Title: "Winter I: The Riddle"

Name: Branwell

E-Mail: COMBS-BACHMANN@WORLDNET.ATT.NET

Date Finished: August 20, 1999

Rating: R, Sexual references, Language

Category: Story
MSR: Mulder - Scully Romance
UST: Unresolved Sexual Tension
A: Angst

Archiving permission: Anyone may feel free to archive this. Just
keep my name with it. I will take care of archiving it at
Gossamer.

Disclaimer: Chris Carter, David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, and
Ten Thirteen productions created and own these characters. My
writing is for fun, not profit.

Thanks: I owe thanks, as always, to Pellinor's incomparable "Deep
Background." I would also like to thank Bugs for words of
encouragement and advice.

Spoilers For: "Ascension," "One Breath, "The Field Where I Died,"
"Christmas Carol," "Emily", "X-Files Fight the Future," "Milagro"
and "The Unnatural"

Time: Thanksgiving weekend, 1999

Summary: Mulder finds an X-file to distract him from the pain of
Thanksgiving memories and Scully unexpectedly agrees to join him
in investigating it. The experience turns into more than the
simple diversion they planned. A darker mystery presents itself
and threatens to expose more of their own emotions than they want
to reveal. This story starts a change in the Mulder and Scully
relationship that continues in "Winter II."

__________________________________________________________

"'What is it that goes round and round the house'
The riddle begins. A wolf, we thought, or a ghost?
Our cold backs turned to the chink in the kitchen shutter,
The range made our small scared faces warm as toast.

But now the cook is dead and the cooking, no doubt, electric,
No room for draught or dream, for child or mouse,
Though we, in another place, still put ourselves the question:
What IS it that goes round and round the house?"

"The Riddle," by Louis MacNiece

Thursday, 9:00 P.M.

Mulder woke up when he was thrown hard against his lap and
shoulder belts. Dazedly he watched two taillights swerve across
the dark road. The car pulled away from them at a rapidly
increasing pace until the points of light shone far ahead.

Scully started their forward momentum again and maintained a
moderate speed. Mulder looked around and registered their
location on an unlit, two lane road, closely crowded by trees.

"He just came out of nowhere. I didn't even hear him," Scully
remarked in a shaky voice.

"Are we lost?" Mulder challenged.

The two taillights in front accelerated in a straight line until
they disappeared into the blackness before them.

"No. If your directions were right, we're here," she replied
sharply, giving him an accusing glance.

"Christ, Scully! The road curves!" Mulder yelled, making a grab
for the steering wheel.

Scully was into the turn before his hands reached it. Their rear
wheels slipped sideways on gravel, while the solid mass of trees
loomed threateningly close. They made it with just a couple feet
to spare.

The car moved at a crawl now. Mulder's heart rate took longer to
slow.

"Are you sleepy?" he asked with elaborate patience after a
minute's silence. "Shall I drive?"

"I'm not sleepy but you should drive," Scully answered, giving
him no argument at all. "We should be there. I think we should
double back and look for the drive again."

She stopped the car and they got out. The cold, moist air crept
under their jackets in the brief time it took to walk around it.
When they'd completed the switch Mulder couldn't resist rubbing
it in.

"You shouldn't let yourself get distracted. It only takes a
second's lapse and you're road kill."

Scully was silent.

"Only one mistake," he prodded.

"I've been thinking, and I can't understand how I did that. I was
watching that car, I looked over at you for a second, and boom,
there was that curve."

"Yeah. Boom. You need to watch the road, not just the traffic,"
he grumbled.

They sat in silence while he maneuvered the car into a turn and
started back to search for a hidden drive.

Mulder didn't enjoy being right as much as he thought he would.
He wasn't enjoying this trip as much as he expected either.

He thought back to his conversation with Scully the day before
last. It was two days before Thanksgiving, a personal least
favorite among all the holidays he despised. His invitation to
her was automatic.

"I'm investigating an X-file on my own time this weekend. Do you
want to come along and help discover a new kind of radiation?"

He was so sure she'd say no that he started his sorry-you're-not-
free spiel before her answer got through to him. His recovery
lacked grace. It had the merit of being humor-free.

"Too bad...did you say 'yes'?" he stammered. "Uh, don't you have
plans with your family?"

"Mom's flying to San Diego. Bill and Tara invited me too, but I
decided against it. I think they were relieved," she said with a
crooked smile. "What's the matter Mulder? Were you asking just to
be polite too?"

"No, no. Not at all. I'm driving to New York to visit a respected
scientist. Dr. Henry VanDyne, if that name means anything to you.
He has a big house with plenty of room for guests."

"He had something to do with the discovery of enzyme activity in
cells back in the forties didn't he? I thought he was dead."

"No, he's old but still feisty. A little eccentric...." Mulder
began honestly.

"Sounds comparatively mild. What time do you want to pick me up?"

They set a schedule and Mulder stuck to the straight-faced and
narrow path of sobriety. The last time he cracked a joke about
Scully's social life the ensuing regret left him wishing he were
dead.

He committed the most recent of memorable, unforgivable gaffes on
a muggy Friday afternoon in September. Mulder was bored. All day
he teased Scully relentlessly about a mythical "hot" weekend date
she was supposed to be panting for. At two he looked at the clock
and raised his eyebrows suggestively.

"Isn't it almost time for you to go home and shave your legs? You
never know how the evening will end."

Scully let him have it. Her restrained manner didn't take any of
the sting out of her words.

"You don't date, do you Mulder? You don't realize how far outside
normal life we're stranded. Do you ever ask yourself what a date
would be like for me? The getting-to-know-you chit-chat. The
exchange of interests and career highlights?

"We sit down in the restaurant. We order. He says 'My hobbies are
skiing, collecting jazz recordings, and taking an annual cruise.
After a few more years I expect to become a partner in my firm.
We take care of the legal details of corporate mergers.'

"Of course he doesn't say it all at once. It comes out gradually
between bites of pasta and sips of wine. My contributions are
scattered through the meal too.

"I say 'Even though I work a lot of overtime I haven't had a
promotion in years. My career would probably be in better shape
if I hadn't been demoted to fertilizer investigator once and
abducted twice. The only hobby I've had time for is collecting
hospital ID bands. On the plus side I won't be sizing you up as a
prospective daddy, since the mainspring on my biological clock
was permanently unsprung years ago.'"

In spite of the harsh words there was more sadness than anger in
her voice.

Mulder thought the skin on his face might blister from the heat
he felt in it. A miserable memory came back to haunt him.

Last April his tongue and wit escaped the custody of his brain
and made a stupid joke about the ticking of Scully's biological
clock. In his defense, he'd been driveling on nervously because
he was in the daring position of simulating an embrace of his
partner. He was teaching her to bat. With his hands on her hips
and his thighs pressed against her ass, a considerable amount of
blood was lost to the thinking process. In some dim corner of his
psyche he was working up the nerve to make a romantic move.

As soon as he heard the fatal words leave his mouth all he could
think of was damage control. He babbled on until Scully finally
told him to shut up. But she didn't call him on his remark. At
the time he told himself she hadn't noticed it.

At first he felt tragically diverted from his intended
lovemaking. Before long he hailed it as a deliverance. In a
moment of weakness he could have destroyed their partnership.
Scully had already sent the message that the lust wasn't mutual
by every means except the Pony Express. His blunder was a just-
in-time reminder of the grief he would always bring to those he
cared for.

That sticky September afternoon in the basement office he found
out how deep the hurt had gone.

Listening to her reprimand was the emotional equivalent of being
keel-hauled. Guilt squeezed his chest until it was difficult to
draw breath. He deserved it, so he tried to maintain an impassive
expression. He must not have succeeded. His failure led directly
to the most painful part of the experience. A remorseful,
stricken look came over Scully's face as she watched his. Her
apology and sweet thoughtfulness embittered his existence for
days afterward.

Since then he had successfully shunned humorous references to
dating, families and timekeepers of any kind.

Now it was Thanksgiving night and they were lost on a dark
lonely road. He was afraid to be funny so he nagged. No, the trip
wasn't turning out to be a success. "We were lucky it hadn't
started to snow yet," he muttered under his breath.

"There it is," Scully suddenly called out as she pointed out her
window.

He'd already passed what appeared to be a tunnel of blackness
formed by the shadowy trunks of tall trees.

"You could have pointed it out before I went by," he complained.
He stopped the car and backed up twenty feet. Scully stared out
the window and didn't answer.

The long drive was gravel strewn with bright brown oak leaves. At
its end the headlights picked out a long house made of gray
stone. It was a mansion in spite of the homey front porch. Lights
burned in most of the windows.

"It doesn't look haunted," Scully remarked with noticeable
surprise.

Mulder made an effort to keep his temper under control. "It's not
haunted. I told you. Dr. VanDyne is studying radiation and its
detection."

"I'm used to more complicated agendas from you," she rejoined.

He sighed and parked the car on the circular drive. Carrying a
suitcase in each hand he climbed the steps and Scully rang the
bell. The door swung open almost immediately. An old man greeted
them.

"Good evening. I'm glad you beat the snow. Mr. Mulder I suggest
you pull the car around the back and put it in the garage. If it
blows much over the weekend you could have trouble starting it on
Sunday."

"I'm pleased to meet you Dr. VanDyne. This is Agent Scully. She
does the science part of our partnership. You'll get a better
assessment of your invention from her than me."

Mulder left Scully to get acquainted while he went back out into
the cold for his car's sake. He had no trouble finding the double
wooden garage. There was plenty of room since it held no other
cars. A few big, fluffy snowflakes floated down onto his face and
hair as he returned to the house.

The front room was a haven of brightness and warmth. Scully sat
in a large, fatly cushioned armchair with a hot drink in her
hands. The furniture was upholstered in a golden, plushy material
and it glowed in the light of the big fire crackling in the
fireplace.

"It was hard to find you. I didn't expect to find a home like
this out here away from everything," Mulder remarked as he
accepted a cup of tea from Dr. VanDyne's trembling hands.

Dr. VanDyne showed every one of his eighty-five years. The skin
of his jaws and neck hung loose and crepey, disfigured by age
spots. Lines that furrowed his forehead didn't stop there, but
extended up onto the front half of his bald head. His knuckles
stood out like knots in a rope, his head nodded with palsy, and
his whole skinny frame demonstrated the uncertainty in movement
characteristic of the very elderly.

"My father liked to hunt, and he wanted to keep horses. So Papa
built in the middle of nowhere the year I was born. It's held up
much better than I have!" he said with a dry chuckle.

"Do you live here by yourself?" Scully asked.

"During the day I have help in. At night I have my memories."

He raised his own teacup as though in a toast to the pictures on
the walls.

"Are these your family?" Mulder enquired as he walked over to
examine a pastel portrait of a girl in a long-waisted dress.

A floppy, silk bow tied up her long, light brown curls. She had
the slightly buck-toothed smile typical of a six year old.

"That's Kitty, my sister. She was seven years younger than me,
but she's dead," he said matter-of-factly.

"Those must be your parents," Scully remarked with a nod toward a
double portrait of a man and woman standing beside a fireplace
like the one in the room where they currently sat.

The man wore an intense expression and a high, stiff looking
collar with a bow tie. She had a bob, smooth features and a dress
that fell straight from her shoulders over a lean, boyish body.

"They made a striking couple, didn't they?" VanDyne asked. "They
knew it too," he added with a wink.

"I hope we didn't interfere with any plans you had for today---
you know---Thanksgiving," Scully explained when Dr. VanDyne
looked at her blankly.

"Oh. I don't celebrate Thanksgiving," he answered shortly.

"I haven't told Scully much about your experiments yet. I thought
I'd leave that to you," Mulder enthused. He was tired of small
talk.

"It's far too late to start on my work tonight. Unfortunately I
won't be available most of tomorrow. I've got appointments with
my broker and my attorney in Corinth. At my age you can't afford
to procrastinate about these things," VanDyne said knowingly.
"I've laid out a lot of my documentation in the study. You're
welcome to read it on your own. Or you could just enjoy walking
around the property. There's a small lake and woods. Quite
beautiful. It's supposed to snow tonight. We keep sets of
galoshes in different sizes at the back door."

"Yes, I'd like to look at your results," Scully said.

