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by Galen Peoples
   On Roswell's southwestern outskirts, between the town proper and the endless brown floor of the desert, there stood two square miles of prefabricated frame houses. Outside one of these, behind a wire mesh fence, a small boy was sitting in his yard scooping up some of the dirt with a toy steam shovel: this was how he chose to spend his Saturday mornings.
   After a little he noticed a slightly bigger boy with slightly browner skin watching him from the gate. The watcher smiled shyly. His eyes widened as the lock on the gate changed to salt, or something like it, and then crumbled away. The gate swung open. After a moment's hesitation, the boy entered. The smaller boy held the shovel out to him, offering him a turn at play.
   The woman the next house over peered out her screen door and saw the two of them sitting together. "¡Dios mio!" she cried. She ran out of the house into the road and across to the neighboring property, halting a few feet short of the open gate, from where she waved to the boy who was visiting. "¡Salgase de ahi!" she shouted. "¡Immediatamente!"
   Reluctantly, and with an apologetic smile at his newfound friend, he got up and walked out to her. Then he realized he had taken the steam shovel with him. As he was starting back in to return it, she pulled it out of his hands and flung it at its owner. Then she herded her boy back home and inside. "¡Nunca vuelvas a entrar ahi!" she ordered. "¿Entiendes? ¡Nunca! ¡Ellos son los malos!" She shot a hostile look back at "los malos," or the only one that was in sight, before following the boy in and slamming the door after them.
   The steam shovel was lying on its side where the woman had thrown it. The boy whose shovel it was wished for it to stand up, and it did–but it immediately fell over again. He bent sideways for a better view; one of the wheels was bent. He wished for it to straighten itself out, and it did. The toy reared upright and came rolling over to him. He stopped it with a look, picked it and himself up out of the dirt, got up himself, and went inside. He was tired of the game for today.
   In the town proper, some older boys were congregated at what until today had been the residence of a fellow band member. "You came," said Nicky. "Thanks." An adult they did not recognize was stuffing Nicky's luggage into the rear of a Navigator that was parked in the drive.
   "You going to live with your mom?" asked Alex.
   "Nah, they haven't exactly been able to find her. For now I'll be staying with my cousin in Salt Lake. Hey, you guys can visit on spring break. We'll jam, maybe land a gig or two somewhere."
   "Definitely," agreed Alex, bobbing his head a few times to denote conviction.
   "I mean, it's not like the group's disbanding or anything like that."
   "Disband? The Whits? Never!" A silence ensued. It was the silence of an empty house, an empty garage.
   But something else was also on Nicky's mind. He leaned close to Alex so the others would not hear. "Alex, those friends of yours. Are they–what my dad thought?"
   Alex affected incomprehension. "Friends? Uh, which ones would those be?"
   "Isabel Evans," Nicky whispered. "Is she–one of them?"
   "Isabel? Is Isabel–" Alex laughed. "Isabel!" He laughed again.
   "Yeah, that's what I figured," Nicky said. He reflected. "Woulda been cool, though. So long, bro." He gave Alex a hug (a guys' hug), and then the others took their turns. They said goodbye as if it were not the real thing, as if they were really going to reunite some day, and did not know that Nicky's leaving was the end of all things.
   Alex was still feeling a little melancholy at lunchtime as he took the last bite of his Canis Major ("A great dog!" the menu translated; the name had been Liz's invention). He waited at the register for Liz to take his check. Until then he had not noticed that she was the only server. "Where's Maria?"
   "She's no longer with us."
   "You mean she's dead?"
   "No, she's around. Just not–around."
   Glancing into the street, she saw the Jeep approaching with Max at the wheel and Isabel alongside. In front of the cafe he slowed down to a crawl. Liz's face took on a look of hope–until she saw the two women jaywalking in front of him. He had only stopped to keep from hitting them, and as soon as they mounted the opposite sidewalk he went on without a sideways glance. Liz's feeling that she had it coming to her did nothing to allay her disappointment, which she tried but failed to conceal. "Guess they're around-not-around too, huh?" Alex ventured.
   "Okay," an angry voice interrupted, "come on and tell me what it is I don't know."
   "The question on my lips," said Alex.
   The first voice was Michael's. Liz looked up in surprise; when she had last seen him he had been at the grill. Now he was standing over her, fuming like a bull. "I have no idea what you're referring to," she said. It did not sound convincing even to her.
   "Max and Isabel just drove by without stopping. That's on account of me, isn't it?'
   Liz was truly amazed. "You?"
   "There's something you all aren't telling me. And you think I'm too stupid to figure it out. But I will. You can count on it."
   "Once you do," said Alex, "clue me in. No info's being routed my way either."
   "Will you just let it go, both of you?" Some of the customers turned their heads. Liz lowered her voice. "If there's anything you need to know, I'll be the first to tell you." An older gentleman at the other end of the counter called for more water, and she went to fetch the carafe from the side counter. Michael returned to the kitchen.
   "'Need to know,'" Alex mused to himself. "You suppose Liz could be a spy on covert detail?" He considered the proposition, and her. "Unh-uh," he concluded.
   The longer Michael stood alone at the grill, the heavier his sense of grievance became. Liz watched from the order window as he administered harsh treatment to a variety of sandwich ingredients, of which the tomatoes fared worst. At last, taking pity on both them and him, she went back to the kitchen for a talk. "You're right," she admitted, "there is something. But it's got nothing to do with you. It's something that happened between me and Max." Which was true enough as far as it went.
   "The two of you have a fight?"
   "Kind of," she dodged. "You're better off not knowing." She almost wished she did not.
   "And you're sure that's all there is to it?"
   "That's all. Well, there is one other thing." It did not pertain, and to her it hardly seemed to matter now, but it was a puzzle she could not let go of. "That V shape in the sky you said was Aries. What made you say that?"
   "Nothing. I just knew."
   "But it isn't Aries. I can show you. In a book." She knew Michael trusted books.
   "Okay," he said, "then show me."
   Alex had left the restaurant in search of the Evans siblings–one of them in particular–and found them at a competing establishment two blocks down on Main. Taco UFO (locals pronounced the second word "you-foe")was the name listed in the phone book , but the sign at the top of the pole alongside read simply "Tacos." The only seating the place offered was a zigzag array of oak picnic tables outdoors under the sign. Max and Isabel were sharing one of them, facing each other with morose looks. Two uneaten tacos in plastic baskets and many unopened packets of hot sauce lay between them.
   "Hey, you two!" Alex greeted them as he walked up. Isabel regarded him balefully and Max not at all. "Mind if I join you?" There was no answer. "Okay, then. I'll just sit here quietly. In kind of a–meditative, nonverbal kind of–impasse–aw, shoot, Max, why don't you and Liz make it up? Whatever the problem is, it can't be worth all this."
   Max stared at him as if he had not spoken. "I need to talk to you," he said. "Over there."
   He led Alex off to the Jeep and reached in to pull the Balancer from under the front seat. "I need you to hold on to this for a while. There's nobody else I can trust."
   "Not even–"
   Max cut him off. "No."
   Alex grimaced. "I don't know. If my dad should happen to find it–"
   Max pressed the object into Alex's hand. "Then see he doesn't find it." He called to Isabel. "Toss you for the Jeep?"
   "I'll walk."
   "Okay, then I'll see you this evening." He climbed into the driver's seat and started the engine.
   All the while, Alex had been attempting to register his objection. "Max? Max, I don't–"
   "Don't mind helping out. I know. That's really great of you, Alex." He clapped Alex on the shoulder. Then he sped off in the Jeep. And he still looked morose.
   "Yeah," said Alex, "goodbye to you too," said Alex. He felt conspicuous with the Balancer in his hand and stuffed it into a pants pocket, where it strained the seam; he limped a little as he returned to the table and plumped himself down opposite the one remaining customer. "So," he said, "Isabel." She rolled her eyes and sighed heavily.
   Liz meanwhile was spending her lunch break in the staff room, giving Michael a crash astronomy tutorial. "This is how Aries looks," she said, pointing to the illustration in her textbook.
   Michael studied it for a minute. "Must be a different Aries, then."
   "There can't be two of them!"
   "I don't care. That V shape is Aries. I feel it!"
   Liz saw that resistance was futile. "Okay," she allowed reluctantly, "it may have something to do with Aries. But it's definitely not the constellation as normally observed from Earth. And there's something else strange about it too. We're the only ones able to see it–you three, me, Alex, and Maria." (she assumed the last as a logical corollary).
   Michael listened without a word, or a clue; he felt he was in over his head by a long way. "Do you suppose," said Liz (but she was really asking herself), "that it could be some form of radiant energy outside the visible spectrum? And that we can–"
   Michael had only heard as far as the word "energy" when a look of eagerness came into his face. "That's what it is! Energy! The V up there and the V down here–they're both the same. The same kind of energy." (Again, he "just knew" this.)
   He went on in the identical vein for a while, rambling wherever his thoughts took him (yet always coming back to the word "energy") in a way that was neither systematic nor easy to follow. But Liz stuck with him as best she could, and little by little most of it fell into place. "So the Stones from the cave luminesce," she re-phrased, "when they're in proximity to the locations on the map, because of the energy they contain."
   "Exactly!" said Michael.
   It made sense to Liz. "And one of them is–"
   "The library. I don't know yet where the others are."
   "I know one of them!" The realization had just hit her. "It has to be. Angels' Ground!"
   "You mean the place where we–where people go to–" He did not like to say it outright in front of Liz.
   "Well?" she said. "Energy?" Michael saw the sense in this. "Do you have your map with you?" she asked. He did; it was never far from him now. He retrieved it from his jacket, which was hanging on the coat tree next to the door.
   Liz looked the map over. "If this is north and this is the library–wait, this isn't right. None of the symbols are in the right place for Angels' Ground."
   "Then it isn't one of the energy sources."
   "It has to be!" she repeated.
   "How do you know?"
   "I just–" She stopped; that was what he had said, and she had refused to accept, as regarded Aries. Then she realized something that should have been obvious to her before. "We can test it with the Stones! We'll take them up there, and if they start glowing, then we'll know–"
   "Sorry, I can't–I don't have them right now." The words came out of him awkwardly. "They're–in storage."
   Liz waited, but that was all he would volunteer, and she sensed that she should not push him. "Okay," she said. "But I'm sure of it, anyway." She pointed at the map again. "So we now know this isn't north. The correct orientation, we won't know until we can identify the symbol for Angels' Ground, which has to be one of the four left." Then she reasoned farther (once she got going, she found it difficult to stop): "I could draw up four different maps, overlay each one on a map of Roswell, and compare for obvious correspondences or discrepancies. That will take time, of course–"
   During her speech Michael had been looking increasingly troubled. "Forget about it."
   "Why?"
   "You've told me too much already. Anything I find out, I may have to use against you–all of you–if it ever comes to that."
   This prediction was surprising coming from him, but she saw that it fit in with Grunewald's findings, and her own fears. "Do you think it will come to that?"
   "It's what Nasedo wants. And a lot of humans, I'm sure."
   "But not you." His face reflected the same confusion it had in his earlier talk with Maria. "Do you, Michael?"
   "It doesn't matter what I want. I'd still have to betray you. And that'd make you a traitor too–because you supplied me with the information."
   Liz stared gravely at him. "Then that would be between me and my conscience. If that day ever comes, we'll all have to choose sides. We'll all betray someone." She added, more quietly, "Maybe some of us have already."
   Michael got up. "Well, it won't be on my account. I think too much of–" He stopped; that would sound corny. "Think too much," he amended. "But don't you think any more about it. Leave the alien stuff to us–to me."
   "Understood." This response satisfied him well enough, and he returned to the kitchen, unaware that to Liz's precise mind "Understood" was not synonymous with "Agreed."
   Out in front of Taco UFO, Alex continued to sit mutely, since Isabel seemed indisposed to conversation. At length, however, she spoke, though her words were not an incentive to further colloquy. "Don't you have somewhere to be?" she asked. "Other than here, I mean."
