Текст книги "X Files: Fight the Future"

Автор книги: Chris Carter

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CHAPTER 11

INTENSIVE CARE UNIT

GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER

WASHINGTON, D.C.

^T think he's coming out…"

JL "He is—he's coming to!"

"Hey, Mulder…"

In his bed, Mulder blinked painfully. It hurt even to think about opening his eyes, so for a long time he didn't; he only lay there listening to the voices above him. Men's voices, vaguely familiar.

"Mulder… ?"

He opened his eyes. Above him, ringed by hospital lights and banks of monitoring equip-ment, three faces were framed by the ceiling. "Oh god…" Mulder moaned.

Langly shook his head, his long hair falling in his face. "What's wrong?" Beside him the diminutive Frohike and Byers, courtly as ever, gazed at the agent in concern.

"Tin Man," Mulder whispered in amaze-ment, staring first at Byers, then Langly. "Scarecrow—"

He raised his head slightly, indicating Frohike. "—Toto." He winced, then sat up, gingerly rubbing his face and frowning at the bandage there. "What am I doing here?"

"You were shot in the head," Byers explained in a low voice. "The bullet broke the flesh on your right brow and glanced off your temporal plate."

Mulder ran a finger over the bandage. "Penetration but not perforation," he said woozily.

Langly nodded. "Three centimeters to the left and we'd all be playing harps."

"They gave you a craniotomy to relieve the pressure from a subdural hematoma," Byers went on. "But you've been unconscious since they brought you in."

"Your guy Skinner's been with you around the clock," said Frohike.

Langly broke in, "We got the news and made a trip to your apartment. Found a bug in your phone line—"

To illustrate, Byers dangled a minuscule microphone in front of Mulder's face.

" And one in your hall," Frohike added. He held up a small vial containing a bumblebee.

Mulder stared at it, eyes widening as his memory flooded back. "Scully had a violent reaction to a bee sting—"

"Right," said Byers. "And you called 911. Except that call was intercepted."

Mulder shook his head. "They took her—"

He pushed the covers off, moving shakily as he tried to swing his legs to the ground. As he did so, the door to his room opened a bit. Assistant Director Walter Skinner peeked in, his expression changing from concern to sur-prise when he saw Mulder standing up.

"Agent Mulder!"

Mulder looked up, nearly losing his balance in the process. "Where's Scully?" he asked thickly.

Langly grabbed his shoulder to keep him from falling.

Skinner came into the room, carefully shutting the door behind him. He crossed to Mulder's side and regarded him for a long moment before saying flatly, "She's missing. We've been unable to locate her or the vehicle they took her in."

"Whoever they are—" Mulder's voice shook, and Langly tightened his hold on him protectively.

"—this goes right back to Dallas. It goes right back to the bombing."

Skinner nodded. "I know." At Mulder's stunned look he went on, "Agent Scully reported your suspicions to OPR. On the basis of her report, I sent techs over to SAC Michaud's apartment. They picked up PETN residues on his personal affects—and analysis showed the residue was consistent with the construction of the vending machine device in Dallas."

Mulder sat back down on the bed, his head reeling. "How deep does this go?"

"I don't know."

For a minute Mulder just sat there, taking it all in. When he lifted his head again, he saw a figure momentarily framed in the small win-dow of the room door. A man in a suit, casting a furtive glance in to where Mulder, Skinner, and the Lone Gunmen were gathered. The stranger stared at them, then hurried off. Mulder quickly turned back to Skinner.

"Are we being watched?"

"I'm not taking any chances."

Mulder nodded. He pulled tentatively at the bandage on his head, grimaced and then peeled it away, revealing the still-livid wound. He tossed the bandage away and looked at one of the Lone Gunmen. "I need your clothes, Byers."

Byers started. "Me?"

Skinner frowned. "What are you doing, Agent Mulder?"

Already Mulder was undoing his hospital gown, angling himself behind Frohike as he ducked toward the bathroom. "I've got to find Scully."

"Do you know where she is?" asked Frohike.

"No." Mulder dropped his hospital gown and motioned anxiously at Byers. "But I know someone who might have an answer…"

"Who better," he ended with grim determi-nation, as reluctantly Byers began to remove his clothes.

A short while later the door to Mulder's room opened. First Langly and then Frohike stepped out into the corridor, glancing around nervously as behind them a third figure appeared, clad in Byers's jacket and natty tie. Standing a few feet away, his back to them, a man in a suit leaned against the wall reading a newspaper. As they started down the hall the man in the suit looked up. He glanced at them, then casually turned and drifted toward Mulder's room, his eyes revealing his suspicions as he peered through the little glass window.

