Rating -    G
      Category -  V
      Spoilers -  Piper Maru/Apocrypha, Tunguska/Terma, Beginning
      Keywords -  alternate universe, S/other friendship
      Summary  -  Just how literally *undercover* can you get?

      Archive    - anywhere, as long as the name stays with it
      Feedback   - sure
      Disclaimer - XF characters belong to CC, 1013 and Fox; _Needle_
belongs
to Hal Clement; Hunter, Kit and Ironcore are mine

"Undercover" takes place just after "Vigilance Committee"; Biogenesis
has not happened


Undercover,
by Lee Burwasser  (lburwasser@crs.loc.gov)


Hunter would have smiled, if it had a face to smile with.  For all her
self-discipline, its host was a sybarite in the bath.  Hot water,
bubbles, aromatic candles, soft music . . .  It might have echoed her
long, satisfied sigh, if it had lungs to sigh with.  Instead, it set a
few more pseudopods to explore her tumor.

Were it a healer, Hunter might have attacked more aggressively, perhaps
even plucked the obscenity from its self-eroded niche in her skull.
(Not that a Pink, or even a Grey, could have seen or felt the erosion;
to Hunter's near-microscopic senses, it was a gaping wound.)  Field
first aid, however, did not cover tumors.  It was supposed to tell its
host's healer or physician about them.  But the Pink physicians were
defeated, and there didn't seem to be any Pink healers.  Which left
Hunter, an undercover cop on a run of rotten
luck.

Now it trailed pseudopods into her blood vessels and searched her lymph
nodes.  No trace of metasticising cells.  Perhaps it could step up its
catabolism after all.  Or perhaps that would be pushing it.

Kit's burns had been so much simpler.  Despite the differences between
Pink and Grey, first aid for Ironcore applied equally to Kit: preserve
fluids, preserve oxygen intake, jam out the pain.  With the additional
job of hiding from her physicians; no great trouble.  And when her
healing was far enough along that she could do as well without Hunter as
with, it had transferred to Dana, and its next showdown.

It returned its attention to the bath.  Dana was making little
pleasure-noises and humming now and then to the music, too low for
anyone else to hear.   Except Hunter, who had followed the standard
practice in sliding a pseudopod into each middle ear, just barely
touching the tiny sound-conducting bones.

Steeping in her pleasure, it let its thoughts drift to its Pink hosts.
It liked Kit Mallory, but now that her burns were healing, it would not
partner her again except in emergency.  Dana and Mulder were unanimous
that Kit was a civilian, and thus not to be put at risk.  Hunter had no
clear idea of the concept "civilian," but Ironcore was adamant that
civilians must be protected, and the Pink agents were reacting much as
Ironcore did when a
civilian got hurt on his watch.

Dana was a good host.  She took care of her body, and had an interesting
job.  At home, it would be seriously considering offering to bud her a
Partner of her own . . .

Except that at home, she would have a Partner already.  The Lines would
have vied for her while she was in training, and no doubt she would have
taken one of her teachers' or one of her parents' -- or quite possibly
a  hetero bud.

*Why am I thinking about budding?*  It wasn't nearly old enough to be a
danger to its host, and had budded its share already, including a
hetero.  If that hadn't been the case, the Powers That Be would never
have sent them into deep cover.

*If I don't find Ironcore, I'm exiled here for life.*  Until it fled its
host  to die rather than kill.  *If I don't find Ironcore, I have to
lead the natives  against the syndicate . . .  Stop that!*  Dana was
trying to soothe away her own stress toxins; she didn't need Hunter's.

It turned its conscious attention to the uncells it had infiltrated into
her middle ear and nasal cavity.  Her scent arrangement was bland but
pleasant; the music was not jarring.  (Ironcore had barbaric taste in
music.)  Firmly,  it put everything else out of its nonexistent head.



Next morning Dana went to the Hoover Building as usual, but stayed just
long enough to dig a small notepad and mechanical pencil out of her
workspace and write Mulder a note: I'm taking Hunter to meet the guys.
He grabbed his coat and followed her out.

She did some twisting and dodging on the way to find and shake any tail
that might be on them.  She also stopped to buy a large enameled basin.
With that, the pad and pencil in her pocket, and a cloth and some soft
cheese that she'd tossed into the car before she left, they descended on
a strangely familiar hideout -- evidently Pinks had paranoid
technophiles, too.

The inhabitants were also familiar.  What did the Pinks call them?
Techno-dweebs, that was it.  One of them would have fit in at the
Hoover  Building; the other two would not.