   After his long experience of her, Alex took this in stride, and set out along a more positive line. "Liz told me about you rescuing your brother. That was pretty brave."
   "Trust Liz to keep a confidence." Well, it had seemed like a positive line. Isabel stood as if preparing to go. "Whatever you do, don't tell Michael. He doesn't know the history with Grunewald."
   "How could he not know?"
   "We hadn't reconnected at the time. If he finds out now, he'll think we've been keeping things from him."
   "He thinks so anyway. What's the difference?"
   "Do as I tell you! And stop annoying me!" Then Isabel recalled her resolution of three months earlier not to be so imperious, at least with people she knew. "Sorry if that sounded rude."
   "No, we certainly wouldn't want to hurt anyone's feelings, would we?"
   Isabel looked as if she would have liked to answer him, but she left without doing so. Following her retreating form, his eye also took in the order window, where it paused on a face he knew. "Maria," he said absently to himself–and then, "Maria?" He walked up to her.
   She displayed a facsimile of her normal smile. "And now Alex. La reunión familiar. Who knew?"
   "You moonlighting?" He considered for a moment. "I guess technically this would be sunlighting." He realized this sounded like something Liz would have said.
   "Yup, finally shook the old Crashdown, thank God. This place is so much more convenient."
   "Better pay? Better hours?"
   "Actually, no. And no."
   "And farther out of your way. Sure, I see the convenience in that."
   A Chevy pick-up pulled into the lot. "Oops, here comes the trail boss. He doesn't like us cowherds socializing on Taco time. Vamos, compadre."
   So Alex took to the sidewalk. "Alex Whitman," he muttered gloomily to himself, "social outcast."
   Ahead of him he saw Isabel lingering at a playground fence, watching the children inside. He had never pegged her as having maternal leanings. He guessed that she was remembering her own childhood and regretting the one she wished had been hers–as was indeed the case. As she watched, a small girl who was climbing up the slide slipped on one of the rungs, clung desperately to the handrail for a second or two, and then fell. Isabel tensed as if about to act on her behalf, but she did not. The girl landed hard, and tore her sleeve. She began to cry. An older girl, apparently her sister, ran to comfort her.
   Alex ambled up beside Isabel. She knew then that he must have seen it all, and she wished he had not. "You again," she said unhappily. And she continued up the sidewalk.
   This time, however, he stayed with her. "Me again, yeah. Excuse me for trying to remain a caring friend in the face of continuous rejection."
   "You don't understand. You couldn't." For once Isabel was not trying to be rude; this was the most polite reply she could summon up without being dishonest.
   "I understand you could have put your oar in back there to keep that girl from hurting herself, and you chose not to."
   "It wouldn't have–" She realized that what she was about to say was not true, and she revised it. "–been a good thing," she finished.
   "Helping people isn't a good thing?"
   Isabel flared at that. "I do help! Or I try. But the right way–the normal way."
   "But, Isabel, what's normal for you–"
   "Is the same as for everybody else! There aren't special rules for people with–abilities. Just because I can do things doesn't mean I don't know they're–oh, I told you you wouldn't understand."
   Alex took a stab in the dark. "Does this have anything to do with what happened at Nicky's? And what did happen there, by the way?"
   "Didn't blabbermouth Liz tell you all about it?"
   "All she said was–"
   Isabel swung on him. "Look, Alex, I'm not Wonder Girl, all right? I can't go around all the time crumbling doors and melting into walls!"
   Alex stared at her. "You did that? Wow. That's–impressive."
   "Doors and walls are there for a reason."
   "To keep other people out?" He took another stab. "Or to keep you in." Isabel did not answer. Uh-huh, Alex thought. After leaving them, her brother stopped by the UFO Center to collect his paycheck and seen someone–at least it looked like him–who was the last person he would have expected to see there. He was studying a diorama of a crashed saucer and three dummy aliens (to whom Max had privately given the names of Isabel, Michael, and himself). Max hailed him tentatively. "Dad?"
   Philip was more surprised to see him than the other way around. "Thought you were off duty today."
   That he had probably timed his visit on that assumption did not occur to Max until later. He held up his paycheck. "What are you doing here? Thought you considered all this stuff–"
   "Moonshine? Well, maybe. But still worth examining, don't you think?"
   "This is all tourist bait down here. The serious material, if you can call it that, Milt keeps under lock and key." He nodded toward the upstairs office.
   "You have anything by Doc Grunewald?"
   Max's guard went up instantly. The question had been put with all apparent casualness, but Max knew his father too well to be fooled by that. "Grunewald?"
   "He's written on the subject, hasn't he?"
   "I wouldn't know."
   His father stared levelly at him. "Son, what really happened out at his place?"
   "Told you, I was out cold. He must have drugged me."
   "Sounds as though he might have been planning to conduct some kind of experiment on you. It wouldn't be the first time. Though you may not remember–"
   "I remember," Max said grimly.
   "He always was suspicious of the pair of you. I dismissed him as a nut–well, he is a nut. But is he completely nutty?" The question came too close to the mark for Max's comfort. "I'd like you to recount for me if you can the exact sequence of events before you blacked out."
   "So you can shoot holes in my testimony? I told you, Dad, I remember nothing. Nothing at all."
   Philip smiled with the bland assurance of someone who had anticipated the answer, and every other possible answer, before it was given. "Fine," he said. "We'll talk about it later. When it's not so painful for you. See you at dinner tonight." As he strolled out, he left Max feeling like a first-time ship's passenger in choppy seas.
   He and Philip did not discuss it again at dinner; indeed, nobody talked about much of anything. The two children remained as depressed as they had been the rest of the day, and their depression seemed to spread to the entire table.
   After Isabel retired, her mother looked in to find her regarding herself in her curtained mirror with no more joy than she had shown while picking at her rice casserole. "Are you all right, honey?" Diane asked. Isabel forced a not very successful smile. "I saw at dinner something was bothering you. If you're worried about that man Grunewald, your father assures me he's safely locked up."
   "It's not him, it's–" Isabel did not want to tell, but she could not stop there. "–my body." And she still had not told it. But what could she say that her mother would understand, that would not terrify her and endanger them all?
   "What about your body?" her mother inquired.
   "I hate it," said Isabel. "Hate it hate it hate it hate it." For additional emphasis, she flung herself onto her wire frame bed.
   "Why, Isabel Evans!" Diane came to stand beside her and placed a supportive arm around her shoulder. "There's nothing wrong with your body." She scrutinized the reflection in the glass. "You're a little wide-hipped, is all. It runs in the–I mean, many of us are prone to it."
   Isabel had forgotten about that: great, one more thing to be unhappy about. "Thanks, but that wasn't exactly what I meant."
   "Then what?"
   Isabel shook her head, and shook it again. She should never have brought it up; that was what Max would say. But Max said lots of things. It was easy for him; he was aloof from it all. He did not want to live the life of the typical American teen; he just wanted to pass for one. "You'll look back on these as the best days of your life," the principal promised her and the other students at the all-class assembly every year, and Isabel had taken the counsel to heart. She wanted to make the most of her time there, to make it something to remember–because who knew what would happen to her after, what she would become? She had no models to go by: not her mother or her grandmother or any of her friends or teachers or–God forbid–Agent Topolsky. None of them had in her what she had: her abilities, as she called them, deliberately avoiding the word "powers." Or, rather, "power" in the singular–because that was what it was: a single thing manifesting itself in different forms.
   –and now it was changing. (As if it had not been enough to deal with before!) Isabel no longer had a clear sense of what it was today, or what it would be–what she would be–tomorrow. And her mother (who was not her mother, any more than her father was her father; but this was something else Isabel chose not to think about)–her dear, well-meaning mother, so certain she knew what her daughter's problem was–she was off on an entirely wrong track. But how could Isabel disillusion her?
   "And all those boys," she was saying, "who are climbing all over one another for a date with you? I suppose they don't bolster your confidence?"
   Not in the way it matters, thought Isabel. And besides, boys.... "Boys," she said aloud, "are...."
   "Yes, they are," her mother agreed without having to hear the rest. "They most certainly are." Then her face took on an unaccustomed slyness. "Of course, there is Alex Whitman."
   "Alex?" He had not figured in Isabel's thoughts at all. "What about Alex?"
   "He seems to have a good head on his shoulders."
   "Alex! Oh, yes. He knows all there is to know–especially about me. Just ask him! He's full of good advice. And always so helpful–always wanting to be doing things for me. Why can't he just leave me alone?"
   "Have you asked him to?"
   "Are you kidding? Yes, I've asked him!" Isabel did not care for the drift of the conversation at all. But it had taken her mind off her other worry.
   "And does he, when you ask him to?"
   "Well–yes! But he never goes very far–because when I need him again, there he is. What on earth did I do to–"
   "Merit such devotion? Nothing, probably. But that's how it usually works. Strange, isn't it?" She smiled in apparent mystification, but Isabel was not fooled–and had not fooled her either: her mother knew as well as Isabel did that she did not really want Alex to leave her alone. But what did she want of him? That, her mother did not know, nor did Isabel herself.
   During school hours she was keeping what Alex called bad company: Ursula Slavin's clique, which Isabel had taken over as her own. At lunchtime on Thursday of the same week, waiting together in the cafeteria line, they filled the room with their chatter and laughter, which was a little too loud and a little too shrill to be wholly genuine. "But, Ursula!" Isabel protested, in response to her cliquemates' unsubtle insinuations. "Of course I'll be on the prom committee with you guys. How could you doubt me?"
   "Well, you've been so busy lately," Ursula sniffed. "With those other friends of yours."
   "But I don't have any other friends! You know that."
   "What about Maria Deluca? Of the flea-market Delucas? And Michael Guerin? The creature from the trailer park?" Ursula's face took on a solemn expression. "You've been observed, Isabel," she warned. "People are talking."
   "Who's talking?"
   "Well–us. And we're your friends. I can only imagine–oh, my God, here's another one." Alex, with a musician's instinctive timing, had just added himself to the line. "Honestly, Isabel. Alex Whitman? Does he have even a prayer of ever being perceived as a social asset?" Alex could tell that she was talking about him, could imagine the kind of thing she was saying, and was disappointed in Isabel for listening to it, as he was often disappointed in her. But then, he was often disappointed in himself, and so he did not hold it against her much.
   If he had been able to hear the conversation he would have counted it in her favor that she put up some resistance. "Alex is nice! He's–his own man."
   "Fine," said Ursula, with a catty smile at the other girls, "as long as he's not yours." Isabel let the matter rest there, though she felt uncomfortable about it.
   After stocking their trays, the girls headed for their usual table, with Ursula in the lead, but she stopped dead in her tracks on seeing it occupied by a small, dark girl Isabel did not remember ever having seen before. "Oh, my God," said Ursula. "An e.t."
   This disconcerted Isabel momentarily. "What?"
   "A freshman." Ursula did not know the girl personally; she could just tell. "Sitting at our table. Isabel, go read her the act." Isabel seemed to hesitate. "Go on, Isabel! The way you did last time."
   All the girls' eyes were on her, and so were Alex's. For some reason Isabel did not want him watching her just then. "Let's take another table," she suggested.
   "Isabel! We have our status to uphold. If we let one of them take our place, soon we won't have a place."
   "But she was there first."
   Ursula stared at her. "So?" Isabel realized then that further appeal to common decency would be pointless. "Don't tell me you're feeling some kind of sympathy for her?" Ursula asked.
   "No, that would spoil the image, wouldn't it?" For the first time Isabel saw Ursula as she knew Alex did (he had made no secret of it), and she was mad at him for that. Why did he have to be there? What was he, her conscience or something?
   Ursula stepped up to her as closely as her tray would permit. "Isabel, what is wrong with you today? You're the one that called them e.t.s to start with. Which I must say is highly appropriate. Go send her away." Her tone, and the look in her eyes, grew darker. "Otherwise we might start thinking there's something weird about you."
