textfiles/sf/greyfox

                          Grey Fox
                              
                      by Sarah Stegall
     
     Fox Mulder woke up from a dream about Dana Scully and lay looking at
the ceiling of his room. 
     It took longer and longer to marshal his thoughts now; the days when
he could leap out of bed clear-headed and sharp as a tack were more than a
decade behind him.  A photograph fades with age, he thought to himself. 
Surely a photographic memory does the same, eventually. 
     Carefully, bracing for the pain in his arthritic neck, he turned his
head to the bedside table to look at the photographs there.  They were
always the first things he saw in the morning and the last things he saw
at night, the only invariable ritual in his life. 
     The photograph on the left was ancient, more than three quarters of a
century old.  It showed a young girl, aged eight, squinting in sunlight
and standing beside a swimming pool.  The other photograph was more
recent, but equally old fashioned--Mulder had never had it holoimaged, so
the image stayed static.  The woman in it was smiling, caught unawares by
the camera, her round, sweet face framed in red hair. 
     Mulder arranged himself carefully on the bed and took a deep breath. 
"Bed," he commanded in Chinese. "Up." 
     The bed slowly tilted upward and turned, allowing him to come to an
upright position and step off onto the floor without bending and turning
unnecessarily.  Remembering the agony arthritis had been for his mother,
Mulder was grateful he was spared so much movement by modern technology.
Carefully he stepped to the window.  Even with the beryllium implants to
strengthen his bones, a fall could severely incapacitate him. 
     The bonsai tree sat framed in the lower half of the window.  He
ignored the readout on the pot and felt the surface and roots with his
finger, testing the humidity and friability of the soil.  He decided it
probably would not need watering for another day.  He stood and mused for
a moment, remembering the day Dana had given it to him, with a joke about
his black thumb.  He'd never been any good with plants, true, but this one
had had his undivided attention for over forty years. 
     The day was clear and fine, with a few clouds floating in a blue sky
over the Potomac.  Mulder was glad the smoggy grey skies of Washington
were only a memory now. Environmental reforms could be a pain in the ass,
but the benefits were incalculable.  He doubted his lungs would have
lasted this long if he'd been breathing the DC air of the Nineties.  He
decided to visit the roof today. 
     It took him a while to dress.  The ancient bullet wounds in shoulder
and hip throbbed today, and his arthritis was mildly intrusive, making it
difficult to move his joints.  The loose trousers were easy, but he still
couldn't remember if the kimono-jacket tied to the right or the left. He
got it wrong, and once again wished for the more complex but familiar
suits of twenty years before.  And as always, he regretted the passing of
ties.  He'd enjoyed ties.  Dana had always teased him about them.... 
     A soft chime sounded.  "Good morning, Mulder Xiansheng," said a soft
voice in Chinese.  "What would you like for breakfast?" 
     "English, please." 
     "Good morning, Mr. Mulder.  What would you like for breakfast?" the
room repeated patiently in English. 
     "Scrambled eggs and bacon in the dining room, ten minutes." 
     "Very good, sir.  Orange juice?" 
     "No. Coffee." 
     "Mr. Mulder, I must remind you that your physician has expressly
forbidden--"  The room sounded faintly annoyed. 
     "Coffee.  Black," Mulder repeated. 
     "Yes, sir." 
     Mulder struggled with his shoes for a moment; his fingers were stiff
and had difficulty with the elastic. Finally he stood and faced the wall. 
     "Mirror," he said in Chinese. 
     The wall shimmered and became a mirror.  He scrutinized his face,
decided that Mother Nature was callous and cruel to force men to shave
every day of their lives.  Not today. To hell with it.  But he reached for
a brush and carefully brushed his grey hair flat, noting that it was
nearly all white now. 
     He was long since used to the wrinkles, and no longer even noticed
his face.  Today he felt good, and didn't want to linger over the scars at
his temple and cheek.  Dreaming of Dana had started the day off right, and
he didn't want to spoil the mood. 
     He dialed up his medication and then headed slowly for the elevator
to the dining room. 
     
