Earthspeak
by Windsinger

TEASER

Near Salem, MA
March, 2004

"So, how did you like find your first week with us, Ms. Sackstone?" asked the smiling voice.

"I have been treated very well. Illuminations is a very exciting place to work."

"I'm so glad that you think so. I know that we have been more than impressed. Your analyses on the cases you have been assigned to so far have proved more than acceptably accurate. Even more so, we are impressed by your commitment to your job, though we are a little concerned." Here the CEO's broad face became more serious.

"Concerned, Mr. Hyxodram?"

"I don't know what they told you in Personnel, but fourteen-hour days are not the norm here. In fact, Human Resources has studies which indicate that the practice is detrimental to the health of professional staff over an extended period of time. For example, computer programmers puzzling over a bit of tangled code have been known to work for days without sleep just to solve a problem. We encourage a certain amount of that. Many of mankind's greatest breakthroughs have come about as a result of such fugues of concentrated output. I just want to make certain that you understand that we can condone such dedication for brief spurts, but not as a general rule. We don't want you to burn out before you have barely started. If you have been trying to impress us, then you have already done so."

Shirley Sackstone stared down into her long-fingered hands that could almost be considered pretty if not for the bitten nails. "I wasn't intentionally trying to impress you. It's just that... that I feel something here." Her colorless gray eyes moved up to stare at the ceiling, then at the walls from one side of the walnut-paneled office to the other.

"And so you have. You've put your finger on the problem," the man's large stubby finger sought a figure on the report before him, "no less than six times in just four weeks."

"Yes, I know. But those were -- incidentals, by products of this larger search. There is something else here. Something strong. Something that does not just whisper to me but cries out to me, loudly, insistently." The man's large eyes widened in sudden understanding. "Sir, I need to sleep."

"So that is how the land lies. Such compulsions are not uncommon in our line of work. We have many potential focuses of power here. We just need to find out the one you're picking up. What can we do to help? Has your supervisor given you access to all the resources you require?"

"Honestly, I don't know. This is such a huge place. I don't even know my way around yet nor what to ask for." Suddenly her bowed head raised, its mass of strangled mass of dirty-blond hair flying. Eyes glazing, she sniffed. "There it is again. Just a whiff. Smoke."

"Smoke?" the director closed his eyes and sniffed with his prominent nose for more than a minute. Sadly, he shook his head. "Sorry, I can't detect a thing. That doesn't mean, of course, that you can't. Our people are like radio receivers all tuned to a different station and your frequency clearly fills in a gap in our net." He paused suddenly. "Hmmm. I have an idea. Someplace they may not have taken you. Come with me please."

Heaving himself up and moving around from behind his massive desk, Mr. Hyxodram resembled a cross between Gimli the dwarf and an employee of Gringotts. The top of his head barely came level with the lower edge of Ms. Sackstone's breastbone though his upper body was the breadth and length of a normal man. His short legs, however, moved with speed. Adjusting her long stride, employee followed employer. He took her out of the paneled office, across the length of the carpeted foyer that looked like a corporate office anywhere except for its dark, stone walls, and finally down to the lowest levels via an ancient brass-cage lift. The doors opened on more stone and an intense dampness.

At her shiver, he explained, "The exhibit rooms themselves are climate controlled." They walked for some time through a maze-like catacomb of narrow hallways lined with doors. Finally, the dwarf-man stopped by one, entered a code into the electronic lock, and the door swung open.

She swayed as if struck by a blow, then recovered quickly to precede her boss into the room. The vault was only a little larger than a closet having barely enough floor space for the two of them. On the six-inch high shelves that reached from foot to ceiling sat row upon row of plastic bags. The contents seemed limited to bits of heavily charred paper yet there was no scent of smoke in the room. Eyes closing, her hands rose on their own to hover slowly and then faster over the shelves until her right arm reached with speed over her boss's grizzled, gray head to touch one packet seemingly indistinct for all the others.

The stench and sting of smoke were suddenly all around her, in her nose, in her mouth, in her eyes. Heat blasted her skin. Her hand

jerked back as if he had been burned. Through tearing eyes she saw the reddened skin, the rising blisters. Then another smell, overwhelming, but familiar. The smell of hell. She was vaguely aware of Mr. Hyxodram speaking urgently into his cell phone but he seemed very, very far away.

ACT I

Dana awoke cold. Outside, the wind moaned in the branches of the pine outside her window while sleet rained against the window. Welcome to Washington in March. Don't like the weather? Wait and hour and it will probably be worse. Without opening her eyes, she reached down to pull the extra comforter up then slid across the sheets seeking her partner's warm back.

Her groping hand met only empty air. Useless male! Then she realized that it was not only the sound of the wind and rain that that had awakened her. From somewhere in the apartment came the constant rumbling hiss of something electronic.

Groggily, she switched on her beside lamp, donned her favorite blue robe, ugly and unflattering but warm, stuck her feet into worn slipper clogs and shuffled into the hall. The noise was louder here. She found them in the kitchen huddled over an array of terminals, keyboards, oscilloscopes, and unknown blinking devices while the overhead lights blazed. Her partner's dark head didn't turn from the high definition, flat-screen monitor. Neither did the head of tangled blond hair beside him.

"Having fun, boys?" she asked sleepily.

"Would be better if the solar flares didn't suppress the plasma spikes," Langley grumbled, flipping a stray tangle out of his eyes. "And if you owned an espresso maker."

"Sorry, I'll put one on next year's Christmas list."

"Please don't ask for an spectral analyzer," Mulder mumbled. "That's outside my budget."

Dana frowned as the men redirected their attention to the tiny spiky lines on one of the oscilloscopes. If she and Mulder had a normal relationship, she would be able to wrap herself around his broad shoulders right now, rest her cheek on top of his head, and in so many small and not so subtle ways influence his decision to return to their rapidly cooling bed. But they didn't, and she couldn't, even if their audience was only Langley. Public demonstrations of affection were not and never would be Mulder's thing.

In time her glare caught Langley's attention. Colorless eyebrow raised, he unfolded his gawky frame from his rear-facing position on her kitchen chair and was soon slinking towards the bathroom. "I think I'll take my morning shower now. Less competition than in the morning. Women and all."

"How would you know, Langley?" Mulder drawled, his attention never wavering from the screen. "According to Frohike, the last date you had was in 1997."

The gunman's closing remark drifted towards them from down the hall. "Can I help it that the dwarf has a libido the size of Montana?" Now that they were alone, Dana had no compunction about making like a kudzu vine. Distracted lips in time found hers, a hand drifted up her thigh under her grandmotherly robe and very ungrandmotherly silk nightgown.

He was rising from his chair, only ten percent of his attention on the monitor now and that percentage dropping in direct proportion to the degree of skin-to-skin contact, when someone's cellphone sang away to the theme from the Twilight Zone. Dana would have let the damn thing ring; her too distractible lover did not. Mulder had vanished to the coat tree by the door to pick through the pockets of his trench coat, coming up at last with a tiny model of a type he must have gotten from the Gunmen. He answered with a simple "Hello". A few seconds later, his sweatshirt-clad shoulders tightened. Catching sight of her concerned eyes he mouthed, "I've had the calls from my apartment transferred," and turned the receiver on 'speaker'. With amazing clarity a hesitant sputtering came from the device. The sputtering was female, however, so this was unlikely to be simply an obscene phone call, and even telemarketers have enough sense not to hawk their wares at two a.m.

"Can I help you?" he asked for the second time.

"I'm..." the woman's voice replied. "I'm sorry. I was looking for a Fox Mulder, Agent Fox Mulder?"

"This is Mulder." His delivery was even, non-committal.

"So sorry to disturb you. This is Shirley Sackstone, I work for Illuminations, Incorporated. I was working, well, not exactly working, but I have some information on one of your cases."

Mulder's posture transformed to an eager brightness. "What kind of information? Which case?"

"M-00134. Such interesting work," the flustered woman wandered on. "I saw your material this morning for the first time. I'm new at Illuminations. We've had problems you know, with the damage, the fire and all, but yours spoke as clear as crystal to me." There was some definite hesitation before a strained voice went on. "Too clearly."

Mulder's eyes rolled slightly back into his head the way they did when he consulted the file cards of images in his head. Dana knew when he found the one he sought. His shoulders slumped in obvious disappointment. "Six unexplained disappearances. The victims were all traveling alone and all seemed to have made radical changes to their vacation plans just before they disappeared. Their last known locations were all within the greater Pacific Northwest area. That's not much to go on."

"I think I have more," the voice suggested.

His hazel eyes glowed with the embers of investigative fire. The last two weeks had been a little dull -- no new X-Files, no profiling cases Behavioral Sciences couldn't deal with, no directives from Skinner as he was out of town, and no one had tried to take either of them out of commission. "Where can we meet? Here at the Bureau in D.C., or we can fly to where you are?"

The voice was hesitant again. "Actually, I'm in Washington now. I flew into National airport and went directly to your apartment -- or what use to be your apartment until recently, it seems. The address was with your account information."

Dana stabbed at the Mute button. "You gave your home address to some consulting group! You'll be giving them mine next."

"Not just any consulting group; these are psychics. They have all of the last pieces from the fire in the X-Files office years ago. If any of Illuminations people caught onto anything, they had to be able to contact me and I didn't want information from that kind of source coming to the Bureau."

"If they really are psychics, they wouldn't need your address!"

"If you're very eager for the information, we don't need to arrange a meeting place," the woman continued. "When it was clear that your apartment building had met with some misfortune, I took a chance and came here."

Dana flared. "You did give out my address!"

"Actually, he didn't," the woman replied apologetically. Dana stared down at the phone. The Mute indicator light was on and had been on through much of their three-way conversation. "I followed a ‘shimmer' from there to here. I am a psychic, after all. The trail's incredibly bright, especially at night when there is so much less extraneous noise. Clearly this is a path you had traveled repeatedly over many years. And I wouldn't have called until morning except that I saw lights. When more came on. I thought that you might be up."

Mulder released the mute. "You've been sitting in your car outside for how long?"

"Oh, uh, two hours."

"You must be frozen."

"Well, a little, but then I grew up in Boston. I know that it's an abominable hour but I don't like crowds, or cities, or traffic. Consequently, I work a lot at night. From the kind of cases you work on, I take it that you work a lot at night as well. If I hadn't seen the lights, I wouldn't have called."

Mulder was learning. At least he caught his partner's eye for her weary agreement before inviting up yet another houseguest.

There was always the couch, Dana thought, and Mulder could certainly testify to its comfort. If he wasn't careful, however, he was going to get another opportunity to test how just how comfortable it could be.

Dana didn't change out of her bathrobe. With most visitors, she would have done everything in her power to project the image that Mulder had just stopped by after the office and that they had been working on a case and lost track of the time. No point with this woman with what she already knew. Besides, maybe if she realized that she had interrupted at least one person's sleep she wouldn't stay too long.

Her feelings changed when Shirley Sackstone appeared on the threshold. Pale, with almost a bluish tint to her lips, the woman's long, red-chafed hands greedily grasped the warm mug of tea thrust at her. It took five minutes for her shivering to stop.

"That's so good," she gushed, breathing in the warm vapors.

Mulder had perched on the arm of the sofa one long leg crossed over his opposite knee. "So Ms. Shackstone --"

"Shirley Sackstone, but call me 'Lee,' please. And no Shirley MacLaine jokes."

"Very well, Lee. So you also uncovered my old phone number through psychic means."

"I didn't need to. You left it with the office in case we came up with anything." Her sheepish smile greatly softened the strong, raw bones of her face.