"My former assistant didn't write down much about his method, but
my present assistant has started to fill in the gaps. You're
going to need someone to explain it. Don't be offended Miss
Scully, but you look like you could use some time outdoors. Too
much time in the office makes you pale and peaky."

Mulder felt his heart beat faster. Dr. VanDyne voiced concerns
he'd been feeling for months, but a grandfatherly type like their
host could get away with talking about it. Mulder told himself he
had general concerns about her health. It was the shadowy menace
of the big 'C' that really terrorized him when he let his guard
down.

"Pale is the rage this year," Scully smiled.

"I plan to retire soon myself. I'll show you to your rooms. You
can come back downstairs if you wish," VanDyne said, as he stood
up. "I had the west wing torn down in 1956." He negotiated the
stairs slowly and carefully, tottering, but never becoming
breathless. "I still have far more room than I need."

Mulder carried the suitcases upstairs and placed them in two
rooms side by side off a wide hallway. On the second floor the
rooms were less inviting. The busy floral wallpaper shrank their
apparent size and the furniture seemed too large and dark. And it
was cold.

"If you see any children playing around the water tomorrow tell
them I'll call their mothers. It's too dangerous. The ice never
gets thick enough in the middle."

VanDyne's querulous complaint matched his aged appearance more
closely than his previously urbane speech. He picked his way
carefully down the hallway as though the polished hardwood floor
were the thin ice he spoke of.

"I'm ready for bed, Mulder," Scully said simply.

The circles under her eyes confirmed her weariness.

"There's only one bathroom. I checked. You can have it first,"
Mulder answered.

"Thanks. Good night."

He extended a hand to her shoulder to hold her in place for
another moment.

"Thanks for coming with me. You know how I feel about the
holidays. It's good to have you here."

"Thanks for asking me. I'll see you in the morning," she answered
tiredly.

Mulder watched her door shut. Unwelcome questions had been
fighting to make themselves heard in his denying mind ever since
she had accepted his invitation. Finally he was too tired to
distract himself. They broke through to his conscious thoughts.

What would she have done during this long weekend if he hadn't
asked her on this trip? Had there been no plans to cancel? No
place where she was expected for Thanksgiving dinner?

Mulder thought he knew the answers, and he didn't like them.

He entered his own room where he was impressed by the height and
polish of the huge brass bed. The mattress on the old-fashioned
open springs proved quite comfortable, but the bed squeaked
noisily when he lay down to test it. Not much chance of slipping
any lively romance past the kids if you were in this bed, he
thought. Rhythmic motions would advertise your activity to the
whole house.

Scully would find it a big step up into a bed like this.

He started to get hard as he imagined her climbing naked into
this bed to wait for him under the pile of bright quilts. They'd
both be cold from the chill of the room. He'd wrap her into a
full body embrace of arms and legs to warm them. Then...then
they'd get warmer yet from exercise. In the darkness of night he
wouldn't be able to see her. His hands would stroke her smooth
curves and press her to him. Her hair would be fragrant against
his face, slippery and silky as he rubbed his cheek against it.
He'd hear her moans and feel her moist softness around his tongue
and cock. Those old springs would squeal for mercy before he was
done, and he wouldn't care who heard them.

God, if he ever believed Scully really had a hot date he'd
probably spend the day weeping in the men's room. No one could
ever take the title of World's Most Selfish Bastard away from
him.

The thought of Scully with another man ended his state of arousal
almost instantly. He got up to sit in the rocker with the
uncomfortably carved back and read his book until his turn in the
bathroom. Scully was back in her room before he finished scanning
the introduction to "Ionization Events."

He read the dry textbook for an hour before he turned off the
light. Huddling under layers of comforters he tried to let go of
wakefulness. After he'd lain staring at nothing for endless
minutes he became aware of a soft, sliding, metallic sound. The
handle of his door was turning very quietly. Perhaps Scully
couldn't sleep and wanted company.

Mulder tried to turn over and welcome her in. To his horror he
found he couldn't move. Five point restraints couldn't have bound
him into place more effectively than the invisible force that
held him. The sound of the door opening and tentative footsteps
approaching from behind sent him into a mental frenzy. His head
and heart both pounded with fear as he willed his body to do
something---anything. No matter how he struggled his muscles
refused to co-operate. Even his mouth and throat disobeyed his
instructions to scream.

Memories of abduction stories flooded him with terror. Abductees
described the same wakeful paralysis he was experiencing. There
was a cold sensation on the back of his neck, and the sound of
furtive scraping across the room. Then Mulder could move.

He rolled out of bed and fumbled for his gun in the top dresser
drawer. By the time he held it in shaking hands and flipped on
the light he figured things out.

His door was shut. There was no else in the room. His neck was
untouched. It must have been a dream. The noise that roused him
was a faint scrabbling sound that seemed to come from the closet.
He found it hard to work up a murderous impulse toward the rodent
that had waked him from his nightmare.

He supposed he should chase it away before it woke Scully. During
his quick survey of her room he had noted that their closets
shared the same wall. With great care he opened the closet door
and examined its interior. The dim bedroom light illuminated the
few clothes he'd hung up. There was no mouse in the otherwise
clean and empty storage area. The scratching continued. He
concluded it was in Scully's closet.

A loud, sudden Bang! from the baseboards in front of him sent him
inches into the air. That was no mouse. Scully must be conducting
her own scouting expedition. Battle had been joined, probably
with a well-aimed shoe. Whether the mouse was a casualty or in
retreat, Mulder didn't think the scratching would be renewed that
night.

He knew before he returned to bed that he didn't really want to
sleep. That nightmare could---probably would---recur. It had all
the negative qualities he associated with his "keepers." The
collection just kept expanding.

Nevertheless, he slept almost immediately and suffered through a
different doom-laden scenario. This one was a classic. He saw
Scully suspended in freezing liquid behind the glass of an alien
pod. In his dream her eyes moved. She watched him resignedly as
he tried and failed to break through to her. Only her eyes
remained, alive and forgiving, while she deliquesced into a
gelatinous horror. He continued to pound uselessly at the pod. He
always woke up in a cold sweat at that point.

Pale winter light glimmered through cracks around the Prussian
blue curtains. Mulder heard shuffling steps in the hall. There
was a knocking at his door.

"Breakfast will be in twenty minutes Mr. Mulder," Dr. VanDyne
informed him cheerily. "We eat in the dining room. It's across
the hall from the sitting room, where we were last night."

End of "The House," Chapter 1 of "Winter I: The Riddle"

_______________________________________________

"The Mouse"

Friday, 12:00 A.M.

When she returned from washing up Scully assessed her bedroom
frankly as ugly. Maroon curtains clashed with wallpaper that
combined the worst shades of tan and olive. The furniture bulged
oversize and dark against it. Apart from the beautiful brass bed
the only pretty object in the room was a white lacquer box, hand
painted with a scene of skaters in a wintery landscape. Scully
admired its delicate brush work before she turned off the light,
dousing the offensive colors of the room in darkness.

Under the warm quilts she drifted into sleep quickly. The softest
of clicks brought her from a deep sleep to a state of semi-
consciousness. Someone had opened her door. Maybe Mulder wanted
company. None of the rooms she'd seen contained a television.

The light touches on the ends of her hair were unexpected. They
were so pleasant she didn't mind not being able to move. Her
scalp tingled in a way that sent tiny shivers down her neck and
back, both soothing her and bringing her to hypersensitive
awareness of her skin. Those gentle fingers had to belong to
Mulder. At the same time she couldn't imagine her partner
abruptly choosing to play this subtle, sensual game with her. She
knew it wasn't Mulder. Nevertheless she lay acquiescent, like a
complacent cat under the caresses of a familiar hand.

It was impossible to determine the exact moment when the nature
of the touches changed. Very gradually the slightest of pulls on
her hair became a little painful. Caresses turned into strokes
that dragged roughly through tangles. Her head was jerked
slightly with their force. Now she wanted to object, but still
found it impossible to move or speak.

Someone held her by the hair and was steadily pulling her head
back on the pillow. Fear blotted out any enjoyment she felt
previously. She struggled to make her arms follow her commands.
The silence was suddenly broken by tinkling notes as her head was
yanked back so violently it hurt her neck. She thrust her hands
behind her head to break the grip. Instead of a bony or muscular
adult hand she was shocked to find herself holding a soft,
clammy, child's hand in each of hers. The next moment she
realized she clutched handfuls of her own hair.

The "Skater's Waltz" still played, the tempo gradually slowing.
It came from the lacquer box, which she now knew was a music box.
When she picked it up earlier she must have unstuck some critical
part of the already wound mechanism.

Toward the end of the tune she jumped at a sudden loud bang from
the wall her room shared with Mulder's. She was sorry if the
music disturbed him, but she didn't know how to silence it any
more than she had known how to start it. The music stopped before
the end of the melody. She was glad it had shaken her out of an
unpleasant hypnogagic state.

When she slept again she moved through a familiar dreamscape.
Endless vistas of empty desert stretched before her. She walked
through a sandstorm that never abated. The riddle was "Why?" No
goal was visible, nor did her dream self know her destination.
Still she walked on. In the end she spun off into the storm,
eroded like soft sandstone by the endlessly blowing sirocco.

At her second waking she saw daylight. The single, old-fashioned
bathroom was free, so she took the opportunity to bathe and
dress. Someone was already busy in the kitchen when she descended
the stairs. Dr. VanDyne joined her in the dining room ten minutes
later.

"Good morning Miss Scully," he greeted her expansively. "How did
you sleep?"

"Just fine, thank you. The bed is very comfortable. I'm looking
forward to going through your notes. All Mulder would tell me is
that you're studying a form of radiation. Have you published
anything on this yet?"

"Did you know that in my whole career I never published? I never
joined a research institute or took a position at a university. I
worked alone and corresponded with other biologists in my field.
Back then scientists had ethics. They gave me unstinting credit
for my findings. But I'm not too fond of talking about my work
before breakfast. I'd like to apologize to you for my
discourteous answer last night."

Scully gave him a questioning look.

"About Thanksgiving," he explained. "I was rather curt. The truth
is I had a family tragedy that day. It happened over seventy
years ago. It must seem absurd to you that I let ancient history
shape my life still, but habits persist long after the original
cause."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to stir up unhappy memories," Scully
said sympathetically.

"I don't mind talking about it to someone who won't overreact.
It's even helpful," he returned, giving her a grateful look. "The
season lends strength to the memories. Especially when the
weather is so similar. We've had a wicked cold snap this past
week. Yesterday it clouded up and the temperature rose. Last
night it snowed. Today the sun is out. That's how it happened
seventy-three years ago.

"My sister died in an accident on Thanksgiving in 1926. She was
six years old. Mama was frantically busy that day, supervising
all the cooking and trying to play hostess to our weekend guests.
Papa and the other men stayed out of the way in the study. That's
where they had to go to smoke. I was doing schoolwork in my room.

"Kitty got underfoot in the kitchen and Mama finally told her to
go away and play somewhere else. We think she decided to go
skating and knew she wouldn't be allowed to go alone if she
asked. So she sneaked out without telling anyone. At dinner time
we couldn't find her anywhere. Finally Papa organized everyone
into search parties with lanterns. We were out all night. It
wasn't until dawn that they found the hole in the ice. They
didn't recover her body until spring.

"I thought my parents were going to lose their minds. All Mama
could talk about was how she lay down with Kitty the night before
in her bed, never knowing it would be the last time. Kitty was
afraid of the dark sometimes. It drove Mama wild to think of
Kitty in the black water all winter. She couldn't rest until they
found her body and buried her in the churchyard. Then she seemed
to find some peace. Papa---he just started drinking and never
really stopped. They were both killed the next year in a car
crash.

"I'm sure you understand why I try to treat the day like any
other."

Scully worked hard to avoid overreacting. The poor mother must
have relived that scene in the kitchen over and over. How many
times in her imagination had she changed history by telling her
guests to make sandwiches while she helped her daughter build a
snowman? At least at the end she had a body to cry over and bury.

"That's so sad, Dr. VanDyne," Scully replied calmly. "I
understand why you haven't forgotten."

"I don't intend to mention it to your partner. I know from a
mutual friend that he lost a sister at this time of year. But I
wanted to explain to you. Good morning Mr. Mulder," he called out
as Mulder appeared in the dining room doorway.

