Sages (1/5) By Kipler@aol.com ............................................................................... Summary: A case file concerning killer brownies. Rated G,X Spoilers: None that would be troubling. Please archive to Gossamer but do not archive elsewhere without my permission. .......................................................................... Disclaimer: "X-Files" characters belong to Chris Carter, 1013 Productions and Fox Television. No copyright violation is intended. .......................................................................... Scully squinted and pulled her sunglasses out of her pocket. The day was hazily lit, with a low late-winter sun falling on the ragged, sloping wash of snow. Apple trees stood in wavy rows on the hilly ground, set in lines in all directions. Their branches grew downward, like the hunched shoulders of old men, spread out on the slope. Even rows, even spacing, old soldiers in parade formation making their ascent up the hill. The boy, Jay McNally, began trudging upward. So Scully and Mulder followed. They ascended one wide avenue that stretched between two rows of trees. The snow on the ground was crusted hard on top, and the six booted feet set up a hollow rhythm as the crust held, then broke through at each step. This hill was the highest spot for miles. A landscape of muted colors spread out beneath thrm. A black sliver of distant river, a grey road, a brown barn and a white house. Mulder nudged Scully's shoulder and pointed to another curve of the hill. "They don't seem to be too shaken by the town tragedy." Scully looked to see the brightly-suited, bobbing figures of children on the treeless patch of hillside. They rolled and tumbled as they plunged down the slope on toboggans or sleds or cardboard boxes. The air was pierced by their cries, their birdlike shrieks of joy. One after another they threw themselves, fearless, downward. Those who made it to the bottom were caught and held by the slopeless bare fields that were the resting gardens. Jay McNally looked at them and shrugged. "That's the pumpkin field hill. The place all the little kids come to sled. Mr. Nelson lets them hang around. I used to play there all the time when I was little." "But not anymore?" "Not... well, no. Not often." They came to the windy, ungoverned crest of the hill. Willows and pines scrabbled for space among ancient apple trees whose branches reached up, wiry and wild and unpruned. Further back, the hill became fully wooded and dark. The wild place was separated from the careful fields by a granite stone wall. A small wooden plaque marked one great tree: "First Apple Tree on Nelson Orchards. Planted in 1831 by O. Nelson." Jay McNally walked forward to the tree and stood. "This is where it happened." The ground around the old tree had been well used. A ring of small boulders circled the remains of a campfire. Nearby, the snow was dotted with aluminum cans from half-dozen cheap beers and a scattering of tiny, single-shot liquor bottles. Mulder stooped over, then raised his eyebrows at Scully as he held up the charred remnants of a recent "Penthouse." The boy shuffled uncomfortably. "Um... that was here when we came." "Why don't you tell us about what happened," Scully said. "Well, it was the last night of February vacation. A bunch of kids decided to come up here. You know, to celebrate. We were just having fun. It was really cold that night, though. Up here it was even colder, because of the wind. Someone brought some food and someone else brought some blankets and Joey brought... um... some beers. For the girls. You know." Mulder caught Scully's eye. She shrugged. "I have to ask," she said. "How much had you been drinking?" The boy looked up and shook his head fiercely. "We weren't drunk. It wasn't like that. Well, yes, it was, a little. But there were like fifteen of us and only twelve beers. We weren't drunk." "OK. So what happened?" "Well, Joey was sitting under his blanket and he kind of got into a fight with Kenny Quinlan. Kenny had brought some food. It was something he made. Some kind of brownies or something. Only not really brownies, more like candy. Kenny said they were made with some kind of a special herb. He had a little bottle with grey kind of powder in it. 'Sages' or something." "Sages?" Scully asked. "Yeah. Kenny said it was an old legend - like from the Indians or something. He said the brownies tasted good - like nothing you could imagine. He said if you weren't old enough, you could die from eating them, they tasted so good." "And Joey didn't believe him?" "No. None of us did. Kenny says weird things. So anyway, he dared Joey to eat some. And Joey said he would, and he took one and shoved it into his mouth. So a bunch of the kids took some and ate them." "And what happened to them?" "At first, nothing. It took a couple minutes. They looked happy - like Kenny was right, those things tasted really good. But then, they started getting sick. Not sick really, not throwing up or anything, but sick like lying on the ground and screaming and crying and stuff." "Who called the ambulance?" "I don't know. Three of the girls ran off down the hill. It could have been Heather Charette or one of the Jennifers. They said they were going to wake up Mr. Nelson and make him call 911." "And they took the victims to the hospital?" "Yeah, to Catholic, in Lowell." The boy's voice thickened, and he looked away. "I rode along with Joey, but they wouldn't let me past the waiting room. So I got a ride home. But they're all still in the hospital. I heard they were like... vegetables." "What happened to the food they ate? Was any of it left?" Jay McNally moved over to the circle of stones and pulled a metal baking pan from the ashes. It was black with soot and warped from the heat. "Someone got scared and threw the pan in the fire," he said. "And you don't have any idea what Kenny's brother put in those brownies?" Mulder asked. "I swear I don't," the boy muttered in a low, gruff voice. "I didn't think they'd send the FBI." "We weren't sent. We asked to come. Agent Scully and I have been tracking a couple of similar incidents." "Isn't this the first time something like this has happened?" "No. We think there have been several outbreaks like this over the past few years. All of the victims have been people under eighteen, and most have been younger than that." "What's making everyone so sick?" "That's what we hope to find out. Right now, we have no hard and fast theories." Mulder and Scully stepped in their own tracks as they descended the hill, twisting their toes inward to match the reverse footprints, avoiding the struggle of breaking new paths through the icy crust. Scully came up behind and had the easiest time of it, moving her feet into the great gaps left by Mulder's double-stepping. Jay McNally moved ahead of both of them, stepping on new snow, sliding and tripping and moving quickly, without caution. Below the orchard, nestled among the gardens, sat a complex of buildings - barns and storehouses. One of the largest barns, standing near the main road, was more deliberately quaint than the others. It was fixed with a large sign reading "Nelson Orchards Gift Shop." The smell of cider and cinnamon came to Scully's nose as she trailed through the wide stall opening and into the shaded warmth of the shop. An old woman stood huddled behind the cash register, reading a thin newspaper. All around her stood precariously stacked bottles of maple syrup, each stamped with "Nelson Orchards" and the iconized image of a maple leaf. Mulder and Jay McNally were already here, talking to an old man who stood drawing on a cigar. The man's voice was gruff and wheezy. "You know, kids are always around and you can't spend all your time chasing them," the man said. "They run over the orchards and have fights with the apples before it's picking time. They steal the pumpkins and smash them at Halloween. Little ones we don't mind so much, but the teenagers you can't count on. They're the ones that get into trouble, and I've been telling my wife something like this was bound to happen. I should fence the place in, but they'd climb the fence." The man went on, but his words told the same truth over and over. Scully gazed behind him at a long wall. Half-dozen poster-sized photos hung there, under a sign reading "Nelson Orchards Through the Year." Each photo showed a cluster of young children enjoying the outdoor life. Three little girls in matching yellow outfits squatted under a blue sky as they picked strawberries. A boy in an orange shirt sat high on a huge pumpkin, laughing. A gathering of schoolchildren stood in the orchard in fall, the bright red of apples spattering the trees and ground of the landscape. It had to be good PR, getting pictures of the local children into your salesroom. Scully shifted her weight from foot to foot, trying to drive the cold from her toes. The old man stopped his complaining long enough to take a breath, and his head lifted slightly. Mulder turned around and nodded to Scully. "This is my partner," Mulder said. "Two of you." The old man shook his head. "Mr. Nelson," said Mulder, "Thank you for giving us your permission to walk up into your orchard. We appreciate your assistance in our investigation." "Yes, yes. I just want to make it clear that it wasn't anything to do with me. Those kids were on my land without my permission. I'm not legally responsible for anything that happened." Scully pulled her sunglasses out of her coat pocket as they passed back through the murky warmth of the shop and into the afternoon sunshine. The woman behind the counter continued not to smile as they exited the building. The halls of the Catholic Medical Center bore their sterile duty with bright cleanliness. Mulder and Scully navigated past the main lobby, through X-Ray and Maternity and Recovery - the levels of moderate hope - until they came to the ICU. Mulder showed his badge to the nurse at the desk, and the woman pointed to a grey- haired man seated at a