TITLE:       Pret' Near Midnight                
AUTHOR:      David Stoddard-Hunt
CATEGORY:    S, H
KEYWORDS:    XFVCU-fic, MSR, DRR, fill-in-the-blank	
RATING:      G	
REFERENCES:  XFVCU 1.01 "Midnight on the Firing Line"
             XF refs: "Sunshine Days," "Vienen," "Piper Maru" 
SUMMARY:     He was jes' shootin' at some food...
ARCHIVE:     XFVCU-fic board. All others, con permiso
DISCLAIMER:  No animals were harmed in the writing of this story. 	  	               
             Characters belonging to 1013 or to CBS Television 
             may not have fared so well. Liberties *were* taken 
             with the genesis of CBS' show.
FEEDBACK:    dmstoddardhunt@yahoo.com
WEBSITES:    http://www.geocities.com/mattersofbelief
             http://xfvcu.deslea.com/forums/
NOTES:       You don't *have* to have read any XFVCU eps to enjoy
             this little post-series fancy, but hey, why wouldn't
             you? 
	  
****************************

XF-VCU offices (ex-XF office, ex-panded)
J. Edgar Hoover Building
Washington, D.C.

"Aw, c'mon! Most of the parties involved would be dead by now. I 
mean, God's sake, Monica, the allegedly infected party himself died 
over twenty years ago. Hell, it was in all the papers."

He was trying hard not to laugh, and trying even harder not to let 
on just how hard he was trying not to laugh.

"John, if you're not going to take this report seriously, then I'll 
be forced to take it to someone who will," Reyes said petulantly, 
reaching over to snatch the intake form from his hand.

"Who, Mulder?" His laughter bubbled to the surface and burst, the 
interrogative pronoun stretched into four syllables - hoo-hoo-hoo-
hoo. "Yeah, let's! He's gonna love this one every bit as much as 
I am, and you damn well know it."

In spite of her annoyance, Monica couldn't help but smile; John's 
laughter was just that rare.

"Let me dial." Amusement still tumbling through his words, John 
leaned halfway out of his chair to grab the intake form and the 
phone. "I want to tell 'im."

On second thought, maybe his laughter wasn't going to be quite 
so rare any longer. At least, not for the duration, however long, 
of this case. Reyes began to question whether she should have 
brought the matter to his attention in the first place.

"Mulder! It's John Doggett. Yeah, good. Good. Yup. No, she's 
good, she's good. And Scully? How's she doin'? Yeah, Will. I 
heard. What? Aw, nah. I don't read the mornin' paper anymore. 
I got sick of seein' my own face starin' back at me from page 
one, y'know? Yeah! Yeah, I guess you do, at that." Doggett 
chuckled along to a Mulder riff on the present state of the 
fourth estate.

That relationship, John and Mulder's, had certainly become 
easier, more companionable, since the grueling congressional 
hearings on the conspiracy and the aborted colonization attempt, 
Monica noted. Comrades-in-arms, she mused.

"Okay, so look. We got a call this morning. Actually, I should 
say *Monica* got this call, from someone out in California who 
suspects that her "uncle," we're not clear whether it's her legal 
guardian or actually her mother's brother, became infected years 
ago, decades, in fact. No, no. He's dead now. No, Mulder, wait. 
You're missin' the point here. The "niece" is one Ellie Mae 
Drysdale, current age around 59 or 60, though she claims to be 
younger, fifty-five or so. Current residence: Los Angeles. 
Former residence: Beverly Hills and, before that, a farm in 
eastern Tennessee.

Monica watched Doggett dole the information out slowly, like bait 
on a line calculated to hook Mulder and reel him right in. She 
shared his excitement vicariously; waiting for the moment Mulder 
began to piece the clues together. Watched his face light with 
growing excitement as the profiler recreated a script drafted long, 
long ago.

"Yeah! Uh, huh. Yes, that one! Uh, huh. The age thing threw me, 
too, until I realized that she woulda had to have turned eighteen 
to marry the old banker. Yeah, yeah. A win-win for him, no matter 
how you slice it! Whassat? Aw, Christ, that's right! I forgot about 
her. Poor choice o' words, then. Hey, did that Hathaway broad serve 
time for it? Oh, God! Yeah, yeah, yeah! 'Served that horny prick 
right.' I remember!"

