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       __________________________________________________________
 "Point B?" asks Max.
"The point of origin," says Charles. "Or should I say, the planet of origin."
Max's whole body begins to tingle. He feels a defensive shield building in his body.
"The SETI program is really quite simple. There is a starting point and ending point. We just work our ways backward and voila! The point of origin."
"So you know where the signal comes from?"
"Oh, yes," confirms Charles. "From earth, it travels back through the Whirlwind Galaxy to a red dwarf and beyond that a system of five planets shaped in a "V" configuration.
"That's amazing," says Max warily.
"And this planet," says Charles as he draws an invisible "V" on a table, "is at the apex of the "V" ... the point of origin." He dots the apex with emphasis, to draw Max's attention.
"But you already know that," continues Charles. "Don't you, Your Majesty?"
Max stiffens and looks Charles square in the eye.
"Who are you?"
 Maria puts the finishing touches on Liz's faked bruise.
"Okay, you're done."
Liz jumps from the bed and checks it in the mirror.
"Maria," she says, "That's really good."
"Not bad if I say so myself," she Maria just as Nancy Parker walks in the room.
Liz hurriedly pulls her shirt down.
"Are you okay?" asks Nancy.
Liz nods.
"You're sure. It's not hurting you?" she asks.
"No, Mom, I'm fine," says Liz. "I was just checking."
"You want me to check it for you,"
"No,"rushes Liz, backing away from the mirror and further from her mother.
Nancy notices and is a little hurt.
"Well, I just came to see if you and Maria want anything."
"No, we're okay."
Maria looks from one to the other.
"Yeah, fine," agrees Maria.
"Okay," says Nancy, "help yourself if you get hungry. I'll be going to the store soon so if you need anything, your dad's downstairs."
"Thanks, Mom!"
Nancy leaves and the girls exchange looks.
"That was close," says Maria.
"We have to be more careful," says Liz, closing her bedroom door again, locking it.
"If Atherton died in 1959," questions Maria,"and this DNA analysis wasn't done until 1999, who did it?"
"I have no idea," says Liz.
"Do you think your parents know?"
"I don't think so."
"You're sure?"
"Mom said Dad hadn't even looked in the box that this report was in."
"Okay, so they probably don't know."
"If the report was dated Sept, 1999, it had to come from my waitress uniform and Valenti took it from my book bag. You had the order book. What did you do with it?"
"I kept it."
"You kept it?"
"I didn't know what else to do with it."
"You still have it?"
"Yes."
"Okay, maybe the FBI did the analysis because Valenti gave the uniform to them."
"That doesn't explain how your Grandmother got it?"
"No," says Liz as she remembers the day when she got shot, how Valenti came through the door, came up to her while the paramedic examined her, how she held her bloodied apron in her hands ... the apron! She never put it in her book bag!
"Maria, what happened to the apron?"
Charles smiled at Max.
"Ground control to Major Tom."
"What?"
"Did you ever wonder, Max, why Earth? Of all the billions of planets, why send you to Earth?"
Max had wondered. Isabel, Michael, Tess, and he all had been made in the image of humans.
"We've been here for a very long time."
"How long?"
"We are the ancients," says Charles. "Unbeknownst to humankind, humans have been studying us for thousands of years and not even known it. Their histories are full of us ... Mayans, Atlanteans, all those cultures humans knew existed and have so little info. Where did they go?"
Max stares at Charles as he points his finger north. Max rolls his eyes north.
"That is, most of them. Some of us remained behind ... to study Earth's lifeforms ... primitive as they were. Earth became home. We, how do you say, we became assimilated."
"So you're not from Antar."
"Originally, but I've lived here a very long time."
"How long?"
"Since 1947."
"You were on the ship?"
"Does that surprise you?"
"No, we know there were two dead, two taken alive."
"Three," watching Max's reaction "three alive, but that's a story for another time."
"Why didn't you look for us?"
"You were safe where you were. And we couldn't take the chance that Kivar would find you. We had to devise an immediate decoy to avert attention from Roswell."
"The Dupes."
"When we went to rescue the pods, one set had already partially dissected--the backup set. The damage had been done. We left them behind initially. My job was to save you -- to keep the Royal Four safe, whatever the cost."
"So you were the one who escaped, not Nasedo."
"I was never captured. Our third comrade had been hit by a jeep. We pulled him off the road. He was dead ... or so we thought."
Max looked at Charles quizzically.