table. The man rose as they approached. Scully took in two things: his height and his age. He stood four or five inches taller than Mulder. His straight, unstooped back and shoulders seemed in direct contradiction to the lines on his face, the age spots sprinkled over his hands. He shook Scully's hand. His eyes were steady, pale grey, unwavering, framed by a net of wrinkles. He must be close to eighty. "Dr. Scully?" he said. The voice matched the gaze; it was calm and measured. "I'm Dr. Nichols. We spoke on the phone." "Yes," said Scully. "This is my partner, Agent Mulder. You're the treating physician for the children who were admitted the other night? "I'm the attending physician, yes... although most of the staff has taken an interest in these cases, as you can imagine." "How are the seven victims?" Mulder asked. "Seven?" the old man said. "Oh, I suppose you haven't heard. Four of them were transferred to Boston Children's Hospital shortly after they were admitted. The parents and the family physicians felt that they had better facilities for the study of such a... unique... illness. In fact, they were probably correct. We're a local hospital, without all the expensive diagnostic equipment they have over in Boston. Still, for these kids, I don't know if all the diagnostic equipment in the world will make a difference." "What condition are they in?" asked Scully. "See for yourself," said Dr. Nichols, leading them to a wide bank of windows. "There they are." Scully looked through the glass partitions and saw the pale bodies of two young boys and a girl, wired to monitors tracing every breath and heartbeat. "They're still unresponsive?" Scully asked. "As of yet," Nichols answered. "Reflexes are normal. But they don't respond to auditory or tactile stimuli." Mulder fidgeted restlessly next to Scully and turned so that his back was to the glass. "What are their vitals?" Scully asked. "They're within the normal parameters. Their BP, pulse and respiration were initially quite elevated - as though they were having an extreme stress reaction. But they've moderated, now. Still not as low as we would like, but not dangerous." "EEGs?" "We ran several on each of them, in the first 24 hours. There were abnormalities in the brain wave patterns, but nothing to indicate this level of unawareness. But we're waiting for word from Boston. They're running extensive tests on the other victims: EEGs, PETs, MRIs. They're trying to isolate the specific effects of this syndrome on the bodies of the victims." Mulder walked away from the viewing window and sat down at the table. He pulled a file from his briefcase. "Dr. Nichols," he said, "Were you aware that a similar situation has arisen in two other towns, over the last several years?" The doctor sat down across from Mulder, shaking his head. Mulder passed the file, and the old man began scanning the pages within: xeroxed copies of small-town newspaper headlines. The first set was from the Sterling-Holden "Bulletin," and all dated from the spring of 1994. "Overdoses of Unknown Toxin Leaves Three Children Dead and Three Others Comatose." "No Explanation in Deaths of Teens." "Fourth Student Succumbs to Mystery Illness." The second set of articles was from 1996, from the Hadley "Sun." "Two Children Die After Birthday Party." "Town Parents Fearful in Wake of Local Tragedy." "Three Months Later, and Still No Answers." The doctor shook his head. "Neither of these incidents was written up in the literature. This information could be very important in treating the children. Have the families been contacted? The doctors?" "We plan to contact them," Scully said. "In fact, we have an appointment in Holden this afternoon." Mulder raised his head. "Dr. Nichols," he said, "Have you heard what the other children are saying? That whatever did this to the victims was related to some sort of magical food they ate?" "Yes," the man said. "My first thought was food poisoning of some sort. Not bacterial or viral, naturally, since the onset of symptoms took only minutes. I searched the databases for similar reports, with no luck. But it seemed probable that the children had ingested some sort of toxin that disrupted neural function." Scully exhaled softly. "I'm unaware of any toxin which would produce these symptoms. Do you know of any?" The old man shook his head. "No. We ran tox screenings of the blood and cerebrospinal fluid of the victims. A couple of them had slightly elevated blood alcohol levels, and one had been taking cold medicine. That's it." "No hallucinogens? No psychedelic drugs?" "Not that we could identify." "But you think we could be dealing with a chemical agent - something that is as yet unidentifiable?" Doctor Nichols shrugged his shoulders. "Your guess is as good as mine," he said. "Could be chemical, or it could be some pathogen that we can't yet isolate." The man stood and walked slowly back to the bank of viewing windows. Scully joined him and studied the forms of the children who lay beyond. "I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know what you find," Dr. Nichols said. "I have to go now - I promised one of my patients I'd stop by her house." "Yes, we will," Scully said. "Thank you." She was surprised when the old man touched her briefly on the head before stepping away. It was a strangely tender gesture. She watched Nichols move down the hall. "It's impressive that he's still practicing," she said to Mulder. "And house calls?" "The gruff, kindly, wise old country doctor," Mulder said, rising from his seat. "We're probably forming an inaccurate perception based on age stereotyping, Mulder." Mulder shrugged his shoulders and Scully smiled slightly as he reached her side. They looked again at the children lying in the ICU. An older, red-faced woman moved close to the pale young girl. The woman clasped the girl's hand and began to speak, words unacknowledged and unheard perhaps by anyone but herself. And then the entry door opened again, and the woman was joined by a young man in familiar black vestments and a white collar. The woman closed her eyes. Mulder turned away from the viewing window. Scully felt his hand slide to the small of her back. She caught the brief tightness in his face and knew to stand for a moment, to let his fingers brush against her before stepping away. "Come on, Mulder," she said. "Let's go." End of Part 1 Sages (2/5) .......................................................................... The sun moved lower in the sky as they came to the Sterling town common. The fading remnants of Christmas still tottered and swayed there. A once-red garland draped raggedly over the edges of a fir tree. A shiny ornament lay fractured and half-buried in the snow. A triangle of snow-narrowed streets ran around the common. Along one street was a brick elementary school, along the second gas station. On the third - the long leg of the triangle - stood a bank of buildings that made up a small merchant's center. Mulder pulled the car up to the sidewalk here and put it into park. "This looks like #123," he said. "It's a hardware store, Mulder," Scully said, chafing her hands against the cooling air. "And it looks like it's closed." Mulder squinted into the slanting afternoon light. "Maybe there's an apartment above it?" They walked to the side of the two-story building and found a narrow wooden staircase. At the top of the stairs stood a landing and a doorplate. "Calvin #123." Scully pulled her fingers out of her mittens to press the ice-cold doorknob. The woman who let them in the apartment was short and stocky, and younger than Scully had imagined. Thirty-four or thirty-five, maybe. She brushed at a thick lock of badly permed blond hair and ushered them in. Nervously, she gestured for them to sit down on a plaid couch. "Here, it's cold," she said. "Let me put some more wood on the fire." There was quiet in the room as the woman fed birch logs to a Franklin stove. The damp wood gave off a comforting smell as it caught and began to crackle. Scully breathed deeply. It was a childhood smell. Once, somewhere, there had been birch smoke and huddling under a blanket. Seattle, it must have been. A cold night, and her father built a fire just for her. There was comfort in the smell, and the red and green and blue fringe of the blanket, and being safe from cold. For a moment her mind held her there, again. But the feeling flew away quickly, and the wood smell was here, and she was in this room and next to Mulder and her hands were ice. Mrs. Calvin was speaking. "You wanted to talk about my son? Matthew?" "Yes, Mrs. Calvin," Scully said. "We're afraid that another group of children have become ill up in Tyngsboro." "Oh," the woman said, letting out a rush of air. "The same thing, you think?" "We're fairly sure," Mulder said. "Seven children were affected - and they seemed to show the same symptoms that the Sterling children showed in 1994." "How do you think I can help you?" "Well," said Scully, "We saw your name in the newspapers." She handed a clipping to Mrs. Calvin. The headline read "Local Woman Fights for Answers." In the center of the page was a photograph of a woman. The hair was less permed and the face less puffy, but it was Mrs. Calvin. "Look at me... a lot younger, then." "Did you ever get any answers?" "No. I don't know if there were any answers to be found. When the doctors couldn't tell me anything after a year, I started looking outside. I still write my letters and make my phone calls. But no answers. I'm not sure I'll ever get any answers. I'm not sure if I really want to. After all these year, it gives me... gives me something to do." "Did you keep records?" "Oh, yes." The woman moved to a tall bookshelf and took down a thick binder. She sat between Mulder and Scully and pulled out a sheaf of well-fingered medical reports, newspaper clippings, and photographs. Set in a folder at the front of the binder were the school pictures of two boys, marked "Matthew, 14" and "Jon-Jon, 12." The boys looked enough alike that they could have