Classification: TRHA

Rating: PG. Ever notice how much of life is PG?

Summary: Weird bedtime stories.

Spoilers: None.

Disclaimer: Go away already. When I want to play with them, they're MINE! Legally, though, they belong to 1013 Productions and Fox Television. It's always about money, isn't it?
 

"For all my father's household was nothing but dead men before my lord the king..."

2 Samuel 19:28, New American Standard Version
 

Patraloas

August 9, 1999

"Do we have any more coffee?" Langly yawned. He looked utterly exhausted.

"I'll put some on. If somebody tried to draw my blood right now, I think it'd be brown liquid and overdosed on caffeine."

He sat in the recliner, and I moved on to the corner of the sofa closest to him. I grabbed an ashtray and lit a cigarette.

"Give me one. It'll help keep me awake."

"Here." I handed him the pack and lighter. We both smoked in silence for a moment.

"Pop quiz, Ally. What year did your dad come to the United States?"

I looked at him as if he were insane, which I had already determined he was, but it was a strange way even for a lunatic to start a discussion.

"1934. He had just turned four."

"Very good."

"Langly, don't fucking patronize me. I'm tired and crabby and I bite when I'm like this."

He smiled indulgently. "Promises, promises."

Seriously, what does my dad having arrived in the United States in 1934 have to do with this?"

"Ally, I told you it was long and complicated. So either stay with me or we'll do this later."

"Okay. I'm sorry. I'm just feeling like the most miserable bitch known to God and man right now."

"No, I think that honor still goes to your mom. But you're starting to sound like a pretty fair first runner up."

"Are you going to get on with this?"

"Yeah. But listen up and don't keep interrupting, okay?"

"All right, already."

"Okay. Your dad comes to the US in '34. He comes with who?"

"My grandpa and grandma and my aunt and uncle."

"Yep. What'd your grandpa do?"

"My grandpa owned an engineering firm in Austria. He did gas delivery systems for medical uses."

"And your grandpa made a pretty good fortune, right?"

"Yeah. But they couldn't take any of their money out of Austria when they left, because it was confiscated."

"Ah, so you do know some of your history."

"Langly, I'm a Jew. I have a basic knowledge of this stuff."

"Okay. So your Grandpa wants to get the hell out of Austria when he sees things getting ugly. He didn't get rich by being stupid, and he sees the writing on the wall. Only thing is, he can't buy exit visas, and he can't take it with him. So how the hell is he gonna get himself, the wife and 3 kids out of the country?"

"I don't know. You see, my family...doesn't really talk about this. I don't think it's a time they cared to remember."

"Damn straight. So he wants to get out. And Europe isn't looking too great. The depression is going on big time. And there's a lot of anti-Semitism running around, and him being Jewish, nobody wants him. So what does he do?"

"I think he tried to get to Canada first, but he needed a sponsor, and he didn't have any relatives there."

"Possibly. So he tries to get into the US. And this is going to be a lot harder than he thought. He's got no relatives in the US to sponsor him, and the US State Department systematically limited the number of Jews entering the country. Did you know that?"

"A lot of Jews suspect it."

"Well, they get the prize for being right, then. The United States had a policy of strictly limiting Jewish immigration. Anti-Semitism was alive and kicking here, too. And he's had all his assets confiscated, and he's not looking too attractive to add to their quotas. So pretend you're in his shoes for a minute. What would you do?"

"Whatever I had to in order to keep my family safe."

"Exactly. Fortunately, your grandpa has some things even the Nazis couldn't take. He had advanced degrees in chemical engineering, and he was creative and innovative. So the State Department says, this guy was a prominent industrialist, and he's got a few functioning brain cells. Maybe he can be useful to us. We'll take another look.

"So they decide, we can use this guy. And he'll do whatever we tell him, because he is so damn desperate to save his family that he'll suck up to anything."

"You make it sound like he's a sellout, when in fact he had no choice!"

