(Headers and Disclaimers in Chapter One)
Chapter 6 of 20

No one but prisoners brought in with Scully on the van tried
to comfort the weepers, encourage the stragglers.  None of the
men or women in uniform spoke unless it was to deliver an order.
And there were many orders issued by men and women who
might have been robots.  They spoke in sentences that all began
with "You will not..." and "If you..then you.." Rules and
consequences.

Had she sounded like this, Scully wondered.  Had
she been this removed from the human side of law enforcement?
Did she distance herself from everyone as these guards and
prison officials did? Was her outrage at the crime so potent it
obliterated the human element in the criminal and thus
compromised her own humanity?

Perhaps these prison officials thought, as she had, that
criminals deserved no better.  She was, after all, an admitted
thief to them.  A guard nudged her back to reality with his
nightstick and pointed to a hallway where the new arrivals lined
up.

In a hallway was a window where she was photographed again
and given a number.  At the next window she got two pairs of
jeans, three long sleeved work shirts, two white short sleeved
tee-shirts, one pair of white tennis shoes, four pairs of
white socks, and assortment of white cotton underwear and a cell
assignment.

Another door slid back.  The newcomers moved into the
main cell block.  The noise of 434 women in a space built for half
that number whacked the newcomers in the face like an invisible
hand.  Scully's seatmate stumbled into her.  While the newcomers
had no chains, their arms carried stacks of towels and blankets.

Scully shifted her load and turned to help the woman behind her.
The illness and fright made her face a splotchy red.  Scully
suddenly feared the woman had developed scarlet fever.

"Face front," a guard said to Scully.

She started to speak.

"Face front." He drew out the words.

Scully reluctantly released the sick woman and smiled some
encouragement, but her seatmate hardly noticed.

"Fresh meat!" screamed a woman in the cell block.  She was
in the first tier, first cell.  She had a missing front tooth and
a shrill voice.  "Fresh meat coming in!"

"Chrissake," said a tall guard.  His dark blue shirt and
pants contrasted against the gray wall.  He adjusted his collar
and stood in front of the cell as the newcomers walked passed.
"Where you learn this stuff? Don't you remember your first day?"

"Been so long I forgit, boss."

"Don't hand me that boss shit," the guard muttered and moved on.

The cell block had few bars.  The cells themselves resembled
cement boxes with reinforced plastic fronts -- frosted on the
bottom half and clear on the top -- that housed two women
apiece.  Only the doors retained the traditional bars.  Women
inside leaned on them.  A guard who lead the line of new
prisoners cleared the way of the hands, arms and feet protruding
out of the cell doors.

Inside, the cells had a toilet with no seat, bunk beds, a
dresser, a sink and a bookshelf.  All the furniture was bolted to
the floor.  Like gerbil cages, Scully thought as she gripped the
bedding she'd been given.  She noted the cameras mounted on poles
at regular intervals in the hallways and common areas that kept
an invisible eye on every inmate.

As the line moved up and through the rows of cells, the women paused in
front of a cell until a guard waved his arm in a circle, alerting 
someone at the end of the row to open a door.  A prisoner stepped inside
and was ordered to shout, "Clear" to signal the guard to close the door. 
The bolt in the cell would slam home, locking the prisoner inside.  Then 
the line of new inmates, all looking neither right nor left, moved on, up 
the stairs to the second floor, down the row of cells and finally up
to the third tier.  The last cell in the last tier was Scully's.

"The penthouse," said one of the guards.  "For FBI agents who screw up."

Scully looked at him and said evenly, "If that woman in section two, 
cell six has an infectious disease it could spread through this prison 
in a matter of days and overload your medical facilities."

Another guard waved his hand in the air, the bolt slid out, and the cell
door rolled back.  There was a pause.  Scully looked at her new slip-on 
tennis shoes.  Manufactured in Taiwan no  doubt.  She didn't think she 
could do it, could take those thin-soled shoes inside the small box.  
Then, amazingly, it was done.

"You must indicate that you are clear of the cell door," said a guard.