"When Hal triggered the alarm and the military police followed him, Nasedo and I retrieved your pods. I was left in charge of you while Nasedo went back for the Dupes, as you call them. He managed to get three of the Dupes out before he was captured. We hastily hid them from view for later retrieval."
"I brought you to a cave where I constructed an incubator and sealed you within while Nasedo went to rescue the last pod. Then I went back for the three and arranged a hasty hiding place in the desert. I thought if anyone found them, it would be an end to the search for 'The Royal Four'. It was then Nasedo was captured. The last pod was never recovered in 1947."
"Ava."
"Poor Ava. She never had much luck."
"So Ava was the pod in the cliff dwelling ..."
"Oh, no, not Ava. Someone else ..."
Max grew confused. Three pods. There were only three pods in New York.
"There was a pod missing in New York. ... I ... I just assumed it was Ava."
"The Dupes actually turned out to be quite clever thanks to Nicholas. Ava's pod was there all along. You just didn't see it. The Dupes acquired it."
"Nicholas."
"Nicholas had had control of the Dupes for a very long time. You remember Congresswoman Whitaker, don't you?"
Max squirms a little as he remembers Isabel & Tess sitting in the middle of Whitaker's scattered remains.
"Of course you do," said Charles. "Whitaker kept a diary and in it, she mentions that the Dupes found the pods in the desert. They took the three of them to NY and dumped them in the sewer with Nasedo's help. I guess they thought they would die there."
"But they didn't."
"Nicholas was put in charge of them. He thought he might be able to secure his position with Kivar if he had 'The Royal Four' for leverage. Unfortunately for Nicholas, when they hatched," continued Charles, pointing to his head, "no Royal Seal. Nicholas had been duped."
"Why didn't Nicholas just kill them?"
"They were easily manipulated. Abandoned by their protector, Nicholas had control of them from the beginning. If the Royal Four weren't found, Kivar had a trumped up set they could use if he needed them. Plus, Kivar and Nicholas know that eventually he could use the Dupes against you."
Max nodded.
"Then the other pod ... is it our mother? "
"Maria, I can't believe I was so stupid!" Liz's mind was racing, trying to retrace her actions the day of the shooting. Her eyes darted back and forth, as if she was looking for the apron.
"Come on, Liz. You were in shock."
"I don't even remember taking it off."
"It probably just got thrown away. Your mom ..."
"OMG, does she know?"
"She probably just tried to clean it and the stains wouldn't come out."
"I have to find it. I was wearing it when I was talking to Valenti. I was trying to cover the bullet hole. Then Dad came in ..."
"Liz, don't do this to yourself."
"Why can't I remember, Maria? It's sooo important!"
"You're reading too much ..."
"Do you realize that someone could have taken that apron and used it to create...THIS?" said Liz, waving the DNA report.
Maria frowned. No, she hadn't considered that.
"What are you going to do?" asked Maria.
Liz contemplated for a moment, then nodded in determination.
"We're going to find it."
Charles shook his head sympathetically.
"That pod represents the past and future of the Antarian civilization."
"I don't understand."
"Antar is dying, Max," said Charles, "Surely you have felt in some way."
"The red dwarf."
Charles nodded, pleased.
"Kivar is desperate. He must find a way to reverse the accelerated damage that 50 years of war has done to the Antarian empire. He thinks he has the Granolith."
"But he does! Tess ... "
"They have a ship ... "
"It's not the Granolith ..."
"Ever been back to the Pod Chamber?"
Max straightened. No, he hadn't. He had assumed ...
"Never assume anything," said Charles, reading Max's transparent thoughts. A smile curled on his lips. "I suspect Kivar will not be pleased to see your beloved Tess."
Max winced at the word, "beloved."
"Well, at least you have a better understanding of 'the evil within.'"
All too well, thought Max, and if it hadn't been for Liz, Maria and Kyle, they would have been in the hands of their enemy ... on their way to execution.
"By 1947, Earth time, the scientists of Antar knew the five planets of the federation was in trouble. That life as we knew it, had to change. Zan understood that. Unfortunately, his people did not. Times were good. They were not ready to change."
"I need to know what happened on Antar."
"What you need to know is what is happening here, Max," said Charles. "That July in 1947, three Antarian ships crashed at three different locations in the New Mexico desert."
"The ship that carried the Royal pods, you know about. The other ships also carried pods ... but different ones."
"What do you mean ... different."
"Antarian scientists have been experimenting with hybridization for a long time, Max. You should know this from the handbook."