Dr, VanDyne's "help" was a sturdy woman named Irene MacMurty. Her
practical outfit of wool pants and flannel shirt was topped by a
head scarf knotted tautly over her iron gray frizz. She worked
slowly and methodically in silence, serving conservatively
portioned bowls of oatmeal and a plate of thinly sliced toast.

Scully saw Mulder looking toward the kitchen after the cereal
bowls were collected. He was probably hoping for bacon and eggs
to follow, but breakfast was over. He took more coffee and sat at
the table toying with his napkin.

A car honked at the front of the house and Dr. VanDyne began the
long process of fussily wrapping himself up for the outdoors.

"Irene will make sandwiches for you at noon. We'll have a proper
supper to make up for a casual lunch," he assured his visitors.
"Normally I have a cleaning crew in on Mondays and Fridays. You
won't be disturbed today because it's a holiday. The study door
is at the end of this hall. My lab opens off the study, but I
keep it locked. The equipment is very delicate," he explained.

He apologized again for his absence and descended the front
stairs with many anxious pauses. A white Lincoln waited in the
driveway. The driver appeared to be almost as old as VanDyne, and
he navigated the snowy lanes with all due caution.

Mulder and Scully headed for the study as soon as the car was
lost among the trees on the drive.

Scully watched cynically. The first thing Mulder did was try the
door on the inside wall of Dr. VanDyne's study. It was locked.

"What?" he asked as he caught sight of her stance---arms crossed,
foot tapping, and deliberately inscrutable gaze fixed on him.

"Nothing," she answered. "I'm going to check the written
documentation. Since Dr. VanDyne isn't here can you give me some
more background on his experiments before I start digging?

"I'd rather not influence you. You should reach your own
conclusions based on the evidence alone," Mulder told her
piously.

Scully looked at the tall piles of lab notebooks, computer
printouts shrunken to letter-paper size, and blurry digital
pictures. It would take her twice as long as Mulder to go through
these, and he had the advantage of knowing the specific goals of
the project. She tried to convince herself that his motives had
to do with the pursuit of pure science. He couldn't be vindictive
enough to make her suffer for past lectures on ruling out bias.

"OK. I suggest you start with this while I organize the rest of
the materials. Then we won't get in each other's way," Scully
responded. She offered him a worn spiral notebook.

Mulder received it with a look of distaste. A flurry of yellowed
pages fell out as he took it by the metal coil. His frown
deepened as he opened it to find pages of closely hand-written
notes.

"Well, maybe it wouldn't hurt to talk about the general trend of
VanDyne's research," he amended.

"You've got my undivided, unbiased attention," Scully replied.

"Dr. VanDyne experiments with electron resonance imagery. He's
completing a series of tests to prepare for measuring the
frequency of a field of free electrons within a living being."

Scully looked at Mulder with raised eyebrows.

"There you go, already dismissing the theory," Mulder observed
with a frustrated look.

"I've already got questions, but I'm not dismissing anything,"
Scully defended herself.

"Fire away," Mulder told her.

"You're talking about plasma. That's a gas that can't exist at
temperatures lower than, say three hundred degrees, and it
requires a near vacuum."

"They haven't proven that plasma doesn't exist at lower
temperatures and within dense bodies. It's just that no one else
has been able to measure it."

"I assume he's using magnetic fields to create a precessional
frequency. What device does he use?"

"It's a modified MRI, like they use in hospitals."

"He can afford his own MRI, here on the premises?" Scully asked
skeptically.

"I had Byers check out his background. He probably owns a matched
set of congressmen. His father was in on the ground floor of
Standard Oil."

"OK. For the moment we'll assume the technical problems have been
solved correctly. The MRI has been modified to detect changes in
electron polarization. It's set to the proper frequency to
receive the field you want to measure. What does the energy
represent?"

"He thinks he can isolate the human life force. The energy that
makes the difference between being dead or alive."

"You mean the soul?" Scully asked, trying to maintain a neutral
expression. Poor Mulder. He would have been a sucker for Wilhelm
Reich and his orgone energy therapy.

"I guess you could call it that if you want to," Mulder answered
reluctantly. "That term has other connotations...."

"That you don't like," Scully finished for him.

Mulder waved his hand as if to push the subject aside. "Think
about it, Scully. It would be the definitive test for when death
has occurred. Maybe we could figure out if biological processes
generate it or if it's independent of the body. Maybe it's
different from person to person, and that difference would mean
something. It's a fascinating idea, even if we don't find any
practical applications," he finished defensively.

"I agree the concept is interesting, but I'm just getting to my
substantive objections, which have to do with method. A computer
uses hundreds, maybe thousands of algorithms to interpret the
signals from a conventional MRI. They develop the algorithms by
comparing the MRI results to known data---X-ray results,
ultrasounds, digitized anatomical atlases and CT scans. What did
they use to adjust the algorithms? How did they test the
results?"

The slow smile on Mulder's face warned Scully that she had just
delivered herself into his clutches.

"That's the kind of scientific evidence that you're so good at
interpreting. I'm sure the answers are in here somewhere," he
replied with a broad gesture that took in the huge study table
and its motley collection of data.

Scully picked up the notebook Mulder had put down and held it out
once more, returning his smile with interest.

"You start with the early notes. I'll work backward from the
latest findings."

The papers appeared to be in chronological order. They would meet
in the middle of the table and the history of the project.

They read silently until Mrs. MacMurty appeared with lunch on a
tray. Scully deduced from his concentrated gaze at the plate that
Mulder was counting sandwiches. The dainty, crustless triangles
reminded her of the refreshments served at her mother's long ago
bridge parties.

"I'm not very hungry yet. I'll just have one of those," she
volunteered to Mulder after Mrs. MacMurty left the room.

"Are you sure?" Mulder asked, putting one of the halves into his
mouth in one bite.

"I'm sure. Eating like this is much better for me than a
Thanksgiving meal."

"If you're sure it's enough. I'm surprised Mrs. MacMurty doesn't
object to us eating in here. You'd think it would make the mouse
problem worse."

"What mouse problem?" she asked absently.

"As in Mickey Rodent infestation. Like the one you clobbered last
night in your closet."

"You must have been dreaming Mulder. There wasn't anything in my
closet last night."

He looked puzzled. Scully wondered why he didn't mention the
music. Then she realized he must have banged on the wall in his
sleep, perhaps during a nightmare. He woke himself up and didn't
know it. His sleep problems weren't something he enjoyed talking
about, so she dropped the subject.

"Do you think this is from Waterford?" Mulder asked. He rang the
cut glass platter with a flick of his fingernail as he took the
last sandwich.

"Probably. And this is from Limoges," Scully answered. She
carefully picked up the delicate white cup and saucer that held
her coffee. "I think I could read newspaper headlines through
it."

"I wish this was from Izzy's deli," Mulder observed morosely as
he finished the last bite of thinly sliced bread filled with an
almost transparent slice of turkey.

After the meal Mulder seemed to find it difficult to return to
paperwork. He paced the study and examined numerous books from
the built in shelves. Finally he stayed put at the desk where he
flipped through a large, ornate Bible on a rotating stand.

"Whew. No wonder he doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving. According to
these entries...."

"What, Mulder?" Scully prompted impatiently.

"Oh, there were deaths in the family during the holidays," he
concluded tamely, letting the book fall shut with a small thump.
"Scully, a lot of this stuff I'm reading goes back a long way. Do
you think we have to review preliminary work going back to the
nineteen forties?"

"Hmmm? What did you say?"

"Somebody wrote down notes on trying to follow a rat through a
hidden maze with a geiger counter back in 1947. VanDyne set up
thermal detectors all over this house in the late fifties, and it
took three notebooks to hold the results. There's data somebody
in a hospital collected. They used an ion detector on hospital
patients and bodies in the morgue. Then VanDyne built his own EMF
and ELF meters in the seventies. Do you think all this is
relevant?"

"Use your judgment. We can always go back later if it turns out
something important came out of an early experiment. Now, if you
don't mind, following this takes a lot of concentration. It would
help if you could sit quietly," she suggested.

"Yes. Sorry," he responded.

They read until the light began to dim at the windows. Mrs.
MacMurty returned at six o'clock to inform them that Dr. VanDyne
would be staying with a friend for dinner. Theirs would be served
in the dining room in fifteen minutes.

"Well, what do you think so far Scully?"

"That Dr. VanDyne is remarkably good at avoiding us. I'm
reserving my judgment, but there are a lot of steps missing in
the process for interpreting the frequencies. Maybe VanDyne's
assistant can fill in the blanks. If not...."

"We haven't seen the lab yet. Maybe you'll be overwhelmed by the
sophistication of the technology," Mulder joked.

He didn't seem to want to argue.

Dinner was grilled salmon with braised vegetables and a sorbet
for dessert. Mrs. MacMurty served Dr. VanDyne's portion to Mulder
without even asking. Afterwards Scully began to congratulate her
on her cooking skills, but she cut the compliments short.

"I can't cook this fancy stuff. Dr. VanDyne has low-fat, pre-
cooked gourmet meals delivered in dry ice every two weeks. I just
warm it up."

"I see. Well it's very good."

"It makes the doctor happy. I could do him a meatloaf with mashed
potatoes, but that's not healthy anymore."

"I'd risk your meatloaf," Mulder volunteered earnestly.

"I suppose you've worked for the family for years," Scully
remarked.

"No. I've only been working here since summer. I moved back East
six months ago to take care of my mother. She died in August."

"I'm sorry. How do you like working here?"

"It's a long drive. I wouldn't do it if Dr. VanDyne didn't pay so
well. The work isn't hard. He has contractors to do the heavy
cleaning and yard work. Here. The doctor always has after dinner
drinks," Mrs. MacMurty said, as she gave them each a snifter of
brandy and left the bottle between them. "If you'll be all right,
I'm going home now."

They took their drinks to the sitting room. A fire had been built
again tonight. It crackled noisily and sent pulses of delicious
warmth through the air. Sitting side by side on the sofa, they
watched the blue glow around the logs and gold sparks flying up
the chimney. Scully caught Mulder looking at her warily as she
drained her brandy in two swallows and poured herself another.

"We're not on official duty, remember?" she teased him.

Sometimes he was so transparent in his anxiety. She wanted to
sleep soundly tonight. Maybe a little alcohol would fend off the
kind of disturbing dreams she had last night.

If Scully hadn't had the second drink she never would have asked
the question.

"Mulder, do you think Emily had a soul?"

The pain in his expression reminded her of that afternoon in
September when she lost her temper. Then she had lashed out to
hurt and succeeded beyond her worst intentions. All she wanted
now were his thoughts.

Her own feelings were tolerably anesthetized by the brandy. It
must be true that an Irish heritage made it easy to find solace
in alcohol. She'd have to be careful not to seek it too often in
the barren future that extended indefinitely before her.

Mulder needed time to compose himself.

She gave him time. "I know you believe in souls. You believe you
were Sullivan Biddle in a previous life. What transmigrates if it
isn't a soul? There doesn't necessarily have to be a God
involved."

"Scully, I...I don't know what it means to have a soul. If it's
the life force then animals have souls. The things we've
seen...shapeshifters, possession of the living by the dead,
creatures that don't belong to any species we know. They don't
fit into any accepted version of science or religion."

"Sometimes I say a rosary in bed at night. I imagine Emily and me
in heaven just like I imagined it when I was a little girl. All
white fluffy clouds and golden mansions. I see us playing in a
perfect garden. In heaven I love her without holding back.
Without remembering the price I paid for her existence. Do you
think that's pathetic or just intellectually dishonest?" Scully
asked the question with the detachment of an amused observer.

"Neither one," Mulder answered seriously. "I think it's a kind of
meditation. It's your safe place. You're not supposed to analyze
your safe place to death."

"What's your safe place?" She wanted to give him a chance to
cheer himself up with a joke. He might say Graceland, or maybe
the Sextuple X-rated Video Store. She found a sales slip from
there on the floor of their office once.

"It's wherever you are, Scully."

She looked over at him quickly to catch him laughing at her
before he came out with a quip about her marksmanship. He stared
fixedly at his empty brandy snifter. Suddenly Scully was on the
verge of maudlin tears. "Oh, Mulder, sometimes your feelings
aren't very safe with me."

