance. «The teenage witch?» Michael asked, perplexed. Max winced. Sometimes he didn't know if Michael was trying to be funny, or if he was just clueless. «Salina, the town. Where Liz and I got arrested. Part of my court sentence was that I couldn't return to Utah until after my twenty-first birthday.» The privacy curtain was drawn completely aside by Maria as she joined Michael in the center seat. «So? You're in Utah now, aren't you?» Max looked up in the rearview mirror and made a face. «Yes, I am. But given our luck lately, I don't want to chance that we'd drive by one of the cops who stopped us before and get arrested again. Ergo, it's your turn to drive.» «Oooh, 'ergo,'" Maria said, her tone slightly mocking. «Is that Antarian?» Liz looked back at her friend, one eyebrow raised. «Maria, didn't we give you two enough time alone back there?» As Maria sighed dramatically, Michael patted Max on the arm. «Pull over up there and I'll take over.» Minutes later, Max and Liz were safely behind the privacy curtain, and Michael was driving. «Be sure not to go over the speed limit," Max called out. «We don't need to call any more attention to ourselves.» «I hear and I obey, Maxwell," Michael said, sighing heavily. Liz moved Maria's guitar case aside and spread her blankets out across the back of the Microbus, then patted them to encourage Max to lie down with her. Grinning, Max plopped down beside her. She rolled onto her side and propped her head up with her hand. «Hey," he said, stroking her cheek with the back of his hand. «Hey, yourself," she said, then leaned in to kiss him. The effect was magical, as it sometimes was when they kissed. Max saw/felt in his mind's eye a kaleidoscope of images and memories: a swirling galaxy; Liz in a one-piece swimsuit at a pool; the controls of a spaceship; Max healing a wounded bird in the park; Liz with a flower in her hair; the rocks in the Roswell desert canyon, where the Granilith had been hidden; Maria and Liz laughing in a park; a constellation of five stars; a/f of them at the prom; even Alex in his tuxedo And then Liz pulled away, breaking their contact. «I'm sorry," she said, her voice low. «Hey, it's not your fault," Max said, holding her hand. «Neither of us can control what we see in our flashes. The images I got were mostly pretty happy ones.» Except maybe for that last one, he thought, suddenly wistful. Liz put her head down on his chest, and Max stroked her hair. He knew that she had never gotten over the death of Alex Whitman. Neither had Maria, for that matter, since the three of them had been friends for a long time. Max wished there was some way he could go back and undo what had happened; he had tried to revive Alex in the ambulance, but he had evidently been injured past the point of no return. It had been doubly hard for Liz to accept Alex's death when it was suggested that he had committed suicide. Eventually, the truth came out that Tess had mindwarped Alex as part of her plan to take the unborn child she carried Max's child back to Antar to deliver to his enemies. Alex had died as a result of Tess's repeated mental assaults. The search for a way to follow Tess and retrieve his son was what led Max and Liz to find the restored spaceship in Utah. It was also what had led Max to Hollywood, where he had tracked down the second surviving alien «protector» from the 1947 Roswell crash. The first had been the shapeshifter they knew as Nasedo, but he had been killed; this second alien had taken the name Kal Langley, and had made a commitment to himself never to shapeshift from his human form again, lest he forever lose every truly human characteristic he had ever acquired. Langley had become a rich and powerful Hollywood producer, and he seemingly had everything he wanted. But when Max reappeared in his life, Langley's stable and prosperous existence was shattered. Max found out that Langley had to obey Max's commands, so Max forced him to use his film connections to find the reassembled ship that had been spirited away from Utah. He then forced Langley to shapeshift for the first time in decades in order to pilot the ship. Unfortunately, the ship couldn't fly. Max remembered what Langley had told him the last time they had seen each other: «I destroyed my life for you tonight, all for nothing. Because of you, everything I've worked for is gone," he had said. «Being your protector might be encoded in my genes, but after tonight… I'll never stop hating you.» And now they needed Langley's help again, and were on their way to Los Angeles to get it. Max doubted their protector would be any happier about helping them now than he had been a year ago, but he really had no choice, as long as Max was in charge. He has money, power, and influence, Max thought. And he's survived and thrived among humanity for over fifty years. He's got to be able to help us stop the Special Unit once and for all. Somehow. But as he lay in the back of the Microbus, Liz's breath soft on his chest, Max feared that the victory against the rogue government forces arrayed against them might require more hardship and sacrifice than they had ever faced before. «Go home, Max. Don't come back," Langley had said. «Word of advice: The more you embrace our alien side, the more you're gonna lose.» What am 1 going to lose now? Max asked himself. What are we all going to lose? Mount Pleasant, Iowa Kyle stared forward, his eyes slightly glazed. He had never felt more bored. Why didn't I listen to Liz? He had been sitting in the Superliner's lounge car, reading a Powers graphic novel that he had picked up several days earlier. He liked reading good comics when he could, but they didn't have much room for reading material in the