   Her threat hit home. Isabel cast her a hostile glare, which looked genuine for a moment, but then changed to the insincere, put-on kind–which restored Ursula's trust in her. Putting Alex out of her mind, almost, she approached the table in a manner that reminded him of the Queen of Hearts in Alice. "...unless it's this little e.t.," she said. The freshman girl looked up at her with a pair of big grey eyes, which seemed even bigger by contrast with her tiny features. "You're new to this planet," continued Isabel, "so you couldn't be expected to know. But just for future reference, this table is ours. We sit here every day at this hour." "I know," said the girl. "I've seen you." And she placidly resumed eating. Ursula and the others made expostulating noises. Alex, who had been listening with concern–for Isabel as well as her target–smiled with relief. This one could take care of herself.
   "And you still sat down here?"
   "Why not?"
   "Allow me to explain this to you in terms you can understand." Ursula's eyes glinted. This was the "act" she had looked forward to hearing Isabel deliver again. Alex, to whom it was new, listened less happily. "We are upperclassmen. We are the rulers of this planet. You are a freshman–an alien species–an inhabitant of the most insignificant planet in the most obscure galaxy in the known universe. You have no rights. You exist only by our sufferance. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We will tell you where to walk, where to sit, when to come, and when to go. So–" Glancing inadvertently at Alex, she found his eye trained sternly on her, and she faltered. "So–so–" She found herself powerless to continue. Damn him, anyway!
   Seeing her dilemma, Ursula stepped into the breach. "So either you do as we say or go back to your own planet." She ended with a glance at Isabel which suggested that her queenship of the group was due for reassessment. One of the other girls grabbed a flyer from the bulletin board–a cartoon of the famed Roswell alien, bug-eyed and chinless (which Isabel liked to annoy her brother with by telling him it proved people knew about him), and handed it to Ursula, who tried to stick it to the girl's back. It would not hold.
   The girl did not bother with them. She was gazing up at Isabel inquiringly. "Go on!" Isabel said. "Go!"–and then, in a whisper, "Please?"
   The girl shrugged. "I was finished anyway." She wiped her mouth daintily, then stood and picked up her books. "For today, I mean," she added, with a glance at Ursula. As she passed between the two of them, she laid her fingers lightly on Isabel's hand. You can't change what you are, she said–but she did not move her lips. Isabel stared at her in shock. The girl drew her attention to the salt and pepper shakers on the table. One was white, one black; they traded colors. The girl smiled at Isabel ever so slightly and then walked off with the same placid, unhurried air.
   Isabel stared after her. She hardly heard the voice at her side–Ursula's, it must have been–squealing, "My God, did she actually touch you? Isabel?" After a few seconds she sat down with the others and put up a front of ordinary sociableness, but her mind was (so to speak) in a galaxy far, far away.
   Alex had seen that something had happened between the two of them, but had seen no more than that. He hurried out after the girl and found her standing in the shade of the building, gazing out at the blue and gold umbrellas of the lunch patio with an expression he was unable to fathom. "What'd you do to Isabel?" he demanded.
   The girl regarded him with the same imperturbable manner she had shown inside. "That's Isabel's to tell. If she chooses." Then she walked off again. Isabel was watching from inside, wondering what had been said. But she would not ask Alex, and she certainly could not ask the girl. She would put it completely out of her mind.
   Liz, on the other hand, never put anything out of her mind if she could help it. This included Michael's questions about the cave map. After school that day she stopped by the Roswell Historical Society, which had its office in a tiny building at a corner of Summerhaven Park. It was only open two afternoons a week, not counting Saturdays, and this happened to be one of them. The docent on duty Thursdays was an elderly woman with glasses and a librarian-like air. "I'm doing a project on the town's history," Liz lied, "and I have questions about some of the local landmarks. Like, oh, the library. And Angels' Ground...."
   While she was so occupying herself, Isabel was trying to manage the feelings that had been growing in her all day, the more that she thought about what she had vowed not to think about. The revelation had burst on her so suddenly and so unexpectedly, she had been unprepared to accept it, especially in the middle of the school day, surrounded by her friends (so-called), caught up in her painstakingly cultivated conventional teen's existence, in which her noontime encounter had no place; in other words, she had to "think outside the box," as the saying went, in order to think about it at all. And she had had to fight past her immediate, instinctive reaction–which was one of fear, plain and simple–to reach the sea of conflicting emotions that tossed inside her. Now she was almost drowning in them.
   She had met a girl like herself! That was exciting, because it was a first–and scary, because the only alien they had known about other than themselves was a serial killer–and ego-threatening, because she was no longer the only known female of her species–and embarrassing, because when she had met the other she had been trying, obviously and clumsily, to pass for human, trying to deny her own identity: this, more than anything else perhaps, was what she had been reluctant to face.
   She knew she should tell Max; she longed to, in a way. But she felt constrained to keep it a secret. If she could talk to the girl alone, with nobody else around, she could find out things. On the other hand, what questions would she ask? And would she be able to understand the answers? She doubted if the girl would let her get that close anyway, now. Telling Max would not help: he would try to simplify things and end up making them more complicated; it was what he was best at.
   But he was also her brother. And she felt a need to talk to someone. So she slipped into his room that night long after they had "gone to bed," but knowing he would still be awake. She hunched down on the throw rug beside the bed with her knees drawn up to her chin. "Oh, Max," she said, "I did a stupid thing today."
   "So what else is new?" Isabel did not smile. "Stupid how?"
   "I was mean to someone. To a freshman."
   "Oh, well, if it was just a freshman...." Isabel smiled a little this time. "You're not a mean person. Why would you act like you were?"
   She tilted her head and rested one cheek on her knee. "To be normal."
   "How many normal people have you ever actually met? I have a feeling the supposedly normal ones are the exceptions. And probably they'd rather be different, would rather be noticed."
   "'Supposedly.' Mmm, maybe," said Isabel. She noticed that the photo on his nightstand was lying face down. She lifted it to look at. "Still, if I could be the girl in this picture...."
   "Liz?"
   "Is this who she is?"
   Max studied the photo for a moment. "No. Nobody could be that girl." He returned it to its place, face down. "Why on earth would you want to be that?"
   "On earth," she repeated, with meaning. "Why do you think? So I won't have to deal with who I am."
   "But I thought you were okay with it. I mean, we haven't talked about it in a while–"
   Isabel remembered vividly. "Since we were ten. Then, I felt like I was someone really special, only no one else knew it, but some day they would and I'd be, like, their queen. It's not like that, Max. And I can't stay in denial about it. I'm changing. My body is changing. "
   "Mine is too. Happens to everybody at our age–the biology book says."
   "Not like this. I feel the power growing in me, but I hardly know what it is or what it can do–what I'm capable of. Neither do you. And of course Michael...."
   "Others might know. Others of our kind–if we knew of any. But, unfortunately–" Isabel had opened her mouth to speak. "What?"
   She shook her head. "Nothing." She stood. "Thanks for listening, Max." She hurried out of the room. Her brother looked after her curiously. Sometimes he understood her, and sometimes, like now, he was obliged to defer understanding.
   Within the hour she was at the school auditorium, pushing Alex out onto the stage in front of the entire student body. He tried to bolt for the wings, but Isabel grabbed him and held him fast. "You can too dance," she said. "Try it and you'll see." And suddenly he was dancing, beautifully, and the crowd was cheering and applauding. "Now take off your clothes," she said. And suddenly they were off and he was in his t-shirt and shorts before God and everybody.
   And then something began to happen to his body: it began to grow new parts. A big fin, thrusting out of his front, tearing the boxers, and an even bigger fin, thrusting out of his back, tearing the shirt. The crowd was chortling and jeering. Then his jaws began to grow. They grew out a yard from the rest of his face and turned toward Isabel, somehow pulling the rest of his body after them. Then they opened wide–and swallowed her whole.
   ...Alex sat up in bed and found himself sweating. He discerned, by the night-light, a girl sitting on the madras spread. "Isabel? Is that you?"
   "Hush," she said. She laid a soothing hand on his cheek. "You're only dreaming."
   "Doesn't feel like a dream."
   "It has to be. You know that's the only place I can open up to you."
   "Were you responsible for that coming-out party just now?" He knew she must have been.
   "Sorry about that. But I wanted you to understand how it feels–how I feel sometimes. It can make me–I might say things that aren't very–" She struggled to say it.
   "Hey," said Alex. "It's okay." And it was; Isabel saw in his eyes that it was. She could have wept for gratitude, if she had not been Isabel. "Wish I could do something to help."
   Isabel had been hoping he would say that. "Actually...."
   She did not have to finish this time either. "Ah," he said. "Not drawn by uncontrollable primal lust, then." Isabel gave him "that look," as Alex called it. "Hey, you said it's a dream."
   Isabel felt a momentary doubt over what she was about to do, but she had argued it out with herself beforehand and concluded it to be justified. She needed Alex's help, and to get it she would have to tell him what she had kept from Max, and would rather have kept to herself. But at least she could trust Alex to be content with what she told him, and leave the rest hers; he was always willing to give her as much space as she needed–or less, when she needed that. He was really rather wonderful, and in the past she had not appreciated him sufficiently: so she had decided just before her visit. But she had also reflected that perhaps it only seemed that way tonight because she wanted something from him.
   Reservations or no, she was determined to go through with it; she had to know. "Alex," she said, "that freshman today. The one I–the one in the cafeteria. She's a–a not-of."
   "Not of what?"
   "Not of this Earth."
   The term was new to Alex. "'Not-of.' I like that. You mean she's one of you. Okay, so?"
   Isabel stared at him. "You're not surprised?"
   He was not, very. He had known there was something odd about the girl; odd but recognizable. "Well, you know how it is," he said. "When you've seen one alien...."
   Isabel suspected he was deliberately trying to be annoying, but for her present purpose she was willing to allow him that. "I'd like you to find out all you can about her–who she is, where she's from, where she lives. I know you're able to hack into the school's computer." In fact, Alex had an easier means of access he had stumbled onto accidentally, but he did not let it be generally known. "Will you," asked Isabel, "as a favor to me?"
   As Alex was debating it in his mind, weighing the ethical and the erotic considerations, a hazy figure with a golden aura around it materialized at the foot of his bed. "Okay, you win," he said to Isabel. "This is a dream."
   "It is now," she said wonderingly.
   The figure became more distinct, and they found themselves in company with the person they had just been talking about. "Wouldn't it be simpler to ask me?" she said. She smiled at Isabel so freely that it was as if Isabel's harassment that day had had no real meaning, and Isabel began to believe it had not. "I'm Neila McFadden," she went on. "I'm from–well, the first Earth city I knew was Richmond, Virginia. As for where I live, you can come and see for yourself." And she supplied the address, which was located in the complex of low-cost housing southwest of town.
   Isabel drove out there after school the following day. A few miles past the city limit, she took the precaution of pulling to the side of the highway and waiting for the next several vehicles to pass before returning to the highway, reasonably satisfied that she was not being tailed. Best to be cautious: Topolsky was back, Valenti had never gone away, and Nasedo–who knew where he was?
   Soon she exited into the grid of narrow lanes separating the ten-square lots. She looked for street signs but saw none, and few visible numbers on the small houses. However, she was in luck–or perhaps instinct (or some wilder talent) came to her aid. She stopped in front of a house from whose stoop a plain-faced Hispanic woman was keeping a close eye on a boy at play in the yard.
   Isabel left the Jeep and crossed the road to their front walk, lined with pebbles. She called to the woman on the stoop. "Excuse me? Can you point me to the McFadden house?" On receiving nothing back but a blank stare, she strove to dredge up her recollections of freshman Spanish. "¡Buenos dias, señora! ¿Por favor, donde esta la casa del McFadden?"
   The woman's eyes grew wide, and she erupted into a stream of exclamatory utterances too rapid for Isabel to understand fully. "¡Largo de ahi!" she shouted. "¡Esos son malos!" This was followed with a string of epithets.
   "Perdona me–" Isabel began.
   "¡Esos son malos!" the woman repeated. "¡Malos! ¡Malos!" She waved the boy to her, swept him inside ahead of herself, and slammed the door.
