Classification: TRHA

Rating: PG

Summary: A chance to take swipes at pharmaceutical companies, the government, Vegas...the usual targets. Lydia has a strange story to tell, and Langly and Allison and Byers are headed for Vegas.

Spoilers: None here.

Disclaimer: Not mine. Not yours either. Property of 1013 Productions and Fox Television.
 
 

Dare Fatis Vela

"His destiny, his homecoming is at hand
When he shall see his dearest, and walk on his own land."

Homer, "The Odyssey", Book 5, Lines 120-121, Fitzgerald Translation. Used without permission.
 

August 3, 1999

"Hi." Lydia got up to shake hands. Her legs were wobbly beneath her, both from the large quantity of beer she had consumed and the stress of whatever it was that was eating away at her.

"I met you in San Francisco. At your dad's funeral."

"For about 30 seconds. How are you?"

"Not bad, not bad at all. You?"

"I've been better," she admitted.

"Drive down here suck?"

"The drive from NJ to DC always sucks. I've done it a few times, and it's never been something I repeat willingly."

"Ally, got a beer for me?"

"What's the matter, you don't have legs?"

"Hey, I was working."

"And now you're not. And while you're in there, can you grab some iced teas for Lydia and me?"

"Busted again," he muttered, walking into the house.

I turned to Lydia. "There's something I didn't tell you."

"Don't tell me. You're involved with him."

"Jesus, am I that transparent?"

"Yes, you are." She actually smiled on that one. "Ally, you've always had your mind on your sleeve."

"And a long history of losing my shirt."

"How long?

"Not very."

"Pretty serious thing, though?"

"As serious as either of us can be," I replied lightly, but I really wasn't ready to go into it with her. She was, after all, Eric's little sister...

"Good," was her response.

"I figured you'd been really weirded that I didn't wait a year and-"

"Oh, fuck the Jewish shit, Ally."

"Lydia, you're one, too."

"Ally, I'm not particularly observant. I'm strictly a High Holy Days Jew, and that's if I'm not busy. Besides, it's not as if it's particularly advantageous to proclaim one's Jewishness these days."

"Has it ever been? Anti-Semitism's been around about as long as there've been Jews." Langly appeared with beverages in hand. He mock-bowed to me. "Oh Great One, I only live to do your bidding."

"I see you're doing it right this time," observed Lydia drily.

"Forget it. He's not even remotely trainable. You haven't seen what he's done to our bedroom."

"Hey, that was a serious upgrade to your utterly lame system."

"My system was not lame. That was a 300mhz Pentium in it."

"Last year's model. Now you've got screaming speed and gobs of memory."

"Not to mention all the other little features you added." I didn't elaborate on that one. "So Lydia, what's this? Anti-Semitism is alive and well and rearing its ugly head in the workplace?"

"Yeah, it's almost a new millenium, you'd think otherwise."

"Seriously Lyddie," I put in, "what makes you think this is going on?"

Lydia gulped down her iced tea. "I know it's going on."

"How? I mean, there are laws-"

"Ally, I've done my time on the bench. I went and slaved away for my fucking PhD and nearly drove myself bankrupt and insane. I was supposed to head up a new antibiotic research project starting in September." She shook her head, jangling her jewelry as she did. "But all of a sudden, the project's cancelled."

"Well, don't projects get cancelled all the time?"

"They do. But not something like this."

"So what did you get assigned to?"

She laughed miserably. "I'm back on the bench, doing some research into neurotransmitter enzymes. Not exactly my field of expertise. And I'm not even a senior researcher on this project."

"Some exec's kid need a job, and Dad came through?" inquired Langly.

"Yeah, that pretty much covers it. Another career bites the dust in the name of nepotism." She finished off her iced tea. "Anybody want some more? I need a refill. Not to mention a bathroom break."

"None for me," I assured her.

"Maybe in a while," Langly told her.

She went inside the house and I could hear her talking to Miranda and Shelby, who had just come back from Sarah's house.

"She's looking pretty strung out," Langly observed about her.

"Yeah, she's not in the best shape I've ever seen her in. I'm not sure why, either. I know she's having some problems at work, but she hasn't really given me much to work with."

"Sounds like she got cheated out of a promotion big time."