been twins. Matching smiles stared out from matched brown faces, even pairs of dark eyes gazed at the camera. But the older boy had the awkward look of adolescence: a too-long neck, a nose suddenly too wide for the child-face. "Those were taken right before the boy's father moved back to Haiti," Mrs. Calvin said. "I remember thinking that those might be the last pictures where they were really happy. Their father's move was hard on them." "Your husband isn't living in the country?" "No," said Mrs. Calvin. "Ex-husband. Gus and I are divorced. Things... didn't work out. Our big surprise." The woman smiled sadly and shook her head. "We thought that we'd be stronger than everyone else because we had fought the color thing. But then we realized that our backgrounds made a difference, even if the color didn't. And my husband's background... Gus had problems. He... Well, you know, same old sad story as every divorce. I could make him sound crazy, but that would be the talk of a bitter ex-wife, right?" Scully smiled gently. The woman lowered her head and continued speaking. "As soon as Matty was born, you could tell he was his father's son. Quiet. Like a little old man. He didn't talk until he was three, and then Jon-Jon was coming up behind him, talking too. And once Jon started talking, he never shut up. I swear, Matty used to stay out late just so he didn't have to listen to Jon. And Jon was easy to get along with. Had lots of friends. Matty used to get into some fights. I don't know what about. I guess it wasn't so easy on him, the teasing about his father and me. I heard the kids once, calling him 'Oreo.'" The woman's voice cracked and she paused for a moment. Scully looked up from the medical files and glanced around the living room. She felt the absence of the two boys, how small and hollow this apartment must be, after the noise and bustle of teenage sons. She wondered when Mrs. Calvin had moved here, had disassembled her life from before and rebuilt it more quietly and more tightly. "Mrs. Calvin," Scully said. "May I take these medical files and make copies? I'd like to read them carefully." "All right," the woman said. "Did you find any of the other parents? They might know something." "We didn't find them," Mulder said. "Yes... I think the Johnsons put Eric in a fancy hospital in Boston. And the Bakers moved to the southwest after Mary died. I don't know about those families from Holden. Me, I got Jon-Jon in the Pinehurst nursing home. It's close, and I can visit him every afternoon." "And Matty?" Scully asked. "Matty? Matty's not there." Scully blinked and wondered if she could have overlooked something in the records - some notice that Matthew Calvin had become another unexplained death. "I don't..." Scully stammered. "Matty's not in the nursing home. He lives over on Reney Street." "Lives there?" Mulder asked. "You mean he recovered from this thing?" Mrs. Calvin nodded vigorously. "Yes. I... I thought you would have known that." "Mrs. Calvin," Scully said, "Your son is the first victim we've heard of who didn't either die or remain unresponsive after experiencing these symptoms. He could be very important in helping those other children. Would he be home now?" The woman tugged at one frayed end of her battered hair. "Well, he'd probably be home now," she said. "Him and his... girlfriend, Julia Schaeffer. But whether he'll talk to you is the question." "Why wouldn't he?" Scully asked. "He's quiet. Quieter now than ever. Doesn't talk to me much, or his old friends. He dropped out of school when he was fifteen. They tried to tell me it was against the law, but I told them they could try to make him go, then. Then he took up with that... woman... and moved in with her." Mrs. Calvin's tone was disdainful, now. Scully wondered what sin against the mother this girl had committed. "So," Mrs. Calvin continued, "He doesn't talk much to me. I don't know if he'll talk to you." "Reney Street. How do we get there?" Reney Street was actually more like the remains of a street: wooded, narrow and collapsing into gravel under the weather and the traffic. The last of the sky-color faded behind the black tree trunks as they passed down the road. Water and mud settled into the potholes to refreeze under the deep shadows of early evening. They sat in silence as the car jostled and shook down the road. "Scully," Mulder said suddenly, "Do you suppose someone could overdose on pleasure?" Scully raised her eyebrows. "Do I want to know why you asked that question?" Mulder gave her a questioning look and continued on. "No, really. Do you think it's possible that the pleasure centers of the brain could be stimulated in such a way that the neurons were damaged?" "You're back to the brownie theory." "Yes. If that's what you choose to call it. The news reports here and the ones in Holden all seem to tell the same story - that whatever those kids ate, it tasted so good they couldn't bear it." "So what are you suggesting?" Scully said at last. "Dessert so good that you die when you eat it?" Mulder squinted into the lights of an oncoming car. "It'd make a hell of an ad campaign, don't you think?" Scully raised her eyebrows again. "Look," she said. "It's probable that there was some chemical in those brownies that caused the symptoms we're seeing. But there has never been any evidence that mammals can die from excessive pleasure." "Tom Robinson in accounting died of --" "Tom Robinson died of a heart attack. He was an overweight fifty-year old man engaged in sudden strenuous activity. These are healthy young teenagers." "So why is there always dessert linked to the deaths?" Scully sighed. "Maybe it's some kind of new drug that the kids are using. It could be something that's chemically inert unless it's worked into one of the ingredients in these bars. Something in the recipe could be a catalyst." "But wouldn't the FDC have picked up on this sooner? The first case I dug up happened almost five years ago." "Maybe we're just lucky enough to be the first ones to see the connection among these victims. Maybe no one at the FDC searches Yahoo for news stories containing the words 'chocolate' and 'coma.' " Mulder smiled and leaned back in his seat. The car jolted down a sweeping, bumpy hill; a small ranch house sat at the bottom. A carved wooden sign hung from a tree branch. It bore a folk-art painting of six black cats sitting in a row, and the words "Signs by Julia Schaeffer." The girlfriend. The door was answered by a man. But not quite. When the figure stepped into the light, Scully could see that this was the face of Matthew Calvin, the boy whose photo grinned out from Mrs. Calvin's files. But he was changed. Taller, of course, and fuller across the shoulders. "Mr. Calvin," Mulder said. "I'm Agent Mulder, and this is Agent Scully. We're with the FBI. We're investigating a case of unexplained illnesses among teenagers in Tyngsboro. We believe they were exposed to the same thing as you and your brother. We're interested in talking to you. May we come in?" Matt Calvin shrugged noncommittally, stood for a moment, and then finally opened the door. "Who's here, Matt?" came the voice of a woman. "FBI." Scully stepped through the door. There was a flurry of motion under her feet - a brush of black fur and the soft thumping of a dozen feet on the hollow wooden floor. A flood of cats hastened out of the room, brushing the feet of a woman standing in the doorway. And Scully saw immediately what had colored Mrs. Calvin's words with disdain. Matthew Calvin was eighteen now, at the oldest. But this woman - Julia Schaeffer - was older than his mother. Her sandy brown hair was flecked with grey, and the skin around her eyes was tracked with deepening lines. Her thin, wiry frame was covered by faded jeans and an overlarge flannel shirt. "What do you want?" she asked. "They're here about what happened to me and my brother," Matthew Calvin said. "It's happened again." The woman stood mutely for a moment, then gestured for the agents to sit down. The living room was small and rustic. A lumpy futon rested on a frame made of two-by-fours, and in the corner of the room stood a scratched and patched leather recliner. A bookshelf near the futon was lined with dog-eared paperbacks: "Kundalini Yoga." "Meditations for the Winter Season." "Franny and Zooey." "Catcher in the Rye." More books lay scattered across the table in front of the futon. William Blake. Milton. Against the wall, in front of a cold fireplace, stood six cat bowls in a neatly organized line. Each bore a name: Pugsy, Smudge, Pickles, Petey, Buzz-Buzz, and Pumpernickel. Mulder gestured toward the bowls. "You just need to get a 'Dopey.' " "Yeah, well..." Julia Schaeffer said, "I've never been any kind of Snow White." Matthew Calvin pulled the recliner out of the corner and sat it across from them. He watched them, or rather, watched the wall behind them. His eyes seemed not to make contact with either of them. "So, what you want to know?" he asked. "Do you have any idea what happened to you and your brother, Mr. Calvin?" Scully asked. "Don't know. We were standing there with our friends, and then I woke up seven months later. That's all I remember." "But right before? Some of the witnesses said that you had been eating something right before you got ill. There was speculation that this was some sort of food poisoning or drug overdose." "Did my mother tell you that?" Calvin asked. "No. We read it in the newspaper reports." "I don't know anything about what happened before. I can't remember anything." "We're trying hard to understand what happened here," said Scully. "To prevent it from happening again." Matthew Calvin's eyes met Scully's for a moment before they moved away again. "My mother's been trying to understand for four years. Nothing to understand." He got up, slid the chair back where it had been, and turned back for a moment. He opened his mouth as if he were going to say more, but when he spoke it was not to Scully and Mulder. "We got any Coke?" he asked Julia