Date:         Wed, 17 Aug 1994 08:45:55 EDT
Reply-To:     Highlander TV show stories <HLFIC-L@PSUVM.PSU.EDU>
Sender:       Highlander TV show stories <HLFIC-L@PSUVM.PSU.EDU>
From:         "(Nancy Cleveland)" <NancySSCH@AOL.COM>
Subject:      Aloha Chapter 2 (p 19-24)

Minutes later, he stepped up to the sleepy eyed clerk at the counter. She had
soft blonde hair that curled just to her chin, and pale, pale blue eyes, cool
with professional courtesy. <An angel, hovering in the clouds. Not for us
earthbound folks, I'd wager. .>

"Cartwright. Reserved a coach seat to San Francisco. One bag to check."

Duncan scribbled the address of the small hotel he usually stayed at in San
Francisco on the luggage ticket.

<This is it. > He put the bag down on the metal stand.  <I hope I see this
again.>

The clerk tapped the keyboard and looked up. "Window or aisle, sir?"

"My seat should be preassigned."

"Yes. I see it now. You're in row 32. Would you like a seat closer to the
front of the plane? We do have some available?" Her fingers were poised over
the keyboard, ready to make the change.

"Row 32 will be fine. Thanks for asking, though." He smiled at her, and she
smiled back, tentatively, warmth creeping into her eyes.  <The angel descends
to earth. I'd love to be there when she lands. Maybe next time. .>

The printer hummed and spat out his reservation. The girl glanced at it and
handed it over. "Everything is paid for already. Just go right to gate 27.
It's up those stairs, past the metal detectors."

"Thank you." Her fingers were slender, and warm. He felt a surge of
tenderness as they brushed against his. < She was so young, had to much yet
to experience.>  He hoped it would be a good life, one full of love and
fulfillment. <I'm getting sentimental, in my dotage. Mooning over every
beautiful young girl.> Duncan winked at her, and grinned.

"Have a good trip, sir. Come again, soon. Aloha." She smiled one last time,
her lips alive with promise, a faint blush staining her cheeks.  <So she felt
it, too. At least I'm not just imagining things.>

"Aloha."  <Now I find the friendly ones. Now that I'm leaving. That's life.>

Duncan strode towards the gate. Of course, it was the furthest one from the
entrance. The metal detector hadn't even peeped. <Maybe I could have taken
the swords through, after all. >

He felt the buzz. Raven must be just ahead. He was nowhere in sight, though.
The brightly illuminated corridor had a scattering of variously clad airline
staff moving briskly to or from their shifts, and a few straggling business
travelers, suited up for the expected chill of the mainland. A dark haired,
uniformed guard stood up the hall, next to a door marked "Security."

Duncan quickened his pace. <Something is wrong.>  The guard stepped forward.
The buzz intensified, screaming in his head. The guard had his gun out, a
flash of a tanned hand and he pressed it against Duncan's ear.  <Damn, I fell
right into this.>

"Step inside the office, now. " The man spoke in a low tone, his voice for
Duncan only. The unknown Immortal shoved the door open with his foot and half
dragged Duncan into the office. The door closed automatically behind them.
The Immortal smiled as he tightened his finger on the trigger. "I thought I'd
missed you, earlier."  <Missed me? Missed Raven, then.>

The whole thing had taken maybe five seconds. <He's done this before..>

Duncan used the forward momentum the Immortal had exerted to get him inside,
and kept on going, pulling the man with him.  Duncan twisted his body,
ducking and reaching for the Immortal's groin with one hand, shoving the gun
up and away with his other.  The barrel exploded next to his ear, deafening
him, the bullet burning a searing path along his temple. Duncan grabbed the
man's crotch, yanked and twisted, hard.

The Immortal cursed and groped for Duncan's eyes with his fingers, clawing at
his cheeks, smashing at him with the gun. Duncan bit down on the web of flesh
between thumb and finger that found its way near his teeth. He tasted blood.
He butted his head into the other man's nose, hearing the bones crack,
feeling teeth cutting into his scalp.

The Immortal staggered back, his arms flailing, red splattered across his
face. Duncan braced on the wall and turned, thrusting a lethal kick at and
through the man's neck. He felt the windpipe collapse. The man folded
suddenly and was on the floor, twitching, as his skin turned blue and he
fought for breath, his hands clutching at his own throat, his mouth open in a
surprised "o", his eyes wide and frantic.

Duncan looked quickly around the room. The walls were lined with swords.
Dozens of swords. Each of a different make, different age, different size and
style. Trophies. From dead Immortals.