"I think there's something else there. She'd be pissed off about losing the project, but not scared. And something definitely has her scared shitless."

"What company does she work for?"

"Meerschaum-Beckerling."

"Ah, one of the giants in the world of pharmaceuticals. They've got a virtual monopoly on quite a few drugs out there."

"She keeps making all these vague allusions to Anti-Semitism, to nepotism, to a bunch of stuff, and it's nasty stuff, to be sure, but I can't tie this all together. I'm sort of surprised that she's working on some neuro project. Neuro isn't where her expertise is. She's into infection."

"Maybe it's time to do a little on-line checking."

"Maybe, maybe not. I'd like to find out more from her. I'm not sure she'll tell me."

Lydia appeared back at the door, wearing her swimsuit and toting her backpack. "The kids want to go over to the pool. I think a swim might do me good. You don't mind, do you?"

"No, go on ahead. Enjoy. Maybe we'll stroll over in a while."

Langly got up after she left. "Why don't you go and hang with them? I'd like to do a little funky poaching on-line. Something's definitely hinky here."

"Up to you, babe. But I was going to put on my bikini."

"Tell you what. I'll admire you in the bikini when you get back. Besides, I still have scars from our last encounter with Mr. Sun."

"That's what sunblock is for."

"Yeah, and don't forget to wear it."

"Yes, dear."

I don't use the pool in our complex very often, but it's a nice, if somewhat small, pool, with plenty of deck area and nice recliners.

Lydia swam some laps and frolicked with the girls. The water did seem to do her good. Maybe she'd be able to better put her story together later. I got myself wet and then parked it on a recliner with a copy of Catullus in hand. I didn't need anymore Greek tragedy in my life right now, and Catullus is about as far from Greek-and tragedy-as one can get in the
classics.

The girls didn't want to get out of the water, but Lydia had had enough after a while, and she came and joined me in the adjacent recliner.

"Feeling better?" I asked her.

"Yeah, it's good to just be able to do something other than worry all the time." She closed her eyes and leaned the recliner all the way back. "I'm so tired."

"You'll get burned to a crisp if you sleep out here."

"Ally, I'm a brunette, remember?" She laughed, and so did I. "And sunburn is the least of my concerns right now."

"Lydia, you seem really concerned about a lot of things, but I'm still pretty unclear on what's happening here."

"You're not the only one. If I were clear on this, I'd be a lot less worried and I'd have a better idea of what to do." She scanned the empty recliners on the deck. "So where's your gorgeous blonde?"

"He'd rather worship the computer gods than the sun gods. Or more specifically, he'd rather be the computer god."

"Another one?" She laughed.

"Yeah, but slightly different flavor this time."

"That's really good."

"Here I figured you'd be pissed off that I was somehow being disloyal to your brother and desecrating his memory."

"Ally, get over it already, okay? He's dead. I wish to God he wasn't. But he is. I can't bring him, or Mom, or Dad back. Emma's on the other side of the map. I've got Seth and Miranda and you. That's it." She shifted into a prone position for more even bronzing. "You and my brother were good while he was alive. And as far as I'm concerned, that's all that matters.

"My mom and dad, I've always said that the physical attraction between them must have been phenomenal, because they really weren't very compatible. It was only after Mom got sick that Dad became this super-devoted husband and cared for her totally. I think he felt guilty for all the years he was such a shit to her."

"From what Emma tells me, she could be a real shit to him, too."

"And she was. But let's face it, he only got into the good-husband thing after she was too sick to recognize it. And if she hadn't gotten sick, he'd never have treated her like that, and she wouldn't have appreciated it if he had. You and Eric, you guys treated each other kindly. You respected each other. You were considerate to each other. You didn't badmouth the other
one behind the other's back. And even when times weren't the best, you guys always hung tight. And that's what counts. I mean, you're not a fucking nun, Ally, and nobody expects you to live like one.

"And if you got serious in a hurry, so what? It's not like we're all twenty. Skip the stupid games and get on with it."

I laughed gently. "I'm way too old for that shit, Lyddie. And so's Langly, although he is eight years younger than me."

That made her grin. "Ah, another cradle-robber. Isn't younger flesh just that much sweeter?"

"Seth's what, seven years younger than you?"