"I understand that you have information on one of Mulder's old cases," Dana said, "but I am surprised that you came down here directly. Mulder tells me that Illumination's home office is in Massachusetts. We travel a lot, we might have been out of town."

"I did call the FBI first. Your voice mail said that you were gone for the day and would return tomorrow so I felt pretty safe about coming." The woman's hands trembled so that the contents of the mug nearly sloshed over the rim. "I had to see you, Agent Mulder. These images won't leave me alone."

Mulder turned to his partner. "The case she's referring to, M-00134, was actually from a file marked 'Miscellaneous'. It didn't have enough of the X-File 'odeur' to warrant an 'X' rating, at least not then. Maybe now, however. It came to me during the time when my uncanny spookiness frightened even me. The Behavioral Science Unit hoped that I could come up with a profile. I let them down. So tell me what you have, Lee."

As she paced the room in obvious agitation, she told them about her vision in the vault under Illuminations main office. As she spoke, Dana watched Mulder as avidly as she watched the woman. Both partners believed that most psychics were fakes, intentional or not. They believed just as completely that some were genuine. Mulder clearly assumed that Shirley 'Lee' Sackstone was of the latter variety, Illuminations being such a reputable firm.

By the time Lee finished, Mulder was in full Sherlockian mode, slouched in Dana's favorite easy chair, fingers steepled under his chin, eyes intense. "As we both know, visions are one thing; interpretation is another."

"Absolutely. That was why I had to see you in person. You wrote up the original notes, talked to the original contacts. I had to see if my visions would clear."

"Have they?"

"Some. What surprises me most are the impressions from the dead." Her pale eyes went to his. "You've known a lot of dead, Agent Mulder. They certainly know you. They are 'at home' with you and aren't afraid to speak." Mulder's expression didn't change but Dana noticed his skin pale. "They demand resolution, Agent Mulder, and they've chosen you to provide it. Some have loved ones who still need to know what happened to them. For others you are the only one who cares. They are in torment."

Dana watched her partner with concern. He didn't need this kind of pressure, not again. She watched his Adam's apple as he convulsively swallowed, saw the dim light of the living rooms lamps pool in his eyes. "I want to help. I'm willing now, but don't know much more than I did before. Let's go through those visions of yours again, one by one. Maybe we can find a pattern. We even have a few days we can spend on this."

"One thing," Dana asked, knowing enough not to scoff. "Are all of the missing deceased, or should we be preparing for a rescue?"

Mulder turned to the pale woman as well, the same question in his face. "There were six in the original case."

"Those are no longer with us,' Sackstone answered though with a slight hesitation.

"Those? There's more?" Mulder inquired.

"There were more than you knew then, there are even more now and all dead," the woman's bony face twisted in a kind of deep pain.

Unable to bear inactivity any longer, Mulder lurched to his feet to pace. Dana was afraid to move from her place on the arm of the couch. With these two pacing and now a dozen or more weeping souls, her small apartment was feeling very crowded.

At that moment a "Jeeze!" exploded from the hallway. Dana nearly toppled from her perch until she remembered her other houseguest.

Langley stood dripping onto the floor, a tiny towel barely covering his skinny loins and in his haste to cover more was in serious danger of losing that. "You could have told me you had visitors... I just wanted to ask where I could find more towels..."

He had turned to flee, displaying an amazingly white backside, when Lee Sackstone's attitude abruptly changed. "Lizard?" she called taking to step towards the hallway, incredulity in her voice. After a moment's pause, his wet head peaked around the doorway of the bathroom.

"Shit," he swore.

"Lizard Brain," Lee breathed.

"Wizard Brain," Langley retorted.

"I take it you know each other?" Mulder asked realizing only then where he had seen the woman's strong bone structure before.

"Answer the man, you skinny-assed, paranoid geek!"

Langley glowered. "It's my damned incense-breathing, tofu-gobbling, crystal-dazzled cousin. Embarrassed any more husbands from your previous lives lately?"

Somewhere in Kansas, two days later

The black night road slid by nearly soundlessly under the wheels of the cruising van. For the tenth time in as many minutes, Mulder rolled back the sun shield to stare up at the stars. As far as they were from civilization, the Milky Way was ablaze in all its splendor. He raised and lowered his seat with the touch of a finger, adjusted the side mirrors, fine-tuned the equalizer on the surround sound system, and punched in a request for new and completely unnecessary instructions from the in-car directional computer.

"Do you think maybe that you could quit fiddling and give some of that attention to the road?" Scully inquired groggily from the passenger seat. "Some of us are trying to sleep here and want to have some confidence that we'll wake up."

"Sorry. This machine Langley came up with has got more bells and whistles than an entire Gemini spacecraft."

His partner snuggled down into the comfort of the glove-leather seat. "Didn't you notice the license plate -- GKNOLL2. I assume that refers to the second gunman on the grassy knoll. This opulence on wheels belongs to Byers, who just picked it up cheap from an impoundment lot in Fairmont, Iowa -- the internet being a wonderful thing -- and he will kill Langley when he finds it gone. He will kill us all if we damage it." She adjusted her own captain's chair to a more comfortable reclining position. "At least we didn't end up trying to drive cross country non-stop in that moving disaster the Gunmen usually roll around town in."

"We would have it, only Frohike and Byers are using it in their surveillance of the Libertarian Party headquarters."

Scully rolled her eyes. "And they are involved in what illegal activity?"

"Don't ask." His hand caressed the padded steering wheel.

Sleepily, Scully turned in her seat to stare back at the dim outlines of the two shapes sprawled out in their own captain's chairs behind. "Those two finally passed out."

"They've only insulted each other for the last thousand miles. They must be worn out."

"Between my ear plugs and headphones, I slept through the last tirade. Did I miss anything?"

A sunflower seed cracked between his teeth. "Only Missouri and Kansas and her tales of how Langley sabotaged both her junior and senior proms. In other words, no. We're almost in Colorado though you wouldn't know it."

Scully stared out into the dark. "I remember my first cross-country car trip. I was surprised to find that eastern Colorado was so flat. You think Colorado, you think mountains."

A chill settled into his stomach. "When was this?" he asked.

"I don't know. I must have been about ten, I guess," she answered as she hunted in her travel bag to come up with a box of juice. "You know, the kind of trips every family takes, hit all the national parks."

That's what he thought she was going to say. The chill had become a lump.

"Anything wrong?" When he didn't answer immediately, he felt her slender hand come to rest on his thigh. "Give. I know there's something."

Shrug. "Same old thing. Me and my childhood, or lack thereof. No amusement parks, no summer camps, no holiday celebrations, no birthday parties."

"And no cross-country car trips," her quiet voice added.

"Just to the summer place and back and not even that after I was twelve."

After Samantha disappeared. Scully was silent now. Way too much baggage for either of them to continue on that subject. A few miles rolled on in silence, just that warm, reassuring hand on his leg, not sexual in any way. A faint lightening in the sky in his rear view mirror told him that dawn was reaching for them from the East.

"Any more of an idea of where we're going?" Scully asked at last. Reflected in the windshield, a series of expressions flowed over his face. "I gather 'yes' and 'no' to that."

"Actually, yes. I just don't know how I feel about it. Lee had two more visions while you were asleep. Allowing her to gather impressions as we went along was the reason why we drove to begin with. She finally identified the smoke she sensed. She's convinced that what she smelled had nothing to do with the apartment fire or our old office fire though the recent connection might have made her more sensitive. There was pine in the smoke, not the kind of toxins present when buildings burn. In Kansas we added the scent of rotten eggs, hydrogen sulfide, which she remembered when we went by a paper mill. Langley cross referenced forest or lumber mill fires against hot springs, fumerals and paper mills using his handy-dandy wireless notebook."

"Taping into the DOD's satellite system, no doubt."

He smiled. "Only the best for the 'boys'. In Colorado she felt a pull to the northwest. Add to that that this must be an area where people traveling randomly in the area would likely to be drawn to and we triangulated on a location, at least some place to start." He felt her eyes on him, questioning. "We're headed for Yellowstone."

In one smooth motion Scully returned her seat to its upright position. "Sulfur, the geysers! And the fire that swept through so much of the park twenty years ago. But that's wonderful!"

"Is it?"

"You've certainly been to Yellowstone! Maybe as a child you didn't travel, but you've crossed the U.S. at least a dozen times since I've known you. Seeing that Yellowstone is larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined, it's rather hard to miss."

"I have."

She was silent for a long moment, absorbing his very definitive denial. "Missed the Grand Canyon, too? And Yosemite, and the Grand Tetons, and Arches, and Dinosaur National Park? Missed Carlsbad Caverns, Glacier National Park, Crater Lake, and Mesa Verde?"

She knew him too well. No, not to any of the places where happy families gathered. "Military installations and UFO's hot spots tend to like quiet, unpopulated places. So do I."

"Ever think that these places are popular, Mulder, because they are amazing? Yellowstone, especially."

"You mean Old Faithful, blue-haired ladies by the tour busful and Yogi Bear?"

She actually lifted his hand from the wheel to give it a squeeze. "Yes, there are those things -- except for Yogi Bear because bears aren't allowed to bother tourists any more -- but there are amazing things there, too, Mulder. You will love Yellowstone if only because it truly is the most highly geothermic area in the world. Almost the whole park sits inside an ancient volcanic caldera. If that isn't a Fox Mulder kind of place, I don't know what is."

'But if we are right, Scully, people also died there,' he thought, not wanting to ruin her good mood. 'They were lured there and killed. But then I guess that also makes it my kind of place.'

ACT II

Yellowstone National Park

Much as he tried to fight it, Mulder found his partner's enthusiasm infectious. While she drove and the landscape changed abruptly from plains to majestic mountains, he commandeered Langley's notebook and read everything that he could find on the park, its geology, and surrounding area. There was much to read and the day slipped by quickly with Langley and Lee playing hangman and fighting in the backseat. When Lee spoke about her impressions, which wasn't often, her broad features took on a strained expression. She mentioned once at a rest stop that she seemed able to sense then they crossed the path that one of the victims took on their final journey. She kept a notebook of her observations, and the closer they came to the northwest corner of Wyoming, the more frequent came her notations.

They ate an early dinner in the tourist town of Jackson, which represented everything Mulder hated about tourist towns, though he had to admit that this one was cleaner and less gaudy than most. His patience was rewarded by the sight of the Grand Tetons. The snow of their jagged, unworldly, geologically new-born peaks glowed red at sunset. Almost immediately, they entered Yellowstone Park through the nearly deserted south entrance. No army of tourists in sights. Not a single tour bus. There was not much else to see either as it was night except that they seemed to spend a lot of their time driving up hill. Denver had nothing over Yellowstone when it came to altitude. There was not a point in the park that was less than a mile above sea level and the mountains that ringed the ancient volcano and its caldera were far higher still. In March, even though the winter had been mild and spring early, that meant that the snow was piled high along the main route so that it resembled a tunnel more than a road.

Giddy from the long drive, they had tumbled from the car for an impromptu snowball fight. Just as Mulder realized that they might just need every layer of winter clothes they had packed, an ungainly female moose and her equally knobby-kneed calf crossed the road. As the women cooed, Mulder and Langley shared stoic glances of male solidarity though secretly Mulder felt a strange, warm glow of pleasure. He came crashing to earth only a few minutes later, however, when a glance in the rear view mirror revealed a new haunted pain in Lee's eyes.

Mulder didn't remember much of their arrival. He had let Scully handle the reservations as she seemed to have a place in mind. All he could recall was falling into a bed around one a.m. After more than two-and-a-half days of non-stop driving, the mattress continued to move as if the bed rode a ship at sea.

