From drjudd@rainbow.net.au Fri Aug 30 08:49:16 1996
OFFSPRING
DESLEA R. JUDD
drjudd@rainbow.net.au
Copyright 1996

DISCLAIMER

This book is based on The X Files, a creation of Chris Carter owned by
him, Twentieth Century Fox, and Ten-Thirteen Productions.  Fox Mulder,
Dana Scully, Walter Skinner, and a number of lesser characters including
Bill Mulder, Mrs Mulder, Samantha Mulder and her clones, Maggie Scully,
Melissa Scully, Captain Scully, Sharon Skinner, Kimberly Cooke, the
Cigarette Smoking (Cancer) Man, the Well Manicured Man and his offsider,
Frohike, Quiqueg, Gautier, Jean Gautier, Ellen, and Alex Krycek remain the
intellectual property of those parties.  A number of other characters are
the author's creation and are copyright, and may not be used without her
written permission.  These include but are not limited to Dr Karen
Koettig, Agent Grbevski, Melissa Samantha Scully, Grace Skinner, Clone 1
(Cynthia), Clone 3 (Carolyn), Clone 4 (Catherine), Dr Sam Fieldman, Dr
Paul Sturrock, Dr Marion Pieterse, Wendy Tomiris, Serena Ingleburn,
Amarette, Dr Jillian Maitz, Hallie, and Emily Trent.  Any queries
concerning ownership of minor characters not mentioned here should be
directed to the author.

(See Pt 1 for complete spoiler, content, and comments info).

A few spoilers from Pilot, Duane Barry, Ascension, One Breath, Colony,
Endgame, Anasazi, Blessing Way, Paper Clip, Nisei, 7.31, Piper Maru,
Apocrypha, and Avatar.

I've rated this book R just to be on the safe side, but I think it's more
PG-13, in truth.   There's some low-level sex (three scenes, more
emotional than anatomical), low-level bad language, low-level violence,
and that's about all.

Comments, good and bad, are welcome; but make sure they're constructive,
please!  My e-mail is drjudd@rainbow.net.au, but don't worry if you see
something else in your "reply" header like magna.com, because Rainbow.Net
shares a server with another ISP called MagnaData.  And if you think my
work's worth stealing, I'm flattered; but don't even think about it. 
Archivists, feel free to add this to your collections; but be sure to let
me know.

OFFSPRING BY DESLEA R. JUDD (10/18)

FIVE

3170 West 53 Rd, #35
Annapolis, Maryland
January 19, 1997

	    In the end, she broke quite suddenly.
	    They were in the kitchen of her apartment, and Skinner insisted that
he get the coffee.  It wasn't only solicitude.  He feared she would burn
herself, she was shaking that badly.  But Scully kicked up the most
infuriating fuss, accusing him of patronising her and trying to be big and
strong instead of expressing how <> was feeling.  (The pot calling the
kettle black, Skinner reflected).  She became furious, then overwrought,
then suddenly collapsed on the floor in floods of tears, her arms crossed
over her head.  
	    Alarmed but not surprised, Skinner dropped at her side and cradled
her there, until later, much later, she quietened, making little
breathless hitching noises every now and then.  Then their lips met, and
suddenly they were comforting each other in the only way they could,
losing themselves and their pain in one another.  They moved to her
bedroom and undressed one another, and even when, tenderly, he entered
her, even when they came together, still they held each other with their
eyes, lost in one another's agony.  
	    When they were spent, they lay with their hands linked over the
swelling in her stomach.  Then there were more tears, his; and he wept in
that unashamed way that a man does only with his lover in the bed that
they share.  Deeply moved, Dana held him and kissed away his tears; and he
was comforted.  Finally, they fell into a fitful sleep, their embrace
tightly protective.
	    Skinner was woken by a rattling outside Dana's apartment.  There was
the sound of a key in the lock, the turning of tumblers.  He extricated
himself from Dana, quickly pulled on his trousers and threw his shirt on. 
Not bothering to button it, he drew his weapon, went to the living room,
and trained it on the doorway just as the door swung soundlessly open. 
"Federal agent.  Drop your weapon and place your hands behind your head,"
he demanded as the shadow of a man presented itself.
	    Mulder complied, stepping into the light.  Skinner lowered the gun. 
"Don't you ever announce yourself?" he demanded.  "Or knock?"
	    "Only at your office, Sir," Mulder said wryly, lowering his hands.
	    "And usually not then, either."  He put the gun down on the coffee
table and turned away to button his shirt, suddenly self-conscious.  "What
are you doing here?" he asked, turning back to face him.
	    To his surprise, Mulder was red-faced.  "When neither you nor Agent
Scully returned to the office, Sir, I became worried.  I thought you'd had
bad news.  I didn't think - I mean, I didn't realise-"  he broke off,
discomfort showing in his expression.  "I didn't mean to intrude," he
apologised softly.
	    Skinner held up a hand, dismissing this, frowning.  "Unfortunately,
Agent Mulder, you were right.  The news is bad - very bad."  He regarded
him for a moment.
	    "You'd better sit down."