"Yep. Turned 31 in June. And I can wear him out and not even smudge my eyeliner."

"He still in the animal labs?"

"Yeah, he's there." Seth was a rodent technician. He was extremely humane in his treatment of the critters, which is definitely not always the case in research labs. He worked for the same firm as Lydia, which was how they met. After resisting his initial overtures, she finally succumbed and they'd been together since. "And I don't want to talk to him about some of the things going on at work, because he'd get all weirded out or he'd tell me I was losing my mind. I'm not sure which it would be."

"Seth's a pretty tolerant sort."

"He is. But he'd probably tell me I was making a big deal out of nothing."

"I can't say if you are or not, Lyddie. You haven't really given me a clue as to what's going on."

She stretched her shoulders. "It's...complicated."

"So take it from the top."

Once again, she scanned the pool area. Since it was after 5:00, the place was empty save for the four of us, and the girls were reenacting some kind of horror movie in the pool, replete with screams and loud dialogue. They weren't going to listen in.

"We were bought last year by a conglomerate called Intertest Industries."

"Yeah, it was in the business pages."

"Well, MeerBeck had a reasonably good corporate climate before then. Not great, mind you, but not terrible. You could do research there. And once in a while, you could be recognized for doing something significant, even if you were female, or a minority-it was pretty much okay if you were a purple elephant with pink spots, so long as you could produce. Our last CEO was a pharmacologist, so the technical people had somebody in their corner.

"MeerBeck had been having cash flow problems. Our last couple of drugs didn't do so well. One was quietly pulled from distribution, one was a more public debacle. You remember the thing with the oral contraceptives?"

"Yeah, I do." Several women had died using two types of contraceptive pills
available from them.

"We hadn't really begun to take big hits in R&D-our CEO still felt that if we didn't keep developing new products, we'd be dead in the water anyway. So we still had money pumped into that. And it was a real plum to get the antibiotic project. I really thought we'd make some significant breakthroughs on superinfections, and I was still amped about it.

"Intertest started buying up our stock. And they offered a takeover deal. The CEO had been ready to retire for a while, and he'd kind of been hanging on just to steer the boat through the storm, so to speak. And they apparently offered above and beyond what the stock was valued at-I don't know anything about stock or takeovers or anything about business, so forgive my ignorance-and it was just too good an offer to refuse.

"Memos were circulated and company meetings held to assure people that they'd have their jobs and nothing would change, which instantly made me suspicious. You don't have takeover of that magnitude and not have anything change."

"Little stuff at first. The dress code was instituted. No shorts, no sandals. A limit was placed on the number of body piercings you could display, and tattoos were to be covered. I said, okay, it's stupid, but I can live with that, and you shouldn't be wearing shorts or sandals in the lab anyway.

"Then they sent out memos that the troops weren't complying, so they cracked down more. No jeans. Now, you want to talk about stupid. You don't want to wear clothes in a lab that you give a shit about, and we were pissed. I'll be damned if I'm going to wear Ann Taylor pants when I'm handling chemicals.

"You own clothes from Ann Taylor?" I was incredulous.

"I do now. Pathetic, huh?"

"Hey, you've gotta eat."

"So then there was more bullshit. You couldn't display certain things in your cube or your lab. This includes Dilbert cartoons, girl."

"You're kidding."

"Wish I was. Can you believe, Dilbert is subversive?"

"Dilbert is not subversive. Dilbert's merely an illustration."

"I'm not arguing that. But then they actively blocked our Net access to it as well.

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of."

"If the insanity stayed there, I'd deal with it. But it doesn't. The really stupid-and dangerous-part of the equation is that we no longer have a clue what we're working on. We're just supposed to be...experimenting with possibilities and writing them up. All I know is that I'm doing work on neuro enzymes. I have no idea for what type of drug with what types of applications."

"Isn't part of research just letting your brain go and seeing where it takes you?"

"That can be a lot of fun in the right environment, but research is very expensive, and you have to focus it. And this is definitely not the sort of environment that's going to be tolerant of free thinking."

"North Jersey has a lot of pharm companies. Have you thought about sending out your resume?" This was so obvious as to be insulting, I wasn't sure how she'd react.

"Ally, all the companies are going in this direction. Did you know that all funding for contraceptive and AIDS research has been cut off?"