Inside, tucked into the hospital bed with the sheets pulled up to his nose, a figure lay motionless.

Beside him Walter Skinner stood talking on the phone. The man in the suit stared at the bed, frowning, then turned to look back down the hall again.

At the end of the corridor the three men walked quickly, Langly and Frohike flanking Mulder. As they rounded the corner Frohike covertly passed him a cell phone. Without hesita-tion, Mulder punched in Dr. Kurtzweil's number.

CHAPTER 12

CASEY'S BAR

SOUTHEAST WASHINGTON, D.C.

In the dark alley behind Casey's, Alvin Kurtzweil waited anxiously, scanning the night for any sign of Fox Mulder. When he saw no sign of him, he turned and started back for the door, reaching for the knob. He twisted it and stepped inside, and came up short against a sparely elegant man in a cashmere overcoat, his hands raised in mock surprise and delight to find Kurtzweil there.

"Dr. Kurtzweil, isn't it? Dr Alvin Kurtzweil?"

"Jesus Christ…" Kurtzweil gasped and reached behind him for the door. He glanced around fearfully, trying to edge back outside, but the Well-Manicured Man only smiled.

"You're surprised. But certainly you've been expecting some response to your indiscretion…"

Kurtzweil shook his head furiously. "I didn't tell him anything."

"I'm quite sure that whatever you told Agent Mulder, you have your good reasons," the other man said evenly. "It's a weakness in men our age: the urge to confess." He paused, then added, "I have much to confess myself."

Kurtzweil stared at him, confused by his words and serene tone. Finally he blurted, "What are you doing here? What do you want from me?"

"I'd hoped to try and help you understand. What I'm here to do, is to try and protect my children.

That's all. You and I have but short lives left. I can only hope that the same isn't true for them."

He stood quite calmly and held the door open, as if in invitation. Kurtzweil stood there for a moment, as though considering the other man's words; then suddenly bolted, pushing past him and back into the alley. He ran toward the street, but had gone only a few paces when headlights blinded him. A town car pulled into the alley, accelerating as it roared down the narrow corridor. Kurtzweil stopped, panting, and squinted at the approaching car. He turned to stare with terrified eyes at the man still standing calmly in the doorway.

Fox Mulder barreled through the front door of Casey's, looking around frenziedly for Kurtz-weil. The bar was crowded, more people than he'd ever seen there. He elbowed past them, pausing to get his bearings and peer vainly through the dim room. There was no sign of Kurtzweil anywhere. Mulder sighed, ran his hand through his hair, and hurriedly made his way to the back to the doctor's usual booth.

It was empty. Mulder sucked his breath in, fighting real panic. He turned and ran to the dank hallway where the bathrooms were, edg-ing by a knot of laughing women, and burst out into the alley.

"Shit," he whispered.

A town car sat idling on the cobblestone pavement. At its rear, a tall, beautifully dressed man and his uniformed driver were arranging something in the car's trunk. As Mulder stared, they closed the trunk.

The elegant man looked up, and said in greeting, "Mr. Mulder."

Mulder's hands clenched. "What happened to Kurtzweil?"

The Well-Manicured Man shrugged off-handedly. "He's come and gone."

He started toward Mulder and Mulder backed away, still breathing hard. "Where's Scully?"

The Well-Manicured Man stopped a few feet in front of him. He took in Mulder's shoes, the too-short trousers and ill-fitting jacket bor-rowed from Byers. After a moment he looked up and said, "I have answers for you."

"Is she alive?"

"Yes." The Well-Manicured Man hesitated, then said, "I'm quite prepared to tell you every-thing, though there isn't much you haven't already guessed."

Mulder's throat felt tight. "About the con-spiracy?"

"I think of it as an agreement," the other man said lightly. "A word your father liked to use."

Mulder took a step toward him. "I want to know where Scully is."

The Well-Manicured Man nodded. Mulder tensed as he reached into his jacket pocket, and removed a thin envelope of dark-green felt. The Well-Manicured Man weighed it in his palm, then said, "The location of Agent Scully. And the means to save her life. Please—"

He gestured toward the car, where the driver stood holding the back door open. Mulder hesitated, then stepped toward it. He moved past the Well-Manicured Man and slid into the seat. The older man got in after him and closed the door. He motioned at the driver, and the town car pulled away.

