textfiles/sf/XFILES/alk4

                   A Little Knowledge  (4/7) 
                  ***************************
                               by
                         Patti Murphy  
     
     Scully struggled to keep her eyes open for most of the
drive, despite the fact that Mulder had brought her a large
steaming cup of coffee when he arrived to pick her up at six
twenty-five.  She dozed fitfully, jerking awake occasionally with
the motion of the car.  Mulder watched her for a while, then
reached into the back seat for his trenchcoat.  
     "Here," he said, as he handed it to her, "use this, so you
won't get a sore neck."
     She mumbled her thanks, stuck the coat between her head and
the door, and promptly went back to sleep.  He kept an eye on her
as he drove, wondered if she was still angry with him.  She had
been quiet since he'd picked her up, but then, she was pretty
tired.  She still looked pale and Mulder noticed that she was
frowning slightly in her sleep.  He smiled to himself.  She must
be dreaming about him.
     Later, when he pulled up in front of the Inglis residence, a
big, tudor style home with manicured hedges, he had to gently
shake her shoulder to rouse her.  She yawned and sat up, then ran
her hand through her hair, trying to repair the damage.
     Mulder got out, stretched and surveyed the house while he
waited for her.  A moment later, she joined him on the sidewalk
and handed him his trenchcoat.
     "It's a little wrinkled," she said.  "Sorry."
     Mulder examined the coat.  It was deeply creased, like a
piece of paper that had been crumpled and then unfolded.
     "It's too warm for it, anyway," he said and tossed it in the
back seat.