"Scully?" he inquired softly the next morning. He got only a straggled murmur in response as her small body burrowed into his for added warmth. As good as the sensation was, Mulder felt an oddly happy excitement of an entirely different nature. He had finally made it to Yellowstone. Well, they had actually been driving in the park for hours the night before, but now they had light and an entire day before them. And geysers. He was going to see a geyser that wasn't on a video or a picture in a book. His unexpected buzz of anticipation made him realize how short the step really was between ages ten and forty. When he opened his eyes to focus on his room, however, his anticipation dimmed. It looked like one of the poorer cheap motels that he had too often stuck Scully in -- double bed, small table, one side chair, a sink in their room and toilet and tiny shower in a freezing side alcove. He had expected the Ritz in retaliation for his past choices.

"Sure that we are where we are suppose to be?" he asked hesitantly.

He was answered by an un-Scully-like giggle from beneath the blankets. "These cabins look exactly the way they did when I was fifteen," she answered with pleasure. "Don't worry. You don't spend any time here. You live in the Lodge."

They emerged from the little clapboard cabin into spring. Mulder vaguely remembered descending from the pass into what was called the Central Plateau on the park map. There was snow only in the shadowed places here, unexpectedly warm after the ten foot drifts just south of the caldera rim. As he followed his smiling partner to the large, dark-logged building down the road, a small family herd of long- eared deer trotted past. "Muledeer", Scully explained, then pointed to a burly dark spot in the tall grass across the road.

"A buffalo?" Mulder marveled. As if on command, the creature raised its huge head, snorted, then dropped it again to continue feeding.

"Bison. Don't call them buffalo. The young males are forced to leave the herd until they can find a female of his own."

"Some things never change," Mulder murmured with a sympathetic glance in the bison's direction.

As they climbed the few short steps onto the huge porch of the lodge the mist beyond where the bison fed rose over what Mulder realized was a huge lake surrounded by snow-covered mountains. Scully sighed with satisfaction. "Yellowstone Lake. Hasn't changed a bit except that we were never here so early. More snow." They crossed the porch, which stretched at least forty feet to either side of the

lodge's main entrance and was lined with rocking chairs all turned towards the lake. The lodge itself seemed to be one huge but surprisingly cozy room with two dozen conversation pits, brightly burning fireplaces, bar and restaurant. Dana smiled. "And this is Lake Lodge. It hasn't changed either except that I hear they have a modem line. I've always felt that this would be the perfect place to hold a party for me and a hundred of my closest friends."

"I don't even have a hundred friends," Mulder sulked.

They found Lee and Langley only as they were leaving the restaurant. The two cousins were arguing, as usual, next to the van, which they had pulled in front of the Lodge. With all the high-pitched squabbling, it wasn't surprising that there wasn't a muledeer in sight, and the bachelor bison had ambled some distance closer to the lake.

"I should have known that even twenty years wouldn't be long enough for you to grow up," Lee sneered.

"Nor long enough for you to learn to keep that long nose out of other people's business!"

"Hardly other people's business. I had to sit next to you during most of the trip!" The woman directed the partners' attention to Langley's outfit that was peculiar. The gunman wore his cat burglar pants, turtleneck and watch cap. The black was broken only by red tennis shoes and the same torn t-shirt advertising a D.C. sushi joint that he had worn for the previous two days in the car. "That's the extent of his wardrobe! Where did he think he was going, Hawaii?"

"At least Hawaii's warm, and it does have volcanoes!"

"So does Yellowstone. You're standing in one, circuit-brain!"

Having had to head for the local Walmart more than once for essentials left behind, Mulder stuffed his hands deep in the pockets of his jeans and said nothing. Scully stared at the van. "Ninety percent of the stuff we crow-barred into the van was yours and none of it was clothes?"

"Equipment, Agent Scully. Computers, satellite dish, modulators, seismographs, radiation detectors, mass spectrometers. Come prepared. We didn't know what we were going to need and, I don't know about you, but I haven't seen a Radio Shack for a hundred miles!"

"Clothes... " Scully mused. "I guess it's not like you're going to need a tux. Sweatshirts we can find in any gift shop, and the Lodge has a laundry. We do have more to worry about, after all, such as where do we start?"

"Geysers," Mulder suggested though it wasn't really a question. "We do need to get the lay of the land."

"The park's more than geysers," Lee said with a worried frown. "There's the smoke I smelled and I felt, remember? We also need to concentrate on the areas devastated by the '88 fire. The disappearances all trace from immediately after that time. It is one of the primary reasons for our coming here rather than Crater Lake or Laissen or Mount St. Helens."

Mulder hoped that his disappointment didn't show. He didn't know if it did or not but felt his spirits rise as Scully noted that Lee had also smelled hydrogen sulfide, so the geothermic features could not be ignored either.

As the scowling cousins climbed into the back seat, Scully indicated that she would drive and surreptitiously slipped her hand briefly into Mulder's. Looking into her eyes he caught a shrewd sort of sparkle. So she had seen. "This is after all an unofficial investigation. Technically we're on vacation until we can find something more substantial to go on than Lee's shimmers so we might as well enjoy it. One day visiting geysers won't hurt."

"Scully," he began, "I appreciate this but we have so much to do. A few hours --"

"I'm not just being nice. The distances between the major geyser basins is not trivial, and you usually have to wait. Even for the FBI, geysers don't erupt on a schedule, except for one, of course."

Their first stop was West Thumb Geyser basin on the western edge of Yellowstone Lake which Mulder and Langley, another deprived youth who had never taken the National Park tour either, found both disappointing and intriguing. They were disappointed because no geysers actually erupted during their visit but they couldn't help to be fascinated by the simmering geyser pools of sapphire blue too

hot for algae to grow, the slopping mudpots, and stinking fumerals. Mostly, however, they marveled at the steam that rose off the chilly lake and the clearly visible geyser cones on the lake bottom each appearing like tiny dormant volcanoes. At their next stop, however, Mulder sat on the edge of his seat like any tourist as Old Faithful sputtered and steamed teasingly for fifteen minutes before it finally shot off like a fireman's hose ninety feet straight up into the brilliant blue sky.

Scully let him away at the end to meet up with a Ranger talk beginning a quarter mile up a well-paved trail at the upper geyser basin. "Can I see it again?" he asked wistfully.

"Every ninety-six minutes, give or take twenty minutes. They don't call it Old Faithful for nothing," Scully assured him with a laugh.

Their interpreter was Ranger Harris, a small, thirty-something woman whom Mulder had to admit filled out her uniform very well indeed. She certainly never had a more attentive or questioning audience. The fact the Mulder and Scully had to distract the ranger from the soil and water samples and the countless readings with obscure instruments that Langley was taking further down the basin only added to the intensity. She explained how geysers needed three elements to exist: A continual source of water far below ground, heat below and in the surrounding rock, and the correct plumbing.

"Rhyolite is a yellow volcanic rock of which so much of the park is formed and from which it gets its name. You'll see that most clearly in Yellowstone Canyon near Tower Falls. Rhyolite is silicon- based and perfect for lining the water channels of the geysers and making them water-tight. Boiling water below becomes superheated because it's under pressure from cold water above which is in turn heated by the surrounding rock. Being at such a high altitude also lowers the boiling point. That increases the eruption rate. Greater height is achieved if the geyser plumbing also has a constriction point. Old Faithful has all of these elements."

"You say that you don't know when the other geysers around the basin will erupt. Then why can you predict Old Faithful so accurately?" Mulder asked.

"O.F. has it's own water supply. Once the chamber fills and the water reaches the right pressure and temperature, it goes off. The others share a water supply and often have multiple chambers, sometimes in extremely complex combinations. That's why we can't predict them." She smiled a little sadly. "But we're working at it even with the budget cuts." She indicated what seemed to be a tall, white, anthill-like cone as large as an RV. "For example, we can predict this one, Castle Geyser, to within four hours. It's spectacular, so the wait is worth it though we suggest that you bring water, lunch and a book." She indicated further on down the basin. Mulder noted Langley speaking earnestly to one of the other rangers. He hoped that the Gunman wasn't being asked to leave the park for dropping fluorescent dyes to trace water flow. "There are even larger geysers than Old Faithful and Castle here," their ranger continued. "Giantess erupted three times in 2003 and Giant once. That doesn't sound like much but is still exceptional."

As they moved on, Mulder noted that Lee was scanning the hillsides. She had gotten her fire. The slopes were covered with hundreds of living eight-foot lodge pole pines and a new spring layer of underbrush, but amidst the green you couldn't miss the hundreds more of uniform black trunks, the remains of pines burned in '88. They lay about helter-skelter like so many huge matchsticks. Scully studied the psychic closely. There was much that haunted the woman in this place, yet no panic.

They were walking along a weathered boardwalk suspended above a white, crumbly soil. Their lecture group wasn't large but having become bored two boys had begun irritating each other as children will. "Please," Ranger Harris warned with real concern, "you don't want to fall off the boardwalk. Those ‘Danger' signs are there for a purpose. A few winters back we began to notice a terrible smell coming from the lower basin. Eventually we found the problem. A bison calf had wandered onto the geyser basin and broken through the crust. It didn't survive long after a nearby geyser erupted. Let's just say that cleaning up wasn't much fun. We wouldn't want to have to clean up after you as well."

Wincing, Mulder shot Scully a look of alarm. She knew that expression. "Mulder, there are accidents everywhere," she whispered. But she knew he would remember and noted how he studied the notices about boiling water and unstable ground with greater attention than before. Damn but his mind was working on something.

Just then Ranger Harris' voice rose as she pointed across the road, where a plume geyser was just getting started and within seconds was pumping energetically, maybe not as tall as Old Faithful, but still impressive. "You're in luck That's Baby Daisy. It became active again just last year after being dormant since 1959."

Mulder stiffened slightly. "You mentioned that Giant and Giantess Geysers had also become unusually active recently. How active is active for this one?" Mulder asked in a tone that caused his partner to glance in his direction.

"Nearly once an hour though there are wide variations," Ranger Harris reported.

"You don't find that degree of change alarming?" Mulder inquired. "From nothing to twenty-four/seven?"

"This ‘is' an active geothermal area." As if that answered all, Harris changed the subject and began discussing the reason for the various colored algae found in some quiescent geyser pools and not in others. Mulder was quiet but caught up with the ranger at the end of their lecture.

"Have other features changed lately," he asked with an intensity Scully knew all too well. "What do you not want to say because you might disturb the tourists?" Langley and Lee joined them. For some reason Langley was also on edge.

"There really is nothing to be concerned about," Harris assured them in a practiced voice. "There have also been several changes at Norris Geyser Basin. That's nothing that we are trying to hide. We've reported our findings in the newsletter to the Yellowstone Associates. The water has become hotter at Porkchop Geyser and erupted for the first time since 1991. Pearl Geyser became a fumarole as did Green Dragon that was once a boiling spring. A new thermal feature began throwing acidic mud to such an extent that a trail had to be closed. The ground itself in several parts of the basin has become hotter."

"And you don't find that unusual?" Mulder asked in what Scully recognized was sounding far too much like his interrogation voice.

Ranger Harris' response was clearly on the defense. "We're monitoring, but keep in mind that in the geologic sense, our records on the park are like a blink of an eye. These variations could mean nothing."

"Or could mean something," Mulder retaliated.

"Excuse me, sir," asked the ranger, officiously polite, "but may I ask if you are with the media. We do have an office of public affairs. Perhaps you should speak to them."