<This man is evil. A fat bloated spider stealing Immortal souls from unarmed
men and women. He deserves to die.>

* But here? Now? *

The door was heavy, reinforced. The room was sealed. < Immortals have died
here, before. One last death and it will be over. >

Duncan strode to the wall, wrenched a huge scimitar off its elegant hanger,
and raised it above his head.

"I am Duncan MacLeod. There can be only one."

He swung the sword.

   *  *  *  *  *


Jonathan settled into his seat, and set up his Laptop on the drinks tray. He
glanced at the clock on the screen. MacLeod was late. Boarding would be over
in a few minutes. What was keeping him?  < Maybe he decided I didn't need a
wet nurse after all.>

Jonathan accessed one of his Internet accounts and started several database
searches. He was looking for information on the Agency, any hint of changes
in the structure, or the focus of its work. <Is the Director still in charge?
I need to find out, now.>  He left coded E-mail  for some of his regular
sources,  a cryptographer at the Pentagon, an analyst at DOD and a liaison
officer at State. He queried a contact at the Surete for any trace of the
Swiss bank raid. He'd downloaded a batch of mail when he'd signed on, and he
took a few moments to review it, looking for any responses to his first
urgent messages earlier this morning.

He was still staring at the screen when he felt the buzz. MacLeod slid into
the seat next to him. Jonathan could hear MacLeod's breath coming unevenly,
as if he'd just been running. There was a faint whiff of cordite. Someone had
fired a gun very close to the Immortal, very recently. He looked up. MacLeod
seemed a little ruffled, some faint disarray of clothing, of hair, of psyche.
There was a fading bruise staining his skin, along his cheekbone. <What
happened? Did someone follow us? Again? >

"I wondered if you'd decided not to come?" Jonathan asked the question
lightly, but the look he gave MacLeod had layers of meaning behind it.

"I ran into some trouble. We can talk about it later."  MacLeod spoke curtly,
then looked past Jonathan, out the window of the plane, watching some red
flashing lights go past.

<An ambulance?  Just how much trouble did he run into? And is it still
following him? Following me?>

The seat belt sign came on. The engines growled, setting up a low constant
vibration in the rear of the plane where they sat.  The plane began the long
taxi across the runway. The stewardess pointed out the emergency exits. With
a steadily rising roar, and a bump, they were off the ground. The rumbling
hum of the engines effectively shielded their conversation from even the
steward sitting in the cat seat next to the kitchenette, just a few feet
away.

The man had his hands clasped in what looked like prayer, his lips moving,
and his eyes staring fixedly down at the floor. <He doesn't look like he
enjoys flying much at all.>   A news bulletin crawled across the top of
Jonathan's  screen. A commercial airliner had just crashed,  in North
Carolina, this time.

<The flight crew must all know. No wonder the captain sounded so somber.
Usually they're cracking bad jokes by now. > He turned to MacLeod.

"Have you ever been in a plane crash?"

MacLeod came back from whatever vision he'd been contemplating and looked at
Jonathan. He paused a moment, as if searching his memory, before replying.

"No. I've never been in one. But others of our kind have. Barring a freak
decapitation, you would survive just about anything. Some have. Some have
died."

"Great. I guess I can cancel my flight insurance." Jonathan looked for a
spark of response, but the Immortal had gone back to his thoughts, and seemed
oblivious to Jonathan's attempt at humor.

<Gallows humor, at best.> He looked again at the screen. He didn't want to
think about what the messages that had been sitting in his mail meant. The
Director, the man Jonathan had  kept at bay with the threat of exposing his
double dealing with Russia, his acceptance of contracts for personal
vendettas having no policy reasons of state, his own private bank accounts in
Switzerland and Luxembourg, and the way that money had been placed
there...the man who had selected Jonathan's targets, sent him out as a
killing machine and reeled him in again, bloody and spent, after each
mission...the Director had disappeared.

Dead, or in hiding, the Agency didn't know. But he had left instructions,
specific, detailed instructions, to collect and question Raven.  The Agency
hadn't just retained Kassmir, they'd put out a public contract on Jonathan,
posted a bounty for his body, delivered dead, or double if warm and
breathing,  and sent it out at all their active agents. He'd tapped into
another account, one belonging to a woman on the active list. And read his
own death warrant.

<Sure, I can go underground, for a while. But eventually someone will
recognize me. For one million dollars, I'd have to be invisible, to not be
found. >

His fail safes were virtually useless, if the Director was dead, nothing
would stop the Agency now. Much of its force had hinged on the peculiar and
personal relationship between all the agents, and their trainers, handlers,
and the Director. Still, no point in letting them lie unused, if there was
any chance they could help. He typed in several more codes and left the
information files primed, ready to arrive at a few preselected destinations.