Mulder sat bolt upright, looking guardedly from the man beside him to the driver, who returned his gaze in the rearview mirror. Without a word, the Well-Manicured Man handed Mulder the small felt envelope.

"What is it?" Mulder asked.

"A weak vaccine against the virus Agent Scully has been infected with. It must be administered within ninety-six hours."

Mulder stared at him, then at the felt enve-lope in his hand. "You're lying."

"No." The Well-Manicured Man stared broodingly out the tinted window. "Though I have no way to prove otherwise. The virus is extraterrestrial. We know very little about it, except that it is the original inhabitant of this planet."

Mulder looked dubious. "A virus?'

"A simple, unstoppable life form. What is a virus, but a colonizing force that cannot be defeated?

Living in a cave underground, until it mutates. And attacks."

"This is what you've been trying to con-ceal?" Mulder no longer tried to keep the con-tempt from his voice. "A disease?"

"No!" exploded the Well-Manicured Man. "For god's sake, you've got it all backward—

"AIDS, the Ebola virus—on an evolution-ary scale, they are newborns. This virus walked the planet long before the dinosaurs."

Mulder scowled. "What do you mean, 'walked'?"

"Your aliens, Agent Mulder. Your little green men—they arrived here millions of years ago. Those that didn't leave have been lying dormant underground since the last Ice Age, in the form of an evolved pathogen. Just waiting to be reconstituted when the alien race returns to colonize the planet. And using us as hosts. Against this we have no defense. Nothing but a weak vaccine…"

He paused and stared pointedly at Mulder, who finally looked shaken. "Do you see why it was kept secret, Agent Mulder? Why even the best men—men like your father—could not let the truth be known?

Until Dallas, we believed the virus would simply control us. That mass infection would make us a slave race."

"That's why you bombed the building," said Mulder slowly. "The infected firemen… the boy…"

The Well-Manicured Man nodded grimly. "Imagine our surprise when they began to ges-tate. My group has been working cooperatively with the alien colonists, facilitating programs like the one you saw.

To gain access to the virus, in hope that we might secretly develop a cure."

"To save yourselves," broke in Mulder.

The Well-Manicured Man shrugged. "When war is futile, victory consists of merely staying alive.

Survival is the ultimate ideology." He hesitated, then gave Mulder a cool smile. "Your father wisely refused to believe this."

"My father sacrificed my sister!" cried Mulder angrily. "He let them take Samantha—"

"No." For a moment the Well-Manicured Man looked almost sorrowful. "Without a vac-cination, the only true survivors of the viral holocaust would be those immune to it: human/alien clones. He aUowed your sister to be abducted, to be taken to a cloning program. For one reason."

"So she'd survive," Mulder breathed in sud-den understanding. "As a genetic hybrid…"

The Well-Manicured Man nodded. "Your father chose hope over selfishness. Hope in the only future he had: his children. His hope for you, Agent Mulder, was that you would uncover the truth about the Project. That you would do everything you could to stop it–

"That you would fight the future."

He fell silent. On the other side of the backseat, Mulder sat stunned, feeling as though all at once his destiny had been validated, or maybe simply justified. "Why are you telling me this?" he said at last.

The Well-Manicured Man stared at his hands for a long time before replying. "For the sake of my own children. Nothing more, noth-ing less. Once they learn what I've told you, my life will be over."

He raised his head, and Mulder looked up to see the driver staring back at them from the rearview mirror. At their notice he quickly brought his attention back to the road, and Mulder asked, "What happened to Dr. Kurtzweil?"

"His knowledge became too great for his indiscretion. As your father knew, some things need to be sacrificed to the future."

Mulder stared at the other man's impassive face and suddenly realized the truth of it.

"You—you murdered him," Mulder said in shocked disbelief. When the Well-Manicured Man said nothing, Mulder grabbed his door handle. "Let me out. Stop the car."

The Well-Manicured Man gestured at the front seat. "Driver…"

Slowly the limo pulled to a stop. Outside the street was empty, lit only by a single yellow crime light.

There were no houses, no people, only an abandoned gas station flanked by sev-eral rusting Dumpsters.

Mulder jimmied the handle. It was locked. He whirled to challenge his captor, and found himself looking down at a handgun resting carefully, almost casually, on the other man's leg. Its barrel was aimed directly at Mulder's chest.

"The men I work with will stop at nothing to clear the way for what they believe is their stake in the inevitable future," the Well-Manicured Man said as Mulder recoiled. "I was ordered to kill Dr.