Her back to the door, Scully pressed her lips together and stared at the 
blank wall.  Token resistance, it meant nothing, but she felt better.

It startled her to realize resistance made her feel better.

"You are required to indicate that you are clear of the door," repeated 
the guard.

"Sonvabitch.  I'm writing her up," said the first guard.

"Clear!" yelled a voice from the top bunk.

When the door bolt slammed in with the heavy thud of metal
on plastic, Scully started.  She could have sworn the bolt
pierced her heart.  She focused on a calendar taped to the back
wall.  Nine days since Mulder came home, since she woke in his
bed.  Six days since she last felt sick.  Three days since she
last saw her mother.  Two days since she was free.  A day since
Mulder saw her led from the courtroom.

Quiet fell over the cell block.  The retreating steps of the
guards clicked and clopped on the concrete hallway and metal
steps, growing fainter and fainter.  Scully looked on the top
bunk and saw a thin knee and two small hands holding a magazine.
She moved closer.

"Can you read?" said a voice from the top bed.

"Yes." Scully said it with more confidence than she felt.

A tiny woman with cropped blond hair, narrow face, and
dancing blue eyes popped up and grinned down at her.  The woman -
she looked more like a girl of 16 -- studied Scully for several,
silent moments before thrusting the magazine in Scully's face.
"What is this?"

Scully shifted the bundle in her arms and leaned over to
read the print.  To her relief most of it made sense.  "It's, ah,
the Grand Canyon.  A new nature trail opened and this picture
shows the view from the top of the trail."

The elfin creature bounded down from the top bunk.  "I knew
it! I knew it was the Grand Canyon.  It just looked so much like
the African..I've never been to the Grand Canyon.  Have you?"

"When I was little.  My family took a vacation out West.  We
drove to the Grand Canyon." Scully threw her bundle on the lower
bunk and pointed to a spot in the picture.  "I stood right about
there." She looked into the double truck, full-color picture.
The reds, oranges and greens in the photograph seemed to bleed
into her and she felt a measure of calm.

"Is this someone who works there? A guide?"

"Ah, yes.  Park Ranger Tom Mathews."

"He looks very kind, don't you think?"

Scully pursed her lips.

"Did you go in the summer? Fall?"

"Summer," Scully said.  "Right about this time, actually."

"What was it like? Can you see it in your head now?" the
woman asked.  Her tiny nose wiggled.  Her rosy cheeks made her
blue eyes seem even bigger than they were.

Scully shook her head.  "No, sorry."

"Try."

It was like facing down a child.  Scully sighed in
exasperation, closed her eyes, and tried to remember.  "The
brightest color that day was red.  The canyon was full of reds,
from the earth and--"

"No," said the woman.  "Open your eyes. I want to see too."

"What?"

"Just open your eyes and remember what you saw that day
when you were a little girl.  You said reds.."

Scully retreated a step in the face of her cell mate's eagerness.  "Oh, 
geez, I'm scaring you.  I'm sorry.  I got so excited about the Grand 
Canyon I forgot.  But you're not too scared, that's good."

"Zelda!" The harsh whisper from the cell next door sounded
distorted from its trip through the walls.  "You watch yourself,
girl.  I can hear you planning a trip!"

"Am not!"

"You mind!" said the voice next door.

"I'm just talking.  I can talk to her if I want."

"Zelda ---"

The childlike expression on Zelda's face vanished.  She put her hands 
in her hip pockets and stared at Scully.  "Who are you," she said.  

"I-I'm not sure anymore," said Scully, shocked by the words that came 
tumbling out of her mouth.

"Well, who do you think you are," Zelda said as though Scully had
made a perfectly appropriate answer.  "Because, the others want to 
know. They're afraid of you."

"You're not?"

The elf shrugged.  "I have to be careful too."

"Why?"

"Everybody has something to lose," she said.  "Even in here, you still 
have more to lose.  They say you're an FBI agent?"

Inexplicably Scully's eyes smarted.  "I used to be."

