The island had been uninhabited for years, with only the sheep to
see the sun rising over the mainland and setting over the
Atlantic. Even the one house which was still habitable was boarded
up and abandoned; nobody had set a foot near it since the original
owner had gone to prison. For corruption, his guide said; he had
been a politician who had taken kickbacks left, right and centre.
There was something appropriate about it, Alex thought, as he eyed
up the house, estimating the amount of work that needed doing. His
money was dirty too. Of course in his case, no one would ever find
out.
He had never cared much for money as money; the desire to save
for "a rainy day" or his "old age" had never had any hold on him.
But almost as soon as he got back from Russia, he had realised
that, though it went against his instincts, he would need to
gather a little hoard against the cold days. If things went wrong,
if the Old Man changed his mind and decided to ship him back to
his former bosses in Tunguska with a ribbon round his neck, he would
need something to fall back on other than secrets and cunning.
So he had begun; nothing so crude as theft, of course, nothing too
obtrusive, only a little scraped away here, a few scraps misdirected
there—slow work, but remunerative nonetheless. And it had been
almost laughably easy to embezzle funds from Roush. All the company's
security had gone into protecting secrets, not money. After all,
nobody who was anybody at Roush really expected to collect on their
share options.
Alex wondered idly, as the south wind ruffled his hair and his
guide rambled on about turf and halting sites, whether embezzling
from a company that no longer existed was still considered a crime.
Of course, with the political climate being what it was, he'd
probably get a full pardon, if not a medal. Roush, Purity,
conspiracy, aliens: these were dirty words nowadays. Those who
had known about the invasion that never happened were either
heroes or demons in the eyes of the people, according to whether
they had resisted or collaborated. And the definitions of "resistance"
and "collaboration" seemed to vary from day to day and country to
country. Whether he would fall into one camp or the other in the
eyes of the law and the public was something he didn't care to
find out.
All he wanted was peace; and while money couldn't buy respite from
the bubble and swirl of his memories, it could buy him a place of
solitude, a place to hide from the crowd and their endless
questions. A place where, for the first time in years, he could
breathe.
This place.
The island was barely a mile in length at its widest point; it was
rough and exposed and had no facilities at all. He'd have to wait
a week for electricity, longer for a phone line, and even then the
service would be erratic. It was so isolated that he would need to
make trips to the mainland at least once a week or starve to death.
It was perfect.
As they reached the western edge of the island, Alex's mind was made
up. He would listen to all his guide had to say, for courtesy's
sake, and he would pay whatever price was asked, but he would have
the island. He would buy this little patch of rock in the middle
of nowhere, and make it his home.
He stared west across the ocean, at the waves and the seagulls,
and suddenly the thought struck him, with the force of a punch to
the gut, that there was nothing but the ocean between him and
Mulder.
He blinked, squeezed his eyes tight shut, and shook his head
decisively. No. He would not cry for Mulder now, for old dreams
and lost opportunities, would not allow the moment to pass by in
futile wonderings. It was better not to see Mulder, now that the
war was over and their common cause had evaporated, lest he find
that the truce had gone with it. And better not to think of him,
lest he tear his heart out with longing.
"Mr. Arntzen? Are you all right, Mr. Arntzen? You look as if you'd
seen a ghost!"
"No, I—It's nothing. I'm all right."
The guide knelt down by the edge of the cliff and stared in the
same direction, a frown of concentration on his face; but after a
moment he stood up again and brushed the grass from his knees.
"I've heard stories," he said, "about the spirits on this island.
The ghosts of the dead, the Good People—even Robin Flowers
wrote about it. If you wanted to see a ghost, the Inis is the
place to look."
It sounded like tourist fodder, and yet Alex could not detect
even a hint of a lie in the man's voice. He turned to face him in
his surprise and said,
"You don't believe in that stuff, do you?"
The man looked away across the ocean with a brooding expression. "I
never used to," he said finally, "but then, I never used to believe
in aliens."
