Title: Tellus Mater (04/07)
(Sequel to Pater Familias)

Author: OneMillionAndNine

Feedback: kokotheuberchimp@hotmail.com

http://www.geocities.com/onemillionandnine/

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Monday morning, I got the kids off to school and scared up 
a maternity dress from Hawaii Stidham for Thea.

It seemed Thea had never shaved her legs in her short life. 
Well, she couldn't go out onto the streets of Delphi, 
Alabama looking like Thea the Jungle Girl. Even if she had 
some experience with it, there was no way she could reach 
her legs at that point. We were both uncomfortable when I 
did a short strip with Mulder's shaving razor. In the end, 
we used the same thing I always used on my legs. At least 
all that hair made them easier to wax.

I told her it was going to hurt.

After I finished, she asked me, "When?"

In the living room, Langly kept trying to pretend he 
wasn't staring at her legs.

"You're wearing a dress," he frowned and pushed up the 
corner of his glasses as he observed the obvious.

She shrugged and signed, "It's what they had."

"Looks like you," his signing faltered, "shaved your legs."

"No," she corrected him. "She pulled it out with wax." 

He winced.

When I came back with my purse, they were sitting on the 
couch side by side, reading. The hem of her dress was 
suspiciously raised on one side and Langly was 
surreptitiously running his thumb along her kneecap, 
although he appeared quite engrossed in his book. 

I couldn't help but shake my head. "Ready to go?" 

Langly instantly jerked his hand away from her leg.

"Where?" Thea bounced one knee in a very Mulderlike way.

"You need to see a doctor." Langly looked put out. 
We had been discussing it all morning, but Thea was 
pretending she had forgotten the morning's itinerary.

"Oh, please. I know all about pregnancy." She rolled her 
eyes and took on what I could only describe as a tutorial 
pose. She began signing as if by rote: "Pregnancy is not 
illness; as Praetorians you are designed to reproduce 
easily, with multiple births being the norm. The lab techs 
overseeing your particular project will issue your 
offspring both name and numerical designation after birth. 
Do not deviate from your assigned task."

Langly looked horrified, and turned a shade somewhat more 
pale than his usual. 

"Thea," I made sure I had eye contact with her before I 
signed, struggling to keep my exterior as calm as possible. 
"Human mothers tend to have more favorable outcomes when 
they receive medical care during pregnancy. We are going to 
take you to the doctor. Now. Do you have any other shoes?"

She looked down at Langly's spare Converse hi-tops. It 
figured that they wore the same size. If it weren't for 
her pregnancy, I speculated, their clothing would have been 
interchangeable. "It's either these or the flip-flops." 

Thea sauntered out ahead of us. I turned to Langly, trying 
not to scowl. It took everything I had to keep myself from 
launching into a full scale rant. I bit my tongue. 
Literally. "Was it worth it?"

Langly blinked as if he hadn't heard me correctly.

"It's not that she's young so much as she's almost feral." 
The words slipped out of my mouth, but I wasn't certain 
I regretted them. 

His eyes went wide. I didn't feel the least bit sorry after 
the shocks I'd been dealt in the preceding days. 

"Lets hope she doesn't get frightened and eat her young."

Langly started speaking just as I pulled the door shut 
behind me. 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

This was the point in the story where I called Scully a 
bitch.

Not out loud. Not to her face. Dying would have defeated 
the 
purpose.

But I still called her a bitch.

"You think she's like an animal?"

"I didn't say that. I said feral. Lack of social 
interaction in early life usually results in a crippled 
ability to relate to one's fellow humans." She sighed.
"I don't know what kind of ability she'll have to be a 
mother to her child." 

Some kind of cold, wet gears turned in the pit of my 
stomach.  I didn't even figure into the possible future as 
Scully saw it. 


"I don't blame her Langly. She didn't ask for the life 
she's had, but the chances are bad, much less than average, 
she'll have the emotional resources to parent."  She sighed 
again, world weary, like she saw some inevitable future 
where Thea hared off into the great beyond and dumped our 
unborn children straight in Scully's lap. 

"What about me?" I asked. "I mean, I'm the father. Doesn't 
that count for something?"

"Parenting is a big job, Langly. I've known you a long time 
and you've never even had a house plant."

"Kinda like a certain former FBI agent." I tried not to 
sound snotty, but I couldn't help it. "Only, you know, I 
sleep in a bed." 

"I wasn't a teenager."

I shouldn't have said it, but I did. "No. You were a single 
chick in her mid-thirties who liked dead people better than 
live ones. Only thing missing was some cats."