Monica could tell that they were both laughing now, so much so that 
it was becoming difficult for either of them to sputter out complete 
thoughts. Oh, heavens. Tears were beginning to spill down John's 
cheeks.

"Can you imagine," Doggett wheezed, trying to regain breath and 
composure. "Can you imagine if the uncle really had been infected 
with the black oil?"

Reyes could hear Mulder bark out a sharp laugh even though the 
earpiece of the telephone was pressed firmly to the chiseled plane 
of Doggett's cheek.

"That ol' lady woulda had a helluva time, beatin' him over the back 
of the head," Doggett dissolved right back into gusts and gasps of 
laughter, "with a cast iron fryin' pan!"

Mulder's voice modulated to absurd heights in imitation, Reyes 
presumed, of the elderly female her partner had mentioned. She 
couldn't be certain, however, since the elevated pitch rendered his 
voice all but unintelligible to an eavesdropper.

"Wull, hey! Ah got a great eye-dee!" 

Monica knew that John didn't indulge in gross mimicry as a rule, 
didn't abide it in others, wouldn't permit it in himself. 
Apparently, however, certain exceptions to this rule obtained - 
slanderous pastiches of Southerners, for example.

"We could jes' conk 'im out and th'ow 'im into the see-ment pond, 
yonder!"

The wheezing wracked his body once more, tears squeezing past 
tightly closed eyelids. As hard as Monica strained to listen, she 
could no longer hear Mulder's voice on the other end of the line. 
John must have been right. Mulder, too, had been consumed with fits 
of laughter, enjoying this poor woman's tale just as much as Doggett 
had claimed he would. Reyes' initial annoyance began to resurface, 
unchecked even when he waved her over and, helpless in the grip of 
chuckle quakes, handed her the phone.

"Hello?" Reyes was fully prepared to read Mulder a version of the 
riot act, laced with how-could-yous and you-of-all-peoples and 
the-rights-of-all-humans. But her rant got short-circuited by a 
tight, soft voice.

"Agent Reyes?"

"Dana?" Reyes' surprise verged on shock.

"For Heaven's sake, Monica. Can you tell me what's gotten into the 
two of them?" Scully didn't have to explain which "two" she meant. 

Reyes could tell that Scully's annoyance with Mulder had quickly 
outpaced her own with Doggett. The sounds of anguished infant cries 
provided a  hint of explanation.

"I'd just gotten Will down for a nap. He's still getting 
re-acclimated to his surroundings. It's difficult enough to get him 
to sleep without his father braying like a jackass in the other 
room." 

Monica could well imagine the glare Scully was giving Mulder at that 
moment and, in sympathy, shot her own approximation of Irish fire at 
Doggett.

In effort to enlist to Scully to the cause, Monica began to recount 
the specifics of that morning's call, and how her partner had, in 
his amusement, hijacked the matter and had inveigled Scully's own 
partner into aiding and abetting, for good measure.

"Do you mean to tell me," Scully said in such a frosty tone that 
Reyes began to think Will might end up an only-child, "that, 
simply because these people were minor celebrities some forty years 
ago, Mulder feels confident in discounting their claims? Are we 
talking about the same Mulder? My Mulder? The one who "Believes"?" 

Reyes could hear the quotes being snapped around the word by 
Scully's voice.

"To be fair, Dana, John was the one who started it all down that 
path," she said, icy fingers weaving their way into her own voice. 
"He just gathered up Mulder for company along the way."

In the silence that followed, Monica feared that it had finally 
happened. Scully's voice had become so brittle and tight with 
frustration that it had constricted into anti-sound.

"Sit tight, Agent Reyes." Monica sagged with relief merely at the 
revivification of Scully's larynx. "We'll be there in half an 
hour." 

Reyes' protests hit dead air, and she turned, looking for someone 
to blame. Doggett raised his head only to find himself squarely in 
her line of fire, alone and in the kill-zone.

