The X-Files: Grey Fox

From: matthewk@ucsu.Colorado.EDU (MATTHEWS-SIMMONS KELLIE)

Date: Mon, 8 Aug 1994 22:20:35 GMT

Yet another story from Sarah Stegall, who has no net access but writes

great stories.  This one is one of the best I've ever seen.  I'm posting

for her.  If you want to talk to her, her address is: sfsfs@fail.com

Here ya go.  Grab a hankie.

                          Grey Fox

                              

                      by Sarah Stegall

     

     Fox Mulder woke up from a dream about Dana Scully and lay looking at

the ceiling of his room. 

     It took longer and longer to marshal his thoughts now; the days when

he could leap out of bed clear-headed and sharp as a tack were more than a

decade behind him.  A photograph fades with age, he thought to himself. 

Surely a photographic memory does the same, eventually. 

     Carefully, bracing for the pain in his arthritic neck, he turned his

head to the bedside table to look at the photographs there.  They were

always the first things he saw in the morning and the last things he saw

at night, the only invariable ritual in his life. 

     The photograph on the left was ancient, more than three quarters of a

century old.  It showed a young girl, aged eight, squinting in sunlight

and standing beside a swimming pool.  The other photograph was more

recent, but equally old fashioned--Mulder had never had it holoimaged, so

the image stayed static.  The woman in it was smiling, caught unawares by

the camera, her round, sweet face framed in red hair. 

     Mulder arranged himself carefully on the bed and took a deep breath. 

"Bed," he commanded in Chinese. "Up." 

     The bed slowly tilted upward and turned, allowing him to come to an

upright position and step off onto the floor without bending and turning

unnecessarily.  Remembering the agony arthritis had been for his mother,

Mulder was grateful he was spared so much movement by modern technology.

Carefully he stepped to the window.  Even with the beryllium implants to

strengthen his bones, a fall could severely incapacitate him. 

     The bonsai tree sat framed in the lower half of the window.  He

ignored the readout on the pot and felt the surface and roots with his

finger, testing the humidity and friability of the soil.  He decided it

probably would not need watering for another day.  He stood and mused for

a moment, remembering the day Dana had given it to him, with a joke about

his black thumb.  He'd never been any good with plants, true, but this one

had had his undivided attention for over forty years. 

     The day was clear and fine, with a few clouds floating in a blue sky

over the Potomac.  Mulder was glad the smoggy grey skies of Washington

were only a memory now. Environmental reforms could be a pain in the ass,

but the benefits were incalculable.  He doubted his lungs would have

lasted this long if he'd been breathing the DC air of the Nineties.  He

decided to visit the roof today. 

     It took him a while to dress.  The ancient bullet wounds in shoulder

and hip throbbed today, and his arthritis was mildly intrusive, making it

difficult to move his joints.  The loose trousers were easy, but he still

couldn't remember if the kimono-jacket tied to the right or the left. He

got it wrong, and once again wished for the more complex but familiar

suits of twenty years before.  And as always, he regretted the passing of

ties.  He'd enjoyed ties.  Dana had always teased him about them.... 

     A soft chime sounded.  "Good morning, Mulder Xiansheng," said a soft

voice in Chinese.  "What would you like for breakfast?" 

     "English, please." 

     "Good morning, Mr. Mulder.  What would you like for breakfast?" the

room repeated patiently in English. 

     "Scrambled eggs and bacon in the dining room, ten minutes." 

     "Very good, sir.  Orange juice?" 

     "No. Coffee." 

     "Mr. Mulder, I must remind you that your physician has expressly

forbidden--"  The room sounded faintly annoyed. 

     "Coffee.  Black," Mulder repeated. 

     "Yes, sir." 

     Mulder struggled with his shoes for a moment; his fingers were stiff

and had difficulty with the elastic. Finally he stood and faced the wall. 

     "Mirror," he said in Chinese. 

     The wall shimmered and became a mirror.  He scrutinized his face,

decided that Mother Nature was callous and cruel to force men to shave

every day of their lives.  Not today. To hell with it.  But he reached for

a brush and carefully brushed his grey hair flat, noting that it was

nearly all white now. 

     He was long since used to the wrinkles, and no longer even noticed

his face.  Today he felt good, and didn't want to linger over the scars at

his temple and cheek.  Dreaming of Dana had started the day off right, and

he didn't want to spoil the mood. 

     He dialed up his medication and then headed slowly for the elevator

to the dining room. 