Mulder pulled out his ID, which forced Scully to wearily do the same. The ranger's eyes opened to a prodigious degree. "FBI? May I ask what you are investigating? I'd be happy to direct you to the correct people." There had been a decided emphasis on ‘happy'.

"We're still collecting information, but thank you."

"Mulder..." Langley had been nervously shifting his weight from foot to foot, as if the boardwalk he stood on was already too hot. "I have a question. I was talking to one of the other rangers. What about the lava dome, the ‘rising' lava dome? The one on the north end of the lake that has raised the temperature of the lake floor? Bubbles of steam and hydrogen sulfide have been seen on the lake surface. Within the last fifteen years it has tilted the lake to the extent that twenty feet of the south end shore is now permanently under water?"

Mulder stiffened. "Lava dome?"

Ranger Harris was making all the correct calming gestures but knew that she wasn't succeeding well with this group. "This is an geothermic area. That means that the Earth's molten core comes relatively close to the surface here and, yes, there is a magma lake under most of the park."

"In layman's terms, an active volcano," Lee corrected. "One of the largest in the world."

"Yes," Harris admitted, "which hasn't erupted in six hundred thousand years."

"And is due to erupt in six hundred thousand year intervals," Mulder recalled.

"Give or take a hundred thousand years. Not something that I think we need to be overly concerned about. Not something that need concern the FBI."

And with that and a piece of amazing dexterity, Ranger Harris slipped away.

"You badgered that poor woman, Mulder. We knew that Yellowstone sits on top of an active volcano."

"But there's knowing and then there's ‘knowing.'"

"But what does any of this have to do with the disappearances?"

He shrugged, which seemed to dispel some of the tightness in his shoulders. "Coincidence?"

"But you don't believe in coincidences."

"You're right, I don't."

ACT III

Scully joined Mulder on the lodge's wide porch, where he sat in one of the rockers, his feet on the thick bole of the tree trunk railing in front of him. The beauty of the lake may have been before him, but his eyes didn't see it. He was in full analyst mode, his inner eye in operation.

"Ranger Harris will be here in a few minutes. It's her day off, but her supervisor has agreed for her to act as the FBI liaison in this case. Heaven help us if we have to prove this is sanctioned."

She slipped into the rocking chair next to her partner and waited for him to acknowledge her presence. Finally, he leaned down for the glass by his side. "Ice tea?" she asked with a smile.

He managed a small return grin while taking a draw on the straw. "Unfortunately, yes. They make some brew here you could stand a spoon in. Moose Drool. As soon as this is over I'm having one."

Vacation was over. There has been no more geyser watching after the revelation at Old Faithful. "You really think you have a case?"

"I have a place to start. Where's the two love birds?"

"I went with Langley over to the Lake Hotel down the road and rented another car. I felt that we would need one. The front desk told me where the Lakeside General Store was and I showed him on the way in case he wants to pick up some more clothes. The nights get cool even if the days are exceptionally warm for this time of year. I took the rental and let Lee off at the records depository as you requested. Langley took off with the van to visit the park surveyors. There are people using a ROV submersible to map the lake bottom, yes, with emphasis on the lava dome under there. He'll confirm the changes we heard about this morning and look for evidence of more and see about timing. If he showed them some of his toys, he was confident that he could get them to tell him anything."

"He will. I'll bet that they're all card carrying members of Geeks International."

At that moment a park service four-wheel jeep pulled up in front of the lodge and the agents left their comfortable rocking chairs to join a worried Ranger Harris. "I'm told I'm at your disposal, agents, though I don't know how much I can tell you."

"Just give us a tour of other areas of the park. We'll talk on the way. All we've really seen is the distance between the Old Faithful basin and here."

"That's not much. We have a lot of miles to cover then." As she pulled away, Harris gave them the broad facts. "The park covers over two million acres. The caldera we spoke of is thirty miles wide and forty-five miles long but it's only the most recent of three almost all of which still fall within the park. Although Yellowstone became the first national park because of its geothermal features, it's known as much now as a wild life sanctuary and wilderness area."

"In what way a wilderness area?" Mulder asked. "It's so well known. I saw that you see two million visitors a year."

"On only three hundred miles of paved roads out of 3,472 square miles of park? Yes, there are a thousand miles of back packing trails but the extent of hiking the vast majority of our visitors do is from their air conditioned tour buses to Old Faithful. And we have only a five month summer season. The other seven months, we see only about a hundred and fifty thousand."

"So a lot could go on the rangers don't know about?"

"Absolutely. There's only about a thousand rangers and that's in high summer." Harris frowned behind the steering wheel. "Budget cuts again."

"That leads to one of our big questions. Are there any groups that would like to discredit the park?"

"Ha! Get in line. The group for free public access would like to bring in every stink pot, ear-splitting, fume-spewing snowmobile they want and churn up the woods all winter long. The affect on the fragile, wintering animal populations would be devastating. There's virgin forest here that timber conglomerates would love to get their hands on. They argue that the fires of '88 are a sign that clear cutting parts of the park would actually help protect it."

"As I recall," Scully offered, "the current theory is to allow natural fires, those due to lightning, to burn normally except where they endanger human habitations or historic sites."

"That's pretty much it. By putting all fires out quickly, a lot of dead wood accumulated over the years. It is healthier since the fire. We also have one of the world's largest petrified forest, but we don't advertise that considering what has happened to the others in this country. Our relationship with our neighboring ranchers is unstable. They like the money the park brings in, but a certain number of our elk and bison carry brucellosis, and you can't keep such migratory animals totally inside the park, especially in winter."

"Brucellosis abortis causes abortions in cattle," Scully informed her partner.

"And then there are the wolves," Harris added with a sigh.

"Wolves?" Mulder asked delighted.

"We re-introduced wolves to the park a few years ago. They are collared and heavily studied. There are fourteen packs of about nine individuals each in the park. They roam as well. The ranchers were concerned about their herds but they have not been too much of a problem. They should worry as much about the natural predators. Mountain lions, coyotes, golden eagles, and bears take down as many as twenty-five percent of newborn bison calves and elk fawns each year."

They passed few cars it being so early in the season. What met their eyes except for the road was natural: rolling hills, fields and forests. "I see a lot of fog rising, or is that steam?" Mulder asked.

"Steam."

"Out in the middle of nowhere?"

"There are ten thousand thermal features in the park of which only three hundred are geysers and only the most notable can be found on the actual geyser basins. Here for instance." She pulled off the road and they got out. "Listen." It took the agents time to hear anything, true silence was so unusual. The hillside sighed with a soft and eerie whistling. "That's water underground turned to steam by our hot spot working it's way to the surface." She shrugged as if whistling mountains were the norm. "It happens here."

"So there could also be changes to features you don't know anything about? Even new features? Hot springs bubbling to the surface, new geysers." Hesitantly, the ranger agreed.

Back in the car Mulder slouched in silent thought for a while. When the jeep stopped he looked up to find the vehicle surrounded by hundreds of bison. All of them were taking their time walking along or crossing the road. The land had totally changed as well to a wide, flat valley dotted with dark, woolly shapes, their winter coats falling off in carpet sized patches leaving sleek, massive bodies behind. Mulder thought of lone bachelor Bob back near Lake Yellowstone. "You've fishing in the wrong stream, my friend."

As they waited in childlike joy for the huge beasts to mosey along, Harris' radio squawked. She listened, then swore. "Central Admin has called for an ambulance. You sent an agent to Records?"

"A... consultant," Mulder corrected, his concerned glance going to Scully. "Was there an accident?"

"Unknown. She fainted, or may have had an epileptic episode."

"If there's no danger, I'd rather that they keep her where she is until we can get there. Special Agent Scully is also a medical doctor."

"Who knows nothing about Lee's 'condition'," Scully whispered harshly, after Harris had squeezed out of the car with a cattle prod in order to move enough bison so that they could turn around.

"More than likely it's a psychic trance. She went 'looking' for the names of the missing to see if we could even place them in Yellowstone at the time of their disappearance."

"Couldn't a computer search bring that up?"

"Registrations weren't computerized until seven years ago," he explained, "when the park out-sourced the process. Everything charged from dinners to trail rides we can find since then but everything before is on paper and the last twenty years of that is kept in Central Records."

"She was looking for the original six associated with the case?"

"That case was ten years old. Remember she hinted that there might be more? Langley and I performed a more recent search using his wireless wonder during the trip while you were sleeping. We found twenty possibilities, twenty disappearances of adults, ages eighteen

to fifty, in reasonably good shape, who were traveling out West alone and disappeared after straying from their itinerary if they had one at all."

Central Administration was housed in the northwest sector of the Park, in an old army post. That it was also near Mammoth Hot Springs was obvious from the odor of hydrogen sulfide that hit them as soon as they emerged from the Harris's jeep. A follow up call confirmed that Ms. Sackstone had come around but was groggy and paramedics were holding her at a small first aid station. 'Groggy' was understating that glazed expression, but Lee recognized them and after Scully showed her medical credentials, checked the woman's pulse, and borrowed some oxygen she let the paramedics go with the FBI's thanks.

"What did you find?" Mulder asked after checking that Harris was elsewhere.

Lee took a deep breath. "Fifteen of them are here, Mulder. Fifteen out of twenty! Seven are in the more recent database -- those the clerk found -- but I 'felt' the other eight, just by standing up in that room and calling up their names. And in all cases, their visits timed roughly with the reports of their disappearance."

Scully frowned. "So you didn't actually see the records?"

Lee's tired pale eyes flared in indignation. "I could if I had wanted to. I can lead you right now to the correct box of receipts or hotel register. Signatures have power."

Mulder raised a hand. "We'll have to pull them up soon to see if there's a pattern -- if they stayed at the same lodge or shopped in the same store -- but not just this minute. You show us when you feel up to it."

A little unsteadily, Lee stood. "I want to get this over with."

All became suddenly aware of an unhappy Ranger Harris standing behind them. "I think that I deserve to know what's going on, don't you?"

After a pause Mulder nodded. "As long as I can ask some more questions."

While Scully helped Lee and a dazed clerk, pull, copy, and document dozens of receipts, Mulder and Ranger Harris grabbed coffee at the canteen and took a walk outside. Mulder stood in awe as a small herd of elk trotted by. Harris then took him to an overlook with a view of a wide stream. Far below, small figures moved in the water. Mulder stared.

"Are those people down there swimming? That stream has to be barely above freezing with all this snow melt."

The grave expression Harris had been wearing softened slightly. "Run off from the hot spring flows in just upstream. It's too hot in summer but just right for this time of year. May we discuss this case of yours now?"

Mulder talked as they watched the frolicking swimmers and drank their cooling coffee. The ranger took the news of the disappearances seriously but did not seem surprised. The park was a huge place. She had no explanation for why no one had made the connection between the park and at least some of the missing people before.

"The park service wouldn't try to hush such a thing up, I hope," Mulder said. "However, I have to wonder. The park doesn't need any bad publicity. If your attendance goes down, I assume that so does your funding and you have those special interest groups which you mentioned."

Harris' frown deepened. He had injured her pride. "We are federal employees, same as you, Agent Mulder, and get paid a lot less because we love what we do. Maybe we wouldn't publicize such a thing, but we wouldn't cover it up. As far as linking the names, going through hand written records is labor intensive as you know and not something one would do if you didn't know what your chances are of finding anything. As for the computerized records, clearly no one looked or made the connection."

"What about our missing five? Is there a way someone could get in without putting their name down anywhere? A visit to this park is hardly a day trip and even if you pay cash you have to sign in when you come through the park entrance."

