It continued to rise, its shadow passing over the two tiny figures on the ice below. Mulder turned to watch it pass, the shadow moving like night across the snow, swallowing a small sturdy shape in the near distance—Mulder's snow tractor. And now the craft began to glow as with some unimaginable heat, transforming itself into pure energy. All around it the sky shimmered and pulsed, as the craft seemed to expand.
And then, with a last blinding, deafening burst of energy, it disappeared into a cloud for-mation.
Echoes of its passage rumbled across the ruined landscape. The spacecraft was gone.
Mulder stared at the empty sky, then at Scully. As though awakening from a fever dream, her eyes opened and she gazed back at him. Then, slowly as a child falling asleep, he lay his head down upon the snow. His body heaved with exhaustion; his eyes closed. Moments later he began to shiver, unconscious.
Next to him Scully lay, still as death. A freezing wind howled cross the waste, sending eddies of snow whirling down into the vast crater left by the ship's passing. Then Scully began to cough. She fought to lift her head, blinking.
She looked at Mulder. His face was white, his body limp. With all the strength she had, she pulled him close to her, cradling him against her body and warming him.
She gazed back over her shoulder, at the immense crater left by the ship, dwarfing the wasteland around them, two tiny figures invisi-ble against the immensity and desolation of the endless ice.
CHAPTER 14
FBI OFFICE OF PROFESSIONAL REVIEW J, EDGAR HOOVER BUILDING
WASHINGTON, D.C.
"—in light of the report I've got here in front of me^in light of the narrative I'm now hear-ing-"
Assistant Director Jana Cassidy sat in the middle of the conference table, flanked by her colleagues.
She held a slender sheaf of papers and glanced at them as she spoke, choosing her words carefully. At the end of the table sat
Assistant Director Walter Ski
"—my official report is incomplete, pend-ing these new facts that I'm being asked to rec-oncile.
Agent Scully—"
Dana Scully tilted her head. Her face bore signs of minor frostbite, but otherwise was healed. Her expression was even and com-posed, but as Cassidy spoke her blue eyes dark-ened with restrained defiance.
"—while there is direct evidence now that a federal agent may have been involved in the bombing, the other events you've laid down here seem too incredible on their own, and quite frankly, implausible in their co
Cassidy flipped through a file on the table before her. The faces of the other board mem-bers mirrored her own—curious and slightly a
"What is it you find incredible?" Scully asked coolly.
Jana Cassidy suppressed a smile. "Well, where would you like me to start?"
As she spoke, a black-clad figure moved silently through the Dallas Field Office hun-dreds of miles away. Gray light filtered down through small windows set high above the floor, the only illumination until a flashlight beam suddenly pricked through the darkness. The beam swung back and forth, momentarily igniting jars, shattered plastic, twisted bits of wreckage. At last it settled on a table set up with microscope and magnifying glass, where several small vials were nestled in a cardboard box.
The man holding the flashlight moved quickly, silently, purposefully to the table. He was tall and gaunt-faced, his hair close-cropped. When he reached the table he extended one gloved hand and without hesita-tion picked up a vial, a tiny glass bottle con-taining fragments of petrified bone. The man glanced at the contents, then pocketed the evi-dence. As quickly and quietly as he had arrived, he disappeared, and the room was dark once more.
"—Antarctica is a long way from Dallas, Agent Scully," Jana Cassidy continued without a beat. "I can't very well submit a report to the Attorney General that alleges the links you've made here."
She picked up the file, then dropped in pointedly in front of her. "Bees and corn crops do not quite fall under the rubric of domestic terrorism."
Somewhere in the wilderness west of Dallas, a seemingly endless field of corn began to blaze as a phalanx of men wielding flamethrowers began to walk slowly and purposefully along the rows.