Kurtzweil."

Mulder backed against the door as in one fluid motion the other man lifted the gun. "—as I was ordered to kill you." But before Mulder could cry out, the Well-Manicured Man whirled and shot the driver in the head.

Blood spattered the front windshield and Agent Mulder's jacket. He gasped, still trying to comprehend what had just happened, and stared horrified at the man holding the gun beside him. "Trust no one, Mr. Mulder," said the Well-Manicured Man matter-of-factly. Mulder looked at him, expecting to be next. But the Well-Manicured Man only opened the door and stepped from the town car. He stood in the desolate street and held the door open for Mulder, who was still frozen in his seat.

"Get out of the car, Agent Mulder."

"Why? The upholstery is already ruined."

"Get out."

Taking a deep breath, Mulder joined him on the asphalt. He looked down at the felt envelope in his hand. The Well-Manicured Man stared at him with an intensely somber look, still grasping the handgun.

"You have precious little time, Agent Mulder. What I've given you—the alien colonists don't know it exists… yet. You have in your hand the power to end the Project. To take what is most valuable from them."

"I need to know how—" Mulder cried.

"The vaccine you hold is the only defense against the virus. Its introduction into the alien environment may have the power to destroy the delicate plans we've so assiduously protected for the last fifty years."

"May?" Mulder clutched the envelope and shook his head. "What do you mean may?"

"Find Agent Scully. Only then will you realize the scope and grandeur of the Project.

And why you must save her. Because only her science can save you."

Mulder stared at him, waiting for more. But the Well-Manicured Man only pointed down the street.

"Go."

Mulder started to protest, but the other man raised the gun and pointed it at him.

"Go now!"

Mulder did. Walking quickly away from the car, then hastening into a run, looking back over his shoulder as he fled. Behind him the Well-Manicured Man stood watching him for a moment; then turned and got back into the car. He shut the door, and Mulder had the faintest glimpse of movement behind the tinted glass. Seconds later, the car exploded.

Mulder's voice was drowned by the roar of flames shooting up from the vehicle. The impact wave knocked him to the ground. He lost his grip on the precious envelope and it briefly flew from his hand into the darkness. Gasping, he struggled to his feet, and reached out for the little dark-green rectangle, its con-tents spilling onto the street. The light from the blazing car touched what was there: a syringe; small glass ampule, miraculously undamaged; and a tiny piece of paper with numbers meticulously written on it.

BASE 1

south83°00Lat. east 63° 00 Long. 326 feet

Mulder picked up the envelope and its con-tents.

CHAPTER 13

POLE OF INACESSIBILI.TY

ANTARCTICA

48 HOURS LATER

The ice was so vast and colorless that it blended into the sky, so that there was only white: endless, eternal, terrible. White and devastating cold. Inside the cab of the snow tractor, Mulder's breath turned to vapor thick and white as smoke. Ice crystals formed where several days' worth of beard had sprung out upon his face, coating the edges of his mouth and eyes. Even with the heat blasting inside the cabin, he could barely feel his hands inside their heavy gloves, resting awkwardly on the wheel. He hunched over the controls, focusing all of his energy on what lay before him. The tractor crawled on across the harsh frozen land like an insect, leaving parallel lines behind it to mark its tortured journey across the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf.

Hours passed. In that land without night he lost all track of time, and with no land-marks—no buildings, no mountains, nothing but snow and ice—he grew fearful of losing his bearings as well. Finally he maneuvered the tractor to a stop, reached for the handheld Global Positioning Satellite monitor to check his position. He squinted as numbers scrolled across the GPS monitor's screen. They told him that he had reached his coordinates. Glancing at the dashboard, he saw that the gas gauge hovered just above

'E.' Looking out the front window, there was nothing but snow to see, nothing but white all the way to the hori-zon. He checked the GPS device one more time, then reached for the door latch and stepped outside.

Snow crunched underfoot, snow whirled around his head. In this forbidding environ-ment, even with the GPS device in his hand, he might as well be taking a space walk—without the security of a lifeline.

He trudged across the ice. The snow squall abated, and his footprints showed clearly behind him.

When he looked back at the snow tractor it looked very small and insubstantial against the endless vista of white ground and steely sky. He began a long, laboring ascent of a gentle grade, now and then sliding and catch-ing himself by digging hands or heels into the soft new snow. When he reached the top of the incline he dropped to his knees, instinctively ducking his head.