     "I knew he was dead the moment I saw him," the tiny woman
said.  She sat opposite Mulder and Scully, in a wingback chair,
which threatened to swallow up her frail form.  Her hands lay
lifelessly in her lap and her shoulders slumped slightly, as if
some great weight was pushing down on them.  Nearby, a
grandfather clock kept vigil, steadily counting off the passing
seconds.  "When the paramedics arrived, they said there was
nothing they could do, but I'd known that from the moment I
stepped into the garden and saw him lying on the grass."
     Her eyes drifted away from Mulder and Scully to gaze
sightlessly into space, but her expression told them that she was
reliving the scene.  Scully waited for a few seconds and when she
spoke, her voice was soft and soothing.  "Mrs. Inglis, what sort
of reaction did your husband usually have to bee stings?"
     "He would have difficulty breathing and then his throat
would become swollen, but once he took his needle, he'd be fine
in a few minutes."
     "So he'd been stung before?" Mulder asked.
     "Oh, heavens, yes!" the woman said.  "Bill loved to garden
and he was particularly fond of roses, so the back garden is full
of them.  Most days if you stood still out there, you could hear
the buzz from the back door."  She smiled wistfully and one hand
fluttered up from her lap to touch the lace doily on the arm of
her chair. "He was always getting stung, but he didn't seem to
mind.  He'd just take his needle and rest for a little while,
then he'd be right back at it."  The smile on her face slowly
faded and tears began to seep into her pale eyes.  She fought to
compose herself.  Mulder noticed that this woman bore a passing
resemblance to his own mother and silently wished himself out of
this living room.
     No one spoke for a few moments while she drew herself back
together and blinked the bothersome tears away.  "I'm sorry," she
said.  "It's still difficult."  She smoothed her skirt, then
folded her hands on her lap again.  "Now, you said something on
the phone about Leslie."
     "Yes," Mulder said.  "I don't know if you are aware that a
missing person report has been filed on Dr. Hamilton."
     The woman looked stricken. "Leslie?  Dear God, what happened
to her?"
     "There's no reason to believe that anything has happened to
Dr. Hamilton," Scully cut in, with a cursory glance at Mulder. 
"Some friends of hers in Texas are concerned because she hasn't
been in contact with them.  At the moment, no one seems to know
where she is, and so it's routine to file a report."
     "I see," Mrs. Inglis said.  She pondered this information
and the colour slowly returned to her face.  "Well, I'm afraid we
haven't heard from her since, oh, it must be last summer."
     "Your husband and Dr. Hamilton have known each other since
medical school, is that right, Mrs. Inglis?" Mulder asked.
     She nodded.  "Yes, they were classmates at Yale.  In fact,
she and her husband Vince were married two weeks after Bill and
I, right after graduation.  It was a lovely wedding."  She
paused, the wistful smile returning briefly.
     "Did they ever work on any projects together?" Mulder asked.
     "Oh yes. When we were in New Mexico.  But that was a long
time ago."
     Mulder sat up a little straighter.  "Do you remember exactly
when that was?"
     She sighed.  "Let's see...Bob, my youngest, was in junior
high then, I remember because we had an awful time finding a
school that would take him mid-semester. So, it must have been
the winter of '67 that we moved there."
     "What sort of project were they working on?"
     "Oh, heavens.  I'm afraid I don't really know.  It had to do
with viruses, of course, since that's Bill's field, you know, and
it was a government grant of some sort, but beyond that I can't
help you.  I was busy raising the boys and Bill didn't like to
discuss his work much."
     "And Dr. Hamilton was working on the same project?" Mulder
asked.
     "Yes, but as I say, they never really talked much about it."
     "You said you'd heard from Dr. Hamilton last summer," Scully
said.  "I assume you've kept in touch over the years."
     "Mostly Christmas cards and the occasional letter.  She and
Bill conferred with each other for work I know, because he would
mention from time to time that he'd gotten a call from her."  She
shook her head.  "Poor Leslie.  I hope nothing has happened to
her."
     Mulder leaned forward, elbows on his knees.  "Mrs. Inglis,
do you have any idea where Dr. Hamilton might go if she wanted to
get away for a while?  Does she have relatives that you know of? 
Anybody she spoke about?"
     The tiny woman frowned.  "I don't think I ever heard her
speak of relatives, and of course, she and Vince never had
children."  She thought for a moment.  "I do remember them
stopping by once, oh, it must be twenty years ago, while they
were on vacation.  It sticks in my mind because we so rarely saw
them.  As I recall, they were going to spend a month at this
little cabin that Vince had inherited somewhere in the Allegheny
mountains.  It was quite remote and they were beginning to make
enquiries about the possibility of getting electricity."
     "Do you have any idea where it might be?" Mulder asked.  He
was leaned so far forward that Scully thought he might tumble out
of his chair at any moment.
     "I'm just trying to remember," the woman said.  "There was
an animal in it somewhere..."  She tapped a dainty finger on her
lips and frowned as she thought.  "It wasn't bears....what was
it?  It was something Crossing.  No, something Junction.  That's
it.  Some animal Junction."  She pursed her lips and frowned. 
"It was so long ago, you know.  I'm not sure that I..."  She
stopped speaking suddenly and her face brightened.  "Wolf
Junction," she said.  "The closest little village was Wolf
Junction, West Virginia.  I think it's just across the state
line, actually."
     Scully saw Mulder's body relax, as if he'd just started
breathing again.
     The woman beamed a little at her accomplishment, then
smoothed a few more invisible wrinkles out of her skirt.  "That's
the only time she ever mentioned it.  She may not even own it
anymore.  As I say, it was a long time ago."
     "Well, it's worth looking into," Scully said.
     "Mrs. Inglis, is there any way we could look through some of
your husband's correspondence?"  Mulder asked.  "There's a
possibility that Dr. Hamilton may have mentioned something that
could help us to locate her."
     She hesitated and cast a furtive glance towards the
staircase in the hall.  "I suppose that would be all right," she
said.  "The last couple of years, he worked mostly at home, in
his study.  I ..."  She choked on her words, one slender, pale
hand flying to her mouth, in an effort to hold back a sob. 
Mulder and Scully waited, eyes downcast, while she struggled to
find her voice.  
     "I wonder if you would mind if I didn't help you?" she said,
at last.  Her hands darted about in tiny birdlike movements,
fingering the buttons on her sweater, touching the fabric of the
chair.  "I haven't been able to bring myself to go in that room,
yet.  It's silly, I know, but..."  She let the sentence trail off
unfinished and regarded Mulder and Scully with a beseeching look.
     Scully glanced over at Mulder in time to see his expression
soften into a tender smile.  "It's not silly at all, Mrs. Inglis. 
I understand perfectly," he said.  He got to his feet.  "Why
don't you just tell us which room it is and we'll look on our
own."