Schaeffer. "Yup. In the back on the top shelf." Then he walked out of the room. Scully heard a refrigerator open and shut, somewhere in the back of the house, and then heard the sound of a television playing. Julia Schaeffer sighed and sat down on the coffee table. "I'm sorry," she said. "Matthew will never talk about his brother. I think it's just too painful - that he's well and Jon is still in that rehabilitation hospital." "Ms. Schaeffer, what has he told you about the whole thing?" "Nothing. His mother thinks I did that to him - that I turned him against her or something. But that's not it at all. He's just sworn himself to silence on the whole thing. I don't know why." "His mother is very concerned about him," Mulder said. The woman's eyes fell for a moment. "Look, spare me the lecture about the difference in our ages. Do you think I don't know? Do you think the whole town hasn't said everything there is to say, already?" "I'm sorry," Mulder said. "I didn't mean..." Julia Schaeffer's gaze moved to meet Mulder's, and her cheeks reddened. "No," she said. "I'm... I should be sorry. I'm defensive. I know that. Look - it's not as if I don't understand what people are saying. I know a mother's feelings. I had a son, once. He died in a car accident. But he would have been about Matthew's age, now. So I know what those ladies in town must think about me. I used to be one of them. I used to be in the soccer carpools. I used to be at the PTA meetings and the bake sales. And I'd still be there, if I'd had any choice. But I didn't." The woman paused, and her grey eyes moved from Scully's to Mulder's. "Listen," she said slowly. "I don't want the pity of those people in town any more than I want their scorn. This is the deal I get. I don't get to go back where I was before. But I get this house, and I get Matthew. And I won't apologize for that." Matthew Calvin walked back into the room, carrying a tall glass of soda. He stood by Julia Schaeffer and laid his hand on her shoulder gently. The gesture was practiced and measured, free of awkwardness. There seemed in this man no connection to the picture of the boy in that other place. No glass-clear look in his eyes, no questioning. The room was silent. The cats crept back in one by one, prowling among table legs and Julia Schaeffer's booted feet. They stood just beyond the reach of Mulder and Scully, facing them watchfully. Their green eyes sent a message of intrusion; the eyes of Matthew Calvin didn't contradict them. "Well," said Mulder, after another moment of silence. "If you can't tell us anything, we'll be going." "I don't know anything worth telling," the man said, shrugging his shoulders. Mulder lay still on the hotel room bed, his eyes closed. Scully rose from the armchair and crossed the room. She paused as she passed Mulder. She watched his face. It was loose and easy in sleep. Open. Unfamiliar. There were loud voices in the room next door. A tapping noise came through the wall, and then the loud shrill of stereo speakers. Mulder slept. Scully stepped into the cramped bathroom and splashed her face with cool water. She glanced at her reflection - took in the lines around her eyes, the creases between her brows, the tiny downturns on either side of her mouth. The thinness was still there from her illness, and her features were drawn and edgy because of it. But more than that, the past year had made some mark that would not be erased. Some watchfulness sat on her, now. She shook her head and switched off the bathroom light. The music next door grew louder. The walls came alive with noise. They rattled and thumped in time with the bass coming from the speakers. A shouting, scratching staccato voice echoed the rhythm. Mulder came awake. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. "You with me?" Scully asked. "Yeah," he said. "I guess I drifted off there." Scully watched him rise. His face and his shoulders tightened as he shook off sleep and moved back into himself. A piercing note rattled a mirror. Mulder's face contorted. "What's going on?" he said. "The manager said there's an interstate basketball tournament going on tomorrow. The kids are staying here. Still, I'd think they'd need to get some sleep - to get ready for their big day." Mulder smiled grimly. "Something tells me you've repressed your teen years, Scully. They're going to drink and stay up all night. Prove they're adults." Scully settled back into the armchair. She opened the medical files and began reading. "What do you think of Matthew Calvin?" she asked. "I don't know. It seemed pretty clear that he didn't want to talk to us." "Neither did Julia Schaeffer." Scully felt Mulder watching her expectantly. "What?" she asked. Mulder raised his eyebrows. "Come on, Scully, don't tell me that whole thing didn't bother you. Their relationship has got to be close to illegal, don't you think?" "Not if Matt Calvin is eighteen now..." "I'll grant that she might get off on a technicality, but the woman is more than twice his age. That would be like... like you going into the room next door, trolling for a date with one of those basketball players." Scully looked up from over the rims of her glasses. "She didn't look like the 'trolling' type." "You could be right," Mulder said. "Maybe Matt Calvin is just extremely mature for his age." A shock of unrestrained whooping and pounding came through the wall. Scully guessed that the boys in the next room were kicking it. With their boots. "So," said Scully, "Ignoring for a moment the unique situation of their love lives - do you think Matt and Julia Schaeffer really don't know anything about what happened?" Mulder shrugged. "I don't see why they'd lie about it. Matt Calvin was a victim as much as anyone else in this case." Scully leaned back in her chair and rested her head against the wall. She was jerked upright by a loud crash pounding through the plaster, followed by the sound of glass shattering and howling shrieks of laughter. She shook her head, gathered her papers into a pile, and moved to leave the room. "That's too much for me," she said. "In my day we had taste," Mulder said. "We listened to 'Smoke on the Water.'" End of Part 2 Sages (3/5) .......................................................................... It was Monday morning, early; the halls of Children's Hospital were quiet and the elevator empty. Scully glanced at the slip of paper in her hand. "They said we should go to the fourth floor and take a right." She pressed the "up" button on the elevator's control panel as Mulder leaned wearily against the back wall, holding his head in his hands. "I thought those kids would at least sleep in this morning," he said. "Yes. I ran into them at the coffee shot at 5 a.m.," Scully said. "Is their youthful enthusiasm a little too much for you, Mulder?" "Mmm... Maybe tonight we could stay at a nice retirement resort," he said. The elevator came to a stop and Mulder and Scully followed the hallway until they came to a door marked "Conference Room." They entered the room, which contained a large oak table and a computer desk. They were met by a young man in thick glasses and a blue lab coat. "I'm Hank Tremblay," he said, rising to shake their hands. "I take it you're the FBI agents?" "Yes," said Scully. "We understand that you've been overseeing the data on the four students fromTyngsboro who were brought in here?" "Yes," said the man. "We've had some time, now, to run tests under controlled circumstances. And the results seem to be consistent and fairly conclusive." "Conclusive of what?" Scully asked. "Do you know what caused this?" "No," said Dr. Tremblay. "But I think I know what the effect was. Look at these." The doctor flicked a switch, and the back wall of the conference room jumped into fluorescent brightness. It was a bank of viewing windows, lined with a double row of medical images - X-rays, MRIs - all showing the brain, from above or below or from the side. "We've scanned the brain activities of these children in as many ways as possible. We've found abnormalities in every case. Whatever happened to the victims, it seems to have altered their brain functioning. You see the X-Rays and MRIs appear normal. We notice no significant change in anatomy - nor would we expect any. There has been no trauma to the head, as far as we know." "It's the physiological processing that seems to have been altered. The EEGs reflect drastic alterations in brain waves - as we might expect given that the victims are comatose. But the PET images are what's most exciting." The man moved to the computer table and called up a black screen paneled with colored images. He scrolled up and down through dozens of pictures showing the human brain in sections - transverse, frontal, coronal - layer upon layer, image upon image, colored in blues and greens, reds and yellows against the black. "Over the last several years, PET images have allowed us to make great leaps in understanding brain function. By priming the body with radioactive substances, we can actually visualize metabolic processes: the absorption of glucose, the uptake of oxygen, the flow of blood. Active areas of metabolism show up in reds and yellows, less active areas in blues and blacks." Dr. Tremblay used one finger to point at an image made almost entirely of blue and black, and then down at another one fiery with reds and yellows. His hand shook slightly as he pointed, and his eyes were intent on what he was seeing. Mulder caught Scully's eyes and raised his eyebrows. Dr. Tremblay was smiling. "We can actually visualize what parts of the cerebrum people use when performing various mental tasks. And how they are used." "So," said Mulder, "You can see people thinking." Dr. Tremblay turned from his images. "Well, no," he said. "But we can see the cellular results of thinking." Scully scanned the slides. One set of images stood out from the rest; they showed a great black space in the center of the brain, and a narrow line of reds and oranges like a crown around the darkness. "That's not