   Isabel returned to the Jeep and was lifting a leg to climb in when a sturdy-looking old woman shouted to her from her rocking chair on the porch of the house the Jeep was parked at. "She's right, you know," the woman said. "Ain't too smart, that 'un, but she knows that much."
   Isabel walked up to her. "Sorry, what was it she said? My Spanish–"
   "Wrong 'uns, she called 'em. And wrong 'uns is what they is."
   "Are they? Why's that?"
   The old woman shrugged. "'cause God made 'em that way, I reckon."
   "Where's their place?"
   "Next one down that side. One with the big wire fence around it."
   "Thanks."
   "But you stay clear of there, honey. Them's no good. Them's–"
   "Wrong 'uns, got it." So much for positive intergalactic relations, she thought–and that applied to her too.
   She walked across to the gate, feeling less assured than before she had come, and stopped uncertainly. One part of her was anxious to go in; the other part was just anxious.
   "If Alex was here," she reasoned with herself, "he'd say, 'Isabel, are you sure you want to do this?' And I'd say, 'Yes, Alex, I'm sure–and it's none of your concern anyway.' And he'd say, 'Isabel, everything you do concerns me. You're the woman of my dreams–literally.'" She shook her head. "No, Alex would never say that. He'd say, 'But, Isabel, aren't you scared?' And I'd say, 'Of course I am! I know nothing about this girl–except that she's like us. And she did invite me.'" She shook her head more emphatically. "This is a waste of time," she said. "I'm going in there." She continued standing. "I am." And finally, "Now." As if that had been the magic word, the gate latch lifted and the gate swung open. "Wal, come on in," said Isabel on its behalf.
   As she advanced up the dirt walk, the front door opened and Neila appeared, smiling. "What kept you?"
   "Should I have RSVP'ed first? I don't know the right etiquette for dream invitations." She thought again. "It was a dream, wasn't it?"
   Neila left the question unanswered. "Come in," she said.
   Isabel stared through the open doorway. It was, she sensed, the passage to a different life–and a different her; that beyond it she would lose herself–or find herself, depending on how one saw it; after all, Eve's expulsion from Eden was also a release. Isabel wanted to find out what lay waiting for her in there; she had other wants too, some of them tending in the other direction, but at the moment that one was paramount. So she went inside.
   Nothing terrifying befell her immediately. The lair of the "wrong 'uns" was benign, not sinister, full of sunlight pleasantly softened by the paper blinds. These were of a style like nothing Isabel had ever seen, and so were the other furnishings: patchwork-like, triangulated, nearly weightless. "So this is what houses look like on our world," she said.
   "Do they? I didn't know. I copied this from Better Homes and Gardens."
   She seemed to be waiting for something–for a request from Isabel, for the right moment, for something. This made Isabel restive, and she came to the point right away. "You know why I'm here, right? Because I'm not sure I do."
   "To learn," Neila said simply. "You came here to learn."
   Isabel nodded; she had known, after all. "I don't think I'm ready. Not yet."
   "If you weren't, you wouldn't have come."
   "But this power in me–"
   "The Balance."
   "The Balance." She had known that too. "It's so strong. So destructive."
   Her way of putting it seemed to surprise Neila a little. "It can be," she acknowledged. If you want it so."
   "What I want," Isabel said, almost in desperation, "is to keep from hurting anyone."
   "If you're holding a gun and don't know how to use it, will that stop you hurting someone? Come to the kitchen. I'll make us a pot of tea."
   She did this in the conventional way–except for the unusual quantity of pepper she put into the brew. "Why go through the whole process?" asked Isabel. "Can't you just–"
   "Of course. But it's never quite the same. Hadn't you noticed?"
   Isabel laughed. "Yes, but I thought it was just me."
   "Some things," said Neila, "require time." She said no more than that, but stood watching the kettle and waiting for the mix to boil.
   Isabel knew it was time. She took a deep breath. "Okay, then. I guess I'm ready. When do we start?"
   "We already have."
   "When will it end?"
   Neila shook her head. "There is no end, that we can see."
   They took their tea together in the front room, seated on what Isabel guessed to be a sofa. "I'll teach you all I know," said Neila. "There will be others who know more. You'll discover them in time."
   "Like your mother?"
   "I never had a mother. Or a father. I was ship-born."
   "You mean you were born–out there?"
   "No, after it landed. A long way from Roswell. though. So was my brother–adoptive brother." She regarded Isabel curiously. "Weren't you?"
   "We don't know. It might have been a ship. But it wasn't where they found the wreckage. We've searched. It must have been some place farther out."
   "Was it just you and your brother?"
   "Adoptive brother. And Michael."
   "Yes, I was forgetting him. Will you tell them about me, do you think?"
   "No," Isabel said. "That is, not yet. Have you told anyone about me?"
   A small boy ran in from the back hall. Until then Isabel had not guessed he was there. "He's the only one I have to tell," said Neila. "Aluben, say hello to my friend Isabel." Isabel heard a shy 'lo, but only inside her head. "Ben doesn't talk much–aloud, that is."
   Isabel had always had difficulty communicating with children, mute or not. "Hi there, big fella. How you doing?" was the best greeting she could come up with.
   "He was sick this morning. That's why you didn't see me at school today."
   "He seems fine now." In fact, he had begun running in circles around them, and Isabel was trying to shut her ears to the relentless tattoo of his feet on the hard floor.
   "Oh, we don't stay sick. You didn't know that?" Neila gave something like a sigh. "We have a long road ahead of us."
   "My brother brought someone back from the dead once," Isabel offered, feeling the need to show she was not as backward as her new friend supposed.
   "Yes, I heard about that. I'd been wanting to meet you ever since. Pretty reckless of him, wasn't it?"
   "It was," Isabel admitted. "Brothers." They both laughed.
   The one that was Neila's, having tired of running, went to the dining room bureau (that is, what Isabel assumed to be a bureau) and took out a bag of building blocks, which he poured onto the floor and proceeded to play with as any child might, almost: after stacking them as high as he could, he changed them into balls, which promptly fell and rolled away in all directions; he changed them back into blocks, crawled around to collect them, and stacked them again, only to change them into balls and make them fall again; and so on, without end. "It seems to surprise him every time," Neila observed.
   Isabel envied him. "He makes it look so easy."
   "It is easy."
   "Not for me it isn't."
   "Then we'll have to make it easier." She rested her cup and saucer on the coffee table (which Isabel had had no trouble recognizing; apparently coffee tables were impossible to disguise). "First lesson," Neila announced. "Change the cup and saucer to your favorite color. You can do that, can't you?"
   "Of course!" Isabel felt offended that anyone would have to ask.
   She bent her focus on the objects for a few seconds, and they turned pink. "No," said Neila, "I mean your true favorite." The objects then turned a dark purple, almost black. "Ultraviolet," Neila said approvingly. "Now the table." In a few seconds it matched the tea things on it. "And now the walls. All the walls."
   Isabel's mind resisted. "That's too much!"
   "No, it isn't. You just have to picture it. Not just on the outside, but inside, where all the tiny little–" She searched for the right words.
   "At the molecular level?"
   "That's what they call it!"
   Isabel, who was no science whiz herself, wondered for a moment whether Neila knew as much as Isabel had been giving her credit for. Well, we're aliens, she thought, not Rhodes scholars.
   She turned her attention to the wall opposite them. "Start with the wood," Neila instructed her. Isabel shut her eyes and concentrated; soon the image became clear to her in every detail. "Now the plaster." This was a little more difficult for some reason, but she achieved it. "And now the paint." This was easy, since Isabel had done some painting herself. "Now," said Neila, "will it to change. All of it, on every wall. It's no different than the cup and saucer. In fact, it's easier, because all you're doing, when it comes down to it, is repainting."
   Isabel found herself straining. It should have been easy for her, but it was not. Superficial as the change was, it was a harder task than, for example, melting a door, because it was at once more subtle and more widespread; she could see the big picture but had trouble holding on to it. At last she managed to keep it in mental view for more than a flash, and her will carried; the new color washed down the walls as if someone had flung a tub of paint at them–but the picture slipped out of mind before she was done and the wash stopped in the middle, leaving the walls two-toned: purple on top, yellow on the bottom.
   Ben ran to Neila and buried his head in her chest. Bad, she heard. "Don't be frightened," she soothed him, "it's just colors." She glanced back at Isabel. "Your shade is too truthful for him," she explained. "Don't worry about it. Go on." Isabel tried, but the color crept down only a little farther. "No! You're trying to persuade yourself you can do it. And if you have to do that, you can't. Just accept that you can. Slide back the door of your cell." Isabel did not understand–until she did it. Then it was exactly as Neila had described: a sudden escape from confinement into a limitless universe, of which she was in control. Almost before she could take another breath, her color was flowing all the way to the floor and was all around them.
   But now Ben was crying. "You don't like it?" said Neila. "Then you pick one." Ben thought a moment. "Cat?" Neila repeated. This puzzled her for a moment, and then she got it. "Oh, cat!" She laughed. "It's a neighbor's," she told Isabel. Then she shot her eye around the room and decked the walls in alternating streaks of orange and grey.
   "Please!" said Isabel. "Show some taste." She changed the streaks to a highly tasteful pink. Neila, not to be outdone, changed them to a sky blue. The two kept up the contest, working their way through the spectrum, until at last both timed their changes to happen at the same instant, and their clashing energies exploded together in a confusion of colors like an every-dimensional rainbow.
   Ben clapped his hands; he liked that. He and Neila laughed, and Isabel laughed with them. Now she felt up for anything. "What next?" she asked.
   "Next. Hmm...I know! You'll make it colder in here."
   "I tried that once. I couldn't do it."
   "But you're free now. You've opened the door." Isabel knew it was true, and that she would never go back into confinement again; she would have sooner died.
   "Imagine absolute cold," Neila directed, "and begin moving toward it." And Isabel did so; it was easy–almost ridiculously easy. "Closer," said Neila. "And still closer." Ben was now shivering. "Ben, you know how to warm yourself! Do it." Shortly he ceased shivering.
   "You can stop now," Neila told Isabel. But the temperature continued to drop. Ice was forming on the walls and the ceiling. Neila became alarmed. "Isabel, stop!" But Isabel seemingly could not; her eyes were fixed and her body was vibrating like a hummingbird's, too rapidly for the vibration to be seen.
   Neila took action, meeting Isabel's power play with one of her own. At once the temperature began to rise. The icicles cracked. The noise broke Isabel's trance. She looked around to see the walls running with water. Within seconds it had evaporated and the room was back to normal. Isabel felt as if she had been riding a roller coaster and locked in a steam press at the same time. "What happened?" she asked.
   "The power was controlling you. You must keep it in check at all times, otherwise you'll get swept away by it. That's why it's called the Balance." She gazed at Isabel admiringly. "You're stronger than I expected. Much stronger than me. Almost a warrior."
   Isabel began to blush, and then found she could control that too (which would come in handy some time, she was sure). "I wonder what Alex would say if he knew."
   "Your human friend? You mustn't tell him. Anything we reveal, they only use as a weapon against us."
   "Yes, I've been told that before." And as then, she reserved judgment, especially where Alex was concerned. "What about seeing into their minds? How do I get better at that?" She was still thinking of Alex.
   "That isn't a power that can be developed. It's a bond that either exists or doesn't between you and the other mind."
   "And what about dreams? I can visit other people in their dreams, and Max can't."
   "No, only women possess the dream power. It can be developed, but only in a wrong way–to twist other people's dreamspaces and corrupt their minds completely." She shivered. "I've never seen it, but I've been told about it."
   "I could bring them good dreams instead of bad ones," Isabel proposed.
   Neila stared gravely at her. "That's how it's done."
   Isabel was silent. Once or twice she herself had fallen prey to that temptation; she wondered if Neila knew. From now on she would have to remain in command of herself and her abilities. After all, she was almost a warrior.