Scully's face turned red.  It looked like I was gonna get 
my ass kicked. 

After a long pause, she swallowed. "I may well have been, 
as you say, 'a single chick in my mid-thirties,' but I was 
pregnant by choice.  My choice.  My children are not the 
unforeseen by-product of my desire to please someone else." 
She looked at me hard. "Someone who should have known 
better."

I opened my mouth, but I really don't know what I thought I 
was going to say.  I was so damned mad that my eyes 
started, 
well, getting wet. I wasn't about to cry; I was just 
pissed. 
As pissed as she was, at least.  

If I could have gotten it together enough to say something, 
I would have set her straight but when she looked at me 
again, her face sort of softened.

I'm not trying to be a doomsayer here, Ringo." 
She put her hand on my shoulder. "I'm just concerned. About 
all of you."

I held in. I'm pretty good at holding in. I am a Langly 
after all, and if there's one thing we know, it's how to 
hold in.  "You don't know her, Scully. You haven't even 
given her a chance."

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*


My first thought was to ask Scully if she'd ever seen an 
apple doll.

When I was a kid in Saltville, every year my class went on 
a field trip to see the Christmas On the Prairie exhibit at 
the Pioneer Museum. And every year there were these scary 
little dolls with dried, peeled apples for heads . Every 
year I saw those dolls and every year I thought about how 
far my sisters would kick my ass if they found a doll like 
that under the tree.

When Scully pointed out her doctor, Dr. Worthen, he looked 
just like one of those apple dolls, with cotton batting for 
hair and teeth made out of broken pieces of rice. Some one 
even made him tiny glasses with needle-nosed pliers and a 
strand of wire. I asked if he was safe before we came; it 
only occurred to me later to ask if he was competent.

'Cool out,' I tried to tell myself. 'Scully's a doctor. She 
wouldn't bring Thea to some quack.' 

I could feel it coming on. I tried not to fight it. That 
would only make it worse.

I closed my eyes, tried to imagine a far-off place. A 
peaceful glen. Water. The Arcade. Whatever. Trying to 
biofeedback yourself out of an oncoming asthma attack is 
practically a freaking Zen Buddhist Koan.

My last really cogent thought was that it was the memory of 
my sisters that actually triggered the attack.

Thea realized what was happening even before I did. I guess 
she knew my last inhaler was pretty much gone, too. Thea 
wrote down my doctor's usual treatment and got Worthen's 
nurse, then stayed by my side like somebody welded her 
there.

In the middle of all this I caught Scully signing, "Is he 
asthmatic?"

"No," Thea signed blandly, "the chipmunk in his ass just 
gnawed it's way to his small intestine and this is his 
natural response." 

Oh, ha ha.

"You have your father's sense of humor." Scully was prim as 
they walked me between them to the small treatment room. 
The two of them said more to each other, but I don't know 
what; Thea took my glasses and the nurse put the breathing 
machine mask over my face.

I was sitting there beside her, with my glasses in her hand 
and her other arm around my shoulders when I realized I'd 
been a traitor.

Scully's speech had hit on something somewhere and got me 
worrying. More specifically, it got me comparing Thea to my 
mom. Probably not entirely fair on my part.

My mom was a good mom pretty much down the line. She had 
kept seven kids clean, dressed, and fed. Thea was almost 
eighteen and she couldn't wash clothes worth a damn. She 
had the annoying habit of knocking things over and walking 
away. It was a cold day in hell when she put anything back 
where it came from. If given a choice, Thea would live on 
fried meat and milk. The only thing I had ever seen her 
cook was microwave popcorn. When all her clothes were dirty 
she kept wearing them until someone said something. Then 
she wore mine.

I had been thinking, when my breathing problems started, 
that maybe Scully was right, that maybe we were all doomed, 
and I continued on in that pleasant fucking vein until 
Doctor Apple Head walked in.

"If it isn't the lovely Mrs. Laura Levine." He kissed 
Scully's hand. "I hear you've been holding out on us."

She smiled weakly and he continued to smooth-talk her while 
he started examining me. "Here you had this stunning girl 
and you kept her away from us. Didn't give any of the local 
fellas a chance to steal her heart. Well, I can see my 
nurse knew just what to do with your son-in-law, as usual. 
I hear your girl was a big help, knew George's regular 
dosage and everything." He smiled in Thea's general 
direction. "I think she'll make a good little mama." 