"You'd think we'd have read about that, Lyd."

"Oh, it's not being made public, that's for certain, but believe me, anything related to reproductive and sexual health is not being worked on. I've...seen things."

"Seen what things?"

"Before my password permissions were changed, I accidentally stumbled on some...documents."

"Internal documents?"

"Uh-huh. All marked 'not for distribution.' Ally, these things scared the hell out of me."

"Did you copy any of them?"

"Are you crazy? I had no desire to end up like Barbara Silverman."

"Wasn't she kind of like your mentor?"

"Barbara, yeah. Barbara's been the guiding force in most of my career."

"So what happened to Barbara?"

She bit her lower lip to keep the tears from coming. You could see her struggling horribly.

"Barbara...died in a diving accident about a month ago."

"Oh, fuck." Barbara had been a strong ally of Lydia's, and the loss had to be devastating. "I'm really sorry to hear that, Lyd."

"It wasn't an accident, I'll promise you that," Lydia whispered fiercely.

"What makes you sure of that?"

"Barbara was demoted right after the takeover. As I told you, women, blacks, Jews, Hispanics, we're all being relegated to the ditches. And she was pissed. She'd done a lot for that company, devoted all her life and energy to it. And she was furious about what was happening. They screwed her royally.

"They made a little mistake, though. They didn't change her password permissions for about a week after she was brought down. And Barbara was determined to find out what was going on. Let's here it for our IS department."

"Sounds like they're a little slow on the uptake."

"Barbara was the one that showed me some of the documents. I didn't have as much access as she did, but I was still able to see a few memos and things after I was removed from some of my responsibilities.

"Barbara threatened to go public with all this. It would've destroyed her career in research, but she didn't give a shit by then. The company tried buying her out, but she wasn't taking. And the company claimed that no one would believe her, anyway. She didn't care. She said she would get it out, no matter what."

"So you think they killed her."

"Barbara was an Olympic team diver back in the 60s. She never medaled, but she continued to do it and enjoy it."

"Even Olympians have accidents. How old was Barbara, anyway?"

"Almost 53. She was born after World War II. Her parents managed to survive Auschwitz, and when she was 5, they were finally able to come to the US. From her parents' experiences, Barbara was always mistrustful of authority and regulation. She could be a little paranoid about things. And she married someone about ten years older than her who had survived the Lodz ghetto, so she had that to exacerbate it."

"Her husband still alive?"

"Yes. Sam called me to tell me that he'd been offered a large 'gift' from the company in connection with her death. For all the fine years of work she'd done." She spat out the last sentence as if it tasted foul. "Sam is convinced they're trying to buy his silence."

"Is Sam a researcher, too?"

"Nope. Sam teaches Holocaust history. He's kind of a brittle sort of guy, but Barbara was crazy about him. They never had any kids, so it was just the two of them, and they adored one another. Oh, and Sam was even more paranoid than she was."

"Being born in Lodz, I'll bet he was."

"He was pretty small during the war years, but he has memories, and he mistrusts everybody."

"I should introduce him to Langly." I laughed at the notion of two paranoid souls with an interest in Holocaust history hammering away in one room.

"Sam is convinced that Barbara didn't die by accident, but he's thinking he'll never be able to prove it. And without proof, as far as the law is concerned, Barbara wasn't murdered. He's been trying to get some people interested in forming a watchdog group of some sort, but he has a tendency to...alienate people, shall we say? And his paranoia is well-known in the circles he travels in, and most people think he's nuts."

"What do you think?"

"I always found Sam to be a pain in the ass and I thought he was overly suspicious. Now I'm not so sure."

"Lyddie, I do know some people who would listen to him...and take him seriously."

"Would that include the sexy blonde who wouldn't come and sit with us so that he could romance the computer?"

"That would include him, yes."

"What is it that he does, anyway?"

"He's one of the editors and writers of a...government watchdog publication." I think Langly would have cracked up hearing the formal way I described it, but if the shoe fits...

"What's the name of this publication?"

"It's called the Magic Bullet. He and the editorial board refer to themselves as the Lone Gunmen."

"Never heard of it."

"Available by subscription only, and you have to go to...certain online sites to subscribe."

"Is this one of those fringe publications?"