"Maybe they're not always handled gently, but they're usually
handled with respect," he answered, now giving her a diffident
smile. "You expect too much of yourself."

"I try not to be too hard on myself," Scully disagreed. "Maybe
I'm finally growing up. You'd think I would have realized before
now that I'm not going to live forever."

"Well if souls transmigrate...," Mulder trailed off suggestively.

"It wouldn't be me. I wouldn't be Dana Scully," she objected.
"I've thought of my life as being on hold for years now. There
were so many things I thought I'd do when my life got back to
normal---love, marriage, a family, a community. I should have
known. All anyone really has is the moment. If you can't learn to
appreciate that, you won't even know you've lived when you lie
dying."

"That's still a long time off," Mulder objected.

"Have you ever tried to get insurance outside the FBI benefits
package?"

"Not since...not for years. Why?

"I did, when I was trying to adopt Emily. None of the agents
called me back after they got my medical records. There's a
reason for that."

"That's only statistics. They can't know that you as an
individual aren't a good risk."

Scully suppressed a smile at Mulder's skewed, optimistic view of
her prospects. "Let's be honest with ourselves. Do you contribute
more than the mandatory minimum to a retirement fund?"

Mulder shook his head.

"I did until Antarctica," Scully went on. "Then I cashed in my
IRAs and CD accounts to pay off the debts that accumulated after
my sick leave ran out."

"You should have told me you needed money," Mulder protested.

"I had the money," Scully replied calmly. "What's the point of
putting it into a fund I'll probably never collect from? What
I've got is what I'll have. And it's a lot. The work we do is
important, and I'm good at it. Even if my career hasn't taken
off, I keep growing and learning in my profession. I've got a
good partner who's a good friend. I shouldn't waste whatever time
I've got left regretting what I don't have."

Mulder flinched visibly, as though trying to avoid a blow. Scully
reached for his hand to offer wordless comfort.

"Your cancer isn't back, is it?" he asked fearfully.

His return pressure on her hand almost hurt in its intensity.
"No, nothing like that. I'm just being realistic."

"You don't seem realistic. You seem sad," he said bluntly.

This was an area too delicate to explore with him. It involved
her acceptance of the limitations on their partnership. She was
finally admitting to herself that they would never be more than
friends. For years she told herself that someday they might move
on to love and passion. If she were truly honest with herself,
she had felt those things for him for a long time.

That bug-eyed little writer, Padgett, had managed one true
insight into her life. She was already in love. It was lost among
all the worthless inferences he made about her. Her usually
intuitive partner hadn't sensed the genuine quality of that one
observation. Or at least he hadn't chosen to do anything about
it.

If Mulder had similar feelings for her, they were locked into his
unconscious so securely he could never act on them. Every now and
then she thought she caught a glimpse of longing in his eyes when
he looked at her. It had never lasted long enough for her to be
quite sure.

"It's sad to let go of hopes and dreams, but it's good to face
the truth," she pronounced.

Moments passed in silence as they gazed into the fire, their
hands still linked.

"Scully, I lied to you about even my parents not calling me Fox."

At first she was puzzled at his change of subject. Then she
realized that Mulder was trying to share something he considered
extremely personal. He was reciprocating her confidence about
Emily.

"I know Mulder. It's all right."

"I want to explain. I grew more than a foot between my twelfth
and fourteenth birthdays. I was a klutzy, messy, smart-aleck who
asked too many questions and ignored too many chores and
assignments."

Scully had to hide another smile at the picture he painted.
People like Kersh might claim he never grew out of that stage.

"I'm familiar with the phenomenon of the adolescent boy. I had
two brothers," she reminded him.

"My father had already started calling me Fucks-up whenever I did
something wrong. After Sam was taken, he just never let up. All
the time, I was Fucks-up Mulder. When I look back on it, I know
he probably was down on himself as much as me, but it still....I
never told you how much I appreciate you calling me Mulder. I
didn't think until later that you might believe I was trying to
put distance between us."

"Maybe you were, at first. But I've known for a long time that
you don't deliberately push me away," she replied.

Of course he'd pushed her away reflexively a thousand times. His
jokes, his ditches, his secretive behavior were automatic defense
mechanisms, like the blink of an eye at the approach of a finger.
Tonight the brandy must be getting to him too. He seemed prepared
to sit here all night holding her hand, and watching the embers
die in the hearth.

Tonight it was she who couldn't bear the closeness. She wanted so
much more from him than his hand to hold. During the worst times,
like tonight, she thought she could happily die in his arms. That
wasn't what she really wanted, of course. She wanted the "little
death" in his embrace. Sitting like this made her ache for him to
slide his hand up her arm to pull her close. Her neediness would
eventually drive her to some pedantic or patronizing remark. She
could prevent that.

"The brandy is making me sleepy. I'm going to bed. Tomorrow we'll
get some answers," Scully yawned.

Mulder looked disappointed at her departure. One more minute of
his eyes, golden and softened in expression by the flickering
firelight, and Scully might have done something regrettable. She
gave his hand one last squeeze and almost ran upstairs. After a
quick wash in the chilly bathroom Scully huddled under her covers
and let the alcohol shut her down.

Her sleep lasted only a few hours. The sound of a branch tapping
and scraping on her window woke her to the discomfort of a dry
mouth and dull headache. She lay and debated whether she should
brave the cold for water and aspirin. The noise from the window
came at maddeningly random intervals.

Scrape...Tap, Tap...Tap, Scrape, Scraaaape.......Tap...
Tap,Tap,Tap..Tap, Scrape.

The wind must be unusually gusty. As long as the noise continued
she wouldn't be able to go back to sleep. She was steeling
herself to throw back the covers when she remembered the view
from her room. If she hadn't been slightly hung over she would
have remembered sooner that there was no tree outside.

Her stomach clenched like a fist. She lay rigid in the bed for a
full thirty seconds. Then she rose to examine the window
carefully.

Curtains concealed the night sky and whatever clung or floated
beyond the glass. She stood to the side and used the cord to pull
the curtains back . No moon or stars lightened the inky
rectangle. Snow-covered ground was dimly visible below. The
noises had stopped and there was nothing at the window.

Scully stood in the dark and studied the view for a minute or
two. She wished the scrapes and taps would happen while she
watched the empty window. When the cold became too uncomfortable
she gave up and moved back toward the door to turn on the light.
She left the curtains open. It happened at the instant she
flipped the light switch.

The window shook as though something had hit the side of the
house. A shape revealed itself in the fraction of a second before
Scully's eyes adjusted to the brightness. She had a clear vision
of a small, brown-splotched skull hovering with what would have
been its nose pressed up against the glass. Two little clusters
of yellowed digits waved on each side of it like anemones in a
current. Her hand jerked and hit the light switch coming down.
The shape disappeared as quickly as the illumination.

Scully swallowed and fought the urge to scream for Mulder.
Instead she went for her gun. A gun against a specter was
ridiculous and she knew it. Holding it gave her a sense of
control and security. Training it on the window she reached once
more for the light switch and flipped it. There was nothing. She
turned it on and off several times and saw nothing.

It was an optical illusion of course. The light's reflection
created an image that her brain interpreted as a skull. She
couldn't discover the right angle to reproduce the effect.

The light stayed on while she went to the bathroom. On her return
she turned it off and then drew the curtains. It wasn't until she
had warmed up under the covers that she heard the new noise.

A faint scratching and scraping came from somewhere around the
white lacquer music box. Scully remembered Mulder's comment about
the mouse problem with relief. Her gun could stay safely in her
purse. She slid out of bed again, this time arming herself with a
walking shoe.

The scrabbling noise continued after she turned the light on
again. She circled the table that held the music box and saw
nothing. Her examination convinced her that the mouse was inside
the box---probably the very same mouse that had scared her with
its antics at the window. The shuddering vibration and the
mottled skull at the window didn't quite track with the mouse
theory. She refused to dwell on it.

The lid of the box was detached. She could knock it off without
worrying about hinges. Scully flipped the top off with her left
hand and brought the shoe down quickly, ready to use it as a
club. There was no need. The mouse appeared to be dead already.

At the bottom of the box lay a small, limp, dun-colored object.
It didn't move as she reached in to pick up the tiny body. She
stopped before she touched it, her professional instincts
suddenly asserting themselves. She should wear gloves.

Snapping on latex gloves from her briefcase, she grabbed a few
tissues for an impromptu shroud. The wood showed a soggy spot
under the body. When she saw the amount of leakage Scully
marvelled at the lack of odor. Then it occurred to her to wonder
how a long dead mouse managed to be so noisy.

It wasn't until she spread it on the tissues that she realized
what she held. A small mitten, soggy with cold water, lay on the
table beside the lacquer box.

Now she understood what was happening. She deposited the mitten
in the bathroom wastebasket and climbed back into bed to wait for
dawn. The problem was her overactive imagination. Ever since
their bizarre experience last Christmas Eve, Scully had to admit
that on occasion she could hallucinate as dizzily as the most
suggestible hysteric.

It was a serious weakness. Even Mulder was immune this time. He'd
laugh himself sick if she told him about her "experiences." "I
knew you should have gone easier on the brandy," she could
imagine him lecturing, barely able to contain his mirth. "You
should have expected a 'spirited' evening." She'd rather put up
with one more night here than face his raillery.

End of "The Mouse," Chapter 2 of "Winter I: The Riddle"

_______________________________________________
"What is it?"

Friday, 10:00 P.M.

As soon as Scully left the room the fire lost its attraction for
Mulder. The book collection in the study lured him back, where he
spent two more hours analyzing Dr. VanDyne's library. He still
didn't feel he understood the man.

There were books from the thirties on spiritualism, a complete
set of Edgar Cayce's readings, scholarly studies of voodoo,
numerous texts through the present dealing with cellular biology,
and recent publications on electromagnetism. Mulder wondered if
there had been a Mrs. VanDyne who had a calling as a medium. He
reminded himself that he wasn't here to profile the scientist.

Dr. VanDyne still hadn't shown up at midnight when Mulder went
upstairs. He dutifully carried a text on toroidal electron
spectrometers rather than a privately published analysis of
spirit manifestations by Montague Summers.

Mulder nested under five layers of quilts and tried to stay
focused on spectrometry. Finally he realized he'd whiled away
several minutes speculating on whether the hairy-looking blossoms
represented on his wallpaper were drawn from life. Then the sound
of slow, tentative steps in the hall signaled the return of their
host.

When the footsteps stopped Mulder started waiting for a knock. It
came, but not on his door, as he expected. Dr. VanDyne was
knocking on Scully's door. He heard it open. Only a low murmuring
of voices came through the thick wall. Whatever they were
discussing, apparently he wasn't involved. As usual, curiosity
won out over dignity. He quietly opened his door a crack to hear
the conversation.

It seemed he wasn't quiet enough. Scully and Dr. VanDyne both
turned instantly to look at his door. Scully wore her serious-
investigator expression. She smiled when she saw him peeking out.

"Mulder, you're awake! Dr. VanDyne offered to show me around the
lab. Why don't you come along?"

"Sure. Give me a minute to get dressed," he answered stupidly.

Scully was still dressed. Apparently she wasn't as sleepy as she
pretended when she went upstairs. Her object had been to get away
from him. Here was another piece of evidence to support the
Mulder Plan for Peaceful Co-existence rather than Uneasy Co-
habitation. Tonight's evidence hurt a bit more than usual. He'd
been feeling close to his partner this evening, and taking
nervous delight in the experience. Once again, the pleasure was
all his.

The talk in the hallway continued while he pulled on his pants
and shirt. Hastily he tucked himself in and stepped out. The two
were deep in discussion on the complexities of getting informed
consent from human subjects of scientific experiments without
skewing the results. He followed them down the stairs in silence.

Dr. VanDyne's lab reminded Mulder of a hospital. The MRI loomed
hugely in the normal-sized room. VanDyne threw a switch and the
machine hummed to life.

Mulder was shocked into a protest when Scully climbed up to lie
inside the doughnut-shaped mechanism. "Hold on here. You can't do
experimentation on humans without meeting guidelines. You haven't
even used the MRI on animals yet. I read through your lab
reports."

"Relax, Mulder," Scully said with a laugh. "It's just an
electromagnetic field. This is an exercise in signal detection---
there's no effect on me."