Below, spread out across the plain like some misplaced vision of a space colony, was an ice station surrounded by tractors and Sno-Cats and snowmobiles. Mulder pulled a pair of com-pact high-powered binoculars from his parka and scanned the domes and support vehicles, looking for signs of life. None, until he let his sight linger on the most distant dome.

"Bingo," he whispered.

There, jolting over the ice fields, was another snow tractor. It crept across the barren landscape toward the ice station, coming to a halt beside one of the domed buildings. For several minutes the vehicle sat there, and then a door opened on the dome and a man emerged wearing a parka and fur hat.

The man stood on the doorstep for a moment, his face obscured by a cloud of gray vapor. Then he tossed some-thing into the snow and walked to the vehicle.

The Cigarette-Smoking Man. Mulder watched as he yanked on the door of the snow tractor and clambered inside. The vehicle reversed, driving over its tracks in the snow, then slowly crawled off toward the far horizon.

Mulder drew the binoculars back from his eyes. He was breathing even harder now, more excitement than exertion, and had to force himself to sit for several minutes, to calm him-self for what was ahead.

Finally he pocketed the field glasses, stumbled to his feet, and started down the far side of the slope toward the ice station.

He moved cautiously and with effort, care-fully weighing each step before setting foot on the ice crust before him. When he reached the bottom of the slope he glanced furtively behind him, still unable to shake the fear of being fol-lowed; then turned and went on.

Mulder's gaze remained fixed on the domes. Ahead of him, the ice station very gradually grew larger as he approached, until the domes loomed up against the cloud-streaked sky. He had only a few hundred yards left to go, when with a cry he stumbled. Beneath one boot the ice crust gave way. There was an instant when the world seemed to trembled before him, the domes like huge bubbles floating atop a milky sea. Then the ice collapsed under him.

He fell, landing on his back. The surface beneath him was cold and hard and smooth. He lay there for a moment, grunting as he caught his breath and trying to determine if he'd broken anything. Pain shot through one arm, and the gun wound at his temple throbbed, but after a minute had passed he rolled over, wincing, and began figuring out where the hell he was.

He had fallen on some hard, narrow, metal-lic structure, like a catwalk or steel floor. Its dull black hue was in stark contrast to the dead-white of the ice that encased it. There were vents in the floor through which air blew.

Warm air only by the relative standards of the Antarctic; but when Mulder lifted his head to gaze upward he saw what had happened. The air had caused a bubble, an air pocket, to form beneath the ice: above him the ceiling had been carved into patterns corresponding to the vents below. Where he had fallen through, the ice had softened and melted enough that it at last gave way at his tread. He rose to his knees, the air from one of the vents blowing onto his face. The vent was open, with no protective grate or covering, and big enough for a man to crawl into. Mulder pulled off the hood of his parka and his gloves, and looked deep into the vent, then back up at the hole he'd fallen through. No way back up there, and nothing around him but solid ice. He gazed back at the vent.

It was his only choice. He took a deep breath, then pulled himself forward into the darkness.

Inside the vent was cold and pitch-black, its sides corrugated to give him easy purchase. He moved cautiously, feeling ahead of him as the ribbed corridor snaked downward, until a pinprick of light appeared. Several more min-utes of creeping and he had reached the end, another vent opening into god knows what. He squeezed through headfirst, grabbing at a small ledge that projected beneath him and with dif-ficulty maneuvered his legs until he could swing himself down and then onto the ground.

Mulder blinked and shoved his gloved hand into his pocket, fumbling until he with-drew a flashlight. It clicked on; he swept it up and down in front of him, revealing a terrifying landscape.

He stood in the middle of an endless corri-dor carved into the ice. To the left and right, as far as he could see, were tall glassy shapes, regu-larly spaced on both sides of the passageway, like ice coffins stood upright against the cavern walls. He trained the light on the corridor, marking where it curved off into the distance; turned and did the same in the other direction. Then he spun around and pointed it directly in front of him. Mulder reached to brush frost from the surface ice. He gasped at what he saw.

There was a man frozen in the ice. Naked, his eyes open and staring into some long-forgotten distance. His hair was long and dark and matted, his flattened features oddly inhu-man: broad nose with flared nostrils, pro-nounced brow ridge, lips drawn back to show yellowing peglike teeth. Drawing closer he could see that the man's flesh had the same weird translucence as that of the fireman in the morgue.

Mulder grimaced, then drew back in revulsion as he saw something inside the man: an embryonic creature with huge, oblique black eyes, frozen like its host.