normal," Scully said. "No," the man said. "Good catch. This is the brain of a six-year- old girl. She was born with severe hydrocephaly - excess fluid in the ventricles of her brain. The fluid pressure forced the brain matter up against the walls of her skull. In essence, she has a water-filled hole taking up what is, for most of us, the thinking mass of the brain." Scully exhaled softly. "Is she severely disabled?" Dr. Tremblay smiled again. "Actually, she is in the middle of a very successful first grade year. The brains of young children are remarkably elastic. If the traditional seat of... say... language is not available for use, then language learning can be shunted over to another part of the brain. This girl, in essence, has rewired her brain so that she can perform many tasks within the normal parameters. We seem the same thing happen among young victims of stroke, and even among older victims, though to a lesser extent." Mulder leaned over and scanned the image. He traced the narrow line of color with his finger, then stepped back and looked at Dr. Tremblay. "How does all this relate to the patients from Tyngsboro?" Dr. Tremblay turned back to the computer and maneuvered to a web site entitled "Tremblay Images." The machine began to download graphics: more brain images, each bearing s small caption. "Every neurological syndrome has a specific impact on the brain," he said. "Epilepsy, cerebral palsy, you name it. Even drunkenness effects a temporary change in the way language is processed and memories stored. With the Tyngsboro patients, I can stimulate the brain to respond in predictable ways, by playing music or making noises, shining light into their eyes, pricking the soles of their feet with a pin. And their brains do respond to these stimuli. But look at the differences." The man pointed at four rows of images. "Here on the left are images of the normally-functioning brains of patients under sedation. And here on the right are our patients from Tyngsboro." Scully leaned in close to view the slides. She clicked the mouse to scroll down further. "It looks like the center of processing has shifted," she said. "Yes," answered Dr. Tremblay. "In each case, it appears as though the processing - of reflexes, at least - has moved deeper into the brain." "What would cause that?" Mulder asked. "I have no idea," said the doctor. "I feel that we have a remarkable situation here. It's as if these brains have been completely rewired." Mulder and Scully left the car and crossed the paved playing field at the side of the Tyngsboro Middle School. Children rushed around them in clusters of three, four, a dozen. Their exhalations mingled white-cold in the air, but their whirling bodies shook off bright coats and scarves, threw them into piles. Small pyramids grew up amid the groups of children: book bags and gym shoes and warm clothes. As Scully moved, she noticed the small children catching sight of the FBI tags, stopping to look, watching her and Mulder with solemn, unflinching stares. A balding middle-aged man approached. "Agents Mulder and Scully?" he said. "I'm Barry Richards, the principal." Mulder held out his hand. "Pleased to meet you," he said. "We hope this isn't too much of an inconvenience." "No," said the man. "You're a distraction from fifth grade recess duty. Besides, the rumor mill on this whole thing has been unbelievable - parents calling twenty times a day, wanting to know if it's safe to send their kids to school. We need some closure on this." A piercing shriek came through the air. Scully looked over to the side of the hardtop; a large snowbank had drawn the attention of dozens of children. Barry Richards broke into a slow jog, entered the crowd, and emerged accompanied by two small boys. He rolled his eyes and shrugged as he walked by Scully and Mulder. Opening the side door, he pointed inside and gestured for the small boys to go in. They looked at each other with fear, then solemnly stepped through the door. Barry Richards turned and paced back to Mulder and Scully, scanning the playground as he did. "Sorry about that. Now... how can I help you?" "We need to speak to some of the students who were at the party when all the trouble took place. We believe that most of them are in your eighth grade. Jay McNally told us that. He gave us a list of names." Scully handed a slip of paper to the principal. "Yes, I know Jay. He and these other students have already been interviewed by the local police, after this happened. But I can get most of them for you. The older kids are at lunch right now - they won't have to be pulled out of class." They turned the corner of the building and moved into an empty parking lot backing a wide, tall wall of windows. Barry Richards opened a door, and they stepped out of the cold and into the crowd and noise of a cafeteria. "Wait here," Richards said, moving into the crowds. Scully scanned the controlled commotion of the room. Most of the students were sitting, now, eating. But some were in line for food, and some were moving up and down between rows of tables, socializing. There was a quieting in the room as other students seemed to realize that something important was happening. Slowly, dozens of pairs of eyes moved to Mulder and Scully. Students pointed their fingers. They cupped their mouths, their ears, as they leaned in to whisper to one another. They gazed furtively at the agents, but looked away - down, always down - when Scully caught their eyes. From the center of the room, a group of students rose and marched single file behind Barry Richards. They came to stand near Mulder and Scully. "Why don't we use the meeting room near my office?" Barry Richards said. The space was cramped but bright. A dozen hard chairs sat around a large table. Mulder and Scully settled themselves at one end of the table while Barry Richards called the students in. Jennifer Paquin came first. She peered out from under frizzy red bangs and thick glasses. Her eyes were tearful as she sat in the two-large chair. "Jennifer," Scully said. "This isn't meant to frighten you. No one is being accused of anything. We just want to clear up what happened the night your friends got ill." The girl looked mournfully at the table, sniffling. Barry Richards moved to Mulder's side and spoke quietly to him. Scully looked up questioningly. "Jennifer," Mulder said. "Would you feel more comfortable if your friends were here with you?" The girl nodded, wiping one large tear from her cheek. Barry Richards went to the door and gestured to the students waiting outside. "Here are the other Jennifers," he said, as three more girls filed in. "Jennifer Clermont. Jennifer Tyler." "Tell us what happened that night," Scully said. Jennifer Clermont - tallest and most developed of the girls - sat up straight in her chair. "Well," she said. "We were up on the hill. Someone had brought some beer, but we wouldn't drink any." Jennifer Paquin and Jennifer Tyler nodded their heads. Jennifer Clermont continued. "And Kenny had that food. He said it had some kind of special herb or something." "Special herb?" Scully asked. Jennifer nodded. "Sages. Or something like that. Anyway, we didn't know what it was. We told the other kids not to eat it. We said it was stupid." The second and third Jennifer nodded enthusiastically. "But they went ahead and ate it, anyway. And they all got sick. So I ran down to Mr. Nelson's house and banged on the door until he would let me in to call 911. He almost didn't let me, but I wouldn't stop banging." Another chorus of affirmative nods. "What did it look like - when the other kids got sick?" Jennifer Clermont's eyes wavered. She looked at her friends. "I don't know. What do you guys think?" The girls shrugged slightly and lifted their eyes in thought. "Um," said Jennifer Paquin in a quiet voice. "It was kind of like... rolling around. Like they were hurt or something." Jennifer Clermont shrugged. "Anyway, we just wanted to get out of there." Three bobbing heads agreed with one another. The Jennifers left, and were followed by a Jonathan, a Franklin, and a Heather. As the last child left the room, Mulder leaned back heavily in his chair. "Well, that wasn't much help," he said. "No," said Scully. "Their stories all line up perfectly with Jay McNally's." "You have to understand," said Barry Richards. "This happened a week ago. The kids have talked about nothing else since. Whatever really happened is so obscured by gossip that it's hard to tell what's true and what they've convinced themselves is true. And they're all afraid that they'll get in trouble. Because of the beer." "What about this Kenny Quinlan," Mulder said. "He's the one who allegedly brought the food in the first place. Where is he?" Barry Richards shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "He's always come to school rather... sporadically. And since this happened, hardly at all. He's got younger siblings, and his family uses him as a babysitter. To tell the truth, I was surprised he was involved with these kids at all. Kenny is usually a loner. He doesn't have many friends." "May we have his address?" "I've got it in my files." A bell rang. The school day was over. Mulder and Scully took the information from Barry Richards. They left the school through crowded halls, and walked out into sunshine and the diesel smell of idling school buses. They crossed through the freed crowds; they were noticed immediately. A group of small children stopped their game of tag to stare at them. On a large snowbank, seven tall boys pointed. A huddle of mothers stood alongside the buses, watching the agents intently. One woman put her mittens over the ears of her small son. "Gee, Scully, do you think they know we're the feds?" Mulder said. The car was parked behind two waiting buses. The day was warming and the sun was bright. Scully settled in the passenger seat and scanned the faces in the parking lot. She nudged Mulder and pointed. There, against the wall of the building, carefully guarded by Barry Richards, were