***********************

"Even you could have found room in here for my desk, Mulder."

Scully seemed to be idly taking in the expanded X-Files' offices.  
Idly covering the same circular path around the floor. Once, twice, 
a third circuit? Dragging a finger along a shelf as if checking for 
dust. Hardly idle, then; Scully was pacing.

"You did get your own desk, Scully. Eventually. After I..." 

She cut him off with a graceful economy of fury. Reyes was duly 
impressed.

"Tell me again, Mulder, why you believe that this claim is less 
worthy of investigation than any of the thousands you've hared 
after in the decade we've been partnered?"

"It wasn't thousands, Scully. It was about fifteen a year for the 
first seven years or so, and barely any after that. That's only, 
let's see... five, carry the three, one hundred five!"

She merely stopped in her tracks, not even facing him. Stopped dead 
still. And so did Mulder's mouth.

"Damn!" Monica smiled. "The girl is good!"

Doggett looked up at his partner, startled and not a little 
unnerved.

Scully turned to await Mulder's answer. 

"Scully!" He looked up at her, pained. "You know why."

She spread her hands at waist height, palms out, widening her eyes 
a fraction.

"And now she'd like you to share with the rest of the class," Reyes 
translated, pleased at having decoded some of the couple's famous 
unspoken communication. It wasn't quite as impressive as breaking 
Navajo code-talk, but Reyes beamed nonetheless.

Mulder slumped in his seat, dejected. Doggett, running a "stop" sign 
from his co-defendant, rose in the dock.

"You said y'self, Monica, that there would be crazies comin' out of 
the woodwork right along side the real victims. Now that all of this 
is out in the open, we're bein' besieged by claims of paranormal 
activity. You've gotta admit that a good percentage of those claims 
are likely without merit. The paranormal is hot right now. There are 
people who are gonna take advantage of this to get their fifteen 
minutes in the spooky spotlight. Uh, no offense, Mulder."

Head bowed, Mulder just waved a hand at him. Doggett had done no 
more harm than had Mulder himself.

"I did say that, yes," Monica replied evenly. "And you're correct." 
Doggett looked hopeful, for a moment. "For every nine valid claims, 
there will probably be one person who comes forward simply to claim 
some attention."

"That would be approximately the same percentage of general 
criminal activity reported by the population at large," Scully 
added. "Wouldn't it?" She directed this at the shaggy crest of 
Mulder's head. He nodded, just once. "And yet, Mulder," Scully 
continued in a measured pace, dragging out the coup de grace, 
"you've divined this to be one of the ten percent without any 
investigation into the claim. Amazing." She stood above him, 
staring out across the room. 

After a bit of silence, Mulder chanced a glance around. Scully was 
still there, standing in wait.

"Quite the profile, even for you." She smiled in mock 
encouragement. "Why don't you tell Agents Reyes and Doggett 
what your real reason is for dismissing this case out of hand?"

Mulder noticed that both of their fellow agents were now staring at 
him with undisguised curiosity. After a moment, he capitulated.

"It was that Brady Bunch case. I've had a feeling ever since that we 
were going to start getting pounded with copycat cases from popular 
shows. From T.V. Land to the X-Files, with love. If that happened, I 
feared that an already derided department would only get further 
marginalized." 

Mulder was quite nearly shouting at Scully, now. For her part, she 
remained cool and collected. 

"So this," he continued, "may be the start of just that pattern. 
Just when the X-Files finally has some credibility, this could 
destroy it all."

"Mulder, for a week, you were also afraid that the publicity 
surrounding the paranormal would result in an increase in the 
number of baby boys named 'Fox.'" 

Even though there was still an edge to her voice, Mulder smiled 
at Scully's jibe, and the tension in the room eased noticeably.

"Mulder," Monica's tone was warm, "this is factually different 
from that case."

He rounded on her to voice dispute, but was deftly intercepted. 