     

     After breakfast (where he complained about the quality of the coffee,

politely), he took the elevator to the roof. He stepped out into a warm,

beautiful morning.  The office building next door rose three stories above

his, and he scanned the bubbled windows.  Now and then he had seen people

standing in the windows and had waved.  One had waved back; he flattered

himself it was a pretty young woman.  No one was visible today. 

     "Buenos dias, Agent Mulder," said a voice to his right. He turned

carefully. 

     "Good morning, Agent Ramos.  How are the tomatoes today?" 

     The old man sitting on the stool stood slowly.  "Very good.  I'll

have a couple ready tomorrow, I think.  You ready with that trade?" 

     Mulder smiled.  "I don't know, Jorge.  Much as I love home-grown

tomatoes, I don't know if I can part with an actual Patrick Ewing." 

     "Jeez, Mulder.  I'm beginning to think this is all a fake.  You don't

really have a Ewing, you're just stringing me along until zucchini season. 

In fact, I'm beginning to suspect this whole card collection of yours is

fictitious." The other man smiled, to show he was joking. 

     "Well, there's one way to find out." 

     "Nah, no way, Mulder," Jorge laughed.  "Those strawberries are mine! 

I count them every day.  If I find one missing, I know where to look!" 

     Mulder smiled and changed the subject.  "What's new on the

assassination?" 

     Jorge shrugged.  "Not much.  They think they have a lead to the gun,

but you know UniPol.  Their leaks aren't much better than press releases. 

Too much spin on them." 

     "Yeah, everything's political these days.  Do they still think it was

a silicon-based projectile?" 

     "Oh, that's another war altogether.  Half the people I talk to on the

Net think so, the other half are voting for either the new plasmids or the

ceramics." 

     Mulder grimaced.  "I hate the damned ceramics." 

     Jorge nodded.  "Yeah.  In our day it was lead and plastic.  Stuff

that left evidence behind." 

     They talked shop a little longer, then Mulder walked over to the

waist-high ledge surrounding the roof, detouring around the garden plots

and solar collectors on the way. Below him, Washington stretched out like

a child's board game, with the gleaming monuments and buildings of The

Mall barely visible three miles away.  Fifteen years ago, thought Mulder,

they would not have been visible at all for the smog.  But then, fifteen

years ago, he would have been at his desk by now, getting ready for class. 

He remembered the bitterness of that last class, how he had hated to give

up teaching at the Academy.  They had raised the retirement age, and then

raised it again, but they simply refused to let him teach past his 73rd

birthday. 

     Did they think he would simply hobble away and die somewhere?  He was

still jealous that men like Ramos, who had stayed closer to street work,

were allowed to keep on at the Bureau until 75. 

     On the other hand, he hadn't wanted to move to St. Louis, either,

when the federal government moved out of DC. 

     The sun was hot.  He turned and went back to the elevator, waving at

Jorge.  He entered the community library on the first floor and logged on

to the public terminal for his mail.  The house sysop was nagging him for

his vote on the contract negotiations for house maintenance; the contract

was up for renewal and the owners' group was supposed to vote on the

proposals.  Although he was mildly annoyed at the Chinese program which

had obstinately refused to learn English as a first language, he voted for

it over the Israeli program.  He really didn't like the rigidity of their

literary program and their restrictions on access to the infoweb.  His

contacts at the Bureau still holoimaged him regularly, and he was active

in many informal discussion groups; restricted access would cut him off

from the world. 

     At least the government had stopped trying to write its own programs

and contracted them out to the experts.  He remembered the awful mess the

Bureau had made of databasing its voluminous files until they called in a

few savvy fifteen-year-olds from California.  The fifteen-year-olds had

charged the FBI thirty million dollars, a third the going rate, to put the

entire files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on-line in less than a

year.  It was phenomenal. 

     And it had given him back the X-files. 

     No bureaucratic restrictions precluded him from investigating the

files they had denied him nearly sixty years ago.  Now that he was

retired, he could open as many investigations as he wanted, and with his

pension and contacts had actually cleared some of them.  Of course, it

helped that the bureaucrats and politicians who once might have been

embarrassed by the revelations of their part in various cover-ups had been

dead for a generation. 

     Mulder smiled.  Nothing like outliving your enemies for revenge, he

thought.  Then he thought of Dana and the smile disappeared. 