Zelda studied her new cell mate.  Scully couldn't remember a
more penetrating gaze, a more thoughtful probing stare.  She felt
strangely exposed, compelled to tell Zelda something, anything.

"I'm afraid of what this is doing to my mother," Scully
said.  Her own honesty took her breath away.

"Not your partner? You're not afraid of his pain?"

Scully's eyes flashed with more surprise. She tried to step back.
Her breath came in quick pants that she first attempted to disguise, then
control.

"Zelda!" The neighboring voice called.

"Everybody knows everything in here. It's like one giant beauty parlor
without the resulting beauty." Zelda walked to the front of the cell 
and said to the woman next door: "I'm just talking, that's all, 
Bernice.  What's wrong with that?"

"Talk where I can hear!"

"Get bent!"

Next door Bernice let fly a stream of creative oaths.

Scully sat stiffly on the edge of her bunk.  Zelda flipped her hands 
back and forth.  "Don't pay any attention to Bernice.  She's the mother 
of this pod.  It's her job to protect us, make decisions." She grinned.  
Scully looked blank so Zelda continued, "Pod.  Six cells to a pod.  Four 
pods to a rec room.  Keep your same pod for your whole tour but rotate
rec pods every year...Rec room's in the center of the pods and they open
it three hours a day -- you get used to it."

"And Bernice is the mother," Scully finished.

"Ah-h.." Zelda said, "Surely you're familiar with studies on the dynamics of 
women in prison.  Where men use sex, and violence to mark territory or 
control their circle of influence, such incidents are rare in a women's 
prison.  Women typically develop family units.  Within the unit the 
strongest personality becomes the mother figure and regards the women 
around as her children to protect, comfort, reward, punish --"

"Recent studies detect an increase in violent incidents among female 
prisoners." Scully sounded weary to her own ears.

"In the context of the family unit.  Domestic violence, if you will," 
Zelda said.  

"Still violence," Scully said.

"Agreed. I didn't meet to imply it wasn't, I only meant
to say Bernice isn't bad.  I've seen worse.  She's inclined to 
punish rather than protect, but ---"  Zelda looked uneasy.

Since it was obvious Zelda had said all she intended to on
the subject of Bernice's leadership qualities, Scully unrolled
her mattress and bedroll.  She realized she was tired - and
dirty.  After all the poking, prodding, examinations and
inspections, Scully wanted to shower.

But she wasn't free to choose.  Until she came up with answers she would
have to bath on command, eat on command, go to bed when the lights went 
out.  She had to tramp down her blooming resentment.

"Look, it isn't as bad as you think."

It was already worse than Scully envisioned.  She searched
her bedroll for a towel and something to wash with.

"The others -- they think you're a spy, you know.  A-a-a-,"
said Zelda.  She leaned against the top bunk.

"A plant," Scully said.

"Are you?"

"You'd hardly expect me to say so if I were."

Zelda's face was pure innocence.  It shone like the light of glory from 
her.  She lifted one eyebrow in expectation, shifted her weight to one 
foot and, it seemed to Scully, waited for her new cellmate to say 
something else.

Without thinking Scully said, "I trusted a man I shouldn't have.
And I didn't trust a man I could have."  She blinked in surprise;
she couldn't imagine why she said that.  It made no sense to her.

"Well, ain't that always the way." Zelda appeared relieved.  She leaned 
against the bars and spoke in the direction of the cell next door.  
"She's no spy, Bernice.  Just trusted the wrong man."

Somewhere down the cell row a woman laughed.  "That so? Hey, the FB and
I trusted a man." A series of hoots, catcalls, and raucous laughs bounced
up and down the cell row.  Scully watched her hands lace together.

"Zelda's the damn fool!" Bernice's voice next door was a threat.  "Shut 
the hell up.  All of you." The cell row fell silent.  "Zelda, you know
nothing about nothing! You mind what I say!"

Crestfallen, Zelda scuffed her feet, shoved her right hand
in her jeans, and studied the floor for a moment.  Finally, she
pouted and drew a deep breath.  "I'll help you make your bunk,
Dana.  Then will you tell what it says under all these pictures?"