Microbus. The irony that he himself now had some kind of developing superpowers was not lost on him every time he read comics; it was one reason he tried to pick intelligent, «real-world» looks at superheroes. When she sat across from him in the lounge car, the woman in blue polyester hadn't seemed much of a threat at first. She was even pretty, though at least fifteen years his senior. His reading interrupted, he initially hadn't even remembered Liz's warning. Now, half an hour had passed, during which time she'd revealed her name Lucinda and had detailed her past three divorces, her erotic adventures at Sleeping Beauty's Castle in Disneyland, the problems with her last five haircuts, the changing scenery and how boring she found it after approximately nineteen trips aboard this same train, whether the light in the trains was flattering to her, and her loathing of people who ate the Korean cabbage dish Kimchi. In his mind, Kyle kept repeating the first three of the Buddhist «Four Noble Truths»: life means suffering; suffering has a cause; and the cause of our suffering can be ended. He couldn't quite see how to work in the fourth truth: suffering can be ended by following a path to wisdom, peace, meditation, and growth. What's my path, out ojhere? he asked himself as the woman chattered on. The simple answer was to get up, walk through the sliding doors to another car, and continue until he got to the sleeping car where he and Isabel had a suite. They'd lucked out and been the sole people renting aboard that particular sleeping car, so they had no neighbors. Kyle had left Isabel alone to shower and clean up. He knew how much of a horndog she thought he was, so he didn't want to crowd her «personal space.» Not that there hadn't been a few times he'd wanted to. She was beautiful. And married, he reminded himself. Finally, Kyle could take no more of Lucinda's selfinvolved babbling. He gave her a smile and stood, saying, «Lucinda, I really need to get going. I've got to check in on my friend, and I really need to use the little boys' room.» She grinned lasciviously. «I'm sure you need the big boys' room.» She threw her shoulders back, pushing out her chest, and tilted her head to one side. «You want me to come back to the sleeper with you? 1 give great massages.» Oh Lord, Kyle thought. I should have listened to Liz. He forced another smile. «No thanks, that's all right. My friend might not appreciate the company. She's a bit touchy sometimes.» Lucinda's eyes flared, and then narrowed. «Oh. 1 see. Well, have a good rest of the trip, then.» «You too," Kyle said, exiting as quickly as he could. He passed through the sliding door and looked back once. Lucinda was watching him leave. Kyle made his way back to the sleeping car. Their suite, paid for with alien-altered currency, was downstairs. He prepared to descend the narrow stairwell, when he heard a metallic gong and voices. Isabel's and a man's. And neither voice sounded happy. Isabel had really needed the time in the shower alone. She hadn't washed for two days now, and felt gritty. The hot water relieved the stress of the past few days a little, but that amount of tension couldn't be completely excised quite so easily. She looked down at her side, where a pair of small bruises were ripening to an ugly purplish-blue. Those had come from the tasers that the agents had used on them in the back service corridor of the mall in Cheyenne yesterday. The charge had disrupted her system more than she'd expected. Fortunately, it didn't seem to be having any long-term effect on her. Long-term effect. The phrase was almost a joke, especially in her situation. After all, she was the woman who had betrayed her family and friends on her home planet, was later resurrected on Earth as a half-alien/half-human girl, and was now running for her life from the various forces both alien and human that wanted her dead. Compared to the trauma-drama that was her life her lives a few bruises were insignificant. Isabel turned off the water and stepped out of the shower. She grabbed a big fluffy towel and began drying herself. Following the hot shower, the feel of the fabric on her skin was a welcome sensation. Once she felt suitably dry, she donned a robe, then bent over, wrapped her hair in a towel, and flipped her head back. Isabel heard a noise outside the bathroom door, in the bedroom of the sleeping car's suite. Kyle must be back. She opened the bathroom door and stepped out. «Good timing, Kyle. I just finished in here. You can shower now if you " What she saw stopped her short. There was a large, ruddy-complexioned man standing in the room, pointing a strange device at her. It didn't look like any weapon she had ever seen before. «Who are you? What are you doing in my room?» Isabel said, trying to keep the edge of fear out of her voice. «I'm here for you, Vilandra," the man said, his voice edgy and deep. He was using her Antarian name. He's an alien as well. Or one of the human puppets being mind-controlled by aliens. Instinctively Isabel put up her hand and sent a wave of energy out toward the man. Although the metal walls clanged from the energy's impact, the man stood there, apparently unaffected by her blast. He smirked. «Your powers can't hurt me.» He took a step toward her. «Kivar wants you back, Vilandra.» 5 Bowie, Arizona Jim Valenti gripped the station wagon's steering wheel tightly as the desert highway slowly unwound before him, the afternoon shadows slowly lengthening across the bare brown land. Amy DeLuca had flattened down the backseat and was sleeping beside him, wrapped in one of the multicolored blankets that River Dog had given them as a buffer against the autumn breezes and the cold desert