Thea smiled back. Not her polite smile either - her big 
grin, the one that made her look like Scully.

I wondered how much she managed to lip read and how much as 
guess work. Lip reading is a lot harder than it looks on 
TV. Quick as she was, even then she only got about a third 
of what anyone said.

He was right, though. She did take care of me. She'd done 
it before. And then there was one time when Kimmy was being 
especially Kimmy and she punched him in the stomach on my 
behalf. She could care about people. She could bond. 

So she wasn't Mary Beth Langly. Big deal - I 'd do the 
laundry. And cook. But she was definitely pitching in with 
the diapers.

I thought about my mom. We only had about four 
conversations in my life . Over and over and .over.

"Ritchie, get out from under the table. I'm sure your 
sisters didn't mean it. You know how the twins are."

"Ritchie, did you brush your teeth? I'm so proud of how 
well you're doing in school. Could you help Eddie and/or 
Bobby with their shoes/home work/science projects? Don't 
forget your inhaler."

"Ritchie, I'm sorry Tom got the last piece of pie. You 
should have said something."

"Oh Richard, don't slouch. You're so handsome. I'm sure any 
girl would be lucky to have you. Are you sure you don't 
want to go to the hay ride/dance/homecoming/prom? There's 
still time to change your mind."

It wasn't her fault.

I was the fourth of seven. Sounds like a Borg designation 
when I put it that way, but until I left Nebraska, that was 
kind of how I saw my self. Not big and handsome and winning 
like Tom, good enough at his school work but great at 
everything else, and such a nice guy, you couldn't hate him 
for it. Not Julie and Carol, the twin 
Scarlet O'Hara-wannabes of the northern plains. Not 
Heather, their little pet. Not Bobby or Eddie, good solid 
guys, whose biggest aspirations involved becoming Dad.

I was the one hiding in the barn with a Theodore Sturgeon 
book. The one who didn't get married before turning 21. The 
only one who didn't live within an hour of the farm.

I think Mom told all the relatives I was a writer. Maybe 
because that's what I told her. My real life was too weird 
to try and explain. "See Mom, one day I was selling bootleg 
cable boxes, and the next I woke up naked and incoherent in 
a warehouse with three other guys - no, wait Mom, this 
isn't a dirty story. See, one of the guys was a federal 
agent, right, and we wound up starting a newspaper and 
working to uncover the truth about our governm-. .  Mom? 
Mom?? You still on the line?"

Anyway, she told everyone I was writer, and sent me a 
homemade quilt or a tin of fudge on alternating 
Christmases. Her heart gave out when she was 56. Even from 
Maryland, I could see it coming.

Thea was never going to be my mom, but she didn't need to 
be. And I sure wasn't going to use Dad as any kind of role 
model.

I leaned my head on her shoulder. My short hair still felt 
weird. See, all I needed was some prednisone and a 
breathing machine and I was okay.

"We fixed Daddy-to-be up for you. Let's see about that baby 
now." He pulled out his stethoscope intently.

Scully spoke up. "Thea's deaf, Dr. Worthen, like Daniel." 

Dr. Worthen's eyes glinted merrily. Up close, he was 
starting to look like a deflated Santa Claus. "Isn't that 
interesting? I think she got my meaning, though. Didn't 
you, Honey?"

"Should I get up in the stirrups now? " she signed at 
Scully. I think she wanted to get it over with.

"No. I think he'll do a general exam first," she answered. 
As if in afterthought, she asked, "Thea, have you ever had 
a pelvic exam before?"

"No," she answered, "but I know all about it."

Scully frowned as she signed back, "I bet you do." 

Thea seemed to hit it off with the doctor right away. He 
ran her through the gauntlet and she didn't give him any 
shit. Maybe the moon was in a good phase. 

I tried not to look too interested when she climbed up on 
the table. I finally gave up - my choices were look away or 
stare. I closed my eyes.

"Well, Sweetheart," he snapped off his rubber glove, "your 
cervix is nice and closed. Nothin's wrong, but I'd like to 
listen to the heart beat again."

"Why?" I pulled off the oxygen, trying not to wheeze too 
much.

"Hang on and breathe a minute more there, George. Your wife 
isn't in any danger. In fact, I'd say she's definitely one 
of the healthiest pregnant women I've ever seen. Good low 
blood pressure, nice reasonable sugar, no swelling in the 
extremities." He tried to keep a straight face as he said, 
"A man like you, with a healthy young wife, needs to learn 
to take it easy." 

I just breathed.