"The fees are only per car. You can take the shuttle from Jackson or hitch. Even walk in. There are ways. As far as your case goes, give me your list of names and I'll see if there were any inquires over the years and what was done about it." Harris glanced in the direction of the building where Lee and Scully worked. "This consultant of yours believes she can just reach out and lay her hands on the records she needs? If we had a coherent filing system, I could see how it might be possible but we don't. How does she do it?"

Mulder sipped his nearly cold coffee. "She has her ways."

The Watcher sipped coffee as well as he sat on his favorite bench and waited. Over the years he had become adept at identifying potential candidates even if his eyesight wasn't as good as it use to be. He'd then follow, listen, take notes. So early in the season, however, choices were few. He'd been watching for more than a week. Something had better show up soon.

Limp with exhaustion, the three oozed into the rental car Lee had come in and Mulder drove them back to the lodge. During the ninety- minute trip, Lee slept and Scully sorted copied receipts and registration pages as best as she could in the near dark. There was far more than one receipt per victim. People charge a lot on vacation.

The sorting continued in the nearly deserted restaurant at the lodge after a brief dinner that few touched.

Scully suddenly leaned back. "Oh, no." Tired eyes moved in her direction.

"Ten of the fifteen charged for items in the Lakeside General store. That's the one Langley and I passed this morning!"

"That's the most common factor so far?"

"So far and others may have visited and paid cash. It makes sense. These General Stores are much more than gift shops. They carry camping gear, backpacking food..."

Mulder nodded energetically, seeing clearly where she was leading. "And your lone traveler, alone and lonely, who has changed their itinerary on a whim might find themselves talking to some kindly salesperson, or even just another shopper, when they stop to pick up all those things they didn't bring along --"

"Like coats and glove and boots and sweaters?" Lee asked thoroughly alarmed. Her attention was directed toward the restaurant's entrance. Soon all three heads were turned in that direction. There stood Langley looking about as out-of-place as a St. Bernard at a cat show.

He tromped over to their table, new boot squeaking, as he pulled off thick, sparkling clean gloves. Letting fall a well-stocked backpack that still boasted its tags, he shrugged off a fine fleece coat, the type of which would have made the Marlboro man proud, to better reveal new jeans and a red sweater with a moose and 'Yellowstone' woven into the pattern.

"What's wrong," he asked at their wide eyes. "You practically ordered me to buy clothes. I had to drop the cost of two servers and a router for all this."

Lee's mouth worked first but not well. "It's all over him," she whispered in terror. "Hunger, satisfaction."

Scully's question came out nearly in a squeak. "Where did you buy those?"

"The store by the pond you pointed out to me this morning." He jerked up the expensive coat to examine it. "What's all over me? This is brand new! The dwarf would have been so green."

As Scully dropped her face into her hands, Mulder swallowed. "Friendly people help you there, Langley?"

"Have you ever met a salesperson who wasn't? No, wait, Washington is nearly as bad as New York in that respect. But they were very helpful."

"You chatted."

"Yeah, but I didn't tell them the real reason I was visiting. In fact I didn't mention even knowing any government slaves or crystal creeps."

"No, only that you were just unexpectedly passing by after a business trip, which was why you didn't have the right clothes for the climate."

"From a conference in Silicon Valley on thwarting computer terrorism if you must know. Always know your competition."

Lee sighed. "You are ‘so' in trouble, chip brain."

Ten minutes later the four were standing in front of the store. The rustic, homey place was locked tight and as dark as the sky over Yellowstone Lake. It was after eight p.m. after all. Though the days were spring-like, at night snow-kissed air flowed in from the surrounding highlands where winter still reigned. Scully and Lee put their hands in their pockets. Langley turned down the ear flaps on a new furry hat. "If you have it with you, can I borrow your watch cap?" Mulder asked, shivering, to which the gunman pulled the black stocking cap out of a pocket.

"Your perp couldn't have been the salesperson," Langley complained continuing their conversation from the car. "She looked like my mother. Certainly, she was old enough."

"A woman of that age would be an unusual suspect for this type of crime," Scully observed.

Mulder frowned as he turned the cap inside out and pulled it down over the whitening tips of his ears. "We haven't really discussed what kind of crime we have."

"What kind do you think? The homicides, which homicides I assume they are, clearly aren't intended to damage the park's reputation, since they were completely unknown until we pulled them up, so the aim wasn't for publicity of any kind. Nor for money; no ransom demands. What's left is violence for violence sake, appeasing the ego, the inner god."

"I don't sense violence," came Lee's tense voice from where she stood huddled as far from her cousin as she could get and still be part of the group. "I don't sense any malice, at all. He's very cold. The victims are not regarded as people, per se." She stared down at the ground, anywhere but at the small, gray shapes fawning about Langley that only she could see. "More like objects, like animals."

Langley snorted. "I think I've just been insulted."

"That could be it. The act is its own end, only why here?" Mulder mused. "Wilderness it may be but there are a lot more people per square mile here than most of the West."

Scully's attention shifted from the psychic to her partner's face and she didn't like what she saw. "You've got something. A totally wild, unsubstantiated theory that I don't think I'm going to like."

He shrugged. "I admit, it's from the far side of the moon even for me. I wasn't going to mention it yet."

"Mention it." He still wouldn't have spoken except for the tone of her voice.

"I don't believe that our perp is appeasing any inner god, I think he's appealing ‘to' the gods."

Langley shivered in his fancy new coat. "I think I know where you are going with this, and I'm with Agent Scully. I don't like it. Let's head back to the lodge. I think I need to hear this one over one of those Moose Drool beers you were telling me about."

The fire was warm and Langley and Lee's beers were as thick and flavorful as promised. Mulder frowned at his ice tea in disappointment.

"You're not quite right about the moon, Mulder," Langley agreed licking the foam from his lips. "The moon is too close for a theory like this. Maybe Jupiter, maybe Neptune."

"Just because you don't want to be sacrificed to the local volcano god?" Mulder asked. "Have you been fantasizing that your demise would be somehow more heroic?"

"At least it could happen in the South Seas where volcano gods are respected. But Wyoming!"

Scully tasted her tea not seeming to mind that it was not Moose Drool. "Peace, you two. Actually, being the vehicle for the awakening of the volcano beneath Yellowstone would be worth a fairly large historical note."

"You're taking this pretty calmly, Scully."

"That's because I don't take it very seriously, Mulder."

"If the Yellowstone volcano were to awaken with the kind of energy of its last eruption -- which remember, was six hundred thousand years ago with a cycle of six hundred thousand years -- then there may not be much of anyone writing historical notes. The drop in global mean temperature that would result from the ash and smoke would result, as a minimum, in the total loss of the output from the Great Plains, a major breadbasket for the whole world, not just North America. I think we are talking damage to agriculture far more widespread, however. A famine unprecedented in recorded history. Death in catastrophic numbers, civil unrest on a global scale. Our global culture, not just that of one country, hangs on a knife-edge which is more and more precarious with every passing year. No, I doubt anyone will have the leisure to write history. The question is, what does our acolyte hope will come of his adoration?"

"But from Langley's discussion with the survey teams today, an eruption here of any magnitude isn't likely to happen for generations," Scully said. "Maybe there is some uplifting of the magma dome under the park but we are looking through a slit in geologic history the width of a hair. This kind of variation may be normal for this geology."

"Oh, I don't disagree with you."

"You don't?"

"No. The point is not what ‘is' happening but what our perp ‘believes' is happening. There's just enough change in the last ten years to make him -- or her -- think that their 'work' is being noticed. In that case there's no reason for him to stop."

There was silence all around.

Worriedly, Langley asked, "When did Harris predict that Mrs. Billingsly was likely to surface?"

"Your oh-so-helpful and motherly salesperson is currently driving to Boston to be present at the birth of her first grandchild," Mulder reminded the gloomy gunman. "She may not get our message for two to three days. Then we're depending on her being able to remember, and being able to describe, anyone hanging around the store while you were there today. You're sure that you don't recall any serial killers loitering about?"

Langley glowered, pausing only to remove the twist of hair he was chewing on. "When was the last time you took a vacation, Mulder? Everyone loiters, that's what most people do on vacation. If I had been casing the joint for a break in as part of a little spot of intellectual espionage, you can bet I would have remembered the flavor of ice cream every kid who walked in ordered, but I was buying clothes!"

"Time out," Scully insisted, "Under the circumstances, Mulder wouldn't have remembered either. You'll just have to stay out of sight for a while."

"Can't I just stay with one of you?"

"No, then you wouldn't be alone, now would you?" Mulder said, "and our perp targets lone travelers. Once we have a plan for drawing him out, wander where you will."

Lee stared from Mulder to Langley. "You're going to use him for bait!"

Mulder looked sadly into his glass of tea. "At least there's one thing to be thankful for. At least I'm not the one in the line of fire this time."

Scully pulled the blankets higher as her right side cooled. It was still dark, and Mulder was up.

"Somethin' wrong?" she murmured, groggily.

She felt his warm breath on her face as he bent down to kiss her. "Can't sleep. Got to come up with a plan. Think I'll take a drive and go for a swim."

"Swim?" She almost woke for that. "We're over a mile up, it's March. " Yawn. "Unless one of the inns has an indoor pool."

The kiss brushed her forehead, all that protruded above the covers. "Harris showed me this stream with its own hot spring. Should be heavenly."

"Maybe your idea of heaven. I'll see you for breakfast. Don't be late."

The sun was up, though not by much, when someone began a frantic pounding on the agents' room. Once a heavy-eyed Scully managed to get the door open, a nearly naked man burst into the room. Unceremoniously, he dropped an hysterical as well as wet and lathered Lee Sackstone onto the bed. Her clothing consisted of two tiny room towels, his of a pair of blue plaid Fruit-of-the-Looms..

"What happened?" Scully demanded from either party even as she threw the bedspread over the woman. Langley dropped into a chair huddling behind the room's two bed pillows. Neither replied immediately. Lee seemed to be weeping through some inner psychic horror while Langley just appeared to be in shock. Suspicious, Scully stared from one to the other. "I didn't think that you two got along. Were you...?"

"No!" both denied together. Langley alone went on. "Our bathrooms are back to back. I was... well, occupied in mine, Lee was in the shower when all of a sudden I heard her start screaming. I ran around to her door and burst it open," he absently rubbed a shoulder, "but when she saw me she started screaming even worse. I brought her here. It was all I could think of."

"You did fine. Lee," Scully asked gently shaking the woman. "Lee, what's wrong?"

Wiping stray shampoo from her eyes, Lee managed to stammer, "M- Mulder. I was in the shower. I saw him in the water." She then pointed a wavering finger at Langley. "Then he came in. The ghosts were clustered around him last night. Now they're gone! I'm afraid that they returned --" Her eyes went to Scully's confused face.

"By the way, where is Mulder?" Langley asked, searching the corners of the room.

Still fuzzy from sleep, it took Scully a moment to remember when she had seen her partner last. It came back in terrifying swiftness. "He went for a drive some time before dawn. Said something about... swimming. Some stream with its own hot spring." Her fear flared out as anger. "You thought you were safe this time, damn you! I hope you parboil one side and get frostbite on the other!"

"No!" Lee's groping hand fixed on Scully's arm like a vice. "Dana, this is serious. He went down! Into the water!" Wildly she stared from her cousin to Scully. "But it was as if I watching through someone else's eyes and it was Mulder, but sometimes it was as if I were looking at Langley."

Behind his pillows, Langley hunched pale, bony shoulders. "Mulder isn't going to feel flattered about the comparison. You need glasses if you think we look anything alike."