"You can't read?" Scully said.

"I used to.  My brain won't hold everything it learns.  I lost the 
knack."

Scully gave her a small smile.  "The human brain contains
billions and billions of cells - most of them unused.  You can
learn to read."

"Even the cells in your brain are finite.  When they fill
up, you have to abandon something to learn more," Zelda said.

"You'd have to learn quite a bit for that to happen,"
Scully said.  It was like arguing with a child.

"Yes, you would have to know a great deal," Zelda said.
She looked wistful for a moment.  "No two objects can occupy the
same space unless they are on different levels of existence and
then, technically, they aren't occupying the same space.  You
have to give something up to get something.  Perhaps something
you prize - to obtain something you prize more.  It's true in
physics, philosophy, religion, human relationships.. I didn't
mind not being able to read when Ann was my cellmate.  I won't
mind now that you've come - if you'll read to me."

"Ann?"

"Gone."

Scully saw there was more Zelda didn't relish telling.

Zelda tugged on the sheet at a corner of Scully's bunk.
"She jumped off the railing out there.  They enclosed it after
she took off.  It was my fault."

"Why do you say that?"

"I knew she was in trouble and I did nothing.  Doesn't that make it 
my fault?"

Scully busied herself with the other corner of the bed.
"Not directly."

To her surprise that pleased Zelda.  "You're honest," she said.

"You still don't trust me."

Zelda's laugh came out like a high-pitched chortle.  "You
can't ask something of me you're not willing to give yourself."

She looked as though she pitied Scully.

Perhaps her cellmate wasn't such a child after all, Scully thought.

They finished Scully's bed in silence.  Then Zelda folded a wool blanket
from her bunk and dropped it against one of the cement walls.

"We can't sit on the bunks together," she said.  "Rules. You need to 
requisition another blanket so we'll have somewhere comfortable to 
sit when we read." She fetched her magazines and settled down.  Scully
sat beside her, leaned back against the wall, and opened the pages of 
'National Geographic' for the previous October.  The magazine for the 
previous January lay in Zelda's lap.

"Shall I start at the beginning," Scully said.

"Please."

"Do you want to hear the articles too?"

"Just the captions." Zelda said.

In their travels through the magazines Scully learned
Zelda had visited many of the places in the pictures.  Exotic
places like Sri Lanka, Cambodia, and Uganda.  Ordinary places
such as Houston, Texas, San Diego, California and Phoenix,
Arizona.  She knew Buddhism and quoted Tao.

"How do you know these places," she asked Scully.

"I love to read.  My father was in the Navy.  We moved a
lot.  I traveled after college for a few weeks, and I saw a great
deal --." She started to say she saw quite a few places in her
job.  A pang of regret lanced through her.

"I was a military brat too," Zelda said.  "My father was killed right 
after I was born and my mother was in the Army. We traveled all over the 
place."

"Where is she now?"

Zelda's face fell.  "I don't know.  MIA.  She served in Vietnam and..."

"I'm sorry."

"You would have liked her.  I was old enough to remember -I remember her
eyes," Zelda sighed.  "She taught me so much.  I don't regret that.  No, 
not that."

"My father is dead too," Scully said.  "I only regret I didn't have 
more time with him."

Zelda regarded her with a renewed interest.  Scully felt as
though she had passed another test.  "You can travel with me,"
she said.  "I think you can do it--over time."

"Over time."

"Well, we got plenty."

Scully sat back and regarded her cellmate for a long moment.  "What are
you doing here?"

Zelda got up and stretched.  "That's a breach of etiquette.  Don't ask why
someone's here.  She wants you to know, she'll tell you." Zelda moved back 
into a corner of the cell between the back wall and the beds to change 
shirts.  "You're innocent, aren't you?"

Scully studied the sink across the cell for a moment.  "Yes."

"So am I." Zelda grinned.  "This is a whole prison of innocents."
She pulled a tee shirt off and chose another "You can hang your robe
at the head of the bed or
on the end.  Gives you some privacy on your bunk at the end, but
less air circulation.  Your choice."