"Of course he had no choice! Let me go on."

"Okay. Just remember something: I was named in his memory."

"How'd that-oh, yeah. His name was Abram, and I guess you take the first initial from the last relative who died."

"True. I didn't know my grandpa and I don't want to desecrate his memory."

"Ally, that's not the point of this story, so don't argue, okay? Listen and learn.

"So they grant visas to your grandpa and the family, and they get to New York City."

"My grandma hated New York City."

"That's why they settled in San Francisco. The feds are like, okay, whatever. So your family heads west. And what did grandpa do when he got there?"

"Started a company."

"That's what you've been told. Your grandpa's company was a front."

"A front for what?"

"Basically, your grandpa got here because he agreed to do chemical weapons research for the federal government."

"You're saying my grandpa made a pact with the devil to get here."

"He wasn't the only one. Same year, different country-physician by the name of Yakov Molodhoretz from Poland got here by making a similar deal."

"Who's Yakov Molodhoretz?"

"Mulder, Molodhoretz, the similarity strike you? Probably a fuck up at entry, or else he changed it himself. In any event, he became Jacob Mulder when he got here."

"Mulder's grandfather?"

"The one and the same. Jacob Mulder was doing biological weapons research for the feds as his price of admission."

"Oh, God. Does Mulder know this?"

"Yeah, he does."

"This is all very interesting, Langly, but what does this have to do with the price of fish?"

"Ally-"

"Okay, okay."

"So anyway, this is where things diverge. Your grandpa wants to stay here and keep the family safe, and he's going to soldier on and put up with any shit the government wants to give him, if only because proportionally it looks less vile than what he'd have to put up with in Austria. He probably doesn't like it, but he's alive and his family's okay.

"Jacob Mulder is not liking this deal a whole lot, and things aren't going so well for him. They had one kid born in Poland, and in 1935, they have kid number 2. This kid is William Mulder, who grows up to be Mulder's dad. Well, Anna, that's Mulder's grandma, she dies having kid number 2 when she suffers a brain anyeurism after William Mulder pops on to the planet.

"Things really suck for Jacob Mulder. He doesn't like doing the work he's doing, and he wants to practice medicine like he did in Poland. So he tries to quit and get a medical license. State of New York won't give him one. He moves to Rhode Island. Same deal. Finally he ends up in Massachusetts and applies there. No dice.

"Jacob's drinking pretty bad by this time. He's got two kids he's raising alone, and not doing very well with it. He starts bashing on the kiddies. Rebecca-that would have been Mulder's aunt-is getting the worst of it. He's molesting her regularly. So one night she refuses him. The guy goes postal. He ends up beating her to death."

"So much for the mythology that Jews don't drink and beat their families."

"So I've learned. Anyway, Jacob ends up killing himself, leaving a 9-year-old Billy Mulder to deal with the mess."

"So what happened to him?"

"He's about to end up in the Jewish orphanage, and somebody wants to adopt him. Well, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is always more than happy to have one less mouth to feed, so they're like sure, whatever. He gets adopted into this family, where they have a son slightly older than he.

"Unfortunately, it's not paradise found. Stepdaddy has a mean old temper, and he bashes on the two little guys with alarming regularity. Stepmom is sort of weak and she just lets him have his way."

"Why did he adopt him?"

"Jacob was a friend, and they were wrapped up in the same stuff. This family came from Poland too, they felt the obligation, I guess. But the friend is not the most stable guy in the world, so life is still pretty shitty. I don't know what it is, it's like these guys could never adjust to the change to their new country or something."

"Put yourself in a similar situation."

"And I'd probably be a lot like them. But Billy seems to be more or less okay. He does well in school, all that shit, wins a scholarship to Harvard, as did big stepbrother. So he and stepbrother are looking like they might make it.

"Problem is, these two dudes are majorly pissed off."

"And rightfully so, from what it sounds."