Scully's fear was escalating by the second. She began throwing on clothes as Langley averted his eyes. "You are of a height and general shape. Besides, where is there a rule that says that serial killers have to have good eyesight?"

Lee suddenly sat upright, the bedspread slipping into her lap. "That's why they looked alike. In my vision Mulder was wearing a black hat like the one he borrowed from Langley last night."

Dana paused in her frantic dressing. "Langley, did Mulder return your hat?"

The gunman shook his sleep-tousled hair in the negative. "That must be a sight. Swimming in running shorts and a -- " Suddenly he stopped speaking and began chewing his lip.

"What is it?" Scully asked.

"Scully... I wore that cap all the time I was shopping. " Her gaze turned on him horrified. "It was the only part of me that kept warm all day. Worse... " he added apologetically, "I saw as we were coming in that only the rental car is outside, Mulder must have taken the van. That was what I drove when I went shopping yesterday. We are so screwed."

Her face frozen, Scully snapped her weapon into the holster in the small of her back. "No, it's Mulder who's screwed."

The water was delightful. Jacuzzi-warm if you moved closer to the input from the hot spring, icily chilling if you moved further downstream. Best was somewhere in between. On the other hand, the early morning air on wet skin would stop your heart so he planned to keep his head above water. Determined to stay well this trip he even wore Langley's old cap, creepy as it felt even turned inside out. Better than Scully's disapproval if he caught cold. Good intentions don't always pay for all, however. Stepping in a hole he went under. In the deep places, the water was ...cold!

He thought he had been swimming alone, but when he came up, his eyes streaming with water, he thought he saw other swimmers near him, a whole football team's worth. Once he had wiped his eyes, however, they were gone. Before he had time to make sense of what he had seen or not seen, something powerful plowed into his back above the left shoulder. He was swept off his feet into the worst of the swirling current. He went down and down, his wind knocked out from the blow. His head went under into water several notches too warm for comfort at the same time that the icy flow swirled about his struggling legs. His awareness of the irony didn't lasted long. Within seconds neither arms nor legs answered his panicked call. After all he had been through, and he was going to drown and he didn't even know why!

ACT IV

There was too much noise, noise that had no beginning and no end but only swelled from time to time to an even more terrible shriek before rolling back to its previous head-splitting level. And then he was sick. Sick of the numbing shaking that continually bounced his nearly naked hipbone again the cold, unforgiving surface he lay on. Sick to his stomach, too, from the camel sway of this terrible ride and from what was certainly a cocktail of unpleasant drugs. He could taste them in his mouth.

Despite his scrambled brains he had to think, had to ignore the dark and the teasing spots of light that flickered before his aching eyes. He flexed his fingers. It had taken a long enough to realize that he could even do that though the knowledge did him little good. His arms were bound to his sides at elbow and wrist. Then he realized that his groping fingers scratched at his own bare thigh. Naked? No, he touched the edge of a scrap of thin, damp cloth. His aborted swim came back to him. He must have been hit by a tranquilizer dart though by its force it must have been meant for deer or bear.

But he hadn't been left to drown. Someone had fished him out, most likely his assailant, rolled him in a blanket, and wound some kind of binding at multiple points around and around his body. Mummies must feel like this, or if they were alive they would. For a few minutes he struggled but he was wrapped with something that refused to give or slip. They must have used duct tape. Damn television. His exertions brought on a fit of coughing. With effort he managed to rid himself of what was left of the stream water in his lungs. From the soreness in stomach and throat he had thrown up the rest of it before.

His dark, rumbling prison suddenly tilted and he went rolling. He was grateful for Langley's wet, knitted cap when he head came up sharply against the metal wall of what had to be quite a small enclosure. A trunk? No, he had been thrown into enough trunks in his days not to confuse this sliding, swaying motion with a car's motion. It felt and sounded more like he had been stuffed into some compartment on a boat. The engine had that high-pitched whine of an outboard motor only there was too much up and down. His feet were numb from being bare and not covered by the blanket. If he had to guess, he was hearing the engine of a snowmobile and he was in some sort of covered cargo sled. It was more likely than a boat on land- locked and still partially frozen Yellowstone Lake. The winter snow pack was still extensive in the upper altitudes.

But where was he being taken? He didn't want to think about why, but every jar of the sled drove the unpleasant possibilities into his bones. The ensuing panic got him on his knees in spite of his drug sluggish limbs. His plan was to force his back up against the solid cover of the sled. He had to begin over and over again as the bed of the sled constantly altered speed and direction. He didn't know what he would have done if he had managed to spring the top. Fall out, a blanket-bound mummy onto the snow? To what end? He didn't need to worry about that. The cover was the same fiberglass as the sled shell and refused to budge.

Scully, where are you? But she had been an hour's drive away when he was taken. How would she ever find him? When would she ever even notice he was gone?

At that moment, the object of his question was sliding with reckless abandon down a snowy slope from their rental car towards the part of the stream below Mammoth Hot Springs that had been pointed out to Mulder as the 'swimming hole.' Dana knew that she was showing a level of emotion rare for the cool Agent Scully, but appearances be damned! She slowed only when she saw the large area of yellow police tape against the snow and the clusters of serious-faced rangers.

It had indeed snowed during the night, though only half an inch and there had been none at the lodge. Not all that unusual for this time of year.

Seeing her, Harris left her ranger group. "Anything?" Scully asked.

"Surprisingly, yes, thanks to the snow. And a good thing that we got here as soon as we did because the sun will hit here in an hour and that will be the end of it." Harris pointed to clear marks in the snow, some dyed pink. "Pink marks those made by the first ranger who arrived after your call. Two people were here. One went into the water directly, the other took a more suspicious route."

"How suspicious?" Scully asked, feeling a chill in her stomach.

"From bush to bush." The ranger drew something bagged and labeled as evidence out of her pocket. "We found this behind a tree."

Shock ran through her. It was clearly a tranquilizer dart but huge. It was as long as her hand and as thick as three fingers. Her insides churned with alarm. "You'll send this to the local FBI field office for analysis?"

"Of course." Harris led her nearer to the bank and just outside the tape where a large area of snow was disrupted. "Here's where they must have come out of the water. See that large square space?" Harris asked. "It's almost as if a six-by-six carpet had been laid down and rolled. See also that only one set of tracks returns to the parking lot, the suspicious one, only he's not walking easily any more. He slides and pauses and his prints are deeper than before. We're fairly sure that one man carried the other though we will drag the river just to be sure"

Not just a chill, ice cycles in her guts. "I gather there were no witnesses?"

"No, but that isn't surprising for this early in the season."

Following the tracks, the two women climbed back up to the parking lot. "As you can see," the ranger said, "the snow didn't stick on the blacktop so we don't have any information on the other vehicle except that we assume that there was one."

"What about the van Mulder drove?"

Harris pointed straight up to a flattened area far above them. Dana could just make out the edge of a building. "It's there. In the parking lot for the admin campus. You visited there yesterday. It's where I showed Mulder the stream." Harris' head bowed. "I'm so sorry about that. I never thought... Anyway our assumption is that Mr. Dartgun moved it up there. A vehicle in a busy parking lot is less conspicuous than one unattended for hours or days on the side of a road. By the way, we didn't pick up any useful prints in the van at our first go round. The ones on the door and steering wheel were smudged so your last driver wore gloves. Still we're keeping an eye open because we expect him to come back to dispose of it as he must have disposed of the others." Harris' tone was inquisitive. "He thinks that he has time because, as I understand it, he expected his victim to be traveling alone." Her obvious question was unspoken.

"You have my word that Mulder did not intend to play the goat," Scully assured the ranger. At least not this time.

Harris seemed relieved but only momentarily. "I have more bad news or perhaps I should say no news. Our shopkeeper Mrs. Billingsly still hasn't made her appearance at her daughter's in Boston."

Something in Scully's expression convinced Harris that now was perhaps a good time to coordinate with the other rangers. That left the agent alone to crouch on the wet asphalt straining weary eyes for some hint of a muddly tire tred mark or a scrape of a rare cigarette butt.

One pair of worn and one pair of new hiking boots appeared in her field of vision. It was Lee and Langley whom she had left to park the rental car.. "What can we do?" Lee asked softly gently crouching down.

Scully shrugged helplessly. "We haven't a clue. Not one. We don't know who, we don't know where."

Lee had to look away from the naked emotion in her new friend's face. "I know this sounds crazy, but I think I have a direction." Her eyes lifted up and up to focus on the snowy gap between two of the dozen or more ten thousand foot mountains that marked the caldara rim.

Scully followed the other woman's gaze but made no attempt to stand. "I know that you've produced some phenomenal results these last days," she said wearily, "but this is different."

"Why? Because it's 'too' important?"

"I guess so. Working with Mulder all these years I've seen a lot and learned to believe in much but --"

Lee stood, fists clenched. "Then don't stop believing! He's alive. At this moment he's alive!"

Without speaking, perhaps because she didn't trust herself to, Scully rose, brushing gravel and wet from the knees of her slacks.

Lee's strong face flushed. "He's thinking of you right now! THAT's how I know. When he thinks of you I sense this kind of... shimmer. Remember how I found your apartment that first night? It's like that only fainter because this path hasn't been laid down again and again over the years. Right now he's on the move, they're climbing." The psychic's pale eyes glazed. "It's cold and I smell snow and pine and ... gasoline?"

Scully allowed herself one glance one more into that far distance and shivered. Direction help but it was still a huge area. "What if I agree and you're wrong? We'll waste time. Can you tell me what will happen then?"

Feeling decidedly left out, Langley had been pacing, his fingers twitching for something solid and preferably electronic that he could hold in his hands that would help here. Now he snorted in frustration.

"You always were a prick, Lizard," Lee snapped. "Believe it or not, I can sometimes see what 'is' that others can't or what has been, but I never claimed to be precognizant. That's a different curse. But who's to say that I wasn't sent by someone who does know these things? What if I was sent not only to stop the murders of all these lonely people but also to save Mulder. Maybe Mulder was even allowed to be taken because I 'could' follow him through this 'shimmer' between he and Dana." Her attention to him had become a sneer. "You should be relieved. If it had been you, Langley, we wouldn't have had a chance of following because there isn't anyone in this world that you care about as much as Mulder cares about Dana. Now, as Dana says, we can't afford to waste time." Lee stabbed again at the distant gap between the two peaks. "Mulder is up there and is being taken farther away even as we stand here arguing!"

And as they watched the two pinnacles emerged glistening white into the morning sun from behind the shadow of a taller, more easternly brother. With it a bright energy seemed flowed through Scully. Was this hope? At least it felt better than despair. "Ranger Harris!" she called. "I think we have a place to start but we're going to need a map and some alternate transportation."

By the time the terrible engine stopped, Mulder was suffering not only from the remains of the drugs in his system but was seriously motion sick from the endless swaying of the sled. With his ears still ringing from the mind-numbing whine, he nearly missed the sound of the sled's cover being raised. At best his thrust upwards from his knees was a weak, ill-timed, and rather pitiful attempt to head butt his captor. His upper body passed through empty air to fall back with a painful thud against the edge of the sled. A solid whack to the side of his skull with a stout stick stunned him so that he got only a momentary glimpse of long, gray hair and a face as leathery and weather-lined as Clink Eastwood's. The man proceeded with ridiculous ease to force some thick and foul tasting fluid down Mulder's throat. The old man clearly had experience medicating recalcitrant dogs and cats as well as other higher beings. Within seconds a cold paralysis began to radiate out from Mulder roiling stomach.