	    Scully woke to voices in her living room.  She sat bolt upright for a
second, but then she recognised them as Skinner's and Mulder's.  She lay
back down for a few minutes, collecting her thoughts.  
	    She thought of the baby moving within her, and of her sister, and
even of her father.  <>  But she didn't
need his message from beyond to know - indeed, once she had rejected a
psychic man's offer to give it to her.  She already knew:  he was her
father.  <> she could imagine him
saying.  <>
	    Even as an adult, she had never really understood that.  She knew
that it was important to do what was right, somehow; but she hadn't
understood that you could never exert any control over the actions of
others, whatever you did - not really.  If you wanted things to be right,
you had to do what was right yourself and hope that it was enough.
	    She understood now.
	    And now she committed herself, again, to doing whatever she had to do
to protect this child with whom she had been entrusted.  Because that was
what was right; and it was the only thing in this situation that she knew
was right.
	    Scully dressed in a pair of track pants and a loose shirt.  She
didn't have that many clothes that really fitted her anymore.  She didn't
need them:  she was always swathed in her trenchcoat at work.  If her
belly strained against her trousers, it didn't really matter, because
no-one saw them.  Her weekends were spent quietly at home; she had stopped
seeing her family.  Not that she mistrusted or feared them; she simply
hadn't thought it a good idea for them to know she was pregnant until she
was sure her baby hadn't been harmed by the accident at Kuringai.
	    And until she knew exactly what this child she was carrying was,
perhaps that was just as well.
	    She emerged from her bedroom.  Mulder and Skinner looked up, Mulder
with some suprise.  She was puzzled, then realised:  Except for her
sonogram, when she had been swaddled in a surgical gown and sheet, Mulder
had never seen her this way, her pregnancy showing.  "You filled him in?"
she asked Skinner.
	    Skinner nodded; then, respectful of the bond they shared, he rose and
went to the kitchen.  Mulder rose also and took her hands.  "I'm sorry,
Scully.  For how I acted and for what you've learned."  He stepped forward
and embraced her, warmly.  She held him tightly for a long moment, then
smiled at him gently and pulled away.
	    "How are you?" he asked gently as they sat.
	    She gave a twisted little smile.  "I'm coping, I guess.  I wasn't
doing so well earlier.  I felt kind of frozen - emotionally, I mean; but
physically, too.  I was so <>  I felt- I don't know, paralysed,
somehow."
    	He bowed his head, ashamed.  "And I was too busy playing ghostbuster
to be there.  I'm sorry, Scully.  You deserve better than the way I
treated you."
	    Scully took his hand.  "Don't, Mulder.  It's over.  You're here now. 
And I don't think anyone could have done anything for me before.  It was
something I had to break through myself.  Walter was here, but even he
couldn't do very much except stay with me through it."  She paused.  "Let
it go."
	    Skinner emerged with coffee, and the three of them sat silently for a
time, lost in thought.  Suddenly, he asked, "Did you check?"
	    Scully looked at him, puzzled, a moment; but then her expression
cleared.  "The laproscopy?  Yes, there's a scar."  She paused.  "The only
thing I don't understand is why it's there.  With IVF, they normally use a
tube intravaginally into the uterus.  Laparoscopy is more often used to
collect ova.  It doesn't make sense, because the ova used weren't mine."
	    Mulder spoke up.  "I went through this with a cousin of mine a few
years ago.  They used a program called GIFT.  I don't know what it stands
for.  But they surgically implanted ova and sperm into the fallopian tubes
to fertilise naturally."
	    "Gamente Intra Fallopian Transfer," Scully expounded.  "It's more
invasive in one sense, but there's a higher success rate than with IVF. 
It's also ethically more acceptable because there's no question of
freezing complete embryos, and no question of destroying lives once a
decision has been made to thaw the cells unused - not that the people who
took me seem too concerned about ethics," she added bitterly.  "It does
make more sense that way, medically speaking," she conceded, "but I stand
by what I said before.  It must have been IVF - complete embryos. 
Implanting unfertilised ova - even if you implant sperm too - is just too