"I'm just having a little trouble-" he polished his 
stethoscope with the bottom of his white coat "-deciding 
whether there are two babies in there, or three. I would 
give her an ultra sound if my machine hadn't up and died a 
few years back."

I looked over at the machine.  Didn't look too complicated. 
"Do you know what's wrong with it?"

He looked confused. "It doesn't work. More than that, I 
can't tell you."

As nicely as I knew how, I said, "I'm pretty good with 
electronics. You think I could take a look at it?"

Sure, he told me, his nurse would lead the way.

It turned out to be one loose wire. A chimpanzee could have 
fixed it. I leaned against the wall and laughed, thinking 
about how that would crack Thea up.

Another fifteen minutes and we knew for sure. 

There were three. Three boys. Bigger and healthier than any 
child of mine had any business being. Three boys with a 
single placenta.

"Identical," Dr. Worthen and Scully agreed.

"Clones," Thea spelled into my hand in the dark.

The doctor held out a hand and helped Thea get off the exam 
table. "So how's Coach takin' all this, anyway?"

Why did Worthen have to give me something else to 
worry about?

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Before Martin and the kids got home from school, there were 
four computers, two toasters, and a sewing machine in my 
living room, all waiting to be fixed.

By morning, Langly and Thea had them all repaired and lined 
up on the front porch.

The next day Bud Collins called George and Martin in to the 
mayor's office and wound up putting George on retainer.

Their first request was have him install those spiffy 
ethanol engines in all three of Delphi's police cars.

George "Ringo" Froyers had just become the most sought 
after man in town.


*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I'd been telling myself all along I wasn't going to be a 
dad like Hank Langly, but it didn't take too much time to 
figure out there wasn't much chance I was going to be a dad 
like Fox Mulder, either. 

I used to think Mulder was one of us. Okay, that's not 
right. I used to think if you took Byers, Hickey, and me, 
made us into one guy, added looks straight out of GQ, gave 
that guy old money and an Oxford education, that guy would 
be an awful lot like Fox Mulder. Nice as the idea was, 
living with him made me realize it wasn't true.

When I was growing up the only time my dad ever spoke to me 
was to tell me how I was fucking up again. Mulder, on the 
other hand, acted like he was auditioning for the part of 
'the dad' every minute he was with his kids. He would come  
home from work every day and spent an hour rolling around 
on the floor, kissing and hugging Daniel and Sylvie. Every 
couple of days, he'd stand on his head and let them shake 
all the change out of his pockets. They scrambled after 
quarters for the ice cream truck like somebody had busted 
open the cash pinata.

No way I was ever gonna live up to that.

I didn't know whether my dad was a better husband than a 
father or not. Whatever happened between my parents went on 
in private. I never saw them kiss. To tell the truth, if it 
weren't the for the little matter of them having seven 
kids, I would have sworn they were 'just friends'.

Back in the day, I could never quite figure Mulder and 
Scully out. I mean, I knew they liked each other; you could 
tell. But you could tell they were afraid of each other, 
too. Like they could never get too close or too far away. 

It wasn't like that when we got to Delphi. Mulder kissed 
her all the time, and not just, you know, on the face. He 
kissed her hands, her neck when he could get at it. One 
time I found him, bent over in the kitchen, kissing the 
soft part inside of her elbow. She just stood there 
shivering. 

Not only that, but he woke me up every night, giving it to 
Scully. Never took less than an hour. Wouldn't have been 
too bad if they were like regular people with, you know, a 
few muffled bumps and moans. I'd been woken up by Frohike 
and some waitress with more make-up than brains a few times 
over the years, and I always managed to go back to sleep. 
But no, Mulder couldn't screw with his wife without 
providing color commentary.

I had to lay there listening and feeling inadequate and 
holding a girl too damned pregnant to even think about 
putting any moves on.  

Girl was right. She seemed young to me, really young, for 
the first time since I'd known her. I understood why Mulder 
wanted to kick my ass. I decided to try to apologize. But 
what the fuck to say? 

That was going to take a while to think through. 
 
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I was beginning to wonder when I had fallen in love with my 
husband.

It was not love at first sight, because, not unlike cold 
fusion, I had never heard a reliable report of the 
phenomena. Besides, the first time I saw Fox Mulder there 
was great deal of heat but precious little light. Did I 
learn to persevere because I loved him, or did I learn to 
love him because I persevered? 

I knew it was a pointless question, but I continued to wish 
I could isolate the moment of our true marriage, like 
trying to document the point where simmer turns to boil. 