the two young boys he had pulled out of the crowd this morning. "Did you ever spend time with the principal, Mulder?" A flash of amusement played across Mulder's face. "Believe it or not, Scully, I was a stranger to disciplinary action until I graduated from elementary school. What about you?" Scully smiled and shook her head slightly. A memory played suddenly through her mind - a choke of stolen cigarette smoke in her throat and a shudder of cool autumn air against her skin. Leaves, fading from red to brown and falling, skating around her feet. And the raw newness of it all - the fear and the tentativeness. And then it was gone, again. She shook her head a second time. "Do you ever wonder, Mulder?" "Wonder what?" "What divides who we are now from who we were then? When we change? Sometimes... I can almost remember what it was like, being ten. The way things felt, and looked... smelled..." Mulder shook his head. "What?" Scully said. "You don't remember, or you don't wonder?" A pause. "I remember," Mulder said. They sat in silence for several minutes. The buses filled and then moved on, carrying their shrieking, scuttling cargo. Mulder pulled out behind the last one. Two boys - a red jacket, a blue jacket - sat in the back seat of the bus, pounding on the window with their hands, waving peace signs and other signs at Mulder and Scully. End of Part 3 Sages (4/5) .......................................................................... The road turned left at the shopping center, and moved past the parking lot and the dry cleaners into sudden open land. And again, the apple trees. "This must be another way into Nelson Orchards," Mulder said. As if in confirmation, they passed a large, white cinderblock warehouse stenciled with black letters: "Nelson Orchards Processing." This was the business end of the operation; there was nothing quaint or homey here. A wide cement driveway was lined with wooden palettes. Three loading docks broke the white wall, their sliding metal doors shut tight. Off to the right, where the cement turned to ground, stood a wide, tall stack of tree limbs, looking like fuel for a giant bonfire. There were three small houses near the warehouse, as well - modular homes that had been carried in by truck and planted in the soil. They sat facing each other, a tiny barracks in the midst of the apple fields. The trees ended suddenly, and the property line was marked by a high chain link fence topped by barbed wire. "There's Steely Road," Scully said. It ran through a small development of ranch houses. They looked the worse for wear; the paint was cracked and the siding old. Mulder pulled into the driveway of a small, once-pink house. He and Scully stepped out into the afternoon sunshine. From somewhere behind the house came a whooping noise. It was followed by a group of four small children, who swarmed around the corner and toppled into Mulder's legs and into each other. Scully smiled as, one by one, Mulder and the children set out to regain their balance. "Hi," she said to the biggest of the children, a girl who appeared to be no older than four or five. The girl stared at her blankly. Her hair fell in serpentine curls around her face. Her nose ran; she wiped it on the dirty sleeve of her yellow jacket. "We're looking for Kenny Quinlan," Scully tried again. "Is he here?" The girl pointed to the house. "He's our brother." And with that, the children were off again. They scrambled over the hard snow, scrabbling over a lumber pile before rounding the house again and disappearing from view. Kenny Quinlan called for them to come in. He stood looking out the back window of the house. He didn't move to approach Mulder and Scully as they entered. "You the FBI people?" he asked. "Yes," Mulder answered. "How did you know?" "My mother called me. She works down at the sub shop across from the school. She saw you there. Did you come to arrest me?" "Kenny," Mulder said. "We don't arrest people unless we think they knowingly committed a crime. We just need to know what was in that food you gave the other kids. We're trying to stop this from happening again." The boy looked out across the greying snow of his backyard. Through the window, Scully could see the four small children, climbing in and out of a huge cardboard box - their windfall from someone's purchase of a new refrigerator. Kenny turned from the window and sat down at a small table. He was a small boy, for his age, and his body seemed smaller in the baggy clothes he wore, under the ragged, snaking curls of his uncropped hair. "I don't know what that stuff was," Kenny said. "My brother Mikey gave it to me. It was some kind of powder in a bottle. He got it last fall, when he was working with the apple pickers. " "The apple pickers?" "Yeah. Those guys who come around in the fall. They don't stay here - at least most of them. They go back south until next year. They're like migrating workers or something. "Migrant workers?" "Yeah, whatever." "What did they tell your brother this powder was?" "Well, the guy said it was some kind of special herb that the natives used. It made stuff taste really good. " "Did you believe that story?" "Mmm... sort of." "Did you try this stuff yourself?" "No." "Why not?" Kenny Quinlan turned toward them. He looked at the floor; his face was frightened. "Mikey said it was like... bad for minors or something. Like cigarettes or beer." "But you've had beer." Kenny looked up quickly; he neither nodded nor shook his head. "But those guys told my brother that this stuff would kill you if you weren't old enough to have it." Mulder glanced at Scully. "So what you're saying is that this was some kind of herb that came from the Indians--" "No, not the Indians." "But you said..." "I said the natives. But not natives like Indians. You know... natives from wherever the apple pickers are from." "And where are they from, Kenny?" "I..." The boy thought for a minute. "I don't know." "Can we talk to your brother? Would he know more?" Kenny laughed, then frowned. "No." "Why not?" "Mikey took off, right after all this happened. We haven't heard from him since then. That's why I can't go to school; I have to watch the little kids, now - until my mother can find day care." "Kenny," Scully said. "Do you have any of this... this herb left?" "No," he said. "I threw it away. Into the woods, at the top of the orchard. Into the snow. I got scared." "And you don't know the names or locations of any of the men who gave it to your brother?" "No. They leave when the apples are gone. Except a couple of them stay and work for Mr. Nelson. They live in one of those houses right over the fence." Mulder nodded. "Kenny," Scully said as they moved to the door. "Why did you give something to your friends that you were afraid to take yourself?" The boy looked up; his face was grey. His voice shook when he spoke. "I don't know. I was stupid. I thought everything was just a story. And now it's like... no matter what I do I can't take it back. And I can't even remember how I could be so stupid." The Agawam Hotel was emptying as the evening deepened. The basketball players - in their bright team jackets - loaded bus after bus to go back to their homes with their trophies and their lingering hangovers. Mulder sprawled on his bed letting the flicker of the TV news wash over him. Scully glanced up from her computer to see him gazing blankly ahead, a hamburger in one hand and a remote in the other. "Still tired, Mulder?" He stretched his shoulders and punched off the TV. "Yeah, I guess so," he said, picking up the hamburger and taking another bite. "Are you finding anything?" "Well," Scully said. "I don't know what we did before the Internet, Mulder. You wouldn't believe how many individual researchers have posted the PET results of their brain research. Saves a lot of time at the library." "Anything noteworthy?" "I'm not sure. But there is something strange here." Mulder rose from the bed and pulled a chair up next to Scully's. Scully clicked on a bookmarked website. "Scully," Mulder said. "The Magic Mushroom Enlightenment Page?" "Yes, I know it sounds... off the beaten path. But listen to this." Scully scrolled down through paragraphs of text until she hit upon one that was highlighted. She read it aloud. "The use of organic hallucinogens is common and legal in many cultures. Recent studies have allowed researchers in these countries to map brain-function changes which occur during the use of hallucinogens." "So what do they find?" "See for yourself." Scully scrolled again, and the now-familiar images appeared on the screen - brain scans in bright colors. These came in sets of three; the images were labeled "before use" "during use" and "after use." "The 'before' image," Scully said, "Is what we would expect. The 'after' image is, also. But the image taken while the brain was affected by hallucinogens..." Scully pointed. Mulder studied the images. "It shows the same patterns as the PETs of the victims in Children's Hospital," he said. Scully nodded. "This man's thesis - the thesis of the book he's trying to sell through this website, incidentally - is that ritual hallucinogens put the users on a transcendent plane of experience. And that they should be legalized for the overall improvement of society." "The assumption being that the altered state is an improvement." "Of course, it's a shaky conclusion at best." Mulder rubbed his chin in his hand. "The unbiased reporting notwithstanding," he said, "Do you think that those kids could have been given some sort of organic hallucinogen?" "It's my best guess," Scully said. "If they were given something that was so powerful it didn't allow their brain function to return to normal after the drug wore off... we might be seeing long-term, lingering effects of the chemical." "And Matt Calvin?" "A smaller dose, maybe. Or... Kenny Quinlan said that this substance, whatever it was, is dangerous to minors. Maybe Matt's body was more mature, somehow able to metabolize the chemical differently." Mulder nodded. "That