risky for the purposes these people have in mind.  What was to stop me
from conceiving with a man with whom I was involved - as in fact was the
case?"
	    Skinner spoke slowly, thinking it through.  "I'm not so sure about
that, Dana.  For one thing, they had no way of anticipating that you would
be rescued.  Chances are they would have held you until they had
ascertained the success of the experiment - maybe even until the child was
born, if it had been."
	    "There's something else," Mulder said.  "They'd have done their
homework.  You haven't been involved with anyone in years - hell, I don't
think you've even dated in years, have you?"  She shook her head.  "That's
my fault, dragging you into my messes and scrapes.  They couldn't have
predicted you two getting together in the aftermath.  And," he added, "it
means you haven't been on the Pill, I suppose?  Because that would cause
problems with you getting pregnant."
	    Scully nodded slowly.  "Yes, that's true...I suppose that makes sense."
	    "And maybe that's why you were chosen for the project," Skinner
pointed out.  "But <>   What's it all for?"
	    Mulder answered.  "I don't want to hit a nerve here, but I think it's
part of the experiments to create an alien-human hybrid."  Scully stifled
a groan.
	    "But why?" Skinner repeated.  "To what purpose?"
	    Scully put forward her own theory.  "Whatever it is, I think it's to
do with bio warfare.  I think it's an attempt to alter immune and other
base responses in order to provide an artiliary soldiered by immunes in
the event of germ war - not to mention to provide the basis of human
survival, in some form, were such an event to happen."
	    "I think that's part of it," Mulder agreed, "but I'd apply the same
to nuclear warfare.  The question of radiation exposure, all of that."
	    Scully looked at him dubiously.  "Not the radiation thing again?"
	    Mulder grinned, half annoyed, half amused.  "Scully, do you remember
those French seamen on the salvage vessel?"
	    Scully nodded.  "How could I forget?"
	    Several months previously, a French vessel on a mysterious salvage
mission had been found, all but one of its occupants afflicted with severe
radiation sickness.  Those suffering had died within days.  The remaining
seaman, a man named Gautier, had shown no signs of illness; but had acted
strangely in subsequent days.  Eventually, Mulder had found him, passed
out; and when he came to, he had no recollection of any of the events
leading up to their rescue.  His wife, Jean, had suffered the same fate,
making her way to Hong Kong before being found similarly collapsed. 
Corrupt Agent Krycek had manifested similar symptoms before disappearing. 
Mulder had formed the opinion that they had been hosts to an alien
lifeform, and that the salvage mission had been in the process of
retrieving a UFO with radioactive qualities.
	    Now, Mulder said cautiously, "I know what you think of my theories on
that case; but isn't it possible that whatever Gautier was host to
protected him from the effects of the radiation to which he was exposed?"
	    Scully wasn't won that easily.  "Go on," she said dubiously.
    	"Presumably, because whatever Gautier was host to was capable of
rendering radiation benign?"
	    Scully thought a moment.  "Not precisely.  It doesn't become benign,
as such.  The chain of reactions stops at some point - the radioactive
substance stabilises.  And radiation isn't an entity in the sense that a
virus or bacteria is.  You can't have an immune response, per se.  It's a
process.  It breaks down cells.  Theoretically, his cells could have
self-repaired.  This doesn't happen in practice because one, the damage is
too great to be repaired, and two, the self-repair mechanism itself is
also broken down and either doesn't work or repairs in a way which is
faulty.  And with gamma radiation, there's never a chance anyway because
normally the substance - the cell, say - never completely restabilises."
    	"For the sake of argument, let's say these creatures have some sort
of properties which interrupt and stabilise the process, and enable their
cells to self-repair - perhaps an ability which evolved because they live
in an environment of high radioactivity.  As, apparently, do those who are
hosts to those creatures - at least while they are hosts.  As," he said
pointedly, "do you."
	    "Mulder, I-"  Disbelief already showed in her expression.
	    Skinner spoke up.  "Dana, you were exposed to over one thousand rem
of radiation.  You should have been dead inside of six hours.  Can you