Mulder turned and quickly paced down the dim ice corridor. Where it ended, dim light seeped through several low, arched openings. Mulder dropped to his knees to peer through, and saw before him a brief passage that widened into a sort of balcony. He bellied down on his stomach and pulled himself through the arch, grunting as he scraped against ice and metal. When he reached the other end, he poked his head out onto the bal-cony and gazed up in wonder.

All around him was space, sweeping to a domed ceiling almost inconceivably high above him. He looked down and fought a wave of vertigo; wherever the bottom was, it was at least as far away as the top. Very carefully he pulled himself out, until he crouched on the lip of the balcony—actually a ventilation port opening onto the empty center of the dome. All around him, circling the dome, were count-less other ports; hundreds of them, thousands. Shakily he got to his feet, steadying himself against the wall behind him, and gazed down to the floor of the dome. There, a large central theater glowed with an eerie intensity different from the pale light that emanated elsewhere in the vast space: an icy, almost livid, glow. Leading down to this central theater were sev-eral enormous tubular spokes. One of them angled up past Mulder, perhaps an arm's length away.

It took several minutes for all this to sink in. The scale was too immense, much huger than anything Mulder had ever seen, could even imagine seeing. But strangest and most terrifying of all was what he saw within that central space: row upon row of roughly man-sized pods, dark-colored, hanging in formation from long railings that extended into the dark-ness. He squinted, trying to figure out what they were, and where the seemingly endless rows led; while hundreds of feet above Mulder, another figure gazed in disbelief at what was before him. Within the heated cab of his Sno-Cat, the Cigarette-Smoking Man leaned for-ward to clear a spot on the foggy windshield. Behind him the outlines of the ice station could barely be seen; before him a vague shape grew more distinct, until at last he could see it clearly—

The snow tractor Mulder had abandoned on the ice.

For a long moment, the Cigarette-Smoking Man gazed at the tractor. Then, without a word, he turned his own vehicle, and as quickly as he could, he drove back to the base.

Beneath the ice, Mulder continued to peer into the dimness, tracing the rows of frozen objects in an attempt to determine their origin. As he did so, he noticed that in the furthest recesses of the dome, the rows appeared to be moving. The objects suspended from the rail-ings slid along slowly and rhythmically, one by one clicking into place as though part of some gargantuan machine. He blinked, trying to get a better view, and then saw what he had not noticed before.

On the floor hundreds of feet below him, and within the shadow of those moving rows, lay a discarded cryolitter. Its plastic top had been removed and lay discarded alongside it. Amidst the dull gray bulwarks and stark, com-manding architecture of the dome, it looked surprisingly small and frail, the sole artifact made to human scale. And because of that, it unsettled Mulder more than almost anything else he had seen.

His face grim, he tore his gaze away and once more stared at the long tubelike structure that rose a few feet behind him. It had a small opening, just wide enough that a man might fit inside. Without stopping to think of the dan-ger, Mulder slipped inside.

It was tight, but he could fit. He began to climb down, struggling to see in the near-darkness, hands and feet slipping as he tried to gain pur-chase. The tube felt slippery, almost oily, to the touch, but there were small protuberances like rivets which he could steady himself on. He climbed down for what seemed like hours, fighting exhaustion, when without warning his hands slipped and he began to slide. He strug-gled futilely to stop, but continued until he reached the end of the tube and found himself striking a narrow ledge. He scrambled desper-ately at last managing to hold on.

His breath shuddering, he looked down-ward. As he did so the binoculars slipped from his pocket and fell. He watched them fall, light glinting as they twisted and turned. He waited for the sound of their impact, waited and waited and then held his breath, to make sure he wouldn't miss the sound of them hitting bottom.

He heard nothing. There was no bottom; or if there was, it was so far below him as to be the yawning chasm of a true abyss. He looked downward and saw an unimaginably black and bottomless pit. The sight terrified him. With every ounce of strength that remained, Mulder pulled himself along the ledge, his fingers dig-ging into the slick material, until finally he managed to lift himself up, and then over, onto the inner side.

He took a deep breath, then got to his feet. He was in a sort of corridor, darker and warmer than the one he had left, its walls glistening faintly. He pulled out his flashlight and trained its beam on the tunnel.

He walked carefully following the faint beam of light until he saw before him the cryolitter. He approached it hesitantly, and when he reached it he stood for a long moment. Inside were Scully's clothes and the little gold cross she always wore around her neck. He stooped and picked up the cross, pocketed it, and went on.