"Okay, I'm not gonna argue that. But they're pissed. And they're not gonna get shoved around. They're gonna remake the world in their image."

"All right. So what happens?"

"They go into government service."

"I guess there's nothing like being on the inside."

"Nothing like it, that's for sure."

"Langly, not to be so self-involved, but I'd like to know what happened with my grandpa."

"What year did your grandpa die?"

"1955. Five days before I was born."

"How'd he die?"

"Heart attack, I think my dad said."

"Uh-not exactly."

"What do you mean, not exactly?"

He had pulled his knees up to his chin and wrapped his arms around his legs. God, the guy was all limbs. He had his hair pulled back into a ponytail-it dawned on me that he hadn't even had the chance to crawl into the shower yet. Between the pose and the fatigue on his face, he looked about 14.

"Ally, do you really wanna know?"

"I don't know. Maybe I should."

"Your grandpa shot himself."

"What?!"

"I've seen his...autopsy report. You really don't want the gory details, Ally."

"Well, he saved his family, but it sounds like he was never happy with the decisions he had to make."

"Since you didn't know him, I can't ask if you think he'd do this sort of thing. But it does make me suspicious. It was reported by your dad that he'd been depressed for a long time, but I'd have to get a physician to really look over the report."

"D'ya think Dana would do it?"

"Not sure I want her getting involved in this. She's supposed to rest up, and Mulder would shoot me if I started giving her stuff to do."

"I hear she's the better shot." We both laughed.

"Yeah, but I don't think I'd wanna get him upset over Scully. You should have seen him during the three months she was...gone...but I digress.

"So your grandpa dies, and your dad and your uncle and aunt try to buy out what they think is their share. The company's not worth very much, but they each get a big chunk of change. Strange? I think so."

"And my daddy started his company."

"And Daddy starts his company. And in the meantime, Grandpa doesn't say anything to anybody. So the kids don't know how they got here. I think they just assumed they got lucky. Daddy has no clue that his seed money's tainted."

"Well, I don't think he can be blamed for that."

"Ally, quit getting defensive, okay? So your dad forms Rausch Electronics, way back when Silicon Valley was a bunch of zucchini fields. And he does okay. He gets a partner-"

"That would be Jerold Sondermayer."

"Yeah. And it's a good thing he hooks up with Jerry, because while your dad is a fucking design genius, he's not much of a businessman. And he knows it, and he knows that without Jerry, he's going nowhere in a hurry."

"Daddy was always more the creative type."

"It's a gift, but won't make your company go. You need both. So Jerry hustles and your dad makes the products. They sell some stuff. They hire a few more people. They sell a lot more stuff. They hire a lot more people. They start making money, and the Rausches can move up to Mill Valley.

"Things are looking good. The Rausches are living large. They have two more kids. The business grows. The house gets bigger and the cars get better. Things are really awesome until the 70s come along.

"In 1971, your dad applied for a patent on his artificial heart valve that he designs in conjunction with a doc he's friends with from the neighborhood. The patent gets filed, and the production starts. Looks like a real moneymaker for the company, and things could really hit the ceiling.

"One small problem, though. The heart valves didn't work properly. It might have been design or manufacturing process, but whatever it was, it damn near killed the house that Rausch built.

"Wait a minute. I knew there had been some problems, but Daddy said that they were settled."

"Oh, they got settled all right. To the tune of nearly 15 million dollars, which just about bankrupted the company."

"Wait. This is not the way my parents told me about this."

"What did they tell you?"

"Not much, admittedly."

"Well, I hate to tell you this, but there are court documents in these cases. Public record in some cases, private but easily obtainable otherwise."

"If you know what to do."

"If you know what to do. So your parents have had a fourth kid, your mother likes living large and gambling and entertaining and all that shit. And this was before your mother got good. She was losing money all over the place."

"My mother got her real estate license around that time."