     They found William Inglis's study on the second floor. It
was a small room, made all the more cramped by the number of
books, journals and files that were piled on every flat surface.
A sturdy desk and chair were pushed up against the wall by the
window.  Two wooden filing cabinets stood beside it, and there
was a worn, sagging arm chair in the corner.
     "I'll start with the filing cabinets," Mulder said.
     Scully looked around the room, took in the clutter on the
desk and decided to begin there.  She sat down in the desk chair
and surveyed the files, scraps of paper and stacks of bills and
correspondence.  She methodically worked her way from one side of
the desk to the other, discovering along the way scribbled
references to scientific articles, phone numbers, a few issues of
the journal of virology, a grocery list and a heap of seed
catalogues.  The slightest sense of guilt dogged her as she
sorted through the paper and books. There was something
disturbingly intimate about sitting at someone else's desk, going
through their things, as if their entire life and all its secrets
were tucked away in the drawers.  She wondered, as she sifted
through a handful of receipts, who had cleaned out her desk in
their basement office when she had been missing last year. 
Probably Mulder.  Had he felt guilty, intrusive, as she did now? 
Or was he grateful for the chance to sit in her chair and maybe
somehow be near her in the process?  She honestly didn't know,
and she certainly wasn't going to ask him.
     Her gaze fell on the Macintosh computer that occupied a
quadrant of the desk.  She studied it, thinking for a few
seconds, then reached around the back of the computer and ran her
hand across the ports, switches and cables.  At the far right
edge, her fingers touched a phone line.
     Mulder looked up from the filing cabinet when he heard the
computer hum to life with a perky chirp.  Scully was tapping keys
and peering at the screen.
     "What are you doing?" he asked.
     "Following a hunch," she said.
     Mulder entertained several witty replies, then remembered
the look on her face when he had left her apartment early this
morning.  He decided to keep them to himself, and returned to the
filing cabinet.
     Scully scrolled through directories looking for something
that wasn't password protected.  She was about to give up and
start searching the desk for anything that looked like a
password, when she came across the directories for an internet
service provider. There was no security software on them.  A few
keystrokes and she found herself with a list of e-mails that
William Inglis had sent, which had been automatically filed in
the computer's memory.  She started reading.
     A few minutes later, she said, "Mulder, I think I've got
something."
     Mulder came to the desk and looked at the screen.  "What?"
     Scully clicked the mouse a few times, and the text of a
letter appeared on the screen.  He leaned closer to read it.

     Leslie,
          I heard about Richard today, but I think you're over-
     reacting.  The stupid old fool fell down the stairs is all. 
     I never liked him, as you know, but I can't help but feel
     sorry.
          Listen -- about your recent e-mail.  I don't know what
     to tell you.  I have no idea if you've done the right thing
     or not, but what's done is done.  It will probably all blow
     over in a few days.  You're getting paranoid in your old
     age, Leslie.  It was 25 years ago.  No one cares anymore.
     Regards,
     Bill.

     Mulder looked at Scully.  "She blew the whistle on the
project," he said, "and when they started coming after them, she
tried to warn Inglis."
     Scully leaned back in the chair and it squeaked loudly. 
"O.K., but why now?  And what proof does she have?"
     "If we can find her, we can ask her ourselves," Mulder said. 
"Is there an address?"
     "Yeah, but it's just an e-mail address through a commercial
service provider.  It's going to take a lot of paperwork and a
couple of days to get a proper address,"  Scully said.  "But we
do know that wherever she is, she has access to a computer."
     "And a phone line."
     They regarded each other for a moment.  
     "Hey, Scully, how many new phone lines do you think have
been installed around Wolf's Butt, West Virginia in the last
month?"
     Scully allowed a hint of a smile.  "Hopefully not too many."


     Mulder looked into his rear view mirror and watched Scully's
reflection stride across the rental car lot.  He knew it made
sense for her to head back to Washington to meet her virologist
friend at Georgetown while he continued westward to Wolf
Junction, but for some reason he couldn't fully articulate, even
to himself, it made him uneasy.  He'd held back while they'd
discussed the plan of action, not able to come up with a good
reason why they should stick together, and in the end, he'd
driven her to the nearest AVIS office to rent a car for the
return trip to D.C., with a promise to call one another as soon
as anything turned up.  But he didn't like it.
     He signalled, then eased the car onto the highway,  glancing
back over his shoulder at the lot before he accelerated. She was
nowhere to be seen.  He pulled his cellular out of his pocket
then punched in the familiar number.
     "Danny?" he said.  "I've got an urgent one for you, and I
don't care who you have to pull off the golf course for it.  I
need information about new phone lines installed in a place in
West Virginia in the last five or six weeks."