The shortest cleared a place for Dana to put the basin, and all watched
in silence as she put the notepad into the basin and the pencil and
cheese next to it.  She soaked the cloth, wrung it out lightly and
brought it back.  She asked, "Do any of you read classic science
fiction?" and bent her head over the basin.  Hunter took its cue and
poured out of her face.

They couldn't complain of the audience.  The techno-dweebs all shouted
at once.  The only thing that could be made out was "NO!"  Then all were
deathly silent, until the tall one said, "Oh, my God," in a flat,
shocked voice.

The basin was a snug fit, but there was just room for Hunter to relax.
Dana covered it with the wet cloth.  A few moments later, she lifted the
cloth to crumble the cheese onto its upper surface.  A few moments after
that she lifted it again to let the lead of the mechanical pencil sink
through its mass.

"Kit suggested I read Hal Clement's _Needle_, 1949.  That's where the
idea of the cheese and the pencil lead comes from.  Clement's alien is
too weak to use a mechanical typewriter."  It could not hear as well
without its connection to her middle ear, but she was taking care to
speak extra clearly and distinctly.  "Hunter and Kit worked out a way to
communicate using a computer keyboard, but until you've satisfied
yourselves as to its nature, facilitated communication would be more
than suspect."

She had told it about the "facilitated communication" debacle.  Now, it
knew, she was stepping back, literally, to let the three do their own
communicating, without interpreters.  She gave them final advice: "Speak
up.  Without our middle-ear bones, it's hard of hearing."

It wrote on the pad: Kit was my first Pink host; she read me parts of
NEEDLE; she calls me Hunter.  It partly tore and partly catabolised the
sheet free of the glue and streamed it through its mass to the edge of
the bowl, where Dana had left a slot between cloth and metal rim.

Someone lifted the sheet away.  Someone, it thought the long-haired one,
said, "Pink!?"

Not knowing quite what to make of that, it wrote: Not all Greys are
grey, either.  It sent this sheet the way of the first.

One of them said, "Settle down, guys, we have to do this right . . ."


Long and busy hours later, Dana spoke again.  "Hunter's used up the
cheese, it needs to get back into a host.  You agree it's intelligent?"

"Oh . . .  oh, yes," said one of the techno-dweebs.

Dana pulled away the cloth she'd been keeping moist during the exchange
and bent over the basin for Hunter to return.  Even before it completely
settled back in, it sent pseudopods to her middle ears, to lose as
little as possible of the discussion.

Mulder was holding forth: " . . . for going on six years she's been
denying that there *are* extra-terrestrials, now she's bullying that . .
. that *oilien* . . . the way she does us."

"What you mean, *us*, G-Man?"  That sounded like the short one.

"Mulder, setting a Grey's dislocated shoulder is pretty solid evidence,"
said Dana.

"Better than a stampede?"

"In a dark mineshaft, yes.  By the time I recovered my flashlight, they
were gone.  In retrospect, the likelihood that they were Greys is now
higher than I would have put it at the time, but I still couldn't swear
to it."

Hunter pulled on Dana's tendons to curve her fingers as though about to
use a keyboard.

"Do you have a keyboard with a very light touch?" she asked the three.
"Hunter has something to say.  Or ask."

"This has the lightest touch," said the tall one, going over to a
keyboard and doodling on it for a bit.  Then he stood and gestured,
saying, "Go ahead."

Dana sat and positioned her fingers over the keys.  Hunter could not tug
hard enough at her tendons to strike the keys itself, but enough for her
to follow its lead.  Between them they typed: Are these civilians?

"Mm . . ." said Dana.  "Civilian specialists.  They're the only ones who
do what they do as well as they do it that we can trust, so we can't
avoid putting them at some risk."

"It's our fight, too," said the long-haired one.

Dana explained, "Hunter doesn't understand 'civilian,' except 'someone
to be  protected.'  Since Ironcore isn't here to tell it who's a
civilian and who isn't, it has to take our word for it."  They had
mentioned and discussed Ironcore in the course of the testing.

Hunter pulled her tendons again for attention, then guided her to type:
Who is protecting Kit now?

"Since all the accounts agree there was an attack, the hospital has all
the burn cases in a single ward, with hospital security and the local
police cooperating on guarding it.  The Bureau has a resident agency in
Frederick, which is keeping Violent Crimes updated, since this is the
third state involved."

Hunter typed: Is there a resident agent you trust?

"Trust no one," said Mulder.  "Where do you suppose Cancerman gets his
Men in Black?"

