She was still on the porch as they drove toward the main road, and he suspected she would be there for some time to come.
He didn’t speak until Scully pulled out onto the interstate. “Amazing, wasn’t it? The Sangre Viento, I mean.”
She glanced over at him, unsmiling. “I’m working on it, Mulder, I’m working on it.”
“Of course you are.”
Gradually the desert gave way to the first houses, which multiplied and grew taller, and the interstate grew more crowded. Scully had a silent, close to obscene altercation with a pickup that cut them off, and another with an old tail-fin Cadillac that hadn’t yet discovered the speed limit was all the way up to fifty-five.
A mile later, she glanced at him and said, “Do you really think it was power he was after? Because he wasn’t really part of that world?”
He didn’t answer right away.
“Mulder?”
“Yes,” he said at last. “Mostly. Power equals respect is an old lure for those who think they don’t have either. Ciola is in the warehouse because he knew what Nick would do. And—”
“That’s not respect, Mulder, it’s fear.”
“Sometimes people like that don’t, or can’t, make a distinction.”
A van passed them, music blaring from its open windows.
“Acceptance,” Mulder said then.
“What?”
“Acceptance. Power equals respect equals acceptance.”
“Equals fear,” she added quietly.
He agreed. He also agreed that murder was seldom as uncomplicated as most would believe. He and Scully could probably talk about it all the way back to Washington, and they still wouldn’t have the complete answer.
The only one who did was Nick Lanaya.
“Scully,” he said while she tried to follow the signs to the airport, “what do you think would happen if, for example, the man who replaces Velador in that circle gets a notion? Like Lanaya did. Lanaya didn’t know exactly what went on in the kiva. He made a few guesses, got a few answers from the old man, who didn’t know he was giving them, and did the rest on his own.
“What if one of the circle decided to turn mean?”
She didn’t answer.
He had no answer.
What he knew was that Nick could possibly have gone on indefinitely, killing those he didn’t like, killing those he took a dislike to for no reason at all. He could have, mostly because no one else believed.
He watched the city, the cars, saw an airplane drifting low toward a landing.
Those old men may be wise, but they aren’t all old, and none of them is perfect.
Imagine, he thought.
Imagine the power.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My gratitude and fond appreciation to the poor folks who had to listen, advise, and humor me over the past few months:
Caitlin Blasdell, who, for reasons known only to herself, puts up with all my calls, and has never once told me to stop bugging her and get back to work;
Steve Nesheim, M.D., for the wonderfully gruesome details, and for all the possibilities therein;
Wendy Webb, R.N., M.Ed., for taking those details and actually making them fun;
Geoffrey Marsh, for graciously allowing me to borrow the Konochine Indians for my own disgusting use;
The Jersey Conspiracy, as always, this time providing me with more dead bodies than I could possibly use this time around, and one drunk;
And Robert E. Vardeman, who never stops reminding me why it’s nice to have good friends in far places.
PRAISE FOR
“The X-Files is a true masterpiece. There’s no more challenging series on television and, as a bonus, it’s also brainy fun.”
Howard Rosenberg, Los Angeles Times
“The X-Files is undeniably x-tra smart.”
Matt Roush, USA Today
“The most provocative series on TV.”
Dana Kennedy, Entertainment Weekly
“The X-Files is a rip-roaring hour of TV: suspenseful, scary, fun, imaginative, entertaining, and weird, wonderfully weird.”
Jeff Jarvis, TV Guide
“The X-Files leaves you in no doubt that you are watching television’s rarest phenomenon—an original gem, mined with passion and polished with care.”
Andrew Denton, Rolling Stone
The X-Files
From HarperEntertainment
THE X-FILES: GOBLINS
THE X-FILES: WHIRLWIND
THE X-FILES: GROUND ZERO
THE X-FILES: ANTIBODIES
THE X-FILES: RUINS
THE X-FILES: SKIN
Coming Soon
From HarperEntertainment
THE X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE X-FILES: WHIRLWIND. Copyright © 1995, 2008 by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub © Edition SEPTEMBER 2008 ISBN: 9780061981869
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