Scully hung her robe on the end of the top bunk and it
hung over the edge.  Zelda approved.

Every night the line to use the one telephone on the row
wound down the corridor.  It was almost lights out by the time
Scully's turn came.

"Mulder."

For a moment she didn't know what to say.  She kept the
telephone pressed tight against her ear and opened her mouth,
but nothing came out.  With a hundred women breathing down her
neck and serious questions about the security of his end of the
line, Scully found she couldn't say anything.

"So, Scully, what are you wearing?"

She chuckled.  "Basic blue."

"Yeah," he said softly.  "Yeah, me too.  I'm trapped in a Salvador Dali 
painting."

"The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto 23?"

"How'd you know?" he said.

"I'm surprised we haven't run into each other.  It's a fairly barren 
landscape with nothing but a skull to block the view," she said.

"Hey! You got people waitin'!" shouted one of the women too far down the
telephone line to make it before lights out. The line jostled, women cursed.

"Gotta go," Scully said.

"Scully!"

"Mulder?"

"I-I'm glad it's not a Fellini movie?"

"'night, Mulder."

"Shit! You gotta tuck him in every friggin' night?" said
the next woman in line.  She began punching in her prison number
to clear the system operator the instant Scully hung up.  She
never got connected.

From somewhere in the back of the line Bernice
materialized and took the receiver from her hand.  "Thank you, my
sister." 

The two women stared at each other for a moment, then
the other woman dropped her eyes and walked away.  "Sure," she
said and walked away with only a sullen backwards glance.

"Doggie boy!" Bernice said into the receiver.  "You ready
to play fetch?" She laughed.  "I know that's right." Bernice's
eyes swept across the line, lingered on Scully, and turned to speak
with hushed tones into the receiver.  Everyone in line made an
effort to appear preoccupied.

Prison life surprised Scully.  She had set up expectations
and tested reality against them in a time-honored way to prove
or disprove theorems.  She discovered that thus far she hadn't
really known much about the realities of corrections.  That
realization frightened her.

She knew within a few days she couldn't use much of her 
past experiences to predict the future.

One of the first expectations to fall was the notion that
a person raised in a military household who prized routine and
order would not find the rigid life of prison too difficult to
bear.

She despised it.

After that, her expectations fell like dominoes.  Although
she enjoyed quiet places, soft music, Scully possessed the
ability to tune out extraneous noises when she had to.  She had
no clue how the unrelenting noises of prison would wear on her.
And in such a short time.

She thought of herself as someone who could endure the
fallibilities of most people.  One afternoon with her pod and she
discovered she was actually very intolerant - but until now
she'd had a place to run.

She knew she was disciplined.  Stripped of her defenses,
her distractions, her support, Scully became seized by an
inertia born of having no purpose or direction.  Floundering, as
her mother would call it.  She didn't know what to call it.

Scully realized she was learning things about herself she
didn't care to know.

The routine wasn't hard to decipher.  The bell right
outside her cell sounded for meals, for the endless head counts,
for work, for outdoor exercise, for time in the recreation area.

Just when Scully thought the overcrowded cafeteria with the
sickening smells and uncomfortable stools that swung in and out
from the table represented the worst part of prison, she
received her work assignment to the laundry.  She had almost
decided meals were pleasant compared to enduring the heat and
steam of the laundry when she was braced for the first time.

Periodically guards would select inmates at random to face
the wall, arms high and feet spread, to search.  Often the
searches turned out contraband cigarettes, drugs, items pilfered
from work assignments.  The braces happened in hallways, cells,
conference rooms, and workstations - anywhere and everywhere
guards elected to frisk an inmate.

The first time a prison guard dropped a hand on her shoulder and 
spun her around to face the wall she suffered in silence as a 
female guard ran her hands over her body.  She understood the 
reasons and the right of a guard to search a prisoner.  She got 
through it by reciting any chemical formulas she could remember 
and replaying medical procedures she recalled as being interesting.  
It heartened her to know she could now remember many things she 
thought she'd forgotten.