   Nevertheless, she volunteered to cook dinner for the family that evening, and it was ready almost before they turned around. Max watched with deep misgivings as she carried in the last of the casseroles (using a pair of pot holders for show). "How'd you get it done so fast?" her mother asked.
   Isabel smiled brightly. "Who knows? Maybe I'm a witch." Her brother flashed her a cautionary look which she ignored.
   Philip began to serve himself. "This one's not hot."
   "Isn't it?" Isabel laid a hand on it. "Feels hot to me." Her father tested it again–and quickly drew his hand back. "Did it burn you?" said Isabel. "Sorry."
   "Wasn't like this a second ago," he said.
   "But it must have been!" said Diane. She looked around helplessly. "Mustn't it?"
   "Yeah," Philip agreed, "must have." But he sounded incredulous.
   Isabel continued to ignore Max's disapproving eye. "Dig in, everybody!" she chirruped gaily.
   After dinner the two shared dish duty, but Isabel had everything washed and dried in a few seconds. Her brother beckoned her into the adjoining laundry room, out of their parents' hearing, and spoke to her in a whisper. "What exactly do you think you're doing?"
   "Dishes," she said blithely.
   "You have to stop it! They're getting suspicious."
   "Let them. I'm tired of pretending I can't do things. Tired of crawling when I could be walking." Before today she had not known she felt like that. "Doesn't it ever get to you?"
   "Of course it does. Things could be so easy for us. So many things."
   "You said we should develop our powers, didn't you?"
   "Yes, but not to the point where we give ourselves away. We can't take that risk."
   "'Can't'!" Isabel repeated derisively. "With you everything's always 'can't do this,' 'can't do that'! I say it's time to see what we can do." She sailed off before he could answer. Max stared at the finished dishes with more concern than a casual bystander would have supposed they merited. This was one of those times for not understanding his sister.
   As for Isabel, she was pumped up with the conviction that she was beginning to understand herself for the first time. Lying in her room, she thought only of her next session with Neila–except for a moment's self-congratulation at not having told Max about her. That had been the right decision; he must never know.
   The same evening, in the kitchen of the Crashdown, Liz distracted Michael from his work by proudly reporting her discoveries in the Historical Society's archives. "I checked out the sites on the map–that is, the two we know about, and–"
   Michael was predictably irritated. "Didn't I tell you to leave that to–"
   "Yes, but listen! Both places have a record of strange occurrences. Electrical disturbances, unexplained noises, car batteries dying for no reason–that happens at Angels' Ground–"
   Michael grinned. "Yeah, I've used that one myself."
   Liz felt he was not taking her seriously enough. "Michael! Don't you see what this means?"
   He shrugged. "Shows I was right." But he had been convinced of that before the proof.
   "All the sites are energy sources. I'll bet every one has stories like that connected with it."
   Despite the lightness of his manner, Michael was impressed: Liz had come through once again, and without his having expected it. He still wished she had listened to him–but he could not wish she had not found out what she had. "Did you ask if there were any other places around here where weird things have happened?"
   "Michael, we're in Roswell, the alien capital of the world. There are reports of weird incidents everywhere. We'll have to find the other sites first. Then we can look them up specifically."
   "Liz!" her father called from the front. She started to go.
   "Thanks," said Michael. "I mean it. But I still don't want you involved in this alien stuff."
   She turned in the doorway with a forlorn smile. "Too late for that now," she said. The door swung shut after her. Max, thought Michael. She must be talking about Max.
   He hitched a ride to Angels' Ground that night, at an hour ungodly enough for the last loving couples to have finished their business. He hiked to the top and seated himself cross-legged at the rim overlooking the town, where he meditated at length on what Liz had told him, together with what other information he had gleaned. He had laid two maps down in front of him: the replica of the cave painting and a street grid of Roswell. Following Liz's proposed strategy, he tried postulating first one and then another of the map symbols as representing the location where he was.
   Suppose it were the lines like whipcords? Then north would be at the top left. However, if it were the row of boxes, north would be at the top right, and the distance to the library symbol would be shorter, which meant the scale would be smaller–or would it be larger? If it were the whipcords, the boxes would be northwest of them; if it were the boxes, the spiral would be in the same place the whipcords would be if–
   Michael felt his mind give way. He clutched the back of his head. "Too much!" he shouted.
   And someone heard him. "Doing some surveying?" she asked as she walked up at his back.
   Michael did not have to look this time. "Ms. Topolsky–again." He slid the cave map under the other one. "Just practicing my map reading. It's for a class project."
   "Past curfew again," Topolsky observed. "'way past."
   "So arrest me."
   She shook her head. "Out of my jurisdiction."
   "You know, I've never been sure what all your jurisdiction covers."
   She sat down next to him with a great deal more agility than most adults could boast "A very broad spectrum indeed. Including what happened at Dr. Grunewald's."
   "Doctor who?"
   "You mean the others didn't tell you about it?"
   "Nah, they're not telling me much these days. What happened?"
   "They wouldn't tell me either. But I'll share my surmise with you, if you like." Michael shrugged. "The doctor abducted your friend Max, intending to torture or perhaps to kill him. His sister and Liz Parker broke in and rescued him. They may also have done something to unhinge the doctor. His mind's completely gone. But don't worry, we have him safely under observation."
   "Why would he kidnap Max?"
   "He seems to have gotten it in his head that Max was an otherworldly being."
   "What proof did he have?" Michael immediately revised his question. "I mean, thought he had."
   "None," said Topolsky, "now." She could not keep the edge out of her voice.
   Michael felt happy–until he reflected that all the others, even Liz, had kept the information from him. "Am I the only one who didn't know?"
   "You know now," Topolsky pointed out. "And in exchange...." She took a sheet of paper from her purse. "Can you tell me what this is?"
   It was a sketch of the Balancer, not quite accurate, but close enough. "Who drew it?" Michael asked.
   "A student." Michael remembered the boy outside the rest room, and wondered how the drawing had made its way to Topolsky's desk. "Well?" she said.
   Michael felt compelled to give an answer and decided that the truth, or part of it, would be best. "It's something Max found."
   "What does it do?"
   "So far, nothing. Except–" He had remembered the small explosion in the park. But that would only make her Bureau more eager to lay hands on the thing. "No, nothing," he said.
   
   She let it go. "And who has it now? Max?" Michael hesitated. "Remember, I told you about Grunewald. He didn't."
   Michael gave in. "Okay, he's got it." Then an idea struck him: since Topolsky knew about Nasedo (though just how much, he was uncertain) she might know about the map too. "Okay, now it's my turn. See if these symbols mean anything to you."
   He got to his knees and began to draw in the dirt with his finger. No sooner had he finished the whipcord lines than Topolsky grabbed his arm. "What do you know about those?"
   "What those?"
   "The rocks."
   "You can tell from my drawing they're rocks?"
   "It's their exact shape. You've never seen them yourself?" Michael shook his head. "Then where did you get this picture?"
   "Saw it on a wall somewhere."
   "Graffiti?"
   "Yeah, in a way, come to think of it. Where are they located?"
   "In the desert southwest of here. I don't know the exact location."
   "How far, do you think?"
   "I said, I don't know!" The subject seemed to disturb her. Yet she had been the one who had brought it up.
   "The exact shape," Michael mused. Then his face lit up, and he looked back at the plateau. "I'll be damned," he muttered. Next to the symbol he had drawn, he drew another: the one that resembled a small solar system. "Remind you of anything?" he asked.
   Topolsky squinted at it. "A nipple?" Michael raised his eyebrows. She shrugged. "Well, that's what it reminds me of."
   "And women say guys only have one thing on their mind." He scooped up his maps, pocketed them, and scrambled to his feet. "Show you what I mean." At the west end of the parking area stood a natural rock pile. Michael helped Topolsky, and then she helped him, onto a ledge halfway up, which afforded a view over most of the plateau and the winding approach where she had left her Impala.
   "See?" said Michael. "It's the same as the symbol"–and, apart from some small errors of proportion, it was. "Those aren't just symbols. They're pictures of the places themselves."
   He had forgotten that Topolsky did not know about the map and that he did not want her to. "Where is this graffiti wall of yours?" she asked.
   He answered with another question that terminated the conversation. "Mind if I bum another lift from you?" He started downhill on his own, leaving her to pick out her own way, as he knew she could. Be my guest, she replied, not aloud, but he was out of earshot anyhow.
   At the same time (or a little earlier, or a little later) Alex was scaling a dune more steep than any to be found at Angels' Ground, or indeed anywhere in the waking world, with Isabel preceding him. Her bare feet glided easily over the sands, almost as if she were floating. On reaching the crest, she turned to him and lifted her arms, as a star-spangled galaxy whirled in the black sky behind. The high whistle of the wind expanded into a choir of angel soprani. "Can you really do all this?" Alex asked.
   Tonight Isabel did not have to remind him that it was all a dream. "This is only the beginning," she said–and upon the word she was transformed into a queen or a goddess or something that partook of each, whose like Alex knew he could never have looked upon and lived, except in a dream. He fell to his knees before her, and the object of his veneration accepted it as her due: mere Isabel no longer, she was now Isabel triumphant.
   Though it had been Alex's dream, not hers, it imbued her with a sense of elation that lasted through most of the following day. In the afternoon she and Neila made arrangements for her next visit–that is, her next lesson–and while the two of them stood talking together Ursula and some of her clique–which was no longer Isabel's–passed without acknowledging her, or she them. She was not sure who had cut off communications first, but either way she was glad about it.
   So was Max. He had walked up just in time to witness the dual snub, and he felt like applauding. He had never liked any of those girls in the least, or understood what Isabel had seen in them. Now he scowled after them, as he always did, hoping they would notice (though they never seemed to. However, as Neila left his sister, he scowled after her too. At his appearance she had cut the conversation short, feeling it prudent to avoid a face-to-face meeting at that time.
   And so it proved. "Who was that?" he asked.
   Acting from the same cardinal virtue as her mentor, Isabel assumed an air of indifference. "A friend."
   "What's her name?"
   Isabel hesitated. "Her name is Neila. Why, does it matter?"
   "Is she the one you burned up all those miles on the Jeep to go and see yesterday?"
   Isabel had not expected him to notice that, or to make the connection. "So what if she was?"
   "There's something strange about her." And all of us, thought Isabel. "You know, she might be a decoy put here by the FBI."
   "Max, she's just a kid!"
   "So?" Isabel had no answer for that. "Keep away from her until I make sure she's all right."
   Max had issued such directives in the past–he was famous for them–and his sister had usually gone along with them to avoid contention. But today–the first day of the rest of her life with the new sense of empowerment she had acquired–it was more than she could, or would, put up with. "Who do you think you are, my jailer? You have no right to dictate who I can and can't see!"
   Max realized he had come on too officiously, but was puzzled as to why it should suddenly be riling her now; she should have been used to it. "I didn't mean it to sound like that," he said.
   "Well, it did," she replied. And for a little both were silent.
   It was Isabel who advanced the first peace offering. "Max, please. This means a lot to me. I never had someone to talk to before–someone who understands about–" She stopped; she had revealed more than she had intended.
   "Understands?" Daylight dawned. "That's what it is about her. You never said."
   "I found out by accident." Her friend might have disputed this interpretation. "It was so lucky I still can't believe it. She's teaching me things, Max–things you couldn't begin to conceive."
   Max doubted that. "Who are her parents?"
   "She doesn't have any. Like us."
   "She must live with someone. Some adult. She hasn't mentioned them?" Isabel shook her head. "Don't you think you should ask her?"
   "That's between us!" She sounded angry because she had secretly been thinking the same thing–so secretly she had almost kept it from herself–but she had been afraid to tax her new acquaintanceship by probing for information. "And you keep your nose out of it," she told her brother.
   "I can't promise that."
   "I mean it, Max. Stay away from her!" She stormed off, leaving him more worried than before. But then, every new thing in his life worried him more than the last; it was his curse.