Jesus, was she still tipsy? It wasn't like Scully to be careless
about research protocol. But he knew the look on her face. She
was determined. It was his fate to watch and worry. By the time
he'd resigned himself to the situation, the loud whirring and
thumping of the MRI had built to a crescendo.

Mulder went to stand behind Dr. VanDyne at the computer screen.
VanDyne made a few adjustments. A luminous, sky-blue sphere
swimming with golden sparks appeared on the grid that defined the
area where Scully lay. He was fascinated in spite of his concern.

"Is that her?" he asked VanDyne.

The old man nodded absently.

"Do you add the color?" Mulder wondered aloud.

"No. That's how it looks when you translate it to the visible
spectrum."

Of course. Mulder knew Scully's soul would look beautiful. He
hoped she never saw his.

"It looks as though I started just in time," VanDyne murmured
while checking some gauges on-screen.

As he spoke Mulder saw the sphere lose some of its definition and
brightness. "What's going on?" he demanded.

"The energy is separating from the subject. I'm not really sure
what happens. I don't know if the field gradually moves to
another location, or if it dissipates permanently."

"But what happens to Scully?" Mulder insisted.

"Oh, she'll be dead when it's gone, wherever it goes."

"Turn the machine off," Mulder ordered shortly. "Or I'll tear it
apart."

"It isn't causing her death. It's recording it. Turning off the
recording device won't change the data."

Mulder strode over to Scully and tried to make himself heard over
the roar of the machine.

"Scully, something's wrong. You're dying in that thing. We've got
to get you out and take you to a hospital."

Unbelievably, she slowly shook her head. "Let's be realistic. We
all have our limits. Since it can't be stopped, I might as well
give it some meaning. For the advancement of science," she
whispered tiredly.

Mulder stood and tried to think while Scully grew paler. He
touched her cheek and seemed to feel it cool under the palm of
his hand.

"Anyone could see she was fading, but I didn't know she was this
close," the old man commented with poorly concealed excitement.
He gave Mulder a cautious, sideways look. "If it bothers you to
watch, why don't you go to the study and browse through Summers'
study of spiritualism?"

Mulder saw her body go limp. One arm slipped off the side of the
table.

"You know how to stop this, don't you, you cold-
blooded...scientist!" Mulder cried in despair.

"I think YOU know how, Mr. Mulder. But you're not going to try,
are you," he observed imperturbably.

"Wait a minute. How did you know I picked up that book by
Summers?"

The knocking of the machine changed to a softer tapping sound.
Mulder woke up.

A branch must be tapping on his window. He lay with his cheek
resting on a page of diagrams illustrating electron paths under
various magnetic influences. It was a mistake to drink. It only
made his nightmares worse. The bedside lamp still shone, but he
could see the dawn creeping in around the dark curtains. It was
time to get up.

This time he reached the breakfast table ahead of Scully. He was
surprised to see Dr. VanDyne already in place.

"You must have gotten in after two o'clock last night," Mulder
remarked. "Do you always keep such late hours?"

"You know how it is. People my age don't need much sleep. How did
you sleep?

"As well as I do in my own bed."

"Do you think I should apologize to your partner for my rude
answer on Thursday night?" VanDyne inquired.

Mulder looked at him quizzically.

"About Thanksgiving," he explained. "I was rather short with her.
The truth is the holiday has tragic associations for me."

"I'm sure she didn't take offense. She'd be sorry to think she
brought up painful memories."

"It's a relief to talk about it to someone who isn't over-
sensitive," VanDyne. "Would you like to hear the story?"

Luckily politeness demanded that he show an interest in VanDyne's
story. Mulder tried to underplay his avid curiosity as he
answered. "Yes. Yes I would."

"My sister died on Thanksgiving in 1926. She was six years old. I
was thirteen. Mama was frantic that day. She had to supervise the
staff and she had her hostess duties. We had ten people staying
for the holiday weekend. Papa and his friends holed up in the
study so they could smoke. I shut myself in my room with my new
microscope.

"Kitty came and knocked on my door. She wanted me to go skating
with her on our little lake. I told her to go away and stop
bothering me. That was the last time I saw her. We couldn't be
sure, but we think she sneaked out to the lake by herself. She
knew she wouldn't be allowed to go alone if she asked Mama. At
dinner time we looked for her everywhere. At dawn a search party
found the hole in the ice. Her body was never recovered.

"I broke down a few days later and told Mama and Papa how Kitty
had asked me to go with her. They looked right at me and told me
it wasn't my fault. I knew they lied. And even though she'd been
disobedient and mischievous, I knew she was the favorite child.
Always. Even after she was dead.

"I wanted to take the blame. I thought that would keep my parents
from destroying themselves. It didn't work. We lived here
together, but afterwards we were each alone with our guilt.

"For a long time Mama wouldn't believe Kitty was gone. She hired
a clipping service to find stories about people who wandered off
and lost their memory. A seamstress came to the house in the
spring and made a whole summer wardrobe for Kitty. By then both
Mama and Papa were drinking too much and fighting all the time.
That fall they were killed in a car crash.

"I'm sure you understand why I try to ignore Thanksgiving."

Mulder couldn't speak when the story came to an end. He just
nodded his head in mute understanding.

"I don't intend to mention this to your partner. She looks like
she has enough on her mind. But I wanted to explain to you. Good
morning Miss Scully," he called out as she appeared in the dining
room doorway.

Mulder couldn't fault Dr. VanDyne's powers of observation. Scully
looked ill-rested and preoccupied. Coffee brought some animation
to her face and voice. The prospect of visiting the laboratory
enlivened her more.

After his dream the laboratory held both threat and allure for
Mulder. He suffered through small talk about breakfast teas and
heart-healthy margarines with saintly forbearance. When their
host stood up Mulder had prepared himself mentally for anything
from a total fraud to a plot against their lives. He rudely
pushed past Scully in order to precede her into the newly
unlocked room. Vigilance had to take precedence over manners,
even if Scully thought he was being inconsiderate.

The laboratory didn't look much like it had in his dream. It was
a large, square room with no windows. The sinks, electrical
outlets and smooth working surfaces were completely modern.
Several computers were grouped at a work station next to a door.

Following his gaze, Dr. VanDyne remarked, "The MRI is through
there in that shielded room."

This lab lacked the beige curtains, medical equipment and
monitors that had given the dream lab a hospital atmosphere.
Mulder relaxed a little, still keeping a close eye on Scully. She
showed no signs of wanting to offer herself as a test subject.
Instead she moved around the room examining equipment and leafing
through folders stacked at the computer workstation.

His dream also left out the facilities for animal
experimentation. The four cages in the corner were large enough
to hold medium-sized dogs. Dr. VanDyne must be ready to move on
to the next step in testing his device.

"Come here and watch," VanDyne invited them. The PC screen showed
a small patch of fog on a measurement grid, alongside clocks,
energy displays and controls. "This is a video record of our
latest experiment using cats. The death resulted from
administration of phenobarbital over a period of two hours. I'm
playing it a high speed, of course."

They watched as the fog thinned and finally disappeared. It was
gone at some point, but Mulder couldn't pinpoint the seconds when
it moved from "there" to "not there."

"This one is really intriguing, I'm showing it at real-time
speed," VanDyne advised them. In this video the fog moved,
sliding around in a semi-circle before moving off the screen at
the bottom of the grid. "A large bore needle was inserted into
the heart at second 59.5. Needless to say, death was
instantaneous."

The image made Mulder cringe, distracting him momentarily from the
significance of the video.

"What do you claim these experiments show?" Scully inquired.
Mulder could have told Dr. VanDyne to be careful: Scully was
positioning herself for extreme skepticism.

"Wouldn't you agree that the life force behaves differently when
death occurs quickly and unexpectedly?" he countered.

"You have too few data points to generalize. Am I right in
assuming you believe these results prove your success in
visualizing and measuring the energy of the soul?" Scully asked.

VanDyne shrugged. "I let the evidence speak for itself."

"I have some questions about your evidence. There seem to be some
recent notebooks missing from the collection in the study. And I
didn't see anything about animals," Scully followed up.

"Probably Miss Barney has the notebooks. She takes work home
sometimes. Her health hasn't been good recently. She usually
arrives early on Saturdays to work, but she had to go to the
community hospital this morning for percussion therapy. I hope
you can meet her this afternoon."

"Did Miss Barney develop the software you use to turn the
electronic frequencies into graphic images?" Scully inquired.

"Yes. I know how to use the programs, but I'm not familiar with
the languages."

Scully gave him an approving grin. "I've known fifty-year-olds
who claimed they were too old to learn to use a computer.
They should see you."

"It's not too late until you're dead," Dr. VanDyne replied, with
a twist of his mouth that was almost a smile.

"Do you have a permit to use animals for biological testing?"
Mulder finally spoke up.

"I have a friendly arrangement with the local ASPCA. They know I
euthanize the animals painlessly. I take the job off their hands.
I don't depend on grants or government money, so we keep things
informal," VanDyne answered cooly.

Mulder noticed a worried line between Scully's eyebrows. He often
thought she was too coldly rational in her perspective, but Dr.
VanDyne made her look positively hot-blooded.

"I've got a custom designed plasma gun and another generator on
order with the company that built the MRI for me. We think we can
create a spheromak to confine the fields you saw on the screen
there. It's a sort of magnetic bottle," VanDyne explained
further. "Think of the possibilities! Maybe we could preserve a
person's life force and put it into another body. Maybe two could
share a body! Who knows? If you combined it with a column of
magnetofluid with an opposing flux it would annihilate the field.
Would that destroy a person's soul eternally? There's one for the
theologians!"

His voice rose and quavered a little with excitement. Mulder
revised his assessment of the scientist as cold-blooded. Scully's
disapproval of VanDyne's flights of fancy appeared clearly on her
face.

"It would require extensive work with animals and peer-reviewed
precautions before human testing could take place," Scully
lectured. "If you could play games like that with a person's soul
it would be wrong."

Mulder relaxed a bit more on hearing Scully's unequivocal and
characteristic response. The fears awakened by his nightmare
dwindled further.

"But what if it was an evil soul?" Dr. VanDyne proposed, with
little chuckle at his own wit. He spoke again quickly when
Scully's expression became more forbidding. "Of course, of
course. I understand your concern. Human dignity and all that.
But we don't have to do things just because we can. I call my new
device an ERI," VanDyne said proudly. He pronounced it like the
adjective 'eerie.' "For Electron Resonance Imager."

"An ERI it is," Mulder agreed. "When can we expect Miss Barney
to arrive?"

"About four o'clock I believe."

"We'll be here with all our questions. We need to run a few
errands, but we'll be back long before four," Mulder assured him.

"Unless you need me I'd like to stay here and go through all the
computer records of animal experiments with Dr. VanDyne," Scully
said.

"I need to talk to you in the study a minute," he stated, guiding
her toward it with his hand on her back.

"I'm feel like I'm going to starve to death here and take on the
position of household ghost," Mulder told her with a self-
deprecating smile. "My errand is just to get chips or peanuts or
something with salt and fat to fill in the corners."

"Not me Mulder. Mrs. MacMurty whispered in my ear that we're
stuffing ourselves on consomme and watercress sandwiches at
lunch. I'd really rather stay and follow up on those suspicious
gaps in the research."

"Then I thought I should warn you. I don't trust Dr. VanDyne
completely," Mulder said. He tried to achieve the right mix of
concern and off-handedness in his tone. "I'm starting to wonder
if he wants something from us besides an opinion."

Scully looked thoughtful and then spoke carefully. "Maybe it's
mostly distraction from loneliness, boredom, fear of death. The
Holiday Blues probably get worse with age. How did you find each
other?"

"The old-fashioned way---through a mutual friend. You remember
Theo Bell, the biologist I consulted about lipid metabolism
during the Incanto case? I've talked to him about other cases
since then. He told VanDyne I'd be interested in his research.
VanDyne wrote me and asked if I'd be interested in evaluating his
work. He suggested this weekend and that was a perfect fit for my
schedule."

"Did you wonder why he asked you and not a physicist?"

"No. Theo told me he already tried to interest some physicists
and biologists. They couldn't be bothered. They think the
research is worthless and VanDyne is probably senile."

"He's not senile," Scully observed. "But what makes you think he
has dark designs?"