That took Alex by surprise, and he wondered whether perhaps the
people most shaken by the war were those whom it had never touched
until it was all over. The conspirators were, for the most part, dead,
whether by execution, suicide, or the inevitable results of the
conspiracy itself; they would none of them see the world their failure
had created. Mulder, child of the Project or not, would have had
the same driven, crusading personality; it was impossible to imagine
him otherwise. Scully, now...perhaps she might have had a normal life
if not for the war and what it had done to her. And yet....He could
remember her a little from the time before, her anger and her loyalty
and her terrible, inescapable honesty. It may well have been that she
was fated to be special, whatever happened.
For himself, he had never really believed he would survive it all,
despite the contingency plans he had made, and that being so, he had
never stopped to consider the consequences of all that was going on.
There was a certain measure of self-protection involved, too. It
would have been counter-productive, not to mention downright dangerous,
to worry about such abstract and long-term matters when the world was
threatening to collapse around him. There had simply never been the
time.
But now...now the danger was past, the war won, the dust beginning,
slowly, to settle. There was time. There would be time.
He turned to his guide abruptly and said, "These sheep. They belong to
you, to your family?"
He nodded. "They do. And, Mr. Arntzen, I'm afraid the answer to your
next question is no."
"What do you—"
"The Dalys have kept sheep here on the Inis since the nineteenth
century, Mr. Arntzen. We used to live here, a long time ago. We're not
budging now. And I think you'll find it's in the conditions of resale
that the grazing rights remain with us."
From the look on the man's face, Alex judged it would be unwise to try
to fight him on this, whatever the conditions were. "You wouldn't
consider compensation?"
"I'd have to talk about it with my brothers, but...I doubt it."
Alex nodded gravely, while his mind tried to get to grips with the way
the man had used the word "we" of people long dead. Ever since the day
he had called his employer with the message that Mulder suspected him
and he could no longer maintain his cover, he had lost all continuity
with the past, even his own. It had been disorienting, to say the
least, to find that the man he had been yesterday no longer existed
and the man he was today wouldn't exist tomorrow. It had gone on for
years, too, that constant shifting of identity, no place his shelter
for long enough to earn the name of "home", no familiar faces but
those of his enemies. He had had to hold on to a core of self in
order to keep from splintering, and he had guarded that core
jealously, never letting anyone see it.
It was important to remember, now, that not everyone was like that.
"It doesn't really matter," he said. "I trust it won't mean there'll
be shepherds landing on the island every weekend?"
"Ah, not at all. Sure, the sheep look after themselves most of the
time. We just come to the Inis for shearing and the like."
Nodding, Alex turned and gazed past the grazing sheep—and there
weren't very many of them, after all—past the ruins of drystone
walls and roofless cottages. There was a solidity about this place
that made Mr Daly's "we" seem natural rather than presumptuous. Even
though the ruins were no more than a hundred years old, they seemed
immeasurably ancient, so crumbled and weatherbeaten that surely
another season would be enough to flatten them altogether.
And yet, although the island was more solid, more real than many
places he had spent time in over the past few years, it had never, in
the grand scheme of things, been important. It had been home for some
people and a place of shelter for others, but never any more than
that.
It couldn't have been more suitable if he'd had it made to order.
There were still formalities to be gotten over with, of course; his
people would call Haughey's people, prices would be suggested, rejected,
adjusted and finally accepted; and even when the island was his by
right, there would be a week or two's wait while the house was made
suitable for his purposes. And yet, and yet...
He fancied he could feel the spirit of the place welcoming him.
Anchor me, he said in a silent prayer. Keep me here. Bind me to the
earth. I need this.
When he met Mr Daly's eyes again, there was a wary respect in his
expression that hadn't been there before; not the almost fawning
attention of a man who knows what side his bread is buttered on, but
a kind of muted recognition. "Dia's a mháthair, is oileánach é!" he
said in a mutter, and then, aloud, "You'll do well for the Inis, Mr
Arntzen."
And Alex nodded gravely, taking this honour as his due. It was his
island now.
[end chapter 1]
Translation: God and His mother, he is an islander!
Inis Icilean
by Katherine F
I will leave this place
and go somewhere
you are not known.
Days might pass
without hearing your name.
— Mary Dorcey, "I Will Leave This Place"