"Well, that depends on what you call 'fringe.' I suppose their point of view could be considered...extreme."

This made her laugh. "Ally, you went from Mr. Conventional to Mr. Conspiracy Theorist? This is too much!" She kept laughing.

"Hey-"

"I'm proud of you, girlfriend. I never thought you had it in you to be as straight as my brother would have you."

"Hey, I loved Eric very much. Still do. And I always will."

"Hey, I'm not arguing with you on that. You guys were good together. But I think it's great that when you had the chance, you quit doing what everybody expected you to do...and just did something that felt right for you."

"I'm getting too old not to. I'll be 44 in 5 days."

"That's right, and I don't have a present for you. But I will correct that."

"Lyddie, just staying here with Miranda is a good enough gift for me. You have no idea how much I appreciate it."

"And you have no idea how much I appreciate the chance to get out of North Jersey and maybe start feeling a little sane again. At least I hope I start to feel a little bit sane again."

"Just don't watch any Oliver Stone movies while I'm away."
 

August 5, 1999

"Here are the emergency numbers."

"Hmm...Szechuan Gardens, Domino's, Pizza Hut, Molinero's, Chicken Delight...yep, definitely emergency numbers. Okay, here's the vet. And Dana Scully..."

"Call her if you need medical assistance. She was my old boss. Don't worry, she can do live people as well as dead ones-wait. You can't do that. She's on maternity leave. If it's that bad, call 911 and go to the Alexandria Hospital. It's practically down the street."

"Is she almost fully cooked?"

"Nope, she's had complications. She's doing the bed rest thing. From her e-mails, she's ready to strangle both Mulder and her mother."

"Wanting to strangle Mulder's not much of a stretch. You ready?" Langly was in the kitchen, backpack slung over his shoulder, book in hand, and he was waiting on me. He turned to the one suitcase and my backpack, which were sitting near the doorway. "That's all you brought?"

"More than you have, babe."

"Yeah, but I thought women needed all kinds of stuff just for a weekend. Scully never goes anywhere without at least six bags."

"I travel light. My clothing requirements are not extreme."

He considered a lecherous remark, and bit it back. I winked at him.

"We'll be-"

"Yes, Mom, you'll be at Caesar's Palace. You've only told us 42 times in the last half hour." Miranda was shaking her head as she munched on cereal. "Are you going already? Aunt Lydia's taking Shelby and me swimming."

"Don't miss me too much, okay?" I still remembered Miranda as a toddler, being somewhat upset when I had to go somewhere. Now she was booting us out the door.

"Not likely. You gonna win big, Langly?"

"Nah, I leave that to the experts." Meaning Byers.

"If you really have problems and you can't reach us, Frohike's staying in town," I added.

"Okay Mom already. Now go! I love you!" She gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek, and then she turned to Langly. "Oh, all right, you too." She hugged him, and he hugged her back. "Now get out of here so we can have fun!"
 

Langly had stuffed his notebook computer into his backpack and we took it out for a rousing session of "You Don't Know Jack." I was beating him, but the margins were much narrower than they had been on the last plane trip.

"You studied this version before we played. No fair," I chided him.

"What's not fair? That you're not ripping my balls off in this game?"

"Something like that."

"You're still winning, anyway."

"Guess I'm just too powerful."

"How about Myst?"

"I suck at Myst!"

"It's not whether you win or lose--"

"Oh, c'mon Langly! You're more original than that!"

"-it's whether I win or lose!"

"And if you win?"

"I'll take you to see the Elvis impersonators."

"I can't wait. So what happens if you lose?"

"We'll go twice."

"Wow, that really motivates me here."

"What's the matter, didn't you ever dream of being married by an Elvis impersonator?"

"Langly, that's Mulder's fantasy wedding, not mine."

"You never told me about yours."

"Eric's and mine? Oh God...our wedding was a disaster!"

"Really. I figured you had a nice, normal, regular wedding, from what you told me about him."

"Well, it was sort of the plan. But anything that could go wrong, did."

"How so?"

"Okay. We were living in Los Angeles by then. Both families wanted us to get married up in the Bay Area. We didn't want to do that. Eric's family is Conservative Jewish, not Reform, and I didn't want to get married in a Conservative temple, and in fact, since we both wanted a very small wedding, we didn't want to do it in a temple at all."