"Handbook?"
"The Destiny Book, you call it. Of course, it's not a destiny book at all, but you already know that from the translation Tess wormed out of Alex."
"Is it real?"
"Depends on your perspective," Charles said, dismissing the question. "Anyway, for thousands of years, we have been sampling the DNA of various earth species to find that one compatible donor that would make life possible beyond Antar."
"Human."
"We successfully cross-pollinated with Native American women throughout the southwest. Their offspring in turn intermingled with other humans until they became entirely human. They contain a genetic marker not found in other species."
"What does this have to do with us?"
"You, Max. What does it have to do with you."
"It's not here," says Liz.
"What did you expect, Liz," returned Maria. "It's been over a year."
"I've got to know, Maria. I have to account for it."
"Why don't you just ask your mom?"
"You can't be serious."
"Why not?"
"Because after all this time, it would be too suspicious."
"Your mom loves you. She's not going to think anything."
"Maria, she's a parent."
Maria thought a moment.
"You do have a point."
Charles picked up a copy of Atherton's book, "Among Us."
"We had help, Max. Didn't really have a choice. Three ships, twelve alien beings in a strange land, mangled, hurt, dead ... on a desperate mission 'to save the world.' Our world."
Max was wishing Charles would get to the point. This was not new.
"With you hidden safely in The Pod Chamber, we needed to secure your future safety and ours. By chance, the military was observed by a few people. They were sympathetic and helped us. Over the years, the group slowly grew ... from those who were there like Claudia Parker, but mostly among the Indian tribes, especially the Mesaliko and people like Atherton.
Charles holds up the book in Max's face.
"Atherton's curiosity got the better of him and Nasedo was vulnerable to his cajoling. He set up an underground of 'helpers' in exchange for favors."
"What kind of favors?"
"Sanctuary for information. Atherton even managed to see the pod, the one you and Liz found." Probably the basis for his diatribe about alien brain capacity. He never did understand what that pod represented."
"You didn't think much of Atherton, did you?"
"He exposed us. Thankfully, not many people believed him initially. But, by 1959, his greed threatened your very existence. We had to take him out."
"You killed him."
"Not I. I'm not programmed to kill, Max. I'm a doctor of science."
"What happened after Atherton was killed?"
"A split developed almost immediately in the underground. Some continued to help, like Riverdog, but cooperation among the others dwindled. The fracture was deep. The underground grew more cautious in their support."
Max nodded. He had witnessed how the tribe fiercely protected Riverdog after Michael got sick and he and Liz went to seek Riverdog's help.
"Someone in the underground informed the FBI."
"Riverdog mentioned that someone was chasing Nasedo."
"It wasn't only the FBI."
"The Skins?"
"They are everywhere ... high and low. After they discovered that the Dupes were frauds, they began looking again. They positioned themselves in positions that gave them access to confidential information. Nasedo was constantly on the move because of that."
"With Tess."
"Yes."
"So she was telling the truth about that."
"Up to a point. ... We never did find out who turned Nasedo in."
"This underground, does it still exist?"
"Oh, yes, but you never know who to trust in the network. A friend can be a wolf, a wolf a skinwalker."
So even Atherton's Underground could not be trusted, maybe not even this man, Charles. He could be another Nasedo, just as duplicitous as Tess.
"How do you know Mr. Seligman? Is he part of the underground?"
"More than that."
"What do you mean?"
"He's your teacher."
Not exactly the answer Max wanted. It told him nothing. He had a feeling Mr. Seligman knew all about him. Seligman knew about the red dwarf; he conveniently had the picture of the Whirlwind Gallery posted in his classroom. It was as if he was feeding information to Liz and him. At the same time, he squirmed under Seligman's apparent disapproval of his relationship of his "star pupil." Charles would not tell him anything more about Mr. Seligman. He would let him squirm like Mr. Seligman.
"The pod ..."
"... and its descendants have been under special protection of the underground. The Royalists have guarded the sacred knowledge of this line as if it were 'The Holy Grail.' As I said, the pod represents your past and future. Your past ... because this is a pod of Royal heritage as you are ... a distant cousin of yours. This pod housed the father, the scientist, the man responsible for perpetuating the most important line of hybrids, including 'the Star Child' of all the Star Children."
"You may also want to give her this." said Charles, placing a bag in Max's hands. "I believe she might be looking for it."
Max looks inside. Staring at him are the two eyes of a Roswell gray apron, stained in red.
"Liz."
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