'Oh, Scully, after all those hours spent bent over the porcelain god, now would be a really good time to throw up.' But it wasn't to be. His mind followed his body into a gray cotton haze.

With Lee squeezing Scully's elbow from behind to indicate whether they should stop at any particular place or go on, Harris' Park Service jeep churned on through what was a gravel road in summer, a snow-covered track in spring, and impassible in winter. They would have to stop soon and pull out the snowmobiles that road in the trailer they pulled behind. Harris drove expertly without feeling the need to ask any questions, which considering the situation was even more commendable than her driving. Langley sat unhappily in the back seat continuing to feel useless in this largely non- technological world. At the moment he was confused about why he had been included. He was no woodsman and had never tracked so much as the missing family dog through the snow but, despite her claims that she couldn't read the future, Lee had insisted.

For some time the psychic had given no directions and both the women's faces had begun to show the strain. All at once, however, Scully straightened in the front seat as Lee squeezed down hard. "Turn here!" What might be a road because it was a space the width of a road and lacked trees opened on the left. The snow was a little deeper and so easy to see the few sets of solitary tire tracks. Harris got out for a look only to leap in again moments later. The sun was high now and the impressions easy to read. "By the tire tread and axle width those tracks all appear to be made by the same vehicle." She didn't have to say more. They might very well be on to something.

They came upon the pickup more quickly than anyone expected. It was parked just far enough off the main road to be invisible.

Harris let off a low whistle. "I think know that truck."

While Harris called in the license plate, Lee crept up to the pickup, palms raised like radar dishes. While Scully prepared to search the cab for evidence, Langley drifted over to inspect an eight-by-eight metal shed painted Park Service green and brown. It would virtually disappear in summer, but not now. A tiny satellite receiver and a small but sophisticated weather station were its primary attractions. By the time the gunman hurried back the women were off-loading the two snowmobiles. Their faces were grim.

Before he could speak, Lee was at his side. "Agent Mulder's shoes and clothes are in the back seat of the truck," she whispered. "There wasn't even any need to force the door. And I was afraid to say but I lost the shimmer miles ago! Lost it! I only felt the truck by chance, probably sensed his clothes like the signatures on the sales receipts."

"He's not --"

"No, not dead. I would know that. But asleep maybe."

"Or unconscious. You have no idea how many hospitals visits I've made to see that man in the past ten years. You have the tracks though. Whoever drove the truck must have left a trail."

"We're fairly certain that he used a snowmobile only the woods around here are crisscrossed with dozens of tracks. No way to tell one snowmobile from another."

Her misery transmitted all too well. Making a sudden decision, he called out, "Ranger Harris! Agent Scully! Here's something you might want to see." He gestured towards the park service building. "It may not have a thing to do with Mulder's disappearance, but you have a saboteur. A clever one."

Harris' eyes frowned impatiently as they followed Langley to the shed. "That's just an instrument shed. There's a whole network of these in the park. They record and transmit meteorological and seismographic data."

"This one's been used for something more and something less than that." Langley announced swinging open the shed door. "It's been fixed it up as someone's home away from home and there's an empty lean-to on the far side that's just the right size for a couple of snowmobiles. And your instruments aren't working, at least the seismograph isn't, that is, it's working but is being fed false data. Data from another location is being captured and fed through just enough out of cycle for the duplication not to be recognized. Whether it's related --"

Harris frowned at the sight of the cot, tiny propane stove and supplies. "Oh, it's related. It fits with what I just found out. The truck belongs to "Pigtail" Newton, an employee of the surveyor's office for years. He helped set up most of the initial network and maintained these sheds for years. There's a note in his file. His son was a smokejumper. He was killed in the '88 fire. Pigtail blamed the fire on the tourists and one did start one of blazes but not all. He was an extremist even for our own cadre of tree-huggers, critical of the Park Service but never really left it or the park even after his forced retirement two years ago. His truck is a common fixture, which is why I recognized it. Why he would want to falsify data, however, makes no sense. The measurements have value only to us. We measure tremors, the movement of ground water --"

"Geothermal activity?" Langley ripped a sheet off a terminal that had

finished printing just as they stepped inside. He thrust it into Scully's hands. "I restored the correct input, accessed the main database and cross referenced the sectors covered by the other park seismographs. Any one of them could pick up even a moderate-size earthquakes over most of North America but for geothermals there's minimal redundancy." He indicated a lightly shaded area on the map. "In other words, you've had a hole in your coverage of the park probably for years." He pointed to a drum whose pins were steadily recording multiple active lines. "Here's the real readings from the past week. Does it indicate what I think it does?"

Harris stared. "An unknown and extremely active thermal area just outside the caldara rim. A hot spot, and getting hotter!"

"That's where they'll be!" Scully exclaimed remembering Mulder's not-so-crazy theory about sacrifices to the volcano gods.

The four headed for the snowmobiles at a run. Harris paused only a second before climbing on board. "What I don't understand is how you were able to access anything on our system, much less as quickly as you did. Our systems have some sophisticated security."

"Professional secret," Langley shrugged, as he climbed onto his own metal snow beast and gave Lee a hand to seat herself behind him. "Besides, 'YOgi_Bear' was not so hard of a password to guess. Now if this drives anything like a motorcycle we're with you. Just don't tell Frohike about my checkered past.

It was at times like these when the limp bodies of the offerings sat heavily on his shoulders that "Pigtail" Newton worried about getting old. And he was thought to be in good shape for a man his age but didn't feel it today. It didn't help that it was no little distance from where the snow stopped to the offering place, but then even in the worst of the winters snow seldom lingered here. Too warm. He could feel the ground heat even through the thick rawhide soles of his boots. At the edge of the basin where the ground turned to crunchy bisque he slipped his feet, boots and all, into the flat wooden shoes that so much resembled snowshoes. While standing on one foot with his burden, he felt the weight on his shoulders shift and only barely righted it. Definitely getting too old. The gods would have to hurry if he were going to live to see the day of their glorious vengeance.

Twenty yards across the basin and beginning to sweat from the steamy heat, the old man reached the altar. Its simple but elegant design was like the others he had built over the years. It was three feet high and as long and wide as a tall man was tall. Built of a lattice of the trunks of lodge pole pine, the open weave of the lattice alternated east and west and north to south. With relief and surprising care, the old man rolled his burden off his shoulders and onto the bier. With a sharp knife he cut the tape and then began automatically to straighten the awkward position of the man's limp, bare limbs. He found himself blinking at the still face, as he tried to focus using eyesight that he refused to correct with glasses. It was the first time that he'd really taken the time for a close look that day. The sight made him uncomfortable. The young man was better looking than Pigtail remembered from the store, better looking and with a better body than he expected. And he had been wearing the black stocking cap, though little else. He had also driven the correct van -- GKNOLL2. Pigtail was unlikely to mistaken it for any other after following it back to the shopper's lodgings the evening before. Besides, Volaria must be smiling over his choice otherwise excited sleeplessness would never have induced him to begin his surveillance so early. Any later and he would have missed the pre- dawn excursion. Still, this was not like his other selections. Someone would surely miss this one.

Almost reverently he touched the gray cheek and noted the glaze over the slitted eyes. "Cold, Mr. G. Knoll? Not for long, I promise you, not for long."

Mulder wondered if where he had been could be called sleeping. It seemed odd to sleep with his life on the line, but for the first time in what must be hours he was warm though the drugs had left him stupid as well as lethargic. Without giving away that he was conscious, he stretched his senses. He was completely naked now and bound spread eagle, held down at wrists and ankles though still covered with the blanket from the chest down. He was laid out on a hard and exceedingly lumpy platform and from time to time choking fumes rolled over him. He soon located the source of the warmth as well as the smell. Moist warmth was rising up through spaces in the thick kind of grating he lay on. A burger on a grill came to mind. No, more like a hot dog in a steamer. Correction again, a hot dog in a pressure cooker as he began to identify the sounds and smells about him. Vibrations in the ground transferred up through his pallet as underground water and steam came under more and more pressure.

Only with effort was Mulder able to turn his head to the left in the direction of the hissing and gurgling noises. He could just make out a tall, gray cone from which steam rose and intermittent jets of water shot out in great forceful sprays. From the size of the geyser's cone, things were just heating up. Just then as a bit of breeze cleared the air of steam he saw several low structures close by in various degree of disrepair. There were probably more but he stopped counting once he made out that one still retained the whitened remains of an earlier victim.

How he sometimes hated being right.

Something more in the mist and clouds of steam caught his attention. Forms seemed to go in and out of focus. Did the old man have a congregation and had they all come to watch the sacrifice? If so Mulder realized with a shiver, it was a strangely insubstantial congregation. If they were there at all, he could see through them. Then he realized where he had briefly seen the gray figures before if only briefly. They had been standing around him in the stream when he came up from his dunking. That is what had seemed most odd, they had been fully clothed, but then the dart had come out of nowhere and that vision had been swept away.

His head fell back onto the logs of his own altar with a thud. Now they were back and they all were looking at him. Expecting what exactly? For him to rise triumphantly and smite their murderer? Fat chance when even his head felt as heavy as lead.

A much more substantial form moved to his right. The old man. The fact that he was still near might mean that there was time still. "Who are you?" Mulder croaked, unable to come up with anything more original.

The old man grunted. "I'm not important."

"I think you're very important just now."

The old man didn't reply. Instead the rumbling suddenly increased. The old man disappeared as a wave of incredibly hot steam mingled with a fine spray of stinging droplets sprayed across Mulder's body. Whoo, too hot. Geologically, things seemed to be moving along far too quickly for any kind of subtle interrogation.

"So what's the name of the geyser that's going to scald me to death?" Here was one that would be classified as 'Other' under 'Cause of Death' on the local autopsy report. "Or your name. I'll settle for your name."

"Her name is Volaria Magma," snarled the old man reluctantly from some distance. There was no small amount of anger in the man's voice, as if it were somehow sacrilegious that anyone should dare to ask.

"How appropriate. She's violent, I take it, and as unpredictable as any woman? Her plumbing system must be pretty complicated."

The old man was there again, frowning and walking oddly on what must be soft and dangerous ground. His return, however, gave Mulder hope. The courtier would know his lady's ways.

"She'll prepare for days and days before making an appearance. Sometimes weeks. She took six months once." He paced back and forth in his weird gait studying the bubbling cone with worshiping eyes.

"That must have been hard," Mulder replied conversationally. "Waiting, that is."

The old man gestured towards the platform where the bones still glistened. "Had to listen to that one snivel and beg for two whole months. Had to gag her finally except when she had to be fed. There wasn't much left by the time Volaria finally came. I could tell that she wasn't pleased. She didn't come again until now." For the first time to Mulder's knowledge the old man actually looked into his victim's face. "But I already know that she approves of you. She is eager, I can tell. We won't have long to wait." At that moment beneath them, the earth groaned like a herd of dinosaurs with full bellies turning in their sleep. "Feel that? She wakes. I won't have to gag you will I? You'll go quiet? Oh, not too quiet, I know, because she takes her time. See I'm teaching her well. She's finding pleasure in the destruction of those who cause her home so much harm."

"One contented lady will not solve the problems of the... world," Mulder coughed as a particularly odious cloud rolled over him.

"No, but once she learns she will invite her father and her mother and all her kin. And they will rise up!" The old man's voice raised like that of an old time tent meeting preacher. "And they will wipe this land clean with fire and earthquake and molten stone! With smoke and doom they will smite this land of all those who spread like an infection over the land. At the end you will meet her with nothing but the flesh in which you were born. Then I tell you, beg her forgiveness," the crazed voice softened, "so that in the midst of your great trial you will not overlook your mighty purpose!"