For one thing, it might have helped me with Thea. When does 
a mother fall in love with her child?

I didn't know what to do for her. For long stretches, she 
seemed mature and more than competent, only to suddenly 
behave as though she had been raised by wolves. I suppose, 
at least metaphorically, that was the case. For example, in 
a rare impulsive moment, I bought her a pair of small hoop 
earrings similar to the ones Sylvie usually wore. She was 
so thrilled that she pushed them through her un-pierced 
ears without so much as flinching.

I had the same feelings for Thea that I had for her brother 
and sister, which was strange, but not inexplicable. The 
visceral tug of motherhood was undeniable, but I had no 
background to frame it - no warm memory of her infant body 
between Mulder and me on the bed, no first tooth, no colic, 
no first steps or skinned knees, no first day of school. No 
nothing. And it seemed unreal that soon she'd be a mother 
herself.

She was more than eager to please me, but what really left 
me impressed was the way she treated Daniel and Sylvie. She 
had no aversion to modifying remote control cars or playing 
Barbies for hours on end. She explained the efficacy of 
good penmanship to her irritable little brother. Daniel 
admired her obvious intelligence and tales of hard labor, 
which, for some reason always fascinated him. Sylvie loved 
her humor and sense of adventure. Together, they gave the 
Barbies haircuts. "The old hair was impractical," Thea 
explained, while one Barbie versed the others on their plan 
to "Bring down The Man."

She read the infant development books I gave her, but 
all her questions were about love. She seemed to want 
something from me, some wisdom I wasn't sure I had.

I wasn't sure if she was being a typical 17, 18 year old or 
simply her father's daughter. She thought the sun rose and 
set on odd, ungainly Ringo Langly. 

Langly, for his part, followed her around and picked up the 
constant stream of things she dropped and discarded. He put 
his arm around her every time she stopped moving.

She gave me any information I asked for and some that I 
didn't. She told me wished she could speak so she could say 
his name.  She said Gibson and Langly were the only friends 
she had ever had. The other Gunmen were different she said. 
Like teachers, only smart. Or like techs, who actually 
cared. They might nag but it was a nice nagging. She would 
have compared them to parents, I think, if she'd had the 
experience to draw the connection. The closest thing to a 
mother she had ever had was John Byers.  

What did it say that I still felt inadequate?

After two days with them, I knew that whatever else Langly 
had done to, for, or with her, parenting wasn't on the 
list. She evidenced the uncanny ability to make him blush 
deep scarlet. One day she told me his cunnimanualis was 
far superior to his cunnilingus. "But," she added 
brightly, "it's so nice to kiss his face afterwards."

I had no idea what the appropriate response to this 
information might be. 

I was very close to being grateful, by then, that it was 
Langly we were talking about, and not someone with more 
guile and self-interest. Truth be known, I didn't think 
Langly knew how to betray; strip him of his sarcasm and 
braggadocio and he was a nice, shy Lutheran boy from a 
dairy farm. He seemed so unguarded with her, almost 
defenseless, the protective egotism I associated so closely 
with him, palpably lacking where Thea was involved.  

A nice boy, that is, but still old enough to be her father.

Ironically, although I was slightly older than the farm 
boy in question, I didn't feel old enough to be Thea's 
mother. When she was conceived in May of 1989 I was still 
listening to Jack Willis tell 'Spooky' jokes. In 1994, 
mere weeks after she was released from her tank and the 
wires feeding information to her developing brain were 
removed, I was abducted. The year she was paired with 
Gibson Praise, I was battling cancer. Had I been there, 
I doubt I would have made a very good mother.

Looking at her fair hair and clear skin, I couldn't stop 
myself from thinking abut Emily. I couldn't bring myself to 
talk about her either. Not with my husband. Certainly not 
with Thea. 

Thea and Ringo would take walks around town in the evening, 
shoulder to shoulder. One night they were coming up the 
walk when I saw Langly run back a few houses while Thea 
stared at him with knitted brow. He trotted up to her, a 
something in hand, and passed it to her with the sort of 
flourish Mulder reserved for flowers and buckets of ice 
cream.

The only sign I could make out was 'feldspar'.

Our daughter blushed and glowed in turns. 

Those two were truly odd.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Ten days in to their stay, Martin and I were getting used 
to their presence. I had, for example, come to accept the 
fact that all life stopped for Star Trek, and Thea wouldn't 
eat anything she couldn't conceivably put hot sauce on.