     After breakfast (where he complained about the quality of the coffee,
politely), he took the elevator to the roof. He stepped out into a warm,
beautiful morning.  The office building next door rose three stories above
his, and he scanned the bubbled windows.  Now and then he had seen people
standing in the windows and had waved.  One had waved back; he flattered
himself it was a pretty young woman.  No one was visible today. 
     "Buenos dias, Agent Mulder," said a voice to his right. He turned
carefully. 
     "Good morning, Agent Ramos.  How are the tomatoes today?" 
     The old man sitting on the stool stood slowly.  "Very good.  I'll
have a couple ready tomorrow, I think.  You ready with that trade?" 
     Mulder smiled.  "I don't know, Jorge.  Much as I love home-grown
tomatoes, I don't know if I can part with an actual Patrick Ewing." 
     "Jeez, Mulder.  I'm beginning to think this is all a fake.  You don't
really have a Ewing, you're just stringing me along until zucchini season. 
In fact, I'm beginning to suspect this whole card collection of yours is
fictitious." The other man smiled, to show he was joking. 
     "Well, there's one way to find out." 
     "Nah, no way, Mulder," Jorge laughed.  "Those strawberries are mine! 
I count them every day.  If I find one missing, I know where to look!" 
     Mulder smiled and changed the subject.  "What's new on the
assassination?" 
     Jorge shrugged.  "Not much.  They think they have a lead to the gun,
but you know UniPol.  Their leaks aren't much better than press releases. 
Too much spin on them." 
     "Yeah, everything's political these days.  Do they still think it was
a silicon-based projectile?" 
     "Oh, that's another war altogether.  Half the people I talk to on the
Net think so, the other half are voting for either the new plasmids or the
ceramics." 
     Mulder grimaced.  "I hate the damned ceramics." 
     Jorge nodded.  "Yeah.  In our day it was lead and plastic.  Stuff
that left evidence behind." 
     They talked shop a little longer, then Mulder walked over to the
waist-high ledge surrounding the roof, detouring around the garden plots
and solar collectors on the way. Below him, Washington stretched out like
a child's board game, with the gleaming monuments and buildings of The
Mall barely visible three miles away.  Fifteen years ago, thought Mulder,
they would not have been visible at all for the smog.  But then, fifteen
years ago, he would have been at his desk by now, getting ready for class. 
He remembered the bitterness of that last class, how he had hated to give
up teaching at the Academy.  They had raised the retirement age, and then
raised it again, but they simply refused to let him teach past his 73rd
birthday. 
     Did they think he would simply hobble away and die somewhere?  He was
still jealous that men like Ramos, who had stayed closer to street work,
were allowed to keep on at the Bureau until 75. 
     On the other hand, he hadn't wanted to move to St. Louis, either,
when the federal government moved out of DC. 
     The sun was hot.  He turned and went back to the elevator, waving at
Jorge.  He entered the community library on the first floor and logged on
to the public terminal for his mail.  The house sysop was nagging him for
his vote on the contract negotiations for house maintenance; the contract
was up for renewal and the owners' group was supposed to vote on the
proposals.  Although he was mildly annoyed at the Chinese program which
had obstinately refused to learn English as a first language, he voted for
it over the Israeli program.  He really didn't like the rigidity of their
literary program and their restrictions on access to the infoweb.  His
contacts at the Bureau still holoimaged him regularly, and he was active
in many informal discussion groups; restricted access would cut him off
from the world. 
     At least the government had stopped trying to write its own programs
and contracted them out to the experts.  He remembered the awful mess the
Bureau had made of databasing its voluminous files until they called in a
few savvy fifteen-year-olds from California.  The fifteen-year-olds had
charged the FBI thirty million dollars, a third the going rate, to put the
entire files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on-line in less than a
year.  It was phenomenal. 
     And it had given him back the X-files. 
     No bureaucratic restrictions precluded him from investigating the
files they had denied him nearly sixty years ago.  Now that he was
retired, he could open as many investigations as he wanted, and with his
pension and contacts had actually cleared some of them.  Of course, it
helped that the bureaucrats and politicians who once might have been