'I doubt that I'll be able to overlook such a mighty purpose,' Mulder thought glumly. One was unlikely to forget being splattered to death by boiling water and scalded by steam. How long would it take? Or was the old man talking about thousands of gallons rising up and showering down to write across his body in fantastic patterns of blistering flesh? In that case, he wouldn't have time to forget nor to be quiet even if there were some point to showing restraint.

The snowmobiles tore over the wet spring snow, whipping back and forth to evade trees and rocks and slopes too dangerously steep. Harris and Scully's was in the lead. Harris set a frightening pace. Dana took hope in that Harris was following the tracks of riders here before them. All at once the ranger shouted triumphantly over the din of the engines. Only one track stretched before them, only one headed in the direction they needed to go and its tracks were deep and fresh.

The earth continued to groan only louder and more often. The geyser within the cone was becoming more active. It would rise a bit and Mulder would wince as its hot spray hit his feet from which the blanket had slipped and which was closest to the fountain. Then the eruption would take a step back, gathering strength and Mulder would feel the warm, not unpleasant wetness seeping through the blanket onto the skin of his legs. He thought of another question but before he could open his mouth the dinosaurs turned again and old man tipped his hat and trudged away to safer ground. Mulder considered asking the ghosts but they were an uncommunicative lot.

After nearly two hours on the back of a snowmobile, Scully found that the landscape of twenty-year-old burned forest had begun to take on a monotonous, dream-like quality. From time to time Scully felt her head droop to rest against Harris' shoulder. She woke instantly, however, when the engine's RPMs dropped. Scully could soon hear the ranger swearing. Harris was going slower because though the ground she searched was still white, the covering had thinned.

She stopped and climbed off with an agility that the others could not come close to duplicating. "Damn, lost the track. It's too warm today; the snow's flattened out. We're well within the zone Langley's report identified but there are still a dozen square miles --"

Lee came to a sliding stop beside Scully to point slightly towards the left of the gap between the original peaks that they had been heading towards all along. "That way! He's awake! I've thought so for a while but there was too much noise to concentrate. We have to hurry!"

Volaria was stretching her broad shoulders. Her fountains were coming more quickly and rising higher though as much splashed to Mulder's left or right as in his direction. He tensed at the roar of each jet. His blanket was damp all over now and very wet and hot near his feet. For the first time a hot splash sprinkled his face. The coolness of the spring mountain air was all that had saved him from serious damage so far but for how much longer? What would happened when the water from the earth's own personal water heater began coming in buckets rather than cupfuls? He no longer wanted the ghosts to go away. It was horrible dying alone, but they must know that more than anyone. Maybe that was the only reason for their being here. If so, it was enough.

The snowmobiles stopped dead. No more snow. Harris shook her head puzzled over why this should be so but there was no time for questions. The four were off and running as fast as they could over a mushy ground cover of snowmelt mud and soggy leaves. This time they followed Lee's tall, raw-boned frame and the expression of renewed terror on her face. There was no thought of trying to keep quiet so not to disturb the acolyte at his ceremonials. Clearly, there was no time, yet there was still hope. Whatever terrible thing was going to happen had not happened yet.

Very soon, perhaps the length of a football field from their own snowmobiles but hidden from the sight before, they came upon a single abandoned snowmobile hitched to a cargo sled. Its turtle shell cover was open. Zipping down her jacket as she ran, Harris shouted to the others, "There must have been snow up to here just a few hours ago. That's a lot of melting. It's also too warm."

As she raced past the sled, Scully looked once, swallowed, and ran faster. The storage compartment was easily large enough to carry a man Mulder's size and it was empty. The lack of snow in this sheltered, shadowed place where snow should have lingered all summer was of no concern of her, but the unexpected rise of temperature was both a relief and a worry. Surrounded by snow fields, she had been worried about Mulder's lack of clothes. He had to be more comfortable now but the rise in heat and Mulder's own theory had to point to Langley's dangerous geothermal area being close by.

The party no longer needed maps or a psychic guide. Before them was a well-worn path. Confusingly, it seemed to be dead-ending into the very side of the mountain. Then suddenly within a stone's throw of sheer rock walls, the path dipped precipitously. As they descended, a warm rising breeze brought them the all too familiar hell scent of sulfur.

As the trail dropped, the space before them opened and the steps of all the party faltered. Long ago, a huge side vent off the central crater had exploded, rupturing the caldara rim and propelling outwards a huge chunk of the mountain. A entire basin of a dozen geyser cones, and countless boiling azure pools, fumaroles and mudpots simmered menacingly within the sheltered bowl that that explosion had left behind yet only a quarter of the entire mysterious realm was open to the sky a thousand feet above their heads.

Harris gasped even as she resumed running. "Small wonder that this place was missed again and again by aerial surveys. Follow me, be careful where you step!"

Scully followed but was nearly tripped by Lee who staggered, her hands rising to her mouth in horror. Scully ran past, refusing to allow herself to be distracted by either the geology or whatever visions Lee saw. Only where to place her feet so she could keep running? She had to find the place of execution, the place of ceremony, and from Lee's reaction she had to find it fast! Where was it? Because that was where she would find Mulder.

Being in front now, Harris saw the altars first. There must have been a dozen in bleached piles neatly arranged in two arcs around the yellow-white cone of the largest geyser cone that she had ever seen. Even as they watched energetic clouds of steam began boiling out of the core. From its heart fountains shot high into the air. Both Harris and Scully had drawn weapons by now as they searched through the mountain's shadow and clouds of steam. Scully's foot went through the crust and she felt a thick, hot sludge fill her boot. She would have gone down but Langley grabbed her free arm.

"They say we have to hurry!" Lee screamed flying past. Scully swore. ‘Who' says? Besides, she was hurrying! Then she saw the old man, his long hair wet and plastered around his face from the spray. He was standing and glaring at them, his face red with fury.

"Hands up! FBI!" Scully commanded in a voice made thunderous by her own anger. But instead Pigtail bent, seized a yard-long stick and

ran into the billowing clouds of waist-high steam in the direction of the awakening geyser. Scully saw his arm raise as if to beat at an amorphous shape nearly obscured in swirling clouds.

"Stop!" she screamed. But the arm didn't pause. Scully stopped, stood, fired. Down in the geyser bowl, the figure jerked, dropped a fist-size chunk of wood that was all that remained of the bludgeon, and then sent some dark shape flying. A flag? Staggering, barely visible, he then dashed around to the far side of the cone where the water was rising in fountains higher and higher, eight feet, now ten feet.

"Pigtail!" Harris called. "Give it up!"

"You people give it up!" the old man shouted back in both anger and anguish. "Give the land back to itself!" The last Scully saw was the old man wading, screaming, through the steaming water which collecting in a deeper and deeper pool at the foot of the cone where the most spectacular hell was breaking loose. He seemed to be trying to get away around the far side of the geyser but for reason wasn't making much progress.

All but Lee gave no more thought to the old man. As her far-seeing eyes counted far more than one figure gathered at the base of the cone, Harris, Langley, and Scully ran towards the place where they had seen the old man raise his bludgeon. As they neared with the soft, hot ground breaking again and again under their feet, a swirl of wind played with the steam to reveal another of the altars. Their eyes had been drawn to a dark object, a blanket, crumpled on the corner of the altar. This was the ‘flag' the old man had pulled free at the last minute, hoping to hasten the completion of the sacrifice. Nearly, invisible against the bleached wood, a pale, naked figure was stretched out and struggling weakly at ropes that held it down.

Within seconds Harris had pulled out a pocketknife. As the three sheltered Mulder from the worst of a fresh spray of huge, boiling drops, the sharp blade made quick work of the rope. It took not much longer for the three to get themselves and Mulder onto dry and solid ground. As Mulder, coughing weakly, collapsed bonelessly into Scully's waiting arms, Langley draped the recovered blanket over them both.

A safe but still impressively close distance away, magnificent, magnificent Volaria had finally reached her climax. Unaware and uncaring that her promised gift had been spirited away, thousands of gallons of boiling earth-heart waters were shooting in dozens of glorious fountains eighty feet into the air, the blood of her self- proclaimed consort barely a pink stain about her feet.

Epilogue

A Park Service helicopter came to lift the injured and his personal physician away. The patient was swathed in an odd collection of whatever the others could spare. Scully leaned over the litter as the paramedic fastened the straps for the trip and brushed her partner's cheek.

"I can't feel much," he asked worriedly. "How bad is it this time?"

"Not too bad but be glad of the numbness from the drugs. One blow to the head, one to the shoulder."

"Only because I jerked away at the last moment."

"Bumps and bruises from her sled ride, and no worse than second degree burns from Volaria's kisses especially on your feet. No worse than a bad sunburn on your top half."

"Ouch," he winced.

She bent and kissed him. "Honestly, you got off easy this time. If it weren't for the drugs that need identifying, you wouldn't even need to stay the night."

"Whatever he gave me, I didn't seem to care over much about anything."

Her smile was brittle. "I think you would have if the situation had gone on a few minutes longer."

"Yeah, probably." He looked over to where Langley and Lee stood, the Gunman's arm close around his equally tall cousin's shoulders. "I think I've missed something. What's up with those two?"

"He says that they were in separate rooms last night. I think that he got to her awfully fast." She took her partner's hand as the attendants began to carry the litter the few dozen yards to where the helicopter waited.

"Wait," he said, "I need to talk to Lee, to ask her what she saw at the end."

"Harris has her statement."

Mulder's expression was thoughtful. "I think she might have seen things which she'd be reluctant to report to Harris."

Scully considered Lee's silence since the old man's death. "I think you may be right about that, but later." .
They moved into a bit of sun and the sky above them was the bluest of blues. "You know, Scully, I think that I would like to come back."

"To Yellowstone? I guess we could request a couple of days of sick leave for you."

"No, sometime in the summer. Sometime when there are lots of tourists and things are not quite so warm."

Two remained to watch the great, iron bird lift into the sky.

"I had a feeling you'd be good for something!" Lee said looking into the face of her third cousin twice-removed. "I lost the trail. Without you we never would have gotten here in time."

"But you led us to the shed. You knew that Mulder was in trouble."

"I guess that just means that in this world, it takes both beauty and brawn."

"Right brain and left brain," he corrected. In rare agreement, she nodded and together they began walking back towards the geyser. At the top of the path they could see Ranger Harris as she stood entranced by the continuing spectacle and appalled by the damage the crazy old man had done with his altars and his constant tramping back and forth through the delicate ecosystem. Then there was the sickening sweet smell that wove about with the hydrogen sulfide that only geysers that are worshiped as gods have.

"Before the next eruption they will remove the bones, new and old, and take down the altars," Lee observed, too tired to put any emotion behind her words. "Then Volaria will be like the others, only more so. She and her kind, they don't really need us, you know."

"Except to protect them," Langley murmured. When Lee kept on down the trail towards the basin, he asked with concern, "Why go back? You don't sense anything down there any more, do you?"

She had to think about that. "No, not a thing. It's very quiet. But I want to say a prayer anyway."

The End.

Author's notes

I love the national park that was the location for most of this story and no disrespect was meant in any way. Many of the places mentioned there are real, some are not. I apologize if I offended any group with my opinions about the use of the park in general and of snowmobiles in particular, but as with all things, there are uses and abuses. Preserving the land and our resources for future generation, however, must take precedence over our own short term pleasures. Except for the Volaria basin, which is my own creation, the geologic changes mentioned in the story have actually occurred and are depicted as accurately as I could make them in this short space.