"It's just a feeling," Mulder said, reluctant to attribute his
doubts to a dream.

Scully didn't smile or raise skeptical eyebrows. "I'll keep it in
mind. This house has an atmosphere...." she trailed off.

"You're not used to old houses. There's nothing...odd about the
house. I'll be back long before four o'clock."

Now Scully did give him a skeptical smile. "Just be careful. The
roads are probably pretty bad out here."

Mulder remembered to pull galoshes on over his shoes before he
set out to the detached garage. It had snowed again last night.
Somebody had been through with a plow and cleared VanDyne's
drive. The two lane road beyond it was slippery, but it had been
scraped and scattered with cinders.

He had to drive fifteen slow, twisting miles back the way they
came to find a gas station. In between he saw nothing but hills
interspersed with what appeared to be pastureland. He wondered
exactly how far Mrs. MacMurty had to drive to work, and where
they did their household shopping. Maybe there was more
civilization to the north of VanDyne's place.

Mulder asked himself why a working scientist would want to live
so isolated from colleagues and facilities.

Dan's Service Station disappointed him with its sparse stock of
junk food. He bought candy bars, corn chips and peanuts. They
didn't offer sunflower seeds. When he tried to elicit information
on Dr. VanDyne from the young woman who rang up his purchases he
got nothing but a bored disclaimer of any knowledge.

On his way back he decided he should have turned left instead
right when he left VanDyne's property. Re-tracing their Thursday
route had wasted an hour and a half. Mulder checked his watch and
persuaded himself he had time to press on in the opposite
direction. He might find better pickings, in the way of both
edibles and gossip.

After fifteen more miles of driving past trees and fences he
conceded to geographical realities. A drive leading to a small
cemetery offered the first opportunity to turn around. Thirty
yards away stood the remains of a foundation, probably the last
traces of the church that presided over the burying ground.
Mulder found it strange that the driveway to a deserted cemetery
had been plowed.

He got out and started walking among the stones. For the first
time he registered the stark beauty of the area. The rolling
hills wore a pure white icing under the pale gray sky. Bare
branches stood black and sharp against the filtered sunlight.
Tall, pointed firs scattered in groups across the landscape
offered a soft contrast. All carried a coat of white, clingy snow
on long, fresh needles. The clean air, scented only by pines and
faint wood smoke, made a remarkable change from the pollution of
the Beltway. Even stranger was the quiet. It comforted his ears,
long accustomed to the background hum of car engines, heating
systems, computers, hallway conversations, and city traffic. When
he stopped walking the squeak of his boots in the snow gave way
to utter silence.

Each gravestone wore a cap of snow, but the sides of the upright
markers were clear. Farthest from the road were dark, narrow
slabs bearing worn chiseled names and dates that could no longer
be deciphered. In front of them were several rows of square,
white, chalky-looking stones with raised letters and numbers.
Closest to him were two polished granite tombstones. The
familiar name caught his eye. "John and Violet VanDyne" appeared
on a double-sized slab. "September 8, 1880 - November 24, 1927"
and "June 14, 1882 - November 24, 1927" were the dates that
appeared with their names.

Mulder was surprised to see the smaller marker bore the name
"Catherine VanDyne." Her dates were "January 13, 1920 - November
25, 1926. "May her soul find rest" was carved below. VanDyne had
told him that Kitty's body was never recovered. Of course this
could be a commemorative headstone without a body beneath it.

Without warning the memory struck like a shark attack from the
depths. It tore at his peace of mind. Once he and Maggie Scully
chose a gravestone for Scully. A ponderous rock to seal the most
alive person he'd ever known into the ground. Only they didn't
have her body---she was missing and presumed dead. If he'd truly
believed in the reality of her death he wouldn't have had the
strength to stand and approve her epitaph. He hoped he didn't
live long enough to face that duty again. No one could ask him to
go through it twice.

He pictured a young Henry VanDyne standing at his parents' grave
while the minister said a few words. How had the man managed to
choose suitable words? Had there been room for any emotion in the
boy other than guilt? The grief, the loneliness---all of it would
have been tainted by his burden of blame.

Mulder checked his watch and was shocked to find it was already
three-thirty. If he didn't hurry he'd miss his chance to ask
questions of Dr. VanDyne's assistant. Scully's questions promised
to be even more interesting than his. He returned to the car and
drove as quickly as he dared.

End of "What Is It?" Chapter 3 of "Winter I: The Riddle"

_______________________________________________
"Draught or Dream"

Saturday, 4:30 P.M.

After he put the car back into the old garage, Mulder paused for
a lingering look at the white hills behind VanDyne's house. This
time the silence was painfully broken by the roar of snowmobiles.
In less than a minute two of them zoomed into sight, driven by
two large young men. They wove exuberantly around each other and
gunned their way up and down the gentle elevations. Then they
disappeared behind a hill.

He knew that Dr. VanDyne would frown on trespassing by snow
mobilers, but he had no way of detaining them for a warning. At
least anyone old enough to drive one would know enough to stay
off ice in weather that hovered between twenty and thirty
degrees.

But what about the little girl in the blue jacket and ski pants?
A heavy bundle dangled from her arm, swinging with each skip as
she bounced away from him. Just before she rounded a small hill
the sun broke through low lying clouds and glinted off the blades
on the skates she carried.

Mulder's normal pace was rapid. He moved faster than usual in his
effort to reach the girl before she could don her skates. Snow
covered the path that ran over and through the low hills. It
didn't slow him down. In spite of his speed she already stood at
the edge of the ice when he crested the hill. The last, pale
lemon rays of sunlight edged over the surrounding heights. Below
him the frozen lake gleamed invitingly and the skater completed
her first tentative figure eight.

He called to her as loudly as he could. "Get off the ice. It's
dangerous. Go back."

She looked up and seemed to measure the distance between them
with her eyes. He couldn't see her features. It looked as though
she shook her dark pigtails at him impudently while she swiveled
and headed straight across the tinny-looking surface. He started
running. From above he could see an ominous dark warping at the
center of the icy circle. If she wouldn't listen he'd have to
remove her bodily, or at least chase her away.

He was still too far away from the edge when disaster struck. The
tip of her blade seemed to catch on the ice. After a few awkward,
stumbling steps she pitched forward, throwing her mittened hands
out instinctively to catch herself. Instead she plunged right
through, disappearing with a splash into a large, ragged hole.
Her terrified scream was cut short.

Mulder couldn't run any faster. He wasn't on the ice yet when he
heard the blessed roar of the snowmobiles. One rider could hold
onto him while he tried to pull the child out, and the other
could go get help.

Immediately after the motors cut off, he tripped and fell heavily
to the ground. At first all he felt was shock at his own
clumsiness in such a critical situation. He tried to rise and
something very heavy landed on his back. His legs below the knee
were already immobilized. The two young men had tackled him
instead of pitching in to help.

"We've got to save that little girl. She'll drown!" He was trying
to yell and struggle, but the weight on his back left him barely
able to breathe. It was all he could to raise his face out of the
snow. These young men had to be the stars of their high school
football team.

"Calm down mister," the one holding his legs advised. "There's no
one in the water."

Mulder heard the cries now. She must have surfaced. He strained
upwards and glimpsed a blue mitten waving desperately above the
ice. "Help. Help me!" she called. He could hear splashing and a
cry of dismay. There was a shriek and then "I can't...Help me!"

"What the hell is the matter with you? She's crying for help.
What if it were your sister? Let me get up. If you let her die
I'll kill you." Mulder thought he'd explode with fury.

The youth sitting on him suddenly shifted uneasily. He flipped up
Mulder's overcoat and exposed the holstered gun he wore in the
middle of his back. The sitter's voice was less confident than
his friend's. "Jerry, he's carrying a gun. You gotta convince him
it's not real before we let him up. He might shoot first and ask
questions later."

"Take the gun and throw it as far away as you can. Hold it,
Bobby! Not in the water. And remember where you threw it. He's
going to get it back eventually." The tackler still sounded
unruffled.

Mulder put all his strength into trying to pull his legs up for a
mighty kick at the damnably serene Jerry. He couldn't move
anything but his arms. Bobby casually swatted away his attempts
to reach behind him and grab for something to hurt. Forced to lie
still and listen as the child's last faint cries subsided, Mulder
wiped at tears with a cold, snow-wet hand.

"It was no use to talk while you could hear it, so I didn't even
try." Jerry spoke first. His voice held a note of compassion
Mulder couldn't reconcile with what had just happened. "I'm real
sorry. I can tell you take things hard."

"Look, kids have been revived after hours in cold water. Maybe
there's still time," Mulder coaxed. It almost killed him to woo
this monster with conciliatory words, but he could do it. "One of
you go to Dr. VanDyne's house...."

"I'll let you up if you promise not to kill us," Jerry offered.

"Yeah. Yeah, I promise," Mulder said, with a mental reservation
relating to when the promise expired.

Jerry and Bobby sprang away from him simultaneously and watched
as he tore off toward the lake. They didn't say a word as he
stood in confusion. The hole in the ice was gone. Melted and
refrozen snow rutted its surface at the edges. The middle was
almost slushy. No traces remained of the figure eights and the
trail the skater had started to blaze across the lake.

The tumult of emotions inside Mulder abruptly focused into a
fervent desire to hit someone. He glared back at his first choice
of targets.

The young men didn't look cruel or stupid. He thought they must
be brothers. They shared the same solid, stocky builds and
straight, dirty-blonde hair. Each of them outweighed him by about
a hundred pounds.

"Do you believe us now?" Bobby asked eagerly.

Mulder examined the lake again and gave a deep sigh. He started
to brush off the snow that caked his coat and trousers. "I may
not kill you, but I know how to hit and make it hurt," he said
menacingly.

The young men let the ritual threat pass unchallenged. They all
three knew it was empty.

"Tell me what happened," Mulder demanded.

"The lake is haunted," Bobby volunteered eagerly. "You see
someone drown, but it's a ghost."

"He's right," Jerry agreed. "But it's not quite that simple. I've
always been pretty independent. After I was ten my family gave up
on trying to control where I went. That fall our grandma warned
me about the mirage on Hollow Lake. She called it a mirage
because she knew I'd seen mirages in cartoons about the desert.
Or maybe she thought calling it that explained it, and made it
less frightening. She knew it wouldn't do any good to tell me to
stay away altogether. That would just make me curious. She was
very specific, and she wouldn't tell me how she knew. When I was
fourteen I saw a boy who looked like Bobby drown in there. Even
though she warned me, I might have gone in if I hadn't known he
was laid up with a broken leg. It's so real," he said
apologetically to Mulder.

Hell. He'd brought Scully to a house with a haunted lake. Here
was a chance to investigate a manifestation, and he couldn't take
it. She'd never let him hear the end of it if he went back and
told her about his discovery. Nor could he deny the resulting
nastiness when he convinced her to spend the night in a
supposedly haunted house last year.

Maybe he could return during the Christmas holidays. He directed
a speculative look at the young man who had tackled him. "You're
Jerry. What's your last name?" he inquired.

"Pudden Tame," the youth grinned. "I'm not going on the Jerry
Springer Show, or even Oprah. I've got a football scholarship in
the bag, and I don't want the sports writers nicknaming me
'Spooky.' I'll tell everyone you're crazy if you claim I told you
any ghost story. Bobby and Grandma will back me up."

Mulder looked over at Bobby, who was nodding vigorously at his
older brother. Then he checked his watch. It was almost five
o'clock. The young men returned to their snowmobiles and prepared
to leave.

"You'll be all right, won't you?" Jerry tossed over his shoulder.

"Yeah. Thanks for stopping me," Mulder added grudgingly. "Hey,
where'd you throw my gun?" he yelled at Bobby.

Bobby loped back to the spot where they'd brought Mulder down and
took his bearings. He walked out along the bank of the lake
unhesitatingly and picked up the gun.

"Here. Sorry I had to sit on you," he said as he returned the
weapon.

"Bobby's going to get that scholarship two years from now," Jerry
said approvingly. "So long."

Mulder knew he was late, but he trudged back along the path
slowly. The girl who drowned resembled his sister superficially.
He'd never gotten close enough to identify her as Samantha. The
voice...he wasn't sure he remembered her girlish voice accurately
anymore.