   If he had been aware of the investigations Michael had undertaken, he would have regarded them as further grounds for concern; because with Michael you never knew. For the whole day, in every bit of free time he had managed to squeeze out, Michael had been studying the map; apart from reading books, it was the longest he had ever concentrated on anything. To the identifying tag "Library" he had now added two more, "Angels' Ground" and "Rocks–Desert (where?)," next to the appropriate symbols. Only two sites remained to be identified; Michael had not had a chance to ask Topolsky about them, but they would probably have meant nothing to her. It was a fluke her knowing about the rocks (and how had she known?)
   It was clear now that the symbols were simplified but recognizably accurate diagrams of the sites they represented: the diagonal lines were the rocks, the concentric circles were Angels' Ground– But hold on! The spot in parentheses? How could that be the library? There was no obvious resemblance at all.
   That evening Michael went to take another look. There was no higher ground from which to view the whole layout, only lawn on all sides, except at the rear, where it descended by a gentle slope to a small amphitheatre. Michael had attended concerts there in the summers.
   –the ampitheatre! He ran around to look at it and confirm his recollection. Sure enough, it was an ellipse: the amphitheatre, not the library, was the energy center. And again the map had pictured it accurately enough to enable a positive identification.
   Michael turned his attention to the two unknown symbols: the spiral and the five boxes. Surely, he thought, the original of the latter should be easy to track down. He could gauge its general direction from that of the rocks: if they lay southwest, as Topolsky had said, then the boxes lay more or less west–and if the map was to scale, they were even farther away than Angels' Ground. That would be some walk. But again, the town was not all that big. The prospect of further geographical calculations daunted him more. It feels like homework, he thought. Steeling himself to the necessary exertion, mental and physical, he set out on his expedition.
   Soon he came to row on row of apartment buildings and sought among them for a building with five and only five units, but found none. He knew he was being optimistic (and lazy); the place he was after had to be much farther on than that. And so he kept walking, until the apartment buildings ended and a section of single-family houses began–miles of them. Eventually these gave onto a wedge of the business district, the bulk of which extended off to the southeast, and this in turn gave onto more houses. Michael felt as if he had been walking half the night. But it was only an hour past curfew when he reached his goal.
   He had no clue at first that it was within his view. All he saw around him was an industrial area stretching for blocks, a congeries of parking lots, fences, and walls, looking sterile and desolate under the security lights, and all of them too far apart to be the objects of his search. As he was about to give up for the night, he glimpsed an empty lot–no, a whole succession of them–in the middle distance, and beyond them an aggregate of smaller shapes, among them a set of five: five exactly. They were slightly longer than the map pictured them, but in exactly the right configuration. Michael could not imagine at first what they could be. Then he remembered the old railroad yard. It had been shut down, reopened for a time as the Aickman Railway Museum, and then shut down again. But the rusting rail cars remained; where else could they go? As he drew nearer he was able to see them in increasingly greater detail: a locomotive engine, a string of passenger cars, and a caboose with two walls caved in, as from a collision.
   On reaching the yard he found it surrounded by a chain link fence–which of course this was no obstacle. In the map on the cave wall, it had been the westernmost of the five boxes that had housed one of the Stones and been pointed up by its light. So it was the westernmost of the five cars–the locomotive engine–toward which Michael looked first.
   After he had hauled himself up the tall steps into the engineer's cabin, the thing he noticed at once was an item of clothing–a sweatshirt–draped over the throttle. He turned it over. "Coach," read the patch on the back. Michael tensed: Nasedo had been there–but apparently was no longer: Michael relaxed. He had now seen what was to be seen, which from his perspective was nothing, and was about to leave the cabin when he heard the sound of a bell, faint but clear: dingdingdingdingding: a train bell. It kept ringing, and growing louder. Looking out through the front window of the cabin, he saw a light–a train light–a hundred yards ahead, bearing down on him out of the blackness, as if a train were approaching on the same track. This was impossible; there was no track beyond where the engine stood. Yet the ground shook under him.
   Scarcely knowing what he was doing, he ran to the steps and leapt to the ground, then shot a look around. There was no train–how could there be?–only the bell and the light and the shaking. Michael started running and did not stop until well past the fence. He quickly mended the hole he had made in entering (though there was no point) and stood in the middle of the field outside the yard, panting and–he now became aware–trembling. "What the hell was that?" he asked himself or God or nobody.
   Almost at once, the answer came, and it almost made him laugh. "Unexplained occurrences," Liz had reported: well, he had just had a taste of them, and they had terrified him; no wonder the museum had had to shut down. But why those occurrences: train lights, train noises? Maybe traces of the realities lingered there like echoes, and the energy of the place amplified them; maybe they were what people called ghosts. But they were chance emanations, with no malevolent will behind them–at any rate, not tonight. However, Michael desire to repeat the experience. And he did not need to; he had gotten what he was after. Once home, he added a fourth tag to the map.
   Now only one symbol remained a mystery: the spiral that was not a spiral. Michael knew he had never seen anything resembling it anywhere. Yet it stirred something in him that was like a memory. His instinct told him that the spiral was not like the other symbols, that its significance lay deeper. For one thing, it was engraved in the Balancer, and for another, Isabel had a pendant–another alien artifact they had found–cut in its shape. Michael wondered whether the spiral affected her as it did him. He could not stare at it too long, or it brought to mind things that bothered him, things and people: usually Hank and, for some reason, Maria. He made an effort, largely successful, to put it out of his thoughts: he had to be up early for work the next morning.
   This being a Saturday, Isabel had been able to recruit Alex to drive her out to Neila's in his father's Volvo, Max having claimed the Jeep–on purpose, she suspected, to prevent her going. If that had been his plan, she reflected with some satisfaction, he had failed in it. She and Alex reached the house before noon.
   She did not go in at once: she was waiting for something from him. "Glove compartment," he said finally. In it she found a white handkerchief, which enshrouded the thing she wanted. To satisfy herself of this, she felt at it gingerly through the wrapping, stopped as soon as she recognized its contours, and packed it away in her purse. She found that it still excited a slight distaste in her.
   "I still think I should check with Max on this," said Alex.
   "Trust me, if anyone can tell us about it, it's Neila."
   "Maybe," Alex acknowledged. But that had not been his point.
   Isabel opened the door. "Thanks for the ride. You can pick me up at two."
   "Unh-uh. I'm waiting here."
   She looked doubtful. "Long wait."
   "Brought my games with me." He lifted a laptop out of the rear seat. "Scouts' motto–'Be prepared.'"
   "You were never a Scout!"
   "My motto too."
   Isabel gave him the most uncomplicated smile he had ever received from her. "You're a nice guy, Alex. You know that?"
   "Story I get is, we finish last."
   "Not with me you don't." On impulse, she leaned over and kissed him. The beaming countenance this left impressed on his features remained long after she entered the house and almost until she came out again.
   She began this visit with a confession. "I told my brother about you. Didn't mean to, it just happened."
   "It's all right," Neila said. "He was bound to find out somehow sooner or later."
   "He was asking me questions about you. I didn't have the answers."
   Neila read between the lines. "You could find them if you tried, in my dream closet. I could do the same to you. But do we need to?" Isabel shook her head. "Your brother would never understand that." Neila glanced up at her. "Would he?"
   Isabel had her purse open and her hand on Alex's handkerchief, ready to take it out for Neila to see, but at this question her hand froze. "You're right," she said after a moment. "My brother wouldn't understand at all." She let go of the handkerchief. She was uncertain now if what she had been about to do, or if refraining from doing it, was the right thing; perhaps she would know better later. She clasped the purse shut and laid it on the sofa. With barely a thought for Alex, still playing out in the car, she turned her attention to whatever lesson she might be set today. She looked forward to it.
   And Neila did not disappoint; Neila never disappointed. "In my mind," she said, "I'm holding the image of a form. Find it, see it, and change the table to match it."
   Isabel focused, and within a few seconds found it, saw it–truly saw it, as if it had been there in front of her–and tried to change it, but with no success. "Slide open the door," Neila reminded her. Isabel remembered; she did it, felt the freedom of it, and the table metamorphosed into a cube twice the size it had been before. "Repeat!" Neila commanded. "But a different form this time." Again Isabel focused, found it–and made a face. "No snide remarks!" Neila chided her. The cube swelled into a valentine's-day heart twice as big again. "Repeat!" said Neila.
   This time the job took longer and taxed Isabel more sternly; her face was smothered in perplexity. At the end of it the heart expanded–almost exploded–into a geodesic dome so huge that it scraped the ceiling plaster. "Isabel!" exclaimed Neila. "This isn't what I was thinking of at all."
   "No," said Isabel, "me either." They stood and circled it, staring at it wonderingly.
   In the lane outside, Alex heard another car approaching. There was no reason the sound should have startled him, but it did; the afternoon had been that tranquil. The girls would have heard it themselves if they had not been absorbed in the mysterious manifestation before them. "You must have picked it up from someone else," Neila said. "Maybe your friend?"
   "Or something triggered the memory. I was inside one of those once." This brought to mind the pendant she was wearing, which was concealed by her top; she wore the pendant for luck, but never where it could be seen, in case the wrong people happened to be watching). "That's where I found this." She lifted it into view.
   Neila stared strangely at it for a moment, then went to a bookcase (identifiable as such by the books it contained) and took down a framed photograph, which she brought over to show her. "It's the same one, isn't it?" The photo showed a pair of men in front of a dome like the one Isabel had created–in fact, the same one she had been in. It had been a late addition to the house of a man who had once written a book. It was a book on aliens, Isabel had seen it herself, and from the portrait on its dust jacket she recognized the author as one of the men in the photo. He was wearing the pendant that was now hers. "That's James Atherton," she said. "But who's the man with him?" He was tall, with a black beard, was dressed as a cowboy.
   "That's my father," said Neila. "He gave him that charm."
   A chill seized Isabel. "You never had a father. You said so."
   "Sorry, I meant stepfather. I forget sometimes, we've been with him so long." In the pause that followed, the sound of the motor reached them. Neila ran to a window and pulled back a corner of the blind to peer out. Her face lit up. "It's him! I didn't expect him back until next week."
   Isabel was confused. "Who?"
   "The one we were just talking about. My stepfather."
   No, thought Isabel, no. She backed away toward the door–and bumped into the dome. "I have to be somewhere. A date. I have a date." She hardly knew what she was saying; the only thought in her head was to get out of there as fast as she could.
   "No, stay! I want you to meet him!"
   Isabel ran out, ignoring her cries. A battered Cadillac convertible with the top down was turning in at the open gate; its driver looked just as he had in his photo. Isabel raced past him to the Volvo. She opened the door on Alex's side. "Slide over!" she shouted–and when Alex was slow to comply she shoved her way into the driver's seat, forcing him aside. The key was in the ignition; she turned it. "Hey, not your car!" Alex protested.
   Isabel glanced back at the house for a second. Neila was standing at the door, looking as bewildered as Alex was looking. Isabel wished she could take her out of there–and her brother, of course–but it was impossible now. Tabling her regret, she swung out into the lane and shot off in the wrong direction. She turned at the first crossing and doubled back at the second.
   "What's your hurry?" asked Alex. "Who was that guy?"
   "Nasedo." Her eyes remained fixed on the road. Why did he, of all people, have to be Neila's father? For once something in her life had been perfect, had made her happy, really really happy, and now–
   No sooner had Alex absorbed the news than another thought struck him. "Isabel, where's your purse?"
   It took only a second for the realization to hit home. Isabel jerked the car to a halt. "Crap!" He had never heard her scream before. "I left it!"
   "Left it? But it has the–"
   "I know!"
   "It's with him!"
   "Alex, I know! I was so rattled–" She buried her face in her hands. "Oh, God, what'll I do? What'll I do?" At that point she was not even figuring Alex into the equation.
   "Max'll kill me," Alex said. He knew this was not the most important consideration just then, but it was the one uppermost in his mind. "He'll do the opposite of what he did to Liz. He'll make holes in me."
   "After he finishes with me." She despaired for a moment, and then ordered herself to snap out of it; that would not help anything. "We'll have to go back for it," she said.