"Wait. She's got a point," Doggett said gently. Mulder glared at 
him, betrayed and hurt, but Doggett pressed on. "Listen t'me. The 
Brady case, that was just a guy who got into the lives of fictitious 
characters on a show. Got into them way too much, okay. But still, 
it was just a show, a creation. There wasn't really a family at that 
address, no man-with-three-sons, woman-with-three-girls, anyway.  
It was just a Southern California house chosen at random."

"And that's what differentiates it from the call this morning," 
Reyes added a little anxiously. "This family actually existed; its 
story *became* the show. Their house..."

"Became the model for the house in the show," Mulder finished 
abruptly. "I know. I get it." He looked over at Scully, who 
responded with one of her patented raised brows. "I *get* it," he 
said, relenting.

After a moment, he turned to Reyes. "What was the message? Did you 
get it word for word?"

"Better!" Reyes responded brightly, holding up a micro-cassette 
recorder. Mulder nodded, and she cued up the tape.

Midway through the second playing, he reached out and punched stop, 
rewind and play in quick succession. 

"...no change after his initial discovery?" Reyes' sonorous alto 
was leached of its plummy richness by the small speaker.

"No ma'am! Not at first, leastways. He were too excited, an' come 
runnin' up clear through the holler jes' t'tell us about it."  

The voice still bore the familiar honeyed tone, but was deeper, 
rougher than any of them recalled. 

"A man his age. Imagine!" 

There was sweetness, still, in the inflection. But the rest of 
the voice had been cured too long in a smokehouse.

"You said 'not at first.' What happened when he went back to the 
site?" Something seemed to have occurred to Reyes, because she 
added quickly, "Did anyone go back with him?" Mulder looked across 
at her, approvingly.

"Oh! No, ma'am. Well, m'brother wanted to somethin' awful, but 
Granny t'weren't havin' none of it. My Uncle Jed, see, he was 
s'posed to be out rustlin' up somethin' fer Granny to cook so's we 
could have supper. Well, when he come back with nothin' but a story 
in his hands, Granny had to quick figure somethin' else to cook 
less'n we all go hungry. So, the idee..."

At the softly slurred pronunciation of the word "idea," Monica shot 
Doggett an accusing glare. He looked away immediately, embarrassed.

"...of lettin' *one* of the menfolk, let alone both of 'em, go back 
out jes' fer carryin' on when there was work to be done? Well, now, 
m'Uncle Jed may have been head o'the family, but Granny ruled the 
roost and everthin' in it. She said, "Jed? That oil has been settin' 
'neath the ground perfectly fine long before you come along. It'll 
keep one more night fer you t'come an' fetch it." Jethro, he was 
going to argue with 'er, but Uncle Jed knew better'n that. When 
Granny'd start to pitch a fit, he always knew jes' how to calm her 
down. He was the sweetes', kindes' man y'ever did see."

There was a wistfulness in her voice that was painful to hear. A 
long pause followed, with Reyes' recorded prod finally interceding.

"So, they waited until morning to go back to investigate?"

Still more silence and another prod from Reyes: "Ms. Drysdale?"

"M'sorry. It's jus' I haven't thought 'bout this in a age." There 
was a much briefer pause while the caller collected herself. "Next 
mornin', Uncle Jed sent Jethro all the way t'town to git our claim 
stook with the gub'mint. It was fer the best, I reckon."

Before another lull could descend, Monica asked "So, your uncle 
went back to investigate the oil by himself?"

"Uh, huh. But, this time when he come back, he was powerful 
differ'nt. Quieter, more serious like. He didn't smile none like 
he allus used t'do. He was a changed man."

All four people in the room could hear her soft sobs just audible 
over the hiss of the Pearlcorder. 

"He was jes' shootin' at some food!" Ellie Mae wailed.

Doggett looked across at his partner, finally understanding her 
stubborn insistence about this call.

"Do you mean, changed because he knew that his discovery would 
likely bring an end to your way of life?"

"No, ma'am. I mean that he was a changed man. My Uncle Jed went 
out there to stake our claim on thet there oil, an' another man 
come back from doin' jes' that. He looked like Uncle Jed. He 
sounded like Uncle Jed, but it'weren't him."

There was a shiver in the caller's voice, as if that memory had 
other, more fearful ones appended to it. Monica took a stab at 
the reason for this fear.