What if Samantha had died like Kitty in a tragic but simple
accident all those years ago? He was supposed to have a wild
imagination, but he couldn't begin to picture that life. No
Search for the Truth. No FBI. No X-Files. No Scully. Or rather no
Scully for him. She'd be an Assistant Director out in San Diego
by now.

Instead she risked her life working as a field agent. And she
risked it on weekend jaunts into the unknown because he suggested
them. Right now, while he dawdled and philosophized, she was
working alone in a situation of questionable safety. His memory
of choosing Scully's gravestone suddenly linked up with the
remnants of dread from last night's dream. The logic that allowed
him to leave her behind with VanDyne hours earlier no longer
seemed compelling. He ran the last quarter mile to the house.

Mrs. MacMurty answered the door. She stared at him as he panted
out his question. "Where's my partner? Where's Scully?"

"She's in the lab with Dr. VanDyne. Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. I was just getting some exercise," he explained. He
pulled off the galoshes and threw his coat on the hall tree. It
would take too long to change out of his wet trousers.

The relief he saw in Scully's face when he entered the lab had to
be reflected in his own.

"I'm sorry I'm late. The roads were bad...."

"Never mind, Mulder," she replied with a roll of her eyes. "We're
still waiting for Ms. Barney."

"You look a bit cold and damp, Mr. Mulder. No problem, I hope,"
Dr. VanDyne observed.

"Slipped on some ice," Mulder said shortly. He was about to
suggest that he go change when a gaunt young woman appeared in
the doorway.

She stared at them through thick-lensed glasses.

"Surprise!" Dr. VanDyne crowed. "Mr. Mulder and Ms. Scully are
here to review our work. She's got a degree in physics. They work
for the FBI and analyze paranormal phenomena. Of course our work
is solid science, but they've kindly agreed to look over our
results."

Mulder was half a second from dashing over to catch Ms. Barney
before she hit the floor. Her shocked expression was followed by
closed eyes. She wavered in place. Then she opened her eyes and
smiled. Mulder hoped his own face didn't betray his surprise when
she displayed a mouthful of teeth marred by a multitude of brown
discolorations.

"We're please to meet you Ms. Barney," Scully began. "Your work
looks very interesting, very innovative."

"Thank you. It wasn't easy stepping into Steve's shoes."

"Steve worked on the ERI with me originally. Unfortunately he
died in a car crash a couple years ago," VanDyne explained.

Barney gave Dr. VanDyne an expressionless stare. "It was two
years ago the day before yesterday," she asserted.

"Quite true. The memory is the first thing to go, isn't it? Why
don't we take seats around the library table in the study?"

"All right," she answered him grudgingly. "But I didn't know we
were going to spend the evening this way. There's some work I
need to do first. I'm going to image some hypothetical numbers
and then do disk compressions and tape back-ups." She waited with
visible impatience for Dr. VanDyne to struggle to his feet from
the chair at the work station. Before they left the room her
fingers were flying over the keyboard.

"What's the prognosis for Ms. Barney?" Scully asked as the three
of them took seats around the big table.

"Not too good. She gets a lot of lung infections. Her doctors
estimate she'll need a lung transplant within two to three years.
So far she only needs oxygen intermittently."

"Are the local doctors up on the latest treatments for cystic
fibrosis?" Mulder inquired.

"She goes to Albany for consultations. A nurse at the community
hospital near here learned percussion therapy and how to use an
implant port for administering antibiotics." He stopped speaking
and then started again, clearly signalling a change of subject.
"Did you get your errands accomplished?" he asked Mulder.

It wasn't until then that Mulder remembered the chips and peanuts
still sitting in his car. He could get them later. "Yes. It was a
longer haul to shopping than I expected."

"We get deliveries of most things twice a month. Sometimes I
regret being so far away from everything, but I've gotten used to
it. In eighty-five years you get used to almost anything," he
said with a self-mocking smile.

"So what did you want to ask me?" Barney asked from the doorway.

"Why don't you sit down? I'm wondering about the notebooks where
you describe how the frequencies are translated into graphics,"
Scully said diplomatically.

"Steve had that all figured out before I came onto the project.
I've been studying his figures at home. The algorithms are on the
computer too. He had some experimental data from a hospital MRI.
That's how we were able to get so far without using animals."

"Are all the notebooks on animal experimentation at your home
also?"

"Yes. I didn't know you were here and wanted to see them," Barney
said defensively.

"Maybe we could look at them on-line," Mulder suggested.

"Not while I'm running disk compressions and back-ups."

Mulder found the next two hours as frustrating as trying to get a
straight answer from a politician. He and Scully asked specific
questions and got abstract generalizations for answers. Or they
were told that "Steve did that." Demonstrations of methodology or
explanations of processes had to be deferred until the computer
was available. Scully finally lost patience.

"Ms. Barney, I'm not satisfied that you're being honest with us.
You may not realize it, but you're giving the impression that
you're covering something up."

Mulder thought Barney should be more insulted by Scully's
words than she appeared. She merely looked annoyed and stood up.

"I'll be right back. I want to check on the back-ups."

In her absence Dr. VanDyne shook his head implacably. "Miss
Barney may not be co-operative, but her science is solid. Be
patient and she'll explain everything."

When she re-entered the study her face was blank and rigid. She
didn't sit down. Her stiff-backed walk brought her right up to
the edge of the table. She swept both arms from left to right,
sending piles of lab books and notes onto the floor. Loose papers
zigzagged down slowly to their resting places after the initial
crash.

The frail woman stood breathing heavily from exertion. She still
managed to raise her voice in defiant words. "You're right Ms.
Scully. The whole project is a lie. Steve's notes were fakes. I
knew it a week after I started." She turned to face Dr. VanDyne.
"I'm sorry, but I needed money...." A series of wracking coughs
shook her.

"Do you have your oxygen?" Scully began.

"What's the matter with Dr. VanDyne?" Mulder interjected.

VanDyne was clutching at his throat and jaw. Mulder thought he
might be trying to force words out. The flesh on one side of his
face had fallen slightly, like softened wax slipping down a
candle. He almost fell from his chair before Scully grabbed his
shoulders and pushed him against its back.

"Reefurme. Roofurto," he drooled, before his eyes fluttered shut.

"It's a stroke. Go have Mrs. MacMurty call 911," Scully
instructed Mulder.

Mulder hurried off, hoping the housekeeper hadn't left at her
usual six o'clock. He quickly found her in the kitchen fixing a
vegetable tray.

"Where's your phone? I have to call 911. Dr. VanDyne is having a
stroke."

Mrs. MacMurty stepped back and put her hand over the old rotary
phone. "We don't have 911 service. Anyway Dr. VanDyne signed a
'Do Not Resuscitate' order. We're not to call emergency services
for him."

"Come on. We can't just do nothing," Mulder urged. "Call the fire
department. They've got equipment." He considered getting his
cell phone from his room.

Mrs. MacMurty shook her head. "He wouldn't thank you. Here, you
make the call. His personal physician. Dr. Ernest Craig." She
offered him a hand-written list of phone numbers.

Mulder made the call and Mrs. MacMurty watched with satisfaction
while Dr. Craig confirmed her statements.

"He wants to die at home. Not in some ICU on a ventilator. I'll
be over in thirty minutes to give him something for his blood
pressure. If he's still alive. That's all he wanted."

Mulder agreed reluctantly. Dr. VanDyne seemed too full of fight
to give up on so easily.

"No emergency service. His doctor is coming over," he informed
Scully. "How's he doing?"

"He seems to be stable. We should get him to a hospital.
Sometimes they can treat strokes to minimize damage."

"It's not going to happen. Is Ms. Barney all right?"

"Isn't she giving herself oxygen in the sitting room?"

"I didn't see her." Mulder shrugged. "Maybe she decided to take
advantage of the distraction and leave the scene of the crime,"
he commented.

"I guess Dr. VanDyne could prosecute her for fraud. But would
he?"

Mulder shrugged again. He gave the house a cursory search while
they waited for Dr. Craig, but Helen Barney was gone. Mrs.
MacMurty confirmed that she usually drove an Escort. The circular
drive was empty. Her cars tracks were clearly marked in the snow.

As a federal officer he supposed he should care about Barney's
lawbreaking. He found it difficult to muster up concern. A rich
old man with no immediate heirs had been cheated out of some
money. Dishonesty shouldn't go unpunished. Still Dr. VanDyne had
had a long, rich life, blessed with material things, health, and
work he loved.

Barney had to struggle just to get through every day. Her life
was likely to be cut short within the next few years. He didn't
want to see her go to prison. If VanDyne lived he could pursue a
civil suit and Mulder would testify truthfully if subpoenaed. He
wouldn't release the bloodhounds personally. Scully seemed to
share his doubts. She said nothing about calling the police.

Dr. Craig turned up at ten o'clock. His beefy face looked rather
young to Mulder. His confidence and energy appeared boundless.
After administering the promised medicine he compared notes with
Scully on VanDyne's vital signs. They agreed that with a heart as
healthy as his, Dr. VanDyne might live another ten years.

The four of them carried the old man upstairs on a chair turned
into a makeshift stretcher. They settled him in bed and Mrs.
MacMurty agreed to sit with him that night. A nurse would be sent
up from an agency the next day. The housekeeper refused
Scully's offer to share her vigil, but she seemed heartened by
reassurances that either of them could be wakened at any time if
she felt uneasy.

Mulder and Scully went to their bedrooms at two A.M.

This time Mulder took Montague Summers' account of the roots of
spiritualism from the study. There didn't seem to be much point
in reading more about electron polarization or plasma containment
fields. He was tired past the point of sleepiness, and feared
insomnia would be his close companion.

Just as he settled down to read he heard one muffled thump from
Scully's room. Spirit knocking? Or just Scully bumping into
something in a room overcrowded with furniture? He listened hard,
but heard no further noises. As he began reading he made a mental
note to keep one ear tuned for unusual sounds.

Soon Summers' history of Margaret and Kate Fox had him engrossed.
The sisters became famous as adolescents for communicating with
spirits who rapped out elaborate codes. Forty years later
Margaret recanted her life as a medium. Asserting that she and
her sister had faked the knocking from the beginning, she denied
everything she had previously sworn to be true. Montague Summers
maintained that the claim of fraud was a fraud. Miss Fox, now
Mrs. Kane, wanted social acceptance and a "normal" life, so she
denied the reality of her early experience.

Mulder wondered which of Margaret Fox Kane's accounts were true.
The average person tended to believe self-accusations, but an
experienced investigator learned the myriad reasons why people
confessed to crimes they didn't commit. They might use the
confession of a misdemeanor to distract attention from their
darker deeds. Or the truth might be abandoned under social or
economic pressures.

Mulder thought back to Helen Barney's poker face and dramatic but
pointless trashing of the study table. The questions presented
themselves readily.

What if she had some reason for wanting outsiders to believe her
experiment was a failure? What if it were more important to keep
her success a secret than to preserve her reputation? Barney
would know that most people were ready to believe the worst. He
and Scully had fallen into the common error of assuming that she
wouldn't falsely accuse herself.

Mulder knew he couldn't wait. He had to go downstairs and review
the evidence on the computer now. Scully would want to come too.
Well, maybe not. She might believe it could wait until morning.
He'd better leave her alone if there was no light under her door.

There was no need to fluster Mrs. MacMurty further, so Mulder
opened his door very quietly. Stopping several feet from Scully's
door, he squinted and twisted his head sideways in an attempt to
make it look as though the gap at the bottom were illuminated. It
wasn't. But even at that distance he could feel a cold wind
blowing steadily out from under the door. It would be too much
chill for the most devoted fresh air fanatic, and Scully didn't
fall into that category. Something was wrong.

End of "Draught or Dream," Chapter 4 of "Winter I: The Riddle"

_______________________________________________
"The Riddle"

Sunday, 2 A.M.

Scully couldn't sleep. She hadn't done things the right way.
Instead of choosing a public confrontation, she should have asked
to speak to Barney privately. A low-key, professional approach
would have prevented that violent, vein-popping scene. She was
indirectly responsible for Dr. VanDyne's condition.