And every night in the room next door Langly sang to her 
until he dropped off to sleep. It was something of a relief 
to know definitively that I did not have the worst singing 
voice in the world. It was less of a relief to be in the 
room next door to it at bed time waiting for it to drop off 
into a snore so I could have sex with my husband.

On the other hand, we were getting fairly adept at Name 
That Tune. 

"I think he's trying to drive us over the edge," Marty 
whispered one night not too long after they'd come to stay. 

"He has no idea we can hear him," I whispered back.

"Do tell, Mrs. Levine," he said leering and making what I'm 
sure he thought was a subtly suggestive motion with his red 
pen.

"Think about it. I would be willing to bet he has 
significant hearing loss from twenty years of concerts and 
loud music. I know for a fact he's had tinnitus since the 
mid-nineties. They're a good match."  I looked over at him.  
He had a stack of essays on 'A Farewell to Arms' on his  
bare chest and I wished Langly would drop off to sleep 
already. "Too bad we don't have railroad tracks in town for 
them to buy a house next to."

"She's a child, Laura. Scully. A baby. Maybe that's why she 
gets a lullaby." His light mood turning sarcastic for a 
minute.

"She's nearly eighteen.  During many periods in history, 
women were married by twelve or thirteen and, not 
infrequently, to men significantly older than themselves.

"Honestly, my feelings on their relationship were more 
Ambiguous than accepting but as usual my husband's out 
right Disapproval pushed me into the opposing camp. 

"Somehow it doesn't make me feel better that Lucrezia 
Borgia was on her third husband at Thea's age." He stared 
down At the paper in front of him and gave Adonis Foster a 
large red C+.

"Thea could fight off a bear if she had to." I suspected 
that perhaps she already had at some point.

"The girls in my Junior English class would rip her to 
shreds." He gave Takeitha Wayne a B-, and I wondered 
briefly what the difference was.

"A shape-shifting alien wouldn't have a chance against 
those girls. Besides, I think she'd do better than Langly," 
I told him. 

He raised his eyebrow. "Do I even have to say it?"

I finally came out and asked, "Do you honestly think he's a 
pedophile?" 

"No!" He scowled, perturbed by the very suggestion.

"Well, what I am attempting to point out to you is that it 
looks to me like they have a remarkably equal relationship. 
He's not a father-figure to her; he's not using her. 
Honestly, they seem equally mature to me. Well, equally 
immature. Besides, I, well, I think they're in love." I 
wanted to laugh at myself for feeling so sentimental.

He looked skeptical as he put the papers on the floor 
beside the fold-out we'd been sleeping on lately. "Yeah?"

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. "You trusted 
him before, right?" 

He adjusted his pillow. "He never impregnated my daughter 
before." 

"Mart- Mulder, how many times has Langly come through for 
you? He's helped the both of us, right? Because he was your 
friend and because you were working for the same things - 
democracy, truth. . ."

"God, mom, apple pie, and cable TV," my husband, the 
eternal smart-ass, broke in. "Yeah. I trusted him."

"Then trust him now."

He changed the subject. "Is he singing 'Good Night Irene'? 
That is so many kinds of wrong." He worked at distracting 
me running his finger in circles around my pajama buttons.

"At least it's not Motorhead night," I whispered and Martin 
shuddered, snuggling closer

Martin's face took of an expression that was both puzzled 
and pained. "What 'is' that song?" He delayed my attempt at 
answering by tracing the shape of my arm, then my hand, 
with his pinky. He lingered in the crook beside my wedding 
ring.

I closed my eyes and listened. His warm hand was more than 
pleasant. "I think that's 'Coup d'etat' by the Circle 
Jerks. Early eighties."

He peered at me over the top of his glasses. "Why does it 
bother me that you know that?"

Something caused me to return to our original topic. "You 
realize Thea's older than Hawaii Stidham don't you ?"

The look on his face told me it had never occurred to him, 
but after he drew his hand back, he was quick to recover. 
"William Boyd Stidham III never spent three weeks playing a 
computer game."

"William Boyd Stidham III," I countered, "couldn't hack 
into any financial institution in this country."

"Or the D.o.D. Or Monsanto." He rolled his eyes and made a 
gesture reminiscent of male masturbation.

"William Boyd Stidham III couldn't build an ethanol engine 
if his life depended on it," I replied.

"You know those videos that weren't mine? Well, I never 
watched one with William Boyd Stidham III." He pursed his 
lips then added, "And as far as I know, Junior Stidham 
never jerked off over a character in a video game."

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

End 04/07