   "And take on Nasedo? Just you and me?–well, you."
   "You're right. We'll have to bring in the others–except Michael. But we won't tell them about–that."
   Alex knew what she meant. "Why not?"
   "Because I don't want them to know, okay? Until I can get it back." Covering your ass, in other words, Alex thought. Just like the rest of the world. He understood the motive but did not admire her for it. Just like the rest of the world.
   However, in less than an hour, he was at the UFO Center telling Max as much, and only as much, as Isabel had directed him to. "Nasedo?" Max repeated. His first concern was the same as his sister's. "You haven't told Michael?"
   "No, Isabel thought it'd be best to keep it from him. For now." The qualification was Alex's, not hers. "She's gone across to tell Liz."
   "Liz!" Max could hardly believe that even Isabel could be so imprudent; as far as he was concerned, they should not tell Liz anything more about themselves, ever. But then he remembered Liz's store of knowledge and her capacity for analysis. "Maybe it's best, at that," he allowed. "She might be able to help."
   At the moment, however, she was not helping in any way Isabel could detect. "But are you sure?" she asked for the third time, forcing Isabel to repeat, "I told you, I saw him."
   They were in the staff room at the Crashdown. Isabel had unstopped the kitchen door to keep Michael from hearing them. His back had been turned–Isabel had made sure of that–but not quite long enough to prevent his catching a glimpse of her leopard-print top as the door swung in. There was no mistaking that top.
   Through the order window he could hear Jeff calling into the back. "Lizzie! Doing a solo out here!" This confirmed his guess as to who the other party in the conversation was.
   "Five minutes, Dad!" she called back.
   "You've hadyour five minutes," he said grumpily. Through the window Michael saw him return to the front, visibly irritated. He was not a very good waiter, but he somewhat made up for it by being a good host, and that afternoon he was too busy schmoozing with the customers to notice the woman who was not one–not today–but was just making a brief tour of the joint in search of someone, whom she did not find. On reaching the rest room door at the back, she discovered a need she had been theretofore unaware of and went in to meet it, paying no heed to the sign on the wall that read "Rest Rooms for Customers Only."
   The "five minutes" Liz had requested had not yet ended, but something else was about to, and Isabel would be cross with herself later because she had not foreseen it. "You mustn't tell Michael," she was insisting, as she had insisted to Alex and (through him) to Max.
   "What does it matter?"
   Liz's seeming attitude of bleak indifference, which was normally alien to her, took Isabel by surprise. "You know Michael as well as I do. Maybe better. Depending on what happened to be running through his head at the time, he might try to kill Nasedo, or join up with him. Whichever, he'd be putting himself in danger."
   Liz shook her head dismissively. "Nasedo's no danger to you. Just us." She looked away. "But then, so are the rest of you. He does it his way, you do it yours. Same difference in the end." That morning she had been brooding on her hematological condition, as she found herself doing more and more often lately, and that had left her bitter, as it always did.
   To Isabel, who still knew nothing of her case, Liz's mood was just a mawkish self-indulgence, and a distraction from the crisis at hand. "What are you talking about?" she asked.
   "Isn't that the reason you were sent here? To contaminate our blood? Only Dr. Grunewald found out."
   "Grunewald's crazy."
   "Then I'm crazy too."
   "You're sounding that way."
   This judgment was not without foundation; Liz's state was in fact getting to her, and in her present mood the weight of her hopelessness leaned hard on her other thoughts, throwing them atilt. "One drop, Isabel. From one of his slides. That's all it took."
   "Took for what? We don't have time for this." While she was speaking, Michael, unheard by either of them, crept up to the other side of the door and put his ear against the crack.
   "Took for your blood to poison mine. I'll show you if you want. Under the microscope."
   "I believe you," said Isabel. "You're the scientist." She knew this sounded cold, but she could not help it. Though she felt for Liz in her plight, she could do nothing for her, and so disregarded the problem for the present as none of her concern. Triage, this was called in rescue missions–and that was what she was now engaged in: the rescue of Neila, and the Balancer. "Does Max know?" she asked.
   "And if he did?" said Liz. "What's one human more or less?"
   "I think you mean more to him than that." And she did think so, even after what had happened between them. But the expression of the thought had sounded perfunctory, like a mere courtesy; she was holding back her sympathy for the sake of practical need–and it would have been of no use, anyway, so why waste energy on it?
   Michael, listening at the door, was trying to make sense of it all. He could not see the hardening in Isabel's expression, but heard it in her voice as she went on. "Obviously I can't contradict you. I don't know why we're here any more than you do. But I do know one thing, now." She was pacing; Michael could hear her footfalls. "I thought we could work together to fight Nasedo, in spite of all our differences." At the mention of Nasedo, Michael began listening more intently. "Now I see that Michael was right."
   "Right about what?"
   "He kept insisting to Max that your race and ours are natural enemies. And this proves it."
   "Maybe it wasn't natural." Any claim of proof always stirred the scientist in Liz to examine it. "Maybe you were genetically engineered for it."
   "Then that's even worse," said Isabel. And suddenly she was overtaken with the sadness of it, of Liz's dashed hopes and her own. "I'm really sorry, Liz," she said, "though you may not believe me right now. Sorry we ever interfered with your life. Max should have–" She stopped as she realized where the thought was heading.
   Liz did not shrink from saying it. "Let me die? Yeah, guess he should." But Isabel had not meant that–had she?
   The two of them had now reached the end of their conversation; the end of everything. "Crap," Isabel said, for the second time that day.
   Michael was set to barge in and demand a full explanation from them of what he had just heard, but somebody beat him to it. The door from the cafe opened halfway, and Jen's face appeared in the gap, gazing at Isabel in fear and amazement. "What are you?" she asked.
   "How much did you hear?"
   "All of it. Through the wall." She pointed in the direction of the ladies' room.
   "Have to get that fixed," said Liz.
   Isabel tossed a glance that way. "Done." Then she turned back to Jen. "If you heard, you know. But you mustn't tell anyone."
   "Especially your boyfriend," Liz added. The two of them converged on Jen, suspending the separation agreement just settled upon to mount their joint attack.
   "Husband," Jen corrected. "He's my husband."
   "You married that guy?" Isabel said, and then, "Sorry."
   "He's not always like that." But her tone was defensive. "Not with me. Or his sister. She has a birth defect. That's really the reason for the alien thing–he was looking for a cure for her, from up there." Then the truth hit her. She stared at Liz. "But you were healed. So Larry was right!"
   "And if he ever finds out," said Liz, "his life could be in danger. Yours too."
   "Danger from what?"
   "You read about the silo murder?" said Isabel. "And the handprint they found?" Jen nodded. "The guy who made it–he's back."
   Michael gave a start, causing himself to bang his shin on the door. The girls heard, but before they could act on their knowledge, Jeff burst in on them. "Okay, Lizzie, back to work now! No more breaks today! And you two, out of here! This area's staff-only." They all hastened to obey, and Michael, rather than waiting to be caught eavesdropping, quickly returned to the grill.
   Meanwhile Max and Alex were waiting in front of the restaurant, according to Isabel's instructions. "You have the Balancer with you?" Max asked.
   "The what?" Alex had not heard the name before.
   "That artifact we found."
   "No, we–have to drop by and pick it up after we leave here." It was not precisely a lie, but it was deliberately misleading, and Alex did not feel comfortable with it. Or with what they were doing, either. "Why don't we just tell Valenti? He's been hunting this guy for years."
   "And if he gets killed or put in jail, what happens to his stepchildren? They'd be like me and Isabel. Orphans."
   "So we let him keep on killing because he's a family man?"
   "I haven't worked that out yet. But I'm not bringing the sheriff in on it."
   "In on what?" said the voice they least wanted to hear: Its owner had stolen up on them from behind without half trying. "Okay, you two," he demanded, "what's going on?" They stood facing him like deer caught in the Rover's headlights.
   –and might have stood that way all night if the girls coming out of the back room had not seen their predicament. "And now the sheriff," said Isabel. "This is just great."
   Jen sized up the situation immediately. "Leave it to me," she said, to the others' surprise. She ran outside to where the three were standing and tugged at Valenti's sleeve. "Sheriff, I have to report a missing person. My husband."
   "Ma'am, please, one minute–"
   "He's been gone all morning. I'm afraid he's been abducted by aliens." This captured Valenti's attention, and that of the boys also. "I'm in the kitchen making scrambled eggs," Jen went on, "Larry's favorite. But no bacon–he used to have six big strips every morning, but I put a stop to that after we got married."
   While Valenti listened, trying to hide his growing impatience, Isabel slipped out the cafe doors behind his back. She waved thanks to Jen, Max slipped away after her, and together they hurried across to the Jeep, which he had left outside the UFO Center. To his annoyance, Isabel claimed the driver's seat and grabbed the car keys from his hand.
   "We have to wait for Alex," Max said. "He's got the Balancer at his place."
   "Not any more he doesn't," said Isabel, and she turned the ignition key.
   "So the eggs are done," Jen was saying, "and I call him. 'Larry!' I call. But he doesn't answer. And when I look, he's gone! And he hasn't been back."
   Valenti scratched his neck. "And you suspect aliens are responsible? Why's that?"
   "Well, last night I woke up and heard this weird squeaking. Like mice."
   "Maybe it was–" From the corner of his eye he saw the Jeep hanging a U, and before it disappeared on squealing tires around the nearest corner, he also saw who was in it. "Hey!" he shouted.
   Coincidentally, the person Jen had reported missing was just turning the same corner on foot. "Larry!" she cried. She ran to meet him halfway.
   "I've been looking all over for you," he said.
   "I've been looking for you too." That much of her story had been true. "Where have you been?"
   "Interview." He wanted to keep her guessing longer but could not hold back the good news. "Jen, I got the job!"
   "Larry, that's awesome!" Hugging each other, they walked back to where Valenti was still glaring after the Jeep, or where it had been. "Look, Sheriff!" said Jen. "Larry wasn't taken by aliens, after all."
   "Got a job at the library," Larry said smugly.
   "Same difference," Valenti muttered.
   "Let's go celebrate," said Larry. "What do you say to dinner at Chez Pierre?"
   "I say, ooh la la!" And the couple walked off romantically, arm in arm.
   Alex was now left alone with Valenti, and uneasily aware of the fact. "Mr. Whitman." Valenti grinned. "Seems like it's just you and me. What say we step out back for a chat?" He motioned toward the alley.
   "A chat about what?"
   "What you kids are hiding from me." Alex put on an absolutely-not-hiding-anything look of a kind Valenti had seen many times before. "You know, it could be more dangerous than you think. Suppose something happened to Isabel Evans?" Alex glanced sharply at him. "You'd feel pretty cut up about that, I expect. Rather spare you that. But you'll have to work with me." Alex recognized the tactic, but it had its effect regardless. By the time they reached the alley at the rear, Michael, who had intermittently been keeping an eye on the various comings and goings, had posted himself inside the back door, holding it open just far enough for him to overhear.
   Isabel meanwhile was heading west on the 70 at a speed which Valenti could not have matched, which the Jeep was bearing hardly, and which had her brother clutching the door frame with something approaching panic. "Will you slow down?" he begged her.
   "No."
   "Oh," he said, in some slight surprise. "Well, okay, then." Somehow she had assumed command, and he did not challenge it. "Will you tell me where we're going?"
   "To Nasedo's."
   "And you have the Balancer with you?"
   Isabel cast around for a strategy that would save her from having to tell him outright. "Not...exactly."
   "Didn't you say Alex gave it to you?"
   Isabel cast around again. As yet no strategy was forthcoming. "Not...exactly," she repeated.
   "Then what exactly? Isabel, where is it?"
   Isabel realized avoidance was impossible. "I left it at Nasedo's."
   "You what?"
   "I couldn't risk going in there alone. I mean, I had Alex with me, but I needed you."
   This placated Max a little, as she had hoped. "We have to get it back," he said. "Who knows what he'll do with it?"