"Did something happen? What I mean is, did your uncle do anything 
to you, to Gran... your grandmother, or Jethro, to try to harm you?"

"No! No, that ain't it a t'all. It isn't what he done. It's what he 
didn't do no more."

Mulder flashed an apologetic look at the obviously moved Reyes, 
then fast-forwarded through the caller's emotional recitation of 
the Uncle she'd lost, starting and stopping several times until he 
found the exact section he wanted.

"...seemed like his ole self agin."

He rewound the tape to play this last bit out one more time, for 
good measure.

"No, that ain't quite right. They was that one time when the 
gub'mint man come down. He's the one said we's all gonna be 
com-pen-sa-ted fer our land. He was gonna move us somewhere fur 
away, and nice. An' we was going to be richer than revenuers. 
While the gub'mint man was around, Uncle Jed seemed like his ole 
self agin... smilin and polite. He really seemed to like this 
feller. Granny was the egg-zact opposite. She didn't hold with 
his city talk and city ways. She was funny like that. Like, she 
could smoke her pipe out in her rocker on the porch from sun-up 
to sun-down an' that was oh-kay. But, tarnation! This city feller 
best not light up a ceegar in her house, leastways then crush it 
out on her clean-swept floor."

Something about this memory made the caller laugh. It took years 
off of the voice, burnishing it with the sheen of lost youth.

"I swear, Granny was like to clock him but good, til Uncle Jed 
'splained that the feller promised to make us rich. Well, then, 
she couldn'ta have been friendlier to him, invitin' him to set 
right down to supper with us. "Fresh 'possum!" He weren't too 
keen on that, I could tell, an' he left right after. But, he did 
make good on his promise. Moved us outta there and made us rich 
as you could ever want."

Something in her tone said that this was not as enticing an end 
as might be believed.

Reyes, however, had picked up on something else, the same something 
that had later caused Mulder to fast-forward the tape.

"Cigar? Ms. Drysdale, you said the man smoked a cigar, but he 
crushed it out under foot?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, ma'am. Anything tobaccah tha t'weren't in a pipe, 
we called a ceegar. He smoked cigarettes, that gub'mint man?"

The present Reyes nodded along with her taped double.

"He smoked 'em one after th'other."

Mulder shut the cassette player off and exhaled a bone-weary sigh.

For a long while, the four of them sat unmoving around the 
polished mahogany conference table, the Pearlcorder bearing mute 
but accusatory witness. Reyes and Scully looked on as their 
partners shifted through the emotional spectrum from remorse 
through righteous anger and, finally, to a detached curiosity 
and acceptance. Clearly, from the furrowed brows on both men, 
the potential ramifications were worrisome.

"Okay. One thing, right off, we know for sure," Doggett said at 
length. "There's a crash site similar to the one down in Dallas. 
Only, this time, the Consortium's cover-up was successful. To the 
best of Ms. Drysdale's recollection, it's located somewhere in the 
eastern Tennessee hill country."

Mulder sighed.

"Yeah, I know," Doggett admitted. "But the precise location may 
be in some of the recovered files, though I'll grant you the 
chances of that are slim. Regardless, it's imperative that the 
site be located and immediately designated an Extraterrestrial 
Superfund Site."

Mulder looked up at Doggett and nodded. "The growth of the 
Knoxville area may well have impinged on the site without anyone 
realizing. We'll need to check police, fire and hospital records 
for anomalous case histories from 1960 and earlier." He sighed, 
the burden of the task ahead of them already beginning to weigh 
heavily upon him. "Then, too, there's a possible connection to 
the N.R.C. facilities at Oak Ridge."

"Hey," Doggett said lightly, "it's just as likely the site is 
located a hundred miles from any population cluster. It could be 
deep in the Smokies, either on the state's eastern border with 
North Carolina, or its northern border with Kentucky."

"True!" Mulder said, brightening. "According to our witness, as 
late as the nineteen fifties, the area was sufficiently remote 
that it took her brother a full morning to walk to the nearest 
hamlet. And it would explain how the Smoking Man and his cronies 
were able to keep the excavation of the site from casual or even
more intensive detection efforts."