would explain why we have no adult victims. It's possible that adults could use the same drug with no ill effect." "And if migrant workers carried this into the country, it would explain why it isn't common to our medical literature, yet." "I'd like to speak to the workers who live at Nelson Orchards," Mulder said. "They might be able to give us some information." "All right," Scully said. "But I've set up an appointment with Dr. Nichols at Catholic Medical Center, too. I think he'll be very interested in those PET results." The children at Catholic Medical Center were still and quiet and unchanged. One of them - the girl whose mother had called the priest - had been moved out of the ICU and into a private room. The two boys still lay in their beds behind the glass viewing window, one visited by a man, the other by an old woman. Scully stood by the windows, watching the still bodies of the young people who lay there. Mulder sat in the corner, facing away from her, next to Dr. Nichols, who was busy at a computer. The old man looked up, shook his head, and turned to Scully. "These are the brain scans of the children they took to Boston?" he asked, incredulously. "Yes. Why? Do they surprise you?" Scully asked. "I... Yes. I've them before. Wait here a minute." The doctor moved from his seat at the computer station. He returned in a moment with an armful of medical journals. "Here," he said. "I knew I'd seen those images before." "The 'Journal of Gerontological Research?'" Scully asked. "Yes," said Dr. Nichols. "I've been following the research on aging fairly closely. When you begin to see signs of it in yourself, it becomes rather more... urgent... to understand what is happening." Scully smiled and looked at him steadily. "I'm eighty-two," he said. "People wonder." Then he looked back down at the journals he had spread out on the table. "One of the biggest areas of research today is brain aging. Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's... people are living longer, and these diseases are becoming far more common. With our new technology we can understand the process much better. Each disease has its own pathology, naturally. But the healthy brain also undergoes predictable changes - at least among the eldest of the elderly. The literature calls them the 'old old.' Look at what their brain scans show." He flipped open one journal, then another and another. The glossy pages showed image after image of brain after brain - all showing the clear changes in color and pattern that they had seen among the children in Tyngsboro, in Holden. Mulder shook his head slowly. "Do you think the aging process somehow prompts this change?" he asked. "No," Dr. Nichols said. "I think this change is result of the aging process. But it's a result of many other processes, too. There's a doctor who's doing work with the victims of post-traumatic stress disorder. He's getting the same results with his patients. And, believe it or not..." The doctor flipped through his journals and pulled out a well-worn copy from the bottom of the pile. "Here," he continued, "is a study done on Buddhist monks in Tibet. This researcher has found very similar changes in brain functioning among the monks - in numbers far exceeding what he's found in the general population." "Buddhist monks," Mulder said, shaking his head slowly. "Yes," said Dr. Nichols. "Welcome to the mystery of the human mind." Mulder was silent behind the wheel of the car. "Well," Scully said. "Those children in Tyngsboro might have taken organic hallucinogens. But I doubt that they had much in common with Buddhist monks." Mulder glanced at her. "What do all those groups have in common? The very old, victims of extreme stress, Buddhist monks, and users of hallucinogens?" "You've got me, Mulder. What do all those groups have in common?" There was a pause and Scully watched her partner. He raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders slightly. "I don't know." Another pause. "I was thinking about those boys in the hospital," Scully said. "That's a load of guilt for Kenny Quinlan to be carrying around for the rest of his life. I wonder what he said to convince those kids to eat those brownies." "Not much, I'd guess." "You think they'd take that risk, without good reason?" "I think the risk is the reason. It's forbidden fruit, Scully. Pandora's box. The thing we don't know - the thing we can't have - is the thing we want most." They fell back into silence. Scully thought again of the day of the stolen cigarettes. She remembered the flush of excitement and the choke of smoke in the cool air. How the smoke had tasted when it hit her throat. How she had burned her fingers, fumbling. How she had walked home through the colorless leaves - smug, knowing. How she had lain awake, later - tired but sleepless, holding her first heavy secret in the dark. She blinked the memory away and looked out the window of the car. End of Part 4 Sages (5/5) ............................ The road gave way to the field and now-familiar orchard. Mulder turned off into the back entry of Nelson Orchards. It was busy now; the loading docks were backed by trucks and the gates of the processing building were wide open. Mulder and Scully moved to the tiny, identical houses that sat nearby. Scully climbed the two steps leading to the front door of the first one. It was empty. She knocked at the second with no answer. The third house was marked with a small, hand-printed sign. "Pinsonneault." When Scully knocked, the door was answered by a dark-skinned woman. Her black curling hair was bound in a thick braid. She held a sleeping baby in her arms. "We're with the FBI, Ma'am," Scully said. "May we come inside?" The woman's eyes went wide, then narrowed. "You with immigration? We're legal. We got our papers." The voice was defiant and carried a trace of accent. Scully tried to put the face and the accent together. Caribbean. From the Islands, somewhere. "No," Scully said. "Nothing like that. We're investigating the deaths of some of the local children." The woman's face softened, and she stepped back from the door. "I knew someone would come sooner or later," she said. Mulder glanced at Scully. They entered the house. "What did you mean," Mulder said, "You knew someone would come eventually?" "I mean, with all that trouble last fall, and then those children. I knew someone would come to talk to us about that." "What trouble last fall?" Mulder asked. The woman gestured for them to sit down. She laid the baby on the cushion of a chair; he settled in quietly. "About that Gustave and Michael Quinlan." Scully and Mulder looked at the woman blankly. She leaned forward. "Last fall. We had a man working the orchards. His name was Gustave. Just come here after being back home a long time. He said he needed the money. He took up friends with Michael Quinlan - the boy who lives on the other side of the fence. A nasty boy. We don't like him. And Gustave came to no good end. Michael Quinlan was coming around, at nights, looking for Gustave, and Gustave didn't want to see him. Then one day Gustave ended up dead and Michael Quinlan was gone. The end." "How did Gustave die?" Scully asked. "They said he fell onto his knife. But I think different." "Why?" "That Michael Quinlan - he was always after Gustave. Wanted his help. Wanted to know things." "What sort of things?" Scully asked. The woman's eyes moved from Scully to Mulder and back. "Things that will sound crazy, to you." Scully smiled and Mulder laughed openly. "Ma'am," Mulder said, "We've seen some things that seem crazy. Believe us." The woman relaxed a little, and settled into her chair. "Back on the island, Gustave was involved in. there is no word in English. A religion. No. a cult? This group of people, they believe that they have ancient spells. To make your enemies leave you alone. To bring luck to your children. To help you see." Mulder caught Scully's eye. "Do you believe that those spells work?" he asked. "Not the spells, no," the woman said. "But they have more than spells. They have ritual foods, too - and drugs. Strange drugs that no one understands." "Gustave had these drugs?" Mulder asked. "Yes. Something strange. I saw the bottles in his things. And Michael Quinlan found out, and wanted them. He was wanting Gustave to tell him things that he shouldn't know. Gustave told him no, loud, and then Gustave fell on his knife." "Did you report your suspicions to the authorities?" Scully asked. "Yes," the woman said. "They heard me, but they dismissed me. They said there was no sign of murder. But you know, we are new here, from far away. They will not take our side." "Mrs. Pinsonneault," Scully said. "How do you think this is related to what happened to those children?" "It was the food from Gustave's. cult. I have heard stories from the other workers. What Gustave had - it is not to be eaten. It is not right that he had it." Scully moved one step closer to the woman. "Where is Gustave from?" she asked. "Where is his family from? It might be very important for helping the children who got sick." The woman shrugged and moved to check on the baby, who was awake now, and mewling. "I saved the newspaper article. That tells most of what we know about him. He was a migrant. He came this time from Haiti but before that from somewhere else." The woman moved with the baby on her hip. She lifted a glass jar from side table, and pulled out a slip of paper that lay underneath. "Here it is," she said. She handed the paper to Mulder. His face took on a look of subtle astonishment. "Look at this, Scully," he said. The article had been relegated to page 13A. The small caption read: "Local Worker Dies Unexpectedly." A grainy photograph had been printed. A black man in his thirties. A stranger. But the eyes that looked out were familiar, and immediately recognizable. The name under the photograph was "Gustave Calvin." Matthew Calvin was alone, this time, when Mulder and Scully arrived at Julia Schaeffer's small house. Alone but for the cats. Six