Turnabout

x 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 night. Valenti was extremely grateful that River Dog had aided them without adding further complications to their already precarious situation. The old shaman of the Mesaliko Indian Reservation was an integral part of the alien history of Roswell, though not an active enough part, apparently, to merit investigation by the Special Unit. Those government spooks have no idea just how much the old man knows, Valenti thought. In the 1950s, River Dog had befriended Nasedo, helping heal him after a tribal sweat ritual had gone awry, unbalancing his alien physiology. Though River Dog later lost track of the shapeshifter, he'd never judged him as an evil spirit, as had the tribal elders. Thus, even after the alien killed their mutual acquaintance, author James Atherton, River Dog had trusted Nasedo, and vice versa. The old Native American was one of the few who knew the truth about Nasedo and who hadn't been eliminated by Nasedo during subsequent years. Although Valenti hadn't learned about it until later, River Dog had also helped Max, Michael, and Isabel learn the truth about their alien origins, and had aided Michael in getting through a hallucinatory sickness by restoring the balance of energy within his half-alien body. When he was sheriff of Roswell, one of Valenti's best deputies was Owen Blackwood, who had grown up on the reservation. River Dog had apparently not entrusted Blackwood with any of the secrets of the cave in which Nasedo had lived for a time, nor with the meanings of the alien hieroglyphs engraved on its walls. Instead, River Dog had shared this knowledge with Eddie, a teenager on the reservation. It was Eddie who had met Valenti and Amy earlier when they arrived. This morning's tumultuous events remained green enough in Valenti's memory that he still found himself trembling from time to time, his body tensing with recollections of fear and adrenaline. He had gotten a call from Suzanne Duff, the FBI agent with whom he had worked the Laurie Dupree abduction case the previous year. She had given him a cryptic warning, telling him that he was no longer safe in Roswell. Then, in rapid succession, Valenti had gotten a page from UFO Center proprietor Brody Davis on his special «panic pager," followed by a phone call from Sheriff Hanson, asking him to get into the office early. Hanson wouldn't explain the urgency, but Duff had told Valenti to get himself and anyone else he felt might be at risk from the government's alien-hunters away from Roswell immediately. Immediately after arranging a clandestine meeting in Tucson with Duff, Valenti had called Amy, who had been on her way home from his place to change clothes before opening her shop for the day. She had explained that she was being followed by a black sedan, and the resulting chase had ended in a lumberyard. Valenti had hurried over there and driven off with her before her pursuers had had a chance to follow. Amy had cut her head badly when her car crashed in the lumberyard, but Valenti knew he couldn't risk taking her to the hospital. The safest place he could think of at the moment was the Mesaliko reservation; it seemed unlikely that the Special Unit operatives would think of looking for them there. While an elderly native American woman one of River Dog's friends sewed up the gash on Amy's scalp, Valenti tried to raise Phillip Evans, then Jeff Parker, on his cell phone. Disconcertingly, though not at all surprisingly, there was no answer at either home, nor at either of their business numbers. Valenti then dialed Brody Davis at the UFO Center, and was gratified when he finally got an answer. «Brody? This is Jim Valenti. Are you all right?» The Englishman sounded rattled. «Yes. For now.» «What's going on there? You paged me.» «Yeah, like an hour ago. You told me that pager number was for special emergencies, and I think what I saw certainly qualified as one of those.» Valenti turned and saw that River Dog was regarding him with a calculating stare. «What did you see, Brody?» «A bunch of commando guys broke into the Crashdown Cafe and took Mr. and Mrs. Parker away. I locked the Center down and called you immediately. What took you so long?» «I've been a little tied up, Brody," Valenti said guardedly. «Apparently the Parkers aren't the only ones they're after. I'm on my way out of town now, to try to get some help.» «What's going onT Brody asked, his voice almost a wail. «Men in Black coming to Roswell isn't exactly a new concept to those of us who are UFOlogists, but what do they want with the Parkers? Or youT «I'm sorry, Brody. I can't tell you right now. It's too dangerous.» Valenti knew that Brody was already involved in alienhuman encounters to a far greater extent than he realized; his body was occasionally «abducted," mind-controlled by an entity named Larek, a native of Antar who sometimes communicated with Max and the others from the alien homeworld. As far as Brody knew, he was a multiple abductee but had never been told that his «missing time» hadn't been spent aboard a visiting alien spaceship; the only actual physical interaction he'd ever had with an alien was when he'd employed Max to work for him in the UFO Center. Valenti heard silence on the other end of the line, until Brody spoke again in anxious tones. «Exactly how dangerous is this? They had guns, Mr. Valenti.» Valenti winced. «Where's your daughter, Brody?» «Sydney's staying with family out of town.» «Good. Keep it that way," Valenti said. «You should be safe. I don't think anyone has connected you to the rest of us yet.» «What is this 'us' thing, Deputy? And what exactly is it that I have to worry about?» Brody's voice sounded strained and defensive. 1 can't say I blame him, Valenti thought. «Brody, please trust me when I say that you are better off not knowing right now.» He paused for a moment, considering what to say next. Better to give him an inch than risk him leaping the mile. «All I can tell you is that your work at the UFO Center is a lot closer to the plain truth than you probably ever realized. But the more you know, the more at risk you'll be. You and your daughter and your family.» More silence followed from the other end of the line. Finally, Brody said, «So, what should I do?» Valenti wasn't sure, but he didn't want Brody to know that. He recalled the situation over a year ago when Brody's memory had gone haywire because of Larek's «abductions," and Larek/Brody had taken Max and the others hostage in the Center, which had been a secure bomb shelter back in the 1950s and might be used that way again now. «I know you can lock down the Center," Valenti said. «Do you have supplies there? Can you survive holed up in there for a few days?» «Yes. I've got several months' provisions here if I need them. But I " «You won't need months," Valenti said, interrupting. «Days, at most. Close up shop, lock yourself away, and get done with some of those projects you've been meaning to finish. Try to have as little contact with the outside as possible. But contact me if anything else comes up, all right?» «You'll answer my page this time?» Valenti massaged his temples and sighed. «If I'm able to, I will. But a lot of really big things might be coming down over the next few days. I don't know what the outcome is going to be.» Silence reigned yet again on the other end of the phone, and then Brody said, «I wish you the best of luck, Deputy Valenti.» Not sure if I'll even be a deputy once this is all over, Valenti thought, suppressing a chuckle. «Thanks, Brody. You too. Ill be in touch.» He clicked the phone off. Valenti stood beside River Dog's station wagon as the freshly stitched-up Amy made herself comfortable in the passenger side, preparing to take a much-needed nap. River Dog came up from behind him. «This is someone else who is involved?» he asked, gesturing toward the phone in Valenti's hand. «Sort of," Valenti said, tucking the phone into his belt, between his pistol and handcuffs. «He's become a part of all this. I don't think he's in any immediate danger, though. He probably would be if he knew the real truth about everything.» «I do not know the truth about everything myself," River Dog said. «But what I know here, and what I feel here» he gestured toward his head, then his heart «tell me I must be involved as well. Those whose souls come from beyond must be protected.» Valenti smiled. «That's a pr