   "It's more important to get her out of there. Her and Ben."
   "I wouldn't say more important–"
   "Of course they won't listen." Isabel was now speaking principally to herself. "He's never harmed them, and never will. But he's a criminal. A murderer. And sooner or later it will come down on them. It always does. Then everybody ends up getting hurt." Max had questions he wanted to ask, but he held back until she was done. "You were right, Max, and I was wrong. We should keep to ourselves, not get involved with other people. It only makes matters worse. And now Liz–" She stopped, realizing he did not yet know about Liz.
   "What about her?"
   She tried to tell him as simply as possible. "Her blood got another kind mixed up with it. Our kind."
   This confused him. "I don't see how that's–"
   Isabel saw what conclusion he had naturally jumped to and she cut it short. "Not you. It was a blood sample from the lab. There was an accident. Her blood was poisoned. Our blood poisoned hers. Like Grunewald said it would."
   "But Grunewald is–"
   "Crazy. I told her that. Didn't seem to ease her mind a lot."
   "And you're sure? Absolutely sure?"
   "She is. And she's the biology expert."
   Max could not accept it, and shook his head several times in token of his nonacceptance. "There must be a way to save her. Some way, somewhere."
   Isabel felt like giving him a hard shake. Just like him to have his head in the clouds now, when they had to be thinking practically! "Why must there? We can't save everybody, Max. And now, thanks to me, we may not even be able to save ourselves. I've bungled it all." This was the other side of self-determination.
   But at least she had succeeded in putting a stop to his meaningless invocations and restoring him to the present concern: he now looked as unhappy as she felt, and that was something. "Could things get any worse?" he asked.
   "Afraid so." She nodded toward the rear view mirror. "Same car's been tailing us for miles." She turned onto a side road and the car sped past. She saw it was the Volvo that had brought her the same way in the morning. "Oh, you fool!" she said (to Max, since the driver was out of earshot). "You can't handle him on your own!" But before she could deal with this new fear, there arose a shrill cry, one her brother could not hear; it filled every corner of her mind, and of her being. Although it was soundless and wordless, its message was unmistakable: it was a cry for help. And Isabel knew who the sender was: every consciousness was as individual and recognizable as a silver handprint.
   Max saw the alarm written in her features. "What is it?"
   "Neila. And she's in trouble." But where? Where? Isabel searched the landscape. "There!" She pointed to a grey Sebring with smoked-glass windows which was soaring past in the opposite direction. That had been the source, without doubt.
   "Is Nasedo with her?"
   Isabel imagined him as she had seen him, and cast her mind into the Sebring, probing for a match. "I don't think so. No, he can't be."
   "Then he's still at the house. And Alex–"
   "I can't be bothered with Alex now!" But she felt a twinge of conscience as she said it. She climbed back onto the highway and sped after the Sebring. When it turned off heading south, she did the same.
   The Volvo she had seen continued to Nasedo's house and stopped in front of it. The driver switched off the ignition without a key (which in any case he did not possess) and jumped out. He said, to an audience not present, "So this is the place you all didn't want me to know about, huh? Found it in spite of you." He crumbled the gate with a glance, tramped up the path, hesitated for a second at the door, then crumbled that as well, and marched inside. The dome still crowded the living room. The intruder circled it with care, expecting the coach to pop out from behind it at any second. Having cleared it without incident, he proceeded to reconnoiter, one room at a time.
   He found only one door shut, and threw it open. The room was dark, but as soon as he stepped in he sensed another presence there. He made a light, like a will-o'-the-wisp fluttering near the ceiling. It revealed the room's other occupant: a man on a bed, half-lying, half-sitting. He smiled at Michael. "I've waited for this a long time."
   "Yeah," said Michael, "me too." Ben's playground ball was sitting by the door; the room was his. Michael lifted the ball and hurled it at the bed with such fury that it burst against the headboard. The reclining man had deflected it from himself, but only barely. "Why did you have to make me fight you?" Michael yelled. "And turn me against the only people who mattered? Now everybody's the enemy." The man on the bed did not answer, but stared at him in seeming incomprehension.
   The Sebring, and the Jeep dogging it, passed out of the city into the desert. The Sebring turned off onto a narrow road, took it for a short way, and then abandoned it to cut across the waste. The Jeep followed suit. Both were trailing the Great Wall of China, in dust. The Jeep's tires and suspension had an easier time over the rock and brush, and gained on its prey steadily, but too slowly for the driver's taste; she wanted resolution now.
   She wheeled around to a view of the sedan's front tires, focused on them, and turned them to granite, forcing it to a stop. Two "suits" jumped out, waving revolvers. When these turned red hot under Max's merciless gaze, the suits threw them down and fled. Unexpectedly, a beige Rover and a black Impala, side by side, bore down on them from the turnoff road, blocking their escape. One of the vehicles disgorged Valenti, the other Topolsky and another suit, all with guns drawn. The Sebring men raised their arms in surrender.
   As the Jeep pulled up beside the Sebring. Isabel rotted one of the rear doors and it fell away, revealing Neila, Ben, and a heavy-set woman with greying hair sitting beside them. She grabbed the boy by the collar. A second later her hands flew to her head, liberating him. He and his sister scrambled out together and she enfolded him in her arms protectively. Isabel ran to them. Max followed her at a walk.
   The law officers strode up with the two fugitives in tow. Isabel, to whom it was not yet clear they were being detained, not reinforced, favored Topolsky with her most scornful stare, which she had spent a lifetime practicing. "So the FBI's stealing children now? Nice way to make your living."
   Topolsky nodded toward the two. "Not ours, I'm glad to be able to say. But I bet I know whose they are." She peered into the sedan. "As I thought. Hello, Margaret."
   The grey-haired woman nodded coldly to her. "Kathleen."
   "Out," said Topolsky. The woman did not move. "Now!" This time she complied, though grumblingly. On emerging from the car she was confronted by the row of not-ofs: the two children, Max, and Isabel: probably more than she had ever seen together in one place; her belief in them, if it had ever wavered, was now confirmed.
   "Allow me to introduce your child stealer," Topolsky said. "Margaret Seaver from the Bureau of Energy Alternatives Management–or BEAM, as it's called."
   "More than from the Bureau, dearie. I'm the new number two."
   Topolsky seemed unimpressed. "I wouldn't brag about that too loudly if I were you."
   "Who's number one?" asked Valenti. Seaver ignored him.
   "Wouldn't we all like to know?" said Topolsky. She looked toward Neila and Ben. "And these are the children." She gazed at them with a catlike curiosity which suggested she had heard something of them herself. "What's your business with them, Margaret?"
   "They're being detained on grounds of national security. Sheriff, I expect your support in this."
   Valenti rubbed at his five-o'clock shadow. "My job's enforcing the law. These kids haven't broken any laws that I know of."
   "Some things, there are no laws to cover–yet. We create our own as need arises."
   The sheriff met her commanding stare head on. "Then that kinda makes you the criminals, doesn't it?"
   "And inasmuch as your agency has no police authority," said Topolsky, "I'm taking you all into custody on suspicion of kidnapping and child endangerment. You have the right–"
   Seaver laughed derisively. "You have no legal basis for holding us."
   "Some things, laws don't cover," Topolsky rejoined, "so we make up our own."
   "One phone call–one–and I'll be out. And so will you, dearie–out on your well-shaped ear."
   Topolsky stared at her. "Who said anything about a phone call?" This seemed to unsettle the woman somewhat.
   "Where's the kids' father?" Valenti asked suddenly. "He was at the house with them." Max and Isabel glanced at each other: how could he have known that?
   Seaver shrugged. "We saw no one else."
   "No, you wouldn't have bothered to look, would you?" said Topolsky. "Not once you had the children. Your 'energy alternative.' Good for eighty years–or longer, who knows? And they rarely need recharging." The scorn Seaver showed on hearing this did not entirely mask her displeasure at the accuracy of her adversary's knowledge, or guess.
   It was not lost on Valenti either. "I get the feeling," he said, "that I'm in over my head here."
   "So are they," Topolsky replied, her eyes still on Seaver. "Only they don't know it yet."
   A familiar figure had climbed out of the Rover and now came over to join them. "Didn't I tell you to wait in the car?" said Valenti.
   "Wait for how long?" Alex rejoined, sounding equally cross.
   "You can't be here," said Isabel. "You drove past us twenty minutes ago."
   "That was Michael. He swiped my car–I mean, my dad's."
   Max looked at Isabel. "We have to go after him."
   "Maybe not," said Valenti. He pointed toward a battered Cadillac convertible approaching them. Michael was driving (which in itself would normally have been sufficient to frighten those who knew him) and Nasedo was sitting beside him. They came to a stop some fifty yards away. Nasedo climbed out, though with evident effort, and held the door open. "Children!" he called. They went running to him.
   Valenti reached for his gun. Nasedo held out an object resembling a Nerf football, and instantly cylinders of some transparent substance, glass-like but impenetrable, rose up out of the earth like cornstalks to encase the sheriff, his colleagues, and the men in custody–but not Seaver. Seizing her chance, she broke into a run, or an attempt at one. But she did not get far. The dirt at her feet changed to a thick black tar that enveloped and mired them. Nasedo, who had created and guided it, walked out to her, clearly full of purpose, though his step faltered now and then. When he got to her he reached out and grabbed her neck with a black-gloved hand. Before Max or Isabel could think of some way to stop him, they realized he did not intend to harm her; he was doing a mind bind. It lasted only seconds, but it appeared to drain all the energy from him. And when he stepped back from her, he looked nearly as frightened as she did.
   "That's what you have in mind for the children?" he said. "All of them?"
   "Papa!" shouted Neila. "We have to go!"
   "You must be stopped," Nasedo continued, "but not by me. Were I to act against you now, others would follow in your steps. Your end will come–but it must be at the hands of your people, not mine." And with that he returned to the Cad.
   The afternoon's multiple encounters and re-encounters had gotten in the way of Isabel's original purpose, but it was not forgotten, and the more events worked against it, the more urgent it seemed. She approached Neila but stopped a few feet away, whether of her own volition or Neila's or someone else's she could not tell. "Stay here!" she urged. "I'll find a place for you and your brother." Then she had a Liz-like bright idea. "You can live with us! We'll be like sisters."
   "Sorry, Isabel. He comes first."
   "There are things you don't know about him."
   Neila smiled sadly. "You don't understand."
   "I can help you. We can help each other." Isabel's voice grew increasingly strained as her emotions neared the breaking point. "Don't you see? You're the only one I have!"
   "I know." Neila's cheek was wet; she brushed it dry. "But, Isabel–dear Isabel–he's the only one we have."
   Max came up alongside his sister. He called out to Michael. "Don't do this, I beg you. Take his road and you'll never find the way back."
   Michael gave a half-smile. "You don't know what you're talking about, Maxwell. As usual."
   Having failed with Neila, Isabel now turned to him. "Please, Michael, think what you're doing."
   To her he spoke more gently. "Have a little faith, Issy. Just–a little faith."
   The two children climbed into the back, and Nasedo rejoined Michael in the front. "Goodbye, Isabel!" said Neila. "Remember me." Then they took off in another cloud of dust.
   "Remember you?" Isabel echoed. "What do you think?" This came too late for the other to hear, and she could not have heard, anyway; Max had, but only barely, and he was standing right at Isabel's side. The parting, unexpectedly, had left her with an aching inside that would not stop. But it ebbed and flowed like the tide, and every time it retreated a little it rushed in on her again with greater force and a greater sense of loss. And at every resurgence Isabel could hardly keep from crying; for all she knew, she might be crying already. Perhaps she was not that much of a warrior, after all.
   The cylinders imprisoning Valenti and the others melted away into the earth, and so did the tar around Seaver's feet. "I'll put out an APB for them," Valenti said, and he hurried to the Rover.
   Isabel watched the Cadillac's lengthening dust trail. "I'm responsible," she said, more to herself than to her brother. "For everything that's happened."
   "Not Liz," said Max. "Not her."
   "No. But Neila. And Mi