"And she started to buy commercial properties, thinking that there was money to be made. Eventually she did in the 80s, when Silicon Valley went nuts. But the 70s were hard times."

"Maybe that's why they wanted me to go to school locally. I mean, they made this big thing out of they wouldn't send a daughter to anything but a state school nearby, that I wasn't worth the investment." I tried to laugh, but it came out as a short, harsh bark.

"And they knew probably that your brother wanted med school and they probably figured you'd marry into another one of Silicon Valley's royal families and things would get better. But you start getting involved with a dude from Hayward. I mean, Hayward! Your mom is freaking."

"Yeah, but she's come a long way from San Leandro and she ain't going back. Your mom went to Stanford on scholarship, didn't she?"

"Yes, she did. Against her parents' wishes. And she was determined that her life would be different.   She didn't want anything to do with living on the wrong side of the Bay."

"And she made sure she chose somebody who would give her that life. But in the meantime, Rausch Electronics is bleeding red ink. Your family's house in Mill Valley is mortgaged to the hilt, and your mom and dad have cashed out most of their investments to keep the company going.

"So it's probably with immense relief that your dad gets this major contract for radiation delivery systems. He's good in radiotherapeutics and diagnostics, so this is up his alley; after the heart valve debacle, he probably wants to stick to what he's good at. Who do you think gives him this contract?"

"I have no idea."

"It's Bill Mulder and his pals at the shadow outfit. They want delivery systems for their particular kind of evil magic. But your dad doesn't know that at first. I can see where you get your lack of guile, Ally, but at least you came by it honestly."

"My father was not duplicitous."

"And that's a good thing, but combined with his financial desperation, he didn't have really good judgment. And Sondermayer was gone by then."

"They'd had a falling out years prior."

"Jerry only wanted to stick with winners, and when your dad started losing, he bailed. Even though the heart valves were his idea to take to market.

"So Rausch Electronics has money again. They can happily do R&D, and your dad feels like probably he's been given a second chance. Once again, the Rausches live large, but I bet your dad never recovered from what happened after the heart valve thing."

"I think it shook him pretty badly."

"Now your mom's investments are starting to pay off. You're out of college, it's a couple more years before Robbie gets in, and they only have to sweat paying for Danny boy. Jason's still little and they don't worry about it.

"Now the pressure heats up. Your dad is developing stuff, good stuff, and making money. But the shadow pals want something else. They're looking at gas delivery systems. Your dad balks, but eventually he figures out that if he doesn't play he's gonna pay, and he can't afford the fare. So he tries to go through some of your grandpa's old records and books, seeing what he did. And he learns about what the deal was that your grandpa made to get them out of Austria. Unlike your dad, your grandpa kept good records. He wrote everything down."

"My dad was sloppy in that regard. He could remember most anything, so he didn't really need to."

"This was 1981. What year did your dad die?"

"1982. He suffered a heart attack. At home in bed."

"That was verified. I don't know how your dad felt about the whole thing, but I'm guessing that all this broke his heart."

"It may have. I don't know. He was pretty strange the last year of his life. Particularly the last six months."

"But you had just gotten married, and you were happy, so this is not your major problem. Your main concern is being  married, working, doing things like that. And your dad can't quit. Danny boy is going to get into med school. And if he tries to stop this, your mom is going to lose it. I mean, she's not the most stable woman anyway."

"Bipolar disorder can do that to a person."

"Yeah. And your mom and dad are drinking big time."

"They always drank big time. Sometimes it scared me."

"No big surprise there."

"Okay, so we have figured out that my grandpa and my daddy were dirty." I was pretty pissed off, and having not slept was not helping. "What does this have to do with my situation in the present day? What the fuck did I ever do?"

"Let me have another cigarette, Ally. And put on some more coffee."

"More to tell?"

"Much more."
 

We were back in our places in the living room, and Langly was sitting with his feet up, munching Cherry Garcia straight from the tub. He looked like a little kid. I really needed to get him in bed, but I also needed to hear more. Or did I? I was so confused now. It was as if I had never known my family at all.