embarrassed by the revelations of their part in various cover-ups had been
dead for a generation. 
     Mulder smiled.  Nothing like outliving your enemies for revenge, he
thought.  Then he thought of Dana and the smile disappeared. 
     He logged onto a discussion group in Brazil arguing about the latest
sightings on the Plata do Enabes above Amazonia and spent the rest of the
afternoon refereeing a technical discussion about atmospheric distortion
and terpenes. 
     The household had voted for holos after dinner that night.  Mulder
had never cared for holoimaging; it gave him the creeps.  So he went to
his room and asked the room for Silence.  It lowered the acoustic shield
and he played music for a couple of hours.  He sat in his favorite chair,
regretting briefly that he was no longer able to throw himself casually
into the embrace of an easy chair and lounge in it with one leg over the
arm.  He adjusted the photographs on his bedside table so he could see
Samantha and Dana more clearly.  Dana had always liked DeBruges and the
later fusion groups, so he played some and thought about her.  He had
learned to live with the ache, for the sake of the pleasure it brought
him, as one wears a callous on the soul. 
     He dozed off somewhere in the middle of the Round Motif and woke when
the piece ended.  Its melancholy ending perfectly fitted his mood.  He
told the room to stop the music program (and had to repeat the command in
Chinese). He sat and looked at the photographs for a long time. 
     "Dana..." he whispered.  "I miss you so much." 
     He didn't know when he realized that his shadow was being cast on the
wall before him.  He was tired, with a weariness of the soul that went
beyond age and disease.  It was almost too much trouble to turn his head. 
But the curiosity that had driven Fox Mulder all his life would not let
him go now, and he slowly turned his head to look behind him. 
     He had to squint, the light was so bright. 
     "Room?  What's going on?" he asked, but there was no reply. 
     That was odd: the room was, if anything, overly attentive to its
client. 
     "Fox."  The voice was young, female.  Mulder frowned in
concentration. 
     "Who is that? What is going on?" 
     Alarmed, he tried to stand, but found he could not move.  Panic
surged through him--was he having a stroke? But that made no sense; he
could move his head perfectly, could speak and hear. 
     "Fox, don't be afraid." 
     "Who is that?  No one's called me that in twenty years." 
     "It's me.  Please don't be afraid." 
     Goose flesh rose along his arms and legs as memory returned, surging
from the place he had buried it decades ago. 
     "My God!  Samantha?  Is that you?" 
     "Yes.  Can you see me?" 
     "Just barely.  What--how--what are you doing here?  Why did they take
you?  Why did--" 
     Laughter rippled at him, and he recognized it with a deep pang.  He
had not heard that laugh in more than seventy years, but it was as fresh
as the last time he had heard it. There could be no mistake. 
     "Samantha!  It is you...Oh, God." 
     He felt the tears on his cheeks but could not move. 
     "I've come to take you home, Fox," said the voice.  It was soft,
infinitely soft. 
     "Home?  You mean...dying?  Are you dead, Sam?"  He choked a little. 
All his life, all these years, he had hoped desperately that somehow,
somewhere she was still alive.  Had it all been in vain?  Memory flashed
in him, of his mother's death.  She had never known what had happened to
her daughter.  No one did. He'd looked for Samantha almost every day of
his life, fruitlessly. 
     "No, Fox.  I cannot die.  But you will.  I can make it easy.  Do you
want to stay?" 
     "I don't understand."  The light was growing brighter. It was faintly
green-tinged. 
     "Come with me and you will understand." 
     "I...I don't know.  It's...hard to give up.  There's still so much to
find out." 
     "I know.  But you will need more than one lifetime to do it, and this
one is at an end." 
     His feet felt cold.  In fact, his whole body felt cold. Mulder felt a
little groggy, a little faint.  Was his heart failing?  Curiously, he felt
no fear, only sadness. 
     "Are you...are you alone?"  he asked the light.  He squinted against
its searing brightness.  Was there a shape there?  Or several? 
     "No, Fox," said his sister's voice.  "I have never been alone.  You
won't be, either.  Will you come?" 
     He had been alone most of his life, except for the few precious years
with Dana. 
     "All right," he said.  His eyes traveled back to the photograph of
Dana.  He missed her so terribly.  Maybe it was time to stop hurting. 
"I'll go." 
     The light was very bright, and very cool. 
                              
                           THE END