     Scully consulted the directory in the lobby of the deserted
biological sciences building, running a finger down the list of
names of professors and researchers until she found Dr. E. 
Przednowek, Rm. 612.  She went off in search of the elevators,
her heels clicking loudly against the floor tiles and echoing in
the empty halls.
     The door of room 612 was decorated with stickers from
Greenpeace and a half-dozen other whale and tree saving
organizations.  Scully smiled as she knocked.  Beth would never
change.  
     The door was opened by a tall, lithe woman in a t-shirt,
jeans and Birkenstocks.  Her long, blonde hair was pulled back in
a ponytail and she had wide, chestnut coloured eyes.  She didn't
return Scully's smile.
     "Jesus Christ, Dana!  Where did you get this?"  the woman
said, when she spotted Scully.
     Scully, who had been about to step through the door, stopped
dead.  "Why?"
     "Do you realize what you have here?" she asked, waving a
handful of pages in the air.
     Scully looked quickly up and down the hall.  "Can we discuss
this in there?" she asked, pointing into the office.
     Beth's expression softened and she nodded.  "Sure, sure. 
I'm sorry!  Come on in."  She stepped aside and let Scully enter
the tiny, windowless room.  She pushed some text books and
computer printouts off the only chair and motioned for Scully to
sit down.  She sat on the edge of her desk.  "I'm sorry, it's
just that I've been reading this stuff you dropped off for the
past two hours and it's really freaking me out."
     "What did you find?" Scully asked.
     "Well, you were right, it's a retrovirus, but this data...."
She shook her head.  "This is bioengineering on a level I've
never seen before."
     "Really?"
     Beth nodded and her pony tail bobbed in rhythm.  "And that's
not the best part.  This data records elaborate manipulations of
a retrovirus that, as far as I know, doesn't exist."
     "Do you mean that it's one that hasn't been identified?"
     "Well, it's either that or somebody created this thing to
play around with."
     "How, exactly?"
     Beth flipped through the pages.  "It's not entirely clear
and there's a lot here that's over my head.  But from some of
these experiments, I'd say they were trying to make it more
virulent.  They were damn successful, too.  They managed to speed
up the cell death on some of these trials by 40%."  She lowered
the pages and stared at Scully.  "And you're not answering my
question, Dana.  Where did you get this?"
     "We're not entirely sure yet," Scully replied.
     Beth cocked her head and studied Scully's expression. 
"Agent Scully, are you being straight with me?  Or is that Bureau
talk for `keep 'em in the dark'?"
     Scully sighed.  "Look, Beth, there's a lot we don't know
about this yet."
     "All right, all right," Beth said, "it's not that I don't
believe you.  It's just that there is some pretty revolutionary
stuff in here.  Not to mention a Nobel prize or two."
     "Can you tell me how it works?" Scully asked.
     "It's hard to say, but there are some structural
similarities to HIV, so I'd guess that it targets the immune
system."
     "Which means that the host would die from opportunistic
infections like pneumonias, and fungal infections, right?" 
Scully said.
     Beth nodded.  "It's possible."
     "How infectious is it?"
     "From what I read, not very.  You'd need fairly direct
contact with body fluids."
     Scully sank back in the chair, her mind racing.  Beth
watched her for a few seconds, then said, "Is this some new sort
of Ebola thing that lives in African bat shit or something?  I
mean, should I unpack my biocontainment suit?"
     Scully met her gaze and chuckled.  "Washington isn't about
to become the next Zaire, if that's what you're asking," she
said. 
     "Maybe not," Beth said.  "But you've just shown me research
that is so far beyond cutting edge that I can't make heads or
tails out of some of it."  She looked directly at Scully, her
dark eyes intense.  "Somebody, somewhere has this technology and
they're not sharing.  Doesn't that scare you?"
     Scully looked at her friend for a long time, then nodded.


cont.