"That probably went over well. Not."

"I did want a rabbi to officiate, and I did want a Jewish ceremony. So we had it in the rabbi's study. Both families bitched about that, especially mine. They bitched about traveling the 450 miles to Los Angeles-you'd think we were dragging them to Australia or something. They complained about the hotels we chose for them-they all ended up changing to ones they picked,
which we didn't care about, but they kept bashing me over the head about it. They couldn't understand why we didn't get married up in the Bay Area, which they claimed was our home and was so much nicer and yada yada yada."

"Well, it was your home."

"When we were growing up, yes, but LA was our home together. And that's what we wanted. It's a Bay Area thing. You're supposed to hate LA. But I like LA. My mother didn't help at all; in fact, the whole time she was there, she complained that I was not entertaining her enough. I mean, I was getting married, and she's whining that I'm not paying attention to her!
Then when I finally did have some time and made plans with her, she decided to go out with my brother and his wife instead, and didn't bother to tell me."

"Your mother is a piece of work."

"My dad didn't come down until the night before the wedding, and he couldn't wait for it to be over so that he could get back to work. My brother Dan's wife bitched about the heat the whole time-we were married during a heat wave, and it was 108 on the day we got married. Like I had a lot of control over that. Rob and Jason were pretty cool. Rob and Laurie stayed at our
place while we went away for a few days after and took care of Mu, who, believe it or not, was the only pet we had at the time.

"My in-laws weren't thrilled about us being married by a Reform rabbi, but as they moaned, at least it's a rabbi. They were upset that we had it in the study, not the temple. They wanted us to do the whole nine yards of it, and we didn't. I mean, I had a ketubah-that's a marriage contract, for those of you who are Hebrew-challenged-but they just didn't think it was religious enough for them. They complained about having to spend money to come, which was about the only thing my family didn't."

"That's because your family has bucks and his doesn't."

"Okay, there is that. And then our flowers didn't arrive. The florist screwed up and thought I was getting married August 12, not July 12. She had written 8/12 on my card, not 7/12. So they dropped everything and pulled the flowers together, but they arrived 45 minutes late. Which turned out it didn't matter, because my family got lost on the way to the service and they were an hour late. And the rabbi had another wedding that afternoon.

"So we have the ceremony and all that, and it goes fine. I mean, it's really over so fast. And Eric completely shattered the glass with one shot, which is supposed to be lucky, so that was cool. We truck on over to the reception, which was at this kosher Chinese place we found."

"Kosher Chinese. Okay."

"For real, and it was a really decent place. The owners went out for us. The food was great, champagne on the tables, plenty of beer. Well, my mother-in-law has a fit. We didn't know at the time that she was starting to develop Alzheimers', and she's not the most agreeable person anyway, and she had a total hissy fit. She hates anything but plain kosher cooking, and she was furious because she claimed there was nothing for her to eat. I mean, she had an actual tantrum in the restaurant. I mean, Eric told me she wouldn't be happy, but it was our wedding, not hers, and she was really a lot more upset than we anticipated. She did eat some wedding cake, which was chocolate-we insisted-but only after peeling off the frosting, which was made in a way she didn't like. My dad was annoyed because the place was only licensed for wine and beer and he couldn't have any whiskey. And it really bugged my in-laws that I didn't wear a white dress and a veil. I had a really nice flower print dress and I wore flowers in my hair, which is what made me comfortable, but the idea that I might not be a virgin seemed to particularly upset my father-in-law."

"Well, you weren't, were you?"

"Get real. I hadn't been for a while. But I guess my not wearing white was really upsetting to him. And no tuxes, that bugged my mother. We went for pretty casual dress, and that my mother considered inappropriate. However, my father didn't complain, since he wore his Nikes with his suit. He had arthritis and he wouldn't wear hard shoes. My mother got pissed at him about that as well."

"Sounds like a fun time."

"Not really, but once we got away, it was cool. We went to Big Sur for a few days and it was awesome."

"Kosher Chinese. What a concept."

"Hey, it's not like I had the reception in a biker bar or something."

"Now a biker bar-that's got possibilities."

I punched him in the shoulder.

END OF PART 19