Had Hunter possessed teeth, it would have gritted them.  If Dana and
Mulder thought the two of them -- or the five of them -- could bring an
entire syndicate to book . . .  Well, one of three grim alternatives:
either these professional investigators did not know how to set up an
investigation; or they were too paranoid to network within their own
Bureau; or their Bureau really did consist of the opposition and the
unreliable.

It tried to think through the backchat about "oiliens" when a ringing
phone interrupted everyone.  It turned out to be Dana's.

"Scully."

"Agent Scully," said a familiar voice, "this is Kit Mallory."

"How are you doing?"

"We all become outpatients tomorrow.  All of us that are left.  Hey,
there was a chap visiting one of my wardmates who turns out to be a
classic-SF fan.  We talked about the Golden Age -- DeCamp, Clement --
and we got onto _Needle_, and how the aliens aren't angels or devils, or
even one each, just a goodguy and a badguy . . .  Anyway, he's going to
see me to the municipal airport and onto a puddlejumper headed for
College Park."

"When do they release you?  What time?"

"Well, they say ten a.m., which with all the paperwork probably means
noonish."

"We'll talk then, OK?"

"Right.  So long."

Dial tone.  Dana put the phone away.  Mulder grabbed their coats even
before she said, "Kit's to be released tomorrow morning.  Someone's
chatty friend has offered to take her to the airport."

"Didn't know the place had one," said Mulder.  "You figure it's the
Resistance?"

"How would they target her?" asked the tall one.

"She was the worst burned of the survivors.  Without Hunter she wouldn't
have survived; with its help, she doesn't even need grafts.  She made a
point of telling me that this chap discussed _Needle_ with her.  He
could be either Resistance or a contact from Ironcore, recognising --
what did you call it? -- 'oilien' work.  Or he might be a classic SF
fan."


As the rental car barreled out of the Frederick Municipal Airport, Dana
snarled, "Driving the Interstate would have been faster."  Hunter now
knew what Kit meant by a "puddlejumper," and was beginning to understand
the Pink cult of "Murphy."  With a deadline to meet and the length of
the state to cross, they met every imaginable delay and difficulty.  Now
they headed for the hospital at barely legal speed.


As they turned into the hospital's drive-through, Dana rolled down the
window on her side, muttering, "Good thing she's another beanpole."  At
the hospital's entranceway, a tall brunette was about to enter a car.
Hunter could not have testified to more than that, but Dana clearly
recognised her.  "Kit!" she cried.  "Kit Mallory!"

Kit turned her head, and just as clearly recognised Dana.  She waved,
and turned the wave into a 'come on' gesture that ended pointing at the
car.  She got in on the passenger side, and the car drove off.

"Well, she trusts him," said Dana as the agents took off in pursuit.
The other car didn't try to loose them, but headed directly out of town
-- and not in the direction of the airport.

At an isolated building, the other car pulled in and stopped.  The
driver was out the door and had them covered in about three seconds.
Kit got out and cried "It's all right, Ted!" as she circled the car to
put a hand on the  driver's forearm.

By this time, Dana (and presumably Mulder, though she didn't look at
him) was out of the car but still sheltered by the open door.  She had
her weapon drawn, but Kit was too close to the target.

Kit called again, "I told you, Ted.  They were with me at Gambrill.
They helped me."

"We'll talk," said the driver, presumably 'Ted,' "but not while they're
armed."  He called louder, "One in front of their car."

A weapon fired from the building.  It sounded bigger than a handweapon.
Dana glanced at the building and back, too quickly for Hunter to see
anything.  The strategically positioned uncells against her retina and
optic disc were best at detecting close-range motion.

"Just a hunting rifle," called Ted, "but it does the job.  Either get
back in the car and get gone, or put your weapons in the car, close the
doors, and step clear."

Dana obeyed, keeping her eyes on Ted and Kit.  The slam of the other car
door indicated that Mulder also followed orders.  They moved clear of
their car.  Ted gestured them to enter the building.

Inside the door was a flight of stairs and a passage running to the back
of the building.  Directed by their captor, they walked up the stairs,
doubled back toward the front of the house, and entered the second-floor
front room.  Here they found the man with the rifle.

"Ironcore, I presume?"



=====     =====
AUTHOR's NOTE: Yes, the Baltimore Field Office of the FBI has a resident
agency in Frederick MD.  (Hunter doesn't quite know what to call the
agents there.)  There is also a Frederick Municipal Airport and a
Frederick Memorial Hospital.
=====     =====