"It also might go some way to explaining the Hatfields and the 
McCoys," Doggett mused. Mulder nodded, strangely pleased by that 
notion.

"Mulder," Doggett said, taken aback by a sudden thought, "if Ms. 
Drysdale's uncle was like those men we encountered on the oil rig 
in the Gulf, then he woulda had the ability to infect other people 
without losin' the contagion himself, like with, uh, like how you 
found, early on."

"With Krycek," Mulder supplied sourly.

"Yeah," Doggett said mildly, "like with him. That would help to 
explain a lot of things, for me anyway, about, uh, out west." 

"Hollyweird," Mulder snorted.

Doggett laughed, adding, "California - the land of fruits and nuts!"

"John!" Reyes admonished her partner for his politically incorrect 
jibe, then relaxed. She turned to Scully and smiled. They had 
achieved the tacit objective: to get their partners to take this 
case seriously and follow it to the fullest.

Scully rose and gathered the still-slumbering Will in his 
porta-rocker. "I think our job here is done," she whispered to 
Reyes. "Lunch?" 

Monica's stomach gurgled, and both women laughed. 

"I'll take that as a yes," Scully said. 

Monica nodded enthusiastically and rose to follow her out to the 
elevator. Behind the departing agents, the two men continued to 
volley ideas about with increasing enthusiasm.

"As I recall, Mulder, the uncle died some thirty years ago."

"Yeah, of natural causes. Thirty years almost exactly. July 10, 
1973. Close enough for government work, anyway."

Doggett frowned, obviously unaware of Mulder's attempt at a joke.

"What is it?"

Doggett thought for a little bit more, then said "Well, if Jed was 
infected and later died of natural causes, causes we know do not 
affect the viability of the black oil..."

"Then where'd the oil go?" Mulder finished for him.

Both men considered the various possibilities for a moment and 
then, as one, reached the only logical conclusion:

"Jethro!" they exclaimed in unison.

************************

XFVCU office
8:54 a.m. the next morning

John looked up from the papers on his desk to see Mulder 
leaning against the door jamb, making a comic show of looking at 
his watch. A fleeting wave of anxiety washed over Doggett; he'd 
only gotten through proof-reading half of what they'd 
worked late into the night writing.

"What time is it?" he asked.

"Eight fifty-four and twenty two seconds," Mulder recited. "No. 
Wait! Eight fifty-four and thirty seven seconds. No, forty two 
seconds. No, wait!"

Doggett, recognizing the reference, and grateful for the attempt 
to put him at ease, relaxed and played along. "Jethro, just give 
me the pret' near time."

"Oh!" Mulder responded a shade too brightly. "It's pret' near 
nine o'clock, Unc' John."

"Time to go present ourselves to the Deputy Director then," Doggett 
said, slipping his suit jacket over his shoulders. "Let's go, 
Jethro!"

"Bo-dean," Mulder said, unwilling to let the joke drop. "Ah even 
made muh parents call me Bo-dean," he drawled. If Doggett caught 
the more personal reference, he gave no sign.

On the ride up to the Directors' level, neither agent said a word. 
So certain were they that, in the newly charged political climate, 
the D.D. would authorize an immediate investigation, they took 
this quiet time to plan the arrangements each would need to make 
for the trip out to California.

When, at last, Deputy Director Alvin Kersh looked up from the 
report, all expectations were dashed.

"Do you two realize what havoc this will cause? Our entire 
entertainment industry will become suspect, untrustworthy. 

Mulder started to say that, yes, they understood this fully, and 
so what? 

Kersh, however, would brook no dissent, and cut him off abruptly.

"Our society can't stand anymore of that kind of uncertainty at 
this time in history. I want you to clamp a lid on this, agents, 
and clamp down hard."

"Excuse me?" Doggett was incredulous. "Deputy Director, with 
due respect..."

"You heard me, John. I meant exactly what it sounds like," Kersh 
said peremptorily. 

"Clamp it, gentlemen. Clamp it down."

-end-