     He logged onto a discussion group in Brazil arguing about the latest

sightings on the Plata do Enabes above Amazonia and spent the rest of the

afternoon refereeing a technical discussion about atmospheric distortion

and terpenes. 

     The household had voted for holos after dinner that night.  Mulder

had never cared for holoimaging; it gave him the creeps.  So he went to

his room and asked the room for Silence.  It lowered the acoustic shield

and he played music for a couple of hours.  He sat in his favorite chair,

regretting briefly that he was no longer able to throw himself casually

into the embrace of an easy chair and lounge in it with one leg over the

arm.  He adjusted the photographs on his bedside table so he could see

Samantha and Dana more clearly.  Dana had always liked DeBruges and the

later fusion groups, so he played some and thought about her.  He had

learned to live with the ache, for the sake of the pleasure it brought

him, as one wears a callous on the soul. 

     He dozed off somewhere in the middle of the Round Motif and woke when

the piece ended.  Its melancholy ending perfectly fitted his mood.  He

told the room to stop the music program (and had to repeat the command in

Chinese). He sat and looked at the photographs for a long time. 

     "Dana..." he whispered.  "I miss you so much." 

     He didn't know when he realized that his shadow was being cast on the

wall before him.  He was tired, with a weariness of the soul that went

beyond age and disease.  It was almost too much trouble to turn his head. 

But the curiosity that had driven Fox Mulder all his life would not let

him go now, and he slowly turned his head to look behind him. 

     He had to squint, the light was so bright. 

     "Room?  What's going on?" he asked, but there was no reply. 

     That was odd: the room was, if anything, overly attentive to its

client. 

     "Fox."  The voice was young, female.  Mulder frowned in

concentration. 

     "Who is that? What is going on?" 

     Alarmed, he tried to stand, but found he could not move.  Panic

surged through him--was he having a stroke? But that made no sense; he

could move his head perfectly, could speak and hear. 

     "Fox, don't be afraid." 

     "Who is that?  No one's called me that in twenty years." 

     "It's me.  Please don't be afraid." 

     Goose flesh rose along his arms and legs as memory returned, surging

from the place he had buried it decades ago. 

     "My God!  Samantha?  Is that you?" 

     "Yes.  Can you see me?" 

     "Just barely.  What--how--what are you doing here?  Why did they take

you?  Why did--" 

     Laughter rippled at him, and he recognized it with a deep pang.  He

had not heard that laugh in more than seventy years, but it was as fresh

as the last time he had heard it. There could be no mistake. 

     "Samantha!  It is you...Oh, God." 

     He felt the tears on his cheeks but could not move. 

     "I've come to take you home, Fox," said the voice.  It was soft,

infinitely soft. 

     "Home?  You mean...dying?  Are you dead, Sam?"  He choked a little. 

All his life, all these years, he had hoped desperately that somehow,

somewhere she was still alive.  Had it all been in vain?  Memory flashed

in him, of his mother's death.  She had never known what had happened to

her daughter.  No one did. He'd looked for Samantha almost every day of

his life, fruitlessly. 

     "No, Fox.  I cannot die.  But you will.  I can make it easy.  Do you

want to stay?" 

     "I don't understand."  The light was growing brighter. It was faintly

green-tinged. 

     "Come with me and you will understand." 

     "I...I don't know.  It's...hard to give up.  There's still so much to

find out." 

     "I know.  But you will need more than one lifetime to do it, and this

one is at an end." 

     His feet felt cold.  In fact, his whole body felt cold. Mulder felt a

little groggy, a little faint.  Was his heart failing?  Curiously, he felt

no fear, only sadness. 

     "Are you...are you alone?"  he asked the light.  He squinted against

its searing brightness.  Was there a shape there?  Or several? 

     "No, Fox," said his sister's voice.  "I have never been alone.  You

won't be, either.  Will you come?" 

     He had been alone most of his life, except for the few precious years

with Dana. 

     "All right," he said.  His eyes traveled back to the photograph of

Dana.  He missed her so terribly.  Maybe it was time to stop hurting. 

"I'll go." 

     The light was very bright, and very cool. 

                              

                           THE END

-- 

Kellie Matthews-Simmons//matthewk@ucsu.colorado.edu  

Member: SFLA&EBS,  PSEB,  DDEB,  X-phile   "Ego veno eos in vulcos minos."

"Sometimes the need to mess with their heads outweighs the millstone of 

 humiliation." --Fox Mulder, X-Files "Squeeze"