"So you marry Eric Gerstein," he mumbled over a mouthful of ice cream. "God, Ally, you know why I love you, don't you?"

"Why don't you just tell me? I'm too tired to think straight."

"'Cause you always keep great ice cream in the house. Ben & Jerry's. Awesome."

"So Eric majors in bio like you, and he's finishing grad school, thinking he's gonna be a professor. And you decide to head to court reporting school, because there's not much out there for you, and you think you might like it."

"Eric starts dealing with computers at work, and decides computers are a lot more fun than lab work, so he starts programming. You finish reporting school. You guys have Miranda. Life is good. You're happy, until one day you realize you can't take working in juvey anymore. You're on your way to becoming a drunk, and Eric knows it. So you start looking for other things in life. You buy a house. Life gets good again. You're not rich, but you're comfortable, you have what you need, you like your husband, like working with deaf kids, love your daughter and your animals. And you take fun vacations once in a while, and you go out and look at the stars, and see movies, and go to dinner, and celebrate holidays. You've got a nice life
with friends and good times. Your husband's not an easy guy to live with, but you love him, he loves you, and you make it work."

"Your husband decides at one point he's going to move into Windows programming; he's had it with Unix programming and wants to move on. So he takes the pay cut, you guys get by a little more tightly, but no big deal. And he starts doing more stuff he likes.

"He gets a job at this company in 1996. And it's a plummy job. Brings him back up on the pay scale, and he's doing work he thinks is cool.

"Eric liked Java programming."

"And he was good. He's a good software designer. And vendors like his work. So he's in a vendor meeting one day, and they want his group to do some stuff for them, build a software interface. Who do you think the vendor is?"

"Daddy's company?"

"Bingo. Turns out that your husband's company stretched themselves a little thin on their IPO, and sales were slow."

"That I was aware of."

"And how convenient that he happens to be married to the founder's daughter. If he gets obnoxious, he can be controlled, right?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Eric's group was asked to build a software interface that would deliver substances. And the project looked real cool on the surface. But Eric started getting uncomfortable. He knew your dad had military contracts, and he was not real comfy with that idea. He began to get concerned about what might be done with his product."

"Langly, I swear, he never said a word to me about it."

"On the quiet, he started checking out your dad's old stomping grounds. And he wasn't liking what he was seeing. He probably started sending out resumes, didn't he?"

"He sent a few. Said it never hurt to let people know you're alive." God. What a sick choice of words.

"Did you know he was unhappy at work?"

"I know he was stressed-I did talk to him once in a while, you know!"

"Yeah, but it sounds like there was stuff he didn't tell you."

"Like what? We talked about work all the time. Probably too much."

"What did he say about what he was working on before he died?"

"That he was having a hard time with it. I assumed he meant technologically."

"And you said he was stressed out."

"Their release schedule was inhumane. He was putting in a lot of hours, and anyone would get stressed. And Eric was pretty high-strung. He'd get pretty moody when there was a lot of pressure."

"Did you know his friend Godzilla?"

"Godzilla? Hey, that's one of my favorite trashy movies, but I don't know any friends he had named Godzilla."

"How about a guy named Bryan McIlwaine?"

"Yeah, I knew Bryan. He was living up near Goleta, though. He and Eric hadn't worked together for a long time. Bryan was a software engineer, but he was the sort of guy you called when you needed something in three hours. We used to kid Bryan about being the sort of guy who worked well with a gun pointed at his head, preferably loaded. He agreed."

"What'd he do when he wasn't coding?"

"Bryan? Funny you should ask. Bryan was a conspiracy theorist. He had all these theories about how government was controlling our lives and how they were going to do it...do you know this guy?"

"I know Godzilla from our subscription list. He's one of the original subscribers."