He had to deactivate the send codes, weekly, in his normal routine. Now, he'd
shortened the time to daily. If he didn't get back to this account and
countermand the order, all the damaging information he had would spill out
along the information superhighway. <I expect it will cause a few crashes,
too.> There were still many persons in power,  in positions of high
government trust or corporate responsibility who could be hurt by this data.
Complicity, corruption, collusion. All potentially devastating charges. All
verifiable. He hadn't wanted to use it, ever. But his back was to the wall.
There didn't seem to be any other choice.

Jonathan leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment,  surprised at how
tired he felt. <On the run for less than 12 hours and I'm wiped out. What is
the rest of my life going to be like, if its starting like this?>

The low level buzz that signified MacLeod's proximity to him sharpened.
Jonathan opened his eyes. MacLeod was staring at him, hard. <I feel like a
bug under a microscope.>

"I think I need to begin your training now."  MacLeod spoke softly, but
Jonathan could hear every word. " We may not have much time for you to learn,
before you  face death again. And I am having some...problems, myself."

<Problems? What kind of problems do Immortals have?>

"I estimate we have until this plane lands, and about five minutes more. "
Jonathan smiled, bleakly. He had little faith that they had left the Islands
undetected, now. He cleared the screen and re-accessed his remaining
financial accounts. The primary backup account in the Bahamas was gone. As
he'd suspected.

Access denied. No such account.

<Damn. They were moving too fast. By the time we land, I'll be broke, as well
as dead.>  The transferred funds still remained safely hidden in Washington,
though. According to his data, all he needed to do was show up, and verify
his identity, to claim them. <With everything else gone, this smells like a
trap. In case they miss me at the airport, they get me at the bank.>

The germ of an idea began to grow inside Jonathan. He turned to MacLeod, who
had been silently watching his fruitless struggle with the bank, and laid out
his concerns, first..

"I'm broke, now. They've busted my bank accounts, and I'm pretty sure they
traced the tickets  I bought for this flight, too. They'll be waiting, in San
Francisco. I probably won't make it out of the airport. You'd be safer just
staying entirely away from me."

MacLeod nodded. "You do attract trouble. But I've been dealing with this kind
of trouble for quite a while. Successfully, for the most part. We have an
edge in these situations. You just have to be discreet."

"Right." Jonathan smiled slightly, no humor in his eyes. "I understand the
concept, but I'm not entirely sure how it works."

MacLeod  shrugged. "It's simple. You let them take you, kill you. You die.
They see you dead. They bury you, or whatever. Someone else gets you out,
later. Then it's up to you to keep out of the way, under cover, until all the
people who wanted you dead have died themselves, of old age."

"You've done this, yourself?" Jonathan was curious. Theory was fine, in
theory. He needed to know if MacLeod had the guts to practice what he
preached.

MacLeod was silent a moment, his expression remote, sad, as if he were
looking at something far away, then he nodded. "Yes. More than once. It's not
fun, but when it's been necessary, it has worked." He paused again, then
added dryly. "Usually. Sometimes things get more...complicated. There's
always a risk something will go wrong. You just have to decide if it's worth
it, or if you have other, better alternatives."

"I don't see any alternatives, right now." Jonathan wondered again how old
MacLeod really was, how many times he'd *died* and returned to life. How many
other Immortal lives he'd ended. How many mortal friends he'd buried. He
realized that there were ramifications to this Immortality that he was only
beginning to glimpse.

<How does he see himself? We think of ourselves, identify ourselves by the
generation we were born. Our values and beliefs are shaped by that, by the
pressures and events of our youth, by our friendships and relationships with
our peers and the society that exists around us. These values shape us,
define us, and stay with us until we die.

< How does it feel to watch everyone from your generation, everyone who
shared those experiences and values,  die, then to watch their children, who
may have carried on some of their parents memories and beliefs,  also die,
then to watch their grandchildren also grow old and die?

< What connection does he still feel, for people who may be  the
grandchildren of the grandchildren of the grandchildren of the men and women
he grew up with? People whose very lives and values must be totally alien to
the world he was raised in? How many generations of people has he seen born,
live and go to their graves?  What does it do to a man, to see that? And is
it something I want, for myself? >

"How old are you, MacLeod?" <100 years? 200? I need to know, to ever begin to
understand this man. To begin to understand what it means to be Immortal.>

"I was born in the Highlands of Scotland, 400 years ago." Jonathan tried not
to show his shock. MacLeod's eyes were on him, gauging the impact of his
words. His mouth quirked.   " More or less. Actually I'll be 403 next month."
=========================================================================