explain that?"
	    Scully turned to Skinner, stunned.  "You believe this?"
	    "I want to believe that there is an explanation for all this.  That
it isn't just some cosmic fluke.  I want to believe that there is a reason
for this, and that there are people who did this to you, and that we can
find them and make them pay."
	    Scully turned to Mulder.  "Mulder, it's true that foetal hormones
have been found in minute levels in the mother's system - hormones which
have been overridden by the mother's cells as foreign.  But that's the
only known crossing of foetal characteristics of any kind into the
mother.  For this kind of cell-repair, she would need appropriate enzymes
in enormous quantities - quantities far greater than those which could
originate in the foetus, much less cross into the mother.  And anyway,
even if that did explain my recovery, it doesn't explain why Gautier
showed no symptoms in the first place."
	    "Gautier was host, presumably, to a mature, fully-formed, completely
alien lifeform.  The enzyme concentration would be greater and stronger. 
Maybe his cells repaired almost instantly, so that he showed no effects. 
You, on the other hand, are host to a partly-formed, immature lifeform
which is only partly alien and therefore would not have the strength to
pre-empt an attack, but which with a greater time frame could still induce
a recovery."
	    "Mulder, there's been nothing documented-"
	    "Scully, of course there isn't!  They're completely different
creatures - your DNA testing showed that.  You can't expect the normal
rules to apply!"
	    Scully became angry.  "Isn't it convenient that nothing you work on
ever has to make sense?  'It's alien, so it doesn't have to.' What a
cop-out," she said disgustedly.
	    "You know that's not true.  I think there probably is a certain logic
to all of this, just as there is in this reality.  But I also think that
what we presuppose in this world we can't necessarily presuppose in
another.  That's all."
	    Scully felt ashamed.  She didn't agree with him, but he was right -
she was being unfair.  She looked away a moment.  Finally, she said, her
tone more even, "All right.  Let's take as our assumption that some sort
of experimentation has taken place, involving GIFT, with a view to
creating a life form with certain coping mechanisms relevant to defense. 
As to the details of the source of those properties, let's agree to differ
for now - it doesn't make that much difference for the immediate moment,
anyway.  How do we go about investigating further?"
	    "I think you were on the right track asking for a DNA breakdown on
the genetic- on the ovum," Skinner corrected.
    	A look of pain flitted across Scully's face.  "You mean on the
genetic mother."  
	    Skinner bowed his head.  "I'm sorry."
	    There was an uncomfortable pause; until finally, Mulder could no
longer stand it.  He broke it.  "You think we should run searches against
the databases?" he asked, dubiously.
	    "It's something," Scully said.
	    "But Scully, we're probably talking another abductee here, not a
criminal.  She may not have a record, and if she does, it's likely as not
to be something that doesn't involve leaving bodily fluids at a crime
scene - like tax evasion.  So unless she's from Virginia," Mulder said,
referring to that state's practice of taking fluid samples from all
criminals, "you won't find her."
	    Skinner spoke up.  "Look, it's a long shot.  But frankly, Mulder,
it's the only clue we have."
    	"I still think we'd be better going to the source of it all...the
railroad.  They had to be taking you somewhere  - a holding facility,
labs, something."
	    "That's your agenda talking, Mulder," Scully said pointedly.  "That
railroad branches off everywhere, and as soon as my absence was detected,
they stopped the train and went back, isn't that right?  Frohike got
nothing but a few hundred extra miles on his car for his trouble.  The
railroad is bigger than our resources right now.  The DNA search is
manageable.  It might not help, but it's not going to do any harm."
	    Mulder regarded them both.  "All right," he said finally.  "Let's do it."

Coming In Part 11:  A Mysterious E-Mail/Who Is S-A-M?/The Mother Of
Scully's Child

-- 
 _______________________________________
|                                       |
|Deslea R. Judd (drjudd@rainbow.net.au) |
|"The Owls Are Not What They Seem"      |
|           - The Log Lady, Twin Peaks) |
|_______________________________________|

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