"Wow. Small world. Anyway, Eric and Bryan worked together for about 7 years. Bryan would sometimes not feel like working, and when Bryan didn't feel like working, you didn't either. He made sure of that. Bryan always got everything done, but according to Eric, he spent maybe ten percent of his time coding. Maybe. Otherwise, he was always checking things out-news, info on the web, whatever. And he'd haul your ass off to lunch to expound upon his latest theories. And I don't think Eric took some of them terribly seriously, although Eric was far less sanguine about government activity than I was. I don't mean to imply that I don't think our government is totally clean-God knows we've seen enough evidence to the contrary. But
Eric always enjoyed hearing Bryan out and arguing with him. Do you know the conventional wisdom column in Newsweek?"

"Yeah."

"Bryan had his own internal version going at work. Only one time, during a management shakeup, Eric wrote the column. Everyone thought Bryan did it-and Bryan did nothing to dispel that notion. He and Eric had a good laugh over it, though."

"Well, I got something from Godzilla beginning of last October. It was an e-mail. And it was encrypted. It had been sent to him from your husband."

"Let me guess. You destroyed it."

"No way. Just reencrypted it, that's all. If you want to read it, I'll print it out for you."

"I think you'd better."

He was curled up in the chair now-how did someone that tall curl themselves up so well?--and his eyes were blinking drowsily.

"Ally, I told you I don't think you got here by accident. Maybe if I show you his letter to Bryan, you'll get some insight."

"Is this the end of the story?"

"No. But right now, Ally, I've gotta sleep. And the G-men are coming back soon, to talk to the kids. And I'd just as soon be asleep when they get here. I've had my fill of G-men for one day."

"Speaking of G-men, Mulder hasn't called."

"This case wouldn't be in his jurisdiction. Not yet, anyway. He'll call. Trust me, once he talks to Scully about it, he'll be on the phone, and don't forget that Mulder doesn't sleep like normal people."

"Actually, I think he's been better since he moved in with Dana."

"This is Mulder. He gets even a whiff of something weird, he's like a terrier with a rat."

"Worse than you?"

He giggled, a bit sleepily. "I'll go print out the letter if you want."

I looked at him. "You know what, babe? I can barely believe what I've heard so far. Give me time to at least soak it in and see if I can make sense of it. Save it for later." The idea of reading this correspondence-if it was even Eric's-made me uneasy. And I was feeling uneasy about a lot of things right now. "Right now a lot of my basic assumptions are lying in rags on the floor. And I need some sleep, and I feel like I'll never be able to sleep until I know what happened to Lydia."

He was curled into the chair now. "Come to bed with me?"

"Can't. The G-men are coming, and I'll be damned if I won't be there when they talk to the kids."

"Good call. Hope you don't mind, but I'm gonna sit this one out."

"Wish I could, but I won't." I yawned hard. "Listen, I know this is a lot to ask, but do you think Byers or Frohike would come over and hang here for a while? I am so tired, and I think I might be able to sleep if there was somebody awake while we're down for the count."

"Just ask 'em. I'm sure one of 'em would. At least one of 'em."

"I'm just feeling really...paranoid right now? I know, that sounds ridiculous, I'm sure nothing will happen to the girls-"

"No matter how paranoid you are, you're not paranoid enough."

"Your quote?"

"Suzanne Modeski's. As in the late Mrs. Byers."

"Maybe she was right."

"Hey, you said yourself, parental paranoia has no limits."

"No, it doesn't." He was starting to drift; I could tell from the little soft noises he was making that he always made in his sleep. "Langly?"

"Huh?"

"Go to bed."

"Uh-huh." His eyes were closed now.

"Langly baby, the G-men are coming."

"Mmm."

Okay, if that didn't do it, nothing would. I grabbed one of the afghans from the back of the sofa and tucked it around him and kissed the top of his very exhausted head. NY Times jumped up on him and settled in.

Then I dialed the Gunmen offices.

END OF PART 24