bodies scrambled away underfoot, and Mulder nearly tripped as he tried to move through the crooked door. "You're back," Matt Calvin said. "Mr. Calvin," Mulder said. "Matthew. Tell us about your father." "Nothing to tell," came the voice in reply. "Left here a long time ago, and never came back to visit me or Jon in four years." "Did you know he had died?" The boy turned and looked at Mulder. His face was unchanged: eyes still steady, movements still measured. "I didn't know that." Mulder passed him the obituary. The boy sank into the futon as he read the text. "I didn't know he had come back," he said at last. "I lost track after he left Haiti. I didn't know. Tyngsboro. Where those other people got sick." "Yes," Scully said. Matthew looked up at her with clear eyes. Scully thought for a minute how tired he looked, and yet how unchanged. As if he could not be marked by this news. Mulder sat down next to the boy. The man. "Matthew," he said. "What was your father doing? How was he involved in both sets of illness? What did he give these children?" Matt Calvin smiled slowly. "No. He didn't give them anything." "But you know what it was," Scully said. The room was silent. Scully watched the still, young face of Matt Calvin as he pulled his eyes from hers to Mulder's. At last he looked back at Scully, looked hard. "He's dead now. They can't do anything now." Scully nodded in affirmation. Matt Calvin sighed. "My father was.... I used to think he was crazy. He was always talking to my mother, about going back to Haiti, and going back to Africa. He'd lived all over, you know? So she'd try to understand him, but she couldn't. When I was small, and he would be home, I would go out, away, on long walks. To get away from him. I could never understand him. My mother and me - we loved him, but we couldn't understand him. I thought he was crazy." "But now you don't?" The man smiled slightly. "Crazy? No. No. My father wasn't crazy. He saw things. He knew things." "How?" Mulder asked. Matt Calvin stepped through a pool of cats, walked to the kitchen and then returned to the living room. He handed Mulder a tiny jar - an ampule. Mulder glanced at it and passed it to Scully. "My father always used to keep these around." Calvin said. "He got them somewhere - I don't know. From his cousins or his uncles or somewhere. They were from his family. They would have come to us, when we were ready. My father protected us. We knew he had secret things we shouldn't touch. There were books and letters. And these. But Jon had to know. He always had to know things." Matt Calvin's eyes were distant, now. "What happened, Matthew?" Scully asked. The man shook his head. "Jon got into my father's things," he said. "He took the books and the spices, and he called us all down to the Farm Road. I knew it was wrong. But I wanted to know, too. So when he gave me the stuff to eat, I took it." He paused and inhaled deeply. "I remember feeling hurt - but not in my body, in my mind. Worse than when my father left, worse than when I was being beaten up at school. Like a thousand bad things all at once. And then I woke up in the hospital, and I was skinny and weak - I couldn't even walk for two weeks - and Jon was gone. But I'm still here. I'm still here." The man shrugged slightly and moved to the bookshelf. He pulled down a paperback volume and handed it to Mulder. "The Poetry of William Blake," Mulder read. "That book has my father's favorite poem," Matt Calvin said. "And my favorite. You should read it. The page is marked." Mulder looked at the slim volume, then looked back at the man standing before him. "What did your brother do, Matthew? What did he take from your father?" Scully glanced at the vial in her hands. She shook it. It was dry, clean, empty. She read the tiny label, scrolled with tiny, cramped handwriting. Her eyes took in the French word. "Sagesse." "Wisdom," Matt Calvin said. The road was quiet, now. Mulder sat in the passenger seat, holding the glass vial in one hand and the paperback book in the other. Scully drove quickly, familiar now with the curves and climbing slopes of this place. "What you're proposing," she said, "Is a biochemical explanation of personality." "It's not a new theory," Mulder said. "We know what hallucinogens do to the personality. We know what brain injury can do. What if the old and the enlightened become wise not because of what they've learned - but because what they've learned has changed their brains in some way? In some way that this chemical mimics?" Scully sighed and watched the road ahead of her. The slanted sun was blinding on the fields of shallow snow; she squinted into it. "What does Matt Calvin's poem say, Mulder?" Mulder opened the book and shuffled the pages loosely. The binding was bent in one place; the pages fell open. "What is the price of Experience? Do men buy it for a song? Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price Of all that a man hath, his house, his wife, his children. Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy." Mulder watched her face intently. "Do you believe that? That this drug gave the children wisdom? That the wisdom killed them?" "I think Matt Calvin believes it." "He's young, Mulder." "Every culture tells this story, Scully. Pandora looks in the box, and evil is unleashed upon the world. Pain is the price for knowledge. Suffering for wisdom." "But literally, Mulder?" Scully said. "Physically?" Mulder signed and looked down at the glass vial in his hands. He shrugged his shoulders. It was late afternoon as they drove into the front entrance of Nelson Orchards, as they came for the second time to the gardens and the tree-lined hill. Scully parked the car near the entrance to the warehouse. "There's Matt Calvin," Scully said, pointing to the storefront. They stepped from the car. The younger man moved toward them. "We're glad you came," Scully said. Matthew Calvin shrugged. "I want to talk to the people who knew my father. And help you see if you can recover any of his. things." Scully nodded. "Jay McNally and Kenny Quinlan said they'd meet us at the top of the hill," she said. The orchard was different in this light, awash in the blues of late afternoon. Scully touched Mulder's shoulder and pointed below, again, to the children on their colored sleds, riding down in waves of howling, chirping, careless joy. They came to the top of the hill. Jay McNally stood by the stone wall near the oldest tree. Kenny Quinlan sat on the stones. "Kenny," said Mulder. "You told us you could show us where you threw that bottle of powder? It may be the only sample we can get. The only thing that tells us for certain what happened to your friends." "I can try," said Kenny. "But with the snow, it might be hard." The boy walked through a gap in the wall, into the unpruned, wild overgrowth of trees. "I came over here," he said. "One of the Jennifers grabbed the baking pan from me, and threw it into the fire. She was screaming at me. 'Look what you did! Look what you did!' So I got scared, and I ran towards the woods. Right over here. I threw the bottle as hard as I could. That way. Over that way." He pointed into the trees, into the dark trunks and the beginnings of woods. Scully looked at Mulder. He shrugged and walked toward the trees, weaving left to right and staring at the ground. Scully moved among the light and shadows of the tree trunks until she could hardly see snow anymore, or sticks, or gathered leaves. She scanned the ground and heard the snapping and grinding of the feet of her companions. The search went on for an hour or more. Now and again Scully came back to the clear field, so that she would know where she was, so that she wouldn't get lost in the overgrowth. Her fourth time out, she looked up past the stone wall and realized that the day had fallen into evening, that the air was growing cold and damp. Down on the slope of the hill, the children were walking away, dragging their sleds with them down to waiting cars and parents. Their black silhouettes moved small against the last orange of the lowering sun. Kenny Quinlan and Jay McNally were standing in the orchard, among the pruned trees. One of their voices rang up to Scully. "We can't see anything. We're going home." Scully waved them off and settled herself against the grey stones. She watched the figures of the two boys tumble and jostle down the slope, move back into the fields that would be careful gardens in a few months. She sat on the wall between the tended ground and the wild, and waited for Mulder. And he came, a few minutes later, finding his way out of the woods more quickly than Matt Calvin. He stood grey, blending into the night-blackened tree trunks. He waved at her. She crossed to meet him. "We won't find it," she said quietly. "I know," Mulder answered, leaning against the old tree. Scully looked up at his face, at the drawn lines and the familiar shadows there - the same shadows that were mirrored in her own face, now. They stood in silence for a time. "Do you think it's a fair bargain, Scully?" Mulder asked. "What's that?" she said. "The things we trade for the things we know." She didn't answer him. She looked down through the blue-grey orchards and watched the last of the children leaving, rushing to be home before dark. She heard the distant, whispered echo of someone calling her into safety from the cold. It slipped past her and disappeared. She shivered and lifted her hand to rest it on Mulder's rough sleeve. She brushed her fingers against his warmth. From the bottom of the hill came the voice of some child, unrestrained and shrieking, marking a last goodbye to the day. The night moved in, colorless and still. The snow glistened pale on the fields. The voice of Matthew Calvin drifted down from the darkness. Scully and Mulder turned to look for him. They walked out of the garden and into the wild place beyond. End Feedback is cherished and appreciated. Seriously. I've got a fanfic feedback folder. I read it when I have a bad day at work. Kipler@aol.com