Turning restlessly in the bed she sought a comfortable postion.
She stopped moving when she detected quick, soft footsteps in the
hall. It sounded as though a child had run past her door. Sliding
carefully off the high mattress, Scully moved to the door quickly
and opened it enough to check outside. A little girl crouched in
the shadows at the top of the stairs. Her face wasn't visible,
but from her leaning, intent posture Scully judged she was
listening for activity in the house. After a minute of silence
she crept down into the well of darkness at the bottom of the
stairs. Scully followed, unwilling to let the mysterious visitor
out of her sight.

The slight shape moved confidently through the downstairs rooms
to the kitchen door. Scully felt her way more slowly. She was too
late to object to the girl's opening the door to the outside, but
quick enough to catch sight of the determined walker from the
doorway.

Scully left the house in her pajamas so she could keep the small
figure in sight. Any hesitation and the indistinct movement
against the landscape would be lost. Increasingly blustery winds
made it hard to follow the shadow flitting ahead through blowing
snow. In spite of her own bare feet and nightclothes, Scully
gained on the child. She hardly noticed the bitter gale cutting
through to her skin or the icy wetness creeping up inside her
pajama legs. It was only when she seized the girl that she
realized their peril. Once she had stopped her forward motion,
she could no longer reanimate her limbs.

The wintery night had frozen both of them into brittle
immobility. Temperature lost its meaning. The grip of the tiny,
hard fingers at the back of her neck loosened gradually. Hours
passed while the wind whittled at their forms, smoothing,
polishing, and wearing away. Gradually they joined the mad dance
of snowflakes swirling by, destined to transform the landscape
with an innocent white blanket.

Scully's last conscious thoughts weren't frightened or sad. The
atoms that had constituted her would be forever scattered and
granted peace. No more no more fear, no more pain, no more
loneliness. She was free.

There was a loud knocking sound. It meant nothing. Numbness
wasn't unpleasant. It was just---nothing.

"There's a cold wind blowing out from under your door. I'm coming
in," someone called out. "Owww! Shit, Scully. There's a puddle of
ice water on the floor in here!"

After a bright flash something burned her cheek. She kept her
eyes closed, willing the return of the serene, paralyzing cold.

"Open your eyes!" the panicked voice demanded. "I can see you're
still breathing but you're as cold as....come on, wake up!"

Now both cheeks were burning.

She opened her eyes to find Mulder staring into her face, looking
as though he'd seen a ghost. His hands on her face felt hot
enough to brand her.

"Go to the bathroom and run a tub of hot water," he ordered. "I'm
going to close your window."

The dark red curtains billowed into the room on a bitingly cold
current of air, twisting like snakes around the black window.
Mulder pulled down the sash with an emphatic thump. At the bottom
of her bed the quilts and comforters were folded into a neat
stack.

Confused by the sudden awakening from a deep sleep Scully lay
unmoving. Mulder stalked back over to the bed and pulled her
upright. He fingered the collar of her pajamas and Scully
realized they were sodden. When he withdrew his hand he held a
few long brown hairs that had been clinging to her shoulder.

"Won't it disturb Dr. VanDyne if I run water so late?" she
objected.

Mulder gave her a look. It conveyed his barely controlled
inclination to take personal charge of the whole matter.

She fled to the bathroom. Mulder followed almost immediately to
hand her a sweatsuit of his own put on after her bath. Mrs.
MacMurty poked her head out into the hall. When she asked if
there was a problem, they answered simultaneously that they were
fine.

The bathroom was frigid. It didn't feel uncomfortable to her. She
didn't start shaking until the steam rose from the deep, claw-
footed tub as it filled. Her wet pajamas suddenly chilled her.
Stripping them off hastily she soaked in repeatedly refreshed hot
water until her shivering stopped. After dressing she started
back to her room.

As she turned her doorknob Mulder emerged from his own room with
a stubborn set to his jaw

"You can't go back to sleep in there. It's too cold and the bed
is clammy. Besides, what happened? Was it you that opened the
window?"

"I must have, I guess. I had a dream about going outside. Maybe I
was sleepwalking."

"Did you see anyone, anything?" he asked, looking uneasily up and
down the hallway.

"No. That is, only in my dream."

"You must have stood in front of the window in the snow. You were
soaked. And cold as a corpse," he said roughly.

"I don't know. I dreamed about walking in the snow."

"Come in and sleep in my bed," Mulder said.

Scully wished that meant what it sounded like. Her best dreams
involved sharing a bed with Mulder. But she knew her partner.
Long before they met he'd mastered the art of the vulgar
witticism to defend himself against grown-up love and passion.

She waited for the inevitable innuendo and leer. They didn't
come. He just stood there as if hypnotized by the sight of her.
She gazed back and allowed herself to dwell for a few seconds on
the thought of waking up to his sleep-relaxed face across the
pillow. Accepting the impossibility of that dream desolated her
heart until she almost choked with a sob.

Mulder's next words came slowly, as though dragged out by weighty
chains. "I'll go sleep on the couch downstairs."

She nodded dumbly and entered his room, hoping that he couldn't
read on her features how much she wanted to pull him in with her.
As she expected, she couldn't go back to sleep in sheets that
smelled of Mulder's shampoo, his soap, his skin. They were a
crueller tease than sitting hand in hand with him. She lay awake
until dawn posing herself the problem of working out a
satisfactory scientific explanation for the night's events.

Scully expected to fend for herself that morning, but once again
Mrs. MacMurty had beaten them to the kitchen. While she cooked
breakfast, Scully checked a sleeping Dr. VanDyne, and found his
vital signs holding steady.

Breakfast consisted of the usual toast and oatmeal. Mrs. MacMurty
replaced Dr. VanDyne at the table. Mulder joined them and heard
the news about their host. The agency in Albany had called to
confirm that a registered nurse would arrive at noon.

Scully was lost in thought. She had exhausted the topic of her
guilt in causing Dr. VanDyne's stroke. She moved on to the
problem of Helen Barney's guilt. The woman had admitted to
committing fraud. Scully had done nothing so far to bring her to
justice. She probably couldn't be sent to prison even if
convicted. Yet how could Scully justify picking and choosing the
laws she upheld, or selecting people to exempt from them? Her
ever vigilant conscience reminded her of all the times she had
already done those things. Moral questions of a complexity beyond
the Jesuits had become her daily portion since she started
investigating X-files.

She expected Mulder to dismiss the whole dilemma with a grandly
merciful gesture. That's why his words caught her totally off
guard.

"Scully, I started thinking last night. That's why I came to your
door. What if Helen wasn't telling the truth? Last night,
after....what happened, I couldn't sleep anyway. I went and tried
to check the computers. She wiped the hard disks totally clean
with a program that overwrites every bit. I called Frohike for
help in recovery, but he said there's no way. All the floppies
and tapes used for data backups are gone. What if the work is
genuine? Maybe she has some reason for wanting to avoid notice by
the government."

"More than just the government. She burned her bridges with Dr.
VanDyne," Scully said with a frown.

"Think about it. If it works, what would some people pay for it?
Now she doesn't have to share the profit."

"My objections still stand. The evidence is far from complete."

"But what if some of it was deliberately withheld? I'm going to
her place and talk to her. I'm not satisfied."

Scully smiled at him over her rueful comment. "You're never
satisfied."

"Come with me," he urged.

Mulder watched her closely as he asked. He really wanted her to
go with him. Last night he must have been more frightened than
she thought. Maybe he'd been seeing and hearing more than he
admitted in his own room.

"I'd really appreciate it if you didn't leave me here alone with
the doctor," Mrs. MacMurty stated apprehensively.

Scully shook her head at Mulder.

"I'll pack so we can leave when you get back. And I should pick
up some of the mess in the study. I can organize the notes in
case Dr. VanDyne wants to prosecute Ms. Barney for fraud."

Mrs. MacMurty interrupted her before she had done more than stack
everything neatly.

"Dr. VanDyne is asking to talk to someone," she said. Scully
never expected to see the stoic housekeeper wear such an anxious
expression.

Without openly running, Scully pounded up the stairs as quickly
as she could. She hoped the old man wasn't having another stroke.
His desire to die at home was understandable, but it wouldn't be
easy to stand by and do nothing if he stopped breathing.

VanDyne sat propped up in bed. The harsh morning light revealed
only a slight droop on the left side of his face. It was barely
noticeable, although his missing plate gave his cheeks a
pathetically sunken appearance. The damage to his mind was more
serious.

"Bridget, you're looking lovely this morning," he greeted her.

"He keeps asking for her. I don't know who she was."

Mrs. MacMurty startled Scully by hissing the information right
into her ear. Why had Mrs. MacMurty fetched her if he was asking
for Bridget?

"My dear, would you mind doing me a favor? The sun's been shining
all morning and I'm worried about children playing on the lake.
The ice might have held them yesterday, but today the middle will
be rotten. It worries me."

Scully imagined that his family tragedy did make him anxious
about the local children.

"You don't need to worry about anything. You'll be taken care
of," she soothed him.

"It's not myself I'm worried about. It's the children!"

He started to work his right leg out from under the covers,
becoming more and more agitated when he couldn't make his left
leg follow suit. His blood pressure would rise to match his level
of excitement. Scully stepped forward and took his hands in hers.

"I promise I'll go check," she assured him with a smile. "I'll
walk out there and have a look around."

She coaxed him into lying down for a nap, assuring him that she
would report to him when she returned.

Mrs. MacMurty shadowed her back down the stairs and explained her
thinking.

"I thought it might work to get you when he got all in a tizzy
asking for Bridget. What do you want to bet she had red hair? I
don't think he knows what's going on. He's calling me Mrs.
Gould."

When Scully took her coat from the hall closet Mrs. MacMurty
looked shocked.

"You're not really going out, are you? I haven't seen a child
around here in the three months I've had this job. There are
those idiot high school kids on snowmobiles. But they're old
enough to know about thin ice."

"I promised. It's no bother."

The prospect of a quiet walk through the hills attracted her. She
hadn't had much of the solitude she was used to in the last three
days. Except during hours of broken sleep in that dark, odious
bedroom. A serene hour of walking would prepare her to face
Mulder's mood during the drive home. He might be full of
accusations, guilt or worry over her. Or a combination of the
three.

The smallest pair of rubber boots went on easily over her shoes.
The sun had done a great deal to warm up the atmosphere, but
mittens, a hat and scarf would still feel good

It had snowed again during the night. She walked where only birds
and rabbits, and a few deer had gone before. Under the bright sun
their tracks had melted slightly and spread into strange shapes.
The snow sparkled as she always imagined stardust would. So often
white as a color seemed too safe---boring and virginal. This
white scintillated with energy, filling her with more vitality
and purpose than she'd enjoyed for a long time. She strode
quickly over gentle rises that grew into the hills that
surrounded the lake.

The sun's rays bounced in every direction from the silvery disk
of ice frozen in a bowl of snow. They dazzled her eyes shut as
she reached the top of a hill. She shaded them with a hand. When
her vision cleared she was alarmed to see that there was indeed a
child playing at the far edge of the lake. The girl appeared to
be three or four years old, much too young to be out there alone.

Scully scanned the surrounding area for the person who should be
minding her, but saw no one. The child edged up to the ice and
slid the toe of one boot across the surface.

"Don't go on the ice," Scully yelled through cupped hands.

The little girl glanced up curiously to see who was calling. She
brushed short, straight, blonde hair away from her round face and
seemed to look gravely at the strange woman yelling meaningless
words. To Scully's alarm she stepped onto the ice and started
running and sliding on the invitingly glazed surface.

Scully started running too. Words didn't influence the wayward
urchin enjoying her own style of ice skating. The child was
almost to the center of the lake, and it was there that the worst
danger lurked. If need be Scully would drag her off the
treacherous skin of ice by force.

She had just reached the edge when the little girl threw up her
hands and her blue eyes went wide with surprise. Her small body
slipped through the sudden hole so quickly and neatly there was
no time for a scream.

Scully stretched herself full length on the ice and started
scooting out toward the dark water. She kicked her boots and
shoes off behind her and unwound her scarf as she moved. If the
child didn't re-surface in seconds to grab the scarf she'd have
to go after her.

Then there was a flash of a pink face and red stocking cap.

"Mommy! Mommy help!"

"Grab the scarf!" Scully screamed as she tossed one end of it
ahead of her so it trailed in the dark water.

The terrified child flailed in the water for a few moments and
then sank out of sight again.