During her second week of prison she was braced twice: once by a 
guard outside the laundry and the second in the library by an 
officer whose hands lingered around her breasts until she allowed 
a warning hiss through her lips. She filed an oral complaint with the
disinterested sergeant at the duty station.

The next time it happened -- on the Monday of the third week - she 
was more prepared.  The officer slammed her against the cement wall of 
the hallway so hard her cheek scrapped.  After he completed 
the search, she said evenly, "Sgt. Anderson. Explain to the 
staff that policy prohibits excessive searches and that in the 
future I will file a written complaint with the director following each 
incident. Every complaint, as you may know, requires a written response 
from guards. I have nothing but time; you will be buried in paper."   He 
laughed in her face. 

She wanted to bathe.  Right then.  While the feel of the guard's large, 
beefy hands still kneaded her soul as they had her body.  He escorted 
her back to her cell at a respectable distance.  

Once inside she turned to him, stared for a moment and said distinctly, 
"You have my permission to close the door now, Sgt. Anderson."  

The guard scowled, the bolt shot home and he walked away with a 
heel-toe, heel-toe clip in his step.  Over it all Angela and Bernice 
guffawed.  Only the sound of his steps and the laughter of inmates 
died down did Scully allow herself to lean against the top bunk, arms 
folded across her chest.  She hoped her face had not betrayed her 
outrage, but only reflected a self-contained, cold, determination.

Zelda giggled.  "Well done.  It'll stop for a time."

Scully looked up sharply.  "How do you know?"

"I know all kinds of things," Zelda said.

"But you can't read..."

Zelda spit mouthwash into the sink, then held up a finger.  "What
would you give up, if you could fly? Would you surrender your
ability to add and subtract?"

"To fly?" Scully shook her head.  "Not much of a incentive."

"Hmm-m, a concrete thinker."

Scully didn't bother to answer.  Zelda made room for her at the sink 
and Scully wetted a washcloth.  She held it against her cheek.

"What do you want?" Zelda began to laugh.  It sounded pure
and open.  "Maybe you need to discover what's valuable to you
before we talk about what it costs to get it."

Scully scoffed.

"Something to think about," Zelda said.  She hopped up on her bunk.  
"What else you got to do?  Nobody but me will talk to you."

"You, ah, want to read," said Scully.  Her hands fluttered
to the magazines on the bed, then watched as one or two fell off
at her feet.  She had no energy to pick them up.  She felt
desperately lonely, and, something else.  Something she feared to
say, even to herself.

"You're not alone," Zelda said.  "You've got to accept that,
enjoy it."

"You always seem to know what I'm thinking," Scully said aloud.

Assuming the attitude of a storyteller Zelda began: "The 
grandsons of Noah and their sons built a great tower to reach 
up into heaven, to the very throne of I AM.  
As they built this monument to their ego, I AM grew
more and more displeased.  While they raised their tower, schools
weren't build, the poor went unattended, the sick died.
Determined to punish them, I AM made the language of men
unintelligible, so they could not communicate with each other."

Zelda crossed her legs. "Then I AM saw that no women worked on 
the tower.  No women made bricks or carried things up the ramp 
or even offer water to men working on the tower.  The women 
stayed in the villages, caring for children, teaching, healing.
So I AM gave women the power to communicate without speaking, 
to know without asking."

Scully sank onto the bunk and proceeded to count her fingers.
Zelda leaned upside down to look at Scully.  "You have
power you never imagined." 

She swiped her mouth with her sleeve, and sat back up.  After 
a moment Zelda said softly into the air, "You are the one.  I've
been waiting three awful years." 

She glanced around furtively, took a magazine from the stack on the
shelf and grabbed a photograph out of the pages.  She leaned
upside down again and thrust it in Scully's face.  It showed a
grinning pixie with blue eyes, her arms draped around the
neck of a dark-haired little boy.  On the back it said "Scott
Deschamps, age 4."